Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Author: PieInTheSky

Life of Pie: living next to an old graveyard

What is the meaning of life and death?

I live in a fairly central area of one of the busiest cities in Europe. At the end of my street- well not mine per se – is a wall. If this seems totally unremarkable to you, it’s because it is. It is an old wall, fairly long and not particularly distinctive. It does not have a gate or any another entrance on this side, and above it all you can see is tree tops. Most people who pass the wall have no idea what is behind it, nor do they care.

On the ehm… other side, so to speak, lies a quite old and mostly abandoned graveyard. Due to some peculiarity of human psychology, some people find living next to a graveyard unsettling. I am not one of those people. Being mostly abandoned, it is little more than an unkempt park, siting on 7 hectares of quite prime real-estate (600-800 dollars per square meter or maybe more) and containing some 30 thousand graves. The cemetery is no longer active, so you don’t have to see funerals –maybe one or two a year – or mourners walking about as the graves are old and the families are no longer living in Romania. The cemetery is called Cimitirul Evreiesc Filantropia, meaning of which I assume you can eventually figure out without translation.

For most of my life I paid it little mind. It had, off course, some perks being an area with no buildings, it was quiet and provided glorious, available street parking, which in a city like Bucharest can be a godsend, so to speak. Usually the departed don’t drive, although they may still have a valid license and, on occasion, vote.

A good background is important

It is one of 3 Jewish cemeteries in Bucharest and, according to the caretaker, 832 recorded in Romania – although many have been destroyed under the Antonescu regime. This is an Ashkenazy graveyard, build in 1865 on the site of an old quarry. The other two, known as Giurgiu cemetery and The Spanish cemetery –incidentally on much less valuable real-estate – are Sephardic. Giurgiu is the largest of the three – 14 hectares – and second largest in Romania after the one in Iași. I always though Ashkenazy versus Sephardic to be purely a geographical designation, a Jewish appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) if you will, but the cemeteries seem separate.

Sometime this year it occurred to me that I had never visited it to see what is beyond the wall. In cities like Paris, visiting cemeteries was a thing people did. I decided to change this, and one sunny Saturday morning I went to the entrance, only to find it closed. I did not know cemeteries close, but this one did, every Saturday. So on a sunny Sunday morning, I went for a visit. At first I was not even sure this was possible, to visit it I mean, but it was, with only the request that I wear a small round hat. And since I visited and took some pictures – not particularly good ones, mind you, I only have my phone and am a bad photographer – I thought I would share. So basically trigger warning – pictures of cemetery and graves and stuff, for those who do not want to see such things. Now, normally, I would not make a post on a cemetery, but found this one interesting.

After the entrance is the chapel. Beyond the main alley started. It was long – 1 kilometer or so- and looked like it got lost in distance and vegetation.

Walking down it, it had a sort of story atmosphere, as it became progressively less maintained and wilder as you moved along.

The further back, the older everything was and the alley narrowed

Towards the end it was barely there until it stopped in thick bushes

Here and there, there are small stone benches, usually with the name of the person who donated it.

One thing I noticed, unlike orthodox graveyards, there were no real crypts or mausoleums build by rich families. There were some more elaborate graves, but mostly just had a grave stone.

I noticed two kinds – simple stone and black marble or granite, the second ones having survived the passing of time much better. I saw no white marble or lightly colored granite.

About half way down the alley, there is a monument to Jewish soldiers who died in the Romanian army in World War 1, 119 of which are buried in this cemetery. Until this monument the cemetery looked at least somewhat maintained. After this the wilderness started. The main alley was narrower and in poorer repair.

While the main alley still looks somewhat taken care of, on the sides of it the cemetery looks quite abandoned

From the main alley there are, as expected, there are side paths. This were sometimes paved, but mostly not and often just look like a path in the forest. Some of the gravestones were completely lost in the vegetation.

In the wooded area you can occasionally see really old stones lost in the thicket.

There is an area which I could not access, the vegetation was to thick. I was told that at the center there is a pond. Not originally there, but formed when the ground sank as a result of movements caused by the building of a subway line nearby. It dries durring summer, but in the autumn to spring period, part of the graves are underwater. I could not get a shot of this so just took a geneic picture of the area.

It is, all things considered, a very peaceful and contemplative place. Walking through it, you get to places where you almost cannot hear the traffic, something rare in Bucharest. And, unlike other graveyards in which there are always groups of people walking about, I was alone here and did not see another person besides the caretaker at the entrance. This may be a bit sad or not, depending how you look at it. The families of the people here probably moved on long ago, to the US or Israel or some other country and in a sense, many areas of the graveyard seem long forgotten. Time has moved on. It can be depressing or somewhat comforting, depending on how you look at it. So I will leave it at that, maybe with just a few more pictures.

May 28, 2018
On Welfare State, compassion aside

There was a fine post on this fair blog about compassion, pity and the welfare state. I though I would add my 2 grams of silver and share a few thoughts.

Outside a narrow circle of non-bleeding heart libertarians or, as I like to call them, actual libertarians, there is about zero support of completely removing welfare. The people on the left generally want more of it, and the people on the right just want somewhat less of it and “more efficiency”. Neither of these options will work in the long term, in the opinion of this heartless libertarian who just hates the damn children.

The Universal Basic Income is, for example, one of the more prominent recent attempts to fix welfare, one that even some libertarians support. The idea is no welfare is not an option, so let’s have the best system. Sadly, I do not believe a best system, even if it existed in theory, can exist in practice. Why? This is what I will try to cover.

Kind, compassionate people

The essence of the question is found in the essence of government. Government is at its core a concentration of power. This, naturally, now and always, attracts people who want power. So in the end, the ultimate goal for many at the top of government will be to get and retain power. Sure, they may have other ideas about society and maybe even be honest about wanting to improve it (at the point of a gun if necessary) and thinking they have the capability to do so (ignoring a few broken eggs here and there). But this is always secondary, at least for the ones who get to the top.

In my view, in a struggle between those who want power to use it for, let’s say for lack of a better word, “good” and those who want power for the sake of power, the latter will come on top. What has this got to do with welfare? Well, any government activity will be inevitably used as a tool to get power, and will not be shaped to maximize results but to keep people in power. Welfare is no different. You will never get the welfare that is most efficient and helps the poor; you will get the one that helps politicians.

Now, there are moments when feelings get the best of reason, and I think it would be acceptable to have a limited welfare system for the truly needy. This is a view of many right wing people I know. This will not work because there is not choice between limited welfare just for truly needy and a massive and much abused inefficient system. The choice is between no welfare and a massive and abused inefficient system. A limited system will never stay limited because, in essence, any program that allows politicians to transfer money from one person to another will be used to buy votes. More and more needy will be found. More and more people will receive something. And the limited help will be declared insufficient.

Telling it how it is

It was always strange to me how people who support a social democracy scream about the evils of campaign money as “buying votes” while their political platform is literally buying votes. If someone gets money from the government, when a politician says, “I will increase these payment,” that someone will, quite literally, hear vote for me and I give you money. A welfare state is practically a license for a politician to buy power with other people’s money. And if I am wrong, I would love to hear a reasonable, logical argument as to how I am wrong.

But there is a second layer. The large amounts of people not on welfare but who emotionally support the programs, either out of a misguided view on compassion or basic signaling of their moral high ground. So this is another group who will be convinced to give their votes because welfare is insufficient. I have seen multiple articles in the press where such people tried to live on welfare money to prove it can’t be done, and the conclusion was it can but it is not easy. So even when there is a level of welfare that many view as quite enough, others want more of it.

