On the Assault on Globovision by the Venzuela Government

There is a good series of videos at YouTube (via Cato) regarding "Globovision and Venezuela's assault on Freedom of the Press". Watch all five to learn more of the terrible acts of the Chavez regime:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

Don't Wash Those Vegetables, or the Government Will Get You!

Read this ridiculous posting for another story of government regulation's strangling business -- this time your loveable local farmer who sells veggies at a farmer's market. Apparently they aren't allowed to wash the vegetables, even if they don't label or package them in any way that indicates they have been washed. They must be sold dirty, as dirty as they came from the field. Wow.

No Matter Who Is President, the Stonings Will Continue

Several friends posted or sent this link to me, and I've finally gotten to reading it: No Matter Who is President of Iran, They Would Stone Me, by Lila Ghobady, an exiled Iranian writer-journalist and filmmaker living in Canada since 2002. This is a very powerful essay, one that makes quite clear the limits of the "revolution" that was simmering in the wake of the recent Iranian political leadership (s)election.

On What Obama Should Say To Iran

I'm a few days behind in sharing this link, but it is still very worth reading: What Obama Should Say To Iran, by Debi Ghate.

Henry Waxman's Scary Plans For Us

I find it hard to choose what items to bother mentioning at my blog, because there are just so many worthy items coming out of Washington. There are so many attacks on our rights, proposed schemes that will ruin the economy, and so on... where does one begin? Why mention this horrific idea over any other? I'll continue to somewhat randomly mention the ones that happen to catch my eye... like this item from the April 10th WSJ: Henry Waxman Has a Plan. The list of things his plan would further regulate includes roofing, furnaces, laundry machines, dishwashers, showerheads, faucets, water closets, urinals, jacuzzis, lightbulbs, lamps... and likely a lot more that the article doesn't bother to mention. Another day, another "yikes!".

On Jackie Chan's Recent Comments

I was saddened to hear of Jackie Chan's recent comments. It might not be good for over a billion people to have freedom? I don't assume that moving a country that size away from single-party rule and a relative lack of individual rights will be easy or could be done overnight. But to say what Mr. Chan is saying? Ugh.

Example of Neither Side Understanding Individual Rights

Very often I see both liberals and conservatives in this country argue passionately about some issue, but upon closer investigation discover that neither side understands the fundamental principles involved -- often the fundamental concept of individual rights and how they apply on that issue.

Greg Perkins has done an excellent job identifying such a situation and explaining quite succinctly. The example is the issue of pharmacies and drugs and the "freedom of conscience" of the pharmicist.

Coming Next? Make Them Stay at AIG

The blog Titanic Deck Chairs had a nice posting titled AIG Bonuses and Retention Contracts -- A Proposed Solution. Does this seem farfetched? I could see Barney Frank and the others at least suggesting this solution. I'd like to think there would be enough of an outcry from other legislators -- and the "American people" -- to keep it from happening.

Regardless, this was an interesting, provocative post, with a great reference to Directive 10-289, from Atlas Shrugged here!

Latest Eminent Domain Disgrace: Seize My Property, Then Sue Me if I Complain

Yikes... this is ridiculous. As if the Kelo decision from the Supreme Court, and the countless similar eminent domain abuses weren't bad enough, this latest twist reported by Forbes magazine is outrageous: Seize someone's property, and if he cries foul, sue him.

On Paying Organ Donors

I was pleased to see an article in the October 8th issue of the Economist about the need to allow for payments to organ donors (in the case of a kidney) or their families in the case of donation of organ donation upon death.

Here are my previous blog postings on the need for a market for organ donations (esp. for kidneys):

• On Why We Need a Market for Human Organs (7/27/2008)
• The Need for an Organ Market (12/23/07)
• Repugnance Shouldn't Be a Standard (8/4/07)
• Market for Kidneys... Guess Where? (11/26/06)
• 10-person Domino Donation at Johns Hopkins (11/26/06)
• Sounds Good, But How About Really Helping? (10/29/06)
• Consequentialist Bioethicist is Proud of Efforts to Restrict Organ Donations (9/15/06)
• A Good Sign for Change to Organ Donation Policy (8/5/06)
• Equal Opportunity to Suffer and Die (6/18/06)
• Market for Organs (5/20/06)

Saudi Ruler Should Practice What He Preaches

Joel Brinkley had a nice column today (and here is a second link to it), in which he criticizes the king of Saudi Arabia for calling for religious tolerance -- just not in his own country. Brinkley gives examples of people condemned to death in Saudi Arabia for "religious crimes" -- pretty scary stuff.

New Online Poker Legislation Introduced

The Poker Players Alliance sent out a press release recently about legislation introduced by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) that would license and regulate online poker. While I'd prefer that online poker were not regualated, at least legalizing it and regulating it would be better than the current situation for Americans where are rights are being violated by the law passed a few years ago that effectively makes it illegal to play. So I hope this bill can get passed at some point -- after the new year perhaps?

FIRE ad in US News and World Report

I was pleased to learn today of an ad that FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is running in the 2008 edition of U.S. News and World Report's America's Best Colleges issue. Here is the ad. And here is the FIRE press release about it. Good for them! I'll be interested to learn what if any response there is to this ad, from the five "red alert" schools (Brandeis, Colorado College, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Valdosta State) or otherwise.

On Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

A month ago Paul Gigot wrote a great opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal: "The Fannie Mae Gang". If your only somewhat familiar with the history of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, then I encourage you to read this article. I really liked the ending of the article, and I've bolded a key paragraph:

Fan and Fred also couldn't prosper for as long as they have without the support of the political left, both in Congress and the intellectual class. This includes Mr. Frank and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Capitol Hill, as well as Mr. Krugman and the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein in the press. Their claim is that the companies are essential for homeownership.

Yet as studies have shown, about half of the implicit taxpayer subsidy for Fan and Fred is pocketed by shareholders and management. According to the Federal Reserve, the half that goes to homeowners adds up to a mere seven basis points on mortgages. In return for this, Fannie was able to pay no fewer than 21 of its executives more than $1 million in 2002, and in 2003 Mr. Raines pocketed more than $20 million. Fannie's left-wing defenders are underwriters of crony capitalism, not affordable housing.

So here we are this week, with the House and Senate preparing to commit taxpayer money to save Fannie and Freddie. The implicit taxpayer guarantee that Messrs. Gray and Raines and so many others said didn't exist has become explicit. Taxpayers may end up having to inject capital into the companies, in addition to guaranteeing their debt.

The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Campaigning to spare taxpayers from that result would represent genuine "change," not that either presidential candidate seems interested.

Ugh. Clearly these "institutions" need to end up being privatized somehow (if you need to first nationalize them, I'd be open to at least considering that, as long as the end goal was privatizing). Indeed, Fannie and Freddie should never have been created in the first place. The government should not be in the housing loan business, risky ones or otherwise. Why? The proper role of government is the protection of individual rights. There is no individual right to own a home, pure and simple. So the government shouldn't be involved, not directly and not through half-government proxies like Freddie and Fannie.

On Parental Rights and Homeschooling in California

Thomas Bowden at the blog Principles in Practice posted "California Children Still Considered State Property" in response to a recent legal decision on homeschooling and parental rights in California. He argues that the court decision didn't go nearly far enough to truly establish parental rights of child education. A good article, he concludes by rightly asking the bigger questions:

But what if parents stopped groveling and started asking whether the state has any right at all to be running schools, dictating educational standards for children, and “permitting” parents to homeschool their own kids? This would call into question the moral foundation of public education as such.

But I especially liked the following paragraph, which draws a great analogy:

Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a child’s parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias.

That is a great analogy. I especially like "outlaw home-cooked meals", which is a direct reductio ad absurdem of any attempt to outlaw homeschooling.

On Chinese Censorship and the Continuing Popularity of Mao

Here is an interesting post from someone visiting China: Shadow of Mao: There's no memory of democracy's brief bloom in China. And then here is another one, on a similar subject.

Granted, the average person on the street in the US isn't particularly knowledgeable of politics and world events -- Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" routines have demonstrated that time and again.

But you would think that people in China -- people standing in Tiananmen Square, mind you -- would know of the student protests and use of tanks by the government there in 1989. But apparently not. Just how powerful is the censorship machine in China? Surely it doesn't rival that of the completely closed off North Korea. But this article is enlightening, not only for the street interviews but also for the report on Google successes and failures: searches for democracy, free Tibet, and so on bring back zero results, while "Mao is great" bring back plenty.

And on the subject of Mao, how long will it be before the Chinese decide that he wasn't so great, that instead he was responsible for the murder of tens of millions of Chinese people? When will they stop gleefully getting their photos taken with Mao posters, stop selling Mao-merchanidize, and start understanding the true history of their country during the 20th century? Apparently it will take a while, given the many levels of censorship in place.

