Steve Milloy, who most often exposes the scare tactics of environmental fearmongers has been employing their methods recently. It is one thing to point out conflicting scare stories from the environuts, e.g. the world is ending because of fossil fuels, but we can't use windmills because they kill birds. There is nothing so wonderful as watching various claimants to ecological consciousness beat each other to a pulp in the public square. But I refuse to join those trumping up environmental dangers of wind power simply because I disagree with renewable power subsidies.

Adopting environmentalist tactics of poorly communicating risk in context to defend abstract libertarian principle is a bad idea. This week Steve's Junkscience Column for Fox News is part of the junk rather than exposing it. In a timeworn rearguard effort he complains that Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards are killing people. So if this chance is increased by 7.5% that means that CAFE standards would increase the chances of the average American dieing in a traffic fatality to 1in 92,500 annually. As father Guido Sarducci once said on Saturday Night Live: "I'm shakin' in my boots.

There is, admittedly, more truth to this line of reasoning than the idea that Alar was killing people, but in context CAFE standards are a non-issue with regard to automobile safety. At first blush it sound like I'm talking through my hat. Various studies cited by Steve suggest that a median of about 2500 traffic fatalities a year might be attributed to CAFE standards. With NHTSA statistics showing a total of 33,000 traffic deaths a year this appears to be more than an insignificant number, i.e. it represents about 7.5 percent of the total. But if one factors in transportation statistics regarding total vehicle miles (VMT) from the Center for Transportation Analysis at the Oakridge National Laboratory, the total number of deaths represents a statistical risk to a individual American of 1/100,000.

Continue reading "Don't tout Fear of Death when we want the Death of Fear" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:36 AM | Permalink

In response to a complaint by a single viewer, British media regulator Ofcom said Turner Broadcasting has offered to delete scenes that "glamorize smoking" in cartoons from earlier decades, when such scenes were commonplace. According to Reuters, the change was instigated when a single viewer complained to Ofcom about two scenes in two Tom and Jerry cartoons (one scene in each) shown on Turner's Boomerang channel in England, 56 percent of whose viewers are aged four to fourteen.

Continue reading "Turner to Remove Smoking Scenes from Cartoons—in UK" »

Posted by Sam Karnick at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

David Bernstein writes:

I don't like most of the terms used to describe libertarian beliefs. Free markets? Not everything is about economic markets, and left-wing critics have a field day pointing out that government itself establishes the underlying rules of the market. Market liberal? Again not everything is about economic markets, and just generally, yuck. Classical liberal? Kind of like a secret handshake, only those in the know have any idea what this means. Besides, many of historical figures often identified as classical liberals wouldn't know what to make of modern libertarianism. Individualism? Socialism would actually be a better description, if it hadn't been captured by collectivists. At one time, libertarian types were called socialists, and Marxists called themselves libertarians (Chomsky still calls himself a libertarian, last I heard). Too confusing to try to undo this one.

Continue reading "Libertarian Name Calling, Free Exchanging?" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:26 AM | Permalink

That's the question libertarians have been asking themselves since at least last August, but probably longer. The rise of populism and special interest politics in The Republican Party, has made what was once an easy compromise (voting Republican) far more unnerving. Ryan Sager has a pretty tight analysis of the problem over at Real Clear Politics. The only quibble I would really have is the assumption that libertarians were once wholly in the Republican camp. I'm not sure this has ever been the case, though I haven't researched the quesiton.

But to answer the question before us: What can be done?

Continue reading "What is to be done?" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:43 PM | Permalink

George Will has recognized the cynical silver lining of the assimilation cloud in a useful column in the Washington Post:

"large rallies by immigrants, many of them here illegally, protesting more stringent control of immigration reveal that many immigrants have, alas, assimilated: They have acquired the entitlement mentality created by America's welfare state, asserting an entitlement to exemption from the laws of the society they invited themselves into."

The complication of this debate for libertarians isn't knowing what we think, but explaining why in a way that moves public opinion, which is perhaps at its statist zenith with regard to immigration.

Continue reading "Immigration, stop gap measures?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 07:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There is a fascinating oped in the Journal today on Charles Murray's plan which would give $10,000 to every citizen annually in lieu of government administered social programs. Not only would this be a more efficient allocations of funds, and leave people with more options, Murray also thinks such a plan would return a certain moral grounding to the welfare state. We would all know exactly how much others were getting and, thus, be more willing to judge some citizen's misuse of the endowment. The result is a more responsible citizenry. The only problem is that freeing the polity from responsibility is, arguably, part of the motivation behind the welfare state, is it not? If we believed people were responsible enough to invest their own money why would we take social security taxes in the first place? Paternalism is welfare's secret motivation. So while the plan is a clever one, it hardly seems any more realistic than dismantling the welfare state altogether. Though, there is something to be said for vision.

