July 2004 Archives

I made it home from San Diego yesterday in 1.5 hours, which is pretty darn fast, but it felt rather dangerous because I was so tired from the night before. I didn't feel bad when I left, but once I was on the road I started getting that out-of-body-experience thing going and I knew I only had three options.

I could pull over and take a nap... ha, but seriously. So I had two options: I wasn't sure if I should drive faster to get home before the fatigue could hit me hard, or if I should drive slower so as to minimize the chance of a serious accident. What do you think?

I had a rather vivid dream last night about a raft city built in an concrete river (like the spillways that crisscross Los Angeles). I "discovered" the dry riverbed myself and decided I should flood it with water, anchor a raft, and live in the swiftly flowing current. After a while more people started to join me and we created a utopia wherein whenever anyone caused trouble we cut their raft loose and let it float away.

One of the more interesting discoveries I made at Cato Univeristy is that although most of the older libertarians there seemed to be strongly pro-choice, the majority of the younger libertarians were pro-life. I'm sure there's a selection factor at work, since the older attendees paid their own way to the conference and the youngsters were often there on scholarship (like me), but it was still an interesting dynamic.

For a libertarian (and, I'd argue, for everyone) the abortion question rests solely on one issue: is a fetus a human being? If so, then a libertarian must seek to protect that life on the same terms as any other. If not, then there's no reason for government to get involved with abortion at all.

Dear Cato Sponsors,

My name is Michael Williams, and I want to thank you for the opportunity to participate in Cato University this summer. It was an amazing experience that I'll never forget.

I hardly know where to begin, but the first thing that comes to mind is the absolutely outstanding quality of the students that Dr. Palmer invited and that you sponsored. It was a pleasure and a priviledge to be among them. At most conferences it's expected that the lecturers will be engaging and informative, but I had no idea how much I would enjoy interacting with my fellow students over the course of the week, and how much I would learn from them. There were so many young adults -- from all around the country and from every walk of life -- and everyone had a different perspective on what it means to long and fight for a life of liberty. I made new friends that challenged my opinions as they shared their own, and I hope I'll keep them for a long time.

Even though I say I expected it, the lecturers were completely top-notch. It was exciting to interact with so many experienced and thoughtful freedom lovers, which isn't something I have much opportunity for in my usual surroundings. Normally I'm the one espousing the virtues of liberty and limited government and trying to guide others away from the Dark Side, and it was refreshing to be among so many teachers who, rather than needing convincing, were actually encouraging and directing me.

Again, thank you for giving from the fruits of your labor so that I could be where I am right now: furtively typing in my hotel room at 2:30 in the morning so that I get this thank-you written before any of my memories fade. Although we may never meet, I hope this letter inclines you to believe that your gift was worthwhile. I look forward to future involvement with the Cato Institute, and I hope that someday I'll be in your shoes and able to pass along the favor that you've given to me.

Sincerely,
Michael Williams

Illegal immigration costs more than mere money. For example, 95% of outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles target illegal aliens. Most recently, a truck driver ran over Oakland police officer William Seuis and fled the scene. Sources indicate that the driver, Carlos Mares, was possibly an illegal immigrant, but most of the news stories skirt around the issue. SFGate reports that Mares is "being held without bail in a federal immigration case", so draw your own conclusions. FreeCalifornia informs me that Mares is an illegal alien, and that Oakland residents are super-pissed. Why isn't the media covering this angle?

Proverbs 13:12

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

I guess I don't have much more to say, other than that it sucks to just wait and wait.

Lots of people seem to think John Kerry looks silly in a clean suit, but I don't see what the fuss is about. That's what people wear when they're around expensive and fragile equipment. Big deal.

Cato University has been great so far -- all the people are really interesting, and I'm losing my voice from all the discussions.

Internet access isn't as easy as I'd hoped, and even when I pay the daily fee I can't reliably get online from my hotel room... so there's going to be less blogging than I'd intended. I can't get to gmail from the business center here because they're using IE 5.0. I'm going to see if I can install Firefox....

One of the things that bothers me a bit about libertarians is that they're deathly afraid of slippery slopes. I agree that they're something to be wary of, but as Eugene Volokh has argued many times, sliding down a slope isn't inevitable. Libertarians want to create a world in which government is so limited that they'll never have to fight for liberty again, but fighting for liberty is inescapable. I'd rather work for the best good (life, liberty, &c.) now, even if it means we'll have to fight against a slope a little more later on. We can win now, and we can win later, because we're right.

I'm here at the Rancho Bernardo Inn for Cato University and using my new Costco laptop. (They have a six month no-questions-asked return policy!)