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 in the examples it discusses it doesn't do a good job of making clear which of the "labor laws" are actuall laws enforced from the Chinese government, and which are not actually laws, but perhaps rules that the Wal-Mart or Nike expect their factories to now follow (after so much pressure was put on them in recent decades). This is an important distinction for the reader to understand. The former speaks to the massive government control and intervention in the economy (even while China reforms away from hardline communism), while violating the latter (through fake audits and so on) amounts to a breach of contract between the Chinese factory and the Western companies such as Wal-Mart and Nike. It is important that the types of violations involved get clearly made to the reader.
  
• And the last thing I'll mention... in a few spots in the article we are told that "Americans expect ever-lower prices for many goods, driving the demand for cheaper supplies from China." But this is just asserted, and worse, it isn't true, at least not as strongly as worded. Individuals qua consumers are price-conscious and that is as it should be. Rational consumers, whether American or otherwise, want the most for their money. In some cases this can result from lower prices, but it can also result from improving quality. A lot of goods are not going down in price in recent years, not to mention "ever-lower". But they are going up in quality -- computers with more power, clothes that are more durable or color-fade-resistant, and so on. It can also result from things being provided in a timely manner -- time is important to consumers, as they will pay more (up to a point) to get something they want when they want it, instead of having to wait. This is the old trio of production management -- cost, time, quality -- but as considered from the perspective of the consumer.

Russia and the Lack of Freedom

The latest issue of Imprimis had an interesting piece titled "Freedom vs. Non-Freedom: A View from Russia", adopted from a speech by Andrei Illarionov, former chief economic advisor to Vladimir Putin. Full of facts and data, he chronicles the decline of freedom in Russia over the past several years. Given the bad news he has to report in this area, I have to wonder how much longer his "independent free market think tank in Moscow" will be allowed to operate.

Kelo's Christmas Card

Check out this brief news item about holiday cards sent by Susette Kelo to city officials and members of New London's development agency. She says she will never forget what they -- and five members of the Supreme Court -- have done to her. And rightly so... they infamously took her home and handed it over to developers who wanted to build commercial buildings on that land (not for public use).

The responses by those who received her holiday cards are disgusting: they consistently say that their were actions were "nothing personal" against her. Nothing personal! We'll just take your home away from you, by force... but its nothing personal. Would that response work for murderers or rapists? Oh, I didn't know the person I assaulted -- I would have attacked anyone who was in my way or crossed my path -- you see, it was "nothing personal, so you have no right to be upset with me." Or more similar, what about the person who steals, say from a 7-11 or a bank? Could they respond with "nothing personal"?!! How pathetic they are... but thanks to Stephen Hicks for the link.

Ah, the Humanity!

Virginia Postrel (herself a living kidney donor) provides another fine post on kidney donations, and the desperate need for expansion beyond a purely "altruism-based" system to one that allows for market forces and payment for living donations.

Noting the inconsistency in the healthcare establishment she writes:

...affluent professionals can hire egg donors and surrogate mothers to undergo risky medical procedures for pay, [but neither] an insurance company nor the hospital nor the government can legally compensate a living donor... It's a travesty perpetuated in the name of 'justice' and 'dignity.'

She also writes:

Things could, however, be much worse than they are in the U.S. In Japan, it would have been illegal for me to give my kidney to Sally Satel, because we are not related. So Japanese kidney patients get people to pretend to be relatives, which is illegal, and money sometimes changes hands, which is also illegal. Sean Kinsell explains here. In a high-profile recent case, a couple was just convicted for paying an acquaintance to give the man a kidney, pretending to be the woman's sister. They received one-year prison terms, suspended for three years. "The couple's actions violated the spirit of the Organ Transplants Law, which represents humanity, volunteerism and fairness, and seriously eroded public trust in medical transplant procedures," said the judge. Ah, the humanity.

Ethical Relativism vs. Women's Rights

I read two things recently on the issue of the individual rights of women around the world. First, the November 27th issue of US News and World Report had a brief item in their "The World" section. Titled "A Limited Win for Women in Pakistan", here it is in full:

Despite strong opposition from Islamic religious parties, Pakistan's National Assembly adopted the much-anticipated women's rights legislation reforming rape laws, which previously made it all but impossible for a woman to successfully bring charges against her attacker. Now, judges will have the discretion to send a rape case for trial in secular court under criminal laws rather than in an Islamic court using the Hudood laws that require a rape victim to produce four male Muslim witnesses or potentially face adultery charges herself based on her own testimony.

The new law maintains consensual sex outside marriage as a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison, reduced from the old maximum punishment of death. A leader of the six-party religious alliance-which is threatening to create a political crisis by pulling its 53 members out of the 342-seat National Assembly-fretted that the legal changes will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex society."

This is good news, I guess... but the title is correct, as this is a very limited "win" for the individual rights of women in Pakistan. The rights of both men and women are still being violated on a massive scale though, since the new law "maintains consensual sex outside of marriage as a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison." And the notion that this new law, which eliminates the death sentence as punishment for having such sex, will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex society" -- that would be laughable if it weren't so sad and ridiculous.

The other item was the brief writeup titled The Condition of Women, on page 7 of the latest issue of The Independent, the newsletter of The Independent Institute. It summarizes the work of Michelle Fram Cohen's "The Conditions of Women in Developing and Developed Countries" (Fall 2006), which is 13 pages long and includes figures. Cohen explains how in the 19th and 20th centuries, the status of women improved the most in economically progressive areas dominated by Western culture. In developing areas dominated by non-Western culture, however, women remain more or less subjugated, and in some countries they are stripped of any rights. And here is a bit more from the summary:

Oppression can take several forms, including the denial of property rights, “honor” killings, dowry-related subjugation, and lack of legal protections. Often these injustices are widely accepted norms handed down from generation to generation.

Poverty and custom in developing countries drive extended families to live together under the same roof, making young couples subordinated to the traditional values of their parents and grandparents.

Unattached women, in particular, face stiff economic disadvantages. In some countries where subsistence farming is the main source of livelihood, customary law prevents women from owning land unless their fathers have no male heirs. If widowed, a wife loses access to her husband’s land, and must therefore spend even more hours each day fetching water.

Shockingly, “honor” killings, committed by relatives for “shame” brought on a family, claim the lives of thousands of women each year, mainly in predominantly Islamic countries. “In 2005, the Pakistani government rejected a pro-women bill that sought to strengthen the law against the practice of honor killing,” Cohen writes. Although Turkey has passed a law imposing life sentences on those convicted of honor killings, a survey shows that almost 40% of respondents supported the practice.

The overall picture of women in developing countries contrasts sharply with the growing educational and professional opportunities for women in developed countries. “Sweeping legal reforms have opened many doors for women in Western countries, but women have not always taken full advantage of these reforms,” Cohen writes. “As in developing countries, customary law may still prevail over the formal law. It is up to both men and women to challenge the traditional norms to bring about a genuine change in women’s condition.”

Indeed it is. But I'd like to make another point here, which is that far too often people, especially some on the political left, will excuse horrors around the world by resorting to ethical relativism. This is the notion that what is "right", or what is at least morally permissable, is entirely relative to a culture or a society, and that people from outsideof it cannot assess moral blame using their (equally relative) norms and pronouncements. This is most often stated indirectly, as an implicit charge against the West, the developed world, or even more specifically the United States, who are still portrayed as imperial powers, trying to oppress the rest of the world in various ways -- including through cultural or ethical bullying.

What this kind of view denies of course is that individuals -- qua individual persons -- have absolute rights, ones that are not relative to a society, a culture, or anything else. But individuals do have such ethical rights, have always had them, and will always have them -- based on their status as moral persons, and regardless of whether any particular government, culture, society, or legal system recognizes those rights or not.

Women have such individual rights -- qua individuals persons -- just as much and as fully as men do. This is true in the same way that brown-eyed people have them just as much blue-eyed people do, or blondes as much as brunettes as much as red-heads. People of each racial group, ethnic group, nationality, religious belief -- all individuals have individual rights. These are not rights based on group membership either, as moral rights are not collective-based, but are rather individual-based, and are hence identical for all individual persons, for all times.

As a thought experiment to see just how horrific the unequal treatment of women in Pakistan and elsewhere really is, just think how absurd it would be if a society or culture decided that any people (male or female) born each year between January and June would for all times have far fewer rights -- and would have all the injustices perpetrated on them as described by Cohen above -- as compared to those born between July and December. Assume that this splits the population roughly in half and you have the same split in numbers that we have between men and women in the world. Is there any more logic or good reason to limit the rights of women as there would be people born between January and June? Of course not! The fact that some religions or other cultural institutions "have always done it this way" is not one bit of reason to make it anything less than a horrific injustice.