Will Wilkinson has some interesting thoughts on the Murray plan as well.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:53 PM | Permalink

A nod to freedomdemocrat's Logan Ferree for subjecting himself to the criticism I have leveled at his libertarian scorecards for the house and senate. He left a comment that parallels several offline comments I've had on my blog posts that appears to return this discussion of partisanship to one of pragmatism -- thus vindicating Mike Van Winkle's instincts.

The sagebrush rebellion was snuffed out when its effective coalition broke apart into factions promoting regulatory reform through state based management of federal lands, and those promoting privitization of the vast federal estate. This theme obviously continues to play itself out as virtually any federally managed use of these lands is portrayed as fraught with subsidy rather than freeing overregulated industry. Thus, Logan disagrees with my proposal that votes for opening ANWR to oil exploration would be reliable indicators of a libertarian philosophy. Logan is by no means the lone libertarian with respect to such criticism, he is just wrong.

Continue reading "Sagebrush civil war" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike recently posted links to a topic that drew me to blogging in the first place, although I think the title might be a little bit of false advertising. It is really about "partisanship and idealism" rather than "pragmatism and idealism".

Stephen Gordon at Hammer of Truth has seized upon a young Democrat's libertarian view of his party to support the theory that the party out of power develops more libertarian tendencies. I think that is a reasonable proposition. But the ‘research’ Stephen cites to support this is tainted by the choice of legislation used to analyze Congress, as well as ignoring the Democratic party's institutional responsibility for the existing anti-libertarian status quo in the economic sphere. I don’t think libertarian oriented Democrat Logan Ferree necessarily conspires to make Democrats look better on the Nolan chart, although I can’t rule it out.

Sorry that, as usual, it has taken me rhetoric of such logorrheic proportion to half explain why, but for the fearless of heart, or those with a large periodicals shelf or an ethernet connection next to the W.C. (and with only a slight bit less respect for what Shakespeare actually said): read on Macduff.

Continue reading "freedom democrats - a contradiction in terms?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Bill Higginson tried to sound a thoughtful note on this blog regarding the debatably dubious Dubai deal. William Triplett, a former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Comittee penned an epitah for the UAE undertaking that tried to put some similarly fine points on the matter but smacked of staying on both sides of the issue.

The idea that any serious thought would be expended by any parties to this political firestorm is generous to a fault. President Bush, who has consistently resorted to terrorism as the one arrow in his quiver, found out the hard way the cost of going to this political well so often. The parable here is a cynical corollary of Aesop's famous fable, the moral of which is reported to be: "Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed".

President Bush now knows: "When liars admit their lies, people don't believe them either".

Continue reading "The President who cried wolf -- a trade war by any other name, say 'terrorism'" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

Catallarchy has a great post on "maximizers" and "satisficers". A "maximizer" is one who is continuously searching for better options, even when he or she is relatively satisfied. A "satisficer" is more apt to stop searching once a reasonably satisfying option is found. Specifically, Patri Friedman asks "is satisficing rational?" I'm not sure this is the right question. It impies that any one particular mindset is more rational than the other. The reality, I think, is that whether the behavior (maximizing or satisficing) is rational depends on the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The key is that any "rational" behavior can be irrational if performed for irrational reasons.

The issue then is whether the motivation is rational maximization or an insatiable standard of satisfaction. The same would hold for the satisficer who risks maximizing utility for some reason other than being truly satisfied. Of course, we are now getting beyond the categories available to economics but the discussion heightens my awareness of just how difficult it is for any one person to determine his or her level of satisfaction about anything, much less a social scientist to determine the optimal level of satisfaction for an entire society (i.e. utilitarianism).

PS> If you're not reading Catallarchy regularly your missing out.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 04:03 PM | Permalink

… are hybrid cars as phony as the hydrogen economy? As pointed out yesterday -- well it was really a week ago, but this blogella (is that how you say novella in blog), begun the day after, has taken me quite a bit of research and thought, the value of which I hope will be open to some speculation here and elsewhere -- Steve Milloy takes the libertarian cudgel to Bush's alternative energy boosterism. Starting with the most glaring policy inconsistency of the new Bush energy push, Milloy observes that Ethanol takes more energy to produce than can be derived from burning it. Can you say "grasping at straw"?

From there, thinking about alternative energy and subsidies gets more complex…

Continue reading "Grasping at straw or..." »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Candidate Kerry was ruthlessly (and correctly) criticized for being on both sides of most issues. President Bush, instead of running that way, has arguably governed from both sides of the issues. For libertarians, his faux-Reagan patina tarnished early with the 'No Child Not a Federal Project Act'.

The pattern is clear enough that libertarians know better than to watch a Bush of the union message without an air sickness bag. Of course there is a bipolar character to these edge-of-the-seat yawns in which the forgotten proposal to privatize social security revealed a principled president with the temerity to challenge a reactionary constituency that can be stampeded in defense of the status quo (see, e.g. Hilarycare - this phenomenon works in both directions).

