Year: 2016

PREPARE for Something Amazing! My Debate With Jeremy Hammond on Israel Will Air Tonight

rafifarber Libertarian Halacha, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Wow that was SO much fun. What a thrill to be on the Tom Woods show! He really is one of my favorite, if not actually my #1 favorite libertarian speaker. He is a scathing but light-hearted and hilarious cynic, with a biting sarcasm and wit possibly even more scathing than my own. He just does it better than me I think and with more poise, while I am more spastic and emotional. He can destroy any statist argument in seconds and he is entertaining as anything.

Here is Tom at his best. I loved this talk.

Here is what he writes in preview of our debate on his site:

There aren’t too many countries created from scratch before our eyes, so that historical episode raises important and interesting questions, for libertarians in particular.

Here’s the resolution: “Israel was founded on the basis of legitimate homesteading of land and reclamation of lost Jewish property from previous generations of Jews.”

Arguing in the affirmative: Rafi Farber.
Arguing in the negative: Jeremy R. Hammond.

The episode is already recorded, so I can tell you: this topic is debated in a manner that is at once civil, engaging, and informative.

I decided to host a debate on the topic when I discovered that Walter Block and the late Murray Rothbard, two Jewish libertarians, disagreed on the issue. So I thought we ought to hash it out and see what conclusions we can reach.

Now you’ll never guess: on Twitter, someone demanded to know why I was allowing a debate on the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Why not Germany, England, France, etc.?

I found the question obtuse. How about because major libertarians disagree, and it’s good to try to resolve disagreements? Or how about the significance for current events of the circumstances surrounding the creation of Israel? Only if we understand Israel’s birth correctly can we form correct judgments about ongoing events in our own day.

Keep reading…

I’m not sure exactly how well I performed because I haven’t actually heard it yet, and you people in the US will probably hear it before me because it will be Shabbos here in Israel by the time it’s online. But I believe I did very well, at least in my own head. I dug in there with my Jewish claws so to speak and didn’t let go, and spoke from the soul about Rome, Har Habayit (the Temple Mount), Ma’arat Hamachpela (Cave of the Patriarchs), the expulsion from Gush Katif (Gazan Jewish settlements) and other topics. I also made a request of Tom personally as a Catholic libertarian at the end of the debate which you will hopefully hear, and I am serious about the request. It has to do with the Vatican and some stuff they have.

I have to commend Jeremy for a respectful debate. I believe he and I made history here, along with Tom, in conducting this discussion civilly. You’ll hear in the debate that we actually agree on much of the practical solutions to this conflict, which happen to be very similar to the solutions of Moshe Feiglin.

No Jeremy and those that agree with him generally will not turn into Feiglinites any time soon, that I’m certain of. But on principle, paying the Christian and Muslim Judeans to leave voluntarily (and with that nomenclature I’m giving you a small hint of the direction of my argument) is a solution that Jeremy did not object to on principle if the non Jewish people now living in Israel so desire to leave for money.

I believe they do. So let’s get it done.

Enjoy the show! You’ll find it here some time today. I will link to it on Motzash.

The Best Presidential Election Scenario for Libertarians

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

The best scenario for libertarians would of course be the best scenario for everyone in general, though most people don’t realize this because most people receive tax funds and would rather not have their milk supply cut off from the State’s nipple.

Here’s the best possible scenario as I see it. Hillary Clinton is sick as a dog, but she is still the best possible president, partly because of this. Julian Assange שליט”א is breathing down her neck and and about to make her life even more miserable than it already is, and forgive me for hoping that whatever remains of her sad life is spent doing nothing but staging personal battles against her accusers so she doesn’t have any time to kill anyone else in some foreign country or come up with bigger and more evil taxing schemes.

I don’t want her to suffer as much as I just want her to be totally preoccupied with defending (however poorly) her own sick (physical and spiritual) reputation just so she has no time to do anything else at all.

So the best scenario is as follows, as I see it. Hillary hobbles through to November while being beaten over the head by Assange and by the public for her health problems. By hook or by crook, she wins the election, and spends the her entire term fighting back scandal after scandal as her health continues to deteriorate. She is unable to pass a single piece of legislation, start a single war, or pass any executive order because she is too busy fending off attacks by a united Republican congress who do everything they can to stifle her just to spite her. She’ll be the greatest president since Nixon in terms of sullying the office, which is a very positive thing.

Go Hillary! If you’re voting, I endorse her. Just make sure you vote a straight Republican ticket to make sure she has the greatest opposition in Congress as possible. Make the branches of government fight one another so fiercely that they forget to oppress us in their preoccupation with one another.