So I urge you... if you ever find yourself saying or thinking something like "Well, that is just how that society or culture does things. We have no right to object, that is just their way."... remember this thought experiment and think carefully about the nature of individual rights.

Privatizing and Protecting Marriage

A few months ago the newsletter of the Independent Institute (simple called "The Independent") had an interesting blurb called "Privatizing and Protecting Marriage". Here it is in full:

The institution of marriage could better meet needs if couples had more options than taking or leaving the terms of marriage offered in the one-size-fits-all version provided currently by government, according to Doshisha University Law professor Colin Jones (“A Marriage Proposal: Privatize It”).

“Couples entering into marriage should be able to use a partnership agreement that is tailored to their own circumstances and aspirations, one that reflects the values and expectations that they themselves attach to marriage,” Jones writes. (An op-ed based on his article ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, January 22.)

Ending the government’s monopoly on marriage, Jones argues, would foster innovation in the design of marriage contracts, resulting in better legal and relationship counseling, better protection for children and spouses, and better marriages. Couples could select from a variety of marriage-document kits. They would also be free to form or join marital corporations— organizations, including churches, whose members share the same values about marriage—which might arise to cater to the needs of different kinds of couples.

This privatization of marriage, Jones further suggests, might also help defuse the controversy over same-sex marriage because opponents and proponents of same sex marriage would join separate marital corporations and thus would see their version of marriage protected. See “A Marriage Proposal: Privatize It”.

This is in line with my own views on the matter, which has come up for me whenever I've heard in the news all the controversy over "protecting marriage", the attempted constitutional ammendment, and so on. The one new thing here that I hadn't thought of is the idea of "marital corporations" as described above... an interesting idea.

I'm sure many religious conservatives would passionately disagree with most or all of the above. But I have yet to hear a good, rational argument from them on these matters. The one most commonly tossed out is that by allowing homosexuals to marry -- which they usually think would be wrong in and of itself -- you are starting us down the slippery slope to all kinds of insanity, a list they then immediately rattle off that usually includes at least polygamy, child abuse, and some kind of beastiality (a guy marrying a goat, or a woman marrying a frog that she thinks will turn into a prince or whatever).

Well, this is an obvious straw man argument against allowing homosexuals to marry. First, it doesn't deal directly with the rights issue for homosexuals at all. But second, the slippery slope makes no sense. Marrying a child or marry an animal would not be allowed, because children do are not eligible to have the full rights of adults that come from having full ethical personhood status -- and this is based on the rational faculty reaching a certain maturity level. On this basis, obviously animals would not be candidates to be wed to humans either. (I'll note that if intelligent, rational aliens were ever discovered on other planets, this criterion would permit a human adult to marry them, and that makes complete sense... why not?).

The point is that if two persons (as just briefly described) wish to marry, wish to commit to each other, and wish to have a particular joint legal and economic status as such in the eyes of the society in which they live... why shouldn't they be allowed to? Most today would agree that people should be "allowed" to marry other people from any economic class, race, ethnic group, and so on. It wasn't too long ago that this was not the case, but fortunately, most societies have gotten at least this far. But why not two homosexuals? And why not multiple men with one woman, or multiple women with one man (polygamy)? I see no rational reasons to disallow these -- that is, arguments based on the individual rights of persons (not on utilitarian grounds, and not to mention faith-based supernatural and mystical "arguments"). If you can think of any such arguments against homosexual marriage and polygamy -- that are based on the individual rights of adult persons -- I'd be interested to hear them.

Having said that, I'll note that I don't believe that married couples should be given tax benefits. This is a form of social engineering by the government. The point of marriage is mostly a private matter between the people getting married -- and a sign of commitment in the eyes of the society in which they live. It could (and perhaps should) also serve as a proxy for things like implicit permission for hospital visitation rights, default inheritance in the event of death, and so on. But marriage should not be a means to get tax benefits or other special treatment from the government (positive or negative).

Report and Database from FIRE

As a followup to my last posting, see also the impressive Report and Database provided by FIRE. Here is a Dec. 6 press release that describes these resources. Here is a snippet from the press release:

The report’s findings include:

• Public colleges and universities are disregarding their constitutional obligations. More than 73% of public universities surveyed maintain unconstitutional speech codes, despite numerous federal court decisions striking down similar or identical policies.
• Most private colleges and universities promise free speech, but usually do not deliver. Unlike public universities, private universities are not legally bound by the First Amendment. However, most of them explicitly promise free speech rights to their students and faculty. For example, Boston University promises “the right to teach and to learn in an atmosphere of unfettered free inquiry and exposition.” Unfortunately, it also prohibits speech that would be constitutionally protected in society at large, such as “annoying” electronic communications and expressions of opinion that do not “show respect for the aesthetic, social, moral, and religious feelings of others.”

Overall, the report reveals that more than 68% of the colleges and universities surveyed maintain policies that “both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech.” Overbroad and vague speech codes from the 2005-2006 academic year include:

• Macalester College bans “speech that makes use of inappropriate words or non-verbals.”
• Furman University bans any “offensive communication not in keeping with community standards.”
• At the University of Mississippi, “offensive language is not to be used” over the telephone.
• The University of North Carolina–Greensboro prohibits “disrespect for persons.”

I hope fire keeps up their good work! You can keep updated on their work through their RSS feeds... go to their homepage and scroll down a bit and see the RSS links on the right under "syndication".

Thought Reform at Michigan State University

I keep tabs on the work of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), and I encourage anyone interested in maintaining freedom of thought to do the same. This organization brings to light some very disturbing, rights-violating practices of administrators and policy-makers at campuses across the country.

Their most recent alarm was sounded over the "SAC" (Student Accountability in Community) program at Michigan State University. Read the entire FIRE press release on this (which includes links for more info), but here is a snippet:

“Michigan State’s SAC program is simply one of the most invasive attempts at reeducation that FIRE has ever seen, yet it has been allowed to exist at the university for years,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “As bad as it is to tell citizens in a free society what they can’t say, it is even worse to tell them what they must say. Michigan State’s program is an immoral and unconstitutional program of compelled speech, blatant thought reform, and pseudo-psychology.”

According to the program’s materials, SAC is an “early intervention” for students who use such “power-and-control tactics” as “male/white privilege” and “obfuscation,” which the university cryptically defines as “any action of obscuring, concealing, or changing people’s perceptions that result in your advantage and/or another’s disadvantage.” Students can be required to attend SAC if they demonstrate what a judicial administrator arbitrarily deems aggressive behavior, past examples of which have included slamming a door during an argument or playing a practical joke. Students can also be required to attend SAC for engaging in various types of constitutionally protected speech, including “insulting instructors” or “making sexist, homophobic, or racist remarks at a meeting.” When participation in SAC is required, “non-compliance typically results in a hold being placed on the student’s account,” an action that leaves the student unable to register for classes and thus effectively expelled from the university. Students are required to pay the cost of the SAC sessions.

Once in the program, students are instructed to answer a series of written questionnaires. In their answers, students must specifically describe how they are taking “full responsibility” for their offensive behavior and must do so using language that the director of the session deems acceptable. Most students will be asked to fill out this questionnaire multiple times, slowly inching closer to what administrators deem to be “correct” responses.

Wow... Orwellian to say the least.

Insight on Darfur

Insight on the situation in Darfur, Sudan, comes from Anne Applebaum at Slate (thanks to Stephen Hicks for the link). In particular, consider these paragraphs:

I can offer no scientific explanation for why the tragedy of Darfur conjures up the specter of history's judgment and why other tragedies do not. But the answer must lie in the fact that this conflict has so few strategic or geopolitical implications. Because it seems to be in no one's "interest" do so so, a call for a U.N. intervention in Darfur surely feels—at least to Americans and Europeans who haven't followed China's involvement in Sudan's oil industry—like an act of real charity and not more evidence of the West pursuing its interests.

Equally important is the fact that Sudan plays no real role in Western domestic politics. Any discussion of North Korea will still evoke the Cold War, any conversation about Iran must touch on radical Islam. By contrast, when most of us look at Sudan, all we see is what Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, last weekend called "acts of inexplicable terror." Taking a stand against genocide in Sudan does not require anyone to take a parallel stand on communism, the war on terror, or the war in Iraq. It does not imply that you are left wing, right wing, pro- or anti-Bush. Once the United Nations is there, this may change: The U.S. intervention in Somalia immediately politicized what had also appeared to be an apolitical conflict. But at the moment, it is still possible to think of Darfur as an appropriate target for neutral humanitarianism.

