It's good to remind people of certain fundamentals of free markets. For instance, it's easy to focus on the jobs that immigrants take, while forgetting that they bring new jobs, too.
Resurrectionsong is celebrating one full year as a blog. Party at Zomby's place!
I like Atrios' favorite slogan for the Bush reelection campaign:
Don't Switch Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse
Cute.
There will be another Rocky Mountain Blog Roundup this weekend. It's my turn to host, so get your entries to me by Sunday night. I'll publish it Monday morning, March 1st. This will be a VERY SPECIAL version of the Roundup, so you don't want to miss the opportunity to have your blog read by thousands of new readers.
Here are the rules. The RMBR is open to all Colorado blogs, even those Colorado bloggers in exile out of state. Send in your favorite post from the last few weeks, [from around Feb 8th and on] and I'll put them all together with links back to the original blogs.
Send the link to your post to walter{{at}}walterindenver{{dot}}com. Now's your chance for fame and fortune. Well, a bit of fame, anyway.
Some of you may have been surprised that I criticized the prez for supporting a marriage amendment. How does a Christian support gay marriage?
When it comes to politics it doesn't matter what I think of gays and their marital status. What you think of these things doesn't matter, either. All that matters is that government doesn't have the right to regulate marriage. Perhaps you're thinking, sure, government doesn't have that right, but who cares, it's on our side. As long as government makes the right decision it's OK.
There's the rub. Once you've let that cat out of the bag, you're not going to get it back. If you concede to government the right to define marriage, or other vital social norms, you're going to have to live with the results. When a democratic majority decides that gay marriage is just hunky-dory, what will you do then? You've already given government the right to regulate marriage. If government has the right to ban gay marriage it also has the right to sanction it.
When this country's political right wing chose to use politics to fight gay marriage they lost a golden opportunity. They could have argued that government has no say in religious and social matters, that we the people will do as we wish, and those of us who don't like gay marriage won't recognize it. Instead they've declared that whatever the majority says about the subject will be our national policy. Anyone who doesn't like it can lump it.
That's what will happen when when a majority approves of gay marriage, too.
Good news for both the blogosphere and the liberty movement - Matthew Edgar is accepting the job as Director of Operations at the Independence Institute.
I just hope we can get one more Paranoia Periodical before before he quits his current job...
Bush's announcement on gay marriage contained this bit:
America's a free society which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens. This commitment of freedom, however, does not require the redefinition of one of our most basic social institutions.
I bet you could think of some basic social institutions we've redefined or even eliminated in the past. Didn't anyone read this before it went public?
Colombian rebels have been relying on drug trafficking to finance their murderous enterprise. Thanks to the War on [some] Drugs they have a ready profitable market.
U.S. and Colombian authorities are aware of this, and they've stepped up efforts to eradicate coca trade in Colombia. The result?
Colombia's largest rebel group is growing coca -- the raw material for cocaine -- over the border in northern Peru, an area that has not typically been used to grow coca, Peruvian Defense Minister Roberto Chiabra said on Friday.
"There is an increase in cultivation of coca leaf in our territory which requires an operation (to prevent it)," he said during a visit to the southern city of Ayacucho.
It's sort of like squeezing one end of a balloon.
With Nader in the race, will the Democrats put their support behind instant runoff voting?
The point-counterpoint feature in Saturday's Rocky tackled the eminent domain controversy. The state lege is looking to rein in the ability of local governments to seize private property for use by other private entities.
First up, William H. Mellor of the Institute for Justice. I don't find anything remarkable about his piece. He just states the obvious, that seizing one person's property for another person's use is a terrible abuse of government power.
More interesting is the rebuttal, written by Northglenn, Colo. Mayor Kathie Novak. Her premise is flawed, and very typical of the governing mindset. Right off the bat she falls into the moral morass:
It's the job of local governments to protect the current well-being and plan for the long-term best interests of their communities. Urban renewal gives local authorities the tools to do just that by allowing them to clean up deteriorating parts of town, revitalize local economies, provide new jobs and opportunities to local citizens and improve the quality of life for all residents.
That's only true if you accept the premise that government should control the well-being of residents. If you believe citizens should be responsible for their own well-being then you may see a very different role for government.
