Pun Salad

Senator Maggie's letter to Newell is reproduced at the link. No doubt Steam is hosting some nasty stuff. But you know what? So does Amazon.

Nobody's forcing people to play games at Steam. None of the stuff Maggie mentions is prohibited speech, and if any legislation was (somehow) enacted to ban it, it would be declared unconstitutional in a few nanoseconds.

And yet Maggie is demanding that Steam do the things she's unable to do herself. With a hefty undercurrent of "or else".

And my "Live Free or Die" state just re-elected her. It's a funny old world.

Briefly noted:

• Speaking of another senatorial bully from New England, J.D. Tucicille reports on what Liz is up to: Warren’s Crypto Bill Targets Financial Freedom, Not Fraud.

  Beyond politically connected scammers and frothy valuations, the attractiveness of cryptocurrencies lies in their potential for doing what cash does, but across distances. When governments inflate money, people turn to other stores of value, including crypto. When politicians and their financial-sector accomplices block transactions of which they disapprove, people look for alternative means of doing deals without permission, crypto among them. So, when officials talk of stripping privacy and autonomy from cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, you know they would do the same to cash if they could.

  "Rogue nations, oligarchs, drug lords, and human traffickers are using digital assets to launder billions in stolen funds, evade sanctions, and finance terrorism," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) huffed this week. "The crypto industry should follow common-sense rules like banks, brokers, and Western Union, and this legislation would ensure the same standards apply across similar financial transactions. The bipartisan bill will help close crypto money laundering loopholes and strengthen enforcement to better safeguard U.S. national security."

  The bipartisan bill to which Warren refers sports the tendentious moniker, Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022. Stripped of grandiose claims, it attempts to extend the financial surveillance state cooked up by drug warriors and anti-terrorism fearmongers to cryptocurrencies. Warren and company picked an opportune moment to do just that, while the public is occupied with a headline-grabbing financial scandal that taints crypto's already sketchy reputation.

  Exploiting your fear of "rogue nations, oligarchs, drug lords, and human traffickers". With the unfortunate side effect of treating ordinary honest citizens as criminals.

• Bari Weiss's Free Press is a worthwhile stop. Bari's spouse, Nellie Bowles, takes a look at: Just Another Week in the U.S.A. Among the stories she covers and comments upon:

  Our favorite high-flying crypto mogul and Democratic mega-donor has finally been arrested and jailed. The charges: mail and wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to avoid campaign finance regulations, and more. Bankman-Fried claimed he needed to get out on bail because he was depressed and also a vegan. (Why does one always come with the other?)

  SBF has hired the lawyer who defended Ghislaine Maxwell, which is a little too on-the-nose.

  His parents, Stanford Law School professors who teach on philosophy and taxes, were there in the Bahamas as their son was booked. From the CoinDesk reporter who was in the courtroom with them all: “Bankman-Fried’s mother audibly laughed several times when her son was referred to as a ‘fugitive’ and his father occasionally put his fingers in his ears as if to drown out the sound of the proceedings.” The fugitive’s father, Joseph Bankman, who was paid by and worked with his son, will not be teaching his usual tax-policy course this year. Stanford Law students are there to learn how to cheat the tax code successfully—not to learn how to get caught!

  Nellie's witty and charming, I'll probably quote her again next week.

• Kevin D. Williamson is Against Adhocracy in Oregon.

  The death penalty in Oregon has in effect been abolished by the state’s lame-duck Democratic Gov. Kate Brown—who has no legitimate power to do any such thing.

  She does have illegitimate power to do this—by abusing her gubernatorial powers of clemency to effect a policy change rather than using them for their intended purpose, which is to engage in the democratic continuance of the formerly royal prerogative of offering extraordinary mercy on a case-by-case basis. Gov. Brown has simply commuted every death sentence in Oregon to life imprisonment, making an end run around the legislature and the state constitution both.

  Here we have two competing moral and political considerations: The death penalty should be abolished, but executive unilateralism of the sort being practiced here by Gov. Brown is an invitation to chaos. This raises an old question, one that has especially vexed conservatives in the liberal-democratic context: What do we do when a bad process produces a good outcome?

  I don't have a lot of patience with "conservatives" who want to play the same game as Kate Brown. But it's a dangerous one.

• And Jeff Maurer has a pretty good question: Why Do We Even Bother Making Movies?.

