NOTE: Please read the About page for important information about this web site.
Researchers demo BIOS attack that survives hard-disk wipe.
Some people say I’m paranoid about computer security. To those people, I say: don’t use online banking.
At least not on their own spyware-ridden machines.
Some people think that Big Government is bad (me included). However, it’s helpful to define “Big Government.” The term has become a platitude. It’s a punchline in partisan jokes. You know, Republicans/conservatives hate Big Government and anything that stinks of it (stuff they don’t agree with, in other words). Democrats/liberals on the other hand are always trying to expand Big Government, so say the completely impartial conservative editorialists on Fox News.
So what does “Big Government” mean? Typically, it connotes governmental involvement in an area of economic, social, or otherwise non-political life that is not warranted. There’s a lot that could fall under that umbrella, so the standard by which Big Governmentism is judged becomes extremely subjective.
Is expansion of the Defense Department or military Big Governmentism (BGism, for short)? What about the Iraq/Afghan war? Or what about the regulatory oversight of financial institutions: are we better off without pesky government involvement in that sector of the economy? Are laws that regulate food or medicine quality a good thing, or not?
Conservatives are BGish when it comes to protecting the homeland from bad guys, meaning we throw money at missile defense, despite the fact that our huge nuclear arms stockpile is still a pretty good deterrent from being invaded by China’s (insignificant) navy.
Liberals are BG-oriented when it comes to punishing rich people, esp if they work for an oil company.
I’m obviously employing satire (it’s working if you’ve read this far), but in all seriousness, we need BG. This country (the US, for all y’all foreigners) is made up of people of disparate origins, successfully weaved together by merging thousands of cities in dozens of states and territories. Our economy is comprised of the output of this complex geographic web, now including the inter-connected countries in the far corners of the world (aka, globalization). Just look in your closet to see that the stuff you bought from the Gap was made outside the US, probably in predominantly emerging markets (Mexico, Pakistan, China, etc). Globalized division of labor and economic connectivity is a good thing, driven by business but made possible via governments.
As much as I absolutely despise some of the moronic things our political luminaries do, it’s better to have the responsive governance that we arguably have than one that is unresponsive (due to gridlock, stupidity, or whatever). In Congress, at present, we have the do-nothing Republicans on one side vs the high-on-Keynes Democrats. Given those two choices, I’ll take the latter.
Earlier posts clarify my stance that different situations require different approaches. In good times, with non-crumbling infrastructure, the free market fundamentalist approach works well. When the economy is in recession–with a “mild” depression in the cards–there’s potential benefit to government action, esp when the catalyst of the recession is a banking crisis that freezes lending/liquidity for the entire US economy.
There are obvious downsides to the government-to-the-rescue scenario. Generally, the government really, really sucks at doing simple things, much less complex tasks like allocating capital efficiently. That’s why central planning is almost always a bad idea. When the government tries to plan some big project, it’s going to cost a lot of money, benefit a lot of cronies, and probably won’t work very well in the end. Politicians are passionate about keeping their jobs and buying votes with taxpayer money, not about the project they’re funding.
There should always be an exit strategy when government steps in. That’s true for bailout packages, infrastructure spending, or whatever. Again, we ultimately want to return to “normal capitalism,” not the inefficient state-controlled variety.
The intellectual output of laissez-faire types like Milton Friedman is still true. Government involvement, during both the good and the bad times, has its risks, from reduction of our freedoms for arbitrary reasons to reduction in prosperity via unneeded regulatory burdens, not to mention re-distribution of wealth (like the money from our paychecks going to union bosses in Detroit and bank executives in New York). BGism should be the exception, not the norm, but there are times when it’s necessary and does more good than harm, much as I’m loath to admit it.
Apparently I’m already over the hill, if the BBC Health web site is to be believed. Drat!
Strategic thinker and all-around-smart-guy Thomas Barnett is positive on Hillary Clinton (thus far… there’s still plenty of screw-up time). Maybe she’ll be much more useful as a secretary of state than she was as a senator.
He says this about Clinton (or, er, her staff):
More generally, the TNR piece gives me a lot of comfort on the quality and number of Asia-smart hands around Clinton…
The subject at hand, US-Sino relations in the context of the N Korea situation, and Barnett’s thoughts:
There is no question [raised by Clinton or her counterparts] about the DPRK’s collapse triggering war between the US and China. We simply need the event to go down in such a way as to bolster our bilateral ties and to make Beijing feel secure enough to play the role it needs to play.
Done well, this crisis is an opportunity for major growth in security–a final processing of the Cold War’s tailbone.
Bottom lines:
* Clinton’s not too bad; let’s give her a chance!
* War with China = dumb idea pushed by “big war” crowd to fund the billion-dollar toys they love
The rise of welfare statism is bad for religion, it seems.
