Thomas Sowell characterized (at around 1:30) the choice between McCain and Obama as one of disaster vs. catastrophe.

They both have very bad philosophies and I really don’t like either one of them.

And, since I live in Washington State, which will certainly elect electors for Obama, there’s no chance of my vote being decisive, so I’m extremely free to vote (or not) for purely expressive reasons.

So, I’ve cast my absentee ballot for the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr.

But, although I voted for Barr, I do have a preference between the two major-party candidates and (like Sowell) I prefer disaster to catastrophe and hope that McCain manages to pull out an upset.

The main reason is that I’m afraid of one-party executive-legislative rule, and worry about how much damage would be done. The second reason is that there is a very good chance that the next president will nominate two Supreme Court justices, and I expect much better nominees from McCain than from Obama.

McCain is bad, but he might actually veto the most outrageous of congressional mischief and slow down the damage. And, a Democrat congress might deny him his most outrageous policy goals.

But, I realize it’s a longshot. Intrade has McCain’s chances at about 11% at the moment.

So, I expect that people will tend to vote for change they can fantasize about, and will elect Obama. Hopefully, he won’t be as bad as I fear, and any damage can be reversed within a few years.

Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic about it at this point.

By the way, there have been some interesting posts about how libertarians should vote at the Volokh Conspiracy recently.

People who know me will find it funny that I’m announcing that Penn Jillette is cool.

Not only because I’m not personally cool, but because I’m often disdainful of “cool” celebrities and their fans.

These things are true.

But, I think Penn has qualities that rise above all of that and lead me to admire him and want others to share the pleasure he brings me.

Today I spent a while watching his video blog entries in the Penn Says series. Check them out!

It’s hard to describe why I find them so compelling. I think it’s because I share the values that Penn expresses: his intellectual curiosity, his skepticism of religious impulses in all their forms, his passion for science, liberty, and human flourishing…

And, beyond all of that, I admire his easy eloquence at expressing himself.

Also, magic is cool.

This Financial Times article by Sam Jones seems to tell an important part of the financial crisis story (HT webgrrl). As I wrote in a comment at the previous link:

It seems like a major problem was that too many were reliant on the software of an agency to rate securities that were too complex for the rating to be verified independently. That, coupled with corporate
political fear of delivering massive bad news as soon as it was discovered led to catastrophe. It was a giant system with a single point of failure that failed.

It doesn’t seem like a failure of regulation or of deregulation. Just human error, bad judgment, and people who didn’t know how to directly value what they were trading.

I don’t think more upfront regulation would have avoided much of this, though.

Regulators and rigid rules wouldn’t have been any smarter than the interested parties.

It’s always tempting to point fingers of blame. We’re all biased towards finding vindication for our prior convictions in complex crises.

But, it would be pretty amazing if this whole problem could have been averted by better software testing.

While I’m not at all surprised, I’m still pretty upset by the passage of the bailout bill today.

I’m with Arnold Kling on this (please follow the link and read his thoughts and two recent articles about it).

I’m also with Steve Horwitz that this was a problem of bad regulation rather than under-regulation.

I’m trying to find a silver lining, though.

Perhaps we can finally put to rest Naomi Klein’s idiotic Shock Doctrine theory that crises are exploited to foist free-markets on people. The truth is that they’re almost always used to further attack free markets.

I hope this attack isn’t fatal.

Every smart blogger I read, and a lot of economists, are convinced that passing the Paulson/Bernanke bailout, as proposed, would be a big mistake. That’s what I thought.

I tend to favor proposals like Arnold Kling’s to address it by easing some regulatory constraints on banks (and, yes, the federal government would still back up deposits at greater risk than before), rather than having the government buy bad loans and cause an open-ended string of unintended terrible consequences.

Is there much chance that what comes out of Congress will be sensible?

I wonder if McCain and Obama are reconsidering how much they actually want to be the next president…

In case anybody is wondering, I’m against the proposed government actions to address the current financial sector problems.

