Re: TownHall.com – 4/24/2008 – “Voters Don’t Care About Global Warming, But They Should” – Amy Menefee

Menefee shows a healthy degree of skepticism about the suitability of WW-II as a model for a “war on climate change” as well she should. A much more effective model is the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb and in the process, commercial atomic power, Teflon, and numerous other scientific and engineering discoveries/inventions that aided mankind and the civilian economy. But the Manhattan Project was highly secret and a military necessity, so perhaps the Mission To Space is an even better model, a project that got us to space (that was not exactly a short-term necessity) but also resulted in science and engineering advances (those in Computer Science in particular) and greatly improved science education from kindergarten thru graduate school.

The fact of the matter is that even those who doubt the bad effects of global warming must see that the two most likely tools in the fight against global warming are energy efficiency and non-fossil-carbon (alternative) energy sources, the only long term solution to our excessive dependence on imported oil and arguably the most reliable and cost effective way to lessen that dependence in the intermediate term.

Rather than concentrating on their disagreements with the global warming believers, why don’t people like Menefee collaborate with their global warming opponents on actions which are in both their interests?

Why? Because like many global warming and anti global warning fanatics, they are more interested in reflexively defending their philosophical positions then using their intelligence and practical experience to solve real problems.

I can’t say that the abysmal, incompetent media coverage consisting mainly of repeating verbatim the loudest and most radical rantings from the extremes has helped any, either.

Re: TownHall.com – 4-25-2008 – “The Case Against Cynicism” – Burt Prelutsky

Prelutsky contradicts himself when he says first that “the anti-war sentiment on college campuses had less to do with pacifism or a moral code than with a reasonable fear of being killed or maimed in Vietnam” and then “Even the mere threat of being bossed around by top sergeants who hailed from Texas and Georgia, of having to pull K.P. duty and make their own beds, was enough to give most of the guys I knew at UCLA a case of the vapors. Heck, just the idea that one could never light up a joint whenever you felt like it was reason enough to make any number of them take to the streets or take off for Toronto”.

Giving up ones freedom or exposing oneself to death is not to be taken lightly --- to do so there must be a compelling reason. The anti-war people felt the war in Vietnam was not such a reason, and in fact, war protesters risked giving up their freedom to arrest and jail (and perhaps fleeing their home country) because actively opposing the war, unlike participating in it, was a valid moral goal in their eyes. It is not cowardly to refuse to kill a random stranger for no good reason. It is not cowardly to refuse to get yourself killed for no good reason. It is not cowardly to refuse to fight in a useless war. It is cowardly not to stand up for what you believe. Prelutshy’s knowledge of war protesters must have been very limited and/or very inaccurate to lead him to believe they were cowards. But Prelutesky’s comment about making beds and smoking pot indicates he knew that his claim about protesters being cowards was erroneous --- just as erroneous as calling suicide bombers, who give up their life for what they believe, cowards. Suicide bombers can accurately be called terrorists, criminals, and just plain insane, but cowardly they are not. Anti-war protesters who attempted to avoid the draft can accurately be called draft dodgers or criminals, and I suppose some could be called cowardly (relatively few draft dodgers did so out of cowardice) but saying moral code had less impact than cowardess is just plain wrong.

Prelutsky says “we have millions of Americans who are convinced that whenever anything bad takes place, be it a hurricane or 9/11, it’s George Bush’s fault”. Nobody I know blames Bush for a hurricane or 9/11. But almost everybody I know recognizes that our government’s emergency preparedness to hurricanes was disgraceful, and Bush, as President, is not free of blame for that. As for 9/11, the government could also have been more competent in preventing and preparing for a 9/11, and Bush as President again bears some responsibility, although in this case the responsibility goes further back in time and reflects on past Presidents as well, but the mayor of NYC probably had more blame for unpreparedness to deal with 9/11 that all the Presidents combined.

Not everyone thinks of Charles Lindbergh as “beloved”. You might want to listen to Woodie Guthrie’s “Lindbergh” some time.

Re: TownHall.com – 4/27/2008 – “Naming the cause of medicine’s failures” – Paul Jacob

Jacob claims that “farming, distribution, and marketing of our food supply works best with minimal government involvement” but fails to identify what would happen without that “minimal involvement” or what that “minimal involvement” might be. Does Jacob believe that government involvement with transportation (such as building and maintaining roads) interferes with the distribution of food supply? Does Jacob think that government financing of agricultural research, either in government national laboratories, in our state colleges of agriculture, or with research grants to private and public institutions necessarily harms our food supply? Both of these government involvements in agriculture are substantial --- does that mean he thinks they should be cut back?

Back in the good ol’ days when government kept out of medicine, salesmen went from town to town selling really bad useless potions as tested safe and effective medicines. Does Jocab think that any government regulation of medical products is over involvement? If not, where does he draw the line between under-involvement and the appropriate amount of involvement?

Socialism does not necessarily imply rationing any more than does capitalism. Costco, a purely capitalist corporation from whom I buy most of my food including rice, has began rationing rice to its customers due to a recent rice supply/demand imbalance. In reality, socialist run businesses can be just as efficient as private run businesses, provided that private run and socialist run businesses use the same management principles. Take the national oil company of Brazil as an example. There are lots of examples of inefficient private companies (some being overly bureaucratic and/or with management overly concerned with providing unearned benefits to themselves and their friends) that are no better at managing their business then are governments.

I guess Jacob’s problem is a frequent one: seeing the bad but not the good associated with things you instinctively oppose and seeing the good but not the bad with things instinctively favor. Half the story is better than no story so long as you remember your telling only half the story. Believing the partial story you tell is the whole truth is really quite dangerous. Jacob needs to put equal emphasis on identifying what government ought to be doing in medicine and what it ought not to be doing, because without this, his position on government involvement in medical care is meaningless.