One should keep in mind that the cost of welfare is not just the money that ends up at welfare recipients. Welfare also keep politicians in power, which means lots of money spent on various graft, not directly related to the welfare, but related to the politicians. Another point is that there will be an ever-growing bureaucracy dedicated to administering welfare, which may end up costing more than the welfare itself. There is also the cost associated with people who may be able to do something productive and do not, both due to incentives of welfare and to the economy in general, which is affected by the taxes needed to fund all the above costs.

On the other side of the spectrum, other politicians will use it as a tool for their base, talking about scroungers and welfare frauds. But this will basically lead to another layer of division between people which is exactly what the politicians want. Divide et Impera is what keeps the big parties in power. There always need to be another side which is bad, and my side which is less so.

The art of politics is basically to keep the people split on as many issues, so that they do not notice that no issue is handled properly. Must spread attention as thinly as possible to keep scrutiny off what the government actually does.

Universal Basic Income will be no different. It will not stay for long as the only program, as different programs for different groups will be invented. It will constantly be under pressure to increase. And it will create an ultimate feeling of entitlement. You get money for breathing, basically.

So to me the alternative is no welfare or a system which will inevitably become first and foremost a tool for power, with all other functions secondary. If no welfare is not an option, I will accept a constant struggle will be on this and just stay out of it and leave it to others. I assume the system will oscillate, going too far then followed by a snap-back and then too far again. But to those who think welfare will be mostly about helping people as well as possible, I have a bridge to sell.

May 9, 2018
Politics’ Pseudo Pragmatism Problem

By PieInTheSKy

In this particular piece, Pie ponders people’s perceptions of pragmatism pertaining to politics, particularly partisanship. Is it just me or does this blog need more alliteration?

2 Major Parties

This is, as you know, the most important election of our lives. This is a time to be pragmatic; there is no place for philosophy or idealism. It is important to stop Insert Candidate Here and now. For every other country, add names of parties, rinse, repeated. This is something I am often faced with people when I try to discuss principle. A call to pragmatism is what I get. People do not have time to read and debate the fundamentals of economy, philosophy, and ethics. They are pragmatic. They care, mostly, that the party they oppose loses this time. This time is important, we will think of principle after. Unfortunately this time is every damn time. So is this truly pragmatic? Yes, my candidate has many flaws, but the other is worse and this is not the time nitpick a bit of theft and fraud here and there.

The question I would ask, as a libertarian, is when and how can we get to the point where the election is not that important and we can think principle? Also, if so many crucial elections were lost by the side The Great Pragmatists support, it is obvious The Wrong People will inevitably end up in power and the Most Important Election will be lost. So would it not be a good idea to reduce government power and make these often wrong elections less crucial? Of course not. This time, we cannot allow the wrong lizard to win. And when Our Side gets that elusive Permanent Majority, we will have the time to think upon the fundamentals.

This permanent pseudo-pragmatism is rather obviously, to me at least, engineered for a very clear purpose: a way to keep people alarmed by the next election. Create urgency so people do not think long term, or in perspective. Many blame politicians for thinking only about the next election, but regular voters do the same. And more importantly, vastly lowering the expectations placed on politicians. Some Romanians have been voting the lesser evil for going on 30 years now, and are constantly screwed. And the lesser evil gets worse and worse, as it is no longer expected of politicians not to steal, but to be the lesser thief in the election. And this led to exactly what they wanted. So how fucking pragmatic is it, in the end, to constantly vote for the lesser thief? Maybe it would be better to vote on some clear principles. Maybe the lesser evil might lose until it becomes not evil? Maybe … eh who am I kidding?

This so called pragmatism often leads to missing the forest from the trees, to miss the fundamentals of what a government should and should not do. In the end, to hardly notice that the parties are not all that different, and not in the positive aspects, if there are any. That certain people make bank whomever is in power. That lobbyists thrive, that laws are getting complicated mostly for the benefit of special interests. That year after year things are not improving nearly as much as they should.

Each election we try to fix the cracked window, but what about the rotting foundation of the house? Well I don’t have time to think of the foundation, I am, after all, a pragmatist. That crack in the window is crucial, so it needs fixing. Laws and regulations are constantly patched without thinking if they are so bad to need constant patching maybe, we should rethink them. But people are pragmatists and they patch and patch and one year later a new patch is needed. Not unlike software, a point comes where the code is too complicated and full of bugs; you need to outright rewrite it.

Beyond ideology of left and right, if people were actually intending to create a good society , some things would be a lot more bipartisan, like make things as clear as simple as possible, constantly analyze if things work and if not change, don’t patch. But they do not intend that. They want to push their little pet projects, protect their sacred cows and care not a jot about anything else.

I used this Douglas Adams quote before, but I will again, ’cause I like it:

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
“What?”
“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”
“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”
Ford shrugged again.
“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish…

April 16, 2018
Life of Pie: Cost of living in Bucharest

Some people on this fair forum want more Pie in the states, or so is my impression, and to be fair, who can blame them. Which got me a-thinkin’ maybe the pendulum swings both ways and some want to move themselves the other way. There may be some glib out there, somewhere, wanting to immigrate to good ol’ Bucharest. And said glib may want to know a thing or two about the cost of living, before jumping in. Well this is the post for that glib, and whomever else may have the curiosity.

Kinda lost its shine

So let’s, shall we? To start, in order to buy stuff, you need money, cash, dough. In our particular case we are talking of the mighty Leu (lion to you). Although the Leu often loses its roar in bouts of inflation (one of them legendary in the 90s), it is still our good ol’ currency. Although now we are talking about the new Leu (RON) versus the old Leu (ROL) after 4 zeroes were chopped off.

Back in the day, the day being 1850s, it was based on the Dutch thaler , which had a lion engraved on one side – an animal which was not a heraldic symbol in our country (we were more along the lines of eagles and aurochs), hence the name. The Bulgarian currency lev also means lion. In that particular time, the Romanian leu was 5 grams of 83.5% silver. Now the same silver cost 8.5 RON – after several times when zeros were taken from the end, that is.

I will, in general, try to express prices in dollars, so you understand better. I will enact the labour of currency conversion, if you will. I will not enact the labour of unit conversion so, sorry, you get grams and liters and such.

So we need Lei, yes we do. How much does an honest day’s work pay? Hard to say, Romanians always think in terms of monthly after tax salary. This is due to the fact that all the taxes are payed by the employer, and as such you only get to see your after tax. In general people negotiate their after tax salary on job interviews, called net salary round here. The average take home pay in Bucharest is 3200 RON or 850 of your inferior American dollars. A qualified engineer or programmer usually can get 2000-2500 dollars per month, and more for very good or highly specialized people. I mention this because engineers/programmers are among the best paying jobs in Romania. OK now, how far will all this get you?

Usually salary means you pay for the fabulous government healthcare and government pension, although if you actually get sick you need some money for bribes. But I will not give healthcare costs or pension fund costs. They are not relevant in the context.

As I know Americans to be drivers, I will start with the cost of regular gas, which is around 5.5 dollars per gallon. For non-drivers, a bus ticket is about 30 cents, a 10 trip subway pass about 5 dollars. Uber or taxi is usually 40-50 cents per kilometer.