None of this, I should emphasize, is meant to disparage the work of the extraordinary Darfur coalition, which has pushed an obscure and terrible war into the center of the international spotlight. Nor do I mean to deny that "history will judge us," for surely it will. But when future generations look back on this era, they will judge us not only for how we responded to the most primitive and the most apolitical of horrors. They will also judge us by the consistency with which Western and international institutions battled sophisticated totalitarianism in all its forms: That is, they will judge us by the United Nations' application of its own declarations on human rights, by America's ability to live up to the rhetoric of its leaders, by Europe's willingness to stand behind its stated values. The creation of an international coalition to end genocide is a stunning achievement, but its goals are still not deep or broad enough.

Remembering Stalin's Mass Murders

Mara D. Bellaby's brief AP article was picked up in my local Rochester paper. She describes a recent gathering in Kiev, Ukraine to mourn the 10 million Ukrainians "killed by a famine orchestrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin" in 1932-33. As she describes it: "Stalin provoked the famine to coerce peasants into giving up their private farms and joining agriculture collectives being formed across the Soviet Union. Villages were ordered to provide the state with set amounts of grain, but the demands typically exceeded crop yields. As village after village failed to meet their quotas, officials seized all food and residents were barred from leaving -- condemning them to starve. Farmers in Ukraine, which was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, fiercely resisted and bore the brunt of the human-caused disaster."

It is bad enough when, centuries ago, bad weather caused famine and starvation. Or today, in poor countries, when bad weather in conjunction with poor government policies, corruption, and/or cultural/societal mistakes lead to famine and starvation. But when it is entirely orchestrated as it was by Stalin and his regime... the evil of that is barely fathomable.

There is debate in the Ukraine about whether to call this horrible part of their history "genocide" or not. Some there are siding with Russian leaders who don't want to "politicize" it, saying that it should instead be termed "a tragedy". But calling it merely a "tragedy" would -- I think intentionally by some -- obscure moral responsibility (by Stalin and those in his regime) for what occurred.

One dictionary definition of tragedy -- "a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair, a disaster" -- is certainly accurate, but doesn't imply anything about whether it is a natural disaster (and hence not open to moral evaluation) or a man-made disaster (and hence open to moral evaluation).

Another definition of tragedy identifies the ancient Greek genre of play: "a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction." So again, this sense of the word (while obviously used metaphorically in this case, since the slaughter was all to real and not merely a play) would obscure moral responsiblility because it leaves open that Stalin simply had a character flaw, or that the 10 million Ukranian dead was just fate, or caused by a complex societal conflict, and not something that can be blamed on the choices of Stalin and those in his regime.

That said, I'm not sure that "genocide" really applies either. The article notes that Stalin didn't specifically target Ukranians, and that numerous Russians and Kazakhs were also affected.

But the description that clearly does apply is "murder", in fact, "mass murder".

I'll note further that I don't see what is gained by classifying a mass murder as genocide or not. This is often politically motivated, and it usually seems to at least implicitly give merit to some form of collectivism -- as though membership in a group of some kind or other (race, religion, ethnicity, etc.), and being targeted because of that group membership, is somehow worse than simply being killed as individuals. In reality of course, only individuals exist and all forms of collectivism and collectivist thinking are, in the end, damaging and often deadly. Regardless of the intentions of the muderer, the act of murder is the murder of an individual person -- not the murder of a unit of some sort of collective entity. Individuals are alive and have the right to live, collective entities of this sort don't "live" and have no rights as such in this context.

So I say, lets just call it what it was -- what its essence was -- mass murder of individuals by evil people who had evil ideas.

And finally, while reading this article I couldn't help but think of the various people in the US in the 20th century, who argued (including while the mass murder was occuring) that communism, including the Soviet Union in particular, was the morally superior system to capitalism. From Hollywood to Academia to Politicians, that sentiment was widespread and argued for time and again. How horrible!

10-person Domino Donation at Johns Hopkins

I heard about this recently, and then was pleased to see Virginia Postrel commenting on the amazing 10-person "domino donation" performed at Johns Hopkins. This is amazing for many reasons. It is great to see this occur, to see five people's lives get saved in the process, and so on. But it is also amazing, because it amounts to a superb indictment -- a reductio ad absurdem -- of the current policies and laws that make it illegal for donors (or their families) to benefit financially from donating a kidney (either while living or upon death). If we had a regulated market for kidney donation, then the long and growing -- and utterly inhumane -- waiting list for kidney transplants would rapidly shrink, and without the need for 4, 6, or 10-person groupings of donors and recipients just in order to save lives and reduce suffering. As great as the 10-person donation story is, it shouldn't have been necessary!

Another great post on this topic from Virginia followed that one. She ends with this nice paragraph:

Most kidney patients--and the friends and relatives from whom they're likely to get organs--are of relatively modest means. Prohibiting organ sales doesn't "help the poor." It hurts poor kidney patients, by keeping them on dialysis and shortening their lives. It hurts poor relatives of kidney patients, by forcing them to choose between saving their loved ones and taking financial and health hits. It hurts poor, healthy would-be donors by depriving them of economic opportunity. If you don't want poor people to sell their kidneys, give donors with big income tax breaks or college-loan forgiveness, so that only the affluent will get the money. Let Ivy League grads sell their kidneys instead of their eggs. But don't just prohibit compensation.

Market for Kidneys... Guess Where?

I was both delighted and a bit surprised to read two items in the latest issue of The Economist (the Nov. 18-24 issue). The editorial on pg 15 is titled Psst, wanna buy a kidney? is available online.

As I've blogged before, the USA and the world desperately need to inject market forces -- including compensation for living donors -- to resolve the long list of people suffering and dying while waiting for a kidney transplant. The powers that be -- the federal government and the major Kidney organizations -- are against this, but their logic and ethics are horribly flawed.

Both of these items in the Economist are about a country that does have a kidney market... to an extent. And guess where that is? Yes, Iran of all places. So while there are few issues where I can say this, in this case I must say "Congratulations to Iran" for having something approaching a sensible, humane policy on the issue of kidney donations.

Here are a few interesting bits from the editorial and the article:

• Because people are living longer, the lines for people waiting for a kideny are lengthening fast -- 7% a year in America, where 4,039 people died waiting last year alone. The average waiting time in the US is now five years!
• In Iran, an officially approved patients' organization oversees transactions which pay $2,000 to $4,000 to the donor. The result is that the waiting list there has been eliminated.
• Having a kidney removed is as safe as commmon elective surgeries and even beauty treatments (it is no more dangerous than liposuction, for example). America already lets people buy babies from surrogate mothers, and the risk of dying from renting out your womb is six times higher than from selling a kidney.
• By keeping compensation for kidney donation (living or dead) illegal, there is no where near enough supply -- hence the long and growing waiting list. In addition, we see black markets with all the ills that often arise from them.

A Minimum Wage Story

Lin Zinser offers a great story that speaks against the raising of (or even existence of) minimum wage laws. How would anyone in the scenario given be better off if they had followed the minimum wage laws?

But she also raises an interesting point regarding interns. People can work for free, but they can't work for $5 an hour in the US. Volunteers are one thing: they work for free out of charity or for some other reason. But interns are willing to work for nothing to earn skills and experience that will make them hireable in the future. So they are receiving value in exchange for their labor, just not in the form of money. But add to that value they are receiving, by paying them $5 an hour, and all of a sudden the business owner becomes a criminal who is breaking the minimum wage laws. Or fail to provide them benefits required by law, and the same thing is true: even though both parties are freely contracting to mutual benefit, you are breaking the law.

Sounds Good, But How About Really Helping?

The October 16, 2006 issue of US News and World Report had an interesting article titled "Mix, Match, and Switch". It is about "kidney exchanges" -- a system where someone who needs a kidney and has a friend or relative willing to donate -- but who is not a blood/tissue match -- are paired up with another two people in the same situation, such that the two donors will match for the two people in need.

Because this can increase the number of kidney's available by getting more people to be live donors, it seems like a really good idea. The article notes that kidneys from live donors are nearly twice as good as those from cadavers (based on acceptance after five years). And there are so many people in need... some 67,962 on just the United Network for Organ Sharing list.

But so far this approach has been quite limited, with only 109 such swaps occuring since the first one in 2000. Why one might ask? Because to do this efficiently and on a grand scale you would need a national database of people in need of donations -- with their blood and tissue types -- and the paired individual they have located and their blood/tissue type, so that a search could be done to match the foursome together. But because an exchange of kidneys like this is considered an exchange of something valuable (duh! a working kidney)... you guessed it... it is against the law. Or at least it is very questionable, according to the ridiculous 1984 National Organ Transplant Act. This ban says that exchanging organs for "valuable consideration" is a criminal act.

