What prices do they deserve?

Someone should remind Rep. John Dingell that many Americans can think beyond what we’re told. For example, his comments about the Medicare drug bill have another side:

“Republicans had their shot at making the drug bill work, and seniors are still not getting the prices they deserve,” said Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, the chief sponsor of the Democratic proposal.

“Republicans chose to take care of their friends in the drug industry,” Mr. Dingell said. “It’s our turn to prove that the bill can work for seniors.”

And now Democrats have their shot at making the drug bill work. Does anyone doubt that Democrats will choose to take care of their friends in the “senior citizen industry”? All they’re trying to prove is that Congress can ignore the laws of economics. Good luck with that. I’m sure the Republicans are to blame for not effectively repealing those laws. But Democrats will have better luck. Right?

I know who’s carrying the oil can.

We knew this was coming, so only minor credit is warranted:

On its second day under Democratic management, the House yesterday overwhelmingly approved new rules aimed at reining in deficit spending and shedding more light on the murky world of special-interest projects known as earmarks.

Under the new provisions, the House will for the first time in years be required to pay for any proposal to cut taxes or increase spending on the most expensive federal programs by raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere. And lawmakers will be required to disclose the sponsors of earmarks, which are attached in virtual secrecy to legislation to direct money to favored interests or home-district projects.

Admirable, although I don’t trust anyone in Congress to pick spending cuts in the equation. Balanced budgets are better than deficits, but barely under the principle-free government that’s emerged out of abandoned understanding of the Constitution. The only safeguard we have right now is the veto pen, and we know how well that isn’t working under the current administration.

In recent months, with revelations that lawmakers had earmarked funds for projects with little public benefit, earmarks had became a political embarrassment and a symbol of fiscal profligacy.

Revelations? Who didn’t know this was going on? That’s a bizarre way for a journalist to phrase the recent attention to the long-standing problem of reckless spending. But, in case anyone feels we need new evidence that Congress (i.e. Democrats) will botch the implementation of Pay-as-You-Go, consider:

So far, fiscal restraint appears to be gaining the upper hand. As he left the House chamber yesterday, [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B.] Rangel said he is scouring the tax code for tax breaks that benefit special interests. If the beneficiaries “don’t put their hands up, it’s out,” he said, suggesting that the money saved could go toward paying for the repeal of the alternative minimum tax.

Good grief. The squeaky wheel gets the oil is not wise fiscal policy. All Rep. Rangel is saying here is that he’s seeking political contributions for his re-election campaign. If you have a tax loophole that you’re fond of, it’s available for a price. The more things change…

Economic Thought of the Day

George Will gets it right today on the coming push to increase the federal minimum wage:

But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities’ prices.

That’s spot on. The essay is not perfect, as Kip at A Stitch in Haste points out with a useful economics lesson, but the conclusion is the same. The correct minimum wage is $0. If the uninitiated come away with the wrong justification but the correct conclusion, we can work on the reasoning. Short-term isolated problem versus long-term widespread damage. Easy choice if those are my alternatives.

Of special note, I love this line that Kip wrote to explain Will’s loose semantics:

…sloppily knocking a foul ball down the right-wing line…

His entire post is worth reading, and shows why he should be widely read, but that phrase by itself is excellent. I wish I’d written it.

The scalpel will not teach responsibility.

This editorial is a mess, so it’ll be easiest to just jump in:

In inner Sydney it has been estimated that between 10 and 18 per cent of the homosexual population are HIV/AIDS-affected, similar to the UN’s figures for parts of Africa.

In NSW and Victoria, the rate of diagnosis of infectious syphilis doubled between 2001 and 2005, “almost entirely through increased numbers of cases among homosexual men”.

Alarmingly, the NSW Government has failed to take the smallest step toward preventing the spread of AIDS and syphilis, though still parading its support for the homosexual community’s annual orgy of self-celebration, the mardi gras.

You know where this is going, right? I’ll get to that in a moment, but it’s impossible not to also highlight the implication of “the homosexual community’s annual orgy of self-celebration” as an important facet in this essay. It will return. But let’s get back to what is the painfully inevitable nonsense masquerading as a strategy:

The step that NSW Health Minister John Hatzistergos won’t take is the adoption of circumcision as a routine surgical procedure.

