GMU Update

After about half a week of vainly trying to get a hold of Pete Boettke (who wrote in an e-mail recently that I could call him if I had any questions), I got an e-mail from GMU. Apparently he’s re-reviewed my application and put me on the wait list for the PhD program, which is awesome. That’s the good news: I still might get into the PhD program.

Apparently the GMU people are trying to get as many waitlisted into the program and those that don’t get passed on to a different group so they can be considered for the masters. That’s the bad news: I might not get into either.

BUT, apparently my constant nagging earned me something as Pete has taken an interest in me and they’ve “flagged” my file, which means they’re going to try harder to get me in. How much harder and how many others are flagged, I don’t know. But my chances are better than they were last week. That’s the good news.

But it seems that at the end of each day, I actually know less and my future seems more uncertain. Why do I get the feeling I’m the victim of some kind of prank?

Fallacy

Of late I have been discussing with a friend some possibilities for revamping the curriculum and methods of teaching at Beloit College. This is mainly a thought experiment.

My latest response began like this:

It seems to me that if all these ideas are as viable and workable as you claim, they would have been tried by now. Doesn't the fact that no college has a curriculum like you want suggest that the market has determined that this is not the best outcome?

I should be ashamed of myself, and I am. I adhere to what I consider truth: that markets solve problems, and when a problem exists the market actively works to solve it. However, I took it a step too far in assuming that if the market (in this case, the college system) had yet to try something, then it was hardly worth looking at. This logic of course precludes all forms of entrepreneurship. To say that an idea is not workable because if it were, then "the market would have already done that" ignores that the market is a dynamic process. I am not the only one to commit this fallacy (heck, I probably find myself guilty of it regularly). How many times has a student been told that a research topic, if valuable, would have already been researched? I have seen (and probably done it myself) friends dismiss new products under the guise that they can't possibly be innovative.

And of course my favorite tale is one of a teacher I once had, who claimed with absolute sincerity, that there was nothing new that could be thought of or done; all the "newness" was exhausted.

Clearly, this is a fallacy of thought. It is especially a fallacy of economic thought. But I do not know what to call it. The fallacy of premature dismissal? Ideas?

Them Crazy Canadians

Mike sent me this article to cheer me up. My favorite part is that their health care system is so bad, Canadians are being sent to the states to get cared for. Makes you think what they would do if we followed their "amazing" system.

Woot!...Or Not So Much

“Woot!” was the original title I was going to use when I found out GMU accepted my application for their PhD program. I was so sure I’d get in I can’t even list all the things I had going for me (notably the recommendation and help with the application from a well-respected alum of program). Then I called them today to ask why my application status seems to be stuck on “Complete ready for review,” especially since I had no idea what that meant. They told me the committee turned down my application.

Looking back, I think the number one thing I did wrong was turn it in too late. Even though it was still months before the deadline, if they got it December 1st instead of December 21st (especially since that’s four days before Christmas) things might have been very different. Who knows?

So now I’m taken aback and not sure what to do except start looking for jobs and try to figure out what’s next on the list. Apparently my application was referred to the masters program. I have no idea what that means, though I sent an inquiring e-mail.

At least the whole ordeal has been a learning experience. Here’s what I’ve learned (and am learning).

- Never put all your eggs in one basket, even if the basket’s made of a springy material that protects eggs.
- Everything happens for a reason, so long as you make that reason happen.
- Be grateful for friends that you can call when something bad happens. Sometimes all you need to do is talk.
- Never try to find out the status of your application while all you’re college friends are in class.
- Never try to find out the status of your application while your old professor is out of her office.
- Getting what you want is like fighting a war: use every advantage you have to its maximum capacity (so long as you don’t violate the Geneva Conventions).
- Always remember that no matter how bad things seem to be, there’s always someone from high school you didn’t like that’s worse off than you.
- Be grateful if you learn these lessons while you’re still young so you have the opportunity to apply them and you don’t get totally screwed when you discover them.

Science Lesson

I was never really great at the hard sciences (especially biology), mostly because there’s too much to remember. Parts of the cell, organs, chemical names, rules for how they combine—it can get overwhelming very quickly.

But science’s growing complexity and fundamental role in economics (like genetic engineering) and politics (like the EPA) warrants everyone to learn some science terms to better sort through the issues. Here are two such words I found while reading Challenging Environmental Mythology, by Jack W. Dini.

The first is bioavailability, which describes the amount of a substance that’s available for interacting with other agents in the environment. Toxins might have a high bioavailability in the lab (thus making it very likely some amount will kill a given organism) while in nature that same amount of toxin could have a lower bioavailability for the same organism (thus making it less likely to kill it). Most evidence suggests that soil, for example, greatly lowers the bioavailability of chemicals.

The EPA doesn’t pay attention to bioavailability factors when it determines how harmful a substance is. The same goes for other studies done by scientists who are either ignorant of the phenomenon or have a vested interest in overestimating risk. It’s like citing experiments that drown people in water to conclude water is toxic. Bioavailability can vary dramatically (28.2% to 99% decline between six different soils) and diminishes with respect to DDT, DDE, DDD and dieldrin via earthworms.

The second term is chirality which describes the form of amino and nucleic acids. All such molecules can manifest as either “left-handed” or “right-handed,” even though they are comprised of the same atoms with the same quantities of each. Sometimes the “mirror image” is inactive. Other times, it can be dangerous. In 1957 thalidomide was used to lessen morning sickness, but its mirror image caused birth defects. Doses administered with both versions led to the false conclusion that the chemical itself was bad.

Mixed doses can be common (25% of all pesticides, for example, have mirror images), and the EPA doesn’t even acknowledge chirality as a factor. This is reflected in past environmental data which never distinguished which forms of the chemicals in question were present. A 1999 Nature report noted that traces of DDT derivatives, PCBs and plasticizers aren’t really as bad as once thought once you’ve adjusted for chirality.

I have to point out that if we didn’t politicized science and kept it in the private sector, these gaps wouldn’t be as bad because there’s a private sector incentive to recognize poor science and correct for it. Politics, however, isn’t about truth; it’s about perception. And that means never having to admit you were wrong.

Blame the Turks

Two years after we invaded Iraq we finally have an answer to help explain why our forces continue to meet with resistance to this day.

I thought that a major insurgency was inevitable—after all we’re messing with the internal affairs of a sovereign country, creating general chaos with no clear plan for rebuilding, and we’re not really well liked in the Arab world to begin with.

But apparently it didn’t have to be so major. Donald Rumsfeld announced yesterday that if Turkey let us invade via their border, then “a considerably smaller number of the Baathists and the regime elements would have escaped.”

There’s some logic to the argument: a lot of intelligence and military personal escaped to the north when the US invaded from Kuwait. But isn’t it likely that they did this because we weren’t invading from Turkey and if we did, they would have simply disappeared elsewhere. Iraq isn’t the largest country in the world but it’s still pretty big and the personal certainly knew it better than we did.

There’s simply no way Rumsfeld could know that the difference is “considerable” and it’s just another pathetic attempt of the administration to cover up the fact that they had virtually no post-war plan. When’s someone going to be held accountable for this screw up? Oh well. At least now we can be sure that the Turks hate us.

French Get Angry For Being Googled At

For years I’ve dreamed of the day when a major and well-known corporation with a funny name got into some controversy. That way, talking about it would be that much more enjoyable, the face of capitalism would be more playful, and I’d have a lot more fun writing headlines.

That day has finally come.

A French news agency is suing Google (note who did the ads for the article…that’s too funny) on grounds that it’s news service reproduces wire news stories without authorization. If you’ve never been to Google News, the page is basically a list of headlines gathered from papers all over the world and organized based on topics. All the information is taken from other websites (including the headline and summary).

The French’s case doesn’t work because the only way to get the full story is to click through to the page(s) Google got the words from. (The headline for the story snipet is always links to the original story of that headline and that snipet.) This is free advertising, so stop bitching.

Google officials also point out that the only way an article be included in Google News is if the company chooses to be indexed for Google News. Hmmm…

The best part about this story is that I found it via my Home Page: Google News.

Strangling Science

William M. Connolley is up for arbitration. So far, most of the wiki members are voting in favor of him, which is sad. WMC isn’t keeping up with the idea of mutual respect and compromise. (Most notably, he’s deleted my attempt to add the “disputed” label to the global warming article. He doesn’t even want people to know there are those who challenge conventional wisdom.)

The vote for it came from the user I only know as Cortonin, a scientist who’s much more middle of the road than I. Talk pages suggest he and WMC have been going back and forth for a while.

Mike thinks I should give this up (and I have taken a break from it), but so much about the article (and more importantly the edit wars of the article) have rubbed me the wrong way. It’s becoming to represent so much of what I dislike about today’s state of affairs.

