Month: May 2006

Hurricane season is fast approaching

When I saw that the FTC found no clear price gouging in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I’d planned to discuss the report. Not only because he beat me to it, but because he’s 100% correct, I’ll point you to Kip’s analysis at A Stitch in Haste. He says everything I could’ve hoped to say about the report’s specifics. Read it.

Instead, I want to mention this brief passage with ominous warnings for the future.

A House measure passed earlier this month would raise penalties for price gouging and order the FTC to define the term. But the commission’s report yesterday said that a federal law on gouging could “run counter to consumers’ best interest.” The commission said price gouging “is neither a well-defined term of art in economics, nor does any federal statute identify price gouging as a legal violation.”

[FTC Commissioner Jon] Leibowitz said the FTC report showed that “price gouging is a phenomenon that is hard to nail down.” But he compared it to obscenity: “difficult to define in theory but easily recognized.”

The FCC’s enforcement of “indecency” isn’t the most promising path we can pursue. Perhaps we could try something more sane, say “if you don’t like the price, don’t buy the product”. How’s that sound? I like it because it leaves the power in the hands of the consumer instead of some central planner ruling through threat of official reprisal, with both financial and criminal penalties.

We’re going to pursue the latter, stupid path, of course, because Congress has so little brain power and leadership. What the people want (mob rule) can’t be wrong. Can it? Never, so I suggest we set up the price control board now rather than waiting until the next crisis. We’ll have more time to adjust, at least. And we can learn to live without all the nice essentials luxury items we’ve grown accustomed to having. Thanks.

Finally, something for the children

Following up on this post from December, here’s a minor victory out of Canada:

Circumcisions will no longer be performed on newborn boys at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, hospital officials announced Friday.

The move comes in response to the investigation into the case of a boy who was mistakenly circumcised at the hospital last November.

There’s a reason this victory for common sense requires a qualifier.

Since receiving the review, the chief medical officer at St. Boniface has decided not to reinstate the program, which was suspended after the incident.

Dr. Bruce Roe, the hospital’s chief medical officer, said it was “more appropriate” for circumcisions to take place in outpatient clinics after the family has been released from the hospital.

It’s more appropriate for circumcisions to take place for medically-necessary reasons only. If that requires an outpatient clinic or a hospital, so be it. Is it any more inappropriate to carry out a circumcision on a newborn (male) whose parents have consented than it is to carry it out on a newborn (male) whose parents have not consented? As we implement the law today, the answer is “yes”. But when we stop ignoring the elephant in the room, we understand that the answer is clearly “no”. Regardless of the reason given by the child’s parents, he has not given his consent to the cosmetic surgery. That should be enough to stop the hideous practice of routine infant circumcision.

This decision is a victory for the rights of infant males in Canada, but for too many children born at St. Boniface, it will be only a temporary reprieve. That makes it minor.

This thinking deserves a permanent majority?

I’ve yet to read any of John Stuart Mill’s works, although I intend to tackle them in the future. As such, I can’t cite examples to refute anything in this hack piece from Friday’s Opinion Journal. No matter. The absurdity of Roger Scruton’s argument is sufficient to attack itself. After a perfectly reasonable opening, which provides biographical details of John Stuart Mill’s life, Mr. Scruton continues with this background on counter-arguments against utilitarianism:

According to Mill’s argument, that way of thinking has everything upside down. The law does not exist to uphold majority morality against the individual, but to protect the individual against tyranny–including the “tyranny of the majority.” Of course, if the exercise of individual freedom threatens harm to others, it is legitimate to curtail it–for in such circumstances one person’s gain in freedom is another person’s loss of it. But when there is no proof of harm to another, the law must protect the individual’s right to act and speak as he chooses.

Pretty much. I don’t see how anyone in America could disagree with such a view of individual freedom. The Constitution virtually guarantees as much, accept that it’s been interpreted into near-worthlessness by partisan ideologues more intent on imposing their vision of proper than preserving liberty. I don’t care for that approach, although America is still the best deal going.

