I like to complain

I still like to complain, but...

2008-08-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

I used to think that I would have a separate blog for each of my separate interests. It turns out that was unrealistic, so now I have one uniblog called Everything's Dynamic. I've exported all of the posts from I like to complain over there, but the comments did not survive the move. Nevertheless, there are still on I like to complain ad infinitum, and the posts with comments contain links back to the original post.

Health Care

2007-12-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

One of the main reasons the American health care system is messed up is the link between employer and health care. For most Americans, health care is subsidized by their employer, and as a result most people don't understand how much their care really costs. This leads to frivolous health care expenditures and a lack of responsibility among consumers...they're not paying [entirely] for it, so why should they worry about the cost? The link between ones employer and health care is basically the unintended consequence of government-imposed wage controls during the 1940s/1950s. Companies couldn't raise wages, so they began offering health care as an incentive to employees, essentially paying their employees with a currency of health care. Also, while individuals have to pay taxes on income used to purchase health care, companies don't. This ends up being a corporate tax loophole that companies can bury otherwise taxable income with.

Another problem with the current system is that certain health care expenditures shouldn't be considered "insurance." We don't have grocery insurance, because we know we need groceries. Likewise, we know we're going to need a certain amount of basic health care--there's no getting around it. Administering such basic health care through an insurance company or through the government is just unnecessary bureaucracy; it won't magically make the health care any cheaper, but it will add layers of administrative cost.

So if I were put in charge of solving health care, here's what I'd do:

Break the link between a person's employer and their health care, which could be done in part by making all health care expenditures by individuals tax-deductible. This would take away the tax incentive that companies have to pay their employees with health care.
I might consider making each individual purchase health care on the open market, just like how car insurance is mandated today. By making people think about how much health care really costs, they might think twice about getting the all-inclusive deluxe plan where all doctor visits and prescription visits are free (well, free at the point of purchase but paid for by high premiums). Additionally, people would be less likely to use insurance for routine doctor visits, which would likely lower administrative costs.
I think these reforms would help a lot, but it wouldn't result in a utopia where everyone gets all the health care they possible need for the lowest cost possible. For example, people whose income is such that they already pay little or no federal income tax won't be affected by changing the tax code to allow health care expenditures to be tax-deductible. For these people, I would support a government-funded voucher program where each qualified person gets, say, a $2,000 per year voucher with which to purchase both health insurance and other health care services not covered by insurance (such as routine doctor visits). If they don't use all the money, at the end of the year the leftover amount gets rolled over year after year in an account they own. This would put the participants in such a program in charge of their health care decisions and provide them an incentive to make wise choices.

And after all that, for the people still left out (for whatever reason), I would support keeping Medicaid, although I'm sure it could use some reforms and hopefully would be used by far fewer people.

Onion Prophesy

2007-07-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

This Onion article seems oddly prophetic:

Eco-littering, however, is just one of the ways the public is embracing the green idea. The growing popularity of flex-fuel cars, which can run on regular gasoline or the ethanol-hydrocarbon compound known as E85, means more people can enjoy old-fashioned Sunday joyrides and short drives to the neighborhood supermarket without fretting about wasting nonrenewable fuel. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs now save the trouble of turning off lights. And cleaner-burning fuels and sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar power are making the longtime dream of running household appliances at all hours a reality.

I already find myself thinking, "Oh, it's alright if I leave the lights on...I'm saving so much energy anyway." But if the cost (the holistic cost, which includes the price per unit of energy and the environmental effect of that energy) of energy decreases (note that the monetary cost may increase while the holistic cost decreases because the [perceived] environmental cost may decrease), people will probably consume more energy. What other incentive is there to conserve besides cost?

Food Alarmism

2007-03-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Chinese food is unhealthy. Hmmm...so I guess that would mean that people that eat a lot of Chinese food wouldn't live as long as people who didn't eat a lot of Chinese food. So, let's look at two countries with fairly similar economic systems, one where the average person probably eats Chinese food a couple times a month (at best), and one where the average person eats Chinese food just about every day (source: CIA Factbook):

UK life expectancy
total population: 78.54 years
male: 76.09 years
female: 81.13 years (2006 est.)

Hong Kong life expectancy
total population: 81.59 years
male: 78.9 years
female: 84.5 years (2006 est.)

Hmmm....

Capitalism: the Antithesis of Social Darwinism

2007-03-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the following comment in response to Julian Sanchez’s phrase “the progressive version of the intelligent design fallacy” got me all riled up, and I’ve already criticized it here.

If you want to make an evolutionary argument, you have to realize that the way evolution by random mutation works is by failure. Trial and error. Lots and lots of error. Millions of kids lives would be ruined, society would collapse, and a new society billions of years from now would have evolved the innate capacity to build properly functioning schools for their multi-tentacled offspring. Or something like that. Anyway, the point is that if you want progress you can find in the newspaper rather than in the fossil record, you need intelligence.

Julian was advocating for school choice (i.e. vouchers), so I assume that this commenter is an opponent of school choice, and probably of capitalism in general. Who knows...The point is, a lot of people commit the fallacy of associating capitalism with evolution, or more specifically, Social Darwinism.

What's the easiest (and intellectually laziest) way to attack a person advocating capitalism and free markets? Accuse him of supporting Social Darwinism. Of course, such an attack is misguided at best, and actually couldn’t be further from the truth.

In a market-based system, wealth is created through innovation. In evolution/Social Darwinism, wealth is transferred to the biggest bully. Sure, at any given instance, the competition between two businesses vying for the same thing (access to some resource or customer or money) might resemble an encounter between a snake and a mongoose, but the customer ends up winning in either case because the winner of the battle must do something (such as inventing a new product that makes life easier) to win the battle for the resource.

In fact, communism—the polar opposite of capitalism—more accurately resembles Social Darwinism; the lack of incentives for innovators results in a fixed amount of wealth being fought over instead of new wealth being created (through the innovation that capitalism so uniquely fosters). Carl Milsted sums it up nicely here:

Another notorious metaphor [to capitalism] is “Social Darwinism.” It implies a tougher fight for survival in a market system. Ironically, when traditional societies become more free market based, populations tend to explode, until parents realize that their children are likely to live long lives. As far as people are concerned, capitalism is anti-Darwinian. A good case could be made that our descendants will be stupider and less hearty because capitalism has made life too easy.

There is an evolutionary aspect to capitalism, but it applies to businesses, not the people they serve. Businesses that fail to provide good service do get weeded out by competition with better businesses. But the evolutionary process is not entirely Darwinian: businesses learn. Lamarkian evolution is the norm.

Anyway, the point is this: in a market-based school system, some schools would fail, while others would succeed. But just as the consumers win when Target matches Wal-Mart’s prices and provides a more comfortable and attractive shopping environment (while other competitors like K-mart fall by the wayside), the students and parents would win if schools were pitted against each other. Sure, some schools would be closed (i.e. go out of businesses), and (gasp!) some teachers would lose their jobs. But I want bad schools to close, and I want bad teachers to lose their jobs. After all, I’m not all that concerned about the schools and the teachers; I’m concerned about the students!

The Progressive Version of the Intelligent Design Fallacy

2007-03-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Julian Sanchez describes what he calls the "progressive version of the intelligent design fallacy" in this post. Here's the excerpt:

This is the progressive version of the intelligent design fallacy—the implicit belief that complex results must be consciously aimed at to be achieved...

The context that it's used in is to attack how opponents of school choice seem to operate on the presumption that central planning is required to produce a good product. I love the concept that Julian has coined, but I don’t love the term he’s given to it. I think it will lead to a lot of confusion and straw man arguments that conflate market-based systems and capitalism with evolution. For example, a commenter attacks Julian's verbiage with this comment:

If you want to make an evolutionary argument, you have to realize that the way evolution by random mutation works is by failure. Trial and error. Lots and lots of error. Millions of kids lives would be ruined, society would collapse, and a new society billions of years from now would have evolved the innate capacity to build properly functioning schools for their multi-tentacled offspring. Or something like that. Anyway, the point is that if you want progress you can find in the newspaper rather than in the fossil record, you need intelligence.

Nevermind the commenter’s conflation of evolution with market-based systems (see this post for my thoughts on that fallacy). What really freaks me out about this guy’s comment is that he seems to be willing to completely ignore the obvious evidence that markets work, and more specifically that people (in their current state of evolutionary existence) function optimally in market-based systems. It won’t take millions of years of evolution for people to adjust to a market-based school system, just as it won’t take millions of years of evolution for people to adjust to a market-based food distribution system (or any other subsystem of the overall capitalist/market-based economy). NEWSFLASH! We already have those systems! A market-based school system isn’t any different!

Yes, you need intelligence, but not from a central planning perspective. You need intelligence (insofar as being able to tell the difference between a failure and a success) at the level of the consumer, or in the case of school choice, the parent. And we already have that! Would anyone ever really suggest that people are so stupid that, without millions more years of evolution, they can’t tell the difference between a success and a failure?

Anyway, to avoid the confusion that Julian’s comment cause in this commenter, as well as to avoid the conflation of evolution (i.e. Social Darwinism) with capitalism, I’d like to suggest a new term to describe this fallacy that many people assume to be true. How about simply, the “central planner fallacy?”

School Choice

2007-03-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

This post was originally a comment in response to this post on AngryBlog, but I liked it so much I'm posting it here:

Potential reasons for opposition to school-choice:

1.) Public funding of religious schools
2.) An erosion of the sense of “community” that comes with geography-based schools
3.) Fear of treating children like commodities to be shuffled around to school after school to prove a political point

Point #1 is a valid concern, but as long as there’s nothing in the allocation formula regarding religion (or the lack thereof) I think that this concern goes away.

Point #2 is not a valid concern because it relies on the false assumption that geography-based schools have the potential to foster a greater sense of community than performance-based schools.

Point #3 is valid, but as Tim points out, it can’t get any worse than it already is. We’ve been carrying out the progressive experiment with education for a long time now, and inner-city kids are the victims of “progressive dogmatism.”

The progressive system isn’t working (and in fact isn’t all that progressive). It’s time to try something else.

Liberty Mutual's "Responsibility" Site

2007-03-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

After calling Liberty Mutual to ask about a bill, I decided to go online to pay it. The image/question on the right side of the page caught my attention. It asked, "Should the government regulate the use of trans fats in restaurants?"

My interest was piqued! "OF COURSE NOT!" I thought to myself, my rage at the recent action by the New York City city council to ban trans fats being quickly recalled. So I clicked on the image and found this site, which has a huge list of "yes/no" survey questions that have been featured in weeks past. Much to my surprise the questions actually address the concept of liberty/personal responsibility vs. government mandates rather directly.

Besides the trans fat question that's currently up, they also ask about motorcycle helmet laws, airport security, even whether people without children should have to pay "school taxes" (their words). In most cases, the survey respondents [predictably] err on the side of more government action (and less liberty). Most respondents think the government should ban trans fats, most think the government should have motorcycle helmet laws, most think the minimum driving age should be raised, etc. But the "yeses" don't usually win by very much, showing that there is a healthy amount of people that believe the government should stay out issues revolving around personal choice and responsibility.

Even better, the comments that those opposed to government action write tend to be along the lines of liberty and the government's taking of freedom. The do-gooders keep trying to bring the question back to whether helmets saves lives or whether trans fats are healthy, but the opposition doesn't fall for that straw man, instead recentering the debate to government action vs. individual liberty and personal responsibility.

Go to the site now and voice your opinion!

Good Strategy for Promoting Liberty

2006-12-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

I think Radley Balko is onto a great strategy to promote liberty. It's basically the same strategy non-libertarians (statists, alarmists, public healthists, public safetyists, etc.) have been using for years. The strategy? Focus on the personal victims of whatever evil you're trying to expose. Think about it...for smoking ban advocates, it's stories about the poor single-mom waitress who has lung cancer despite never smoking a day in her life after working at a restaurant (where smoking is allowed) for 30 years. For the MADD crowd, nothing's more effective than the infamous "Happy Birthday" commercials where a home video of a child's birthday party is shown while a narrator informs viewers that the child was killed by a drunk driver. For food safety alarmists, it's not the fact that 15 out of 300 million people got sick from eating bad spinach, it's that the old man is in critical condition at a local hospital after eating a salad.

Libertarians and free market advocates know they're right in the grand scheme of things. It's not even close. Look at things like global standards of living, then look at levels of economic, social, and press freedom. On the macro level, it's clear that greater liberty equals a better society for all. On the macro level, the few people who actually care enough to objectively consider the macro-level generally accept this idea.

But on the micro level, where most of the people (most of the voters!!) make their decisions, the non-libertarians dominate. When was the last time you saw a local (or even national) news story that focused on the abuse of power by government and/or how government hurts people's lives. Rarely. And if there is such a story, it's usually couched in terms that make the government's co-conspirators (such as a money-hungry corporation) look worse than the government. What's far more likely is a story about how some business or landlord is ripping people off, how someone died because of "gun violence," or some victim-laden story about the "digital divide" or the growing gap between rich and poor. And almost inevitably the stated or implied solution to such problems is more government action.