Later Mayor Novak shows her true colors:
According to proponents of these bills, local governments are driven by civic greed, focused on the pursuit of tax revenue above all else. While that imagery is dramatic, it is simplistic and inaccurate.
While boosting local economies is critical, it is only one reason why urban renewal is so important. Redevelopment efforts in Colorado have resulted in the preservation and redevelopment of historic buildings, the creation of affordable housing and open space, and the cleanup of polluted, dangerous and abandoned sites - all of which improved the overall quality of life for citizens.
And municipalities need not be ashamed of also looking for ways to increase the revenue that is critical for the success of local communities - especially in tough economic times.
She's baldly claiming that the needs of government ("community") outweigh the rights of individuals, so much so that government should be allowed to seize private property just because they need the money.
Furthermore, she doesn't seem to recognize that redevelopment could be achieved through other means. It's either government action or nothing, because from her point of view government represents the community, but that's only possible if every element of the community shares the view of the government.
If that were true she wouldn't need to take anyone's property, because property owners would already be working toward the same goals as government.
Mayor Novak's philosophy and attitude toward government action is, in my experience, typical of the political class. Their ideal world is planned from the top down, and allowing individuals to act on their own just gets in the way of the public good. People who feel differently generally don't get involved in government, and that's a problem. I don't know what political party the Mayor is affiliated with, if any, and it doesn't matter. Both of the major parties are populated with those of the same mindset.
While at work yesterday I listened to Zomby's interview on Darren's show yesterday. I called in and they talked to me on air for a while, but I couldn't really think of a reason to heckle like I promised.
Craig of MTPolitics heard the show on-line and blogged it, live.
This unfortunate event brought to us courtesy of the War on [some] Drugs:
A South Haven High School assistant principal may face drug possession charges after police say he admitted to planting marijuana in a student's locker.
Pat Conroy told police he planted the drugs in the locker last year because he suspected the student was a drug dealer and wanted to get the boy expelled.
Remind me who the good guys are again.
Update: Drug WarRant has more, natch.
A propos nothing in particular (except my extraordinary dislike of him), I'm listening to Bill O'Reilly on his radio show. He is proudly, and loudly, proclaiming that he never, never, never ever smoked marijuana or did any other drugs. Ever.
Well. Mr. O'Reilly comes by his "ideas" in a stone-cold state of sobriety. I can't think of any stronger argument in favor of profligate drug use.
Darren Copeland, the Colorado Conservative, is getting his own radio show starting this weekend, and Zomby's going to be his guest.
At one of the blogger bashes we noted that Steve, Andy, Darren and I had all done radio at one time or other. Seems that the same sort who would interested in radio would like blogging, too.
The ever thoughtful Gary Farber, on a previous post, 'Sweatshops and Ethics:'
Factories where there is total indifference to worker safety, for instance, so that limbs are commonly accidentally chopped off on a weekly basis, isn't, in my view something that should be tolerated just because people are desperate and their children are starving enough that they "voluntarily" take a job there.
Libertarians, last I looked, oppose "coercion." There's plenty of coercion that doesn't flow directly from the barrel of a gun, government otherwise (you forgot to mention "jackbooted"). There's coercion of circumstance. There's coercion of desperation. There's coercion of starvation. These are all equally, in many cases, as coercive as pointing a gun, and render agreements made under their threat of force non-voluntary.
The people who died in the Triangle fire (I trust you're familiar with it), because they "voluntarily" took jobs in a factory where the doors were all chained shut so they couldn't escape, were murdered. I don't think this is the sort of "liberty" that helps make the case for the virtues of libertarianism.
Government makes capitalism workable by enforcing contracts, and many libertarians agree with this. My radical suggestion is that a certain minimal level of regulation does the same thing, and is equally necessary -- so far in history, anyway, and outside fantasy theorizing (which might someday be workable, okay) -- but I don't expect this to be very well accepted by even "lukewarm libertarians."
I would like to think that limb chopping factories are rare. Perhaps I'm naive. A facility like that, one might think, is an example of factory owners making a profit at the expense of laborers, but what about cases where owners are as much a servant to circumstance as the workers, or better yet, where there are no owners at all?
