A Stitch in Haste

To review: Whenever the government engages in activities that are not true public goods, those activities will be subject to the same pressures and distortions that infect all political activities: factionalism, rent-seeking, corruption, etc. A private proprietor serves one master: the customer. A public proprietor serves two masters: the customer and the bureaucrat (or politician).

Recently, several different items crossed my aggregator illustrating this basic principle. Each serves as a reminder — a warning — that the usurpation of the private sector by the government creates problems that are best avoided at the outset.

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ITEM: The frog died for your sins —

An Italian museum on Thursday defied Pope Benedict and refused to remove a modern art sculpture portraying a crucified green frog holding a beer mug and an egg that the Vatican had condemned as blasphemous.
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The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope’s name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture. Pahl released parts of the letter, which said the work “wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love”.
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Italy’s culture minister, Sandro Bondi, said museums that receive state funds should not “exalt artworks of desecration, of useless provocation and of nonsense”.

MY TAKE: I preferred the chocolate naked Jesus. In any case, Minister Bondi may very well have a point: why exactly should taxpayer money be used to subsidize artists whom most taxpayers find worthless at best and sacrilegious at worst? Of course, the best answer is one that Minister Bondi probably would not want to hear: There should be no taxpayer funding of any art. And if there weren’t then there would be no issue. Only people who value a crucified, beer-drinking, egg-eating frog would pay to see one. Problem solved. (Various “arts funding” posts here.)

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ITEM: I recently blogged about the possible impropriety of libraries as public goods. What I didn’t mention of course was the question of what influence government ought to have on a taxpayer-funded library’s policies, most notably about possessing certain controversial books:

A Lewiston [Maine] grandmother who defied a judge’s order to return a children’s sex education book to the library will not face jail time after all. JoAn Karkos called the book pornographic.

Late Friday afternoon, Lewiston’s city administrator stepped in saying the city will not file the necessary papers which would have found Karkos in contempt of court.

MY TAKE: If you rent videos from Blockbuster and don’t return them, you can’t be ordered by a judge to return them. You might get sued for the value, but you don’t face contempt of court, and jail, for not returning them. But a public library apparently is entitled to the full protection of the criminal justice system (see also this incident). If nothing else, the question certainly remains whether those same taxpayers who support the public library should also be expected to pay for such prosecutions. I think not. I think obviously not.

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ITEM: Let’s say I invite you into my home, you subsequently offend me and I demand that you leave. If push came to shove, then I could call the police and have you removed. Now instead assume that I invite you into my home, you subsequently offend me and I demand that you not leave:

I attempted to get up to use the restroom, rather urgently, during the 7th inning stretch as God Bless America was beginning. As I attempted to walk down the aisle and exit my section into the tunnel, I was stopped by a police officer. He informed me that I had to wait until the song was over. I responded that I had to use the restroom and that I did not care about God Bless America.

“As soon as the latter came out of my mouth, my right arm was twisted violently behind my back and I was informed that I was being escorted out of the stadium. A second officer then joined in and twisted my left arm, also in an excessively forceful manner, behind my back. I informed them they were violating my First Amendment rights and that I had done nothing wrong, with no response from them.

MY TAKE: The incident at Yankee Stadium (which in a sane society would be strictly private property with strictly private security) involves a great deal of “he said, they said” and competing principles of contract, property and tort law. But this much is self-apparent: Under no circumstances should it be the role of the NYPD to use the threat of government force to confine people against their wishes to placate the bizarre faux patriotism of George Steinbrenner. To evict a trespasser or contract-breacher, perhaps. But never to intimidate people into staying in their seat. (Via Boing Boing.)

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ITEM: Back to lewd Jesus statutes, one in the U.K. has resulted in -a “private prosecution” for obscenity —

Lawyers for Emily Mapfuwa, who comes from from Brentwood in London, will put their arguments to Gateshead Magistrates Court when the case resumes.

They will say that the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art committed an “act of a lewd and a disgusting nature and outraged public decency contrary to Common Law” by displaying a statue of Jesus that shows an erect penis.

They will also claim that visitors who saw it were likely to be “harassed, alarmed, or distressed”.

MY TAKE: I don’t know enough about British law to have a definitive opinion about their obscenity laws or this bizarre notion of a “private prosecution.” What I do know is that Britain, like the rest of Europe, has no First Amendment and is far more amenable to abrogating artistic and property rights in the name of the nebulous, “whatever the malcontents say it is” notion of “public decency.” Mixing taxpayer dollars with private funding only fans the flames of such culture wars. (Via Religion Clause.)

Filed under: Libertarianism, Taxation & Fiscal Policy