“From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards”

via HIGHLIGHTS-Greek FinMin unveils tax reform, wage policy | Reuters.

Enjoy cash while you can. I think it’s already pretty common for cash transactions in the US to seem suspicious. At some point, the government will decide that cash is primarily used to avoid taxes and cash will be phased out. As usual, the logic of state economics is pretty easy to predict.

John McCormack of the Weekly Standard fell Tuesday night as he tried to speak with the Democrat while simultaneously videotaping her and trying to pass a metal grate on a Washington sidewalk.

- Reporter takes stumble chasing Mass. candidate

Let’s see the video:

It’s hard to describe that as anything other than sheer abridgment of the freedom of the press. An unfriendly reporter was asking questions of a candidate and someone working for the candidate assaulted the reporter. I mean, what else is there? The Boston Globe is happy to edit history’s first draft in this case and YouTube is here to provide the second draft.

Ultimately, this incident isn’t about an election, or partisan politics. It’s about a fundamental American value that is being ignored by the Coakley Campaign (and the guy is definitely with the campaign). Americans want a free and functioning press. We want tabloid journalism and Pulitzer Prize journalism. We want to hear lies and we want to see journalists expose the truth. We don’t want to see some flack assault a journalist and we certainly don’t want to see other journalists covering it up. That is just as much against American values as police protecting themselves by arresting innocent cellphone videographers.

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. – The Official Google Blog

Good for Google! As an American, I grew up with a pretty steady drumbeat of praise for free speech. It’s not easy for me to think of many values that resonate with me as strongly and as clearly as freedom of speech. And so I’m very happy to see Google withdrawing from their arrangement with the Chinese government. Freedom is the ultimate complementary good.

In the case of egoism, the arguments against it typically try to imagine some sort of scenario where failing to follow non-egoist principles results in some sort of morally disgusting result. This type of argument is fairly common in ethical reasoning, as well as any other field where you’re prefer to not reason from first principles. But it’s a type of arguments that, by its design, fails to even notice that there may be some positive argument for the principle in question. In fact, the argument type I mention really just results in begging the question, as the “morally disgusting result” is typically evaluable as morally disgusting from non-egoist principles. One rarely comes across an anti-egoism argument that actually engages the egoist argument on egoist terms. Anti-egoists, like anti-Darwinian, prefer to stay within their own premises and then show that, by golly, you can’t be both a creationist and a Darwinian, so Darwinism must go (you can’t be both an anti-egoist and an egoist, so egoism must go).

As it turns out, there isn’t a coherent alternative to either neo-darwinism or ethical egoism. Additionally, neither evolution or ethical egoism result in morally disgusting situations. Evolution, so far, results in humanity, among other things. Ethical egoism, as I live it, is full of creativity, co-operation, compassion, and love.

I suppose that if it were true that ethical egoism required me to violently subjugate every person I encountered and that I could only feel true happiness when sunbathing by the side of a river of human blood…well, I would probably reconsider ethical egoism. In this vein, if everyone shit ice cream, then restrooms would be restaurants. But, as things actually stand, ethical egoism has made me a decent person and nobody is eating out of their toilet.

Over the last century, we’ve accumulated lots of data on the effect of economic freedom and a lack thereof. We’ve seen the utter ruination of economies in the cases of the Soviets and the Maoists. We’ve seen generally slower economic growth in more social democratic western European countries like Germany and France than in the more “economically conservative” US. We’ve seen some third world economies become first world nations through trade-friendly policies, as in South Korea. We’ve also seen regional leaders regress economically, like Cuba or Argentina, through poor property protection and corruption.

Basically, we’ve seen an awful lot of experiments run on what effects different kinds of economic policies have. The more prominent fact that emerges is that economic freedom is more productive. The more free the market, the better property is protected, the less corruption in the government, the lower the taxes (to a large extent), the richer the country. You can argue that some statistics come out better in less free countries (as in the perennial examples of health-care and literacy in Cuba). But you cannot argue that less free societies outproduce more free societies. Wealth matters to the quality of life of all citizens of a country, and freer countries are wealthier.

And that, basically, is the most reasonable case for what is sometimes called “economic conservatism” in US politics. The data supports staying pretty close to the traditional American economic system, or even becoming more free. Lots of countries did us a favor and showed how painful lack of economic freedom can be.

Now, that said, there is no such sad history of countries that legalize gay marriage. Nor is there a sad history of countries that legalize abortion. Nor is there a sad history of countries that fully embrace biomedical research. Nor is there a sad history of countries that become more accepting of human sexuality in all its variety. Nor is there a sad history of countries that adopt more humane laws regarding drug use and abuse (quite the opposite, even here in the US!).

“Conservative” opposition to social progress is generally entirely theoretical and is mostly made up of scary stories of what might happen. These scary stories, well, they don’t come true. The one exception that comes to mind is that conservatives are largely right about urban crime and the need for consistent enforcement as the way to preserve civil harmony. Here, though, they are able to point to real experience in the US from the 60′s through the 90′s to make the case. But when they move from real lessons derived from real experience, they always seem to go wrong.

What I am in favor of is neighborliness. I think most people like me (middle/upper class westerner, fairly smart and fairly well educated) have a pretty good sense of what being a good neighbor means and it may be the case that virtually everyone has that sense, too, I just am not familiar enough with most cultures to make the claim. I am, however, certain that knowing what it means to be a good neighbor means is not universal.

Some aspects of neighborliness that are important are simple things like respecting your neighbor’s property, privacy, and autonomy. I don’t try to control my neighbor’s house or car or whatever. Nor do I pry into their lives beyond what parts they’ve invited me into. And I certainly don’t make any attempts to tell them what they can and can’t do with their lives within civilized norms.

I can’t, and won’t, give any sort of definitive list of what makes a good neighbor or bad neighbor. I tend to think that people really can figure that out for themselves and that most folks who aren’t in the thrall of an ideology like marxism, compassionate conservatism, or islam will agree that that neighbor is best who governs least.

All that said, it’s clear that modern politics, emphatically including in the US, is anti-neighborliness. I’m sure I’ll post more on this, but I hope that it’s not too hard to see how US politics, at least, makes it difficult to be a good neighbor.