Why the NYT Won't Shut Me Down

Citing cuts at the New York Times, in part due to internet and blog-related substitutes which crowd out their circulation, CF wondered what would happen if newspapermen started behaving like lobbyists, constructing barriers to entry. She proposed two tactics newspapers could employ: promoting a fee for spreading information or endorsing a sort of licensing for publications.

The lobbyist logic is sound but I doubt we'll see either of those problems any time in the near future for three reasons.

1) Publications benefit from blogs just as they are harmed from them. Let us never forget that journalists have gotten pretty damn lazy over the decades; removing blogs would deny them one of their prime sources for information.

2) Newspapers aren't stupid and surely many are aware that these rules would be impossible to police. Like CF, I could re-create the blog and e-mail under an assumed name. Charging me would become impossible as would shaking me down for a license.

3) For as long as the First Amendment's been around, newspapers have been citing it as a hallmark of freedom and democracy (and to defend their industry). In way they are now victims of their own success; if they start screaming information should be controlled, the bullshit will be clear even to the public.

Of course in the long run, any or all of these could fall to the wayside. But for now, let's enjoy it while it lasts and not worry.

Fake News Gets More Fake

Let me start by saying I love the Daily Show. It's funny, it's insight and it's smart.

But sometimes it's not so smart; take last night's piece by new correspondent Dan Bakkedahl on "Bumvertising."

What the hell's bumvertising you ask? Developed by Benjamin Rogovy, bumvertising involves renting the space below the signs homeless people hold on street corners. Just under the "Will work for food" on cardboard, you'd see a glossy, green poster with "PokerFaceBook.com: Meet players, find games, get connected."

The ads work--PokerFaceBook's sign ups noticably increased with bumvertising--and since it's not much more work for the homeless, they gladly accept the three-dollars-a-shift pay. Rogovy even thinks there may be spillover benefits. "Bums will incur higher revenues from donations after showing the initiative to seek out semi-legitimate employment. Many of the vagabonds of PokerFaceBook.com's Bumvertising campaign remark that they are receiving more comments and questions than ever."

The new guy had a problem with this. He brought on some kind of homeless advocate to attack the idea of the destitute working for the money that goes in their pockets. He found it "exploitive" and not what they needed. With a mixture of seriousness and humor, Bakkedahl called the process "sucking the blood of the poor." (Granted, I'm paraphrasing, but it was something to that extent.)

What amazes me is that the homeless advocates clearly don't know what the homeless want. If it was degrading and evil, then why are the poor participating? If it is so horrible for them to do it, why are they doing it? Don't we want the poorest people to get jobs and contribute to society? Isn't this better than simply begging?

That's a "No" to Bakkedahl and the other guy (yeah, I can't remember the pro-homeless guy's name). They think the homeless are too stupid to make their own decisions. They think everyone else should give out of pity. How degrading.

RSS Feed

An inquiring mind wanted to know why we don't have an RSS feed. The short answer was, "wtf?" The longer answer is "I have no idea what that is." I think I know now: a way to be included in a single page people go to in order to read all the new articles of their list of blogs.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I signed us up and our feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ LawLegislationAndLunacy

Thanks to Jaka for the help.

My Shoes Fit Fine

I decided a while ago that my disseration for getting my PhD will involve the Ansari X-Prize as a model for technological growth. I don't plan as of yet to stray from this path but my relatively recent interest in Wikipedia has called into question my chosen path.

One of the core questions is "How do economists decribe phenomena that were once only available as a profit-making opportunity for a firm now made available through a free, decentralized spontaneous order?" Examples include file sharing, Wikipedia and Slashdot--all done by no one individual and all individuals who do it, do it for free.

Well, a Yale law professor beat us to the answer: he calls it peer production.

What a great name, because that's exactly what it is. Equals working together and taking on roles firms once did, producing what firms once produced. But you can tell Yochai Benkler isn't up on his economics, saying "it's an uncomfortable shoe for economists."

Not so. Just because it's done for free doesn't mean economists have trouble working with it. In fact, a lot of this stuff falls under the category of non-rivalrous. My consumption of Wikipedia doesn't prevent you from looking something up (sort of...Wikipedia's having bandwidth trouble due to its popularity but that scarcity is nothing compared to, say, buying a book). If I copy a music file from you, others still can, too. Technology has allowed this non-rivalry to propser on a level unlike ever before. Extra demand costs practically nothing.

The other piece of peer production includes supply items that aren't that scarce. Most people like to talk about stuff they know, thus they are willing to write for free on Wikipedia. When my computer isn't using a big chunk of its computing power, I'm fine with other people using it in the form of SETI or Skype Technologies. There's no cost (indeed, sometimes there are benefits) from producing.

The same can be said of air. For all practical purposes, air is non-rivalrous--when I enter a room you are in, you don't start gasping. It's also plentiful, produced freely by plants in abundent quantities. Thus, it's no wonder we don't pay for air. (Technically, all you need is a lack of scarcity to eliminate prices but I include non-rivalry because it really makes the abundance happen. I may like writing blog articles about economics, but I wouldn't want to write the same thing over and over again, each for a different reader.)

Peer production is a fantastic name for the many free services the Internet is providing. But it's not so new economists have to go back to the drawing board.

EDIT: I was recently informed that Slashdot writers get paid for their services. Thanks to the ever alert Mike for the heads up.

With A Snap of My Finger....

Willie L Brown Jr., former Mayor of San Fransisco, did an amazing thing tonight on Real Time with Bill Maher. He solved the poverty problem.

"If the poor people of this country," he said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "had the same resources as the corporations and Haliburtons of this country, they would not be where they are today."

No shit. If poor people had billions of dollars at their fingertips, they wouldn't be poor anymore. And if we could create money by snapping fingers, that would be a reasonable plan. But it's just a pipedream. In the real world, prosperity doesn't come from altruism. The pie doesn't get bigger because some gave their money to others. Economic pies grow when people create more; not when they are given more.

Thus the good news. The nation's down-trodden have a long list of institutional advantages that most of history's poor never had. A stable, peaceful government. Well defined private property. Easy access to employment. Easy access to entreprenuial activities. Freedom of movement (from neighborhood to neighborhood, region to region). Freedom of association. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. All of these translate into profit making opportunities (some more than others).

Immigrants understand this well. Most poor Americans don't, not because of their race or because they're stupid, but because they get welfare. Let's not kid ourselves; work is hard--that's why they call it work--and while there are many that take that money to move out of welfare, many others don't. That's what happens when you pay people not to do something they don't want to do.

I would like to believe, like Brown surely does, that we could pull the poor out of poverty with a snap. But Q is just a Star Trek character and despite what some may tell you, he's not real. Pretending that he is doesn't make the poor better off; it does them a disservice by telling them they are victims, not masters of their future.

Roll For Delaying Your Action

Somehow I doubt that when I get married, my wife won't accept a conditional gift on our anniversary.

But that's exactly what President Bush gave the world when he addressed the UN on their 60th anniversary yesterday. When I first read it, I was so excited. "The United States is ready to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free flow of goods and services..."

Then I read the condition. "...as other nations do the same."

What a load of crap. We all know damn well that one country taking the initiative on that would be astounding. A whole region, a miracle. But everyone has to do it and they all have to do it at the same time? That's like Bill Gates saying he'll give all his money away on the condition that everyone in the world runs naked through the streets on a common day. It's what you say as a sarcastic joke. "Oh yeah, I'll eliminate all tariffs; when the rest of the world does, too!"

Take the initiative, George. Show world leaders that their economy won't collaspe if they eliminate their precious subsidies. Stick your neck out and set the example; that's what good leaders do. Don't hide behind a condition you know will never happen.

Please forgive the dorkiness of the title; I just couldn't resist.

Technology Is Fruit

Daniel Drezner's concerned; the OECD released it's education report today and the US education system in science and math, well, sucks compared to other countries.

In science and math, the U.S. is ahead of only the really poor OECD countries -- Turkey, Mexico, etc. So yes, there is reason to worry.

Worry about what? If Dan has anything in common with Thomas Friedman, he's concerned about technology loss.

Theory is if Americans don't invent the "next big thing," we'll lag behind the rest of the world. In order for us to benefit from technology we have to create/own it. That's akine to thinking that if oranges aren't grown in the US, we won't get them.

The key is trade. It doesn't matter what nationality owns technology (though it does matter for government, but that's another story); it only matters if there's free trade. Suppose Korea invents the flying car and we don't. Does that mean we don't get the benefits of them? Not if there are few barriers to trade. And if we get the benefits, who cares who owns what? Do bananas stop being bananas if they are grown on foreign soil? Of course not.

Trade, of course, requires that we have something to give up in return, but that thing could be anything the Koreans marginally value more than we do. It could be art or McDonald's or Google ads. As long as we are free to trade, relax and stop scaring everyone!