As the article notes, earlier this year Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan introduced a bill to eliminate the legal murkiness, by simply adding a line to it that makes explicit that it doesn't ban paired donations.

So adding that to the 1984 ban sounds good to me... at least at first. If it means a national database could be created to match pair-exchange foursomes, that would ease a lot of suffering and save lives. But I just hope that doing so wouldn't prolong any further the current kidney donation regime that bans "valuable consideration" (i.e., payment) being given to live donors. Because even if we magically had tomorrow a robust national database with data for pair-exchanges, you still need to find willing donors. Giving people financial incentive to donate a kidney -- either while alive, or at death (their families get the payment) -- is what would really open the floodgates and do the most good. Think of how much suffering could be stopped and how many lives could be saved if this ban were repealed!! And don't just think about when you are the one needing the kidney... think about it now!

If done correctly, rights could be well protected (such as the rights of the poor or anyone else that might be 'taken advantage of'), as opposed to the current ban which denies rights to everyone involved -- potential donors and those in need of the organs -- to make voluntary, freely-negotiated value-exchanges.

See also my blog posts earlier this year on the need for a market for organs here, then here, then here, then here.

What Is and What Should Never Be

I have recently written (here and here) about the United Nations and why I think it is not just problematic at present, but flawed at its core, and that the US should immediately announce our intention to leave the world body by a set date (say, six months from now). But of course, my primary criticism of the UN -- that it sanctions countries 'led' by criminals (dictators and other statists who deny, on principle and by their very existence, individual rights on a massive scale) -- also applies to some actions and policies of the US (and other countries) in our direct dealings with such criminal leaders.

The latest example I've seen is reported in the Sept. 25 issue of US News and World Report, in the article "Dictator and Diplomat". It shows a grotesque picture of Sec. of State Rice shaking hands with Equatorial Guinea (see Wikipedia entry on EG) "President" Teodoro Obiang Nguema. The sub-headline reads: "Why is this man smiling? Here's a hint: It has something to do with oil."

So of course this is just another example of the US playing friendly with oppressive regimes because of our interest in the oil they have. Such supposed "pragmatism" is standard practice for the US, for many, many decades, especially it seems in dealings with third-world countries.

I won't make the same arguments here that have been made many times before... that the US shouldn't deal with such regimes, even given their value as oil providers (including the more difficult cases -- due to the size of the oil reserves in question -- such as Saudi Arabia). I only mention this case because again, if the US were to make a radical break from its past policies, and announce a completely new set of policies -- and hence its plans to leave the flawed United Nations -- I can't help but wonder what kind of changes such an earthquake would cause in the various dictatorships of the world. It would vary from country to country, but I wonder if the US did this, and if a few other major countries came along with us in doing so (say Britain, Australia, et al.) -- would some of the smaller thug states not look at the new reality and decide to radically reform? It is not at all easy to predict, and I'm sure most people would think I'm being naive and entirely too optimistic, but I wonder about this. I doubt Saudi Arabia or various other large countries would change their ways very quickly, but a puny country like Equatorial Guinea?

Afterall, the US is currently the only military and economic super-power in the world. Couldn't we use that position to change the world for the better by setting a new path, much as our founders did when they created the country? This would be for both our own benefit and for the benefit of all those whose individual rights are being violated on such a massive scale.

Cochlear Implants = Genocide ?

I blogged a month ago about parents deliberately choosing to have deaf children.

Now I'm reading Marc Fisher's column in the Washington Post, about the student protests at Gallaudet University over incoming president Jane Fernandes, who it seems they don't think is "deaf enough" to be president of their university -- at least, in terms of how and to what degree she supports radical deaf culture. I say radical, because of this bizarre paragraph:

Fernandes tells of a friend on the faculty who has now broken with her -- "a former friend, maybe" -- who refers to the advent of cochlear implants, electronic devices that give the deaf a sense of sound, as a "genocide."

This is ridiculous, on many levels. Genocide is a very serious matter. To claim that cochlear implants represent "genocide" against deaf people is to invert a virtuous desire and action -- the desire to have the sense of hearing, with a vicious one -- generally considered to be the killing of people within a group because they are members of that group (ethnic, racial, religious, etc.).

To those who make such wild claims, I'd love to ask the following the thought experiment. What if all deaf people could be given cochlear implants -- or even better technological or medical surgeries -- that would give them full hearing. And what if medical science could determine how to fix deafness in the womb or genetically, so that no child ever need be born deaf again. And even all cases of accidental hearing loss (e.g., from loud music, old age, etc.) could somehow be corrected as well, such that any future deafness would only be temporary. That is, imagine a world where we could essentially banish deafness forever. I ask the defenders of deaf culture (as apparently an intrinsic good that must be defended at all costs) -- those who claim that cochlear implants amount to 'genocide' -- what would they say to such a seemingly wonderful turn of events? Would they fight it to retain "deafness" in the world? And if so, why?

Walter Williams on Foreign Trade

Walter Williams makes many good points about foreign trade and the US trade deficit, and along the way rightly criticizes protectionists like Pat Buchanan. And I really liked the end of this column:

Buchanan, like so many others, points to the government subsidies and tariff protections given to businesses in other countries, a practice from which we can’t plead complete innocence. Protectionists call for “free trade but fair trade.” They call for a “level playing field.”

In effect, they’re saying that if other governments rip off their citizens with business subsidies and import duties, forcing them to pay higher prices, our government should retaliate by using the same tools to rip off its citizens.

The next time I see Pat, I might ask him what he would do if we both were at sea in a rowboat and I shot a hole in my end of the boat. Would he retaliate by shooting a hole in his end?

Tibor on Common Good, Government, and Respect

Philosopher Tibor Machan has recently posted several brief items worth reading:

• Society isn't Government - critical of conservatives (e.g., David Brooks of the NYT, who regularly conflate society and government.
• Respect our Enemies - Why? - critical of comments from physicist Freeman Dyson who defended the somewhat cliche notion that we can't understand our enemies unless we "respect" them as human beings.
• The Common Good - critical of many who continue to misunderstand and misuse the usually vague, and almost never correctly defined, notion of "the Common Good".

From this third one I'll quote for you the following two paragraphs:

In most countries throughout human history the idea was promoted that there is a rich common good, a whole slew of objectives that we all must pursue. In other words, the common good was really the collective goods of all the people, as if they really did share goods galore that they needed to promote. The one size fits all mentality was encouraged by rulers, monarchs, tsars, and the rest who needed to hoodwink us into thinking that their goals are really our goals and we cannot really, individually, have goals of our own. That was the common good—the leaders’ good peddled for the rest as their good, too.

The American Founders, guided by the classical liberal social-political philosophies of John Locke and Co., saw through this. They realized that in a big country, the millions of inhabitants, citizens, share but very few goods. (Of course, small associations—churches, clubs, corporations, professional groups and so forth—can have some common objectives all right. It is only that no such common good or objective exists for the millions of us!) And the most important—probably, in fact, only—common good we share is the protection of our individual rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It’s the one good that’s indeed good for us all, that we have in common.

George Bush: End the Genocide Now

I have recently seen several commercials demanding that George Bush (and by extension, the US) "End the Genocide... NOW", referring of course to the horrific situation in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

I'll first note that the ads imply that the genocide in Sudan is somehow George Bush's fault -- as though he is responsible, instead of or at least in addition to, the actual murderers in that country. This faulty reasoning relies on flawed premises -- that are quite common -- in which lack of action is somehow presented as a form of causation. Sometimes this is explicit (as it is in some philosophical literature), but other times it is more nuanced, where the argument is couched in causation terms, but really what is being argued is that the lack of an action equates to moral responsibility for the events that occur. No doubt, there are some very limited circumstances where this can occur, e.g., a lifeguard at a pool who does nothing as a child drowns in front of them. But such cases are quite limited and there is always a strict context where the expectation and responsibility to take a positive action is what allows moral blame to be given when the person does not. But I don't see such a context in this case with Sudan: It can't be expected that the US will somehow prevent all murderous regimes from killing hundreds of thousands of their own people. Not when leftists around the world whine over US "imperialism" and complain whenever the US tries to impose itself, even in the slightest way, in the affairs of other, so-called "sovereign" nations (so-called because countries ruled by dictators and other thugs are not actually deserving of such a respectful designation).

But even more interesting to me about these ads is the explicit argument (request... demand!) they give. They don't demand that George Bush (the US) directly do something to solve the Sudan problem and stop the killing and raping. For example, it doesn't suggest that the US should invade the Sudan, temporarily take over that country, and directly fix the situation. That would work, though it would cost some US lives and would have other problems -- and I'm not here advocating for that.