Here's a real world example that happened right here in Colorado. Back around 1858 the gold rush in California was settling down, and some of those veteran miners made their way to Colorado. Some of those fellows learned the mining trade in Georgia. It's a mostly forgotten chapter of American history, but there was a Georgia gold rush before California.
When these guys showed up in Colorado they were very familiar with the hazards of primitive mining. The tinhorns came later, and they became famous for their suffering in the gold rush, many turning back East before the real big finds were even discovered.
Anyway, those first veteran miners knew about the dangers, the cave-ins, the bad air, the unpredictable explosives, that were common to that era of mining. Most importantly they knew they weren't likely to get rich, but rather they just wanted a property of their own and a chance to earn their own way. They came anyway. In no sense was anyone exploiting them, as they owned their own mines, and they pocketed all the profits they produced.
The cemetaries in our mountain towns are testament to the brutal nature of the mining business. In later years the mining companies took over, and the mines were worked by company employees rather than owner-operators. Some of the original prospectors owned the mining companies. As technology progressed and as the mines became profitable they became safer, although to this day they aren't safe in comparison to the average workplace.
So who was more exploited, the owner-operator who took greater risk with the chance to become wealthy, or the mine employee who worked in safer conditions but was only paid an hourly wage? In either case the guy down in the mine is working in his own self interest.
As for the Triangle fire, I've often thought that the wave of government regulation that followed was a classic case of politicians finding a parade and then jumping in front of it. I'm sure workplace safety would have improved even without legislative prodding. This may come as shock to some of my fellow libertarians, but I'm not entirely against regulation, either. But that's fodder for another post.
Golfdom Magazine's latest issue features a story about eco-terrorists and their efforts to damage golf courses and horticulture research facilities. The attacks documented in the article are pre 9-11, so perhaps the terrorists are less inclined to do those sorts of things now.
If you know anything about golf course maintanance the pictures with the story will make you ill. It takes a long time to fix a green after some troglodite goes after it with a shovel.
If you don't live in Colorado you might have missed Linda Seebach's Saturday column concerning third world residents who are hurt by environmental policies. Here's a bit:
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore said that when he helped create Greenpeace in 1971, "I had no idea it would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics to silence people who wish to express their views in a civilized forum. I had no idea the movement would oppose genetic engineering and other programs that could benefit mankind - and adopt zero-tolerance policies that so clearly expose its intellectual and moral bankruptcy."
Want some specifics? Golden rice. This is rice that has had a daffodil gene added through genetic engineering, to help alleviate Vitamin A deficiencies that are common in areas where rice is a staple.
According to CORE's press release, "Every year, 500,000 children around the world go blind, as a result of vitamin A deficiency, noted Dr. C.S. Prakash, professor of plant genetics at Tuskegee University and a native of India. Two million die from problems directly related to this simple lack of a common vitamin, often because they are so malnourished they cannot survive the malaria, dysentery and other diseases that also afflict them. If people could eat just 1.5 ounces of 'golden rice' a day, they could eliminate these threats, Dr. Prakash pointed out."
Be sure not to miss the rest.
Friday morning while we puttered around the house one of our neighbor's house caught fire. We didn't know anything about it until we heard the fire engines, and it wasn't until a couple hours later we heard on the news that there was a fatality.
In a strange twist later that afternoon a man was arrested after being treated for burns himself. Police suspect he murdered the man found dead in the fire. The Rocky story is here. Police haven't yet speculated on a motive.
I try to get to know my neighbors, which runs against some stereotype of libertarians, I suppose. This unfortunate fellow was a renter, however, and I don't believe I had met him.
Belle and Sebastian are playing Denver May 7th. Be a shame if we couldn't go. The venue is walking distance from the house, but Mrs. In Denver may not be in walking condition by that time.
Upon reflection, I have to give credit to the Greens who did vote for Nader last time around, in states where it mattered. They had more balls/principles than a lot of the libertarians who, in fear of Gore, jumped to Bush in 2000 despite Bush's straightforward admission of being socialist-lite (er, a "compassionate conservative", a dubious badge to willingly wear in any case). Hopefully, those who turned to Bush in 2000 will not repeat their mistake.
Don't bet on it.
