Must Read: Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Speaking of books that changed my life (see my previous post)... I just finished reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. This book is one of the best, most interesting, and most important books I've ever read. (To read an overview of the book, see the Infidel page at the AEI site.)

If you are like I was until about a month ago, then you have perhaps heard of her (from the news several years ago) or of this book (it is a NYT bestseller). You have likely heard of Theo Van Gogh, perhaps only because he was murdeed by an Islamist in The Netherlands (after he and Ayaan created a movie critical of Islam's treatment of women in many countries and cultures). If you are like I was, then that is about all you know about her (which says something negative about the news media in this country!).

That said, rarely has a book impacted me in the way this book has. In fact, I had some trouble composing this blog posting -- as it seems no words describing this book, or Ayaan as a person -- will be sufficient. Simply stated, she is a heroine of the rational mind, of liberty, and of women's rights. Indeed, on that last point, while reading this book I found myself many times thinking: "If Ayaan Hirsi Ali continues her current work, then she should go down in history as one of the most important advocates for women's rights."

I strongly urge my friends reading this blog posting to go out and read (or listen to the audio version) this book, Infidel. If you are like me, you have a long list of books -- or a stack of books already purchased -- that are waiting for your time. I understand that. After you finish the book(s) you are already reading, I just urge you to read Infidel next.

This book was extremely educational for me -- it gives a first-person perspective, with many concretes, etc., that you just don't get from newspaper or TV news stories about the "war on terror", "Islamic radicals", and so on.

In reading this book, I found myself pausing every few pages to reflect on what I just read. At times I was shocked with horror; at other times I smiled as I learned of Ayaan's courage and followed her mental development. The writing style of this book is easy to read, but on a more substantive level, this book is both an easy and difficult book to read.

I want to thank Ayaan for this book and for her ongoing work (I look forward to reading her online articles), and my way of doing so is by writing this blog post, and sending out emails to friends, to encourage more people to read her book.

I could go on an on. Please, when you do read this book (notice I didn't say "if"), I hope you'll email me or blog about it -- as I'm interested in the reactions of friends to it, especially if they picked it up based in part on my recommendation and urging.

For more info on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, here are some good links to get you started:

• Ayaan's page at AEI - Includes links to her latest writings, events, etc.


• A good overview of Infidel - provided at the AEI site


• A good review of Infidel - by Gina Ligget, published in the March issue of American Atheist (thanks to NoodleFood, where Ligget is a blogger, for providing access)


• Ayaan speaking - A one-hour AEI event from Feb. 2007, first half her speaking, second half is Q&A (though when I tried the video version, I didn't get an audio -- so I only heard it as MP3 audio).


• Wikipedia for Ayaan Hirsi Ali - for general background, and also many links to interviews with her

Bread and Butter? That will be 27 billion dollars, please

Each time I blog about Zimbabwe, I wonder how much it will get -- both the political crisis and the economic crisis. Check out the latest inflation numbers and prices in this article, Zimbabwe has shortage of food, abundance of zeros.

The price of a loaf of bread is $2 billion Zimbabwe dollars (or $15 billion on the black market) and 17.5 ounces of butter is $25 billion. A car battery, by the way, will run you 2.4 trillion dollars (which is about $240 US dollars). Other similar prices are listed in the article -- but amazing as these all sound, they all assume you can even find these goods available at all.

And yet... Brian Raftopolous, a South African-based economic researcher, notes "As bad as things are, it can get worse." I wonder what the next set of inflation and price numbers will look like?

Iranian Censorship

Yet another interesting series of photos from the Amazing Things site. This one is Iranian Censorship: How Famous Magazines Look in Iran. Assuming this is true... it really is amazing indeed.

What Would John Galt Do?

Wow... this is impressive. My friend Shawn Klein blogged about Ezra Levant's defense of free speech before the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission. I must agree with Shawn that it amounts to a "remarkable and inspiring demonstration."

In fact, it made me think of the heroes and heroines of Ayn Rand's novels (especially Atlas Shrugged). I could just see Ezra, faced with a summons before the HRC, asking himself "What would John Galt do?" (as a play on the cliche "What would Jesus do?")

The issue here is Ezra's publishing of the "Danish Muhammad" cartoons that raised such a fuss a while back. Complaints have been lodged, and so he has been summoned by the HRC to be interogated about this. A clear freedom of speech issue, pure and simple.

You can watch the video at Shawn's blog above, or you can see it at YouTube here. This is his 6:31 "opening statement". It is great that this was video-taped, and that it is available on YouTube -- I don't know if that is standard HRC policy to make the video-taping available to the person being questioned, or if this was a leak -- but either way, it is great we can all see it.

Then be sure to also see the other segments that follow, which are shorter (see the links in the Related Videos scroll window at YouTube). While being asked seemingly standard questions, he doesn't waver in his defense -- though at times he resorts to some mild ad hominem against those bringing the charges against him, and a few other people (e.g, calling some people "fools" and so on). I wish he hadn't done that... but it is the only thing that keeps his performance from being a perfect 10.0. If this were the Olympics, as a judge I'd be holding up a card with "9.8" on it or something thereabouts.

One other thing... I don't know who the woman is interrogating/interviewing him. At a few moments I felt sorry for her -- just doing a job, but clearly outmatched by the intellectual ammunition and preparation of Ezra. I give her credit for not getting emotional or engaging him in debate -- a battle she would clearly have lost. But that is all I give her credit for -- as this entire event should never have occurred in the first place, and it seems, the HRC -- if it ever had a legitimate purpose -- clearly is overstepping those bounds today.

The Need for an Organ Market

I meant to blog about this weeks back, but it slipped through the cracks. A great letter to the editor was published in the Chicago Tribune in November about the need for a market for organ donors. It doesn't get much more succinct and powerful than this:

Thousands have died through the years waiting for transplants because the National Organ Transplant Act forbids the sale of human organs. To significantly decrease the shortage of organs, this murderous law must be repealed and the trade in organs decriminalized. If the law recognizes our right to give away an organ, it should also recognize our right to sell an organ. And if the law recognizes our right to pay for a life-saving medical treatment, it should also recognize our right to pay for a life-saving organ for transplant.

Those able to pay for organs would benefit at no one's expense but their own. Those unable to pay would still rely on charity, as they have done to this day. Moreover, those able to buy organs would drop out of the waiting list, increasing the chances of those remaining to obtain the organs they need.

