The question libertarians just can’t answer

Michael Lind has the best takedown of libertarianism ever: If [libertarianism] is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it? 

Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

To be clear, I sympathize with the libertarian cause.  I want to maximize freedom, but not just for myself.  I want to maximize freedom also for my fellow man and, to the extent possible, my fellow non-homo-sapien creatures.  But the moment you decide to extend freedom beyond yourself you run headlong into the problem of externalities.  If I want the freedom to sleep and my neighbor wants the freedom to crank their stereo up to 11 (or keep a pit bull) then at least one of us will be forced to give up one some of our freedom not by the government, but by the laws of physics.

This is the fundamental problem of libertarians.  They are political alchemists, committed to a tacit definition of freedom that is tantamount to perpetual motion.  Freedom cannot possibly mean that everyone gets to do whatever the fuck they want.  Externalities and conflicts have to be resolved somehow.  Government and the rule of law are the best mechanisms mankind has yet been able to come up with to solve this problem.  This is not to say that the situation couldn't be improved -- of course it could.  But it won't be improved by libertarians sticking their fingers in their ears and hoping the problem will just go away if they ignore it hard enough.

On the morality of kitten torture, part 1

I was going to title this post "Why I am not a humanist" but I thought the kitten-torture angle had more panache.  I've also been looking at my traffic stats lately, and it seems that sensational titles are very effective.  This post has been getting a huge amount of traffic lately.  One of these days I'm going to write a series of completely bogus posts whose titles are all of the form "The shocking truth about X" and see what happens.

But back to kitten torture.  My recent encounter with Richard Dawkins has led to a lot of discussions with members of the secular community about religion, community, morals, and nomenclature.  I believe that I am entitled to be fully franchised as a human being despite the fact that I don't believe in the existence (in the narrow sense) of the supernatural.  One of the things I believe I'm entitled to is a noun.  And not just any old noun, but one that adequately captures my core beliefs.  Religious people have these: "Christian", "Muslim", "Episcopalian." Why shouldn't I?

The obvious noun for me to adopt would be "atheist".  But I don't like to self-identify as an atheist despite the fact that I am one.  It's partly because of the baggage that this term has been saddled with by both believers and unbelievers, but more because I would prefer to self-identify with what I *do* believe rather than what I don't.  I am, in point of fact, an a-unicornian in addition to being an atheist, but I don't want to self-identify as one of those either.

A possibility that has been suggested to me is to self-identify as a Humanist.  The problem with that is that I'm actually not a humanist.  Humanist doctrine (to the extent that a secular movement can be said to have a doctrine) is set out in a document called the Humanist Manifesto, of which there are three versions.  There is a lot to like in all three versions, but, in my opinion, a fatal flaw in the most recent revision:

Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.

Or, to put it more bluntly, man is the measure of all things.

The problem with this view of morality is that it fails in my view to adequately answer the following question: if I have an intellectual curiosity about what happens when I torture a kitten, is it morally acceptable for me to conduct this experiment?  [UPDATE: I am specifically stipulating that no greater good will be served.  This is not scientific research, it is satisfying a personal whim.]

On a straightforward reading of the morals clause of the Manifesto the answer is an unambiguous "yes" because my interests as a human axiomatically trump the kitten's interests as a non-human.  And yet this grates heavily on my moral intuition, and, I suspect, on the moral intuition of most of my fellow humans, and even most of those who self-identify as humanists.

The mere fact that most humanists choose not to torture kittens does not give them license to sweep this issue under the rug.  Most Muslims choose not to engage in violent Jihad, but that does not stop the secular community from pointing out (rightly IMHO) that what they assert to be the Word of God does in fact endorse violent jihad.  It is no less justified to point out that what humanists hold up as their defining document doe not provide any principled way to reject kitten torture as immoral.  A humanist might reject kitten torture as personally distasteful, but there are no grounds on humanist doctrine for me to condemn your personal choice to torture kittens.

And yet, I do condemn it.  Torturing kittens is absolutely, unequivocally immoral.  And I believe that my moral condemnation of kitten torture can be justified on scientific grounds.  (Exactly how that is done will have to wait for another post.  It's not obvious.)  But I don't see any way to condemn kitten torture on the basis of Humanist Manifesto III, or even on the more general notion that man is the measure of all things.  That is why not only can I not self-identify as a humanist, I actively reject the label (unlike my attitude towards the term "atheist" which I reluctantly adopt as an accurate though incomplete description of my core beliefs).

Figuring out a principled way to make the argument that torturing kitten is immoral makes a challenging intellectual exercise.  If you, like me, believe that kitten torture is wrong, you might want to give it a shot. You should keep in mind that one doesn't have to go very far back in human history to find societies where the idea that it is immoral to torture animals for sport was the minority opinion, and that "it's wrong because I believe it is wrong" doesn't count as a principled argument.

Shame on you, Michelle Rhee

Michelle Rhee's apparently inaptly named organization "Students First" has refused to rescind an award to homophobic Tennessee state representative John Ragan as "reformer of the year" in 2012 despite Ragan's ongoing sponsorship of anti-gay legislation that would effectively enshrine in law people's ability to bully and harass gay students.  MoveOn has a petition demanding Rhee's group (I can't bring myself to write the name again because of the manifest hypocrisy) reconsider their decision.  I urge you to take a moment to look at it and consider signing it.

[UPDATE:] We won!

It's time to end the war on marijuana

The ACLU is calling for an end to the war on marijuana.  This has seemed like such a no-brainer to me for such a long time that I can hardly think what to say about it.  It's like trying to convince someone that the sky is blue.  It is just so obvious that marijuana is a benign drug (at least by comparison to tobacco and alcohol), that prohibition doesn't work and never has, and that the war on drugs is a thinly veiled excuse for oppressing racial minorities and protecting moneyed interests (specifically the prison-industrial complex).

Oh, and in case there was any doubt, the sky is blue.

Obviously it's different because this time it's OUR state

I don't like to spend too much time pointing out examples of Republican hypocrisy because it's so common that there just isn't very much sport in it, but this takes bald-faced duplicity to a whole new level.  Senator James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma both voted against federal relief funds for victims of hurricane Sandy.  But of course they're all for federal money for victims of the Oklahoma tornado.  Because, well, it's Oklahoma, and Oklahoma is totally more deserving of federal relief money than New Jersey is.

Oh, Coburn is insisting that the money for Oklahoma disaster relief be offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.  So... because he's going to take the money for his state away from someone else, that makes it OK?  Do these people ever stop to think about what they're saying?