His health department describes the removal of the foreskin as “social circumcision” and not to be performed in the state’s hospitals unless a clear clinical need is established.

Last month, the World Health Organisation (WHO) established such a clear clinical need. It stopped two large clinical trials it was conducting in Kenya and Uganda because it felt the results were so overwhelmingly positive for the circumcised group it could not ethically proceed without offering those in the uncircumcised control group the chance to get snipped.

The writer of this essay, Piers Akerman, made the illogical leap from it being unethical to not offer circumcision to the still-intact adults in the study to demanding that the New South Wales Health Minister adopt circumcision as a routine surgical procedure¹ for infants. The WHO’s conclusion included the two key words Mr. Akerman is now ignoring, as well as buried-but-appropriate warnings that circumcision is not a magic bullet. As such, there is not a “clear clinical need” for sexually-inactive infants.

Continuing:

The NSW Government is in politically correct self-denial, as is Sydney’s homosexual community.

While spokesmen such as The Sydney Morning Herald’s cultural commissar David Marr and High Court judge Michael Kirby make gay marriage their gay issue of choice, their cohorts are dying because governments see no mileage in doing more than promoting so-called safe sex.

This at a time when a group within the homosexual community has been identified as promoting high-risk sex and actively pursuing infection or passing it on in a macabre practice known as “bug chasing”.

Mr. Akerman is woefully misinformed if he believes that circumcision will prevent HIV infections among those who are “bug chasing”. Circumcision is not immunity from infection. It will still be possible to become infected without trying too hard. But it’s easier to lambast gays as a group for the irresponsibility of a few than to focus on irresponsible behavior by individuals, gay and straight. The consequences should fall on those who are irresponsible, not infants.

Despite what came before the conclusion, it takes a strained thought process to propose this:

Reckless indifference to safe sexual practices by members of the homosexual community is responsible for most of the transmission of HIV/AIDS in Australia.

State governments need to get off their politically correct hobby horses and prescribe the operation to all male infants to give them a better chance to avoid this plague.

This is ridiculous, as should be clear by the two statements I’ve emphasized. Some gays will behave irresponsibly. This warrants circumcising all male infants, the majority of whom will not be gay? Unless we can identify which infants will be irresponsible when they become sexually active, routine infant circumcision is not the answer. Even then it wouldn’t be acceptable, but until that discussion is warranted, routine infant circumcision as an HIV preventative is little more than a universal punishment for potential future irresponsibility that only placates Mr. Akerman’s apparent animosity towards gays.

Update: For a refreshing look at common sense overtaking the bigotry and stupidity, read the comments at Mr. Akerman’s blog entry for his published essay. They started out badly, but recovered well.

¹ We’re discussing socialized medicine here, with the procedure paid by the taxpayers through the government. Parents in Australia can still circumcise their male children for any reason on their own dime.

Mob rule isn’t activist?

Not much needs to be said about this vote in the Massachusetts legislature, a follow-up to this post:

Massachusetts legislators approved a measure yesterday that next year could allow voters to overturn a historic same-sex marriage law in the only state in the nation where such unions are legal.

Before I go further, it’s important to note that 62 of 185 legislators voted for the measure, a vote that equal just above 33.5%. Okay, so on to Gov. Mitt Romney, who will be is running for president in 2008:

“This is a huge victory for the people of Massachusetts,” Romney said in a statement. “In a democracy, the voice of the people is sovereign.”

This is what partisan, wedge politics has achieved. A presidential candidate views 33.5% support as “the voice of the people.” Pathetic.

There is one other interesting quote in the story:

“It’s in the best interests of children and society for marriage to be defined as between a man and woman,” said Glen Lavy, a senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, which strongly favors banning same-sex marriage. “The battle to preserve marriage in Massachusetts as between a man and a woman is alive and well.”

Sentence one: please provide proof. Sentence two: the battle is now to return marriage in Massachusetts to the definition of a man and a woman. Accept it or not, but marriage in Massachusetts is now between two consenting adults.

Capitalism doesn’t require stupidity

Interesting news out of Milwaukee:

If you wanted to buy condoms 30 years ago, you had to bear the embarrassment of asking a pharmacist to fetch them from beneath the counter.

Now with thieves wiping out the entire stock of prophylactics in some stores, more retailers are putting them back out of reach – and, in some cases, are even locking them up.