A Negative Times A Negative Is A Positive

Sometimes government ineptitude can be a good thing.

Last month I mentioned that Hawaii will be issuing price caps on the wholesale oil. I vowed to keep track of the prices and luckily I found a site that did that for me quite nicely.

After Katrina hit, I noticed something strange. Go there right now and look at the chart. Compare Hawaii's prices with the national average; notice that they don't skyrocket as the mean does even though the law went into affect the first of September. Also notice that while the price of oil does go up, it quickly goes back down. Strange because the economics suggest prices should be leaping.

Then I noticed this article. Here's a telling line: "The governor admits she's not sure the gas cap is forcing up prices because the companies are keeping their wholesale prices secret."

That's right. The goverment was able to create a law telling companies what to charge, but they have no way of knowing if the law is being followed. Thank God they are staying busy pushing string--means they can't do real harm.

Market Object Lessons

About three weeks ago, on my first day in Washington, a pick-up truck smashed into my parked car while I was looking at an apartment. I got the license plate, writing it down after begging some kids returning from school for a pencil, and contacted the police.

After they did some heavy police work (looked up the plates, contacted the house) they discovered that some unlicensed kid took his mom's car out for a wild ride that Sunday. I talked to the mom--who was very nice--and we decided not to contact the insurance agency. She didn't want to deal with the higher rates and would pay for the repairs; I didn't want to operate on the insurance company's schedule. Thus we settle a different way. This is what we call a substitute. To those that think people have to get insurance, remember that.

While I waited for the parts to come in, three different strangers offered to fix the damage. Even though the mother found a place to get it fixed, I have to appreciate how the market steps in just in case I didn't get the plate. Soon I will need to make a trip to the DMV. Somehow I imagine that if I wore a shirt that said "I need to get a Virginia license and registration," government workers wouldn't be offering to set up an appointment while I'm getting gas.

Currently my car is being repaired and I am discovering how much I hate taking the bus.

How Black Society Hurts Black Society

Everyday we encounter random laws that make us stop and ask, what the hell were bureacrats thinking? Today was no exception because I learned about a Virginia adoption law (which my source says is a common in other states) that says adopted kids have to racially match with their adopted parents. Thus white kids can only be adopted by white parents and black kids by black parents.

Before you claim that the KKK is far more powerful in modern society than anyone thought, understand that white people didn't advocate the law; black people did. Or more specifically, the National Association of Black Social Workers who advocated the creation of the law in early 1970s. The NABSW continues to support the policy as they stress "placing children of African ancestry with relatives or unrelated families of the same face and culture for adoption" despite the estimated 222,000 African-American foster children living today.

The claim is culture; black people have their culture, white people have theirs and NABSW would be damned if it let the two mix. But culture is a living thing and it is not up to the NABSW to say what changes and how. Moreover, they are harming black culture; foster children who hit the 18-year-old mark are thrown out in the cold world without a dime to their name. I guarentee you they don't become doctors. Out of neccessity, gangsters and low-wage workers I would bet are the most common career choices. The culture the NABSW is trying to defend is very one most foster African Americans probably don't want; they are hurting the people they are trying to protect. It's shameful; shameful and selfish.

Justice, Inc.

I was reading the Tyler/Alan e-mail exchange on slate.com concering Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Bait and Switch. Then something Alan wrote popped out: "I know no corporations interested in spreading justice."

How about all of them? On an everyday level, companies want to those that steal from them to be punished. That spreads justice. They want anyone that backs out of a contract to pay for it; that spreads justice. If the mafia (or similar organization) threatened them with violence to extort payment, they'd demand the extorters are arrested. That spreads justice. (This is why Tony Soprano doesn't have a lot of Manhattan business.)

On a more general level, companies want a safe society. Communities that are prone to theft, war, murder, lying and corruption (directed at the company or not) are not good places to run businesses. Certainly there are firms that do nasty stuff with the institutions that protect them, but that unfortunate activity shadows in comparison to the benefits they gain through an evenly weighted legal system. Spreading justice increases the number of places companies can operate safely and profitably.

To say that corporations aren't concerned about spreading justice is the same as saying drivers aren't interested in building roads.

Woot!

As of Tuesday, September 6, 2005 at 11:50am, I am a PhD student at GMU, having transfered from the master's. This is what happens when you pester the right people enough.

Let's Take a Trip!

The administration spin machine must have been asleep when the Red Cross posted this answer for why they weren't in New Orleans:

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Yeah if I knew that some people were giving out drinking water in a flooded, soon to be disease-infested hell hole, I'd be first in line.

Unscientific Method

Tonight on Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill talked to climatologist Stephan Schneider via satillete and they discussed how Hurricane Katrina was beefed up by global warming.

The logic seemed sound--more heat means bigger storms--but they made the rather hasty jump from global warming was akine to steriods for the hurricane to the human race was the steriods. In other words, we're causing the heat.

Consider this:

1) Understanding climatology cannot use controlled experiments because there's no control. We only have one planet to work off; we can't burn fossil fuels on one and not on the other and then see what happens.

2) Understanding climatology is incomplete. It's a huge, dynamic system with countless elements that top scientists have acknowledged they don't understand.

3) Climatologist generally agree that burning fossil fuels are causing global warming.

I can understand suspicious or potential avenues of inquiry or even red flags. But if you can't figure out how the world works, either through inductive reasoning (number one) or deductive reasoning (number two), then you can't claim to have a scientific conclusion.

Wikipedia Game

1. Pick a random nonfiction book off your shelf (fiction could an easier version of the game; I'm not sure).

2. Flip to a random page.

3. Choose a word/term from the page that is (a) a proper noun (b) a period-specific term or (c) a disicipline-specific term.

4. Look up said word/phrase/term on Wikipedia.

Five points if you get a stub.
Ten points if the article doesn't exist.
Fifteen points if the article doesn't exist and you create it.

You get ten things to look up.

I have no idea how hard this game is but some test entries suggest it'll be pretty difficult.

General Theory of Discovery

There are lots of things people acknowledge government shouldn't fund. Successful companies. Hitler monuments. Gigli II. Uh....

Ok so that's about where it stops.

But of all things one group or another demands we drop, pure research is something that's hard to defend cutting because it's benefits are so uncertain. Thus the NPR report I heard today that criticized Mr. Bush's recent budget cuts on NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The report opened with how pure theory of Einstein's general theory of relativity is used to make GPS work. The theory tells us that as stuff goes faster, time for that thing goes slower. Since GPS satellites orbit so quickly, they are equipped with special clocks that literaly use a different unit of time to keep in accordance with its terrestial customers. We never know how science will help us, the report concluded (and that is true), thus government has to fund science (here I have a problem).

Let us set aside the fact that Einstein didn't develop his theory at NASA or the NSF. Hell, he didn't even create it in America. The lecture was given in 1915, after he worked at the University of Zurich and the University of Prague. He didn't move to the US until the 1930s. (Even if we assume these are goverment-funded institutions (Zurich is; I'm not sure about Prague), many other universities of equal or greater prestige are not. Indeed, since private schools offer greater freedom, most universities prefer to go private, assuming they could get the funds.)

Government funded science simply isn't neccessary for a well functioning economy. Private firm innovation, X-Prize style contests and academic research easily fill the gap. And even if some great idea for some ungodly reason isn't realized because of a lack of government funding, that doesn't mean we won't benefit from it eventually.

Suppose Einstein really needed public money to develop the theory (maybe money becomes enchanted with some brain-enhancing invisible wave if it's taken as tax dollars). Decades later, the first GPS satellites go in orbit and the firms realize something is very strange. The times between here and space aren't in sink. After intense research and theorizing, they come upon Einstein's conclusion anyway. No public money spent. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Would it have taken longer? Sure would, but we wouldn't have had to fund all those projects that concluded really intersting stuff though wouldn't have a practical value for decades to come. And we could have used that money to make our world better today.

It's like when people say the $118 billion (2000 dollars) that NASA spent on the Apollo program was worth it until I point out that money probably could have been used to make huge leaps in fighting cancer.

Meals Without Design?

I just saw a very disturbing commercial.

It opens with a voice over telling a story about Ronald Regan and his take on evolution. It said that when he was president, he wanted to invite the leader of a communist government to the mansion for a great state dinner. At the end of the meal, after the sovereign praised the quality of the food, Regan would ask if the leader believed if there was a chef. The commercial shamelessly ends with "Evolution is a lie. Read the Bible."

Assuming the story is true, Regan would committing the fallacy of False Analogy. Ingredients are not autonomous agents seeking to make the perfect meal. They are merely matter (usually dead), uninterested in (and often incapable of) sacrificing themselves to feed others.

Prospering, however, is something all organisms are interested in doing. This common goal extends from the most basic of bacteria to human societies. Thus if Regan thought something as simple as a cook making a layer cake demonstrated nature cannot exist without God, then by logical extension the world economy needs a central planner to function properly. But Regan recognized that people pursuing their own self-interest can create a complex system without design. If only he recognized that ecology and eggs benedict were not the same thing.