Oh, and Inhofe is the Senate's foremost climate change denier.

Let's take stock, shall we?  Senator James Inhofe wants to 1) not do anything about climate change (because he thinks anthropological climate change is a hoax) 2) deny federal disaster relief to victims of extreme weather events unless 3) those victims happen to be in his home state.  And senator Coburn pretty much feels the same way except that in addition he wants to make sure that the money comes out of someone else's pocket.

It is taking all the self control I can muster not to render into words my feelings about these two senators and all of the citizens of the great state of Oklahoma who voted for them.  But were I to succumb to the temptation, at least one of those words would begin with the letters F and U.

We now return to our regularly scheduled Republican hypocrisy

Well, that didn't last long.  Republican lawmakers are back to their traditional (which is to say idiotic and hypocritical) ways in North Carolina, where the state senate commerce committee has just unanimously approved a bill that would prohibit car makers from selling their products in the state except through third-party dealerships.

Two passages from the article really stand out:

[The bill's] sponsor, state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican from Henderson ... said the goal is to prevent unfair competition between manufacturers and dealers. What makes it “unfair competition” as opposed to plain-old “competition”—something Republicans are typically inclined to favor—is not entirely clear.

But it becomes a lot clearer when you read this:

Robert Glaser, president of the dealers association, told the News & Observer that the law prohibiting Tesla sales isn’t just about his industry’s self-interest. Pointing to the Tesla representatives at a recent hearing, he said, “You tell me they’re gonna support the little leagues and the YMCA?”

If ever there was proof that Republican really don't hear themselves talking, this is it.  Their best argument for passing a law prohibiting competition is that the competition may not spend the money it makes in the way that they like.  Isn't that supposed to be the whole point of the free market, that people (of which corporations are now a proper subset) get to spend their money in the ways that they like and not in the ways that you like?

Stop the presses! A republican has done something sensible!

John McCain has introduced a bill that would encourage (not require) cable companies to offer unbundled services.  It's all carrot, no stick: cable companies currently enjoy compulsory copyright licensing of broadcast channels.  McCain's bill makes that license contingent on offering a-la-carte channel selection.

Of course, a better (and less hypocritical) approach would be to remove the regulatory barriers to entry that prevent competitors from entering the market.  (Hey, a bot can dream.)  But short of that, this is better than nothing.

I thought this was noteworthy because it is so rare that a Republican does something that isn't completely moronic.  I'm sure it's not unprecedented, but I can't remember the last time it happened.

The only thing that surprises me is that this hasn't happened sooner

Or maybe it has and we just haven't heard about it.  A gang of thieves stole $45 million in a coordinated attack on ATM machines worldwide.  This surprises me not at all.  The world's financial systems are for the most part hopelessly insecure because they are (again for the most part) based on protocols that were invented in the 1950s.  I became personally and painfully aware of how deeply broken the system is when a bank lost a very substantial sum of my money in 2008.  Since then I have become even more painfully aware of how deeply entrenched the brokenness is when my own efforts to fix this problem crashed and burned on the shoals of protectionist regulations and other very effective barriers to entry erected by the banking industry to keep meddling newcomers like me off of their turf.

The situation is bad.  It's really, really bad.  And it's going to keep getting worse because the banks have no incentive to fix the problem.  They aren't going to face any competition.  Their barriers to entry are too effective.  And they aren't really taking on any risk either because as long as their losses are big enough they just get the government to bail them out.  Because, well, they basically own the government.

I really wonder what the end game is going to be here, because I don't see how the status quo can possibly be sustainable.  Banking is supposed to be about capital formation and risk management, but it has now become an industry of arbitrage and legalized fraud.  Banks have become parasites, sucking the life blood from the economy and contributing nothing.

The thing about parasites is that they can only grow so much before they kill the host.

I'm not a bigot! I'm not I'm not I'm NOT!

States are legalizing gay marriage so fast I can hardly keep up any more.  Delaware joined the club on Tuesday, and the Minnesota House approved it today.

Still, some legislators seem not to have gotten the memo.

Opponents argued the bill would alter a centuries-old conception of marriage and leave those people opposed for religious reasons tarred as bigots. 

"We're not. We're not," said Rep. Kelby Woodard, R-Belle Plaine. "These are people with deeply held beliefs, including myself."

I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you Mr. Woodward, but just because your beliefs are deeply held doesn't mean they aren't bigoted.  This is the funny thing about bigots: they never think of themselves as bigoted.  How can you possibly be a bigot when God (or logic) is on your side?

Having not a single substantive argument remaining, conservatives are now arguing for gays to be denied their fundamental human right to marry whom they choose on the grounds that the people denying them that right might be tarred as bigots.  The irony is almost too much to bear.  That is the very definition of bigotry!

Libertarianism ends with a bang

If any good can come of a tragedy like the explosion in the town ofd West, Texas it is that it might help drive the zombie notion that all government regulation is bad back to the intellectual graveyard from whence it came.  This is the fundamental problem with libertarianism: it's the externalities, stupid.  In the absence of government regulation, nothing prevents people from imposing risks on other people without their consent.  I love freedom as much as anyone, but how any reasonable person can fail to understand this is beyond me.

How's that "profiling people who could conceivably be Muslim" thing working out for ya?

Rhetorical question for the day: how many of these terrorists might have been caught if we'd followed Sam Harris's recommendation of "profil[ing] Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim"? (Hint: at least two of them actually are Muslims. Can you tell which by looking at them?)

 

This is what implementing Sam Harris's plan looks like

Sam Harris's recommendation to improve security by "profil[ing] Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim" has been implemented in France:

Black and North African railway workers were banned from working at Paris's Gare du Nord when the President of Israel visited France over fears they might be Muslim...

Unless and until Harris actually explains what he means by "anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim" we have to assume that he means what is commonly meant: dark-skinned people, or people who wear non-western attire.  I'm sorry, but that is the very definition of racist.

Once again: I am completely on board with singling out Muslims, if by "Muslim" one means people who adhere to a certain set of virulent beliefs (and not "people who self-identify as Muslim").  The problem is that there is no way to tell who these people are by looking at them.  This is a complete no-brainer.  And Sam Harris is a neuroscientist.  He of all people should know this.

For the record, re: Sam Harris

Sam Harris has published a response to some of the recent criticism leveled at him as a result of his public spat with Glen Greenwald.  He writes:

Because I consider Islam to be especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse, my views are often described as “racist” by my critics.

