An Odd Statute

Nevada State Capitol Building by Prayitno is licensed CC BY 2.0.

At work, I've been reading through various statutes and requirements to finally identify, once and for all, what we're required to do, IT-wise, in terms of data retention, security, and so forth. This week's reading has been on the State of Nevada's requirements, which has meant browsing through the Nevada Law Library, starting with the Nevada Revised Statutes. While doing so, however, I stumbled across NRS 269.563:

      NRS 269.563  Formation of town in area that contains no residents in county whose population is 700,000 or more.
      1.  The board of county commissioners of a county whose population is 700,000 or more may provide by ordinance for the formation of an unincorporated town in an area that contains no residents if all of the owners of land within the boundaries of the proposed unincorporated town so request in writing. The written request of the owners must include the statement that the owners consent to be taxed for the services to be listed in the ordinance. If any owner withdraws his or her consent before adoption of the ordinance creating the unincorporated town, the owner’s property must be excluded in fixing the boundaries of the town.
      2.  The ordinance must contain clear designation of the boundaries of the unincorporated town and the boundaries of any area which may be annexed into the unincorporated town, a listing of services to be provided, the number of members to serve on the town advisory board and the conditions that must be satisfied before appointment of the first town advisory board. These conditions may include, without limitation, the number of residents, the level of services being provided and the extent of improvements in place.
      (Added to NRS by 1995, 2177; A 2011, 1166)

Interestingly, the original 1995 draft had originally limited the statute's applicability to counties with whose population is 400,000 or more; 2010's census, however, revealed there were two such counties, so the limit was adjusted upward.

What gives? Why would anyone want to create a town with no residents? And why would such a construct be limited to Clark County?

The answer has a lot to do with Clark County's notoriously hostile relationship with Las Vegas and its reliance on unincorporated townships. CGP Grey's video is as good of start as any - long story short, there's always been a tense relationship between Clark County's government and the governments of the cities within Clark County due to competing tax rates, provision of public services, and so forth. In 1995, a new subdivision was being created - one that was going to explicitly cater to wealthier homeowners. Trouble was, it hadn't been created yet; no roads had been paved and no houses had been built. So, the question became, who would end up providing this new subdivision public services and, in return, collecting tax revenues from its potentially affluent property owners? The developers - the Howard Hughes corporation - didn't want Las Vegas to annex the development; doing so would subject new property owners to higher city property taxes, instead of the significantly lower property taxes enjoyed in unincorporated Clark County. Similarly, Clark County didn't want Las Vegas to annex the development, either, since the development, if it attracted as affluent of a clientele as it desired, would undoubtedly provide quite a bit of tax revenue.

That wasn't all, though.

From the minutes of the Senate session that led to the passage of SB 556 in 1995:

Mr. Mark Brown, Vice President, Howard Hughes Corporation, testified. He stated Howard Hughes Corporation supported S.B. 556. He said, over the past three years, Howard Hughes Corporation had worked with officials from Clark County to plan Summerlin-South and its master plan had recently been approved. He advised Howard Hughes Corporation would be at a major competitive disadvantage and its development of Summerlin-South could be slowed over the upcoming 18 month period if S.B. 556 did not pass. He declared Howard Hughes Corporation believed S.B. 556 was critical to the future development of Summerlin-South. 

Mr. Brown stated Howard Hughes Corporation anticipated the next housing boom in Las Vegas would occur at approximately the time the new resorts between Tropicana and Spring Mountain Road were completed and explained, "The southernly access to our property is critical to capturing and providing housing needs for those employees there."  He contended if Howard Hughes Corporation was prevented from moving forward with its development it would miss out on the next housing boom and, if that happened, it would cost the company tens of millions of dollars.  He urged the committee to support S.B. 556. 

Chairman Price asked whether the fact Summerlin-South did or did not become an incorporated town would make a difference in whether or not Howard Hughes Corporation developed Summerlin-South.  Mr. Brown replied in would.  He indicated Howard Hughes Corporation had drafted the first two sections of S.B. 556 more than a year earlier in order to request a technical change to the law which would allow an unincorporated township to be created without its having any residents.  He advised Howard Hughes Corporation did not foresee Clark County would take steps to assist in providing infrastructure and services to an entity which was not generating revenues. He asserted Howard Hughes Corporation could not afford to provide such infrastructure and services without the county's assistance.

In short, the Howard Hughes Corporation wanted to develop Summerlin-South and wanted to do it on Clark County's dime. By creating its own township, any tax revenue generated in Summerlin-South would go toward further development of Summerlin-South, regardless of whether anyone lived there to enjoy the benefits or not. 

This goes a long way toward explaining why NRS 269.563 was amended in 2011 and remained amended after Nevada's decennial legislative exercise of shifting population limits in Nevada statutes to reflect current county populations - Washoe County didn't want developers to put it on the hook for providing services to their developments before people moved in.

Recycling Content

Recycle Reduce Reuse by Kevin Dooley is licensed CC BY 2.0.

Been fighting off a cold for the past couple of weeks - took some antibiotics last week, which cured the sinus infection that hitched a ride on Rhinovirus Alpha and helped me feel better for a few days, then caught another cold a few days after that. 

Needless to say, I'm not amused.

So, while I suffer through yet another week of keeping the facial tissue industry singlehandedly in business, here's something I wrote recently for the LP Nevada blog - Trump's followers might not be racist:

I was at a gas station a couple days ago when I overheard the clerk talking with a customer about the last GOP debate. What caught my attention was that he was the first person I met that openly expressed support for Trump - most conservatives I've talked to can't stand the guy (he's not conservative enough for them), and most Libertarians are doing their level-best to contrast themselves from his xenophobia - so I naturally wanted to know more. Why, of all the candidates on that stage, did the gas station clerk favor Trump? 

"He's genuine. He speaks his mind." 

That he does. You have to give him credit - he's not parsing every sentence that comes out of his mouth through a series of focus groups or think tanks. That genuineness, that willingness and ability to say what's on his mind and damn the consequences, is actually one of the first things supporters consistently love about him. He's not beholden to campaign contributors - he's a billionaire, after all - he's not beholden to the GOP establishment, and he's not beholden to the media, which happily laps up his every absurd utterance like a kitten splashing around in a milk bowl. In short, whether you love him or hate him, he's different. Sure, a lot of what's on his mind is utter nonsense, but he's willing to share his mind with America and let us decide among ourselves which of his ideas have merit and which of his ideas belong in the rubbish heap of history. That's pretty rare among aspiring politicians these days, who, more often than not, would rather run every utterance past expensive political consultants, focus groups, polls, major donors, and so forth before they take even the shakiest of stands. 

