Didn’t think so.

© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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What they were complaining about this time is that the personal information of a few College of Liberal Art potential-fillers-of-the-empty-seat students had been blacked out. They called it redacted because it sounded scarier. What information, what crucial, vital, essential pieces of information needed to be shared with the world and whose being blacked out was a violation of LAW and which was done with NO PRECENDENCE!? The students’ addresses, student numbers, telephone numbers, email addresses, and cumulative GPAs.

You know, the stuff one doesn’t generally doesn’t want to see floating around on blogs run by anonymous people who use the word “redacted”.

When a commenter responded to the post by saying, “I dont think you are being fair. Censoring home addresses and phone numbers is perfectly understandable before they are confirmed. Let’s try not to be unreasonable guys” one of the VisLupiEstGrex people retorted:

“This is isn’t about fairness. This is about the plain meaning of the law. The Senate has never before, to our knowledge, redacted such information [...] I do not believe it is unreasonable to make a reasoned argument backed by legal authority. It may be unfair that this is public material, but it is not declared by law to be private.” (emphasis added)

But this couldn’t be more completely wrong. Laws have no authority in and of themselves. Laws derive their only power, their only sway insofar as people are willing to uphold those laws. There are laws against jay walking and speeding, but how many times have you broken these laws even within the past week? Would all the VisLupiEstGrex people be willing to say they never drank underage, never drove over the speed limit, have, in fact, stopped at every “Stop” sign 100% everytime they’ve seen one?

Of course they shouldn’t have to say they’ve done all those things: those things are pointlessly stupid laws in many instances. Dumb laws should be ignored. Bad laws shouldn’t be followed simply because they’re laws. They are first and foremost “bad” which makes whatever it is they advocate lose any sense of “necessity.” Don’t ever be fooled into thinking there is such a thing as a “necessary evil.” There isn’t. Such a ploy is only held up by those too weak to carry meaningful ethical principles.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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If you haven’t already heard, the president of the ASUN,* Eli Reilly, has proposed a “stimulus package” for UNR. The idea is for $200,000 to be spent over two years that “will create 50 new student jobs on campus.” If this isn’t the definition of blindingly moronic, then I don’t know what is.

In fact, if this is considered a “good idea” or is actually thought, by anybody, at any time, for any reason to be an effective way to “stimulate” UNR in a positive way, then I am afraid that everything I’ve ever known, loved, or cared for in humanity is circling the drain.

In the face of “budget cuts” and a “recession” someone’s fearless leader (not mine), Eli Reilly, has seen fit to inflate the budget 10% what it was last year. When START said that cutting the budget of certain programs was going to be necessary and that if elected they would be scrupulous about it, they were screamed out of whatever room they were in. Laughed at, picked on, and called ridiculous, for proposing such a ridiculous idea. And yet with Reilly’s cuts of $12,500 from Flipside, $3,000 from homecoming, $4,000 from Insight, and $50,000 from club support, this course of action is applauded and indeed deemed responsible.

Wait, what? you might ask. Didn’t I just say the budget is 10% greater, and yet there are all these cuts? What’s up? Well you’ll be glad to know that among the increases were: senate wages (go figure…), executive wages (go figure…), professional salaries (seeing a trend?), professional and classified salaries (seriously?), ASUN advertising, Campus Escort, the Leadership Program, and Diversity inititives.

That’s right. Stuff that doesn’t actually help the majority of students in any conceivable way. No money for tutoring, no help centers, no counseling, nothing.

Complaints of slash and burn cutting (with a heavy dose of favoritism) aside, what about this “stimulus package.” Well, 50 lucky students are going to get jobs working for the ASUN or some other department on campus. Fifty make work jobs paid for by people with actual jobs, actually working their way through college. These jobs that Reilly hopes to create don’t exist now because it doesn’t pay for them to exist now. Put another way, the reason there aren’t the 50 jobs he hopes to create out of thin air already existing now is because it is not worth it by the people who would employ them to allow them to work for them. As an example, say there are 20 of you working at the Panda Express (mmm…) on campus. Why aren’t there 25? Because the people paying you will lose money.

The solution, at least in the eyes of someone’s economically ignorant leader? Have student fees pay for those 5 extra workers! According to the “package” the department will only pay for 25% of the student’s salary while the University picks up the 75% slack. Now, Panda Express only needs to value those 5 new employees at 1/4 of what they value their other employees. But, the 1/4 valuable workers will still be paid the same amount! (or close to it) Who exactly is this fair to?