Anyway, back to the lecture at hand. "If it bleeds, it leads." That's the de facto axiom of news broadcasts. Why? Because people sympathize with personal stories. It doesn't even really matter what the story is; if there's a personal story with a likable person as a victim, it's perfect for the news.

And I think that libertarians are finally realizing this. Radley Balko is leading the charge at using personal stories to illustrate how government policies and government corruption can ruin the life of a real, actual person with a face and a name. Finally libertarians are understanding that what sells are personal stories on the micro level. You can talk all you want about how increased economic liberty will lead to a better society for all, but that point gets lost on most of the audience. What really gets people are real-world examples of individual victims.

Nice rant

2006-11-18T22:25:00.000-08:00

Mark Frauenfelder, the "small l libertarian" contributor to Boing Boing, has a nice rant about the incidental War on Allergy Sufferers, an unlikely child of the War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs:

For one thing, I'm one of those crazy (small l) libertarians who thinks drug laws, on the whole, hurt society more than they help society, so I don't like this law. It's a shame that some people ruin their lives and their families' lives by using meth and other drugs, but the innocent people killed by muggers who need money to buy expensive drugs, the enrichment of street gangs and organized crime rings that sell illegal drugs, the corruption of government officials who take bribes from smugglers, the people who are falsely arrested on trumped up drug charges, the people who are killed by crazed bounty hunters and police raiding the wrong houses, the seizure of property belonging to people who didn't know there were drugs on their property, and the imprisonment of non-violent drug users amount to a bigger problem, I think. I am in favor of abolishing all drug laws.

Well said.

New Market for the Liberty Dollar?

2006-10-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

I thought of something the other day. How might the recent ban on financial transactions for internet gambling affect using Liberty Dollars to pay for such services? After all, if the Liberty Dollar is not legal tender (PDF), can it really be covered under a ban on financial transactions? Isn't it just a fancy form of bartering?

Imagine...Liberty Dollars becoming the de facto standard currency for a fun activity that adults choose to participate in but that busybody politicians seek to prohibit...It's a perfect match!

Update

2006-10-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

In case anyone has looked at this blog in the past couple months, I'd like to provide three ~~reasons~~ excuses for the dearth of posts:

1.) I got married in July, and that took up a lot of time
2.) I got a puppy in August, and that took up a lot of time
3.) I got a new car in September, and that took up a lot of time

Es tut mir leid.

Promoting Corporate Success vs. Promoting Consumer Choice

2006-08-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

There are two ways to promote deregulation/privatization/marketization, which I'll refer to in this post simply as DPM. The first is to focus on the benefits to the economy, specifically the benefits that would come to "business." For example, someone might suggest that DPM will "be good for business," which to the average person that isn't already convince of the benefits of DPM sound like "allow big corporations that take advantage of the 'little guys' to make more money."

Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth, but that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the public's perception. It's frustrating, but it's true.

So what's the other way to promote DPM? By focusing on the increased choice ("consumer choice" is the most favorable way to phrase it) that will result from instituting DPM or, even better, never even enacting regulations in the first place. Tim Lee has done a great job of doing this in this op-ed, which argues against enacting legislation that would attempt to preserve "net neutrality."

Tim's op-ed sounds very positive to me. Even though he's arguing against the populist position (which says that we need net neutrality to maintain equal access to the internet), his argument comes off to me as slightly populist (i.e. it has popular appeal).

To sum up:

more profits = bad public perception
more consumer choice = good public perception

Both arguments are valide reasons for supporting DPM, but argument #2 won't instantly alienate half of the electorate.

Deregulation vs. Privatiziation vs. Marketization

2006-08-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

In general, libertarians (and some conservatives) favor reducing regulations. A term that was once popular but that now seems to carry negative connotations is "deregulation." For many, this term essentially means selling out to big corporate interests, usually at the expense of the public.

Whether such a perception is right or wrong is irrelevant--if people think that deregulation is bad, then it is bad.

An even nastier term than dergulation is "privatization." This term reeks of the corrupt sale of big Soviet industries to seedy businessmean and profiteers.

A better term (for now, at least) is marketization, which sounds better when it's used as a verb: "Energy rates would decrease if we were to marketize the power distribution system."

This term has two things going for it: (1) it hasn't been used a lot (at least recently) and (2) its root word is generally more positive and more accurately characterizes the goal of the concept.

"Deregulation" is inherently a negative word (with the prefix "de"), and simply "deregulating" something doesn't address what will happen to that something after it is no longer regulated.

"Privatiziation's" root word is "private," which connotes selfishness. Again, what will happen to something once it is "privatized?" Will those who had access to it in the past continue to have access to it in the future?

"Marketization's" root word, however, is "market." "Market" is the term that pretentious people use for "stores," as in, "I'm going to pick some celery up at the market." Plus, if something is "marketized," we know what the outcome will be. It will be transformed from its non-market state to a market state. That's all. Nothing to worry about.

But for me the post positive thing about "marketization" is that its root word implies consumer choice. What kind of "market" has only one option?

I'm sure there are technical differences between the three terms discussed above, but that doesn't really matter to me because I'm not an economist. And it doesn't really matter to a majority of Americans (who also aren't economists), because all that's important for them (and especially for the people trying to reach them!) is what they perceive.

Libertarians run some of the hottest "green" companies

2006-07-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Two well know libertarians, T.J. Rodgers and John Mackey, who participated in a famous debate about the social responsibility of businees with none other than Milton Friedman, run two of the hottest "green" companies--SunPower Corporation and Whole Foods, respectively. SunPower Corporation is a member of the Wired 40, where it is lauded for its "photovoltaic silicon [that] puts out 50 percent more juice per square inch." Whole Foods, of course, is the most successful chain of supermarkets offering "natural and organic"food.

See liberals? Libertarians are your friends.

Images from here.

I hope this guy's not a libertarian

2006-06-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

I found out about this from here.

Another reason to abolish the FDA

2006-06-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

From here:

The report, requested and funded by the Food and Drug Administration, lays out ways to help people manage their intake of calories from the growing number of meals prepared away from home, including at the nation's nearly 900,000 restaurants and other establishments that serve food.
...

The report encourages restaurants to shift the emphasis of their marketing to lower-calorie choices, and include more such options on menus. In addition, restaurants could jigger portion sizes and the variety of foods available in mixed dishes to reduce the overall number of calories taken in by diners.

What if a government agency "encouraged" media companies to show more "good news" and human interest stories, because, gee whiz, that stuff makes people feel better? What if a government agency recommended that atheists take a fresh look at Christianity, because Christians tend to be happier?

Such government intrusion into our media and our spirituality would be almost universally seen as wrong.

Why should it be any different with a government agency like the FDA? While the FDA and the healthists wear a public face of "serving the public good," it now seems like they're intentionally trying to usurp responsibility from individuals.

I don't want to be "encouraged" to eat more or less of anything, and I certainly don't want restaurants to be "urged" to serve smaller portions and more fruits and vegetables. 1.) Restaurants already serve a lot of fruits and vegetables...they're called salads! Almost every restaurant (including the Great Satan McDonald's) sells them. 2.) If you want a smaller portion, eat half of what you order and take the other half home.

Immigration Stupidness

2006-06-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

Cap on high-tech visas for 2007 already met

WASHINGTON - The government has already reached the limit on high-tech worker visas for 2007 even though the fiscal year does not start until Oct. 1, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Thursday.

High-tech companies said that underscores the need to increase the 65,000 annual cap on the popular H-1B visas used to bring in engineers, computer programmers and others.

Why do we have this stupid cap in the first place? Oh, that's right, to protect high-tech jobs for American scientists and engineers.

(1) I bet every immigrant working as a scientist or engineer creates >1 high tech jobs for some American (probably someone with a business degree, which we have too many of).

(2) There aren't enough American scientists and engineers the way it is...everyone's majoring in business!

There's talk of increasing the cap to 115,000. I'm sure all of those would be filled just as quickly. We should get rid of the cap entirely and let all the Indians, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Nigerian, etc. scientists and engineers come to America. With any luck, they'll stay here and create millions of new jobs with the technologies they invent and companies they found.

Republicans are scared of libertarians

2006-06-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

Sue Jeffers, who is a libertarian and is endorsed by the Minnesota LP, is prohibited from speaking at the Minnesota Republican Convention.

Bill Weld, a New York Republican endorsed by the New York LP, loses his party's endorsement.

Republicans in office at the federal level barely even bother to pay lip service to liberty anymore.

George Bush is touted for his big government conservatism.

Someone in Minneapolis gets it

2006-06-02T00:05:00.000-07:00

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he said. "The whole country seems to be going to the Soviet Union, I'll tell you that."

This comment was made by Minneapolis resident (and good honest American!) Gordon Anderson in regards to a proposal by Minneapolis City Council member Robert Lilligren that would make it illegal to walk down an alley on a block you (or someone you're visiting) don't live on.

This proposal is a classic government "solution." First, from a practical standpoint, it's unenforceable. Second, for the few instances it might be enforced, the only logical tactic of enforcement--asking someone where they live--is incredibly unconstitutional (4th Amendment). Are black people walking down alleys in southwest Minneapolis (which is predominantly white) going to be stopped and questioned (for their residency papers?!?!) by cops?

I found out about this story from this post at the Agitator.

Keeping the undesirables out by keeping prices high

2006-05-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

As I discoverd in this post at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, Hercules, California is using eminent domain to keep Wal-Mart out of their precious city.

"It's the quality of living in Hercules that we're dealing with," said Steve Kirby, a Hercules resident since 1988. "One thing that we don't want is a regional-type business in there that brings in a lot of traffic."

In other words, we don't want anyone that doesn't fit the profile of our ideal citizen. In other words, we only want certain people to shop in our town....we don't want, ahem, those people in our city.

Sounds like Hercules has a Pleasantville complex.

Great libertarian quote

2006-05-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

"Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" should be the name of a store, not a government agency.

[corrected for punctuation and grammar from a post by Chris Marshall here]

Overkill

2006-05-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

Some kids pulled off a clever prank and made marijuana-laced muffins for their teachers.

Give 'em the chair!!!!

The FBI was involved? The prosecutor wants to give the kids 20 years in prison because "illegal drugs" were involved? 20 years? The kids aren't criminals now (yes their actions were criminal (because marijuana is currently illegal) and unethical (whether or not drugs should be illegal, tricking someone into taking them is wrong), but they're not *criminals*. But they'll probably become criminals if they go to prison. If nothing else, they won't be productive members of society (which they otherwise would be...I don't think they're going to spend the rest of their life tricking people into eating pot muffins).

Nerd Alert

2006-04-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

Libertarians are nerds.

This symbol used to represent liberty...

2006-04-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

Boing Boing mentions how a protestor in France (presumably protesting the would-have-been repeal of a law that protects workers under 26 from getting fired; here's a good summary) looks like a famous painting by Eugene Delacroix entitled "Liberty Leading the People." Sure, the images look similar, but the spirit of the protest couldn't be more opposite than "liberty leading the people." Protesting to maintain the status quo which has left youth unempolyment in France at over 20% hardly smacks of liberty. Besides, the lady in the painting looks better than the lady in the photograph.

Free-market solutions for parentalism

2006-04-01T07:02:00.000-08:00

This passage from a Crispin Sartwell article has been cited by several libertarian heavy hitters (TheAgitator, Hammer of Truth, and Reason to name a few), so since I'm a libertarian heavy hitter (ha!), I'll cite it too.

We want the government to guarantee our health, deflect hurricanes, educate our children and license us to drive; we want to be told what to eat, what to smoke and whom to marry. We are justly proud of the fact that no enduring society has ever incarcerated more of its people. Noting that the policeman has a pistol, a club, a stun gun, a can of pepper spray and a database that includes us, we feel happy and secure.

Our submission is absolute: We want to be operated like puppets and provided for like pets.

The terrorists hate our freedom. But we should be comfortable with that. We hate our freedom, too.

Radley Balko (The Agitator) coined this idea of fearing freedom as "parentalism." While frustrating, this realization isn't super surprising. Think of how resistant some people are to move out of their parents' home. Or even how afraid people (myself included) are to try new things. We're fraught with worry when posed with new options...what if I don't like it, what if I can't undo things (like I can on the computer!), what if I lose money?

Clearly, parentalism is not a concept resulting from living in a somewhat free society; it's just basic human nature. Being afraid of new things probably kept our ancestors alive while our would-have-been ancestors perished along with their DNA.

So instead of trying to fight the problem, as Radley implies must be done with his treadmill analogy, why not acknowledge the reality of parentalism and apply some libertarian wisdom to the problem? If people want to have their decisions made for them, why can't private companies do this? They can, and they can [of course] do it better than the government!

In a way, I think this is already occurring, especially through the Internet. A big part of decision making is having information. Google and Wikipedia do this like nobody else. Blogs do it, too. The "main-stream media" does it as well, although with a bit more alarmism than is necessary.

