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By the Numbers: Is Private Gun Ownership Responsible for Police Militarization? – Article by Daniel J. Bier

By the Numbers: Is Private Gun Ownership Responsible for Police Militarization? – Article by Daniel J. Bier

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The New Renaissance Hat
Daniel J. Bier
September 3, 2014
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Are private guns to blame for police militarization and racial tensions with cops? That’s the conclusion of Adam Winkler, a Huffington Post blogger and law professor at UCLA. In the wake of a police officer shooting an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, Winkler argues that private gun ownership is a major culprit for the tensions between citizens and cops.

The problems of racial harassment and police militarization are exacerbated by the fact that America has a heavily-armed civilian population. … Whatever one’s personal views about guns, there is no denying their presence in every American city, from Philadelphia to Ferguson. Nor should we fail to recognize the profound impact this has on law enforcement.

Because there are so many guns out there, police officers are trained to live in fear of the very people they are supposed to protect and serve. … At training academies throughout the nation, new recruits are taught that cop-killers need two things: a will to kill and an opportunity to act. There’s little an officer can do about will … Officers can, however, limit the opportunities for a cop-killer to act by being prepared and quick to defend themselves.

He further contends that police militarization is actually in part the result of private gun ownership: “The Brown protests have also set off a debate about militarization of the police since 9/11. That militarization is partially a result of our heavily-armed civilian population. The armored vehicles that have become the symbol of militarization are being purchased by law enforcement agencies to protect officers against gunfire.”

There are many problems with this argument, but first let me note that the armored vehicles Winkler mentions, such as MRAPs, are designed to protect soldiers from landmines and IEDs in wartime, not to protect peace officers from gunfire. They are mine-resistant, not bullet-resistant, vehicles. If guns are really the concern, “overkill” just doesn’t even cut it here.

But the biggest issue with Winkler’s claim is that widespread private gun ownership far predated police militarization. Large numbers of private citizens have owned firearms throughout American history.

Moreover, gun ownership in the United States has been declining, both before and throughout the process of militarizing law enforcement. The 1980s saw early stirrings of it, with the spread of SWAT teams and Reagan-era “tough on crime” policies. It grew in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration, which authorized the DoD’s 1033 program, expanding and formalizing the process for giving military gear to police. Finally, after 9/11, militarization took off in earnest, with two wars, paranoia about terrorism, a booming defense industry, and billions of dollars in Homeland Security money to drive it.

Meanwhile, rates of gun ownership through the U.S. dropped or stagnated. Winkler drops the oft-quoted and often misunderstood statistic that there are “320 million guns in the United States, approximately one per person,” but apparently doesn’t recognize that this stat doesn’t mean everyone gets a gun. (A good way to check: Look around you. Do you see any guns? No? Okay, myth busted.) Today, the actual rate of gun ownership is just 34 percent, down from an average of over 52 percent in the 1970s.

Not only is gun ownership down, so is crime—dramatically so. Starting in 1990, and continuing through recessions, terrorist attacks, and wars, crime has fallen. Murder, rape, robbery, assault—even property crimes—are all down. Cops toting .50 caliber machine guns and driving landmine-resistant vehicles cannot be responding to an epidemic of violence, because one simply doesn’t exist.

But even if far fewer people own guns and commit crimes than did so in the past, it’s still possible that police officers are uniquely under threat in recent years. Maybe killings, assaults, and injuries of police are on the rise. But they’re not.

In every way, this theory fails to align with the facts. Not only is gun ownership down, but so are crime and attacks on police. Private gun ownership is not responsible for militarization, racial profiling, or tensions with police.

But Winkler is right about one thing: Police officers are being taught to be paranoid about citizens and guns, and that fear is being channeled against minorities, from ATF stings targeted at poor blacks and Hispanics, to New York’s racist stop-and-frisk program, to New Jersey’s felony prosecution of a single mom who tried to do the right thing.

But the reason isn’t that there is more of a threat than there used to be. It’s that people are being systematically misinformed—by reporting like Winkler’s—about the risks they actually face. Telling poor minorities that hostilities with police are really partly their fault—and that if they would just give up their guns, everything would be okay—is not just absurd, it’s actively harmful.

Daniel Bier is the executive editor of The Skeptical Libertarian. He writes on issues relating to science, skepticism, and economic freedom, focusing on the role of evolution in social and economic development.

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education.
Ferguson: The War Comes Home – Article by Ron Paul

Ferguson: The War Comes Home – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
August 26, 2014
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America’s attention recently turned away from the violence in Iraq and Gaza toward the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown. While all the facts surrounding the shooing have yet to come to light, the shock of seeing police using tear gas (a substance banned in warfare), and other military-style weapons against American citizens including journalists exercising their First Amendment rights, has started a much-needed debate on police militarization.The increasing use of military equipment by local police is a symptom of growing authoritarianism, not the cause. The cause is policies that encourage police to see Americans as enemies to subjugate, rather than as citizens to “protect and serve.” This attitude is on display not only in Ferguson, but in the police lockdown following the Boston Marathon bombing and in the Americans killed and injured in “no-knock” raids conducted by militarized SWAT teams.

One particularly tragic victim of police militarization and the war on drugs is “baby Bounkham.” This infant was severely burned and put in a coma by a flash-burn grenade thrown into his crib by a SWAT team member who burst into the infant’s room looking for methamphetamine.