It wasn't enought that the federal druggies prosecuted Tommy Chong for selling pipes, or that they pressured his family until he pleaded guilty and was sent up for nine months. No, they had to spend $12 MILLION of our taxes to do it.
That tidbit from Talkleft.
A conversation about the morality of 'sweatshops' is running around some Catholic blogs, starting at David Morrison's blog, moving to Mark Shea's blog, to Disputations, and back to Mark Shea.
All of them take an anti-'sweatshop' stance, whatever that means. The best response comes in the the very first comment from Franklin Jennings after the David Morrison post criticizing Wal-Mart for exploiting the poor:
Ridiculous.
Every dollar saved at WalMart is not squeezed from the least of these. its another shirt purchased to feed a Bangladeshi family. With a 35% unemployment rate in a kleptocracy that has to import most of its food, I would say buying their textiles is almost a moral imperative.
Insult and injury, indeed.
125 comments later to those four blog posts no one has bested that logic. The simple truth is that voluntary economic exchanges work for what each participant sees as his own best interest. A completely coercive economy, say that of North Korea, might force people to work against their own self interest, but that's not what's alleged in most 'sweatshop' situations. It's only that the workers aren't earning as much as the should.
In the comments on the first Mark Shea post, Stephen writes:
...[W]hat would you propose as the alternative? A minimum wage that removes the profit motive of creating third-world factories? So instead of working 12 hours for, say, $2/day, they're working 0 hours for $0/day. Not to mention the happy side-effect of removing what little developmental steps they've taken.
Which Disputations, err, disputes:
I can read this comment in one of two ways. One is, "Evil will be done. Shouldn't we do the least amount of it?" The other is, "Evil will be done. Shouldn't we recommend the least amount of it is done?"
There's a third way to read that, which goes, "Employing people is good, even at wages we would consider extremely low." That is, offering jobs to third world workers only works if you offer them a job that's better than what they currently have. How is that evil?
Jobs aren't charity, employment is an exchange of values. But even when it comes to charity, is giving a small amount of money evil? Of course not.
Most importantly, what solution is offered? If you object to the way a company does business you can refuse buy from them. But many don't stop there, they want to forcibly interfere with free associations between employers and emplyees, to make it illegal to do what they do.
There's nothing as ridiculous as using the barrel of a gun to show you care about morality.
Today is the day we mark a great event in U.S. history. Celebrate accordingly.
Mrs. In Denver is expecting, as you all know. She's closing in on 17 weeks. Today we went in for her second ultrasound. We were anxious, as this was the one where we'd get the answer to the boy-or-girl question. And, as we're not teenagers, there are some health issues to be concerned about.
It was all good news. The doctor thinks it's a boy.
...and a girl. They missed seeing the second little blob on the first ultrasound, but there was no mistaking it this time. The two of them were moving their limbs as if they were boxing. Quite a shock. We've spent the evening calling relatives around the country and overseas. The universal reaction to the news is laughter. I think they'd all given up on us ever producing offspring, and two is just too funny.
The Pixies really are back together, and are planning a tour. So far they've announced some dates in western North America, not including Denver, and some European shows, which sold out in no time flat.
It seems likely they'll schedule some more shows.
Zomby pointed out that I'd missed this letter to the editor in the Rocky:
This is great. Turns out scientists were wrong to claim that exposure to depleted uranium munitions are harmful. News media critic Dave Kopel's "top of the heap" Web logger, Walter, says so ("Blogs unearth dubious sources," Jan. 3). So go back to sleep, all you worried military wives, parents and sufferers of Gulf War Syndrome.
This means that nuclear scientist and former chief of the Nuclear Sciences Division at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, who as a U.S. Army colonel served as a unit commander in Operation Desert Shield, was wrong when he said: "Depleted uranium enters the body via inhalation, ingestion and absorption. Uranium is water soluble and can be transported throughout the body. The alpha particle released by decay of the uranium atom gives up a large amount of energy in a distance no longer than a couple of microns. Causing breaks and ionization of molecules, it is capable of destroying proteins, enzymes, RNA, and damaging DNA in many different ways, including double-strand breaks."
The darned doctor goes on to claim that depleted uranium causes kidney damage, leukemia, emotional and mental deterioration, as well as genetic damage that can be passed from generation to generation.
