Great Explanations of How and Why Stuff Works (or Doesn’t) The always provocative _David Friedman_ (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/) has _a new blog_ (http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/) , where he shares with us his often jarring insights into the world. (Whether I agree with him on this or that issue or not, I always find David interesting. I’ve sent his excellent book _Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life_ (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887308856/qid=1135644294/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1365566-3870313?n =507846&s=books&v=glance) to plenty of people over the years. I’m sending copies of that and of his _Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters_ (http://www.lfb.com/index.php?deptid=&parentid=&stocknumber=EC8137&page=1&itemsperpage=24) and _Price Theory: An Intermediate Text_ (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0538805641/qid=1135644360/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/104-1365 566-3870313?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) to a number of Iraqi university libraries as part of a large shipment of books, mainly made up of economics books, but also including sociology, history, law, philosophy, and literature.) Posted by Tom Palmer at _07:38 PM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027831.php) | _Comments (0)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027831.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27831) The Future Is Arriving
The “House of the Future,” circa 1965 Whoa! I just had to take the opportunity to do some “sky blogging,” as I’m on a _Scandinavian Airlines_ (http://www.scandinavian.net/) flight that offers in-flight wifi access (for $9.95 for 30 minutes). This is too cool. I’ve checked email and figured I’d post my first aerial blog entry. We may not have such great video phones yet (like the ones I thought so cool when I visited the House of the Future when I was a boy), but so much else that was once fantasy has been delivered by science and capitalism. And so much else that is now reality — like the internet and sky blogging — wasn’t even a fantasy just a few years ago. Free market capitalism isn’t merely efficient. It isn’t merely just. It doesn’t just deliver more and better goods for more and more people. It’s cool. P.S. I‘m confident that someone will point out that SAS, on whose plane I surfed the internet, is _partly state-owned_ (http://www.flightsafe.co.uk/sas.html) (50% private share ownership and 50% state ownership through a consortium of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish state holding companies). But even the semi-private SAS operates within the context of a global capitalist economy. Were there just one state airline, I doubt that we’d see much innovation, falling prices, or customer service. Imagine the case if the various suppliers were all socialist enterprises, as well. And were capital markets controlled by the state, we’d be back to the disgusting Aeroflot flights of years past that I remember so unfondly.) Posted by Tom Palmer at _01:17 PM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027830.php) | _Comments (1)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027830.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27830) December 23, 2005 The Body Snatchers The American Face of British Broadcasting At first I thought that the bones of the late (and much missed) Alistair Cooke that were reported stolen were taken by some kind of sick collector. That’ s weird and disturbing enough. It _seems_ (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-12-22T191545Z_01_EIC269205_RTRUKOC_0 _US-LIFE-COOKE.xml&archived=False) , instead, that they were stolen by a ring of body part snatchers. How awful — and how interesting if there are in fact “rings” of people stealing parts from cadavers for transplantation. Maybe it’s time to think again about the _laws governing organ transfers_ (http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv28n3/v28n3-1.pdf) (since rather older laws were apparently violated by those who stole Cooke’s bones). (_Here’s_ (http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2004/10/on_markets_for_.html) another helpful link on the topic.) I recall Cooke quite fondly for his television work in the U.S. and also for very a fine collection of essays by H. L. Mencken that he edited some years ago, which I read in high school: _The Vintage Mencken_ (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679728953/qid=1135324412/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-6583460 -7874360?n=507846&s=books&v=glance) . His radio commentaries were also insightful and entertaining. It’s sad that the corpse of such a gentleman should have been dishonored in that fashion. Posted by Tom Palmer at _02:49 AM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027794.php) | _Comments (7)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027794.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27794) December 22, 2005 A Brief Layover I’ve got a few minutes to check email and delete spam while waiting for a connecting flight in the _Zürich International Airport_ (http://www.zurich-airport.com/ZRH/default.asp?ID_site=1&sp=en&hp=1&t=Zurich%20Airport) . Very clean. Very tidy. Very expensive. Very Swiss. Among the emails were three about a _recent junket_ (http://antiwar.com/blog/) to Malaysia, one of which included this repulsive image of a notorious _Jew-baiter _ (http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/malaysian.asp) (Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad) and one of his fervent admirers, Eric Garris of antiwar.com: It’s remarkable that Mahathir Mohammad didn’t jail his other admirer, _Justin Raimondo_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/020009.php) (seen in the background), while Raimondo was in Malaysia at the invitation of the country’s leaders. In Raimondo’s case, the charges wouldn’t even have to be trumped up, as they were in the case of _Anwar Ibrahim_ (http://www.anwaribrahim.com/ver2nd/enter.html) , who was jailed by Mohammad on phony charges of sodomy. (I recently had the honor of meeting Anwar Ibrahim, a remarkable scholar and a strong fighter for freedom, at a Cato Institute event.) Ugh. Posted by Tom Palmer at _03:40 AM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027764.php) | _Comments (34)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027764.