Most notably is the sloppy science weaved in the article. In December of last year WMC demanded Cortonin to show him evidence of global cooling after he put up a similar dispute notice. WMC responded, “Again, I'm very familiar with both of those pages and they are perfectly compatible with this page, so (given your failure to find a model for cooling) I've removed the NPOV header.”

Models are not evidence, as WMC suggests. By definition they are based more on assumptions than observed data. It is items like this that make me think of the tag line on his blog: “Taking Science by the Throat…” Yes William, because you’re trying to kill it.

(Maybe I should stop keeping track of these articles. I have better things to do and talking to brick walls isn’t going to help me. Something to ponder.)

World of Contracts

Some weeks ago, a friend suggested I try the online game, World of Warcraft. I never played a game that required monthly fees before so he said I could just play on his account when he’s not using it. After I got into it, he said that when he hit the maximum level, he’d stop and sell me the game for about $50 (the price of the software).

This was not a problem for the majority of our arrangement. My friend took evening classes and played to the wee hours of the morning; I would play in the afternoons and while he was at class. He got it weekends (when I work).

Last week my friend decided his schedule was too screwed up and reset it, staying up for 31 hours straight. Instead of waking up at four or five (and go to class soon after), he was waking up at 11 or noon, about the time I do. Our schedules now severely overlapped.

I didn’t think much of it because he was only a couple of levels away from the max (level 60). I was even thinking about paying more than the fifty bucks for the game as he suggested he could sell the account on ebay for $100.

Everything changed a few days ago. In the kindest way possible, he said he was tired of sharing the account and because he’s starting a new character, he won’t be getting tired of the game anytime soon (Blizzard’s will also be offering hero classes to advanced levels soon).

So I now have to buy the game, set up an account and—worst of all—create a new character from the ground up (I was at level 36…the timer told me I’ve spent more than a total of nine straight days getting there.)

Reliable contracts are a key component of a functioning society, but how broadly should we define contract? Does it have to be written? If not, how formal does the verbal promise need to be? Could implied contracts count? On one hand, making it too casual obviously opens the door to abuse. On the other hand, de-formalizing contracts could help us get rid of those pesky lawyers.

So question becomes this: what—if anything—does my friend owe me for breaking contract?

All Hail Kirk

This makes me sad but it's a valuable lesson: fascism can don the most noble of masks.

Faces of Catan

Glen, you should appreciate this.

Alcatel—a French telecom company—is putting out a promotional version of a classic board game. The Communication of Catan is a high-tech take on the German original with a definite free market tone.

The best part: the robber dynamic from Settlers is now embodied by government regulation. How perfect is that?

Iowa Gets Video Cameras

Iowa’s known for many things: caucuses, corn, flooding, soybeans, pigs, an education system that used to be number one in the nation but has been declining for several years…corn, again.

We’re also known for being the future birthplace of Captain Kirk, specifically in the small town of Riverside (eight miles south of Iowa City). As Iowa’s most positive claim to fame, it’s about time they got their own show.

On March 29, Spike TV will launch their mini-series (“Invasion Iowa”) where William Shatner leads a cadre of Hollywood types to the Iowan hamlet so they can shoot a major motion picture. This would be the first time Shatner’s ever visited the town.

And what better way to start a relationship than with a lie? The movie’s a fake and the entire point of the series is to screw around with the small town and see how they react to the absurd changes justified by movie production. The last episode will air on April 1st (Whoa! It’s like they planned it that way!)

I love Spike TV, I love Star Trek, I love Joe Schmo (the series that inspired this one) and I really love it when national television covers my home state. Like everyone else in backwater country, I enjoy feeling recognized. Make some more shows about us, America, and I promise we’ll stop talking about ethanol and insisting we should be the first caucus for the presidency.

A Cleaner Harvard?

Don’t you just hate not having everything? Lots of people do and there’s basically three ways to respond.

The first is working hard and contributing something valuable to society, earning money to pay for lots of cool stuff.

The second is taking stuff from others and using it yourself. This always involves some kind of force so it’s particularly common in government.

The third is just encouraging less stuff across the board. That way, no one feels jealous. This is favored reasoning on college campuses, even when it concerns something colleges desperately need: cleaning.

Don Boudreaux at Café Hayek reported that Harvard students are complaining about Michael Kopko, a student selling maid services to dorm residents. An opinion piece in The Harvard Crimson claims,

By creating yet another differential between the haves and have-nots on campus, Dormaid threatens our student unity.... We urge the student body to boycott Dormaid [the name of Kopko’s company].

It goes on to argue that the service may create conflict between roommates (one wants it and the other doesn’t). Don rightly points out that this level of immaturity is hardly suiting for a college student.

Just for fun, let’s suppose the students have a point—inequality is bad because it makes people feel bad. By logical extension, all signs of different incomes should be eliminated. Nice cars (in fact, any cars) should be towed away. Televisions, microwaves, refrigerators, printers, game consoles, VCRs, DVD players and even computers that don’t belong to everyone should be removed from the dorms. All students should be limited to maximum standard of clothing and makeup. CDs, DVDs and newspapers should be stowed out of site. Decorating of any sort should be prohibitive (unless it’s with materials provided by the school). Food and dishes should similarly be taken away.

On the plus side, rooms won’t need cleaning anymore.

NOTE: Don used the words “chooses not buy” instead of “cannot afford” and inquired why he would do so. One reason is unless the service costs several thousand dollars, student can find ways to pay for it. For example, they could not buy some of their very expensive school books and instead photocopy and/or borrow them from others (I know students who do this). The nature of the case yields a second reason why any student could afford the service: they can do it themselves.

Shaking Up the Mouse Market

It’s amazing just how many problems the market can solve. I never even considered the impact of hand tremors on working a mouse. Thanks, IBM.

Movie Wars

If you’re like me you thought the last two Star Wars movies were nightmarish catastrophes. If they weren’t riding the coattails of the first three, we wouldn’t have a third one coming out in May and we probably wouldn’t have the second poison in the first place.

But it is a good universe to tell stories in and I would like see more of them. Have no fear my fellow hopefuls because in about a month, Panic Struck Productions will release a fan-created Star Wars movie called Revelations. (And the trailer looks pretty awesome.)

Until I learned about this project through Slashdot, I never knew fans made movies. I thought they limited themselves to stories and websites. But fan movies aren’t new and Lucas apparently loves to let them happen. As long as it’s non-profit, there’s no suing.

It got me thinking about copyright. What if the rules were less stringent and people could make money off the Star Wars universe? Yes people would be making money off of others’ hard work but the last trilogy ended more than 20 years ago; patents are usually expired after that. Why can’t people make a film if they only use material that’s two decades old?

I’m first to admit that it may make some really bad Star Wars movies but wake up everyone; we’re already there.

Climate Change Gets Nasty

Since contributing to Wiki’s articles on global warming and scientific opinion on climate change, I’ve had run-ins with some…savory characters in the wiki world. At the top of the list are William M. Connolley and Vsmith, both of whom are fans of reverting articles they don’t like.

Reverting is the option that basically changes any edit job to a previous version. Its use is to easily change vandalism. Some punk jumps onto an article and changes all the information to something completely false and you can quickly undo the damage.

Unfortunately, reverting is also a favored tactic of closed-minded people because it doesn’t even require you to consider what’s been added. A lot of people who don’t appreciate new ideas use it as if it was heroin. They often justify it by simply claiming it’s wrong, though the parts they delete are often others’ take on controversial topics.

For example, I added a political section to the “Scientific opinion on climate change.” It basically explained how politicized science can be hijacked by various groups and mutated into pseudo-science or even fraud. Given the politics of global warming and the fact that some people argue this is happening (most famously Michael Crichton and John Stossel), it seemed like the right thing to do.

Vsmith reverted the article, calling it “sensationalist” and “weasel-worded.” In the discussion section, he claimed it didn’t add anything new and attacked the analogy I used without offering any substantive explanation. He also called it mere conspiracy, which isn’t really accurate. (In the addition I said some people think it’s a conspiracy while other believe it’s more of a collective action problem.)

So I made some alterations (he had a few good points, like sometimes I was vague). I also added sources. In the edit heading I said “Made some requested changes, please discuss before reverting.” And hour and a half later Vsmith reverted anyway saying, “revert - don't need the political conspiracy theory.” In the discussion page, he attacked me because my main source was a novel (irrelevant for two reasons: it wasn’t my main source and the parts I used were fact). Connolley joined Vsmith, saying I should put the stuff in the article called “global warming controversy.”

This is a favored tactic of Connolley. He dumps ideas he doesn’t like and suggests people put them in different articles, assuming a front of neutrality. Thus it allows him to condense the opposing side to a mere link while he rambles on and on about his point of view, which also crowds out different opinions; Connolley also likes reverting on the basis the article is too large.

