comment spam

Whoever can change the settings for this blog - could you please turn on the word verification in the comments options? I did for my blog and haven't gotten any of this spam.

Bridget

"The World Is Flat"?

Here is an article worth reading: "The World Is Flat: But America is a laggard in the tax-reform revolution." Here are snippets, but the whole article is worth reading.

It's about time the concept of taxing all income at a single rate, which presidential candidate Steve Forbes and then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey broached a decade ago, once again takes center stage. It's increasingly popular overseas, with Romania and the republic of Georgia adopting it last January. Greece is likely to introduce a 25% single rate for both corporate and personal income next month. If Poland's opposition parties win next month's elections they are likely to introduce a flat tax. In Italy, the Bruno Leoni Institute has just published an interview with former finance minister and current defense minister Antonio Martino detailing his support of the flat tax.

...

Here at home the flat tax is still routinely ridiculed. When Mr. Forbes floated the idea in 1995, President Clinton joked that Republicans were becoming "the party of flat-earthers and flat-taxers." But he has also told friends privately that he got a real scare during the 1992 primaries when Jerry Brown championed a flat tax. Mr. Brown won applause from audiences by pointing out that under our current system the rich will always be able to hire experts to lobby for tax loopholes and avoid the higher rate traps set for them.

...

If the U.S. doesn't adopt the flat tax it may find itself losing jobs, capital and ambitious entrepreneurs to nations with a more ambitious growth agenda.

...

Alvin Rabushka, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, believes it's only a matter of time before an emerging economic superpower like China or India goes the flat-tax route. His book on the subject has just been published in Chinese, with a preface by Lou Jiwei, the vice minister of finance. If China adopted a flat tax, more than a quarter of the world's population would be filling out tax returns on the back of a postcard. That would leave them a lot of time and money to eat our economic lunch.

Nuclear Fusion? You Must Be Staring Into the Sun.

I have a big government liberal friend who studied economics and finance. I am always forwarding to him anti-government propaganda from Mises.org and Cato. This is his latest attempt to justify government spending for stimulation of the economy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4629239.stm#

This concerns the nuclear fusion plant to be built in France and its promise of unlimited and clean energy for the future. His argument is that no private enterprise could afford to pursue this technology now. To tell the truth, the whole things seems a little dubious to me and rather like a lot a country size back-slapping and deal-making. And I honestly don't know much about the present state of the technology nor do I understand who is doing what. A little help here would be greatly appreciated! FRANCO DELENDUM EST.

Claremont (and Sciabarra's book on...)

Hello! What a day I have had! I suppose many of you out there were attending your orientations today, or at least returning to your schools of choice for another exciting year!

One course of mine, the "Basics of Political Theory", had 7 thick and wordy treatises assigned as required texts. Man, that should be real fun by the end of the semester. You graduate student bastards should have warned me. I could be drinking right now, instead I am reading the prefaces to all my texts for fear of ridicule come Monday lest I am found unworthy.

On another subject, when reading for fun was still an option, on Professor Horwitz' advice I looked up a book by Chris Sciabarra called "Ayn Rand: the Russian Radical". A wonderful book, to say the least. Very insightful, well written, captivating, convincing, and accessible (understandable), I highly recommend this to anyone. While this book focuses on Rand's own philosophy, it incorporates the ideas of many other giants and does so in a way that manifests correlations between and among various thinkers and various philosophies. Although I am not yet through the whole book, not even half-way, the book has helped me to make sense of many previously difficult subjects and terms, which some of you may or may not be comfortable with. And it has helped me understand where the major philosophers stood in relation to these terms. For example, after reading this book one should be more familiar with: dialectical materialism, realist-idealism, intuitivism, the dichotomies of mind\body, empiricism\rationalism, etc., symbolism, and a bunch of other ism's that are equally cool.

