People have been prosecuted for burning money in Kenya. They arrive as tourists and commune with giraffes and elephants, then when it's time to go back home, they find that the Kenyan money that they got in exchange for money from their own country cannot be exchanged for other currencies: it's illegal. (But my information may possibly be many years out of date.) Some are angry if they find this out for the first time on the day they board their return flight. So they burn their Kenyan currency. And then get arrested.
"INot only do you have to deal with the energy regs; to raise your voice in opposition, you must face the Kafkaesque rhetorical burden of arguing that gas isn’t “money.”"
Gas isn't money but speech is money... Money is speech... Citizens United... The Kafka is coming from the billionaires....
Citizens United does not say that money is speech. Instead, restricting the spending of money on speech is a restriction on speech, just as if the NYT or CNN was prohibited from spending money. Taxing media companies is not regarded as a restriction on speech, even though the money being taxed could also be spent on speech.
In the UK, we have some very significant instances of discrimination laws incorrectly identifying discrimination. Thousands of mostly female shop workers recently won compensation because they were paid ~50c per hour less than warehouse workers. Some shop workers had already moved to the warehouse to get the higher wages. Nearly half the warehouse workers were actually women. Some of those who remained in the shop didn't want to move, they preferred the shop, even though it paid less, and they even said this in court.
Those who moved to the warehouse and endured a less favourable working environment / anti-social hours / longer commute thought they were getting a wage premium. That premium has effectively been taken from them.
This case was only 3,500 claimants, but there are now 100,000+ claims waiting to go through the courts with the same arguments.
Discrimination laws hurt the people they are supposed to help. They create a litigation risk for the employer. The only people who can't sue you for discrimination if fired are young white guys.
The one caveat is how the government actually operates itself. One example is discrimination and goes beyond Biden’s appointment to SCOTUS, in his own words, would be a black woman. How many Republican presidents have hired 50% non-Republicans to their cabinet? Same with Democrats. Are we positive that each cabinet member is the most competent for that position? Not necessarily.
For federal appointees generally, my understanding is that Republicans hire a 50/50 mix of Republicans/Democrats simply because there isn't a large enough qualified labor pool of Republicans to hire.
Two things: 1) There's a famous anecdote about Pablo Escobar burning a pile of US dollars to warm his daughter while they were escaping on the mountains. 2) As voters aren't always rational, also business's owners aren't always rational too; my cousin once suffered discrimination in a restaurant while she was in Utah, the waitress told her that they didn't serve brown people there. My cousin is a US citizen, but second generation of Hispanic immigrants, half Cuban half Salvadoran.
She filed a legal complaint against the restaurant, she's also a lawyer but in Florida, the restaurant just washed their hands blaming on the waitress, but although it's obvious that a waitress doesn't have such discretionary powers in a restaurant that isn't her own, she had no way of proving otherwise.
In any case, discrimination continues to affect the lives of some people, even if it is merely anecdotal evidence, I was surprised that you talk as if it is total nonsense that there are some laws against discrimination to some degree.
There's a huge irony in the government making it illegal to burn money. Imagine you do a bunch of work for me and I pay you by writing down IOUs on pieces of paper and then the next day you set fire to those pieces of paper. My reaction would be “gosh, thank you for obliterating my debt!”. Burning government currency feels intuitively different but it’s really truly not. Burning money is, in an pretty much literal sense, equivalent to just giving it to the government.
(For those not yet convinced -- which in my experience is most people -- imagine two worlds: (a) You give the government a pile of money, which they spend. (b) You burn a pile of money, the government prints a new pile for themselves, and then spends it. What's the difference between (a) and (b)? There's none! Other than the printing costs, which are a tiny fraction of the face value of the bills.)
'until today — you probably never before even heard the question, “What’s the point of a law against burning money?”'
Actually I'd be more surprised if people hadn't ever heard that question, or at least among the sort that ask questions generally. I can think of a dozen or so times I've heard that conversation over my own life even as far as the 1980s. You have an novel take on it from my perspective so that was refreshing but generally the argument I've always heard, and it's reasonable, is more along the lines physically currency isn't yours, it's the governments. You just own the value that currency represents as it's effectively a bearer bond. Destroying it amounts to destruction of government property which in the aggregate has a appreciable cost especially given even if burned, but not unrecognizable so, you can exchange it for free for another one. It's not that physically currency is magical, it's just that it's uncontrolled government property hence they are simply putting the public on notice to not intentionally damage it.
