Author: PieInTheSky

Romanian Christmas Traditions: the Pig

Trigger warning: images of butchered animal of the porcine variety.

Not unlike the US and the Thanksgiving turkey, Romania has the Christmas pig. As tradition goes, get one before Christmas and eat it head to tail over the winter months. I have covered some of uses of such beasts in my Christmas food post. This has origins in the times when meat was not a regular meal for many most of the year, but winter was a time for feasting and , I assume, the cold meant the meat kept better. While it was done for Christmas since time immemorial, I assume the origins are older. Families would spend all year fattening the critter, to get the proper use of it. There is even a saying “to fatten a pig the night before Christmas” referring to jobs left to late and half-assed in the last moments, often applied to students studying for exams or the process of morning links on certain websites. A fatter pig was prized, as it had higher not-bones to bones ration, and the abundant lard had many uses.

The pig is traditionally slaughtered close to Christmas, on the Orthodox Christian feast day of Ignatius of Antioch, also known as Ignatius Theophorus, which is the 20^th of December. That left time to prepare everything, but the meat was fresh enough on the 25^th. Since modern refrigeration exists, and people no longer grow their own pig, the date is now flexible.

The habit is still to avoid so called factory farmed animals for this, and many people have a pig guy in the countryside, who raise some 10 to 20 pigs earmarked for various city families. You generally ask for one in the previous winter/spring, so a piglet can be acquired. As such, the day of the kill depends, as all pigs get their turn. This can be time consuming if done traditionally, with the pig seared on a straw fire in order to scrape the hairs, then washed with hot water. The whole affair usually involves many people and mulled Țuică.

Fat has less uses these days, and a fatter pig is sometimes older and harder to process. My family always got a pig in the 100 to 120 kg range, unlike the 200+ of some. After my father died, we no longer bought a pig, but shared one with my aunt and uncle, getting half for me and my mom. Additional things, like extra liver, are bought from the butchers. My aunt and uncle have two children with families of their own who buy 200+ kilogram pigs each, and so extra meat and fat can be obtained if needed.

That being said, this year’s pig was a bit on the small side, at 90 kg, too small to be honest. But it was what the pig guy gave us. Pigs like this, bought whole with bones and guts and everything, cost about 12 Lei (USD 3) per kilogram this year in Romania. So about USD 125 for the half. The pig was split in quarters for easier handling, and here we have a quarter of small pig

We got it home for the final processing, and these are the images I want to show. Keep in mind this is not how the typical Romanian butcher processes a pig, but how my family does it for the purpose of Christmas. The Day of the Pig day is ended with Pomana Porcului, which translates as the pig’s funeral feast. The Romanian word pomana can refer to either charity in general, or a funeral feast when extra food is made and given to the poor to honor the deceased.

The meat is processed in a few categories.

Some of the skin is taken off and eaten as it is. Not much suet from this pig, but enough it is kept for a bit of dough. Some of the fat is left skin on and processed as slăninuţă (similar to Italian lardo), which is eaten as a cold cut. It is either packed in salt for a while to cure, or smoked, depending on the preference.

The grilling category has the ribs and the loins. For roasting, the large muscle meat from the ham. Most of the rest and various scraps go towards ground meat for sausage.

The spine and various bones with remaining meat on them are used for stock or soups.

The head, tail and feet are saved up to make headcheese and meat in aspic.

The guts are cleaned for sausage.

Parts of the fat are melted and used to make jumari and cooking lard. Jumari are a traditional local winter food. How you make them is basically make small cubs of the fat, usually with some scraps of meat remaining. You put them in a pot on the fire, and after about 15 minutes when the fat begins melting, add a bit of water.

Allow some of the fat to render, and the remaining pieces to get nice and brown, about an hour or so, and you are done. Salt em, eat a few hot and put them in a jar that’s about it. Mmmmm pig fat deep fried in pig fat.

It is fatty, piggy, savory, salty and an acquired taste, in the end. This was originally a preservation method, and it is also done with larger pieces of actual meat, covered in lard – hence the English word larder. This was a staple back in the day, although it is rare and sort of a specialty product these days. Confit de canard, which in some places is a fancy dish, was also meat preserved in lard. They can be eaten as a snack or used when cooking cabbage or beans, and should keep for several months, especially in a cold pantry. Lard is also kept separately for cooking.

Now on to the meal of the day, it is simple. People are usually tired at the end of the day and do not want to cook something complicated. A few pieces of fatty meat and liver are kept from the pig, fried in a bit of lard, eaten with lots of garlic and polenta. Țuică and wine make an appearance, and usually cheese is on the table because cheese is always on the table in Romania, in this case a very fresh cow’s cheese bought from the same farm as the pig. The meat has just a bit of salt an pepper added, because the point is to enjoy the fresh fatty taste.

December 20, 2019
Liberty and the invention of the Internet

Hello and welcome to Pie Ponders, in which Pie – that is me for those who destroyed too many neurons with alcohol– raises questions on various topics of great importance. As usual, this is not a fully refined post, but just some thoughts and ideas I throw to the commentariat, in the hopes of better arguments through crowdsourcing. On to it, then!

There is a major issue with most human’s views of the world. This was very well described by the Bastiat phrase “what is seen and what is unseen”. This has to do a lot with opportunity cost and a lot with much else. In general, it is easy to see things on the surface. It is harder to go a bit deeper, a few layers down. I would say it is easy to see the obvious, but the obvious is not always that clear. If you go down a road, you may not think enough of the road not taken. Except when the traffic is really bad and you wish you took another route, but that is not the point.

What brings these musings, you ask? Just a couple of stray thoughts… A popular thing among our friends on the left (yes, meaningless designation left wing, but generally sufficiently fit for purpose) is to claim that well why do libertarians complain of big government on the internet, if big government invented the internet. Or the smartphone. Or, in the end, whatever. Like most things these people say, this is stupid on multiple levels and I shall briefly go into it.

Let’s start with the easier levels. Let us assume the premise, which is wrong and dumb, but let’s assume it. The government “invented” the internet. First, the government did not do shit, it took tax money and financed some scientist. Second, just because the government financed some things that work, does not mean most things governments do also work. Third, most of the R&D by government that is praised by the various lefties was done as part of military & defense research, one of the few areas where conservatives and non-anarchist libertarians see a clear role for the state. And probably one of the last areas they would seek cuts from.

Let’s go to the next level. Did the government really make the internet? No. Anyone with half a rational though on the issue realizes this. This excludes all left wing and some of the right. What is the internet? Spoiler alert: it is not a network or a communications protocol. The communications protocol is just one of many possible. The internet is every single website and piece of content created. This was not done by state agents. Tax financed researchers developed various networks and communications protocols. And most were unused and did not account to anything. The internet, like soilent green, is people.

Should we go to another level? Okay, okay, the internet is many things, but without that government funded research it would be a nonstarter. Ehm no. Was there no R&D before massive government involvement? Yes there was, most of the industrial revolution, early electricity and its applications, lights telephone, radio, airplanes and much more. At some point, the state increased its involvement, due to mostly war, and manage to crowd out some of the private sector. Would things discovered by tax funded R&D not exist without it? Off course they would. Those people innovating when working for state research facilities would have done so anyway. A lot less in taxes would mean a lot more private investments. Would private innovations stop suddenly in 1950? Why would things not be invented anymore? There was plenty of research in networking besides ARPANET.

