Author: Redactor

Expensive coffee is my besetting sin. But the hugely successful Starbucks — which I’ve defended before — recently did something so oddly irksome that maybe I’ll get a handle on my occasional vice.

Starbucks offers a debit-​card-​like “customer card” that allows you to pay for your purchases in advance. Or to give coffee to the Starbucks addicts on your gift list.

This is a great marketing gimmick … to which I’ve never succumbed. So I had to read about the controversy from David Boaz of the Cato Institute in an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

A friend of David’s got a card. And he went to Starbucks’s website to get it going. Starbucks offered to “customize” his card with a personalized motto that the website says would make the card “as unique as you are.”

David’s friend chose the motto “Laissez-faire.”

That means “leave us alone.” It’s the living expression of tolerance and lack of regulation, often used in conjunction with free-​market capitalism.

Great slogan. I use it. It fits with other ideas of tolerance I have, too, the common, more liberal ones about free speech and such.

Unfortunately, Starbucks wouldn’t print the slogan. It was rejected.

They let plenty of leftist political slogans see printing, but not “laissez-faire”!

It makes me want to leave Starbucks alone.

Hmmm … Starbucks has competitors. Maybe I’ll try one.

That’s “laissez-faire.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Dentistry! What a job, sticking fingers into opened mouths. Probing. Drilling. Filling. Ugh.

And it must not be easy managing patients, or clients, or whatever they call the people who pay their bills.

It’s bad enough here in America; It is obviously much harder in Britain, where dentists were just told to go on vacation. By the government. Why? They had filled their work quotas. Even while millions — yes, millions — of English people can’t get in to see any dentist!

Dentistry is socialized in Britain. The government hires the dentists. Tax money — not patients directly — pay for the dental work.

So no wonder there aren’t enough dentists in Britain, and why British teeth, in general, are getting worse, even though the service is “free of charge.”

Just try to provide a free service using tax monies — you still can’t void the laws of scarcity and value by edict. If you want something, you still have to pay for it. You still have to invest. Scarce resources must go from some use and be put to another.

The trouble, as economists starting with the Austrian Ludwig von Mises have shown, is that when you try to run things by bureaucracy, forfeiting private means of production and capitalist investment and competitive markets, you give up some amazingly effective tools to organize scarce resources. And you are left with guesswork. And politics.

And, under socialized medicine, bad teeth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

If he attends the opening ceremony of the Olympic games in Beijing, President Bush will miss an opportunity … an opportunity to protest the Chinese government’s crackdown and jailing of dissidents in Tibet and elsewhere.

On the eve of Olympic festivities, China jailed oft-​detained human rights activist Hu Jia for “inciting subversion of state power.”

A spokesman for the International Olympics Committee says Hu’s fate is a â€œmatter of Chinese law,” that there should be a â€œbig, fat, red line” between sports and politics. But by keeping mum the IOC is indeed making a statement. Just as they did when they picked China as the Olympic venue. They’re giving the Chinese government a green light.

At the same time, though, IOC vice president Kevin Gosper urges China to lift any censorship of the Internet during the games. It’s fine before and after the games, I guess. Gosper also objects to a law under which the Chinese can detain anyone, including athletes and ticket-​holders, for up to two days without informing anybody.

That fat red line stretches thin.

Democrats like Hillary Clinton urge President Bush to skip the opening Olympic ceremony. Is she sincere or an opportunist? Doesn’t matter. In this case, politics should indeed be set aside — American domestic politics, that is.

Mr. Bush, do the right thing. Don’t attend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.