Oil Five-O

On September 1, 2005 Hawaii will be the first state to impose gasoline price ceilings in an attempt to lower the state's higher than average gas prices.

When I first heard this story on NPR today, the economic commentator correctly pointed out that this will lead to shortages as people will want to buy more and sell less. But there are two interesting facets of the law that the commentator left out.

The first is that it's wholesale--not market--price that's capped. Thus it will be the gas stations that will bear the shortage and since they are free to set their prices, they will increase them to compensate for the lower supply. The law bent on making gas at the pump cheaper will make it more expensive.

The second little bit of info is that the government will adjust the cap weekly. Since they are trying to make it closer to the continental US, as the local market price goes up, the goverment will lower the wholesale cap, encouraging the market price to go yet higher.

I'm very interested in how this will play out over the next couple of months.

Represent!

Greetings from our nation's capital (or rather just outside it). I realized in my moving it's been a week since I last posted and I thought I'd take a few moments to use my cousin's housemate's computer to pass on something interesting I've noticed.

Every DC license plate has the words, "Taxation Without Representation." Note it doesn't say No Taxation Without Representation, as per the 200 year old slogan, but "Taxation Without Representation," as in homage to the old words and indicating such abuse is going on now.

Now I've known for a while that DC gets no Senators and no Representatives but I never knew that this was so much of an issue they would put it on their plates. But it is a big deal, and for good reason. The lack of representation for the very city that hosts the very congressmen from all over the country stinks of tyranny. DC wasn't even able to vote for president until 1963. The city's plates are one of the few things they can change without Congressional approval. (Again, the same Congress DC doesn't get any representation in.)

For the record, DC proper has a population of 553,523 (Wyoming has only 493,782) and an area of 177 km² (Vatican City has only .44 km²). So what's with the hypocracy?

Iowan In DC

Tomorrow begins my long journey to the nation's capital for grad school. I have no idea when I'll be online again, just so you know. Think thoughts of liberty while you wait and enjoy Tim's overdue return.

Farming Nature

So I’m watching the History Channel’s Modern Marvels, this one about the logging industry. Naturally an important part of the show is the environmental impact of cutting trees down and how those concerns changed the industry. This led into one of the first responses the industry offered way back in the 1940s: tree farms.

Tree farms are still used today; some one-third of our lumber comes from them and that number continues to grow. But some people have a problem with them. The program included footage of a university professor noting that these farms are horrible things because they are comprised of only a few species of trees, thus support only a few species of animal life. In that way, they cannot replace forests, whose diversity in foliage allows greater protection against calamity and supports more wildlife.

No one, by the way, is seriously considering that we tear down all forests and replace them with farms (especially since most tree farms are in the Southwest, a region not known for it’s sprawling vegetation). The idea is we get our lumber from farms, allowing us to leave our forests intact and get the lumber society demands. By cultivating trees, we indirectly cultivate nature. Thus farms compliment the natural world by segregating its uses into preservation and harvesting.

Forests are freed to be used for other profitable, but eco-friendly activity, including hiking, camping, limited fishing and limited hunting. And because a great deal of money can be made in these endeavors, the government is not the only way to protect wildlife (even though that’s what the program claimed).

Environmentalists who demonize these farms because they aren’t “natural enough” miss the forest for the trees in the most literal sense.

Ding, Dong, our Rights are Dead

The Supreme Court recently decided that a town could seize property under the doctrine of eminent domain - so far, nothing unusual, but here's the twist - and give it to another private party. Previously, the power had been limited to seizing private property for important public projects.

But as if the status quo weren't bad enough, the less-sane half of our darling Supreme Court has upheld the power of government to redistribute property as benefits the government. The rationale in the particular case was that tax revenues would be greater with the properties in question under one particular owner rather than another.

Oh... I just can't express how vexed I am. But badly enough to say "vexed", which should be a pretty good indication.

At this point, all pretense of Constitutionality is gone, as I see it. Out government is an outlaw from itself, refusing to recognize its own laws - and I'm not the first to recognize this. Judge Andrew Napolitano, with whom I hardly agree about anything, has written a lovely book, "Constitutional Chaos", in which this nasty proclivity is hashed out in some detail.

What to do? For now, close your eyes, tap your heels three times, and say... well, you know.

Get Meth. It Pays.

Sometime ago, Iowa passed a law that made it harder for people to acquire pseudoephedrine in an attempt to prevent people from distracting themselves from their boring Iowa lives with meth.

The other day, the QC Times ran this article that proudly declared Iowa meth labs are down by 75%. Let us side aside that this does not mean Iowans are using less meth. Nor does it mean that this is a permanent change. But I’m more interested in how they concluded this astonishing figure.

It’s not like you can find meth labs in the yellow pages. They are illegal and like all illegal activity, significant time and energy is taken to keep the operations hidden. Surprisingly, police merely compared the 286 labs they knew about in May-July of last year and the 70 that they are sure about today. They can only find 70, thus only 70 exist. How dumb is that?

It seems far more likely that the reason there are fewer known labs is because existing labs went deeper underground until they can perfect a way to get around the law. When they do, don’t be surprised if they charge a higher rate for their goods to compensate for lost business; it’s not like they’ll have a lot of competition.

Let's Hear It for Chemicals

Connecticut might get a new law that requires employers to notify if they use trichloroethylene—a chemical for cleaning metal—the logic being that it might cause cancer.

This new rule spawns from a court battle involving Neil Clifford, who claims he got cancer from working a site where someone dumped a lot of TCE. Even though the site’s adjacent to a group of condos, he’s the only case.

In the testimony, Dr. John Meyer said that TCE might cause cancer in humans. The International Agency for Research on Cancer notes the evidence for this is claim is limited. But governments are paranoid and love spending money so the DEP spent $750,000 cleaning up the site anyway.

Laws, by their very nature, are bitches to get rid of once passed. This is doubly true for theoretically preventing things that might threaten human or animal health. TCE might cause deadly cancer, but it might not. Why demonize a useful tool without knowing if it really is harmful or not? Are we going to do the same thing to TCE as we did to DDT? This is how it starts.

This Is Where Your Money Goes

I just read the headline and started laughing. Good to know something's being done about the trash collector shortage.

The Wealth of Virtual Nations

My brother sent me this link about the economics in MMORPGs. The article brought up several cool ideas we can use to interpret these online games under an economic or sociological lens, my favorite being exchange rates.

People pay real money for game money all the time and I wondered what the exchange rate was for World of Warcraft. According to Ebay, one dollar gets you about ten gold. That same dollar could be exchanged for 111.28 yen, 0.819 Euros and .564 Pounds. I’m not yet sure what that means because we don’t know what the PPP is for gold; and coming up with a virtual basket of goods would be problematic as WoW characters don’t need to eat, pay for shelter or do other activities real people need to. If only Ironforge had a McDonald’s.

But because you need to pay for so little as a Warcraft character, and because you can get so much money for just a dollar, I’m betting it’s far cheaper to vacation in Azeroth than in Europe.

No wonder it’s so popular.

Grad Update

I realized I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd explain why.

I finally got a job. In addition to grad school, I now have a way to pay rent because I'll be working for the University's new postgraduate fellowships and grants department. Yay for me!

So now I need to find a place, and think I'm narrowing down on one (thanks to craigslist). But I've also noticed people can be pretty...oblivious. Consider this e-mail exchange.

Me: Well, Im not really in a position to come down and visit as its so
far.

Potential place: You are in Luck! In my haste I actually put the correct date and wrong day. So the showing is SUNDAY July 31st at 1:30. If you have any questions feel free to call or email me. See you on Sunday!

I'm hoping it was a blanket e-mail or he just forgot I live in Iowa.

And things might get a little more interesting. As I checked my e-mail to get that exchange, I noticed my latest message to my number one spot bounced back. Maybe I won't be living there...

I have a feeling this is going to be one of those things where I don't know where I'll be living until the 11th hour.

Guns and Government

Penn & Teller’s Bullshit recently tackled the issue of gun control. As really hard-core libertarians (betting they’re virtual anarcho-capitalists), the episode’s staunchly against infringing on the right at all.

As a minarchist, I’m on the fence. Gun control is horrible in some cases but in the case of SMGs and other heavy firearms, I gotta side with the law. While small arms and light weapons are great for defending yourself, large ones are really only useful for offense.

P&T end the program by advocating the right to overthrow the government, a very important and valuable right. I’d venture that they’d want the public to own, say, a rocket launcher because what’s a pistol going to do against a tank or a helicopter? It would be like arming our citizens with sharp sticks just in case the guy with nukes gets too bossy.

