JayB

Might just be you. Seems like a case of is versus ought. In an ideal world, the police would have used tactics that were more effective and less painful to remove the guy from the building. In the same world, the said guy would have refrained from the self-dramatizing histrionics and would have left when asked to do so. I think it's reasonable to expect police to abide by a higher standard than we expect of the average citizen, but in the real world you can expect that needless confrontational defiance "Oh yea - MAKE me leave..." will result in a non-ideal outcome for you.

I just happened to be reading through a compilation of Milton Friedmans editorials at the WSJ over the years and happened to come across this item: "On Health Care The best way to restore freedom of choice to both patient and physician and to control costs would be to eliminate the tax exemption of employer-provided medical care. However, that is clearly not feasible politically. The best alternative available is to extend the tax exemption to all expenditures on medical care, whether made by the patient directly or by employers, to establish a level playing field, in terms of the currently popular cliche. Many individuals would then find it attractive to negotiate with their employer for a higher cash wage in place of employer-financed medical care. With part or all of the higher cash wage, they could purchase an insurance policy with a very high deductible, i.e., a policy for medical catastrophes, which would be decidedly cheaper than the low-deductible policy their employer had been providing to them, and deposit all or part of the difference in a special "medical savings account" that could be drawn on only for medical purposes. Any amounts unused in a particular year could be allowed to accumulate without being subject to tax, or could be withdrawn with a tax penalty or for special purposes, as with current Individual Retirement Accounts--in effect, a medical IRA. Many employers would find it attractive to offer such an arrangement to their employees as an option. --from "A Way Out of Soviet-Style Health Care," April 17, 1996" And thought of my own post in another thread: "think we'll be seeing more high-deductible plans coupled with tax-sheltered, debit-card-accessible HSA's in the future. I think that whole foods already went this route, and I suspect they'll be a major part of the market when the compulsory-insurance deadline rolls around in MA. I'd much rather pay lower premiums, and get the return on the money that doesn't get spent on health care expenses myself, rather than the insurer get all of this benefit. Transfering the tax deductability for premiums to the individual and taking it away from employers would be something I'd like to see. Under this set of circumstances, I'd much rather get all of my compensation in cash and determine what kind of plan I want, instead of having that determined for me and having my pay reduced by $500 a month or more. I'd also much rather contact specialists directly, compare their rates, and pay cash upfront instead of having to dick around with visits to the PCP and get a referral, etc." Pretty funny. I'm not sure that he's ever addressed the topic, but I suspect if he had he'd really, really hate the current move towards the state turning over the people that rely on Medicaid to private HMOs - at least in the way that it's currently done. Instead of providing Medicaid recipients a voucher that they could use to procure health care from a number of plans that compete for their business, they are essentially stuck in a private monopoly which combines the worst attributes of both government and private enterprises in one package. With a captive market and fixed payments, the incentives are such that the only way to incease margins is to to impose even more onerous price controls than the government's and limit care to an even greater extent than the government had, so inevitable result is that there will be ever fewer providers who are willing to see Medicaid patients, and the efficiency state spending on health care is reduced, and you end up getting less care for the same price. Sounds like the medical equivalent of JFK's quip about DC "All the hospitality of a Northern City with all of the efficiency of a Southern One."

I remember seeing some kind of a TV special a few years ago about a lab where they were trying to develop new ways to subdue out of control people or crowds that were less likely to endanger the police, and less likely to be lethal for the folks on the receiving end. Seemed like a good idea, and was interesting to watch - sort of like a glimpse into a real, live James Bond laboratory. Guns that fired nets, cannisters that ejected a gazillion tiny marbles or oil slicks to keep people off of their feet, etc. Made me think of some other novel ideas, like the "Circle of Mockery" where the Riot Police would encircle an unruly subject and pantomime their antics until they were reduced to weeping in frustration. Other ideas???

