CrowEpistemologist

Most likely. Maybe. Maybe not. How do we find out then? What tools of knowledge might we use in order to test some of those assumptions? If those assumptions were wrong (within a certain geographical context for instance), then we'd have a clear case for the regulation of weapons. If they were right, then we'd weigh on the side of protecting citizens from their rights being violated. As for Constitutionality, I won't debate what our musket-wielding forefathers had in mind, but you should remind yourself that beyond the 2nd Amendment there's the 16th Amendment, enabling income taxes. It's best to figure out what is right first, and then get into the legal arguments as to what can be done in the here and now. FWIW, however, gun regulation in the US exists in many places and forms, and it has survived Constitutional challenges.

Criminals exist, who violate our rights to greater or lesser extents. We cannot get rid of all criminals, and thus all violations of people's rights. No government could perfectly do this. A proper government is one that, to the greatest extent possible, should secure the rights of the individuals its serves. Outlawing every single gun in the USA would violate the rights of many, and prevent the violation of the rights of others. We can debate all day about the extents of either of these, and it would be highly contextual and varied, but the above generalized fact is demonstrably true. The decision, therefore, is a trade-off at some level which is determined by the context. We need to trade-off the right of hobbyists, hunters, and those interest in using a gun for personal self-defense against that of innocent people who are killed using weapons which the former my desire. There is no absolute right to "guns" (as I said, a sloppy, lazy term used by HB in his article), and regulating and banning weapons in the proper context is absolutely justifiable insofar as your goal is to protect the rights of individuals. In order to make this trade-off--which is a guess at the future actions of humans--we should use every bit of knowledge we have. We know, for instance, that almost no crimes are committed with long barrel single-shot shotguns, and we know a lot of hunters desire those for their recreation. This is a no-brainer trade-off. Banning these weapons will violate far more rights than it would prevent the violation of. We also know that a "saturday night special" pistol is almost always used for a crime, and is uninteresting to hunters and hobbyists. Again, a no-brainer trade-off. Banning these weapons (within a certain geographical area where the issue is acute) is something which will secure far more rights than it would violate.

Well, defaulting on our debt is also illegal, as is not paying for the things that Congress has decreed shall be paid. From a strictly legal standpoint, this is uncharted territory, and whatever gimmick (including flat ignoring the debt ceiling itself) is fair game, morally speaking. I suppose the Framers might have thought that this is the sort of situation where Scotus should step in and make a judgement, and procedurally that means the president needs to do something and that in turn needs to be legally challenged. I can't see it possibly getting that far. So yeah, here's to hoping this whole thing goes away before it begins and we don't get another pointless stand-off with grandstanding Congresspeople telling the outside world that they are insane and want to blow up everything. The last spectacle hurt the markets because of the sheer stupidity of the whole thing--that Congress enacted laws that contradict each other on the most basic logical terms.

I think he's studied it extensively, and I think he knows quite well what overinflation of the money supply does, and I think he advocates no such thing. Krugman's politics might be mainstream socialist / democrat, but his economic precepts are fine. He starts with the premise of a welfare state. Given that premise, he's generally correct about the big stuff, as near as I can tell.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the first part of that question--and I have absolutely no clue about what you were asking in the second part. I don't think our current downturn had that much to do with monetary policy, if that's what you are asking. It played a part, yes, but it certainly wasn't the biggest driver.

Absolutely. The "natural" state of things would be a pretty good clip of DEflation against commodities like gold and silver, modulo speculation on any particular instrument, modulo the scarcity and practical usefulness of those commodities changing the supply and demand curve for them. As for what factors cause lower demand across the board, well, it could be a million things. Clearly in this case a certain set of dynamics e.g. the housing bubble set off a down turn. I don't think there's any more abstract answer to that though, any more than the answer to, "what causes a business to fail".

Does gasoline cause fire? Yes. No. Depends. I've had a tank of gas sitting in my garage for years. There has been no fire there. QE can cause inflation if there is sufficient aggregate demand. If there is not, then there will be no inflation.

Well, PK is wrong in a couple of ways. First, he's a socialist, which means he's just wrong :-). He takes the fact that the government has a right to take money from citizens as unquestioned. Note how this is the underpinning of all stimulus-based economics. As for economics specifically, I think that in the long run, we'd end up privately building structures which played similar roles as massive government stimulus. The liquidity trap is something which could be gamed by smart people with a whole lot (a whole hell of a lot) of money. The long-term certainly necessary to store that much capital for such an occurrence would take a pretty big sea change though. And to be sure, long term PK (and/or his academic equivalents) is right if things don't change and we have a mixed economy forever. PK and his ilk are essentially "mixed economy optimizers". Insofar as we have a mixed economy, they will be "right" about their predictions, or certainly more right than Austrian dreamers. (Oh, and I agree with sNerd that--even with what little I know about macro--that the coin and QE and debt are all very different things and have different implications).

