Seasteading

John Stossel's latest article is about Seasteading, which is the theory that wealthy libertarians can create their own countries at sea.

Friedman is convinced that only competition can produce the way to extricate us from the mess the politicians have created. "Seasteaders believe that government shouldn't be like the cell phone carrier industry, with few choices and high customer lock-in. Instead, we envision a vibrant startup sector for government, with many small groups experimenting with innovative ideas as they compete to serve their citizens. ... The world needs a place where those who wish to experiment with building new societies can go to test out their ideas. All land is already claimed -- which makes the oceans humanity's next frontier."

Kind of silly. First of all such seasteading societies will self select for sympathetic souls (say that 5 times fast). In other words; no bums. Even the working class who can afford to go to a seasteading community will be motivated to see it work. Secondly, these communities will be small as well as homogeneous. It's unlikely that the sorts of solutions that will work in these small communities will also work on a nation the size of the United States.

There's not a lot in the comments for something this intellectual; many do seem to believe that some form of this idea is a good one.

Why not invade a small county the same way Mexico is invading us.... just move there. Costa Rica is an inviting place. Move there and become the voting majority. Let the looters have this place. They will destroy it soon enough and maybe there will be an opportunity to return.

I wonder if I count as a looter? Probably not; mostly likely he means Hispanic immigrants.

A Non-Mosque Post

I have to admit I've been hitting the subject of the "Ground Zero" Mosque pretty hard lately (and may return to it later on today), but for a change of pace let's call John Stossel a liar.

Stossel's latest article is about privitizing Social Security; he notes accurately that the public taste for this idea is pertty low. But then he has to lie in order to make his case.

First, there never has been a trust fund! Your FICA tax payments were not saved or invested. Social Security transferred them to current retirees. Second, in return for IOUs, Congress raided Social Security's budget surplus every year and spent like any other tax revenue.

Those IOUs are what most of us call US Treasuries, one of the most secure investments on the planet. It's possible that Stossel doesn't in fact know this; he imagines the Social Security office recieving scribbled IOUs from congress. If he doesn't know this though, that shows a certain amount of stupidity or lack of care. I think he probably does know it, but chooses to fudge the truth anyway.

Easily Refutable Lies

One of the big lies the right has been telling about the sad excuse for health care legislation we are getting is that it will require death panels; panels that will counsel old people to abandon medical care and die so as to save the system money. John Stossel, conservative columnist, points out how stupid this argument is.

. . . no bill in Congress mandates end-of-life counseling, much less "death panels." And there's a deeper problem. When opponents of nationalization make such easily refuted charges, supporters of nationalization gain the upper hand. All criticism is undermined. Neutral observers can easily conclude, "If the death-panel claim is false, why believe anything else the critics say?"

That would be a disaster.

Of course this debunking doesn't seem to have persuaded his readers.

The fact is the Obamacare dream promotes the shifting of healthcare from the elderly to the ficticious 47 million have-nots--thus death panels...social justice not.

The rest of the Obamacare dream has nothing to do with healthcare but the total control of everyones freedom of individual determination. The Obamacare dream is evil and must be defeated now before a revolution takes the lives of millions of Americans.

But then again a guy like that might not be capable of persuasion. And, for a counter point, over at Salon they have a quote from Farhad Manjoo on whether or not the President should bother debunking these rumors; Manjoo thinks Obama shouldn't waste his time.

I've got some simple advice for Obama: Shut up about the death panels already. Don't keep fighting this rumor. You've lost—and the more time you spend trying to make things better, the worse off you'll be.

He argues that he's not going to convince the people who believe in the death panels and that continuing to refute them will, in effect, spread the rumors.

An End to Cops

John Stossel's latest article argues that regulation is foolish because people break the law anyway.

Advocates of regulation attribute almost magical powers to regulators, but clever cheats can get around any system. They always have. It's their chosen profession, and the regulators can't look everywhere. Regulation advocates also assume that bureaucrats are disinterested and incorruptible, but we know this is not always true. People who work in government are like anyone else. There will always be a percentage of individuals who can be tempted by corrupt opportunities.

. . . Fraud will always exist. Enforcement of anti-fraud laws is a useful deterrent, but in the end there's no substitute for investor vigilance. Government regulations provide a false sense of security -- and that's worth less than no sense of security at all.

I think Stossel is right but he clearly doesn't go far enough. For example right now a portion of our taxes goes to pay inefficient police officers to protect us from criminals. And what do we read in the papers, day after day? Crimes are still being committed. Criminals aren't dumb and they aren't giving up. And Police seem unable (and in some cases unwilling) to stop them. So why not leave security up to the individual? Rather than the false security of a police force, leave it up to each individual to provide their own security! And if they don't feel competent to handle that themselves, they could hire a security firm to protect themselves. Such firms would doubtless be cheaper and more efficient than Government Run Policing, and they would be required to be effective by the logic of the free market.

But wait, I guess a lot of people wouldn't have the means to hire a private police force. And that might lead to an increase in crime, as crime becomes more profitable. But this would be great economic news for security companies; they could raise their rates. And the people in society who really contribute and are rewarded, would be able to protect themselves by hiring these security firms.

It'd be a golden age.

John Stossel, Discrimination, and the Good Old Days

John Stossel's latest article argues in favor of a companies right to discriminate, in this case, on the basis or age. But he goes on to make this fascinating statement.

