I used to call myself a libertarian socialist. This was in college. At the time, I didn't realize that libertarian socialism was already a common euphemism for left-anarchism. I was not an anarchist, even though I did embrace the non-aggression principle. I just hadn't thought it through yet.

I was an individualist, a decentralist, and a secessionist. I thought the only ethically legitimate arrangements were voluntary. But I wanted to see more voluntary experiments in socialism and "intentional communities." I absolutely did not trust businesses or markets larger than a certain very small size, and I considered "capitalism" to be a dirty word.

It was with these ideological reflexes that I made my pilgrimage to the Mecca of voluntary socialism: the Israeli kibbutz.

I lived there for almost half a year. I loved the people, loved the life, loved the land, but I also, sadly, came to the conclusion that socialism was not sustainable, whether voluntary or coerced.

It was clear to me that I was visiting a dying institution.

Christopher Westley posts to blog.Mises.org about "the Degania kibbutz' decision to abandon socialism and allow the private ownership of property, a move many kibbutzim in Israel have been making in response to low productivity and the abandonment of their youth." Read the rest.

As I mention here, San Francisco once dealt successfully with disaster by letting the market work. With drastic shifts in prices came significant adjustments in both supply and demand. But that was 1906. Today we have a more overtly market-friendly man in charge:

April 30, 2007

Left Coast Road Socialism and the Market-friendly Governor

B.K. Marcus

Yesterday afternoon, my friend, who has recently moved to the Left Coast, pointed to this blog to alert me to the fact that MacArthur Maze, "the complex of freeways where Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and all the traffic from the East and South Bay area come to a head," has collapsed again.

("Again?" Yes, again: the exact same spot that collapsed in the 1989 earthquake.)

My first thought was, of course, "road socialism." The blog author concludes it's corrupt government, without any apparent sense of redundancy.

Last night, my friend wrote me again:

One of the first things I thought was "Oh, ferry and BART prices are going to skyrocket," as that would be the normal (aka market) method for balancing the suddenly decreased supply of "transportation between the East Bay and SF."

But no.

http://bart.gov/news/features/features20070429.asp

I'm gonna have an interesting commute tomorrow.

So Governor Schwarzenegger — who has claimed that the two people who have most profoundly impacted his thinking on economics are Milton Friedman and Adam Smith ("At Christmas I sometimes annoy some of my more liberal Hollywood friends by sending them a gift of Mr Friedman's classic economic primer, Free to Choose") — thinks the best way to deal with sudden changes in supply and demand is to obliterate the price system.

So much for electing market-friendly politicians.

April 30, 2007 10:16 AM | comment | Digg | contact B.K. Marcus | other posts

(Many thanks to Choicy White Boy.)

Here's an image that tells at least half the story:

I won't look for an image to go with this post.

The reliefs carved onto the walls of Rameses III's mortuary temple gave the pharaoh credit for leading an enormous victory. In the carvings, the rejoicing Egyptian warriors are surrounded by piles of hands; it was customary for soldiers to sever the right hands of the dead and bring them back to the scribes, so that an accurate count of enemy casualties could be recorded.*

---

* The technique of "counting by hand" was varied, once or twice, in earlier battles, when the soldiers apparently decided to cut off penises and bring them for accounting instead (making for one particularly interesting relief, in which a scribe is comparing the hand-count with the penis-count to see if they agree.)

Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, p. 277

And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.
And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Genesis 10:8–10, King James Version

Susan Wise Bauer has some great footnotes in her new book, The History of the Ancient World.

For example, this one from p. 269:

The chronology is difficult but Tukulti-Ninurta is probably the king called Nimrod in Gen. 10:10: a mighty hunter and warrior whose kingdom included Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Nineveh, the same expanse as that claimed by Tukulti-Ninurta for Assyria. Weirdly enough, this Hebrew version of the name of the Assyrian great king has become an English synonym for a foolish and ineffectual man ("What a nimrod!"). The only etymology I can find for this suggests that, thanks to some biblically literate scriptwriter, Bugs Bunny once called Elmer Fudd a "poor little Nimrod" in an ironic reference to the "mighty hunter." Apparently the entire Saturday-morning audience, having no memory of Genesis genealogies, heard the irony as a general insult and applied it to anyone bumbling and Fudd-like. Thus a distorted echo of Tukulti-Ninurta's might in arms bounced down, through the agency of a rabbit, into the vocabulary of the twentieth century.

And on the topic of "Fair Trade" …

Oxfam coffee 'harms' poor farmers

Caroline Overington

April 28, 2007

TWO Melbourne academics have lodged formal complaints against Oxfam Australia over the sale of Fairtrade coffee, saying it should not be promoted as helping to lift Third World producers out of poverty because growers are paid very little for their beans.