For now though, she has to recover. I don’t want Biden getting in there and screwing this up. He doesn’t inspire nearly enough hatred for government. Hillary is the queen of that. I want her as president.

Debating Jeremy Hammond on Israel on the Tom Woods Show

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

I’ll  be debating Jeremy Hammond on the Tom Woods show next week, on the legitimacy of the State of Israel. I will be arguing from a minarchist perspective even though I am an anarcho-capitalist. It will be published on the Tom Woods YouTube channel and I will of course post it here when it’s up.

I don’t think Tom or Jeremy know what they’re in for. I will make arguments that every libertarian has heard before, but never in the context of Israel.

Stay tuned.

Rabbi Thinks Downs is Caused By Past Sins, People Care For Some Reason

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

When to be offended, and when to laugh it off? Here’s my take.

Came across an article on Jpost, which I only went to today to see if there are any updates about the people trapped in the rubble in that collapsed parking lot in Tel Aviv, right across from where I used to work.

Anyway, there is this article about some idiot Rabbi who says that Downs Syndrome is caused by past sins. A bunch of people are offended, understandably.

Here’s why they should not be offended. Because the statement is meaningless. It has no theoretical evidence that could possibly prove or disprove it beyond a direct Divine revelation, which is not happening. It’s equivalent to someone saying gravity is caused by a bunch of invisible elephants blowing gravitons at us from space that are entirely undetectable in every way.

It’s like claiming everything in the world was suddenly replaced by exact duplicates yesterday and the originals destroyed by God’s court jester for fun. This is an unprovable statement. Maybe it’s true. But it doesn’t matter. Maybe Downs Syndrome is actually caused by past sins. There is no way for us to ever know, and therefore it’s not a statement that means anything.

So who cares?

When someone says something that cannot, by its very nature, be proven or disproven by any conceivable evidence, then he may as well be saying nothing at all. We may as well just consider him as someone with Downs Syndrome and leave the guy alone. Maybe he has Downs Syndrome and all the evidence to the contrary is fake.

What should offend us is if he says something like “Parents of kids with Downs Syndrome should be stoned to death because they are sinners, otherwise they wouldn’t have had kids with Downs Syndrome.” At that point it’s OK to be offended because he would be advocating murder. But as long as he’s just babbling incoherent nonsense, just laugh at him and leave him alone.

Thinking about Running on the Zehut Ticket

rafifarber Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

I just got a text from one of the Zehut Party activists that primaries for the party will be soon. I’m not very active on the ground at the moment as I have zero patience for grunt work and politicking. However, I am vaguely familiar with the Zehut crowd as I’ve been to a few key events, and they generally strike me as thoughtful people, not libertarian theorists by any stretch but they do have a better sense of what liberty is than most people.

That’s pretty good.

An internal poll commissioned by Zehut and done by Ma’agar Mochot saw Zehut getting up to 15 seats. That means if I can get a slot up to 15-20 I may actually get in.

If I do run, my campaign will be extremely simple and cheap. My platform will simply be this:

  1. I will not be running to be a Knesset Member, or חבר כנסת, literally “Friend of the Knesset”. I will be running to be a Knesset Enemy, or אויב כנסת. I will be a Member of Am Yisrael, not The Knesset.
  2. As an Enemy of Knesset and Member of Am Yisrael , I will vote against any law that decreases liberty for Am Yisrael and/or increases the power of the State.
  3. As an enemy of Knesset, I will vote for any law that increases liberty and/or decreases the power of the State.
  4. Any law that both increases and decreases liberty, or both increases and decreases the power of the State in certain respects, I will have to judge on a case-by-case basis as to whether State power or liberty is increased on net, and I will explain each decision I have made, and I will be open to discussion about it before voting with whoever wants to speak with me about it.
  5. I will not be subject to any coalition discipline from anybody, not even Moshe Feiglin. I am not his chassid, though I will listen to his opinions and take them into account.
  6. I will not accept a single shekel in State salary or subsidies for any purpose whatsoever. I will not drive a state car or use any of its money for any reason. If I am elected an Enemy of Knesset, I will do it for free. I will be accepting voluntary donations for my time however, for defending the liberty of everyone. Any money forced into my bank account by thugs will either be burned and inflation returned to the People or donated back to Zehut for the purpose of shrinking the State.
  7. I promise to make my opening Knesset speech a thing for the books. I will drag that place through the dirt and I will not hide my contempt and hatred for all politicians in that building.

If you want me to run, comment here and let me know.

Colin Kaepernick Refuses to Stand For Blood Spangled Banner

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Go Colin Kaepernick! I love football. The NFL YouTube channel is one of my favorites. I watch the highlights of every game. Their athleticism is absolutely insane.