We don't need laws against discrimination. We need a free, competitive marketplace. Competition is better at punishing sexists, racists and "ageists" than clumsy laws. If a boss discriminated against, say, women, he would be demolished by a competitor who obtains better workers by hiring the women the first boss turned away.

Let's look back at the way the world was before such laws were implemented - did companies who discriminated against racial minorities or women suffer? Nope. Everybody was doing it. I don't know of a business that went under because of discrimination. Neither does Stossel.

It's pleasing to think this - by the same token it's pleasing to imagine that Consumers can force high environmental standards by refusing to patronize those businesses or products who choose to pollute. But it doesn't seem to be the way the world works.

John Stossel also makes this trenchant observation.

Good intentions are irrelevant. Public policy always has unintended bad consequences.

Now there's a conservative point of view. It almost seems like we shouldn't have any public policy at all.

Should Kid's be Allowed to Wallop Each Other? or Most People Were Kung Fu Fighting

John Stossel's latest article takes John McCain to task for not defending the right of parents to allow their kids to participate in mixed martial arts tournaments. Mixed Martial Arts is akin to the Ultimate Fighting Challenge, in which you are allowed to use any martial art to wail on each other but no weapons and no eye gouging or finger twisting. Apparently McCain has been critical of this sport. And that makes John Stossel angry.

Sen. John McCain -- yes, that John McCain -- once called the adult version of MMA "human cockfighting." He wrote letters to the governor of every state asking them to ban it.

Also, according to John Stossel all sports are dangerous, even cheer leading. So why shouldn't kids be allowed to beat the hell out of each other for their parents amusement?

I have to say I find this an odd angle from which to attack Senator McCain; but I would like to point out the vapidity of argument that all sports are dangerous by suggesting competitive Russian Roulette. Six kids. Six Chambers. That's a 83.3% survival rate. Since some kids get injured in all sports, why not competitive Russian Roulette? Because the odds that at least one kid will die or get seriously injured in Russian Roulette is pretty much one to one. The odds aren't as bad in this Mixed Martial Arts, but it certainly seems more likely to injure kids than other sports.

Even regular Martial Arts, for example. Martial Arts usually stresses discipline and safety (yeah there was that one bad teacher in The Karate Kid, but most teachers aren't like that (I hope). The bravado that saturates Mixed Martial Arts (hell just think Ultimate Fighting Championship), well, that's something else entirely.

I don't actually have that strong a feeling on this issue; I just don't think that McCain's position is so bizarre that it will hurt him in the election.

A Climate of Fear

John Stossel is a huge proponent of putting a stop to what he calls frivolous lawsuits. Or to put it another way, John Stossel is opposed to wealthy white people being held accountable for their actions.

Sure, fear of the "invisible fist" makes manufacturers more careful. Some lives have been saved because the litigation threat got companies to make their products safer. That's the "seen" benefit.

But that benefit comes with a bigger unseen cost: The fear that stops the bad things stops good things, too -- new vaccines, new drugs, new medical devices. Fear suffocates the innovation that, over the past century, has helped extend our life spans by almost 30 years. Every day, we lose good things.

We can't even begin to imagine the life-saving products that might have existed -- if innovators didn't live in a climate of fear. That'll be the subject of next week's column.

This is one of the core differences between the Liberal and Conservative mindset. To Conservatives, wealthy white people are generally good and want to do good things, but are held back by frivolous lawsuits and over regulation. If we just let wealthy white people do what they want, without fearing for the consequences if they make a mistake, well, we'd all be a lot better off.

I say wealthy white people, not because I think Stossel is racist, but because most of the wealthy people he is trying to protect are white. I'm sure that in so far as Hispanics or Blacks or Asians are wealthy, John Stossel wants to give them a pass for their mistakes as well.

I'd be curious to know where Mr. Stossel stands on treating drug abuse compared to criminalizing drug abuse; many conservatives (but not all) are bang up along side punishing Drug Abusers, particularly the poor and non white drug abusers. Or, alternatively, consider the recent Bankruptcy bill that targeted America's working class who made a few mistakes.

The pattern seems clear. Poor people's screw-ups should be punished; wealthy people should live in a climate where they can screw up as much as they want without consequence.

More on History and Marrying Your Cousin

These stories don't go together, but one involves a link and the other doesn't so I jammed them together.

One of the problems with critiques of how history is taught is that they inevitably contain critiques of America. That is because History has been taught with America coming off overwhelmingly positively. In this false narrative, America always does good or tries to do good. So in order to present a more accurate and factual version of American History, we necessarily have to be more negative.

By the same token, if American History were taught as Conservatives imagine, with America as the villain at all times, well, people fighting for a more accurate version of American History would look a bit like pollyannas.

None of this means that Historians who want to teach the betrayal of Guatemala, for example, hate America or want to teach American history as a succession of failures. It means they want a picture of America that includes both the highs and the lows.

On the lighter side John Stossel has written an article in favor of marrying your cousin (should you want to). I think it's intended as a mockery of the Gay Marriage debate; if so, it's not very convincing. Particularly since even his townhall readers don't seem to get the joke.

I particularly like this enlightened response.

TTSSYF writes:
The latest fad...

This is simply the latest fad, following polygamy, that is meant to innur us to Third World practices and have us more accepting of Third World immigration.

Thank you, world traveler, for shedding light on the cousin-marrying ways of the Third World.