Another stupid meme is one of showing a smartphone with components originating in government research like touchscreen and such. This is equally irrelevant. Sooner or later, those things would be invented outside government and there is no reason to think otherwise. Many things through history were invented independently, by various people in various places. If something that is a generally useful technology was not invented in a certain research facility in a certain year, are we to believe it would never again be invented?

To go back a bit, making a chip or a touch screen is not really what makes the modern smartphone. Making these things cost effective and widely available is. Making a phone for 1 million, why even government can do that. Soviet Russia had itself some discoveries in government labs – after all everything was government, but those ended up nothing or bad products.

So no, the government did not create the internet, the internet uses some things researched under a government program. Those things would have been researched anyway – maybe in slightly different forms, maybe worse, maybe better. But the internet is not a network or a communications protocol. The smartphone would be just fine without government, because researching a touchscreen is not what makes a smartphone and there is zero reason to believe it would not have been discovered anyway.

One can say war accelerated innovation, but one can also say government secrecy due to war slowed it down some. Also the massive cost and destruction of war, the lives – and potential inventors – lost in it, all these things surely put a damper on invention. In a more libertarian world maybe we would not have the exact same tech as today in all respects, but we would have something comparable. I think even better.

But my main curiosity is how do people end up thinking like this? Can anyone, looking at the history of private innovation, at independent discovery, at general human endeavor, think well this particular thing would not have been innovated without government? I do not see the logic of it. Are people so incapable of thinking that without government involved in X, something would be different but not inexistent? The US government financed some early airplanes. If the government financed ones would have been successful a bit earlier than the Wright brothers, would we say we would have no airplanes without government? Can anyone think that if Newton would not have formulated his theorems, no one would have until this day?

These are the things that make me believe there is no real way to get common ground among people. If they truly believe that without government touchscreens would not exist. And this, off course, extends to any area of government intervention, healthcare, education and, probably everything these days. And if they think this, it means they do not understand that for everything government did that they see, there are unseen opportunity costs. While you can never truly know how things would have been if some factor or other was different, you can speculate. And you need to. Otherwise there is no critical judgement possible to things done. We don’t know what would have happened if the US pulled out of Afghanistan after 6 months, let’s say. But that does not mean one can never criticize the never-ending war.

December 5, 2019
The Enlightenment in the 21st Century

I have noticed on the interwebz a lot of back and forth talk of the Enlightenment. What was it, was it good, was it bad and how does it affect us. Well my fine fellows, Pie is here, yet again, to give the knowledge to the masses. After carefully studying the debate on the merits of the Enlightenment for about 10 minutes or so, I am going to drop a few ideas here.

Wait! Is that really sufficient research on such a complex topic? Yes, but more importantly I noticed a lot of stuff about it on the internet and felt this site also needs more posts on the Enlightenment, otherwise we will have a post gap on our hands. We need more scholarly, profoundly intellectual pieces around here anyways. What is the Enlightenment? What does it mean? What does the future hold?

Where shall we begin? Well at the beginning if you will.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. Or the big bang happened followed by billions of years or random particles doing random particle shit and out of this whole mess, plus some soup along the way, here we all are, dicking around on the internet. I may have skipped a bit over the boring parts.

Let there be light. But it was not light all the time. Sometime it was night. And a few measly stars and the moon don’t cut it, especially inside or when it is cloudy or rainy or snowy or murky or generally unpleasant. Hupersons (let’s not be sexist y’all) have always had strange relationship with the dark. It was dangerous and mysterious. It caused fear and awe and inspiration and fascination. And while the dark was not necessarily bad, humans fought against in since they mastered fire. The dark was worse in winter, and often accompanied by the cold, so warmth was needed as much as light. But with fire, both were more or less achieved.

Fire was the first push against the dark. The bonfire and the hearth; the torch and the primitive lamp, made of stone or bone or shell, likely using resins or animal fats as fuel. As human civilization advanced, oil lamps and candles and rushligths – if you were poor and basic- appeared. Followed by gas lamps of various shapes and forms and, finally, after one hundred thousand years of struggle or more, glorious electricity.

Electricity was a game changer. It made night into day, it extended the time and scope of human activity, it changed biorhythms and habits and it, in a way, remade civilization. After electricity, we could say we conquered the darkness. We may have conquered it a bit too much, if you count light pollution and the fact that some people searched the darkness. You want, off course, what you are missing, and the world and its dangers were tamed in many ways.

Fire and electricity brought, besides light, other comforts against the cruel world, heat and cold, depending on what you want, chiefly among them. This was later called by historians The Enlightenment, the mass bringing of light and comfort into human civilization. Because what else would the enlightenment be? It has light right there in the name, so don’t you @ me, as the olds say on twitter these days, I am sure the kids have moved on to whatever bullshit goes on tik tok.

I mention comfort because, despite the fight against the dark and the cold, more or less successful, for the majority of human history people lived in dwellings that, unless the season was just right, were either cold or hot or damp, and most definitely dark. Because, while fire and lamps and candles and stoves worked some, they worked in a very limited fashion, creating an oasis of light and warmth in the cold and dark, and people huddled inside it.

But the darkness is fighting back. In the form of the modern green movement. Like the puritans of yesteryear, only weirder, they do not like what the Enlightenment brought. Demons and witches ahem CO2 is lurking in the miracles of the age, which are nothing but a Trojan horse for a magnum destruction of the entire world. Repent, ye heathens, the end is nigh.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like the environment. I even live in it. I like mountains and forests and lakes and rivers as such. I am not pro pollution, although CO2 as pollution is sort of debatable. What I do not like is the quasi-religious aspect of the movement and, in reference to the text I have written, the miserabilist aspects. The green movement does not seem to be “let’s see what we can do to best preserve the world and keep our comfort, given the various trade-offs”. Nonono my friends, this is not what the Khmer Vert (h/t K. Niemitz) are all about. Besides being more or less a front for socialism, with little if at all to do with saving the world, they are so damn anti-inspirational. What happened to dreaming of a world where we can have all the things we want? Their solutions are mostly towards poverty. Turn off the lights! Turn down the heat! No AC! Go back to living in to cold, to hot, to damp dark dwellings. No meat. Shower every other day. No flying. I am going to have to go with “no” on this one. If fact Hell No. The devil Marx take these people!

I do not want to live in a cold, damp, dark home. I don’t want to live in a tiny home. I want to eat food I like and drink good wine and get the occasional vacation in. I want to have the freedom to decide my life, what I do, where I work, keep my money and decide how I spend it. I am open to preserve the environment, because it is obvious I, like many people, do not want to live on a devastated planet. Not that the planet is currently devastated or anywhere near it, at least not in the civilized world. So I will take a movement serious as long as they preserve this things.

We have the most technologically advanced civilization in human history. We should be able to find a solution to lowering CO2 if so we wish. Hint: nuclear. Now I may be excessively optimistic on nuclear. But I do not think so. I think there are plenty of promising techs. Some say it is expensive or dangerous. Dangerous I doubt it, not truly, not if you are a bit careful. For storing the waste there are solutions. Although a lot of the issues would be solved by molten salt reactors. I am not even talking fusion or such. Personally, I think it is silly to burn coal for power in the 21^st century. Maybe it is the techno optimist in me. I think nuclear could give sufficient cheap power, enough to replace fossil fuel heating in most places with electrical. And nuclear is a much more elegant solution than anything else.