You mentioned that a primary driver of gun rights in the USA has to do with the idea that we can use our guns to protect ourselves in the event of tyranny: Did I not understand that correctly? I admit I might not have followed the entire line of reasoning there...

Yep, we do. If our government ever "turned" then one of two things would happen: 1. Our military would not turn with it, and we'd basically have a new government run by the military. 2. Our military would be controlled by the rogue government. In either case, civilian pop guns are of absolutely no consequence.

Here's the analysis I've given on this subject before: 1. Republicans do not know/care about a principled defense of free markets. They don't even try. Insofar as they do try, the go up against the fact that our culture is light years from where it needs to be in make any headway. 2. Instead, they resort to making the economic case on immediate practical grounds, e.g. we will all be richer tomorrow (or the day after tomorrow) if we would just accept [the Republican slate of changes]. This is what I call the "Big Republican Lie" of our age. 3. The facts get in the way of #2. Austerity would shrink our economy in the short run, and would cause an economic downturn for... a long time before we turned the corner and fully "detoxed" off of 60 years of government stimulus. In plain terms, this would suck for another decade or more. Paul Krugman is right over and over again about his analysis. Sure, he's a Socialist and a liberal and yadda yadda yadda. But he's right about the short-term (~20 year window) analysis of the economy. Paul K bet against the most successful bond trader on Earth and won. The doomsday inflation and the skyrocketing t-bill rates keep failing to materialize year after year after year. It's important we keep our feet on the ground, people. If Paul K is right then he's right--there's no sense in disconnecting yourself from reality in the name of some fleeting political gains...

We've gone over this point--that guns are necessary for individuals to own in case our government (and by extension its military) went "rogue" such that we can defend ourselves. I hear this argument again and again. It's preposterous. In the Iraq war, the US army destroyed 2000 Iraqi tanks in about 100 hours. A bunch of unorganized civilians with pop guns are nothing compared to our modern military. Nothing. Civilian weapons in this day and age are completely irrelevant to the protection of our country against tyranny. What are discussing is the right of hobbyists to collect the collectables they want to collect, nothing more.

I don't think this "coin" would increase the Monetary Base. The net effect would be no different than if Congress simply increased the debt limit. It's just a gimmick to counteract another gimmick.

Ethics? Um, okay... Are you sure you don't mean, "epistemology"? Anyhow... Anyhow, this is getting confused. One applies a principle to something. Principles applied to nothing at all don't tell you anything. We are not "Aquinus's Angel" in that we do not magically know all of the implications of our principles automatically. Otherwise, simply knowing that "A=A" would make us omniscient.

Well, we'll see on both counts I guess. Both have to do with the public perception of the issue and the actual detrimental effects of the situation (which depends on the former). Obama could make the entire "episode" go away in an instant by using the magic coin trick. Yes, he'd hear many voices go apoplectic over it, but those voices go apoplectic almost every day anyhow. The worst case is that people really think they are "going blow it all up" and it screws up our markets and makes planning impossible for tons of economic activity, inflicting very real damage on a large swath of Americans. The best case is that people treat it like those doomsday predictions and treat it like a curiosity--and sure, maybe an excuse to discuss the overall issue, to worry about deficits, and so forth. In the last episode it was much closer to the worst case in terms of the effects. With any luck the next one won't have the same impact. This too will be something Obama weighs up in creating the magic coin. If he sees detrimental effects being caused by the ensuing mayhem, then he can make himself look like a hero in making the whole problem go away in an instant. If the markets start going into the crapper over it then people won't care and will just want the whole problem to go away. However, if the episode is met with a big yawn, and there are no real detrimental effects, then Obama could look like an asshole for using the law in a way never intended and so forth. In thinking this through as I write this, I bet that a) Obama implicitly threatens to use the coin as a "backstop" to basically ensure the markets that no matter what the government won't stop even temporarily; and the overall reaction to the next episode is very small compared to the last one, and becomes a sort of a "veteran's day" for the national debt.

There's a deep dishonesty at the heart of this coin. Maybe Kant's picture should be on it--or Peter Keating's. Basically our Congress has voted for spending, low taxes, and debt, but would now like to cause the machinery of our government to be even more inefficient by tampering with its normal operation--the normal operation that they demanded with their votes. No Republican who does not vote for a motion to abolish Social Security immediately (or the fiscal equivalent) has a moral right to vote against the debt ceiling. To fail to vote for the former and not vote for the latter is to intentionally inflict harm on the US for no reason short of pure Nihilism. Obama is absolutely correct in threatening to bypass this political theater with this "coin", and I hope a few dozen coins are minted just in case. We don't need this distraction from the real issues and neither do the markets. If Congress wants to cut spending (or raise taxes) then they should have the political balls to do so. Anything else is dishonest and needlessly wasteful--or betrays a bizarre form of wishful thinking.