Now, folks, who you gonna believe, some darned alarmist director of Uranium Medical Research Center (www.umrc.net) or Dave Kopel's favorite right- wing blogger? Thought so.
Bruce McNaughton
Denver
You'll notice the post in question doesn't mention uranium. David Kopel's column does, but he is relying on other sources for that information. That and the letter writer's referral to me as a 'right-wing blogger' makes me think he's never actually read this site.
Not that ignorance should keep Mr. McNaughton from having himself a nice little rant.
You've possibly already seen Josh Claybourn's analysis of the Bush II budget numbers. It's been getting a lot of play after the Prez was on TV the other morning claiming that his budget is keeping spending in check. Seems the whole blogosphere is talking about it, but I'd be remiss if I didn't join in.
G.W. is either ignorant or lying. I'll be charitable and say he's 'spinning' the numbers, but the dollars are out in the open for everyone to see. Discretionary spending, the part of the budget that can be more easily controlled, is up 15% in Bush II's first two years, and the rate of increase is even more than during the last Clinton term.
I already knew this as I listened to Mike Rosen's local radio show yesterday. His guest was Gov. Bill Owens, (R, natch) and they were making the case that Bush is being as frugal as possible, that the increase in spending was caused by the War on Terror and the economic downturn, which automatically increased some non-discretionary outlays.
However, the discretionary spending numbers won't let Bush or his supporters off the hook.
Clayton Cramer keeps a blog devoted to recording instances of guns used in self-defense. He's going gangbusters there. I'm really astonished at how many times these events are reported by the mainstream media, although usually only as a local story. Here's one example:
OXFORD, Ala. -- A convicted burglar sentenced in Calhoun County to 20 years in prison this week as a repeat offender had an unusual run-in with his victim.
The victim, Richard Bussey, says he drove up to his father's rural residence last summer and found a man loading furniture and other items into a pickup truck.
Bussey held a gun on the would-be thief and ordered him to return the furniture. Bussey didn't have a telephone, so he made 45-year-old Roy Andrew Gendron mow the lawn with a push mower until he could think of a plan to alert authorities.
Mr. Cramer is blogging two or three such incidents PER DAY of late. I imagine it's very difficult to get an accurate count of how often guns are used for defensive purposes, since most incidents will go unreported. Judging from the number of times these stories are carried by the media, though, it must be a large number.
When picking sports for your children to play, be sure to select one with some sort of weapon involved:
Three sixth-graders used the side-swing they learned in hockey practice to save a woman being attacked by pit bulls Sunday morning in Highlands Ranch.
Tripp Wheat, 11, who along with two buddies tried to drive off the dogs with their hockey sticks, said the dogs seemed unfazed by the blows.
"It was like they didn't even feel it," he said.
Golf clubs might have worked better.
It's a wrap! Nice job by Matthew and everyone who sent in blog posts. I've already found some stuff I missed.
Go read it and see the blogging wealth that is Colorado.
Every so often I express amazement at intelligent, respectable, people quoting admiringly Justin Raimondo, of "antiwar.com," an infamous proto-fascist admirer of fascists, and staunch ally of Patrick Buchanan (Raimondo gave the nominating speech for Buchanan's Presidential campaign at the Reform Party convention).
What's truly amazing is that the people who are so respectful of Raimondo, a self-described "paleoconservative," are often leftists. Apparently the word "antiwar" is a magic cleanser.
Of course, Raimondo's "anti-war" stance is selective. He defends the Japanese attacks on China, the South Pacific, and Pearl Harbour, as entirely justified as "self-defense" while maintainng that the US should never have fought either the Japanese or Germans in WWII.
You may remember I'm sort of a fence-sitter when it comes to the Iraq war - while I think the US is morally justified invading Iraq, but I'm not convinced the war is in our best interest. It only makes things worse when Raimondo is regarded as a 'Libertarian' spokesman. I'd never heard of him before 9-11.
Another short interview, this time I ask pseudonymous blogger Publicola five questions. Wow, he gets up early, or stays up late. Another insomniac blogger?
The governor of Washington state wants to make the poor poorer, hurt small business, and drive up unemployment, all for the sake of government education.
