Fire and Knowledge

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

—George Bernard Shaw, as quoted in Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007), p. 217.

From CNN:

A wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from a coal plant in central Tennessee broke this week, spilling more than 500 million gallons of waste into the surrounding area.

he sludge, a byproduct of ash from coal combustion, was contained at a retention site at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plant in Kingston, about 40 miles east of Knoxville, agency officials said.

The retention wall breached early Monday, sending the sludge downhill and damaging 15 homes. All the residents were evacuated, and three homes were deemed uninhabitable, a TVA spokesman told CNN….

TVA spokesman Gil Francis told CNN that up to 400 acres of land had been coated by the sludge, a bigger area than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

An expensive mistake that has cost many families their homes and land. They better be generously compensated — though there is probably no monetary compensation that can make up for losing their homes like this. It’s frustrating that people have to suffer for the mistake of a corporation.

You have no talent for dishonesty, so your refuge must be ignorance and stubbornness.

—Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), p. 257.

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

—Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), p. 85.

Because most drug offenses carry mandatory sentences and exclude the possibility of parole, other prisoners are having to be released early to make room for all the new drug offenders pouring into the system.

In consequence, the average convicted murderer in the United States now serves less than six years, the average rapist just five.

Moreover, once he is out, the murder or rapist is immediately eligible for welfare, food stamps, and other federal assistance. A convicted drug user, no matter how desperate his circumstances may become, is denied these benefits for the rest of his life.

—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. 91.

According to a 1990 study, 90 percent of all first-time offenders in federal courts were sentenced to an average of five years in prison. Violent first-time offenders, by contrast, were imprisoned less often and received on average just four years in prison.

You are, in short, less likely to go to prison for kicking an old lady down the stairs than you are for being caught in possession of a single dose of any illicit drug.

—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. 90.

I just found out that there are more people in slavery now than at any other time in human history:

In its 400 years, the transatlantic slave trade is estimated to have shipped up to 12 million Africans to various colonies in the West. Free the Slaves estimates that the number of people in slavery today is at least 27 million…. Three out of four slavery victims are women and that half of all modern-day slaves are children.

And if you think it’s just “out there” and not in the US, think again:

Estimates by the US State Department suggest up to 17,500 slaves are brought into the US every year, with 50,000 of those working as prostitutes, farm workers or domestic servants.

According to the CIA, more than 1,000,000 people are enslaved in the US today. Thousands of cases go undetected each year and many are difficult to take to court as it can be difficult to prove force or legal coercion.

Perhaps the most famous inflation of the twentieth century occurred in Germany during the 1920s, when 40 marks were worth one dollar in July 1920 but it took more than 4 trillion marks to be worth one dollar by November 1923. People discovered that their life’s savings were not enough to buy a pack of cigarettes.

The German government had, in effect, stolen virtually everything they owned by the simple process of keeping more than 1,700 printing presses running day and night, printing money. Some have blamed the economic chaos and bitter disillusionment of this era for setting the stage of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 350.