Read the rest at the link.

Odds and ends

Hey everyone - I have a few posts rummaging around in the background (including a follow-up to my last post), but until they're done, here are a couple things to tie everyone over:

I've been posting on the LP Nevada's blog lately:

• Gun rights have nothing to do with militias
• The case for a $30/hour minimum wage

The first post is a more serious look at an issue raised by Marc Randazza on Popehat, though, for the record, I didn't read his article before I posted mine, which is a shame since he made my point better than I did. Moving forward, though, there's a strong chance that most of my political blogging is going to end up on the LP Nevada blog unless I feel the need to be contrarian and chew certain libertarians a new one.

On a more tech-ish note, we're being encouraged at work to decorate our offices. Here's the Christmas tree I put up on our door:

Though it's not obvious, there are some hidden spaces in there - if you want to run this yourself, copy and paste the following:

@ECHO OFF

CLS

SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion

FOR /L %%G IN (1,1,10) DO (

SET _Str=*

FOR /L %%H IN (1,1,10) DO (

IF %%H LSS %%G (

SET _Str=*!_Str!*

) ELSE (

SET _Str= !_Str!

)

)

ECHO:!_Str!

)

SET _Str=

FOR /L %%I IN (1,1,20) DO (

IF %%I GEQ 10 (

IF %%I LEQ 12 (

SET _Str=!_Str!=

) ELSE (

SET _Str=!_Str! 

)

) ELSE (

SET _Str=!_Str! 

)

)

ECHO:%_Str%

Until next time...

Mansplaining Feminism

Status Update: I'm Doing Nothing by Surian Soosay is licensed CC BY 2.0.

This was originally posted as a comment in a feminist group that I somehow have admin access to. How that happened should be a fascinating story, but it's sadly pedestrian - the original admin was taking a vacation and she felt I'd be too relaxed and easygoing to do anything detrimental to the group. The post has been edited slightly to take advantage of the fact that it's posted on a page that supports inline HTML links, as opposed to Facebook which inexplicably doesn't.

Trigger warning: LONG.

I thought about posting this as a comment, but decided the point was large enough to warrant its own post.

I'm going to explain, as best as I can, why a lot of feminists get bent out of shape about #notallmen and often reply, on the extreme end, with #maletears and #killallmen. My target audience is primarily male (i.e. some of the more difficult guys that find themselves arguing with feminists here), though I’m sure there are a few women that are perplexed by this issue as well and may benefit from what you’re about to read. To do this, I'm going to lean hard on my experience as an active participant in the Libertarian movement and, by necessity, do quite a bit of mansplaining (i.e. potentially talking out of my ass). If you're a feminist and believe I'm wildly off base, feel free to say so in the comments, but please remember that I'm not trying to explain feminism to you - I'm trying to explain it to others that see only a very cherry-picked version of it, so certain details and nuances will be glossed over or explained using potentially problematic language that, I hope, resonates better to my target audience than academic feminist terminology.

Libertarianisn, in its modern form (i.e. the form you usually bump into on the Internet these days), was founded to oppose the oppression caused by the governments of the United States of America - local, state, and federal. More specifically, it often focused on the oppression caused by the governments of the US against white people (white males more often than not, though ALF members will happily point out that feminists were better represented in the LP than most political parties - I call this "damning with faint praise"), which should be a pretty familiar problem among feminists at this point - in fact, let’s call this form White Libertarianism, since it nicely parallels the background and interests of White Feminism and exhibits some of the same frustrating, myopic behavior due to its limited perspective. As an example, if you see a "libertarian" cheering on Putin because he's poking a stick in the US government's eye (at the cost of innumerable Russian, Syrian, Ukrainian, and Georgian lives), that's White Libertarianism privileging its oppression by the US government while ignoring the oppression of others across the globe by other governments, such as the Russian government.

Ron Paul is a textbook White Libertarian.

The biggest issue with the limited perspective of White Libertarianism, however, at least when we’re talking about the role of the Libertarian movement in the US, is that most fairly affluent white people (like me!) only deal with the government maybe twice a year - once when we file our taxes and once when we go to the DMV. Some more affluent white people might deal with the government a little more often and experience additional frustrations when doing so - say, when they’re trying to get a permit to renovate their garage, or open a business, or what have you. Some might also deal with the government when they’re dealing with their children in school, though their experiences with government school are generally far more positive than everyone else’s. Occasionally, we might get pulled over for a minor traffic infraction, at which point we can usually count on being treated fairly and professionally, if curtly. This, needless to say, is a markedly different experience from the experience of poor people - especially people of color - in the United States, which, in turn, is an infinitely more positive experience than those on the wrong end of graft-infested governments in Eastern Europe or South America, or governments that openly and blatantly privilege certain tribes in Third World countries.

Which brings me to the following question: What is the role of government workers in the Libertarian movement?

From a White Libertarian perspective, government workers potentially look like natural allies. After all, they get to witness the inefficiency of the government every day of their working lives. They get to watch politicians promise them fat pensions in one hand, then refuse to pay for them in the other. They get to watch politicians decide to remove “waste and fat” by adding various pointless rules and regulations to their jobs, rules and regulations that often cost more to implement than they could ever conceivably save (I wrote a blog post ages ago about this - link in the comments). Plus, a lot of White Libertarians know government workers - government work is a decent professional job, if you can get it, that pays well and has decent benefits. Consequently, if you’re a college-educated White Libertarian, chances are you know more than a few government workers personally and you know that they’re generally decent, hardworking people. So, why not leverage that additional experience and frustration with government inefficiency and harness it to the Libertarian movement?