Rather, I note that these commercials are actually demanding that George Bush step up and go to the United Nations, and get that organization to do something to fix the situation. So what is curious about this? Well, why get upset with Bush on this score? Why not instead expect the United Nations to do this on its own? Why does the UN only seem to do things of this kind when the US presses them to take actions? That is the assumption of these commercials! How weak and inefficacious can this world body be? It baffles the mind. All the more reason to think that the US should abandon the UN (as I argued here, and again a bit here).

Civil Liberties vs. Fundamental Rights

Thanks goes to Zach Oakes for the link to this article by Felipe Sediles in the April issue of The Undercurrent. There are a couple of good points made in the article, including the emphasis on the need for foreign policy to deal with terrorism instead of relying on police actions domestically. But the best point is the articulation of the distinction between civil liberties and fundamental rights.

Tibor Machan on the Situation in Hungary

One of my favorite contemporary philosophers, Tibor Machan, was smuggled out of Hungary in 1956 at the age of 14. I was hoping he would comment on the current crisis in that country, and he did so recently in this column posted at the Atlasphere. Good stuff.

Interesting Take on Global Warming Lawsuit

Greg Perkins over at Noodlefood offers up two interesting responses to the recent announcement of a lawsuit over global warming by California against six of the worlds largest car makers. He notes that there are many others that could be sued... why arbitrarily choose the car makers? What about the car owners, the car drivers, the car dealers, gas stations, or the oil companies? He also raises the possibility that this lawsuit might end up being a good thing, by bringing to light the shoddy science and arguments on the Global Warming side, much as the Dover, Pennsylvania "Intelligent Design" case did. We'll see...

Deliberately Choosing to have Deaf Children

Thanks to GeekPress for the link to a Slate piece about this report showing some fertility clinics have helped couples deliberately select defective embryos (e.g., those that will be deaf). I agree that this is very disturbing to say the least. No mention of parents deliberately choosing embryos that will develop to be blind, lacking a particular limb, having asthma, or having celiac disease or various food or other allergies. I have no idea what types of things can or cannot be tested for and selected for or against, so maybe some of those aren't possible (or at least not yet).

The argument that the parents want the child to be a part of the deaf culture is ridiculous: it is a rationalization of the worst kind. Kids can, and if born to deaf parents, likely will learn sign language and be a part of that community anyway. There is no good reason to cripple them by taking away one of their five senses. Let them hear music. Let them hear speech. Let them hear. To actively select for genes that will produce a deaf child is cruel and evil.

Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia Say No to China

Thanks much to this post from Josh Zader at the Atlasphere regarding the news (reported here in the Guardian) that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries. Unlike Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and other big companies, Jimmy has a spine and is acting on principle. The excerpt by Josh quotes Jimmy making a great point too: while China wants to keep entries on conflicts with the government and on topics such as Falun Gong out of their citizens' reach, they also end up keeping Chinese citizens from sharing their culture, ideas, influence, and so on (he uses the example of a small village that has a wonderful local tradition that won't be able to share this through Wikipedia).

I'm very happy to hear of Jimmy's position on this. And he is going to meet with senior Chinese officials to try and get them to reverse their position and unblock Wikipedia from the Chinese people. Good luck Jimmy... I hope you can pull it off!

FIRE's Speech Code of the Month

The September "winner" of FIRE's Speech Code of the Month is: Drexel University. In summary: jokes aren't allowed.

Cuba's Present and Future

There was a nice short article about conditions in Cuba in the August 14 issue of BusinessWeek: "Cuba: Visit to an Island Frozen in Time". I have no idea what will happen in Cuba when Castro passes away, but the evidence provided here makes it clear that it won't be easy for the people of Cuba to improve their condition. The second to last paragraph in this article I think mistakenly praises the "social services" provided by the Castro regime, something a few of the commenters on the page (especially "Bianca" and "Amused") set right.

Presidents and "Presidents"

In his brief posting Labeling Dictators, David Boaz notes the shameful way that dictators are often referred to in the media. The example he gives is noting that while Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay is remembered as a "military strongman", Fidel Castro is regularly referred to by his title of "President". Since I highly doubt that "Military Strongman" was Stroessner's official government title... one must wonder about this inconsistency. (Checking at Wikipedia... Stroessner's title was "President" as well.)

I've always noticed this, and it ticks me off. People like Castro, Saddam Hussein, and many others should not be referred to as "President". This does damage to the concept: it fuzzies the mind, blurs to gray what are black and white distinctions, and makes it easy to talk of dictators as though they are legitimate leaders who deserve a place at the negotiating table and a spot in international organizations and the like. They do not. The important distinction is between leaders who are elected by free and fair elections (even with relatively minor disputes in those elections arising from time to time)... and those who are in power through force -- whether they came to power through force, or in some cases were elected but then turned to force to retain their power. Terms like "President" and "Prime Minister" should be used for the former, not the latter. To allow the Castros and Husseins to use those terms is to give them a legitimacy they don't deserve.

And its not like the English language lacks a variety of terms that could be used instead. What dictators should be called, aside from "dictator", could include: military strongman, criminal, thug, tyrant, totalitarian, and many others. Where appropriate you could use "king/queen", because that usually provides additional information -- that the ruler is in power for hereditary reasons, which these days I hope has a negative conotation.

And of course there is always the option to simply refer to dictators as "leader" or "ruler" of their country. Ruler has a bit of a negative tinge to it, while Leader might be slightly positive sounding, but either are pretty neutral in my view. But the important point is that they don't conflate dictators with legitimately elected/chosen heads of state.

The Dogs Aren't the Problem

And while I'm at it, another nice piece of work by Mr. Balko is this blog entry, "When Dogs are Criminalized, Only Criminals will own Dogs". Sad story for a lot of dogs that will be killed off, it seems more because of irresponsible owners who sometimes train them to be dangerous and government leaders who are clueless about what to do about it, than because of any inherent danger in the so-called "breed". (For more info on this type of dog, see the Wikipedia entry, which includes a discussion of common myths.)

Sowell on Minimum Wage Decision in Chicago

I recently blogged on this, here and here. Thomas Sowell had some good additional points in his column Minimum Wages in Chicago: A Glimmer of Hope. Here are some highlights that I hadn't read before (or mentioned in my other posts):

• Not only did Mayor Richard M. Daley denounce the minimum wage hike to $10 (for just big box retailers), but did so did both Chicago newspapers. Plus: "The crowning touch came when Andrew Young, former civil rights leader and former mayor of Atlanta, went to Chicago to criticize local black leaders who supported this bill."
  
• "A survey has shown that 85 percent of the economists in Canada and 90 percent of the economists in the United States say that minimum wage laws reduce employment." (I ask... what kind of theories are the other 10% working from?)
  
• And he ends nicely with: "Most studies show unemployment resulting from minimum wages. But a few studies that reach different conclusions are hailed as having “refuted” the “myth” that minimum wages cause unemployment. Some of these latter studies involve surveying employers before and after a minimum wage increase. But you can only survey employers who are still in business. By surveying people who played Russian roulette and are still around, you could “refute” the “myth” that Russian roulette is dangerous. Minimum wage laws play Russian roulette with people who need jobs and the work experience that will enable them to rise to higher pay levels. There is now a glimmer of hope that more people are beginning to understand this, despite political demagoguery."

New Law: Used Cars must be priced at 15K or more

Don Luskin, a contributing writer at SmartMoney.com and a Chief Investment Officer for an economic consulting firm, has written a great column in which he proposes a new law, one that sets a requirement minimum price of $15,000 for used cars. The idea is that this would help people -- especially poor people -- who have used cars that aren't worth very much because they would be guaranteed of getting at least 15K when they sell them. The obvious problems with this -- problems largely for the very same people (those likely to want to sell or buy low-value used cars) -- are twofold: if your used car isn't worth near 15K, then you'll have a hard time selling it now, and further, people in the market to buy a used car but who can only afford to pay $3,000, or $8,000, or $12,000, won't be able to get a car at all now.

The point is that the exact same logic is involved in the minimum wage laws. In cases where the job in question isn't worth the new legal minimum, the business will not hire people or will let people go who were previously working for the lower amount (an amount that was at or below the value their work provided the business). To make this clear, Luskin discusses the case of France:

"Consider what happened in France, where there is a minimum wage roughly twice that mandated in the United States. Go to a grocery store or a toy store there. There are hardly any clerks to help you. No baggers to pack up your stuff when you check out. Merchants simply can't afford to pay the too-high minimum wage for this kind of work.