  Movies haven’t really recovered from Covid. In 2019, the film industry made $181 million during the Thanksgiving period; this year, it was $95 million. A senior analyst at Comscore dubbed the movie market “confounding” and called the dismal Thanksgiving returns “an attention getter for an industry that’s still reeling”. 41 percent of consumers say they “rarely” go see movies; 18 percent say they never go at all. Just about the only movie that’s doing well right now is Black Panther: Wakanda Literally Forever Because We Will Keep Cranking These Out Until You Stop Going To See Them.

  Everyone knows basically why this is happening: streaming. Why put on pants (already a non-starter as far as I’m concerned) and go out in public and interact with — shudder — human beings when you can watch a movie from home? Covid just accelerated a trend that had already started, and nobody in entertainment is unaware of the shift. But I think what’s happening is an even more profound change than most people realize. I think it’s time to ask “What is a movie and why do we even bother making them?”

  Well, if every movie made were Top Gun: Maverick quality, Jeff wouldn't be asking that question, would he?

Yet another Jack Reacher yarn, co-written by "Lee and Andrew Child" (pseudonyms for James and Andrew Grant, respectively). Eventually, I've read, Lee will bow out from writing duties, tossing the keys entirely to Andrew. We'll see how that works out. For now, Andrew's name remains the smaller on the book cover.

And, yes, it's formulaic and forgettable. But also fun. Reacher maintains his streak of happening upon a massive nationwide conspiracy, by sheerest coincidence, which he thwarts more-or-less single handedly. This time he's touring a small town in Colorado when he (and nobody else) witnesses a woman being pushed under a bus. The perpetrator scampers off with the victim's purse, with Reacher in pursuit. Violence ensues, ending with a collapsing fire escape.

But Reacher's seen enough to put him on the trail of the baddies; he teams up with a partner, the ex-wife of another victim of the conspiracy; they set off on a road trip to a super-secure Mississippi prison, the true nature of which only becomes apparent near the end. Supplementary plot threads involve a Los Angeles boy living in an abusive foster home, who discovers that his estranged dad is due to be released from that very same prison. And an arsonist-for-hire set on a path to revenge for his dead son, that path leading to … you guessed it.

Note: I got the 2014 edition of this book via Interlibrary Loan from the University of Vermont. (Yes, even in Vermont, their state school allows dissent from standard progressive ideology.) But there's a "revised and updated" 2020 edition out there, so caveat lector.

Alex Epstein makes probably the best case for "drill, baby, drill" when it comes to oil production. More controversially, it's "dig, baby, dig" for coal. And "frack, baby, frack"… well, you get the point.

Heresy! And yet, I found it mostly persuasive. Epstein's primary point is (surprisingly) philosophical, arguing that human flourishing should be the primary standard for judging public policy generally, and energy policy specifically. This is in contrast to the inherent misanthropy of mainstream environmentalism, which holds pristine nature up as the ideal state, something that sinful humanity harms in multiple ways.

Yes, Ayn Rand is cited in the "Acknowledgments" section.

Epstein says: sure, Mother Nature can be (indeed) beautiful. But Mom is also a psycho killer bitch. Back in pre-industrial millennia when we "lived in harmony with nature", she was busy condemning us to short lifespans, filth, famine, disaster, poverty, infant mortality, and disease. Not to mention plenty of deadly violence, fighting over a zero-sum pie. We've changed that game to our benefit with many tools, but the primary one was our harnessing of the concentrated energy of fossil fuels.

Epstein's repeated mantra about fossil fuels: they are "cheap, plentiful, and reliable". Often with an associated point: the associated technology is "scalable". The touted replacements for fossil fuels fall short on one or more of those attributes. To the extent that we're coerced into "going green", we are effectively condemning billions of people to remain in poverty, living (and dying) according to Mother Nature's murderous whims. And by denying ourselves the benefits of fossil fuels, we're miring ourselves in a low-growth (or even degrowth) road-to-serfdom economy.

Epstein is dubious about climate change doomsaying. He would, for example, scoff at our local "Granite Geek", who opened a recent blog post with "Nobody in their right mind can downplay the unfolding disaster of the climate emergency now that global evidence has, unfortunately, become overwhelming." (That article was mainly about a town's inability to buy electric golf carts. But hey, let's insert some gratuitous alarmism.)

In addtion to skepticism, Epstein suggests that adaptation to whatever climate the greenhouse effect causes is the optimal way to go. A scenario with cheap, plentiful, reliable energy will generate riches, which can be used to alleviate whatever the climate throws at us.

I plan to check out his newest book, Fossil Future, when I get the chance. Bryan Caplan loves it, which is the only recommendation I need.