There are two things wrong with this. First, we don’t want to make it likely that a relatively small number of people can overthrow our government lest we get something even worse. Limiting the arms to small ones ensure the army is large and thus the threat of freedom is well established.

Second, in the early stages of the rebellion, the army would probably be underground to start. Since large weapons are, well, large, they aren’t very portable, concealable, autonomous and any of the other things that make a good insurgency firearm. They’re necessary in the long run, of course, but by that time the revolution would gain control of some base or factory at which that law becomes a non-issue.

One last thing. Halfway through the show we take a close look at what the Second Amendment actually says.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, should not be infringed.

I read that about fifty times before I finally figured out what it was trying to say; it’s no wonder there’s been so much debate about this topic (which is probably why the awkward wording is as such; so we would talk about it).

Here’s what I think they mean: “A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state; thus the right of the people to keep and bear arms, should not be infringed.” In other words, we’re going to have guns, so you should have some, too. Of course, that was before SMGs.

McDiet

Remember that Super Size Me movie, where the guy ate McDonald's for a few months and never exercised? Then, surprise surprise, he nearly died? The message of the movie is basically McDonald's is bad for you and they are evil for selling you all this bad food.

The movie's a waste of film, of course. You can consume 5,000 calories at Subway and end up the same way. It's about what you eat, not where.

A North Calorina woman knew this and just to prove the movie wrong she start the McDonald's diet. After doing some basic research on the web site, she developed a diverse (and low cost) diet of salads, parfaits, apple dippers, McGridles, mayo-free chicken sandwiches and even the occasional hamburger. After two months she lost 30 pounds.

I wonder if we have the next Jared on our hands?

Look How Important I Am

I just got off IM with a friend of mine in China and he told me the government's decided LL&L shouldn't be allowed for public consumption. It's kind of funny; most libertarians see the Internet as a sort of Mecca. It's where government regulation is difficult or, for some things, impossible. It's where ideas and energy meld into a dynamic world culture. It's a virtual version of what we'd like to see in the real world. But in the place that needs the tough questions the most is the place where it's hardest to get them.

I told Tony I'm honored to be blocked by the Chinese government and I thought it was strange that was my first response. If this happened in the States I'd be angry and outraged, but we've come to expect this from China. Hell, I almost want to thank them; it's a sort of mark of pride to be blocked by an oppressive regime. I wonder if we're blocked in Cuba?

Damn Lies and Secrets

Enemies are everywhere, we’re told. Deep dark monsters loom in the shadows, some sanctioned by governments and others nothing more than angry men with bombs.

But it’s never as bad as we’re told it is. Experts exaggerate to keep us in line or to scare us so we buy their counsel. Sometimes they go over the top so no one can blame them for not crying wolf when the shit finally does hit the fan and sometimes scare tactics crop up because it’s expected. Paranoia is rarely justified.

Fear knows no boundaries, no matter how absurd. Today on Kudlow & Company, Jerry Taylor from the Cato Institute and Frank Caffney from the Center for Security Policy exchanged opinions about CNOOC’s buying of Unocal. CNOOC is a Chinese oil and gas company; American Unocal also focuses on those energy commodities.

Caffney accuses CNOOC of being a puppet of the Chinese government (they are heavily subsidized) and this acquisition is but a step in an economic attack of epic proportions. I wish I kept track the number of time he said “strategic,” but it was a great deal.

Taylor made the very good point that you can’t control a market as wide and deep and vague as energy, but he didn’t push it hard enough. If, in the unlikely event, that this is just part of the much larger puzzle and “they” are trying to take our energy, then we have nothing to worry about it. There are endless alternatives to oil and gas; even if I were to make the paranoid assumption that everyone was out to get us, they cannot plunge us into darkness.

It’s fitting that Rep. Richard Pombo suggested that this deal could be the Sputnik of our time. Sputnik I orbited the earth for less than six months. It did little more than gather information about electron density in the ionosphere. It wasn’t a spy satellite, nor could it fire lasers from space. It had absolutely no military application at all. Like this deal, all the danger is in the fear-monger’s heads.

Saving 51 Billion Dollars a Year: Priceless

Tell me if this sounds familiar:
Disposable gloves: $30
Teddy bear: $60
Toothbrush: $1,000

Remember when we heard about the military charging erroneous prices for the most mundane items? But these aren’t for the latest soldier’s personal kit. They’re items from a medical bill.

Yesterday morning on Dolan Unscripted, the Dolans talked about rip-offs, ending with these grievous errors on hospital bills. According to the National Healthcare Anti-Fraud Association, some $51 billion was lost to fraud and overcharging.

These are hardly honest mistakes and point to why some libertarians would like to see health care completely pulled out of the public sector. Not only would more competition lower prices and improve quality, these kinds of errors would be far less likely. I’m not going to worry about a $1,000 toothbrush if it’s not my money, but I’ll be damned if I spend that much at Wal-Mart.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

I heard on the radio that the Illinois man who grabbed a girl’s arm was deemed a sex offender by the state court last week. It happened because the kid ran out in the street without checking for cars and the guy got out of his car to give her a lecture on traffic safety. He never committed actual sex acts against the girl.

So how is he an offender? The court claimed that this act of parenting often leads to rape. Thus he is guilty without even committing a crime.

If the incident happened in one of the several Florida cities with segregation laws, the man would be forced to move to one of the few neighborhoods without a school. This leaves very few choices. That’s a stiff punishment for someone who was just trying to save a kid’s life.

No one thinks sexual offenders are good things for the world to have. But we shouldn’t throw away our core values in a hapless pursuit of a child-proof society.

Check out this editorial for more information.

15 Minutes

I'm writing this 15 minutes before the 4th just to make sure I'll post it in time. However you celebrate tomorrow (if at all) we should all respect how others choose to, even if we disagree with it or find it insult (as long as others aren't being harmed and so forth). There is perhaps no holiday where that attitude is more appropriate.

But if you want something more than watching things explode, I suggest you do what I do every 4th: read the Declaration of Indepedence. I find that document to be more fulfilling and celebratory than all the fireworks in the world.

Libertarianism in 30 Seconds

An IHS alumn wanted to create a wikipedia entry that would serve as a forum for discovering an "elevator definition" of classical liberal. An elevator definition is an explanation of a word or idea that's short enough to convey in an elevator ride. The rule of thumb is a thirty second time limit.

This is a valued project as most people don't know what a libertarian is and have little interest in discovering what it means to be one. But the wiki people rightly concluded this is not what the online encyclopedia is for.

Thus I offer LL&L as a forum. This post will be labeled under "Ongoing Posts" to the right so users can update and reference the discussion with ease.

If you comment using the "Anonymous" option, please sign your name at the end to make responding less confusing unless you want to remain nameless.

Driving While Resurfacing

If libertarians really want to make a freer society instead of daydreaming about it, perhaps we should focus on how ridiculous the law can be with a comical but true story.

Yesterday afternoon a police officer followed up on a call that someone was erratically driving a Zamboni in a local ice rink. When the cop arrived at the scene the driver was having lunch with a friend. Noticing tell-tale signs of alcohol use the officer administered a blood test on the man who registering .04 points above the legal limit. He was arrested for drunk driving.

If the goal of drunk driving laws is to keep us safe, how is arresting this man—who drove in a private space with no one else around and didn’t go faster than nine miles an hour (a Zamboni's max speed)—pose a threat to anyone? It doesn’t, of course, but I’ll guarantee you that it will be included in arrest statistics that area politicians will cite to convince the public they are safer.

Superheroes of Liberty

While waiting at the airport last week for the flight home, I got into a discussion with some IHSers about super heroes. It made me think of The Dark Knight Returns, a comic a friend of mine once told me about. In this grimy future, Superman is the lackey of a US President and Batman is retired, though he returns to his crime fighting ways in part one.

By the fourth part, Superman is deployed to Latin America to put down a military force on a small island. This leads to the USSR launching a nuclear warhead which will unleash an EM pulse and shut down electricity to North America. Chaos reigns in the streets and Batman leads an army of followers to restore order in Gotham City. The government sees Batman as an embarrassment and a threat and sends Superman to put him down.

Batman vs. Superman captures eternal struggle between liberty and force. Batman is businessman. As a loner, he’s not a big fan of authority. He donates to private charities. He’s a vigilante. He even saved the notes that would become Human Action from the Nazis. Batman is a libertarian.

Superman is a little trickier at first. In the first Superman movie, his dad tells him that if he helps people all the time they won’t know how to help themselves. A very libertarian theme. But if you look deeper, that’s about all Superman has in common with classical liberals. Superman thinks of people as weak; Clark Kent personifies his view of humanity. He enforces whatever the law says. In a recent Justice League Unlimited episode, Superman sternly says he’d “never fight the government,” not even if Lex Luther was elected president. Speaking of Luther, Superman’s main villain is a businessman. And like many people’s view of government, Superman can do almost anything masterfully. Superman is a statist.