And he’s been hitting the revert button a lot on scientific opinion article. Here’s a little conversation Connolley had with a user called Cortonin after Cortonin tried to discuss the creation of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

Cortonin: RV to Marco Krohn version, includes description of IPCC formation. [RV is short for reverting.]
Connolley: Try alternaitve wording focussing on what they are rather then who chose them
Cortonin: Lets merge these two.
Connolley: No lets not
Cortonin: RV. Merging as compromise.
Connolley: Rv'ing Cortonins fake compromise
Cortonin: Then lets return to the more accurate one which comes from the reference, if you don't like the compromise version.
Connolley: Rv: your version is inaccurate. See talk.

The talk gets pretty nasty, mostly because Connolley doesn’t like the idea of including information about the politics of the IPCC and claims Cortonin is trying to discredit the organization. In Talk, Connolley says:

Well, you're finding the IPCC section quite controversial. Why not - since you really don't mind whether you do IPCC, or AMS, or whatever first - go on and do a less controversial one? But of course, thats laughable. We all know that in fact you care nothing for the others. And your version of the IPCC author seclection is wrong.

You know the funny this is that according to Wikipedia,

Sometimes, though, it is better to write a third version that takes the best bits of the other two, and combines them to get the best of both worlds. Note that reverts are not appropriate if a newer version is no better than the older version. You should save reverts for cases where the new version is actively worse. Regardless, we strongly recommend against heated revert wars.

Now if only some people would read it…

A Really Hopeful Future

Someday I’ll have it all. Someday I’ll have a computer that works reliably and will integrate with my palm pilot seamlessly (like it’s supposed to). Someday I’ll have a cell phone that gets reception in the places I go, a credit card in good enough shape to be swiped at the gas station so I don’t have to go inside and PDA that doesn’t erase its memory when it runs out of batteries. Someday all this technology will actually function while I’m holding it.

I’ve been away from LL&L that past few days because my computer has undergone a much needed overhaul including virus scans and reformatting. (I also visited Beloit in the middle of the week). After all that, I sat down to reinstall programs only to discover the left button doesn’t respond about 20% of the time. Today I grabbed a new mouse (though it cost more than I thought it would). Things seemed to be working until after the long installations needed for World of Warcraft: I couldn’t sign on. So I write this article instead.

I love technology, I really do. Entrepreneurship creates efficiency but innovation can only take you so far. Invention, however, makes our capacity for growth limitless which is why I want to dedicate my life studying technology’s role in the economy. I see it working every day though it never seems to function for me (at least not as well as for everyone else).

Someday it will all work. I swear.

"You Can’t Take the Sky From Me."

Damn you Mike, damn you for introducing me to Firefly. I now have the theme song constantly in my head.

For those of you out of the know, Firefly is a wonderful, short-lived series that was once on Fox a few years ago. Due to poor choice in scheduling and episode order, the network pulled the series halfway through its first season. It was later released on DVD.

That was when it's popularity really took off, so much so Universal bought the rights to make a movie (due out in September). It also generated a list of fan sites (here, here, here and here, to start), along with the required fan fic (here, here, and here). I especially like the site where the author is working on a virtual season of it for Phoenix Virtual Television (here) and the site dedicated to products inspired from the series (here). All this from a mere 14 episodes.

The lesson boys and girls is that in our age of technology and ethical greed, it's hard keeping a good product down. We also learned this lesson with Family Guy (Fox is bringing back the series thanks to high DVD sales). All things just keep getting better.

A Terminology of War

Last week I thought I’d enter the Wikicommunity and add what I (correctly) assumed would be a lacking but necessary voice to their article on global warming (I also updated my profile to link to LL&L).

There are a lot of fun and interesting stories that are spawning from this experience but one bears special mention: the attacks on my credibility.

For example after one of my edits, William M. Connolley—who watches the article like a hawk—visted the blog and attacked my intentions based on the March 4th post. Connolley is a fan of reverting the article (taking it back to an earlier version), undoing my work. Vsmith has accused me of “declaring war on wiki climate articles,” based off the post. Though I never used that term, it’s not an inaccurate description. I didn’t expect new ideas to be accepted and debated on these articles and unfortunately I’m right: skepticism is being met with hostility.

Thus others’ define this as a “war,” and I accept that term for two reasons. First, it takes two sides to make a peaceful exchange. If they are going to be nasty and closed-minded, then the term “discussion” is not appropriate (though I insist on taking the high ground). Second, the war anology lends itself to other useful analogies. For example, I opened a new front.

I’ve been spending time working the article and disscussion for wiki’s article called “Scientific opinion on climate change” and I’m trying to introduce a section on the politics that shape that very opinion. Again, lots of deletion and angry words.

NOTE: At the time of this writing I’ve been unable to contribute to the talk page to defend my take on the matter…something is wrong with the wiki site. Also, to view my (short lived) contributions, visit the history page and check out revisions by “Atlastawake.”

If anyone has any advice or links they could provide me to help make my cases, I’d love to see them.

The Economics of LL&L

Jackie, in an effort to boast traffic on her site (and for her own amusement) posted a series of controversial posts this week. It worked and she saw a 346% growth in comments and 45% increase in visits.

I’ve often mulled over if I should try a similar tactic to boast LL&L’s traffic but Jackie’s blog and mine fundamentally different; I doubt it will make much difference.

1. Jackie’s female and I’m not (nor am I pretending to be female). Thus it’s far less sexy (and claiming I blog naked holds a lot less power).

2. Jackie writes about her personal life while I don’t (at least not in a stand alone manner). Economically, this adds greater product differentiation to Jackie’s blog—issues vary but you can probably find similar commentary on others’ blogs as you can on mine. But Jackie’s blog is THE source for Jackie news (which is enriched by #1).

3. Jackie’s been around about a year longer than mine, allowing it more time to gather a larger audience.

4. Jackie’s picture is a lot better than mine.

5. Most of the people who are kind enough to visit LL&L are people I know and do it out of courtesy. Few of them bother to read my long posts (which is why I’m been trying to be more brief). Michelle, I’m looking at you.

6. This one is just a guess but I’m thinking Jackie writes like she’s writing for a blog while I write like I’m writing for a magazine. Her articles are more open ended (leaving more to comment about) while I try to preemptively counter some arguments. This, of course, makes my posts longer (like this one is becoming).

7. Lately World of Warcraft has been eating up assloads of my time, thus I’ve been blogging less. On the plus side I’m almost up to level 36!

And when I think about it, I don’t have that many taboo ideas to write about. The most controversial was probably DDD and nothing has ever come close (that I’ve written). I also don’t want to write about my personal life too much—I think it takes away from the title, of which I’ve already strayed from.

But I wouldn’t mind the low traffic so much if more of our readers would leave comments! Let me know you’re at least reading this damn thing—sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a wall (and you just can’t get insightful responses from a wall).

WikiClimate

I've started sharing my skeptical views of climate change using Wikipedia's article on global warming. I invite everyone to watch what will surely be mayhem and contribute to the article (I have a feeling it's going to need someone to help organize it because it's going to get messy over the next few weeks).

Sweat, Blood and Tears Shops

Tyler Cowen cites a story about Chinese workers who are striking for longer hours (because they want more money). Their hours were shortened by Nike and similar companies in response to criticisms of their sweat shops.

You’d think the people who claimed they were out for the interest of the world’s poor would ask the downtrodden what they want before changing their society.

Huben's Hubris

I’ve said many times that libertarianism’s greatest obstacle is the rhetoric war. Classical-liberalism holds a lot of great cards—overwhelming evidence, a consistent philosophy, an overarching respect for freedom and humanity—but we don’t have the one that outweighs them all: the rhetoric. Understanding how to take back the rhetoric requires us to learn the challenges to libertarianism.

I found this site by Mike Huben, a FAQ about classical-liberalism done by a critic of the philosophy. Some of it is interesting, some entertaining and some completely wrong. Most of it occurs in some combination of the three.

For example,

Many libertarian arguments are like fundamentalist arguments: they depend upon restricting your attention to a very narrow field so that you will not notice that they fail outside of that field. For example, fundamentalists like to restrict the argument to the bible. Libertarians like to restrict the argument to their notions of economics, justice, history, and rights and their misrepresentations of government and contracts.

Yes we all know that economics, justice, history, government, contracts and rights all sum up to a narrow scope. It totally leaves out pizza parties, backgammon and one-inch pieces of string.

Huben then proceeds to offer questions that are good ones to ask as a response to libertarian arguments so as to coax our “questionable assumptions…into view.” These are the order in which he presented them.