As shocking as the case of baby Bounkham is, no one should be surprised that empowering police to stop consensual (though perhaps harmful and immoral) activities has led to a growth of authoritarian attitudes and behaviors among government officials and politicians. Those wondering why the local police increasingly look and act like an occupying military force should consider that the drug war was the justification for the Defense Department’s “1033 program,” which last year gave local police departments almost $450 million worth of “surplus” military equipment. This included armored vehicles and grenades like those that were used to maim baby Bounkham.

Today, the war on drugs has been eclipsed by the war on terror as an all-purpose excuse for expanding the police state. We are all familiar with how the federal government increased police power after September 11 via the PATRIOT Act, TSA, and other Homeland Security programs. Not as widely known is how the war on terror has been used to justify the increased militarization of local police departments to the detriment of our liberty. Since 2002, the Department of Homeland Security has provided over $35 billion in grants to local governments for the purchase of tactical gear, military-style armor, and mine-resistant vehicles.

The threat of terrorism is used to justify these grants. However, the small towns that receive tanks and other military weapons do not just put them into storage until a real terrorist threat emerges. Instead, the military equipment is used for routine law enforcement.

Politicians love this program because it allows them to brag to their local media about how they are keeping their constituents safe. Of course, the military-industrial complex’s new kid brother, the law enforcement-industrial complex, wields tremendous influence on Capitol Hill. Even many so-called progressives support police militarization to curry favor with police unions.

Reversing the dangerous trend of the militarization of local police can start with ending all federal involvement in local law enforcement. Fortunately, all that requires is for Congress to begin following the Constitution, which forbids the federal government from controlling or funding local law enforcement. There is also no justification for federal drug laws or for using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to treat all people as potential criminals. However, Congress will not restore constitutional government on its own; the American people must demand that Congress stop facilitating the growth of an authoritarian police state that threatens their liberty.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Immanuel Kant’s Ideas on Knowledge, Science, Morality, and Rational Free Will (2002) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

Immanuel Kant’s Ideas on Knowledge, Science, Morality, and Rational Free Will (2002) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

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G. Stolyarov II
July 23, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2002 and published in three parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 23,000 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time.  The essay should be read as a factual exposition, not an endorsement, of Kant’s views.***
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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 23, 2014
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Immanuel Kant’s Early Life and Ideas on Knowledge

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Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in the East Prussian city of Konigsberg (modern Kaliningrad, although the post-Communist leadership of the Russian Federation is considering an alteration of its name to “Kantgrad”), in the middle-class family of a manufacturer of saddles. He lived on a moderate income, sufficient for him to attend the university within the city and display the reputation of a formidable student.

Kant was a man of rather fragile health and a “late bloomer”, and thus spent the better portion of his youth slowly obtaining knowledge sufficient to gradually ascend the hierarchy within the university. His early years were spent constantly engaging in social activities and exposing himself to both the mundane and the ideological worlds. However, his contemporaries perceived that despite his insightful mind and abundance of ideas, Kant would never emerge as a leading philosopher due to the worldly distractions that he faced.

The young Kant became determined to prove his doubters wrong. He altered his routine, beginning in his late twenties and intensifying as he neared old age, into a rigid, nearly mechanical working discipline, forfeiting most interpersonal interactions other than those with his students (he was a private tutor earning a meager income prior to having earned his doctorate in 1755). He resolved never to marry nor acquire a family that would divert him from the task of becoming the prominent thinker who revolutionized Western thought.

Kant’s first work was composed in 1746, and titled Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces. His ideology developed from that point into the formidable and thought-provoking philosophical doctrine that one would encounter in Critique of Pure Reason (First Edition published in 1781, the Second Edition in 1787).

Kant argues that there exists a difference between individual perception of the world and the absolute reality in which the human species dwells. He refers to the external world as “things-in-themselves,” of which every person possesses a varying and inaccurate understanding due to the unique manner in which an individual’s mind would process this information. This activity is known as synthesis, and involves the assimilation of data into the mind, after which it is blended with and connected to previous experiences to thus add to one’s perception.

Kant rejects the existence of a priori intuitive postulates within the human mind, claiming that so-called “intuition” is a product of having received information, then engaged in discourse on or analysis of the topic that the information concerns, and, at last, forged a conclusion, a point where synthesis forms the understanding that becomes a portion of our perception. Kant divides intuition into two categories, “sensible,” which is presented with material after which it undergoes synthesis and extracts an “insight” from it, and “intellectual,” which actually “creates” truth. Only God, according to Kant’s doctrine, would possess intellectual intuition.

Immanuel Kant’s Ideas on Science and Morality

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According to  Immanuel Kant, no person may possess inherent wisdom about reality. This is best summarized in the philosopher’s famous expression, “Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without data are blind.”

Indeed, Kant believes that in order for us to utilize our sensible intuition, we must possess two stimuli, “physical sensation” and “moral duty.” The first of the two addresses a portion of Kantian thought known as “empirical realism,” a reasoning that defines that absolute reality as the entire universe in which all human beings dwell. Every time we acquire external data from that absolute reality, our perception of it assumes a greater degree of accuracy. And what would be the optimal way of acquiring such data with only minimal if any contact with other persons’ perceptions (which are, like ours, inaccurate, only in different ways, since each human being possesses a unique arsenal of experiences)?

Scientific exploration is, therefore, the key to an ultimate comprehension of things-in-themselves. Kant was a fervent admirer of Newtonian thought and the Scientific Method, which permitted scientists to ascend to unprecedented heights in their understanding of and control over nature.