All Pictures shown are for illustration purpose only. Actual store may vary

A three bedroom apartment, 1000 square foot or so, in a good area can cost 800-900 dollars a month, in an average area 400 to 500 and in a bad area 350. These are apartment in those concrete communist era brutalist apartment buildings, in new developments the prices can be 30% to 50% higher. Now that you have your apartment, let’s talk utilities. For gas the price is given, strangely, per kW-hour – not a unit of volume, and it is 30 cents. Electricity is 13 cents per kW hour. Internet for a gigabit connection, standard home connection non-guaranteed, of course, but it is usually very fast, costs 10 dollars per month. A decent cellphone package can go to 12-15 dollars a month – unlimited talk/sms and 3 to 5 GB of data. Netflix costs 15 a month for the top package, but not everything available in the US is available here.

Now a man/woman/otherkin must eat (I would ask the moderators to catbutt any vampire jokes at this point.) For food, I will reference the supermarket chain I do most of my shopping at. It is not the cheapest, but it is not particularly expensive either. I would add that, in a un-libertarian way I assume, I do not eat in the most cost effective fashion. This is because I do not have pantry staples and do not buy in bulk. If I did, I could go to cheaper large stores and save money, but then again I might throw away a lot more and lose some money that way. I usually buy just what I plan to cook/eat in the next day or two, so I go to a supermarket on my way from work home. I also dislike using frozen meat, so I buy all my meat fresh, which is pricier.

So what does food cost? Depends, I assume, on what you buy. Standard eggs are 4 dollars for 30, while the cage free organic can be 3 dollars for 10. Milk is 1 dollar 30 cents per liter and 200 grams of unsalted 82% butter is two fifty, same price as 350 grams of plain cheese. Romanians eat a lot of cold cuts, which are locally called mezeluri (I assume from the Middle Eastern meze or mezze). These can range from very cheap in a “don’t ask what’s in it” way to quite pricy. Two and a half dollars can buy you 400 grams of cheap salami (42% pork meat according to the label), 4 dollars buys 70% meat salami in the same quantity, and 6 dollars buy you 300 grams of the good stuff. There is also parizer (which is meant as an equivalent to what you may know as mortadella / Bologna), which has the same things in it like the cheapest hot dogs, pink slime like substances I would think, which is a dollar for 500 grams – never touch the stuff myself. Pork hot dogs are a dollar fifty per 300 grams. And cheap yellow mustard can be had for 3 dollar 350 grams. Whole chicken is 4 dollars per kilogram; average cut of pork is the same, not too fancy cut of beef can be 8 to 12 dollars per kilogram. Bread can be between 20 cents and 2 dollars a loaf.

Mmmmm pink slime and chemicals

I think this is enough food prices, off course there are many more items, but this is to give a rough idea. Now let’s get boozing. Basic local beer can be had between 50 cents and one dollar per 500 ml can. The craft stuff it 2 to 4 dollars per 500 ml bottle. Wine starts at 2 dollars and can get to 50 and beyond. Smirnoff Red vodka is about 15 per 700 ml, Jack Daniel’s 23 per 700 ml. I don’t touch the stuff, but coca cola and similar sugary crap sodas are generally 2.5-3 dollars per a six-pack of 330 ml cans.

What else? I am beginning to think this is enough for a general idea and the post can get too long. A good meal in a good restaurant, not cheap no too fancy, is between 20 and 30 dollars per person, including wine and service (in Romania tips are 10%), depending on one’s appetite. In a bar a beer will set you 2 to 4 dollars, a cocktail (keep in mind it is very hard to get a decent cocktail in Romania) is 4 to 6 dollars. A movie ticket is 5 to 7 dollars at a good multiplex, where the concession stand costs way too much. I think this about covers it for now and I hope this convinced you to immigrate to Romania, had you any lingering doubts.

March 29, 2018
Constitutions, guns and limited government: a constant uphill battle

As I may have mentioned before, I hail from the far away land of Romania, a country with a history of communism which basically wrecked the country and without a particularly strong tradition of limited government, where most peasants were still serfs almost up to the 19^th century. I was asked before on various positions on limited government Romanians hold, and thought I’d write a quick post on it, mainly an anecdote, really.

Too scary for locals, but we export them

Are notions of limited government increasing? Not really. You would think after a history of bad government and massive abuses of power, many would think to give the other side a shot. But sadly, this does not happen. We just need the right top men, you see. One problem is that people want things and rarely thing of the implications, the ramifications, and both the expected and unexpected consequences. They have the view of government which does everything they want and nothing they do not. And I am talking here about the upper echelon in terms of intelligence, education, and professional success. As such, I have little hope of clear improvements in the future.

As an anecdote, I will talk of someone I know who is, let’s say, someone I had high hopes of when I thought of a move towards freedom in Romania. He grew up in communism, finished Polytechnic university in Bucharest, got his PhD in France, and was a very successful semiconductor engineer. Of course, for most of his life, he was the kind that didn’t pay much interest to things outside his field, and only recently did he read some books on economics and political philosophy. But this makes him more knowledgeable than most in my company who did not read anything on these topics, although they have really strong opinions on politics and economics. He is what, for Europe, would be vaguely classical liberal / libertarian on economic issues, although quite vaguely. When he reads a libertarian book, he often agrees with what it says, but he simply cannot get past his many years of thinking that government must do way too many things in society. So this generally causes a few days of thinking a bit differently, followed by a comeback to the old ways. So he would not be a reliable voter for strictly limited government, and if he is not, I have little hope for most other Romanians.

As a Romanian, he hates guns. He thinks they are dangerous and wants them banned. The government’s job is to disarm the population, he states. In this he is joined by his brother, also an engineer by trade in semiconductors, who immigrated to the States and now lives in a leafy and quite lefty suburb of Boston. His brother also hates guns and republicans in general, and thinks America is too right wing.

We need ourselves a better version of one of these things in Romania

The man I speak of trusts his brother’s judgment, and I had several debates with him on US politics which ended because his brother is his ultimate argument and tells me he is more informed than me because of what the brother tells him. I, frankly, find this rather annoying because his knowledge of US culture, economy and its politics is probably 10% of mine. And his brother’s does not seem much better, as he forwarded to me some emails that could have been taken directly out of the New York Times. I remember speaking about certificate of need legislation in US and he outright said that is not true, such things do not exist; it is not possible in a capitalist country like America for the government to prevent a hospital from expanding, let’s say. He did not really care to read about it because he had his sources. This is his answer. It is obviously impossible to argue with someone whose main argument is “my brother told me this so it must be true.” I have asked countless times for data for his claims, but he literally said, “I do not have data but it is true. I have my sources,” – his main source being his brother. This is quite dispiriting. Someone who is more politically knowledgeable than most people I know, one of the few to have actually read some economics. If he can’t argue properly and form a more informed opinion, who can? Most Romanians still tell me that the US is the land of no government and unrestrained free market capitalism, and they believe that. Especially when it comes to the completely private and completely unregulated healthcare systems you Americans seem to have.

Recently I hear the complaint – coming from the brother originally, of course – that the problem with US in that the constitution is too difficult to change as to disarm the population. A smart, accomplished engineer with some knowledge of economics does not give a jot of thought to the ramifications of what he claims if it will lead to his preferred outcome. He would be so willing to see all guns banned for civilians, that he would tear the constitution apart for this. Of course, he does not claim that. He says only the second amendment, not others. But if you give the power to easily change the second, how would you prevent that power being used to change the others? How can you create a system where just one article of the constitution is easily changed? The ridiculous view of government doing everything I like and nothing I don’t.