For the record, and on the off chance that Sam ever reads my blog, this is not the reason I labelled him a racist. The reason I labelled him a racist is because he implied that one could tell who is and who is not a Muslim by their physical appearance.  I mostly agree with the rest of what he says. In particular, I agree that "Islam [is] especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse."

But there is another subtlety that Harris misses, apart from the bigoted claim that a person's beliefs can be inferred from how they look: just because Islam is especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse, it does not necessarily follow that Muslims are especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse.  It depends on how you define "Muslim."  Of course, if you define a Muslim as someone who follows all of the tenets of Islam, including the belligerent and inimical ones, then it does follow.  But this is not the only possible definition of the word "Muslim."  Another perfectly reasonable definition of the word is someone who self-identifies as a Muslim.  And not all people who self-identify as Muslims adhere to all of the tenets of Islam (even if they think that they do).

I am personally acquainted with several self-identified Muslims who are no more belligerent or inimical to the norms of civil discourse than the next person.  I have travelled in Muslim countries and have come away with the impression that the vast majority of the people who live there are perfectly decent human beings.

Yes, it is true that the Quran says all manner of horrible things.  But so does the Bible, and somehow the vast majority of people who self-identify as Christians manage to get along without, say, stoning their disobedient children to death despite the fact that the Bible says unambiguously that they should.  People have an amazing capacity for letting crazy ideas run around in their heads without actually going crazy.

Make no mistake, there are a lot of Muslims whose adherence to Islam makes them worthy of the distrust that Harris advocates.  But it has to be a minority.  There are a billion self-identified Muslims in the world.  If even half of them were as crazy as Harris fears we world would be engulfed in a conflagration the likes of which the world has never seen.  That's not happening.

Harris is not wrong about Islam.  His mistake is failing to distinguish between Islam, (self-identified) Muslims, and crazy Muslims.  And thinking that you can tell who is who by their appearance.

Who says there is no justice in Sharia law?

A man in Saudi Arabia convicted of repeatedly raping his teenage daughter has been sentenced to receive 2,080 lashes during his 13 year prison term.

(For the record: In case it's not obvious, the title of this post is intended to be ironic.  I am as horrified by the punishment as I am by the crime.  Sadly, this sort of thing seems to be sickeningly common in the Muslim world.)

Bitcoin: passing fad or the end of the world as we know it?

Bitcoin is suddenly getting a lot of attention.  As I write this, BTC is trading at $118USD, up from $30 in the last two months.  That's a nice rate of return.  But is it a bubble, or the start of a revolution?

For those of you who have been living in a cave, Bitcoin is a fully decentralized anonymous digital currency.  It is based, like so many cool things are, on an algorithm rather than government fiat.  Its anonymity makes it attractive to criminals, and its algorithmic basis makes it attractive to libertarians and people who have been screwed by central banks.

Some people think the recent price run up is a bubble, and that the whole bitcoin thing is a passing fad.  Others think it's the beginning of a revolution and lifting the Rothschilds boot from the neck of the People once and for all.

I think it could go either way.

On the one hand, Bitcoin really is new and revolutionary.  There has never been anything like it in the history of the world.  It is a tradable commodity whose supply is limited by mathematics, and is therefore guaranteed to remain scarce.  On the other hand, its intrinsic value is zero, so its actual value depends entirely on whether or not people choose to use it.

Right now, they're choosing to use it.  And the problem with that is that it poses an existential threat to the current social order, but very few people have realized it yet.  I think even Bitcoin's advocates don't fully appreciate the genie that they have unleashed.

Here's the problem: life is a prisoner's dilemma, a game in which mutual cooperation is an evolutionarily stable strategy, but only under the condition that the game is iterated.  Only if you play multiple rounds with the same players is it rational to cooperate.  Otherwise, the rational strategy is to defect, and civilization collapses.

Bitcoin, by providing anonymity, undermines the iterative aspect of most social interactions.  The social fabric is held together by the possibility that if you try to screw someone, they (or people acting on their behalf) can screw you back.  But that only works if they know who you are.

Bitcoin replaces the social impediments to defection with technological ones.  There is, essentially, no possible punishment for stealing bitcoins, since all bitcoin transactions are anonymous.  Instead, stealing coins is simply hard to do.  That difficulty is enforced by cryptographic algorithms.  These algorithms work very well, but -- and this is a big, big BUT -- only if they are used properly.  And using cryptographic algorithms properly is really, really hard, particularly in the face of active attack.  The more Bitcoin is adopted, the more lucrative, and hence the more likely, such attacks become.

Case in point: I just downloaded the latest bitcoin client from sourceforge.  Those files are served over an HTTP link.  So how can I know that the file I got is really an honest bitcoin client and not some backdoored version served to me by a Bulgarian hacker?  The answer is: I can't know.

I'm sure the Bitcoin community will eventually batten down the hatches and close such obvious security holes as the non-secure client downloads, but the point is that unless you write your own client from scratch (and your own compiler and your own operating system, and maybe even your own BIOS and CPU) you can't be sure if the client you're using is trustworthy.  And if you're not sure, you could wake up one day and find that all your bitcoins are gone.

When that day comes, you will have no recourse.  Zero.  None.

Worse, you don't even have to be the victim of malice, or even technical incompetence to irretrievably lose bitcoins.  Simple carelessness will suffice.  Today I lost some bitcoins because I accidentally entered the wrong account number into a transaction.  I was trying to transfer some bitcoins that someone had given me on Reddit into my main account (which in bitcoin parlance is called a "wallet").  Instead of cutting-and-pasting my own wallet identifier, I accidentally pasted in someone else's.  I have no idea how that happened (or even if -- it's possible that Reddit screwed this up, though I think that's unlikely).  But my bitcoins are gone.  I don't even have any idea who I sent them to.  Whoever you are, use them in good health.

I think that what will ultimately doom bitcoin is that people will come to realize that civilization does actually offer some benefits that they are loath to give up once they realize what the price of freedom really is.  The amount I lost today was trivial, but bitcoin doesn't care about that.  It will just as happily dispense with a large amount as a small one.  The lack of recourse will be the same either way.  I think people will ultimately decide that the risk of losing your life savings to a typographical error is too big a price to pay for anonymity.

