New School Politics

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“Not long ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran a fake news story that began like this:
‘At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.’
Like all good satire, the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

Here is the link to the rest of the column.

Popularity: 45% [?]

When asked about the legal treatment of gays in Iran at Columbia University, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a one liner to remember–the best part is that he was serious:

In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” [Laughter] “In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”

Popularity: 51% [?]

I was pissed when I first saw this. From the NYT:

NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked permission to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site when he comes to New York City next week, but the request was denied, a police official said Wednesday.

Pardon my French, but what an asshole. Keep in mind that this is from the nation that was founded on the slogan “death to America,” behind terrorist attacks in ‘83 and ‘96 respectively that killed 243 and 16 Americans respectively, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and who is ordering the killings of many Americans in Iraq today. For years they have been the lead patron to many organizations who would have done anything to execute an attack such as the one that killed 3000 Americans. At least, however, we know that Iranian backed organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, et al. were jubilant on the day just over six years ago; and we have all the reason to believe that the Ahmadinejad was beside himself too.

Iran should have been taken down long ago; at least we should not allow them to mock our great national tragedy.

Popularity: 64% [?]

On the anniversary of 9/11, young muslim apostates are launching a campaign to make it easier for Muslims to leave Islam–which is considered an offense punishable by death according to Islamic literature. From The Times:

 The Committee for Ex-Muslims promises to campaign for freedom of religion but has already upset the Islamic and political Establishments for stirring tensions among the million-strong Muslim community in the Netherlands.

Ehsan Jami, the committee’s founder, who rejected Islam after the attack on the twin towers in 2001, has become the most talked-about public figure in the Netherlands. He has been forced into hiding after a series of death threats and a recent attack…

“Sharia schools say that they will kill the ones who leave Islam. In the West people get threatened, thrown out of their family, beaten up,” Mr Jami said. “In Islam you are born Muslim. You do not even choose to be Muslim. We want that to change, so that people are free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.”

The article’s afternote sites the Koran:

Sura 4: 88-89 reads: “Whosoever turns back from his belief, openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard.”

The scary thing is that Europe faces intimidation from Islam even if they do not have the same Islamist governments as in the Middle East. We saw this from the murder of Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh, from the massive riots and deaths from the Danish Cartoon controversy, from the (Muslim) youth riots in France, to many other instances. It demonstrates both the growing force of Islam across the world as well as Europe’s tolerance for it.

I do not really see how this amnesty movement for apostates however could work in the Muslim world. Where Sharia’a is present the teachings of the Koran are beyond question. I do however think that Mr. Jami’s campaign is valuable because it points out the danger of Islamic mysticism on a continent where criticizing the religion is politically incorrect (a crime punishable by social ostracizing). There is always a place for people to call out religion when it is used as a political tool; if nobody does so there is no stop to the havoc it can wreak.

Popularity: 68% [?]

Normally, I’m against government in all of its forms. It taxes and spends, and uses up citizens’ money for pork spending and unnecessary “aid.” However, I believe government should expand to one area: drugs. Not drug regulation, but cultivation and sales.

Think about it this way: are people going to stop buying drugs just because they’re illegal? Of course not. All we do is foster cartels, a black market, and waste billions on anti-drug campaigns. Why don’t we just target the source?

Here’s my plan. The government creates something called the Federal Department of Hallucinogens or whatnot. They can start by getting tobacco farmers to grow drugs, which they must sell exclusively to the federal government. Failure to do so will result in confiscation of land. However, the government will pay fair prices for each kind of drug.

Then, the government will manufacture them into a usable form. Because the government is heavily regulating it, marijuana will be in a pure form, not that cocaine-spiked stuff that they give to kids these days. Likewise, meth, for one, will also be free of the useless garbage-it will be sterile and safer. Dosage can also be regulated by the government. The government can then sell drugs to druggies at a decent price, allowing them to make a profit (including all the beauracacy, farmers, regulation). They can use this money to, say, fund education.

This plan has several effects: firstly, it will cripple the drug cartels. No money = no mercenaries, guns, and therefore crime. They will be starved. Secondly, the drugs will be safer and more regulated against OD’s. This will reduce such deaths. Third, the government makes money, not spends it. We’ll save whatever we spend on drug-regulation, and make money from the selling of drugs, allowing us to cut taxes and fund other things like education. Fourthly, we get more people employed, and we can keep them happy. Finally, the government will have a large stockpile of these drugs to use for military/scientific/medical purposes. What’s wrong with this plan? Almost nothing.

Perhaps the best part is that it will give us back, on average, $30 of our taxes. This may not seem like a lot, but when you account for the 300,000,000 people in this country, and the 150,000,000 who actually pay tax (middle class always gets screwed, poor people want higher taxes cuz they don’t have to pay them and get benefits, upper classes have the means to evade taxes via switzerland, etc.) that’s a lot of money.

