“Couple Make Burglar Clean Up at Gunpoint“

My first response was: Hahahahahahahaha!!! Serves him right.

Then when I read the article I laughed even more:

When police arrived, Bullock complained about being forced to clean the home at gunpoint.

“This man had the nerve to raise sand about us making him clean up the mess he made in my house,” she said. “The police officer laughed at him when he complained and said anybody else would have shot him dead.”

What a baby, complaining about having to clean up the mess he made.

This is what comes from a culture with a government that encourages shirking responsibility. And that’s no laughing matter.

It’s a good thing the victim had a gun too.

I have two book/movie reviews coming out in the Fall issue of Prometheus, the quarterly newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society. The first is on the Transformers movie and novelization, and here is the second:

Sagramanda: A Novel of Near-Future India
By Alan Dean Foster
Pyr/Prometheus Books, 2006, $25.00

Alan Dean Foster’s Sagramanda is a far better novel than his Transformers. While not especially libertarian, it is also far more so than his Transformers. Sagramanda is a science fiction techno-thriller set in the near-future Indian city of the novel’s title. In this, Foster’s novel follows in the footsteps of Ian MacDonald’s River of Gods and MacDonald indeed has a blurb on the back cover in praise of Foster’s novel and remarking on “the growing swell of writers realizing we may be living in the Indian Century.” As far as I can tell Foster does a good job of capturing the spirit and atmosphere of India. (My wife is Indian but she was unable to read the novel before the deadline for this issue.)

As a science fiction novel, Sagramanda is replete with scientific advances and nifty technological innovations, some military but most of a civilian consumer nature — from human-piloted cow removers designed to clear the streets of sacred roadblocks (gently and humanely, of course) to holographic avatar projectors that can superimpose images over their users, programmed with the complete Kama Sutra, for both instructional and entertainment purposes. In near-future India, futuristic and ancient technology co-exist side by side. Hydrogen powered cars are commonplace, as are camels as beasts of burden still. One character wields high-tech handguns loaded with explosive rounds and neurotoxin-filled syringets while another kills with a very traditional, yet for all that still very effective, sword.

As a techno-thriller, the central plot revolves around a revolutionary and potentially very profitable scientific discovery stolen from a powerful multinational corporation. We do not find out the nature of the discovery until the very end of the novel. All we know is that the scientist who stole it hopes to sell it to another multinational corporation for a huge sum and, rightly, fears for his life, for the corporation he stole the discovery from is willing to kill in order to get the information back. One of the main protagonists is that scientist, and he is a likeable and largely honorable fellow, with the glaring exception of his theft. Arguably, the scientist did not have a right to the discovery, seeing as how he was only one among others working under contract [probably including some sort of trade secret/nondisclosure/noncompete agreement] on the project for the corporation over at least a few decades [The discovery itself, being merely information, cannot be property. If I were to write this review now, I would say he was probably guilty merely of breach of contract.]. On the other hand, the multinational corporation he worked for is obviously not a completely honest or just business concern. Other major characters include the scientist’s beautiful yet tough fiancée, an Untouchable; his traditionalist father, who is out to kill him for tarnishing the family name; a enterprising villager who has risen out of poverty as a successful city shopkeeper; a sociopathic, yet perversely scrupulous, company tracker/hitman; a sword-wielding serial killer sacrificing innocent locals and tourists to the goddess Kali; and, finally, a man-eating tiger.

Foster tells a fast paced and entertaining story but, as I noted at the outset, it is not an especially libertarian story. That the main protagonist is a thief [or, rather, a contract breaker] is one reason. Another is that both government and business are shown in both positive and negative lights. Foster sees a legitimate role for government in regulating business, at least to some extent, and the city police are depicted as dutiful and efficient; on the other hand, Foster makes reference to notoriously corrupt Indian politics. It is really only in its portrayal of capitalism, business and entrepreneurship that Sagramanda can be considered to have any libertarian theme at all. Sagramanda is not an overtly political book, however. Small business appears to be shown in a better light than large multinational corporations but, again, we are not given an unambiguous picture of either as primarily good or bad. Popular entertainment and the businesses that provide it are both appreciated and criticized. Capitalism is clearly portrayed as enabling the rise out of poverty for those with the requisite ability, initiative and responsibility. Capitalism has clearly brought great prosperity to growing numbers of Indians and, for all its faults, even its excesses may only be so in the eye of the beholder.

I recommend Sagramanda primarily as an entertaining science fiction techno-thriller with an exotic setting, nifty technological innovations, and interesting characters. Experience the vivacious world of near-future India. Just don’t expect an unambiguous or overt defense of liberty and the free market.

I have two book/movie reviews coming out in the Fall issue of Prometheus, the quarterly newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society. Here is the first:

Transformers: The Movie
DreamWorks SKG, 2007
Directed by Michael Bay
Screenplay by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Anthony Anderson, Jon Voight, Rachael Taylor, John Turturro

Transformers: The Novel
By Alan Dean Foster
Ballantine/Del Rey, 2007, $7.99

This summer saw a blockbuster movie remake of a classic animated television series and movie. Transformers retells the story of the millennia-long conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons — both factions within a race of sentient alien machine-life forms — but this time the story is told in live action and primarily from the human perspective. Die hard fans of the original television series and movie may not like some of the changes made to the characters and storyline, but the movie succeeds on its own merits. The novel by Alan Dean Foster, based on the screen play, however, is not so good.

