DISQUS

Andrew,

there are many of your articles that contain (in my opinion) unsubstantiated claims. Why are you so defensive if people post unsubstantiated claims about you? If you can't substantiate in an academic way the claims you're trying to make, how can you expect other people to do the same for you?

You're in kind of a conundrum here, posting an article about freedom of speech, yet removing user comments?

You have a severely warped sense of judgement. Could someone please sort Ms. Yang out here? As a first step I'd recommend reading this:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/discrimination

Wow, I don't even know where to start here Ms. Yang or how to react. Maybe I'll reference one of Andy's other articles:

http://riseuprochester.org/2008/08/22/how-to-de...

Seriously are you on drugs?

What exactly are you even trying to say here?

Of course we all know how this ends:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112864/plotsummary

Anyway, yeah the disturbing the peace provision does say we blame the 'victim' provided the 'victim' is stupid: ie: doing things to endanger their own well being or that of others.

As an atheist I wholeheartedly agree with Paul and Common Sense's comments, nothing really to add here.

Anyway, that speech has no reference to the holocaust, so why bring it up? If you can post any evidence to your belief that the holocaust was created in order to create a Jewish state, please reference it.

There's too much this video doesn't show. Like what was the man doing before it cuts to the scene with police talking to him. I agree with common sense though: who wouldn't expect what appears to be a predominantly black area of Philadelphia to be ecstatic and practically in riots after the historic election of the first black president? Also, who would seriously think it safe to go into such a crowd as a white man with mccain shirt, effectively saying screw you guys. In dealing with riots, hasn't safety always come first over free speech?

See definition of disturbing the peace:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disturbing_the_peace
"or using offensive words likely to incite violence."

The camera man is also heavily biased. He asserts, without offering any evidence, that the celebrating crowds are behind a conspiracy to stage a "post-modern coup." Are you implying that the election was a fraud?

Can't you ever interpret something in the news to not be a conspiracy? Of course Obama will face "imminent problems" when in office:

According to dictionary.com:

im⋅mi⋅nent
   /ˈɪmənənt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [im-uh-nuhnt] Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. likely to occur at any moment; impending: Her death is imminent.
2. projecting or leaning forward; overhanging.

So when he's in office, its likely that he will face problems at any moment? Does this really sound suspicious, or like anything out of the ordinary? Would you expect Obama to face no problems as the new president?

Yep, I am telling you that. Our law has to presume innocence, but I don't. Should I have gone up and asked him if he had a permit? Maybe I could have asked him at the same time if he planned to rob the place, or shoot an innocent bystander or shoot me (hey I may have had my ipod on me)?

Its a Felony to have an unregistered handgun, why? Registration is required to ensure that you haven't already committed violent crimes. I think we can both agree that selling firearms to convicts isn't a good idea.

All I can say is apparently I haven't learned my lesson. This past weekend I went to Mark's Texas Hots around 9pm with a friend. As we were finishing our meal my friend noticed a guy who at just come in standing by the counter with a handgun concealed on his person. We got out of there as fast as we could. I didn't see anything on the news about a shooting, but regardless it was quite disconcerting.

If I feel unsafe grabbing a hot dog in the city, how safe would I feel living or working in the city? A lot of people I've talked to who worked in the city through the sixties claimed the violence associated with the race riots as a main reason for leaving the city. Crime isn't just deterring suburbanites, its deterring many people who would potentially want to live and work in the city. I for one would love to live in an area where I wouldn't need a car.

Check out James Slater's case:

http://www.rnews.com/print.cfm?id=60240

Amazingly, they've convicted the two guys of robbing him at gunpoint, but they've both been acquitted of murder. WTF? The jury cited difficulties in the credibility of the main witness (who was the other guy in the robbery). If video had recorded this would there be any question? If the robbers knew they were being filmed, would the have shot and killed the guy over an ipod and two cell phones in the first place?

Nice article Andrew, I think your approach here is much more effective in getting us to think than some of your other articles, which I've been more critical of. I would be eager to see you go into some specific issues, in depth, using economic concepts to explain alternatives or to justify how current solutions work.