But this year's state of the union address was the largest rhetorical reversal for this President as he declared "America is addicted to oil".

Continue reading "Is oil an addiction?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A one-time fiscal conservative, Steve Laffey, is putting on his Roosevelt [pick either one] dancing shoes in a conservative populist (with apologies to co-blogger Randy Piper and his progressive conservatives) run for the Senate in RI against leftist Republican Lincoln Chafee. Ironically, while decrying government spending as a neo-Reaganite, Laffey, the budget-cutting no-nonsense Mayor of Cranston, serves up a bunch of bull about how government needs to protect citizens from big drug companies and big oil [the link to Laffey's criticism of big oil is down right now, but you will get the flavor from the opportunistic flagellation of the drug companies. What a shame that folks who want to shrink government think it should get bigger whenever there is a 'problem'. Reagan would have had the right solution, less regulation not more. Those claiming his mantle should practice what they preach.

More on my Reagan-esque ruminations in the follow, but if you want to hear a quality candidate -- with whom I disagree on some of these populist proposals -- Steve Laffey will be my guest on Rule Free Radio from 5:00 to 6:45 PM EST tomorrow (Friday, Feb. 24). You can Listen Live here.

Continue reading "Drug Wars: Markets vs. Populism [as usual]" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

I guess this is what happens to you if you believe what you read in the Washington Post. I didn't believe that FISA could have such a giant hole in it, so I downloaded the statute (50 USC 36). I like my dry reading like the next policy wonk, but be fairly warned, reading this law will make your eyes bleed. Shakespeare definitely anticipated Congress when speaking about weaving tangled webs.

It turns out that the Washington Post comment was right in an isolated sense. But it leaves the impression that the President must seek a warrant based on probable cause against the domestic participant in an international conversation and thus is confounded in a mechanism for secretly intercepting communication of foreign nationals in or into this country. This is incorrect. See generally, US v Verdugo. If the government suspects the foreign caller then the 4th amendment doesn't apply, nor does it apply to the domestic party incidentally intercepted.

Thanks to Bruce Fein in another serious column for alerting me that there my original interpretation was based on a false assumption.

So now what do I think...

Continue reading "Mea Culpa: off target on NSA targets" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 03:48 AM | Permalink

Reading a little Hayek this weekend, I stumbled across an interesting suggestion. Libertarians are no strangers to the natural tension between liberty and democracy, specifically the fact that there is no intrinsic relationship between the two concepts. Libertarians are also no strangers to concerns that our society has come to worship democracy as an end in itself, rather than as a tool for the maintenance of liberty.

Continue reading "Hayek on Voting Rights" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 10:55 AM | Permalink

Bill Bradford, of Liberty Magazine fame, died last month. To no surprise, this month's issue is full of tribute. [hat tip: Sciabarra ]

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:00 AM | Permalink

There seems to be a good riff running in the libertarian community [quite broadly defined] lately that we have a passion for economic freedoms in common with many conservatives and a passion for 'civil rights' in common with liberals. I don't think it would once have been possible to present this duality as an indication that libertarians should find themselves equally at home with Democrats and Republicans, but times they are a changin’, albeit not for this curmudgeon...

Continue reading "Privacy -- Bugbear at the libertarian orphanage" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 12:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

No question David Boaz and my co-blogger Mike Van Winkle have it right that you don’t need crenelations in excess of human digits to count avowedly libertarian politicans -- be they big L, big R or [shudder] big D. Arguments about ‘first by the post’ politics are almost too easy a complaint. There is no excuse for accepting the dearth of libertarian fixtures in the media (John Stossel and the less well-known, but voraciously libertarian, Vin Suprynowicz, the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review Journal, being the exceptions who prove the rule). But obtaining results in the political arena is more a question of reducing negative perceptions than increasing outright libertarian allegiance to 50%.

To Mike’s eye, a serious problem is a loud minority of impractical libertarian thought. That outspoken libertarians are unabashedly laissez-faire and isolationist doesn’t seem chimerical, per se. But, if these positions are not well defended or delimited they may appear to be abstract litmus tests almost inapplicable to real world circumstances. Without the benefit of a statistical survey of attitudes from rural Illinois, I tend to believe it doesn’t play in Peoria. The libertarian philosophy comes off as not matured.

Liberal, if occasionally fair, commentator in the "Writ" at www.findlaw.com/#, Ed Lazarus pointed this out in the context of anti-Bush demonstrators who insist on subtlely but significantly altering the famous Ben Franklin aphorism (as does virtually everyone who co-opts this quote) to read as follows: “ Those Who Would Sacrifice Liberty for Security Deserve Neither”. So misquoted is the resident of the $100 bill, that I had no idea thatwhat he really said was: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”1. The marked difference in those two statements epitomizes the adolescence of libertarian thought. It is not impracticably purist, it is simply not fully formed.

Continue reading "Libertarian Foreign Policy, an Oxymoron?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 10:02 PM | Permalink