The second stimulus to action, moral duty, provides the explanation for the purpose of all human actions toward the comprehension of the universe. This portion of Kant’s doctrine has been dubbed by the philosopher as “transcendental idealism,” since it establishes a framework outside the natural world upon which correct actions are based. Kant sees the ultimate virtues to be the attempts to reach three goals which are not yet found in reality, God, freedom, and the immortality of individuals. God, the Creator and Supreme Being of the universe, must be fathomed, properly interpreted, and obeyed in accordance with his true desires. Freedom, the individual liberty to act as one wishes and to grant all others this right, must be instituted through societal reforms and a development of ideology to understand the proper order that would establish such an atmosphere. And, at last, every human being must rise to possess the right to exist for an indefinite length of time that he may obey the commandments of God and practice his freedoms. Kant states that all which is right and moral must be based upon those three principles.

As such, Kant separates the scientific realm (which describes what is) from the moral realm (which explains what ought to be), but he considers these two realms to go hand-in-hand — ultimately advocating putting the scientific realm in service to moral one.

Immanuel Kant’s View of Rational Free Will and Its Implications for Criminal Justice

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In the view of Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), all individuals possess a “rational free will” and are capable of recognizing the three pillars of morality – God, freedom, and immortality – and acting accordingly with them. Kant recognizes that every intended deed is purposeful and selected by the person who commits it.

According to Kant, no set of circumstances, no matter how great their severity, can force a person to abandon the three moral virtues unless the individual himself selects to do so. And this selection, then, permits for punishment to be distributed to an individual based on the action undertaken. Thus, every deed committed with the intention of being so done implies a moral accountability within the human responsible.

This model of thought is of immense help to understanding what actions Kant saw as necessary for the creation of justice within the real world, since, once again, every individual’s worldview is based upon that individual’s own set of experiences. Thus, any judgment by one individual of another’s set of “data” will be subjective and skewed, which perverts any prospect for objective justice. That is, unless an objective framework such as one of “God, freedom, immortality” is used to evaluate a deed and not the person responsible, while properly rewarding or punishing the latter.

A Kantian justice system would thus solely focus on what was done, rather than on the character of the person who did it. No excuses regarding a criminal’s genome, upbringing, history of mental illness, or socioeconomic status can exonerate him from receiving punishment for the criminal act. The fact that a man was abused during his childhood does not justify his infliction of similar abuse on others later in life. The fact that a mother who drowned her five children was suffering from post-partum depression does not nullify her responsibility for the act and the need to punish her to the utmost extent possible.

Indeed, a court organized on Kantian lines might be able to exercise its functions using purely objective, factual considerations. Evaluating the evidence in a specific case, the court could conclusively determine what was done, and who did it, from which the punishment for the perpetrator would follow algorithmically, being already stipulated in the law. Whether the criminal is a “nice person” or has a history of past troubles would have no bearing on the outcome – thus eliminating the need for subjective opinions entering the analysis. Neither aloof nor passionate behavior on the part of the defendant in the courtroom would have the ability to sway the court’s decision one bit.

History of the 1848-1853 California Gold Rush (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

History of the 1848-1853 California Gold Rush (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2003 and published in six parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 43,500 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time.  ***
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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 20, 2014
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Background History of the California Gold Rush

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The real story of the California Gold Rush has to be traced back to the Mexican War, which was fought from 1846 to 1848. The war started out as a dispute over Texas. However, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, America ended up not only with Texas, but also Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California.

During this time period, the country was expanding and its transportation improving. Once gold was discovered in California, waves of fortune-seekers, also known as 49ers (because they came during 1849), came from all over the world to California, thus drastically impacting both the economy and social life of California, which in turn impacted the rest of the nation. Even though few of the 49ers actually made a fortune from mining gold, many found other ways to earn a living, especially once the gold became scarce and xenophobia emerged. Nonetheless the incredible number and diversity of people who came to California seeking an easy fortune influenced Californian and American life.

John Sutter, on whose lands the gold discovery had occurred, moved to California from Switzerland in 1830 and obtained a property charter from the Mexican government. During this time, he established a fort at New Helvetia, at the junction of the American and Sacramento rivers. He strove to build an agricultural empire, but the gold discovery was the beginning of the downfall of his dream. Along with James Marshall, Sutter located gold at his mill in 1848.

It may seem odd that James Marshall and John Sutter were quite displeased upon testing the gold and confirming its identity. But Sutter was barely interested in profits to be made from the discovery; his original plan was to establish an agricultural powerhouse, and he stuck to it. He was afraid, however, that if news of the discovery leaked, his workers would abandon him and try to make a profit of their own from the gold fields. He also feared the competition over land and resources that would ensue if a massive rush of immigrants came to California to seek gold. Thus, he and Marshall agreed to keep the discovery secret until the mill’s completion, so that Sutter would retain the manpower necessary for the job.

Stories circulated the countryside within weeks. However, they were all too often dismissed as wild rumors, until they caught the ears of a new and ambitious Mormon immigrant, Samuel Brannan. Brannan immediately sensed immense riches in store from the potential gold boom, and keenly bought most of the picks, pans, and shovels in California at extremely low prices. Then, after he established a colossal stockpile, he ran through the streets of San Francisco, holding up gold, and shouting “Gold, gold in the American River!” He provided enough empirical evidence to be believed and trigger a massive inflow of immigrants as the news spread east. In just the next nine weeks, by selling mining equipment at prices far higher than his costs, he made $36,000.

Gold Seekers’ Journey Westward During the 1849 California Gold Rush

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The journey westward during the 1849 California Gold Rush was an arduous ordeal for many. As news of the 1848 discovery at Sutter’s Mill spread, people all over the United States were allured by the prospect of gold, but the pathways from the population centers of the East Coast to California were few and arduous. Two essential choices for forty-niners, the first wave of Gold Rush immigration in 1849 were an overland journey across the 2000 mile stretch of yet unsettled land in between, or a sea route around Cape Horn in South America.

