The right to sell my freedom

Freedom includes the right to sell one's freedom.

Freedom

Freedom is always and necessarily, freedom to buy, which is akin to freedom to sell.

Sexual education

Good sexual education is learning how to discipline the body so as to pursue long-term happiness.

Bad sexual education is about how dealing with an uncontrolled body, it's about damage control.

Worst sexual education is misleading the body towards depravity, a.k.a. soul slaving by a body gone mad. It's the opposite of sexual freedom.

Good sexual education is learning about the meaningful role of sex in human fulfillment of happiness. It's about love.

Shallow sexual education is learning about body parts and bodily functions which are anyway written in instinct.

Good sexual education is about duty rather than pleasure, which paradoxically leads to pleasure.

Bad sexual education is about pleasure rather than duty, which paradoxically leads away from enduring pleasure.

Good sexual education is about using sex in pursuit of happiness.

Bad sexual education leads to sacrificing happiness to void sex.

Good sexual education leads towards enjoying sex.

Bad sexual education leads towards suffering sex, towards sex as a vice.

Good sexual education is about love for others.

Bad sexual education is about selfishness.

Bad sexual education is about not being an adolescent mother. It gives ideas about postponing which "make sense" far beyond adolescence.

Good sexual education is about not being a single mother. It gives ideas about how to start a family.

Good sexual education is about children, and becoming parent as a means. It's about giving.

Bad sexual education is about the selfish pleasure of parenting using the child as a means. It's about asking. It's about human pets.

Good sexual education is about lifetime compromise. It's about matrimony.

Bad sexual education is about good-while-rendering. It's about a civil contract useful when the expected breakup arrives. It's about planning divorce. It's cynical.

Good sexual education is about human dignity, about what makes our bodies sacred, about respecting ourselves.

Bad sexual education is about how to put on a condom as to avoid chlamydia.

Bad sexual education is about statistics.

Good sexual education is about not judging the neighbor and custody of the own eyes.

Good sexual education leads to being a good person.

Bad sexual education leads to being a bad person.

Good sexual education is about highlighting that the most natural thing is for sex to be considered taboo; this is, something which is not irreverently talked about but something intimate, special.

Bad sexual education aims at eliminating the taboo character of sex, turning it into base, mean, and coarse. That's why sexual explicitness is everywhere attached to bad manners and lack of education.

Bad sexual education is about learning to use condoms.

Good sexual education about learning not to use porn.

Bad sexual education is about looking for pleasure.

Good sexual education is about running away from danger and pain.

Church and freedom

The Catholic Church needs the help of people who truly believe in and are students of freedom for her to understand her limits on political proposals, her best way to fight poverty, and her development of a theology of free will harmonious with economic and political sciences and the rule of law.

People who truly believe in and are students of freedom can benefit from the Catholic Church, so that they remain humanitarian and full of charity, understand that free will and respect of free will is not the same than selfishness or disdain, but that true respect of freedom must be close to love for the neighbor.

Love of freedom and fear of God share major features: realizing that one is not almighty and cannot rule over whatever caprice one can have, to trust in powers which are beyond our full comprehension but which we revere by acknowledging that they operate for our ultimate benefit.

Freedom and fear of God are not just compatible but ultimately of mutual necessity as well as totalitarianism and atheism are at the end both sides of one same coin.

There cannot be God without freedom and there cannot be freedom without God. Both Church and classical liberals must understand that or scorn it at their own peril. It is civilization and that which we regard distinctively human which is at stake.

Externality = violation of a property right = coercion = the opposite of freedom = anchor to underdevelopment

I mean, if somebody is smoking in the park and I'm reading there and I don't like the smoke, such as Coase shows, the externality is not merely a matter of the smoker causing a damage to me (Pigou's naïveté). Damage is not a sufficient condition to have a (negative) externality. If and only if a violation of a property right occurs, have we an externality. The other way of seeing an externality, i. e. the need to internalize, consists precisely in the need to put a stop to such a violation of the property right, to such a coercion. Externalities can be defined only in the context of a register of property rights, since they are precisely violations to such a register. On the other hand, even in a completely internalized society where there would be no externalities at all, we could have damages and benefits perceived by some agents by the actions of other agents. The feature of those damages and benefits, however, would be so, in such a system, that our damaged or benefited agents would no have any right whatsoever over putting a stop to the damages or continue enjoying the benefits happening by the actions of other agents, which we re are assuming to be the proprietors of the things causing damages and profits to other agents in our example.

