Dinner Party
Just a quick post tonight. I wrote on Wild Cards this morning, and then went off to ride Pi. He was good, but as usual, tiring. I got home at 1:30, ate some lunch, and helped Carl build the frame for the Japanese “bell”. It’s not actually a bell, it’s a piece of steel from the International Balloon Museum. Carl was the project architect on the project and he took this as a souvenir. Now we just have to buy rope to lash the bell to the frame. This is an area of the house where there is a round window, and a run off area that I have lined with beach stones. I want to get sand or pebbles and do a kind of Zen garden out there. Maybe a bit of bamboo or a single tree. It should look really cool.
I spent an hour building more erosion control terraces, and then it was time to start cooking. George R.R. and his lady Parris were coming over for dinner. I made pork loin with hazelnut hollandaise sauce, green peas and yams. I had also baked an apple pie. I’m rather famous for my apple pies. Each fall I go to Dixon’s (a local apple farm), and buy a bushel of champagne apples. This past year I figured out that I could prepare the filling, and freeze it in pie sized packets. I have two left, and they have to last through the summer.
We had a nice visit, and ended up talking about when is a daddy/mommy government too much? What got us started is the anti-scald unit that was in George’s shower. He wants to take a hot shower. I was complaining about the low flow faucets even though I know in New Mexico they are a really good idea. We shouldn’t waste water, but sometime I want some water pressure, damn it! We realized that we are all liberals, and believe the government should care for it’s citizens, but when does it go beyond caring and become oppressive? Should we be banning trans fats in New York City, and smoking in public places? Personally I love the smoking ban. I grew up with parents who were both chain smokers, and I find the smell nauseating, but… but….
I have a feeling that as resources become more scarce, clean water, oil, etc. we’re going to find more and more curtailment of our personal freedoms. I love my little hot sportscar, but wouldn’t a hybrid be more responsible? Probably. And perhaps the government will eventually make that decision for me.
Okay, I’m going to take my aching body off to the Temperpedic matress.
Melinda
May 13th, 2007 at 2:38 am
You can have your cake and eat it too! Love your sports car and be environmentally responsible! Check out the Tesla Motors roadster! I’m drooling for one (even though it’s out of my budget range).
Since 95% of my driving is urban, I’m personally looking forward to the introduction of the Smart car next year.
May 13th, 2007 at 8:42 am
George is seriously considering the Tesla. I looked into hybrids, but 95% of my driving is on the freeway because I live quite a distance from town. With the present technology I’d just be running the gas engine. Parris has a hybrid, and is getting 50 mile sto the gallon. But she drives mostly in Santa Fe except for the occasional jaunt to a convention.
May 13th, 2007 at 10:30 am
I’m a pretty hardcore libertarian, but I’m glad California has restrictions on cigarette smoking. Never mind the health issues and the debates over how real they are. I don’t think you have the right to walk up to me and spray perfume or other scents on me without my permission. And back in the days when smoking was more tolerated, if I spent time in public places, my clothes and my hair were likely to stink all day. I’m glad not to have that inflicted on me.
It would be preferable if it could be dealt with through ordinary courtesy; but common courtesy seems to have become uncommon. If it were still the custom to ask people’s consent before smoking, and to accept a refusal with good grace, we might not have had the demand for legal regulation.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Anti-scald?? Oh my, I haven’t heard of that. Jeesh.
With regard to smoking bans, much as I am a fascist non-smoker, I would never, ever promote banning smoking altogether. Further, I think the current move to have characters smoking in movies impact the movie rating is one of the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. There’s a huge difference between banning smoking in public spaces (which I strongly approve of) and banning smoking completely.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Exactly, William.
Inhaling smoke gives me coughing fits, esp. with my spring pollen allergies, but if you ask people to please, not to smoke because it makes you ill, most of them will ignore that.
So I’m glad smoking is forbidden in most public rooms in Germany.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:41 am
One of the great things about capitalism is that it lets you buy what you _want_, rather than what some bureaucrat thinks you _should_ want.
That wonderful song “Copperhead Road” pretty well sums it up for me; I’ve always loved that unapologetic, contumacious I’ll-do-what-I-goddamned-well-please individualism. It’s one of the more charming parts of the American national character.
That restaurant in Galveston I saw once was a good example — made in the shape of a 3-story pink-concrete shrimp with a ten-gallon Stetson on its head and a six-gun in either hand (or claw). Now, _there’s_ a statement!
May 14th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
I agree that people ought to be able to abuse their bodies any way they like. Within limits. I don’t want to breath smoke, and I don’t want to fly on a plane with a pilot who is high on something, I don’t want to be killed by a drunk driver. Otherwise I don’t care if people do drugs. We should legalize them and let the market set the price. Hopefully they would be cheap enough that people don’t have to rob my house to pay for their habit.
