21
Nov
2007
Is "free" too much to pay for online music? In October, the critically acclaimed group of Internet entrepreneurs known as Radiohead released its latest album, In Rainbows, in digital format and invited fans to download it from its Web site. The price? The completion of a registration form, plus whatever you feel like paying. Five dollars? Great! Zero? That's fine, too.
In
an information age when we're required to hand over confidential
information to make a purchase, drive a car, or visit a doctor's
office, our privacy is being relegated to the junk heap of
antiquated, obsolete ideas. Nowhere is this more evident than in the
telecommunications industry, where technological breakthroughs that
add convenience to our lives are simultaneously giving corporations
and government agencies almost unlimited access to our most private
moments.
Illegal
immigration is one of our country's most divisive, intractable
issues. The Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986 was supposed to solve it, but
illegal immigration has continued to increase. This year's attempt
to craft comprehensive immigration-reform legislation blew up in
Congress. Given the record of failure for effective comprehensive
reform, perhaps it is time to address the problem in incremental,
piecemeal proposals.
Congress
is soon expected to consider whether U.S. consumers should be able to
purchase medicines from abroad. The legislation to allow drug
re-importation is expected to include a provision that represents one
of the most destructive government interventions into free markets
since the New Deal.
Protectionists
claim that free trade is bad for America - that increasing imports
of goods means increasing exports of jobs, thereby gutting our
economy. This notion could only be valid in a zero-sum world with a
fixed number of jobs, where one country's gain would be another's
loss; in fact, though, the number of jobs, both at home and abroad,
is locked into a clear uptrend. New businesses and industries
continually emerge in the never-ending attempt to satisfy humankind's
insatiable wants. We can never run out of jobs.
"There
is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people
running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it
Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist,
Zionist/Seventh-Day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican,
Mattachine/FourSquareGospel, feel it has the will, the right, the
duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who
sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge
unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any
author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery
rhyme."
As
the Twin Cities struggle to return to normalcy in the aftermath of
last month's collapse of the bridge along I-35, we will be
subjected to the unseemly spectacle of politicians pointing fingers
at each other. I am not interested in this political soap opera, but
rather in the larger lessons we can learn from this tragedy.
More
committed to protecting his political friends than upholding the rule
of law, Alberto Gonzales' tenure as U.S. attorney general has been
characterized by his tendency to be a political "yes man" and a
manipulator of the law.
While
Members of Congress take their annual August recess, they are not
alone. It's a time for taxpayers to breathe a little easier as
well, because August is at least one month when they know new taxes
and burdensome regulations won't be rammed through the legislative
process.
First,
full disclosure: In my youth, I engaged in some serious substance
abuse. Today I am a teetotaler, but I do not object to other people
consuming alcohol. I hate smoke, but I defend the right of others to
smoke. I disdain illegal drugs, but I don't feel that I have the
right to impose that judgment on others. Also, while I am a
free-market economist and believe that government has gotten way too
big, I am not (for a variety of reasons) a card-carrying Libertarian.
That having been said, I find much of the libertarian argument in
favor of legalizing recreational drugs to be persuasive, although I
strongly dissent from one of the major implications of the
libertarian position.