Popularity: 49% [?]

After just over half a year of the troop surge, Bush is bringing soldiers home in limited quantities. Quite frankly, that confuses me. If the seven month surge is beginning to make the situation better in Iraq five year war, why start bringing troops home? It seems like exactly the opposite thing to do if we want to continue to make progress in Iraq.

What more troops gave us in Iraq was more force. Force has also been lacking since the beginning of the occupation in Iraq; we have always been fighting more passively (peacekeeping occupation) than aggressively (total war) and we never had enough troops to maintain the peace in the aftermath of isolated conflicts. We got it, it began to work, and then we toned it down. Considering my assumptions and my present knowledge, the move appears to make very little sense.

The President insisted:

Because of this success, General Petraeus believes we have now reached the point where we can maintain our security gains with fewer American forces.

That may or may not be true. But lets give the General the benefit of the doubt and say it is, say, 80% true–would it still be practical to begin withdrawals? I still say no. For one, there is a remaining possibility that Petraeus is wrong and we loose the ground we gained. And second, saying that maintaining our current levels is satisfactory also implies that we can achieve victory at the present rate. I don’t have any sense that we could achieve a surrender of jihadist forces in Iraq “in due time”. I think that even now, we still have to augment the rate of achievement in Iraq to make progress significant enough for ultimate victory.

If anything, the successes of the surge would tell me that we should maintain the surge itself or continue to inject more force in Iraq. As is I surmise that the present political developments are nothing more than representative of the major flaws of the entire Bush policy: he wants enough force in Iraq to keep the situation in our control, yet he will not raise the levels of force enough to yield the radically destructive change that constitutes victory in war.

Popularity: 43% [?]

Economist George Reisman, author of one of the most comprehensive defenses of capitalism to my knowledge, concurs with my conclusions on the roots of the credit crunch. Reisman explains articulates the issue very well on his blog:

The situation today is essentially similar to all previous episodes of the boom-bust business cycle launched by credit expansion. The only difference is that in this case, the credit expansion fed an expanded demand for housing and, at the same time, most of the additional capital funds created by the credit expansion were invested in housing. Now that the demand for housing has fallen, as the result of the slowdown of the credit expansion, much of the additional capital funds invested in housing has turned out to be malinvestments. In most previous instances, credit expansion fed an additional demand for capital goods, notably plant and equipment, and most of the additional capital funds created by credit expansion were invested in the production of capital goods. When the credit expansion slowed, the demand for capital goods fell and much of the additional capital funds invested in their production turned out to be malinvestments.

In all instances of credit expansion what is present is the introduction into the economic system of a mass of capital funds that so long as it is present has the appearance of real wealth and capital and provides the basis for sharply increased buying and selling and a corresponding rise in asset prices. Unfortunately, once the credit expansion that creates these capital funds slows, the basis of the profitability of the funds previously created by the credit expansion is withdrawn. This is because those funds are invested in lines dependent for their profitability on a demand that only the continuation of the credit expansion can provide.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

Popularity: 45% [?]

From the LA Times, here’s something you don’t see every day:

Nelson is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at four-star restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals without spending a cent.

…

Nelson, 51, once earned a six-figure income as director of communications at Barnes and Noble. Tired of representing a multimillion dollar company, she quit in 2005 and became a “freegan” — the word combining “vegan” and “free” — a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste. Though many of its pioneers are vegans, people who neither eat nor use any animal-based products, the concept has caught on with Nelson and other meat-eaters who do not want to depend on businesses that they believe waste resources, harm the environment or allow unfair labor practices.

…

Freeganism was born out of environmental justice and anti-globalization movements dating to the 1980s. The concept was inspired in part by groups like “Food Not Bombs,” an international organization that feeds the homeless with surplus food that’s often donated by businesses.

…

Adam Weissman, whose New York group Freegan.info has been around for about four years, lives with his father, a pediatrician, and mother, a teacher. The 29-year-old is unemployed by choice, taking care of his elderly grandparents daily and working odd jobs when he needs to. The rest of his time is spent furthering the freegan cause, he said, which is “about opting out of capitalism in any way that we can.”

Of course their utter disregard for morality and open opposition to the productive process is lamentable, to say the least, but I also must question the label of “wasteful” that they attach to consumerism and capitalist activity.

Economic agents measure their resourcefulness in dollars and cents. Whether they are making more money than they spend represents whether they are producing more than they spend. It’s naive to say it constitutes waste when food is thrown out or plastics aren’t recycled, etc., because that statement lacks economic perspective. Within the full context the food and the other materials that are disposed of are mostly thrown away because that is the most efficient way of dealing with them.