[Obama's] audacious plans for the expansion of the government — from the stimulus to health-care reform to a larger role in education — are likely to spell trouble for the vitality of American religion. His $3.6 trillion budget for fiscal 2010 would bring federal, state and local spending to about 40% of the gross domestic product — within hailing distance of Europe, where state spending runs about 46% of GDP. The European experience suggests that the growth of the welfare state goes hand in hand with declines in personal religiosity.
My last blog entry was incredibly poorly written to the point of embarrassment. I’ll clarify some points & also add some new points, time permitting.
In my last entry, I claimed that Obama is a Keynesian capitalist. Makes sense, unless you’re Rush Limbaugh, in which case you’d say he’s a communist (but I think Rush is biased). Anyway, I still think that’s the case. However, I also said this:
So, circumstance and strategic maneuvering take the place of rigid ideological idealism.
But isn’t that oxymoronic (or maybe just moronic)? I.e., if circumstance defines the “optimal” position to have (rather than never-changing ideology), then it could be that Obama is only a Keynesian because current economic conditions demand. In other words, Obama is a Keynesian due to economic and political realities. In another context, perhaps he’d be much more or less free market-oriented. Hence, my labeling of Obama was contradicted by my claim that he’s adaptive to present circumstances.
It’s difficult to say. Being a Democrat, we’ve come to expect the usual big government predilections and pro-union overtures. That doesn’t mean that the rhetoric matches the action, and in Obama’s case, it’s mostly rhetoric. Economically, his actions have been pretty conservative. In fact, many pundits point to a larger clash between Obama and left-wing Dems (like Pelosi) than with Obama and blue dogs (conservative Dems).
So Obama is a neo-capitalist, perhaps. He’s “Keynesian” when he needs to be (like now, many people argue), but not so Keynesian when the situation changes.
It’s the balance between being ideological (sticking to one’s guns) and being dynamic (changing view points as the situation demands). As a leader, it’s good to find the correct and optimal balance. Bush had too much of the former, and Obama likely has too much of the latter.
But right now the US and the rest of the world need a bit more of the latter to counteract some of the deficiencies of the former.
Thomas Barnett points to an editorial saying that Obama is not a socialist (the referenced article is here).
I point this out b/c a) Thomas Barnett is a smart, strategic guy I respect, and b) this is a common misconception on the Right. Oh, and c) I don’t want the term “socialist” to become watered down such that anyone who doesn’t believe in puritanical laissez-faire capitalism falls into the “socialist” camp.
Obama is a Keynesian capitalist, or a liberal capitalist, if you prefer (using today’s American definition of liberal, which actually means illiberal). He’s also an opportunist and a clever manipulator (the tip-off: he always seems to know what to say and how to say it to the crowd).
Whether Keynesian economics is bad or good is a pointless debate right now. Given the current crisis, some targeted government spending might be good (though our congress will screw it up and generally be wasteful, of course). In other circumstances–a non-crisis circumstance–government spending on a significant scale would be very bad.
So, circumstance and strategic maneuvering take the place of rigid ideological idealism.
That doesn’t mean that Keynes has killed Milton Friedman. It means that, for the moment, we’ll be Keynesian for the duration of this fiscal uncertainty, after which we can return to reason.
Sign the petition, if you think “card check” legislation is a bad idea.
Fascinating editorial on Christian evangelicalism. The gist: evangelicalism will fade in America, after decades of robust acceptance by most of the population. The godless alternative, activist secularism, will displace evangelicalism and out-maneuver ill-prepared evangelicals who are used to preaching to the choir.
Why will this happen? The writer lists the following reasons:
However, a new vitality of evangelicalism will emerge under the ashes.
We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.
We’re already seeing the decline of evangelicalism and the rise of a radical strain of secularism, are we not?
This brings to mind the recent “normalization of evil” editorial on the WSJ, of which I blogged about already.
Great commentary on disability laws on the Freakonomics site. In the end, the laws on the books meant to discourage discrimination–against the deaf in this case–indeed encourage the opposite effect. The blog post doesn’t conclude that disability laws are bad universally, of course.
That said, it is hard to believe that this kind of lawsuit won’t make more doctors do their best to avoid seeing similar patients in the future. In which case a law designed to prevent discrimination will, yes, encourage discrimination.
I’m impressed with Brooks. It’s not easy to defy the current dogma of one’s party, but Brooks does it. Good read.
Nothing you don’t already know.
Since the average American never took out a mortgage loan as big as seven hundred grand– for the very good reason that he could not afford it– why should he be forced as a taxpayer to subsidize someone else who apparently couldn’t afford it either, but who got in over his head anyway?
