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Lawsuits are handled in governmental courts, so you're admitting that your government idea is already a failure. Indeed, the vast majority of disputes between individuals are already handled through "private" arbitration; literally, the real world has rejected your position and has instead embraced mine (perhaps without anyone even realizing it, as though they were guided gently by the "Invisible Hand" of Evolution by Variation and Selection).

Part of "leveling the playing field" is making the court system a lot more efficient; that is, the government (or some other system of organization) needs to help individuals enforce their property rights—the problem is a lack of property rights.

Anyway, you seem to contradict yourself. You see, I thought your government idea is supposed to be implemented of The People, by The People, and for The People, so whence come these angels who will supposedly deliver The People from evil? Whence come these men-with-guns and jackboots who will wield with inspiring virtue your huge, quasi-religiously revered monopoly on violent imposition? Even back in 1850, Bastiat was already impugning this absurd position:

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these [would-be] organizers [of society] are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority.

They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.

Goddamn. He tore you a new one.

There is no such thing as "Intelligent Design"; those who have tried have just led millions of people to their shallow, watery graves.

PS - I'm actually for raising taxes.

The Law

Broken Window Fallacy

Money once spent by an actor, say for a broken window, cannot then be spent on that which it may have originally been intended, or for any other purpose to that actor's interests.

http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwi...

Yes, the sun does disrupt sale of lighting equipment. That does not mean we ban it.

In The Law :

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

Read the whole pamphlet; it's stunning.

I have some really bad news for you. A lot of Trump supporters have read Bastiat, can quote from several of his essays, and also do not consider themselves to be "conservatives" or "capitalists".

Also, we will fucking laugh in your face, because after everything we've been through recently, we find it hilarious that our opponents still think that we care about their disapproval.

P.S. Kevin D. Williamson, the author of that "article" should probably read more than just the title of Bastiat's works. Here is an essay that speaks directly to this line of reasoning. Oh, and both he and his editor should be ashamed of themselves. The first half of the article was incoherent gibberish that would have been dripping with red ink if I had handed it to even the laziest of my high school English teachers for proofing.

They can't, for two reasons. The first is that their message is utter garbage to the core, and has been ever since Marx wrote it. This was recognized instantly by, among others, Bastiat, who wrote an excellent rebuttal which shouldn't take anyone more than an hour or so to read. The translation from economic terms to cultural terms by the Frankfurt School didn't make it any better.

The second is that they don't possess the equipment necessary for thinking.

And no, I don't mean brains. I mean introspection, self awareness, curiosity, etc. Well, maybe I do mean brains too, a little bit. The people "protesting" the election results, to pick one example, probably aren't ditching their local Mensa meetings to be there.

The rant of somebody whose the job is threatened by tech companies... Probably, it is the right time to stop selling candles instead of trying to switch off the sun.

Amen. See Frederic Bastiat's "The Law:" http://bastiat.org/en/the_law....

Written in 1850, it details from a philosophical perspective the rise of law, its presumed purpose, and some strong arguments for indicators that the law has gone bad. Chronic, uneven application of the law is one of the perversions of law he discusses.

I want my fellow citizens to be able to get higher education and health care and other base necessities of modern day life regardless of whether or not they were born to a rich family.

That's very admirable - and of course you should back your goals financially.

And I want people to continue to graduate without student debt weighing them down so they can actually spend the money they make and thus help the economy.

You're making an "unseen error here - the money that pays for the education instead of loans has to be taken out of the economy a-priori and you're ignoring its economic benefits. Given the time-value of money it might well be huge. Education is an economic good, and like all valuable economic goods it has a multiplicitive effect. If there should be forced public funding of education then why not housing or food, which have an even higher multiplier? If housing is backed by loans, like most economic goods, education can be too.

Now access to financing may well be an issue in Finland, but giving rich people free stuff paid for by the middle class is hardly an egalitarian solution.

This system works

It achieves certain outcomes at the expense of others that you're ignoring. From what I'm reading here, Finland's economy is tanking, necessitating these cuts, so that can't be the outcome you're referring to.

I'm paying for my past education and the education of the coming generations by paying across the board higher taxes than most people in say, the US- And I'm completely alright with that,

It's great that you're OK with what you're paying for - that means you would do the same thing voluntarily. But to see if the system is just, you must see what happens to somebody who is not OK with it. Will violence be uses against them if they choose not to participate? If so, you must be willing to engage in violence, killing people if necessary, for the sake of forcing OTHER people to pay for a high university-level education rate to achieve questionable economic benefits.