Nothing surprising so far, at least when looking at the simple concept that stores aren’t in the business of offering five finger discounts. Until purchased, the condoms belong to them. If they want to lock them up, fine. If they want to place them on a shrine in the middle of the store with a giant spotlight, fine. Their property, their prerogative.

Of course, the nanny statists disagree:

“We are certainly concerned about the availability of condoms in stores,” said Eric Ostermann, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Health Association.
…

“We’d hope they would not present any obstacles to getting their product in the community,” Ostermann said.

Encouraging people to keep themselves safe is wonderful, but the puritanical, irrational fear of sex and all things regarding the body is too embedded. Wouldn’t it be better to disassociate the stigma from sex in general, making it easier to buy condoms without shame? More capitalism and less puritanism.

To be fair, Mr. Ostermann is not making an anti-capitalist, public before profit statement, but an understandable lament based on our puritanical society. Yet, someone will probably suggest legislation requiring stores to provide simple access to condoms in the public interest, without regard to likelihood of theft. Before we take that silly route, stores or some other enterprising soul could follow the suggestion of the many Fark commenters in the thread where I found the story: vending machines. Simple and effective.

Instead, we get feel-good corporate gobbledygook like this:

Other stores, such as Walgreens, mostly keep condoms in a highly visible area in the store where thieves would be more concerned about employees catching them in the act of stealing. Several Walgreens that had placed condoms behind their counters have since been instructed to return them to the sales floor, said Carol Hively, corporate spokeswoman for the pharmacy chain, based in Deerfield, Ill.

“It’s our policy not to lock up condoms,” Hively said. “Shrink can vary from store to store, but in general it is in the interest of public good and safety to keep the condoms unlocked.”

It’s in the interest of those who are responsible enough to practice safe sex and pay for that protection that they have access to condoms when they attempt to purchase them. Walgreens is free to do what it wants, but what would it rather have, a thief who returns to the store multiple times because he didn’t get infected or a paying customer who returns to the store multiple times because he didn’t get infected? The potential embarrassment of the customer should be considered, as any smart business will consider its customer’s needs and wants. But meeting customer needs at a loss is crazy.

Or, in the words of a friend of mine, buying condoms shouldn’t cause embarrassment because it’s a sign that the buyer will be having sex. Customers should be proud.

Government sanction is not a defense

I thought about writing something about the execution of Saddam Hussein, but decided against it because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say beyond the obvious. Saddam’s despicability doesn’t change my opposition to capital punishment. My reasons are based on my beliefs about government as much as they are on the ethics of condoned murder. I will lose no sleep over Saddam’s execution, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with it as a punishment. That I even feel compelled to write that last sentence is sign enough that too many capital punishment supporters (dare I say fans) would accuse me of sympathy for Saddam because I don’t believe we should’ve been complicit in his murder. Don’t we deplore murder?

Until today, I couldn’t find the words to explain why I can disagree, even with a figure so worthy of such a punishment as Saddam Hussein. The only drawback is that Jacob Sullum wrote the right words at Reason’s Hit & Run before I could express them. I’ll quote him here discussing the etiquette of what happened:

… I’m a little puzzled by the expectation that one really should be polite to a gentleman one is about to kill. …

No, the taunts bother people because they’re undignified and emotional, revealing too much about the true nature of the event, which is a dressed-up, cold-blooded version of vengeance, prescribed and limited by law. They bother people for the same reason we don’t have public executions anymore, with crowds gathering to jeer and cheer after a nice picnic lunch. But what is the right way to kill a man who deserves to be killed? Calmly, professionally, and rationally, or angrily and triumphantly, while shouting “die, motherfucker, die”?

That’s it exactly. We want to make the event solemn, more for us than the condemned. He is going to die and we’re going to take joy in the act. But we want to pretend that it’s just. It is not. We are complicit in murder, for no better reason than vengeance. It’s unpleasant and unbecoming of a civilized society, but at least be honest about it. I respect honesty. That would be an improvement over an unconvincing argument that execution is necessary without the threat of imminent danger.

How do we protect government from itself?

