Why are they on the way out? This is because government is rendering this sort of commercial activity more and more difficult with more and more onerous rules and regulation, even including outright prohibition. And why, in turn, might that be the case?
One path toward an explanation of this phenomenon is to ask quo bono? Who gains from interfering with this type of marketplace behavior?
Airbnbs and VRBOs are out. What’s that you say? What are they? They are short term rentals. Residential occupants rent out their domiciles for anything from a day or two or three up to several weeks and maybe as long as a month or so. Perhaps the vendors go out of town for that stretch of time, and want to add a bit of spending money to their budgets. Maybe they are in the business of renting out residential real estate for such short time periods.
Why are they on the way out? This is because government is rendering this sort of commercial activity more and more difficult with more and more onerous rules and regulation, even including outright prohibition. And why, in turn, might that be the case?
One path toward an explanation of this phenomenon is to ask quo bono? Who gains from interfering with this type of marketplace behavior?
One answer is obvious: hotels and motels. They are in direct competition with those who rent out homes on a temporary basis. For a large family, a residence of 3,000 square feet for $1000 per night is a much better deal than five hotel rooms of $300 each. So, yes, it is a reasonable hypothesis to look at this sector of the economy for an explanation of these new stifling rules.
Another source of dissatisfaction with Airbnbs and VRBOs stems from homeowners and renters who do not engage in such activities. They oppose all this moving in and moving out in their neighborhoods. They want a nice quiet residential experience. They want to know exactly who are their neighbors- whether for safety reasons, or for friendships or block parties or whatever.
What is the optimal allocation of resources between temporary and more permanent accommodation? Desirable from whose point of view? From the perspective of all concerned.
Yes, we can acquiesce that permanent residents want more permanence in their geographical areas. But how, then, do we factor in the desires of temporary residents, many of whom are tourists, who relish just that sort of permanent residences for their short visits, and wish for cheaper room rates?
The free enterprise system provides the only way out of this physical and philosophical morass. The best solution, the only one, is for the government to withdraw its gargantuan powers and exit the scene entirely.
Saturday’s resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill came after months of controversy—and a viral-video grilling of Magill in a congressional hearing—over allegations the school has become a hotbed of antisemitism.
While those allegations have been given widespread credence, a Stark Realities analysis of dozens of claimed antisemitic incidents at Penn finds that, apart from a small handful of cases, the great majority are merely instances in which Penn students, professors and guest speakers engage in political expression that proponents of the State of Israel strongly disagree with.
Conveniently, a catalogue of supposed examples of anti-Jew bigotry at Penn is laid out in a federal lawsuit filed last week against the school by two Jewish students who allege it “has transformed itself into an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment, and discrimination.” In the suit, dual American-Israeli citizen Eyal Yakoby and American Jordan Davis seek “substantial damages in an amount to be determined at trial.”
For those wanting to look beyond what’s been said about Penn by grandstanding politicians, click-seeking news outlets and sensationalist social media posters, the 84-page complaint is a valuable resource. Unlike the sloppy court of public opinion, real courts demand a detailed presentation of specific allegations.
However, scrutiny of the Penn complaint—prepared by Philadelphia lawyer and Penn law grad Eric Shore and New York City law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres—confirms the campaign against the Philadelphia school is just the latest component a broader, long-running drive to censor political expression that’s critical of the State of Israel and sympathetic to Palestinians.
In support of that drive, conservatives who’d previously and rightfully bashed campus viewpoint censorship and crackdowns on flexibly-defined “hate speech” are among the most vocal advocates of installing a new censorship regime to keep students “safe” from anti-Israel rhetoric.
Political Views Wrongly Labelled as Antisemitic
Objective readers of the complaint will quickly note a number of red flags, starting with strident, vitriolic language referring to “rabidly antisemitic professors” and “Jew-hating” speakers who “spew antisemitic venom” by “bellowing into bullhorns to express their hatred for Israel.”