What is the point of the constitution is it is easily changed? Majorities are fickle. One may have the 51% now, the others the next time. Laws change with majorities. The whole point of the constitution is that it is not as easily changed and it needs broad consensus. And if you look at US history, many bad things came exactly when the constitution was not respected. How can we get a more libertarian view in Romania when people lose their reason when it comes to topics they feel strongly about? How can we argue when people say, ‘I don’t have any data but my brother told me”? I do not know, but I do not have my hopes up, lest I be too often disappointed.

March 21, 2018
Wines and vines of Romania: the grapes

So we covered a bit of general information and a bit of history on wine in Romania, best wine in the world. Now let’s get a bit more specific and let’s us talk grapes. Well not individual grapes of course, I mean varieties. As mentioned previously, accurate figures are difficult to come by, in Romania or elsewhere, due to informal wine making and general issues with such statistics, but I will try to give some numbers, as accurate as I can. So take it with a grain of tartrate, so to speak. According to Ministry of Agriculture estimates, Romania has about 200,000 hectares of vines, 80% of which are dedicated to extracting the nectar of the grapes, making 500 million liters of wine. Give or take 150 million. Half of them are European vines, half are hybrids. I will ignore the latter altogether because, personally, I do not consider that to be wine wine, and frankly there is not much to say of the mighty Căpşunica.

Isabella or strawberry wine

Fine… I will talk briefly of Căpşunica, the most popular hybrid wine grape. The word comes from căpşună, meaning strawberry. It came to Romania via Italy, where it was called Fragolino, hence the name. It is a hybrid originating in, I think, South Carolina or thereabouts, where it was called Isabella or somesuch. Many Romanians drink wine made of this. I am not among them. I find it utterly unpalatable. Anyway… Moving on…

About 70% of wine grapes in Romania are white and the remaining 30% red. There may be a few confused, inter-color, bi-curious and such, but a negligible amount. This data is basically approximation as no one knows for certain. This is due to the highly fragmented nature of the holdings, mostly because of those who grow for personal consumption. While in the EU the average vineyard size is 1.3 hectares, in Romania it is 0.2. So everyone and their grandmothers have a couple of vines to make a bit of wine, usually ready in spring and to be drunk by mid-summer, otherwise it goes sour. There are exceptions though; a minority of people do make good homemade wine.

The white is predominant due to local preference for lower alcoholic, sweetish wines that can be drunk in high quantities, usually mixed with soda water. Șpriț, as the locals call it, word coming from the German Spritze. This leads wine snobs, such as yours truly, to turn their nose up and look down upon the plebs. For one thing, I dislike wine that isn’t dry. And second, I would rather drink a smaller quantity of something good than a larger one of something bad. And I don’t mix my wine. Some people actually put Cola in wine. One thing that amused me, as an anecdote, was one such person criticizing another: I understand drinking red wine with Cola, I do it all the time, but white wine with Cola is just weird. White wine is with Sprite or mineral water. But the șpriț has its reasons: if you want to drink all night and keep hydrated, half wine and half water works better. You don’t get pissed as fast.

Old school sifon

As an anecdote, most people use bottled mineral water now. But back in the day – 80, 90 or so, it would be sifon, which I don’t know how to translate other than soda water. This was basically tap water with CO₂ added. There were special places – sifonarie – where you would take your reusable bottles to refill. The bottles had a special head.

The main white grapes cultivated in Romania are Fetească Alba, Fetească Regală, Riesling, Aligote, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat Ottonel, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Tămaioasă Românească, Grasă de Cotnari, Francusă, Galbenă de Odobești, Crâmpoșie Selectionata, Mustoasă de Mădarat, Zgihară de Huși, Sarba, Plavaie, and several others. Riesling is mostly Italian Riesling, but small amounts of Rhine Riesling have been planted recently, for the local need of a wine with just a hint of petrol in the nose. The largest amounts are planted with the local grapes Fetească albă and Fetească regală, together being 18% of plantations.

The main red grapes planted are Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Băbească Neagră, Fetească neagră, Pinot Noir, Burgund Mare, Traminer Roz, Busuioacă de Bohotin, Cadarcă. Merlot is the most planted red grape, with about 12 thousand hectares. (As a side request for the admins, please catbutt any post saying they won’t drink any fucking Merlot.)

I will not talk of international grapes much, but focus on the local ones. While there are several varieties, a fraction of the pre-phylloxera varieties still exist. I think there are probably lost varieties still grown among villages off the beaten track, but there is no project or funding to identify and preserve them (one of the things I would fund were I a billionaire). Many more were probably lost in the recent frenzy to replant everything with Cabernet and Syrah and other such invasive species.

Fetească is sort of the local flagship grape, both in white (alb means white) and red (negru means black). Fetească Alba is a white clone of Fetească Neagra. Feteasca comes from the word fata, meaning girl, and it could be translated as young girl like. I do not know how this came about. Another common grape Băbească neagra (red fruit, higher acidity), comes from babă which means old woman. Băbească is to Fetească maybe stretching it a bit what Pinot is to Cabernet, and is used to make lighter somewhat fresher and fruit forward wine. Fetească is the more serious grape, making more complex wines. There is an old saying, heteropatriarchical I would think, about how young men like the older woman and old men like younger girl (meaning youth prefer the lighter wines from Băbească and the older, with or without candy, like the more complex Fetească). Băbească also has it’s white wine clones Băbească Albă sau Băbească gri, but these are very rare.

The general harvest date for Fetească Neagra (considered typical with a significant aroma of dried plum) is around 15 September, having a growth period of 160-170 days. They get about 230-240 g/l of sugar and acidity of around 7 g/l. I will not give technical notes on other grapes. For more info there are encyclopedias for this sort of thing.

Negru de Dragasani

Less common red wine varieties which make, in my view, good wine are Negru de Drăgășani (black cherries, blackberries, blueberries and other dark fruit) and Novac (raspberries, sour cherry, cloves, black pepper, dark chocolate – I do not do tasting notes myself so I just copied these from some professional wine taster, I find describing wines in such detail a bit silly), both from Drăgășani, a wine region in southern Romania, and both obtained by different crossings of an old Romanian pre- phylloxera grape Negru Vârtos with the grape Saperavi. They make a velvety red wine with some aging potential and one of the local candidates to making what some might call “Great Wines.” Negru Vârtos – meaning strong, powerful black – was one of the more appreciated pre phylloxera wines of Romania, and it was preserved in Negru de Drăgășani and Novac.

As a note, many of the wines that are traditional to Romania (which contains the subregion Moldova) are also common in the now independent country Moldova. Some say one grape comes from one or other, but being that the language and culture are mostly common (despite the best efforts of Russians to make Moldova Russian), I do not think it is relevant. Jancis Robinson makes claims about this, for example, but I find it meaningless. The national grape of Moldova is Rară neagră which is simply another name for Băbească Neagra.

Now to go through a few more grapes quickly… Grasă de Cotnari -gras means fat – is the flagship grape of the Cotnari region and is used to make sweet, aromatic white wine – and I remember reading that it was also planted in South Africa for this purpose. Fetească Regala is a cross between Fetească Alba and Grasă de Cotnari in order to get a more aromatic wine, but used for dry whites. Francusă is the Cotnari grape used for dry and rather acidic wine. In the old days people in general preferred sweet wines to dry, but the legend goes that Cotnari wine was generally so sweet that the boyars occasionally drank some Francusă as a palate cleanser.