The sea route, preferred by gold seekers from the Eastern states, would often take about six months. It was not a pleasant journey, either. Seasickness and spoilage of food and water were omnipresent.

Some time later, a third route was thought up, though not any less perilous than the other two. Migrants sailed as far south as Panama, disembarked, then made 3-day trip by mule and canoe across land to the Pacific side, where they boarded another ship. Tropical diseases in that part of the world were devastating. Malaria and cholera claimed many lives. Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, when journeying to California in 1852, wrote that a third of his regiment was killed or incapacitated by these afflictions. To add to the problems, ships to ferry the immigrants up to San Francisco were rare, and the travelers would often end up being stranded in Panama for months.

Over land, a favorite route of immigrants from the Central states was the Oregon-California Trail, a well-worn path carved out several years earlier by fur trappers. This overland road much shorter than the sea route, but not faster. Its travelers would go for six months by covered wagon through desolate landscapes with scarce supplies of water. The Native Americans along the way, whom many xenophobic settlers initially feared, actually turned out to be helpful, providing supplies, information, and guides. The occasional entrepreneur in the area would also capitalize on the scarcity of water by selling it at prices as high as $100 per drink. Supply and demand worked even in the desert.

Because travelers reached California successfully did not imply that their journey was over. Gold was further inland near Placerville, far from the port of San Francisco where the ships docked. Some travelers were also repulsed upon reaching San Francisco by the sight of numerous bars, gambling places, and saloons, all sites of licentious life that had been taboo in the East. Additionally, many immigrants explored the Sacramento River and its delta for new gold sites to mine.

Key Figures in the California Gold Rush: John Sutter, Richard Barnes Mason, William T. Sherman, and Ulysses S. Grant

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The 1849 California Gold Rush was a magnet for ambitious personalities: individuals who would later rise to extraordinary heights in American politics, military, and economic life. The Gold Rush ruined the great landowner John Sutter but served as a testing ground for Richard Barnes Mason, Ulysses S. Grant, and William T. Sherman.

John Sutter was, as he had predicted, economically destroyed by the inpouring of gold seekers into California. His ambitions for an expansive enterprise were ruined by the desertion of his laborers and by squatters overrunning his lands after the discovery of gold. Sutter never extensively attempted to benefit from the Gold Rush, except for one half-hearted expedition which he abandoned almost upon arriving at the gold fields. His losses were never officially compensated.

Another key person in Gold Rush history was Colonel, later General, Richard Barnes Mason, who served as the fifth military governor of California from 1847 to 1849. Governors were changed with extreme rapidity during that time period, but Mason served on his post the longest. He was an astute observer who toured the gold fields with his assistant, Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman, and reported to Washington first-hand observations of the social and economic conditions in the state. His writings are an excellent primary source for understanding the Gold Rush phenomenon.

Sherman, the Sherman who would become an infamous Civil War general, wrote down his observations in his memoirs. Quite unexpectedly, he became a banker for Lucas, Turner & Co. in September of 1853, and oversaw construction of “Sherman’s Bank,” a building so durable and finely engineered that it still stands in California today.

The California Gold Rush seemed to be a magnet for future great generals. Ulysses Grant, upon arriving in California, also wrote detailed notes for his memoirs. His own experiences however, were not to be as glorious as his later life. Grant struck a deal with his troops to start a potato growing business, which failed miserably.

Grant’s financial failure happened because hundreds of other entrepreneurs got the same idea at the same time. So many potatoes were grown that season that everybody had enough for themselves, and no one wanted to buy any. So Grant and his troops ended up eating a lot of what they grew and letting the rest rot away. As for Grant himself, put simply, he had a drinking problem, which would notoriously feature in his later life. In 1853, he was discharged from his regiment and sent home, though he conveniently omits this fact from his accounts.

Economic and Cultural Leaders During the 1849 California Gold Rush

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A number of America’s future economic and cultural leaders began their rise to prominence during the 1849 California Gold Rush. Among them were such individuals as Mark Twain, Sam Brannan, Levi Strauss, Phillip Armour, John Studebaker, Henry Wells, and William Fargo.

The Gold Rush was the proving ground for Samuel Clemens, the future Mark Twain. He came to California as an absolute unknown and took a job at the San Francisco Call, one of the two newspapers in the city at the time. He distinguished himself before the world in a rather unorthodox manner, writing a story about a local frog-jumping contest.

As for Sam Brannan, the great businessman who first spread news of gold’s discovery in California, he became the richest man in California without once mining the gold himself. He outmaneuvered the market many times through his publicity skills and adept purchases, eventually owning much of downtown San Francisco and even printing his own currency. Brannan was also disgusted with some of the racist, nativist miners’ oppression of foreigners and new arrivals in the state. He often broke up ethnic clashes and defended the rights of immigrants against the typically racist-slanted legislature. Why did Brannan care about the plight of working immigrants? The simplest answer is that foreigners were a large portion of his customer base, and the more miners were in the business, the more Brannan would profit. The market, and its most skilled representatives, are blind to irrational prejudices of race and nationality.

Levi Strauss, the future inventor of blue jeans, was known during the Gold Rush as a dry goods salesman and tent maker. In 1853, he made what he called “canvas pants” out of tent fabric especially for miners. These gained widespread popularity and earned Strauss a fortune.

Another great businessman who got started during the Gold Rush was Phillip Armour, who came to Placerville, California and opened a meat market there. Later, he moved back to Indiana with his profits and founded the gargantuan Armour Meat Packing Company.