This principle has a profound significance: It is saying that the purpose of law is not to uphold the will of the majority, or to impose the will of the sovereign, but to protect the will of the individual. It is the legal expression of the “sovereignty of the individual.” The problem lies in the concept of harm. How can I prove that one person’s action does not harm another? How can I prove, for example, that other people are not harmed by my public criticism of their religious beliefs–beliefs on which they depend for their peace of mind and emotional stability? How can I prove that consensual sex between two adults leaves the rest of us unaffected, when so much of life’s meaning seems to rest on the assumption of shared sexual norms? These questions are as significant for us as they were for Mill; the difference is that radical Islam has now replaced Scottish puritanism as the enemy of liberal values.

Seriously? Is it that hard to understand that the will of the majority or the sovereign can have awful consequences? Or that “harm” isn’t a difficult concept to understand, as pertaining to government’s role? Use the word physical, as should be readily apparent to even the most uninitiated seven-year-old, and the measure of when an individual is about to be (or has been) harmed is clear. Government intervention is not only expected, it becomes vital to a functioning society. That does not include such subjective actions as sexual norms. If one individual can’t stomach the sexual actions of another’s relationship, there is a problem. However, it belongs to the offended, not the offender.

The notion that sexual freedom is somehow analogous to radical Islam is beyond the realm or reason, and deserves to be ridiculed, if not ignored.

Taking “On Liberty” and [“The Principles of Political Economy”] together we find, in fact, a premonition of much that conservatives object to in the modern liberal worldview. The “harm” doctrine of “On Liberty” has been used again and again to subvert those aspects of law which are founded not in policy but in our inherited sense of the sacred and the prohibited. Hence this doctrine has made it impossible for the law to protect the core institutions of society, namely marriage and the family, from the sexual predators. Meanwhile, the statist morality of “Principles” has flowed into the moral vacuum, so that the very same law that refuses to intervene to protect children from pornography will insist that every aspect of our lives be governed by regulations that put the state in charge.

It should be painfully obvious by now that Mr. Scruton is uninterested in liberty, unless your liberty involves making the same choices he’d make. The law should protect marriage and the family from the sexual predators. That is the argument of a man uninterested in reason or intellectual discourse. That is the plea of a man consumed by fear of the unknown.

… to free oneself from moral norms is to surrender to the state. For only the state can manage the ensuing disaster.

Any guesses on who should decide the moral norms?

More thoughts from Andrew Sullivan

Banning the two “F” words

This morning, like every morning, I woke up to Howard Stern. Usually it’s a good way to ease into the day. A few laughs, a little banter, and pop culture references. It’s worth $12.95 per month. Usually.

This morning, I awoke to Stern discussing an article in yesterday’s New York Times by Nicholas Kristof. It’s titled “Killer Girl Scouts”. Lovely, huh? I couldn’t read the article because I don’t waste my money on Times Select, but the one sentence synopsis, “Beware of cute little girls bearing trans fats”, is enough to know I disagree.

Stern offered a summary, with commentary, on the article, and that’s what got me fired up today. From what he said, it’s the same argument that we’re getting fatter, the evil corporations don’t care, our government-financed health care is going bankrupt, and something needs to be done now. The article (apparently) includes an example from Denmark in which the government requires that trans fat be no greater than 2% of a food item. McDonald’s chicken nuggets in Denmark have .33 grams of trans fat, while the same chicken nuggets have 10+ grams of trans fat in America. Outrageous.

So maybe they are trying to kill us, right? The solution, according to Stern? You know what’s coming, don’t you? That’s right. Pass a law. Force companies to limit the trans fat in the food products they sell to us, the unwitting dolts who can’t make conscious, responsible decisions for ourselves. We shouldn’t stop financing health care with public funds to prevent the system from going bankrupt, that would be too obvious. We should outlaw bad food, instead. For a brief moment, I wanted to cancel my subscription.

