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Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Jon Stewart on ACORN
The Durable Internet: Preserving Network Neutrality without Regulation
by Timothy B. Lee
An important reason for the Internet's remarkable growth over the last quarter century is the "end-to-end" principle that networks should confine themselves to transmitting generic packets without worrying about their contents. Not only has this made deployment of internet infrastructure cheap and efficient, but it has created fertile ground for entrepreneurship. On a network that respects the end-to-end principle, prior approval from network owners is not needed to launch new applications, services, or content.
In recent years, self-styled "network neutrality" activists have pushed for legislation to prevent network owners from undermining the end-to end principle. Although the concern is understandable, such legislation would be premature. Physical ownership of internet infrastructure does not translate into a practical ability to control its use. Regulations are unnecessary because even in the absence of robust broadband competition, network owners are likely to find deviations from the end-to-end principle unprofitable.
New regulations inevitably come with unintended consequences. Indeed, today's network neutrality debate is strikingly similar to the debate that produced the first modern regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission. Unfortunately, rather than protecting consumers from the railroads, the ICC protected the railroads from competition by erecting new barriers to entry in the surface transportation marketplace. Other 20th-century regulatory agencies also limited competition in the industries they regulated. Like these older regulatory regimes, network neutrality regulations are likely not to achieve their intended aims. Given the need for more competition in the broadband marketplace, policymakers should be especially wary of enacting regulations that could become a barrier to entry for new broadband firms.
Nuclear No-Contest
by James P. Hogan
Before the 1950s, the future confronting the human race was bleak. With the global population increasing and becoming more dependent on energy-dense technologies to sustain its food supplies and rising living standards, there seemed no escape from the catastrophe that would come eventually when the coal and the oil ran out. But few worried unduly. It was only after an escape from the nightmare presented itself with the harnessing of nuclear processes and the prospect of unlimited energy that people began to worry. People can be very strange.
Toward Higher Energy Densities
For reasons that have mainly to do with politics and the media's thirst for sensationalism, nuclear energy has been a subject of much disinformation and alarmism for several decades. In fact, nuclear is safer, cleaner, and potentially cheaper and more abundant than any other proven source of energy that the human race has come up with. But beyond this, its real significance is that it represents the next natural step in the evolutionary progression that has marked the history of energy development.
From unaided muscle power, through the use of animals, wood, wind and water, to coal, and oil, finding better ways of doing the work involved in living has reflected the harnessing of more concentrated energy sources. A lot is written about how much energy can be obtained from this source or that source. But if you really want to do things more easily and efficiently – and open up ways to doing new things that were inconceivable before – what counts is energy density. How much can be packed into a given volume. It's easy to calculate how much energy it takes to lift three hundred people across the Atlantic, and how much wood you'd need to burn to release that much energy. Okay, now try building a wood-burning 757. It won't work. The mountain of logs will never get itself off the ground. You need the concentration of jet fuel.
Some people argue that we don't need nuclear power because we already have other ways to generate electricity. This misses the whole point. It would be like somebody in an earlier century telling Michael Faraday that we didn't need electricity because we already had other ways to heat water. What made electricity so different was its ability to do things that were unachievable to any degree with existing technologies, and the whole field of electrical engineering and electronics that we take for granted today was the result. A similar distinction sets nuclear processes apart from conventional sources. All forms of hydrocarbon and other chemical combustion involve energy changes in the outer electron shells of atoms. The energies associated with transitions of the atomic nucleus are thousands of times more intense, and hence represent a breakthrough to the next regime of energy control that the growth of human populations and wealth creation require. The so-called alternatives do not.
Negative Interest Rates
by Gary North
There is considerable discussion about the possibility that the Federal Reserve could and possibly should create a monetary environment in which interest rates are negative.
First, why should it do this?
Second, is this even possible?
Third, if it is possible, under what conditions could/should the FED do this?
I am not speaking here of real interest rates, i.e., the cost of borrowing discounted by the rate of price inflation. That environment existed in the late 1970s when Federal Reserve policy under the pipe-smoking Arthur Burns and then the long-forgotten G. William Miller produced negative real interest rates. Prices were rising at rates higher than T-bill rates or T-bond rates. Investors lost wealth by investing in these assets rather than gold or silver.
There is considerable discussion about the possibility that the Federal Reserve could and possibly should create a monetary environment in which interest rates are negative.
