… how last night’s New Hampshire Democratic Primary can repeatedly be called a win for Hillary Clinton. As I understand it (and I’ve paid little attention to the lower-level workings of the wacky U.S. election system) both Clinton and Obama got the same number of delegates and thus effectively tied, even though Clinton got a scant 2% more of the popular vote. Given that she was the heavy favorite everywhere up until Iowa, anything less than an actual win in delegates seems like poor performance to me. Is this anything other than media bias in favor of Hillary shining through?

File this under “things that you hope would get funding so that they can fail miserably and become a lesson to others”: free nationwide wireless porn-free Internet.

There are some goods and services that, for various reasons, you just can’t get in Canada: warm weather in January, pictures of yourself hugging Mickey Mouse, a view of the Mona Lisa. If you want those, you have to travel to some other place.

You can also add doctor-assisted suicide to that list. Unlike the others though, getting that service will get your loved ones questioned by police… and, if the lobbyists have their way, arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

This service is obviously in demand (Sue Rodriguez made big headlines for weeks back when I was in high school). There’s some very sound ethical arguments for allowing it. But the laws in Canada don’t allow for it, potentially to the point of prosecuting those who seek the service off of Canadian soil.

Something else to note: by forcing assisted-suicide seekers to foreign countries, you in turn:

• Limit its availability to those who can afford the travel expenses.
• Limit its availability to those who can physically make the trip — thus forcing a life-or-death decision earlier than would otherwise be required.

I don’t think that that serves much purpose.

I discovered OpenPolitics.ca while reading about the leader of Canada’s Green Party suing several web sites for defamation. I haven’t looked into it in detail yet, but it looks promising so far.

One of the first things I’ve investigated is their
Political Personality Quiz, which is very much like the one at Political Compass which I wrote about earlier, except that it has 6 axes instead of two. According to my results, I’m an “Anti-Nationalist”, which is a harsh-sounding term, but the writeup describes me pretty accurately. Further down they give an “alternate nickname” of “post-nationalist”, which I think is a better name: it implies that nationalism is a obsolete system rather than a bad one.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more from this site in the future.

I can’t say too much about this Dilbert Blog post or it would give away the ending. I’ll just give you a hook; you’ll have to read it for yourself.

Imagine you could make fuel out of poor people.

Marco responds to my earlier post on The Political Compass:

…there’s no one they picked in the Right-Libertarian square! In practice, in a 2-party system, if you want conservative, you (tend to) get authoritarianism…. the founding fathers, if on that graph, and modified for their time, probably *would* fall down there. Jefferson, almost unquestionably, for example.

I’ll start by referring to another image on the Political Compass analysis page:

This one does show someone down in that lower-right corner: Milton Friedman the Nobel-winning economist. Based on what I’ve heard him say, Alan Greenspan would probably land in that quadrant too. I’m not super-familiar with the US Founding Fathers, but from what I do know Marco’s example of Thomas Jefferson seems dead on the money.

Note, though, that two of those three people are not political leaders (and the other one is dead). As I said in my previous post, if you look at individual leaders, you’ll probably find people who tend to believe that individual leadership (ie: authoritarianism) is a good way to run things. There will be exceptions, but the rule is quite clear. That’s goes for both sides of the economic (socialist/capitalist) axis; it’s not just for the conservatives.

By the way, if you give Political Compass some money, they’ll do an analysis of your (least) favorite leaders.

When it comes to socialism vs. capitalism in economic discussion, there’s lots of evidence and good arguments for both sides of the debate. That’s a topic I’m interested in.

But when it comes to authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, I think the issues are much more cut-and-dried: authoritarianism is pretty much always a bad thing for everyone but the authority.

From Venezuelan Congress grants Chavez power to enact by decree:

“Viva President Hugo Chavez, long live socialism!” National Assembly President Cilia Flores said as she proclaimed the law approved.