Again, since it’s not clear, the free market can take care of this “problem”. If a person is responsible for his own health care costs, isn’t he more likely to take care of himself, by his own actions? And if not, why should we care? He’ll pay the higher costs. He can make that rational decision of which is more important, dollars or Thin Mints.

Stern’s next topic made this morning’s discussion especially frustrating. He launched into his commentary about the Senate voting to increase fines for “indecency” on public airwaves. His current stance is motivated by business interests, and I think, a little hope at exposing Congressional hypocrisy. He applauded the Senate’s action, even though he acknowledged that it’s an affront to the Constitution. The increased fines will only help satellite radio, of course.

I see the humor in that, but can’t stand the double standard for freedom that Stern’s dual positions represent. He accepts that the Constitution protects free speech from the whims of Congress, noting that the free market can handle what the public wants and needs. Satellite radio is sufficient proof, although that’s not an excuse to allow Congress to continue its election-year crusade to protect us all. Which is what it comes down to, isn’t it? Protecting us from ourselves.

We’re too sensitive to hear swearing on the radio, so Congress should protect us. We’re too irresponsible to eat our vegetables, so Congress should protect us. Both are symptoms of the same disease. Politicians take their direction from the few who are vocal enough to make their preferences known, regardless of the damage to liberty. Paternalism arrives marketed as leadership. And most of us decide where we stand on each individual issue by determining which we prefer. In Stern’s case, he hates healthy food and loves freedom of speech, regardless of the underlying principles.

Me, I think we should all be vegans, but I love liberty more.

Gladys Kravitz would love this debate

I don’t have much more to add to the immigration debate right now. I didn’t watch President Bush’s speech last night because my grass needed to be cut. From what I know of it, I’m not optimistic that’s it will end up being more than pandering to xenophobes. I hope I’m wrong. This essay at TCS Daily offers hope for learning how economic reality works, even if it implies we’ll learn the hard way. Consider:

Recently, Georgia has passed what has been called the nation’s toughest laws against the hiring of illegal immigrants. But if Georgia was unwilling or unable to enforce a law that applied to the relatively few window tinting shops in its state, what prospect is there that it will be willing or able to enforce a law that applies to the vast multitude of small businesses that hire illegals: restaurants, construction firms, landscaping companies, just to name a few? Yes, examples can be made of a few big companies, but it defies credibility to suppose that the law will be rigorously applied to the thousand smaller businesses that hire illegal aliens — and these businesses are perfectly aware of this fact. Their very smallness protects them.

Herein lies the drawback to laws that are passed by legislative bodies solely to prove to their constituents that they, the legislators, are really doing something. “See,” the legislators can tell the voters back home, “we are really cracking down on illegal immigrants by making tougher laws.” …

I agree, it defies credibility that the law will be rigorously applied to all. Unfortunately, this is a significantly more inflammatory issue than window-tinting. While no government could ever fully enforce such a law as our enforcement strategies exist today, I suspect they’ll try. Hello larger, more intrusive government.

National IDs? We need to keep them out, which means we need to know who should be here, so check. National employment database? We need “real-time” access to employment eligibility, so check that one, too. How long before we require business customers to become non-deputized snitches enforce the laws through “voluntary” reporting to the government? Remember, these same “do something” legislators will need to do something to appease the constituency when Joe Citizen still sees brown people doing the jobs Americans won’t do.

Again, I agree it defies credible logic. I remain pessimistic that we’ll learn our lesson before we see harm to our economy and/or an increase in government.

These are my choices?

I have no idea what political persuasion the authors of this article in today’s Opinion Journal hold, nor do I care to score partisan points, but they clearly bought the idea that current Republican economics is the only way to look at government budgets. Consider:

Voters will elect governors in 36 states this year. And as they decide who to send to the governor’s mansion, they will also be shaping the economic future of their state. On taxes, the gubernatorial candidates fall into one of two camps. Either they believe that the best way to close a budget gap is to raise taxes. Or, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have done from the Oval Office, they believe in raising revenue by growing the state’s economy with tax cuts.