On being controlled, we already get a lot of that from employers (especially if you work for a big company). Dress codes, facial hair codes, speech codes, relationship rules, etc...corporations have it all!

I think there's a market opportunity (which is to say there's currently a defiency) for a business that provides "protection." Not like the mafia or the government, which provide you with coerced protection (we're going to protect you, like it or not!), but a business that provides "peace of mind." That sounds like an insurance company slogan, and I guess insurance companies do this to some degree, but nobody likes insurance companies. There is an opportunity for a business that goes one step beyond advice.

Instead of paying a company for advice (which you're doing indirectly by visiting a website with ads), maybe the next step is to pay a company (voluntarily, remember) to actually make decisions for you. Maybe you'll pay a company to do all your grocery shopping for you but they will decide what's healthy and what's not. Or maybe your favorite internet news site will be customized to report to you the things that make you the most comfortable. Like, if you're paranoid about violent crimes, the site will pepper you with facts about how many people are in prison or how much money is spent on fighting crime. Or maybe it's just the opposite--the site will only inform you of good news and leave you blissfully unaware of the stuff you fear.

I don't know exactly. The market will have to figure this out. But clearly there is a desire for some people to be (or at least feel) more controlled. Let's create free market solutions for this before the government creates its so-called "solutions." As Harry Browne has said, "Whatever the problem in a free market, it will be a profitable opportunity for someone who knows how to fix it." Indeed!

Vindicated!

2006-03-26T18:39:00.000-08:00

Cue the Dashboard Confessional song...I've been vindicated. Last June, I expressed my support for pay-per-mile road financing schemes. Of course, there are obvious privacy concerns that other libertarians (someone actually left a comment!) have a knee-jerk reaction against. Fortunately, Alex Tabarrok agrees with me.

I wonder how many other regulatory agencies are completely useless...

2006-03-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

Via this post, I discovered this post, which contains this:

My column barely mentions one important part of the story--the regulatory environment. At first, containerization grew through cracks in the rigid regulatory structure of the 1960s. But today's fully integrated systems became possible only after trucking and rail were deregulated in the 1970s and maritime rates were deregulated (to very little fanfare) in 1984. Assumptions about transportation regulation have changed so radically that reading about the bad old days seems like science fiction.
As Levinson said in our interview, "Nobody even remembers what the Interstate Commerce Commission used to do. But you’ve probably been in the old ICC building on Constitution Avenue in Washington. It had a choice spot in Washington. Important agency, important location, big building. This was a key federal agency. And it spent its time hearing arguments about whether this truck line ought to be able to carry cigarettes in the same trucks as it carried textiles or whether the rates that were being charged to carry pretzels were adequate. People have trouble remembering that today."

So back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the ICC had a bunch of people in suits deciding how trucking companies could operate, and they all felt important, like they were looking out for the American consumer. I wonder how many other similar regulatory agencies exist that, upon ceasing to exist, would result in a noticeable increase in liberty and prosperity. I'm guessing there are dozens, if not hundreds (especially if you go state-by-state!).

That town in Florida the Dominos guy wants to build

2006-03-14T23:17:00.000-08:00

I've heard worries from some of my liberal, Democrat-leaning friends about Ave Maria, the town in Florida that the founder of Domino's Pizza (Thomas S. Monaghan) wants to build. From a CNN article:

The town of Ave Maria is being constructed around Ave Maria University, the first Catholic university to be built in the United States in about 40 years. Both are set to open next year about 25 miles east of Naples in southwestern Florida.
...
Homebuyers in Ave Maria will own their property outright. But Monaghan and Barron Collier will control all commercial real estate in the town, meaning they could insert provisions in leases to restrict the sale of certain items.

This is basically a large real estate development...not really a "town" in the way that I think a lot of people are assuming. There won't be any abortion or birth control in the "town," which means nothing since the development is only 25 miles away from Naples. There are numerous small towns around the country that are further than 25 miles away from abortion and birth control, so the fact that the development won't offer these things isn't anything to write home about.

But what really struck me when I first heard about this was how, if the developers really want to turn this whole thing into a town, it's not going to work. Why won't it work? It's too centrally planned. Central planning doesn't work. Ask the Soviet Union, East Germany, Cuba, North Korea, etc.

The planned university will probably succeed, but the town won't end up being some American version of the Vatican, as alarmists in the media would want you to believe. If the developers are overly oppressive towards businesses locating within their "town," developers will simply build just outside of the town.

Drug Prices

2006-03-14T23:11:00.000-08:00

I like this little rant by Ronald Bailey.

The economically ignorant Times notes, "[P]eople who analyze drug pricing say they see the Mustargen situation as emblematic of an industry trend of basing drug prices on something other than the underlying costs."

Ahem. Prices are not based on costs; they are based on what people are willing to pay for something. Think of it this way.Your parents probably paid less than $25,000 for their first house. Fortunately, let's say they bought in Chevy Chase, Maryland and stayed there all their lives. Now the average home price is $600,000. If one only took inflation from 1960 into account, the house would only be worth $160,000. Unfortunately, your parents were run over by a Presidential motorcade. As their heir, would you be willing to sell their house for the equivalent of what they paid for it? Would that be fair to you?

Of course, the response by many well-meaing people is something like "Drugs are different. Sick people need drugs; how dare someone profit off their misery!" However, there will be few new drugs if you take the profit out of discovering and producing them. Then sick people will simply suffer and die as they always have, but at least no one will have made a dime off of their misery. And while I'm thinking about it; how dare those grocers and homebuilders profit off of people's hunger and need for shelter!

Loser pays

2006-03-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading John Stossel's book "Give Me A Break." It's very easy to read, probably because I already know about and agree with almost everything Stossel discusses. But one thing I wasn't aware of was the idea of "loser pays." Here's an article by Stossel that hits the main points he covers in the book.

"Loser pays" would impose penalties on the plaintiff if they bring a case to court and lose. An example Stossel uses in his book is Instant Replay in the NFL. When it first debuted, there was no cost to making a challenge to a call and the system was abused, slowing down the game. Fans revolted and Instant Replay got thrown out. Of course, the system has been brought back, but now teams that challenge a ruling get charged a time out if they lose the challenge. Big surprise...this system works better now.

In America, we're still operating under the old Instant Replay system. If a plaintiff loses a lawsuit, they rarely, if ever, get penalized. This makes it really easy for frivolous liability lawsuits to be brought. The practice of champerty (think venture capitalism funding of lawsuits) may even be used. As Stossel points out in his article, since the American system lacks "loser pays," determined lawyers can file an unlimited amount of lawsuits until they finally reach the desired outcome.

This is what happened with the lawsuits against the tobacco companies.
They just keep suing until they do; they lost 700 lawsuits before they started winning against the cigarette makers.

With deep pockets and a battery of lawyers hoping to cash-in on a mega settlement, it's easy to see why liability lawsuits are they're own little cottage industry in America.

Almost every other country (England, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, etc.) has "loser pays." And it helps deter frivolous lawsuits. As Walter Olson points out:

European courts also come down hard on the Yankee practice of blowing up routine injuries into whopping cash demands. The litigant who claims a million marks or francs in damages but proves only a hundred thousand is deemed to have lost at least in part, and some lump of fees will be deducted from his award. (Various rules deal with the special cases where damages cannot be precisely calculated.) England's "pay into court" rule serves a similar function: If a plaintiff turns down a settlement offer and does worse at trial, the plaintiff has by definition not prevailed for purposes of fees incurred after the offer.

Thus (a Swiss law professor explained to me) when a Zurich or Frankfurt accident victim walks into the office with a good case, the first order of business after establishing the case's merit is to figure out what is a reasonable amount of money to request, based on what the courts have given for similar injuries. Asking for more could risk a fee penalty. An American lawyer who handled a case that way would probably be sued for malpractice or disbarred on grounds of insanity.

America needs to institute "loser pays" now. Oh, and Stossel's awesome.

Iiidiots!

2006-03-11T12:31:00.000-08:00

Is the New York City Council made up of, as Napolean Dynamite would say, "Iiidiots!?!"

Some entrepreneurial individuals from New York City have found a partial solution to the city's traffic problems (link):

Known as pedicabs, these vehicles look like giant tricycles with a passenger carriage in the back. Some tourists and New Yorkers see them as an affordable, pollution-free way to see the city and sail through gridlock.

Of course, as Alex Tabarrok points out, the almighty New York City Council (peace be upon them), in their omniscient way, have decided that to save the ignorant and stupid masses (particulary tourists), they must impose regulations on the innovative pedicab operators.

"It is disconcerting that New Yorkers and tourists are riding in these devices without oversight in place -- non-inspected devices that may not have proper safety equipment or insurance," said Iris Weinshall, New York's transportation commissioner. "We simply cannot wait for a tragic accident involving a pedicab to occur."

Yeah, I bet you're losing a lot of sleep over it, Iris. And your solution sounds like a great idea. Subject small business owners to so much red tape that they go out of busineess. Then the people that would have ridden in a pedicab--which so far has never been involved in a fatal accident--will instead ride in regular taxis. And of course, New York taxis never crash (PDF).

Image from here.

Vote for Sue Jeffers!

2006-03-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

You have to be a Minnesota resident to vote for Sue Jeffers (running for governor under the Libertarian Party) this November, but you can vote for her online right now. Do it!

As of this post, she's in second place. Help move her into first!

Meme for me...why not?

2006-03-06T21:04:00.000-08:00

Wow, despite an approximately three month drought of posts (I've since picked things back up), someone memed me. I have no choice but to comply.

Four jobs I've had:

1.) Grocery bagger at 29 Super in Weston, WI - I was good.
2.) Surveyor's assistant - While only working there for 1 1/2 months, I learned how hard surveying is.
3.) "Consultative sales representative, technology" at Office Depot in downtown Minneapolis - I learned how much I don't want to work in a retail environment
4.) Independent distributor for Amp beverage promotion - I handed out free cans of Amp energy drink to drunk people in downtown Minneapolis when the bars closed...this was an awesome job.

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1.) Star Wars
2.) Ferris Bueller's Day Off
3.) The Bourne Identity
4.) Mission Impossible

Four places I've lived:

1.) Milwaukee, WI
2.) Brooklyn Park, MN
3.) Fairfield, IA
4.) Kronenwetter, WI

Four TV shows I love:

1.) The Office (British version and American version)
2.) Seinfeld
3.) 24
4.) Saturday Night Live

Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows I haven't seen much of:

1.) Arrested Development
2.) CSI: anything
3.) The Sopranos
4.) Everybody Hates Chris (I saw this on someone else's list, but it fits for me, too)

Four places I've vacationed:

1.) Lausanne, Switzerland
2.) Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
3.) Colorado (Vail, Breckenridge, Aspen - all on college ski trips)
4.) Milwaukee, WI (Brewers games and German Fest!)

Four of my favorite foods:

1.) Baby-back ribs
2.) Peel-and-eat shrimp
3.) Cajun mix from Office Depot and/or Rainbox Foods (the generic brand)
4.) Angel food cake with strawberries

Four sites I visit daily:

1.) The Agitator
2.) Hammer of Truth
3.) Marginal Revolution
4.) Google News

Four places I'd rather be right now:

1.) Europe (Germany, Switzerland, or France)
2.) Somewhere luxurious and tropical but not crowded
3.) A clean house
4.) Somewhere cool creating really good graffitti

Four new bloggers I'm tagging

1.) I'm so low on the internet food chain...everybody's already been tagged. Next time, next time.

What a surprise...socialism doesn't work

2006-03-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

This article at Reason discusses some California legislator's plan to force Canadian-style socialized medicine upon all Californians. It links to this New York Times article.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 23 — The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada's most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise.

Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years before receiving treatment.
But no one is about to arrest Dr. Brian Day, who is president and medical director of the center, or any of the 120 doctors who work there. Public hospitals are sending him growing numbers of patients they are too busy to treat, and his center is advertising that patients do not have to wait to replace their aching knees.

One thing that wasn't mentioned in the Reason article is this bit from the New York Times story.

While proponents of private clinics say they will shorten waiting lists and quicken service at public institutions, critics warn that they will drain the public system of doctors and nurses. Canada has a national doctor shortage already, with 1.4 million people in the province of Ontario alone without the services of a family doctor.

If health care is a right, will Canada start forcing young people to go to medical school (and stay and work in the draconian Candadian system)?

Hurry up...let's take their land before it's illegal

2006-03-04T07:58:00.000-08:00

Minnetonka, MN wants to take land using eminent domain so that it can sell it to a developer. But they have to hurry, because Minnesotans for Eminent Domain Reform are working to ban such practices (the governmental powers resulting from the Kelo ruling were already explicitly legal in Minnesota). From this story:

Minnetonka will use a process called a "quick take" to seize the properties for the Glen Lake project. If it can get a judge to agree, it can take the land in about three months, before prices are set or legal appeals are completed.

Wow.