-Why should I accept that "right" as a given?
-Is that a fact around the world, not just in the US?
-Are there counter examples for that idea?
-Are libertarians serving their own class interest only?
-Is that economic argument complete, or are there other critical factors or strategies which have been omitted?
-When they make a historical argument, can we find current real-world counterexamples?
-If we adopt this libertarian policy, there will be benefits: but what will the disadvantages be?
-Are libertarians reinventing what we already have, only without safeguards?

These are good questions and exactly the kind that statists need to answer, not just ask. Over the next few days (or weeks, depending on how inspired I am) I’ll answer these questions for Mr. Huben, and I hope our tens of readers will help out, too.

Temporal Disturbance in the Blogosphere

At precisely 10:46 Central Standard Time, I visited flying hedgehogs. I saw a post written by Nikki who lives in Arlington (in the Eastern Time zone). Therefore, the time of the posting could not have been after 11:46. But the post is filed under March 2, 2005, not March 1, 2005.

Nikki, when did you learn time travel?

Internet Exploiter?

Who says Microsoft is a monopoly? Two independent reports discovered that the company’s Internet Explorer browser's market share dropped below 90% as people make the transition to open source browsers like Firefox.

Virtually all accounts justify the move that IE is inferior to so many others: it’s riddled with flaws, poor at blocking pop-ups and lacks enough security. So why is the share still so high? Critics of Microsoft sneer it’s because IE is written into Windows and you can’t delete it. But since Microsoft doesn’t make anyone use it, the complainant reduces to the fact that IE is a giveaway.

Again we ask why IE is so heavily used. It’s ultimately due to three issues: knowledge, trust and costs. Most people don’t know much about computers, thus they don’t know how good things can be and they don’t bother to look for them. Even if they find an alternative, there’s little guarantee the browser is better and virus-free. Microsoft may not be perfect but few believe its products will wipe hard drives. But by now Firefox is well enough known and trusted, these barriers become less significant (though most people don’t know how much better the alternatives can be, so knowledge is still an issue). But there are significant costs to a new browser, even if it’s free.

I’m using IE now and I’m looking to switch, but I’m also dreading it. I’m used to IE’s organization and want to avoid all adapting to a new one. I have scores of sites bookmarked and they’re organized in just the way I like it. I don’t want to bookmark all over again. And all of those little things—getting used to clicking a new icon, being comfortable with a new look, learning to ignore all the minute details I may not like—encourage me to put off the transition.

Most people just want to get online. I-Mac’s success demonstrated that. Plug it in, click the icon and start searching for porn. IE’s success isn’t due to force or monopolization, its laziness. But it looks like that’s slowly changing.

Faber-Mart

CNBC re-aired David Faber's two-hour special, The Age of Wal-Mart, Sunday and for the first time I saw it (I’ve never heard about it until now). Overall, I got the impression that the documentary was slightly slanted against Wal-Mart for two reasons. The first is simply that on two instances, the voice-over referred to the company’s goal of “world domination.” Faber’s word choice and tone was inappropriate; “world domination” can only be practiced by governments and evil geniuses. It requires the use of force, something Wal-Mart doesn’t have.

The absence of a core argument in favor of the company also rubbed me the wrong way (though I should blame Wal-Mart officials for that). While there was lots of talk about stores Wal-Mart drives out of business, there was nothing on the retail stores Wal-Mart encourages. The logic is simple: because Wal-Mart saves its customers money, people have more money to spend on other things. Because Wal-Mart can’t sell everything, completely separate companies get a boost.

For example, while Wal-Mart sells books, DVDs and music, selection of those things is very limited. These limitations are extended because the chain is willing to not sell certain titles. So while mom-and-pop hardware, grocery and electronic stores are run out of business, mom-and-pop book, movie and music stores (appropriately stocked) are enhanced. The outrage by these competitors isn’t so much generated because their businesses might close but because they aren’t willing to adapt to the changing business climate.

That’s Wal-Mart’s great contribution to society (not “keeping inflation down” as an interviewed retail economist said). Because they are so efficient, people as a whole get more. This is how economies grow.

Them Crazy Brits

We make fun of the British but sometimes they give us some good stuff: the Beatles, Monty Python and most recently, two students breaking our laws. I wonder if they're looking for some company.

The Brads Break Windows

The Broken Window Fallacy is a harsh mistress. She slithers in countless forms and wraps her tentacles around even the sharpest of minds. After each conquest she hungers for more, urging the bearer of her bad news to infect others.

So it’s not surprising that Brad DeLong agreed with Brad Plummer when he said that it doesn’t matter if Americans spend 40% of their income on health care via the private industry or the government. Alex Tabarrok challenged their conclusion saying,

To make the problem with Brad P.'s thought experiment clear suppose that we documented exactly how everyone spent their yearly income. Now we tax everyone 100 percent and provide them with exactly what they were buying before. Nothing changes, right? Wrong. At 100 percent tax there is no longer any incentive to work - thus no one works and nothing is provided. Everything changes.

Alex is absolutely right. Even if we assume that the government could collect such a daunting level of information and even if we assume that people are so bland they want exactly the same things at exactly the same times year after year and even if we assume that the government could peacefully enforce this exchange of work for things, Alex would still be absolutely right.

There’s a lot of tacit satisfaction that comes into play when people do the shopping themselves. For a lot of people shopping is socially stimulating, acts as leisure time and embodies a certain kind of discovery process that a state government could not replicate. On the supply side, manufacturers have a reason to make the things people need and they have an incentive to improve their product.

But if the government pays for your medical costs you have fewer choices and you loose some or all of the interpersonal relationship with your doctor. Doctors have little reason to exceed expectations. The incentive structure has fundamentally changed.

And because all those earlier ifs are big IFs, the problems multiply and the incentives change even more. The Brads are breaking classic windows: option A is no different than option B because we get the same thing either way. They don’t pay attention to what’s done with the money, and why people use it that way. Ultimately, society gets very different things.

Everyday Miracles

We are exposed to technological wonders everyday, so much so that really amazing things seem totally mundane. At Café Hayek, Don told us about flat-bottomed paper bags. Their free-standing capacity and necessity of hand folding made them a luxury item. Now my cats play in them.

It makes me think of Russell’s article on the cardboard box, or mine on purple. The number of everyday wonders is virtually unlistable: aluminum cans, books, plastics, tennis shoes, refrigerator magnets, staplers, batteries, scotch tape, aspirin… All of these things either didn’t exist or were incredibly expensive two hundred years ago. Now, I’m surrounded by them, use them generously, buy them on the fly and loose them without batting an eye. All of these were forged from the free market, not from governments. Free markets made them cheap and practical. Free markets improve them to this day. Makes you think what’s next.

Fonts for Everyone!

Here’s a lovely example of what happens when we’re not so concerned with copyright. It makes you wonder what stuff is lost when are (as is usually the case).

Cutting the Fat

While protectionists may scream panic, I find the bankruptcy of Winn-Dixie—a chain of supermarkets—to be yet more evidence of creative destruction. As they blame Wal-Mart, it’s worth pointing out that the most vocal naysayers of any company tend to be their competitors (such as the crusades against Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Microsoft).

Organic Food Can Kill You

When I wandered into the Health Section of a local grocery store, I discovered something curious: nearly all the food proudly displayed an “organic” label. Cereals, peanut butter, pasta, milk, cheese, potato chips, nuts—the list goes on and on. Celebrities and commentators often remark their wish to eat “organically” for health reasons. The association of “healthy” with “organic” even affects to our nation’s children: some Wisconsin and Minnesota schools are substituting conventional meals with organic ones.

The idea that “natural” is “better for you” is one of the leading myths of our time: organic food can actually be harmful. For example, organic farmers don’t use nitrogen enriching fertilizer—it’s a man-made chemical—they cover their crops with cow manure instead. The manure passes on various strains of bacteria to the food that grows in it, including E. coli O157:H7 which can get in the tissue of plants so it can’t be washed off.

Supporters downplay that very real danger (which kills hundreds of Americans each year) and emphasize unfounded concerns. They say the real point is that organic foods don’t have artificially created pesticides, which is true for the most part. But they don’t tell you that doesn’t matter. There is not one documented case of a person getting sick from pesticides. The farmers, who are exposed to huge quantities of the chemicals everyday, don’t get sick either. If what supporters of organic foods were saying was true, millions of farmers would have died a long time ago.

Pesticide fear mongering becomes even more ridiculous when you understand biology. Plants excrete natural pesticides called Halogenated Dimethyl BiPyrroles (HDBPs). We ingest about 10,000 times more of these pesticides than man made ones and we’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Yet people are living longer and longer.