If the legitimate rights of potential buyers and sellers of organs were protected, many of the 95,000 people waiting for organs would be spared much suffering and escape an early death. How many? Let's find out.

Hurdles for Bloggers from Cuba

Here is an interesting article about the hurdles that bloggers in Cuba face. And yet there are some in America who still praise the totalitarian Communist regime that causes so much misery in Cuba.

Health Care and the Free Market

Two weeks ago the ARI put out a short opinion piece titled "Be Healthy or Else!". It nicely summarizes a free-market viewpoint rarely found anywhere else.

But even better, because it gives real-life examples, is John Stossel's recent "Medical Competition Works for Patients". In this column, Stossel gives numerous examples of areas of the health care world where free-market principles still thrive, where competition and pricing are not being altered by government regulation or even insurance company's policies. And the results? Quality in those areas continues to go up, and prices continue to go down. Quite the opposite of what we see across most of the health care world in recent years, eh? To get some great examples of the free-market at work in health care, this column is must reading!

And just as good is his previous column that details how Whole Foods ditched the traditional health insurance game in favor of HSAs -- Health Savings Accounts -- for its employees. The results, and Whole Food CEO John Mackie's understanding of the principles involved, are impressive and instructive. Also must reading!

Hamline Student Suspended and Required To Take Mental Exam

A Hamline University student has been "suspended a student after he sent an e-mail suggesting that the Virginia Tech massacre might have been stopped if students had been allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus." But it gets worse... for him to return to school, he must take a mental health exam! See the FIRE press release, and the supporting docs too.

It never ceases to amaze me... the rights-violating things that some university officials will do these days. Thank goodness we have FIRE around to fight for the rights of students, and to fight back against such irrationality. Out of all the great cases that FIRE has fought and raised awareness of over the years, I think this one is in my top-10 -- or bottom-10 in the sense of being the most bizarre and wrong. To claim that someone who makes a common, sensible, and quite defendable (whether you agree with the conclusion or not) argument in an email is actually a threatening person who must have his head examined to be allowed to return to class... wow. It doesn't get much worse than that!

HR 2046 and Poker

I heard recently that there was a new bill up in the House to try and save or protect online poker. So I went to the Poker Players Allliance website to get some info, and at this page they provide the following info about HR-2046 "The Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007":

HR 2046 protects poker players. Applicants for a gaming license would be required to provide comprehensive financial statements and corporate structure documents, and to agree to be subject to U.S. jurisdiction and all applicable laws related to Internet gambling. No license would be granted to any applicant convicted of a criminal violation of any law relating to gambling, money laundering, fraud or other financial laws.

HR 2046 protects consumers. The framework set forth in the bill would for the first time effectively regulate Internet gambling, thus making it possible to address underage and compulsive gambling, neither of which are prevented under prohibition regimes. Regulation combined with proven technology would establish a system of effective controls to block children and compulsive gamblers from gambling.

If HR 2046 becomes law, online poker will be safe, secure and regulated. The bill would create stringent licensing to ensure that poker operators are legitimate. HR 2046 protects poker players, and it protects consumers.

This might not be exactly what I'd like to see happen, and I'm against government regulating the economy and the actions of consenting adults. But passing this into law would be better than the current situation, because last year's legislation -- slipped into other legislation and passed under the cover darkness -- has made it far more difficult for Americans to play the great game of poker online. So given the choices of only regulation or prohibition, I'll of course go with regulation.

The PPA continues to provide great info on the issue of poker and the law, and I really wish them success in the fight with congress. Their homepage provides the following "Important Facts Congress Should Hear", with links to supporting info and argumentation:

• Poker is one of the great American pastimes. The game has been enjoyed by presidents, generals, Supreme Court Justices, Members of Congress and average Americans for more than 150 years.
• Poker is a game with a predominance of skill. Like chess, poker is a "thinking man's" game which relies on mathematics, psychology and money management.
• Poker is a source of charity. In 2006, millions of dollars were raised for local and national charities through poker tournaments. One event in D.C. featuring 15 Members of Congress raised more than $288,000 to fight cancer.
• Billions of tax revenue is being lost. According to an economic analysis, 3.3 billion in federal tax revenue and addition 1 billion in state tax revenue could be raised if the federal government were to regulate Internet poker.
• 75 percent of Americans oppose banning online poker. According to national polling, a vast majority of Americans oppose federal efforts to ban online poker.
• Supporting an online poker ban can cost you an election. Exit polling has shown and the national media has noted that a leading advocate to ban Internet poker in the 109th Congress was negatively impacted by his leadership on the issue.

Those are all fine points to make for the purposes of trying to win votes in Congress. Different legislators might be swayed by some or all of the above. I think the second point is particularly important, because it is relevant to the total hypocrisy in last year's legislation, and in the politician's attitudes towards gambling in general: they allow horse-racing and state-run lotteries, but not games like poker. And yet, the lottery is completely a game of chance, while poker is a game where skill plays a major role. So how is the lottery OK -- not just OK, but state-run! -- but poker is banned? That is just ridiculous, pure and simple.

But as valuable as the above bullet points might be to convincing this or that legislator, the real reason that online gambling -- indeed gambling as such -- should be legal is a matter of individual rights. It simply isn't the proper role of government to keep two or more free adult people from doing something that isn't violating the rights of anyone else. The arguments in favor of gambling prohibition have always been and will always be invalid. It is the role of government to protect people from mistakes they might voluntarily make. Nor is it acceptable for a particular morality to be imposed upon individuals by law -- and that quite clearly from the history of gambling prohibitions is a large part of the issue here: conservatives, particularly religious conservatives, imposing by force their view that gambling is somehow immoral.

We often talk about separation of church and state, because that is how it was worded in founding American documents. But what really matters, philosophically, is the underlying separation, the necessary separation between religion and law.

On the Right to Assisted Suicide

During the week that Dr. Jack Kevorkian was released from prison, The Ayn Rand Institute had both a press release, and an op-ed "The Right to Assisted Suicide" Thomas Bowden. Both are excellent.