First, why should it do this?
Second, is this even possible?
Third, if it is possible, under what conditions could/should the FED do this?
I am not speaking here of real interest rates, i.e., the cost of borrowing discounted by the rate of price inflation. That environment existed in the late 1970s when Federal Reserve policy under the pipe-smoking Arthur Burns and then the long-forgotten G. William Miller produced negative real interest rates. Prices were rising at rates higher than T-bill rates or T-bond rates. Investors lost wealth by investing in these assets rather than gold or silver.
Check Treasury rates on my site: the department on "Yield Curve."
Check the Median CPI and CPI on my site's department, "Federal Reserve Charts." Or just type "Federal Reserve Charts" on Google. My department is the top link.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Pay More, Get Less
by Michael D. Tanner
That's it?
For the past six months, six members of the Senate Finance Committee, led by Chairman Max Baucus, have been laboring mightily to design a health-care bill. Yesterday they finally brought forth their product — and it leaves us with more questions than answers.
Despite months of work, Baucus hasn't really produced a bill yet, only a 223-page summary of what he hopes a bill will contain.
Here is some of what we know and don't know:
First, he claims the bill would cost only $856 billion. (Remember when that sounded like a lot of money?) In fact, that likely understates the true cost. The Congressional Budget Office only looks at a 10-year budget window, that is, 2010 to 2019. But most of the bill wouldn't even start until 2014. Thus, the "10-year cost" covers only five years of actual spending. Future costs are expected to increase dramatically.
The proposal isn't all bad. Most significantly, it drops the idea of a government-run "public option" in favor of co-ops. Government involvement with these co-ops would essentially be limited to providing start-up grants. The co-ops are unlikely to have much, if any, impact on the cost or availability of health insurance, but are far preferable to a government-run plan.
Baucus would also take the first tentative steps toward letting people buy health insurance across state lines. He'd allow states to establish interstate compacts for insurance purchases starting in 2015, and also let insurers develop national products that could be sold in any state. National plans would be exempt from state-mandated benefits.
This doesn't go far enough, and risks simply transferring regulation and mandates from the state to the regional or national level. Still, it looks like a tiny step in the right direction.
But in the end, this is still a plan that will make Americans pay more and get less.
Its centerpiece is a heavily punitive individual mandate — a requirement that every American buy a government-designed minimum-insurance package. Failure to comply would result in a fine that could run as high as $3,800 for a family of four.
Moreover, the mandate may not apply just to those without insurance today. While Baucus' summary says that those with "grandfathered" plans wouldn't have to change their current policies to satisfy the mandate, it's vague about what qualifies as "grandfathered."
Plus, employer-provided plans — that is, the policies of the vast majority of us — would have just five years to comply with the new insurance regulations, and "grandfathered" plans wouldn't be eligible for any subsidies. There's thus an excellent chance that most people wouldn't actually be able to keep their current plans.
Some seniors would also be forced out of their current arrangements. Baucus would cut payments to Medicare Advantage — which is likely to push many insurers out of the program, while others would raise the premiums they charge seniors. Millions would likely be forced back into traditional Medicare.
(The plan also targets two other GOP health-care reforms of recent years: It would impose new restrictions on Health Savings Accounts and limit the ability of workers to take advantage of tax-free Flexible Spending Accounts.)
Baucus also wants a mandate for employers to provide insurance to workers, though it's less severe than the mandate in the House bills. He has no specific requirement for employers to provide insurance — but any employer who failed to do so would have to pay the cost of all subsidies that the government provides his or her workers to help them pay for insurance on their own, up to $400 a worker.
Those Who Do Not Remember History Are Condemned to Say That "Taking Our Country Back" is a Code Word For Racial Animus
Nick Gillespie
Yesterday on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, University of Pennsylvania sociologist author Michael Eric Dyson appeared, talking about racial animus against President Barack Obama. Dyson is smart, prolific, and ... possessed of an extremely weak memory when it comes to the cliches of the American political scene. At one point, in response to a self-identified black conservative who claimed that criticism of Obama stemmed from policy differences rather than prejudice, Dyson responded
...even though you can look out [at the Taxpayer March on Washington and various Tea Party demonstrations] and say, "Hey, I didn't see anyone say an epithet or hurl a nasty remark against Mr. Obama," you know, some of those posters that had him decked out in what they perceived to be African gear were offensive. The vitriol directed against him—"We want our country back"—I mean, there are code words that are being distributed and we can't be ignorant and pretend that we don't get the code words...