Because, if you’re not a White Libertarian, government workers are collaborators. They’re the ones in power. They’re the ones bashing down doors at 2 AM killing your grandmother and throwing flashbang grenades in your child’s crib. They’re the ones pulling you over every week for some made up traffic infraction and taking your money. They’re the ones seizing your car using civil asset forfeiture laws. They’re the ones telling you what food you can buy and what neighborhoods you get to live in. They’re the ones threatening to arrest you because you’re walking home from work - which you wouldn’t be doing if they didn’t impound your car - and they don’t like the way you look. They’re the ones bombing hospitals. They’re the ones torturing prisoners. They are the problem. #KillAllStatists #KillAllCops #CopTears #FuckThePolice. What’s their place in the Libertarian movement? Dead, their backs against the wall, with their heads nailed to pikes placed across the street from the nearest police station or City Hall as a warning to others. They are gangsters enforcing their will at the point of their guns. They deserve no quarter or mercy.

Before a Libertarian jumps in - I exaggerate slightly. But only just. Read comments on Cop Block sometime. There’s a reason so many Libertarians are fanatics about the Non-Aggression Principle - it’s because it’s explicitly designed to keep people that think like this from taking over the movement.

Trouble is, when you’re talking about exterminating (or something close to) all government workers, you’re talking about somebody’s friends, neighbors, and family members. Those who know government workers personally - cops, teachers, civil servants, and so on - will not, under any circumstances, allow a group of angry people to seriously harm them. In fact, if you try to sell Libertarianism to them using that sort of language - a language of hate, bitterness, and revenge - they’ll reject it automatically. They’ll radicalize themselves to oppose you if they feel you’re dangerous enough to actually do harm. If you live in, say, North Korea, perhaps that opposition is worth it - perhaps those that work for the government truly are beyond redemption and the only option is violent revolution. If you lived in Rwanda during the genocide in the ‘90s, the solution wasn’t to appease the sensibilities of the murderous Hutu gangs that were rounding up Tutsis - it was to either kill more of them than they killed of your tribe, if you could, or run away as fast as possible if you couldn’t. If you lived in Apartheid South Africa and were on the wrong side of the government imposed social order, the solution was…

Wait, what’s that? Apartheid in South Africa was overthrown more or less peacefully? A couple people got the Nobel Prize for pulling it off? Hmm. I wonder if there’s a lesson there.

This, I think, is one area where White Libertarianism can actually bring some much needed perspective to the movement. We actually know government workers. We eat with them, drink with them, talk with them. We know that, for the most part, they’re people, just like the rest of us, trying to do as good of a job they can with the tools they have. Government teachers usually want our children to learn. Government police usually want our neighborhoods to be safe. We also know that there’s a reason these people follow unjust policies and unjust laws, at least in the United States, and it’s a good one - the laws and procedures they follow, at least *theoretically*, were written and enacted with input from citizens of all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. If they start picking and choosing which ones to follow, they’ll probably end up privileging their own experiences and opinions over the experiences and opinions of those that theoretically had their voices heard in the political process. Remember, if we encourage police officers to use their own judgment when deciding which laws to enforce, we don’t get to pick and choose *which* police officers exercise their judgment, nor do we get to pick and choose which way their judgments fall. They might choose to ignore the laws that “unjustly” prevent them from performing police brutality, for example, or might choose to ignore the laws that “unjustly” punish their coworkers when they engage in abusive behavior.

Now, does this mean a kindler, gentler, more inclusive approach toward government workers is the right solution for Libertarianism across the globe? Not at all. I’m not even sure it’s the right approach in all parts of the United States - I think it would work well in Reno (where I live), for example, where our civil servants are fairly professional and have a decent reputation, but would be an utter disaster in places like Ferguson, where the local governments were explicitly created to further the interests of segregationists and small-town tyrants. I think there’s room for both well-meaning civil servants and the Battle of Athens. 

Personally, I get the impression that White Feminism is trying to drive the same point home among the broader feminist movement. Yes, poorer, less privileged men are almost universally going to be reactionary against the feminist project - after all, when a person doesn’t have any control over their own life but sees an opportunity to control another’s, they’ll frequently take it (this is the path from which petty bureaucrats are formed). However, what several White Feminists are trying to say (and this is the part where my ass potentially does the talking) is that they’re seeing more and more men become open allies of the overall project. They’re seeing men, especially among the more affluent, better educated group, learn the goals of feminism, learn how those goals benefit themselves as well as women, and are consequently signing on to help advance the project. Since a lot of these men are in positions of power and privilege, they’re pretty useful to have as allies - they’re actually in positions to move public policy and the social culture in a more feminist direction. On the other hand, these men are used to being respected, valued, and listened to, and if feminists won’t listen, well… who will? /r/TheRedPill?

On the other, other hand, part of the problem is that there’s a class of men that are, by default, used to being respected, valued, and listened to while everyone else is ignored. 

Of course, they’re the ones with the levers of power to begin with, which is bad…

But some of them are willing to share, which is good!

But they’re not willing to give them up entirely, which is bad...

But they’re willing to listen to feminists while wielding their levers of power, which is good!

But their levers of power contain potassium benzoate…

Uhh… am I being detained? Am I free to go?

So, to wrap things up, if you’re not a feminist and you see a feminist rant about #NotAllMen, understand that there are very good reasons for that rant. Not all women are privileged enough to live, work, and be surrounded by generally reasonable men, and those women really need to get their voices heard. Additionally, a lot of the more reasonable men are also spoiled, privileged brats that need to sit down and shut up once in awhile and let the people that know what they’re talking about do the talking, something which you’d recognize if you think about the Pointy Haired Bosses in your life (as an IT worker, I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had my job explained to me by someone that doesn’t know how to reboot their computer). If they’re following it up with #killallmen and #maletears, well, there’s probably a pretty good reason for that, much of it probably involves a considerable amount of personal trauma, and if you walked a meter in her shoes, you’d probably feel the same way. If you don’t believe me, ask a convicted felon how they feel about the government. Or ask someone from a country where their government doesn’t even pay lip service to the idea of basing their authority on the consent of the governed. Same idea, oftentimes the same oppressor.

With that, over 2000 words later, I am done. #endrant

The Libertarian Buffet

meatloaf by karen H. nickname.{ pooh} is licensed CC BY 2.0

Let's start at the beginning: I love a good metaphor. Or analogy. Or simile. Call it whatever you want, I don't really care. A couple weeks ago, I ran across a really good one, courtesy of Don Boudreaux - suppose you were a restaurant owner who was tasked with selling a single dish to over 100 million people. Which dish would you choose? Mexican? Cajun? Too spicy. Sushi? Too exotic. Lamb? Too gamy.