Crâmpoşia is one of the grapes believed to date back to ancient Dacia. Crâmpoșie Selecționată was obtained from Crâmpoșie crossed with a grape called Gordan, which I know little about, in order to solve some problems with sterile vines. It has high acidity and is used to make fresh, fruity whites. While traditionally used for dry wines, the possibility of both high sugar and high acidity made it useful for semi sweet and sparkling wines (Prince Stirbey vineyard makes a good sparking from Crâmpoșie). Another local wine use for sparkling is Mustoasa de Madarad, from the Arad region of western Romania.

Tămaioasă Românească – tămaie means frankincense – is of the main white grapes used in Romania to make sweet aromatic wine. Although traditionally only used for sweet, some dry varieties were produced recently, due to the changing of tastes towards dry wines – Romanians still like a lot of sweet or semi-dry wines but tastes are shifting. Some of the dry versions were, in fact, pretty good. The grape is related to the French Muscat de Frontignan. A variation called Tămaioasă Roza – used to make a rose sweet wine – is actual Muscat de Frontignan, but they are, apparently, not allowed to call it that.

Another sweet rose wine of some fame is Busuioaca de Bohotin. Busuioc means basil and it is a reference to the wine being quite aromatic. This was, during communism, grown on a limited surface and was reportedly Ceaușescu’s favourite. Due to this – the dictator drunk it and the people didn’t get any – after communism it got real popular because everyone wanted to drink Busuioaca. In the 90’s, probably 10 times more Busuioaca was sold than produced, a cheap, sweet red wine of the poorest quality. Recently, a few reputable producers made some, and while I’m not a fan, it can be pretty good as sweet wines go.

As far as international grapes, I would say that if you are a fan of Pinot Noir, I would be very careful buying Romanian one. It is most likely bad, and not very typical due to the hot summers. Say what you will of Romania as a wine region, Burgundy it is not. Not even, say, Oregon. Furthermore, Pinot Noir was mostly made in Romania as a semi-sweet red wine of poor quality. It was what Romania was known in the past in England and Germany for – bad cheap Pinot for students and drunks.

I was thinking of making one more post on recommended Romanian wines, but due to the availability in the states, there is little point. I already mentioned the wineries I like in the first post. Most wines from those are good. To highlight a few, Fetească Neagra I like from SERVE (Guy Tyrel de Poix), Bauer (FN quite different style to others), Davino, Balla Geza (Stone Wine Fetească Neagra) and Ferdi Feteasca Neagra – although this is nearly impossible to get in Romania, small family winery which does not really retail in stores, you need to know a guy. . . For Negru de Drăgășani and Novac the top is Prince Stirbey. There are other producers in the Drăgășani area that make it and only one outside, Via Marchizului Negru de Drăgășani from the somewhat hotter Dealu Mare, but an interesting variation of the wine. White wines I drink less of, but recommend the same producers. Stirbey and Bauer make great Sauvignon Blanc, but that is not a local grape. Bauer is the main oenologist of Stirbey, who made his own boutique winery with great results and even made the first Orange wine in Romania.

About where to get it … TotalWine apparently has the mid-range Recas, which OMWC reviewed. The net said something about Mariano’s in the Chicago area, but we will have to ask Swiss if that is true. Mission Liquor & Wines Pasadena, CA, had, at least on the website, Nedeea – a blend of Fetească Neagra, Negru de Drăgășani and Novac and some Panciu which should be decent if not spectacular. The website has some stuff on it, no idea if it retails or how. Besides that… who knows.

March 14, 2018
Wines and vines of Romania: a bit of history

To start, in the beginning there was a formless void. Then the Dacians created the world, and after it, wine. Moving in the realm of less fictional, but maybe somewhat so, based on serious archaeological evidence, we can estimate at least 4000 years of wine making round these parts. Getting to the 60s – BC that is – we have Dacian king Burebista – the first to unify the tribes in what is now Romania and parts of Ukraine and Hungary into something resembling a kingdom, or kingdom like tribal alliance. Wanting a better, stronger kingdom, military and economic, he ordered the burning of the vineyards, because the people drank too much wine. So wine around these parts goes back thousands of years. And drunkenness as well.

Not my property

Romania does have a history of wine and does have several famous wine regions, suitable from a geographical and climate point of view. Wine from areas like Cotnari, Odobesti, Drăgășani, Dealu Mare had its moments of being considered among the good European wines and are mentioned by foreign sources since the 1500s.

The present situation is… complicated, with good and bad. Much of the bad, as I said in my previous post, was due to communism – bad, cheap mass produced wine to export for low prices. Usually semi-sweet with added flavor. The vines and facilities were not maintained, a lot of knowledge was lost. The 90s were a bit of a dark age, as government agricultural cooperatives were dismantled, some vines being given to former owners or their heirs, others to dysfunctional government enterprises.

New owners did not maintain vineyards any better, and most of the wine was mass produced and of very dubious quality. At least in my view. Many Romanians like to claim they enjoy “natural clean country wine”, not that commercial stuff. Natural and clean meaning not polluted with the things that stabilize and clear the wine of impurities, thus making it drinkable. The resulting liquid is sometime – rarely – quite decent if not great, but more often brown and murky, reminding one of a muddy river. I feel the home made wines in Italy or Portugal are of significant better quality because people actually bother to have some skill.

But some of the… roots is the proper word… of the problem predate communism. Even before, quality wine was but a fraction of the total wine production. Most of it was made, then and now, for personal consumption on very small lots – basically each peasant’s garden. A lot of trade in the 1800s in Romania was still barter and did not involve money, which rural populations did not always have, so there was no developed market in wine, like in, say, France.

Story time: as I said in my very first post on Glibertarians, my great-grandparents were from the Pitești region, grew plum trees for țuica and owned a pub in Pitești. Back in those days, the pubs sold mainly țuica and wine, so they made extra țuica, loaded up some wagons and traveled over several days to a wine producing region and traded for wine.

Ox cart, common theme in Romanian painting

Transport was bad in Romania back then, mostly by wagon and dirt road, so it made sense that most of the people made wine themselves, it was hard to buy from a distance. So each town or village had some vines surrounding it. The quality of the wine varied greatly. Some people respected the craft and themselves and made quite decent, if rustic, wine. Clear, somewhat stabilized micro-biologically – the barrels were sort of fumigated with sulfur providing the sulfites, wine was sometimes filtered using egg whites – something still done in modern times, although now artificial gelatin is favored. Others, not so much. It was just plain bad, or mixed with water, made with added sugar or with certain additives to make it seem better.

Now a little break for fun with etymology! Șmecher is a quite common Romanian word –which mean crafty, cunning, shrewd and difficult to trick. An assumption is that the etymology is from the German word like “schmeck” or schmecken, which means to taste. The legend goes that German merchants came to the Drăgășani region of Romania to buy wine. The locals gave them a bit of the good stuff, and then a bit more, and the merchant got a bit drunk, and then they sold him some bad wine as well, but for the price of good. Now, say what you will of German merchants, they were not stupid. Fool me once, as the saying goes. So the next time they brought tasters which did not get drunk and made sure to get the good stuff. These schmeckers or tasters were people who were hard to trick, who did not buy bad wine for the price of good. Hence the Romanian word.