But the NFL has serious Statist problems. Buddied up with the military, sometimes there are F16 flyovers at stadiums, there are often commercials, at least I remember them from years ago, of the NFL encouraging enlistment into the ranks of government trained killers, etc.

Kaepernick is the starting quarterback for the 49ers. I’m a Miami Dolphins fan, but as long as Kaepernick is playing for the 49ers, I am a 49ers fan first now, and Dolphins second.

I realize that it is not perfectly principled to be a consumer of NFL content when I also say the league is tainted with Super Statism. What can you do.

I also realize that not all the reasons Kaepernick refuses to stand during the Blood Spangled Banner are great. Something about Black Lives Matter and other stuff that doesn’t really get to the point. But he did criticize both Hitlery Clinton and Donald Duck, and in correct ways, so he does get something:

CK: You have Hillary who has called black teens or black kids super predators, you have Donald Trump who’s openly racist. We have a presidential candidate who has deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn’t make sense to me because if that was any other person you’d be in prison. So, what is this country really standing for?

Regardless of his reasons, it takes real guts to sit during the Blood Spangled Banner, especially in an Uber Statist league like the NFL. He’s risking his very career. It is very possible the 49ers will sideline him so as not to upset their fans, and no other team would pick him up for the risk of being tainted.

We should show him our support and root for the 49ers!

Fox News ran this stupid segment on some paraplegic government trained killer who is upset with Kaepernick for not standing during the song as Kaepernick has legs. Johnny Jones, this guy who got his legs blown off after trying to kill people in some far off land, is upset.

I have a message for Johnny Jones. The fact that you don’t have legs is your own fault. If you want to keep whatever limbs you have left, stop trying to kill people.

Cowards like Jones invade other countries who have not attacked first. Jones will collect his welfare check until the government runs out of Kaepernick’s money to give him for having his legs blown off.

Brave men like Kaepernick risk their livelihoods and reputations to sit down for what they believe in.

 

Model Portfolio Update

rafifarber Stock Trading

I think gold is ready for another leg up after reacting positively to Janet Yellen’s inane speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Adding a 5% position in leveraged junior gold fund JNUG at $22.83 a share.

Reminder I am not a legal financial adviser according to the government, so I’m not actually saying anything or recommending anything and I’m warning anyone considering not to listen to anything I say about investment.

The Caveman Minimum Wage Argument

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Here’s an original approach to debunking wage minima.

Imagine that in 10,000 BCE, when humanity was just beginning to learn how to farm crops, that the minimum wage was $15 an hour in today’s value numbers.

Would there be a human race today?

The surprising answer is yes, because whatever government that may have existed back then would not have had the resources to enforce a minimum wage.

How much resources does it consume to enforce a minimum wage? How much money is minimum wage enforcement erasing from the incomes of the earners of minimum wage, e.g. those with skills JUST high enough to make it over the employment high-jump?

“Minimum Wage, so stupid, even a caveman wouldn’t do it.”

Aetna Fights Back Against Antitrust Goons, Threatens to Drop Obamacare

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

It’s always nice to see companies fighting back against the Feds. Aetna’s got some guts and some ammo doing this, because the government is going to go after them hard now, looking for all kinds of regulations that it “violates”. Aetna is threatening to drop out of Obamacare, which is already reeling from other major pullouts. Soon there will be no insurers left.

It is basically telling the Justice Department to leave it alone in its business plans to merge with Humana, which needs to be done to save the companies after Obamacare is draining the entire system by subsidizing high cost patients with money that doesn’t exist because younger people aren’t signing up, amazingly.

The Justice Department is in charge of deciding which mergers are a “trust” and which are fine, which they do totally arbitrarily because there is no objective definition of what a “trust” is. From the letter written by Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, to some guy named Ryan, an antitrust lawyer working for The Man:

Our analysis to date makes clear that if the deal were challenged and/or blocked we would need to take immediate actions to mitigate public exchange and ACA small group losses. Specifically, if the DOJ sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint…

Unfortunately, a challenge by the DOJ to that acquisition and/or the DOJ successfully blocking the transaction would have a negative financial impact on Aetna and would impair Aetna’s ability to continue its support, leaving Aetna with no choice but to take actions to steward its financial health. These contemplated actions would include the actions discussed below.

Although we remain supportive of the Administration’s efforts to expand coverage, we must also face market realities. Our customers expect us to keep their insurance products affordable and continually improving, and our shareholders expect that we will generate a market return on invested capital for them. We have been operating on the public exchanges since the beginning of 2014 at a substantial loss…

Finally, based on our analysis to date, we believe it is very likely that we would need to leave the public exchange business entirely and plan for additional business efficiencies should our deal ultimately be blocked.