I remember back in public finance looking into the topic of public schools for instance. If my memory is correct, we determined that there were both public and private aspects at play in the public school system; I was initially quite surprised by this conclusion. It was drawn as follows: Funding for public schooling is largely drawn from local sources (town property taxes). Most people working in Monroe County have a fair level of mobility, with cars or public transit you don't have to live in the same town you work in. Different towns within Monroe County have different budgets for schooling, you can choose to live in a town that reflects your preferences for funding of education.

http://www.monroecounty.gov/property-taxrates.php

All other variables aside now, does it seem astonishing that kids from the Brighton, Pittsford suburbs get a better education than kids in your average city school?

As for curriculum, this is something that tends to be more regulated. New York state sets standard requirements for a diploma and these standards are the same across the entire state. I went to a good public school and remember some of my regents courses being pitifully easy, yet these were the state's high standards. Should I, could I have benefitted from a more rigorous curiculum? Probably.

Didn't the Federal Reserve Act (passed by congress) give Greenspan and Bernanke the right to fix the price of money?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_central...

See 1913 through present:

"After the war, the Fed, led by Paul Warburg and New York Governor Bank President Benjamin Strong, convinced Congress to modify its powers, giving it the ability to both create money, as the 1913 Act intended, and destroy money, as a central bank could."

Its irresponsible to call for imprisonment of these people if they haven't committed any crimes. Ron Paul must be an idiot or a fascist if he thinks we should lock people up for using the powers granted to them by congress.

So essentially you're a person who hates investment and all the benefits associated with it? Banks have existed in one form or another in almost every advanced society. Why? Well it makes sense that if someone needs to save $100 and someone needs to borrow $100 that these people work together and do so (in actuality only 90% is lent out, reserve requirement ratio provides base level of cash on hand, to avoid run on the bank type situations). If 100% of your money sat in a bank vault and was unused, no one would benefit. You wouldn't receive interest, you'd probably have to pay the bank additional fees to guard your money, since by simply guarding it, they make no money, and it would be much harder for individuals to get loans. How could you possibly propose such an inefficient system, do you not realize what it actually is you propose, or do you just choose to ignore all the consequences I've stated?

Spreading misinformation, or misleading people is irresponsible in my mind, I'd love to hear your response.

If you really feel the government is ripping you off that badly with inflation, have you considered TIPS (treasury inflation-protected securities)?

And this article explains that during that week there were 10 felony arrests in a 10 block neighborhood, obviously this area has a extraordinary drug/crime problem. It pains me to see this too, short of gross natural disasters or other extreme states of emergency, I hate to see curfews applied to the general public too.

While death by death ray does sound pretty cool, I'd be more worried about nuclear proliferation.

I support Ayn Rand's philosophy as a good tool to reference in making decisions, however it has a number of very fatal flaws. First, it is incompatible with any sort of non-market policy. This is a flaw, because unless we brainwash everyone in the world to accept and adhere to objectivism, there will be people making non-market decisions/policies. Two, the requirement from the previous point will never be reached due to what I would describe as the socialist aspect of human nature. You and me, as economics students are socialists?? Seems a crazy statement, but look at family life, something that is inherently socialist. I've only read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but do you notice how Rand completely leaves out family life in her novels?? Would John Galt keep a tab on all the expenditures he made raising kids and expect them to pay him back to the penny as adults? Even Rand can't explain this or apply her philosophy because it would be ridiculous. I respect Rand greatly and think her philosophy is an excellent reference, but it is not perfect.

I'll see if I can check out Mises, someone I've never heard of before, but will give you an example of one of Rand's disciples who recently has be undermining the belief that free markets are flawless:

Alan Greenspan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081024/ap_on_bi_ge...

Under biography you can read about Greenspan and Rand's relationship. The yahoo article begins with the premise:

"Badgered by lawmakers, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the nation's economic crisis was his fault on Thursday but conceded the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and left him in a "state of shocked disbelief.""

Need I say more? Have you taken Public Finance at U of R yet? If not I'd highly recommend it, if only because it provides a good study of where the free-market and non-market intersect in policy.

"You really would have loved fascism - all of the secret spies running around as tattle tales, the military on the streets policing the citizenry and all the rest."

Except I wouldn't have, because I respect tenants of constitution. I respect your freedom of speech and your right to run this website, I disagree with your opinions. I respect your right to avoid unreasonable search and seizure, I don't think cameras are unreasonable. The Nazis or Soviets would have locked political dissidents up or worse, I would protest against this. Don't make me out to be a fascist just because I disagree with you.

"How did the cameras prevent the two pizza delivery people from getting shot? What about the home invasions? What about the murders that don't happen in front of cameras?"