You go down a long list.  Eventually, you settle upon something that is unquestionably bland and common and uninspiring – something like a plain hamburger, or perhaps a dish of mild meatloaf with mashed potatoes topped only with butter.  Anything more exotic than such offerings will, while being much preferred by a few million of the people whose patronage you’re trying to win, will be rejected by a majority of the people.  Your rival, of course, faces the same incentives..

This same dynamic, he goes on to explain, is why presidential candidates are so utterly boring and insipid. The goal isn't to become beloved, since that's virtually impossible - it's to be less intrinsically offensive than the other candidate.

Though this is certainly accurate, it's also profoundly depressing.

Now, it's no big secret that I'm a rather serious fan of a bit more variety in our political diet. Speaking as a card-carrying Libertarian (seriously, the national LP will send you a card if you become a member - it's quite handy for scraping ice off a windshield if you break your ice scraper), I view Libertarians as a group of people that see a menu with two entrees - a plain hamburger and a mild meatloaf with mashed potatoes topped with butter - as a moral affront upon our political culinary senses. So, we set about to create a new restaurant, one that won't even try to sell dishes to 100 million people, but will instead focus on bringing new and novel tastes to the political public. We'd get the dishes out by creating a political potluck, where each person would be free to bring whatever dish they want, just so long as they respect the right of those around them to also bring separate dishes to the potluck. Want to try support for gay marriage in the '70s? Yeah, we can do that. Legalized prostitution? No problem. Bitcoins as campaign contributions? Done and done.

The trouble with the potluck model of political restauranteuring, however, is that some people just aren't very good cooks. Some people, in fact, are the political equivalent of Typhoid Mary and are in every bit as deep of denial about their poisonous nature as she ever was. The mainstream parties do a decent job of keeping those cooks out of the kitchen; sure, a bad apple sneaks in every now and then, but they usually get plucked out once they start acting like a political sous-chef. At the Libertarian Party Buffet, however, all dishes are theoretically welcome. So, some people bring plates full of live worms and insist they're actually hamburger. Some people bring a plate of raw ground beef - it's "purer" than a cooked meatloaf or hamburger, you see. Some people show up with edible underpants and a bowl full of flavored condoms. Some people scrape some fuzzy mold off of some beans and hard tack they left in the root cellar "back in the day", warm it back up, and bring it to the buffet. Still others show up with a tin full of "special brownies". Occasionally, someone shows up with a plain hamburger made with grass-fed beef instead of the usual cheap corn-fed beef (see, it's different!), which rather misses the point of the buffet. Still others show up with a plate of ghost peppers and a bowl of Insanity Sauce to dip them in. Then there are the ones that show up with a bunch of fried chicken, watermelon, and purple-colored water because they think it'll appeal to "those people". Or the people that try to serve a bunch of "chemical-free non-GMO organic halal kosher pink Himalayan salt". Or - and these are my personal favorite - the people who bring a bunch of pretentiously plated food for people to "look at" - God help you if you actually attempt to "defile" the "art" with your hunger.*

What's the problem with that? Well, some people are showing up to the buffet with some really neat and incredible dishes. There's some excellent fusion food getting cooked up here lately, along with some excellent traditional dishes. Trouble is, can you run a restaurant where nine out of ten dishes on the menu are fantastic - better than anything else offered anywhere else, in fact - but that tenth dish makes everyone who tries it violently ill? How long will it take until some unfortunate person tries "Chef's Special #10", or just happens to be downwind of the kitchen while it's cooking?

So, what's the solution? Do we kick the bad chefs out of the kitchen? To be fair, we could. It would fly in the face of the Libertarian Party Restaurant ethos, and who knows, maybe one of the dishes being "vetted" out of the restaurant might be really, really good, but we could. How would we do that? Who would be in charge of the "vetting" process?

Alternatively, we can rely on public shaming, which seems to be the default solution for now. Shout out from the rooftops that, hey, "Chef's Special #10" is horrible, no good, and probably dangerous. Tell everyone and their mother that Specials 1-9 are way better. Scream at the chef that keeps bringing in that toxic waste in that ancient avocado-colored crock pot to stop coming here, damn it. Make it clear that we don't want to be known as "that restaurant that serves worms and 'organic' Himalayan sea salt and moldy beans" - we want to be known as the restaurant with lots of really tasty dishes, so many that everybody can find something they enjoy.

Will it work? I don't know, but I'm excited to find out.

* This list of dishes wasn't pulled completely out of my waste orifice - enjoy TLR's Here Are The Top 10 Worst Kinds Of Libertarians.

Why the Soviet Union fell

Lenin, Soviet Union by rlzobreaker is licensed CC BY 2.0.

I've read a fair number of books about the Soviet Union recently. Each book has done a good job of explaining the problems with the Soviet experiment - the brutality that was used to install the system during the October Revolution; Stalin's symptomatic and seemingly random cruelty; the way politics and ideology bled into every single corner of Soviet life, even the sciences, stalling technological progress; the inherent inefficiencies of the command economy, especially as implemented under "Socialism in One Country"; and so on. None of them, however, explained why the Soviet Union collapsed. Sure, the system wasn't as efficient as capitalism, but North Korea and Cuba have both proven that's not enough to prevent a totalitarian "socialist" government from maintaining power. North Korea's mass starvation in the 1990's proved that a major disaster isn't enough to topple a totalitarian government (as if the Holodomor wasn't sufficient to prove this already), so why is Chernobyl considered one of the keys to the collapse of the Soviet Union? Why was Gorbachev so unsuccessful in his attempts to reform the Soviet system? What made the Soviet Union different? What happened?

Halfway through the first chapter of The Russians, I immediately understood.

Pretend you work in a widget factory for a multinational conglomerate. It's a big, sprawling mess of a company, with as many employees as you can imagine and locations all over the world. To keep the company moving in nominally the same direction, several policies and procedures have been crafted and they are strictly enforced. To ensure the company's procedures are followed and losses are minimized, the company utilizes a sophisticated system of intelligence gathering - surveillance cameras wherever possible, paid bonuses to employees that tattle on their coworkers, transfers to unpleasant departments for people that are found guilty of minor transgressions, and termination of employees caught doing anything halfway major.