In the meanwhile, you should voluntarily donate personally to a fund set up for free education of foreign students.

The Candlestick Makers' Petition by Bastiat:

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.

We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds — in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat.

But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

How has this perversion of the law been accomplished? And what have been the results?

The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. Let us speak of the first.

Corporations would do away with regulations, our air would be like China's,

Wait, you're saying that China is controlled by corporations, not by the Communist party, or other political figures?

As for the role of government, Bastiat got it right - the use of force in the defense of private property rights. Keep it to the bare minimum, with carefully circumscribed powers and responsibilities, and corruption is minimized.

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

It has been 170 years since the famous petition to French Parliament to protect candle maker from unfair competition from a certain celestial body. Did they learn nothing? Why prop up an obsolete and failed industry at the expence of taxpayers, consumers and competitors?

Maybe use that money to preserve some outstanding paper book editions? Or poll that money to create a free e-book repository to educate the masses who don't have the resources to pay for books $60 a pop? Today we have the technology to bring literacy and education FOR FREE to every ghetto and remote corner of the world, yet a certain Mikey Mouse character prefers and inifinite copyright, and universal as well (Thanks, WTO!)

Wow. Just fucking wow.

Here we have at least three replies to my original post who think that "sucking off of the Government teat" is a valid part of a viable business plan.

Listen, if you can't generate enough income to pay your own way in the world, then you don't belong in business. Forcing other people to pay your expenses is not a sustainable plan.

Plus the fact remains that Obamacare has already killed more startups than it will ever incubate.

Sheesh. Some of you people need to read your Bastiat. Better yet, just keep your day job.

Excellent post. The broken window fallacy is truly a fallacy.

In this case, $561,000 of electricity per day works out to a whopping $205 million per year!

Simple: limit regulation to the strict protection of private property rights.

Unlimited liberty requires security of oneself and one's property. Government should simply be the collective use of force in defense of private property rights. Bastiat had it figured out over a hundred years ago: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

As Bastiat pointed out so eloquently in That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen your $800 per month is what is seen.

What is not seen, is the $800 per month that this no longer costs your neighbors.

All government spending is not evil, and all public works aren't bad. But it is a mistake, a fallacy, to think that taking $800 per month from your neighbors so you can spend it is somehow good for the economy, or your neighbors.

When we must engage in public works, we should do so - hold our nose and accept the necessary evil. This, however, should never be mistaken for economic activity. That is an illusion.

It is worth taking a hard, critical look at yourself and what it is you do. Is your job really justified? Maybe so, perhaps you are a civil engineer or water treatment specialist, I have no way of knowing. Only your conscience can guide you when you wake up in the morning and greet your struggling neighbors, look them in the eye, and know that they are paying for you to do what you do.

Your absolutely wrong and generous people are always available. Tax's are evil because they are taken by force.

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G002

Please go read Bastiat: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html it will do you a lot of good intellectually.

http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
"That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen" by F. Bastiat
Chapter VIII, "Machinery" is what you need.

Road to Serfdom covers this topic from economic point of view. The relevant sections are: Individualism and Collectivism, Planning and the Rule of Law, Economic Control and Totalitarianism, Security and Freedom, Why the Worst Get on Top, The Totalitarians in our Midst.

I also suggest The Law by Bastiat.

Maybe the direct savings to currently practicing doctors is 2% but what is unseen? What about the indirect effects of reduced supply of doctors because of early retiring/not practicing/not taking new patients due to increased tort costs and decreased medicare/medicaid reimbursements?

For one thing, I doubt his vote was the deciding vote on the issue. It is impossible to quantify how much his advocacy increased the bill's vote count.

Also, government funding of research is just another case of Bastiat's "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen". Government funding crowds out private investment. Even if the bill never existed, there is a real business incentive to invest research in science that can be used to increase worker productivity.

Yeah, and never mind that the government agencies have had this type of functionality for the longest time, that's what the police and FBI use to try and catch suspects.

But if you are a private individual or a company with the same type of technology, all of a sudden you are too dangerous.

Al Franken needs to read this book and learn something, specifically that if something is illegal for an individual to do, the government must not be allowed to do it either.

...the study of paying people to dig holes and then fill them up again. Of course, the jobs are just what is seen...

Are you suggesting that without large government interventions into peoples' lives, society cannot be orderly, or capable?