The six billion dollar organic food industry loves touting junk science to support their smear campaign against technology. Organicconsumers.org now touts a recent study by the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences. According to the article, “rats [who] fed on organic food were slimmer, slept better and had stronger immune systems than others fed on conventionally-grown produce.” But slimmer doesn’t mean healthier, “sleeping better” is subjective and their immune system was probably enhanced because it was busy fighting off bacterial infections. The sample size wasn’t even large—there were only twelve rats per group. To make it statistically significant, each group needed at least 30.

It just shows that with sloppy science and unfounded claims, you can convince people of anything. You can even get them to think that chemicals are bad despite that people are nothing but leather bags filled with chemicals.

Public Places, Private Star Trek

Privacy (as a facet of property rights) is a sticky issue, one that gets rather confusing when considering freedom. In the Star Trek: DS9 episode, "Meridian," the B plot concerned an alien who had a crush on Major Kira—second in command of the space station. This alien hired Quark, the local bartender, to create a holosuite program featuring the Major.

A holosuite (or holodeck if you’re a TNG type) is a computer simulated environment that looks in feels like reality in every way. You can touch objects, feel them in your hand and have sex with them. That’s what this alien had in mind for holo-Kira.

So Quark had to scan Kira’s image. First he tried to lure her in a holosuite then he tried to take her holopicture with a handheld camera. Neither succeeded. From these attempts, Kira figured out what he was trying to do and that her image would be used to fulfill the lusting desires of someone else. She talked about it as if Quark was being immoral.

I started asking myself what her problem was. Sure it’s her body but it’s the alien’s fantasy. Denouncing the program would be like condemning him for thinking about Kira intimately. The only difference is the holosuite makes it seem more real, but that’s not enough to make it wrong.

Granted, if Quark were mass marketing the program, there’s a case that permission (and a cut of the profits) is called for. But I can’t help but wonder how far that rule should extend.

Consider celebrity status versus the rest of us. Dozens of tabloids take pictures of celebrities (and make money off of them) every week. But if you’re on Cops or Candid Camera, they need you to sign a release before they can show your face. What’s with the inconsistency?

On one hand, you could say celebrities are special cases because they are so powerful and influential. Imagine if politicians or movie stars could pick and choose when they’re covered in the press. Average citizens shouldn’t be held to those standards. But on the other hand, shouldn’t I know if the cops found out my neighbor sets trees on fire or beats animals (for example)? After all, much of what these people do are in the public eye and what prevents anyone from just watching it?

So again we are back where we started: why is it when we move from an on the spot format (fantasizing, seeing it on the street) to an organized medium (a picture, a holodeck program) do we assume that privacy is violated? The method shouldn’t matter, it’s the place. Recording in public is one thing, recording in a home is quite another. (Note that this does not mean I advocate the state to monitor its citizens in public…governments can’t be trusted with such unprecedented information.)

Rethinking Charity

People always look at me weird when I say I trust corporations more than NGOs, especially when it comes to science. I never understood why. In an excellent opinion piece for the Guardian, Dick Taverne cited polls that concluded “people do not trust scientists who work for industry because they only care about profits…Scientists who work for environmental NGOs are more highly regarded.”

But it is because scientists care about profits that I trust industry more—in order to get those profits the science has to work. There’s a much higher standard because millions of dollars are at stake. NGO scientists can’t make profits and don’t sell goods or services. They depend on donations and therefore they sell a very different product: fear. Most non-profits advocate panic because it’s the best way to raise funds quickly and since it doesn’t actually have to be true to work, shoddy science is rarely checked. In fact, fraud is (implicitly) encouraged. Environmental groups are the worst offenders (claims of DDT, greenhouse gases and genetically engineered food are all exaggerated and the panic is responsible for killing people).

Taverne points out all of this but he makes a fatal flaw. He says, “Motives are not irrelevant, and unselfish motives are rightly admired more than selfish ones.” The context convinced me he wasn’t thinking of selfishness (self interest at the expense of others) but trade (self interest with the cooperation of others). Thus the common claim: philanthropy is morally superior to pursuing profit.

But look at the world around you. We live in greater prosperity and opportunity not because people donated their time but because they sold it. The private sector makes the technology of our lives and entrepreneurs don’t labor 80 hours a week because they are saints. So what if there are rewards for contributing to exchange? Philanthropy has its own rewards, too (attention, satisfaction, getting a building named after you).

Trade is better—it’s responsible for more progress and it’s sustainable. It’s created more jobs, abundance and safety than all the donations in the world. Instead of thinking of philanthropists as holy men, we should treat them like lawyers—necessary and sometimes noble, but susceptible to immense corruption.<

Cataloging Corruption

Ok this is awesome. I’ve been slowly expanding my circle of libertarian blogs and I stumbled upon a lovely post at flying hedgehogs. Blogger Nikki (aka nikki—I don’t know why she has a distaste for the shift button on her keyboard; that’s a question for her, but I’m not going to judge) found a site that actually keeps track of farm subsidies. It’s like a holy grail for research!

For example, in my home county of Scott County, Iowa alone, 1,099 people received a total of $77,042,466 during the years of 1995-2003. That’s an average of $8,560,274 a year, $7,789.15 per person per year. And that’s just for corn! While the past two years were lower than the average (probably because, in part, my hometown is rapidly expanding, crowding out the farm land), it was increasing over those years: $4 million in 2002, $5.6 million in 2003.

The site lets you break down the numbers in all kinds of interesting ways but it all boils down to one central question: Where’s my cut?

Forged From Liberty

Congratulations to Don Boudreaux who published his first of many columns in the Pittsburg Tribune Review. This initial essay addressed the claim that slavery created capitalism—it was responsible for making the initial components that capitalists built on to make the wonders of today.

Don correctly pointed out that slavery existed for thousands of years but we only experience unprecedented growth after its destruction. Capitalism does not require slavery—slavery is only productive for mindless work because only then is it easy to monitor. In fact, slavery fundamentally doesn’t work with capitalism. Twentieth-century assembly lines were a kin to the farms of two hundred years prior, but they weren’t manned by slaves. The real question is: what is it about emancipation that makes it enhance society’s living standards?

Don offers a piece of the puzzle: freedom makes it easy for companies to expand. If a worker can quit one job and move to another unhindered, it reduces the barriers of taking the operations to the next level. Because the prospect of an industrial empire becomes more likely, competition becomes fiercer. This is to everyone’s benefit.

The monitoring and inflexibility of labor point to what slavery is: control. Centralized power. But knowledge is decentralized which is why markets work better when they are decentralized, too. A slave may see an opportunity to be more productive but he has no incentive to act upon it. A hired hand, however, might get a pay raise or a promotion so he goes for it. A slave may imagine a new or better way to provide a service unconnected with farming, but since she can’t leave her job the opportunity remains vacant. A free person, however, would act on her awareness.

Inventions, innovations and entrepreneurship rarely—if ever—originate from the enslaved. They might have the knowledge, but they lack the ability and incentive to act on it. But free people not only have the ability and incentive to act on opportunities, they have the ability and incentive to search out new ones. The more free minds at work, the better off we all are.

Walls that Prevent Walls

Virginia Postrel at dynamist.com commented last week about the seemingly constant state of construction in LA. “Whether public or private, construction projects here drag on endlessly. Why, I have no idea. There do seem to be a lot fewer people working on any given project, and sometimes no one at all.”

I lack the tacit and local knowledge to answer her question but it sounds like the work of construction unions. LA’s one of the most socialist cities in America and it would not surprise me if unions pressured legislation to set their wages high. That would stretch company coffers forcing them to limit the number of employees. Thus the construction goes on and on…

The Market Really Works

Some people say that professional players are paid “too much.” Obviously they’re wrong.

Child Proofing Death

You know there’s something wrong with society when volunteer thought police are lauded as heroes.

A recent article reported that an Ontario woman infiltrated a chat room in time to alert police to stop consenting adult from having sex and killing themselves. For this Valentine’s Day, Gerald Krein of Klamath Falls, Ore. invited 31 women to his home to perform sexual favors for him and then commit suicide. He’s been trying to get them to do this for five years. Now he’s being charged with solicitation to commit murder.

The origin of the West’s hatred of suicide can be traced back all the way to the Catholic Church in the tenth century. According to The Straight Dope,

English common law distinguished a suicide, who was by definition of unsound mind, from a felo-de-se or "evildoer against himself," who had coolly decided to end it all and thereby perpetrated an infamous crime. Such a person forfeited his entire estate to the crown. Furthermore his corpse was subjected to public indignities, such as being dragged through the streets and hung from the gallows, and was finally consigned to "ignominious burial," as the legal scholars put it--the favored method was beneath a crossroads with a stake driven through the body.

Similar laws were common through out most of Europe and today, virtually every country punishes those who take (or try to take) their own life.