As an aside, one thing our government is supposed to do, if you believe our founding father’s on this issue, is “to fix the standards of weights and measures” (US Constitution, I Section 8 #5), and defining safe and effective dosage of medicines fits well within this responsibility. Congress’ power to “to regulate commerce … among the several states” (US Constitution, I Section 8 #3) clearly gives the government the authority to impose those safe and effective dosages onto the practice of medicine, at least in so far as interstate commerce is involved.

Re: TownHall.com – 4/19/2008 – “Global Warming Tax Hikes Headed Your Way” – Paul Driessen

Driessen doesn’t seem to understand global warming science. He confuses maximum temperature from time-averaged temperature. He can’t tell systematic temperature changes (the true “global warming” prediction) from naturally and simultaneously occurring cyclical tendencies. He can’t tell cold region addition of ice (arising from increased precipitation) from cold region reduction in area. He can’t understand that rising temperatures are both caused by CO₂ concentrations and cause rising CO₂ concentrations, so looking back in time and seeing rising CO₂ levels following temperature increase is not a contradiction to global warming, but one of its predictions. His criticisms of uncertainty in the science of global warming are made in denial of the fact that the uncertainties in economic theory far exceed the uncertainties in the theory of global warming. He fails to understand the limitations of derivative predictions from global warming models --- predicting localized consequences of global warming (such as whether global warming would turn the Rio Grande Valley into a desert or swamp) are much harder and less reliable than predicting the average global effects.

Driessen seems to be unable to understand that CO₂ production and energy usage need not be as strongly linked in the (near) future as they have been in the past. Technology has a way of changing such linkages. Increased efficiency in solar, wind, and tidal/wave based energy production is bringing energy from those sources closer and closer to fossil carbon in cost-effectiveness. Increased efficiency in using energy can reduce energy consumption without reducing what we use energy for. What would Driessen have said about leasing federal lands for oil exploration lands instead of for growing more hay and raising more horses to solve the transportation problems of the past

Driessen is scandalized by the fact that “Activists, journalists, politicians, AlGoreans, and even scientists and corporate executives then select the scariest scenarios, call them evidence, trumpet them with hysterical headlines – and insist on drastic cutbacks in CO2 emissions and energy use”. So what? He promotes the least scary scenario --- global warming doesn’t exist and things will continue along as they have in the past. People who have political prejudices tend to favor the scenarios that promote their prejudices. But the political machinations of prejudiced political operators has little to do with the predictions of real science which take a probability-weighted middle ground of all possible scenarios somewhere between the two extremes.

Driessen says “Climate change is also about power. Power to control – and curtail…”. Is that the key to what Driessen is up to? Does he favor the economic/political power structure that seeks to keep energy policy as it is now --- favoring fossil fuel based energy production over alternative energy production and increased efficiency --- and opposes those who would shift economic/political power from the fossil carbon energy producers?

Re : TownHall.com – 4/17/2008 – “What Price Freedom?” – Lawrence Kudlow

Kudlow is very confused.

Expending 1% of gross domestic product for our safety is a reasonable sized investment. Flushing 1% of our gross domestic product down the drain is another matter altogether. Except for our underspending in Afghanistan, at least that part of the war on terrorism has been well spent and has greatly lessened our danger from al-Qaida. Our expenditures on domestic security have produced positive results although the effectiveness and efficiency with which our domestic security programs have been administrated has reduced the effectiveness of what should have been achieved with those expenditures.

But Iraq is a different story. While Saddam was a theoretical supporter of terrorism against the USA, he had kept al-Qaida and similar organizations out of Iraq because he realized that they were an even greater threat to him then they were to the USA. Al-Qaida in Iraq (which has a focus on Iraqi interests and in international affairs is only weakly linked to al-Qaida itself) was formed after the fall of Saddam by an inflow of non-Iraqi Islamists. While the removal of Saddam did accomplish certain US strategic goals, it also resulted in strengthening the position of Iran in the mid-east and providing an increased focus on Islamic terrorist groups as defenders of Islam from the attack by the USA --- failures that far exceeded any positive results we have achieved so far in Iraq.

Kudlow’s economic arguments make even less sense than his geopolitical ones. Whatever economic gains have been made under the current administration have been financed by international debt, which someday will come due. Think how much better our economy might have been.

Re: TownHall.com – 4/22/2008 thru 4/23/2008 – “The Economics of College, Parts I. II, and III” – Thomas Sowell

Part I

Sowell either does not understand capitalism or does not understand the social benefit (to every individual in our society) in insuring that those young people who will best benefit from college are able to afford college.

Sowell sees deciding to go to college like deciding to buy cosmetics --- if the price is cheap enough, why not; but if it’s too expensive, pass. Surely enhancing the ability of individuals to buy cosmetics by granting “cosmeticships” brings little benefit to the rest of us (unless perhaps the cosmetics are deodorants). Let the market have its way with cosmetics.

But getting a college education is not like getting cosmetics. College trains scientists, teachers, health care providers, engineers, accountants, business executives, and even future military officers. A college education, in spite of much of what you read in the conservative press, makes for better informed citizens, and the better informed our citizens, the better democracy and our economic system performs. In reality, the more educated our workforce, the better our economy can perform --- each of us benefits by every incremental college education (note I am not talking about college diplomas that are hardly worth the paper they’re printed on to society, but about a college education).

So here’s the model I think Sowell should be using. When society grants academic scholarships to college (and graduate school) students it providing market incentives for students to get an education and/or “employs” students to go to school, just as industry finances the training of their employees (especially new employees).