I'll post some pictures when I've got some. I may not be on much because they charge for internet access in the rooms... $10 per day.

This is so bizarre that I'm almost sure there must be some explanation other than the obvious. A American border-watch group snuck across the US-Mexico border and brought a "fake WMD" into the States -- presumably after first sneaking into Mexico.

The Mexican government is checking a videotape and may enter a formal complaint with the United States government.

"If the incident can be confirmed," said Miguel Escobar, Mexico's consul in Douglas, "a formal letter of protest will be submitted to the U.S. government."

And so Mexico is going to formally complain about Americans sneaking into their country? I'm speechless.

President Bush delivered a speech to the 2004 National Urban League Conference that could have been delivered to the NAACP, if that organization weren't so thoroughly owned by the Democrats. The whole thing is worth reading, but the President's final appeal to the black leaders at the conference is especially well crafted.

Ours is a solid record of accomplishment. And that's why I've come to talk about compassionate conservatism and what I envision for the future. I'm here for another reason. I'm here to ask for your vote. (Applause.)

No, I know, I know, I know. The Republican party has got a lot of work to do. I understand that. (Laughter and applause.) You didn't need to nod your head that hard, Jesse. (Laughter.)

Do you remember a guy named Charlie Gaines? Somebody gave me a quote he said, which I think kind of describes the environment we're in today. I think he's a friend of Jesse's. He said, "Blacks are gagging on the donkey but not yet ready to swallow the elephant." (Laughter and applause.)

Now that was said a while ago. (Laughter.) I believe you've got to earn the vote and seek it. I think you've got to go to people and say, this is my heart, this is what I believe, and I'd like your help. And as I do, I'm going to ask African American voters to consider some questions.

Does the Democrat party take African American voters for granted? (Applause.) It's a fair question. I know plenty of politicians assume they have your vote. But do they earn it and do they deserve it? (Applause.) Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party? That's a legitimate question. (Applause.) How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete? (Applause.) Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat party truly served the African American community?

That's what I hope people ask when they go to the community centers and places, as we all should do our duty and vote. People need to be asking these very serious questions.

There's more, and I'm excited to see the Republicans taking the issues to the black community like this. There are "(Applause.)" indications in the transcript, but I'm still looking for more coverage to get a sense of how enthusiastic the listeners were.

Unfortunately I screwed with this post and lost all the comments... so I'm pasting them at the end.

I'm curious as to why gays want to get married. I can only see two major potential reasons, and it may be a mix of both.

1. Gays want approval and recognition for what they do. Gays want society to tell them that their choices are just as good and valid as everyone else's.

2. Gays want the fringe benefits that society provides to married people.

So I'm curious, which is more important to gays? (Not that they are necessarily a monolithic group.) Would they sacrifice one for the other? Civil unions gets #2 at the expense of #1, and that doesn't seem to satisfy most gays. But why is it so important for gays to have everyone's approval? Why do they care so much what people think? Obviously, specific cases of discrimination are bad and unpleasant to endure, but why do they feel like they need everyone to give them a big thumbs-up? Just to validate their lifestyle?

And as for #2, commenter Rob Smith makes the usual point in a good way:

I was not making a "slippery slope" argument in my comments about "gay marriage". I was pointing out that there are all sorts of restrictions on who, what, and how many I can marry. Why is "gay marriage" entitled to special treatment? My mom is a poor, widow women (only partially true, but work with me). If I were allowed to marry her, she would be eligible for all sorts of benefits that I currently enjoy, allowing me to help take care of her. My wife wouldn't mind, since it would obviously not be a sexual relationship and she likes my mom. The main argument for "gay marriage" is that under current law, gay couples are denied certain benefits of marriage (health insurance, tax breaks, etc.). Since marriage has now been reduced to a quest for benefits and not as foundation for providing children with a mother and father, why shouldn't I be allowed to marry my mom (or my sister, or my rugby team)?

(Emphasis mine.) Why not? Because he doesn't "love" his rugby team? Do we really want the government deciding who does and doesn't love each other? But isn't that the usual argument that gays make? They love each other. Fine. But why does that entitle them to special treatment? They say it isn't special treatment, but what makes them different from Rob and his mom or rugby team? Should the law require that you can only marry people you want to have sex with? How could anyone possibly determine that?

I don't completely understand what exactly gays want, and I'd like them to spell it out more clearly. Are they just after approval? Are they just after benefits? Is there some third factor that I'm missing?