As the story goes in the movie, the Energon Cube (also known as the Allspark) is the source of all machine life. But it has been lost. Both the Autobots and the Decepticons have come to Earth looking for it. Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons, started the civil war against the Autobots and is bent on universal domination. He is the first to track the Cube to Earth but crash lands in the process and ends up trapped in Arctic ice. The Decepticons and Autobots who follow are in a race to recover the Cube. It is interesting to note the differing methods by which each faction attempts to discover its location. The Autobots make use of the internet, namely E-Bay, while the Decepticons focus their efforts on hacking into the US government’s computer systems for a certain piece of classified information. As it turns out, one of the main human characters, the teenager Sam Witwicky, is unknowingly in possession of an item containing the location of the Cube. His grandfather was an explorer who accidentally discovered Megatron’s frozen body in the Arctic. The item in question is the deceased grandfather’s spectacles, on sale by Sam on E-Bay, with all proceeds going towards his first-car fund. The US government, of course, covered up the discovery of Megatron. The most glaring un-libertarian aspect of the movie is that key technological innovations of the past century are attributed to government efforts at reverse engineering Megatron’s techno-physiology.

There are many libertarian elements in the movie though. A few key government officials and agents, particularly the Bush-like president and a certain Sector Seven secret agent, are portrayed as un-intelligent, cocky and bumbling. For the most part, saving the day is up to an odd collection of civilians. Also of note is the fact that the Autobots all choose commercial vehicles as their alternate forms, whereas the Decepticons only mimic military and police vehicles. One of my favorite moments of the movie was seeing blazoned across the side of the Decepticon imitating a police cruiser the words “To Punish and Enslave” rather than “To Protect and Serve.” Several times throughout the movie Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, reminds his fellows that humans are not to be harmed, indeed, must be protected from the Decepticons, even at the expense of the Autobots’ lives and the mission of retrieving the Cube. In his final battle with Megatron, Prime argues that humans must be left free to choose their own fates. As the credits role, we are treated to an intentionally funny final scene involving Sam’s parents being interviewed and exhibiting a laughably naïve trust in their government not to lie about and cover up anything like alien robots. Surely if the federal government knew of such beings, they would tell the American people! I mean, this is America.

I found Foster’s novel to be far inferior to the movie for a number of reasons. First, it lacks the energy, wit and charm of the movie. Perhaps my disappointment in the book was inevitable given that I read it after watching the movie. However, it is not simply that the fantastic special effects and compelling performances by the movie’s actors were able to breathe more life into the story than mere words could. I think I would have been disappointed in Foster’s novel even if I had read it before watching the movie or never watched the movie at all. Foster doesn’t simply flesh out the screen play as one might expect. He takes many liberties with it, leaving some scenes out, adding others in, changing dialogue, and so forth. None of the changes add much, if anything, of value to the story in comparison with the screen play. Quite the contrary. Foster’s novel is lacking in physical character and scene description. This is perhaps a necessary evil when writing the novelization of a movie prior to the latter’s completion and release. Yet Foster also delves very little into the deeper psychology of the characters that we don’t get to see on the big screen but expect in a novelization. Perhaps worst of all, his novel is more plagued by Hollywood stereotypes than the Hollywood movie itself! Two of the main characters, Sam and his love interest Mikaela, both come off as far weaker, less likeable and admirable, persons than they do in the movie, a testament both to the screen play and to the actors.

From a libertarian perspective, Foster’s novel is also disappointing. It either lacks or significantly mutes all of the aforementioned libertarian elements of the movie. Indeed, the only mention of freedom in the novel appears midway through it and is only a sadly corrupted version of a key phrase uttered by Optimus Prime. In the movie, Prime states that “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” Foster turns this into the New Deal-esque “Freedom from fear and all else is the right of all sentient beings.”

I highly recommend the movie on both aesthetic and political grounds. Save your money though and don’t bother with the novel. For those diehard fans who absolutely must see or read all things Transformers, Foster has also written a prequel novel, titled >Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday, that may add something of value to the backstory of the movie.

Bill: “We don’t need a history lesson.”

But Bill’s remarks clearly evince a need for the lesson Ron Paul was trying to give him. History is important in this issue.

Incidentally, this is Bill being respectful and on his best behavior. If you’ve never watched his spin zone of a show, you should once in a while to see how anti-intellectual and authoritarian this self-proclaimed independent (but actual neocon) is like normally and at his worst.

Here’s the link.

Hat tip to Anthony Watts for bringing it to my attention.

One of my favorite bands. A new video for their 1984 song, “2 Minutes to Midnight.” Check out the Wikipedia article on the song. Among other things it will help explain the title.

I’ll let the cops’ actions and words speak for themselves.