The redevelopment plan for Glen Lake, one of Minnetonka's oldest neighborhoods, consists of about 180 condominiums and 20,000 square feet of retail space at Excelsior Boulevard and Woodhill Road. If the two lots are acquired, they would be turned over to developer Tom Wartman, the owner of the Glenhaven shopping center. He would reimburse the city for its costs.

Minnesota legislators have proposed laws sharply limiting cities' eminent domain powers. Minnetonka officials said they needed to act quickly to start proceedings now, before the Legislature goes into session, because changes to the law could be made retroactive to the beginning of the session March 1. They also want to have the property available for summer construction.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, though. Do the Minnetonka public officials have lofty goals?

The city cites three public purposes for its use of eminent domain: cleaning up blighted property and building affordable housing in the project as a whole, and building a public path on the Zachman property.

Whatever. Minnetonka is one of the wealthiest suburbs in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, especially the part west of Interstate 494. Does this look like a blighted area to you?

Occupational licensing makes the rich richer

2006-03-04T07:39:00.000-08:00

I don't like occupational licensing. Industries and trade groups should be free to limit the labor supply as much as they want, but they should not be able to use the force of government to do so. Using government to preserve a limited pool of labor in a given industry so that wages in that industry increase is nothing more than clever wealthfare.

It's not a tax if it's a private company

2006-03-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

Boing Boing is wrong. In this story, the headline is, "AOL: Screw you, we're taxing email anyway."

Now, I know that what America Online is doing sounds like a tax, but it's not a tax because America Online is a private company. Unlike true taxes, which are imposed by governments and backed by the [if necessary, deadly] use of force, America Online's so-called "tax" is nothing more than a business decision.

I could see calling it a "tax" for practical reasons, even if it technically wasn't, if America Online had monopoly control over email. However, thisn is defiitely not the case. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, universities, ISPs, etc. all offer free email that is as good if not better than America Online's. Moreover, one could take their destiny into their own hands and get setup their own email service by starting their own website (for which the options are literally infinite). If America Online thinks this is a good business decision and it turns out not to be, they'll suffer the consequences and lose customers to their myriad competitors.

America Online cannot [legally] use force to make people comply with this new program. Therefore, this is not a tax. This guy agrees.

Free Market vs. Corporate Tax Breaks

2006-02-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

Tax breaks are anti-liberty, anti-free market, and here's why.

Take two states, areas, X and Y. GenericCorp is located in X. Lately, the cost of business for GenericCorp in X has increased, and unless something changes, GenericCorp will start losing money. While X has a tight labor market, Y has a fast-growing population and a weaker labor market. If GenericCorp moves to Y, the lower labor costs will allow GenericCorp to actually make money, plus they can afford to expand their operations and hire even more people than they employ in X.

But the people in fancy hats in X don't want their sugardaddy GenericCorp to move out of town, especially on their watch. So they offer a big tax break to GenericCorp to stay in X. The tax break is more than enough to keep GenericCorp profitable, so GenericCorp stays in X.

Who wins in this scenario? The people that live in X that work at GenericCorp, the fancy-hat-wearing incumbents of X, and maybe some auxillary businesses near GenericCorp (like restaurants and gas stations).

Who loses? The taxpayers of X that don't work at GenericCorp (who far outnumber those who work at GenericCorp) and the people in Y that would have worked at GenericCorp if they would have moved. And how do you think the smaller businesses in X feel? Together, they employ far more people than GenericCorp, but they have to pay a higher tax rate.

What's the end result? To use a clichet, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. GenericCorp stays in X, continuing to pay inflated wages to the people that work there, while the people in Y struggle to find jobs that meet their skill level. Moreover, X has now become, to put it bluntly, GenericCorp's b*tch. What do you think's going to happen when the original tax break given to GenericCorp expires? Do you think GenericCorp is going to suddenly start paying the regular tax rate? Fat chance. GenericCorp will threten the fancy-hats of X, and they'll capitulate. And the spiral continues...

Look, tax breaks are a de facto tool of discrimination. Those that can afford to curry political favor get advantages the rest of society doesn't get. A free market doesn't discrminate. Unfair as it may seem, a free market lets jobs flow to wherever they're most valued, both by the empolyer and the employee. The free market allows society to trend toward an equilibrium. Tax breaks, along with other evil market-distorting twin public subsidies, delay that equilibrium from being reached.

What if metropolitan areas had "traffic breaks?" Imagine if the rich and powerful lobbied the government to limit access to the freeway they use during rush hour so that their commute could be swift and stress-free? Sounds great if you're rich and powerful. But what if you're part of the 98% of society that's not? Well, since access to the freeway of the rich is restricted, all the other freeways back up. Everybody else's commute gets way worse because the system is not allowed to reach equilibrium.

Anyway, the whole reason for this convoluted story is that later this year, the Supreme Court is going to rule on a case from Ohio, wherein an everyday taxpayers challenged the state's authority to grant a huge tax break to Daimler-Chrysler to keep a Jeep factory near Toledo. Here's a good article about it. This case is interesting because it's one in which the commerce clause could actually be used to increase liberty.

Municipal wireless

2006-02-17T23:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, so municipal wireless. On the surface, it sounds like a great thing. Decently-fast access to the internet anywhere within a city...why not?

Of course, I'm naturally skeptical of government involvement in anything (as we all should be; after all, it's our money being spent), and municipal wireless is no different. What I'm absolutely opposed to are city-run projects, such as the one in Chaska, MN. Philadelphia was going to set up their municipal wireless like this; however, they've since decided to work with Earthlink.

Such arrangements, where a city contracts with some private company to build a wireless network, don't really seem all that bad. The Philadelphia plan is intriguing because Earthlink will provide wholesale service that will be resold to [I assume a variety of] ISPs that then offer retail service. That's the idea, at least.

At first, the Philadelphia plan, which seems pretty similar to ones conceptualized for Minneapolis and Chicago, reminded me of local cable TV monopolies. For cable TV, a city grants local monopoly powers to some cable company (like Charter, Time Warner, Comcast, etc.) for some fee, and then the residents of that city can only get cable through that one company. The justification for this monopoly-grant system is, presumably, that it's unreasonable and inefficient for competing companies to build physically duplicate cable networks. Interestingly, Barry Goldwater is responsible for the federal legislation that made this possible. (Sidenote: apparently there was a bill in Congress to reform this monopoly system. I don't think it passed, and it was opposed by the National League of Cities presumably because cities get revenues from cable company monopolies)

Anyway, at first, this is what I thought cities like Philadelphia were going to do. But upon further contemplation, I don't think the Philadelphia plan is all that bad.

In the Philadelphia plan, Earthlink will get right-of-way access to city streetlights and electricity for mounting and powering their equipment. This appears to be the only favor Earthlink is getting from the city. There's more to the relationship then that, but some of it involves Earthlink offering discounted prices for the city and poor residents. According to the Earthlink press release:

Under the terms of the proposal, no City or taxpayer dollars will be used to fund the project. EarthLink will finance, build and manage the wireless network, and provide Wireless Philadelphia with revenue sharing fees to help support the Wireless Philadelphia Non-Profit Corporation.

So, from what I gather, there's no reason some other company couldn't build their own wireless network (Wi-Fi or otherwise). The use of city streetlights and power is not a negligible benefit, but it's not as bad as a cable TV monopoly. Plus, the fact that retail service will be provided competitively should mean that consumers will have choices, something consumers don't have with cable TV monopolies.

The big question for me is this: If a company like Verizon wanted to buid an independent, duplicate citywide network in Philadelphia, would the city prohibit it? If they would, then the Philadelphia plan is too much like the cable TV monopoly system that gouges people today and I don't like it.

However, if the city wouldn't prohibit an independent competitor, then I guess I support the plan, despite the fact that government is involved on some level. But since wireless internet access increases mobility (socially and physically) and will likely expose more people to the information of the internet, I think the net benefit is more liberty, which is good.

Update:
I sent an email to www.wirelessphiladelphia.org and, somewhat to my surprise, actually got a response. Here's what I wrote to them:

Me (2/18/06)
I'm interested in citywide wireless systems (Minneapolis, where I live, will be getting one soon), and I have a question about the Philadelphia system.

If a competing company (say for example, Verizon) wanted to build a duplicate, independent citywide network in Philadelphia to compete with Wireless Philadelphia/Earthlink's network, could they? In other words, has Earthlink been granted any sort of local monopoly with Philadelphia?

and here's their response:

Them (3/9/06)
Thank you for your interest. EarthLink has not been given a monopoly. Please see the contacts on www.wirelessphiladelphia.org.

Well, it looks like Earthlink doesn't have a monopoly. That's great!

Where do they get all the flags?

2006-02-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

This post is a little late, but the issue has remain unresolved. How do protestors in the Middle East get all the flags? Seriously, Danish flags? I wouldn't know where to get one of those in the US. I bet they're hard to find in Denmark.

I mean, do stores in the Middle East keep stockpiles of flags, just in case? Sure, I can see keeping a healthy stack of Ol' Glory around. I mean, hardly a week goes by when you don't see footage of an American flag being burned. But Danish flags? Is there some flag maker in the Middle East that can switch patterns at a moment's notice? Have sales of Danish flags in the Middle East surged over the past couple weeks? Maybe there'll be price-gouging hearings by Middle Eastern governments on the sudden increase in the price of Danish flags.

Sensible solution to open internet debate

2006-02-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

At Hammer of Truth, Stephen Gordon's post about the open internet debate does a good job of summarizing the various positions on the issue.

My take on the issue is that overall, a so-called open internet is extremely good. The behind-the-scenes network should be invisible to end-users, and anyone anywhere should be able to access any website.

But instead of making a whole new set of laws that require companies to do this, why not just say this: Companies that restrict their end-users' ability to access website from another ISP lose their government-enshrined monopoly protection.

What a waste...

2006-02-13T21:05:00.000-08:00

Government drug agents arrest government terror agents for smuggling drugs outlawed by government.

Seems like things might be a lot simpler without one of the above ingredients.

Keep laptops out of the hands of poor people

2005-11-30T19:37:00.000-08:00

Who would buy a $398 laptop? People that can't afford to buy a $1,000 laptop. In other words, poor people. So why does the state of Wisconsin forbid Wal-Mart from selling a laptop for $398? Good question...seems pretty insensitive toward the "have-nots," to borrow a term from so-called progressives. I guess Wisconsin thinks only rich people should have laptops.

Beating the terrorists at their own game

2005-11-29T20:36:00.000-08:00

Looks like Miami police have found a way to stop the terrorists...terrorize the citizens first and steal the terrorists' thunder. I read about this story here.

California

2005-11-03T02:06:00.000-08:00

I don't live in California. Maybe some day I will...who knows. But I had to say something about this. Regarding California's upcoming special election, a group called "Speak Out California!" has produced a voting guide to tell people how to vote (and do all that annoying thinking for them). Anyway, on this page about how they think California should work, they ignorantly bash the "free market":

Republicans and their free market fundamentalist attack groups claim that they stand for economic growth, but the stock market on average performs 12% better under Democrats. Why? In short, because tax cuts don't create jobs: people do. We believe in producing robust and sustainable growth in this state by:

* Investing in education and infrastructure
* Encouraging public-private partnerships
* Making California the home for the green economy
* Protecting working families
* Supporting responsible corporate stewardship

There are soooo many things wrong with this statement. First, the assumption that Republicans are somehow allied with "free market" thinking and, even worse, that "free market" is necessarily associated with "fundamentalist attack groups," whatever those are. Republicans pay lip service to free market ideals when it suits their purpose, then spend taxpayer money like there's no tomorrow when their power is unchecked. I don't know what a fundamentalist attack group is--Swiftboat Veterans, maybe? Some pro-life group? I can't think of a fundamentalist attack group that actively supports free market ideals.

Next, the claim that the stock market performs "better under Democrats." Huh? Under which Democrats. Sure, the stock market did well during the 1990s, while a Democrat was president, but during most of that time Republicans controlled at least one house of Congress. More importantly, however, is that neither of those things are directly responsible for the better-than-average stock market performance of the 1990s. What about the boom in technology centered around the internet? This is a once-in-a-lifetime development that completely transformed the way the world works during the 1990s (and still continues today). Imagine if there was a stock market around before and after the invention of the wheel. Would not that fictitious stock market experience tremendous growth, regardless of who was in power (provided they weren't an out-and-out Communist), simply because of all the new stuff that the new technology allowed?

This is getting long, but I think our country functions best (given the current two-party duopoly) when a Democrat is president and Republicans control Congress. This leads to gridlock (which slows down regulation-passing) and animosity between the two branches of government, just as our Constitution intended.

Anyway, back to the critique. "Tax cuts don't create jobs, people do." Well, "guns don't kill people, I do." Seriously, though, what kind of empty statement is that. Obviously, people create jobs (who/what else could?). Tax cuts are a reduction in that which inhibits job creation--government interference in the economy. With our ridiculously-complicated tax code, I don't want to argue about whether one type of tax cut is more effective than another, but I think it's easy to see that, regardless of their impact on jobs, tax cuts improve the economy. Just ask Europe why the U.S. is the only G-8 country to experience consistent GDP growth at over 3% during the last few years.