However, the complaint’s foremost flaw is its repeated assumption that various political concepts, views and slogans promoted by critics of Israel are inherently antisemitic or genocidal. This kind of attack isn’t unique to the Penn complaint; it’s constantly used by Israel’s advocates to silence the opposition. Among the forbidden ideas:
Anti-Zionism. A philosophy embraced by many Jews, anti-Zionism opposes the idea of a Jewish nation-state. Opposing the concept of a such a Jewish state doesn’t automatically make someone a bigot any more than opposing a white state or a Christian state does. The Chavurah, a progressive Jewish group at Penn, recently rejected this charge, saying that “continual conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism undermines any chance for productive dialogue at Penn concerning Israel.”
Questioning Israel’s “right to exist.” No country has a right to exist. Countries are mere political arrangements. There’s nothing inherently bigoted about campaigning for a different political order between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The State of Israel has no more “right to exist” than did the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia, or does North Korea or the United States.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” As I wrote last month, “while any slogan will mean different things to different people, this one has been used for decades by Palestinians seeking the same liberties as Israeli Jews throughout the entire territory ruled by the State of Israel.” For most, it’s a call for the State of Israel to be replaced by a new governing arrangement. While some may be reasonably concerned about how that would play out, the idea isn’t inherently genocidal or antisemitic.
The Palestinian “right of return.” This concept argues that Palestinians displaced by the 1948 creation of Israel should be allowed to return to their homes. It isn’t inherently embedded with bigotry, as the complaint suggests. Indeed, its advocates would argue the concept is a counter to Israeli ethnocentrism.
“Singling out” Israel for criticism. This preposterous standard, routinely advanced by Zionists, suggests that it’s antisemitic to criticize policies of the Israeli government if you don’t simultaneously criticize other governments guilty of the same sins.
Accusing Israel of genocide. While the suit is filled with accusations of genocidal intent on the part of pro-Palestinian activists, the plaintiffs would have us assume it’s antisemitic to argue that Israel’s bombardment of civilian areas in Gaza and displacement of Palestinians amounts to genocide.
Urging boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In another display of double-standards, Israel’s backers cheer on economic warfare against Iran, but the BDS movement—which aims to achieve better treatment of Palestinians by using similar economic tactics—is supposedly a bigoted enterprise.
The most controversial term, “intifada,” has been chanted by pro-Palestinian protesters at Penn and around the world. Roughly translating to English as “shaking off,” intifada refers to an uprising against Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians have engaged in two previous intifadas. While the tactics included suicide bombings targeting civilians, Palestinians also engaged in peaceful protests, rioting, and attacks on Israeli government targets ranging from mere stone-throwing to deadly rocket attacks.
“It is not a term against Jews, it is a term against the Israeli government,” said Glenn Greenwald last week on his show, System Update. “Just like you’re allowed to say ‘I think we should bomb Iran’ or go to war in Iraq or ‘flatten Gaza,’ people are allowed to say, allowed to opine…in the United States of America, that the repression by the Israeli government has become sufficiently severe that an uprising or even violence against the State of Israel is warranted.”
“Intifida” played a key role in last week’s Capitol Hill grilling of then-Penn president Magill, Harvard president Claudine Gay and MIT president Sally Kornbluth by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. Video of the interrogation went viral, and precipitated the resignation of not only Penn’s Magill but also the school’s chairman of the board of trustees.
This interaction, which mirrors Stefanik’s questioning of all three presidents, shows how she used an assumption of genocidal intent by anyone chanting “intifada” to reinforce the mythology that calls for Jewish genocide are commonplace at Penn, Harvard and MIT:
Congresswoman Stefanik: “Dr. Kornbluth, at MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”
President Kornbluth: “If targeted at individuals not making public statements.”
Congresswoman Stefanik: “Yes or no, calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment?”
President Kornbluth: “I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.”
Congresswoman Stefanik: “But you’ve heard chants for Intifada.”
From intifada to anti-Zionism and BDS, all are political concepts that should be debated on their merits, not banned by those who are discomforted by them—and where better for such debates than college campuses?
It’s only by first wrongly defining this assortment of Israel-critical views as inherently antisemitic that one can declare antisemitism is rampant at the University of Pennsylvania or anywhere else in American academia.
Ironically, the lawsuit’s assumption that all Jews at Penn should be assumed to embrace Zionist political ideology or cherish the State of Israel and therefore be victimized by contrary views is itself a display of prejudice.