You can read the rest of the article, but here's the summary: Tim Wilson, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, and Sinclair Davidson, professor of institutional economics at RMIT University, have lodged a formal complaint against Oxfam with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, under the Trade Practices Act. They charge Oxfam with "misleading or deceptive conduct." Fairtrade coffee is "sold at a premium," "to lift Third World producers out of poverty." But Fairtrade harms these poor coffee farmers. To become "certified producers" the poor men have to fork over $3200!! Thus their "costs are … higher than on the open market." And the workers who pick the beans are paid less than the official minimum wage…

(via Sudha Shenoy)

I kid you not:

More here:

Tom Woods, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, reviews Robert Murphy's new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism. I won't review his review. I just wanted to point to a particular passage that resonated with me:

These objections, in fact, illustrate the almost embarrassing lack of imagination and common sense that develop among the general population whenever people have grown accustomed to state-directed approaches. After a while, no one can imagine how things could be done any other way — and when the rare maverick claims otherwise, all people can do is repeat, in zombie-like unison, the clichés they've been taught by their masters.

"Economics Is Fun" by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

You can read Naomi Wolf's full article in the Guardian.

(via neural)

The book that made Wolf famous was The Beauty Myth. I never read it. I first knew Naomi Wolf as one of Esquire magazine's "Do-me Feminists". Every now and again, I'd read or hear something by her, usually revising or rejecting some aspect of mainstream feminism. My reaction to her leans toward positive, but I've not looked too closely. So I can't agree or disagree with these critiques:

The release of The Beauty Myth coincided with Camille Paglia's release of Sexual Personae, which made a scholarly defense of beauty as a natural and enduring dimension of sexuality. Paglia engaged in a spirited critique of Wolf, which included these comments in her infamous MIT lecture:

"If you want to see what's wrong with Ivy League education, look at The Beauty Myth, that book by Naomi Wolf. This is a woman who graduated from Yale magna cum laude, is a Rhodes scholar, and cannot write a coherent paragraph. This is a woman who cannot do historical analysis, and she is a Rhodes scholar? If you want to see the damage done to intelligent women today in the Ivy League, look at that book. It's a scandal. Naomi Wolf is an intelligent woman. She has been ill-served by her education. But if you read Lacan, this is the result. Your brain turns to pudding! She has a case to make. She cannot make it. She's full of paranoid fantasies about the world. Her education was completely removed from reality."

Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Naomi Wolf for publishing the now debunked figure which claimed 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia (the actual number is closer to 100). Sommers cites this as evidence of the media's "servile" attitude to prominent feminists, accepting their figures without investigation as if they were the "gospel truth."

I quote them here mostly because they relate to other themes of this blog.

For more on fascism, go here.

"To be an individualist and libertarian is to understand that no one, anywhere, should ever be aggressed against by anyone, and that the state is the principal form of institutionalized aggression in our world."

– Anthony Gregory, "Real World Politics and Radical Libertarianism," a speech given at the Libertarian Party of California Convention in San Ramon, CA, on April 22, 2007.

Our Kind of Central Planning Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. What was wrong with the leftists' worldview in the 1990s and today? Essentially it is this: they see society as unworkable by itself. They believe it has fundamental flaws and deep-rooted conflicts that keep it in some sort of structural imbalance. All these conflicts and disequilibria cry out for government fixes, for leftists are certain that there is no social problem that a good dose of power can't solve. The problem is that the Right shares that view, only with different applications. FULL ARTICLE

Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley, Jr.

Excerpt:

During the New Deal and before the Cold War, the libertarian tendencies of the American Right prevailed. But after the Cold War began, the mix became unstable, with the militarists and statists gaining an upper hand. It was during this period that we first heard the term "conservative" applied to people who believe in free enterprise and human liberty — a ridiculous moniker if there ever was one. Frank Chodorov was so fed up with it that he once said: "anyone who calls me a conservative gets a punch in the nose." Neither did Hayek or Mises, much less Rothbard, permit that term to be applied to their worldview.

Nonetheless, it stuck, and the bad habits of mind along with it.…

There's a chain of authors and influences that led me directly from Robert Anton Wilson to Murray Rothbard, but I've never seen either of them comment on the other. RAW implied some unflattering things about Misesians in his audiobook, Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything (or Old Bob Reveals His Ignorance) — basically, he said that those libertarians who didn't treat Ayn Rand's writing as dogma treated Ludwig von Mises's writing that way — but I never heard or read anything more direct from him on Mises himself, let alone Rothbard. I know he rejected Rothbard's Natural Law/Natural Rights philosophy (as represented by Sam Konkin) but that might have made him sympathetic to Mises's utilitarian approach. Either way, I never got the sense that RAW quite "got it" as far as economic theory was concerned.