But nuclear is dismissed out of hand. This makes it very hard for me to take the greenies seriously in any fashion. Even if it was dangerous now, the view should be let’s see if we can get it safe. It is not, which makes me think that CO2 is not the real reason. The real reason is socialism and misery and cold and dark and stupid shit like wind mills and solar panels.

We put a goddamn man on the goddamn moon, to be all cliché about it. I would say have a damn moonshot on nuclear. But that is just me. Enlightenment now. Fiat lux!

November 12, 2019
Against the Common Good

People arguing love to throw around the expression “common sense” but due to the many differences of opinion we can safely say “There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.” Most people tend to think that their opinion is common sense – because how could it not be. It is a mostly meaningless term that sounds good superficially. We can very well throw in some meaningless quotes about if from a quick internet search like Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen, which is probably not an actual quotation anyway, but what would be the point?

Just as meaningless and ill-defined as common sense, and equally chucked about in debate, is the notion of common good, which, again, superficially sounds nice. I mean what kind of antisocial monster is against the common good, the good of all? Well me apparently. Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot on the other hand were all for the common good…

Never forget the amount of totalitarianism, war, genocide, eugenics and other unpleasant bits of business that were committed in the name of “The Common Good” ^TM, because, being so unclear but pleasant sounding, it was always used by the ruthless to manipulate the masses into action. Just because your idea of common good seems, to you at least, shiny and pink and cool and innocent and well-meaning, it does not mean it is. And you should not try to impose your particular opinion as common, especially not at the point of a gun.

One cannot objectively and universally define the common good, even vaguely so. As such, it is a term that superficially sounds good, while its meaning can be manipulated in a probably myriad of ways in the interest of whoever wants a bit of the old power. I find few concepts as pernicious and dangerous as the common good, due to the very fact that is sound “right” to so many, and a cursory look at history will find many atrocities justified by it. This is especially true when actions are undertaken now for some common good which will arrive at an unspecified date in the future. Such a vague future achievement is often called upon to excuse use of force today.

Each human being is subjective. Each has a subjective view of his own good and of the good of society. There is quite rarely a wide consensus on this. How could there be? Some believe you can extrapolate a common good from millions of different subjective views on good, but then again some are often assholes.

Some of you may stop and wonder at this moment. Pie, you will say, you support ideas of objective morality, although that is also subjective, just like good. I do, but I see a difference between the two. My objective morality, what should be the basis of the law, is just a subset of the entire moral/ethics conundrum and is based on what seems to me a clear fact – that human beings are individual, independent beings. When these beings interact, conflict arises and it needs a way to be resolved, and the actual rules of conflict resolution should be as objective as possible. Because they are not about one person, they are about all people. And for me, something along the lines of the NAP are as good as it gets. This is why I am a libertarian.

The concept of common good is different. It has more complex moral judgements inside it that go beyond conflict resolution. It has specific goal of outcomes of multiple aspects of life. It imagines a certain world in which people behave a certain way, have access to a certain lifestyle, and do certain things. But when you look at it a little deeper, though you may be inclined not to as it takes time and there’s something rather good on TV – shows are getting crazy good lately, there is no clear notion of what common good might be, and even if you knew, it would be hard to predict if some policy or other would advance this „good”.

The so-called arrogance of the so-called elites, one of the things populist ideologies often exploit, is that they know better what is good for everybody, which is, obviously, horseshit. Maybe some don’t know what is good for them, whatever this may mean, but it’s their right to decide. One of the most insulting things politicians say of people who do not vote for them is that they vote against own interests, as if, for example, when you are not rich, it is always your interest to get hand-outs from others. Who knows what is best? I sure as hell don’t, probably not for me and certainly not for others, and I like to think I am above average in intelligence and information. How does a bureaucrat – who is most likely not above average intelligence – know better? Because, make no mistake, this is what the common good most often gets down to, government imposed things. Furthermore how can someone be considered incapable of choosing what is good for themselves, but at the same time perfectly capable of selecting the best politician -which also advocates for some definition of good or other?

This problem with “good” has been amply demonstrated through history, form heretics persecuted by religion, dissidents by politics; commitment or lobotomy in case of many psychological problems. Women were sterilized for the good of themselves or society by moralizing judges in the United States and elsewhere, women and children separated from families and stuck in orphanages and workhouses. People seem to think society evolved and this can no longer happen; or that if they are in charge, this would not happen; and I am supposed to take their word for it, or something. To be honest, I’d rather not take the chance. Remember, just because you want the best doesn’t mean you know what that is. Empathy is good to a point, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You may want to help but make things worse.

From a liberty standpoint, being a serf to the common good, to society, rather than to an individual, is still being a serf. That is what collectivist and people talking about the common good refuse to understand about libertarianism. Self-ownership is, for all intents and purposes, a much more objective measure than common good. Because self-ownership has clear boundaries and a clear definition- own your body as long as you respect the fact that others own theirs.

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” Robert Frost

October 22, 2019
A Tour of Pie’s Place Part Deux: New and Old in Bucharest

Yes, as the title says this is part 2 of the series. Yes, there was a part 1, not that anyone remembers… I blame excessive alcohol consumption round these parts. No, reading part 1 is not required, the content is independent, being mostly a picture thing. Originally it was just one post, but it seemed a bit big, so I decided to split it. So let’s get to it.

Bucharest can be a city of contrasts, like every other large city to be fair. New and old, rich and poor, pretty and ugly – mostly ugly, all mingle. The jumble can be more pronounced than in other places as the development was a bit haphazard, although I am not one who likes uniformity and dreams of streets where all buildings are almost identical. I like a bit of mishmash, or eclectic as I like to say.

Bucharest is split in 6 sectors, some better than others. I live in Sector 1, aka the best sector. It has most of the older and nicer areas of the city, has by far the most parks and green spaces and fewest brutalist apartment buildings. Plus the most tax money per capita in the budget, which meant a lot was stolen as it was easy to make the sector look better than the others and still have plenty left over for the old Swiss bank account.

You can see a good part of the history of the city if you know where to look. But it is not always easy, it was so thoroughly changed during the glorious years of communism that not much remain. You do not get the same sense of age like in other old cities, like Rome or Paris. Of course, being from the 1500s it is overall a lot younger. Just not that young.

Back in the day, the day being 1900, some people called it Little Paris, and some locals still do. I mean… whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night I guess. This, of course, was not due necessarily to significant resemblance between the cities, although we have an Arc de Triumph and late 19^th century architecture was French inspired. It had more to do with the local economically successful crowd being great fans of French culture. This started after the revolution of 1848, when a bunch went to Paris into exile, and continued, to the point that French was the default language in polite society. Romanian was for the hoi polloi. Romania considered itself a “francophone country”. While the local higher education was burgeoning, a lot of people still went abroad for education, Germany for technical stuff and France for the liberal arts. But most of the old Bucharest is gone or rundown and swallowed by the ugly new.

Many of the Paris educated gentry often came back after a few years having conveniently forgot the Romanian language. The satirists of the day called it going to Paris an ox and returning a cow. Some of the uneducated tried to emulate the French speakers, but ended up altering Romanian words to what they though sounded French – a phrase was coined for this in Romanian – furculision – based on the Romanian word for table fork – furculița, frenchiefied.

