“

As Bryan Caplan, the George Mason University economist (who wrote in Reason back in 2007 about the many prevalent biases about economics that lead voters to prefer anti-free-market policies), has found in his studies of public opinion research vis à vis libertarian policy conclusions, “the sad truth is that the status quo is quite popular, and even moderate libertarian reforms like abolishing the minimum wage are persistently abhorrent to the overwhelming majority of the population.”

At Caplan’s advice, I spent some time trolling through the highly respected “General Social Survey” (GSS) to check out what Americans thought about more stringent applications of libertarian principles regarding when and where it is appropriate to bring state power to bear. While the more abstractly phrased questions tended to produce some modestly libertarian results—for example, 75 percent of Americans favor or strongly favor government spending cuts in the abstract—when asked about any specific spending area, the public tended to want more spending.

Still, some encouraging signs do appear amongst the GSS data, especially in changes that have occurred over the past 10 years. For example, from 1996 to 2006, the number of those who believed in definitely allowing public meetings advocating revolution went up nearly 20 percentage points, while those who believed in definitely not allowing them went down 9 percentage points.

But around 50 percent of Americans apparently have no objection to government control of wages; only 28 percent believe racists should definitely be allowed to publish books; only 27 percent think it should definitely not be the government’s role to provide jobs for all; and over 60 percent think government should prevent imports to protect the domestic economy.

”

— Brian Doherty - Where Do Libertarians Belong Politically? (reason.com July 21, 2010)

July 21, 2010, 11:53pm

“

Most startling is the news that large boat skimmers could have sucked up much of the spill and cleansed it long before the oil reached shore. At the outset of the spill the Dutch offered skimmer boats with experienced crews that could have handled most of the spill. As The Christian Science Monitor reported in “The Top Five Bottlenecks”:

Three days after the accident, the Dutch government offered advanced skimming equipment capable of sucking up oiled water, separating out most of the oil, and returning the cleaner water to the Gulf. But citing discharge regulations that demand that 99.9985 percent of the returned water is oil-free, the EPA initially turned down the offer. A month into the crisis, the EPA backed off those regulations, and the Dutch equipment was airlifted to the Gulf.

A giant Taiwanese oil skimming ship, The A Whale, is only now working on the spill. It can process 500,000 barrels of oily seawater per day, but it also needed the same waiver from the EPA which, expressed in another way, limits discharged water to trace amounts of less than 15 parts-per-million of oil residue. It also needed a waiver from the Jones Act, which prevents the use of specialized foreign ships from the North Sea oil fields because they use non-American crews. Previously, the skimmers had to return to port to offload almost pure seawater each time they filled up with water.

”

—

The sheer amount of governmental incompetence that’s been displayed in the past months is appalling.

Head over to Reason.com to read the rest of “The Government’s Catastrophic Response to the Oil Disaster”

July 09, 2010, 2:12pm

“

When his critics accuse Obama of being detached and passionless, they are really faulting him for being calm, rational, and realistic. Those qualities, a contrast to the cocky style of his immediate predecessor, are what got him elected. If Americans had wanted a leader to channel rage or grief, they would have chosen someone more demonstrative.

Obama has gone wrong—as conservatives have often been correct in pointing out—when he has pressed against the limits of his rightful powers, taking on responsibilities far greater than the federal government should assume. A president who does too much is far more dangerous to life, liberty, and property than one who does too little.

So if Obama is erring on the side of circumspection, more power to him. When he was running for the White House in 1968, Democrat Eugene McCarthy was asked if he felt he would be a good president. “I think I would be adequate,” he replied. Here is a goal for Obama that conservatives as well as liberals should be willing to endorse: Just be adequate.

”

—

Steve Chapman - Why, Oh, Why Doesn’t Obama Save Us? (reason.com June 14, 2010)

I know I post a lot of stuff from Reason, but it’s just so damn good.