Oh, and Sowell points out the irony of the panic over falling home prices:
The same politicians who have been talking about a need for “affordable housing” for years are now suddenly alarmed that home prices are falling. How can housing become more affordable unless prices fall?
The political meaning of “affordable housing” is housing that is made more affordable by politicians intervening to create government subsidies, rent control or other gimmicks for which politicians can take credit.
Affordable housing produced by market forces provides no benefit to politicians and has no attraction for them.
An interesting (albeit misguided) editorial regarding immigration and the establishment of a transnational union b/w the US and Mexico. The editorialist (some professor of labor law) correctly points out that Americans aren’t in the mood for more immigrants (I take a more relaxed/liberal view on immigration, by the way). Then, she suggests that workers need protection (well, they do) and that a union is a great way to do it.
Some excerpts, then my thoughts on the bottom.
Imagine if the United States began admitting migrants on the condition that they join a network of workers’ organizations here and in their home countries — a sort of transnational union. Migrants could work here legally. They could take jobs anywhere in the country and stay as long as they liked. But they would have to promise to report employers that violated labor laws. They could lose their visas by breaking that promise.
This plan, which I call Transnational Labor Citizenship, would give employers access to many more workers on fair terms. It would give people from countries like Mexico greater opportunities to earn the remittances upon which their families and economies rely. It would address the inconsistency and inhumanity of policies that support free trade in goods and jobs but bar the free movement of people.
How could we make this happen? Congress could certainly mandate the change. If that seems unlikely, we could start with a bilateral labor migration agreement with a country like Mexico, making membership in a transnational workers’ organization and a commitment to uphold workplace laws a requirement for Mexicans to obtain work here.
First, dumb idea, of course. We already have unions in this country and they’re a disaster. I like the idea of people coming here legally; I also don’t think that anyone should suffer mistreatment, even if they aren’t technically here legally. Having said that, and while I agree that a mechanism should be available to deal with abuse without fear of deportation, I don’t think unions are the answer (unless the question is, “how can the US become a second-class economic power?”).
The silliest thing that clever people are saying about the world economic crisis is that the United States will lose its position as the dominant world superpower in consequence. On the contrary: the crisis strengthens the relative position of the United States and exposes the far graver weaknesses of all prospective competitors. It makes the debt of the American government the world’s most desirable asset. America may deserve to decline, but as Clint Eastwood said in another context, “deserve’s got nothing to do with it”. President Barack Obama may turn out to be the most egregious unilateralist in American history.
[...]
To overpay unionized construction workers to build bridges, and bail out the bloated budgets of American states, the Obama administration will flood the world with so much Treasury debt that capital will flow out of the poorest countries to buy it. Rather than protest this outrageously unilateralist action, the rest of the world encourages him to do so, hoping that somehow the Obama stimulus package will get American consumers to buy their goods once again.
President/Dictator-for-life Hugo Chavez confirmed his lack of respect for personal freedoms and his lack of grasp of basic economics by continuing his crusade against the private sector. This time, he seized a rice mill owned by Cargill.
The last 2 paras look interesting:
“I warn you, this revolution means business,” said Mr Chávez, who urged Venezuelans to fight against “capitalist speculation”. But he added that “those private companies that work within the law . . . can keep operating here”.
Although rice production has been the focus of government intervention so far this week, Mr Chávez said it would inspect other sectors, including plants producing maize flour, cooking oil and lavatory paper.
The companies that can continue operating are ones that are non-foreign owned (socialism is inherently protectionist) and ones that Chavez personally approves of. American firms aren’t looking too hot in Venezuela right now, nor are local media companies (unless they’re pro-Chavez).
—
The remnants of Venezuela’s democratic system might save it from perversion into socialist dystopia… depending on a) how fast Venezuela pumps oil and b) the price of oil per barrel.
Why? Dumb socialist systems cost money (oil), and absent that “free” money, his social programs can’t sustain themselves. With democracy in place (minimally), there might be enough time for his socialist revolution to falter and be rejected by the population.
What foreign policy initiative could the US phase in to make Chavez’s life more difficult? A carbon tax. Yes, I said it. A carbon tax can be phased in, with proceeds going to pay down the massive deficit (or for pie-in-the-sky Al Gore-ish wind mills; you choose). To offset the new tax, the “hidden” taxes meant to save us from ourselves (like CAFE vehicle requirements) can be removed.
Oh, and we’re either going to get a carbon tax or a cap ‘n trade system. One is more efficient and useful; the other is a tax-in-disguise, inefficient fraud.
Tying this back to foreign policy: economics and foreign policy are always tied. A carbon tax punishes idiots like Chavez and spurs the private sector, not government, to come up with alternatives (like efficiency, or alternate non-carbon fuels). The government sucks at micro-managing, so they need to get out of that business; here’s a great opportunity.