This was somewhat paralleled in post-communist Romania by people who left to work – often menial jobs – abroad and returned with similar language amnesia. As many early leavers went to Italy – it was easier for them there, as Romanians did not have work permits for EU countries, but Italians can be a bit… flexible in the application of the law and there was plenty of work to be found “under the table”, cash money no taxes. The language was easy to pick up for Romanians, who before that only spoke bad Romanian. So after a few years of back breaking work in old Italy, people came back with some cash – by local standards – and a degree of snobbishness which led to similar forgetfulness of Romanian words, to the point in which the Italian phrase “come si dice” entered Romanian vernacular as irony and/or sarcasm.

The turning the words French bit was transformed in turning words English, the new lingua franca if you will. The most famous example of this was a former president who tried to say in English that the Dacians were a branch of the Thracians. In order to pluralize the Romanian words for Dacian, dac and Thracian, trac he simply added an s to the end and said “the dacs come from the tracs”, which came out as “the ducks come from the trucks” and much hilarity ensued, mainly due to the fact that he was the worst thing that could happen to post-communist Romania and people had little else to do than laugh.

Bucharest was rapidly industrialized and populated with the worker necessary to build to socialist multi-laterally developed utopia during communism. The building took the form of hideous brutalist architecture, in endless apartment blocks, crowded, badly insulated, and overall quite unpleasant. There are boulevards where there is a wall of buildings without any gaps between, probably made to channel crowds in controllable fashion. These were the houses of the factory workers. The communist apparatchiks, of course, did not live there. They took over the villas of the previously wealthy or middle class. It is hard work building equality, they deserved a better living standard then the masses. Some animals more equal than others, you see.

The previous rich and middle class were unceremoniously kicked out of their homes, along with many of the poor. Because, besides the party bigwig homes, there needed to be space for the shitty apartment buildings. The proles needed abodes as well. And to do that you needed to tear down the old buildings. Quite indiscriminately.

The neighborhood I live in is what I like to call liminal, because it is on the border between two different areas and also I like using the word liminal. Liminal… It does not even matter if I am using it correctly, so don’t bother commenting. If you were to build a triangle around my building, on one side is the beginning of an old wealthy area. This was one of the wealthiest since before communism, where the well off lived in nice and quite large houses on leafy streets. A lot of these were preserved to this day.

On the second side of the triangle is a front of communist apartment blocks, rising like a huge wall. Since communism, they had some polystyrene insulation added and a usually bad paint job.

On the third there are the old style, not too fancy houses that the pre-communist lower middle class lived in. These are generally single story or at most a couple of levels. Some still have the look of rural Romanian houses. These were the ones that were to be torn down should the communist dream have continued.

Now I have the chance to see what modern society alters. The expensive old villas and the communist blocks will not change any time soon, although every piece of land in those neighborhoods is being built with deluxe apartments.

What is changing is the area of the old not-so-fancy houses that escaped communist building schemes. They are, one by one, bit by bit, torn down and rebuilt. I assume it would also be accurate to say funeral by funeral, as many inhabitants are elderly who do not want to sell the house, or tear it down to rebuild, as they lived their entire life in it. So, mostly after they die, the heirs do something about it. Sell or rebuild or whatever.

The result of the modern building spurt is, to be diplomatic about it, quite eclectic. A lot of houses and building were built in Bucharest in the last 10-15 years, for people who became wealthy enough to escape the communist apartments. The plots of land were generally small and everyone built whatever they felt like, so there is no coherent model. This is good and bad, depending on whether you like uniformity.

Haphazard building led to a great contrast. Old houses, some up kept some not, with a random new house or small apartment building, stuck in the tiny spaces. The future … it remains to be seen. Or not, depending on the breaks. Also for some reason there seem to be a lot of magnolias in this city… And on that note

October 1, 2019
A thought on competition and the public sector

Hello and welcome back to Pie ponders in which Pie tries to understand things. This is a different type of Pie ponders, in which I try to better understand what drives certain arguments with the help of crowdsourcing – that is where you bunch come in. You need to use crowdsourcing and big data and machine learning these days to stay relevant you know, basic bitch reasoning don’t cut it no more. So to proceed…

Today I focus on the debate about private X and public – aka state managed tax funded through the lens of competition. As a libertarian I think you know where I stand. Off course, I have my biases, and I try to listen to the opposite opinion. In this case I am, as in most others, at a loss to understand the fetish some have for the concept of public and their opposition to competition. I leave it to the commenters to point out where my thoughts and arguments may be wrong.

To generalize, we want X, and doing it requires people, materials, management, in general cash, mullah, dough. So the debate boils down to who uses these things better and I struggle to understand how some believe it is the government.

So what are the arguments? One would be against profit, which supposedly takes away money from the actual task at hand, but this is, in itself, irrelevant. If X is accomplished better and cheaper overall while some money goes to profit than when it does not, profit is not in any way a waste. It is a cost of efficiency. Profit is, in fact, often a valuable signal. It tells a company whether they are doing what they should. In commie Romania, many factories were not driven by profit and had no competition to speak of, and yet, shockingly, were extremely inefficient, had stocks of products that no one wanted and shortages of products in demand, all of poor quality, and overall no way of knowing if the way they produce is good. In general if a company changes something and profit improves, they get the info that the change was good.

Beyond the first argument, some people seem to have the ridiculous notion that for certain X, no one should make a profit, because that is somehow immoral. Why this is, I could never understand. Beyond money bad. There is the argument that profit incentivizes people to maximize profit instead of maximizing X, but in a market situation that is not distorted by government, most times the two things go hand in hand. And furthermore, how can one know they are maximizing X?

In the end, all people want profit. Or better said increased satisfaction. But in the public healthcare systems of Europe, doctors who at dinner parties will claim “making a profit from healthcare is immoral” – happened to me several times – and a month later strike for higher salaries. But that is not profit somehow.

A second observation of mine is humans overall perform better when there is competition. This should be a straightforward fact, but somehow isn’t. This has two factors. One, simply because humans can easily get complacent if there is not something to keep them on their toes. Second, if you have different concepts, ideas, methods to organize an activity, there really is no better way to see which works best except letting them compete. Due to the many complexities of the world, second and third order effects, unknown unknowns, you cannot outright say which way is better, which is what bureaucrats and governments claim to do.

X, people will say, it is too important to be left to competition. Or competition does not work for X. Why competition would work for something else and not for X is not always clearly explained. But what is the alternative? The dream of a group of “experts” figuring out the best way, which does not work nor has it ever worked?

The fact about X – healthcare, education, whatever – being too important is also not a valid idea. The thing about competition is that it either works or it doesn’t. It is not it works for product A but not for product B. Because the product is not the key here, the human is. The importance of X does not in any way change the fact that humans do not function efficiently without competition. You need buildings, people, and supplies. As such these are subject to the same economic laws as coffee or clothing.

I find it strange how people believe the human perceived importance of something changes the underlying issues. If a plane is crashing, physics cares not about how important it is to the passengers to recover. If competition is necessary to make TVs, it is necessary for healthcare.

The way I see it is this: the things that are key is not the field or product, but humans and human nature. Going from cars to medicine does not change the fact that humans are involved, and the same constraints of humanity apply in the same fashion. You still need labor, allocation of capital, decision making. There is still self-interest, dishonesty, ego, the whole package. These do not go away because healthcare is important.