Note that the origins of this law were based on religious ideology and legal plunder of the deceased’s property. Now the tyranny of the child proof society is responsible; because a few vocal citizens don’t like the idea, no one is allowed to.

The Prosperity Surplus

I’ve got some great news—the “trade deficit” reached an all-time high in 2004; net imports are as high as 5.3% of GNP—the most of any industrialized country.

Why is that great news? Lots of reasons.

It shows that Americans are so wealthy, we can afford to import all of these great goods from all over the world.

It’s a sign that America is taking its role as a cosmopolitan country to new heights as more and more cities get access to more and more foreign culture.

It demonstrates that in light of all the protectionist rhetoric and scare tactics, industrialists aren’t being deterred to bettering the economy.

It captures the countless jobs created—some through the efficiency gains and others through the construction and financing opportunities as our currency re-enters the economy in the form of capital investment.

Indeed, 13,000 fewer people filed for unemployment last week than the week before last.

It is evidence that capitalism is spreading, and with it prosperity, as people in foreign countries rise out of poverty and into a world of productive invention and entrepreneurship.

And because the trade deficit isn’t a deficit, we don’t have to repay it; at the end of the day everyone gets extra stuff.

When you go through the economics and look at the data, you discover the only bad part about this facet of the economy is ignorance that’s taken over the discussion.

Laughing All the Way To the Political Discourse

Perhaps it’s because Jerry Seinfeld’s in town. Perhaps it’s because it’s Friday Night Standup on Comedy Central. Perhaps it’s because anti-capitalist argument are so backwards, they’re funny, but I had a idea for something society really needs: libertarian comedians.

We do have some—Penn and Teller, Dennis Miller, Dennis Leary, Drew Carey (more here), but we don’t have enough and those we do have rarely make libertarianism part of their act. I’ve often said that the single biggest barrier to freedom is rhetoric (though not in so many words). The fact of the matter is, while the evidence favors liberty, the language favors control (aka “safety”).

Comedians, by the very virtue of their job, transform complicated ideas (or stories) into concise, funny sentences. They’re easy to remember and they make sense. Liberating the peoples of the world requires us to take back the debate. We need comedians to give us the pithy phrases we can pass on to others.

Thus, I call on libertarians everywhere to try to crack a joke that makes a point. Share them with others. Shout them from the rooftops. Rent billboards. Here’s a website to get you to start thinking succinctly about individualism.

Stossel v. Schottel

It’s funny how things can work out.

I mentioned in an earlier post I’m reading John Stossel’s new book, Give Me a Break, a journey of Stossel’s ideological development and overview of why libertarianism makes sense in today’s society. I took a break from the chapter of trivial lawsuit as the author started targeting disability rights lawyers. Absent-mindedly, I visited overlawyered.com—an excellent site I often forget to visit (probably because I’m afraid of being swamped with legalese).

Lo and behold, the triviality knows no bounds: James W. Schottel Jr. filed a lawsuit against NBC’s “The Apprentice” this week because having “excellent physical health” was a prerequisite for audition. Citing the Americans with Disabilities Act, Schottel who’s confined to a wheelchair, calls the requirement “discrimination.”

Yes, I’m sure Donald Trump hates the handicap. It has nothing to do with the mobility required of an executive (like visiting a construction site), or the ease of communicating with others (talking to a handicap person can be physically and psychologically awkward for some customers), or that the Donald would require long hours that would be physically taxing. And I’m sure that I’ve considered every possible nuance of running a major company and there aren’t some relevant scenarios where health makes a difference.

Even if Trump was stupid enough to believe the PC bullshit that the handicapped are precisely the same as everyone else, it wouldn’t matter. He’s hiring someone for his company. He could require all applicants to have mustaches, experience in at least one threesome and wear Velcro sneakers. If he loses a good applicant in the screening process, that’s his loss.

Instead, taxpayers have to pay for this lawsuit and basic economics tells us there’s no reason for the suit in the first place. The plus side is at this rate, we’ll be able to sue for stupidity and I’ll be first in line to give Schottel his own.

Adding the Ads

Fabio Rojas posted this article at Marginal Revolution, in which he challenges the conclusions of Slate’s Timothy Noah concerning Super Bowl ads.

Noah wrote that such ads aren’t worth the million-dollar price tag; companies could reach more people for less. Both Noah and Rojas try to explain why companies run ads anyway. The former claims it’s a forum for the ad agencies, the latter points out it’s good for company prestige. Assuming the conclusions are true, I would have to go with Rojas, who offers an excellent real estate analogy.

But I question the validity of Noah’s dismissal in Super Bowl ads. The goal of advertising is not to merely reach people but to get their attention. Even the best ads are worthless if the audience is in the kitchen making a sandwich. But Super Bowl ads are special and command attention like no other; some 20% (I think that number is right; correct me if not) of Super Bowl watchers are watching just for the ads. Attention is built in and that’s powerful.

It doesn’t stop there. Prior to the Super Bowl (and in the aftermath) we “get” a preview (or review) of the ads from the news networks, reaching a whole other market for free! (In fact, the media may need to pay to show them.) Of course, not every ad will get this bonus, but some do.

Another reminder that the world is more complicated than mere numbers.

Controversy in Colorado

In case you live under a rock (or in Beloit) the country is up in arms over some words by a little known professor in a university in Colorado.

Prof. Ward Churchill defended the terrorist attacks on 9/11, comparing the trade and technology workers at the WTC to Nazis, though he admits others (firefighters, passerbys) were genuine victims. The controversy seemed to come out of no where—the paper he wrote when he first compared the “technicians of Empire” to Adolf Eichmann (who crafted the Holocaust) was back in 2001, just after the attacks. I think he recently refused to apologize (conservative radio shows have been complaining about him since the essay), igniting the current media frenzy.

I don’t agree with Churchill on a lot of levels. Trade and technology aren’t elements of Empire, they counter it (Hitler’s speeches were stuffed with communist language and free trade creates free societies). No one deserves what happened to us on 9/11. It was not just, it was not suitable.

But he has a right to be wrong. He even has a right to be loud. The First Amendment is one of this country’s greatest gifts to its citizens. It shouldn’t be limited to uncontroversial speech, as many people seem to think.

But conservatives have a point—Churchill works for a state university; taxpayers pay (according to Churchill) seven percent of his salary. In part, he is employed by the people, so shouldn’t he soften up just a bit if they want him to? Setting aside the inherent corruption and inefficiency that comes with state spending conservatives point to yet another reason to shrink the government. When taxes pay for services rendered, then any who benefit can be put under the most severe of public scrutiny and have their freedoms slowly stripped away.

The great irony is, Churchill uses the First Amendment to claim the country is oppressing its citizens (and other citizens) through capitalism. Oppressive empires don’t have freedom of speech, Ward. That’s why they’re called "oppressive."

How to Shrink the Government

While reading John Stossel’s newest book about big government, I came up with an idea to reliably shrink government.

Libertarians usually demand that the government dismantle existing programs, a difficult feat because the incentive for congressmen to keep them is so strong. Shrinking the government would take decades and span numerous administrations, each with their own agendas and reasons to forget the whole deal.

What’s needed first is a way to stop government expanse (thus preserving the shrinkage victories of past administrations). What I proposal is a pair of constitutional amendments. The first requires a 100% (or 95% to make it more politically feasible) vote in both congressional chambers to raise existing taxes or introduce new ones (but not to lower or remove taxes), plus the normal presidential signature. Let’s call it the Wealth Amendment. The second is an amendment that creates an exception to rules governing amending the Constitution; changing the Wealth Amendment requires a 100% (or 95%) vote in both chambers, instead of the usual two-thirds, plus the presidential signature.

The idea is, it’s now easier to shrink the government than to grow it. And because this requires just one cooperating president paired with just one cooperating Congress, it’s much more feasible relying on many more politicians putting the needs of the many over that of the few. Admittedly, it’s still difficult but by adjusting the incentive structure, it could actually work.

(I'm sure this is not a new idea; I'm curious if our readers could direct to anyone that might have proposed this before me.)

Farming for Socialism

A day after newspapers reported budget cuts in farm subsidies, a group of state planners, who claim to be economists, released this report, authored by Mike Duffy, Neil Harl and Darryl Ray. The draft by Iowa State's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture reads like a communist manifesto, pathetically cloaked in free market language and riddled with economic fallacies. According to the Center: higher incomes, not higher productivity, creates economic growth; the government is the best source to assessing the safety of food; corporations hurt the environment as they create “industrial food;” vertical integration is bad for the economy; and trade helps firms but hurts local people, who should be compensated.

Sometimes the report contradicts itself. It says food costs too much in third world countries (as much as 75% of income) and then calls oversupply bad, because it reduces prices.