Technology won't catch everything, and if criminals are smart, they won't commit crimes in front of cameras. That said, I could potentially see an externality problem created if cameras shift crime from one area of the city to another, perhaps one legitimate claim against them. Right now the problem is what about all the murders that don't happen in front of policemen, thats a lot of murders. I believe cameras can help.

You can read my arguments for the cameras, this is just my point of view, I think (providing they are effective at stopping crime, this point is still being examined) they're great. You may not know it, but Andrew and I used to be best friends. I broke off our friendship because it was not working for me, but I still wish Andrew well. He's a very energetic and resourceful person and is capable of a lot, I just don't see a lot of validation for a lot of the claims on this website. Andrew: your life used to not include such doom and gloom, why all the paranoia? The majority of people in this country are still able to lead happy lives in an imperfect world, I'd love to see your energies used elsewhere.

You're exaggerating what a tax is. I suppose you could call it robbery, but that would discredit the positive aspects taxes. There are plenty of other incentives the government gives out that maybe you would call robbery too. I'm sure your dad was happy to take advantage of the tax incentives the government gave him when he could claim you as a dependent child. Our government provides additional investment incentives through devices like the Traditional and Roth IRA's, should people who use these feel immoral?

Lastly, our government is not just without limits printing money. Check out Zimbabwe:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/08/19/zimb...

It makes our historic average inflation rate look pretty good huh?

Excellent Point Paul, I've been trying to provide logical counter arguments to what I think are sometimes absurd claims. I believe its irresponsible to promote fear and paranoia based on unsubstantiated theories.

And you could give us more to go on, can you cite specifically where Biden, Paul and the UK have referenced this?

So what exactly are you saying, unless I totally missed it there obviously weren't nuclear attacks in 2004.

"Would you feel any less comfortable if there was a police officer standing at every corner?"

Well, I'd feel more comfortable if there were a policeman on every corner. As a law abiding citizen this would vastly increase my safety in the city. I'll make reference to the Adam Emling incident, which if you're not familiar with you can check out here:

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2007/jul/19/tragic-a...

People don't do things like this unless they reasonably think they can get away with it. I would like to think a larger police presence would have prevented an instance like this because any cop would immediately see a problem with someone carrying a shotgun openly down on Monroe Ave, hopefully before the criminal had a chance to use it. In this case the guy managed to kill someone, an innocent bystander at that. This was a crime against society in the sense that it now instills a fear in me every time I go back to Mark's Texas Hots I may be accidentally shot and killed (formerly Mark's Texas Hots was one of my favorite places to eat down on Monroe). Businesses suffer, people live in fear and someone was killed, what more do you need for a case for stronger police presence?

The fact of the matter is that there are consequences to living in society. Cities by definition are places with lots of people and lots of potential for trouble. Cities with high crime don't function well, hence the need for security. This is only a question you can answer for yourself: are the drawbacks of city life outweighed by the benefits? If your answer is no, you are free to live in a rural area, post a lot of "No Trespassing" signs on your property and not deal with society.

The purchase of these cameras was passed by the Rochester City Council, a group of elected officials, unless you disagree with the democratic style government this means that the general public feels this is a reasonable consequence to living in the city of Rochester.

Interestingly, even the local ACLU council admits the cameras legality:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4180/is...

"It's basically Big Brother expanding," said Scott Forsyth, counsel to the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The cameras do not violate the Fourth Amendment because there is no right to privacy on public streets, sidewalks, or in someone's yard or when a person knowingly exposes himself to the public, even in a home or office, Donohue and Forsyth said.

Lastly, could you please substantiate this statement:

"Keep in mind, the capabilities of a camera to search people passing by go far beyond those of the officer."

Yes they did. Look at the volatility of gold just this year:

http://www.marketwatch.com/quotes/?sid=1633395

How would you like your dollar to vary in it's buying power by that much in that short amount of time? What isn't said about paper money is that INFLATION IS HELPFUL (big bold claim, because it runs contrary to popular belief) to some extent in that it encourages investments. Who benefits from investments? Everyone, the investor, the company and all the people who use their goods/services. Inflation can essentially be considered a tax on hording money, if you stuff it in your mattress no one can use it. Similarly for gold, it just sits there and does nothing to contribute. Now, this may seem like a nasty plan, but wait the government allows you to buy t bills which won't earn you lots of money but are 100% safe and can be used to avoid inflation. The only ones who lose in this system are those who horde cash.