Welcome Notes Users: News Miner 52
Getting 'Stacked, historic Palisade, property taxes, guns and homicide, land use, Colorado's astronauts, and more.
Welcome Notes Users
If you came to this Pickaxe Substack via Notes (Substack’s new alternative to Twitter), welcome! Please note that I run two different Substacks, Colorado Pickaxe specifically for Colorado-related issues (many of which have broader relevance), and Self in Society, where I run my podcast and write articles of general interest. My big recent article at SiS is my review of The Individualists by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi.
At both sites, I write about politics and culture from roughly a secular-humanist-libertarian perspective. I post both long-form articles and “roundup”-style collections of notes. I don’t paywall content at either site (although I do welcome paid subscriptions too). You won’t hurt my feelings if you subscribe to one of my Substacks and not the other (jump to Self in Society).
Like many of you, I’ve lamented the decline of Twitter, and I’ve wondered if Notes can replace it, at least for many people.
One initial problem I see is that, while Notes is super-convenient for people who already publish a Substack, it may not draw in people not already in that infosystem. For example, “Tyler Cowen” shows up as having an account, but Cowen said via Twitter that he hasn’t started using notes.
Another problem is that, while it is possible to (in effect) “follow” someone on notes, this is not as easy as just clicking a “follow” button. If you hit “subscribe” that gets you a person’s notes as well as their Substack publications (via email, although you can turn off the emails). You can choose to “see more” from a person or hide their notes, but there isn’t a crisp and clearly visible way to choose who to follow. By contrast, Twitter immediately tells me how many people I follow, how many follow me, and who those people (or accounts) are. Also, there are no “lists” on Notes, so I can’t (yet?) group my must-read users by category.
It’s unclear to me how everything is going to shake out. This morning NPR announced, “NPR’s organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.” (That was reported by CNN’s Geoff Brumfiel, on Twitter.) Is that another leak in the dam?
It could be that AI drives rapid changes in social media. Neal Stephenson’s Fall shows a near-future America that is deeply polarized but in which people can get AI software (or hire real people) to curate their news feeds. It seems like we’re on the cusp of some pretty sophisticated digital assistants.
For now, anyway, I’m still on Twitter at least to read my existing lists, and I’m also trying out Notes. In terms of my own commentary, I’ll send almost all of that through my two Subtacks—so I hope you stay with me!
Historic Palisade
Complete Colorado published my look at a 1903 edition of the Palisade Tribune; “Seeing reflections of today in Palisade’s history.” The paper featured ads for local businesses as well as for snake-oil remedies, news about the town and crime in the area, discussions about “fake news,” and more. I write:
Reading this old print, now digitized and put online, I am struck both by how people have improved society in various ways and how people still suffer many of the same foibles.
Read the entire piece.
Property Taxes
“Property taxes will skyrocket” in Colorado, says the Independence Institute’s Ben Murrey. See the first, second, and third part of his great video series on the matter. Murrey is not a fan of the 2020 voter repeal of the Gallagher Amendment, the shift that Murrey blames for our pending woes. Basically, this kept in place property tax rates even as on-paper property values rose dramatically.
In my view, “we” should totally do away with property taxes. In general, the simpler the tax system, the better. Also, with property taxes, a person can never definitively own a piece of property; a person has to in effect keep paying rent on that property, to the state, forever.
Georgists will say that we should tax only property. That’s silly for many reasons. If the Georgists were right (they aren’t) that land ownership somehow inherently confers an unfair advantage to the holder, then that advantage would show up in increased personal revenues, which could be taxed.
Given that we have a national system of income taxation, at the state level I’d rather move exclusively to a system of (mildly progressive) income taxes, and eliminate not only property but sales taxes. Simplify!
Kopel on Guns
On April 3, the Independence Institute’s Dave Kopel gave a talk at the Centennial Institute about gun policy.