Not the workers who get paid what they’re effectively worth (and not 4 times as much).
Not the majority of students whom this money is being taken away from (~$16.50 per person).
Not the people excluded from the jobs (since there is no way to effectively measure marginal costs for employment in this case).
Not even to the students who get these jobs! Preferential treatment is still unfair even if we like it.

Why do it then? Why not just give every student $16.50 in Advantage Cash or only for the Bookstore and stimulate the University that way? Who gets the jobs? Which jobs are they? Why those jobs? Why not other jobs? Why? Why?

Why?

Because we have a student government. Like all governments it does not, cannot, know the best way to achieve ends. The person in charge* ($8,800) is a History major, the speaker of the Senate ($7,000) is an “International Affairs” major, and of the two newly elected College of Business senators ($870 each) only one is an actual Economics major, though (so far as I know), he had nothing to do with the budget or this “package”: these people do not know what they are doing with money. Even if they were all Ecomonics geniuses, they still wouldn’t know how to properly spend other people’s money better than they do. You can’t know how to do that. And this is one of the major failings of government (next to it being illegitimate and ever-more-tyrannical).

So give it back. Give us back our money. It’s not yours and it’s not yours to give to 50 other people in some misguided attempt to “stimulate” the University. Isn’t it enough that the four people mentioned above have already taken $17,540 from us by themselves? Must they take even more in the name of others? There is nothing worse than a benevolent thief, he knows of no crime greater than that of honest ownership.

And let us, as a final note, never forget that lesson near and dear to us all:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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It can be read at the above link as well as below. But on the Sagebrush site there have been numerous back-and-forths with those that (for some reason) didn’t like the article. You can have your two cents there or here. Please do enjoy.

A Libertarian Conversation
By Barry Belmont

To be justified in believing in any philosophy means to follow its premises to their logical conclusion. For libertarians there are, at base, two undeniable tenets: 1) the right of self-ownership and 2) all interactions between people (self-owners) must be voluntary.

In short, the entirety of libertarianism can be summed up as “you can do whatever you want, just keep your mitts to yourself.”

In a recent article, Nevada Sagebrush writer Lee Hampton attacked libertarian ideas, claiming they hinge “upon a blind, fanatical and theological faith in ‘free markets’” and that libertarians are somehow bad for doing this.

While the words “blind” and “fanatical” are inflammatory and used for offhand dismissals rather than legitimate criticisms, it can rightly be said that we libertarians do have faith in the free market. Free markets are nothing short of the sum total of all free and voluntary human interactions.

If you can’t have faith in this, then what hope is there of ever improving the human condition?

Some might say that the hope lies in governments and that governments must step in to change individual human behavior for the better. But to believe the government is something different from the same individuals who compose markets is absurd. Who are these angels so full of benevolence? The government is composed of the exact same people as those who make up free markets with one important difference: They have no incentive to do anything well because they can use force.

On free markets, how much a service benefits society correlates to the amount of money gained. This is why Apple and Google do so well and why Paint-a-Pet stores generally go out of business. Where Apple and Google make their money by directly serving customers, governments get the same amount of money no matter how poorly they do their job.

In fact, the converse can be seen: The more poorly a government does its job (that is, by allowing crime rates to rise, causing economic strife, etc.) the more money it gets in the name of “solving” the problem.

In essence, advocating for free markets is advocating for personal responsibility, triumphing personal liberty and holding that though there are some greedy, mean and bad people, the vast majority of people are good. Sure, there might be an Enron or an AIG fiasco on the free and open market, but these singular bad instances are overwhelmed by billions of everyday cooperative interactions.

Think of how much cooperation went in to making what you are reading: I wrote this article, an editor edited it, someone placed it in the newspaper, the paper in your hand was made from trees which were transported vast distances by trucks and planes, the ink had to be manufactured, printers had to place it on the page and so on. Thus, faith in free markets is simply a faith in free individuals.

This is what the University of Nevada, Reno Students for Liberty believe and support.