The word has taken on a different connotation in America than it has in Europe, and the popular understanding of "Liberalism" in America differs from its original meaning and use in the English language. From Wikipedia: "Classical liberalism is a political philosophy that supports individual rights as pre-existing the state, a government that exists to protect those moral rights, ensured by a constitution that protects individual autonomy from other individuals and governmental power, private property, and a laissez-faire economic policy. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that in an environment of laissez-faire, a spontaneous order of cooperation in exchanging goods and services emerges that satisfies human wants.[6] It is a blend of political liberalism and economic liberalism[1] which is derived from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, Voltaire, Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Immanuel Kant, and their precursors, such as Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza. Many elements of this ideology developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The early liberal figures now described as "classical liberals" rejected many foundational assumptions which dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, and established religion, focusing instead on individual freedom, reason, justice and tolerance.[7]. Such thinkers and their ideas helped to inspire the American Revolution and French Revolution. The qualification "classical" was applied in retrospect to distinguish the early 19th century laissez-faire form of liberalism from modern interventionist social liberalism.[8]"

A tremendous loss for Liberalism, to be sure, but when they're in their 90's, you know it's just a matter of time. Oddly enough - his passing made me think of Fidel Castro. Sometimes, when someone who filled a particular role or occupied a particular station is clearly fading, there's an equally capable successor waiting in the wings. In other cases, its clear that the person passed through such a unique set of historical circumstances, and had such a unique combination of attributes and traits that everyone can see that there is no heir apparent. I'm sure that he'd be rolling in his grave if he were ever referred to as "The Fidel Castro of Liberal Economics," but that's kind of how I thought of him. Viva La Revolucion....

Clearly he has yet to learn the finer points of post-arrest etiquette. I couldn't help but form a vivid mental picture of how I imagine that guy was raised. Sort of like a Cat Stevens song for the Volvo and Restoration Hardware set. Start with a toddler in mid-tantrum chucking toys at cowering parents who exchange pained, helpless looks at one another between each dodge and weave and then que the music.... "Joey smacked his Mom just the other daaaaay, she said "I'd hate to see him repress his emotions, so that's okaaaay...."

I think we'll be seeing more high-deductible plans coupled with tax-sheltered, debit-card-accessible HSA's in the future. I think that whole foods already went this route, and I suspect they'll be a major part of the market when the compulsory-insurance deadline rolls around in MA. I'd much rather pay lower premiums, and get the return on the money that doesn't get spent on health care expenses myself, rather than the insurer get all of this benefit. Transfering the tax deductability for premiums to the individual and taking it away from employers would be something I'd like to see. Under this set of circumstances, I'd much rather get all of my compensation in cash and determine what kind of plan I want, instead of having that determined for me and having my pay reduced by $500 a month or more. I'd also much rather contact specialists directly, compare their rates, and pay cash upfront instead of having to dick around with visits to the PCP and get a referral, etc.

Actually - Massachussetts passed a law that I think will eventually become something of a national model for healthcare. Everyone in the state has to pay for health insurance, and people below a certain threshold have their premium subsidized in a manner that's proportional to their incomes. Takes care of the free rider problem, the shrinking risk pool, etc while giving people a choice in the level of coverage - comprehensive, catastrophic - and the ability to choose from amongst a number of insurers who are competing for their business. Employers who don't offer coverage have to pay an annual feel that the state uses to help pay for the uninsured. Sort of like the current model for auto insurance with subidies for folks at the bottom of the income scale. Not something that's going to make everyone happy, but a better solution than most that I've seen.

Hey - look. Tash and I are on the same page. CP - I am glad that you are trying to reconcile science with your faith in some fashion, and I am glad that you had the nads required to share your perspective in a forum where the odds that they'll get a hostile reception are quite high. I've had this converstation a gazillion times before, and I can find some common ground with folks for whom God is some kind of remote first principle that exists outside the physical universe. At this point, IMO, you can eliminate this principal and end up with the same universe - but if someone's wiling to invest this much thought in the nature of whatever almighty they worship then I've never felt the need to push things further. With regards to evolution as historical speculation, all I can say for the moment is that this is just not correct - and while I don't have the time to explain why this is so - I would think that you would have to concede that if the supreme being which you believe in is both omniscient and omnipotent , it would be well within his powers to create the universe through the big bang, and man through evolution.

Maybe someone will get after the object of the "Anyone gonna get after this?" threads of yore.