Moreover, John Studebaker, a wagon manufacturer, established a firm in California to provide transportation to Oregon pioneers. It would expand to become a major car producer during the first half of the twentieth century.

Finally, Henry Wells and William Fargo offered a stable, honest banking, transportation, and mail delivery system to miners, something that the uncertainty-faced miners desperately needed. Their venture would also soon expand to a nationwide level.

California’s Colossal Economic Growth During the 1849 Gold Rush

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The economy of California grew at a phenomenal rate during the days of the 1849 Gold Rush. Much of this growth was made possible by the laissez-faire economic policies of Governor Richard Barnes Mason.

Prices rose dramatically as more people found gold and gold became widely circulated on the market. Seeing that customers would afford it, merchants raised their fees on all sorts of commodities, from real estate to food to transportation. A miner in California may have made about six to ten times as much as his eastern counterpart, but he also had to pay about that many times more for his upkeep.

The following concrete illustration of this trend is useful: a plot of San Francisco real estate that cost $16 in 1847, sold for $45,000 just 18 months later. Imagine investing in real estate during that time period.

The city of San Francisco grew from an isolated village to a thriving city in the five or so years of the Gold Rush. Its population rose from 1000 in 1848 to 35000 in 1850. This contributed dramatically to California’s admission to the Union as a state in 1850. 30 new houses and 2 new murders came about every day. Theaters and newspapers were built and prospered, and eventually only London would have more newspapers than San Francisco. Wages rose with the general standard of living, and great economic expansion and demand for jobs made employment readily available.

The California agricultural boom was another significant economic result of the Gold Rush. Many of the forty-niners and later immigrants contributed to the growing demand for food. Initially, this was satisfied by imports from merchants as far away as Chile or as nearby as Oregon. However, gradually the capacity was developed to grow the food in California itself. Machines were imported into the country to equip an efficient farming industry, and eventually wheat was exported from California to other parts of the U.S.

This phenomenal economic growth was made possible by Governor Richard Barnes Mason’s laissez-faire approach to the economy. Mason recalled of his administration: “I resolved not to interfere, but permit all to work freely, unless broils and crimes should call for interference.”

During the military period, when California’s future within the United States was still uncertain, as it was not yet a state, and governments changed with great frequency, no political factions could emerge to attempt to regulate and restrict the economy. The courts were based on the Anglo-Saxon model, which stressed property rights and the rights of the accused, though occasional acts of “vigilante justice” did occur. The government was highly limited and mainly acted as a second line of defense against crime. People fended for themselves mostly, and did surprisingly well. Unlike the cities, in the mining camps, crime rates were extremely low, lower than even in the relatively peaceful Eastern cities, mainly because almost every miner owned a gun. The principle of “more guns, less crime” was clearly demonstrated there.

Immigration to California During the 1849 Gold Rush

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The Gold Rush resulted in massive foreign immigration to California from virtually every area of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. At first, immigrants were accepted by almost everyone, as land, gold, and other resources were plentiful. As those resources became less abundant, however, a minority of white racists played on miners’ fears of foreign competition and came to dominate the legislature, setting up barriers to foreign immigrants. While some immigrants left, many others persisted, and set the stage for the vast cultural diversity seen in California today.

During the 1849 Gold Rush, California’s government was tolerant toward all immigrants under the laissez-faire military administration of Richard Barnes Mason. But as soon as the civilian legislature came along in 1850, a minority of racist white miners, who feared competition with foreign immigrants, influenced the government to abandon laissez-faire and institute the Foreign Miners Tax.

This $20 monthly fee from every foreign miner was intended to “protect” American miners from foreign competition. It was a disaster and was repealed a year later, as many foreign miners quit their careers and crowded the cities, jobless and penniless. Some did not give up and spread into other fields of business, having thus defended their individual rights against the bigoted government.

Mexicans had comprised much of California’s population before the Mexican War. The war unseated them from a dominant social position and many came to the mines, seeking to regain lost wealth and status. Tensions between Mexican miners and racist/nativist interests escalated into the 1850s. An example would be the attempt by racist miners, supported by politicians from the East, to drive Mexicans out of the Calaveras and Tuolumne counties where the Mexican miners had claimed land.

The Chinese migrants to California would shape the state extensively. Once again, the Chinese encountered animosity from racist miners and the legislature. Nevertheless, their industry and persistence enabled them to find jobs as cooks, cigar makers, restaurateurs, vegetable farmers, fortune tellers, and merchants, found temples, gambling halls, theaters, and laundries, and become key contributors to the agricultural boom. Many of them planted crops or built levees.

Women and African Americans also found a new home and opportunities in Gold Rush California. In both conventional and unconventional economic roles, they defied constricting Eastern stereotypes and met with great financial success. As for African-Americans, though many came as slaves, they bought freedom with gold and those already free used gold to free families, fight discrimination and start newspapers, schools, and churches. Upon its admission to the Union, so many were free and economically active that slavery was prohibited in the state.

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Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant And The Gold Rush. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 < http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist6/shermgold.html>

Magagnini, Steven. Part Three: Chinese Transformed
Gold Mountain. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003
<http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03asians.html>

Magagnini, Steven. Part Three: Fortune Smiled on Many Black Miners. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03blacks.html>

Magagnini, Steven. Part Three: Indian’s Misfortune Was Stamped In Gold. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03native.html>

Perkins, Kathryn Doré. Part Three: ‘Real Women’ Who Defied Stereotype. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03women.html>

The Gold Rush: Collision Of Cultures. 2003. PBS. October 2003 <http://www.pbs.org/goldrush/collision.html>

The Gold Rush: Journey. 2003. PBS. October 2003 <http://www.pbs.org/goldrush/journey.html>

William T. Sherman And The Gold Rush. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 <http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist6/shermgold.html>

America: Gone West. Cooke, Alistair. BBC/Time-Life Television, 1973.