The report is drowning in problems (mostly economic, historical and managerial) and their conclusions are similarly ridiculous. After considering a few ideas to counteract these “evils,” the report begins its answer by returning authority to the Secretary of Agriculture which “would enable the Secretary to function as every CEO of a major corporation does when confronted with overproduction—to reduce output temporarily in accordance with market signals.”

This solution is supposedly “the option that is the most attractive from a cost perspective and least likely to cause widespread economic and financial trauma for the agricultural sector.” All that’s needed in the law itself is a little “fine tuning.”

After building on greater and greater misconceptions about the market and its need of taming, the authors eventually conclude what’s really needed is a global agricultural czar to oversee a “global food and agriculture policy.” Under this plan, Americans will finally understand the everyday horror in the developing world and during the Soviet famines of the early 1920s and 1930s. Here’s to international understanding!

Sick of Sicknesses

From drug addiction to road rage, medical organizations love calling various human behaviors diseases. And why shouldn’t they? It’s great rhetoric for drawing attention to their respective organizations and it makes it a lot easier to get funding for various studies. And the best part is if something’s a disease, people don’t commit it, they suffer from it. The irresponsible become victims.

The possibilities and benefits of disease labeling are so alluring, I’m sadly not surprised that a British psychological group now claims there is real sickness to being lovesick. Psychologist Frank Tallis wrote in the Psychologist magazine, “Many people are referred for help who cannot cope with the intensity of love, have been destabilised by falling in love, or who suffer on account of their love being unrequited.”

Having your heart broken is painful, no doubt. We’ve all been there. But saying there are people who literally “cannot cope,” are “destablised” and “suffer” cheapens the pain of real victims with real diseases. It also bids dollars away from finding a cure to legitimate illnesses in order to study and “treat” these scares. If I had something to gain from this chronic mislabeling, I’d call it a disease. Instead, I’ll just term it cruel.

Where's the Canadian Beef?

The Bush administration is looking to reopen the Canadian border after officials discovered mad cow disease in May of 2003. Democrats are calling this “a disaster,” but I fail to see how. While I’m sure it’s a legitimate concern, the panic surrounding it speaks pure politics. A single case makes blaring headlines and politicians scream protectionism—all too conveniently.

Importing cattle will hurt American ranchers as the price of beef falls (something the Secretary of Agriculture is quick to point out). What these politicians fail to point out is the meat packing industry would benefit from the open borders; jobs are created here, destroyed there and consumers win. And if you’re clever, you’d notice that that packing industry would have a lot to lose if Canadian beef had mad cow disease. Apparently their confident it’s clean and I’d take an industry’s vested interest over a politician’s scare tactics any day.

Generation Next

Why do politicians think they are the legitimate architects of everything? Shortly after the State of the Union, minority leader Senator Harry Reid went on NBC challenging Republicans that the government isn’t doing enough to create the “next economy.” Reid cited past examples of when central planning supposedly succeeded in creating the next economy—the interstate in the 50s and the internet’s initial stages in the 60s.

Reid needs to learn some history, and some economics. Eisenhower’s highway plan was riddled with corruption and waste—typical of any government program. Saying it’s responsible for economic growth is deceiving for it suggests that such an important industry tool could not have been born from private property. Just because the government created the highways and the people used them does not mean these interstates were the best solution to solve the private sector’s transportation problem. Firms have proven they are far better at providing goods to the people. There’s no reason this principle can’t be extended to roads.

For the Internet, note that Reid cited programs in the 1960s, though that part of the Information Age didn’t spawn until 30 years later. Why? Because creating the Internet to point of being profitable requires lots of computers, which means computers have to be widely available. It’s the personal computer—not the Internet—that’s the main thrust behind the Information Age. This wonder that started the “new” economy was a private development.

Reid assumes that if the government didn’t connect these two machines, no one else would, the result of either arrogance or stupidity. While the Internet got its start in government, its main advances—such as the browser and most languages computers use to work the Internet—were private developments.

No one knows what will be the next big thing. While we can point to advances that might play an important everyday role in our lives, we don’t know when they will do so. We don’t know all the ways the “next economy” will affect us and what will be important. That knowledge rests in the minds and expectations of millions of people. Thus governments can’t effectively construct economies; economies have to be grown.

Sunrise, Sunset

Every news network today was a buzz with the Fed’s decision to raise the federal funds rate (FFR) by a quarter of a point, yet not one of them went into much discussion about what it means. The banking industry has huge ramifications throughout the entire economy and the interest rate is one of it central mechanisms. Let’s take a moment and unravel what today’s news really means.

The interest rate is basically the price of money, reflecting the time preference of lenders and borrowers. If the rate is 3%, then $1,000 now will cost you $1,030 later. Borrowing money is useful for economic development because it provides the funds needed to expand production. The FFR is the rate which banks charge each other. Since banks can always borrow from other banks to have the money lend to customers, changes in the FFR directly change the interest rates for consumers and businesses (which are used to build factories, start businesses and so on).

The Fed claims it needs to adjust the FFR as to create a balance between growth and inflation. What the Fed doesn’t tell the public is that its constant meddling in this vital tool for economic growth causes instability and recessions.

This is the Austrian theory of the business cycle. By artificially lowering the interest rate, businesses borrow and expand their production (the boom), thinking the lower interest rate is due to people saving more. If businesses produce more, people will take money out of the bank and use it to spend on the new goods and services. But because these consumer cash reserves don’t actually exist, the businesses won’t sell any of these goods (the bust) and recession—or worse—will set in. Firms will have loans without any way to repay them. This theory was first proposed by Ludwig von Mises, who used it to predict the Great Depression. He was the only economist at the time who foresaw the collapse.

Today we see a similar pattern. The Fed pushed the FFR down to about 1% to counterfeit a boom after 9/11). Its recent increases (six since last summer) are attempts to hold back inflation amidst a recovering economy. But the FFR is still just 2.5%, hardly enough to staff off the bust that will inevitably follow the oncoming (and false) boom. While Americans are celebrating the newly expanding economy, we should watch our back; in 20 or 30 years, it’ll be 1999 all over again.

Watching the Watchers

I’ve just discovered a new blog—EnviroSpin Watch—which tracks the often trumpeted-up claims of environmentalists. Definitely worth a look.

Touching Capitalism

Several years ago, there was a computer commercial where a guy enters a supermarket and starts grabbing stuff from the shelf and suspiciously stuffs it in his jacket. As he leaves the building, he walks past what looks like a security scanner passing through a blue light. A guard grabs his attention. “Excuse me sir,” he says. “You forgot your receipt.”

Piggly Wiggly is taking an important step to that not-too-distant future technology as it announces the success of its “pay-by-touch” machines. Customers can pay for their groceries via fingerprint, which is electronically tied to their financial accounts. The system is incredibly safe—there’s even a heat sensor on the device too prevent fraud with photocopies of prints—and customers are singing its praises. The chain is currently expanding the realm of the service from just four stores to all of its outlets. This service, by the way, is free.

Just another example of how the free market generates what people want. The consumer is king.

Merging Trends

Let’s suppose you’re the president of a successful high-tech company. You’ve worked hard and brought the firm to a new level of success. You charge lower prices and offer better products than you competitors. You constantly push the boundaries of the technology to bring the best bargain for your customers. You led the company to the heights of its success and want to bring to the next level.

To pull it off, you need capital and you need it cheap. You need a new customer base, one to build on. You need employees familiar with the new equipment and customers. There’s one way to get all of this in one fell swoop and that’s a merger.

It’s no wonder why mergers garner so much attention in the business world. And two major mergers are making headlines, but the content rarely alludes to the great new potential about to be unleashed. It’s the legal issues.

SBC Communications is looking to buy AT&T and China’s Lenovo Group has plans to buy IBM’s personal computer division. In both cases, the Justice Department will probably allow the merger to go through, but that doesn’t mean there’s no political lunacy in the stories.

Back in 1997, then-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt shut down any chance of a merger between the two companies by simply calling it “unthinkable.”

Today, three Republicans are wrongfully concerned that IBM capital and technology will move overseas to China and want the review process extended so defend-orientated government agencies can lend their views.

Mergers are wonderful business tools. When one company mergers with another, management can take the best of both and serve the economy even better than if both were working independently. Politicizing this process never yields benefits. At best, it slows down economic progress through mountains of paperwork and political misinformation. At worst, it flat out prevents businesses from providing more for the economy. Paradoxically, there’s more distrust of big business than the much, much larger Big Government. If only the Justice Department would break up themselves.

Iowa Senators Geek With Laws

Months ago, I repeated the findings from a Quad City Times article that Iowa was number one in the country for meth incidents, mostly among teens. And like any “scary” statistic, this one grew horns, legs and big, bulging eyes and waddled over to the government.