Quoting directly from the complaint, here are just several of countless supposed examples of antisemitic activity at Penn that are merely expressions of debatable political opinions:
Although sign language, like any other language, will continue to evolve along with technology, that evolution must take place free from the impediments and myopic prejudices of the Kiev Nazis and their ideological Doppelgängers elsewhere.
WARNING: Don’t try to repost on FB as it violates community standards!!!
Although the traditional signs relating to women, such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother,’ which involved touching the lower half of the face, based on bonnets that girls once wore, and traditional signs relating to men, like ‘husband’ or ‘father,’ involved tipping the upper half of the face, emblematic of tipping one’s hat, are also under attack by these nutters, sign language, like any other language, must evolve naturally and without the inputs of Clown Prince Zelensky and his circus of sad and embittered losers, who also have words like ‘privilege’ in their sights because it traditionally referred only to ‘benefit,’ ‘gain,’ ’credit’ or ‘profit’ and so looked like putting a dollar into a shirt pocket, rather than referring to so-called white privilege or any of the other inventions of the Gender Studies crew, who obfuscate more important trends.
Imagine my horror discovering that American sign language equates Ireland to the potato. You don’t have to imagine at all as I find it hilarious, even though I understand the historical context as to how the Irish, rather than the Peruvians with their divine array of potatoes, or the Russians with their mastery of vodka, or indeed the good folk of Maine or Indiana who grow most of America’s potatoes, are synonymous with potatoes.
At least in American sign language. In Irish sign language, an Irishman is represented by a flat cap, which was very popular here until recently. In Japanese sign language, you showcase it in a different way.
Japan and the Japanese are important in this case as those who use sign language have their own wee networks the length and breadth of the world. If an Irish potato head hits the big smoke in Tokyo or New York, they will gravitate towards where their Japanese and American equivalents hang out and, of course, vice versa. Hit an Irish pub where the local deaf folk hang out and you will most likely find a Yank or a Japanese citizen in the thick of it, gabbering away with the rest of them at a mile to the minute.
All good stuff and all a credit to the many good people from France and elsewhere, who first developed this array of loosely connected languages. Whilst Irish sign language is a derivation of the original French version, the British and the Yanks, good folk like Sam and Ted Supalla, went largely on their own trajectories developing, as it were, their own idioms. And good on each and every one of them.
But before getting on to the main gripe of this article, let’s just say that sign language has to be taught unlike our own native tongues which we first learn literally at our mothers’ breasts, which is why mother, in its simplified forms, is the first word babies ever learn; it is the easiest for their nascent mouth muscles to pronounce.
Not so sign language, which the permanently offended have now targeted. Whereas some Irish with too much time on their hands might get offended by being linked to the potato (or to the flat cap), the former was very understandable in the context of America in the mid nineteenth century and I am happy to see them preserve the connection.
In contrast, some of our Jewish friends are outraged that Jews are represented in Flemish sign language by stroking the nose to identify Jews by virtue of their supposedly big noses. New Zealand, meanwhile, is in uproar because their variant represents Chinese people by tugging at the corner of the eye, Samoans by pressing down on the nose and male homosexuals by a hand-flop.
Social Links for Phillip W. Magness , James R. Harrigan and Ryan M. Yonk
But what is the likely outcome when the US government funds this corporation through something called the Global Engagement Center?
A lawsuit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed in federal court Wednesday along with The Daily Wire and The Federalist declares the outcome was the State Department funding technology that could “render disfavored press outlets unprofitable.”
According to a lawsuit filed in federal court, the Biden administration’s State Department has been funding censorship firms that favor left-wing media organizations.
The First Amendment has long been understood as settling matters where government manipulation of the press is concerned.
“Congress shall make no law,” the text plainly states, “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
The amendment is so clear that only a politician could manage to miss the point.
And when politicians miss the point of a straightforward, necessary protection, they manage to find all kinds of people willing to help them place ideology above constitutionality, common sense and simple decency.
NewsGuard bills itself “The Internet Trust Tool” and purports to offer “transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies,” which admittedly sounds impressive.
But what is the likely outcome when the US government funds this corporation through something called the Global Engagement Center?
A lawsuit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed in federal court Wednesday along with The Daily Wire and The Federalist declares the outcome was the State Department funding technology that could “render disfavored press outlets unprofitable.”