Why should scholarships be considered market incentives? Because scholarships are voluntary, and no student can be forced by the granting of a scholarship to go to school (they can always turn the scholarship down), nor are they forced to use the scholarship even if they choose to continue their education. A scholarship is thus clearly nothing more than a market incentive --- something that makes one economic option open to a student relatively more attractive than other options.

Why should scholarships be compared to employing students to go to school? First because much “scholarship” money is in fact compensation for services the scholarship students provide, such as are required of graduate teaching and research assistants. And second, because college students can be considered as citizens in training, and what society invests in student’s education has the expectation of financial payback to society in the future with no more guarantee of the payback than business who train their employees.

Sowell seems to be asking “what’s in it for me?” and “why should I pay (thru taxes) for someone else’s benefit?”. My answer is: if you don’t provide scholarships to induce students to continue their education, then students who are as shortsighted as you will not go to college, and the automobiles you drive, the healthcare get, the food you eat wont be as good as they would be otherwise, and you’ll not have anything constructive to do with the money you saved by not paying taxes. Not to mentioned being outvoted in elections by an ignorant electorate.

While it is hard to argue in general with Sowell’s conservative preference for individual responsibility, there are times when this argument fails. Sowell thinks that granting scholarships will lead people to squander their educational opportunities because they won’t have to pay for them. But scholarships are generally offered term by term, and those who squander their opportunities loose their scholarships. In my experience as a student thru the 60’s and as a faculty member thru the 80’s, scholarship holders (and mature working students paying their own way) are the most serious students, and it is the upper-income family-financed students that have the greatest feeling of entitlement and the greatest propensity to squander their family’s investment in their education. I should also like to point out that in my experience working students have a far larger dropout rate than scholarship students, not because of academic failure rates but because they could not afford the money or the time that was required of them in school.

Sowell’s rather theoretical prediction about scholarship incentives is in direct conflict with reality.

Part II

Sowell is 100% correct when he says that “education is not a Good Thing categorically in unlimited amounts, for people of all levels of ability, interest and willingness to work”. Scholarships should be granted only to those who show some evidence that the educational opportunities made available will be productively utilized and should finance only those educational costs that the recipient student could not reasonably be expected to provide by themselves at some reasonable level of personal sacrifice.

Back in the 60’s, Cornell University (where I did my undergraduate work) had a policy that anyone who could get into Cornell got exactly as much scholarship aid as a standard formula (based mostly on family income) projected they would need to get to afford school. That policy was an effective standard for limiting amounts of aid only to those qualified to get in and only in amounts required for them to attend. As for interest and willingness to work, Cornell is sufficiently difficult that anyone uninterested in (or unwilling to) work doesn’t keep their scholarship for long! Unfortunately, that way of allocating funds was weakened by racial quota issues and, as best I can recall, an absurd anti-trust lawsuit by an athlete who claimed that the policy interfered with his right to negotiate (based on his athletic prowess) a larger scholarship than the policy allowed. Believe it or not, he won!

Sowell suggests that “Another option would be to allow students to sign enforceable contracts by which lenders [which Sowell later describes as stock-holders] would pay their college or university expenses in exchange for a given percentage of their future earnings”. Unfortunately, the risk of such a contract to commercial loaners (or equity investors) would be very high because of the possibility of death or other default over the life of the loan, a loan life that must be very long because educational expenses are so high compared with starting salaries for all but the most well paying jobs, and that the incremental projected earnings a college degree earns are recovered slowly over the years. High payback risk and high interest rate risk (over a long loan) would require very high interest rates, making most loans unaffordable, especially to the most financially needy --- the cost of their education would in effect make them sort of long-term indentured servants to their loan owners (or shareholders). Lenders have made it clear that they will not make student loans to the most needy (who presumably would have the highest default rate) without government subsidy and/or guarantee, and in fact, government programs to provide such subsidies and/or guarantees do exist. But they are not a reasonable or efficient way of providing all student aid. And by transferring some of the financial benefit of getting an education to lenders, they serve as a relative economic disincentive to get an education. As for suggestions that the interest rate and risk issues could be avoided by pooling the risk of individual default into marketable securities, let’s not go there just now while the same stupid pooling of risk in the residential mortgage market has brought our financial system to the brink of chaos.

Part III

Sowell asks “Why does college cost so much?” and then answers his own question with “There are two basic reasons. The first is that people will pay what the colleges charge. The second is that there is little incentive for colleges to reduce the tuition they charge”. Certainly, these are two (but not the two) reasons. Sowell actually ignores the main reason why college tuition is so high --- colleges are large and complex business that are expensive to run, and high expenses requires high revenues.

People do seem willing to pay what colleges charge, at least what colleges charge after adjustment for appreciable school and government tuition reductions for those who are unable to pay the full nominal cost. And if people are willing (and able) to pay the costs, there is little reason for colleges to lower costs. For colleges that are serving as many people as their business model will support, there is never any economic reason to reduce what they charge. For the best and most prestigious colleges, charging as much as the market will bear provides benefits beyond profitability (as incentive denied to non-profits). Increased revenue from those who can afford it provides scholarship funds to attract top students who might otherwise be unable to attend but may become rich and famous and donate huge amounts of money and bring glory to the name of the university in the future, and provides funds to reinvest in faculty and university facilities that hopefully will also bring glory to the name of the university in the future. Second tier (and lower) academic institutions face a slightly more complex market situation. Unless they can establish a market niche, it’s hard for them to keep tuition high, and the scholarship students they might otherwise attract and the education they offer suffers as a result.

Colleges (and especially universities) have high costs because they are large, complex, multi-function businesses.

Obviously educating undergraduate students and teaching graduate level courses is the first function that comes to mind, and the costs of this function involves faculty teaching salary (only a fraction of faculty members compensated responsibilities), physical plant investment in classrooms, administrative overhead, etc. Like some high tech businesses, there is the huge cost of technological infrastructure including computer networks and expensive scientific laboratory equipment. Colleges finances are also burdened by extensive library facilities.