For me, who's introduction to Rand's material while working at Senator Kennedy's office made me feel bad about myself, this book has gone a long way in validating and enlightening for me the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It would do the same for many of you, to be sure. And if I ever have time to read it entirely, I hope that it helps me in my reply to Tony's query long ago concerning the split between Natural Law and Utilitarianism. As Sciabarra's book demonstrates, the tradition from which Rand was influenced, despite her claims to the contrary, sought to find reconciliations between (what was argued to be) false dichotomies. To put it (over)simply now, I propse that Natural Law and Utilitarianism, rightly understood, are the same thing.

For now that will have to be it. I suppose that as the semester rolls on, there won't be a lack of interesting posts considering that we'll all be in the midst of rewarding (and punishing) studies.

One more thing: Claremont just isn't the same without you. Damn hippies everywhere
;-)

I'm going going back, back to Cali, Cali

Today I leave for Claremont. Friday is Orientation; school starts Monday. I am very nervous. I feel like a first-grader again. Also I am sad. This morning I had to say good-bye to my girlfriend of three years and it was very hard. I will miss my family.

However, I am excited as well. New adventures always pose risk and heartache, but they offer new experiences and friendships as well. With luck and hard work, I will be as sad to leave California when the time comes as I am now distressed to leave my Utah.

Of course, any time that you wish to come to California please call on me! I would love to host you. Hopefully, by then, I will know of all the really good spots upon which to blame having a really bad hangover and I will be able to share them with you. Unless, of course, you are from Utah like me and/or don't imbibe. Then we shall find other refreshing ways to renew our spirits, like walks on the beach, or Gatorade.

And now, to prepare for my road trip to California and the beginning of a new chapter in my life, a new school, and new friends! My next email will be from the giant state of California, probably from a computer lab not unlike the ones we enjoyed at Pitzer (hopefully with a lot less bomb-lobbing commies).

P.S. The first person to indentify the artist from whom I aptly borrowed the title of my post wins their choice of: a balloon or 100 points.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Continued

Rather than post an excruciatingly long reply as "comment 19" (or whatever) on my previous post, I'm posting what I also posted on my blog and xanga. I hope it's interesting, or at least provocative. This is probably my last post on the subject, at least for a while. I leave for school Sunday, and will be rather busy helping with orientation, starting a couple part time jobs, etc. Enjoy. =)



I didn't intend to post again about Hiroshima & Nagasaki; but because of both my strong beliefs about the issue and the surprising amount of response it generated, I've decided to post one more time. I'm going to do my best to lay out the problems that most of my readers seem to still struggle with and give what I believe to be the best answers. I admit that I am far from the "Answer Man" concerning this or any other topic; but hopefully I can generate more beneficial discussion and thought with my words.

First, let's discuss the argument that conventional war would have resulted in more total casualties (William, CJ, Matt and Arthenor all touched on this). This is an argument that I discussed previously. However, I believe it deserves more attention because (a) my arguments have apparently been unconvincing, and (b) though I disagree with the conclusions of the argument, I agree that it is a very popular and convincing line of argumentation.

In response to it, I would first like to refer you back to some analysis I made earlier, which attacks one of the implicit premises of the argument above. Essentially, the argument is a utilitarian claim: If Action X will result in less harm than [not Action X], then Action X is justified. In other words, one should evaluate the "rightness" of the nuclear bombings by an ends-based utilitarion criterion.

Unfortunately, while my readers make some really compelling claims as to why a continuation of conventional war would have caused more deaths in the long run, they seem to mostly miss (or implicitly reject, perhaps) my deontological claim that the action is still wrong. In my last post, I talked about the perverse situations that can result from an ends-based mindset, especially with regard to wartime analysis.

Arthenor's response is threefold. He argues first that the situations are "different" (in other words, that starting an unprovoked nuclear war is disanalogous to the nuclear bombings of WWII). My point was simply that if it could be argued that nuclear war is inevitable (or likely to happen sometime in the future), utilitarian reasoning could justify such heinous actions as beginning a nuclear omnicide.