Or maybe they won't.  Maybe a generation will grow up on bitcoin, fully aware of its risks and potential benefits, and will have devised ways to mitigate the risks to the point where they are willing to accept them.  But (and this is really my point) if this happens, it will be a big, big change.  It will be a fundamental change to the way humans have organized themselves since the dawn of civilization.  Bitcoin could very easily be the end of the world as we know it.  But (and here's another important caveat) that might not be a bad thing if it's a choice that humanity makes with its eyes open.

It's not a slam-dunk either way.

In the meantime, I have never tried to monetize Rondam Ramblings in any way, but I've decided to start accepting bitcoin tips just so I can have a few more to play around with now that the ones I had are gone.  My wallet ID (and let's hope I get it right this time) is 13Yz6GvDGKVfYp21xK6p9xcGFBKQc5VJU9.

@samharris: how does someone "look Muslim"?

Glen Greenwald and Sam Haris are having a a spat over an Al Jazeera article that Glen tweeted about.  The article calls Sam out for being racist and Islamophobic.  Sam, of course, is aghast.  How can it possibly be "racist" to state the simple truth that Muslims engage in terrorism and other unsavory behaviors more than non-Muslims?

Here's how:

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim...

How exactly do you propose we do that, Sam? What exactly does it mean to "look like" someone who "could conceivably be Muslim?" More to the point, what does it mean for someone to not look like they could "conceivably be Muslim"?  Isn't Islam a belief system?  Exactly what outwardly visible physical traits make it inconceivable that a person might harbor that belief system?

Every moment spent frisking the Mormon Tabernacle Choir subtracts from the scrutiny paid to more likely threats. Who could fail to understand this?

That is not at all the same thing.  Being a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and looking like you are a member are two completely different things.  If you judge someone to be a member of the Choir because they present you with, say, a document that shows they are a member, that is one thing.  But judging them to be a member of the choir because of how they look, (and let's not kid ourselves, because they are white), that is racist, even if being white actually does make a good predictor of Mormonism!  Who could fail to understand this?

The only thing that frustrates me more than conservative bigots is liberal bigots because they really ought to know better.  Alas, even liberals have blind spots.

Conservatives are wrong about everything

The dominoes continue to fall: a second Republican senator has come out in favor of gay marriage.

It occurred to me that conservatives have a virtually unblemished record going back hundreds of years of being wrong about social issues: slavery, segregation, reproductive rights, interracial marriage, the right to privacy, prohibition, pornography... the list goes on and on and on.  The liberal position on social issues has been vindicated again and again and again and again.  In fact, I can't think of a single social issue on which conservatives have been on the right side of history.  Can you?

You'd think that people would start to catch on after 300 years without a win.

(Conservatives are wrong about most economic issues too, but that's a harder case to make because there's not a consensus on the quality metric.  Conservatives think that oligopolies are fine and dandy, but dare I say that reasonable people might disagree.)

Enough with the "it's not natural" nonsense already

The more I think about this, the more it steams my clams.  Georgia GOP Chairwoman Sue Everhart was quoted by the Marietta Daily Journal giving voice to a common sentiment among opponents of same-sex marriage:

[I]t is not natural for two women or two men to be married,” Everhart said. “If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship."

I have news for you, Ms. Everhart: gays can (and do) have sexual relationships.  (I always thought that was the problem people had with gays to begin with, that they had sex.  Meh, what do I know?)

But Ms. Everahart is right about one thing: it is in fact not natural for to women or two men to be married.  But it is also not natural for one man and one woman to be married.  The natural (and Biblical, by the way) state of affairs is polygamy.  This is because females maximize their reproductive fitness by mating with the highest status male, while males maximize their reproductive fitness by mating with as many females as possible.  Yes, beer googles can be explained in Darwinian terms.

So what exactly is it that makes being "unnatural" so bad?  Lots of things are unnatural.  Cities, for example.  Sanitation.  Cars.  Movies.  Laws.  Democracy.  Capitalism.  Scotch.  Cell phones.  The internet.  Deep-fried Twinkies.

Religion.  Churches.  Science.

Wearing clothes.

All of these things are unnatural.

Unnatural is a good thing, or at least it can be.  Unnatural is what sets humanity apart from the animals.  The ability to transcend and rise above nature is what makes it possible for us to be noble, artistic, technological, the masters of our fates.

Fair warning: the next person who says in my presence that gays should not be allowed to marry because it's unnatural will get dope-smacked.

You can't make this shit up

Well, at least I can't.  The Marietta Daily Journal writes the following, which I will simply reproduce here without comment because, well, it just leaves me at a loss for words.  (BTW, if you decide to follow the link to the original article, the Journal has a really annoying paywall, which you can circumvent by disabling Javascript in your browser.)

One woman who has not [decided to support same-sex marriage] is Georgia GOP Chairwoman Sue Everhart of east Cobb, although she’s aware of the movement. 

“Lord, I’m going to get in trouble over this, but it is not natural for two women or two men to be married,” Everhart said. “If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship.”

Everhart said while she respects all people, if same sex marriage is legalized across the country, there will be fraud.

“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Everhart said. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

Everhart said if she had a young child, she wouldn’t want them to have gay parents who would influence that child’s sexual orientation.

“You’re creating with this child that it’s a lifestyle, don’t go out and marry someone else of a different sex because this is natural,” Everhart said. “But if I had a next door neighbor who was in a gay relationship, I could be just as friendly to them as I could be to you and your wife or anybody else. I’m not saying that we ostracize them or anything like that. I’m just saying I’m against marriage because once you get the gay marriage you get everything else.”

OK, I'm game

The Guardian reports that a creationist has put up $10,000 for anyone who can prove in a mock-trial that evolution is true.  OK, I can use an extra ten grand, so I went to see how I could sign up.  The Guardian didn't have a link, but through the comments on Reddit I found the guy's web site.  What I could not find were instructions on how to accept the $10,000 challenge.  I looked at all of the obvious places, including the FAQ, and I couldn't find anything.  Compare that to the very straightforward instructions on how to apply for the James Randi prize for demonstrating paranormal phenomena.

I did find Joseph Mastropaolo's email address.  Maybe I'll just drop him a line.

[UPDATE] What the heck, I had a little down time this morning, so I sent Joe this note:

Hello,

My name is Ron Garret.  I want to accept your $10,000 evolution mini-trial challenge: 

http://www.lifescienceprize.org/

But I can't find any indication of how one goes about doing it.  For example, the James Randi foundation has very straightforward instructions for anyone who wants to accept their challenge: 

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html 

but I can't find anything analogous on your site.  What am I missing? 