Graduate education and faculty research is another issue. Beyond graduate level courses, graduate education focuses on research and at most universities the research activity of faculty constitutes the majority of faculty responsibility. And research, especially in science and engineering is very expensive. To some extent that research cost can be recouped by grant money, but academic research need be focused on publishable (non-proprietary) basic (not specific product directed) research, for which industrial support is very weak. But it is primarily the success of the faculty in the research field on which the reputation of major universities is based, and even in fields where grant money is not widely available, faculty responsibilities in research is not diminished. And government support to basic research is not really that different in government subsidization of college tuition --- it’s just the same amount of money in the same pot.

Besides reputation, there is a real link between the quality of higher education and academic research --- those engaged in the best research efforts are usually those most knowledgeable in their field, and unlike lower education, subject matter expertise is really very, very important..

There are also many factors that make academic institutions expensive and difficult to manage, but I’ll mention just one here. Knowledge increases over time and as the amount of knowledge grows, so does the size of the faculty necessary to teach it. Some areas like computer science and bioengineering are growing much more rapidly than universities can finance by talking in more students, meeting new academic demands increases costs faster than revenues. Allocating faculty to cover changing teaching needs is a rather inefficient process, with faculty members with specialization in areas of decreased academic importance protected from change by academic freedom and tenure. Academic freedom is the single most important attribute (after faculty and student competence) of the academic environment and can’t be reduced in the name of efficiency without significant harm to academic quality. Tenure, on the other hand, is a contractual provision that some have attacked. But the fact is that without tenure, faculty salaries would have to be increased --- tenure is a job benefit that has real monetary value to faculty --- and the additional cost of faculty salary would exceed the probable efficiency savings. Even with the promise of tenure, universities have a hard time hiring and keeping faculty in disciplines of very high market value. Besides, the test of tenure is effective in finding dedicated competent faculty and is a huge motivator to get superhuman effort out of young faculty, an effort that very few faculty members could hope to achieve over an academic lifetime. And stability of faculty makes many positive contributions to academic quality.

So college education is expensive because it is a difficult commodity to produce well, and thus is expensive to deliver, and its value to society (that is, all of us as individuals) is such that if each of us does not contribute in some way (thru taxes, thru donations to the colleges of our choice) the number of people getting an education will be insufficient to meet our (individuals in the society) future needs for the scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and producers of the products we all desire to consume. Leave education to the free market and you’ll get the free market result --- a lowering of the standard of living of future generations and of us (as we age) because the free market maximizes current well being while discounting future benefits.

Cushman contrasts government social services and private charity as if they were mutually exclusive. But of course they are not; there is need for both. Contribute to your favorite charities and support needed government social services too.

People who make charitable financial donations often target their favorite causes. While different people favor different causes, the causes that are most popular get most of the donations. But the amount of charitable donations a cause receives is not necessarily the best measure of the worthiness of that cause; charitable donations are made by people who generally don’t need the charity they contribute to while the worthiness of a charity is measured by the good the charity does to those who receive it. Given the possibility of a mismatch between voluntary donations and a receive-based need, there will likely be some needy causes that are not satisfied by charity. Why not have government step in to satisfy the needs that charity has missed?

Cushman says “Government payments are the result of anonymous people determining who should receive the benefit”. The payers of government payments may be anonymous but the causes that are funded are hardly anonymous; government social service funding is based on widely known available-to-all public laws and regulations made by Congress and the President (who are elected by we the people) and highly visible appointees of the President. Most donors to charitable foundations such as United Way or even the American Cancer Society have no more access to the specific details of the use of their charitable contributions than do taxpayers have of the details of the use of their tax dollars.

Cushman says “charitable acts involve interaction with the community and decisions regarding whom to give to”. They may or they may not. Lots of people donate to charity as an act of conscience but choose not to be directly involved in charity in any other way.

Clearly Cushman is generally right when she points out that giving to charity is voluntary and paying taxes is mandatory, although in certain environments, for examples where charities are solicited in the workplace, failure to contribute constitutes a serious risk and payments under such conditions is hardly voluntary. And there are a significant number of people who apparently think paying taxes are voluntary and choose not to volunteer to pay them --- those we call tax evaders.

Clearly Cushman is right when she points out that charitable contributions may not be merely financial, and participating in charitable activities offers social benefits to the participant not obtainable by paying taxes. Most people benefit from the time and financial assets they contribute to charity.

Cushman thinks small government is better than big government. But just what does she mean by big or small? I think government should be no bigger or no smaller than is needed to do what it is that government needs to do. And I take issue with her that government shouln’t meet the needs that charitable giving, on its own, fails to meet.

Prelutsky is an illustration of what is wrong with American politics.

Prelutsky says “There are major differences between liberals and conservatives, and that’s why I never know what people such as Barack Obama are talking about when they speak of bringing us all together”. Prelutshy confuses goals with means, or perhaps even worse, he has abandoned goals and replaced them with means. Liberals and Conservatives generally agree on what they want America to be like: prosperous and free.

Liberals and Conservatives have slightly different views of prosperity: Liberals seem to like a narrow distribution of individual prosperity around the average while Conservatives seem to prefer a wider distribution. But both agree that overall prosperity (economic wellbeing) is important.

Liberals and Conservatives have more differences when it comes how to achieve prosperity, but neither has the absolute answer for achieving it. Liberals (or the people that Prelutsky thinks of as Liberals) generally believe that government should take responsibility for everything that private enterprise has failed to achieve on its own while Conservatives (or the people that Prelutsky thinks of as Conservatives) generally believe that private enterprise should do everything (with few exceptions, mainly in the law and order arena). But no Liberal actually wants to buy toothpaste from a government monopoly (although they might favor government regulating what private enterprise can put into their toothpaste) and no Conservative actually thinks that private enterprise has the right to put poison in their commercial toothpaste and kill off their customers without interference from the government (police, courts, or whatever).