And linking the concept of coercion to the work of Friedrich Hayek in his "The Constitution of Liberty", in which he defines freedom as "that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as is possible in society" (page 11). This is, freedom is the absence of coercion. Coercion is the opposite of freedom. Whereas there is freedom there's no coercion, whereas there's coercion there's not freedom.

This is important, for instance, to understand the key feature by which we can tell a society in which the development advances at a reasonable pace from one in which that reasonable pace is not present. Anyone who has lived in an underdeveloped (*) country bears witness that externalities are a key feature of those countries either because a property register existing it is violated (corruption, blackmail, theft, and a regrettable etcetera) or because there is not such a register in the first place (on which the work by Hernando de Soto is particularly illustrative).

(*) In order to emphasize backwardness, but euphemistically called sometimes "developing" as if full stagnation would be possible and as trying to convey basically the opposite idea of what really happens in countries composed of mostly poor people under world standards, i. e. almost absence of a developing pace.

Protectionism and Krugman

Imagine you begin to sell some good you produce. People buy a lot of product. You just can't cope with so much demand. You invest an important share of your wealth in a very specific machine only useful for manufacture the good you sell. You invest because you expect demand for your good to continue growing. But once you have made the investment, that by the way nobody commanded you to make, you realize that people are beginning to buy from a foreign firm which is selling cheaper than you can, even after the investment of your machine. Yes, you get hurt. But you get hurt because the expectations you built disappointed you, not because the owners of that foreign firm are violating any right you were previously entitled to on the budgets of the potential buyers of your good. However, if in order to avoid competition by the foreign competition you coerce either buyers or other sellers or both so that they cannot make transactions among themselves, it is you the violator. Aren't you?

It is tragicomic to me when noble Krugman et al, in their "International Economics", 9/e, page 51 et seq., say some people get hurt because of trade. Yes, they get hurt, but they get hurt as I get hurt when somebody informs me that my plan to travel to your farm on next Saturday accompanied by Angela Lansbury and by Mr. Obama in order to enjoy a Jim Carrey's play with live music by the original Sepultura's lineup is not going to be possible. It is just a correction on my expectations, precisely the damn thing which markets do, so that we can keep as coordinated as possible in a world sometimes less than ideal.

But if the situation is explained so that it looks that I got hurt because somebody else's "fault", consequently implying a violation of a right of mine (to fullfill my expectations even at expense of violating a true right of others), I guess the analysis is not the best, to say the least.

Not everybody wins with trade? Some people get hurt with trade? In the devious sense setted out by Krugman et al... Well, dah! Because, yes, according to my plan I get hurt when cruel Mr. Obama prefers to be in political meetings than to enjoy Max Cavalera's twist and shout, but this is very different than violating a presumed right of mine. You cannot avoid feeling some hideous taste to deception in Krugman exposure.

And this is what our children are learning in their international trade courses. So primitive a stage, we still are in.

Just trade

It is pleonastic to talk about "free" trade. Only as long as it is "free", can an action be considered "trade".

(By the way, can somebody give me an example of "unfair" trade?)

On the Church

I guess that it can be told with respect to the Church what Mises told about the utilitarian philosophy, that it

"does not look upon the rules of morality as upon arbitrary laws imposed upon man by a tyrannical Deity with which man has to comply without asking any further questions. To behave in compliance with the rules that are required for the preservation of social cooperation is for man the only means to attain safely all those ends that he wants to attain." The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, page 95.

Christianity as a techninque

It is absurd to judge Christianity on grounds of it imposing wrong ends on individuals. Christianity is a technique through which advice is given on how to reach final ends whatsoever. Yes, it's true that in doing this Christianity disentangles some apparent final ends and demonstrates that they are wrong means to reach truly final ends, truly being understood in a purely formal sense as anything which brings closer happiness to the individual.

Market and freedom

The only condition for a market is freedom to exchange.

Addendum

The truth shall set you free...
...and the lie, communist.

