Archive for September, 2010
Ted Koppel on Terrorizing Ourselves
Today’s Washington Post contains a smart piece by Ted Koppel on how U.S. actions since 9/11 have handed Osama bin Laden a great victory. I think that goes too far. Bin Laden and his tiny band are still on the defensive. His grandiose goals are ridiculous, and we should stop pretending that they are plausible. But Koppel makes a good point about how a society’s reaction to terrorism does most of the work of terrorism. The solution? Stop terrorizing ourselves.
Read Koppel’s op-ed; and if you like what he has to say, read our book, which includes contributions from a number of leading counterterrorism experts.
And You Look to Government for Cybersecurity?
Washington Times reporter Shaun Waterman has a characteristically excellent article out today about U.S. cybersecurity authorities failing to secure their own systems.
According to a new report by government auditors, systems at the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), part of the Department of Homeland Security, were not maintained with updates and security patches in a timely fashion and as a result were riddled with vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit.
Time and again, people look to government intervention based on what they imagine government might do under ideal conditions. Real conditions produce far weaker results.
We’re better off distributing the problem of data, network, and computer security among all the self-interested actors in the country—fallible as they are. We should not abandon the problem to a central authority whose failure fails us all.
Serving Minority Tastes
In a Washington Post obituary for billionaire John Kluge, Terence McArdle explains how he made his fortune by creating Metromedia, the nation’s largest chain of independent television stations:
Metromedia stations relied on a mix of local programs, old movies and syndicated reruns that often ran counter to what the big three network affiliates had in the same time slot.
Kluge’s key insight was:
Mr. Kluge believed that if the networks had an 80 percent share in a major market, 20 percent of the market wanted to watch something else.
And that’s a key difference between the market and government, one that’s so obvious we may fail to notice it. Kluge figured he could make money by offering a product that only 20 percent of consumers wanted. Many television networks these days make money by attracting 1 percent or less of the market. But in the political world, it’s usually one-size-fits-all. Politicians decide, and then that’s what we all get — phonics in the schools or not, prayer or not, instead of a market of schools from which parents could choose. Health insurance with 99 mandated coverages whether you want them or not.
I made a similar point in Libertarianism: A Primer (p. 189), on politics as a package deal:
Sesame Street recently gave us an example of what that means. In an election special, the Muppets and their human friends have $3 to spend, and they learn about voting by deciding whether to buy crayons or juice.
“Rosita: You count the people who want crayons. Then you count the people who want juice. If more people want juice, it’s juice for everyone. If more people want crayons, it’s crayons.
“Telly: Sounds crazy but it might just work!”
But why not let each child buy what he wants? Who needs democracy for such decisions? There may be some public goods, but surely juice and crayons don’t count. In the real world, one candidate offers higher taxes, legalized abortion, and getting out of the War in Vietnam, another promises a balanced budget, school prayer, and escalation of the war. What if you want a balanced budget and withdrawal from Vietnam? In the marketplace you get lots of choices; politics forces you to choose among only a few.
Overpaid and Undertaxed
I sympathize with almost all taxpayers, but it’s difficult to feel sorry for government workers who get in trouble with the IRS. Compensation packages for federal bureaucrats are twice as lucrative as those for workers in the productive sector of the economy and their pensions are similarly extravagant. Yet they often can’t be bothered to fully pay their taxes, owing billions of dollars to the IRS according to a Washington Post report.
Among the biggest scofflaws are the folks at the Postal Service, who have accumulated more than $283 million of unpaid taxes. Retired bureaucrats, meanwhile, have amassed nearly $455 million of back taxes. Even tax collectors sometimes fall behind. Treasury Department bureaucrats owe $7.7 million. How hard can it be for them to walk down the hallway and cough up? Or do they think they’re exempt since their boss barely got a slap on the wrist after “forgetting” to declare $80,000?
The most startling part of the story, though, is the degree of tax dodging on Capitol Hill. Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Capitol Hill employees owed $9.3 million in overdue taxes at the end of last year…. The debt among Hill employees has risen at a faster rate than the overall tax debt on the government’s books, according to Internal Revenue Service data. …The IRS data… shows 638 employees, or about 4 percent, of the 18,000 Hill workers owe money, a slightly higher percentage than the 3 percent delinquency rate among all returns filed nationwide. …”If you’re on the federal payroll and you’re not paying your taxes, you should be fired,” [Congressman] Chaffetz said in an interview. He said the policy should apply across the board and “there should be no special exemptions.”
The shocking part about this blurb, at least to me, is not the 638 staffers who owe money to the IRS. It’s the fact that there are 18,000 bureaucrats working for Congress. Do 100 Senators and 435 Representatives really need that many attendants? How I long for the good ol’ days, when each politician had about two staffers. I suspect it’s no coincidence that the federal government was a much smaller burden back when there were far fewer staff.