Wine is the nectar of the vines, if we want to be pseudo poetical about it. And why would we not want to be? But wait; there are plenty of crawling plants, so which ones? Vitis vinifera is responsible for all that which most humans with a discerning palate consider good wine. So plant that shit and drink up! Well, that is what people did. A lot. So up to this point, all is well, everyone was all happy and drunk – as happy as semi-starving peasants can be that is – until you bloody Americans had to screw things up, with you interventionist policies and such. In the year 1884, enter phylloxera stage right. And things got considerably worse.

What is phylloxera ? It’s an insect, a bug, a parasite, vermin. You mean like socialists? Yes, precisely like socialists. Phylloxera is a pale yellow insect native to North America, which, instead of doing productive work, sucks the sap from good, honest grapevine roots. Americans have evolved some natural defenses against parasites such as these, which Europeans did not. But Americans lack the sophistication needed to make a good wine. And speaking of Americans, as a side note, just to avoid all sorts of silly comments, a hectare is 2.5 acres.

No nasty sulphites

In 1884, Romania, not yet including Transylvania, had at least 200.000 hectares of grapevines – mostly local versions of vitis vinifera. Most villages and towns had their own vines, due to the difficulty of transporting things on dirt roads. Then the disease devastated the vines, and by 1905, 90 thousand hectares were left.

By the time the bug was in full swing round these parts, Western Europe, which was hit first, had found the solution. After many trials and errors with pesticide, insecticides, fumigating vineyards and such, the new vines were planted grafted on American root stock – vines that did not give good wine but resisted phylloxera. Romanians, red blooded and proud as the mighty oak that grows in the forests, said, naturally, we ain’t gonna let a bunch of foreigners tell us what to do. So instead, they started experimenting with pesticides, insecticide and fumigating vineyards. This failed miserably and in the end they turned to, you guessed it, planting vines grafted on American root stock.

Being a poor country, money was tight. As such, by 1910 Only 70 thousand hectares were left, out of which 20 thousand hectares had been replanted, and the others managed to hang on. The majority of the country, used to growing and making their own wine, and not being able to afford the new solution, settled on a not great but inebriation enabling intermediary solution. Direct producing hybrid vines. Hybrids of European and American vines, which were resistant to phylloxera and created a drinkable, if bad wine, were planted. They grew, they were maybe more productive than the “noble vines,” as they came to be called, and made a drink that got you buzzed. Good enough.

Sap sucking parasites

By 1935, after gaining Transylvania with a lot of vineyards, Romania had some 160 thousand hectares of European vines and 160 thousand of hybrids. By the end of communism in 1990, there were 160 thousand hectares of European vines and just 60 thousand of hybrids – results of collectivization and elimination of some of the hybrid vines. Sadly, things did not get better immediately, as many people who land from the old state cooperatives sometimes took out noble vines and replaced them with easier to maintain hybrids. So in 1997, the numbers were 80 thousand good vines versus 120 thousand hybrids. Right now, officially at least, it is illegal in the European Union to plant hybrid vines for wine making. This was, I assume, a standard protectionist method for established agriculture, although the pretext was the poor quality of the wine and the higher possibility of methanol in wine from hybrid vines.

Now, more than 100 years later, according to the national statistics institute, there are 180 thousand hectares of vines in Romania, out of which about half, 90, are grafted vitis vinifera. So 150 years after phylloxera, the country has half the vines capable of producing good wine. And the current territory also includes Transylvania. Sadly, many people who make wine for their own consumption still plant hybrids which create a good natural country wine. Because swill does not have the same ring to it.

March 5, 2018
Wines and vines of Romania: a bit of an introduction

There seems to be some interest in Romanian wine. Now, one can probably write 100 posts on such a topic, so where to start? There are grapes, there are wines, and there is history. I will try a quick general introduction, and then will get more specific in potential future posts. Wine, like most things in this world, was invented on the present day territory of Romania by the dacians, although this fact has been covered up historically by other jealous people wanting to steal our legacy. Georgians and Armenians and middle easterners and the like. All lies. Romanian had the first and the best wine. It is known. That being said … to procede.

I could start with a bit about red wine. Red is the colour of the blood that was spilled defending the land and such pseudo patriotic nonsense. I will not. Although Romanians, believe you me, are very patriotic about their wine and consider it among the best. This may have been somewhat true for some wines 150 years ago, before it stagnated significantly and others – especially New World producers – had a bit of aggressive growth going on. This feeling has decreased somewhat in recent years which in turn has led to more imports – a good thing, because more wine variety and a bit of extra competition made the locals pick up their game.

This may break the hearts of some of our fine readers, but communism was not exactly beneficial to the wine industry – or any other. I have to be honest with you guys, communism sucks on all possible levels. Quality wine is bourgeois, comrades. The wine industry was devastated and reduced to producing cheap, low-quality wine, often with added sugar and artificial flavoring, which along with Bulgarian wines were drunk in Western Europe as wine for students with a very tight budget and a non-existent palate.

Map from revino.ro

The state controlled the wine, and while there were, like in all fields, a few passionate and honorable people who did a good job, because it was their nature, more were not thus. There were some wine research institutes that actually did great work, it must be said. But alas, they were in the minority. And, like in many areas in communism, there was laziness and theft. When it came to working, well, it is not my vineyard. When it came to taking, well, it belongs to all of us. Wine was not easily found in stores, nothing was, so people developed their home wine-making, a legacy which persists, producing bad wines in large quantities.

Then communism fell. And things, at first, got worse, which is to be expected in case of massive social upheaval. Many vineyards were abandoned. Many were split in minor parcels as part of distributing land to peasants. Many were simply uprooted. The wineries were closed or privatized. Many times the former workers of the agricultural cooperatives stole everything they could, and stainless steel – quite used in the wine business – was high on that list. It was mostly a disaster.

But then, after the first 10 years, slowly, too slowly if you ask me, things got better. There was a bit of a renaissance in the last 15 years or so, with more and more good wines produced. This was due to a significant inflow of both private investments, from Romanians and companies from the EU alike, and European Union funding. This led to a lot of replanting of vines and rebuilding wineries.

Some of the first doing quality were foreign. S.E.R.V.E was among the first, owned by a French count named Guy Tyrel de Poix since 1993. Oprișor is another, owned by the German Reh Kendermann group. Vinarte was created by a joint group of Romanians, Italians and French. Davino, probably the top producer, was started by a Romanian. Prince Stirbey was a continuation of an old Romanian noble family, but Baroness Ileana Kripp-Costinescu lived in Germany during communism and came with funds from there. Halewood is a British company that came here to make wines for England. Mihail Rotenberg was among the Jewish Romanians who was allowed to leave for Israel – probably after the Government got paid, made his money in engineering, and came back to Romania to make wine.

Rotenberg

While you may say many a things of the EU, the point I would make is this. If you happen to be in it, subject to all the rules and such, you might as well make the best of the funding available. This may split libertarians, but I am of a view that if the state is going to tax and spend, it is better to at least get something out of that spending. And the wine industry is one of the few areas where Romania, notoriously bad at getting EU funding due to massive corruption and incompetence, got 100% of available funds.