Bastiat had something to say to you: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

This is a famous letter written in 1845 to the government in response to new trade tariffs protecting candle makers:
http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Please read this: Frederic Bastiat - The Law. It's very short and I think explains my position better than I can. Everything else in this argument is nuance 38, 53, 70, 90, it's all far beyond the needs of the government to preform the duties needed of it. I live in California and the combined tax rate here is >= 53%. If you really need citation for 53 you can do the google search. But don't get hung up on that, just read the Bastiat link and tell me what you think of that.

That money comes from somewhere - the private sector. So private sector expansion is reduced by the $.75B these "created jobs" cost (as if the government will return the money to the private sector when this "loan" is repaid). And considering the private sector is a lot more efficient that government procurement, it's likely a net loss of jobs.

When you steal money from the future, there will eventually be a cost, even if you don't notice it. That which is seen, and that which is not seen.

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

No, the value of money changes over time. A price is an exchange ratio. If you inflate the money supply i.e. print money, it bids prices up, and causes price inflation, prices that are higher than they otherwise would be. If you read the article I cited you would understand it doesn't add to productive capacity, it only increases production at the expense of future production. This is what happens when you engage in price fixing of interest rates, it distorts the long-term production structure over time, since interest is the price of time. If you manipulate it, you are going to hurt production.

I've read Krugman on and off for a while, he makes a very consistent set of fallacies. Arguments about the housing bubble are perfectly relevant, we are doing the exact same thing that we did to cause it. It's going to cause the appearance of a recovery, and then crash again, even worse than now!

Uh, who do you think runs non-democratic nations? Hint: It ain't 200 IQ scientists who only do what is best for Gaia!

Yes, but that's a point in FAVOR of his idea!

But, to your point, as Bastiat said 160 years ago:

The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority.

They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.

Good one.
But then the politician morons don't understand much.
I remember Bastiat's satire on candle makers
Petition of Candle Makers

You think that what's "right" or "acceptable" for an individual defines right and acceptable behaviour for a government?

Go read The Law by Frederic Bastiat. The only legitimate powers of a government are delegations of the rights of individuals. You have no right to forcibly prevent someone from ingesting whatever he chooses into his own body. You don't gain such a right if you get a bunch of goons to help you.

-jcr

Unemployment is a problem. If nuclear power plants require more people to run, wouldn't that be a good thing?

Indeed. We should also ban all power tools and computers; think of all the jobs this will create! Maybe we should block the sun as well - more candle-making jobs!

Look, for the first round of clean up no "cyberwarriors" are needed. We just had yet another article about how single city, for a single Windows worm, lost millions due to clean up. In that case it lost over $2.5 million, including rewarding the designers of the security flaws to the tune of $1 million. Knocking down a water tower would probably cost less to repair. So why are not the defense and law enforcement agencies stepping in here?

It's not a nameless or faceless "terrorist" group that is costing our businesses, shutting down our infrastructure, tangling our air traffic control, our power grid, or our hospitals. The people promoting Windows and Microsoft technologies have real names and faces and walk among us every day. Take them out and we've won the first round. It could be as simple as organizing a large scale round up under the RICO Act.

From there we can go on to hardening the net with IPv6 and dealing with the usual intelligence / counter-intelligence activities. But the first step, before we can stop the economic bleeding is to deal with the cause of the problem: the people who promote and profit from known defective technology.

Great.

They are giving Slashdot accounts to Palstinians now.

Shooting rockets at everything is your solution to everything isn't it?

If fans of Frederic Bastiat are considered to be "Palstinians" [sic], then yes, they are.

/obvious troll is obvious...i bit anyway

True. The broken window fallacy seems to be referenced when other parts of "That which is seen, and that which is unseen" are more applicable.

the Republicans and Libertarians twisted into "OMG Socialism! Obama is after your mooooniiiiiiiessssss!!11!one"

Obama IS a (little-s) socialist. By definition. At least, the definition I've used forever, the one that Bastiat used 150 years ago.

The whole "socialism" scaremongering was coming from the Republicans.

Good. Obama is a socialist, and his socialism is scary.

McCain, not Obama, was shoving Joe into the spotlight

It was both, actually.

There's nothing that suggest that Obama drug Joe's name through the dirt.

I love how when Republicans do something, McCain was to blame, but when Dems do, Obama had nothing to do with it.

That said, I agree. Obama used Joe a lot, but not to smear him, but to try to make the case that his plan was GOOD for Joe, and even if not good for Joe, that's only because Joe was so well off he didn't need help. (A case which is essentially socialist in nature, of course.)