Thanks to Brian Doherty, I now know that while RAW rejected Austrianism, he did have some respect for the Austrians:

… he also said, as quoted in my book, when asked to expound on the differences between him and the then-dominant Misesian-Rothbardian strain of the movement in a 1976 interview, "this is turning into a diatribe against the group I find least obnoxious on the whole politico-economic spectrum...The orthodox conservatives and liberals, not to mention Nazis and Marxists, are really pernicious, and the Austrian libertarians are basically OK."

Liberty-loving logophiles should check out this list of contronyms (via LRC) and also this followup on the LRC blog, by Anthony Gregory.

iceberg pointed me to this New York Times article:

[that's an NYT link so it might be temporary if you're not a subscriber]

And he suggested I re-run this old post:

beyond non-aggression

Today's Doonesbury provides the opportunity to point to a very good daily article from a couple years ago (to the day, in fact):

"Fairness with Your Coffee?" by N. Joseph Potts

Says Potts:

Before going further, I'd like to make it perfectly clear that it is entirely within coffee-bean buyers' rights to pay any price, including an inflated price, they can get growers to agree to. And I consider it entirely within the rights of coffee consumers to buy coffee represented to have been so purchased at any price the retailer is willing to part with it for. This is all voluntary. There are no governments involved and so, as far as I can see, no coercion.

So, why does it rankle me so? Am I so intensely uncharitable that the charity of others bothers me, even when it costs me nothing? How very refreshing it is, after all, not having the taxman threatening me with the armed might of the state if I should shirk in paying his levy!

So my objection to Fair Trade isn't a libertarian objection. There's nothing about smug ignorance that violates the non-aggression principle. I do have a strong semantic objection (As Potts says, "But worse, this is yet another Newspeak-style hijacking of the word, 'fair,' coupled here with 'trade' that bothers me.") But I'll leave the semantics alone for now, assuming that they'll be obvious from the rest of my objections, which are primarily intellectual and utilitarian.

Bad thinking is producing bad results. And the whole Fair Trade campaign is bad economic thinking at an almost cartoonish level. Potts again: "Á la Bastiat, it's what is not seen that troubles me worst."

The issue of Fair Trade helps make clear that not all leftist dupes are philosophical collectivists. Some are merely methodological collectivists.

They want to help "the poor" — but "the poor" is a false aggregate. The actions they take — whether coercive, like minimum wage legislation, or voluntary and market-based, such as the whole "fair trade" swindle — end up transferring wealth from the poorest of the poor to the richest of the poor (and to the wealthier people running the scam).

The whole concept of Fair Trade in the 21st-century West is socialist at its heart, even if not necessarily statist. It is based on the belief that the market price is unfair, that it necessarily involves exploitation, or is at least somehow arbitrary. So, the thinking goes, just pay more than the market price. But here's the kicker: this higher, "fairer" price is still a market price — for a different product.

If I find out that gardeners in my area make only $10/hour and I think that's absurdly low, offering $20/hour may mollify my sense of social injustice, and ends up getting me a superior gardener, but in no way does it help the gardeners whose marginal productivity earns them $10/hour.

When fair traders realize this, they can either abandon the erroneous concept of a "fair price" other than the free-market price, or they can turn to more coercive actions such as minimum wage: outlaw the hiring of gardeners at only $10/hour. Again, the higher-skilled gardeners will immediately benefit from this action, but the guys whose gardening labor can only draw $10/hour on the free market will in no way benefit from now being coercively disemployed.

Fair Trade is the same story on a smaller (and yes, voluntary) scale. When you choose to spend your dollars on Fair Trade products, not only are you not helping out the poorest coffee growers or farm workers; you're actually steering wealth away from them. I don't know too many leftists who feel sanguine about further impoverishing the poorest of the working poor, and yet that's what all leftist economic policy amounts to — even, it turns out, when that policy is pursued peacefully.

My wife pointed out to me that my previous post should have been titled "beware of Egyptians bearing baskets" because beware is intransitive in the imperative. Good catch, Mrs. Marcus!

Ancient history again.

Tuthmosis III became the pharaoh of Egypt when he was 2 years old. His step-mother, daughter of the previous king, insisted on becoming regent, a position she so successfully turned into de facto rulership that Tuthmosis III didn't rule Egypt until he was 30 years old.

During those 28 years, the queen regent and de facto king, Hatshepsut, seems to have focused on two goals: legitimizing her usurpation and building new buildings.

Susan Wise Bauer writes, "in the ancient world, the number of buildings a king put up was considered a direct index of his success, and Hatshepsut wanted no question as to her greatness" (p. 209).

Meanwhile, the de jure king was off with the Egyptian army, kept away from the halls of power, so to speak. The military, it seems, did not care for the queen's emphasis on domestic policy. They were itching to fight. So when Hatshepsut died, and Tuthmosis III finally took the throne that had technically been his for almost three decades, his reign focused on foreign policy — that is, he took his army out and kicked some ass. Historian James Henry Breasted called him "the Napoleon of Ancient Egypt" (Bauer, p. 209n).