There are many bad arguments against competition. One is someone loses. Sometimes sure, but the loser is not taken out back and shot. Yes from competing ideas, if one is better, the worse one is abandoned, that is a good thing. Unless every single thing needs to be implemented so someone does not feel bad. Another is working together is better than against each other. Which, like most things meant for children, idiots and leftists, sounds superficially good. Until you realize that cooperation has limits and it will hit the invariable issue of being unable to automatically see what works best from multiple solutions.

Competition is a race to the bottom is also popular, although what this is based on escapes me. Certainly not of the high quality of government monopoly services or the how bureaucrats strive to make things easier on the public. Not when privatizing certain services or introducing competition usually is accompanied by significant improvements in efficiency. In competitive private sectors, plenty of high quality products are made, unlike government owned businesses thorough history. So what is this race to the bottom?

We cannot gamble with our children’s future, I heard. But what is the alternative? Sticking them all in a failing system? Or the alternative is the magic committee of experts solving all problems?

In the end, decisions have to be made, and the general idea for some seems it is better to be made by bureaucrats than by people receiving a given service. While I do understand how this could be an issue for emergency services – cannot choose hospitals while you are unconscious, there are multiple ways to solve it in a private system.

There have been a myriad of studies for private vs public education, healthcare and such. And the concept that public works better is simply not supported, no matter how much proponents claim. This will not be solved anytime soon given the massive bias in all studies made, by either side, the massive amount of information existing and missing, and the impossibility of controlled experiments. I will not do a literature review on this, I am trying to approach this by basic reason. Some strict empiricists will dismiss such arguments, but I do not see strict empiricism working in this case.

A further issue is that, when you look at it, in general, bureaucrats are not always the most competent of people. Certainly, the best and brightest seldom dream of becoming civil servants. Nor are they more motivated, more caring or in general better people, and outside leftist delusions you have no reason to believe they would be. Most countries on this planet have plenty of literature and art mocking bureaucrats. So it is quite a known phenomenon.

But I want to give an example of what I mean. The significant innovation and cost reduction introduced in the field of space exploration. SpaceX – whatever you may think of E.M. – is quite the success. This was clear when European government audits a while back informed the European Space Agency that it will be in no way competitive in the future if it does not radically change its MO. And the ESA and Ariane and their other contractors reacted by starting to research reusable rockets, using in part SpaceX innovations, by contracting with more companies and startup, by pushing innovation. This raises the question: why did they not really do this before competition forced it? Why I think this is relevant? Because, if you want to see a field which does attract the best and brightest, this is it. These are people who are at the top of their field, the best education, and furthermore many of them do work they enjoy and are passionate about. And still, without some competition, they were complacent for years and the innovation rate quite slowed down. If in this field this happened, why expect differently for others?

August 27, 2019
Is there no Malt in Scotland?

I may have mentioned round this parts that I took an ill-advised, financially irresponsible trip to the lands of the savage Scots in order to sample the local culture. Whilst hiking around the beautiful islands, a strange old man told me there might be some places in the area in which local sages take a plain old grain and, through alchemy known only to themselves, use it to produce the water of life and that weary travelers may have the fortune of sampling thereof. Well, said I, this sounds like high culture to me. I must take the chance to sample. And, fine reader, sample I did. This is that story.

The trip started auspiciously when I forgot my jacket on the airplane to Glasgow. An astute reader will notice, Scotland has a bit of the old rain going for them, and such a garment was indispensable. Also it cost a chunk of change and I was pissed for forgetting it. The flight attendant had moved it earlier to make room for something else, and I got off the plane in a rush and forgot it. Being in said rush, I did not have proper time to shop, and such made a bad purchase which later sucked. It was the sort of jacket that stops the rain about as efficiently as toilet paper. 34 pounds down the drain. Off course, this being a plane of Romanians, the jacket did not eventually make its way to the lost and found. Proper lost, it was.

But let us not dwell on the negatives. A cheap jacket and a pint of bitter in the rail station pub later, I got on the train to Ardrossan, on the ferry to Brodick – which was late, and on the bus to Lochranza, which kindly waited for the damn ferry. I was sort of tired, because I had to wake up at 4 30 AM and I rarely sleep well the night before a travel, for reasons mysterious to me, so I developed quite the headache and was afraid I was not going to enjoy the day, but after I got off the bus, had a coffee and walked into Isle of Arran distillery, my headache was gone and I was feeling well. I had the combo tour for 20 pounds – distillery (base price 10) and tutored whiskey tasting (base price 15). The distillery tour was not much. It is small and done fast.

Now let’s to the short version of whiskey making, for those of you of the ignorant persuasion: barley is malted (aka soaked in water and spread on a warehouse floor to germinate, turning it 4 times a day for 4 to 6 days, which causes enzymes to convert starch to sugar), dried (with or without flavor enhancing smoke), soaked in hot water which extracts the sugars (obtaining wort).

Yeast is added to the wort, which ferments (becoming basically beer, just like how brandy is distilled wine, whisky is distilled beer, although no hops ) to become wash. The wash is distilled once to become low wine (24% ish). That is distilled a second time to become spirit. The first part of the spirit is not used (called head it contains lots of volatile components among which methanol of the blindness causing fame) and the last part is not used (called faints, the contain heavier, less volatile, compounds and oils).

The spirit is placed in barrels (mostly ex bourbon of sherry, but can be rum or port or Madeira or rye or whatever) which can be first, second, or third fill, and aged for whatever but no less than 3 years and 3 days, by law. Not like you Americans and your bourbon, no patience or sense of time. After it may or may not be finished for 3 to 8 months in different wood – wine for example like Amarone or Sassicaia or Lafite. Bourbon barrels are most common due to their abundance, because of US law that says barrels can only be used once to make bourbon (a law made at the lobby of coopers unions to keep barrel making jobs, but which may be changed soon due to save the trees and shit, which may affect the scotch industry). Single malt is rarely, if ever, aged in new wood. There is also a technique called in shaved, toasted and re-charred casks, but there is no time to get into detail in this post. Now that you are all enlightened, moving on…

The tasting was basically choose 4 of any of the 25 bottles on offer. It is well worth the 15 quid. I had a sip of the 10 during the tour, and it is not much to talk about. During the tasting I had the basic 18 year old (decent dram and goes down way to easy), a distillery exclusive 11 yo cask strength in first fill bourbon casks (my favorite at the tasting and I strongly considered buying a bottle for 60) and two nice but way out of my budget (think in the neighborhood of 200 pounds, which is quite a way from my hood) 21 yo (distillery exclusive) and 22 yo (a special bottling for a music festival they partner with), matured in sherry butts and finished in Solera sherry casks, which, while they had great, complex flavors and were smooth as hell for the more than 50% abv, had a bit too much sherry in them for my taste (and I do like sherry casks in moderation). The guide was in the category old Scotsman with 50 years’ experience in the distillery business, one of the two main categories of guides I encountered.

After the tasting I had dinner and a beer (or maybe two) in the only pub in the quite small village, slept in a sort of summer school center that offers B&B to tourists. On this particular Sunday night I was the only human there, and I do not remember the last time I had such a quiet night, with literally no human made noise at all. Early next morning I caught the ferry to Claonaig.