James C. Scott at Cato Unbound
This month at Cato Unbound, political scientist James C. Scott joins us in a discussion of his landmark book Seeing Like a State. His lead essay “The Trouble with the View from Above” gets readers up to speed and reviews some of the key themes of the book. Here’s an excerpt:
State naming practices and local, customary naming practices are strikingly different. Each set of practices is designed to make the human and physical landscape legible, by sharply identifying a unique individual, a household, or a singular geographic feature. Yet they are each devised by very distinct agents for whom the purposes of identification are radically different. Purely local, customary practices, as we shall see, achieve a level of precision and clarity—often with impressive economy—perfectly suited to the needs of knowledgeable locals. State naming practices are, by contrast, constructed to guide an official “stranger” in unambiguously identifying persons and places, not just in a single locality, but in many localities using standardized administrative techniques.
To follow the progress of state-making is, among other things, to trace the elaboration and application of novel systems which name and classify places, roads, people, and, above all, property. These state projects of legibility overlay, and often supersede, local practices. Where local practices persist, they are typically relevant to a narrower and narrower range of interaction within the confines of a face-to-face community.
Local knowledge both empowers and constrains — it allows and/or encourages some social practices, while making others more difficult. The progress of state power, meanwhile, depends on systematized, uniform knowledge of a wide area, with a loss of local particularity and the knowledge that goes with it. Seeing like a state has costs, in other words.
Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be joined by discussants Donald Boudreaux, Brad DeLong, and Timothy Lee, each of whom will have a chance to ask Scott about his work, discuss its significance, and relate it to their own thinking about states, markets, and societies.
We Have Too Many Teachers Already!
A story yesterday on CNNMoney.com describes the plight of Jenny Frank, who is young and eager to begin a career in teaching but hasn’t been able to land a job. It’s always sad to hear of people failing to find work in their chosen field, but the article in question completely misses a staggeringly important national story. As I mentioned this morning on Fox ‘n’ Friends: we have about 1.5 million too many teachers already!
Since 1970, public school enrollment has barely budged–up just 9 percent. Over the same period, employment has doubled. We’ve added 3 million new government school jobs. Half of those are teachers, another quarter are teachers’ aides, and the rest are service personnel and bureaucrats. This hiring binge has contributed to a quadrupling in the real, inflation-adjusted cost of a k-12 education: from $38,000 to $150,000 (constant 2009 dollars). It has not contributed to improved student achievement which, at best, has been flat at the end of high-school over that entire period.
If we went back to the staff-to-pupil ratio of 1970, we’d save something like $200 billion annually. And since achievement didn’t go up with the hiring boom, there’s no reason to expect it would fall if we pared back the government school rolls. And if staff reductions were focused on the lowest-performers, we would likely see student learning gains as kids were pulled out of the classes of bad teachers and placed into the classes of better ones. Our classes are currently much smaller than those of other nations that outperform us anyway (about 22 to 24 students per class in the US, versus an international average of 29).
Alas, none of that is going to happen while the education of American children remains focused on serving the adults employed by the system rather than kids. But imagine if education were part of the free enterprise system, in which quality and efficiency are handsomely rewarded and failure is penalized. The right-sizing of America’s education labor force would happen automatically, as parents shunned inneffective, expensive, overstaffed schools in favor of those that hired and retained only competent teachers–and only as many as are actually required to effectively reach children.
Isn’t education important enough to do what actually works?
“This cries out for a Jim Harper rant.”
. . . says a colleague. Or maybe it speaks for itself.
“Sheriffs want lists of patients using painkillers“
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the War on Drugs is meant to help people: The helping hand of government strips away privacy before it goes to work.
My 2004 Cato Policy analysis on point is: “Understanding Privacy — and the Real Threats to It.”
A Fannie Mae for Intrastructure?
Like President Bush before him, Obama has a knack for taking the worst ideas of his opponents and making them his own. It is truly bipartisanship in the worst of ways (think Sarbanes-Oxley, the TARP or No Child Left Behind). The newest example is the President’s proposed “infrastructure bank.” A bill along those lines was introduced a few years ago by then Senator Hagel, although the idea is far from new.
First, let’s get out of the way the myth that we have been “under-funding” intrastructure. Take the largest, and usually most popular, piece: transportation. Over the last decade, transportation spending at all levels of government has increased over 70 percent. One can debate if that money has been spent wisely, but there’s no doubt we’ve been spending an ever-increasing amount on infrastructure – so there goes one rationale for an infrastructure bank.
The real rationale for an infrastructure bank is to transfer the risk of default away from investors, bankers and local/state governments onto the federal taxpayer, but to do so in such a manner that the taxpayer has no idea what they are on the hook for.
If there are truly great projects out there that will pay their own way, then they should have no trouble getting private funding.
Of course, we will be told that the bank will charge an interest rate sufficient to cover losses and that the taxpayer won’t be on the hook. Again, if it is charging an appropriate rate, then why does the bank need to be chartered (and backed) by the taxpayer? We’ve heard this story before…with Social Security, flood insurance, FHA, Fannie/Freddie…the list goes on, that all of these programs would pay their own way and never cost the taxpayer a dime. If there are truly outstanding infrastructure needs, then appropriate the money and pay for them. An infrastructure bank is just another way to allow Wall Street to line its pockets while leaving the risk with the taxpayer. If bankers aren’t willing to actually take the risks, then why exactly do we need them?
