The two philosophers differing conceptions of human life made a difference to the content of their ethics and politics

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Famously, mobster Al Capone was not laid low by other gangsters nor by criminal law -- but by the tax code.

He was strangled by bureaucratese. 

Tom Hunter suggests a Japanese-inspired idea to do the same for our local gangsters. And it starts with a humble McDonald's burger, for which a low-level thug wouldn't pay. Turns out something dramatic happened when McDonalds sued the Yakuza gang to which the thug belonged.

'That idea is captured in the dry phrase “employer liability.” In a normal company, if an employee injures someone while doing their job, the victim can often sue not only the individual, but the company and its representative director. The logic is simple: those who profit from dangerous activity should bear the risk of it. Japanese lawyers and police began asking: why should a crime syndicate be any different?'

Death by bureaucracy! Brilliant. What this meant was that all you had to prove was that the guy who had stolen, beaten or murdered someone worked for a Yakuza ..., which is exactly what McDonalds did with the thug.

Simple.

It started with a cheap burger. And is now at the point where the "boss of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gang is losing his house (in a flash Tokyo district) because he lost a 270 million yen lawsuit against a firm that was damaged by one of his 'employees'.'

And here's Tom's thought:

Why couldn’t New Zealand copy these Japanese laws, or at least the conceptual principle of them, and apply them to the likes of the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, Head Hunters, and the rest?

With my kids rapidly approaching dating age and being well aware that I might well be a poor source of advice on it, I keep an antenna out for advice on that matter.

A favorite writer who focuses on such advice is Harris O'Malley, a.k.a., Dr. Nerdlove, and he hit one out of the park earlier this year when someone who listens to the likes of Andrew Tate showed up with a question to the effect of, "Help, science says I'm doomed to be single!"

I really appreciate two things about his letter, the first of them being what is really an all-purpose calling-out of people who wrongly claim that "science" backs them up:

Leaving aside that this leads me to think that the source was a study from Dude, Trust Me University or Dr. ChatGPT, the rare times that people do post a particular study, it becomes clear that they didn't actually read it beyond someone else's summary. The conclusions people derive tend to have very little to do with the study's conclusions and usually involves either overlooking the way the data is misunderstood, small sample sizes, poor-to-non-existent controls, self-report surveys, the authors saying "the results are within the margin of error and so are indicative of more experimentation" and occasional straight up P-hacking.

This he follows up with an intelligent discussion of -- gasp! -- an actual paper written by actual scientists.

But O'Malley isn't done, because the question betrays a deeper problem than ignorance about science.

There is also an astounding degree of ignorance about oneself by the questioner that can't be answered except by introspection, which Dr. Nerdlove successfully points out and motivates, assuming the letter writer really is interested in finding female companionship:

Ah, because it means that -- if we accept your premise -- you are "stuck" dating someone who is also of average looks. Let's put aside the assumption that this somehow means that the "average" women are not good looking and instead focus on what you don't seem to realize that you're saying.

Because I don't think it has occurred to you that, as you're complaining that your looks condemn you to date someone who isn't exceptional looking ... you're expecting someone who is exceptional looking to be willing to overlook your average appearance. Not to put too fine a point on it but ... why is that ok for them but not for you? Why are you asking them to give you grace and see beyond your average appearance, when you aren't willing to do the same? Why -- again, if we accept your premise -- is it not ok for an exceptionally attractive woman to prefer dating an exceptionally attractive man, when you yourself also want to date an exceptionally attractive woman? You would think that what's good for the goose should be good for the gander.

Well, the answer here is obvious: because of what it says about you. This is the core of what Red Pill and masculinity influencers peddle: the anxiety of being somehow "lesser" among men. If you are the sort of person who can "only" date "average" women and not dimes who make your friends and peers and randos jealous ... well, clearly you're not a Top G Alpha Player. You're just some Average Frustrated Chump, to dip back into ancient PUA parlance.

While I would hope that no child of mine ends up being this clueless, I remember being a child and a young adult. Introspection and seeing things from the perspective of others are learned skills, and many aspects of our culture discourage both.

Being aware of the latest ways people are being pressured to conform can't hurt, and this example clearly shows both that real adults aren't what Ayn Rand called second-handers, and that being second-handed is hardly the way to achieve happiness. Only by knowing oneself, and respecting the fact that relationships involve shared values can one really hope to find or be worthy of a romantic partner.

-- CAV

Americans have a rational self-interest in admitting people who will strengthen that protection and excluding people who will undermine it.

There is a great deal of work left to do to turn the completed draft of The Prophet of Causation into a published book, including sorting through all the typos you all found, looking at feedback from several reviewers, and deciding how to publish it. In the meantime, I wanted to share a snippet from some correspondence I had with Neera Badhwar, an academic philosopher who co-wrote a generally accurate overview of Ayn Rand’s ideas for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

She gave me permission to reproduce her original note, which prompted some responses that I thought my readers might find interesting.