I would just steal all of this post from the Binary Circumstance but that would be bad form and probably unethical as well, so you'll just have to go read it.
As Britain is wired for cameras, everywhere, it's good to see some backlash:
The latest attack, believed to be the first on a speed camera using explosives, signals an escalation in action against the Avon, Somerset and Gloucestershire Safety Camera Partnership.
Twelve of its 50 cameras, costing £40,000, have been destroyed since last May.
The dubious safety benefit of this surveillance is outweighed by the sheer creepiness of it. I'm seeing more and more cameras around Denver, too.
Every now and again I'm browsing through the web when I come across another story like this, about two elderly people who were accidentally killed when a drug raid went bad. Police set off flash charges and started a fire. The couple were killed in bed by smoke inhalation. The cops were looking for someone else, and claimed they didn't know innocent people were present.
This happened in 1989, so it hadn't been included yet in my Drug War Bystander casualty count, which now stands at 23 killed and four wounded.
The next issue of the Rocky Mountain Blog Roundup will be hosted by Matthew Edgar. If you are a Colorado blogger, even in exile in another part of the world, get your post to him by Saturday. Send which ever entry is your favorite from the last three weeks.
Fame and fortune will soon be yours. Remember the RMBR!
Tyler Cowen provides us with some interesting facts about lightning, including;
2. From 1959 to 1994 an average of 363 Americans are struck a year, 90 are killed.
3. The annual odds of being struck are about 576,000 to 1. The annual odds of being killed are about 2.32 million to 1. In other words, one in 87,000 bolts hits someone, one in 345,000 bolts kills someone.
4. Florida is the most dangerous state for lightning. In per capita terms New Mexico is the most dangerous state.
he lifted those numbers from a book, Life: The Odds (And How to Improve Them), by Lee Baer.
This is a subject I give special attention. New Mexico is the per capita leader but Colorado can't be far behind in human strikes. My experience is that the prevalence of dry thunderstorms in this part of the country contributes to the high rate. During the warm months thunderstorms are almost a daily occurence, and often there's little or no rain hitting the ground, so golfers and other outdoor enthusiasts just don't come inside.
The above statistics say you have less than a one-in-half-million chance of being struck, but those numbers include all the sedentary or cautious types who aren't likely to be in harm's way. My guess is the odds of a golfer in Colorado being struck are much, much higher. I found some statistics online. This site counts 16 golfers struck over the most recent ten year period, but I think they underreport. I have heard anecdotal accounts of other strikes which did not involve serious injury and are not listed on that page.
Since I work in the industry I'll take a few guesses at the number of golfers in the state and come up with *about* a one in 50,000 chance of an avid golfer being struck in a given year in Colorado. (I figured an avid golfer as averaging 50 rounds per year) That's using the low number of 16 struck golfers in a decade. I think I can come up with some more precise numbers with some more off-line research.
In any event, Denver is great place to see lightning. This insurance report lists Denver as the second most dangerous city in the US for lightning, behind only St Petersburg.
The same statistics counted three fatalities in that period. Again, that number may be low. At least one of those fatalities happened at my course while I was working. During a particularly violent storm a couple took shelter on the course under a tree, on top of a hill. He was killed instantly, but my understanding is that she never recovered from a long coma. The stats I'm using list her only as 'injured.'
Anyway, I figure the chances of getting struck by lightning here in Colorado are much higher than people think. I'm consistently amazed by the golfers I see who refuse to take shelter unless it's a downpour, and even then they don't protect themselves properly. Under a tree? On a hill? With your golf clubs? In those circumstances your odds get much worse than one in 50,000, I would think.
Zomby is unhappy about his taxes. In his comments he says,
I want my money back because I make better choices with it than the government does, because the government is at its very basis wasteful and removed from the reality of the problems that it tries to solve.