At the September 12 march, I did not personally see any signs such as the ones described by Dyson, though there were a few birther references and posters about how Obama should be president of Kenya (as pathetic and misguided as it gets, for sure). The vast, overwhelming sentiment was precisely as advertised and didn't stray from a very basic and unified message: Voter and taxpayer revulsion at bailouts and government spending that started under Bush and has gotten worse and worse under Obama.
The whole section with Dyson is here and is well worth watching, though I disagree strongly with him about the role of race in contemporary policy discussions, especially about health care (as does the Obama White House, which has gone to pains to dissociate itself from Jimmy Carter's recent proclamation on the matter). However, the idea that saying we're going to take "our country" back is anything other than a transpartisan cliche is ridiculous to the nth degree. Indeed, here's a quote by none other than Barack Obama, circa June 2007, telling an audience:
"It's going to be because of you that we take our country back."
The setting for that comment? The 2007 "Take Back America" conference, a confab of leftys. Read more here.
A little historical perspective goes a long way toward alleviating anxiety about the current debased state of U.S. political discourse, which is never as bad today as it will be tomorrow. And never as great as when Rachel Jackson was being attacked as a bigamist, Grover Cleveland as an absentee father, and Dwight Eisenhower as a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy."Folk, Labor Musicians Unite for Third Anti-Bush CD Hail to the Thieves, Volume III: Songs to Take Our Country Back! is a rousing call to action from the likes of Billy Bragg, Anne Feeney, Utah Phillips and folk musicians across the country. This new CD lays out the case against George Bush and his cronies with 20 songs, poems and stories in the best of the traveling, storytelling folk tradition.
I raise this because the selective amnesia of virtually all participants in traditional right-left, liberal-conservative, Democratic-Republican politicking is not only frustrating as hell, but completely self-serving. It's one of the reasons why people are turned off by politics (not such a bad thing, perhaps). You know you're not going to have a serious discussion, but rather one that is completely relativistic and revisionist, typically designed to score points in the here and now at the expense of anything approaching history. Republicans were pissed when the Dems dissed George Bush as retarded draft dodger, and now Dems are outraged by all slagging of Obama & Co. Conservatives who spent eight years of accusing Bill Clinton of sodomizing interns in zeppelin hangars at the Mena, Arkansas airstrip thought civility had ended when the first Bushitler poster hit the streets sometime around January 2001. And on and on.
NICK GILLESPIE ON FOX NEWS' FREEDOM WATCH WITH JUDGE NAPOLITANO
Why do politicians treat the Constitution like a pair of stretch pants?
'What You're Left With Is Libertarianism'
Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld on what guys like to read, what meth addicts do to toasters, and why liberals and conservatives are so annoying
Katherine Mangu-WardInsomniacs who channel surf to Fox News at 3 a.m. may think they have drifted off into a dirty, hilarious febrile dream. Instead of perky anchors and partisan shouters working over the headlines of the day, a pug-faced ne’er-do-well named Greg Gutfeld leads a motley crew of comics, C-list celebrities, and occasional reason editors through a running news-of-the-weird joke fest covering (in no particular order) free markets, unicorns, drug legalization, very attractive women, and very gay sex. Airing since February 2007, Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld is just the latest stop in Gutfeld’s checkered career.
In 1987 Gutfeld took his first journalistic job, somewhat unconventionally for a Berkeley graduate, at the conservative American Spectator, running errands for the magazine’s famously erratic editor in chief, R. Emmett Tyrell. After a failed stint as a screenwriter, Gutfeld got a job at the health-oriented lifestyle magazine Prevention, where he started drinking and drugging at a prodigious rate. Gutfeld went on to edit the lads-and-abs magazines Men’s Health (where he was fired for making fun of Girl Scouts, cat lovers, and his boss), Stuff (where he was fired for an incident involving several midgets for hire at a publishers’ conference), and finally the British edition of Maxim, where he hung his hat while writing Lessons From the Land of Pork Scratchings: A Miserable Yank Discovers the Secret of Happiness in Britain (Simon & Schuster). Gutfeld has written “traitor” columns for women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Mademoiselle, telling women what men really think. He claims to have been rejected for a job at reason in 1988.