One possible response is, "Why not gay marriage?" But then it just becomes a discussion of practicalities, not morality. Most gays think it's a civil right to get married, so they don't want to address the issue of what's better for society; when it comes to rights it doesn't matter what's better for everyone else. But if gay marriage is a right, then what about Rob Smith and his mom or rugby team? How does one determine where this right would end? It's impossible.

Here's an interesting paper on the correlation of height with success.

Your height won't influence what you earn as much as your race or gender, but it may well be significant. In Britain and America, the tallest quarter of the population earns 10% more than the shortest quarter. A white American man averages a 1.8% higher income than his counterpart an inch shorter (1). Economics is not the only area in which taller people win: out of the US's 42 presidents, only eight have been below average height for the time. Most have been significantly taller than the average for white adult males of their eras (2). Tall men are also more likely to be married and have children (3). ...

Effects that appear to stem from one's adult height, though, may have a different cause entirely. Participants in one study were asked to report their heights at ages 7,11, 16, and 23. The height that affected one's adult earnings, it turned out, was not the adult height but the 16-year-old height. (The others did not correspond.) While adult height was found to correspond to earnings in other studies, it seems because of the correlation between adolescent height and adult height (2).

Yet another good reason for children to get good nutrition. It looks like success comes more from confidence than from height, but greater height can lead to greater confidence.

Here's a New Yorker article about the height gap between human populations. There's interesting information in it, but the author makes some political implications that he only admits are unfounded near the very end.

Those not in Southern California may not be familiar with the most recent firestorm over illegal immigration.

In a series of sweeps in southern California over the course of a few weeks in June, a dozen agents of the Border Patrol arrested more than 420 illegal aliens and placed them in deportation proceedings.

Americans enthusiastically supported the sweeps, as any public opinion poll would have predicted, but Rep. Joe Baca (search), D-Calif., and Mexican President Vicente Fox (search) were outraged. ...

During a June 25 meeting with Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson (search), Baca and other members of the Hispanic caucus accused the Border Patrol agents of racial profiling.

In response to the charges, Hutchinson’s office appeared to collapse. Describing the Border Patrol officers involved in the sweeps as a renegade unit that had taken it upon itself to enforce the law without having first obtained the permission of officials in Washington, the DHS, in an all-too-familiar pattern, ordered the sweeps halted.

The vast majority of SoCal citizens are outraged over the issue, particularly since illegal immigrants cost our state more than $5 billion per year in health care costs alone (on top of an unimaginable sum for public education). Either the federal government needs to enforce the borders, or the federal government needs to reimburse the taxpayers of California for the costs incurred by their failure to do so.

Leading the public cries for reform are radio talk show hosts John and Ken, who have even started a "Political Human Sacrifice" scheme to oust one California Republican from the House as an example to the others. They're inviting all the Republican candidates in their listening area to come on the air and defend their inaction on the illegal immigration issue, and then polling their listeners to determine who they should focus their attention on as the "sacrifice". (My vote is for David Dreier.)

The hosts only need to swing about 30k votes to eliminate one of these Representatives, and from what I've heard and read the politicians are scared stiff at the prospect. It's likely that John and Ken's political sacrifice will be successful, and I hope it does serve as a wake-up call to the rest of the Republicans in Congress. (The Democrats are obviously a lost cause on this issue.)

Meanwhile, is it really useful to crack down on illegal immigrants at LAX?

U.S. border agents are now in full uniform on patrol at the airport, looking for people who help transport illegal immigrants into the country. Immigration officials say this is part of a larger effort to secure the border (search) but critics say it amounts to nothing more than election-year politics.

The vast majority of illegal immigrants sneak across the US-Mexican border in trucks or on foot, they don't fly in on jets. What a joke.

New ultrasound makes obvious the humanity of the unborn.

(I think my earlier post(s) on this topic were lost in the server crash a few weeks ago.)

Steven Den Beste explains why I'm very confident in a Bush landslide in November. Barring external catastrophes, President Bush will win re-election by a wide margin.

Winning an election is like preparing a multicourse meal. There's skill involved, but there's also timing. You not only have to prepare all the dishes correctly, you need to make sure they are finished at just the right time. I see undercurrents of a lot of preparations which will bear fruit in the October time frame.

Just about every human endeavor comes down to timing. Time is the essential fiber of existence. Managing your time is managing your destiny.

I wish SDB hadn't given away all the secrets behind my own conclusions, though.

Like John Edwards, I speak to lots of foreign leaders and dignitaries.