Gotta plug this one again too. Best primer on how Socialism attained its status as the opiate of the intellectuals out there, IMO. The Intellectuals and Socialism. Hayek, 1949. "The term 'intellectuals,' however, does not at once convey the true picture of the large class to which we refer...This is neither that of the original thinker nor that of the scholar or expert in a particular field of thought. The typical intellectual need be neither: he neither posesses a special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas...." "In the sense in which we are using the term, the intellectuals are in fact a fairly new phenomenon of history. Though nobody will regret that education has ceased to be a privilege of the propertied classes, the fact that the propertied classes are no longer the best educated and the fact that large numbers of people who owe their position solely to their general education do not possess that experience of the working of the economic system which the administration of property gives, are important for understanding the role of the intellectual. Professor Schumpeter...has not unfairly stressed that it is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs and the consequent absence of first hand knowledge of them which distinguishes the typical intellectual from other people who also wield the power of the written and spoken word. It would lead too afar, however, to examine here further the development of this class and the curious claim which has been advanced by one of its theorists that it was the only one whose views were not decidedly influenced by its own economic interests." Read the whole thing. Perhaps a better title would be "A Brief History of the Parlor Marxist." Or "Prole - a Prehistory."

I don't have time to add more than a hint to help the folks who have thus far missed the point. The first is that he makes it clear that he is not concerning himself with concrete acts of terrorism. He is talking about the prism through which his western contemporaries view the ideology which motivates these acts. The only other thing that I have time to comment on at the moment is the bizarre conceit on display here with regards to this man's understanding of Islam. He was raised in Pakistan by Muslim parents, and his understanding of Islam and its various political manifestations is less credible than your own? Is this true of Hirsaan Ali as well? Ibn Warraq? Please.

I haven't used chalk-balls in ages, but you can make them on the cheap by pouring powdered chalk into some panty-hose and tying off the ends. Double back once or twice to make the ball less porous, or poke it with a nail a bunch of times to make it more so. Seemed to work about as well as the store bought variety.

Closer, but still off the mark. I gave my copy away to a friend, but I'd be willing to but what you've got there is someone's rather crude attempts to summarize a particular sub-argument in cartoon form, rather than a direct quote from the text. Here's a better link for you: Read Me!

Hark - is that another self professed expert outside of their sphere? Or are your assertions of his economic ignorance tongue in cheek? http://www.earth.columbia.edu/about/director/documents/Sachs2-pagebioJune2006_005.pdf Here's a link to the actual article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AF3D5-6DC9-152E-A9F183414B7F0000 And here's a quote from the first paragraph which is either a deliberate misrepresentation or a fundamental misunderstanding of Von Hayek's central argument: "Austrian-born free-market economist Friedrich August von Hayek suggested in the 1940s that high taxation would be a "road to serfdom," a threat to freedom itself." This is factually wrong, but I suspect that he's counting on the fact that most of the folks reading that article shoot a quizzical glance at the page, say "Von who..." and take his word for it. The rest of the article is hardly an improvement.

Linus Pauling and Vitamin C. Einstein and quantum uncertainty. Both had a stature in their own fields that far exceeds Sach's stature amongst professional economists, and both doggedly championed an idea or two within their disciplines that failed to convince their peers. Better stop knocking the few climatologists who dispute global warming if you're going to go this route, and start chugging down the multi-gram megadoses of C while you are at it.

How, exactly, did this prevent anyone from voting and thereby "disenfranchise them?" Unless New Hampshire permits its citizens to vote by phone, I can't see how anyone from any party attempting to manipulate phone lines in any manner could possibly disenfranchise anyone who is capable of spelling their own name with a crayon in five minutes or less, much less complete a ballot. "Disenfranchise" sounds just a tad overwrought and hyperbolic, but I suppose that's the point.

Yes. Say there sport, when your aren't boning up on the counterhegemonic subtexts in meta-critical discourses and whatnot, you should dedicate yourself to finding a means of coordinating supply and demand that does so more efficiently than the price mechanism, and that enables one to quantify and restrain the missallocation of productive resources more effectively than profits and losses. Should keep you busy for a semester or two. That aside, glad to see that everyone completely missed the guy's point - but in a way, the responses here have been a more concrete vindication of his arguments and perspective than anything that I could have come up with.

What I find most interesting about Economics is even among the presumed masters of the craft, not to mention the mere literate, there is a substantially disparate group of ferociously defended opinions on the relative merit of various policies. How people pick and choose those is terribly amusing Kind of like the creationists presuming that technical disagreements about the particulars of evolution amongst scientists vindicate their contention that it never occured. Or the great lament that the great unwashed choose to align themselves with a vocal minority that disputes the informed consensus on climate change. Sorry - but trade barriers, subsidies, price controls, etc. are the economic equivalent of creationism. Biology had Lysenko, economics has its equivalents. I agree though, who people align themselves with is revealing.