In 2005 Gutfeld gained a new audience by writing satirical, liberal-mocking posts at The Huffington Post (sample line: “Is Al Franken patenting the pubic hair and Elmer’s glue cure for baldness, or is he just keeping the idea to himself?”). This helped lead him to his current gig, where in addition to hosting the hour-long Red Eye, he writes the Daily Gut blog. The unifying theme throughout his career has been boobs, as in both breasts and morons. Another theme to his jobs: Gutfeld was fired or forced to resign in disgrace from virtually all of them.
Associate Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward spoke with Gutfeld on stage at Reason Weekend in Orlando, Florida, in April.
reason: Describe the evolution of your political outlook.
Greg Gutfeld: As a teenager, I was a liberal. It helped me in school. Where I went to school, if you collected signatures for the nuclear freeze, you got extra credit. I realized the more you seemed to care about something, the more the teachers cared about you and your friends. If you share the liberal assumptions, you don’t have to think too much about it.
I thought that was great because it really helped me with grades, but after a few debates in school where I actually had to think about things, I realized I was a complete fraud. I started to re-examine myself when I went to Berkeley. It was a really bad idea. It was just walking around with a target on your back.
I became a conservative by being around liberals and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives. You realize that there’s something distinctly in common between the two groups, the left and the right; the worst part of each of them is the moralizing. On the left, you have people who want to dictate your behavior under the guise of tolerance. Unless you disagree with them. Then the tolerance goes out the window. Which kind of negates the whole idea of tolerance. That’s the politically correct moralizing. Then when you become a conservative, the other kind of moralizing comes from religion. But if you remove both of those from the equation, what you’re left with is libertarianism.
From the right, you’ve got free markets. From the left, you have free minds. To me, that’s the only sensible direction. As you grow older, you kind of end up there. Especially if you drink and do a lot of drugs.
reason: Speaking of which, let’s talk about your editorship of Men’s Health.
Gutfeld: I was the only editor of any health magazine that did a feature on how smoking is good for you.
Actually, one of my primary interviewees was Jacob Sullum from reason. He turned me on to all these tobacco companies that were actually doing amazing research on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. But nobody in the media would cover it because smoking is bad. I would get all these amazing medical journals at Men’s Health, and I loved them mainly for the weird pictures that I would copy and send out to my friends, enlarged arms and weird faces. I believe I was the original Internet.
I read a lot of this passive-smoking stuff, and I realized it was just bullshit. What they’re trying to do is create science to legislate. I wanted to write about this, and I’d just become editor of Men’s Health. When you get a job like that, you’re supposed to do the right thing. I did the wrong thing.
The article I wrote was called “I Smoke and I Work at Men’s Health.” We recreated a Parliament ad with me in the middle smoking. It was really cool and wonderful. I interviewed every satanic person in the tobacco industry and cited their science. It was a fantastic article, and it dropped like a stone in journalism. People just hated it. But I couldn’t help it, because this is real health journalism. Once they stop demonizing substances, they’re going to find out that these things can actually help people.
Health editors are generally very miserable people. They constantly think there’s something wrong with themselves. Meanwhile, they hate pharmaceutical companies.
Here are companies that have to bend over backwards to tell you what’s wrong with their product. Those commercials, 90 percent of the commercials are them telling you not to buy it. Meanwhile, health editors are lying to you. They’re telling you that New Age practices work. So you have these people that are making fun of drug companies who are liars, and the drugs companies that can’t afford to lie. I realized that the pharmaceutical companies to me were bigger than the space program. They spend billions of dollars on tiny little things that change your life, and no one gives them credit for it.
Men’s Health is where I started to get very pro-business. Like, you know what? Corporations are not these evil monoliths that they depicted in Michael Clayton. They’re just groups of people who work really hard to create good things that make our lives better, and they’re treated like crap by editors who are paranoid weirdos.
reason: When I was on Red Eye, we talked about some findings about marijuana and life extension. It’s not just the big pharma drugs that can help people, right?
Gutfeld: Yeah. And I won’t just say marijuana. I’ll say Ecstasy, acid, cocaine. People take these things for the sake of oblivion, but they also work. If you treat them like any other substance, you can actually derive what makes them work and turn them into things that help you. Pot helps people who are in pain. There are studies that show that Ecstasy helps heal problem marriages.
READ MORE AT REASON
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