Now for a point-by-point critique:

Investing in education and infrastructure - Good enough, I guess. If the government is already involved in these things, they should be improved upon. "Invest" is an ambiguous term, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, here.

Encouraging public-private partnerships - What, like taxpayer-funded stadiums? Subsidies for Big Farm?

Making California the home for the green economy - By regulating the state to death so that no one can afford a car?

Protecting working families - From whom? Working families should be worried about government taking away their hard-earned money to "encourage public-private partnerships."

Supporting responsible corporate stewardship - Fine. But don't use the word "stewardship." It's annoying.

Comments sind zurück

2005-10-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

Now that Blogger has a word-verification tool to weed out spam comments, comments are back on.

Good Quote

2005-10-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

From this debate at Reason:

Just as people cannot live without eating, so a business cannot live without profits. But most people don’t live to eat, and neither must a businesses live just to make profits.

-- John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods

Defending Wal-Mart

2005-10-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Yeah, Wal-Mart has problems. But sometimes they're worth defending. First, there's this story (which admittedly sounds more like a press release) about Wal-Mart switching to corn-based plastic for their packaging instead of petroleum-based plastic. Sounds pretty win-win to me. I just hope the corn-based plastic isn't subsidized, but I'm sure it is somewhere along the supply chain. So it's not the best story ever, but it's better than nothing.

Propaganda?

2005-10-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

From this LP article:

As the GOP actively sheds its conservative base, hitting stagnation in support, the Libertarian Party continues to grow each day as "dislodged voters" are turning to the LP as the only viable party that will stand by principle for the benefit of the American people....'More and more citizens are looking to us, the Libertarian Party, to break the two-party system and lead this nation to peace and prosperity,' stated Shane Cory, chief of staff for the Libertarian Party.

Okay, Michael Chertoff during the Conventoin Center fiasco. Sure, the LP is growing...by a couple people a month. Nothing against the LP--indeed, I hope their membership skyrockets. But I think the picture they're trying to paint here is a little rosier than the way things really are.

Individuals

2005-10-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

Nick Gillespie, the editor of Reason, is a great guy to have on the libertarian side. Credible, insightful, but at the same time edgy. Plus he's on the same wavelength as me. Or I'm on the same wavelength with him. Whatever...

This post discusses how society is becoming increasingly individualistic, which is in my opinion a very good thing not only for individuals (which we all are) but also for liberty.

The wider social implications of this sort of biomedical technology are pretty staggering, I think, and will almost certainly lead to significant shifts in how we perceive already-fluid group identities such as race and ethnicity.

I think that many people look forward to the day when each person is viewed as an individual and not be their "race." Tearing down arbitrary classifications along the lines of race, ideology, and even class (yes, class is arbitrary--it can't be defined objectively) will help people take control of their own lives...Hopefully.

Maximizing the power of individuals

2005-10-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

I'm not only skeptical of the power governments have over the lives of individuals, but also the power corporations have over the lives of individuals. Yes, private companies are [almost always] more effective at accomplishing something than government, but that doesn't mean I think private companies should control society. Rather, individuals should control their own lives. To me, this is the maximum level of freedom.

So that's why I think Outfoxed is neat. It gives individuals the ability to influence how a site is perceived by other individuals. It allows individuals to view, edit, and read comments from other individuals about any website. So people can be "socially-aware surfers" or learn how a website treats spyware. Basically, it informs individuals and allows them to hear all sides of the story about whatever website their visiting. Sure, such a system is vulnerable to false information, spin, and bias, but so is Wikipedia, and the users of Wikipedia have effectively dealt with such potential problems to make it one of the most informative, reliable, and oft-used sites on the internet.

The influence of Outfoxed may be small, but I think it is indicative of a trend for society to become more individualized and for individuals be become more empowered. More individual power is synonymous with more individual freedom. This is good.

Why Libertarians Aren't Succesful at Anything, Including Ending The War in Iraq

2005-10-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

This article, by RollingStone's Tim Dickinson, is very insightful (+4, Insightful). It talks about how the anti-war movement in the US, while it has momentum and even the support of public opinion, may ultimately be unsuccessful because the movement is "too fractured."

As public opinion turns against the War in Iraq, the anti-war movement has grown and, in many ways, become more credible. Veterans and families of veterans involved in the war (literally) have come out against the war, and they obviously have a huge amount of credibility. On the other hand, the "Free-Mumia" wing of the anti-war movement detracts from the success of the movement because (1) they're seen as radicals in the first place, and (2) because they can't stay on-message. From the article:

When Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother whose vigil at Bush's ranch in Texas catapulted the anti-war movement from the margins to the mainstream, took the stage, organizers even tried to cut her speech short -- after barely two minutes -- to make way for a screechy slew of unknowns, who shouted on about the Angola Three, the Cuban Five and "legitimate revolutionaries" branded as terrorists by the "U.S. puppet regime" in Manila.

Get it? The wackos in the movement are ruining the credibility of the people that are actually on to something. Sound familiar?

Libertarians have been battling this problem almost since the inception of the party. A powerful minority of LP'ers wish they were alive in 1776 to fight against the British and in 1789 to ratify the Constitution. They go off about the gold standard and fiat currency, as if anybody besides themselves cares. They wear three-corner hats to anti-tax rallies at the post office on April 15th.

And these people become the face of libertarianism. Literally! The three-corner hat wearing protester--he's real! He was on national TV (Jimmy Kimmel Live)and wasn't afraid to admit he was a member of the Libertarian Party. Great, the perfect spokesman!

Anyway, all of the non-crazies that are either in the LP, consider themselves libertarian, or would at least vote for a libertarian are done a tremendous disservice by the movement's more...eccentric members.

Now back to the RollingStone article. I found the following passage interesting.

President Bush and his men certainly aren't worried about the opposition. "There is no real anti-war movement," Karl Rove reportedly declared before the September rally. "No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally." Rove knows that beyond its simplistic sloganeering about "Out now," the peace movement has failed to develop a pragmatic exit strategy -- one that mainstream Democrats can embrace without being blasted as part of Cut and Run. Opponents of the war have to do more than pillory the president's policy -- they must bring a serious alternative to the table.

"Everybody knows that things are fucked up in Iraq," says Rieckhoff. "But the question is, What do we do now? The Republicans got us into this mess, but the Democrats don't have a plan to get us out." Rieckhoff suggests that opponents of the Bush Doctrine sit down and formulate a viable exit strategy guided by generals who oppose the war -- the "Zinni Doctrine," say, or the "Shinseki Doctrine" -- that would serve as the basis for a broad-based coalition. "That's ultimately what's needed," he says. "The problem is, that kind of coalition isn't being formed now."

The LP released its Exit Strategy in July, and shortly thereafter the LP's Michael Dixon was interviewed by Alan Colmes. There was a lot of discussion in the vaunted "blogosphere," both for and against the plan. The libertarian pragmatists largely supported the plan, as it seemed like the quickest we could get out of Iraq in a reaonable, politically-viable maner. Of course, libertarian purists railed against the plan and its gradual troop withdrawal and economic assistance to the Iraqi government.

Well, it's been a few months since the plan was released, and there's not much talk about it in the media now. Sure, there's a bunch of discussion about an exit strategy, but not about the LP's specific proposal. Clearly, Tim Dickinson either isn't aware of the LP's plan or if he knows about it doesn't take it seriously.

My question is this: with public opinion turning increasingly against the war, why isn't the LP solely focused on promoting their exit strategy. The LP should be THE anti-Iraq War party. They've been against the war from the start and are against it now. Yet probably 2% of Americans know this. Even the LP's own site shows where its priorities are. Tucked up in the upper left corner is the graphic linking to the Exit Strategy. But front and center is a big image asking for more money!

Why is the Exit Strategy getting the shaft? Who's responsible for not [re]-striking while the iron is hot? Are the LP hardliners holding back this plan because it's not "principled" enough? Is there any other issue that the LP can ride a wave of popular support to mainstream credibility on? What's the deal?

Wal-Mart and Red-state Hypocrisy

2005-10-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

This story embodies what I guess I'll call Red-state hypocrisy (even though I hate using "Red-state" as a euphemism for "conservative," but "conservative" is such an abused word that the term "Red-state" is actually more accurate).

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster..."

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

"At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster," Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others."

On one-hand, Wal-Mart pretends to embrace free-market ideals (but they can't even do that right because they accept over $1 billion in subsidies), and on the other hand they seem to support the suppression of individual rights. They cell censored CDs and now, apparently, they snoop through your pictures and will tattle on you if you're satirizing the Supreme Commander and Leader of Our People Himself, Mr. George W. Bush, blessed be His Name.

The censored CDs are one thing...that's they're decision as a business. I disagree with it, but they're free to do it, because they own the store. And scanning through your photographs--well, I guess that'd be alright as long as they tell you beforehand so you don't have a false presumption of privacy. But tattling on you to the police?!? Now that's wrong. That crosses the line.

Wal-Mart's behavior is indicative of the behavior of many so-called conservatives these days. They bash government when doing so suits they're purpose (and they're image), but actually embrace goverment in a manner far scarier than how big-government liberals embrace it when they call for tax increases and universal health-care. Higher taxes and goverment-run health care are indeed scary, but the wolf-in-sheep's clothing conservative that claims to hate government while steadily stealing your rights out from underneath you is way worse.

You know, "Red-staters" are looking increasingly-deserved of that color designation.

Support Frank Gonzalez

2005-09-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

Frank Gonzalez got 27.2% of the vote to be Florida's 21st District Congressman as a Libertarian (yeah, that's right, with a capital L). Now, he's running (and probably wisely so) as a Democrat in 2006 for the same seat. Let's hope he wins.

Also, can we get him a better (more professional-looking) website? And maybe the domain name www.frankgonzalez.org or voteforfrank.info or vote4frank.us or frankyg.com or something?

Free Market Environmentalism

2005-09-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Clint Eastwood has been doing some free market environmentalizing in California. This BusinessWeek Online article talks about it.

If you're interested in such things, you may be interested in my "Energy For The Future" blog, too.

Germany's FDP

2005-09-21T00:37:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP) is [at least moderately] libertarian. In the most recent election, they got 9.8% of the vote (more than expected). Plus, there's talk of a coalition government between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU, similar to the CDU but only for the state of Bavaria), the Green Party, and the FDP. Since the CDU and CSU are economically "liberal" (i.e., libertarian), the Green Party is socially liberal, and the FDP is both economically and socially liberal, it's possible that the new German government could be rather libertarian in nature.

In order to avoid a gridlocked "grand coalition" (I'm sick of the term, but that's what it's called) with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the CDU/CSU has to convince the Green Party to join them instead of the SDP (the obvious partner). But to do this, the CDU/CSU might have to agree not to do anything too socially conservative (a la the Republican Party in the US) or support any military excursions (again, a la the Republican Party). Of course, it may also mean supporting some socialistic ideas regarding East Germany that the Greens support, but the presence of the FDP within such a coalition may cancel this desire out.

I don't know much about German politics, so this is all just [wishful] speculation. But a coalition comprising the CDU/CSU, the Greens, and the FDP may be able to all agree on their support of individual rights, hopefully both socially and economically.

An anti-eminent domain stance that's hip

2005-09-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

You can protest eminent domain abuse in New York and be ultra hip, too. So do it.

You know, since the government was so effective in this case

2005-09-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

How can so many people completely miss the blatant hypocrisy in this?

Hearkening even further back in history to the days of Roosevelt’s New Deal and its vast expansion of federal power in the 1930s, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called for a New Orleans and Gulf Coast Redevelopment Authority modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Clearly, if there's one thing we've learned after Katrina, it's just how efficient and effective the federal government can truly be!

Will Wilkinson is a good writer

2005-09-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Well said.

More evidence of law enforcement preventing people from leaving New Orleans

2005-09-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

This post discusses a very detailed account of people trapped (thanks to the authorities) in New Orleans.

By the way, the Red Cross is better than FEMA.

I like Mike Gabai

2005-09-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

I've never met Mike Gabai, and I only know one thing about him. But I already know I like him.

Why?

Because he's the owner of fuckfema.com, which as of right now automatically forwards you to redcross.org.

See this Radley Balko article and this Catallarcy post to see why I typed fuckfema.com into my address bar.

What!?!

2005-09-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

The disaster, it seems to me, is the failure of a philosophy. A philosophy of small government, tax cuts, deficits and privatization. The federal government should have arrived sooner but the federal government was doing other things.

The above is from this Salon.com article by Stephen Elliot.

Huh? The disaster is indeed a failure of philosophy, but a philosophy of big government. Were it not for big governement, would half of the Louisiana National Guard's resources be in Iraq? Were in not for government largesse, would the Red Cross (a non-governmental organization) be prohibited from entering New Orleans and doing what they do best--save lives? Were it not for the iron-fist of the government, would the only exit out of New Orleans become a checkpoint (watch the video)?