Thank you, 

Ron Garret, Ph.D.

Anyone want to lay odds on whether he responds?

[UPDATE2] Heh, that didn't take long. "Undeliverable mail -- invalid mailbox."

What a surprise.

OK, Joseph Mastropaolo, I'm calling you out: I want to accept your Life Science Prize min-trial challenge.  How do I do it?

Disgusting concessions from the proponents of gay marriage

I'm on the road so I don't have time to give this the thorough treatment it deserves, but I had a little down time that I used to read the transcript of today's oral arguments in Proposition 8 Supreme Court case.  I was completely disgusted by the arguments on both sides, but mostly by the concessions made by the proponents of gay marriage.

Justice Alito:  Traditional marriage has been around for thousands of years. Same-sex marriage is 25 very new. I think it was first adopted in The Netherlands in 2000. So there isn't a lot of data about 2 its effect. And it may turn out to be a -- a good thing; it may turn out not to be a good thing,...But you want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cell phones or the Internet?

The proper response to this is: No, gay marriage cannot possibly turn out to be a bad thing even if we concede the erroneous assumption we have only thirteen years of actual data to go by.  How do we know this?  Well, first, because we have thirteen years of actual data to go by, and if there were even the slightest hint that gay marriage had deleterious effects the opponents would long ago have seized on those and trumpeted them as a prominent part of their case.  But they haven't, because there aren't any.  But more than that, opponents of gay marriage have not even been able to put forth any credible hypothetical scenario whereby gay marriage might have any harmful effects on society.  The only argument against gay marriage is tradition, and some possible harmful effects that no one has actually been able to imagine, let alone demonstrate.

That argument didn't get made.  Not only that, but one of the advocates for gay marriage actually conceded that states could legitimately ban gay marriage, but only if they had not already granted gays other rights like civil unions.  I won't even try to extract the twisted reasoning behind this.  Go read the transcript if you really want to know.

The case of Loving v. Virginia, the case the legalized interracial marriage, was brought up, but no one has drawn the correct analogy: it is actually possible to raise a much more legitimate argument against interracial marriage than against gay marriage.  That people of color are discriminated against in the United States is a demonstrable fact.  That marriages that involve people of color tend to produce children of color is also a demonstrable fact.  Therefore the state has a legitimate interest in preventing people of color from marrying white people in the interests of preventing the production of children who will be the subject of societal discrimination.

Are you disgusted by that argument?  You should be.  It is a disgusting argument.  No one but the most hardened racist bigot would raise that argument in today's world.  And yet, that is exactly the argument that is being danced around in the Supreme Court today.

Here's a question I wish one of the justices would pose to the opponents of gay marriage:  "Please rank the following parental situation in order of their desirability for the children:

1.  One father, one mother, married
2.  One father, one mother, unmarried, but in a committed relationship
3.  A single parent
4.  A gay couple, married
5.  A gay couple, unmarried but in a committed relationship
6.  Foster care by a straight couple

Can you seriously imagine anyone going on the record rating foster care or single parenthood over a gay couple in today's world?  Honestly, what else is there to say?

That Christian Nation Nonsense

Dr. Richard Carrier utterly destroys the notion that the United States is a Christian nation.  Not that this should have been news to anyone, but the thoroughness of his takedown is truly awesome.  Long, but well worth reading, even if you already believe the conclusion.

Join CRMTL to repeal the California MTA

Following up on my earlier call to action to repeal the California Money Transmission Act (MTA), I have helped form a group called the Coalition for the Reform of Money Transfer Law (CRMTL, pronounced Core-Metal).  We have written a letter that we are submitting as formal testimony for the hearings on March 11.  We would welcome additional signatories to this letter.  If you want to add your voice to ours please send an email to Mark Farouk: Mark.Farouk@asm.ca.gov.  Here is some suggested language:

Re: Assembly Bill 786 

To Whom It May Concern:

[Company/Individual Name] submits the following comments for consideration at the Committee's March 11, 2013 hearing regarding the the California Money Transmission Act of 2010.

We are aware that the Coalition for the Reform of Money Transmission Laws submitted comments supporting the Committee’s efforts to reconsider the Act.  [We/I] support the Coalition's comments and encourage the Assembly to strongly consider the Coalition’s suggested modifications to the law. Once these needed modifications have been made to the Committee's draft legislation, we urge the Assembly to act quickly to provide the relief that is necessary to ensuring that consumers derive the full benefits of a competitive payments marketplace.

[In addition, [ADD ANY ADDITIONAL COMMENTS THAT YOU WISH TO MAKE ON BEHALF OF YOUR COMPANY, IF DESIRED. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO MAKE ADDITIONAL COMMENTS, PLEASE DELETE THIS SECTION.]]

Thank you for the opportunity to provide these comments and we strongly encourage the Committee to proceed to adopt the Coalition's proposed alternatives as soon as possible. 

Respectfully submitted,

[Name, Title and Company Name]

Thank you for your support.  Please note that input for the hearings is due by COB tomorrow, March 6.  Sorry for the late notice, but we only today finalized the text of the letter.

A simple solution to credit card fraud, part 6: It's the protocol, stupid

This is part 6 of a long series.  This post is another technical post.  Some people have been (justifiably) pressing me for more details on the "simple solution" I've been promising in the title.  That's what this post is about.

Let us start by observing that credit cards don't actually require either credit or cards.  What matters is not the card, but the information on the card.  This is particularly evident in e-commerce transactions.  If you possess the right information, you can type that information in to a web browser and a few days later stuff will magically appear on your doorstep.  The fundamental problem is that the information you have to type in is not bound to a particular transaction.  It is reusable.  So you have to trust everyone you do business with.  Sooner or later that trust will fail.  Some random e-commerce web site that you place an order from will turn out to be a well crafted phishing site, or their database will get hacked, or a waiter in a restaurant or cashier at the shop will skim your card or just write down the number on a Post-It note.  Something.  If you use credit cards, it is a question of when, not if, you will get hacked.

Despite consumer protections, getting a card hacked can be a major hassle, especially if, like me, you have a lot of your regular bills set up to auto-pay.  I get hacked every few years, and as you might imagine I am extremely careful.  The last time it happened I was just on my way out of the country for six weeks, so they couldn't even send me a replacement card.  I didn't lose any money, but it was a colossal pain in the ass.