In The Dark Knight Returns, Batman dons a super-suit powered by kryptonite to fight Superman. Does kryptonite resemble reason as the only force that can smash statism? I doubt it was intended in such a way but it certainly works. Something to ponder.

Welcome To the Family

Astute visitors to LL&L would notice that there are two new blogs under IHS Alumni: FLOW, penned by Michael Strong, and Cantillon’s Paradise, authored by David Skarbek. One can only hope they reciprocate.

I met both these sharp guys I met at last week’s seminar and I encourage all of you to add their sites to your regular blogging ritual.

Mike is the Director of Educational Programs at the Institute and doesn’t look much like his picture. David is an anarco-capitialist, as opposed to myself who’s a minarchist. Clearly there’s potential for a catchy-titled debate: David vs. David where we explore the right role (if any) of government. I’m certainly interested in having this debate, though I don’t know how we’d do it. I’d also have to find some Prozac so I could be mentally accustomed to the idea of defending the state. Whoa.

By the way David, where did you get that Calvin cartoon on the June 21st posting?

Speaking of Tom Cruise

This is just funny.

I'm Back

And I have stories. At the top of list is James Buchanan who spoke at the seminar. His speech was about religion, libertarianism and how they actually meld together very well. It’s a shame, he says, that most libertarians are suspicious of religion because the two can work so well together.

Libertarians claim no authority over others thus people can believe what they want without conflict. Communism, on the other hand, requires the populace to lionize the government, crowding out any prospect of competition. There is only one moral authority and that’s Big Brother. Libertarians simply do not claim to be so god-like.

It’s a good, though underdeveloped, point and it was swimming in my mind as I prepared to get caught up in the news. And what do I see? Scientologist Tom Cruise battering Matt Lauer on the Today Show about antidepressants. Matt questioned Cruise’s comments concerning Brooke Shields, who admitted such drugs helped her with depression, and everything went to hell. Some quotes:

Cruise: No, you see. Here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do.

Cruise: The thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay. And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt.

Lauer: But a little bit of what you're saying Tom is, you say you want people to do well. But you want them do to well by taking the road that you approve of, as opposed to a road that may work for them.
Cruise: No, no, I'm not.
Lauer: Well, if antidepressants work for Brooke Shields, why isn't that okay?
Cruise: I disagree with it. And I think that there's a higher and better quality of life. [Emphasis added]

Cruise: Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even — you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is.

Lauer: But you're now telling me that your experiences with the people I know, which are zero, are more important than my experiences.
Cruise: What do you mean by that?
Lauer: You're telling me what's worked for people I know or hasn't worked for people I know. I'm telling you, I’ve lived with these people and they're better.
Cruise: So, you're advocating it.

See how he turned that around to an outrageous accusation so he didn’t have to answer the question? There’s an overwhelming arrogance in Tom’s words as he echoes the beliefs of his faith. Anyone that disagrees with him is just ignorant or stupid. He cannot be wrong. I don’t claim that all scientologists are egotistical jerks, but some institutions are more prone to such individuals than others.

This is why libertarians are so suspicious of religion because most of it is based on telling people how to live their lives. Some beliefs aren’t so superior and with no one claiming Ultimate Authority, libertarianism meshes well with them. But others would like nothing better than to strip away a person’s freedom to determine how they will live their lives. Libertarians can respect the belief, but not the attitude; that’s the problem.

Off To the East

Starting tomorrow I'll be in Virginia for an IHS workshop on social change and won't be back until the 24th. I suggest your take this week to browse our extensive archives; the summer of last year was particularly active. Have fun.

Letters to a Libertarian

I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I became a conservative.

At least that’s what the Conservative Book Club thinks. I got a letter a few weeks ago from them offering to a copy of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History if I sign up for their organization. From what I understand, the Guide is actually a pretty good book and tells some economic truths about the New Deal and the Marshal Plan.

That’s not all because this is where things get strange. By now I’m used to being thought of as a conservative for those who don’t know what a libertarian is, but this is the first time someone thought books authored by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and David Limbaugh would be a tempting offer. That’s right. I can get great deals on books by those who advise shouting matches rather than calm communication with liberals, believe the Patriot Act doesn’t violate civil liberties and insist marrying whomever you wish isn’t a right, respectively.

As usual in politics, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing because a few days ago I got a letter asking me to subscribe to the American Free Press, a liberal newspaper. The AFP piece tried to sell me with phrases like “corporate elite” and “Media Monopoly” (their capitalization).

Here’s a bit of free advice: if you are an organization that proudly advocates one side of the aisle or the other, then focus on economic liberty (for the right) or civic liberty (for the left) to get the libertarian dollars. If you want to paint yourself as freedom-loving in general, then stop it because you’re both pretty crappy at it.

House Develops Conscience

The House voted to limit the Patriot Act as it pertains to libraries and bookstores. Finally. Now all they have to do is remove the nine billion other over-extended laws--and get the Senate and Pres to cooperate--and then we'll be getting somewhere.

Of course, that's unlikely because the President has already threatened to veto the change. If what Mr. Bush says is right, that the terrorists hate us for our freedom, then why is the Administration so bent on making us less free?

Get Out Your Checkbook

While it looks like tropical storm Arlene won't be turning into a hurricane, she is a tumid reminder that Pay-For-People-Too-Stupid-Or-Cheap-To-Move-Out-Of-The-Danger-Zone Season is upon us. Hurricanes are sure to be a plenty this year (just like they have been for thousands of years), and with it comes property damage and government checks.

When a flood in 1996 smashed my hometown of Davenport (luckily I was no where near the flood-zone) I heard a lot of people asking why so many live on the Mississippi. I bet my bottom dollar some of them live on the Atlantic coast in the southeast. Do I really have to reciprocate?

Greed: A Definition

Wow I haven’t posted in a while. That’s partly because I haven’t heard anything that’s really sparked a desire to write an article, but mostly because I’ve been busy taking advantage of stress-free enjoyment before fall semester preparation goes into high gear.

So I’d thought I’d take this opportunity and talk about something fundamental in the capitalist and anti-capitalist camps: greed.

Greed is one of those things everyone thinks they know what it is. We usually say it with a sneer. It is the attribute of evil and detached people who care nothing more than indulging in their vice. For many anti-capitalists, greed is the lifeblood of the free market demon: the binding force that ties in all arguments against capitalism. Like money, it is the root cause of all evil.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no set definition of greed. From economists to ecologists, from pundit to pop culture, greed means different things. Generally speaking it hinges on two distinctions with concern to material wealth: the nature of the desire and the relative value of the object in question.

For most, the first characteristic is about wanting (as opposed to demanding). Massive pillars of popular morality, such as Jesus and Gandhi, believed wanting of material things was being greedy and therefore evil. Greed as a matter of want is generally accepted as a signature aspect.

But you are not being greedy just because you want stuff. Both modern and ancient philosophers concluded that want is not always bad. A person should not be condemned because they want food or shelter in order to survive. Thus greed is sometimes equated with “want beyond need.”

This of course means that everyone—including all members of the Catholic Church—is going to hell. Surely there are scant exceptions but can you not think of anyone that does not desire beyond basic food, shelter and clothing? Even the poorest of people want to do more than merely survive.

Modern society has tacitly understood that want beyond need is inadequate so we have adapted the meaning in two different ways. First, we define greed as want beyond what’s earned. If Bob earns $50,000 a year but wants $100,000, he is being greedy. This line of thinking carries problems. Someday I would want to earn a six figure income, even though I haven’t done enough yet to justify that income. Am I being greedy because I set goals? People shouldn’t be deterred from desiring a better life just because they can’t justify it instantly.

Conceivably, protectionist pundits and anti-capitalists understand that people wanting to do more with their lives is a good thing, as long as they are of a sympathetic people. Few would call small businesses and middle class folk greedy the same way corporations and billionaires are. In the mainstream context, greed is set aside only for certain classes. It is want beyond what’s accessible to most people. Whoever “most people” are remains dubious, for the line between the well-off and the wealthy is a matter of context and perception. Thus it is perfect for popular media because the “greed” label can be applied to anyone as long as you juxtapose them with someone who isn’t as successful.

It appears that the popular belief of greed only applying to certain groups (and the desire to be like that groups) stems from humanity’s ancient roots. The rich were those of kings and knights and merchants that curried favor with the ruling class. The greed was often truly evil because they did not merely want more than they deserved, they took it by force if their threats were not taken seriously. Demanding what’s owed (whether it is beyond need or beyond the masses) is certainly not evil, but demanding beyond what’s earned is the hallmark of tyranny.

Modern thinkers get confused. Taking what you do not deserve is a zero-sum game, one with a victor and a loser, gain and loss. For thousands of years this was how most fortunes were amassed and often thought of the only way they could be cultivated. It was greed and because it was at the expense of others; it was a sin.