Like most people I don’t really understand exactly what has happened, which people and factors are to blame, and what will happen if no actions are taken.

But, I’m highly skeptical that the best action is one that’s so expensive, and so much of an expansion of federal involvement in the markets.

I’m sure that at least part of the problem stems from existing regulatory factors that have encouraged poor lending practices, complex and exotic financial instruments, and the lack of concern about assuming excessive risk because the federal government could be expected to absorb the losses to avoid a crisis.

I don’t oppose all regulation. I’m sure that many things can and should be done to increase transparency and make the value of assets easier to determine. And, if the problem is really severe, there’s probably a much more modest action that could go most of the way towards instilling confidence in the system without committing us to so much additional debt, socialization of risk, and direct involvement in the markets.

I hope that cooler heads prevail, and we don’t rush into really bad actions out of fear.

From Will Wilkinson:

Joe Biden is qualified to be president in much the same way McCain is; he is a lifelong asshole and American senator.

Ok, this video is just creepy.

People say I exaggerate when I claim that many channel the same impulse to irrationally devote themselves to a cause “greater than themselves” that would usually be reserved for religion into causes like politics or environmentalism.

But, there it is.

Maybe there’s a demographic that will be inspired by this. But to me, it makes all of the participants look like imbeciles.

I don’t expect much from most of these celebrities. But, somehow, I’m really disappointed in Jason Alexander.

I didn’t watch very much of the Olympics. I caught some of the opening ceremony, and a few of the events, and watched some highlights.

But, I’m reading of people who view the beautiful ceremonies, and the organization, and the gold medal count with fear. They see China’s growth and ability to put on such a spectacular show as a sign that we should be worried.

But, as I recall, the Soviet Union invested a lot in Olympic success; but, that didn’t indicate an underlying strength. In fact, I think it was a desperate attempt to portray more strength and success than the underlying society had.

I’m not afraid of Chinese economic success. I welcome it, and hope that it will lead to more political liberty for the people of China, and more wealth for people there and for all its trading partners.

I find myself in complete agreement with Russell Roberts, responding to this idiotic Frank Rich op-ed, that:

Yes, China is growing quickly. Yes, they have mobilized a lot of resources to win gold medals in gymnastics and diving.

But they are a desperately poor country that represses their people too often, has filthy air, and has a massive problem dealing with an exploding urban population. Their mobilization of resources to win medals in gymnastics and diving is a scandal for such a poor country, not a triumph. Meanwhile, in the United States, we are suffering through a mild something, maybe a recession with unemployment at 5.7%. Our debt problem is minor. The fact that a lot of US debt has been purchased by the Chinese government that will be repaid in dollars that buy a lot less than they used to is tough on the Chinese not us.

And, mostly with this:

Finally, Chinese growth is good for the United States. The economic race is not like the Olympic race. It is not zero-sum. In the Olympics, if
you win the gold medal, I can’t. In economics, both countries can grow together.

I liked this post by Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute, responding to a story that a UK cabinet minister urged a “morale boosting” tax increase on the rich:

The UK Health Minister wants a big tax increase on the rich in order to boost morale and demonstrate that Labour Party officials “understand what it is like to cope with rising food, fuel, and utility bills.” But if punishing Britain’s most productive residents actually is a way to boost morale for the rest of population, why not build a big coliseum and feed them to lions instead? Wouldn’t that be an even bigger “morale booster”?

Unfortunately, I think that there are quite a few people who really do want to see successful people punished. One of the greatest obstacles to economic liberty seems to be that so many people have a sense of justice that prefers that outcomes be equal (or close) over being better for all.

I really hope that the vast majority of us can get past this mistake, but I’m not sure if it’s the sort of belief that’s amenable to reason and change. It might be just too deeply held. I know that I’ve never had much luck talking someone out of the feeling that it’s just wrong for some to prosper much more than others, or that the others lacked the moral right to redistribute the loot.