Liberals and Conservatives have slightly different views of freedom: Conservatives seem to see freedoms as active freedom (the freedom to do) while Liberals see the passive freedoms (freedom from) as an equally important class of freedoms. But both agree that active freedom is important.

Liberals and Conservatives have more differences when it comes how to achieve freedom, but neither has the absolute answer for achieving it. Liberals (or the people that Prelutsky thinks of as Liberals) generally believe that government is necessary to protect passive freedoms because without an impartial arbiter of conflicts between some people’s active freedoms and others’ passive freedoms, passive freedoms for the weak will be overcome by active freedoms of the strong. Conservatives (or the people that Prelutsky thinks of as Conservatives) generally believe that any action to protect passive freedom is a denial of their right to active freedom, and that either rights conflicts can not possibly occur or that the marketplace of a free people (rather than the government the free people select) is the best impartial arbiter of conflicting freedoms

Why Prelutsky thinks that people whose goals overlap cannot work together to achieve those goals in the overlap is beyond me.

Prelutsky says “if I support the surge in Iraq and you insist on bringing the troops home by next Thursday, what’s our compromise? Bringing our troops only partway home? Say as far as the Canary Islands?”. If Prelutsky really supports the surge, then he expects at some time some of the troops to be withdrawn. So here are one compromise other than sending our Iraqi forces to the Canary Islands next Thursday: Agree that one year from Thursday (or by some other date) we evaluate our progress towards winning in Iraq based on criteria we can define now, and if we have no evidence then that we are closer to winning than we are now (based on that criteria), bring the troops home, otherwise establish a new date and criteria to measure the next benchmark toward victory. This is the standard for any project in business and government. Before you start, evaluate what the value of the gain might be in completing the project and the cost to do so. As you proceed (at predetermined points in the project called benchmarks), measure progress toward achieving the project goal and re-estimate the cost of achieving the goal. If the estimated cost of achievement exceeds the benefit of completion, drop the effort. Otherwise continue on to the next benchmark. The only difficulty with this model is that people begin to associate the project to something bigger than it is, and the projects continuation becomes a symbol of some political goal bigger than the original purpose of the project.

Unfortunately for us, we went into Iraq with a very poor understanding of what the goals of our intervention was (that’s why they changed as the war went on), what kind of effort was required , and how much that would cost and how long it would take. Many Conservatives and Liberals adopted the war as a symbol, and base their war strategy not on the realities of the war as a project (tool to achieve objectives) but as a symbolic statement of their political label. For those of us who see war as a tool, compromise is clearly a viable option. For those irrational Conservatives and Liberals for whom the war has become a symbol of their politics rather than a war, compromise is somewhat less appealing.

Prelutsky says “If you’re in favor of same-sex marriages and I happen to think the whole idea is a very silly joke, where’s our common ground? Doing away with opposite-sex marriages?” Perhaps choosing not to participate in same-sex marriage but letting other people choose to do so. How do two guys or two gals getting hitched interfere with any rights of a same-sex marriage opponent? It can interfere only with their right to avoid moral indignation, not exactly the kind of right our Founding Fathers fought to preserve.

Prelutsky says “If I believe in capital punishment and you don’t, what constitutes a midway point between our positions? Only executing convicted killers whose last names start with the letters between A and M?” Perhaps reducing the number of offenses to which capital punishment can apply by half, eliminating the less outrageous crimes and leaving only treason directly resulting in loss of multiple lives and repeated mass murders subject to the death penalty. It doesn’t satisfy people like me who favor the death penalty for ridding society of the expense of dealing with habitual criminals nor those who think that any taking of life is a sin. But I’ve got to admit that getting rid of the worst offenders is better than getting rid of none and many (but not all) opponents of capital punishment would see the lessening of the number of executions as a positive first step toward their long term goal. Of course, there will always be those selfish people who yell out their window “It’s my xxx, and I want it now”. Probably they also yell “Kill those who believe in capital punishment”

Prelutsky says “One of the most unpleasant things about liberals is the way they tend to place the politicians they endorse on pedestals. Frankly, I have never understood this phenomenon. How is it that so many people turn into besotted teenagers once they decide to vote for someone?” Does he really think Conservatives are not guilty of the same fault?

If Prelutsky really thinks politicians are any different from other human beings who work in the private sector, he’s woefully naïve. Most corporate employees are as far removed from the needs and expectations of their shareholders as politicians are from the people whose interests they are elected (or appointed) to represent. In fact, at the very highest levels of government (especially chief executives and legislators), politicians have more direct confrontation from their employers (the people who elect them) than to corporate CEO’s and board members, who get to pick who runs against them. I’ve done consulting for: federal government including the US Dept of Energy, Consumer Product Safety Administration, and the Corps of Engineers; local government including a county school system, the State of Maryland, Capital Parks and Planning Commission); large businesses including GE, Control Data, Baltimore Gas and Electric; and smaller businesses including Georges (an appliance chain, as I recall) and an IHOP franchise owner. And in my experience (mainly with middle management and lower) government provides as efficient and conscientious service as does private enterprise (but that isn’t saying much) with the federal government and large industry somewhat better than small business and state and local government.

Liberals do not “dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity”; they only recognize the existence of additional roles such as protection of individuals’ rights from the actions of others as well as the existence of immorality (in addition to moral integrity). Free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity is nice, but does Prelutsky suggest that voluntary cooperation (vigilante justice?) is a more reasonable defense against the free choice of a moral integrity lacking bank robber than our government based system of law and order?