June 16, 2010, 12:07am

“

University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research explores similar territory: the differences in ethical reasoning between liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. He argues that there are five dimensions along which people make moral choices, e.g., fairness, harm, loyalty, authority, and spiritual purity. Haidt finds that liberals focus chiefly on the first two dimensions, whereas conservatives deploy all five dimensions in their ethical reasoning.

…

What about libertarians? After his lecture, I asked Haidt where libertarians fit along the five moral dimensions. He asked me to guess how libertarians tested. “Like liberals,” I said, by which I meant that libertarians, like liberals, are less concerned about group loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity. He laughed and said, “Yes, like liberals, but without compassion.” Put another way, libertarians react like liberals, but without the concerns about egalitarianism that dominate the way liberals—and 10-year-olds—think about fairness.

”

— Ronald Bailey - Do Liberals Suffer from Arrested Moral Development? (reason.com June 1, 2010)

June 13, 2010, 4:21pm

“

I ride my bike to work. It seems so pure.

We’re constantly urged to ‘go green’—use less energy, shrink our carbon footprint, save the Earth. How? We should drive less, use ethanol, recycle plastic, and buy things with the government’s Energy Star label.

But what if much of going green is just bunk? Al Gore’s group, Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10 years.

‘It’s simply not possible,’ says Robert Bryce, author of Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy. ‘Nine out of 10 units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons—coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long process. … The world consumes 200 million barrels of oil equivalent in hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias.’

Bryce used to be a left-liberal, but then: ‘I educated myself about math and physics. I’m a liberal who was mugged by the laws of thermodynamics.’

”

— John Stossel - Going “Green” (Reason.com May 27, 2010)

June 03, 2010, 12:01am

“

Over two decades have passed since Allan Bloom’s famous polemic, The Closing of the American Mind, shook up the American academy. The time is ripe for another shakeup. Enter James Davison Hunter, whose latest contribution, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford), promises to shake up American Christianity. An endorsement for Bloom’s book applies just as well to Hunter’s: It ‘will be savagely attacked. And, indeed, it deserves it, as this is the destiny of all important books … Reading it will make many people indignant, but leave nobody indifferent.’”

“The third essay offers a different paradigm for cultural engagement, one Hunter calls ‘faithful presence.’ Faithful presence is not about changing culture, let alone the world, but instead emphasizes cooperation between individuals and institutions in order to make disciples and serve the common good. ‘If there are benevolent consequences of our engagement with the world,’ Hunter writes, ‘it is precisely because it is not rooted in a desire to change the world for the better but rather because it is an expression of a desire to honor the creator of all goodness, beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God, and a fulfillment of God’s command to love our neighbor.’

”

— James Davison Hunter interview. via Christianity Today

May 26, 2010, 11:38pm

“

Zaher El-Ali has repaired and sold cars in Houston for 30 years. One day, he sold a truck to a man on credit. Ali was holding the title to the car until he was paid, but before he got his money the buyer was arrested for drunk driving. The cops then seized Ali’s truck and kept it, planning to sell it.

Ali can’t believe it

‘I own that truck. That truck done nothing.’

The police say they can keep it under forfeiture law because the person driving the car that day broke the law. It doesn’t matter that the driver wasn’t the owner. It’s as if the truck committed the crime.

‘I have never seen a truck drive,’ Ali said. I don’t think it’s the fault of the truck. And they know better.’

Something has gone wrong when the police can seize the property of innocent people.

‘Under this bizarre legal fiction called civil forfeiture, the government can take your property, including your home, your car, your cash, regardless of whether or not you are convicted of a crime. It’s led to horrible abuses,’ says Scott Bullock of the Institute for Justice, the libertarian law firm.

Bullock suggests the authorities are not just disinterested enforcers of the law.

‘One of the main reasons they do this and why they love civil forfeiture is because in Texas and over 40 states and at the federal level, police and prosecutors get to keep all or most of the property that they seize for their own use,’ he said. ‘So they can use it to improve their offices, buy better equipment.’

”

— John Stossel - Confiscating Your Property (Reason.com May 20, 2010)

May 20, 2010, 8:38pm