Worker and employer: two strong parties

Frequently, the relation between worker and employer is seen as that of a weak party (the worker, of course) facing a strong one (the abusive employer).

In many cases, this is a very misleading picture. Indeed, a more accurate way of describing the relative power of these parties is that of a strong one (the employer) facing an as well strong one (the worker who can dismiss his employer as a new opportunity appears).

The best way of protecting an employer is allowing free competition among firms, a very important part of which is competition for employees.

When the worker is devoid of his power by erecting barriers to entry of competition, then you do have a weak party facing a strong one. This way, abuse turns unavoidable. Passing legislation to supposedly protect the artificially weakened party, too often results in no more than smuggling abuse.

The first battlefront for unions truly moved by the interest of the worker should be tearing down barriers to entry of competition. Owners of firms privileged by protectionism can well lose a substantial portion of profits due to this, but industrious workers have nothing to lose but their chains.

And bear in mind that to expect from an employer unleashed from competition to remain kind to the worker is naivety, pure and huge.

Illegal drugs

The one case I have heard of to keep the illegal status of some drugs is the damage on addicts.

However, so far I have never seen junkies in a rally defending the current illegal status of some drugs or fighting for further prohibition on others, say, alcohol or tobacco.

Freedom is daughter of the market

It is not freedom what is a necessary condition for the development of the market. Quite the opposite, is the market order what allows the birth of freedom.

What is conservatism to me

This post is about definition. Therefore, in the core it can't be judged as right or wrong from a scientific view point although it can be assessed from a logic perspective, especially in order to analyze its utility. Agreeing with its assertions only could ultimately achieve a convention but not, per se, to find the truth.

In his essay Why I am not a Conservative, Friedrich Hayek supplies reasons for not to regard himself as a conservative. This way, he was attempting to refute the perception which many had about him. Nevertheless, even after the publication of the essay in 1960, conservatives as conspicuous as Robert Nisbet continued considering him a conservative. There are reasons for this: Hayek was a declared foe of coercion; this is: of changing the distribution of rights. (As a matter of anecdote, I became a conservative thanks to Hayek.)

Conservatism of rights can collide with the fundamental classical liberal dogma of freedom only in a society allowing for legal slavery. In that unique scenario, the liberal would fight for changing the distribution of rights while a coherent conservative would defend the current distribution of rights.

What does a conservative conserve
There are several kinds of conservatism because there are several issues which may be desired to conserve. Two main kinds of conservatism are norms conservatism and moral conservatism.

A norms conservative pursues to conserve rights (or being redundant: property rights). Obviously, the existence of such rights has to have a refference to a concrete rules structure.

A moral conservative wants to conserve moral values: specific uses of freedom (i.e. property on oneself) and after all advices on how not to use freedom which transgression does not imply coercion (this is: violation of another's property). It is important to take into account, nevertheless, that to a norms conservative this conservation only can be done through moral means and not through coercion.

Conservatism as political ideology
Conservatism is an political ideology (an ideology which can be used by, say, a political party in order to guide its program) consisting in defending rights legitimately established in a concrete rules structure.

In the parliament, the conservative congressman radically defends the current rules structure and fiercely attacks bills looking for changing the rights frontiers but only fixing new frontiers where there were not. The conservative congressman typically proposes few laws and makes a lot of political control. In particular, this person never will propose a bill to re-distribute rights and will always analyze carefully bills which he presents to discard such re-distributions. Bills developed by him will pursue sanctioning and clarifying frontiers already draft.

In the executive branch, the conservative administration follows a tame obedience to the parliament. If it offers a bill will be exclusively to fine tune the State management.

The judiciary is called to be the most conservative of all political powers.

What kind of academic freedom must public universities have?

At least in Costa Rica, teachers working in public universities claim for academic freedom.

According to them, academic freedom is receiving funds from government without having to be accountable for their use, this idea expressed of course in much more suave ways.

It is not surprising therefore the conclusion reached by Rogge and Goodrich: "We simply do not believe in academic freedom." (1)

(1) Rogge, Benjamin, and Pierre Goodrich. Education in a Free Society. Liberty Fund, 1973. Page 82.

Freedom

Freedom is no more than a property right on oneself.