One of the rules that all divisions of the company must follow is they are not allowed to buy anything from external vendors if it's being made internally - since the company is quite large and makes all sorts of things, this means the company sources most of its supplies internally. From pens to automobiles to produce to machine parts, the company makes near everything for itself, which ensures that its competition never profits from the company; if the company can't make something, it usually tries to find as close to a substitute as it can make internally, if possible, while it tries to find a way to ultimately supply that thing internally in the long run. This even extends to news and entertainment - since the company owns some newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations, only company-owned newspapers, radio programs, and TV shows are allowed on company grounds. Another rule that employees of the company must follow - and failure to abide by this rule will lead to swift termination - is they are expressly forbidden from talking to employees of competing companies, lest they leak "trade secrets". Since the company makes and sells just about anything and everything, that effectively means that employees of the company can only safely socialize and talk among themselves. To further restrict potential leaks, the company strongly discourages employees from even talking among each other, especially to employees from other divisions.

From your perspective, your particular division doesn't seem to be run particularly well. In fact, near as you can tell, it's run unconscionably poorly. There are frequent supply issues - sometimes you end up with the wrong parts, sometimes the quality of the parts is extremely poor, sometimes you just don't end up with the supplies you need at all. Consequently, your division has serious difficulties satisfying the needs of other divisions that rely on your widgets, to say nothing of your company's customers. Though you and your coworkers generally do your best, you each catch yourselves sometimes letting things slip, letting a substandard widget or two through - better they receive a bad widget than no widget at all, right? Besides, the company has strict quotas about what each division is supposed to produce, and the penalties for failing to produce enough widgets - of any quality - are best left unsaid. On top of the supply and production issues, your division also suffers from a steadily ratcheting culture of micromanagement. For example, management determined one day that it took you 38 seconds to walk from the time clock to the widget press; consequently, if you ever take 39 seconds, you are supposed to lose an hour of pay due to "laziness". One of your coworkers was informed that "shock workers" - the best workers from other widget factories - only required a 74-degree deflection from the top of the press lever to the bottom, which was more efficient than pushing the press down as far as possible due to the reduced range of motion and reduced wear and tear on the press; however, when your coworker attempted to apply this advice, he found that his press wouldn't always cut the widget all the way through the metal. Even so, failure to adhere to management's policies and procedures was strictly frowned on; the last thing your coworker needed was for you or one of your coworkers to turn him in for using a 75-degree deflection and collect that informer's bonus while he and his family were transferred to North Dakota.

Despite it all, though, your division muddles through and keeps producing widgets. Believe it or not, you and your coworkers take pride in your work. Sure, your division may be one of the most poorly run divisions in the company, but you each get it done when it matters and still find a way to deliver. In your own, imperfect way, you and your division are helping to make the company you work for successful. Fellow coworkers around the world - around the world! - count on you and your widgets, a fact that's brought up during every employee meeting, in every internal newsletter, and sometimes even in the company news broadcasts. Not everyone can say their work is relied upon across the world.

To make sure nobody in the world is let down by your poorly run division, you and your coworkers bend the rules a bit. In exchange for you re-pressing some of your coworker's widgets, he'll sometimes clock you in while you're already walking to your press - this way you don't get in trouble for walking too slowly between the time clock and the press and he doesn't get in trouble for improperly pressing his widgets. You have similar arrangements with other coworkers to work around some of the other rules put into place by management, and vice-versa; though this means you could inform on half of the plant if you so desired, they could also inform on you in a heartbeat. None of you really want to do that, though - if the rules weren't bent, the widgets wouldn't get made and none of you would get paid. Sometimes, you even bend the rules a bit and talk to people outside the company - none of them make widgets, so it's probably not competing, right? - or even sneak in some tools and supplies from outside of the company when nobody's looking. Sure, maybe one of the conglomerate's other divisions is losing business because of this, but some of the tools and supplies you're bringing in are really good - way better than anything you can find internally, assuming you can even find it in the first place - and, after all, your job is to produce widgets, right? As long as your division meets its widget quote, it's surely all good.

Again, the alternative is best left unsaid.

One day you wake up and one of your friends from outside the company is calling you. You answer and they immediately ask if you're okay, if you're all right, if your coworkers are all right. "Of course we are," you reply, "why wouldn't we be?" "There was a terrible accident at one of your factories - it's in all the news!", they exclaim. "I'll look into it," you declare, then get ready for work. Once you get to the factory, everything appears normal. Your coworkers are still making widgets, parts and supplies (such as they are) are still coming in like normal. There are no announcements over the intercom and the internal company newsletter mentions nothing out of the ordinary. Surely there was no disaster, you decide, and tell your friend as much once you get home.

A week later, you spot a terse notice in the company newsletter - "Sprockets from the Tennessee Valley factory will be unavailable until further notice." That's it - no explanation, no further details. Even so, that sole sentence is rather strange. You can't think of a single time that the company shut down an entire supplier without some sort of planning, some sort of announcement beforehand. This is very peculiar.

A week after that, a letter from the new CEO thanks the Tennessee Valley factory workers for their "sacrifice" and also thanks the company's internal disaster response team for their "service to the factory workers". "Remaining factory workers", the CEO further explains, "will be transferred to other factories."

Two weeks later, a couple of new factory workers arrive. They look like they haven't slept in ages. They claim they're from "Kentucky", but neither of them say much else. They barely talk to each other and never talk to anyone else. At first, you and your coworkers decide they must be informants - these two aren't willing to "scratch your backs", nor do they seem particularly interested in letting anyone else "scratch theirs". After about a month or so, though, none of you notice any odd firings or transfers, so each of you decide these two just must be the quiet type and leave them alone.

A year passes.

You and your coworkers are really starting to like the new CEO. He's much younger than any previous CEO you can remember, and the company news all show him visiting and conversing with other division workers - really conversing with them, not just lecturing at them or letting them parrot company-sourced motivational phrases. Your father, who also worked for the company when he was your age, mentioned there being a CEO like this one when he was your age, but "that CEO didn't last long". You hope this new CEO lasts a while.

Recently, the new CEO announced two new changes to the rules. First, he announced, the company was going to pursue a policy of "Openness" - though employees were still forbidden from talking to employees of competing firms, they were now expressly encouraged to talk to each other, even if they were in separate divisions. Next, he announced the company was going to pursue a policy of "Restructuring" - it was no longer forbidden for company divisions to purchase goods from competing companies.