Here's my favorite passage from this chapter:

This campaign appears to have frightened the countryside. Semitic warlords from nearby cities began sending gifts to Tuthmosis III, doing their best to make peace with the angry young man in the south. Those cities that resisted were attacked, and sacked, in Egyptian campaigns that stretched over the next few years. Joppa, on the coast [now Tel Aviv], tried to make a deal instead of surrendering unconditionally; according to a later story, the king of Joppa agreed to visit the Egyptian commander in order to discuss peace terms, was served a banquet, and then was knocked unconscious and stuffed into a back room. The Egyptian commander went out and told the king's charioteer that the Egyptians had decided to surrender to Joppa, and that the Charioteer should return quickly and tell Joppa's queen that her husband was on his way with prisoners. A procession of captive Egyptians soon appeared on the horizon, carrying baskets of plunder from the Egyptian camp. But each basket contained an armed warrior; when the queen of Joppa threw the gates open, the warriors burst out of their baskets and forced the city to surrender.[8]

(Bauer, p. 208)

[8] Steindorff and Steele, p. 58.

[Steindorff, George, and Keith C. Steele. When Egypt Ruled the East. 2d ed. (revised by Keith C. Steele). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.]

I wrote my college thesis on the philosophical issues of teleportation.

That's not what this post is about, though.

While I'm reading ancient history on the weekends (as a break from the sort of thing I read and edit all week; as remedial self-education; and as preparation for homeschooling), I keep thinking of the great science fiction novel, Dune (even though the socio-politics of Dune have much more in common with medieval history than ancient).

In reading up on Dune — hoping Wikipedia will explicate the cultural and historical allusions that were part of the feeling, reading the novel, of being immersed in rich context and deep reference — I discover this fascinating link between the fabled Kwisatz Haderach of the Dune universe, and the Hebrew term kefitzat haderech. (I should have recognized ha derech as meaning "the path" or "the way" but kefitzat is wholly alien to me.)

At its most mundane level, kefitzat haderech is "a Hebrew equivalent of the English expression 'short cut.'" But in Jewish folklore, it is "the ability to jump instantaneously from one place to another or travel with unnatural speed. The term is originally used in Midrashim to explain anomalies of travel in the Hebrew Bible. In East European Jewish folktales, especially those associated with the Hasidic movement, kefitzat haderech was utilized by various revered holy men."

The Calvin & Hobbes strip that gets linked to the most on lowercase liberty is this one:

BK Marcus: Let's all say hello to our guest blogger iceberg who hails all the way from the tundras of New York City.

iceberg: Hey! Look mom, I'm on lowercase liberty!

BK Marcus: iceberg, so tell me what brings you here?

iceberg: Well, for fear of reprisal, I dare not post this to my own blog since family members are known to visit my blog now and then, and let's leave it by saying that my folks are often concerned about what I say and how I feel about things. Especially if it involves words containing letters such as G, O, V, E, R, N, M, — well not to get sidetracked, but I just wanted to say that its with great humility when I say that its truly a pleasure to be the first guest blogger to be featured on your esteemed blog.

BK Marcus: We are certainly happy to have you aboard too, comrade. So tell us, what ails you?

iceberg: I fear its the holier-than-thou attitude prevalent in society, and the psychological urge felt needed to reify that baseless superiority. If I may, I'm going to relate one real-life example that I am currently witnessing.

BK Marcus: Sure; what is it?

iceberg: Every Saturday over the past year, my wife and I have witnessed from the vantage of our living room a continual stream of drug transactions taking place right in front of our home; apparently the dealer lives in a walk-up apartment building right across the street from us. I've never thought twice about it until once we invited my in-laws over for lunch, which after they noticed the same, have strongly expressed their compunction to have this man violently assaulted and kidnapped for the dastardly crime of making other people happy and accepting their money in exchange.

In the subsequent dialogue with my mother-in-law, she took offense that I dare defend a drug dealer's right not to be assaulted. Knowing that its probably to difficult to change her heart about the senseless war on chemicals formulations, I made a witty remark saying that her own husband, my father-in-law who by trade is a pharmacist, is himself a drug-dealer.

BK Marcus: So what you are basically trying to say here, is that this smug, undeserving feeling of superiority, can get to the point where someone would actively seek to harm some random stranger in order to be seen as a righteous individual?

iceberg: Exactly! I couldn't have said, or rather, written that any better than you just did. I just can't understand the knee-jerk aversion to that friendly neighbor who never offended me in any way. Sure plenty of strangers visit our block for their fix, but why should I let that bother me — because some pompous moron has decided that my neighborhood entrepreneur is a bad man?! Maybe that kind of illogic stuff flies in kindergarten, but come on, let's be serious and grow out of this puerile tattletaling which helps naught anyone.