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27764) December 20, 2005 Scholarships and Internships -- Run, Don't Walk, to IHS Students and friends of students should check out the excellent scholarships and internships from the _Institute for Humane Studies_ (http://www.theihs.org/) . The deadlines are fast approaching (December 31 for the Humane Studies Fellowships and mid- to late-January for the summer internships). IHS is a great organization and involvement with their programs and their team can make an enormous difference for good in one’s life. UPDATE: My colleague Greg Newburn has reminded me that the Cato Institute has a very fine _internship_ (http://www.cato.org/jobs/intern/) program, as well. Besides the work part, it includes workshops on political thought, economic analysis, logic and argumentation, writing skills, public speaking, and more. So add that to your list of things for which to apply or to which to donate much needed funds. Posted by Tom Palmer at _12:54 AM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027707.php) | _Comments (7)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027707.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27707) December 18, 2005 Dare We Hope? _The European Union has offered to end farm export subsidies by 2013 - a major obstacle to talks in Hong Kong on a new global trade agreement._ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4539108.stm) I mentioned in the previous posting that deciding on what to do to create more just societies is not merely a matter of waving a magic wand to implement the right policies. The example I gave to sober up people in rich societies who just don’t understand why people in poorer societies cannot get their act together was …. farm subsidies, an utterly stupid, destructive, and unjust set of policies that we have been unable to eradicate in the wealthier societies. Well…not yet, at least. (I am hopeful, but realistic; the farm lobbies will move into high gear to oppose elimination of their exploitation of the rest of society.) Posted by Tom Palmer at _04:01 AM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027657.php) | _Comments (8)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027657.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27657) December 17, 2005 Chickens, Eggs, and Scrambled Institutions Which Comes First?* I had a meeting today with a colleague and an Iraqi friend who is going back soon to run her business in Iraq. Among the topics of conversation (in addition to the books she’s taking back for translation) were how to introduce businesslike behavior and customer service into a society characterized for a long time by very little of either. She was hoping to institute customer-friendly standards of behavior (such as answering letters, processing material efficiently, reducing or eliminating occasions for demands for bribes, and so on) in government ministries. My colleague and I suggested that perhaps a better approach would be to promote civil society and let good businesslike behavior go from the private sector into the public sector, rather than expecting it to go the other direction. The problem she raised is that without getting such things as registration forms processed and certified, a private association or business has little legal security (see _The Mystery of Capital_ (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465016154/qid=1134872104/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-159 8327-3479231?n=507846&s=books&v=glance) by Hernando de Soto for evidence of that), so in order to let the private sector grow, you need to get the government associations to process their documents. What about getting the parliament to cut down on the powers of the ministries to require such forms and procedures before private businesses can be started? “Oh, that’s the hardest of all,” she responded. The reason is that the civil society is quite underdeveloped, whereas the ministries are enormous and have large patronage networks to support their expansive powers. So in order to create public pressure for limiting state powers, you have to build up a large private sector, and do to that, the state has to be at least more efficient and prompt in processing the papers that create legal security so that a private sector can flourish. But the last thing you want is more “efficiency” in the exercise of unlimited and unjustified state powers. Efficiency improvements should be limited to those things that will generate more freedom and legal security, not less. It’ s not an easy problem to address. Government has to do less of what it shouldn ’t be doing (either because those actions are unjust in themselves or because they can be done voluntarily) and more of what ought to be done (like defining and protecting property rights and enforcing contracts), but the problem is how to get the wheel rolling so that more freedom and enforcement of rules of just conduct can generate the rich associational life of civil society that can then exercise a restraining force on the state. What’s the best place to grasp the wheel to start it rolling? That’s not the same problem as what “ought to be done” if one had the power to wave a magic wand and cause “what ought to be done” to be done; if we could do that, we in the USA and in the European Union would have eliminated the unjust and extremely inefficient — and, from a social point of view, irrational — policies of farm subsidies. The problem in less law-governed and free parts of the world is much harder than the problem we have not succeeded in addressing in the wealthy countries. The problem is to apply the pressure one has at one’s disposal to start a process that has a chance to be reinforcing. Where should such pressure be applied? Lobbying the state to limit its own powers, or creating voluntary associations within the parameters set by an already interventionist state, or trying to introduce into the organization of the state greater efficienty and responsibility to the social order, so that it ceases to be such an impediment and facilitates (or at least allows) more voluntary association? A part of the solution is to understand that the end of the process is to secure justice and freedom, which means getting the state to protect rights and create a legal order and to limit the state to those functions. More efficient governmental organization is hardly a worthy ideal by itself, but