Please. The contention that the atrocity that the aftermath of Katrina became is somehow the result of small government is patently absurd. What's more, it's impossible, since government has grown faster under George Bush than Bill Clinton, and has been steadily increasing for the last eighty years (save a one-time cut of non-defense discretionary spending under Reagan).

The evidence is clear. Government failed. Not because it was too small. Nay, as Will Ferrell would say. Because government was too big. Too clumsy and bureacratic to pass the paperwork through agency after agency to get things done. Too procedural to let people who actually could help do so. And too focused on making the public think everything was copasetic to worry about pesky things like evacuating people and saving lives.

Government Failure

2005-09-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton agrees with me.

Utter Government Failure

2005-09-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

Watch the video of Geraldo here. It is documented proof that the government was actually preventing people from leaving the horrid New Orleans Convention Center.

So that's one failure. Here's another--the government prevented the Red Cross from entering New Orleans.

Here's another.

But thank God for propaganda--the American people may never know.

But wait, wait. What we really need is more government. 'Cause, you know....they did such a bang-up job here.

I actually think the government (federal, state, whatever) does have a role to play in dealing with natural disasters, but they certainly shouldn't interfere with experts like the Red Cross, or prevent people from leaving hell holes like the Convention Center. Come on.

Oh, and don't forget about Iraq. Due largely to the War in Iraq:

The National Guard Bureau estimates that its nationwide equipment availability rate is 35 percent, about half the normal level, according to Pentagon statistics."

I think Tim West summed it up brilliantly:

Louisiana is not better off becuase of the Iraq War, it’s much worse off."

Clever License Plate

2005-08-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

I saw a really clever license plate on a Toyota Prius the other day:

KIK GAS

It's even better when you say it fast.

What if there were no traffic cops?

2005-08-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

In the Ukraine, there's been no significant change since Viktor Yushchenko dissolved the traffic police.

I think a lot of people would agree that American roads are over-regulated. Why can't we, for example, drive more than 70 mph (the highest the speed limit gets in Minnesota) on a straight, flat road? 70 mph is arbitrary. What's so special about it? I doubt there's any corellation between speed limits and human reaction time.

And what's with the abundance of "no right turn on red" signs in Minneapolis. I'm sure some are justified (for example, if the there's a stoplight on the segment of road you want to turn onto shortly after the turn, then allowing people to turn right on red might create excessive backups and/or gridlock), but there are some that seem to be placed particularly to cause annoyance.

For example, on 50th St. and Vincent, you're not allowed to turn right from eastbound 50th onto southbound Vincent when the light is red. Why not?!? Vincent is a very non-busy road. Often, there's not even anybody going straight on Vincent (perpendicular to 50th) while you're waiting on 50th during the red light. And there aren't any stoplights on Vincent south of 50th. There are barely even any stop signs. What would be the harm in just letting people turn right on red here?

Anyway, all I'm saying is that I think we could do with a reduction in traffic regulations. Common sense is all I'm asking for. Basically, if you're actions on the road aren't going to [practically] endanger anybody else, they should be legal.

Vilifying Subsidies in Popular Culture

2005-07-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

I was happy to see that in the super-funny (I'm not using the word "hilarious" only because it's overused on the internet) movie Wedding Crashers, the movie's primary antagonist is a guy who (to paraphrase) 'got the governor to subsidize a scallop fishery' (or something along those lines). Anyway, what I'm so happy about is that the subsidy-seeking is not crucial to the character's persona. Rather, it's just thrown in there, almost capriciously. Like they producers of the movie are saying to the audience, "Yeah, this guy's already a jerk, but on top of it all, he lobbies for increased subsidies!"

It's subtle, and most viewers probably didn't even notice it, but it was encouraging to see. After all, they could have made the antagonist a guy who works to eliminate trade restrictions (as a stereotypical "evil capitalist"), but they didn't. Those chose to vilify subsidies.

Fair is Fair?

2005-07-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

"Fair is fair. There are too many individuals dying of heat here."

That is Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, as quoted in this MSNBC article. Here's what he's talking about:

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said his office was asking Congress to provide utility assistance for soaring cooling bills the same way it provides for heating bills in Eastern states.

Nice mentality--The taxpayers of the rest of the U.S. have to subsidize people living along the East Coast, so they should have to subsidize people living in Arizona.

Nobody likes extraordinarily hot weather, but I'm sure there are many Americans that would enjoy living in Arizona. Why should people in Wisconsin have to pay for people to live in what some would consider an almost perfect climate (besides the occasional extra-hot temperatures)? If air conditioning costs a lot because it's so hot in Arizona, then that's the price of admission. People in South Dakota don't get to enjoy the nice, dry Arizona heat; why should they have to pay for it?

Same for New England heating oil. Most people probably don't like New England winters as much as Arizona summers, but regardless, a high heating bill in New England is the price of admission. Don't like the cold? Move somewhere else. Hate the cold but love the New England charm? Then pay for it. People in Missouri don't get to enjoy the benefits of living in New England, so why should they have to pay for things when the going gets rough?

Pharmaceutical Tyranny

2005-07-19T19:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't have to say that healthcare in this country is messed up, because everybody knows it. Most of the discussion is about insurance and single-payer universal suffrage copayments blah blah blah. That's all important, but it's also really complicated.

What I find more intriguing (right now, at least) is the racket that is the pharmaceutical industry in America. With respect to the medicine we take (for even the most mundane of ailments), the FDA has a venerable stranglehold over our freedom to decide about whether we're qualified to decide. America has got to be one of the least-free nations in the world when it comes to having the liberty to determine for ourselves whether we need professional advice. The way things stand now, we don't have a choice. Even if we know exactly what we need, we still have to go to a doctor. Even if the visit lasts only four minutes.

Would you believe that, of all nations, France's prescription regulations are far less draconian? I know people that, when they go to France, will stock up on drugs like Zyrtec, which in France can be purchased over-the-counter, just like aspirin. Here, Zyrtec is available only with a prescription.

Similarly, after forgetting an extra pair of contact lenses on a trip to Germany (and briefly the Netherlands), I was able to buy contact lenses in Amsterdam in about ten minutes. I just told them my prescription and they gave me the contacts. No doctor appointment needed. Hardly the case in America, where I would have had to wait how many days or weeks for a routine appointment to tell me what I already knew, that I needed the same prescription I've needed for the last five years. And what's the difference if I buy contacts that are too weak or too strong. How could I hurt anyone? By staring at them for too long?

It's such a racket. Why can't we just decide for ourselves? Why can't we just get input from the pharmacists? I'm not saying we should all go out and take anything we want. But why can't we decide what we're qualified to decide about and what we need to go to doctors for? I know I need Zyrtec. I'll always need it during the summer because I'll always get allergies. I don't need a doctor to tell me that, as luck would have it, my allergies have continued!

Imagine how much healthcare costs would decline if we could eliminate the middleman (the doctor) for things like allergy medication, contact lens refills, acne medications, antacid-type medications, etc...

Update: Here's more complaining about how politicians (this time it's Republicans) insist on saving us from ourselves by keeping us ignorant.

Political party websites

2005-07-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

Since the Democrats have a newly-redesigned website, here's my ranking of the various political parties in the U.S. in order of quality of website design, from best to worst.

Just kidding about the Whig Party...I like them just because wigs are funny. I included the Minnesota Independence Party because it's [still] a major party in Minnesota and it's sort of a rebel offshoot of the Reform Party (it was founded by Jesse Ventura after his disgust with the Reform Party).

Individualism

2005-07-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

I love this quote:

Individualism celebrates the life of each thing as essential in the life of all things.

It's from this essay by Crispin Sartwell, which I found from this story on The Agitator. The actual quote is, "It celebrates the life of each thing as essential in the life of all things," but 'it' is a pronoun referring to individualism, so I think the above quote is reasonable.

My idea for a libertarian billboard

2005-06-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here's my idea for a libertarian billboard. Hammer of Truth is running a contest (maybe it's more like an online brainstorming session) for a libertarian billboard that could be put up in Washington, D.C.

Is this what it's going to take?

2005-06-23T22:07:00.000-07:00

Remember this:

Is this what it's going to take? Some brave defender of freedom standing in front of bulldozers about to demolish his house in New London, Connecticut?

By the way, the guy in this picture (the original) is awesome.

Goverporation, Inc.

2005-06-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

So when a local government is bulldozing houses for a wealthy development, it's a local issue, and the rich and powerful may bulldoze what they please. But if a local government is allowing terminally-ill patients to ease their suffering by smoking medical marijuana, it's a federal issue, and DEA agents can raid marijuana dispensaries. Right.

Isn't the federal government supposed to protect the liberty of we the people, not the privileges of they the corporations?

Sandra Day O'Connor nailed it in her dissent:

"The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

She also dissented in the Raich case:

"[The decision] stifles an express choice by some states, concerned for the lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana differently."

Radley Balko is correct in saying that this was "worst Supreme Court term for the cause of liberty in a very long time."

How the federal government keeps Africa poor and America polluted

2005-06-18T09:29:00.001-07:00

One word: subsidies.

This article, from Reason, explains how American agricultural subsidies severely hurt sub-Saharan African economies. An excerpt:

U.S. agriculture policy undermines U.S. efforts to alleviate poverty because it drives down global agricultural prices, which in turn cost developing countries hundreds of millions of dollars in lost export earnings. The losses associated with cotton subsidies alone exceed the value of U.S. aid programs to the countries concerned.

And consider this:

The aid is ineffective because of the appalling way in which Africa is governed. In recent decades, of each dollar given to Africa in aid, 80 cents were stolen by corrupt leaders and transferred back into Western bank accounts.

So by eliminating pork-barrel farm subsidies, we can help Africa more than any government-to-government aid ever will. With subsidies, we're basically saying, "Okay, we like our society the way it is. We don't want to let anybody else join the party." So our subsidies keep worldwide agricultural prices artificially low, and the hardworking African farmer trying to help his country build a self-sufficient economy gets hammered down by big American corporations receiving fat-cat subsidies via "our" reprsentatives on Capitol Hill.

If we really want to "make poverty history," we have to kill all subsidies, now. I don't care how many "family farmers" will be put out of business in America. The fact is many more families are dying in Africa because of these subsidies.

Subsidies also make more environmentally-friendly energy not financially-feasible in America. From an MSNBC article on the success of ethanol produced from sugar cane in Brazil:

In the United States, the sugar-cane industry has had little incentive to diversify into ethanol production because import quotas support U.S. sugar prices far above world levels...

...Most U.S.-produced ethanol is now made from ground corn in a process that has been faulted as inefficient. Corn yields less sugar per acre than sugar cane, and the refining uses substantial amounts of energy. To keep ethanol competitive with gasoline, major refiners such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. have relied since the 1970s on a tax subsidy, now 51 cents a gallon.

Yeah, that makes sense. Let's use import quotas to keep sugar prices artificially high and therefore stop sugar cane growers from producing ethanol efficiently, but then give subsidies to corporations who make ethanol inefficiently. To make matters worse, the federal government has high tariffs against imported ethanol:

The United States imposes a stiff tariff on imported ethanol. But over the past 12 months, 160 million gallons of the Brazilian product still entered the country. The U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill Inc., the third-largest U.S. ethanol refiner, announced plans last year to refine Brazilian ethanol in El Salvador and export it to the United States duty-free under provisions of the Caribbean Basin Initiative.

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!

To be fair, the Brazilian ethanol industry (big surprise) hasn't done this all on its own:

In the 1990s, some distillers went bankrupt and many refiners and sugar-cane farmers fell on hard times. But the government stuck by its commitment to alternative fuels, purchasing unsold stocks of ethanol and showering tax breaks on cabdrivers who used ethanol.

But imagine if the U.S. wouldn't have had all of those subsidies, tariffs, and other forms of economic protectionism in place since the 1970s. If there were a truly free market in sugar (and its products), the Brazilian industry wouldn't have needed so much government help and there probably would be a thriving sugar cane-based ethanol industry in America.

Instead, we're more relient than ever on foreign oil, and we're fighting a War in Iraq to ~~secure future oil sources~~ fight terrorism.

Sustainable development is the all the rage right now. Well, capitalism has led us increasingly toward more sustainable industries. That's how capitalism works. If a business isn't sustainable, then it goes out of business. Think about subsidies; all they do (by definition) is prop up failing businesses. How can that ever be good? If we prop up our own failing, polluting industries with subsidies, we prevent other, more sustainable industries from developing.

Why a radical platform will never work

2005-06-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

Opponents of LP platform reform have pointed out that if candidates for school board are stupid enought to discuss their ideas for ending the War on Drugs or their opposition to income taxes, they deserve to not get elected. They should know better and they should focus only on the relevant issues.

Okay, that's fine.

But the problem with this argument is that with the LP’s radical platform, the candidates don’t get to determine which issues become important.

See, there's a new piece of technology called the "internet." Well, with this “internet,” people can now go “online” and find out how almost anyone who cares about politics feels about almost any issue, either directly or by association.