The Centennial Institute is associated with Colorado Christian University, so as part of the introduction a woman prayed to God about “the Second Amendment and the right to defend ourselves.” Odd! And CI’s Jeff Hunt spoke out against the “radical abortion bills” in the legislature.
Kopel does talk about the connection between religion and guns; he even has out a book on the relevance of “the Judeo-Christian Tradition” to self-defense and military action. He begins the CI talk by reviewing some relevant Biblical passages.
Kopel quickly pivots to public safety. He says there can be “good gun-control laws that reduce violent crime and don’t infringe on people’s rights, and there can also be bad laws which often do the opposite.” Kopel says the thrust of Colorado’s Democratic legislature is to reduce gun ownership per se.
Kopel points out that, since 1948, the number of guns per capita in the U.S. has steadily roughly quadrupled. Yet the homicide rate “has gone up and down” over that period, showing at least that there is no tight correlation.
Kopel also points out that people set on committing suicide can switch from a gun to some other method fairly easily, although he’s not sure there’s a total “substitution effect.”
What about the relatively low crime of Western Europe? Even under unrealistic assumptions that tighter gun control laws would have comparably reduced U.S. homicides, Kopel argues, if we look at “the number of Europeans in the twentieth century who were murdered by their governments,” it’s not so clear that disarming the populace, in the long run, is great for public safety. (Last year I interviewed Kopel about his paper on this topic.)
Healthy democracy is not inevitable in the U.S., Kopel notes. “In the past two presidential elections, we had false claims of stolen elections,” he points out. Globally, authoritarianism is on the rise in many places. Generally, Kopel argues, an armed populace is better-able to resist oppressive and murderous tyranny.
The Land-Use Debate
In a column and a first, second, and third follow-up, I have made very clear my position on land-use policy: I think the state should stop cities from imposing rights-violating restrictions on how people may use and develop their residential properties.
In an April 10 article, Natalie Menten discusses some legislative proposals that generally I don’t like; however, she continues not to recognize those aspects of Bill 213 that very clearly better-protect property rights.
The City of Denver has come out against 213, as has the Metro Mayors Caucus.
Meanwhile, over in Arizona, Christina Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute writes:
The Grand Canyon State was the most popular place in America to move to last year, but the state isn’t keeping up with rising demand for homes. In fact, Arizona’s Department of Housing cautions that we’re short 270,000 housing units, and that shortfall increases prices and makes it harder every day for people to find homes. Arizona is facing a housing affordability crisis—and the blame lies largely on the shoulders of local elected officials.
It’s time to get serious about solving the crisis. We can start by eliminating the needless zoning rules that block affordable housing.
These restrictive land-use policies, which cities and municipalities across the state enforce, make it too expensive or time-consuming for developers to construct new housing or perform renovations to accommodate those in need of living space.
Sandefur’s entire article is excellent; I hope lots of Coloradans read it!
Quick Takes
Rehab: On April 10 the Denver Post published “Inside Denver’s 5280 High, one of the country’s few recovery high schools.” Heidi Beedle was not impressed, writing (sarcastically), “It’s cool when the paper of record uncritically reprints a health insurance company’s piece about a charter high school that relies on a high control group (cult) to boost enrollment. 5280 High School worked with Colorado’s Enthusiastic Sobriety groups from their inception.” Beedle wrote a five-part series of articles about this for the Colorado Times-Recorder; see the first piece (which links to the rest).
Independence Institute: This is an update from my last post: The Colorado Times-Recorder says, “[The Institute’s Rob] Natelson told me [Jason Salzman] he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and voted for Trump ‘very reluctantly’ in 2020. He also doesn’t believe Trump won the popular vote in 2020, and he doesn’t support him for the GOP presidential nomination now.”
Space: On April 11 my family got to meet astronauts Jessica Watkins and Kjell Lindgren at an event hosted by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It was super cool to see photos of their trip to the space station on the big Imax screen. Some months ago the museum also hosted a live stream with the astronauts from the space station.