flinthills

Al Queda Isn't Enough?

Government begets more government. Look at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Visiting their website you will find a July 9 press release stating that they have kicked off Operation Predator, which is, "a comprehensive DHS initiative designed to enhance the Administration's efforts to protect children from pornographers, child prostitution rings, Internet predators, alien smugglers, human traffikers, and other criminals."

Now, it is clear that protecting children from bad people is a good thing. What is not clear is why the DHS, whose stated mission is to "develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks," should be involved. Although it may be harder to catch terrorists than it is to catch pedophiles, they don't seem as likely to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction or conduct suicide attacks against our country as does Al Queda.

As the announcement specifies, this is a massive, resource-intensive operation. Does Al Queda get a free hall pass in the meantime? If the DHS has time on its hands, they should spend it on figuring out how to better achieve their stated mission.

When the DHS starts chasing ordinary criminals where there is no credible link to terrorism it should raise some eyebrows. If this is happening already when the war on terror is in full swing, what's going to happen when that effort winds down and all those DHS people actually need something to do?

Thomas Jefferson chided that the price of freedom is eternal vigilence. Expansive government agencies can only curtail our civil liberties further. As citizens of Kansas and the United States, we are responsible for the actions of our government. It's time we started asking our representatives some questions.

Welcome to the New Blog Site

Following Tom Palmer's lead, I've moved my blog over to the MoveableType TypePad world. You will still be able to find my old material on blogspot at flinthills.blogspot.com. My last two posts at BlogSpot can be found below. I look forward to seeing you here often!

To be Ruled by Laws and Not Men... (Repost from 14 Jan 2004)

In a city that during winter is perhaps the alter-ego of San Diego for it's constancy of cold-dark-wetness, one of London's compensating charms is its pubs. Last night I was in a beautiful pub tucked in an alley just off of Berkeley Square drinking a pint with my good friend Pavetto and, as always seems to happen everytime I've been in a London pub for the last 15 years, I ran into an interesting gentleman and had yet another fascinating conversation.

His name was Joey, and he looked to be in his mid to late 50's with a kind face but hard eyes. He was from Zimbabwe and said he used to own a farm there, as had many of his family - who had migrated there from England about 160 years ago. Zimbabwe is an incredibly fertile area and as late as 2000 was a rather signficant bread basket for Africa. Many of the established farmers were white.

Around the year 2000, President Robert Mugabe was in trouble: his soldiers weren't getting paid after coming home from brutal assignments in the Congo where they were sent to help fight that civil war - and the citizens weren't voting for his party. He declared white people as enemies of the state - saying they had stolen their land from the native citizenry so many generations ago (I don't know if this is true or not) and ordered his returning vets to occupy the farms. Many farmers and their workers were beaten and sometimes killed (especially if they were known supports of the opposition).

The Zimbabwe courts ruled the farm invasions illegal and ordered the invaders to leave. Mugabe ordered the police not to intervene. Results? Utter destruction of farming, the flight of educated workers to safer countries, rampant starvation and zero incentives on the part of the remaining white farmers with know-how and any surviving capital to risk investing it by planting any new crops.

And those thugs who now occupy the other 1000+ farms? Of the small minority who express any interest in farming, there's no equipment to do it with - for now. The current issue of the Economist reports that Mugabe plans to sieze farming equipment that's been stored in warehouses by farmers whose land was stolen...

I remember Tom Palmer saying that beer and wine are the libations of liberty and progress - they foster fellowship and a coming together... whereas a drink like vodka is the tipple of totalitarianism and control. Nursing my pint in that pub with Pavetto and the Zimbabwe refugee, I supposed that Mugabe and his thugs were probably big fans of vodka.

They Never Learn...

The Channel 10 evening news carried a story on a Kansas Republican legislator who was proposing a raise in the minimum wage. Although it sounded eminent, I can't find it online - if anyone knows how to search the legislative website for proposals like this, please email me!

These election year rallies around emotionally-charged issues like the minimum wage remind me of parties people throw on the coasts in the face of a huge hurricane that ends in tragedy because people think they can ignore the forces of nature. And like a Hurricane, the laws of supply and demand are forces of nature. Not paying attention to them is like not respecting Mother Nature, with equally tragic results.

The facts are these: (1) the only minimum wage - the real one - is zero; (2) the laws of supply and demand - which are not in dispute by any economist on any side of the debate - state that when you artificially raise a price of something (like the price of labor - e.g. the so-called "minimum wage") it tends to cause more of that something to be supplied and less of it to be demanded. This results in a surplus.

Politicians discuss minimum wage laws in terms of "benefits" they will confer on workers who will receive those increased wages. But the real minimum wage is zero, and that is exactly what many of these workers will receive in the aftermath of government-mandated raises -- because they will lose their jobs. The labor market is no more exempt than the peanut or car markets: artificially raised prices will create surplus. In a labor surplus, the least skilled -- those very people the policitian purports to be helping with his proposal to increase the minimum wage -- will lose their jobs.

I could stop there with the "it's econ 101 stupid" lecture, but here's the deal: we should be free to associate with whomever we want. No one should be allowed to interfere with that. This basic principle - freedom of association - is core to our economy's success. Why? Because in the absence of coercion both parties gain from an exchange. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. When an external entity interferes with an exchange, as the government does when it mandates minimum wages, it's more than likely one or both sides will be worse off.

Life is tough and clearly there are times when we only have a list of bad choices to choose from. Normally, unskilled workers would prefer to make the best of a bad list of choices than to have those choices reduced or taken away from them. Raising minimum wages is a great, emotionally-charged issue for a politician to wield during an election year... but it is a very cruel and heartless trick played on those who are using their minimum-wage positions to build a ladder to a better future.