So, a candidate can limit their output to the relevant issues, but voters can get their input from sources other than the candidate’s output. Now, everything is fair game, and candidates don’t get to set the agenda. Anybody that calls themself a Libertarian is automatically associated with the dogmatic platform and pledge of the LP, whether they want the voters to know it or not.

That's why a radical platform will never work.

LP platform reform is necessary

2005-06-15T00:07:00.000-07:00

If anyone doubts that the LP platform stops the party from growing and being more successful, read this string of comments from a Fark link regarding a protest made by a member of the Free State Project. More information about the protest here.

Basically, a lot of the commenters on Fark seem sympathetic to libertarianism but are turned off by the anarchic positions of the party.

How much more obvious can the demand for a moderate LP platform be?

A model candidate

2005-06-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama might be the most popular national politician in the U.S. today. He is a model candidate, and I think anybody that is going to run for an elected office should study his campaign and how he runs his office (including his website, which is very nice).

He's going to be on Oprah this Thursday, and I'm sure this is just one small part of an upcoming media blitz that will be enormously successful. The promotional clips for the show use the teaser, "Will he run for president?" It's not the first time the question has been raised.

His stance on issues isn't the worst. Some of his positions jive with libertarian [moderate] principles, while others definitely don't:

opposes mandatory minimum sentences
is against the death penalty
is pro-choice
supports banning some guns
supports school vouchers
thinks health care is a "right" but doesn't want to nationalize the system
isn't really a free trader

I'm not saying he's going to be president in 2008 (or 2012 or 2016), but he will be successful. If he chooses to, I think he can be a senator for as long as he wants. As long as he doesn't have some scandal, who's going to beat him (much less run against him)?

Imagine if libertarians had such a candidate. Instead, we have people like this.

The LP's infamous pledge

2005-06-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

I wonder if the two dominant political parties in America have pledges to stop any non-purists from (gasp!) joining their party....Nope. Hmmmm...I wonder why they're so successful?

Well, they're not "principled," though. So what if they keep winning all the elections and using their ever-increasing power to destroy liberty. Libertarians, thank you very much, would rather keep their principles. You see, for them, principles are more important than liberty.

Wait a minute...

A dangerous combination

2005-06-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

The recent Supreme Court ruling looks downright scary when you consider the "snitch-or-go-to-jail" legislation that Congress is currently mulling over.

Is your terminally-ill grandmother with glaucoma currently using medical marijuana? Go undercover and rat her out, or else!

Is your friend with AIDS using medical marijuana to keep his appetite up? You better wear a wire for us the next time you visit!

You helped a medical marijuana organization make some Xerox copies of their price list? You better tell us where we can arrest them, or we'll arrest you!

WWJD

2005-06-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

What Would Janice Do?

Janice Rogers Brown, that is. How would she have voted in this recent medical marijuana case?

Given the age of some of the Supreme Court justices, I wonder how long it will take before she gets nominated for the Supreme Court?

Here are some of her positions.

I think she would have sided with Thomas.

Let's regulate the interstate commerce clause itself

2005-06-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

I'd write something about the recent Supreme Court case ruling, in which the federal government's drug laws now officially trump contradicting state laws, but Radley Balko's got pretty much every thing I'd want to say covered (plus a lot more).

In my view, this ruling is just another in a long line of federal government abuses of the infamous interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.

I think the only solution might be to have a Constitutional amendment that strictly defines what *does* and what *does not* constitute "interstate commerce."

Paying for driving by the mile

2005-06-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Britain is considering implementing a pay-per-mile system to pay for their roads.

Most libertarians hate this idea, but I actually like it.

Yes, I know, there are huge privacy concerns here. But they also very obvious concerns. It's not like the government is going to install a GPS receiver in anyone's car and charge them taxes (with a monthly bill?) without them noticing.

Plus, the system ~~could~~ should be engineered to not even keep track of the data. Why not just dynamically check against a database of all roads every time your odometer ticks up another mile to see which type of road you're on? If you're on a freeway, your total fare is incremented by x. If you're on some main drag, your fare is incremented by y. Some residential road--add z.

In other words, there's no need to save your position data. The system would just need to instantaneously grab the position data to figure out how much to increment your total driving bill.

Some people might say that such a system effectively reduces freedom because now people will limit their driving and feel less mobile knowing that every extra mile they drive will cost them.

And that's bad because??? It's not exactly like there's an energy surplus right now. And traffic's fun to sit in!

But besides the practical advantages to implementing such a system, the best reason is that it makes the automotive transportation market much more free market. You pay for what you use; no more, no less. If I never use a road, I never pay for it. If I drive on roads a lot, I have to pay for it.

The overall cost of automotive transportation is currently buried in oil industry subsidies, pork barrel road projects, gas taxes, licensing fees, and probably many other things. So while the average person thinks they're paying 10 cents per mile (assuming 20 mpg and $2.00/gallon gas), they're really paying much more. Now they'll finally see that.

And this will have several big benefits. First, it will level the playing field for things like buses, light rail, subways, and personal rapid transit, all of which might be profitable for private companies to run (instead of governments) if automotive transportation weren't de facto subsidized, as it is now. Second, it may pave the way (no pun intended...well, maybe) for the future privatization of roads...up until now one of the more kooky and unrealistic goals of libertarianism.

Yes, pay-per-mile systems for automotive transportation have an inherent potential for privacy abuses. But so do (and did) a bunch of new technologies. Cellular phone conversations used to be able to be picked up by off-the-shelf police scanners. The internet, while one of the greatest technological innovations of all time, is ripe with privacy concerns. But nobody is suggesting we abolish the internet.

We shouldn't just shy away from new ideas like this one because they carry privacy concerns. We should embrace new technologies and use things like the Constitution (remember that document?) to ensure that our privacy is protected. Laws can be used to protect our liberties, too.

I heard about this story from The Agitator.

James Sensenbrenner has got to go

2005-06-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

~~Senator Palpatine~~ James Sensenbrenner (R, WI) has got to go. Among the legislation he has championed:

HR 1528 - a.k.a. the "Snitch-or-Go-to-Jail" bill (more here)
HR 418 - a.k.a. "RealID" (more here)
HR 1332 - the House version of the "Terry Schiavo" bill

In addition, in 2004 he supported a couple bills that would "prohibit the courts" from reviewing certain bills.

A bill "prohibiting the courts from reviewing a provision of the 1996 "Defense of Marriage Act" that allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage licenses issued in other states or jurisdictions." (HR 3313 (Roll Call 410))
A bill "preventing most federal courts from hearing cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance." (HR 2028 (Roll Call 467)

Any way you slice it, Sensenbrenner, who is at least decent on most economic/trade issues (he supports legislation stopping the FCC from requiring digital TV tuners in all TVs, for example, and has won numerous awards for his economic conservatism), has an unquenchable thirst for robbing Americans of social freedoms. That, and his blatant hatred of the separation of powers make for a scary combination for someone so powerful.

Interestingly, it looks like this fascism is somewhat newfound. In 2004, Sensenbrenner won a "Defender of the Constitution Award" in 2004 from the Conservative Political Action Conference (a conference that many libertarian organizations attended). He's even criticized the Patriot Act, although that crticism came in 2003.

Whatever the reason behind this frightening change of heart against liberty, I say it's time to send him packing. He's up for reelection in 2006. Please, people of Wisconsin's Fifth District, vote this power-hungry legislator out of office for the sake of us all.

Lou Dobbs

2005-06-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

I got tired of Lou Dobbs' xenophobic rants a while ago, but was rereminded about how backwards his logic is by Reason's Hit and Run.

An even better rebuff of Dobbs' arguments is linked from that Hit and Run post, here.

Dobbs (and tech workers disillusioned by the bursting of the dot-com bubble) might fondly wish that highly educated professionals in Asia would be kind enough to lobotomize themselves and go back to farming for the sake of inflating U.S. programmers' wages.

Spot on.

Nightline

2005-05-30T21:14:00.000-07:00

I'm currently watching Nightline's Fallen, its memorial to those troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obviously, I don't really think this, but wouldn't it be nice if every American were "forced" to watch this? I don't think it's necessarily anti-war or pro-war. It's just reality. These Americans died. We didn't.

Libertarian Scorecard

2005-05-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

A blatant ripoff of Newsweek's 'Conventional Wisdom', I'm going to start a weekly scorecard of libertarian winners and losers for the previous week (but for this first scorecard, I'm using the past two weeks). The scorecard is completely subjective and as unscientific as a George Bush paper on environmental policy. Anyway, here it is.

+2 = really good
+1 = good
0 = no change
-1 = sort of bad
-2 = really bad

Cato Institute: -1

Major contributors the Koch's industrial connections leave me with the unsettling taste of bias in my mouth.

Free State Project: 0

Nothing too big seems to have happened recently. Membership growth is stagnant.

Institute for Justice: +2

Their major victory in deregulating interstate wine shipments was viewed as very populist by the media. Their name was cited by a bunch of articles, and they use the word "libertarian" on their website. Possible downside....it was initially funded by the Koch's.

Reason: +1

They continue to be the hippest libertarian organization, plus Reason's Nick Gillespie was not only a guest on the O'Reilly Factor, he made Bill O'Reilly eat his words. Plus, while on the show, Gilespie was able to say something like, "We're libertarians; we believe in free markets and free minds."

Tim Lee: +1

I think I met him at a NORML meeting at the University of Minnesota (I went to a total of one), and I knew he got a job at Cato, but I recently discovered his "blog," as it were (or weren't, as he claims).

Tim West: +1

His insistence on libertarians being more openly anti-corporate welfare is starting to sound more and more like a good idea, given the problems with Cato.

Wookies: +2

First, they get their own planet in Episode 3...then they're compared to libertarians. They're on a roll! Bonus question - does anyone remember the song "Chewbacca" from Clerks?

Free Talk Live: +1

Two new affiliates in, where else, New Hampshire.

DownsizeDC.org: 0

Yes, they released their Read the Bills Act to Congress, but I haven't seen anything about it in the media...even the libertarian media.

That's it for this week.

Is Cato controlled by corporations?

2005-05-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

I've seen a bunch of stuff online recently that is highly critical of Cato and, more specifically, the Koch's, who are big contributors to Cato and other libertarian/conservative institutions. This criticism of the Cato Institute is not exactly objective (Cato's called a "quasi-academic think-tank which acts as a mouthpiece for the globalism, corporatism, and neoliberalism of its corporate and conservative funders."), but it uncovers some interesting things.

I did not realize, for example, how much Cato was funded by corporations. Obviously, being funded by corporations (or their charitable foundations) doesn't necessarily mean their positions are biased, but then why has Cato come out against wind turbines with an obviously disingenuous concern for birds that might be killed by such turbines:

On the environmental side, wind power is noisy, land- intensive, materials-intensive (concrete and steel, in particular), a visual blight, and a hazard to birds. The first four environmental problems could be ignored, but the indiscriminate killing of thousands of birds--including endangered species protected by federal law--has created controversy and confusion within the mainstream environmental community.

Cato's usual skepticism is absent here, accepting without much question the fact that wind turbines will kill thousands of birds. I would expect Cato to reason one step further and question, as this op/ed does:

One high-profile environmentalist admits that birds do occasionally crash into the twirling blades. But, he says (anonymously and carefully, for fear of unleashing another contagious quote), "Do you know how many birds die every day?" They crash into skyscrapers and plate glass windows; they're crushed by trucks; they're sucked into jet engines and gag on smog. Kids with BB guns knock them off. Windmills are a concern, but they don't appear high on anyone's list of avian threats.

I've come to expect more from libertarians. If someone mentions how many people "die each year" from a particular behavior, I expect libertarians to retort with something like, "Well, how many people die crossing the street every day?" I have to say, I'm disappointed with Cato's performance here.

I guess I can' t expect Cato to be perfectly objective, but their funding sources make them an easy target for charges of unobjectivity and acting on behalf of corporations. What irks me is that in these criticisms of Cato, the word "libertarian" is given a negative connotation....as if libertarians support big corporations and corporate welfare. I think Tim West is right that libertarians (especially the LP) needs to make their opposition to corporate welfare and corporate corruption more vocal.

Don't miss this opportunity, libertarians...

2005-05-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

Right now there is wide open space on the political spectrum for someone to treat government as a grudging necessity to meet specific and limited goals, whether those are policing Deadwood's murderous streets, or guaranteeing healthcare for children while balancing a budget.

This, from Matt Welch at Salon is interesting when contrasted with the stuff Tim West has been saying for a long time:

The Libertarian Party, if it ever gets it’s shit together, has set itself up for a role in US politics in 2008 that it either capitalizes on or sinks like a stone. Americans are tired of this moral weakness in their lives across a very broad swath of the Left - Right spectrum. I dont have to read somewhere that this is true. I dont have to have some talking head on TV tell me this is so. I KNOW IT IS TRUE, becuase I hear this every day of my life, at work, at play, everywhere, from almost everyone I meet. Everyone is so jaded, and ordinary people are looking for a savior. If the LP can make a good case that it and it alone has the ethical high ground to clean up government, get the corporations out of government, give them in return the freedom to run their businesses so they dont have to lobby and corrupt government lawmaking, and stand for a return of the sense of RESPONSIBILITY at every level of american society, they will get a huge number of votes.