There are a few cursory nods to fiscal restraint later in the article, but overall, it’s a glowing review of supply-side economics as the solution for budget woes. Crazy me, I think it’s clear that we need to look at both sections of a government’s income statement. I also find it amusing disheartening that so many otherwise smart people can so completely ignore the well-ingrained small-government principle. Spending matters, and I dare say it matters more than taxes for long-term growth. Especially when legislators are ignoring the other side of the balance sheet with the spending they’re adding.

Until legislators refrain from dining at the public trough at every opportunity, government will have an insatiable need for growing tax receipts. Low taxes now, high taxes tomorrow. It’s not complicated, unless you’re blind to reality. Everyone will be an economic libertarian eventually. I just wish it didn’t have to come through bankruptcy.

How one flaw destroys medical logic

In answering a reader’s letter asking how to persuade a friend not to circumcise her soon-to-be-born son, an obstetrician/gynecologist, Dr Sharmaine Mitchell, responds with a well-reasoned explanation of why the procedure is not necessary. Refute the potential benefits with the obvious argument that there are less invasive responses to medical problems, with an additional nod to individual responsibility. I can’t complain, except for this crushing statement backing every circumcision supporter’s favorite crutch:

The procedure is not vital to the child’s immediate well-being at birth and ultimately parents should decide what they think is in the best interest of the child.

Why is medical science so afraid? Whether it’s fear of all the harm than can occur from infection or disease, fear that no longer circumcising would amount to admitting past mistakes, or a more nefarious fear that parents will suddenly reject the all-powerful doctor for their own critical thinking, the answer is absurd. We don’t allow any other surgery just because the parents want it, unless it involves infant male genitalia. I can’t fathom a way in which so many people can come to the collective conclusion that the two parts of the doctor’s statement are anything other than incompatible. I simply can’t.

If that reader’s friend reads Dr. Mitchell’s response, everything will be ignored except the second half of that sentence. That is why I try to understand such willful ignorance. Perhaps one day I’ll learn how to effectively refute it.

The government gets a free pass because you’re careless

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Glenn Reynolds as an apologist for the current administrations forays into absolute authority. Most times, I’ve thought it overblown. If he doesn’t write about something, it’s illogical to automatically conclude that he’s defending it. Perhaps, but perhaps not. There are a lot of topics that I don’t write about because they don’t coax enough of a response out of me for the effort required to blog. Since that required effort is generally minimal, I’m willing to cut some slack on that. This example from yesterday, while not a brazen as The National Review, seems rather misguided.

YES, THE NSA NUMBER-TRACKING PROGRAM isn’t really “eavesdropping” on calls. But as reader Liz Mauran notes, the misleading press coverage probably doesn’t matter: “It seems to me, judging from the number of people in airports, restaurants, and other public venues talking on their cell phones, that it’s just fine to have a non-private telephone conversation.”

Yes. I wish that people valued their telephonic privacy a bit more. And based on my own experience, I’d pity any NSA agent who was forced to listen to some of the stuff I’ve overheard. . . .

While I understand the pithy point that the reader makes, it’s irrelevant to the NSA’s wire-tapping number-tracking program. So what if Americans want to blab their conversations loud enough for everyone to hear? Yes, it’s annoying, but it is not the same thing. The Constitution says nothing about people voluntarily allowing (forcing?) the world to eavesdrop. But volunteering our intimate details and having them siphoned without our knowledge are not the same thing. As we notice when we read the Fourth Amendment, there’s a nice phrase about being secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as the bit about warrants and probable cause. Surely this qualifies. Only an apologist could argue otherwise.

One brilliant governing strategy

The Wall Street Journal’s editors know how to frame a debate. That frame is made of lies, of course, but so be it. If it sells the party line, all is fair.

If ever there was a market test of economic policy, the last three years have been it. The stock market has recovered from its implosion in Bill Clinton’s last year in office, unemployment is down to 4.7%, and growth has averaged 3.9% in the three years since those tax cuts passed–well above the post-World War II average and more than twice the growth rate in Euroland.

