prior probability

In a previous Throwback Thursday I featured my 2005 paper “Deconstructing Darwin.” Today, I want to feature my 2008 paper on “A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Impasse over Puerto Rico’s Status,” which is available here via the magic of SSRN. In my 2008 paper, I model the century-old debate over the Island’s future political status as a truel: a three-person, sequential, random-order standoff among Puerto Rico’s three major political parties, the PDP, the PIP, and the PNP, in which no single player is able to eliminate the other two players. To learn more about truels, check out this Riddle of the Week via Popular Mechanics.

Here are the opening two paragraphs of my paper on “The Law of Self-Ownership” (footnotes omitted):

“When undercover police officers arrested Ana Isabel Castro-Garcia (pictured below, left) and Brenda Stephanie Mata (middle) in Laredo, Texas for working from their homes in violation of local lockdown orders, Jose Baeza Jr., an investigator with the Laredo Police Department said, without any sense of irony or shame, ‘These two ladies were not even licensed beauticians. There’s a health issue at hand.’ Similarly, when Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther (also pictured below, right), who presumably did have a license, was sentenced to seven days in jail and ordered to pay a $7,000 fine for refusing to shut down her beauty salon in violation of local shelter-in-place orders, Dallas Civil District Judge Eric Moyé told her, again with no sense of irony or shame, ‘The rule of law governs us. People cannot take it upon themselves to determine what they will and will not do.’

“The irony here is that it was the judge in the Luther case and the police in the Castro-Garcia and Mata cases who violated the most universal and sacred of our laws–the law of self-ownership–and who should arguably be thrown in jail for their abuses of power. Specifically, the property rights of all three women were violated by these shameless Texas authorities. In summary, although State governments do have the general police power to enact measures to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their residents, this paper will explain why such governments must comply with the Takings Clause whenever their police-power enactments significantly interfere with a person’s self-ownership rights.”

I nominate all the State and local government officials who took people’s labor rights during the pandemic without the payment of just compensation. In a nutshell, my thesis is that labor is property and that lockdown orders thus constitute a taking of property under the Takings Clause. I sketch my simple theory of Lockean lockdown takings in my most recent paper “The Law of Self-Ownership,” which is available here via SSRN. Below the fold is the table of contents of my paper:

That is the title of my most recent work-in-progress, available here via SSRN. Among other things, my paper surveys the greatest and largest-scale “taking” in the history of the United States: the taking of labor of non-essential workers during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. In brief, many State and local governments across the U.S. enacted emergency lockdown orders that deprived “non-essential” workers of their self-ownership rights by preventing them from making a living. Yet, aside from ad hoc stimulus checks and the payment of fraud-ridden and inefficient unemployment benefits, not a single one of these workers received any “just compensation” as required by the Takings Clause of the Constitution. Meanwhile, billionaires avoid paying their fair share of taxes …

On this day (June 22) in 1986, Diego Maradona scored his controversial “Hand of God goal” in the quarter-finals of the World Cup match between Argentina and England. Payback for las Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands), which rightly belong to Argentina!

From his concurring opinion in today’s historic Supreme Court decision (NCAA v. Alston) smacking down the NCAA: “The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing.” Nailed it!

This new movie about the life of Anthony Bourdain (see trailer below) is scheduled to be released on July 16; more details here, via Kottke.

Selena forever! I am feeling much better today so I thought I would share a fragment of my favorite Selena song:

I tested positive for the “Wuhan virus” on Wednesday. Among other symptoms, I suffered a throbbing headache, a perpetual and painful cough, and a bad lower-back ache. Thankfully, however, I did not develop a fever and did not lose my sense of taste or smell, but even this “mild” case of COVID was the worst ailment I have ever suffered, keeping me in bed for over 20 hours per day during the past three days …