That's an important fraction of the anti-tax argument. The entire discussion of taxes and government inefficiency got me thinking about economist Ronald Coase. He put a lot of thought into the subject. His theories have yet to be digested by the political class, or perhaps they just chose to ignore what he learned. I read this a few years ago:
What was perhaps Ronald Coase's most important contribution to economic understanding, however, was not as an author. As editor of The Journal of Law and Economics from 1964 to 1982, Coase exercised a huge effect over the sort of topics that economists chose to investigate. Located at the University of Chicago Law School, the journal is written by and for economists, but economists working in areas that were recently the sole purview of lawyers and policy makers. The JLE under Coase was relentlessly relevant, dedicated to exploring the actual effects of actual policies. This paddled against the flow of virtually the entire profession, which was drifting to increasing abstraction and formalism. Due to its rigorous analytic standards, as well as to the demand for a reality check on the theories of economic scribblers, the Journal led its own paradigm shift in the social sciences.
Coase in his own words:
When I was editor of The Journal of Law and Economics, we published a whole series of studies of regulation and its effects. Almost all the studies--perhaps all the studies--suggested that the results of regulation had been bad, that the prices were higher, that the product was worse adapted to the needs of consumers, than it otherwise would have been. I was not willing to accept the view that all regulation was bound to produce these results. Therefore, what was my explanation for the results we had? I argued that the most probable explanation was that the government now operates on such a massive scale that it had reached the stage of what economists call negative marginal returns. Anything additional it does, it messes up. But that doesn't mean that if we reduce the size of government considerably, we wouldn't find then that there were some activities it did well. Until we reduce the size of government, we won't know what they are.
And:
Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture-- agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal: The effects were bad.
Those quotes are taken from a 1997 interview in Reason magazine.
Ronald Coase won a Nobel Prize for his trouble. As David Friedman said, the Swedes got it right.
Friedman also notes:
His ideas are sufficiently simple to be understood by a layman, as I will try to demonstrate in the next few pages, and sufficiently deep so that they have not yet been entirely absorbed by the profession; to a considerable extent what is still taught in the textbooks is the theory as it existed before Coase.
Gary Farber points to this Guardian article about the horrors of a North Korean prison camp. Not for weak stomachs.
Some excerpts:
Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.
And concerning camp chief of management Kwon Hyuk:
He explains how he had believed this treatment was justified. 'At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.
'It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.'
And why not? Once the philosophical determination has been made that the needs of society outweigh the sovereignty of individuals, anything goes. North Korea is a miserable place, and if these prisoners are impeding the progress of the country then they should be eliminated from society. That's what it means to put society ahead of the individual. The only remaining point of contention is the severity of the punishment.
There is another option, of course. Instead of using government and the criminal justice system to protect the needs of society you could reserve the use of those institutions strictly to protect the rights of individuals. That would mean prosecuting and punishing only those who directly violate the rights of others. Even the U.S. and other freer countries don't do that.
In this country people who use or sell unapproved drugs are sent to long prison terms. Our various layers of government confiscate about a third of all the produce of the land. People who resist turning over their property can share a cell with the drug user. The government prosecutes them because it is thought these activities harm society, and that overrides the rights of the individual. Perhaps some day history will look back at those prosecutions and view them as blatant human rights abuses.
This post is designed to give Gary the willies.
Update: Gary has added the necessary correction in the comments.
I've been reading Mark Shea's blog for a few weeks. He spends a lot of time writing about libertarians. The funny thing is, he doesn't know a libertarian from a libertine. See for yourself.
There are many subjects in which I have an interest, or at least a curiosity. Astronomy, or the minerals of Afghanistan, for instance. I don't write about those subjects much, you see, because I don't know much about them.
Steve Green started a pretty lively debate with his recent posts about libertarianism, and as I read through the dozens of comments people have left at his site I struck by how little people know about libertarianism. That includes people who should know better.
So perhaps I should go over some of the basics. This first one is relevant to Steve's posts.
Small 'l' vs big 'L' libertarians.
The word 'libertarian' connotes both a loose political philosophy and a U.S. political party. A person who favors the philosophy can be called a libertarian, and someone who is a member of the party is a Libertarian. It's very simple, but frequently writers use 'Libertarian' as shorthand for someone who subscribes to a purist, more dogmatic version of libertarian philosophy. This can be quite confusing, as actual Libertarians may not be as extremist as other libertarians outside the party.
I hope that makes things clearer.
When someone alse expresses my own position eloquently, (or at least something akin to my own position) it would be foolish of me to try and top it.
So I'll just say, "What Radley said."