Yet today, citizens and firms hold greater fortunes than was the richest of kings. Almost as a reflex, we equate them with those nasty tyrants without ever stopping to remember that the people—for the most part—bestowed the wealthy’s fortunes on them. It was amassed through voluntary exchanges and thus pleasing to both parties.

If we constrain our definition of greed to merely taking unearned property, then it is always evil. But if we accept more popular perceptions—greed as desire beyond need or as the want of excess—then we have to acknowledge it is not always immoral. In fact, the rewards of wealth are a power motivator that makes society as a whole richer and happier. That is the hallmark of a positive sentiment: surely greed can be ethical as well as evil.

The Market Be a Harsh Mistress

It is inevitable. Whenever free people gather, markets emerge. This is true from the lowliest of small towns to the largest global societies. It’s even true when the stage in question isn’t really there.

World of Warcraft is a Mass-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). On my server (Azgalor), there are over 12,000 characters with nearly 8,000 of them on my side (Alliance). Players create some of these as secondary characters, which they use for various purposes. But it’s still a lot of active minds.

These minds do most of their economic activity at the Auction House (AH), which, for the Alliance, is in the rather unremarkably named Ironforge. Countless items are traded at the AH, including herbs which people make into potions. By far the hardest herb to come by is the Ghost Mushroom. It’s needed some powerful potions but can only be found in small numbers in remote and dangerous places. For a while, they were going for one gold each (which is a lot considering one of the most expensive thing in the game—the epic mount—costs 900 gold).

This is where it gets interesting. A friend of mine often sells these mushrooms because they generate so much cash (making them available to lower levels like myself). But he noticed they were selling incredibly fast, even at that high price and even though he was “farming” for them all the time. So in true supplier form, he raised his price.

Doing this on the AH is very hard because undercutting is a common tactic. But since these mushrooms are hard to come by and my friend has other characters on his account, he thought he’d give it a try. He sent the goods to his pair of “alts” so he could sell them under their names. He even contacted another vendor of the ‘shrooms, telling him the price was rising. This other vendor thought it was a great idea; apparently his mushrooms were going fast, too.

Overnight the price doubled to two gold, and it looked like it was the consensus of four different players.

My friend gladly declared to me that he loves gouging people. I calmly told him “gouging” is actually impossible, unless force is involved. This is a lesson he quickly learned because he couldn’t sell his wares. One gold may have been too little, but two gold was too much. And to make matters worse, some people who weren’t selling them before began to undercut his bids. Apparently, they didn’t think one gold was enough to even bother.

I’ve just checked the price of the mushrooms and currently they are selling at just over one gold piece, my friend included. People don’t control markets, markets control people.

Sense and Sithability

I saw Episode Three yesterday. The dialogue was corny and most of the acting was poor, as predicted. But for some reason I couldn’t describe, I found myself thinking “This isn’t half bad. It’s actually okay.” Maybe it was the epic battle scenes, the overarching conspiracy plot, seeing the wookie planet or discovering how Darth Vader became Darth Vader, but I wasn’t completely disgusted.

Yet as I think about it more and I realize it’s a tragedy. The most interesting part of the movie—the conspiracy—is drenched in several layers of crap. Hat tip to Maddox’s review which helped me sort through these issues.

Beyond the dialogue and acting, there were cutsy additions, overwhelming and unnecessary special effects, poorly executed character development and nasty cases of inconsistency. But Maddox doesn’t go far enough. While he rightly pointed out how unreasonable Anakin’s switch to the dark side was (check out the cartoons here and here), that problem pales in comparison to how easily the Senate throws aside democracy in favor of a dictatorship. It takes just one speech about how bad Jedis are—one speech—and people are cheering for an emperor. Excuse me, what? The war just ended, the democracy is on the winning side and Jedis are famous for being the good guys. No power hungry tyrant—not Hitler, not Napoleon, not Caesar—could pull this off. But Palpatine did?

All of these things were clear to me when I was watching the film, but like millions of others I still walked away with a positive opinion. Why? Why is it so hard for people to realize it’s a crappy movie? The simple fact is we don’t want it to be.

The movie answers a lot of questions people had from the far more likeable trilogy. It explores characters we care about and connects them to fonder memories from earlier movies. It revolves around an epic and powerful story about greed, deception and betrayal. Thus we are willing to ignore how badly the story is told in order to accept the story itself. What we forget is that there are hundreds of well told stories with similar plots. Remember that next time someone praises Episode Three.

Best Birthday Present Ever

After months of waiting and uncertainty, George Mason sent me a letter accepting me into their Master's program. Woot!

Whoa

Whoa I totally missed it. A week ago today marked my one year anniversary at LL&L with this post. We've come a long way since then and to be sure, there's more to come. Thanks for reading everyone.

The Bad Boy of Europe?

Today France became the first country to vote against the new EU constitution. Since all members need to ratify the charter to make it a reality, the results single a depressing defeat for the organization. NPR predicted the outcome this morning and speculated its importance, calling France the “undisputed bad boy of Europe.”

The vote was certainly significant, but “undisputed bad boy?” France? France hasn’t been a bad boy since the Napoleonic Wars, and all that instigator got was an ice cream and a psychological complex. (Fun fact: Napoleon was actually slightly taller than the average man of his era; his popular 5’2 was actually measured in French feet. By English feet, his height was just over 5’6.)

So what inconceivable event rocketed a people better know as chefs and surrenders to a nation of bad boys? The short answer is overwhelming statism. The new law restricts immigration barriers and better politically integrates the EU members. The far left complained about overwhelming capitalism, the far right spread fears about loosing national sovereignty, and with it, cultural identity. But it’s nothing more than hype and fear.

Like nature itself, economies and cultures are evolving bodies. They operate best in climates favoring freedom: climates of adaptation. History’s peaceful changes have always been generated by the people and by their will alone. Those who wish to deny economic or cultural evolution deny their fellow man fundamental freedoms, even if they deny it to themselves.

It’s far too easy to reject something when you don’t know what you are missing. So let me illustrate how unreliable paranoid statism can be with a historical example.

Over a hundred years ago, a nasty-looking structure rose above the skyline of a major city. The city wanted it torn down after it served its purpose, a feat belayed as engineers discovered it was ideal for radio transmissions. Otis Elevator Company (an American firm) built the machines that let people explore the building with ease, increasing its popularity. The construct I’m talking about is the Eiffel Tower, France’s best known symbol. If the naysayers had their way in 1889, there would be no Eiffel Tower or at least it would be a bitch to get to the top.

It’s easy not to see glorious possibilities and only fall for reactionary scares. It’s easy to forget centuries of history and progress just to embrace the latest call for authority. It’s easy to treat your fellow man as ingrates that need to be controlled instead of people that want to be liberated. These are the acts of cowards, not bad boys.

Legalizing Responsiblity

No one likes to see people get hurt, especially kids who are at the prime of their life and have so much to experience. That’s why the flurry of car accidents in Maryland last year was so tragic. But instead of encouraging parents to take an active role in their kids’ lives the Maryland legislature is just passing a matching flurry of laws to try to change behavior.

The basic result will bar countless high schoolers from driving themselves teenagers now require at least sixty hours of practice.

Here’s where it gets interesting: according to existing law, the minimum driving age is 18 but parents can sign a waiver so their children can get a learners permit at 15. Most do. The parents are saying they want their kids to drive which means one or more of three things:

1. The parents want their kid to drive themselves because they feel the teen is responsible enough to handle it and wants to allow for real world experience.
2. The student is involved in extracurricular activities and this level of independence makes it easy or possible to continue these activities.
3. The parent is irresponsible and signs the wavier even though the teen isn’t ready to handle driving.

The law makes things worse for all these families. The first two possibilities mean the law takes away freedom and opportunity unjustly. In the last scenario, the law sends a message to the parents and kids: you don’t need to be responsible; the state will take care of that.

And while I’m sure most of the criticisms of the legislation come from those of the first two categories, I’m more concerned about what the last means. It is merely a small piece of a much larger message: Trust must be enforced and not earned. A responsible citizen is a law-abiding citizen. Only the legislators can make you safe, happy and free.

Is that really the message we want to send to our kids?

Just Turn the Page

Friday’s Des Moines Register published this editorial by Clarence Page where he claims that immigration is only sort of good for the American economy, but controls need to be put on it in order to protect our low-wage jobs.

I never thought I’d hear someone say wages need to be kept low, but there are surprises around every corner.

These low wage jobs are disappearing, but being replaced with higher wage jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more positions will be added to the top quartile of wage earners than all other quartiles combined over the next seven years.

This is happening because our economy is, on the whole, still free and nimble. Entrepreneurs and inventors create new ideas and constantly allow participants to do more with less. Every person adds to that capacity in ways we don’t always see or understand. Page wants our immigration to be “controlled and orderly;” hardly words that fit in with a dynamic, successful economy.