Finally!, you and your coworkers thought to yourselves. Now you can get supplies and parts from anywhere - no more waiting on unreliable internal suppliers of dubious quality. Surely you'll be producing your quota of widgets in no time. However, you and your coworkers quickly discover that you actually can't - there's no money. It was one thing sneaking in the occasional used tool or scrap when times were tight - none of your competitors minded that - but it turns out it's something else entirely when you want a regular supply of something at a consistent quality. In fact, now that your division is a potential customer, your competitors are even keeping a closer eye on their leftovers.

Meanwhile, as you and your coworkers grow increasingly confident in talking to each other - really talking to each other - about work, about life, and even talking to people in other divisions about these things, you begin to realize that your division isn't particularly poorly run - all of the company's divisions are poorly run. Every single coworker you talk to from every other division shares with you the same stories you know so well - of failed supply lines, lousy quality, and endemic micromanagement. Near as any of you can tell, none of you have made anything bought by anyone other than another company division; the company swears it has billions upon billions in sales, but none of your coworkers are making enough widgets or anything else to meet internal demand, much less enough to sell to the public. This, you suspect, explains why your division has no money to buy anything.

At the same time, you also discover that several other divisions also had some silent transfers, just like the two guys that showed up at your factory a year ago. Some of them, it turns out, are actually willing to talk about what happened now, and the stories they tell leave you awestruck. They describe, independent of one another and with near-total fidelity between each of them, a horrific cataclysm, one that killed several of their coworkers and led to entire cities being evacuated. The pollution from the cataclysm destroyed nearby forests and rendered much of the surrounding countryside uninhabitable. The kicker? The factory is still open. Despite the disaster, despite the devastation, the company still insists that factory workers show up at the remains of the factory each day and keep the lines that weren't destroyed operational. You can't believe it - surely, after a disaster like that, they would shut down such an unsafe factory, or spend some time rebuilding it so such a disaster would never occur again, or... or something.

If they won't shut that factory down, if they won't make that one safe after something like that, how do you and your coworkers know that your factory is safe?

You and your coworkers decide it's time for action. You collectively decide to do something unprecedented and talk to your manager. Understand, this sort of thing is never done - everybody fears management, the threat of transfer, the threat of termination far too much to ordinarily consider something like this - but you and your coworkers feel your lives are on the line. Much to your shock and amazement, when you share your concerns with your manager, the manager actually agrees with you and your coworkers. In fact, the manager says something downright amazing:

"I'm not showing up here again until they get this place fixed up, and I don't think any of you should, either."

Then, even more amazingly, the manager left.

At first, you and your coworkers are at a loss. Do you keep working? Do you go home? Something like this has never happened before - a manager has never, ever walked off the floor like that. On the other hand, the manager did tell all of you to go home... right? You and your coworkers talk among yourselves for a bit, trying to sort out what to do next. Finally, after a while, one of your coworkers announces that, "screw it", they're going home. Then, a little while later, another one makes the same announcement and leaves. Then another. Then another. Before long, it's clear to the rest of you that there won't be enough workers around to run the factory, so all of you might as well just head home.

What you don't realize is that, while this is going on in your widget factory, the same conversations are happening in every other division in the company, and many of them are making the same decision yours did. Before long, none of the divisions are able to work - since your factory isn't making widgets anymore, any division that relied on your widgets has to shut down, which causes other factories and offices down the line to shut down as they lose their supplies of whatever divisions the widgets were supplying, and so on. Just like that, the entire company collapses, one division at a time like a row of dominoes, first slowly, then really, really quickly as each small failure in the company cascades into progressively larger and larger ones. It doesn't take any time at all before, one day, you wake up and read in the newspaper that the company you work for - the company you worked for - is now bankrupt and liquidating its assets.

**********

That, more or less, is what happened to the Soviet Union. It might - might - have been able to survive Chernobyl if a hard-line Stalinist was at the helm and carefully controlled information about the disaster, or at least left everyone so fearful about the consequences of speaking up that they'd continue to work anyway. It might - might - have survived (or even thrived!) after Glasnost and Perestroika if Chernobyl didn't prove that the people in charge of the USSR had been all too willing for far too long to sacrifice everything - people, the countryside, everything - for the sake of the system as it was written on paper. It might - might - have survived losing in Afghanistan, might have survived the oil glut of the 1980's, might have survived the effort required to keep the increasingly dysfunctional satellite states in the Warsaw Pact economically viable, might have endured the Soviet Union's increasingly expensive adventurism in Africa. But the Soviet Union couldn't survive all of these things - not with a polity that, by the 1970's, the time period The Russians describes, was already doing everything within its power to work around the system to meet their needs. Once it became clear, crystal clear, that the system didn't mean well, that the system simply didn't work, it didn't take long before everyone just stopped pretending to live under its rules anymore.

And that was that. That was the end.

In short, by the 1970's, the communist experiment, at least in the Soviet Union, was already done. Everybody had been working around it for generations by that point. They tolerated working around the system because they thought that, well, maybe it's kind of working - who knows? There was a time, especially in the 1950's and 1960's, when it really did look like it was working, when it really did look like it might catch up to the capitalist countries in the West. There were Soviets flying to space, advanced Soviet military hardware going toe-to-toe against the West in Vietnam and Africa, even the standard of living was slowly but steadily improving. But, once the Soviets started comparing notes with each other, once the Soviets started comparing notes with what was really going on outside the Soviet Union, and once the Soviets came to grips with their past - not all of it, not even close to all of it, but enough of it - they realized that enough was enough.

Will that happen here some day? Why didn't it happen in Cuba or North Korea? What happened in China? These are good questions, but they will have to wait for another day.

In defense of small-l libertarianism

Two porcupines by Denali National Park and Reserve is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

My name is David Colborne, and I'm a small-l libertarian.

Having been active in libertarian circles for a number of years, I've had several people ask me why I'm not a full-throated anarchist. Don't I think the initiation of force is evil? Don't I think government is inherently coercive? Why settle for smaller government, for minimal government, when I should clearly be advocating for no government as a matter of philosophical principle? My short answer has usually been, "Perhaps, but I'm not really sure that would work". My longer answer has been to throw such people at Scott Siskind's Non-Libertarian FAQ and then try to go through it point-by-point, but even that felt like it was dancing around the core issue that really prevents me from embracing Full Metal Anarcho-Capitalism.