There was, in truth, some over-investment, as often happens in high growth areas, and also excessive expectations. Many expected to get their investment back fast and make a profit. They did not take the view we are building a multi-generational business, like many quality wineries are. Hoping to make a quick profit, most new vineyards wanted to make wine for the so called premium sector, which meant expensive rather than you know… good. There was a lot more premium wine than the market could bare. It was also hard to compete with outside producers, which had been investing for hundreds of years.
There were other issues. It is difficult to make great wine off 5 year old vines. Many of them talked of terroir when the vineyard was on its first wine. If we accept the terroir thing, we must also accept it takes time, years, to understand the soil, the micro-climate, to experiment and find a way to express the terroir. This is why talk of terroir is bullshit in at least 90% of cases.

In the last few years a sort of balance was achieved, more and more good wine appeared at reasonable prices. Most new entries in the last 5 years were not “premium”. It is still hard to compete with the old world for tradition and the New World for quantity and popularity, but things are moving in the right direction.

One mistake, in my view, with all this replanting was that mostly international grapes were planted. It is very hard to compete in the world market making one more Cabernet. It would have been much better to focus on local grape varieties. Some do, but not as many. Planting Touriga Nacional in Romania when you have yet to master the local varieties may be a bit of a rush.

Overall, Romania is a decent country for wine, geography wise. The soils, the climate, the sunshine hours are all pretty good. There is a risk of late spring frosts, but that is true for most of Europe. There is also, compared to counties like Chile, more variability from year to year, which means the wines are vintage dependent, not the same, but this is not always a bad thing. In most areas, summers are generally of the hot and dry varieties, which can limit the range of wines you can make. But there are a few cooler zones here and there.

Most of the wines regions of Romania are currently in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and some plateaus in Transylvania. This all covers a good bit of the country. Other regions are along the Danube, in Dobrogea close to the Black sea. And pretty much all over, really. To drop some names based on Romanian regions, in Muntenia there is Dealu Mare is one of the main red wine areas, close to the cities of Ploiesti and Buzau. In Oltenian is Drăgășani on the Olt river, Samburesti and a few others. There is Murfatlar and Ostrov and Sarica in Dobrogea by the sea. Vrancea, Cotnari and Odobesti are in Moldova. In Transylvania there is Tarnave and Miniș-Măderat and more. In Banat the main one is Recas. There are dozens more besides these, and not the time or space to cover them all.

Some people, in a case of being amusingly very wrong, claim Dealu Mare as the Bordeaux of Romania, as it is on the 45th parallel, same latitude as Bordeaux. Let’s ignore the different soil, different exposure, different accumulated heat, different sunshine hours, different rains, lack of the oceanic influence Bordeaux has and more. It is the same, really.

To close this long post, I will give some Romanian wine producers I like and some I do not. Producers I like are Davino, Stirbey, SERVE, Vinarte, Bauer, Ferdi, Oprisor, Rotenberg, and Wine Princess. Second tier producers Avincis, Petrovaselo, Vitis Metamorfosis, Corcova, Licorna, Segarcea. I would avoid Murfatlar, Jidvei, Cotnari, Vincon, Ostrov, Pietroasele and others I will not list.

So I guess this is it for the first one. Let me know if for the next you want something about grapes and actual wines or a bit more history and culture.

February 27, 2018
Romanian Food – A Short Primer – Part Two

I will skip the introductions as this is part two of a post and continue where I left off in the last post. Romanians usually eat, rather anticlimactically, 3 meals a day, unless you are too poor or following one o’ them new-fangled intermittent fasting things the kids seems to like these days.

Eat at Pie’s!

To do the linguistic part first, breakfast is called “mic dejun” (similar to French I would say, mic meaning small). The mid-day meal is “pranz”. And the evening meal is “cina”.

To start with breakfast, it can be either eggs (fried – in the one proper way, not like you Americans and your 50 ways of frying an egg – scrambled, boiled or omelette) or cold cuts. Most often cheese accompanies either the eggs or the cold cuts as a side, along with some raw vegetables (onion, radishes, tomatoes, bell peppers most often). More traditional, as in 100 years ago, it would mostly be bread or mămăligă with branză (cheese), slană (basically pig fat, sort of like eyetalian lardo) and raw onion. Romanians eat lots of raw onion, red onion being preferred as somewhat milder in taste.

Mama Pie’s homemade noodle soup

Lunch and dinner traditionally are somewhat similar, and are usually a first course which is mostly liquid and a second course which mostly solid. Dessert is included to make the standard 3 course meal.

For the liquid part, Romanians distinguish primarily between supă – which is generally a clear broth with dumplings or noodles – and ciorbă – which is denser and has lots of vegetables and sometimes meat.

Ciorbă is further categorized. There is borş – which is soured with either the eponymous borş or with verjuice made from unripe grapes or fruit, or the juice from pickling cabbage. There is peasant style, which is less sour and has more vegetables in it – making it quite think (and hated by kids, me included, who tend to try to eat the broth while skipping the veggies which are left in the plate until angry parents tell you to eat them). There is a style made with sour cream incorporated into the broth – which is most often called a la greque. And there is ciorbă de burta which stands alone, a tripe soup made with sour cream but soured with vinegar.

Smantana is often added – superfluously in my view – to peasant style ciorbă, although adding it after cooking has a different effect then incorporating it into the broth during the cooking process.

Really sour ciorbă is seen locally as a hangover cure. In fact, there is a traditional very sour one called Ciorbă potroace and this is traditionally eaten the second day after a wedding. In the past, wedding feasts were some of the rare occasions when people got fresh meat and plenty of it. They would get various poultry to roast. The neck, feet and innards (hearts and such) were used to make the broth which would be amply soured. The next day, after plenty of food and liberal libations, a meal of ciorbă de potroace was seen as good for recovery. There was also a silly superstition not to give chicken feet to school aged children because it was going to make them do badly at exams. No idea where that came from.

My family version of ciorbă de potroace was New Year’s turkey ciorbă. The tradition was to roast a turkey for New Year’s dinner and use the not-thighs-and-breast parts to make a really sour ciorbă which would be the first meal after sleeping in the next day, suitable due to the long night and plentiful libations.

Duck legs and cabbage

Now, solid food can be mostly stews with cabbage, beans or potatoes for most people. Duck over cabbage is a preferred delicacy – an entire roast duck over a bed of cabbage. Beans are eaten with pork, often smoked rib or sausage. There are also moussakas and vegetable stews and roast chicken. Often sarmale – leaves stuffed with meat/rice mixture, most often cabbage or grape vine, but also my mother makes some good ones using young horseradish leaves. These are probably similar to such dishes in other countries. Romanians are also big about grilling – with pork being prominent and mici the national grilled dish – small caseless sausages. A local favourite is MBS or mămăligă with branză (cheese – feta style) and smantană (sour cream). Besides the main ingredients butter is usually added and sometimes soft boiled eggs.

One particularity of Romanians, usually older ones, is that they eat bread with everything. Soups, stews, meats, vegetables, a few slices of cheap white bread are always included.

On dessert, there is not much to say. There are usually crepes or cakes or ice-cream and such. One local favourite is papanasi – a highly caloric a deep fried cheese doughnut covered in sour cream and sweet preserves. Generally they come in pairs, two per portion. This is I think because originally one came just with sour cream and one just with sweet preserves, so they were two – one each way – but now they kept the number but add both sauces on both donuts.

Well, that is about it I would say. Probably the last time you have to suffer through a Romanian food post for quite some time.