Forging Our Next Second Class Citizen

It begins with a reasonable law, or well-sounding claim. It begins with a call to protecting someone else, someone with a person connection to the people, or the people themselves. It begins with seemly justified paranoia.

Oklahoma just passed legislation requiring all convicted sex offenders to wear GPS bracelets for the rest of their life so law enforcers can track their every move. Even if we go on the rather ridiculous assumption that every single one of these felons really was guilty, they are still citizens of this country and have done their time. Don’t we have a law against cruel and unusual punishment?

Senator Myers defends the law, saying it will make their other laws “faster and more efficient” to implement. If we only cared about our justice system being fast and efficient, we’d just execute all the guilty.

Law, Legislation and Special Effects

There are aliens at the theater.

No, not just the foreign kind, the green-scaled kind too. While all you in the big cities began seeing the Star Wars fanatics form a movie line weeks ago, the local news reported that ours started today. And the only thing more over the top than the costumes is the attitudes.

Most of the public is guarded, but optimistic. But the fans—the hard core fans—have predetermined that this will be the greatest movie in the last several years. These are the same fans that thought Episode II was pretty good and Episode I wasn’t that bad. Why are they not willing to admit the third time is rarely the charm?

Hardcore fans’ relationship with their object of worship is similar to politicians’ relationship with their pet legislation. They trump it whenever they can. They are most likely to dress up for it. They have a hard time admitting when it’s crap. When they do admit it is crap, they always insist it’s because of relatively small problems.

Thus Star Wars fans blame Jar Jar Binks for the poor quality of Episodes I and II just as lawmakers blame legal wording for the failure of their laws. But the problem is always more fundamental. Laws rarely do what they are supposed to do and often make a matter worse. Politicians rarely have the capacity to recognize when a law goes too far (which is most of them). Laws are a hammer and everything looks like a nail.

George Lucas is a poor director and a poor writer. He’s obsessed with special effects and thanks to CGIs, he stuffs them into everything he touches. He spends more time on getting the lightsabers to look right than he does smoothing out dialogue or keeping the plot moving. And because thirty years ago these options weren’t available, Lucas had to focus on the parts that make a good movie good. Ego inflated after decades of constant praise, he has become his own biggest fan, incapable of acknowledging the fundamental mistakes he makes.

Special effects, like laws, have their place, but are devastating in the wrong hands. Those who put them on pedestals are doomed to witness them become untoward. Those who are unwilling to recognize that problem are doomed to repeat it. If special effects are the legislation of the movie world, than its characters are surely humanity and its plot, their everyday activity. That’s what we should focus on: not making it look good with rules and explosions, but by freeing up those core elements that make a movie worth watching, and a society worth living.

Still Nothing On....

Congratulations to MTV for launching its 100th channel (MTV Africa)! I just saw an ad for the celebration. My studies and constant exposure to free markets has really raised my expectations but one hundred channels for one brand name? That’s impressive. Now if only they would play some videos.

Prediction: UK Blackouts In the Next Twenty Years

Greed. For countless people worldwide the word can’t be said without a sneer at free markets and an implicit call for government regulation. Technically meaning “desire beyond need” or “desire beyond merit,” today’s commentators have mutated it to “desire beyond some arbitrary point.”

No where is this more clear than at the Isle of Man Today Newspapers where a recent article trumps new laws that cap power prices. The article demonized producers, calling them “greedy suppliers” after “excessive profit.”

What the article fails to tell you is that this will likely lead to an England energy crisis similar to the one we saw in California a few years back. You probably heard that those blackouts were actually caused by deregulation and corporate greed. You were wrong. While the wholesale price of energy (the price companies charged one another) was deregulated, the retail price (the price consumers pay) remained artificially deflated. Companies did not have a reason to build new power plant (not that other regulations made such construction viable).

I have no idea where this line is that makes legitimate compensation “excessive” or “too much.” I don’t even know why wanting more than what you have is inherently evil. I do know that greed generates the incentive to keep the power flowing. If you think capping energy prices is going to help a country’s most downtrodden, then you better be ready to sit in the dark.

Someone Get Me Some Advil

I try to imagine how much time and money go into fighting the War on Drugs and every time I do, I get a headache. In this opinion piece from Keeping People Connected News of northeast Indiana, the author trumps a new law the governor recently signed.

The law makes it more difficult for people to legally purchase substances that could be used to make meth. Note I said “legally purchase” and not “obtain.” The new law will certainly makes these components more expensive on the black market, but the kids will still use them.

The law puts limits on the amount of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine a person can purchase in a week, requires identification and creates a database of such people for inspection by police. Civil rights arguments aside, the author makes the counterintuitive claim that this will make the community safer. It seems it is more important to do thousands of background checks—most of which are on senior citizens—than to catch murderers and rapists.

Creepy Words of Wisdom

I was wandering around on the White-Wolf forums today when I noticed a user called “DEVONBIRKENEAU” uses an example as his signature to distinguish between “terror” and “horror.”

“Terror is being stabbed to death by a hulking serial killer.
Horror is waking up the next morning, realizing you were self-identifying with another one of your victims...”

Has nothing to do with economics, laws or anything else I usually ramble about, but it’s pretty damn cool.

Cranial Coverage Generates Disorder

In every society, there are people who want to control it so they concoct the most insane relationships of cause and effect and then regulate the “cause.” The most recent example is Tony Blair’s support for laws that ban “hooded tops and baseball caps from the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.”

Hooded tops, or hoodies, are sweatshirts with hoods. Baseball caps are those rimmed hats associated with one of America’s boring pastimes. It seems these insidious devices cause anti-social behavior orders (asbos) and engender yobs (a British slang term for rowdy, aggressive and violent young men).

I suppose next, the government will suggest everyone wears a uniform to prevent theft.

An Iowan Design Cartel

So much for my back-up plan to design rooms in my hometown.

Iowa Governor Vilsack signed into law last week a new requirement that interior designers have to be legally registered in order to “protect the citizens of Iowa because they will know if an individual entrusted to create their interior spaces meets baseline professional standard,” said Anita Baltimore, president of American Society for Interior Designers. Apparently, the only way to know about health and safety issues is to be sanctioned by the government after six years of training and experience.

Here is where you can contact the ASID to tell them how they should be ashamed of themselves. I did. Here’s what I wrote.

I have a problem with your organization encouraging useless legislation in Iowa, recently signed by Gov. Vilsack, which requires all designers to have six years of education and experience.

Claiming it is the only way to ensure quality (including in safety and health issues) is a logical fallacy and disproved by centuries of free market activity.

This attempt to form a government monopoly will raise the price of design and encourage consumers to do it themselves. By definition, they are most likely to commit the mistakes that endanger their health and safety.

Since most of your members, no doubt, already meet the registration requirements, your organization clearly does not think they are good enough to compete on a level playing field.

Thus I will endeavor to hire a non-licensed designers (and encourage my friends to do so) for not only will they be less expensive and better at what they do, they will almost certainly be less corrupt.

Sampling the Laws

This is a great example of how one over arching law lends to the creation of a myriad of other legislation. Wouldn’t it be easier to drop the age minimum for drinking? Europeans did and their society isn’t falling apart (well, their economy sort of is, but not their society as a whole).

Jesus Christ in Legal Battle in W.Va.

You have to take a look at this. It’s too funny.

Job Search Job

Job had a pretty bad run of luck: boils, the death of his wife, and more importantly, his sheep. I am tempted to feel sometimes that my job search is plagued by Job-like pestilence: few call backs, a lack of experience, two cars, neither of which is reliable, and even a little religious discrimination thrown in for good measure. But alas, Job’s fortune turned around, and so will mine…eventually.

But the job market is a reliable indicator of the need for labor in the larger market. It tells consumers and investors alike what areas are in need (higher wages, less wait time to get a job) and what area are saturated (lower wages, more wait time, greater selectivity). It could be worse. I could be fighting an economy like Germany’s that just introduced mandatory minimum wages, or like some other countries that track you into your job, have industry quotas, and all the rest. I may not like having to scrounge for a while, but scrounging remains preferable to bureaucratically controlled placement. So while I am apt to complain that I have not been hired in record time and at a record starting wage, in the bigger picture I am not so upset.

Faking Private Ryan

It’s good to know that the government is so concerned about our safety they are willing to lower their standards to make sure they have enough bodies. The military is one of the few things government should do; shouldn’t they do it right?

Revenge of the Phantom Clones

The first one sucked. The second was painful. And while Star Wars fans the world over anxiously await the final installment of Lucas’s vision I remain suspicious despite the glowing reviews.

Tyler Cowen cites Variety’s praise of the movie and mentions the magazine’s reliability in this matter. What he fails to mention is that three years the same reviewer of Revenge of the Sith called Attack of the Clones “a grand entertainment that offers a satisfying balance among the series' epic, narrative, technological and emotional qualities.” (To his credit, the reviewer didn’t like The Phantom Menace but because I don’t have a subscription to Variety, I don’t know the details of his analysis.)