Funny, I'm a social liberal, fiscally I run middle-ground (as long as there isn't deficit spending, I don't care what the government's budget is). As a social liberal, I'm more than happy to hear someone else's argument, nod in disagreement, and say "well, good thing we don't have to agree". I don't try to push my morals on anyone, so long as they give me the same leeway. I really don't see how that's evil. I think there would be a bunch of money left over for big planes and ships to keep enemy armies from invading my home, and ample money left over for healthcare, etc (although I would prefer the states to handle that), if they would stop blowing so much money on cracking down on consentual crimes, as well as ensure that education (you need a degree to do anything anymore) is affordable. If that makes me left-wing, so be it. But calling me evil, that's pretty well off the mark. Evil does require the desire for harm to come to another, so I'd be interested in how my views are "evil".

"I don't try to push my morals on anyone, so long as they give me the same leeway."

Yet you support that as long as there's no deficit it is perfectly OK for the government to take from some people to give to others. That's the evil hidden right there.

If the government spends 100 billion dollars it's got two choices, since the State is not a fountain of goods, education and miracle drugs; it either takes the 100 billion from people who earned it through productive activites, or he prints the 100 billion, making everyone foot the bill when all prices go up in consequence of this inflation. I like that you support a balanced budget as that restricts the government to the first method, but taxing someone is still harming them.

Funny thing is that rampant US government growth has only been truly significant after the US instituted its central bank and later went off the gold standard - which was quite unpractical for politicians who wanted to spend money without having to raise taxes i.e. inflating the money supply. That enabled them to increase their spending without actually taking money from people, which had that nasty side effects of getting yourself thrown out of office more often than not. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, as we all know.

To paraphrase Bastiat, when the law ceases to limit itself to being just, it necessarily becomes a 'weapon' for injustice, and everyone will enter politics to get the chance to swing it at somebody else or protect himself from getting hit by it.

If you want to drink at the source and figure out for yourself what you think of it: Bastiat's The Law

...eliminating competition in an otherwise viable industry because someone can afford to offer the service for free as a loss leader to other business.

You should read Bastiat's petition to block out the sun.
You are leaving out the benefits to the end user due to the cheap/free software. It is the classic "Seen vs Unseen".(Of course, if your point about "profiting off an unrelated industry" is true, then it is theft and hence wrong. But I don't believe that that is true.)

but also no one can afford not to use the free thing because the cost of the luxury of buying an alternative brand will be exposed by the market as superfluous if passed along to end users.

Yes. That is a feature, not a bug.
Either the alternative brand has some value, which end users will pay for or its value is not worth anything and the end users are not willing to pay for it.

The mistake you are making is that you value competition for its own sake. Competition (and producers) exist only for the sake of the end consumer. If the consumer can obtain what he wants for a low cost or for free, then there is no need for competition or producers.
This is also the mistake people make when they argue against free-trade and monopolies.

Jeez.. atleast point to Bastiat's excellent Petition of the Candlemakers

That's the broken window falsehood in a nutshell, with a false dichotomy thrown in on the side.

Money and staff spent, in this case, re-inventing the wheel, is money and staff not spent on the core business activities. So,even if it's learning from others mistakes, going FOSS saves effort and that in turn boosts your core business activities (assuming reinvestment and not skimming by the execs). Software is only a tool, an enabler, for those core activities. In case you missed the last 25 years of computing, it's not an XOR choice between using the open source development model and making a profit. In fact, it's been show again and again that it's not only profitable, but makes your company more recession-proof. We've been through a few now and have seen the benefits.

Not meant to completely reject, that in the short-term at least, there can be problems caused by mechanisation, but there's a great quote from That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen (Frederic Bastiat, 1850) on this subject.

James B. had two francs which he had gained by two workmen; but it occurs to him, that an arrangement of ropes and weights might be made which would diminish the labour by half. Thus he obtains the same advantage, saves a franc, and discharges a workman.

He discharges a workman: this is that which is seen.

And seeing this only, it is said, "See how misery attends civilization; this is the way that liberty is fatal to equality. The human mind has made a conquest, and immediately a workman is cast into the gulf of pauperism. James B. may possibly employ the two workmen, but then he will give them only half their wages for they will compete with each other, and offer themselves at the lowest price. Thus the rich are always growing richer, and the poor, poorer. Society wants remodelling." A very fine conclusion, and worthy of the preamble.