BK Marcus: Interesting. Is there anything else you would like to share with our guests?

iceberg: Yes, an interesting note on the etymology of the word "cannabis". According to many etymologists, it comes from the Hebrew words Kanneh Bosem, which translates to "aromatic reeds" or "reeds of balm". This biblical plant was used in the formulation of Shemen Hamish'kha, which literally means "anointing oil" which was used to anoint the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest. Of course it was only a topical application, but the pun remains.

Also, the same oil was used to anoint kings, and eventually, one day it will be used to anoint the messiah, the word derived from an anglicization of Moshiach, or Mashu'akh, which again, literally means "the anointed one".

Even Christianity derives from this- the Greek word for "anointed" is — khrīstos!

I'll leave it up to you what to make of this alluring synchronicity.

BK Marcus: That the use of cannabis is a fundamental Judeo-Christian ritual to be lauded?? Deal me in, kiddo.

How old is the United States?

In Illuminatus! Trilogy, someone asks why we date the USA back to 1776 when it was clearly created in 1787. That question implies to me that Robert Anton Wilson shared the view that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a nationalist coup, which did not so much revise as overthrow the government of the Articles of Confederation, written in 1777.

Was there any government created in 1776, relevant to American History?

Ah, but here's a spin that makes my opening question a trick question — and one that's easy to answer once you spot the trick: notice I asked, How old is the United States. Before the American war of secession, that question would have been asked, How old are the United States? All you need to know to determine whether the centralists or decentralists won is in that shift from plural to singular. How old is the United States? Not quite a century and a half.

OK, but when did the American war of independence begin?

Most people would say 1776, but why? That's when the Declaration of Independence was written, but so what? Didn't the war begin on this date in 1775, in Lexington, Massachusetts? "The shot 'heard round the world"? Anyone?

Those who value deeds over words should consider April 19th to be Independence Day.

Lew Rockwell links to the solecism section of the Economist's style guide.

Here's a digest for those with busy schedules or short attention spans:

Acronym: this is a word, like radar or NATO, not a set of initials, like the BBC or the IMF.

Aggression is an unattractive quality, so do not call a keen salesman an aggressive one (unless his foot is in the door or beyond).

Agree: things are agreed on, to or about, not just agreed.

Aggravate means make worse, not irritate or annoy.

Anarchy means the complete absence of law or government. It may be harmonious or chaotic. [Thank you!]

Autarchy means absolute sovereignty. Autarky means self-sufficiency.

Beg the question means neither raise the question, invite the question nor evade the answer. To beg the question is to adopt an argument whose conclusion depends upon assuming the truth of the very conclusion the argument is designed to produce. All governments should promote free trade because otherwise protectionism will increase. This begs the question.

Bellwether. This is the leading sheep of a flock, on whose neck a bell is hung. It is nothing to do with climate, prevailing winds or the like.

Canute's exercise on the seashore was designed to persuade his courtiers of what he knew to be true but they doubted, ie, that he was not omnipotent. Don't imply he was surprised to get his feet wet.

Cartel. A cartel is a group that restricts supply in order to drive up prices. Do not use it to describe any old syndicate or association of producers — especially of drugs.

Cassandra's predictions were correct but not believed.

Catalyst: this is something that speeds up a chemical reaction while itself remaining unchanged. Do not confuse it with one of the agents.

Centred on, not around or in.

Compare: A is compared with B when you draw attention to the difference. A is compared to B only when you want to stress their similarity. ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?")

Contemporary: see Current.

Continuous describes something uninterrupted. Continual admits of a break. If your neighbours play loud music every night, it is a continual nuisance; it is not a continuous one unless the music is never turned off.

Convince. Don't convince people to do something. In that context the word you want is persuade. The prime minister was persuaded to call a June election; he was convinced of the wisdom of doing so only after he had won.

Current and contemporary mean at that time, not necessarily at this time. So a series of current prices from 1960 to 1970 will not be in today's prices, just as contemporary art in 1800 was not modern art. Contemporary history is a contradiction in terms.

Deal. Transitively, this means distribute: "He was dealt two aces, two kings and a six." Intransitively, deal means engage in business. Do not deal horses, weapons, drugs, etc; deal in them.

Decimate means to destroy a proportion (originally a tenth) of a group of people or things, not to destroy them all or nearly all.

Different from, not to or than.

Dilemma. This is not just any old awkwardness, it is one with horns, being, properly, a form of argument (the horned syllogism) in which you find yourself committed to accept one of two propositions each of which contradicts your original contention. Thus a dilemma offers the choice between two alternatives, each with equally nasty consequences.

Discreet means circumspect or prudent; discrete means separate or distinct. Remember that "Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are." (Oscar Wilde)

Disinterested means impartial; uninterested means bored. ("Disinterested curiosity is the lifeblood of civilisation." – G.M. Trevelyan)

Enormity means a crime, sin or monstrous wickedness. It does not mean immensity.