He secondly questions my uncomfortability with making decisions based upon calculation of "likely body counts." I am certainly not rejecting this, which is made clear by my argument that to commit an act that casuses [bad things] is worse than to allow an act that results in [bad things]. Arthenor's response (and one I believe William gave) is that, barring the nuclear bombings, we would have instead invaded Japan, resulting in the killing of civilians anyway.

However, it is imperative to note that this argument creates a false dilemma. It assumes that there are only two possible options: (1) Drop [2] nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or (2) Continue firebombing and invade Japan. Tony correctly points out that this argument leaves out other options--conditional surrender, for one. In fact, I would argue that there were options that would not have required the United States to take actions that would knowingly result in many civilian deaths.

Another major argument I would like to address is the idea that the United States was already killing innocent civilians through firebombing, etc. The argument more generally posits that the nuclear bombings were not uniquely morally reprehensible; that any ethical concerns against it could be equally applied to other tactics already being used by both sides in the war.

Well... sure. That simply means that the US did another bad thing, not that its other morally reprehensible actions somehow justify all of them. "Two wrongs don't make a right."

Moving on, Arthenor makes an interesting argument that there were really no innocent civilians. His argument is supported by a few claims: (1) Evaluate the act, not the intent (i.e. coercion is irrelevant for determining innocence or guilt); (2) Non-fighting civilians still contributed (sewing shirts for soldiers); (3) There is really no brightline for establishing complicity.

Regarding (1), my response is... well, he's simply wrong. If a man holds a gun to my head and forces me to hand him my brother's wallet, most moral and ethical systems would not hold me at fault, even though I technically had a choice ("Be an unwilling participant in theft or have your brains splattered all over the wall").

On his second argument, he makes a really dangerous slippery slope analogy. I think it's pretty clear that a 34-year-old woman, who sews a button onto a shirt that makes its way onto Hitler's body is not held morally responsible for the actions that Hitler takes. Now, I know that's not Arthenor's intended conclusion. His three arguments are simply fuel for his main conclusion, which is that since we cannot (a) flawlessly determine guilt or innocence or (b) save all innocent lives, our only option left is to "save as many as possible."

But I must heartily disagree with his analysis. First, just because you can't save all (or most) innocent life or create a distinct brightline isn't a reason to completely disregard it. By this reasoning, since our legal system is imperfect and cannot perfectly distinguish the innocent from the guilty, I should ensure the safety of myself and my family and kill anyone I suspect is guilty (vigilante style, baby!). It's not a perfect analogy, but I think my point stands regardless. Applying it to the situation in Japan: If we can't perfectly determine the majority of Japanese citizens' innocence or guilt, we should not simply disregard it altogether.

Keep in mind that Arthenor's conclusion that "well, might as well save our own lives if we can't tell" falls short at the point where invasion or nuclear bombings are not the only two options.

There was a lot more I wanted to say, but I have to get up early tomorrow, and I don't want my post to get any longer. =P I'm guessing there's enough here to talk about anyway. =)

Roman's Notes

The last of my notes are online now. romansturgis@blogspot.com if you're interested.

In other news, Koizumi dissolves Japan's House of Representatives after a reform bill to privatize Japan Post was voted down. Incredible.

-Roman

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The 60-year "anniversary" of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was yesterday. I blogged about the incident; I'm of the belief that the actions authorized by President Truman were wrong. But I'm the first to admit that I don't have a ton of knowledge about the situation at the time, so I'm interested in hearing your opinions. =)

a question for the lawyers

What is the difference between "reckless homicide" and "manslaughter"?

I'm asking because. . . a woman who recently killed my neighbor by failing to stop for a red light and therefore shoving my neighbor's car into the busy intersection is being charged with reckless homicide. The woman charged was drunk at the time of the accident and is being held on $600,000 bond because, on top of everything else, she is an illegal immigrant from Poland.

Also - comments on immigration? Last night I was watching a program about the high risks and costs of the people smuggling business. People were dying on overcrowded sinking boats and desperately trying to repay exorbitant sums for their being smuggled, all in attempts to get to the U.S. Even if the U.S. relaxed its emigration laws, is there the chance that other countries will relax their rules? It was evident on the program that it is as big a problem to get out of their own countries as to get in to the U.S. Thoughts?

