Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Nuking the Net?

The military network that later combined with other networks to “make the Internet” was started out with an interesting purpose: to establish a communication system that could withstand nuclear strikes.

What if the United States were hit by multiple nuclear bombardments? How would survivors communicate? The protocols of the Internet allow for radical decentralization, which allows communications to get around nuked hubs.

Now, around the world, governments are trying to control this decentralized Net, taking down or otherwise preventing citizen access to Web services and sites (China, Britain, Australia, for example), and (most resolutely in China and the United States) preventing communication that cannot be “listened in” upon.

It’s almost as if governments are “nuking the Internet.”

The latest case? Lavabit. This Internet company has specialized in encrypted communications. Last week its owner and operator, Ladar Levison, made a public statement:

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on — the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise.

In an interview with Democracy Now, Levison hazarded that, “if the American public knew what the government was doing,” the government “wouldn’t be allowed to do it any more.” But so far, he’s speaking very carefully and not elaborating on what the government wanted him to do with his company.

It’s almost as if Congress nuked the Constitution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags Ladar Levinson, Lavabit

too much government

Hard Case for Soft Paternalism

Post author By Redactor
Post date August 14, 2013
6 Comments on Hard Case for Soft Paternalism

Not long after I noted a new form of paternalism, David Brooks, from his perch as token conservative at The New York Times, devoted a column to the idea that governments should “nudge” people to act better, rather than force them.

He is enthusiastic. “[I]n practice, it is hard to feel that my decision-making powers have been weakened because when I got my driver’s license enrolling in organ donation was the default option.” He thinks the reality of “soft paternalism” is innocuous in terms of coercion, powerful in terms of consequences, like more donated organs.

Still, he sees the skeptical, anti-paternalist case: “Do we want government stepping in to protect us from our own mistakes? Many people argue no. This kind of soft paternalism will inevitably slide into a hard paternalism, with government elites manipulating us into doing the sorts of things they want us to do.”

But, he argues, this just hasn’t happened. There’s no evidence for this slippery slope.

Not so fast. Economist Donald Boudreaux can explain the lack of data: the reason we see so little move from soft (option-based) paternalism to hard (force-based) paternalism is that most paternalism starts out hard and gets tougher as it goes along: “One reason why the empirical record isn’t more full of nudges turning into diktats is that government typically issues diktats from the get-go.” Paternalists tend to forgo the suggestion for the compulsion.

And their current emphasis on nudging will likely change once their nudging gets them nowhere near their Nirvana. We know this not from direct evidence about soft paternalism, but about the history of government in general and the enduring popularity of paternalism in its hardest of forms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Thought

William Graham Sumner

Every book is a monopoly, and copyrights, perhaps, better than anything else serve to illustrate the wide range through which monopoly may act. Volumes are written which scarcely anyone will buy. The owner of the copyright has an absolute monopoly, but, there being no demand, his monopoly is worthless — from which it appears that a man cannot oppress his fellows simply because “he has a monopoly.”

Thought

William Graham Sumner

The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its debt in the penitentiary or the poor house.

too much government U.S. Constitution

Stopping “Stop and Frisk”

It doesn’t seem at all surprising that New York Mayor Bloomberg supports both his unconstitutional anti-Big Gulp paternalism and his now-overruled “Stop and Frisk” police state nastiness. It’s “for our good,” not any wise dedication to principle, that he wants to prevent us from drinking big sugary sodas, and “for the peace” that he wants police to stop and manhandle thousands, millions of “suspicious looking” people.

Both policies clearly impinge on individual liberty. The former, in that it prevents people from peacefully doing what they want. The latter, in that it treats innocent people as guilty, as “suspicious” just because of the way they appear — mainly their clothing choices, age, and (especially) race.

The judicial ruling is, in its own way, inspiring. “The goals of liberty and safety may be in tension, but they can coexist,” Judge Shira Scheindlin writes, adding that “the Constitution mandates it.” The ruling is also something of an education, for the judge notes that it’s not her business to make policing effective. It’s to make policing constitutional. Constitutional limits are necessary to rein in the potential of government to morph into tyranny.

And “stop and frisk” sure seems like tyranny to the people continually harassed on the streets. After all, the judge found that “the stopped population is overwhelmingly innocent, not criminal.” Treating innocent citizens like criminals doesn’t inspire respect for the law.

And it sure is nice to see Bloomberg take another big gulp from a judicial ruling limiting his power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags Mayor Bloomberg, New York police, stop and frisk

free trade & free markets ideological culture

A Briefing for the President

Post author By Redactor
Post date August 12, 2013
6 Comments on A Briefing for the President

Say we have evidence that entrepreneurs can build roads, railroads, and other means of transport even without government-spewed largesse and macro-mismanagement.

Would President Obama tell us?

Considering the man’s wonted denigration of individual achievement, probably not. Why should mere track records put a damper on his lust to conclude that social cooperation as such, especially as shoved and molded by government, somehow renders individual achievement less pivotal or praiseworthy? “You didn’t build that,” not all by your little lonesome, the Discourager-in-Chief says of anyone too proud of personal accomplishment; government’s always been there to help, however hinderingly.

Turns out, though, that as historians Larry Shweikart and Burton Folsom detail in a recent article, we do “build that,” even roads, when allowed to. Nothing about getting from here to there is intrinsically gotta-be-made-by-government.

The authors observe that auto makers put cars in “almost every garage” long before the 1956 Highways Act. They “began building roads privately long before [governments] got involved.” Businessmen also helped build the first transcontinental highway in 1913.

Before the Civil War, railroads were built and financed privately. When government decided to push for transcontinental railroads, the only continent-spanning railroad to be consistently profitable was the only one not scooping federal stimulo-funding: James J. Hill’s Great Northern.

What about, earlier, Robert Fulton’s steamboat? Was the steamboat able to ride the rivers even before subsidies for canals?

Must airports be government-owned?

Read the whole thing.

You too, Mr. President. It is, after all, a brief brief. But if you are looking for longer accounts, complete with footnotes and citations of primary documents, they are available, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags barack obama, briefing, history

Thought

William Graham Sumner

It is the supreme test of a system of government whether its machinery is adequate for repressing the selfish undertakings of cliques formed on special interests and saving the public from raids of plunderers.

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