Epicentre means that point on the earth's surface above the centre of an earthquake. To say that Mr Putin was at the epicentre of the dispute suggests that the argument took place underground.

Ex- (and former): be careful. A Communist ex-member has lost his seat; an ex-Communist member has lost his party.

Factoid: something that sounds like a fact, is thought by many to be a fact (perhaps because it is repeated so often), but is not in fact a fact.

Fewer (not less) than seven speeches, fewer than seven samurai. Use fewer, not less, with numbers of individual items or people. Less than £200, less than 700 tonnes of oil, less than a third, because these are measured quantities or proportions, not individual items.

Flaunt means display; flout means disdain. If you flout this distinction, you will flaunt your ignorance.

Forgo means do without; it forgoes the e. Forego means go before. A foregone conclusion is one that is predetermined; a forgone conclusion is non-existent.

Former: see Ex-.

Frankenstein was not a monster, but its creator. [As a wise-ass kid in grammar school, I liked to make fun of the kids who thought Frankenstein was the monster, but now I think this point is as silly as correcting someone who claims to drive a Ford ("Ford was the creator, you know, not the pickup truck!")]

Gender is a word to be applied to grammar, not people. If someone is female, that is her sex, not her gender. (The gender of Mädchen, the German word for girl, is neuter, as is Weib, a wife or woman.)

Gourmet means epicure; gourmand means greedy-guts. [This is how the distinction was taught to me by my middle-school French teacher, but I've heard it contradicted in at least 2 different ways by those in the know: (1) A gourmet is a gourmand who knows wines; (2) a gourmand loves food (but is not necessarily overindulgent) whereas a gourmet only likes the very finest foods.]

Homogeneous means of the same kind or nature. Homogenous means similar because of common descent. [I know many economists who get this wrong.]

Homosexual: since this word comes from the Greek word homos (same), not the Latin word homo (man), it applies as much to women as to men. It is therefore as daft to write homosexuals and lesbians as to write people and women.

Hopefully: by all means begin an article hopefully, but never write Hopefully, it will be finished by Wednesday. Try With luck, if all goes well, it is hoped that …

Immolate means to sacrifice, not to burn.

Inchoate means not fully developed or at an early stage, not incoherent or chaotic.

Investigations of, not into.

Like governs nouns and pronouns, not verbs and clauses. So as in America not like in America. But authorities like Fowler and Gowers is a perfectly acceptable alternative to authorities such as Fowler and Gowers.

Masterful means imperious. Masterly means skilled.

Mitigates mollifies; militates does the opposite.

Only. Put only as close as you can to the words it qualifies. Thus, These animals mate only in June. To say They only mate in June implies that in June they do nothing else.

Oxymoron: an oxymoron is not an unintentional contradiction in terms but a figure of speech in which contradictory terms are deliberately combined, as in bitter-sweet, cruel kindness, sweet sorrow, etc.

Populace. This is a term for the common people, not a synonym for the population.

Positive means definitely laid down, beyond possibility of doubt, absolute, fully convinced or greater than zero. It does not mean good. It was a positive meeting probably means It was a good, or fruitful, meeting.

Practicable means feasible. Practical means useful.

Presently means soon, not at present. ("Presently Kep opened the door of the shed, and let out Jemima Puddle-Duck." – Beatrix Potter)

Prevaricate means evade the truth; procrastinate means delay. ("Procrastination — or punctuality, if you are Oscar Wilde — is the thief of time.")

Pristine means original or former; it does not mean clean.

Propaganda (which is singular) means a systematic effort to spread doctrine or opinions. It is not a synonym for lies.

Rebut means repel or meet in argument. Refute, which is stronger, means disprove. Neither should be used as a synonym for deny. ("Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven: but this does not refute my general assertion." – Samuel Johnson)

Sensual means carnal or voluptuous. Sensuous means pertaining to aesthetic appreciation, without any implication of lasciviousness.

Soi-disant means self-styled, not so-called.

Straight means direct or uncurved; strait means narrow or tight. The strait-laced tend to be straight-faced.

To or and? To try and end the killing does not mean the same as to try to end the killing.

Underprivileged. Since a privilege is a special favour or advantage, it is by definition not something to which everyone is entitled. So underprivileged, by implying the right to privileges for all, is not just ugly jargon but also nonsense.

Use and abuse: two words much used and abused. You take drugs, not use them (Does he use sugar?). And drug abuse is just drug taking, as is substance abuse, unless it is glue sniffing or bun throwing.

Verbal: every agreement, except the nod-and-wink variety, is verbal. If you mean one that was not written down, describe it as oral.

Which informs, that defines. This is the house that Jack built. But This house, which Jack built, is now falling down. Americans tend to be fussy about making a distinction between which and that. Good writers of British English are less fastidious. ("We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.")