Liberals, like Conservatives, believe that “individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic” are important human attributes but Liberals also believe that blindly ignoring that people (especially the immoral ones) may interpret “personal appeal” and “talent” in such prejudicial terms that they may actively deny some individuals their just rewards. Liberals also believe that to allow inequality of opportunity (based on these false prejudices) to fester would be just as bad an error imposing “economic and social equality on the population”, an imposition that, by the way, no Liberal suggests (but some other leftist philosophies do) 

Liberals do not want to “create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state”, nor would the policies they back create such an environment. Conservatives may think that any regulation is over-regulation and any taxation is over-taxation, but Liberals believe there is a point between 0% and 100% regulation and between 0% and 100% taxation (closer to 0% than 100%) that is fair and does much more good than harm. Liberals also don’t want to reduce anyone “to wards of the state” but recognize that due to no fault of their own, some people are unable to care for themselves or find care from family or friends and should be wards of the state. Liberals also realize that helping such people does have it’s risks in character corruption, but that having no wards of the state and having everyone a ward of the state are not the only two options, and that having deserving wards of the state is a feasible alternative to the two extremes.

Prelutsky apparently thinks that the “liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization”, but that is a gross overstatement. Does he think that Conservative agenda preys on feelings of superiority in the population to reinforce a system where victimization of the weak by the strong is considered an entitlement?

Prelutsky apparently believes that “When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious”. Should we conclude that Prelutsky denies the existence of real villains and their real victims, and thinks that anyone who should dare try to stop the real villains from running (and ruining) the lives of their real victims demonstrates a neurosis? And Liberals do not want to run anyone’s life, they just want to stop people from running (without their consent) other people’s lives.

Prelutsky clearly won’t admit that what he calls Conservatives and what he calls Liberals together don’t amount to much of a portion of the real American society. The majority of American’s see reality as being somewhere between where Prelutsky’s Conservatives and Liberals are, but that majority is hard pressed to escape the limited choices imposed by the Prelutsky’s of the world to be either with him at one extreme of the political spectra or against him at the other end. Reject the “pure” philosophy of all the extremists! Reject their false characterization of anyone who doesn’t 100% agree with them! And defend the middle ground from the knee-jerk extremists! Keep the Prelutsky’s of the world at the margin where they belong!

Re: Project 21 of the National Center for Public Policy Research New Visions – 3/29/2008 – “Property Rights Going Up in Smoke” – Sean Turner

Turner says “A property right is the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used - whether its' a car, house, business or any other resource of which one is the owner.  Additionally, private property rights confer an exclusive right to the services of the resource - as well as the right to delegate, sell or rent any portion of the rights by exchange or gift based on mutually agreeable terms“. If this is an accurate description of what property rights are, property rights never have existed (and hopefully never will exist).

Property rights are only one class of rights among many. Other rights classes include the right to life and the right to pursue happiness--- at least that’s what our Founding Fathers thought. In the Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers said “to secure these rights [including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] Governments are instituted among Men”. In the Preamble to the Constitution, our Founding Fathers said “in order to … secure the blessings of liberty … do ordain and establish this Constitution” and then proceeded to establish the structure of government which, among other things, provides a structure for arbitrating the conflict of rights between its citizens.

Can gun ownership, for example, really provide the “exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used” for the gun owner? That would include the right to shoot people for any reason including no reason what-so-ever! Of course not; that particular “property right” conflicts with another right (right to life) of others. Thus the exercise of any “right” can never be an exclusive right if it interferes with the rights of others. That is why property and all other civil rights can not be “absolute” in the physical sense but only exist within the reasonable constraints of law.

Even if you have the right to fire guns on your own property, do you have the right to fire them in such a manner that the bullet crosses your property boundary and kills a neighbor on their own property? Do you have the right to shoot someone on your property without warning after you invite them onto it? Do you have the right to shoot someone on your property who is there without your permission but with authorization of law, such as a policeman (with warrant) responding to a suspected criminal activity, or a fireman trying to put out a fire? What about the right to shoot a postman because you are upset with the mail he/she delivered yesterday? What about the right to shoot your spouse because he/she cooked a lousy dinner or left the dishes dirty? I’d say offhand that nobody’s property rights entitles them to take any of the above-listed actions.

The question of property rights vs smoking at home may be addressed in only one logical way. Does smoking in your home cause sufficient harm to others to warrant the abridgement of your right to smoke? If it does not, you have the right to smoke on your own property. If it does, you do not have the right to smoke on your own property.

In my opinion, the harm smoking on your own property does to others does not merit the interfering with your right to smoke provided the smoke is sufficiently diluted by the time it leaves your property and that your property is not used to provide public conveniences incompatible with smoking. I’d also question the right of to smoke on “your” own property when that property is jointly (which would require the concurrence of the other owners so you wouldn’t be interfering with their right to forbid smoking on their property), or if a legal resident on the property (especially a minor for whom one of the property owners is a guardian) is likely to suffer from the smoking.

The right to smoke at home cannot not justified on a purely property rights argument.

Gallagher just doesn’t understand what’s really wrong with the legal ramifications of the way airlines treat their passengers.

Consider a restaurant in which you order your meal, pay for it, and are then served. You go into the restaurant and order their “Shore Dinner” (clam chowder, shrimp cocktail, steamed clams, broiled lobster, fries, 2 vegis, beverage and desert). You pay and are seated. Your server comes to your table and says “Sorry, we ran out of potatoes. You’ll have to stay at your table hungry until we can prepare you a full shore dinner”. Indignantly you request a refund. The server tells you that you are not entitled to a refund because what you really paid for was a seat at the table where you would be served your meal, and once you were seated you had no right to a refund as long as you eventually got served if you waited long enough. You ask the server to provide you the rest of the meal without the fries. “No”, says the server, “you paid for the fries as part of the meal and that’s what you’re going to get”. “Then I’ll just leave”, you say, “because I have an important meeting coming up that I can’t miss”. “Oh no, you can’t do that”, your server tells you. “Leaving without eating would be disruptive to food service, and besides nobody is getting served because every meal has fries, and to insure that you all get what you paid for we are locking the doors (and the restrooms which provide an incentive to get up from your table creating a commotion) and nobody will be able to leave until we serve them the full meal they ordered”. Don’t know about you, but at that point I’d pick up my cell phone (if I had one) and call the police saying that I’m being held hostage against my will.