Approaching various aspects of Rand’s philosophy through the idea of causation seems really interesting. However, I think that Rand’s central idea that the ultimate goal, and source, of all our values, and the foundation of ethics, is survival is mistaken. If you interpret survival thinly, then it’s just false. If you interpret it thickly as happiness in a moral life, then it’s plausible as a goal, but it can’t be the foundation of ethics without circularity.

I discuss this in the latest version of my and Roderick’s Stanford piece on Rand, which I’m attaching if you’re interested. (It has still to appear in the SEP, as the referee sent us additional comments.)

Just two comments on two statements you make:

“The basis of morality is “take what you want.” We are goal-directed beings who assert the needs of our survival and go after them.”

Without context, this actually sounds terrible! Even worse than Trump’s policy.

“Morality, in this view, is a body of factual knowledge about the causal connections between our choices and their effect on human survival—looked at from the perspective of our need to make those choices.”

I suppose you mean that it’s a body of hypothetical imperatives, but I don’t think [hypothetical imperatives] are entirely factual. They depend on what we want or value, and knowing what we ought to value is not a purely factual issue.

I found all of this very interesting, and it led to some interesting new formulations. Here’s my response (with a few minor additions I came up with while preparing it for publication here).

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Last year, California wildfires destroyed 13,000 homes.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced: “We are 100% committed to getting this neighborhood rebuilt again!”

Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed that, saying his officials were “responding to it at scale, with efficiency … addressing building codes, permitting issues, and moving forward to rebuilding.”

Great! It sounded like bureaucrats would get out of the way and let fire victims rebuild quickly.

But no. Not when government bureaucrats are in control.

More than a year later, fewer than 30 of the 13,000 destroyed homes have been rebuilt.

My new video explains why:

Jim Cragg, who saved his house by putting sprinklers on his roof, blames California’s red tape.

Now he runs a volunteer group helping people navigate life after the fire. He’s frustrated that it still takes months just to get permission to rebuild.

Also, those who do get permits and start rebuilding sometimes get stopped.

“You start building on that house and, oops! There’s a permit issue,” Cragg says. “Do you shut down for five days? All those trucks are waiting, all that lumber is waiting. There’s 6,000 houses waiting behind you.”

Bass claims her office simplified things for homeowners: “We have waived, put aside, suspended, so we can get through the permitting process in record speed!”

“Record speed” must not mean much to politicians.

Fire victims must complete a mountain of paperwork before they can get permission to rebuild.

The “Green Building Code” alone has countless rules. The flush volume of water closets must not exceed 1.28 gallons, builders must submit a construction waste management plan, garages must be wired for electric cars, finished buildings must include educational material on positive impacts of humidity and information about California solar energy programs …

It’s a good thing there’s a digital version of these requirements. Printing it would probably violate California’s environmental rules.

“Thousands of people are traumatized,” points out Cragg, “and they’re being handed (those forms) and told, ‘Learn this, figure it out, master this. By the way, if you mess up on this, you may end up losing … $100,000.’ It’s scary.”

The paperwork is so overwhelming that most homeowners haven’t even applied for permits.

“Financially, it doesn’t make sense to try,” says Cragg. “This is something that could ruin your family even worse than what just happened in the fire.”

Yet his mayor still insists, “This is actually pretty quick.”

“It doesn’t feel pretty quick for that family that’s living in a hotel,” says Cragg.

As usual, government causes more problems than it solves.

The fire itself was probably exacerbated by California’s strict environmental rules.

Residents say Los Angeles County wouldn’t let firefighters use heavy machinery in areas with “protected plants.”

Also, before the fire, officials drained a 117-million-gallon reservoir to repair its cover.

As a result, says Cragg, “Fire hydrants … some worked, most didn’t … The reservoir was empty.”

One reason it stayed empty was because California officials took months just to schedule its repair.

Everything government does costs more and takes longer.

If all the bureaucracy isn’t bad enough, the owners of empty lots are told they still must pay property tax.

But the politicians say they’re giving them a break. You only need to pay taxes on the lot, which comes out to two-thirds of what they used to pay.

“It’s a slap in the face!” complains Cragg.

Last year, Bass admitted: “There is dysfunctional levels of government everywhere. It isn’t anything particular to Los Angeles.”

She’s right about that.

But I think Los Angeles is probably worse than most places.

“The Pacific Palisades is a war zone,” says Cragg. “We need a war fighter mentality there. We don’t need committees. We need a decision now. We need leadership and rebuilding now.”

In California? Don’t count on it.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines.”