The ferry itself ran smoothly, luckily for me, because I did not know what to expect on the other side. I though another town or village. It was, in fact, nothing. Not a shack. The ferry unloaded cars on the beach and I caught the bus – about 5 minutes after getting off. I don’t know if the bus would have waited or what I could have done if I did not catch it, besides hitch a ride. My original plan was take a taxi form the town, but there was no town, just a single track road and the bus of which I was the only passenger. Thus I arrived to the Kennacraig ferry terminal and got on the ferry to Port Ellen. On the ferry I got myself a Scottish breakfast with a cold beer and a mediocre coffee, and then enjoyed the ride, as the sea was calm and the sun was shining and the scenery was nice. The scenery was too nice, a large island which I began to suspect was Jura. But Jura should not have been there. Until I found out the ferry was, in fact, going to Port Askaig. Which was, apparently, announced on the ferry website, which I did not check. I was not the only passenger thus puzzled, but one of the few who was not inconvenienced. In fact, I was sort of pleased because otherwise I would not have had the time to see the north of the Island. My lodging in Port Charlotte was equally distant from Port Ellen and Port Askaig.

I arrived in Port Askaig with a thought of wait, that’s it? Smaller than I expected. Grabbed the bus, stopped at Finlaggan with a thought of wait, that’s it?, had some scotch at the Ballygrant Inn, grabbed the bus, went to Portnahaven and back again, and finally I was settled in Port Charlotte. During the day I tried to secure taxis for the next day and failed miserably. I had not expected to need to book more than a day in advance. Oh well. What can you do? Well… walk… mostly. And walk I did.

The next day I got a ride to where the high road branched off towards Kilchoman. After that I started walking. It was a beautiful day, sunny and not to warm. I had left early and the visit was at 11, so I had time. I could have hitchhiked – apparently the people there stop for you – but it felt to awkward for me to stick my thumb out. Embarrassing if you will. So I walked. I walked passed the distillery to the Machir Bay beach which I wanted to see, I walked back and some 8 or 9 miles later, there I was, sore of foot, but ready for the ultimate tour (35 pounds, two hours). Also, with the help of the distillery folk I secured a cab for the way back.

Kilchoman is the smallest and only family owned distillery on Islay, and they are going for the farmhouse distillery vibe. The guide for this one was in the category young woman seasonal worker on summer break from University. The tour was probably the most complete one I had. The distillery has a 100% islay expression, for which they do everything. Growing the barley on the island and malting it on site is unique, as all other distilleries get their malt from a big industrial malting plant in Port Ellen. They all use, I believe, concerto barley. As I said, the tour was quite complete, we tasted the malt straight of the matling floor, the wort – basically sweet barley water or barley tea, we tasted the wash (or low beer as it is called) in a couple of stages and we tasted the new make spirit. We saw the warehouse and ended in the visitor center trying 4 nice malts. The best was the distillery exclusive cask strength but at 114 pounds I decided to pass. Interesting was the sauternes cask finished expression, which really had a strong hit of desert wine in the aftertaste… interesting but not my thing.

Afterwards I grabbed the cab to Bruichladdich , where I did a warehouse tasting (25 pounds) of 3 very nice whiskeys directly form the barrel, a Bruichladdich unpeated 27 year old, a Port Charlotte peated at 22 yo, and an heavy peated Octomore which I do not remember the age of. The guide was in the young woman class. All great whiskeys, none that can be bought in stores as their bottlings are rarely single cask.

I ended the night in Port Ellen at the Trout Fly guest house, which I recommend, after I manage to get a ride when some people noticed me walking on the side of the road in what was for Islay the middle of nowhere and kindly picked me up. Also much better breakfast than on the ferry.

The three days of lovely weather ended, and on Wednesday morning it started raining sideways and raining and raining. After breakfast at the guest house I went to rent a bike and was lucky to also borrow a rain jacket. The rain was intermittent then for the rest of the day.

I biked to Lagavoulin, where I had the warehouse tasting at 10 30 (30 pounds). We were guided by a class combination, a young woman and the distillery famous Ian McArthur in his 50+ year in the biz. In this warehouse tasting we tried a 7 yo at 60.2% year old in second fill bourbon – young and very pale – a 9 year old at 58.1, a 21 year old bourbon cask at 51.4 and a 22 year old sherry cask at 51.8 plus a taste of the Feis Ille 2019 bottling at 53.8 %. They were all good and were all different, the young ones on the rough side, the old ones mellowed with age, with the peat always underlying things. When the woman left for a while, Ian gave us all an additional and much heavier pour of the 22 year old – he told us the young ones don’t know how to treat people properly. Which made things even better. Overall a nice tasting.

After this I biked through the rain to Ardbeg where I had scheduled the Ardbig tour (50 quid). It was a decent tour – although I found it overpriced. The guide was in the same class as Kilchoman, they even looked somewhat similar, although being Islay girls they could have been related. It is a small island. During the tour we got to taste the low beer – more sour than Kilchoman – but not the new make spirit. We ended in the warehouse where we tried 3 different barrels. Ardbeg does not really do single cask bottling, and all their bottles are a combination of many casks, so this is probably the only chance to taste single casks. But the taste of them is not that relevant to the final bottling.

At Ardbeg’s cafe I got to sample the local specialty haggis, neeps and tatties, with a dram of Ardbeg perpetuum on the side.

And thus my all to short time on Islay came to an end. Thursday morning I took the 7 AM ferry back to the mainland and the bus to Campeltown, a quite nice ride, not too long at 1 hour. And the reason for Campbeltown was Springbank.

I started with the tour of the distillery – old Scottish guy with 50+ years’ experience – and it was a good one. We did not get to taste the beer (booo) but got a sip of new make spirit, saw the malting floor (they do all their malting, pictured on top of the post) and their kilning.

What is also nice is they have displayed at each step information. They distill 3 spirits here – Hazelburn (unpeated malt dried for 30 hours just hot air) Springbank (slightly peated, 6 hours peat smoke) and Longrow (peated, up to 48 hour peat smoke). The first is triple distilled, the second and third twice like most scotch. The wort is done with 4 waters, at 63.5, 72, 82, 82 degrees Celsius, although only the first two are used for distilling, while the third and fourth are used as the first water for the next batch. The middle cut, used for whiskey, is 79% to 63% for Hazelburn, 76% to 60% for Springbank an d 69% to 58% for Longrow.

Springbank distillery is partnered with one of the older and more prestigious independent bottlers in Scotland, Cadenheads. They store their barrels and bottle the spirits. And work closely on other issues. As such, after the tour at Springbank one can get the Cadenheads warehouse tasting (35 pounds). And one definitely should. You will have the chance of tasting various spirits you may not find otherwise.

This was given to us by a different class of guide, young guy, but he was proper enthusiastic and the pour was generous and we got to sample 8 different malts. And all interesting. After, you have a chance to buy bottles directly from the casks, something they offer as a reward for going out of your way to Campbeltown. What did I have? Let us see…

A Tomatin 11 year old; a Tormore barreled in 1988; a Benrines of 1995 – which I bought as it strikes a balance of unusual and decently priced at 75, a distillery which mostly makes whiskey for blends and rarely comes up with single malts; a quite interesting blended whiskey which was sat in the cask for 39 years – 140 pounds a bottle was a lot for a blend, but not for something 39 years old – and which no one knew what whiskey it contained, although the guess was some combo of Macallan Highland Park, Glernrothes or Tomatin, as it came from Highland Distilleries company, so it should have been from something they owned in the 70s. We followed with a Paul john from India, aged 5 years in India and 2 in Campbeltown – the climate makes quite the difference, but the whiskey was unimpressive. A Coolie Irish whiskey, 12 year old although put in the cask in 1992, because apparently for Irish whisky the aging, by Irish law, only counts when the barrel is in Ireland, and when the barrel was moved to Scotland it stopped counting; And to finish with some peat, Ardmore 5 (almost 6) very nice at 45 pounds and I got some, and an 11 year old unnamed due to various legal reasons, although our host told us the distillery name rhymes with agavoulin.