Vouchers constitute a direct violation of what is called the libertarian non-aggression principle, which is the core principle of the libertarian philosophy. That’s because vouchers are based on the initiation of force — i.e., taxation — to get the money to fund the vouchers.
Needless to say, vouchers are based on the continuation of the public-school system. They are simply a reform vehicle to enable some parents to use the coercive apparatus of the state to enable them to take their children out of the public-school system and place them in a private school, using the voucher to assist them with the private-school tuition.
Thus, vouchers are not freedom. They are actually antithetical to freedom.
One of the questions about libertarianism that has long fascinated me is: Why have so many libertarians given up on freedom? Everyone is given just one life to live. It seems to me that if there is anyone who would want to experience that one life as a free person, it is libertarians.
And yet, so many older libertarians gave up on freedom decades ago, and many younger libertarians have already given up on freedom.
Why?
Let’s look at one big example of this phenomenon. Let’s consider, for example, the massive governmental apparatus of public schooling, which is the crown jewel of American socialism at the state and local level. The state governments and local governmental school boards provide education for children. Students are there by state mandate. The state sets the curriculum and selects the textbooks. The teachers and administrators are employees of the government. Funding is through the coercive apparatus of taxation. Indoctrination, regimentation, and deference to authority are the name of the game, just like in the military.
In other words, there is nothing voluntary about public (i.e., government) schooling. As a socialist institution, it is the very antithesis of educational liberty.
What would educational freedom mean? It would mean the end of all governmental involvement in education, just as we have no governmental involvement in religion. No more compulsory-attendance laws. No more school taxes. No more government schoolteachers or administrators. No more government-approved curricula and textbooks. A total separation of school and state. A total free market in education.
How would the poor receive an education? How do the poor go to church? It’s the rich and the middle class who build and maintain the churches with their donations. No one excludes the poor. That’s the way freedom works in religion. It gives us an idea of how freedom would work in education.
Yet, freedom is not the position that many libertarians take. Many of them have settled on supporting the concept of school vouchers.
What are school vouchers? They are nothing more than a socialist reform measure, one that is based on the same principle of coercion on which public schooling is based. With vouchers, the state taxes one group of people and gives the loot to another group of people.
An open-source guerrilla war (to use computer jargon) is a new thing and much worse from the nation-state’s point of view. For one thing, it’s almost impossible to win. That’s for the same reason the behemoth IBM had its lunch eaten first by Apple (founded by a couple of hippies in a garage), then the PC (with thousands of independents writing code, strictly on their own). It’s the nation-state fighting hundreds of what amount to phyles, whose main common denominator, at the moment, is that they’re all Islamic. But that’s going to change soon.
I trust you’ll excuse some “stream of consciousness” style writing on my part. My crystal ball showing what we’ll see in the years to come is a bit cloudy. But I think the concepts below will tie together in disturbing ways…
Let’s start with the subject of phyles.
The concept of phyles originated with the sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson, in his seminal book The Diamond Age. I’ve always been a big fan of quality science fiction. There’s no question sci-fi has been an excellent predictor of both social and technological trends.
The book, set mostly in China in the near-term future, posits that while nation-states still exist, they’ve been overwhelmed in importance by the formation of phyles. Phyles are groups of people who are bound together by whatever is important to them. Maybe it will be their race, religion, or culture. Maybe their occupation or hobby. Maybe their world view or what they want to accomplish in life. Or it might be a fairly short-term objective. There are thousands—millions—of possibilities.
The key is that a phyle might provide much more than a fraternal or beneficial organization (like Rotary or Lions) does. Phyles might provide insurance services very effectively, since a like-minded group—held together by peer pressure and social approbation—eliminates a lot of moral risk. It might very well offer protection services; a criminal who might not fear taking out a citizen “protected” by a state, would think twice before attacking members of the Mafia.
People are social. They’ll inevitably organize themselves into groups for all the reasons you can imagine. In the past, technology only allowed people to organize themselves by geography—they had to be in the same area. That’s changed over the last century, with the emergence of the train, the car, and especially the airplane. The same with communication. The telephone and television were huge leaps, but the Internet was the catalytic breakthrough. It’s now possible for people to reach out all over the world to find others that are their actual countrymen—those with whom they have a real kinship—not just some moron that shares a piece of government ID with them.