Debit cards, of course, have all the same problems as credit cards, except that they lack a layer of protection.  When you authorize a transaction with a debit card, you authorize the merchant to reach directly into your checking or savings account and extract money.  There are two reasons you don't hear as much about debit card fraud as credit card fraud.  First, people use credit cards a lot more than they use debit cards.  And second, debit cards typically have an extra layer of protection: the PIN.  Consumers have been effectively trained to guard their PINs closely, but the fact that a compromised debit card gives the fraudster direct access to cash makes debit card fraud lucrative enough that fraudsters go to considerable effort and expense to steal them.

Regular paper checks, by the way, are even worse.  Unlike debit cards, they actually expose your account number, and they don't have a PIN.  Anyone to whom you have ever given a check could, if they chose to, take all the money from your account.  Electronic checks, of course, are the worst of all.  They are completely insecure.  An electronic check has no security at all.  Writing an electronic check is effectively the same as opening up your bank account and saying, "Here, help yourself to whatever you like any time you like."  This is the reason you don't see electronic checks as a payment option very often.  They are so insecure that you have to be carefully vetted before you can gain official access to the electronic check system.

All of these problems could be solved at a stroke using secure digital signatures.  Instead of making a payment by handing over your account details, you would instead write and sign a digital check (not to be confused with an electronic check).  A digital check would be just some text in some standard format, e.g.:

Transaction ID: 1234

Pay to the order of: Joe Merchant

Account ID: 4321

Amount: $123.45

Expires: 4 March 2013

The digital check itself could be generated either by you or the merchant.  To authorize the transaction you would simply generate a digital signature for that text and give that to the merchant.  The merchant would then "cash" the check by presenting the check and your digital signature to the bank.

That's it.  That's the simple solution to not only credit card fraud but check fraud and debit card fraud and just about any other kind of financial fraud that involves stealing credentials.  It works because digital signatures are unforgeable and non-reusable.  The merchant can't change any of the information on the check because that would make the signature invalid.  The merchant can't cash the check twice because it contains a transaction identifier.

Now, there are some real-world complications.  The most serious is that users have to be trained to manage their secret keys.  Keeping a secret key secret is not a trivial matter, but at least it is possible.  Keeping your credit card number secret is not possible because the protocol requires you to disclose it for every transaction.

So what would the user experience be like?  (Are you paying attention, pbreit?)  There are myriad possibilities.  The most straightforward is what is already out there.  Chip-and-pin systems in use in Asia and Europe already implement a similar protocol.  But it doesn't have to be a chip-and-pin card.  It can be a dongle, or a smartphone app, or a browser plug-in.

To give you some concrete examples, here is an actual digital signature for the digital check shown above:

---MSGID---
149302O5AAVHKAEC7N5IPIGDPJAC8MBOJ2T0E6M8LQ3M40BABREI
---PUBLIC KEY---
1RBNESSNAFFOD4G05MJPTK9TLGS95QHOEBK3CD6O1KIOV5GHKAQT
---SIGNATURE---
1EQEB9T51UDVGHFVGMTANQS3JQVLV17H5HAOECHSRDJ67H4MNT1M
29SDNR6V8VCH1C3TICVDDDIA67GTG0V46H4ST2Q7IP4LF8GM548

For you hard-core geeks, this signature was generated using the Ed25519 elliptic curve digital signature algorithm.  The message ID is the SHA512 hash of the ascii text of the check, truncated to 256 bits.  All values are rendered as base 32 big-endian numbers.  You can verify that this signature is valid here.  And you can generate your own Ed25519 signatures here.  As a proof-of-concept for a standalone security dongle, I have implemented Ed25519 on a Teensy3, which costs $19 in single quantities.  So no, pbreit, distributing new hardware is not hard, and it is not expensive.  Not any more.

The physical manifestations of this protocol are endless.  Here, for example, is the above signature rendered as a QR code:

You can scan this image with any QR code reader to verify that the signature is valid.  Or, if you don't trust my verification web site, you can use a standalone verification app written by someone else.  There is nothing at all proprietary about this protocol.  It is entirely open.  The only secret is your secret key.

Again I have to stress that what matters here is the protocol, not any of the implementation details.  I happen to like Ed25519 because it generates highly secure signatures that are short enough to render as reasonable-looking QR codes, but that is a detail.  The point is that by changing the protocol you can solve the fraud problem.

And you can solve lots of other problems too.  More on that in a future post.

Murray Rothbard was an Idiot

This post is not part of the series on credit card fraud.  I just felt the need to vent.  Some anonymous coward posted a comment that pressed one of my buttons.

I'd suggest: Rothbard

It just so happens I have read a bit of Rothbard.  About five years ago I took a deep dive into libertarianism (lower-case l) and anarcho-capitalism.  Both theories had always struck me as obviously utopian and unworkable, and yet a lot of people I respected seemed to subscribe to one or the other (or both) so I wanted to find out if I was missing something.

I wasn't.

On the recommendation of some of the members of a mailing list that contained the word "freedom" in its name, I read The Ethics of Liberty and found it completely, utterly, and transparently intellectually bankrupt.  I wrote up a critique back then, but never published it outside that mailing list.  The response from the list was not unlike the response I used to get when I debated with religious fundamentalists.  It was, in essence: we can't rebut any of your arguments.  But we believe it anyway.

Bah.

Here, then, is a lightly edited version of the essay I wrote back in 2008.

---


A couple of preliminary disclaimers:


First, I have not read even a small fraction of Rothbard's writings, and I never will.  Rothbard is too prolific, I'm too busy, and life is too short.  This is a critique of the work that [names deleted] pointed me to as representative of their positions [The Ethics of Liberty].  I've so far read about half of it thoroughly, and skimmed about another fourth.  A pretty clear picture emerges even from this incomplete perusal.  In particular, Rothbard bases his entire argument on premises which I reject.  So it is not necessary to look into all the details of his reasoning to know that he is wrong, just as it is not necessary to read the entire Bible to convince onesself that it is not the inerrant word of God.  Garbage in, garbage out.  But it is interesting to follow some of the lines of thought nonetheless.
To give Rothbard credit, he doesn't actually run off the rails until chapter 2:

The natural law, then, elucidates what is best for man—what ends man should pursue that are most harmonious with, and best tend to fulfill, his nature. In a significant sense, then, natural law provides man with a “science of happiness,” with the paths which will lead to his real happiness.

This, of course, begs the question of what "real happiness" means, and Rothbard struggles to define it because he doesn't want to use the common economic definition and thereby become a utilitarian.  The problem is, Rothbard gets it wrong.  It is hard to summarize Rothbard's definition of "man's nature" and "true happiness" because it is so incoherent, but it is easy to tell what it is not, and what it is not is the right answer.