"Just a few weeks ago...I was in Brussels at NATO meeting with a whole group of NATO ambassadors and hearing their perspective on this. I just believe that these countries around the world, whose cooperation and alliances we need, believe that in order for them to have a fresh start with America, we're going to need a new president to do that. Now, they're not going to want to say this very vocally, of course, but the reality is that in order for us to reestablish old relations and to establish new relationships, I believe we need a new president. ...

"They didn't say that directly. What they said was they're very frustrated with the way this administration has dealt with them."

Strangely, I get a different story. Just yesterday I was hanging out with the Pope and Yasser Arafat and they told me that Bush should remain President and that I should be crowned Emperor of the World. At first I demurred -- since I'm still quite busy with graduate school -- but once they got the ghosts of Mother Teresa and Gandhi on the phone to urge me to accept the position it was hard to resist.

So I text-messaged Presidents Bush and Putin and they told me that the UN Security Council had already been drafting such a resolution for a few years now. They didn't want to go public with it, of course, until they knew I'd accept, because some of the members have a hard time taking rejection.

The coronation should happen Real Soon Now, but don't worry, I won't use my power for evil, only for good, and only in very subtle ways that may not be immediately obvious to the casual observer. Plus, I'll maintain a low profile and let the existing world leaders stay in the spotlight. I do, however, command Matt Drudge to annouce my coronation immediately.

I'm not keen on adding a new cabinet position to oversee all national intelligence. I can understand the incentives, but I just don't like the idea of having a single (more political) focal point for all our intelligence efforts.

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 (search) attacks will recommend a new Cabinet-level post to oversee the nation's 15 intelligence agencies and control their budgets, say two people familiar with the panel's final report. ...

The CIA director now has loose authority over those agencies. But the commission in a preliminary report found that the director did not hold enough power, because the Pentagon controls more than 80 percent of the nation's intelligence budget. As a result, CIA requests to other agencies are often ignored.

Of course, this makes the DoD totally resistant to the idea -- spending authority is the lifeblood of bureaucracy, and no bureaucrat wants to lose his budget to someone else.

Pros:
1. More centralized control over assets and budget.
2. Less inter-agency bickering.
3. Elimination of redundant offices.

Cons:
1. More centralized control over assets and budget.
2. Position becomes more politically-charged.
3. Gives intelligence higher public visibility.
4. Redundant offices may not actually be eliminated.
5. New layer of bureaucracy added.
6. Cost more money.

I doubt the change will help or hurt our intelligence capabilities, so I don't have a very strong opinion either way. Based on the points I've listed above I'm inclined not to support the idea.

Kofi Annan, the UN's chief secretary and genocide observer, seems to have a twisted motivation for encouraging abortions around the world.

The U.S. administration has withheld funding from the U.N. Population Fund, known as UNFPA, for three years, accusing it of supporting China's policy of coercive abortion. [True or not, there's no dispute over whether or not UNFPA supports abortion in general.] ...

Annan said the U.N. agency was doing "very essential work on reproductive health" and particularly in confronting the AIDS epidemic, which strikes so many women it "today has a woman's face and is producing so many orphans."

I know some orphans, and they're generally just as happy as everyone else, despite often having to endure a series of unfortunate events. It's hard to say whether or not orphans are happier than aborted babies, though, since I've never met any of the latter.

Rich at Seldom Sober disagrees with my earlier post on "Money and Sex" thusly:

Michael's argument, if I'm reading him correctly, boils down to something like this: All social constructs boil down to sex. Money is a social construct. Therefore money boils down to sex.

That's basically right, so I won't bother quoting any of my earlier post myself. Rich then goes on to make an irrelevant point about repugnancy (which has little to do -- as a principle -- with veracity) and then tries to tie my point to evolution:

The theory of evolution never stretches itself as thin as when it attempts to explain complex human behaviors. While it posits a correlation, it cannot positively argue to it. It assumes evolution (a hefty assumption indeed) and then extends that assumption over all living activity. This is a suspicious mode of argumentation and consequently adds to the suspiciousness of Michael's first premise as I have formulated it.

But I never mentioned evolution, and I didn't even approach the question his statements are begging: why is sex itself so important? I've got lots of ideas on that, but I haven't yet attempted to answer it. My only assertion up to this point is that sex is foundational to all human activity. The "why?" of that is a different question, but I suspect it has more to do with orgasms than evolution.

Man desires to be happy. This is a self-evident first principle. There is no man who truly wants to be unhappy (there are men who want to be in what you would consider an unhappy state, but none who want to be TRULY unhappy) Happiness is a sort of perfection over and above mere existence or survival.

And what makes men (and women) happy beyond mere survival? Sex. And the enjoyable things that aren't sex themselves are generally always related to sex. That's my premise. He can't refute it just by rewording it.