As things develop, people will discover—or create—places where their loyalties lie. The nation-state has mostly been an inefficient, counterproductive, and expensive nuisance; it’s rapidly becoming completely insufferable. And dangerous. The people living off the State (which is to say acting as parasites upon their “fellow citizens”) are, however, going to resist having their rice bowls broken.
Sadly, the increase in nominal wages gained by the recent series of strikes is unlikely to keep up with the declining real wages resulting from the Federal Reserve’s assault on the dollar’s value. This is why, contrary to the claims of many progressives, working people are the victims, not the beneficiaries, of price inflation.
President Biden recently repeated the claim that high prices are caused by greedy businesses. Biden is not alone in trying to gaslight the people into thinking price inflation is rooted in the actions of private individuals and not the fiat money system Americans have lived under since 1971. In the media we see excessive consumer spending on luxury items, for example, being blamed for continued price inflation. The fact is that increased consumer demand can only cause prices to rise in those sectors of the economy subject to the increased demand. Prices increasing across the economy are always the result of the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy.
Trying to minimize the harm of inflation, some people in government and media will insist that, while many prices for goods are higher than they were pre-lockdown, they are still lower than were prices in the 1990s when you consider that the quality of these goods has increased. The argument is that buyers are getting higher value today than 30 years ago. Of course, any increased quality is because of market-driven innovation. If America had a free-market monetary system, instead of central bank-controlled fiat currency, prices would drop as quality increases.
It is also important not to ignore the fact that the Federal Reserve’s devaluation of the dollar’s purchasing power creates an incentive for individuals to spend money as soon as they receive it and a disincentive for them to save. This is because the dollar will have less value a year from now than today. Therefore, high levels of spending are a rational response to an irrational fiat money system.
High prices and supply shortages were inevitable after the lockdowns. However, prices would have adjusted back more if the Federal Reserve had not pushed interest rates to zero. While the Fed has raised interest rates, it has not raised rates to anywhere near where they would likely be in a free market. In fact, rates are not at historically high levels, yet many worry the Fed’s rate increases are pushing the economy toward a recession. This shows how addicted Americans are to the Fed’s “easy money,”
I fear that the U.S. politicians and military leaders still fail to grasp that the “war” in Ukraine really was a special military operation. Russia did not unleash its full capabilities. The Russian General Staff, following the guidance received from President Putin, took great pains to avoid massive civilian casualties. Russia left a majority of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in place. Russia declined to destroy Ukraine and the West’s ISR platforms and satellite systems. Those actions are what you would see if Russia went on a total war footing.
The two-part Washington Post report on the failed Ukraine counter offensive was written primarily to blame Ukraine for the debacle and exonerate the United States. My analysis of those articles (here and here) highlighted astounding miscalculations and malpractice by U.S. and NATO advisors. The fundamental flaw is the U.S. military personnel are pretending to have experience that they do not have. The U.S. military is like a Driver’s Education school. They are qualified and competent to teach students how to drive a car on city streets. They can teach how to drive in reverse, how to parallel park and how to navigate getting on to a super highway. But they are not qualified to teach GT race car drivers how to be competitive at the 24 Hours of Le Mans or the Indianapolis 500.
The Ukrainian counter offensive required having trained soldiers with a mix of skill and competence similar to that required of professional race car drivers. But they were not properly trained. They got the equivalent of a driver’s education class. Guess what happens when you put those “students” in a race with professional drivers? Yep. Massive car wreck.
To extend the race car metaphor, professional drivers also have the best equipment and crew teams ready to service those vehicles if there is a problem. Ukraine was given a patchwork system of NATO tanks and personnel carriers that lacked standardization (several of us wrote about this earlier this year, including Brian Berletic, Doug MacGregor, Scott Ritter and me) and proved unreliable in combat conditions.
Another major flaw that sabotaged the Ukrainian attack at the outset was the lack of air power. No NATO army in history has successfully attacked a heavily defended position without the benefit of fixed and rotary wing aircraft providing close air support to troops on the ground. Russia controlled the air, not Ukraine and certainly not NATO. And Russia had something critical that Ukraine did not — first-class air defense and drone capabilities.
MCViewPoint 