Man's true nature is that he is an animal.  I mean that in the strictly scientific sense of the word, i.e. a living thing that is not a plant, the product of a few billion years of evolution.  Each instance of man is constructed by natural processes involving DNA being transcribed into RNA and thence into proteins by ribosomes, which then assemble themselves into a startlingly complex array of structures including a frontal cortex.  Which is where all the trouble starts.  :-)

The problem is that our capacity for rational thought is only a small part of our true nature.  Not only are we (at least potentially) rational, we are also alive, and our being alive is antecedent to our being rational, and therefore a much more fundamental part of our true nature than our rationality is.  We don't even know if being alive is even a prerequisite for being rational.  It is not out of the realm of possibility that there could exist rational entities that are not alive.  So there is no reason to believe a priori that being alive is just an incidental detail that is subsumed by being rational, and can therefore be safely ignored.  Indeed, there is reason to believe that being alive and being rational are in active conflict with each other, perhaps even necessarily so.  But this is a tangent.  If you're really interested in pursuing this line of thought, go read "The Robot's Rebellion" by Keith E Stanovich.  (I don't particularly recommend this book because I think what it says is patently obvious.  But if you don't agree you'll find extensive supporting arguments there.)

What is it, then, to be alive, and specifically to be an animal rather than, say, a plant or a fungus?  It means that sexual reproduction is fundamental to our nature.  And I don't just mean the act of sexual intercourse, I mean the entire end-to-end cyclical process of being born, surviving long enough to reach adulthood, and having and (usually, at least for mammals like us) raising children.

Rothbard completely ignores this aspect of our nature, basing his analysis largely on thought experiments involving one or two fully fledged and functional adult human beings capable of surviving and even prospering on desert island without any outside assistance whatsoever, not even tools and other vestiges of civilization salvaged from a shipwreck.  Having established the dynamics of such a fantasy world he then, with no justification whatsoever, extrapolates his results to the real world as if the principle of mathematical induction could be applied to humans.  He then tacks on children as an afterthought -- in chapter 14! -- continuing to completely ignore the fundamental role of children in human nature, and the fact that people have deeply rooted visceral -- which is to say irrational -- reactions when children come into play.  Because we are animals.

It is, frankly, a completely ridiculous line of argument.

[UPDATE in 2013]: I am re-reading chapter 14 now and it is every bit as -- words fail me -- untenable?  idiotic? horrific? -- as I remember it.  Here's a choice quote:

Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.[4] The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive.  [Emphasis added.]

If I have to explain to you the problem with that then you are beyond help. [End update.]

Even if you ignore all that and accept Rothbard's premises at face value, his argument still falls apart because it hinges on two completely arbitrary and ultimately untenable definitions.  The first is his definition of property and ownership.  Rothbard defines the "natural" owner of a resource as the first person to transform that resource into something else.  So destroying nature is a pre-requisite to ownership.  One person's desire to enjoy the pleasure of hiking through virgin forest is axiomatically subjugated to someone else's desire to cut down the trees and burn them for fuel.

It's even worse than that.  Not only does the logger axiomatically get preferential treatment over the hiker, he also gets axiomatic preference over all other living beings on the planet.  Although Rothbard claims to be taking a scientific approach, he tacitly appropriates the Biblical license for man's dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Now, it is not the case that in Rothbard's world there will not be a single tree left standing, because (chapter 10):

Note that we are not saying that, in order for property in land to be valid, it must be continually in use. The only requirement is that the land be once put into use, and thus become the property of the one who has mixed his labor with, who imprinted the stamp of his personal energy upon, the land. After that use, there is no more reason to disallow the land’s remaining idle than there is to disown someone for storing his watch in a desk drawer.

So environmentalists do have a leg to stand on, but perversely, in order to stake their claim to a virgin forest they first have to cut down all the trees in order to stake their claim to the land.  Only then may they let the land rest fallow and let the trees regrow secure in the knowledge that they are the "rightful" owner of the land.

To prevent the history of anarcho-capitalism from being one of a single mad rush to cut down every tree on the planet as quickly as possible in one vast primordial land-grab, he introduces the concept of abandonment.  But now we are right back where we started because now we have to decide when "lying fallow" ends and "abandonment" begins, and such a delineation cannot be anything but completely arbitrary.

The second arbitrary and untenable definition upon which Rothbard's theory rests is that of "violence."  Violence is the axiomtic evil, and Rothbard never really defines it explicitly, but implicitly he seems to restrict the definition to direct physical violence against another person's property, which axiomatically includes their own body.  As an aside, Rothbard axiomatically precludes people from voluntarily selling themselves into slavery.  Exactly how this differs from, say, entering into a long-term contract for their labor is not clear, but even that aside, this is a very peculiar position to take from someone who presumably would not axiomatically preclude someone from selling off pieces of themselves -- like kidneys -- even if it lead to their death.  So people can voluntarily kill themselves, but they cannot voluntarily enter into long-term labor contracts.  Weird.

But the problem of what constitutes violence is very thorny even in Rothbard's oversimplified fantasy world.  He paints a picture of Crusoe happily fishing and Friday happily raising wheat and both of them happily exchanging wheat for fish, but what if Crusoe decides that his version of paradise is a high-rise condominium development that casts a permanent shadow over Friday's wheat field?  Or a dam upstream of Friday's fields that produces electricity, but stops the seasonal flooding that made Friday's wheat fields fertile?  Of such sticky situations we hear nothing.  It is possible that Rothbard deals with the problem of externalities somewhere, but I can find no hint of it.  The word "externality" does not appear anywhere in the book, and that's a pretty clear indication that Rothbard has simply swept this crucial issue under the rug.

On Rothbard's view, then, it is a perfectly moral act for Crusoe to cut a ring of trees around the island and thereby stake his claim to the land, and then deny Friday access to the sea (or, if he were clever, to start charging tolls) because Friday can no longer get there without trespassing on Crusoe's property.  On Rothbard's view this act is not just legal but moral.  Exactly what Friday is supposed to do to defend himself is not clear; perhaps cut down a few trees of his own before Crusoe gets to them in order to stake his own claim to a right-of-way.