Roman's Notes

The Age of Funk, Stephen Davies. Posted @ romansturgis.blogspot.com

Children's Rights continued

Rather than put this in the comments, I'll put it in a new post.

Katie wrote:

One model of the parent-child relationship claims that parents are the trustees of their children (the potentiality of adulthood held by the child gives the child claim to him/herself). As a trustee, the parent is required to serve the "best interest" of the child (defined by some as the means by which to secure rationality for the child).

This is a pretty good way to look at it. I would frame it a bit differently: parents are stewards of children. We start with the default principle that they are in the best position to know the child's "best interests" because they have the strongest incentives to do the right thing and because they know the children best and can therefore determine what their "best interest" is. Note how this is a Hayekian argument in the sense that it focuses on knowledge and incentives.

And yes, parents who accept stewardship of their children do have some positive obligations to them - minimally, to keep them safe from physical harm, nourish them, and do their best to bring them to functional adulthood. However, as Katie notes below, determining when these obligations have not been minimally met and what to do about it when they haven't been met are very difficult indeed.

This model raises the question of when the state must intervene, or whether the state can intervene in the parent-child relationship at all. It could be argued that when the "best interest" of a child is not being served, the state can step in. But, what is the "best interest?"

Indeed. People differ on what "best interest" is and what is "best" for individual children can vary greatly. Of course things that we, as wealthy Westerners, would take for granted as being in the best interest might not be possible for the children of the poor or from other cultures. Even in the West, penalizing poor parents for being poor by arguing that they are "neglecting" their kids and should have them taken away seems brutually unfair. There is a difference between neglect and abuse, and not all forms of neglect require state intervention. It is always worth asking the comparative institutions question: "as compared to what?" Even if we think parents aren't serving the best interest, will the state do any better for the kids by taking them out of the home? If not, are there less intrusive and dramatic forms of intervention that can help kids without punishing parents (again, this is not about abuse, but many things that we might think of as neglect)? Better yet, are there ways that other social institutions can get involved? What can houses of worship and other institutions of civil society do to help parents be better parents?

How does one secure rationality? Isn't it up to the parent to decide? And if this is true, isn't it unlikely that a parent will admit that he/she is not working in the "best interest" of his/her child?

Determining when "the line" has been crossed and parents are no longer to be trusted as the best steward for children is extremely difficult, and more so when you ask the comparative question from above. My default is to set the bar high, given that I think parents are always in the best position, but that doesn't mean there aren't cases where I think the parents need to have their parental rights attenuated. How exactly to do that and what the alternatives are remain tough questions.

But, then, how does one avoid arbitrary coercion in the parent-child relationship? This seems circular to me.

You can't avoid it; it's part of the relationship. And when we talk about children, coercion is just fine. Now if by "arbitrary" you mean abuse, that's a different story.

One last point: I do think it's probably better to talk about "parental rights" than "children's rights." It's certainly true that children have more rights than they used to and parents somewhat fewer. However, the constitutional law on this issue is all in terms of parental rights. The question you are asking is "when do parents fail their children so severely that their parental rights should be attenuated, suspended, or completely eradicated?"

If you'd like to read my thoughts on the family as a social institution, check out the draft of my forthcoming Cambridge Journal of Economics article here.

Data on "Sweatshops"

Here's a really nice piece by my friend Ben Powell and a student of his that examines actual empirical data on the wages paid by "sweatshops" in the Third World. Excellent intellectual ammunition for campus. Hat tip to Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek.

Flat Tax?

A good discussion is on right now on the flat tax. It is on the Dennis Prager Show. Just click here and then, when new screen pops up, click "Listen Live."

Dennis is interviewing Steve Forbes, author of Flat Tax Revolution. The flat tax discussion is on from 10 am - 11 am (PST). In other words, for another 30 minutes from time this posts. Go listen.

What do you think of the flat tax?