This is a few weeks old, but I’m just seeing it now. Accidental vacations have a way of encouraging information delinquency. Anyway, the underlying concepts won’t age, so here it is:

Trans fats are largely synthetic fats widely used in fried foods and baked goods. There is substantial medical evidence that they are significant contributors to heart disease (perhaps increasing the incidence of heart disease by as much as 6 percent) because they both raise the cholesterol that is bad for you (LDL) and lower the cholesterol that helps to protect your arteries against the effects of the bad cholesterol (HDL). About half of New York City’s 20,000 restaurants use trans fats in their cooking; and roughly a third of the caloric intake of New Yorkers comes from restaurant meals.

That’s from Richard Posner, at The Becker-Posner Blog. It’s a fair enough assessment of trans fats and why health officials think it’s bad. There is no harm in information, right? But how do those facts justify a complete ban on the ingredient in all New York City restaurant meals?

What is missing in this analysis is a cost that, ironically, a great Chicago economist, George Stigler, did more than any other economist to make a part of mainstream economic analysis: the cost of information. It might seem, however, that the cost of informing consumers about trans fats would be trivial–a restaurant would tell its customers whether or not it used trans fats, if that is what they’re interested in, and if it lied it would invite class action suits for fraud. But there is a crucial difference between the cost of disseminating information and the cost of absorbing it.

When I first read through this, I’d intended to discuss “the cost of absorbing it” in this context. But that would be less interesting than this, from later in the paragraph:

Actually the danger would be impossible to explain to diners, because it would depend on the diner’s average daily consumption of trans fats, which neither the diner nor the restaurant knows.

Want to take any guesses about who else doesn’t know the diner’s average daily consumption of trans fats? The government, of course, although it’s less far-fetched to believe that the government wants to know. Rather than the invasive, suspect process needed to keep an accurate, or even approximate, tally, it’s easier to just ban everything. That way, the government knows how much trans fat diners will consume in restaurants.

The acceptance of paternalism continues:

In such a situation, even those of us who distrust government regulation of the economy should be open to the possibility that the ban on trans fats would produce a net improvement in the welfare of New Yorkers by satisfying a preference that most of them would have if the cost of absorbing information about the good in question were not prohibitive.

There are tidbits of possible solutions sprinkled throughout the entry. Instead of less troublesome tactics such as mandatory labeling and government marketing against trans fats, Judge Posner finds government prohibition amenable. Unreal. The cost is less prohibitive in either of my hypothetical solutions, although they’re still far from libertarian dreams. Judge Posner’s conclusion is incompatible with liberty.

Hat tip: Hit & Run

I’m still here

The last week-plus turned into a minor blog vacation, as I spent Christmas weekend and the rest of my break from work bonding figuratively (and almost literally) with my couch and my Xbox 360. For reference, I took my Gamerscore from 865 to 2,145 since Tuesday. Some of that was easy enough with Civil War, but I also finished Prey and played a bunch of Madden 07. I’ve had a blast and it’s felt good to step away from The Internets for a few days. But fret not, I will be back to regular blogging tomorrow, or Tuesday at the latest.

You’re excited, aren’t you?

Forced at gunpoint to wield a gun. What’s to fear?

I always have been, and always will be, against the military draft. Start with a process that makes demands on only 50% of the population (hey, wait a minute). Then throw in forced servitude for no other crime than being born the correct unlucky sex. Finally, give control over that process to politicians/central planners. It results in a fine constitutional mess of injustice and economic inefficiency. It’s all quite anti-liberty. Thus, it remains in the government arsenal.

In light of recent events the length of time since it last occurred, Selective Service is interested in a dry run of the system. It’s unlikely to happen until 2009, according to the article. Even now I’d be in the tail end of those eligible, so my number would not likely come up for consideration. By 2009, I’ll be pushing the outer range limit even more. All said, I’m not particularly worried for myself. However, I’m qualified to address this anyway:

The Selective Service “readiness exercise” would test the system that randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective Service director for operations and chief information officer.

“We’re kind of like a fire extinguisher. We sit on a shelf” until needed, Campbell said. “Everyone fears our machine for some reason. Our machine, unless the president and Congress get together and say, ‘Turn the machine on’ … we’re still on the shelf.”

We don’t fear the machine itself, but that machine, at the discretion of elected dolts, becomes a weapon designed to send men to fight a war. It has the ability to make life hell for a lot of people, unless we choose to consider involuntary servitude something other than hell. I’m not willing to embrace another definition, which means I can think of “some reason”.