But these difficulties pale in comparison to an even more fundamental flaw in Rothbard's theory.  The problem is that the idea of violence as the ultimate evil is not supportable on the basis of human nature.  It might be supportable on the basis of rationalism (relative to some quality metric, of course), but as I pointed out earlier, being rational is not the totality of our nature.  We are not only rational, but living animals with a powerful and altogether irrational drive to reproduce (inherited from our parents who, if they lacked this drive, tended not to reproduce).  When push comes to shove, and one is faced with a choice of starvation or doing violence against another person's person or property, violence will often -- indeed usually -- win, because the person who will starve to death rather than steal a loaf of bread will tend not to reproduce as well as someone who doesn't buy in to Rothbard's theories.

Now, Rothbard doesn't actually address this problem (as far as I can tell) so I'll do it for him: because rational people are aware that evolution tends to produce creatures that will resort to violence before they allow themselves to starve to death, they will recognize that it is in their own interest to prevent people around them from starving to death.  Hence, people will engage in charitable acts of gift-giving precisely to prevent the violence that Darwin predicts.  (Rothbard does not actually make this argument. The only justification that Rothbard can come up with for engaging in charitable gift-giving is the "psychic [sic] satisfaction" that such acts provide. [chapter 7])

The problem with this approach to dealing with the poor is that there is a reverse-externality.  If I feed a poor person and thereby prevent him from doing violence, everyone benefits from my good deed, and yet only I have borne the cost.  This is the classic prisoner's dilemma.  Individually, everyone's rational decision is to wait for someone else to feed the poor.  And yet, if everyone acts on this reasoning, the result is, at least potentially, food riots.

And this, I submit, is the fundamental reason why government is necessary from both a rational and a moral point of view.  The fact of the matter is that humans are more than just rational beings, society is more than just the sum of its parts, and nature has intrinsic value which is destroyed when someone transforms it for some other use.  As a consequence of these self-evident facts, there are things that humans must work on collectively if we are to live in peace.  I submit that the best mechanism yet devised for organizing such collective action is democratic government.  There is certainly room for improvement, but anarchism is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

All this brings me to an answer to the question [name deleted] posed: How much tax do you think Warren Buffet should be required to pay to make you say that he's not doing you harm?

This question is based on a false assumption, namely, that the reason for paying taxes is to mitigate the harm that my externalities cause other people.  It isn't.  The reason for paying taxes is to bear your fair share of the burden of conducting society's collective actions, whether they be feeding the poor to prevent food riots, or building transportation infrastructure, a pre-requisite for industrialization, by the way, that Rothbard completely ignores.

So the right question to ask is: how much tax should Warren Buffet pay to justly compensate for the benefits that receives from the state?  And I'll answer that question with the answer that Warren Buffet himself gives: more than he is currently required to pay.

---

Some day I'll write a sequel about Ayn Rand.

Cutting to the chase: Repeal the California Money Transmission Act

This is the fifth post in a long series.  I've gotten a lot of complaints about cliffhangers and hidden agendas so I'm going to cut to the chase here and then go back in later posts to fill in some details.  And I should probably say this up-front too: there is no "big reveal" at the end of this story.  I spent three years getting the runaround from various banks, and I don't know why.

However, there are some things that I did learn as a result of this experience.  I'm going to just lay them out here without a whole lot of support because there's a deadline looming.  For now I hope you will give me the benefit of the doubt that these are things that I have come to believe are true as a result of firsthand experience and some fairly extensive research.  If you want some of the gory details, you can find them here.  (Note: this is a very long document, well over 200 pages.  And it was not compiled by me.)

1.  The financial system in the U.S. is horribly inefficient.  Retail transactions conducted with credit cards cost 2-3%, which is a ridiculously high cost given today's technology.  Retail transactions (actually, any money transfer transaction) could be profitably brokered at 0.1% or less.

2.  In a normal free market, competitors would arise to undercut the credit card companies and drive costs down.  This is not happening.  There are a lot of new payment companies out there, but they are all (as far as I can tell) UI veneers over the existing inefficient and expensive infrastructure.  This is not to say that these companies aren't adding value; they are.  But none of them (again AFAICT) are addressing the really fundamental problem, which is that moving money costs much more than it should.

3.  One of the principal reasons that startups don't address this problem is that it is essentially illegal.  The regulatory framework in the U.S. makes it all but impossible for a startup to move money legally except by using the existing, broken, inefficient, expensive infrastructure.  (Just today, Square was hit with a cease-and-desist order in Illinois.)

A prime example of the regulatory framework that makes it impossible for startups to tackle this problem on their own is the California Money Transmission Act (MTA).  The MTA was enacted last year, and it put the final nail in an already pretty sturdy coffin for financial startups.

Why was this innovation-killing law passed?  Because a coalition of existing money transmission businesses formed a coalition called the Money Services Roundtable and convinced the California legislature that this law was needed in order to protect consumers.  It's a plausible theory (which is how they were able to bamboozle the legislature into passing it) but it is wrong.  The theory is that by requiring businesses that move money around on behalf of third parties to get licenses and post large bonds, that this will cut down on fraud.  This theory was almost immediately falsified by the discovery that Moneygram, a licensed money transfer agent, had engaged in a massive fraud.  And this was not an isolated incident.    So the MTA clearly does nothing to prevent fraud.  The only actual effect of the MTA is to make it all but impossible for new competition to enter the market.

My goal in writing all this is to try to enlist your help in getting the MTA repealed.  The California legislature is right now considering modifying the MTA.  Unfortunately, the draft legislation currently on the table is a total sham, and will likely end up making the situation worse.  The good news is that because this legislation is on the table there is a public hearing that will be held on March 11 in Sacramento, and so it is possible to get the draft legislation changed before it is voted on.  You don't have to attend this hearing to have your voice heard, you can submit written comments for the record as well.  I urge you, especially if you are a resident of California, to do so.

You can send your comments via email to Mark Farouk: Mark.Farouk@asm.ca.gov.  Here's some sample verbiage, but you should write it in your own words:

Dear Mr. Farouk: 

I would like to have the following comments entered into the record for the March 11 hearing on the California Money Transmission Act.  I believe that this act does nothing to protect me as a consumer.  To the contrary, it erects barriers to entry that favor existing players, suppress competition, and thus ultimately hurt consumers such as myself.  I urge the legislature to repeal the MTA.

Written input for the hearings is due on March 6.

If you want additional information please feel free to contact me: ron@flownet.com.  And if you do write a letter to Mr. Farouk, if you cc me and give me permission, I will also forward it to the relevant legislators and their staffers on your behalf.