French Cartoon. 2003. Oakland Museum of California. October 2003 <http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/curriculum/4g/42103011.html>

The Police State Needed to Enforce Vice Laws – Article by Bradley Doucet

The Police State Needed to Enforce Vice Laws – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
June 27, 2014
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What if Canadian governments rigorously enforced all the laws of the land, outrageous price tag and complaints from bleeding-heart civil-rights types be damned? It might be literally impossible economically speaking, with the costs in terms of extra police and prisons approaching and even surpassing 100% of GDP. This is all the more likely given the lost productivity associated with throwing millions of people in jail. But leaving aside the economic calculation, which I have neither the resources nor the expertise to carry out, I want to focus instead on the fact that rigorously enforcing Canadian laws would involve throwing millions of people in jail.
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Don’t believe me? I have two words for you: drug laws. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 44% of Canadians say they have used marijuana at least once, and hence have broken the law. Next time you’re sitting on a bus, look to your left, then look to your right: On average, one of those two people has at least tried marijuana, assuming only that bus riders are statistically representative of Canadians in the relevant ways. That’s roughly 15 million Canadians who would have done jail time if our laws were perfectly enforced.

Even if we just incarcerate those who have used marijuana in the past year, we’re talking about approximately 1 in 8 Canadians aged 15-64, which means locking up some 3 million people. More, really, because I know there are some aging hippies and recently retired baby boomers over the age of 65 out there who are still toking up.

Of course, this ignores the dynamic effects of massively ramping up enforcement levels. If we really put our money (all of it?) where our mouths are when it comes to drug laws and made a serious effort to arrest every last person who took a pull on a joint before passing it along, there would be some significant decrease in the number of people who smoke marijuana. But this would mean spending a whole lot more money. Even the United States, which spends over $50 billion a year on the drug war, only arrested around 750,000 people in 2012 for marijuana law violations (650,000 of which for mere possession). Given that both countries have similar rates of marijuana use, this means that most of the roughly 25 million Americans aged 15-64 who smoked pot last year got away with it.

But economics aside, if we get really serious about enforcing drug laws, we could say goodbye to anything resembling privacy. The draconian measures required even to approach total compliance with our drug laws would be positively Orwellian: cops on every corner, stopping and frisking passersby that look suspicious (or foreign); road traffic slowing to a crawl thanks to checkpoints at major intersections where you have to show your papers and pee into a cup; random no-knock raids at every third door, during which swat team members may or may not shoot the family dog; warrantless wiretapping of every phone call and email message, carried out by humourless killjoys drunk on their power; cameras in all our bedrooms and bathrooms, watched by perverted busybodies who couldn’t cut it as airport security goons.

Patently impossible, you say. We wouldn’t stand for it, you object. Maybe. But then, why do we stand for selective enforcement, with its unavoidable, inherent injustices? If the police and the courts can’t apply the law equally to all, then officers and prosecutors and judges will apply it at their discretion. Since humans are far from flawless, they will apply it disproportionately, according to conscious or subconscious prejudices. Or they will target gadflies like Marc Emery, whose five-year exile to a US prison is finally coming to an end. Was he extradited and thrown in the slammer for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet, or for criticizing the powers that be a little too loudly and a little too effectively?

The Canadian government’s new bill proposing to outlaw sex work (or rather, to outlaw the buying of sex, but not the selling of sex) would similarly not be enforceable to any significant degree without a massive police state. Arrest every person who visits a prostitute? We’ll need many more cops, much more surveillance, many more courts, and many more prisons. And while prostitutes would not be thrown in jail, arresting all their clients would effectively make it impossible for them to practice their trade. Which of course would be the point, if the law were fully enforced. It won’t be, so again we’ll be left with selective, discretionary enforcement, with the added benefit of making prostitutes’ lives more dangerous while appearing to be doing something.

But this unattractive choice between a police state on the one hand and discriminatory, opportunistic enforcement on the other is a false dichotomy. As my QL colleague Adam Allouba recently wrote in a different context, “a far better solution is to make as little of the human experience subject to legislated rules as possible.” We wouldn’t want to do away with laws against such clearly destructive acts as murder, assault, theft, and fraud. But why exactly can’t we follow the lead of places like the Netherlands when it comes to voluntary exchanges of money for sex or soft drugs?

Our existing and soon-to-be-adopted vice laws rest on the assumption that either buyers (of pot) or sellers (of sex) are victims. Now, the very illegality of the activities in question may indeed increase the incidence of peripheral crimes like gang violence or human trafficking. But by and large, voluntary exchanges themselves do not involve victims—just people who have made choices of which you may disapprove. And the lack of any real victim is precisely what makes vice “crimes” so difficult to prosecute without gargantuan budgets and a blatant disregard for people’s rights. In this day and age, knowing all that we know, we can, and should, do better.

Bradley Doucet is Le Québécois Libre‘s English Editor and the author of the blog Spark This: Musings on Reason, Liberty, and Joy. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
George Zimmerman’s Acquittal – Thoughts and Implications – Video by G. Stolyarov II

George Zimmerman’s Acquittal – Thoughts and Implications – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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Now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted in a court of law of the charges of murdering Trayvon Martin, Mr. Stolyarov offers his reflections on the Trayvon Martin case in light of the information that emerged during the trial. These thoughts include a re-evaluation of the comments made in Mr. Stolyarov’s earlier (March 2012) video, “The Travesty of Trayvon Martin’s Murder“.