Michael, granting himself the first conclusion, goes on to offer further clarification with a few other suspect and, I think, overly-simplified principles. Namely, men want only to have sex and women want only to settle down and be protected. There are both men and women (religious and non-religious) who abstain from sex. There are women who remain single and self-sufficient.

Quite true, and they're generally a tiny minority. Homosexuals could be lumped with these others if one's only understanding of my first point is from an evolutionary perspective. The reason homosexuals don't fit with abstainers is because homosexuals are highly motivated by sex -- not to reproduce (which is what an evolutionary cause would indicate) but simply to have orgasms.

The American Association for Single People reports: "The United States Census Bureau reported in 1998 that only 56% of the adult population was married and living with their spouse. More than 19 million adults or about 10% of the adult population was divorced. The number of adults who have never married has more than doubled in the past two decades, growing from 21.4 million in 1970 to 45.9 million in 1997." Michael's "all" is actually more like "half."

Those statistics aren't even vaguely related to who's having sex and who's abstaining. They're all about marriage and divorce, which are only peripherally related to sex these days.

Further troubling his position, Michael neglects all marriages that are not financially beneficial to the, using Michael's position, female party in the marriage. A full 10% of married, two parent homes in the U.S. live below the poverty level according to the census bureau. It seems unreasonable, then, that these marriages took place for financial stability in return for sexual favors. Sex certainly occurs in these marriages, but financial stability does not.

10% of married, two-parent homes may be below the poverty line, but that says nothing about whether or not the woman would be even poorer without a husband. Furthermore, marriage isn't even required to obtain the financial benefits of sex. Women who bear children are automatically entitled to child-support payments from the father, married or not. (The father, however, is not entitled to have sex with the mother.)

What I get from Rich's argument is basically that people aren't only after sex, they're after happiness -- but that's avoiding my real point, which is that what makes people happy is sex and those things that relate to it.

Tyler Cowen, one of my favorite econobloggers, extols the virtues of the Center for Talented Youth program for smart and curious teenagers. I participated in the program myself for the three summers before 8th, 9th, and 10th grades and enjoyed it immensely, taking courses in Japanese, Algebra 2, and Computer Science. A good time was had by all, and there was quite a bit of learning, too.

Anyone who doubts that public schooling can be improved upon by privatization should look into the CTY program and examine its successes. I learned more over those summer than I did in whole years of public high school, and more cheaply when you take into account the taxes my parents pay.

Update:
Jacob Levy has many more comments and says:

In retrospect, my admission to and financial aid for CTY (math, 1984) provided a pretty tranformative experience for me, and one of the major mechanisms for my own social mobility. The other major mechanism was my scholarship to Exeter. CTY made me realize how desperately I wanted to go to an academically first-rate boarding school. Once I was through Exeter, my course was pretty well set; at that point there was effectively no chance of my not going on to a good college and beyond. Had I stayed in my medium-town New Hampshire public school system-- which was fine but nothing like the public-preps of wealthy suburbs-- I would have stayed pretty miserable and continued to get full-time negative reinforcement for intellectual excitement and curiosity. I wouldn't have understood the range of possibilities that were really open to me, and would have had my sights set much, much lower than they were ultimately set. And I do think I would have ended up internalizing (what I perceived to be) the hostility to nerdiness among my peers. It seems pretty unlikely that I would have ended up in nerd heaven, here at the University of Chicago. After CTY and Exeter excited me to possibilities I hadn't understood existed-- and that, it turns out, provide a path to significant social mobility.

I wouldn't say CTY had the exact same effect on me, but I can certainly relate to Mr. Levy's experience with public schools.

A friend at work told me this story from his native India.

A man's in-laws come over to visit and the father accidentally hits the man's donkey with his car. Rather than accept payment -- and to demonstrate his business acumen -- the man decides to make some money by raffling off the dead donkey.

So he sets up a booth and starts selling raffle tickets for a chance to "win a donkey". He sells lots of tickets and makes far more money than the donkey was worth, even when alive. It finally comes time to draw the winning ticket, but after he does so the winner is upset that donkey is dead. The man apologizes and refunds the winner's money, keeping the rest for himself.

Fred Reed has an essay on why not to get married, and offers the following observations and advice:

Were I to offer thoughts on marriage to young American men today, in these the declining years of a once-great civilization, my advice would be as follows: Don't do it. Or, if you do, do it in another country. In America marriage is a grievous error.

And why so? Because of The Chip. The Attitude. The bandsaw whine of anger, anger, anger that makes American women an international horror.