To learn more, or to read the full version of my lecture “Anarcho-Capitalism II: Justice & Defense,” visit www.UNRforLiberty.com.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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Our leaders, as personified by Eli Reilly, Milton Glick, and the ASUN Senate (all wonderfully nice and respectable people) have, it appears, on their hands a problem which is utterly beyond their power to control or a problem which they are partly responsible for. By this I mean, either they have the power to stop these cuts and have failed to do so or they do not have the power to stop these cuts and we (the students) do not need them. And while this is obviously a ridiculous either/or extreme, consider the middle position: they have some power for doing some things (lacking power to do others and needing our help for those problems) and in this situation having only the power to inspire and inform others of the situation.

Well that is no power at all. And while I applaud the actions of Reilly, Glick, and the senators for acting fast and responsibily, the the role of the presidency and the role of the senate is not to be a mouthpiece, or at least it shouldn’t be. This problem has been long in coming: the reason tuition has been so low at UNR is for the massive amounts of money the state of Nevada pumps into it. Well, now the state says the spigot will begin to close. This calls for action, not begging. We should not have to grovel on our knees and plead with the state legislature for more money. It is not money that makes a university, it is the caliber of its students. We must not only become the best we can be during this “hard” times, we must be better than everyone else. Innovation, creativity, ingenuity, intelligence: these are what blaze the trail which the rest will follow. We cannot be content to follow behind anymore, we must stand forth and actively change our situation, not hope that our tears will convince anybody of anything.

But the biggest and single most important problem overlooked in every op-ed, in every article, every discussion over Ramen: EDUCATION. All caps should signify its importance, but in case that is not enough let me explain. All this talk of budget cuts and losing colleges and losing funding and losing the band and the atheletic teams and this and that and this and that over there; all this letter writing, protesting, furious argument and debate, all this comradery; all the posters and papers printed and left on desks for students to glance at, ignore, throw away, take home and post on their wall or enter into their calandars (save the date!); ALL OF THIS IS BESIDE THE POINT.

Education is the important thing, not the money, not the classes, not even the colleges. “Yes, everyone is worried about education, they just aren’t saying it in so many words. After all, it is money and classes and colleges that provide for a student’s education,” my rhetorical reader might say in response. However, it seems to me that education is the one thing no one is focusing on, and for good reason: you don’t need a university for an education. You need a unversity for university presidents and student leaders, you don’t need it to learn differential equations. Yes, I will admit, a unversity helps. Immensely. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if it is this university. I do not know about you, but I intend to get my education. If that means I have to pay more, work harder, move to another state, take a few years off, live on the streets, then so be it: I will have my education, with or without this university.

Let me qualify this by saying, I am not in favor of the cuts. Though it may seem that I couldn’t care less about the University, this is simply not true. The University of Nevada, Reno has helped make me who I am, it has given me a first rate education, taught me to think for myself, given me the resources to do so, and has asked for practically nothing in return. UNR is my home and one day, when I’m finally out in that real world I keep hearing about, I hope I can look fondly back at my years here. However, it is time to stop playing eye for an eye with the already blind and change our situation ourselves. These “hard” economic times have been used enough to excuse just about every behavior, but this must end. We are responsible for our situation and as such we must do something about it. We must stand forth, stand with, and stand and rise against these times and make them our times.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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This is not the first time the Sagebrush has pointed to the ASUN Senate:

• The ASUN had a nearly $80,000 budget deficit.
• The student leaders showed little leadership.
• The election was a mess.
• The Senate was unprepared for their jobs.
• And there is that pesky $5 per credit ASUN fee [tax].

Of course they are a little less biased than I am, but the idea is the same: the senate, while a powerful tool for those who use it, is often mishandled. I believe we must hold our student government accountable for their actions and their inactions. Just because it’s easy to ignore that 800 pound gorilla known as student government, doesn’t mean we should. We must act to better our government and ourselves constantly.

Next March, when elections come around, do not just vote for the funny names, the familiar faces, and the vague generalities of years past. Vote for people willing to stand up, take charge, and get things done. Vote for less bureaucracy, less wasted money, less pointless rules. Vote to stop this inefficiency.

Or just don’t vote at all…we’re cool with that too.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2008.
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This reporter was a really cool guy and I really appreciate the time and effort he put into this article.

Unlike this asshat who couldn’t be bothered to change his bland, preconceived, hackneyed, one-sided blogpost that didn’t care to look into anything deeper than McCain v. Obama. There are more important things to do with our time than wax pointlessly on the already well-waxed.

So yea, check any of that out if you want. Or not that’s cool too.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2008.
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