On May 28, 1952, the women of Greece gained the right to vote.
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Greek voters
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Jorge Luis Borges
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Dead Men’s Dialogue” in Dreamtigers (1960)
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Chelsea Clinton and Interconnectedness
A few days ago Chelsea Clinton, daughter of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, proclaimed some trendy wisdom. About “interconnectedness.” How she missed “systemic” we are not sure.
Professor Gad Saad is not impressed.
Rush Limbaugh compares Ms. Clinton to a very different professor.
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The Model T Era Ends
On May 27, 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi began his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.
In 1927 on this date in May, the Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T, the last of this model coming off the line the day previous. Over 16 million Model T Fords had been sold, and was a world transformative product. On the 27th, the company began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
Exactly 70 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he was in office.
In 2015, 27 May, the commercial space company SpaceX was approved as a contractor to the U.S. military for satellite launches; SpaceX would go on to compete for contracts against the Boeing-Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance, currently the primary military launch provider
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Lord Acton
The great question is to discover, not what governments prescribe, but what they ought to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the conscience of mankind.
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” published in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)
“Three restaurants vacated the Bay this week, with Berkeley’s Bistro Liaison getting the most attention,” the San Francisco edition of Eater informs us. “It’s a bittersweet exit for the owners, who plan to start new careers.”
The week in question was in February. But this was not an isolated event. Sixty-four Bay-area restaurants and fast food joints closed their doors this last winter.
That is a lot of closures.
Why?
Every eatery has a different story, but the entry December 17* provides a big clue: minimum wage hikes.
Citizens should hardly be surprised. They got what they asked for. The minimum wage went up to $13.00 per hour last July, and will go up another two bucks next year. And this was the result of a citizen initiative. “On November 4, 2014, San Francisco voters passed Proposition J, raising the minimum wage to $15.00 by 2018,” the City Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement tells us.
And the thing about minimum wage laws is that they do not — either by magic or by law — directly raise any wages. They, by law and quite directly, prohibit wage contracts below the minimum established.
Businesses then react, struggling to accommodate the newly imposed costs. Sometimes they keep all their employees and economize on other inputs, but often they must re-arrange hours and workers and whole production schemes.
If hemmed in elsewhere, they just go out of business.
Just as one should expect, according to the law of supply and demand.**
Citizens might wish to reconsider. That is, initiate a measure to repeal a previously successful initiative . . . that gave us this unsuccessful policy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The entry reads thusly: “OAKLAND — alaMar Kitchen and Bar as you know it is shuttering on December 17, but will reopen in the new year with a fast casual format. The owner points to minimum wage raises and the cost of doing business in the Bay Area as the reasons cited for the closure/change.”
** It is often said that businesses just “raise prices” and “pass along the costs” to consumers in general, but, for reasons of supply and demand, they cannot do this without decreasing sales and thus revenue.
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Freedom of Religion
On May 26, 451, the Sassanid Empire defeated the Armenians at the battle of Battle of Avarayr, but guaranteed them freedom to openly practice Christianity.
On May 26, 1328, scholastic philosopher and Franciscan friar William of Ockham and other Franciscan leaders secretly exited Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII. On the same day in 1538, the city of Geneva expelled John Calvin and his followers, who headed to exile in Strasbourg.
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Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer, “The Great Political Superstition,” The Man versus The State (1884).
If we adopt pessimism as a creed, and with it accept the implication that life in general being an evil should be put an end to, then there is no ethical warrant for these actions by which life is maintained: the whole question drops. But if we adopt either the optimist view or the meliorist view — if we say that life on the whole yields more pleasure than pain; or that it is on the way to become such that it will yield more pleasure than pain; then these actions by which life is maintained are justified, and there results a warrant for the freedom to perform them. Those who hold that life is valuable, hold, by implication, that men ought not to be prevented from carrying on life-sustaining activities. In other words, if it is said to be ‘right’ that they should carry them on, then, by permutation, we get the assertion that they ‘have a right’ to carry them on. Clearly the conception of ‘natural rights’ originates in recognition of the truth that if life is justifiable, there must be a justification for the performance of acts essential to its preservation; and, therefore, a justification for those liberties and claims which make such acts possible.
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) allows voters to rank electoral candidates and not “waste” their vote in cases where their most favored candidate is* unlikely to win. RCV also requires a majority for election, not merely a plurality of the vote.
Last November, Mainers passed Question 5 to begin using this voting system for statewide races, state legislative races and congressional contests. Voters in Portland, the state’s largest city, already use ranked choice voting for several city offices.
Nonetheless, Gov. Paul LePage, who has won twice for governor without ever capturing a majority, opposes RCV, as do many state legislators, also elected under a different first-past-the-post plurality system.
Because Maine’s state constitution specifically mentions plurality winners for statewide officials and state legislators (in the General Election), legislative leaders asked the Maine Supreme Court for an advisory opinion on the constitutionality of the ballot measure. Earlier this week, the court ruled that Question 5 was not constitutional when applied to those specific offices and elections.
However, the constitutionality of RCV was not challenged regarding congressional elections or primary elections for the state legislature.
Now some legislators are proposing a constitutional amendment to enact the RCV that voters supported. Others are urging that the entire law be repealed — even the parts not ruled unconstitutional. They claim the new system is too confusing if not used for every office.
But Portland city voters use RCV for some offices and not others, without confusion.
Legislators should follow the court’s decision, sure, but also respect the vote of the people for every part of the measure not addressed by the court.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Ranked Choice Voting also prevents wasted votes in cases where a voter merely expects or fears (even inaccurately) that his or her favorite candidate does not have enough support to get elected.
Original cc Photo by Tim Evanson on Flickr
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Jacob Burckhardt
May 25, 1818, the Swiss historian and academic Jacob Burckhardt was born. Burckhardt’s best known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), but is remembered here as the author of Reflections on History (1905).