Then, while reading Meaningness' Systems of meaning all in flames, I came across this passage:

Any serious system has a network of justifications that answer all “why” questions—not perfectly, but well enough for most people most of the time. So it ought to work.

That's when it hit me - "Big L" Libertarianism, the kind of Libertarianism you see presented from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the kind you sometimes see from the Center for a Stateless Society, the kind you hear argued about at Libertarian conventions where people throw Murray Rothbard quotes at one another, is a system. Oh, sure, it's a heavily decentralized one (in theory), but it's still definitely a system.

Don't believe me? Ask it questions.

Okay, will there be law in an Anarcho-Capitalist society? Sure - there will be competing forms of law that individuals can choose from. Will there still be a police system? Absolutely - there will be several, in fact. But what about the roads? And so on. How are these questions answered? The same way any system answers questions - it makes certain base assumptions:

1. The initiation of physical force against persons or property, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or property, is evil.
2. Since government requires physical force to enforce its edicts, it is therefore, by nature, evil.
3. Even if government didn't require physical force to enforce its edicts, it suffers from the knowledge problem - its information is incomplete - so it must, by its very nature, also be incompetent. 
4. Therefore, all optimal solutions to all political problems must therefore be small, decentralized, self-governing voluntary organizations, i.e. a stateless society, with all services provided via a free market of exchange.

Then, using these assumptions, it solves for X. Worried about militaries? If they exist, they should purely be defensive in nature (see point 1), they should be voluntarily staffed (1, 4), and they should be voluntarily paid for (1, 4). How will this pay for nuclear weapons? It won't - nuclear weapons are inherently immoral due to the collateral damage incurred by detonating one (1). Okay, what about a social safety net? Easy - use private charity (4). Anything else, such as income redistribution, would violate all four tenets above, and probably be more harmful to boot since it's impossible for the anyone implementing a forced income redistribution scheme to know how much income needs to be transferred to poor people to meet their particular needs.

See? It's a system. It has rules. You can ask those rules questions and they'll answer them. It ought to work.

And that's my problem.

Simply put, I don't believe in systems, even ones based on ideological assumptions I happen to share. Even a system like Anarcho-Capitalism, one that is ostensibly decentralized, still requires everyone to play by the rules. Everyone has to believe that, even if 99 out of 100 people in a neighborhood think it's a really good idea to put up sandbags next to their river right before it floods, they are not allowed to use physical force to secure "consent" from the lone straggler. Those 99 people further must believe that "trespassing" under those circumstances is "physical force". Philosophically, if it's really a problem, they can just install sandbags around the property line of the lone straggler and let what may come - it may not be quite as expedient, but it's morally right, and that's what matters, isn't it?

Perhaps, but good luck convincing enough people for the system to work.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a wonderful idea. I'm sure there are plenty of arguments about why this system will work, why this system is morally right and good, why this system will lead to more happiness, health, and so forth. I'm sure they're all fascinating, and logical, too. None of that matters. There will be failures - perhaps warlords, perhaps violent feuds between competing companies, perhaps something totally unanticipated. Either way, it won't matter - eventually, people will tire of the problems of this system and replace it with something else, one that fixes these problems (and inevitably introduces new ones). This is, in my opinion, the lifecycle of all systems.

So what's the alternative?

There isn't one. Well, more accurately, there are several of them - you could probably paint me comfortably in a corner somewhere between political existentialism and nihilism and probably get "close enough for government work". My personal belief is that the philosophies behind Anarcho-Capitalism are arguably the most morally sound, that they make an excellent framework to consider differing political choices against, but that, as the old saw goes, "no plan survives contact with the enemy". When in doubt, we should try policies and prescriptions that move us in a Libertarian, potentially Anarcho-Capitalist direction, but we should also be willing to stop if we're not getting the desired results and try policies and prescriptions from other frameworks if they get us closer to the desired results than we were getting using the Libertarian framework.

Take defense, for example.

Any defense plan that calls on me to accept that, while defending my apartment, I may lose the lives of at least one member of my family is not what I would call an ideal defense plan. Similarly, any defense plan that requires me and my neighbors to suffer through about a decade or so of brutal occupation before we finally wear down our oppressors is also not what I, or any of my fellow voting neighbors, would call an ideal defense plan. Instead, we're probably going to collectively decide, with near total unanimity, that we should do everything possible to ensure that no fighting happens in our backyards, even if that potentially means periodically invading or destroying the backyards of those sketchy people across the street. Because of this, neither I nor my neighbors will ever voluntarily choose a strictly Non-Aggression Principle compliant defense structure if an alternative is available - we're not going to wait for others to invade our neighborhoods, in other words, before defending them. Not if we have the option to make those others defend their neighborhoods first.

Perhaps if we're feeling really principled, we might justify this on the grounds that, well, the Non-Aggression Principle also prohibits threats of violence, and, well, those people over there look awfully threatening...

Ah, but wait! - you're thinking to yourself - what if the other neighborhood makes the same decision? Well, congratulations - you just demonstrated that, even in a presumably stateless society, war will still happen. In fact, since individual neighborhoods will have far less effective methods of deterrence than your average nuclear arsenal or aggressively funded military-industrial complex, there's a pretty good chance that wars will be more common in a stateless society than they are now, even if they might in aggregate be considerably less destructive and shorter than the "total wars" of the 20th century - what's stopping either neighborhood from misjudging their opposing neighborhood's strengths or intentions? Consequently, if we really want a more peaceful, liberty-friendly environment, one in which people are free to do what they will without worrying incessantly about whether their paranoid neighbors from across the street might feel threatened and react accordingly, we shouldn't necessarily rule out a society in which one particular organization has a monopoly on violence - preferably an organization that all of us, including the paranoid neighbors, have some limited control individually but near-total control in the aggregate. Granted, history has shown issues with this approach as well, but it still seems to beat seasonal raids whenever someone's low on salt or bacon. Besides, whenever there are organizations competing for the right to commit violence for citizens in an area, the first thing everyone in the area wants is for the competition to stop, preferably before the competing organizations kill and maim everyone. Then again, small, local civil wars usually don't last for long periods of time or involve genocide like larger state-run conflicts, except when they do, so there's that.