Friends point out that the preview looks great and the film will answer a lot of questions, but the last two previews looked great and the last two films answered a lot of questions (some poorly, some not worth answering). I implore everyone to remember that the first trilogy (which is really the last trilogy) was not directed by Lucas (except Hope), while this trilogy was. That makes a galaxy of difference in itself.

I mentioned in an earlier post that judging a movie before you see it is a process of tacit knowledge and by no means a science. So while I may be wrong, let’s get real for a moment. Reliable signs suggest RotS won’t be worth the price of admission. Unless you’re risk-loving, save your money and watch one of the earlier chapters (which are really the later chapters). At least you’re guaranteed a good time.

Four Slots and Seven Cards Ago

People hate change, even good change. They even can be surprisingly stupid when it comes to their own values.

Take last week developers unveiled plans to build a casino a mile and a half from the Gettysburg battlefield. The uproar was immediate as historians condemned the idea as insulting the memory of fallen soldiers. According to prize-winning author and Civil War authority James McPherson, “It would be a desecration of their memory and sacrifice to establish such a tawdry, tasteless enterprise next to their fields of honor.”

Let us set aside the fact that a mile and a half doesn’t constitute as “next” and the casino wouldn’t even be visible from anywhere on the site. Let us also table the reality that the casino would not it have a Civil War theme (hardly desecration). Let us even ignore that “tawdry” and “tasteless” are mere matters of opinion because in light of all of those things, McPherson is still wrong.

I suppose it is the unfortunate tendency of historians to put their area of expertise on such a high pedestal, they loose touch with the real world in some kind of reactionary attempt to return to the period in question. Because casinos were never in Gettysburg during the Civil War, McPherson reasons they should never be, even if people want them. Even if it could help raise money to save other historical places, as one preservationist pointed out.

In his obsession for authenticity McPherson has lost sight of the ideas behind the Civil War. There were lots of reasons for the War, but there was a central theme of liberation (either from government or from slave masters backed by government). If I were a fallen soldier, I’d be more insulted by attempts to curb others’ liberty than people freely contributing a service to society.

Helping to Stave Off Rotten Luck

Mike sent me a link to this site to help out in my movie-going quandary. It certainly looks like it makes going to movies less risky—and here’s to anything that betters our lives—but we agreed movies are still a roll of the dice.

When Caution Goes To Far

The Airbus A380 is the world’s largest commercial airplane ever built. Completed earlier this year, it stretches nearly 240 feet long and almost 80 feet high. It can seat 555 passengers on two decks and carry them up to 8,000 nautical miles. By any measure it is a marvel of engineering.

Imagine filling five of these planes to the brim with children—most four years old or less. Now crash them all. Do it every day: seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. That will give you an idea of the African death toll thanks to malaria.

Today the World Health Organization and UNICEF jointly released a report on the disease, concluding malaria kills a child every thirty seconds and siphons off 1.3% of economic growth from the worst affected countries. To combat the disease, the report suggests a variety of methods, including pesticide spraying which admits is the most effective method.

The report even points out the most controversial chemical in this regard—DDT—was principle in eliminating malaria in the West. According to one graph, the sixties witnessed the some of greatest decline in malaria and was the height of DDT use. The WHO still recommends the insecticide for the worst afflicted countries.

But it does not recommend its widespread use. It’s not even mentioned in methods for improving the situation. DDT—a chemical that is safe enough to eat and cheap enough for the struggling countries to afford—is Africa’s greatest hope. But greens continue to oppose it based on the precautionary principle: it might hurt the environment, though there is no evidence that it would. The concerns are unfounded. The consequences are real. DDT could save more lives than a cancer vaccine and make a big step to pulling an entire continent from gut-wrenching poverty. How can we even pause?

In A World of Asymmetric Information....

The summer movie season is looming and thus the burning question every movie-goer must ask: which ones will actually be good and which ones should I avoid completely?

Not just a case of adverse selection, movie quality is a matter of taste and preference. Attempts to create a symmetry of information can never be consistently applied. If I bring a mechanic with me to buy a used car, he could give me all the information the dealership has: this part needs replacing, this part is good, that part is wearing. It’s not a matter of debate.

But suppose I consult someone with better knowledge about the movie, such as the director or screen writer. Assuming they are honest (a problem in itself), any opinions he has about the thing that matters—the quality of it—is subjective. Any objective information (such as the details of the plot) could be helpful to assess its quality, but it could ruin the movie. More information would not only affect my opinion of how good the movie is, it could actually decrease my opinion of the quality. Thus creating symmetric information while changing the value of the good as little as possible requires a delicate balance of conveying personal opinion and relevant fact. Rarely can these requirements be separated for one is embodied in the other.

Consider the movie trailer. It is meant to transmit the objective fact of what the movie is about. Thus it always has to give away information, but it passes on as little as possible to maintain the potential entertainment value. And yet it embodies personal preference, just as a journalist passes on their opinion by how they report the news. Scene selection, voice over dialogue, visual order—all of these are meant to engender a positive opinion of its quality. But ultimately it is not of the movie, but of the trailer. Trailers are not enough to judge quality with certainty.

So we hear/read reviews, where a critic (or a friend) consumed the good and reports on the quality. Assuming you can find someone you consistently agree with (a feat in itself), exceptions always loom as objective changes (such as the plot or style) dramatically affect the subjective conclusion. A local critic once gave a bad review of Jurassic Park, a movie most would consider phenomenal. It was clear from that review she simply didn’t like science fiction.

Sometimes a good indicator of movie quality is the basic information about how the movie is made. Who is the director? Is it a remake? Who stars in it? But none of these are consistent. Sometimes remakes are good (The Italian Job), sometime they are not (Planet of the Apes). Some directors are usually great (Tim Burton), but they have their dismal failures (again, Planet of the Apes). Sometimes Bruce Willis is in a good movie (Die Hard), sometimes he’s in a crappy one (Armageddon). A consistently good director can make a poor movie (Steven Spielberg’s AI) and a first time director can make a wonderful movie (Troy Duffy’s The Boondock Saints). There are no hard-fast rules.

I would love a reliable way to judge movie quality, but there is none. It ultimately comes down to considering all three categories and making a judgment based as much on instinct as information. But it takes a lot practice before you get any good at it. So before you go to the movies this summer, do your homework and think about the information you get. Realize the trailer isn’t the movie. Take all critics’ claims with a grain of salt. See how the movie is made. Who knows? You might just get lucky.

If You Ever Need a Message Near Your Crotch

Free markets create some of the crazies things. Here's one for the books.

Mad props to Seth for sending me the link.

Re-entering the Fray / Free Market Enviromentalism

Before I go into my post, I’d like to say a few things. First, let me convey my apologies for being lax about my participation here at LL&L this semester. As some of you may know, I am graduating from Bethany College next week, so this has been my final semester. Congrats to me – I finished my comps this week and have been notified that I am graduating from Bethany with Distinction. Yay!!!

Also, I’ve just been notified by IHS that I’ve been accepted to the Liberty & Current Issues Summer Seminar at Catholic University in D.C. this July. I am quite excited about that, and I hope that maybe I’ll see some of you there.

Now to the post…

Interesting set of articles in The Economist magazine this past week about environmental issues. Among them a discussion about how our ability to assign price to environmental factors is increasing the markets ability to account for those factors efficiently. For example, it has been found that coffee fields planted within one kilometer of a forest are 20-plus percent more productive than fields further away, and that the key difference between them is the increased natural pollination that occurs as a result of forest-dwelling insects. In this way, the presence of that forest is worth, to the farmer at least, the margin of increase in productivity.

Another example is some of the forested area on Panama’s Pacific coast. Medicinal scientists have been documenting for some years now numerous cures (or likely cures) that exist in the swampy muck and moldy undergrowth of that region. Large pharmaceutical companies are already clamoring to gain rights to those areas in order to leave them undeveloped, because in this case, the trees and swamps have enormously more value than condos and golf-courses, that is, if one is operating on a longer time horizon.

Granted, these are not a perfect demonstration of the free market at work, and getting market systems to take hold with regards to environmental stuff has much further to go in terms of sophistication. Most significantly, there are still many perverse incentives written into national laws throughout this country and Latin America. But it does signal a move in a generally good direction. The more that the market can demonstrate itself capable and competent in assigning accurate value/price to environmental concerns, the more likely governments are to abandon the command-and-control regulatory/prohibition model that so dominated green-policy over the last three decades in favor of a market-oriented approach. I’d strongly encourage those of you who are interested in the intersection of the free market and the environment to pick up a copy of The Economist for April 23-29, 2005 – it’s worth a look.

See also: abetterearth.org the IHS site dedicated to applying the free market to the environment.