it may be a part of the process of realizing the ideal, which in this case is limiting the coercive powers of the state and expanding the areas of human interaction that are governed by voluntary agreement, rather than by power. But determining where you start the process of institutional change to get to that ideal is not an easy problem to solve. *An Aristotelian/teleological approach would posit that the chicken comes first in at least one important sense, because a chicken is that for the sake of which an egg is laid, whereas an egg is not that for the sake for which an egg matures into a chicken. (Let’s set aside the questionable value of such a teleological approach to understanding the physical world and just apply the metaphor to the world of human actions, which are oriented toward ends.) Similarly, the end (telos) of political action is the securing of one’s rights to one’s life, liberty, and estate, so what comes first in the sense of ends is the limitation of state power and the securing of freedom; understanding the end of law is the key to knowing how to reform and thus limit the state, but being causally first in the sense of the end for the sake of which something is done is not the same as being first in the order of temporal succession. That’s a different problem. Posted by Tom Palmer at _08:18 PM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027654.php) | _Comments (8)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027654.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27654) What Small Minded, Mean Little People Voluntary (for now), but ugly, very ugly The self-styled _American Family Association_ (http://www.afa.net/) has decided to _boycott Ford Motors _ (http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/12/16/ford.adverts.ap/index.html) for …. trying to sell its products to consumers by advertising them in newspapers and magazines. That is, advertising them to consumers that the AFA would prefer not exist (if you get my drift). As their leader Donald Wildmon stated, “All we wanted was for Ford to refrain from choosing sides in the cultural war, and supporting groups which promote same-sex marriage is not remaining neutral,” but Ford isn’t “supporting groups” by making philanthropic donations; it is paying _The Advocate_ (http://www.advocate.com/) to print advertisements that will appeal to readers, who will then buy cars and enrich the shareholders and employees of Ford. Wildmon & Co. are not mad at Ford for giving away money to bad causes, or for making bad cars, or for treating people badly, or for supporting bad policies; they are angry at Ford Motors for trying to advertise their products and sell them to people at a profit, which is what one would expect of a for-profit firm. But in this case, the AFA would prefer that those consumers not consume anything, because they would prefer that those consumers not exist. Boycots violate no rights, so I’ve no objection on that score, but they can provide insight into the hearts of those who promote them, and the AFA’s attempt to organize a boycot of Ford for trying to sell cars provides a truly repulsive peek. (For those who point out that the AFA and related groups are merely using their dollars to promote their agenda, it’s worth noting that they strongly favor putting gay people in prison and subjecting them to extraordinary coercion and violence. Boycotts of the sort discussed above are the best they can do at the moment, but violence is very much a part of their agenda; support for sodomy laws is support for exercising violence against the innocent. Second, to say that something is voluntary is not the same as saying that it is noble or that it is exempt from criticism; boycotting Ford for trying to sell cars, whether to gay people or to Jews or to blacks or to Arizonans, shows a truly hateful attitude, not toward the product, but toward those consumers, who just shouldn’t be consuming.) Posted by Tom Palmer at _11:24 AM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027648.php) | _Comments (4)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027648.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27648) GLOBALIZAREA ESTE MINUNATĂ!!!: Globalization is Grrrreat! Thanks to the good offices of Iulia Borca, whom I first met at an _IES-Europe_ (http://www.ieseurope.org/) seminar at the _Theodor Heuss Akademie_ (http://www.fnst.org/webcom/show_article.php/_c-406/_lkm-996/i.html) in Gummersbach, one of my essays on globalization (“_Globalization is Grrrreat!_ (http://www.cato.org/pubs/letters/palmer-catoletters.pdf) ”) is now available in Romanian: _GLOBALIZAREA ESTE MINUNATĂ!!!_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/papers/tom_palmer_-_globalizarea_este_minunata!-1.pdf) (A fancier version will be posted soon on a new Romanian libertarian website.) Posted by Tom Palmer at _12:29 AM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027642.php) | _Comments (1)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027642.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27642) December 16, 2005 No More Blank Check? Bravo for the U.S. Senate for _rejecting_ (http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-12-17T011756Z_01_SIB572032_RTRUKOC_ 0_US-SECURITY-PATRIOT.xml) a blanket reauthorization of the “United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorists” Act. What next? Will they insist on upholding the Constitution? Posted by Tom Palmer at _09:06 PM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027638.php) | _Comments (1)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027638.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27638) December 15, 2005 Мифы об индивидуализме: "Myths of Individualism" Some years ago I wrote an essay on “_Myths of Individualism_ (http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-18n5-1.html) ” to rebut various bizarre claims about what individualism means and what those who embrace individualism believe. It’s now available in _Russian_ (http://www.cato.ru/publications/id/162) . Posted by Tom Palmer at _10:43 PM_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027615.php) | _Comments (2)_ (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027615.php#comments) | _TrackBack (0)_ (http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=27615) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back! http://us.click.yahoo.com/g0CDCD/tzNLAA/cUmLAA/KlSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