Doubtlessly, it would be far more costly to force people to consume everything they buy or to recycle what they do not consume. Why? Because, in addition to the fact that on an aggregate level the process of recycling is far more costly than garbage disposal, conserving and recycling imposes an added burden on the people whose time and labor it requires.

If the “Freegans” got their way and no one threw out anything there would be far more waste–waste of time and labor–which is far more consequential then the cold cuts that have reached their expiration date.

Hence, we know that the Freegan solution to “waste” would be far more wasteful because of its ridiculous opportunity cost and because it reflects negatively on people’s bottom line. I can be confident that at present people are generally resourceful when allocating all of their because the incentives are there for them to be. If they waste too much of their material wealth than they will live less comfortably, if they waste too much of their time they will make less money, if they waste too much money they will have less to buy. There is general accountability, meaning that people incur the costs and benefits of their habits so they will be less likely to be unproductive and wasteful.

I cannot say the same of freegan socialism.

ADDENDUM: Here is a link I was fed to another environmentalism movement who, although somewhat different, share the same distaste for earthly and material pleasure. They call themselves “vegansexuals”:

These people are now commonly known as vegansexuals. Alongside not eating meat, they are also choosing not to be sexually intimate with non-vegan partners whose bodies, they say, are made up of dead animals.

Its an amusing story. All I can say is that I could think of few romantic habits that could inflict greater misery. (HT: Simmons)

Popularity: 57% [?]

Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Robert Rector recently published an essay on the standard of living among poor Americans. Those designated as poor include the bottom 12.6% of economic agents in the US which amounts to 37 million people. Most of his data came from the Census’ annual report from the last year. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Here’s a tasty bite:

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year— nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

The most dawning thing of course is that the average “poor” American is supported by just 16 hours of work per week. This naturally leads us to question, why? Well, first we should ask what simple economics would lead us to ask–what are the incentives? Incentives as they apply to the poor may be personal–they prefer to be lazy and dependant over being diligent and competitive–while others may be government induced–they prefer to work less and rely more on welfare and government transfer payments. Incentives that apply to employers include the inflated cost of their labor–everything from minimum wage to employer mandated benefits to other embedded costs of business–which discourages businesses from hiring for longer hours. Moreover, many of the poor may not be worth being employed at all due to sickness, or disability, or downright irresponsibility.

With an unemployment rate approaching full employment, its not reasonable to accuse lack of employer demand for the short work weeks. While certain leftist economists may say that the demographic in question represents a disenfranchised group of discouraged workers who have been displaced by the capitalistic system, for if our amount of worker disenchantment was high so too would our employment rate in general as their levels only logically correspond.

The breakdown of the family, specifically among poor black families is a perpetual problem that certainly has economic implications. For one reason or another there is a lack of family structure for many in poor urban neighborhoods. This simply diminishes the opportunity to create a stable and effective environment in which to raise children. The result is extremely detrimental and perpetuates a cycle of delinquency. The answer to what causes this delinquency is more broadly sociological and I do not think I am equipped to give ideas, but let me say that it is certainly an intriging issue that deserves to be explored.

But in terms of what I can recommend, there are certainly political reforms that can encourage more work among the poor. In order to amend the poor incentives that exist at present, we should eliminate the price floor on labor as well as other employment regulations on businesses and also curtail welfare as well as entitlements to as large an extent as the political process will allow us. If we remove all of the incentives not to work it is logical to assume that people will start working harder and adapting a more independent mind set to their own lives, and by weeding out the lazy yet able workers we can more accurately identify those who truly have disorders and are not able to work so that charities, for instance, have an easier time identifying those who are truly in need. 

Popularity: 51% [?]

No. But they are two of Thomas Sowell’s “Random Thoughts”:

A recent study showed the median income of major corporate CEOs to be about $8 million a year. That’s less than a third of what Alex Rodriguez earns and less than one-thirtieth of what Oprah Winfrey makes. But no one is denouncing them for “greed.”

It is amazing how many people who want us to get out of Iraq want us to go into Darfur.

While I’ll leave readers to chew on those questions themselves, I have a couple of pithy comments on the issues.

First, Oprah and ARod are less likely to be denounced for “greed” because they are in the public eye and thus people feel a connection to them and to their success (because they watch them entertain and provide their riches by doing so). Executives on the other hand are assumed to be greedy and lazy men working in big offices. They are demonized, in part, because their work is enigmatic. While people make them rich by buying whatever they help produce over the course of the day, the process is anonymous and absent of any feeling of connection with the CEOs. And of course a lack of economic learnedness may also contribute to this antagonizing of Executives.

Leftists hate the war in Iraq because its rationale is “self-defense”; leftists love the idea of intervening in Darfur because its rationale is “altruism”.

Popularity: 41% [?]