Reference
– “Shooting of Trayvon Martin” – Wikipedia

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013, showed all too clearly that totalitarianism does not need decades of incremental legislation and regimentation to come to this country. All it needs is the now-pervasive fear of “terrorism” – a fear which can give one man the power to shut down the economic life of an entire city for a day.

This video is based on Mr. Stolyarov’s recent essay, “Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston“.

References

-“U.S. Cities With Bigger Economies Than Entire Countries” – Wall Street Journal – July 20, 2012
– “Adding up the financial costs of the Boston bombings” – Bill Dedman and John Schoen, NBC News – April 30, 2013
– “United Airlines Flight 93” – Wikipedia
– “Richard Reid” – Wikipedia
– “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab” – Wikipedia
– “Homicides decrease in Boston for third straight year” – Matt Carroll, The Boston Globe – January 1, 2013
– “List of motor vehicle deaths in U.S. by year” – Wikipedia
– “How Scared of Terrorism Should You Be?” – Ronald Bailey, Reason Magazine – September 6, 2011
– “Terrorism Risk Insurance Act” – Wikipedia
– “Business Frets at Terrorism Tag of Marathon Attack” – Associated Press – May 13, 2013
– “TIME/CNN Poll Shows Increasing Number Of Americans Won’t Give Up Civil Liberties To Fight Terrorism” – Tim Cushing, TechDirt – May 6, 2013

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
May 13, 2013
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Everyday life in the United States is still semi-free most of the time, if one goes about one’s own business and avoids flying or crossing the border. Yet, the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013, showed all too clearly that totalitarianism does not need decades of incremental legislation and regimentation to come to this country. All it needs is the now-pervasive fear of “terrorism” – a fear which can give one man the power to shut down the economic life of an entire city for a day.

The annual Gross Domestic Product of Boston is approximately $326 billion (based on 2011 figures from the Wall Street Journal). For one day, Boston’s GDP can be roughly estimated as ($326 billion)/365 = $893.15 million. Making the rather conservative assumption that only about half of a city’s economic activity would require people to leave their homes in any way, one can estimate the economic losses due to the Boston lockdown to be around $447 million. By contrast, how much damaged property and medical costs resulted directly from the criminal act committed by the Chechen nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist brothers Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev? An NBC News article detailing the economic damages from the bombing estimates total medical costs to be in excess of $9 million, while total losses within the “impact zone” designated by the Boston Police Department are about $10 million. To give us a wide margin of error again, let us double these estimates and assume that the bombers inflicted total economic damage of $38 million. The economic damage done by the lockdown would still exceed this total by a factor of about 11.76 – more than an order of magnitude!

It is true, of course, that the cost in terms of the length and quality of life for the three people killed and the 264 people injured by the bombings cannot be accounted for in monetary terms. But I wonder: how many years of life will $447 million in lost economic gains deprive from the population of Boston put together – especially when one considers that these economic losses affect life-sustaining sectors such as medical care and pharmaceuticals? Furthermore, to what extent would this lost productivity forestall the advent of future advances that could have lengthened people’s lives one day sooner? One will most likely never know, but the reality of opportunity cost is nonetheless always with us, and surely, some massive opportunity costs were incurred during the Boston lockdown.  Moreover, one type of damage does not justify or excuse another. However horrific the Boston bombings were, they were not a reason to further hinder innocent people.

Bad policy is the surest and most powerful ally of malicious, hate-driven miscreants like the Tsarnaev brothers. On April 19, the day of the lockdown, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the sole surviving Boston Marathon bomber, hid inside a boat in a private backyard, incapacitated and nearly dead from a botched suicide attempt. Dzokhar wanted only to end his own life, and yet he could never have caused more trouble than he did during those hours, because, while the lockdown was in place, bad policy was inflicting more economic damage than the Tsarnaev brothers’ crude and clumsy attack could ever have unleashed on its own.

Only after the lockdown was lifted could a private citizen, David Henneberry, leave his house and notice that his boat had a loose cover. As Thomas Jefferson would have told the Bostonians, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Virtually every time malicious plots against innocent civilians are actually foiled – be it the takedown of United Airlines Flight 93 or the arrests of attempted “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – it is the vigilance of ordinary but courageous individuals that truly enhances the safety of us all.  Policies that create martial law, prevent people from leading their lives, and result in SWAT-style “sweeps” of people’s homes in search of a single individual not only do nothing to actually help capture the violent wrongdoer, but also subvert the liberty, prosperity, and quality of life for many orders of magnitude more people than any criminal cell could ever hope to undermine on its own.

Would any other dangerous condition, one not thought to be “terrorism,” ever provoke such a wildly disproportionate and oppressive reaction? Consider that Boston had 58 homicides in the year 2012. Many cities’ murder rates are much higher, sometimes reaching an average of one murder per day. Was a lockdown initiated for every third homicide in any American city? Traffic fatalities claim over 30,000 lives in the United States every year – or 10,000 times the death toll of the Boston Marathon bombing, and ten times the death toll of even the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Are entire neighborhoods shut down every time there is a deadly car crash? If this were the accepted practice, all economic life – indeed most life in general – in the United States would grind to a halt.  Yet, while the most likely and widespread threats to our lives come from very mundane sources, bad policies and distorted public perceptions of risk are motivated by fear of the unusual, the grotesque, the sensational and sensationalized kinds of death. And yet, in spite of fear-mongering by politicians, the media, special interests, and those who rely exclusively on sound bites, the threat to one’s personal safety from a terrorist act is so minuscule as to safely be ignored. In fact, as Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine discusses, the odds of being killed by a lightning bolt are about four times greater!