"On this day in 1906, an earthquake struck San Francisco. The earthquake began near dawn, at 5:12 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and lasted for a little over a minute. Scientists later determined that the San Andreas Fault had moved about 23 feet. A policeman said, '[The streets] began to dance and rear and roll in waves like a rough sea in a squall, [then] sank in places and vomited up car tracks and the tunnels that carried the cable.' A fire broke out that raged for three days and most of the city was burned to the ground." – Writer's Almanac

But as Friedman and Stigler point out in their 1946 pamphlet, "Roofs or Ceilings?" (about which I recently wrote for Mises.org), there was no housing shortage after the crisis because the government did not intervene in the housing market:

The San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906 was followed by great fires which in 3 days utterly destroyed 3,400 acres of buildings in the heart of the city.

Maj. Gen. Greely, commander of the Federal troops in the area, described the situation in these terms:

"Not a hotel of note or importance was left standing. The great apartment houses had vanished … Two hundred and twenty-five thousand people were … homeless."

In addition, the earthquake damaged or destroyed many other homes.

Thus a city of about 400,000 lost more than half of its housing facilities in three days.

Various factors mitigated the acute shortage of housing. Many people temporarily left the city — one estimate is as high as 75,000. Temporary camps and shelters were established and at their peak, in the summer of 1906, cared for about 30,000 people. New construction proceeded rapidly.

However, after the disaster, it was necessary for many months for perhaps one-fifth of the city's former population to be absorbed into the remaining half of the housing facilities. In other words, each remaining house on the average had to shelter 40% more people.

Yet when one turns to the San Francisco Chronicle of May 24, 1906 the first available issue after the earthquake — there is not a single mention of a housing shortage! The classified advertisements listed 64 offers (some for more than one dwelling) of flats and houses for rent, and 19 of houses for sale, against 5 advertisements of flats or houses wanted. Then and thereafter a considerable number of all types of accommodation except hotel rooms were offered for rent.

I suggest that libertarians celebrate the important non-events of history. Think how much worse it could have been.

Bart:

What the hell is this?

Lisa:

It's one of those campy '70s throwbacks that appeals to Generation Xers.

Bart:

We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little.

Almost four years ago, as we were preparing to move to Pennsylvania for what turned out to be a 3-year stay, we found ourselves purging every possession we could bear to part with. Part of this process meant separating our library into the books we had to store and the books we were going to get rid of. Having held onto my books since the days when all I could afford were trade paperbacks, I found that the majority of my books were yellow and crumbling.

My wife still found it a horrifying prospect to throw books away, especially good books, no matter how unreadable. To my surprise, I shared her reluctance. It didn't make any sense. I knew I could buy new and better copies of these books if they mattered enough — that I'd have to, in fact, if I wanted to reread them — but the idea of throwing books away seemed only one step short of the sacrilege of book burning.

That's when I decided to burn my books.

It was meant to be a liberating act, a symbolic display of the victory of reason over irrationality, my declaration of independence from the secular religion of book lovers. (Or you could think of it as a sacrament to the more abstract version of the religion, where the immaterial contents are worshipped, and not their temporal incarnation.)

I want to describe for you the catharsis, the exultation, the giddy sense of irreversibility as I watched the flames engulf my decades-old collection of tattered volumes … but that's not at all what happened.

It was a bust. Very anticlimactic to take a flame to a book only to discover that books don't burn very easily. Awkward and disappointing to apply lighter fluid only to find that they still burn slowly. I had too damn many books to burn.

So I threw them out after all.

I'm remembering this story because the synchronistic theme for today seems not to be taxes, but books.

First this pointer from iceberg to a Washington Post article on New York's Library Hotel, where your room number is Dewey decimal and your room is filled with more books than you could possibly read on your chosen subject:

"Your Room Is Booked"

Then The Writer's Almanac informs us:

It was on this day in 1926 that the Book-of-the-Month Club shipped out its first selection, Lolly Willows, or, The Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner, to just about 5,000 members. Within a few decades, the Book-of-the-Month Club would become one of the most influential publishing forces in the history of American literature.

The Book-of-the-Month Club let customers sign up to buy one book a month at $3 apiece. The books were selected by an independent panel of experts, but if members didn't like the book chosen each month, they could choose an alternate.

Numerous literary critics thought the book club was a terrible idea, that it would result in a standardization of literature, and that readers would lose their ability to think or make decisions. But the Book-of-the-Month Club was being launched at a time when there were very few bookstores outside of big cities. Buying new books through the mail was the only way that most Americans could get their hands on those books.