Note that they’re (intentionally) confusing Chavez’s socialist economic strategy (which I think is a legitimate strategy to hold, even if it’s ultimately wrong) with his authoritarian grab for more power. That sort of thing happens all the time, and it often works.

The key to understanding politics is that it isn’t a one-dimensional spectrum; there’s more to the world than Left-versus-Right. (Incidentally, that is absolutely not understood by most Americans, and that’s something that enabled the current Republicans to masquerade as conservatives. By most measures, they’re not.) One of the more useful divisions I’ve seen (and adopted) is to split political ideology into social and economic axes: that is, the role of authority (versus individual liberty) and the means of a creating a successful economy (free-market versus central planning).

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out The Political Compass and take their test see where you land on the social and economic scales. Here’s my most recent one; it actually comes out more socialist than my previous tests (but still mostly center). I’m

On the same page as the test results is a chart showing various leaders/famous people and how they’d score if they took the test (based on their public statements):

Note how almost of the “big-name” leaders score high on the authoritarian side. That is, of course, no accident: if you’re the authority, you’re probably more likely to think that authoritarianism (ie: Do-As-I-Tell-You-To) is a good way to do things. And, if left to their own devices, someone given authority will tend to exert it in order to keep it/gain more. That is exactly why authoritarianism needs to be kept in check; it’s self perpetuating, and it’s only beneficial to those who have it.

Marco light-heartedly writes:

But, guys: do you think you could get me one of these? I’d really like one!

He’s referring to the bugged Canadian coins that made the news last week. Apparently, the story was unsubstantiated, and that kind of weakens the point I was going to make, but I’ll post it anyway.

A while back Canada deported a real Russian Spy. Assuming that the allegations are actually true that he was a spy working for the Russian government/security service, it raises several questions in my mind.

Why on earth would Russia base a spy in Canada? I didn’t see any indication that he was doing corporate espionage (which would be understandable), just the regular geopolitical kind. Canada certainly isn’t diplomatically hostile towards Russia, and the Canadian military isn’t any sort of threat. Political strategy has never been more open; you could probably gain as much insight into the Canadian government through public sources as you could by spying, and do so with much less risk. Access to the United States is mentioned, but it seems to me that if you want to spy on the US, you’d be better off planting someone actually inside the country. Canadians have easier access to the USA than most other foreigners, but there are still lots of restrictions and oversight; getting someone into the USA permanently is probably easier than getting someone across the border frequently. So what the heck was this guy doing here? Are they just hedging their bets?

Lots of questions; I’ll probably never have answers to most of them.

Speaking of socialism: our French neighbors rented out their house in France before moving to Canada. Recently they discovered that the renters (who have been giving them problems since the start) have simply stopped paying the rent; however, due to the various tenant laws in France it will be nearly impossible to evict them. From what I understand, tenants have 6 months after they receive the landlord’s notice of eviction to actually vacate (enough time to find a new home). If you’re a tenant, you can go a long way to avoid receiving that notice (ie: don’t sign for the registered letter). You can’t evict a family in the winter, because it’s bad for the children. Et cetera.

From what I’ve heard, France seems to be one of the most socialist countries in the world. I’ll define “socialist” here as “enacting laws to enforce social goals”. I’ll differentiate it from communism and claim that the latter takes the concept of social direction further, but the goal is to downplay individualism (socialism, in turn, is designed to protect all individuals). Countries like China and Cuba obviously have stricter controls over their people than France, but in my opinion they’re beyond the socialist scale.

Of course, “enacting laws to enforce social goals” sounds like a noble goal. The whole idea sprung from the problems associated that arose during the laissez-faire periods. The problem with heavy social engineering is the same one that occurs when trying to direct any complex system: unintended consequences. One human brain isn’t capable enough to understand multiple human brains plus all the complexity of the physical world, and so cannot predict the future precisely nor make effective plans to manage them.

On the other hand, I don’t think that total libertarianism is a viable strategy either… but I’ll save that for another post.