February 19, 2018
Borders and immigration: a view from Romania

To start, I do not write from the perspective of an American. My country has more of a problem with emigration than immigration, and it is not out of the question that I might want to leave myself. So I can see myself on the other side of the border to many from the States. I live under a sort of double jurisdiction, Romania and the European Union, and of a nationality that has been often the object of attack and mockery as immigrants in Western Europe. We are all lazy thieves, beggars, gypsies, wanting to take both the good jobs and welfare of the British chav. I have been bullied on this very website by, to my greate shame, Canadians of all people. I am aware of the collectivist generalization most Western Europeans are prone to – despite the fact that without Eastern European doctors and nurses, their fabulous state medicine would have collapsed a while ago. And if you want trained doctors and engineers, some riff raff will inevitably come along. Although, after influxes of immigrants of late, Romanians no longer seem so bad.

The Picts payed for this

I am a reasonably moderate libertarian, in that I am a bit of minarchist plus. So I do not write or think from an an-cap perspective. I am also the kind of libertarian who believes you have to advocate for both ethical, principled libertarian positions – regardless of their chance of being implemented – and policies that are fit for purpose, good enough, and move things to the right direction while being more palatable to others. I see little point to the “Fiat justitia, et pereat mundus” of libertarians, purity to the exclusion of everything else, who only recite philosophy and ignore the real world. And I am well aware of the danger of compromise but find it acceptable when the alternative is nothing. To complete, I am not a nationalist, I am not a patriot and dislike patriotism in most cases, and I do not feel any particular affinity for certain people over others just because there is a border between us. I can see I have more in common with the fine people on this fair website than with the vast majority of Romanians.

So I am starting with what I consider to be some basic facts: states and governments exist. Debating whether they should is meaningless at this certain point in time, for the purpose of this discussion. These governments have jurisdiction over state borders and have citizens and residents and temporary visitors, with the former having additional prerogative and responsibilities, especially in politics. Governments more or less (usually less) are – should be, to be more accurate – accountable to the citizens. Governments, having jurisdiction inside certain borders, have powers over and responsibilities towards people inside those borders. The US government should uphold the rights of people – including temporary visitors – in areas it has jurisdiction over – by libertarian standards this is its only job – and not the people of, say, Romania. The exceptions to this are American citizen abroad, towards which the government has certain responsibilities.

So a government treats insiders differently than outsiders. The question at hand is in what way the latter should become the former. Has government the right to control who crosses the border? My view is yes, up to a point.

The most often libertarian view for open borders is, paraphrased, the state has no right to impede peaceful people from traveling where ever they wish on public property, and to where ever they are invited on private property. The state has no right to stop people from freely associating. It is the right of humans to travel where they choose. Or to go bleeding heart about it (which I do not recommend), we should care more about humans than borders.

This is all very feel-good, but has some issues, in my view. I would in first instance. replace people with people under the jurisdiction of said state. In my view when talking about rights – freedom of speech, assembly, religion in the context of government – we are talking first and foremost people who happen to be within those border. In a better, non-interventionist world, government should not be able to influence non-residents, outside letting them in or not.

From a pure libertarian an-cap / minarchist point of view, many immigration issues would not be issues at all. With most property private and fully protected, the issues of public lands / areas would be minimal. With no government support at all for immigrants and refugees and with the perspective of being shot if you aggress the locals, a good number of problems would not appear. But that is not the world we live in.

There are several utilitarian reasons for some immigration restrictions. There is a risk posed by a large number of people with radically different values moving into an area, if these values can lead to breaking the Law. Any area has limited capacity to absorb newcomers and exceeding this will cause conflict. Police doing their job plus an armed citizenry could be a reason this problem would not appear in certain societies, but overall it can be unpleasant to have constant conflict in a community that needs to be addresses with violence. How about deontological ones?

Lines are important

Libertarians who do not want to become caricatures understand liberty is not defined as do whatever you want, but within limits. First and foremost, your fist my nose, as the saying goes, but even beyond, there are certain elements of living in a society that will curtail liberty – just the difficulty of defining boundaries between my liberty and yours, and compromises necessary to live in a community.

The libertarian argument is this should be as little as possible and for very good reason. It is, of course, a vulnerable argument, like all arguments in politics – where to draw the line. (Bugs step over this line.) This always applies to human dealings and there should be a constant attempt to swing things in libertarian direction, err on the side of freedom and all that. Even anarchic communities have rules about behaviour, written or not, and probably debate them. But in the end, the community needs a very good reason for any intervention. That is the basic argument.

I usually ignore the every square inch of land privately owned school of libertarianism. This is not the case. Not how humans function. Commons always exist, the village green was rarely privately owned, many roads and lanes likewise.

While no libertarian would deny the right to associate on your property – as long as you are not doing something to affect others’ property – you will not have an immigrant solely on your property (except that 15 year old Russian girl you buy on the dark web and keep in your basement, but this is an exception). The community will have a role in deciding what happens in the commons. So unless you can teleport people onto your private property and then teleport them away, immigration will not be a solely private property issue.

Similarly there is not always an absolute right of free association. I cannot associate with convicted murderers whenever I choose. So here I go back to an earlier paragraph “the state has no right to impede peaceful people from traveling where ever they wish”. So I would say a state can at the very least restrict access to non-peaceful people.

Let the right one in

I talked above about Romanians in Europe. To be completely fair, plenty of Romanians went West with mischief on their minds and some locals were rightfully annoyed. Especially in small towns and villages in which people were not used to rude, loud foreigners making a mess and stealing whatever they can. Romanians eating sunflower seeds and drinking beer on the street while spiting the seed husks is not something a Swiss mountain town wants to see – although these can be mere tourists, not immigrants. So the problem here can be simply of generalizing immigrants, not all immigrants. Some Romanians are, I assume, good people.

So I can say that a government may restrict access of people with high probability to engage in violent or illegal acts, or deport those who do engage. Another class of people with restricted access beyond the violent may be the very diseased. A government may refuse access to people with dangerous, contagious diseases.

I find it difficult to make the freedom of association argument for completely open borders, let any and all in just in case I might want to associate with one of them. One solution to the freedom of association standard might be a resident should vouch for immigrants he want to associate with, a member of community with skin in the game and possibility of redress of wrongdoing.

In a world of government welfare – which I am not happy about the locals getting but there at least is some limit to them – and in which government does not properly protect the locals from immigrants, open immigration will not work. A main argument against this along the lines of two wrongs do not make a make right argument, or just because we have welfare does not mean we should restrict immigration. I do not agree with this argument. If a needs b to work, then you can’t have a before b, is my view. So yes, in libertopia immigration self regulates. To a point. Rapist and thieves may want to come anyway, but they would be dealt with without all the politics involved in current governments. We do not live in libertopia.

To be clear, I am not saying build a wall or kick all immigrants out. I am for as much immigration as possible within limits of safety, with some clear rules. No criminals would be a basic one. You cannot really bring the thieves of the world to your country. It is not in order to protect jobs, not racial or cultural purity. Just keeping a certain control of dangerous criminal elements is not too much to ask. You can still get all the good people you need while restricting the very violent. And I would also add no government aid to new immigrants for at least a couple of years in which they earn income and pay taxes. Giving no aid at all is not an option.

Ok, thoughts? Let me have it in the comments. (I did write this post because my last few were kind of light on the comments, and it is sort of an experiment to see if I can get an good old fashioned argument going like on you know which site.)

February 14, 2018