People have been prosecuted for burning money in Kenya. They arrive as tourists and commune with giraffes and elephants, then when it's time to go back home, they find that the Kenyan money that they got in exchange for money from their own country cannot be exchanged for other currencies: it's illegal. (But my information may possibly be many years out of date.) Some are angry if they find this out for the first time on the day they board their return flight. So they burn their Kenyan currency. And then get arrested.
"INot only do you have to deal with the energy regs; to raise your voice in opposition, you must face the Kafkaesque rhetorical burden of arguing that gas isn’t “money.”"
Gas isn't money but speech is money... Money is speech... Citizens United... The Kafka is coming from the billionaires....
Citizens United does not say that money is speech. Instead, restricting the spending of money on speech is a restriction on speech, just as if the NYT or CNN was prohibited from spending money. Taxing media companies is not regarded as a restriction on speech, even though the money being taxed could also be spent on speech.
In the UK, we have some very significant instances of discrimination laws incorrectly identifying discrimination. Thousands of mostly female shop workers recently won compensation because they were paid ~50c per hour less than warehouse workers. Some shop workers had already moved to the warehouse to get the higher wages. Nearly half the warehouse workers were actually women. Some of those who remained in the shop didn't want to move, they preferred the shop, even though it paid less, and they even said this in court.
Those who moved to the warehouse and endured a less favourable working environment / anti-social hours / longer commute thought they were getting a wage premium. That premium has effectively been taken from them.
This case was only 3,500 claimants, but there are now 100,000+ claims waiting to go through the courts with the same arguments.
Deep dive here: https://x.com/brucegreig/status/1834267249403666796
Discrimination laws hurt the people they are supposed to help. They create a litigation risk for the employer. The only people who can't sue you for discrimination if fired are young white guys.
Young white gay guys or straight guys? With or without facial piercings and/or neon green hair?
The one caveat is how the government actually operates itself. One example is discrimination and goes beyond Biden’s appointment to SCOTUS, in his own words, would be a black woman. How many Republican presidents have hired 50% non-Republicans to their cabinet? Same with Democrats. Are we positive that each cabinet member is the most competent for that position? Not necessarily.
Oh, interesting. Thanks.
For federal appointees generally, my understanding is that Republicans hire a 50/50 mix of Republicans/Democrats simply because there isn't a large enough qualified labor pool of Republicans to hire.
Two things: 1) There's a famous anecdote about Pablo Escobar burning a pile of US dollars to warm his daughter while they were escaping on the mountains. 2) As voters aren't always rational, also business's owners aren't always rational too; my cousin once suffered discrimination in a restaurant while she was in Utah, the waitress told her that they didn't serve brown people there. My cousin is a US citizen, but second generation of Hispanic immigrants, half Cuban half Salvadoran.
She filed a legal complaint against the restaurant, she's also a lawyer but in Florida, the restaurant just washed their hands blaming on the waitress, but although it's obvious that a waitress doesn't have such discretionary powers in a restaurant that isn't her own, she had no way of proving otherwise.
In any case, discrimination continues to affect the lives of some people, even if it is merely anecdotal evidence, I was surprised that you talk as if it is total nonsense that there are some laws against discrimination to some degree.
Tangentially related is footnote 3 of this post: https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity#BURN
There's a huge irony in the government making it illegal to burn money. Imagine you do a bunch of work for me and I pay you by writing down IOUs on pieces of paper and then the next day you set fire to those pieces of paper. My reaction would be “gosh, thank you for obliterating my debt!”. Burning government currency feels intuitively different but it’s really truly not. Burning money is, in an pretty much literal sense, equivalent to just giving it to the government.
(For those not yet convinced -- which in my experience is most people -- imagine two worlds: (a) You give the government a pile of money, which they spend. (b) You burn a pile of money, the government prints a new pile for themselves, and then spends it. What's the difference between (a) and (b)? There's none! Other than the printing costs, which are a tiny fraction of the face value of the bills.)
'until today — you probably never before even heard the question, “What’s the point of a law against burning money?”'
Actually I'd be more surprised if people hadn't ever heard that question, or at least among the sort that ask questions generally. I can think of a dozen or so times I've heard that conversation over my own life even as far as the 1980s. You have an novel take on it from my perspective so that was refreshing but generally the argument I've always heard, and it's reasonable, is more along the lines physically currency isn't yours, it's the governments. You just own the value that currency represents as it's effectively a bearer bond. Destroying it amounts to destruction of government property which in the aggregate has a appreciable cost especially given even if burned, but not unrecognizable so, you can exchange it for free for another one. It's not that physically currency is magical, it's just that it's uncontrolled government property hence they are simply putting the public on notice to not intentionally damage it.