And thus ended the trip to Campbeltown, which I am sorry I cannot make more often.

The next morning a grabbed a ferry back to Androssan, followed by the train, which I preferred to 4 and a half hours on the bus. The ferry is spacious, it has a bar and restaurant, toilets, room to walk and all that. It was a beautiful morning and I left with a great wish to return, which did not happen for many of the trips I took. The rain started again to come down heavy just as I got on the Glasgow bus to the airport. Cheers.

August 9, 2019
Libertarianism and personal morality

“Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” – Walter Sobchack

Libertarians often have to repeat, ad nauseam, that libertarianism is, at its core, a political philosophy, not necessarily a personal behavior one, although, to be fair, the two spheres may touch. A philosophy of liberty and responsibility can influence wide areas of one’s life. But libertarianism primarily deals with government, individual rights and individual interactions that can infringe the rights of others. It has not, as a primary concern, individual activities that are mutually voluntary, though not necessarily beneficial. The cliché position on this is “Just because I think drugs or prostitution should be legal, does not mean I approve of drugs and prostitution” (I do approve though).

I have said before in one of my older articles, which everyone probably forgot already, that I see two domains of human life: the inner sphere is the personal – what you think is right when it mostly affects you and no other unless they agree to it, or at least you do not use aggression on others. This is subjective, as the only judge is you. Eating meat or not on a Friday, drinking, drugs, BDSM, reading SugarFree post and much more come in this sphere. The second sphere, the outer one, the one where humans interact and where your actions affect others. This second domain is covered by libertarianism as a political philosophy.

As we frequently debate these philosophical concepts, I wanted to do a different post, on personal moral beliefs that are not directly to do with libertarian politics. What does Pie believe in, even if he may not fully live up to those beliefs A sort of listicle, if you will.

While these are the things I believe, it does not mean others do, nor do I expect others to live up to these beliefs. The things I talk about are things I think people and primarily yours truly should strive for. I do not necessarily judge people for some of these and I do judge them for others. That is the whole thing about libertarianism, you can do whatever and I can judge you for it. As is my right. You do you. This is the opposite of there ought to be a law. There ought to be no law. Just because you are not free unless you are free to be an asshole, this does not mean you should be an asshole. I would argue the opposite. That is, in a way, the point. It is no great virtue to do something good forced.

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”― Robert Frost

To start with something controversial, I do not believe withholding the truth or outright lying in itself is immoral. It depends on the context. I do not have to tell everyone at all times the truth. This may change with close family or friends, where I can see a sort of an implicit contract to be honest – even if no one really benefits from your wife knowing about that one drunk night with her sister.

To start with the previous conservative statement, more broadly the vices, my main view is I have no inherent problem with them, as long as they are voluntary and manageable to the person. This includes drinking, drugs, gambling – although I would put heroin and crack on the bad list. I do not think sex work is bad, although people on both sides of the deal need to be careful. I accept questions like “would you like your daughter to be a sex worker” only from people whose greatest wish is for their daughters to scrub toilets in a strip mall for a living.

Moving on from vice to more general things of life, the universe and everything. I think you should strive to do no harm, in general. To be, as a rule, nice and polite, as long as it is warranted and not longer. Try going about your day without bothering or inconveniencing others– you know don’t park over two spots, put the gym weights back in their place, clean up after yourself. Don’t be an asshole, if you will.

Help people who need and deserve it. This may include friends, family, neighbors, charity, or simply give your seat to the elderly on public transport and other small acts.

In life you should contribute and pull your own weight. Make enough money doing things other find useful. Try to leave the world better off. Build more than not destroy. Try to leave for the next generation a little more than you received. You know plant a tree though you may not get to rest under its shade or some such hippie nonsense.

Fuck whoever agrees to it while single – age of consent may vary. If you commit to a person, be faithful, as long as you are not in an open relationship. Your kink may vary, but it’s all good when consensual.

If you don’t want a family, you should save enough to cover your needs in your old age. If you do, take care of them properly. Raise your children right. And by this I do not mean strict, or severe nor do I mean lax. Find a balance. And as long as your parents raised you right, take care of them in their old age.

In general, try keep a measure of control of yourself. Avoid alcoholism, severe drug or gambling addictions and so on. Educate yourself. Take some risk on occasion. Take care of your body, at least to a point. Basically don’t be obese and lift weights. Running is for socialists, libertarians deadlift. Also practice hygiene and body odor control.

Be a good friend to your good friends. Keep your word and pay your debts.

All this in general of course. I could go on, but leave the rest as an exercise to the readers. I realize people have bad luck, make bad choices, take risks and lose. This does not necessarily make them bad people or immoral or anything. I have my failings and do not live to all these principles (When I look back upon my life… It’s always with a sense of shame). But I think these things are to strive for. One may fail but one must have a goal, something to aim at.

So how about you fellow glibs? What are your principles beyond the boundaries of “fuck off, slaver.”

July 16, 2019
Practical immigration policies

There have been several articles on immigration in the past, mostly from a theoretical perspective of liberty and immigration. I decided to write about what I would see as a more practical approach to immigration. I will restate that I am not a fully open borders libertarian, that as long as sovereign states exist – and they do for now – they need to be able to exercise some measure of control over the borders of their jurisdiction. As such, as I see the need for a policy. The merit of open/closed borders is not a subject for this post. This is a post about controlled immigration and mostly about compromises in policy. Furthermore, this is not a “ in libertopia these things would be solved by private property” argument. While this argument has its merits, sadly we do not live in libertopia and there is a distinct lack of cocaine vending machines in my vicinity.

Border castle

First and main point: if you are going to have a government, the basic function of that government is preservation of rights, laws and in general the King’s Peace. From this I conclude that the absolute lowest constraint to immigration policy should be the ability of the government to ensure this, for the both the existing and the new residents. This starts with preventing violent criminals and sever contagious diseases, and moves on from there.

The second point is that for any location, the infrastructure at a given point is of a given size and can accommodate a given number of people. Exceeding this number can be workable, if uncomfortable. Greatly exceeding it can get unworkable. Off course, immigrants often mean economic growth and development, but this takes time – building houses, roads, hospitals and so on. If the population of Austin Texas would all move tomorrow to Houston Texas, there would be no room. If the population gradually arrives over years, expansion can happen.

Some open borders people say that it worked for the US in certain times in the past, but did it really? Or was the press at the time bemoaning immigrants living in overcrowded, insalubrious diseased slums? The same thing happened during the industrial revolution: when a lot of people moved from the country to the city, the lived in cramped, crowded, rather unsanitary conditions. The same thing happens now in certain immigrant areas of Europe. The left waive this away as due to the evil of capitalism, but in general more homes do not appear out of thin air and the “empty homes of the rich” are not that many. Even the left prescription of the government building housing takes time.

A form of current open borders policy is the EU, but this was not done right away. It was accomplished by sort of applying the rules: a country was allowed in when it was considered it was ready and would not excessively disrupt others. Romania made it in 2007 with some extra restrictions until 2012. Even now Romania is not a full member of the Schengen area. So this is another form of controlled access, in the end.

We must also keep in mind, not being libertopia, there are political constraints. If a lot of immigrants come in and start creating issues – camping in parks, squatting on private land, creating piles of trash, solving this by having police or military go in force is both dangerous as a precedent for the society and untenable in certain situations, due to the uproar it causes among the bleeding hearted ones. Now, I cannot prescribe this or that number of immigrants for this or that country, but these are things that cannot be ignored completely.

In my view, existing residents do have some claims that new comers do not: they contributed to the building of the respective country, they – or their ancestors – have invested labor and capital, build houses, planted trees and all that. They have significant skin in the game that a new comer does not have right away, and as such newcomers must be mindful of these and respect the existing society, and policy must reflect that by not promoting mindless “multiculturalism.”

It is too often that people move to a place and want to keep their existing culture and behavior intact, without adapting to the new place. This cannot always work. This is significantly more important for people moving from a low prosperity country to a high prosperity one. Just like the great strings of bad luck which derailed socialist policies, many of these people do not make a link between the difference in culture and the difference in prosperity. They want to move to a new place and keep doing what wrecked the first one. This is nonsensical. Furthermore, there are some social mores to be respected. Romanians, to take a simple example, moving to Switzerland cannot keep their habit of eating sunflower seeds and spitting husks on the pavement, without expecting upset Swiss. All these must be kept in mind for a workable policy.

I cannot see value in visas like US H1B, which tie the immigrant to a certain company or job. This can welcome abuse and it is not good for either the immigrant or the natives – from a labor market perspective. I feel my preferred policy in the current world would be something vaguely similar to the New Zealand points system. Give people points for good characteristics, deduct for bad. There would be deal breakers – criminal records for serious crime, dangerous diseases, participation in serious gangs, criminal or terrorist organization, published intent to harm the new country. There would be points received for experience in skilled work, spotless records, speaking the language, education, having assets or capital to bring to the new country. Points would be deducted for misdemeanors, not speaking the language, not having any education or skills to speak of. In the end decide how many points are needed to get in.

After the immigration there would be a number of years of probation – be on your best behavior, prove you have attempted to integrate in the new culture. Any crime in this period means deportation. Not learning the language to a tolerable level at the end of 5 years should be frowned upon severely. In this period you may need to occasionally offer proof of employment and of residence in proper conditions, not 100 people registered in the same apartment. You may be required to have some sort of liability insurance in case you cause damage. After 5 years you could become a full resident, eventually with a path to citizenship.

Given the current climate on immigration, another thorny issue arises for immigration policy, politically and maybe practically. That is very delicate for libertarians as it is rather counter the ideology: can this policy be purely individual or will some collectivism inevitably sneak in. When you see a certain group commit a significantly disproportionate amount of bad things, can you submit members of that group to additional scrutiny? Or to rephrase, in certain cases people group other people in categories out of convenience. And people notice patterns. Should these patterns be used? I have to admit that I do have some reticence about certain immigration in Europe, but would not support blanked bans on whole categories. But can using patterns for some extra scrutiny be warranted? I am not sure I know myself. As a Romanian I have been on both ends of such conversations.

Of course, this are general guidelines I have yet to think of the actual points involved and how to add them up. But it is what I think can be a start for some countries. Opinions or are we all in agreement?

June 25, 2019
Let’s drink to the EU elections

The EU parliamentary elections came and went – not that you people noticed – and the results in Romania had some significance in that the ruling Party lost massively – they are the worst, as the kids say these days. This was compounded by their leader being sentenced to jail for three and a half years on corruption charges on the very next day after the elections, with possibly more to come. This of course led to a wave of the optimistic delusionals saying Romania “turned a corner” and is heading in “the right direction”, although the actions of the government show little cause for such optimism. This is my review of Oriel HopSaSam Ţuiple’up.

I was thinking of doing a more proper write-up on the EU elections, but I am not sure I can be bothered, so I will give a short summary of the Romanian situation. I voted myself in these ones, I am not even sure why, and chose based on potential amusement. I also voted yes to both questions of the referendum. One of them said no amnesty or pardons for corruption charges, and the second said the government would no longer be allowed to change criminal justice laws by executive order.

The results are fully in and one of the traditional “center right”-ish parties (what I call the conniving little bitch wing party), the “National Liberal Party,” PNL – European liberal, winning most votes, followed by a virtual tie for second between the traditional left ruling “Social Democratic Party,” PSD (a mob wing party in general) and the fresh new left-right-center anti-corruption upstarts, Save Romanian Union, USR – a hipster wing party with a slight whiff of something more sinister. You never know when the same old cabal is behind the latest young hip party. The urban youth voted quite strongly for the latter. Three more parties hit the required 5% threshold to get in. The Democratic Union of Magyars UDMR, PRO Romania party – an offshoot of PSD led by former Prime Minister Ponta and Popular Movement Party, PMP, led by former president Traian Basescu, one of the most able, for better and worse, politicians in post commie Romania. The results are mostly meaningless, as the PSD still hold the central government and most local governments, and the EU elections did not change shit, except give a bit of satisfaction the opposition. It may at least be a sign of things to come. A few more weasel parties did not make the cut. As in the last few elections, there was great scandal as polling stations for Romanians living abroad were insufficient and the voting procedure deliberately slow, as such many could not vote, as the polling stations closed despite people who had waited 8 hours in line still not getting in. The ruling party got about 3% of the vote abroad.

Now on to the beer, it is the first one made with a truly local twist – it is aged in former barrels of ţuică – the local fruit brandy for those not in the know. When I bought it, I doubted it would by my cup of, well… beer. It is a triple and I am not a fan of Belgian styles. It has 9.5 alcohol, which is more than I like. It is collaboration between Romanian microbrewery Oriel and a Belgian brewery HopSaSam. According to the owners “The name Oriel comes from the archangel of light, wisdom, illumination and sun.” They produce small batches of a wide variety of Belgian style beers. They are among the few which actually list their equipment on their site. For whoever may be curious, here they be.

The beer was aged in 3 types of barrels which held 3 types of ţuică – the traditional plum, apple and pear, made of wood used for such things in Romania – oak, cherry and mulberry. The beer costs about $3.5 American for a 333 ml bottle. For my taste in ţuică, I am all about the plum. It has the strongest and most distinctive taste (except quince that is, but quince is rare). This is the same reason many people do not like plum ţuică. So I was slightly disappointed that it was not 100% plum ţuică mulberry barrels. Honestly, you can feel the stuff in the beer, but not that much. It looks, smells and tastes mostly like a triple, which is expected and which I don’t like, too sweet and alcoholic. The plum brandy is there, but more as an afterthought, a gimmick.

While not my thing, they are among the first if not the first in Romania to try to barrel age beer, so it is overall a good thing. I also tried their quadruple aged in Belize rum casks. Same verdict, I just don’t like the beer style, so no barrel aging will change that. Smell is subdued, taste is bold, sweetish, alcohol, dark malts, some rum, some vanilla, some wood . Long finish with some bitterness, but overall sweet taste dominates.

I tried to clean my palate with an IPA from a new brewer called White Collar, but it was quite disappointing, albeit more palatable to me. For a beer called Zero Taxe I expected more, but thems be the breaks. Not the best beer day for Pie.

June 11, 2019