The National Standards Debate Continues
Over at PublicSquare.net — a nifty debate site — you can catch another installment of the ongoing McCluskey-Petrilli national curriculum tussle. As always, I think the argument against imposing national standards — and, soon, tests – rules the day, but listen to the exchange and decide for yourself. Once you’ve done that, make sure to leave a note explaining why you think national standards offer no hope for improving American education.
Now He Tells Us…
Here’s a story for the better-late-than-never file. Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro confessed that communism doesn’t work and that his nation’s economic system should not be emulated.
Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba’s communist economic model doesn’t work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago. The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel’s brother Raul, the country’s president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba’s 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows. Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba’s economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore” Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.
Too bad Castro didn’t have this epiphany 50 years ago. The Cuban people languish in abject poverty as a result of Castro’s oppressive policies. Food is harshly rationed and other basic amenities are largely unavailable (except, of course, to the party elite). This chart, comparing inflation-adjusted per-capita GDP in Chile and Cuba, is a good illustration of the human cost of excessive government. Living standards in Cuba have languished. In Chile, by contrast, the embrace of market-friendly policies has resulted in a huge increase in prosperity. Chileans were twice as rich as Cubans when Castro seized control of the island. After 50 years of communism in Cuba and 30 years of liberalization in Chile, the gap is now much larger.
Economics 101
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
In his speech in Ohio yesterday, did President Obama draw a stark enough contrast with House Minority Leader John Boehner, whom he attacked by name eight times, to help his party in November?
My response:
The contrast the president drew was clear enough. His problem is that the people aren’t buying what he’s selling – and for good reason. His ideas, far from being new, have been tried countless times, both here and abroad. They don’t work. And they undermine basic American principles about individual liberty and free choice.
So when Obama says that Boehner and the Republicans have no new ideas, he’s partly right. (They have new ideas about how to address unsustainable entitlement programs — ask Rep. Paul Ryan.) At least in their rhetoric — their behavior in office, alas, is too often another matter — Republicans stand in substantial part for old ideas that work and conform more closely to the nation’s first principles, starting with lower taxes, less regulation, and less government management of the economy. That contrasts sharply with Obama’s countless “programs” to “stimulate” the economy, his targeted tax and spending schemes to create “green jobs,” to sell cars, and on and on. Listening to him, you’d think the economy would collapse were it not for Washington’s management of it.
The truth is quite the opposite, of course, as Americans are coming increasingly to appreciate. Economies prosper when entrepreneurs with ideas and capital are able to employ both for profit. But they won’t do that when conditions are uncertain, as they are when government meddles recklessly and uncertainly at every turn. How often have we heard entrepreneurs in recent months saying that they’d like to hire more people, but with the uncertainty of ObamaCare and so much else coming out of Washington, they’re sitting on their capital? And who can blame them?
So the answer is, get out of their way and let them do what they do best. But that’s not the Obama way. This “community organizer” — who organized people to demand more from government — seems to have no grasp of how economies work, beyond the failed command-and-control model. Even Fidel Castro has just now admitted that a government run economy doesn’t work. So either Obama smells the coffee coming now even from Cuba, or elections will take care of the matter.
Libertarian Review Now Online
Many issues of the late, great libertarian magazine Libertarian Review are now available online. The magazine was published from 1972 to 1981, first as a newsletter of book reviews and then as a glossy monthly magazine edited by Roy A. Childs, Jr. It made quite a splash during those years, and Childs became one of the most visible and controversial libertarian intellectuals. After the magazine folded, as so many intellectual magazines do, he spent almost a decade as editorial director and chief book reviewer for Laissez Faire Books. He had read everything, and he knew everyone in the libertarian movement. He got lots of prominent people — including Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, Thomas Szasz, Roger Lea MacBride, and Charles Koch — to write for the magazine. And he discovered and nurtured plenty of younger writers.
Libertarian Review featured
- news coverage and analysis of inflation, the energy crisis, economic reform in China, the 1979 Libertarian Party convention and the subsequent Clark for President campaign, the Proposition 13 tax-slashing victory, the rise of the religious right, the emergence of Solidarity, Jerry Brown, Three Mile Island, and the return of draft registration.
- classic essays like Jeff Riggenbach on “The Politics of Aquarius” and “In Praise of Decadence,” Joan Kennedy Taylor on Betty Friedan, Rothbard on “Carter’s Energy Fascism.”
- interviews with F. A. Hayek, Howard Jarvis, Paul Gann, Henry Hazlitt, John Holt, and Robert Nozick.
- and especially Roy Childs: on William Simon’s A Time for Truth, on Irving Kristol, on the rise of Reagan, on drugs and crime, on the hot spots of Iran, Afghanistan, and El Salvador.
As Tom G. Palmer put it in a letter published in The New Republic of August 3, 1992, just after Roy died, “Roy Childs was one of the finer members of a generation of radical thinkers who worked successfully to revive the tradition of classical liberalism — or libertarianism — after its long dormancy, and who dared to launch a frontal challenge to the twentieth-century welfare state. An autodidact who knew more about the subjects on which he wrote than most so-called ‘experts’, his writings exercised a powerful influence on a generation of young classical liberal thinkers.”
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