From the Op-Ed:

What lawmakers must grasp is that there is no rational, secular basis upon which the government can properly prevent any individual from choosing to end his own life. When religious conservatives use secular laws to enforce their idea of God's will, they threaten the central principle on which America was founded.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth--which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--means, in practical terms, that you need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise--to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself--is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

And then commenting on Oregon, the one state that has "provided clear procedures by which doctors can end their dying patients' pain and suffering while protecting themselves from criminal prosecution", Bowden continues:

Religious conservatives' opposition to the Oregon approach stems from the belief that human life is a gift from the Lord, who puts us here on earth to carry out His will. Thus, the very idea of suicide is anathema, because one who "plays God" by causing his own death, or assisting in the death of another, insults his Maker and invites eternal damnation, not to mention divine retribution against the decadent society that permits such sinful behavior.

If a religious conservative contracts a terminal disease, he has a legal right to regard his own God's will as paramount, and to instruct his doctor to stand by and let him suffer, just as long as his body and mind can endure the agony, until the last bitter paroxysm carries him to the grave. But conservatives have no right to force such mindless, medieval misery upon doctors and patients who refuse to regard their precious lives as playthings of a cruel God.

Secular and rational state legislators should regard the occasion of Dr. Kevorkian's release from jail as a stinging reminder that 49 of the 50 states have failed to take meaningful steps toward recognizing and protecting an individual's unconditional right to commit suicide.

More On the United Nations and Individual Rights

I've written many times in the past with my criticisms of the United Nations. A few weeks ago I watched a couple of videos of UN Watch speeches at the UN, and I was blown away. This sat in my queue to blog about for a few weeks, but as followup to my posting this morning about individual rights articles in The Economist, you can consider this one Part 2 posting of recent items on individual rights.

First, some videos from YouTube that are worth seeing:

• UN Watch Confronts UN on Sudan - Wow. A thorough bashing of the inaction on the situation in Darfur.
• UN Watch Confronts UN on Human Rights - Wow. A thorough damning of the council on human rights. Examples given of the massive hypocrisy of condeming Israel time and again, but doing nothing about far more severe issues in so many other countries around the world. Simply amazing. Then the speech is deemed "not admissable"... on that, see the next video.
• UN Watch: What is Admissable and What is Not - A litany of examples of things that have been accepted as speeches at the UN, to be compared with the above statement from UN Watch that was not "admitted". (Includes duplicate of the above video as second half.)
• UN Watch on Canada - A generally positive report about Canada's efforts, but examples given of how it could do more. Presumably much the same could be said about the other countries that rate highly on the UN Watch report card.

Then the second item I wanted to mention here is an April press release from the Ayn Rand Institute, The UN Human Rights Council's War on Human Rights. This is focused on the recent UN "resolution urging nations to pass laws prohibiting the dissemination of ideas that 'defame religion.'" Read their press release to see a principled response that defends freedom of speech as the crucial individual right that it is.

And the third item is the article "Bad Counsel: The UN Adrift on Human Rights" from the April 7th-13th issue of The Economist. It is critical of the same religion defamation resolution, but also has the following general criticisms of the UN Human Rights Council:

In its fourth regular session, which ended in Genevea on March 30th, the 47-member council again failed to address many egregious human-rights abuses around the world. Even in the case of Darfur, on which one of its own working groups had produced a damning report, it declined to criticise the Sudanese government directly for orchestrating the atrocities, limiting itself to an expression of "deep concern". Indeed, in its nine months of life, the council has criticised only one country for human-rights violations, passing in its latest session its ninth resolution against Israel.

This obsession with bashing Israel and turning a blind eye to so much else has disappointed those who hoped that the new council might perform better than its predecessor. Now alarm is growing that its anti-Israel bias is going to becompounded by an excessive zeal to defend the good name of religions, and especially that of Islam, at the expense of free speech.

...

A central task for the new council was supposed to be regular reviews of human rights in each of the UN's 192 member states. But nine months since its founding, nothing has happened. A key test of whether the council would prove any better than its derided predecessor would be to get this "universal periodic review" under way, Louise Arbour, the UN's respected High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the Geneva meeting. The council has now given itself a year to establish such a mechanism.

Predictions on what we will see resulting from this a year from now?

Individual Rights and Amnesty International

In early April I blogged about an important distinctions in the area of individual rights, such equal rights vs. egalitarianism. Since then, several items have piled up that I've been meaning to blog about, so I thought I'll do a couple of postings here today.

First there was the March 24-30th issue of The Economist, which had both an editorial and an article on the issue of rights. The brief editorial online has the title of "Human Rights, Dangerously Blurred", while in print it has the title "Stand Up For Your Rights", and then the subhead "The Old Stuffy Ones, that is: newer ones are distractions". Both titles make clear the point they are making, a distinction between traditional political rights (free speech, free election, due process of law) and so-called economic and social "rights" (food, jobs, housing, medical care). After introducing the issue of broadening "rights", they note that Amnesty International in particular has "decided to follow intellectual fashion and dilute a traditional focus on political rights by mixing in a new category of what people now call social and economic rights." The editorial then continues:

Rights being good things, you might suppose that the more of them you campaign for the better. Why not add pressing social and economic concerns to stuffy old political rights such as free speech, free elections and due process of law? What use is a vote if you are starving? Are not access to jobs, housing, health care and food basic rights too? No: few rights are truly universal, and letting them multiply weakens them.

Food, jobs and housing are certainly necessities. But no useful purpose is served by calling them "rights". When a government locks someone up without a fair trial, the victim, perpetrator and remedy are pretty clear. This clarity seldom applies to social and economic "rights". It is hard enough to determine whether such a right has been infringed, let alone who should provide a remedy, or how. Who should be educated in which subjects for how long at what cost in taxpayers' money is a political question best settled at the ballot box. So is how much to spend on what kind of health care. And no economic system known to man guarantees a proper job for everyone all the time: even the Soviet Union's much-boasted full employment was based on the principle "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work".

It is hardly an accident that the countries keenest to use the language of social and economic rights tend to be those that show least respect for rights of the traditional sort. The rulers of Cuba and China habitually depict campaigns concentrating on individual freedoms as a conspiracy by the rich northern hemisphere to do down poor countries. It is mightily convenient, if you deprive your citizens of political liberties, to portray these as a bourgeois luxury.

And it could not be further from the truth. For people in the poor world, as for people everywhere, the most reliable method yet invented to ensure that governments provide people with social and economic necessities is called politics. That is why the rights that make open politics possible--free speech, due process, protection from arbitrary punishment--are so precious. Insisting on their enforcement is worth more than any number of grandiloquent but unenforceable declarations demanding jobs, education and housing for all.

Many do-gooding outfits suffer from having too broad a focus and too narrow a base. Amnesty used to be the other way round, appealing to people of all political persuasions and none, and concentrating on a hard core of well-defined basic liberties. No longer. By trying in recent years to borrow moral authority from the campaigns and leaders of the past and lend it to the woollier cause of social reform, Amnesty has succeeded only in muffling what was once its central message, at the very moment when governments in the West need to hear it again.

Then the article (also available online here) on pg. 67-68 of that issue, titled "Many Rights, Some Wrong" (and online titled "Amnesty International's New Mission") goes into more specifics about Amnesty International's "stretching of its brand" as they say. After providing a quick review of AI's website, noting uneven and disproportionate handling of various issues (being tougher on the West, and in particular America, than on the huge rights-violaters elsewhere), the article raises the big issue:

Another of Amnesty's 12 campaigns is on "Poverty and Human Rights" which asserts: "Everyone, everywhere has the right to live with dignity. That means that no one should be denied their rights to adequate housing, food, water and sanitation, and to education and health care." A similar theme is struck by the "Economic Globalisation and Human Rights" campaign--reflecting Amnesty's enthusiastic support for the World Social Forum, a movement which holds annual anti-capitalism shindigs. Sometimes there seems to be a desire to be even-handed between pariahs and paragons: Amnesty recently surprised observers of the ex-communist world by producing a critique of the language law in Estonia--a country usually seen as the best example of good government in the region.

The big question in all this is priorities. Cases do exist where violations of political rights and of economic ones are hard to separate; one such case is Zimbabwe, whose government has engaged in politicised food distribution and slum clearance at the same time as judicial repression.

But the new Amnesty is surely open to the charges both that it is campaigning on too many fronts, and that the latest focus comes at the cost of the old one.

Amnesty's website is, insiders acknowledge, a campaigning tool; it does not fully reflect the depth of the organisation's expertise, or its internal priorities. Ms Khan admits a tension in the organisation's "business mix" between high profile and less immediately rewarding work.But she insists that there is no drift towards America-bashing for the sake of popularity, and that the emphasis on economic, social and cultural rights does not reflect a preference for any particular system of government.

The article continuse on, and notes that other similar organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have drifted into economic and social "rights" far less than AI has. It then concludes with:

Some wonder if Ms Khan has been too keen to impress constituencies in what NGO-niks call the "global south": code for developing countries, where opinion--at least among the elite--supposedly favours economic development over a "northern" concern for individual rights. She vigorously contests that. But an organisation which devotes more pages in its annual report to human-rights abuses in Britain and America than those in Belarus and Saudi Arabia cannot expect to escape doubters' scrutiny.

Unfortunately, as good as these articles were, they don't actually cut to the essence of the issues involved. The key point to make, and make clearly and explicitly, is that the so-called "rights" of the social and economic variety -- such as the "right" to housing, food, medical care, and so on -- are not actual, valid rights at all. It is a matter of definition and moral philosophy, and these Economist articles don't go far enough to set the record straight here. These economic and social "rights" impose upon others and violate the rights of others (through redistribution of wealth, through the forced provision of services, and so on) in a way that the so-called "traditional political rights" -- such as freedom of speech, due process of law, and so on -- do not at all. These rights that individuals have as restrictions on government, whereas the "new" rights impose duties on everyone to provide actual goods and services for everyone else -- apparently on the assumption that such goods and services are just out there, magically produced by someone, and that some people are being deprived of them while others are not. This is a complete misunderstanding of value production, individual rights, and more.

And because the Economist writers don't present this case strongly enough, they open themselves up to responses like those in the April 7th-13th issues "Letters" section. Here we have the chair of the International Executive Committee of AI, Lilian Gonclaves, responding that yes, AI has "broadened our remit in 2001 to make our work for individuals more effective." Examples she then gives are: "For the man in Zimbabwe who has been forcibly evicted, the right to housing is no less real than the right to be free from police brutality. To the woman raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the claim for medical care is no less a priority than the demand for justice."

But notice the standards she uses here: whether an assumed right feels more or less real to someone, whether someone "claims a right to something", or whether someone "demands" something. These are not the valid basis of what are and are not individual rights! Victims or poor individuals simply wanting or needing something does not mean they have a right to it. She then goes on to cite many examples of AI fighting for legitimate rights in various evil dictatorships around the world, and that is all well and good. But it in no way answers the questions raised, albeit imperfectly, by the Economist article and editorial.

I'll also note that a second letter in this issue, from Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, also misses the point that I wish the Economist had made more clearly. She states that "It is now recognized that you cannot enjoy one set of rights [political] without the other [economic/social] and it was this vision that inspired the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948." While a valid point to make against the claim that this change in emphasis is extremely recent, this again makes clear what the Economist should have come out and said explicitly: that those supposed economic and social rights, including many enshrined by the UN in 1948, are not actually valid individual rights at all. That UN document is severely philosophically flawed.

Internet Radio on Life Support?

Is so-called "Internet Radio" on life-support? It seems that unless a new bi-partisan bill introduced in congress, the Internet Radio Equality Act from Jay Inslee (D) and Donald Manzullo (R), is passed by July 15th... well, a great many outstanding Internet music sites will quickly go bankrupt and be out of business. Most notably for me would be the harm this could cause Pandora, a service I have quickly grown to love, as my recent blog posting described.

See this article, and this one, and this one for info on the situation. More recently than any of these it was announced that the feared May 15th deadline was actually a July 15th deadline, so that gives the SaveNetRadio.org group and others time to fight to get the new bill passed. Doing so would essentially cancel the decision of the federal Copyright Royalty Board, which had determined to hike up fees for web streaming radio stations like Pandora and many others. The new fees are bizarre -- they are per song rather than based on profits (thereby treating streaming like downloading), and they are totally out of whack with (higher than) the fees charged statellite radio and traditional AM/FM radio.

A few comments... first, I wish that we didn't refer to sites like Pandora as "Internet Radio". I mean, "radio" is a particular technology. It isn't used by the Internet to stream music. Calling sites like Pandora "radio" is confusing and based on inessential similarities. Yes, it is similar in that the music (or other content) is streamed rather than downloaded permanently. So lets call such services Internet Streaming services or Music Streaming services or whatever. That is accurate -- calling them "radio" is confusing.

Second, how many people know much about the federal Copyright Royalty Board? That sounds like something out of a socialist or communist country! What are a bunch of government bureaucrats doing dictating to anyone what they must pay to other people for streaming copyrighted content? Can't the two parties involved contract with each other? I'm not in favor of theft of intellectual property -- but equally wrong is government intervention in the economy... and for the same reasons: both are violations of individual rights.

The third news item linked above has the following bit worth quoting here:

Anyone who spends more than an hour a day in a car -- and there a lot of you in Miami -- knows that commercial radio stations are horrid purveyors of mainstream schlock. Internet radio has made new artists, genres, and songs available to listeners all over the world. Artists have a new way to get their music out there, and small distributors have a way to wrangle in new customers.

Sites like Pandora, which uses the innovative Music Genome Project to create specialized radio stations for its six million users based on what they tell it about their musical tastes, are a blessing to music junkies everywhere.

"We can't continue, at the new rate we can’t sustain the service," said Pandora founder Tim Westergren from Washington D.C., where he is attending congressional hearings on the fee hike. "We are losing money now, even at the old rate, we were looking at another two years before we expected to be in the black."

If the new rates go into effect, and sites like Pandora and W305 shut down, it would be a huge loss for music lovers, and perhaps an even bigger blow to musicians struggling to get their music to the public. A lot of smaller, independent Internet stations may go underground and avoid paying licensing fees all together, Kalimi said.

Equal Rights vs. Egalitarianism

Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute has written a powerful Op-Ed on the issue of egalitarianism. In it he argues that income inequality is something good -- a position almost never argued for elsewhere. As Schwartz notes, the issue of egalitarianism is not the issue of poverty. Wanting to alleviate poverty is one thing, but wanting to equalize everyone's wealth is quite another. And assuming that in order to do the former one must do the latter indicates a misunderstanding of economic reality, as such people are usually operating with an at least implicit premise that the world is a zero-sum game: for poor people to be better off, then rich people must be made worse off. Only by reducing income or wealth inequality -- by redistributing from the haves to the have-nots -- can the poor be made better off. But this is incorrect, as all boats can rise at the same time -- with some rising faster than others, either in percentage-increase terms or real-terms, or both. I'll now quote at some length from Schwartz, as he makes several points very well:

... the alleged problem is not that some are becoming poor--but that others are too rich. The complaint is that while the bottom tier enjoyed a 4% rise in income, the top tier enjoyed a 34% increase. The complaint is that over the past 25 years, the share of income of the top fifth of households climbed from 42% to 50%, while that of the bottom fifth fell from 7% to 5%.

But this development represents an injustice only if we use a perverse standard of evaluation. It is unjust only if we measure someone's economic status not by what he has, but by what others have--i.e., only if he benefits not by making more money, but by making his neighbor have less.

...

Egalitarianism is the antithesis of the valid tenet of political equality, under which we have equal rights. That is, we have the right to achieve whatever our ambition and talents allow, with no one permitted to forcibly stop us. Egalitarianism, however, is a denial of the individual's right to be left free. It is an abhorrent demand that some people be punished for achieving what others haven't. It is a brazen declaration that an equality of condition must be attained.

And how is it to be attained? By--as the Australians aptly phrase it--cutting down the tall poppies. No one is to be allowed to surpass his fellow-citizen. No one is to be allowed to rise. Which means that the most able must be brought down to the level of the least able. The equal spread of misery and privation is the only "equality" that egalitarians ultimately seek. This is why they extol socialist societies, where all suffer equal destitution, while vilifying capitalist societies, where all are free to advance according to their abilities and where the poorest enjoy greater luxuries than any citizen in a "worker's paradise."

Making others fall does not make you rise. While prohibiting a Thomas Edison or a Bill Gates from becoming fabulously wealthy does indeed reduce income inequality, it does not make the poor richer. Nonetheless, it is what egalitarians desire. Nonetheless, it is what egalitarians desire. They are motivated by what Ayn Rand called "hatred of the good": if they lack something of value, they want to make sure nobody else has it either.

Income inequality is an effect. The cause is the difference in people's economic production. Criticizing income inequality is like complaining that a computer carries a higher price than a paper clip. Price reflects an object's market value--and the money someone earns reflects the market value of his work. There is no fixed, pre-existing glob of income that somehow oozes disproportionately into the pockets of the rich. Wealth is created. The top fifth of the population have ten times more income than the bottom fifth because they have produced ten times more.

In a statist system, people advance through government favors and at the expense of the genuinely deserving. But in a free, capitalist system, income inequality represents something good. It means that exceptional individuals are free to do their productive best, and to reap their rewards. Whenever a Bill Gates arises to make his fortune, the income disparity between top and bottom increases--but so does everyone's standard of living. If so, why shouldn't we welcome an inequality--including a widening inequality--in incomes? And, instead of apologizing for this phenomenon, why aren't our leaders denouncing the egalitarian enviers who want to level us all?

The key distinctions here are between equality of rights vs. equality of end results, cause and effect, wealth as created and produced, rather than distributed from a fixed amount.

And lastly, I'll note that the argument here is being made based on principles, so the fact that some people inherit wealth rather than produce it is not relevant. The wealth was originally produced by someone, who then had as his or her right the opportunity to distribute that wealth as they saw fit (e.g., to their children, to friends, to charity, or whatever). And keep in mind also that what is being talked about is a free, capitalist society. What we have in the US and other semi-capitalist countries today are not free, capitalist societies. So that is why it is easy to think of people who, like those in statist nations, achieve great wealth "through government favors and at the expense of the genuinely deserving." But these, like those who achieve wealth through fraud or other criminal acts, are not counter-examples to the principles stated above.

Some Background on Mr. Mugabe

The March 31 issue of The Economist (subscription only) continued to keep the focus on Zimbabwe's criminal ruler Robert Mugabe, by including both an editorial and a longer article. The latter was particularly interesting because it goes beyond noting the latest horrors and gives some background on Mugabe's childhood and development. This helps to give a fuller picture of this criminal in charge of a country that was once relatively well-off and now is a basketcase (see my earlier blog item).

And the April 7 issue gives a sad update regarding an African leaders summit that was held on March 29th, where it was hoped that Mugabe would finally be told, politely but firmly, that it was time for him to go. But alas, this is far from what happened.

Astonishingly, Mr. Mugabe got more bouquets than brickbats. The assembled heads of state called for sanctions to be lifted to take the pressure of their comrade, and declared the grubby presidential election of 2002 free and fair. With this sort of endorsement rining in his ears, Mr. Mugabe smartly returned to what he knows best: intimidating his opponents. He called the beating of the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, not only "deserved" by promised more of the same. To cap his perfect week, Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party said Mr. Mugabe would be its presidential candidate in next year's election.

From Breadbasket to Basketcase

The overall situation in Zimbabwe seems to be getting worse and worse. In June of last year I blogged about Zimbabwe, about a PBS special on the country in particular. Now the March 17-23 issue of the Economist provides both an editorial, Toppling a Tyrant , and an article, "The Face of Oppression", (both require subscription) about the latest news. The rule of Robert Mugabe (now 83 years old) continues on, and he talks of wanting to stay in power for many more years. Members of the Movement for Democratic Change (an opposition group) were beaten recently by Mugabe's henchmen. And then consider these latest numbers:

Once the bread-basket of southern Africa and one of the continent's wealthiest countries, Zimbabwe is now a basketcase and suffers a severe shortage of food. It is also the world's fastest-shrinking peacetime economy, with unemployment now standing at 80%. Its inflation rate is the world's highest: currently 1,730%, although the IMF thinks that figure could rise to over 4,000% by year's end. From infant mortality to life below the poverty line, the country's unhappiest trendlines run remorselessly upwards. To stifle dissent and quash opposition, Zimbabwe has been turned into a police state where elections are routinely rigged.

As I've said in previous postings, nations like this are actually being run by criminals -- and I mean that literally. Mugabe is a "President" name only. Since he and his fellow rulers violate the individual rights of the people on a regular basis, and quite intentionally, they are properly seen as moral criminals. Too often the words "dictator" and "tyrant" are used, and people don't grasp that what these words actually mean is "criminal who has power over the people in his geographic area".

And I'll also add (again) that countries such as Zimbabwe should not be in the United Nations, or any other international body, in which the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, et al., are members. Whoever represents Zimbabwe at the United Nations is representing the criminals (meaning right-violators) in the government of that country -- so by sitting down with such a person, and negotiating on this or that issue (trade, aid, whever), are we not sanctioning this regime as even minimally legitimate? One might think that including such countries in the UN is better than not doing so, because it helps in some way the poor people of such countries. But consider the long-term picture here: consider how many of these countries, run by criminal dictators, continue on that path for decades, with no end in site!

Is "working with" the ruling government, to try to minimize the damage they do to their own people, really helping the people in those countries over the long-run? Might it be better to take a principled stand, kick all countries run by kings, tyrants, dictators, etc., out of the U.N., refuse to have any diplomatic or government-supported dealings with them, and isolate them as much as possible in all other ways (economics, etc.)... and see what happens to such criminal-led regimes then? Ideally, that would have been the principled-stand taken in the first place, when the U.N. was first created. Being the optimist that I am, it is never too late to correct this mistake...

A NY Poker Warrior and a NY Gambling Hypocrite

Two bits of news caught my attention recently, both related to gambling, and both related to NY politicians. First, see this announcement from the Poker Players Alliance that former US Senator Alfonse D'Amato has joined the PPA as their new Chairman of the Board. He is described as "a passionate and skilled poker player who loves to win in both poker and politics." I can only hope that this increases the chances that the PPA can have positive influence in getting Poker recognized as a game of skill in the federal legislatures. While my first choice would be that it be simply made legal, I am willing to accept "taxed and regulated" as an alternative to the current direction of banning the game. The new law enacted in 2006 doesn't literally do that, but it makes it illegal to transfer money into gambling websites, thereby essentially making the game illegal for Americans to play online.

As I've said before, this sort of law is wrong for countless reasons. Most fundamentally it is a violation of individual rights since playing poker online is an act that does not violate others' rights, therefore no law should be enacted to prohibit. But even if you don't agree with this minimal-government philosophy, consider that the law is entirely hypocritical by allowing for horse-racing and state-run lotteries (which takes no skill at all!), and will be a complete failure in attempting to protect problem gamblers and children: online gambling will continue, but will be done deeper underground, supplied by less-reputable companies. Further, the billions of dollars in tax revenue that could be obtained from a "tax and regulate" approach is being lost, as is the good that money could be used for to help problem gamblers.

This is all quite obvious, and I can only hope that former Senator D'Amato can hasten the day when that law will be repealed, or at least when poker (and similar games) will be carved out of it with additional legislation that regulates and taxes them. But self-righteous social conservatives, often driven by irrational, mysticism-driven ethics, have once again imposed their views on all Americans, and in the process violated our individual rights (this happened countless times throughout our history -- just think of all the actions that violate no one's rights, but are nonetheless against the law, or were at various times in our history).

The other story was reported in various places, but I saw it as the third tidbit from the "Cross Country" section in the March 5 issue of US News and World Report, "Rolling the Dice on Indian Gambling". Here we learn that newly elected NY Governor Eliot Spitzer has endorsed the building of an Indian-run casino in the Catskill Mountains. It is predicted that it will generate $100 million in revenue for the state, obviously a big reason for the endorsement.

This is not particularly interesting news for me all on its own, until I learn that it will be run by the St. Regis Mohawk Mohawk tribe, and that its location will be 400 miles from the Mohawk reservations. This is dubbed an "off reservation" casino, something that Interior department opposes. It is unclear whether they will allow such things it seems.

At what point will this country wake up and ask the fundamental question: why can't American citizens, people like you and me, start our own casinos, hold poker matches (online or in-person), and so on? I'm not ignorant of the obvious facts here: it is illegal in most states, but is not illegal on Indian land since they are considered "sovereign states". For a governor to stretch this and endorse Indian people running a casino on non-Indian land... can't we see the obvious flaw in our laws?

Why is some gambling illegal, but not others? Again, this is a violation of our rights and always has been! Horse-racing is legal, slots are not. State-run lotteries -- which are entirely luck-based -- are legal, but poker -- a game of both luck and skill -- is not. The hypocrisy of this is mind-boggling!

I realize that the fight to legalize gambling is a massive uphill battle. Not only are social conservatives and religious fanatics against it, but presumably the Indian tribes would be as well. And some interests in Vegas and Atlantic City, at least at first, until they realized they might profit in the long run. But all of this is irrelevant to both the principle and the practicality of the matter at hand. The law against gambling in this country is a violation of our individual rights, and alway shas been. And like all laws against "crimes" that are in fact not rights-violations at all, the law against gambling is impractical and counterproductive: it forces gamblers further underground, creates a black-market, keeps those with problems (in this case problem gamblers) from seeking help, and fails to produce revenue through taxation that could be used to combat any negative externalities that are created. Again, ideally gambling would simply be legal for adults to partake in, but like cigarettes and alcohol, legalization through a "regulate and tax" scheme is preferable for everyone to the current scheme of prohibition and blatant hypocrisy.

Venezuela Blogger from the Inside

This morning I posted my thoughts on the recent news of food shortages, and other major problems, that are increasing in Venezuela as a result of Hugo Chavez' socialist and rights-violating policies. If you haven't read that post yet, do so before continuing with this one...

Then notice the anonymous comment I was sent to that posting. Here it is in full for your convenience:

"Im glad to find an article that tells reality and dont just celebrate Mr Chavez socialist project because it "helps the poor"..You said at the end "90 minutes turns into 4 hours, and it won't be fixed until 2010 at the earliest. When will the majority of people in Venezuela figure out it doesn't have to be this way?".. and for now, i must tell you the answer is No.... About your predictions well im thinking of buying candles and stuff. I think you will find interesting to read my blog (just started makin it, so it looks like crap now but anyways) and would be interesting to keep a discussion / reflection about this events with a foreigner. Anyways my blog is... http//antipatrioticvenezuelan.blogspot.com "

Even with the poor English, her meaning is clear. It turns out she is a college student desperate to finish her major, and hopefully leave her rapidly deteriorating country.

Next, I encourage you to check out her new blog at antipatrioticvenezuelan.blogspot.com. She speaks of difficulties concentrating on her studies, the recent food shortages, the rigged elections in her country, and much more. Her posting "Too late" ends quite passionately: "too late my friends, just too late." Her posting "Why Im Against?" includes this: "I am, after all, an intelectual, so everyday is more hard for me to see how my country collapsed, and how I lose my freedom."And be sure to read her first posting (bottom of her blog page) titled "So do we". Powerful stuff!

Venezuela: Let Them Eat Chicken Feet

This Associated Press story about food shortages in Venezuela gave me a laugh. Although the situation is not good for many in that country, how can you not chuckle at this opening line:

Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits such as chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.

Naturally I found the reference to chicken feet funny. But beyond that, I got a laugh because this effect is so entirely predictable because its cause is so pathetically, blatantly obvious. You have a socialist demagogue soon-will-be complete dictator in Hugo Chavez ruling the country. What do people there expect? Are they entirely ignorant of the world's history (recent history of socialism in particular)? Are they likewise ignorant of basic economic theory? Have they been duped by the rhetoric and promises of the seemingly-always-smiling Chavez?

I do feel bad for anyone in Venezuela who has fought against Chavez' rise to power, and have done so for the right reasons -- those who know his policies violate individual rights, and are destined to lead to economic ruin. But for all the others -- anyone who has supported Chavez even partially, not to mention enthusiastically and fully -- I just can't feel bad for you now that the, uh, chickens (or at least their feet) are coming home to roost.

And its not just meat that is in short supply. The article notes that many other products have seen sporadic shortages in Venezuela for the past several years, such as milk, sugar, coffee, and so on. Why? Chavez has been regulating prices for over 400 products! Price regulation is a cause of shortages. Not only is it anti-market and economically devestating, but it is also morally evil because it violates the rights of individuals to sell products at prices that they set, and the rights of consumers to purchase products that they want through voluntary exchange.

Think about it: There are people in Venezuela who are willing to pay X for a product, say coffee, and other people who are willing to sell it for X. But the government is violating the individual rights of both parties by saying "No. You can only perform this transaction if the price is lower - it cannot be higher than Y." And of course that price Y is in some cases so low that the seller can't even break even, much less make any level of profit (the incentive to produce or acquire the products to sell in the first place).

Why does Chavez do this? Well, my understanding is that he has been elected partially through the votes of the poor, and the poor need food and by definition can't afford (some of) the food at market prices. So because they need it and want it, Chavez will (attempt to) give it to them through force imposed on everyone in the country. This is, infamously, a key axiom of communism and a theory that Chavez has publicly applauded as a goal for his regime: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. Sadly, what ends up happening is food ceases to be available at any price.

Besides trying to help the poor, another goal of Chavez's dictates is to control inflation. But the article states:

Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent in the past four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.

And then there are the other side effects that such a system produces, like black markets and people wasting their time (thereby not helping the economy be productive):

The state runs a nationwide network of subsidized food stores, but in recent months some items have become increasingly hard to find.At a giant outdoor market held last weekend by the government to address the problems, a street vendor crushed raw sugar cane to sell juice to weary shoppers waiting in line to buy sugar.

And of course the government inevitably resorts to outright lies to try to fool the people and prevent panic. This happened throughout Soviet history, and has happened in countless other socialist and communist countries. Consider this example from the article:

"They say there are no shortages, but I'm not finding anything in the stores," grumbled Ana Diaz, a 70-year-old housewife who, after eight hours, had filled a bag with chicken, milk, vegetable oil and sugar at official prices.

Here is a similar report from the BBC, this one focused on coffee beans and the shortages in that area. The following quote from Eduardo Bianco, a senior executive at Cafe Madrid, Venezuela's largest coffee producer, tells the story:

"Would you sell your products on the open market if you were sure you were going
to make a loss?"

Good point. But sadly, the nature of the brute force involved here has recently been made clear:

Venezuela's leftwing leader has authorised the use of the National Guard to "find every last kilogram of coffee" being stockpiled by coffee roasters. He even raised the prospect of nationalising the industry as a last resort.

"As far as the law is concerned, we're absolutely within our rights to seize coffee which is deliberately being withheld from sale," insists Samuel Ruh, a government appointed monitor of consumer rights.

"In fact, we have already carried out several successful raids at premises illegally holding thousands of tonnes of coffee."

Note the knee-jerk reaction... government policy violates the rights of individuals and along the way ruins an area of the economy, so obviously we must then nationalize that sector! That will fix it!

And notice the false assumption by Mr. Ruh -- that consumers have a right to coffee. This complete inversion and misunderstanding of individual rights is a root problem here to be sure.

This BBC article does go beyond coffee, noting:

Yet several food stores in Venezuela's capital city Caracas say the coffee raids are not addressing the fact that shops are also running low on sugar, maize, powdered milk and beans. Store managers insist they are not being supplied with new stock from wholesalers and importers, who were also complaining that the prices set by the government are too low.

And then it goes beyond even food-related problems that Venezuela is facing:

His [Chavez'] government's woes are compounded by massive structural problems of a key road bridge linking the capital city, Caracas, to Venezuela's main international airport. The other day, President Chavez admitted that attempts by engineers to save the bridge from collapse had failed. Tens of thousands of motorists now face misery as they try to negotiate a bumpy road from and to Caracas. Trucks carrying goods from the airport now face a four-hour journey to the shops of the capital city, whereas the old route via the bridge took only 90 minutes. A new bridge will not be ready before the year 2010 according to government estimates.

90 minutes turns into 4 hours, and it won't be fixed until 2010 at the earliest. When will the majority of people in Venezuela figure out it doesn't have to be this way?

And lastly, here is a brief item about another industry in Venezuela being increasingly regulated, and partially nationalized: the electricity industry.

Prediction: electricity shortages (e.g., brownouts, blackouts) will increasinly occur in Venezuela as long as Chavez continues in this direction. Any one wanna bet with me on this? LOL

Updated PPA Website

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) website has been recently given a facelift... looks pretty good. I particularly like the nice and succinct "Important Facts Congress Should Hear" section in Yellow in the middle of the homepage. Here is a nice, very short intro item too. There is lots of good info on this site... so if you are interesting in protecting the great game of Poker, and online poker in particular, check it out and become a member!

On BW's Chinese "Sweatshops" Article

I found the article Secrets, Lies, and Sweatshops: How Chinese Suppliers Hide the Truth from U.S. Companies in the Nov. 27 issue of BusinessWeek to be rather poorly written. But I've come to expect this level of reporting from BusinessWeek, as say, compared with the generally far superior weekly, The Economist.

The cover shows a dark image of an apparent "sweatshop", with two lines of seated female workers, heads-down, producing something in a factory, but with one worker's head turned around and looking somewhat distressed. The article's main points may very well be true (if not particular enlightening). The article describes at some length that the audit processes put in place by major American and other Western companies (Wal-Mart, Sears, JC Penney's, Nike, etc.), in the wake of protests against "unfair" labor practices in China and other such countries, are not always having the desired results. And that this is because the contracted factories (not typically owned by the Western firms, but rather by Chinese businessmen) are finding ways around the rules, regulations, etc., and can fool the auditors and pass the inspections even while making little, if any, real improvements to labor practices. The examples discussed are admittedly not so much of the clear rights-violating variety, such as slave labor, workers forced against their will, or even child labor, but rather things like skirting minimum wage laws, not paying two or three times regular wages for overtime worked, and not giving appropriate vacation allowances. I'm not in a position to contest any of these asserted facts, and frankly, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that some (or even many) factories in China or other countries with large numbers of low-skilled workers are trying to get around the laws imposed by their governments or the rules imposed by their contracted Western companies.

What I want to comment on are the many important facts that this article failed to report, data it failed to give the reader, and questions it failed to even ask. And not for want of space: the article was the cover story and the longest in the issue. Here are a few of the things that irked me about this article:

• We are told that, depending on which figures you use, the average wage in the Chinese manufacturing sector is 42-65 cents an hour. But this tells the reader virtually nothing. What does that buy in China? Not much, I'd assume. But more than it would in the USA or Europe. Couldn't the article spend two sentences noting what that really amounts to for the Chinese worker, in buying power?
  
• The article notes that while some factories are getting away with faking their audits, some others have been investigated and closed down due to failing to follow Chinese labor laws or the rules set forth in recent years by Wal-Mart, Nike, etc. But I see no mention of what happens to the hundreds or thousands of workers who had been working, voluntarily, in those factories, and are now (temporarily, one hopes) out of work. What wage will they be making in their next job, and how long on average will it take for them to get that job? Or must most of them choose to return to the poor rural life they were hoping to escape?
  
  This is the inherent tension in these kinds of labor laws and rules, because they don't, as such, protect actual individual rights, but rather restrict the workers freedom to voluntarily exchange their labor for the wage the market will bear (i.e., their skills relative to demand). Up to a point, labor laws such as these might not have a negative effect on those they are intended to help (i.e., raising a minimum wage by a nickel might not lead to a loss of jobs), but at some point they do. In the case where the factory closes down, and the people return to the rural countryside they were trying to escape -- how is that helpful to them exactly?
  
• Also on this point, at the very end of the article the authors note "Chang says he regularly loses skilled employees to rival factories that break the rules because workers are eager to put in longer hours then he offers, regardless of whether they are paid overtime rates." This is a critical point, so it is a shame that it is buried at the end of the article. These workers would love to make 2x or 3x their regular salaries for overtime they work -- who wouldn't? But short of that -- and with good reason since the profit margins at the factory in question have been slashed from 30% to 5% over the past 18 years -- the workers would "eagerly" work extra hours at the same regular pay rate they get for their normal hours... if only they were allowed to. When they aren't allowed to do so, they quit and sign on with another factory in town -- one that will give them the overtime hours, while breaking the rules against it.
  
  Noting this more prominently in the article, and continuing down with that logic a bit further, would have made for a far more enlightening article. It does get mentioned again in the sidebar titled "How to Make Factories Play Fair", under the heading "Worker Demands". That makes it sound like the workers are demanding a reprieve from inhumane treatment, and on some level they are -- but not what many readers would initially guess. Instead we find out "Many young Chinese production workers want to earn as much as they can in a few years and then return to homes in the countryside. They often insist on logging as many hours as possible, even if they don't get full overtime pay." But their desires are being thwarted, because leftists laws and rules say "No, you can't do this work for the wage you are agreeing to be paid."
  
• Also in that sidebar, it reads "The question is whether such new approaches will improve the lot of the average Chinese worker. Issues like nonpayment of wages, overtime without extra pay, ..." Stop right there! Presenting those two issues as though they are of the same general kind is ridiculous. The first is a clear violation of the individual rights of the worker -- they agreed to do X work for Y wages, and now the factory isn't paying them. But the second issue is only a violation of an arbitrary law of the government, or a rule from a Western company, not an individual right of the worker. And as noted above, the workers are willing to work the extra hours for the same pay as their regular hours!
  
• Another failing of the article is that i