So two things happen. First, you waste your own valuable time having to find what you want without help and bagging your own orders. Second, low-skilled workers who would normally be clerking and bagging — if the high minimum wage hadn't eliminated those jobs — are simply unemployed. The minimum wage in France may be double that of the U.S., but so is the French unemployment rate.

And that high unemployment rate is persistent, too. Without low-wage entry-level jobs, unskilled French workers — especially youths and minorities — have no way to acquire the skills necessary to work their way up to higher-paying jobs."

Becker and Posner on the Chicago City Council

A few days ago I blogged (see "Why only $10 an hour? Why not more?" on the Chicago City Council's ordinance to raise the forced minimum wage -- only for large retailers -- to $10 an hour. The always interesting Becker and Posner have written on this subject, Becker here, Posner here, and then Becker again here. Here are a few points that Becker makes:

• "Large retailers that continue to operate in Chicago will reduce their use of low skilled workers by replacing some of them by more skilled employees, and by machinery and other capital."
• "Retailers will also try to avoid being covered by the ordinance by reducing their space to just below 90,000 square feet."
• "In a city like Chicago the burden from these responses to the ordinance will fall disproportionately on African Americans and Latinos since fewer jobs will be available to workers in the city with less education and lower skills."
• "In addition, prices in Chicago of items sold relatively cheaply by stores like Wal-Mart and Target will rise because fewer of these stores will open in the city. The mega stores that remain will raise their prices because their costs will go up. Since city customers of these stores are mainly families with modest incomes who seek low prices rather than elaborate service, they more than the affluent classes will be hurt by the rise in prices and reduced availability of big box outlets."
• "This ordinance might raise serious Federal constitutional issues because of its discriminatory treatment of large retailers. Since to my knowledge the City Council has not offered any plausible reason for basing the ordinance on square footage of floor space, it is likely to be considered a violation of equal protection of the laws."

Why only $10 an hour? Why not more?

The Chicago City Council approved an ordinance to force so-called "big-box" retailers (like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target, K-Mart, Sears, Toys R' Us, and many others) to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour, plus another $3 per hour worth of benefits. This is a so-called "living wage." See the news reports from Washington Post and NY Times (and just about everywhere else).

My question is: why only $10 (plus $3)? Why not $10.50? Or $12? or why not $14.63 per hour, plus $5 in health benefits per hour, plus 10% company match on a 401K plan, plus cheap life insurance, plus free lunches twice a week, plus a minimum of 6 weeks paid vacation, plus three free wishes for each employee? Why just $10?

I mean, the city council aldermen obviously have knowledge that the big-box retailers will hire just as many people no matter what they are forced to pay them as minimum wages and benefits. Clearly there will be no impact on employment levels or development of new stores in the city, nor any negative economic externalities of any kind, so why not go higher?

Err... wait. Just kidding.

This is wrong on so many levels... But on the most fundamental level, minimum wage laws as such are a gross rights violation of individual rights. Employers own their businesses. Period. They can offer to hire you or not, and the two parties get to negotiate wages. This is the all-important trader principle found in a free-market economy -- and it is what is so very lacking in centralized, statist economies like those found in ubiquitously floundering and failing socialist countries.

Employees do not have a right to a job, hence they do not have a right to a job with particular perks attached, nor a conditional right that if hired, then you are guaranteed to get certain wages and perks. We simply don't have such rights. Governments passing ordinances as if we do is a misuse of government force and violates our rights of liberty and property.

All I can say is, good luck Chicago! In addition to the rights violations, I fear for the poor in your city, who as a whole, will be hurt by such legislation.

UPDATE: Will Wilkinson has also blogged on this, and it is worth reading. He rightly describes the ordinance as one that would "would forbid Chicagoans from legally entering into agreements to work for less than $10 an hour and $3 in benefits—even if they want to—with retailers with $1 billion in annual sales and stores of at least 90,000 square feet." He also describes some study data that is relevant to the issue.

Blogs Banned in India

In the wake of the recent bombings in India, Basia for the blogpost on this)

Zimbabwe: Shadows and Lies (on PBS)

I watched the Frontline World special last night on PBS, Zimbabwe: Shadows and Lies. The first 30 minutes or so was about Zimbabwe, and the horrible condition it is in, largely because of its dictator Robert Mugabe. The brief description of the program from their website is: "Frontline/World goes undercover in Zimbabwe to reveal what has happened to a country once regarded as a beacon of democracy and prosperity in Africa. Posing as tourists, reporter Alexis Bloom and producer Cassandra Herrman find a population struggling with hunger and poverty, and living in fear of a government that has become a brutal dictatorship."

This program is well worth watching. If it plays again, I highly recommend it... and apparently it will be available as a video online after July 5th. I figured it would be good, so I took notes while watching. Some amazing highlights include:

• Robert Mugabe has been in power since 1980. At first a hero of the fight for independence, he is now a ruthless dictator.
• Daily newspapers have been taken over by the government.
• All foreign journalists have been banned. The producers of this program had to pretend to be tourists at Victoria Falls to get into the country, and had to carefully film from behind their car's tinted windows so as to not be arrested.
• Jail cells that are meant for 6 people are sometimes used to hold 30-35 people.
• People (millions) leave for South Africa and elsewhere, but are often sent back. Desperate not to return and/or be caught by Zimbabwe soldiers/police, many will risk their lives to jump off the trains that are taking them back. To keep this from happening armed guards are on the trains and watch the cramped passengers being taken back to Zimbabwe.
• Inflation recently topped 1000%. It takes stacks of money to buy the basic necessities.
• Dictator Robert Mugabe lives in a huge home, with 25 bedrooms, marble from Italy, etc.
• Other leaders in the government live in grand homes, behind locked gates.
• Meanwhile, the Mugabe plan officially called "Clean out the Filth" led to the demolishing of thousands of homes and businesses, leaving nearly a million of the poor homeless (who were not homeless previously). The plan was to include new homes for them -- but it seems few if any of these have been built.
• Several years ago, members of the ruling government, were given land expropriated at gunpoint from the white farmers (some were killed, some fled the country). Since then, they have farmed the land so inefficiently that while Zimbabwe once was a net exporter of food, the country now can't feed its own people and there is likely to be mass starvation.
• The current life expectancy for men is 37, for women 34.
• About 1/3 of the country has fled in recent years, many to South Africa.
• People wait along the roads for weeks in lines at gas stations. There are lines of cars and trucks, grounded along the side of the road, and people live in their vehicles, hoping that gas will arrive at the station. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It wasn't clear where they would then go in their vehicles if they ever did get gas.
• People scavage in rotting garbage piles, alongside various kinds of animals, looking for food.
• People, mostly political adversaries of Mugabe, are tortured to confess to crimes they didn't commit.

And the most amazing highlight from the program:

• Mugabe's Zanu PF organization/party actually ran a TV commercial that first showed a car crashing (kind of like a slow motion crash test collision), with a narrator saying something like "This is one way to die. But there are others." And then the words come on the screen: "Vote Zanu PF and Live"

The producers of this program made it clear that this was not just a claim that voting for the opposition would be a bad thing and that voting for Zanu PF would lead to flourishing... it was meant as an explicit threat on the lives of the voters -- vote for us or we might kill you.

For general information about this poor country, see the Zimbabwe entry at Wikipedia. Some of the related entries also provide good info, most notably the entry on Land Reform in Zimbabwe.

See also this two-page article (available online) from the June 12, 2006 issue of US News and World Report: When Prices Soar and Hopes Plunge: In Zimbabwe, a disaster of one man's making.

I read this article a few weeks ago and was impressed enough by it that it went in my pile of topics to blog about someday soon. But the program last night was just astonishing.

Kelo's Recent Birthday

Because of some recent news items, and because it is the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Courts already infamous Kelo decision, I have been reading a lot of items on Eminent Domain lately. Here is a run-down of several of the more worthwhile ones.

On June 8th Tim Sandefur wrote a brief piece for Cato, The Pain of Eminent Domain. A few highlights:

• Of the 16 states that have acted since Kelo was decided, only six -- South Dakota, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Florida -- have imposed meaningful restraints on government power. Other states have either done nothing or have enacted laws so riddled with loopholes that they allow government to seize whatever property they consider "blighted."
• For example, in Alabama where Gov. Bob Riley declared his state the leader of the post-Kelo "property rights revolt", the new law there prohibits government from taking property merely for economic development, but that restriction does not apply to property that is declared 'blighted'. Blight is defined as "buildings ... which, by reason of dilapidation, obsolescence, overcrowding, faulty arrangement or design, lack of ventilation, light and sanitary facilities, excessive land coverage, deleterious land use or obsolete layout, or any combination of these or other factors, are detrimental to the safety, health, morals or welfare of the community." Under such vague standards, virtually any neighborhood can be declared a blight, and any home or business located there can be seized and given to developers.
• Government routinely causes "blight." By subsidizing idleness, failing to protect property rights and stifling job creation through burdensome regulations and taxation, government often chokes economic growth. And its anti-growth policies sometimes make it prohibitively expensive to construct new housing anywhere but on land already owned by someone else. There's something amiss when developers find it easier to cannibalize existing owners than to build new homes or shops on vacant land.