So the Feds think that when I’m in an airplane, I have no right to deplane a parked plane regardless of treatment. If the plane is in flight, allowing passengers to deplane at will would surely be disruptive (to say the least). But while the plane is sitting idle on the ground?

If airlines want to hold passengers in parked planes against their will because to allow them to temporarily deplane would be disruptive to their operations, let them be required to provide at least basic humane services such bathroom facilities that the airlines are required to provide in flight. While the plane is engaged in interstate commerce the Feds have the right to define those requirements. But when the plane is on the tarmac, it’s not involved in interstate anything and the states should have the right to set their own reasonable requirements

Strom is right about the inability of our government to afford the welfare it has promised to us, but he gives too much credit to government for inventing the problem or to private enterprise’s ability to fix the problem.

Long before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other current federal entitlement programs, our corporations instituted defined benefit retirement programs (if not for their low wage employee, at least for their executives) without much real thought as to the effects of the financial burden on their long term cost structure. Just recently have corporations faced this issue, many by converting their pension programs to defined contribution programs and by increasing worker out-of-pocket cost sharing but generally taking executive benefits out of the hide of corporate ownership. Some companies (in the auto and steel industry, for example) have disappeared or have had their dominance fade because of the impossible cost of financing retiree and current worker corporate entitlements.

If Strom were more constructive, he might suggest that government might take a businesslike strategy to deal with entitlements, such as by financing future benefits with current tax contributions instead of a pay-as-you-go financing strategy, and by adjusting entitlement payouts to financial returns from the entitlement fund.

But Strom’s “blame it on the government and let private enterprise fix it” is absurd. Private enterprise invented defined benefit retirement entitlements in the first place, took far too long to recognize the financial consequences, and solved their problem at least partly by dumping their past obligations back on the government and partly by refusing to recognize the benefit obligations they promises to their past and present workers. And neither of those corporate methods are acceptable solutions for our government’s problems.

Tucker quotes Schumer as saying “When there is a crisis in confidence of credit, you need the federal government to do things to re-assure people that things will get better”. In this case, Schumer is mostly right. The root cause of the current financial crisis was a short-term change in asset values that led to a lack of confidence in the quality of the assets backing credit issuers, and a short term reaction to the long-term projections of the short-term problems. Reestablishing confidence in the credit system would indeed lessen the severity of the crisis in the short-term while the long-term problems would likely resolve themselves in time.

Tucker responds “But history should warn us that when the federal government gets involved, things usually get worse”. Tucker has reversed cause with effect. He should have said “But history should warn us that the federal government gets involved when things get worse”. In fact, history teaches us that with or without government intervention, things get better or worse, but that governments are most likely to intervene in intolerable situations rooted in causes prior to the intervention. I would like to add that never in modern history has a major nation had a government that never intervened in its economy, if for no other reason than setting and maintaining the rules of orderly commerce is one of the major functions of government. And since time is monotonic we never really do get a chance to try both intervention and non-intervention for any particular economic situation to find out which would really be better. Thus any blanket conclusions about the success or failure of intervention compared to non-intervention is faith based and such claims are just (scientifically) unjustifiable opinions.

Yes, government interventions may be associated with unintended consequences (the list is quite long), but so are government failures to intervene. And in many cases of government interventions, the benefits of the interventions (compared to the projected non-intervention results) greatly outweigh the unintended consequences.

The problem with proposals like a 5-year freeze on adjustable mortgage rates is not that it is a government intervention, but that it is a bad intervention. However, the value to the loaner of an affordable fixed rate mortgage is much higher than a defaulting variable rate mortgage at a much higher interest rate. I imagine there are actions the government might take to get otherwise solvent lenders to recognize the loss on their defaulting variable rate mortgages, refinance then with affordable fixed rate mortgages, and in exchange, provide some government assurance that short term credit crunch resulting from the losses on the defaulting variable rate mortgages would be covered for a fixed length of time with short term government loans.

There is nothing wrong with providing $5 billion to help troubled homeowners, provided that the help is limited to where it can make an effective contribution to stabilizing the run on mortgage debt and avoids rewarding those whose reckless behavior caused the financial crisis in the first place, such as by explicitly not covering liar-loans, real estate speculation loans, etc.

Tucker says “One reason gas prices are so high is that oil is priced in dollars, so as the greenback loses value, oil becomes more expensive. In the long run, high gas prices will harm the economy by driving up the cost of just about everything”. Tucker again has things backwards. Our dollars are weak because we import oil and use it inefficiently, earning us less return on our use of oil than we pay for it, and thus have a huge negative trade balance. Since the demand/price curve is super-linear, as oil becomes more expensive we will presumably increase our oil use efficiency and actually improve out balance of payment situation, thus increasing the strength of the dollar.

There is no constitutional right for home schooling (or private schooling) as a replacement for public schooling, at least in the strict constructionist sense. Every parent has the right and duty to educate their children, but that right does not imply the right to also keep their children out of public schools if their state (or under the authority of the state, whatever school district they are in) requires their children to participate in public education.