Happily, preamble and conclusion are both false, because, behind the half of the phenomenon which is seen, lies the other half which is not seen.

The franc saved by James B. is not seen, no more are the necessary effects of this saving.

Since, in consequence of his invention, James B. spends only one franc on hand labour in the pursuit of a determined advantage, another franc remains to him.

If, then, there is in the world a workman with unemployed arms, there is also in the world a capitalist with an unemployed franc. These two elements meet and combine, and it is as clear as daylight, that between the supply and demand of labour, and between the supply and demand of wages, the relation is in no way changed.

The invention and the workman paid with the first franc, now perform the work which was formerly accomplished by two workmen. The second workman, paid with the second franc, realizes a new kind of work.

What is the change, then, which has taken place? An additional national advantage has been gained; in other words, the invention is a gratuitous triumph - a gratuitous profit for mankind.

From the form which I have given to my demonstration, the following inference might be drawn: - "It is the capitalist who reaps all the advantage from machinery. The working class, if it suffers only temporarily, never profits by it, since, by your own showing, they displace a portion of the national labour, without diminishing it, it is true, but also without increasing it."

I do not pretend, in this slight treatise, to answer every objection; the only end I have in view, is to combat a vulgar, widely spread, and dangerous prejudice. I want to prove, that a new machine only causes the discharge of a certain number of hands, when the remuneration which pays them as abstracted by force. These hands, and this remuneration, would combine to produce what it was impossible to produce before the invention; whence it follows that the final result is an increase of advantages for equal labour.

Who is the gainer by these additional advantages?

First, it is true, the capitalist, the inventor; the first who succeeds in using the machine; and this is the reward of his genius and his courage. In this case, as we have just seen, he effects a saving upon the expense of production, which, in whatever way it may be spent (and it always is spent), employs exactly as many hands as the machine caused to be dismissed.

But soon competition obliges him to lower his prices in proportion to the saving itself; and then it is no longer the inventor who reaps the benefit of the invention - it is the purchaser of what is produced, the consumer, the public, including the workmen; in a word, mankind.

And that which is not seen is, that the saving thus procured for all consumers creates a fund whence wages m

I suggest you to read the "A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting."

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Funny as the same old superstitions continue to take hold in the mind of uninformed people.

Given the combination of France and protectionism in one post, I am compelled to link one of the great ant-protectionist essays.

See Bastiat's Petition, by which the makers of candles, lanterns, street lamps, tallow, oil, etc. ask the members of the Chamber of Deputies to block out the sun.

In two words, Legal Plunder.

It's worth reading The Law for a fuller discussion.

To quote an insightful bit:

But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws.

This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

As I see it, the problem is not the EC, but that the elections are a "popularity contest" bereft of any real content, and designed to attract ignorant voters. The EC might possibly prevent a Hitler, Lyndon LaRouche, or "Mickey Mouse" being elected to the White House.

I have a standard procedure I developed during the Bush/Gore election. When someone starts bitching and moaning about a candidate for presidency, I ask them, "I can see you're concerned. It really bothers me that most people voting in the election are not informed enough to make a good decision. It usually comes down to a popularity contest, or a 'MY TEAM vs. "YOUR TEAM' contest. That's pathetic, isn't it?"

Usually they agree with me that it's terrible that ignorant people are casting un-informed votes.

Then I ask them, "What, specifically, qualifies a person to be President? What are the main duties of the President, and why is one candidate more qualified than the other?"

Needless to say, most people don't have a ready answer. (It really IS pathetic that so many ignorant people are casting votes!) So I ask them, "What does it say in the Constitution?" Unless the person is a lawyer, most people don't know the Constitution. There are exceptions, but it's pathetic that most people don't know the Constitution and still insist on "Constitutional Rights".

I then hand them a small booklet with the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States and tell them, "Don't vote until you've memorized the Constitution." These booklets are available for a dollar or less at any Libertarian bookstore, or they can be ordered here: http://www.ashbrook.org/constitution/ I used to carry a number of them in my car and pocket.

If you don't want to order the booklet, you can read the Constitution many places online. Don't vote until you've memorized the Constitution.

Now, Bush is probably the lesser of two evils, which is STILL evil. The CATO Institute will send you a free booklet called, "Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush". I also recommend reading, "We the People" by Mortimer Adler and "The Law" by Frederick Bastiat: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G1753. You have a little over two years before the next Presidential election to educate yourselves.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a member fo the Libertarian Party, but I do consider myself a "libertarian? (small 'l') in the same sense as Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill.