Daily Archives: February 24, 2004

Freeing Human Relationships

This entry was posted in Libertarianism on by

Kevin Drum argues:

PRIVATIZE MARRIAGE?….Libertarians frequently suggest that the state should get out of the marriage business entirely. Just make it a private contractual affair.
This sounds good, but it’s impossible: the state is heavily involved whether we like it or not, and in ways that simply can’t be privatized. Atrios explains.

Atrios doesn’t explain anything at all. He does provide a couple interesting links: 1) 1997 GAO report (PDF) on 1049 federal laws in which marriage is a factor (not a listing of ‘all the rights and benefits of civil marriage’ as Atrios states) and 2) a shorter list from NOLO. He then puts a few of the latter in bold and says they ‘would be difficult or impossible to establish by private contract.’ Some examples:

Claiming the marital communications privilege, which means a court can�t force you to disclose the contents of confidential communications between you and your spouse during your marriage.
Receiving crime victims’ recovery benefits if your spouse is the victim of a crime.
Obtaining domestic violence protection orders.
Obtaining immigration and residency benefits for noncitizen spouse.
Visiting rights in jails and other places where visitors are restricted to immediate family.

In a society where marriage is a private contract issue there is no reason why any the above items would not be easily dealt with. Your valid contract should give you these benefits just as it does today.
No, Kevin, it is not at all impossible. And, cleaning up the current mess will give federal and state legislatures something useful to do for a year or two.

On Blogging

This entry was posted in Blogging on by

James Landrith points out a couple interesting blogging articles.
First, Dan Farber asks What’s up with blogging, and why should you care?:

Many blogging advocates believe that blogs are the most significant democratizing force since the rise of the Internet itself.

Maybe, maybe not. But blogs do open channels of communications and lead to relationships that would otherwise not exist.
Second, Eric Richardson asks Can Corporations and Blogging Co-exist?:

…. .the fundamental problem with corporate blogging. There is a conflict of interest between the open nature of the blog format and the restraints of corporate image and sponsorship.

I don’t know as this is a real conflict on a clearly branded corporate blog. Readers can see the sponsorship information and appropriately filter what they are reading.
If, on the other hand, a business or political entity pays folks to man a blog that appears to be simply the voices of its author(s) when in fact it is a stealth propaganda effort then Richardson’s conflict holds.