Did either of you listen to the speech? Hard to tell from the comments. I'm sorry - although most people are probably quite relieved to hear - that I am just too busy to respond to anything at length today. Some of the Islamist activity fits into neat framework of political violence motivated by concrete grievances that are amenable to negotiated settlements by national powers. Others - like the murder of Theo Van Gough and the "Mohammad Cartoon," episode clearly are not - unless you were to frame the editor of the paper that published them as "the occupier" and Muslim sensibilities as "the occupied" - and Rushdie makes the fact that his commentary in the speech is concerned with the latter of the two phenomena quite clear. I think that you could probably listen to half of the mp3 in the time that it took to crank out a single post. Carl - I could think of no more effective means to discredit Von Hayek than for Sach's to embrace his ideas. Most scientists, like most doctors, are economically illiterate, yet presume otherwise, so it's no surprise that he chose to publish this essay in SciAm as opposed to "The American Economic Review."

You're welcome. It just sounded to me like you were responding to a set of talking points from the Project for a New American Century, instead of what someone who is intimately familiar with the subject on a personal level, and would probably agree with most of your points, has to say.

The ideas under discussion in this thread are those of Salman Rushdie, who is emphatically not a neocon nor a professional apologist for America. Instead of addressing his arguments, you provided a "Yeah, but the Neocons...." response, which I think is rather telling. If you care to acquaint yourself with what the guy is actually saying, and respond to those, I've provided the links.

I think that if you have some time to plug this url: http://libsyn.com/media/pointofinquiry/10-27-06.mp3 into your browser and let the podcast play in the background while you are at work, or in Prole's case - writing fan mail to bell hooks asking for an 8.5x11 glossy during recess/between lectures - you will probably hear Rushdie's answers to most of the questions that you've posted. The lead-in features Ibn Warraq, and Rushdie comes in about 15-20 minutes into the podcast.

I happened to come across this speech by Rushdie the other day where he holds forth on this subject for a half-hour or so. Rushdie MP3 There's a ton of other great audio content available on this site that should appeal to quite a few folks on this site. Check it out here: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/?page_id=72"

Not state sanctioned slavery. But if you want to use that as a measure, a labor contractor for farm workers was convicted of slavery within in the late 1990's right here in the good ole' U.S. of A. The 'other kind' happens here, too. Slavery was abolished in these nations in these years: Sweden, including Finland: 1335 (but not until 1847 in the colony of St Barthélemy) Portugal: 1761 England and Wales: In practice, 1772, as a result of Somersett's case; although the legal effect of this was much more limited; see Slavery at common law Scotland: 1776 as a result of Wedderburne's case[1] Vermont: 1777, Commonwealth of Vermont, an independent republic created after the American Revolution, on July 8th 1777. Vermont joined the United States of America in 1791. Haiti: 1791, due to a revolt among nearly half a million slaves Upper Canada: 1793, by Act Against Slavery France (first time): 1794-1802, including all colonies (although abolition was never carried out in some colonies under British occupation) Chile: 1811 partially, and in 1823 for all who remained as slave and "whoever slave setting a foot on chilean soil". Argentina: 1813 Gran Colombia (Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela): 1821, through a gradual emancipation plan (Colombia in 1852, Venezuela in 1854) Mexico: 1829 British Empire: 1833, including all colonies (with effect from 1 August 1834; in East Indies from 1 August 1838) Mauritius: 1 Feb 1835, under the British government. This day is a public holiday. Denmark: 1848, including all colonies France (second time): 1848, including all colonies Peru: 1851 Romania: 1855 The Netherlands: 1863, including all colonies, but kept using 'Recruits' from Africa until 1940 The United States: 1865, after the U.S. Civil War (Several states abolished slavery for themselves at various dates between 1777 and 1864) Puerto Rico 1873 and Cuba: 1880 (both were colonies of Spain at the time) Brazil: 1888 Korea: 1894 (hereditary slavery ended in 1886) Zanzibar: 1897 (slave trade abolished in 1873) China: 1910 Burma: 1929 Ethiopia: 1936, by order of the Italian occupying forces (see Second Italo-Abyssinian War). After Ethiopia regained independence in 1942 during World War II, Emperor Haile Selassie did not re-establish slavery. Tibet: 1959, by order of the People's Republic of China Saudi Arabia: 1962 Mauritania: July 1980 (still formally abolished by French authorities in 1905, then implicitly in the new constitution of 1961 and expressly in October of that year when the country joined the United Nations), actually still practiced