It’s not enough to say the tech bubble collapsed, it was clearly Bill Clinton’s fault. Our greater economic growth than Europe has nothing to do with a complex combination of factors, but rests solely on one set of tax cuts. The partisan defense only appears because it’s so self-evident, I guess. More interesting, though, is this:

Yes, gas prices are high and interest rates are rising, which helps to explain the anxiety felt by some of the public. But these headwinds are all the more reason to be impressed by the economy’s ability to push ahead nonetheless. We’d have thought that the Democrats who are now voting to let taxes increase would be thrilled to know that things turned out better than they had feared. Americans are better off despite Democratic predictions that, as Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put it back in 2003, tax cuts would “damage long-term economic growth.”

When long-term is now defined as three years, it’s little wonder that current Republican economic “policy” is so great. Reap all the benefits of lower taxes and greater spending, with no worries that the looming (super-duper, extra-double long term?) devastation will come up and bite the savior President Bush. The hero always rides off into the sunset, but perhaps this is where we should remember what the horse leaves behind for the saved as the hero claims the glory.

Tax cuts are great, and I’m generally for them. I like the money I earn and would love to keep it. However, Congress and the President have lost all sense of how to run a budget. I’d rather feel the rough impact of this current profligate spending in the next few years, than to feel the decimation from bankruptcy. Maybe that’s just a dash of realism in knowing that “starve the beast’ is a joke, or maybe it’s just naked cynicism. No matter. The bill is coming due at some point.

I know the political strategy is to leave the Democrat to take the blame for increased taxes (which they’ll happily do because they won’t control spending, either). But it tells me a lot to know no politician seems to care that we’re all the ones who will get screwed eventually. Consider the lesson learned. No political point is too small to score.

Killing legitimate rights to invent progressive rights

The lede to this article intrigued me.

Liberals and Democrats in search of new ideas might surprise everyone by embracing the cause of states’ rights.

I’m sure this would just be an opportunity to play progressive politics locally, instead of the prudishness played out nationally. While I agree that states can work towards better solutions (not best – try private) than the federal government, due to nothing more than closer proximity to the problems (ditto local versus state), I was right to doubt this article. Consider:

Contrast this week in our nation’s capital with the week in Boston, capital of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Congress was solving the enormously important problem of making sure that wealthy Americans can continue to pay low taxes on their dividends and capital gains.

Phrase the issue that way and I know that ideology is more important than solving the problem, regardless of the rhetoric attached to the proposal. I’ve already addressed this in the past, but here it is again. Just because a tax cut is likely to affect the wealthy, that does not mean it’s inherently bad. Unless you like socialism, in which case you’re doubly wrong. Middle-class Americans own investments and receive dividends. They pay taxes, as well. How you frame the question shows exactly the outcome you want. For me, it would be based on principle. I happen to like “keep what you earn” more than “don’t make too much”.

Still, you can’t require people to buy insurance if they can’t afford it. That’s where Salvatore DiMasi, the Massachusetts House speaker and a Democrat, came in. He suggested combining an individual mandate with an assessment on employers who do not cover their employees. Most conservatives hate “employer mandates,” but why should employers who insure their workers provide an indirect subsidy to employers who don’t?

Why should employers who reach an (implicit or explicit) agreement with their workers that cash is the best benefit be punished for coming to a different conclusion than the socialists? They don’t force other employers to provide health insurance and shouldn’t be punished for having the intelligence to try a better way. The social contract is a larger culprit for our problems than the free market’s “failure” to provide every worker employer-sponsored health insurance. Which brings us to this:

… The federal government should solve problems or, failing that, give states the room, the incentives and the opportunities to solve problems for themselves. It’s amazing what local politicians can accomplish when good ideas and skilled agitators come together.

Only as a last resort should the federal government get out of the way. And only if they get out of the way for state and local governments. Brilliant. This is statism, not states’ rights.

More thoughts at Cato @ Liberty