Also on June 8th, John Charles wrote a short piece for Capitalism Magazine, Eminent Domain is Never the Solution. In it he notes a current case in Portland, Oregon, where Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard wants the government to use its power of eminent domain to take property from one party and give it to another so they can build an upscale supermarket. He then notes an alternative to Eminent Domain:

In fact, there are other ways to improve neighborhoods and increase property values. Throughout the 20th century, St. Louis revitalized some of its worst neighborhoods by transferring control of streets to local homeowners. In 1974 the residents of one deteriorating neighborhood formed a residential association and assumed management responsibility for the primary boulevard. They raised $40,000 to erect a gate that partially closed the street, giving owners more control. A block watch was started, crime decreased, and the association borrowed funds to improve the street and housing. The result was that property values doubled.

Then on June 23, President Bush signed an Executive Order entitled "Protecting the Property Rights of the American People." That is a good thing, I guess. It starts by saying "It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken."

That sounds a little vague to me still -- "for the purpose of benefiting the general public" could be easily stretched to include all kinds of things. Is it a "benefit of the general public" that local government have more tax revenue to spend on public projects? Or to allow for a lowering of everyone's propery tax rates? Well, everyone who still has their property that is.

And in legal matters I always pay close attention when I hear the word "merely" inserted. So if some alternate use would be mostly for the benefit of some other private individual, corporation, developers, or whoever, but also has some minor "public use" benefit, then this EO seems to just nod and smile and say A-OK to it.

Later in the EO there are nine exclusions listed, many of which are not surprising -- they allow for the traditional, pre-Kelo uses of Eminent Domain for roads, parks, government buildings, and so on (which I am also against, but that is an argument for a different day). But the last one is again quite vague: "meeting military, law enforcement, public safety, public transportation, or public health emergencies."

Again, whenever I see the word "emergency" used in politics, I pay close attention. It wouldn't take too many dishonest syllogisms for a politician to argue that the government should transfer your property to somone else, so that they can build something else on it, so that revenues from property taxes will go up, so that they can then spend on... public health "emergencies". Afterall, they can't fight public health problems without tax revenue. Or they could make the case that the lack of a good grocery store in a particular neighborhood constitutes a public health emergency for the people in that area... hence, you're gonna need to move on friend.

And ditto for "public safety". No doubt some amount of tortured logic could be used to argue that public safety would be improved by taking Joe's home and plot and giving it Jim's corporation to create jobs, so that people in the neighborhood won't be tempted to resort to crime... thereby improving public safety.

I'm not claiming that Mr. Bush purposely kept certain phrases vague, or that he hopes words like "public health" or "public safety" would be used in that way. Quite the opposite, I assume. But the words are vague nonetheless.

On top of all of that, if he really wanted to make a strong stand on the Kelo decision, he should have done more. The Federal government isn't the major player in such Eminent Domain cases anyway, so passing this EO won't have a huge effect (or so I've read). What could have a bigger impact would be to mandate, or push for legislation that mandates, that no federal funds can be given for such projects initiated by local or state governments.

Here are others who make essentially the same criticisms as the above: David Boaz of Cato here, and then here, Ilya Somin here, and Tim Sandefur here.

And if you aren't yet as skeptical of the value of Bush's EO as I am, read this post from Radley Balko, who notes: "Back in 2004, when Kelo was pending before the Supreme Court, the Bush administration not only refused to file an amicus brief on behalf of the property owners, but was actually on the verge of filing a brief on behalf of the land-seizing local governments."

Ouch! He then goes on to provide an amazing quote from Clint Bolick, an attorney for the Institute for Justice who represented Kelo in the big case. Good stuff!

Equal Opportunity to Suffer and Die

I've been reading lots of good posts and articles lately on the dire situation regarding organ needs vs. donation levels (e.g., kidneys).

David Holcberg recently wrote an excellent op-ed on this subject, Human Organs for Sale? It ends as follows:

If your life depended on getting an organ, say a kidney or a liver, wouldn’t you be willing to pay for one? And if you could find a willing seller, shouldn’t you have the right to buy it from him? The right to buy an organ is part of your right to life. The right to life is the right to take all actions a rational being requires to sustain and enhance his life. Your right to life becomes meaningless when the law forbids you to buy a kidney or liver that would preserve your life. If the government upheld the rights of potential buyers and sellers of organs, many of the 90,000 people now waiting for organs would be spared hideous suffering and an early death. How many? Let’s find out.

Also, there was a brief blog post from Virginia Postrel with lots of great links. Included is a link to the Monday, June 12 conference from AEI titled "Buy or Die: Market Mechanisms to Reduce the National Organ Shortage" (video is available online). Postrel's own presentation at this conference is available online as a PDF of her PPT. She also links to a brief news item on the recent AMA ruling change that allows as ethical the solicitation of organs if it helps to increase the organ supply. That is at least a step in the right direction...

On June 10, Postrel wrote a great Op-Ed for the LA-Times titled Cash for Kidneys.

And Craig Biddle at the Objective Standard journal blogged on the connection between the morality of altruism and the suffering and unnecessary deaths caused by current policy against a free-market for organ donation. (The title of this blog post derives from a quotation in that blog entry.)

Unmarried Couples Insanity

Thanks to Diana Hsieh's blog for pointing out the story out of Black Jack, Missouri (suburb of St. Louis) where a couple living together with their three children face eviction because they... are living together with their three children. Here is a link to the AP story on this, as found in the Kansas City Star. Here is the summary:

The city council in the St. Louis County town Black Jack has rejected a measure that would have changed the definition of a family to include unmarried couples with two or more children. The measure was rejected Tuesday in a 5-3 vote. As a result, Mayor Norman McCourt said in a statement that those who do not meet the town's definition of family could soon face eviction.

Some people in this country just don't understand the concept of individual rights at all. Like the person quoted at the end of this article:

Black Jack resident Rose Curtis, 65, said she thought the council made the right decision. 'As a woman, I'm not going to let a man have babies by me and not marry me," Curtis said. "I think it was a fair decision. It's cut and dried.'

Well that is all well and good for you, Rose. But why do you -- or those you support on the city council -- get to impose this choice of yours on everyone else through the force of zoning laws? Why do you get to evict a family of five from their home simply because the parents aren't married?

Very scary stuff here folks.

Sex Change to Avoid Saudi Oppression

This is not a headline from The Onion. This was reported by Reuters via Yahoo! News: "Fed up of being women, five Saudis change sex"

This story certainly speaks volumes. Things are so bad for women in Saudi Arabia that some are fed up and have sex changes. Wow.

Castro and Students: Nearly a laugh but really a cry

See this AP report by Anita Snow in the Washington Post. The article focuses mostly on the increasing US travel and trade restrictions with Cuba, a common thing to write about. But what spurred this particular article was an educational trip that some American University students took to Cuba recently.

What made me literally laugh out loud was the following:
"The students said they were at times puzzled by the contradictions between Cuban government rhetoric about the benefits of a socialist society and Cubans' lack of material wealth. 'I've travelled a lot and for me it has been very frustrating,' said 21-year old Jessica Skinner of Grand Junction, Colo. 'I came here being very anti-embargo and now that I'm here, I'm confused.'"

Confused indeed. The reporter then said "Such exposure to the complex Cuban reality is increasingly rare." Yes, that's it... the Cuban reality is "complex". Never mind that this communist country has a single ruling dictator for the past 47 years. Never mind that Forbes has estimated he has a personal net worth of around $550 million (Castro has contested that and threatened to sue the magazine for defamation). Never mind that people are desperate to leave the island nation, and are willing to risk their lives on rickety boats to get to Florida and freedom. Cuba is a "complex reality".

Another laughable quote from this article: "Castro and other Cuban officials have criticized the travel crackdown, saying the Bush administration is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens." Admittedly, whether this is true or not is open to debate. But what is funny here is Castro's appeal to the American constitution. Wow.

So this latest Nearly a laugh but really a cry award goes jointly to the Castro regime in Cuba, these students who are "confused", and their educators who have "confused" them by not teaching the truth about socialism and communism with all of the invidual rights violations that occur in countries that implement such systems.