 Ironically enough, the very act that precipitated the Boston lockdown might not even officially be designated a terrorist act after all. If you thought that this was because politicians are suddenly coming to their senses, think again. The real reason is somewhat less intuitive and relates to insurance coverage for the businesses damaged by the attacks. Most commercial property and business-interruption insurance policies will cover losses from criminal acts, but explicitly exclude coverage for acts of terrorism, unless the business purchases special terrorism coverage reinsured by the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Program. However, for the terrorism exclusions in many ordinary commercial insurance policies to apply, an act of terrorism has to be formally certified as such by the Secretary of the Treasury (and sometimes other officials, such as the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security). (For more details on this turn of events, read “Business Frets at Terrorism Tag of Marathon Attack” by the Associated Press.) The affected businesses really do not want the bombings to be formally classified as terrorism, as this will impede the businesses’ ability to obtain the insurance proceeds which would be integral to their recovery.

 I have no objection to the federal government refraining from certifying the bombings as a terrorist act in an effort to avoid needless bureaucratic complications that would impede recovery. However, I also detest Orwellian doublethink. If the bombings are not terrorism for one purpose, then they cannot be terrorism in any other sense. If they will not be used to justify depriving businesses of insurance proceeds, then surely they must not be used to deprive the rest of us of our freedom to move about as we wish, to pursue our economic aspirations, to retain the privacy of our homes, and to otherwise lead our lives in peace. If the bombings are not certified as terrorism, then all fear-mongering rhetoric by federal politicians about the need to heighten “security” in response to this “terrorist” act should cease as well. The law of non-contradiction is one type of law that our politicians – and the people of the United States more generally – urgently need to recognize.

I certainly hope that no future bombings of public events occur in the United States, not only out of a desire to preserve the lives of my fellow human beings, but also out of grave concern for the possibly totalitarian reaction that would follow any such heinous act. I enjoy living in peace and relative freedom day to day, but I know that it is only by the grace and perhaps the laziness of America’s political masters that I am able to do so. I continue to hope for an amazing run of good luck with regard to the non-occurrence of any particularly visible instances of mass crime, so that the people of the United States can find the time to gradually become enlightened about the real risks in their lives and the genuinely effective strategies for reducing those risks. There is hope that the American people are gradually regaining their common sense; perhaps they will drag the politicians toward reason with them – however reluctant the politicians might be to pursue sensible policies for a change.

Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston – Article by Ron Paul

Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
April 28, 2013
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Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

What has been sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance to make a getaway.

The “shelter in place” command imposed by the governor of Massachusetts was lifted before the suspect was caught. Only after this police state move was ended did the owner of the boat go outside to check on his property, and in so doing discover the suspect.

No, the suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public. He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police.

As journalist Tim Carney wrote last week:

“Law enforcement in Boston used cameras to ID the bombing suspects, but not police cameras. Instead, authorities asked the public to submit all photos and videos of the finish-line area to the FBI, just in case any of them had relevant images. The surveillance videos the FBI posted online of the suspects came from private businesses that use surveillance to punish and deter crime on their property.”

Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

This is unprecedented and is very dangerous. We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Effects of Indefinite Life on Criminal Punishment – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Effects of Indefinite Life on Criminal Punishment – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
March 20, 2013
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How would criminal punishments be affected if humans attain indefinite life? I was recently invited to comment on this subject in an Immortal Life debate thread.

I actually created a video on this very subject in January 2012: “Life Extension, Crime, and Criminal Justice”.

Importantly, there would be considerably less crime in a society where indefinite life extension has been achieved. People would have fewer motivations to commit crime, as they would be considerably healthier, happier, and more prosperous. Moreover, they would have more to lose through criminal punishment. They would make plans with a much longer time horizon in mind, and criminal behavior could derail those ambitious plans.

My general view is that criminal punishment would be transformed, especially in the case of capital punishment. Capital punishment might itself be redefined from execution to the simple withholding of life-extension therapies, allowing the unmitigated process of senescence to proceed. This would be effective in allowing appeals and the discovery of evidence of innocence – since a biologically young offender might have a good sixty years in which to make a successful case. I still see the need for that kind of “death penalty” for actual murder, though. Depriving a person of life in a society where indefinite life is possible is no longer a matter of shortening a life by a few decades. Rather, it curtails a potentially unlimited lifespan, full of irreplaceable individual experiences, achievements, and values. Thus, while the troubling aspects of physically violent execution might disappear, the severity with which the offense of murder is perceived would also increase. For some people who might otherwise have been inclined toward crime, this might lead them to reconsider and form internal inhibitions.

As regards imprisonment, being incarcerated for life would be much more severe of a punishment if a person is to live indefinitely – especially if parole is not an option. Perhaps this sort of life imprisonment would be used for offenses that are a degree less egregious than the kinds of offenses that result in the gradual “natural” death penalty that consists of withdrawing rejuvenation treatments. For lesser offenses, though, the focus of the criminal-justice system would shift from punishment to restitution. In a future that is far more prosperous and where advanced medical care is abundant, it would be much easier to fix injuries or restore property to a pre-damaged form. The offender would be asked to pay for the damage (perhaps twice the cost, in accordance with Murray Rothbard’s “two teeth for a tooth” rule of restitution).

My video elaborates on all of these points, for those who are interested in delving into them in greater depth.