Most states allow home or private schooling in place of public schooling, but states do this because for some families it is a reasonable and desirable thing to allow. But it is within the power of the states to insure that all the child citizens meet some standard level of education, and if in the opinion of the states that includes certification of all teachers and curriculum (public, private, or home school), then in my opinion, parents do not have the right to exclusively home school without proving they meet the minimum standards set by the state. If a state choose to certify only public instruction, that is within the state’s domain of authority under the Constitution but in my opinion not in the best interest of their citizens. But the Constitution deals with constraining governmental process, and does not insure a particular result of the process results. And since our Constitution says nothing about education, presumably the regulation of education is reserved to the states and the people to figure how and if to do it on their own.

I repeat: all parents have the constitutional right to home school their children and/or educate them in private institutions. But there is no constitutional right to avoid state laws that require a given amount of state certified education. The choice between state certified education and state uncertified home schooling is not an either or choice. Parents have the right to home school their children (even if they are not certified as educators) but do not have the right to exempt their children from state laws requiring education from state certified teachers.

Adams cannot understand why any academic institution would not support his debate on “Which worldview requires more faith; a) Christianity or b) Atheism?” May I provide three such reasons?

The first reason is that Atheism and the belief in God (not just belief in the Christian God) should be the focus of the debate because Atheism is the denial of God, not the denial of Christ. Either/or debates make sense only if the alternatives are complete (cover the domain of possible perspectives).

The second reason is that debate excludes the point of view that belief in God (or Christianity) and Atheism require the same amount of faith. The assumption that A> B or B > A without allowing for A = B is just sloppy thinking.

The third reason is that there is no reasonable way to quantify faith, and even assuming their faith could be quantified, there still would be no known way to relate a faith metric to a Christian or Atheist faith requirement. Adam’s proposed debate makes no more sense that debating how many abstractions can fit on the head of a pin.

If Adams wants open academic discourse on Atheism, he ought to propose one that has real academic merit.

Adams then goes on to propose “a simple list of things I think Christians at UNCW are entitled to expect”.

First on his list is “In courses raising the controversial topic of religion the professor has every right to assign readings arguing that Christians and religious folks in general are stupid. But the professor should also make some effort to assign readings that reflect a contrary view”. I am not familiar with the course offerings at UNCW, but where I was on faculty (Seattle University) there were extensive course offerings on religion. Could I interpret Adams’ first item on his list to imply he thinks that Seattle University should require consideration of anti-Christian views of non-Christian religions and Atheism (and perhaps agnosticism as well) in all those courses?

Second on his list is “When professors are either unwilling or unable to abide by #1, they should be willing to defend their views in a debate or on a panel – especially one that equally represents both sides”. Does Adams really think that professors of other disciplines should waste their time defending their course content from everyone who takes exception to it. Should biologists spend huge amounts of time defending evolution from creationalists or physicists spend time defending quantum mechanics from those who believe “God does not play craps”? Just what does Adams think academic freedom means? And if Adams wishes academic debate, why isn’t he satisfied doing it in the traditional academic way, with well-researched scholarly articles published in academic journals.

Third on his list is ”When professors are unwilling or unable to abide by #1 or #2, the university should not compound the problem by engaging in violations of the requirement that they exercise viewpoint neutrality in the management of public forums”. While I understand Adam’s frustration, a university has certain academic goals, and that it is within the authority (and the duty) of the university to manage public forms in a way that supports (and does not hinder) the success in meeting those goals. Academic viewpoint neutrality has meaning within the constraint of academic mission satisfaction. I’m not sure why UNCW believed a debate on “The issue of faith in Religion and Atheism” might not fit the university’s academic mission, but if the university feels the debate is of no academic value, it is certainly within the rights and responsibilities of the university not to support the debate.

As a one-time (long ago) Atheist myself, I can assert that I was never “very angry at the God [I claimed did] not exist”, but I was at times very angry at those who tried to stuff their God down my throat. Especially annoying were ascertains that those who do not believe in Christianity (or any other religion) cannot lead a moral life because the Christian God (or any other God) is the source of all morality so no matter what their lifestyle, non-Christians (or people who believe in any other God) must be immoral --- something Adams implies when he projects his own pre-Christian moral weaknesses onto all Atheists.

Perhaps Adam’s misconstrued visions of Atheists is the real reason Atheists have no interest in participating in (and the university has no interest in sponsoring) his proposed debate.

Re: TownHall.com – 3/6/2008 – “The Planning Fallacy” – David Strom

While it is certainly true that the free market has proven to be a much better judge of customer desires than any planners (government or corporate), the free market has also been proven to be a notoriously poor allocator of scarce commodities and, ironically, the free market is also notoriously inefficient in allocating “free” (non-monetized) items. While I would not want to replace the free market with “experts”, I welcome the attempt of those same experts to fully monetize costs so the free market can make even wiser allocations of economic resources.

If the future costs of fueling inefficient automobiles were adequately understood by consumers in the past, they would have been buying more of the most efficient vehicles and less of the gas-guzzlers (like I have) --- of course, that’s just my opinion, but one that is supported by the increasing efficiency of autos offered and selling on the free market. Unfortunately, market hysteresis makes for violent swings in supply and demand when purchase decisions are made based on current conditions rather than over the expected lifetime of the item purchased.

One way in which monetization would greatly assist the free market in improving healthcare is recognizing and making public the real cost of providing and not providing adequate healthcare to people with insufficient financial resources to purchase the care on the free market. Lost productivity is one obvious cost of not providing such health care, but there are others including negative effects on the productivity of family members saddled with providing “free” care, and the long term productivity of children hurt by the family’s social and financial hardships due to untreated medical conditions. Replacing health payment incentives for business with health payment incentives for individuals would be a start. Requiring government drop a “promise now, worry later” healthcare payment system with one with some balance between health care financial benefits and the finances to supply the benefits over the long term would also help.