Gold is no such thing. The US government should be out of the business of minting money entirely. If gold stopped existing (or for instance it was discovered in vast quantities making it worthless) then there'd still be capitalism--it would get along just fine (and does today as well).

The content and slant of media is a reflection of elite culture (the cultural "prime movers" if you will), not of the unwashed masses per se. Fox News absolutely influences people whom otherwise would not hold one view or another. I would submit that "technology" today has sharpened that art to a fine point (the manufacture of consent has improved noticeably). Philosophy, on the other hand, influences the influencers...

Wrong! And this is the trap so many Objectivists fall into! This is pure rationalism! Statistics are collected facts of reality, and as such are facts of reality. "Principles", in of themselves, tell you nothing. Principles tell you how to use and interpret facts, but they are not facts. But your guidelines--which are a great start I think--involve making decisions about policy based on what we know. We know that nobody has ever threatened a movie theater with a big gulp, as threatening as those might look (and in NYC they are illegal don't ya know). Perhaps one point I might have missed emphasizing in responding to HB is that aggregated data is useful knowledge, along with everything else we know. My point was not that we use statistics exclusively or even at all in many contexts, my point was that they are like any bit knowledge which we may properly employ when useful and true in the context. All that said, your scheme would lead us, I think, to a licensing scheme in which individuals who demonstrate a needed stability to be caring a weapon would be allowed to do so. That might be a good solution. But that would be "regulation" in HB's mind, and thus out of the question, apparently. The reason being that even though most rational people would know intuitively from watching the news that tragic violations of rights can and do occur with weapons, we are apparently not allowed to use that knowledge to make a policy decision, according to HB.

Good point. Too bad they didn't run the poll before (and then again after) the election...

Eiuol, when somebody invokes an out-of-context, "A is A!" into the argument, it's time to stop arguing with them...

But they aren't having the same end-effect as Fox, apparently...

The demographics of those audiences are more democratic, and thus are more like Regan Republicans of old. Also, I don't think CNN has enough market share to count anymore, do they :-).

I said nothing of the kind. Harry certainly did not imply that the government is fallible in its protection of our rights--which of course is my point. Harry hung his argument on a government which is "perfect" and has rules which will produce perfect outcomes all of the time and in every context. This of course is impossible. It's doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get as close as we can, but actually achieving perfection is impossible. As for taking Harry out of context, let's try this again: 1. Harry said there are "borderline" cases--and there are. He also implied that the government should rightly deal with those "borderline" cases. I don't think Harry would pretend to know exactly where that "borderline" is in every single context. As such, the implication is that the government needs to make a judgement call which can potentially be wrong. I did not say--and neither did Harry--that being wrong is "okay" and it's not. 2. I surmised that the government should use every bit of knowledge we have to define the proper rules in the proper context. Some of that knowledge can and should include aggregated data since there is nothing wrong with aggregated data. To be sure, Harry's attack here was not really on gun laws, it was actually the use of aggregated data in order to make informed decisions. It is he who switched the context of somebody using aggregated data in order to make a decision and made the magical jump to a social context to imagine that such a use of data is "collectivist". Aggregated data is just data. It says what it says. When we say, "Americans love beef" in that context we don't mean every single solitary American, we mean some majority of them (and that context does not imply precision, it's a summary which is fine in many contexts). A restaurant owner deciding what should be on the menu is not engaging in a "collectivist mentality" when using aggregated data. They are using the full context of their knowledge, as should we all, as should a proper government. Your judgement call above was just that: a judgement call. All three of your examples could result in people's rights being violated in either direction. We have to guess what set of rules should be enforced in what context in order to try to get the balance as right as we can. We won't always do so, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try and it doesn't mean we imagine ourselves omnipotent when we come up with a set of rules that we think is the right one.

How do you explain, then, that you can buy roughly the same car now with 1/5th the amount of gold you could about 12 years ago? Did building cars (along with the thousands and thousands of discrete commodities and units of work than go into building a modern automobile) suddenly get 5 times easier to get/build? I am old enough to remember 12 years ago. I don't remember rent being 1/5th what it is today. I don't remember new cars costing $6,000. I don't remember the price of a cinema ticket costing $3. I don't remember a night on the town costing only $50. I actually remember everything costing about what it costs now, give or take. There are more official stats of course, and they are in complete accordance with this. Yes, devaluing a currency is relatively easy. So is overvaluing a commodity.