I like the libertarian adage that “your rights stop at the edge of your skin”. I used to be a libertarian, but as I’ve gotten older it is less attractive to me, and what really weaned me off it was my mother’s final illness. As she lay dying of lung cancer and I was trying to negotiate a broken health care system, and this with a woman who had money, and it was still a nightmare, I finally gave up on that particular political philosophy. I think it’s a great philosophy for people who are young and healthy and believe the world is their oyster. I just think there are certain things we need government to do. National defense, roads and health care because I really don’t want to live in a country where people are dying in the streets. I also think that a great country cares for the weak and disaffected because we are a community. The common good has meaning for me.
And yes, I am a capitalist, (I run a natural gas and oil company, for heaven’s sake) but regulated capitalism.
May 15th, 2007 at 10:35 am
I’m not a libertarian. I’m in favor of a single-payer health system, for example.
But while Government is necessary (because as Melinda points out there are things only it can do) we should never lose sight of the fact that it’s a necessary _evil_.
So when we use it we should do so while holding our noses, always concious of the fact that it’s a double-edged sword and of strictly limited utility.
It’s not our benevolent friend. It’s not even _potentially_ our benevolent friend.
The basic purpose of the State is to kill and constrain people, and those are the things it does best; when the State comes to you, it comes with a gun and a club. All government action is essentially bad; better than the alternative, sometimes, but still _bad_.
Furthermore, I doubt the _capacity_ and the _motives_ of people who want to/like regulating other people (present company not included in this category).
First, in the long run (and often surprisingly quickly) regulatory agencies always become captives of the people they were set up to regulate, who then use them for corrupt purposes — to exclude new competition, for example.
And it’s not a deformation that could be avoided by drafting better laws or by more public spirit; a devil’s alliance of bureaucrats and wealthy oligarchs is the inevitable result, and ordinary people are always its victims.
It’s like “protecting” jobs — it always, invariably, ends up protecting the established at the expense of the young and the poor; protecting yesterday’s jobs at the expense of tomorrow’s.
Most of Europe is a horrible example; France, for instance, with permenant 25% youth unemployment.
And I don’t think that their _motives_ are benevolent, whether they pretend to be Green, or ’socially conscious’ or whatever. I think they’re lying.
I think they basically hate human beings(*) and enjoy afflicting them and making them jump through hoops because it gratifies their schadenfreude and power-lust, and because they hate independence and the very thought of someone being able to tell them to go to hell.
The only government employees I don’t regard with constant suspicion and a degree of contempt are soldiers and police.
(*) with many of the more extreme “environmentalists” this is quite nakedly the case.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Sorry, Steve, I can’t agree. Organizations are only as good as the people in them, and we are a flawed species. We haven’t been out of the trees all that long so we’re territorial and selfish and corrupt, etc., so naturally there are problems and abuses, but to make such a general statement is disingenuous. Because of my background I’ve known many many people who have served in government both elected and appointed, and they don’t “hate human beings” and suffer from “power-lust”.
I’m something of an expert on the Clean Water Act because of work I did when I was still practicing law. I worked rather closely with people in the EPA, and overall that organization has done a good job in difficult circumstances. Especially now when the Bush administration is packing these agencies with incompetents who don’t actually believe in their stated purpose.
Until Bush FEMA was a welcome sight after a tornado or a hurricane. Without the FDA we’d have toddlers and grandmothers dying from food poisoning at alarming rates. And of course Bush has cut that agency to the bone. Without the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service much of our natural wonder would be destroyed, or filled with houses of the very rich who could afford to build in these precious places.
The basic problem with the Republicans as currently constituted is that they think government is evil and unnecessary so they do an absolutely crappy job of serving the needs of the state and its citizens.
I too have great respect for those who serve in uniform. I have a dear friend who is a homicide cop in Albuquerque, but don’t put them on too high of a pedestal. As Damon has said “70% of the people in a police force just want to drive fast, shoot off guns and beat up people.”
Our soldiers do terrible, difficult jobs, and normally they do them well. Until we place them in a totally untenable position such as Iraq where they can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, and end up falling back on the old idea that you “kill them all and let God sort them out.”
And now we are faced with global problems that are beyond the ability of individuals, cities, and probably even individual countries to solve. We have to have some kind of structure to deal with them — and the only one we’ve got, as imperfect and flawed as it may be — is government. What was it Churchill said (I searched, but couldn’t find the exact quote) “Democracy is a dreadful form of government — until you consider all the others.
May 17th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
I must say that for someone who is not a libertarian, Steve Stirling does a good job of hitting most of the high points of libertarian arguments about the practical side of economic policy. About the only one he misses (and it’s not very relevant to the United States) is the economic calculation argument against socialism—and I was just rereading Island in the Sea of Time and noted a passage where Jared Cofflin reflects on the unworkable complexity of a socialist econom with only a few thousand people, which makes the essential point of that. (You are that particular Steve Stirling, I presume?)
To my mind, one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century was the emergence of public choice economics from Virginia Polytechnic, with its analysis of government failure as a complement to the older analyses of market failure. This provides us with a basis for not inferring immediately from “the market is having problems dealing with X” to “therefore the government can deal with X perfectly and should start doing so,” which was the dangerous fallacy of early twentieth century socialism. I personally hope to see public choice theory become more widely recognized and understood over the next half century, to the point where it actually has some influence on public policy.