Perhaps I'm wrong about defense, though. Maybe Scott's wrong about fish, despite further evidence to the contrary. Maybe the 19th century was wrong about private police forces and private scrip. Maybe if we re-privatize everything and get government out of the way once more this time will be different. It's possible - it's not the 19th century anymore, after all, and a lot of our beliefs, customs and technology have evolved dramatically since then. That counts for quite a bit, actually - it's a little harder to keep a "company store" going when Amazon's always around the corner, and it's a little harder to try to drum up business for your private security agency when everyone can record everybody. Maybe this time will be different. But, if it's not, if our attempts at increasing liberty result in, paradoxically enough, less liberty for most people, we need to retain the philosophical flexibility required to change tack and not confuse the path with the destination.

That's why I'm a small-l libertarian. Maybe you are too?

Government in action - a parable

red tape by Eugene Peretz is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

All characters appearing in this work are fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely farcical.

Once upon a time, there was a government worker. She was a good, conscientious, publicly minded individual of high morals, higher standards, and impeccably professional decorum and bearing. Her job was to prepare a report for the State, a job which she had performed without complaint for over two decades, which, according to a state law that was drafted in the 19th century, was to be mailed to the State Capitol about a half hour away every quarter for review and submission. This report was a fairly large, heavy document, totaling at least a hundred pages, and was consequently not particularly cheap to send via post.

One day, a politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that this report had ostensibly been generated by the same person for over two decades, but he didn't believe it. Surely, he thought to himself, this lazy public servant had found a way to delegate it to one of her coworkers while she sipped some tea and added public funds to her overly fat pension plan! Clearly, he thought to himself, what this public servant needed was greater transparency. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that required our government worker to drive the report to the State Capitol herself so that the politicians in the Capitol could ask the government worker questions and confirm that she did, indeed, write the report in question.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She performed her duty faithfully - every quarter, she drafted the report, got into her car, drove to the State Capitol, handed it to an administrator that would politely nod and ask a few perfunctory questions about its contents, then she would drive back to the office. Being a good, conscientious, publicly minded individual of high morals and higher standards, she faithfully recorded her mileage and her time, all of which were spent performing State business, and submitted them for reimbursement every quarter, just like she was supposed to.

One day, another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to cost only $5 in postage every quarter suddenly jumped to $30 in mileage reimbursements and an hour and a half of experienced public servant labor! This politician was no fool - there was no way this government worker was consuming $30 in gas driving to the State Capitol, which was about a half hour away, and back. Furthermore, why was it taking this worker an hour and a half to drive to the Capitol, drop off the report, and then return? He knew from experience it only took a half hour to get to the state worker's office from the Capitol - multiply that time by two to cover both legs of the trip and it should only take an hour. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that required our government worker to use a state-owned car - this would save money since state mileage would be reimbursed at cost, not IRS reimbursement rates - and required the government worker to submit the report and return back to her office in an hour or less.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She did, however, have a problem - her office did not have a state-owned car issued to it. So, she submitted a requisition for a new car, using the newly-passed piece of legislation as justification, which was summarily approved. In order to meet her hour-long window, she also started to take some liberties with the speed limit when driving to the Capitol to submit her report - this didn't sit well with her high morals, higher standards, and impeccably professional decorum and bearing, but, if pressed, she felt she could explain to her fellow state employees that, since the law demanded she drive fast enough to submit the report, answer any questions asked, and return in an hour or less, she must therefore drive fast enough to accommodate that legislative requirement.

One day, yet another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to only cost $30 in mileage reimbursements and an hour and a half of experienced public servant labor every quarter suddenly cost over $20,000 thanks to a recently requisitioned new car and sundry maintenance expenses! Furthermore, he recently received complaints from his constituents about how state employees in state-owned cars weren't respecting the rules of the road and were passing them like they were standing still. This, the politician decided, simply could not stand. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that required government workers to adhere to the speed limit when driving state-owned cars and required state workers to drive the same state car for longer periods of time so the state would buy fewer new cars.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She did, however, have a problem - it was physically impossible for her to drive to the Capitol, submit the report, field any questions asked, and drive back in an hour or less while adhering to the speed limit. She thought about the problem for a bit, rereading the offending piles of legislation that circumscribed how she must discharge her duties, and then made some phone calls. The law required three things - for her to use a state-owned car, to submit the report and return to her office in an hour or less, and to adhere to the speed limit - but at no point did it say where she was to drive to. So, she drove to a nearby helicopter pad, chartered a flight to the pad next to the Capitol, and made it with time to spare. She couldn't think of very many public servants with enough creativity, drive, and willingness to embrace this sort of out-of-the-box thinking to serve the demands of the public.

One day, yet another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to only cost $20,000 in car purchasing and maintenance suddenly cost tens of thousands of dollars each quarter for private helicopter rides of all things! He simply couldn't believe it. Clearly these public servants were not getting the message - belts needed to be tightened and this sort of wanton extravagance had to be nipped in the bud. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that forbade government workers from chartering personal helicopter flights for official business.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She did, however, have a problem - it was still physically impossible for her to submit this report by car, the airport took too long, and the helicopter was the only thing close enough and fast enough to get her to the Capitol within her legislatively mandated hour long window. Very well, she thought to herself - she knew what she needed to do. Within a quarter, she secured a helicopter pilot's license - the costs of which she billed to the State - requisitioned a helicopter, and even requisitioned a helicopter pad for her office, which she justified via her new legislatively mandated requirements. To her mild amazement, her requisitions were approved; the measures she was taking were, after all, the only way she could possibly perform her job according to the requirements set forth by statute. Thus, she proceeded to fly a brand new, state owned helicopter from her office to the Capitol, report in hand, each and every quarter.

One day, yet another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to only cost tens of thousands of dollars each quarter for a chartered helicopter suddenly cost tens of millions of dollars for helicopter flying lessons, a brand new helicopter, and associated maintenance personnel and parts! This wasn't just out of hand, it must have been downright criminal! - and all of this just to submit some stupid report every quarter. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that eliminated the report and those responsible for generating it from the books.

The government worker was no longer annoyed - she was unemployed - but not for long. Thanks to her new helicopter license and flying experience, she found work flying chartered helicopters for well-heeled clients. The politicians that put her out of a job were all reelected owing to their ability to slash waste and fraud - especially the last one, which save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars!

And that's the story of how the government saved itself $5 in postage each quarter.