In just its first 25 years, the Book-of-the-Month Club shipped more than 100 million books, averaging about 200,000 copies of each selection. Among the authors whose careers were launched in part by the Book-of-the-Month Club were Margaret Mitchell with Gone with the Wind (1936), John Steinbeck with Of Mice and Men (1937), Richard Wright with Native Son (1940), J.D. Salinger with The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Harper Lee with To Kill a Mocking Bird (1960), and Toni Morrison with Song of Solomon (1977).

[emphasis added]

It's telling, isn't it, that literary critics seemed to assume a general population of city dwellers. Or maybe they were just worried that too many urbanites would use the new club rather than reading literary criticism. I think something similar was going on in the 1990s.

Does anyone else remember when Amazon specifically, and the Internet more generally, were being condemned as the death of independent booksellers and somehow therefore also of a diverse, intelligent, and independent readership? I'm sure the small bookstores were hit hard, just as mom-and-pop shops really are hit hard by the new Wal-Mart in town, but for consumers in both scenarios, the development was an undeniable boon. People are reading a much broader range of subjects and titles because of the Internet, and they're paying less than they used to to do so.

It's important to remember that booksellers are a special-interest group. Like organized labor or industrial lobbying groups, they claim to represent the general interest through the pursuit of their special interest — in this case, the literacy, education, and critical intelligence of the general public, rather than the bottom line of their membership's businesses.

The small booksellers were warning of a new corporate gatekeeper on what was and wasn't read. In fact, the opposite has happened. The gates are falling and the gatekeepers, corporate or otherwise, aren't happy about it. The Mises Institute is certainly finding a much broader audience, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm falling into the special-interest trap of associating my immediate interests with a general interest (although I do, of course, believe that individual liberty is in the general interest); anarcho-socialists, fascists, eco-terrorists — all sorts of fringe groups are finding themselves able to put their literature into the hands of the curious. There are plenty who consider this a terrible thing, but I'm not one of them, and the independent booksellers of the 1990s wouldn't have admitted to being among them, either.

This week's theme at A.W.A.D is unusual words to describe everyday things. Example #1 …

I'm afraid the word albedo will always be connected for me with the 1976 Vangelis album Albedo 0.39, which is where I first learned the word: "The reflecting power of a planet or other non-luminous body. A perfect reflector would have an Albedo of 100%. The Earth's Albedo is 39%, or 0.39." I'll probably never be able to hear this word without thinking of the hours and hours I looped this album the summer between freshman and sophomore year in college …

Well, I couldn't find the video for you, but here are the lyrics:

Here's the song I'm doing, gonna fill in you all about tax.
Tax is that familiar melody, sinful and true.
Hum it if you've earned a dollar or two.
Bucks in billions for the government for whatever they do.
Anyone who earns a living gives more than a few.
So schools can be their best, so our roads will have no cracks;
Someone fix those train tracks!
I'm even callin' you Uncle and I'm payin' my tax.

Oh, these are my girls. Hello girls.
Hello max. Nice outfit.
There are many different ways we pay what we owe.
Lady's if you'll follow the lovely tableau.
Income, property, sales, utility. Candy bars in my show.
Licenses for dogs and cats, and that's not all you know.
Out of every dollar a person can make,
City, State and Federal governments take...
Take what?
What they think is fair you givin' your share;
Now and then there's a break.

Max is talking taxes,
Hey, I kept you awake! For the things your town may need,
For the things a country lacks,
All good things take green backs.
We hear you callin' Uncle and we're paying our tax.
People do complain,
Say their taxes are high;
What am I to get in return?

Look around you friend,Max is showin' you why,
With your taxes you support
How we live and how we learn
Now here's the good news,
Many things are tax deductible.

Which means their cost can be subtracted from the amount of income you'll be taxed on. Things like medicine, doctor bills, and supplies for your work.

So keep those receipts.
Be kind to your parents at tax time.
And remember April 15th. April 15th.

What a showman you are Max.
Entertaining us with tax,
In those snazzy plaid slacks.
These slacks are for my business.
I tell you how to fit them.
I hear you callin' Uncle, and I'm paying my tax.
His tax are max.

And I'm deducting my sax.

Ludwig von Mises at a conference on inflation and war, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, April 5-8, 1951:

I want to ask a question. What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law. Great Britain does not punish gambling. This is not a loophole; it is a British law. The income-tax exemptions in our income tax are not loopholes. The gentleman who complained about loopholes in our income tax — he did not refer to the exemptions — implicitly starts from the assumption that all income over fifteen or twenty thousand dollars ought to be confiscated and calls therefore a loophole the fact that his ideal is not yet attained. Let us be grateful for the fact that there are still such things as those the honorable gentleman calls loopholes. Thanks to these loopholes this country is still a free country and its workers are not yet reduced to the status and the distress of their Russian colleagues.

I do not want to assert that our laws are perfect and do not require any amendment. Let us discuss this problem in detail and let us examine every instance according to its merits. But do not confuse the issue involved by resorting to the meaningless slogan "elimination of loopholes."