Iowa’s two senators are pushing for a bill that would force pharmacies to keep decongestants behind the counter because these same medicines can be used to create meth—you know, Satan in a syringe.

Not only will the law make it harder to sell the products and piss off their customers, it won’t do a damn thing in the so-called “War on Drugs.” The same creative, entrepreneurial spirit that generated the television, modern aspirin and frozen food will fashion an alternative. It may be meth without decongestants or it could be a completely new substance altogether. That’s how crack and ecstasy got started.

Parents don’t like their teenagers and college kids taking drugs because they claim they’re too inexperienced, yet these are the same people who are concocting amazing new ways to make complicated substances. If the government would stop changing the recipe, these minds would have the time to work on other things: making plutonium from common household items.

State of Reality

Half a week ago Kenneth Green wrote this review of Michael Crichton’s newest book, State of Fear. It’s a good review and it’s a quality book—fast paced and informative. It was also an unexpected libertarian contribution from the man whose books often revolve around the arrogance accompanied with science (The Andromeda Strain), firms (Congo) or both (Jurassic Park, Timeline).

Easily his most political novel, Crichton attacks the theory of global warming, weaving scientific evidence with an all-too-real fictional story about eco-terrorists sabotaging the environment in order to push the global warming doctrine.

I loved this book and I torn through its 600 pages in a couple of days. It’s a fast, informative read (like so much of his other work) and encapsulates libertarian criticisms of politics.

The over-arching lesson of State of Fear is there’s a danger when we politicize science. When politicians become party to scientific theories, there’s a tendency to exaggerate, distort or manufacture the conclusions to perpetuate what the author calls, the state of fear. Reminiscent of Barry Glassner’s The Culture of Fear, Crichton talks of the “politico-legal-media complex” that’s replaced the military-industrial complex of yesteryear. Each of these factions has a genuine incentive to manufacture fear. “Politicians need fear to control the public. Lawyers need dangers to litigate, and make money. The media need scare stories to capture an audience. Together, these three estates are so compelling that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless.” (p456) And of course powerful mechanisms of the political branch are interest groups.

Thus we get bullshit. Environmental interest groups scream global warming is a dangerous threat, DDT causes cancer and the West should regress its society to simpler times. In reality, there’s not a shred of scientific evidence that global warming exists, DDT’s safe enough to eat and “simpler times” is a euphemism for poverty. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when an island native took apart a Hollywood actor for singing the praises of the “old ways.”

Fear mongering is a powerful, self-perpetuating force. Because there’s so much money and power behind the lie of global warming, few people feel safe denouncing it. So many scientists support the theory despite the lack of evidence because those who criticize it are in danger of losing their funding. Crichton points out that all opponents of the theory are retired, and are no longer seeking grants.

Before reading Crichton’s books, I was on the fence when it came to global warming. Everyone said it was happening, but no one seriously challenged it. While scientists screamed it was happening, their data seemed to rely on computer models predicting decades in advance (an astounding feat considering my weatherman can’t forecast the temperature two weeks from now). But I never heard of any contrary evidence until now. Once again, Crichton masterfully joins science fact with engaging storytelling.

Hunting For Freedom

A few days ago my mom told me a story about my uncle Lawrence and my cousin, Bevin. Earlier this month, Lawrence purchased a hunting license and lent it to Bevin. Now Bevin hurt his foot a few months ago and had it wrapped up in a thick cast. Given his temporary impairment, Bevin loaded up in some kind of vehicle (my mom didn’t know) instead of hunting on foot.

Bevin and a friend of his stalked a deer to the edge of their property (yes, Lawrence had to purchase a license to hunt on his own land) and shot it. The animal ran off, stumbled across the property line, and died. As the pair left to dress the deer (leaving their load guns in the car), the game warden came over the hill and pulled the two aside. It seems they just broke four laws.

The warden charged them with: hunting without a license, hunting on another’s property, hunting from a vehicle and letting a loaded gun be unattended. I don’t know how much the total fines were, but you can bet the sum was around four hundred or five hundred dollars.

My uncle Bruce lives in Florida and whenever he comes up to visit, he hunts. When he heard about this story, he thought it was crazy—he’s never encountered a game warden, not once. Why did he show up at this perfect time? It turns out Lawrence was chatting to a friend of his about lending Bevin his license. This friend happened to be the very same game warden that would later issue four fines.

You can’t trust the state. You can’t trust it to let people use their property as they see fit. You can’t it them to let people hunt as they wish. You can’t trust it not to baby-sit the general public, not to punish people for endangering themselves. You can’t trust it look beyond appearances and circumstances—maybe the deer was shot, as in hunted, before it crossed the property line—if it means they can make a little money. Hell, you can’t even trust it enough to tell it a story without being stabbed in the back the moment it becomes convenient. Don't give The Man and inch. Not one.

The Des Moines Consensus

The Des Moines Register’s Editorial Board (DMREB) ran this opinion piece in the Des Moines Register yesterday about the “Ownership Society.” Seems the President is trying to create a country where people, as individuals, possess society’s assets, instead of relying on the government. The theory isn’t new to libertarians—people who own their property manage it better than the government. Vouchers and private health coverage will bring better education and insurance, respectively. I’m hardly one to applaud the Bush administration, but this is certainly a step in the right direction (but he still has a long way to go).

The DMREB article disagrees and, not surprisingly, their arguments are riddled with economic errors and factual suspicions. They say: “Unfortunately, Bush's tax cuts have had the effect of concentrating wealth more, instead of spreading it around.” I don’t really know that they can say that. As I pointed out in “Why Lou Dobbs Is Wrong, Part II,” job growth in the highest income quartile is skyrocketing, exceeding all other quartiles, combined. This may or may not be because of the tax cuts—economics is complicated that way—but there’s no evidence that “concentrating wealth.”

We can double check with economics. The anti-tax cut theory tends to go like this: more money for the rich doesn’t help the economy because the rich spend it on yachts or stocks or whatever and not on things people need. The middle class do—which helps the economy. But as I point out in “The Magic Yacht,” that’s an absurd argument. People build, sell, maintain and design yachts. Some of the revenue from selling stock goes to buy things, which others have to provide. Money in the bank is loaned out to others (that’s how banks make profit) which they use to buy things, which people have to provide. All of these production roles are real jobs, ones based on genuine demand, and pay real incomes, not government hand outs. Money moves and people get richer.

Conversely, the article gives credit to the Democratic opinion, which says, “[t]he best way to build more wealth for more people is to raise wages, so people can afford to save…” As individuals, that’s true. If I want more wealth, the best way to accomplish that is to pay me more. But “more wealth for more people?” Hoover tried that during the Depression by encouraging industry to keep their wages up despite a plummeting demand. Economists call this the purchasing power fallacy: high wages are the key to economic expansion and they can be maintained even if productivity does not increase accordingly. Of course, wages are an expense like anything else and inflating them without reason bars companies from hiring more workers. Thus unemployment increases. High wages are a sign of economic expanse (they go up because productivity goes up) not a cause of it.

If the Hoover logic held, then a nine dollar-an-hour minimum wage would be good for the economy, thus a nine hundred dollar-an-hour minimum wage would be really good for the economy and a ninety thousand dollar-an-hour minimum would be amazing for the economy. Of course, the logic doesn’t hold and creating minimums creates more wealth for fewer people—exactly what the DMREB accuses the Bush administration of doing.

Insourcing

Over the last few weeks, we’ve bounced about the idea of outsourcing, how we think it’s good, but that it has a rather bad reputation in the media. In fact, David even today made a brief allusion to it in his post The Capitalist Media. It occurred to be today that there is another way we outsource, but backwards: we insource. Specifically, I had in mind sports. Whether at the collegiate or professional level sports has it in mind to win and to be the best. But sports managers and coaches have often found the local talent pool lacking. And so we go shopping for talent: the Caribbean for baseball, Canada for hockey, Latin America or Europe for soccer, and so forth.

Myself, I’m not a sports fan. I don’t watch or play, and so I am not in a position to offer much commentary about the economy of sports. My observations are merely antidotal. That said, it seems pretty clear that the player pools in those geographic regions must be particularly adept at playing their respective sport. Maybe some of it is natural predisposition (such as height in basketball), but I suspect that most of it is just specialization. Unlike America, most countries have one or two major national sports. Consequently, the players of a given sport in those countries are likely to be especially skilled and practiced in it. And, because American sports offer them and their families an immensely better life, there is great incentive to perform successfully and break into an American league. By analogy, this does not seem to me much different from outsourcing tech jobs to India, or manufacturing jobs to East Asia. More and more ours is a specialist economy, which brings me to wonder: I wonder whether Lou Dobbs’ housekeeper or nanny has a greencard?