I'm now convinced more than ever that platform reform is desperately needed in the LP. Without platform change, the party will never succeed. More Tim West:

The LP needs to stop being a “educational” tool and start a conscious process of becoming a political party first, with a single goal of winning electoral office to affect public policy. Exactly how long do you think it’s going to be before a viable limited government party with a sugar daddy like Perot crops up, with a few hundred million dollars and a real plan for POLITICAL success?

If the LP doesn't do it, let's hope somebody does.

American Engineers

2005-05-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

In the US, more students are getting degrees in “parks and recreation” than in electrical engineering.

This is from a Texas Instruments fact sheet on engineering education.

Read the Bills Act

2005-05-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

DownsizeDC.org has finally submitted its Read the Bills Act to Congress.

Go here to urge your senators and representative to vote for it.

This idea has been discussed a lot on the internet:

Almost all of the comments I've seen, ranging from liberals to libertarians to conservatives, support this idea.

This is a populist idea that libertarians (including the LP) MUST latch onto.

Suburban Populism

2005-05-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

If you've watched the news today, you've no doubt heard about this case, in which the Supreme Court banned state laws prohibiting direct shipment of wine to residents from out-of-state wineries, while allowing direct shipment from within-state wineries.

While the MSNBC story doesn't mention it, this Washington Post story does, and many of the TV reports I saw today mentioned the Institute for Justice, which spearheaded this case.

The Institute for Justice is great! This case, along with this case, this case, and probably many others have tremendous populist, "looking-out-for-the-little-guy" appeal.

Whereas the Cato Institute often gets unfairly portrayed as a lacky for the Bush Administration, I haven't seen any claims of the Institute for Justice being "right wing." Plus the name is awesome! Not just any old legal group....THE Institute for Justice. Sure, there may be other "institutes" working for "justice," but this is THE Institute for Justice.

This victory, along with this post at Liberty for Sale, makes me think that the best way for libertarians to be successful, for at least the foreseable future, is to strive to create a public image of populism by advocating practical positions that most Americans agree with. Legalize medical marijuana, reduce unnecessary, arbitrary, and unfair regulations, reduce taxes (or at least don't raise them), increase consumer opportunity by opposing regulations like this, etc.

Of course, there are less populist issues that libertarians can still support without looking like tri-corner hat-wearing weirdos, such as Social Security reform, income tax reform, support for free international trade, etc.

But it's the populism that will get you the votes. Republicans have been extremely successful by latching onto Christian populism. Now it's time for libertarians to win by latching onto suburban populism.

Jesse Ventura is a suburban populist. From this article in The Nation:

"In the high-income professional suburbs, Jesse did poorly," says Myron Orfield, a Democratic member of the Minnesota House and an expert on political demography and regional planning. "In the less affluent suburbs, which are full of households making less than $50,000 a year, often on two jobs or more, he did very well. He also won northeast Minneapolis, which is blue-collar land. And he did better in poor parts of the city than he did in the yuppie areas. The only place where the Democrats held their base was in the Iron Range, where he wasn't that strong."

Even more stunning, in a half-dozen suburban counties ringing Minneapolis-St. Paul to the north and west, Ventura won an absolute majority of the vote. All six of these counties--Anoka, Chisago, Isanti, McLeod, Sherburne and Wright--voted for Clinton over Dole in 1996. They are full of politically independent swing voters coveted by both parties. Indeed, Paul Wellstone spent a great deal of time in these counties during his 1996 re-election campaign. In each one, Ventura actually got more votes than Clinton.

I personally know people in these areas that voted for Ventura that probably didn't vote for Bush (and definitely not Badnarik!) Common sense rules here, as it does throughout the U.S. Someone like Ventura who can, despite his celebrity, seem like a regular old everyman, can do excellent in any election.

That's why I signed the petition.

Wireless Internet

2005-05-05T22:24:00.000-07:00

Seattle To Make A Big Advance In Wireless Internet

Three companies are teaming up to beam high-powered wireless Internet signals across Seattle.

Some people are calling it "Wi-Fi on steroids." Eventually this will be huge for people who use laptops, giving you access to the Internet almost anywhere, without having to be near one of those hot spots at, say, a coffee house or on a ferry boat.

But that's probably a year away. Right now, this new technology will be available to businesses.

Bruce Chatterley, president and CEO of Speakeasy, bravely walked out onto the halo of the Space Needle Wednesday morning to announce the largest deployment of WiMax of its kind in North America.

This story is encouraging; a private company is leading the charge in pushing wireless internet. Even more interesting, they're using Wi-Max.

The Philadelphia plan, which I discussed here, is for Wi-Fi.

This article, in IEEE Spectrum (the Institue of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the organization that literally sets the standards), points out that Wi-Max is more suitable for delivering broadband internet to multiple customers, while Wi-Fi is more suitable for small, very local (more like household-wide) networks.

In 3 years, it'll be interesting to compare the quality and availability of wireless internet in Seattle to that available in Philadelphia, where the government owns and operates a wireless network.

Scandinavia

2005-05-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

What are the Scandinavian countries doing right?

According to Freedom House (PDF), Finland has the most press freedom. The countries with the most press freedom are:

Finland
Iceland
Sweden
Denmark
Norway

The top five spots belong to the five Scandinavian countries.

According to this MSNBC story discussing the 2005 Mothers Index (PDF) compiled by Save the Children USA, Sweden is the best place to be a mother. Here are the top rankings:

Sweden
Denmark
Finland
Austria
Germany
Netherlands
Norway

(Iceland isn't listed in the index).

This Forbes story discusses the World Economic Forum's 2004-2005 ranking of economic competitiveness. Look who's number 1! Here are the rankings

Finland
United States
Sweden
Taiwan
Denmark
Norway
Singapore
Switzerland
Japan
Iceland

Wow. The one report where the Scandinavian countries don't fare so well is the Fraser Institute's (Canada's answer to the Cato Institute) ranking of economic freedom. Here's how the Scandinavian countries fare there:

Finland - 11
Denmark - 14
Iceland - 14
Sweden - 22
Norway - 36

For the record, the United States was tied for 3rd.

Ahhh, but of course, this isn't the only ranking of economic freedom. Here, a Copenhagen "Chamber of Commerce like group touts Denmark ranking as the 8th best country for economic freedom in the 2004 Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. Here are the rankings of that study:

Hong Kong
Singapore
New Zealand
Luxembourg
Ireland
Estonia
United Kingdom
Denmark
Switzerland
United States
Australia
Sweden
Chile
Cyprus
Finland
Canada
Iceland

Norway ranked 28th, which was still better than Taiwan (34) and Japan (38).

Will Wilkinson, in an oh-so-hip "Caeser's Bath" post, listed "Anti-Swedenism" as one of the things that annoys him:

Conservatives and libertarians seem to have an irrational disdain for Sweden, as if it could slide into full-on Juche flesh-eating collectivism at any moment. They crave and horde bad news about the Swedish economy or the travails of the Swedish welfare state. Why? Because Sweden is a fairly rich, happy, stable, and quite free nation with a gigantic welfare state. And we don't want to be more like Sweden, and we resent the fact that it works as well as it does. But I think it is quite possible to make the argument that we shouldn't be more like Sweden without feeling the need to argue that Sweden is a disaster.

With all this data, I have to agree.

In brief, I think the Scandinavian countries have things so well off because:

They can feed off of technical innovation provided by the U.S., Hong Kong, China, Japan, etc.
They have an almost completely homogenous culture; everybody already gets along because everybody already looks the same.
They have a relatively small population. Socialism works great for families, but horribly for big countries. Maybe for small countries like those in Scandinavia, quasi-socialism (the only thing that makes them more socialistic than us is their nationalized health care, but we're almost there) isn't so bad. Especially when you have such excellent press freedom to ensure that government is run efficiently.

How can they not understand?

2005-04-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

(courtesy MSNBC)

These protest signs baffle me. They say things like, "HANDS OFF MY SOCIAL SECURITY!" and "Don't Privatize Social Security."

Okay, sure. I agree. I'll leave my hands off your social security. Just let me put MY HANDS ON MY *OWN* SOCIAL SECURITY! Comfortable with the government managing your retirement?? Fine with me...stay in the system, I don't care.

If you're so "hands off," then why don't you take your hands off MY MONEY? Don't privatize social security??? Why not? Let me have control over my money, and you can have control over your money (and subsequently hand that control over to the government, if you so desire).

Just let me make my own decisions. I am not a child!

Giving Americans What They Want

2005-04-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

(The following is a response to a comments thread of this post at Liberty For Sale discussing whether libertarian candidates can succeed in winning office.)

The libertarian position on issues is often too nuanced that people don't agree with us. But I think this is all too often due in the way that the issue is framed in the eyes of the average American.

I think the average American's desire that something exist is confused with whether they want the government to provide that something. Many Americans (the media included!) simply assume that a service that could be used by many people should be provided by the government. That will take a long time to change.

But in the end, who provides the service is, to the average American, just details. While we libertarians make a big fuss over whether the government owns something or provides a service or regulates something, the average American could care less. They see taxes, health insurance, car insurance, mortgage payments, etc. all as the same type of thing.

An excellent example is publicly-funded sports stadiums. Some people are against them because they don't think the goverment should be involved, but many people (most people?) end up supporting them. All they know is that if the stadium doesn't get built, the team will leave town. They don't care if the government does it or if the team does it. They just want it done!

This is why I think libertarians still have a chance. We can put forward positive ideas (and say that we're *for* something) and still take on a populist position. As I said above, whether the government provides the solution is irrelevant to many Americans; they just want a solution. We can push for solutions without insisting (or even discussing) that the government provide those solutions and still maintain our ideological integrity.

Taxpayers' Stadium

2005-04-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Agitator has a good idea for naming taxpayer-funded stadiums--calling them "Taxpayers' Field." Aside from the sure-to-arise grammatical objections over the use and placement of the apostrophe, I think it's a great idea. I'd choose the new Washington, D.C. stadium over the new Indianapolis stadium, just because Washington, D.C. would hardly even exist were it not for the "benevolence" of American taxpayers.

Government "Commissioning" Things

2005-04-22T22:37:00.000-07:00

In this post, Tim West talks about supporting government-funded things that will yield more in benefits than in projected costs.

Okay, that's a sensible approach, and one that most Americans would agree with. The problem though, is that lobbyists for almost any program can "prove" how their pet program is cost effective. Harry Browne has already addressed this, however (see #4 and #6).

But, back to the real world. People want to vote for candidates that support things, not candidates that simply don't not support things. In other words, people running for office have to be able to talk about something constructive while campaigning.

So what's wrong with the government commissioning things to be built, owned, and managed by private companies? This is [surprisingly] what the City of Minneapolis has decided to do with a city-wide wireless internet network (I discuss this here). Instead of wishing that they'd discovered the key to making socialism successful, Minneapolis is saying, "Look, it's in the city's best interest for people to have internet access at any point in the city. It just makes sense. But we don't know the first thing about setting up such a system. So we'll call for bids from a company or many companies who have something to offer, and we'll help steer the city-wide network in the direction that's best for the city."

If private companies haven't stepped up to fulfill a need (which is the ideal situation, but doesn't always happen quickly enough), I think it's acceptable for the government to lead by "pushing." Not forcing; pushing. Governments (particularly local) can push society in the right direction by commissioning private companies to create things that will satisfy some community-wide need. Governments shouldn't own the businesses or industries whose growth they seek to stimulate; instead they can help in the development and planning of such businesses (but not with an overwhelming amount of control), and perhaps offer temporary advantages as part of the award of the commission.

For example, a city government could offer a one year, protected monopoly to the first company that builds a city-wide wireless network. After they year is up, the market is opened to competition. It's almost like a patent...it offers temporary protection from competition in exchange for an advance in technology. Sure, it's not ideal, but it gets the job done and is minimally socialistic.

Trains vs. Highways

2005-04-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

Tim West defends the interstate highway system here.

I concede that the interstate highway system was a net positive for the US. So, in hindsight, I guess it makes sense to say that it was a "good move."

But, doesn't a government-funded system of roads essentially equal a de facto subsidization of the automobile industry? The prevalence of good roads to travel on resulted in (1) the development of a massive trucking industry, and (2) the development of "sprawled" cities, where cars are a necessity for even basic provisions. In other words, more interstates = more car sales.

What if interstates had not been developed? What would have happened to the US? Would we be a third world country? Would we not be a superpower?

Or would we be even more powerful because we weren't dependent on foreign oil to power our now-necessary automobiles? Sure, there would always be cars in America, but maybe trains would have been much bigger players in long distance commercial and personal transportation. Imagine how much more advanced rail technology would be if US companies had gone full speed ahead on train technology development for the last 50 years...