Changing the facts can take care of this inconvenience

The Sound Of Settled Science

by Michael H. Anderson

Central Planning is doomed

The Internet? Bah!

Newsweek - February 27, 1995

by Clifford Stoll

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connections, try again later."

Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."

What Is the Internet, Anyway?

Over at LRC, Stephan Kinsella posts this great discussion about the internet that occurred in 1994 between Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric on the Today Show.
I think one takeaway from this clip is that it shows us how difficult it is to imagine how different products and technologies can develop, and that it is best to just let the free markets continue to innovate. A centrally planned society can never come up with the innovations that can occur as a result of one person adding something here and another adding something there. Pretty soon, with all these additions, you have everything from online trading, online travel bookings, and youtube to twitter and Facebook leading revolutions.


UPDATE Butler Shaffer makes this interesting added point at LRC:

What is most telling about the mainstream media's early response to the Internet is not its failure to predict where it would be in 2011, but its failure — as in so many other areas — to ask significant questions. That so much attention was given over to asking about the meaning of "@," instead of making inquiries into the possible social and political implications of this new system, is instructive of the point made by Thomas Pynchon: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." This was not unlike the kind of questioning Gutenberg might have faced ("But what will the letters look like?")
These 1990s media people — whose employers faced the biggest threat from the Internet—- might have invoked L. Frank Baum's directive: "Pay no attention to those men behind their screens."

UPDATE 2: David Kramer posts to this incredible 1995 Newsweek article dissing the internet. It is a must read. It is not hard to imagine many people thinking the way this Newsweek writer did back then, which comes back to the point that it is best to allow innovation through free markets, rather than the necessary limited thinking of a central planner.

Happy Father’s Day!

Honor From Our Fathers

"My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: he believed in me."- Jim Valvano

by Dr Zero

Honor is essential to the maintenance of a free society. We learn about honor from our fathers.

When the duties of fatherhood are widely dismissed, or rendered poorly, our understanding of honor is diluted… and freedom soon begins to wither.

This is not to belittle the importance of mothers. Many single mothers do a spectacular job of providing their children with an understanding of personal honor. We can respect and celebrate the achievements of extraordinary individuals, without blinding ourselves to the effect of broad trends upon vast populations. Both fathers and mothers are uniquely important. Our society is suffering from a pronounced deficit of fatherhood.

There are many ways to define honor. I suggest viewing it as an expression of faith, in both yourself and others. An honorable man or woman displays honesty and integrity because they believe others deserve such treatment. It is a sign of faith in other people that we deal honorably with them, and presume they will do the same, unless they prove otherwise. Honor is also a gesture of respect we offer to ourselves, because we have faith that we can succeed without deceit and savagery. If you truly respect yourself, you believe you can win without cheating.

A good father reveals the nature of honor to his sons and daughters through his conduct. He is loyal to his wife and children, despite the easy temptations offered by the modern world. He works to build a better future for them, rather than waiting for it to be dropped in his lap, or demanding others provide it for him. He rejoices in this task, and his joy is so obvious that his family forgives his occasional moments of weariness or frustration. Through marriage, he has chosen duty over indulgence. He sees the intricate beauty of permanence, when the flickering neon light of passing fancy is more obvious. Honor is one of the many frequencies of love.

The absence of a father is a terrible burden for children, and their mother, to bear. I know, because I’m one of the many children who grew up without my father in the house. It’s a pain that is not always easy to understand. What’s missing is too big to be seen clearly. Generations have grown up listening to the seductive lie that fathers are less than critical. They are portrayed as a dangerous accessory, prone to explosion and meltdown, easily replaced by a wad of cash or a government check. Some men have disgraced themselves by allowing this lie to spread, because it suits their convenience. Some women spread it because they have lost faith in the human race, and believe they armor themselves against an inevitable tragedy.

The opponents of freedom spread this lie because they understand honor sustains liberty, and it flows from the loyal union between fathers and mothers. Honorable people carry their freedom with dignity. They understand the difference between charity and dependence. They are energized with faith in themselves, which makes them courageous enough to take risks. Honor builds trust between individuals, enhancing the value of voluntary cooperation.

The honor we inherit from our fathers makes us adventurers, explorers, architects, and paladins. Without it, too many people become predatory, or sessile. Either way, those people are clay to be molded by the will of others. When we act in the name of our fathers, we bear the strength of history. Deprived of this strength, many are trapped forever in the present moment, with past and future beyond their reach. A good father teaches us that the past and future come as a set.

Some fathers are absent without ever leaving the house. To them, I would say that fatherhood is your greatest opportunity to testify, before all Creation, that you are not a beast. Follow its difficult path, in the company of your wife and children, and you may come to understand the true meaning of forever… and then I will envy you, until I am fortunate enough to join you. If you grew up without a father, then I hope you answer the challenge to give your children what you and I did not have. An honorable man understands the world is not fated to lose its battle against entropy. He knows he can help his children make it better. Look upon them, and understand: you are indispensable.

Happy Father’s Day!

Hoping that a slow tortured death of the bearded dictator is coming soon

Former Group of 75 political prisoners present petition to Castro regime 

Twelve former prisoners of conscience, members of the Group of 75 imprisoned during the "black spring" of 2003 and still in Cuba after their release, on Monday presented to the Castro regime a petition demanding an independent investigation of the death last month of dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia.

Officials at the Council of State in Havana refused to accept the Declaration of Roque, named after the town in Matanzas where they signed it this past weekend. But later they were able to submit to the Cuban justice ministry, according to a Radio Marti report.

(UPDATED, June 7, 2011 -- Read the petition, in English, here.)

The 12 former prisoners, all still in Cuban because of their refusal to accept forced exile as a condition of their release, are:

Pedro Argüelles Morán

Oscar Biscet González

Eduardo Díaz Fleitas

José Ferrer García

Diosdado González Marrero

Iván Hernández Carrillo

Librado Linares García

Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez

Angel Moya Acosta

Félix Navarro Rodríguez

Arnaldo Ramos Lauzerique

Guido Sigler Amaya

Reina Luisa Tamayo

Chronicle of a Martyr, Chronicle of Cuba

by Pedazos de la Isla

Just a year and a few months ago, the life of a humble woman from the small town of Banes, Holguin, Cuba, was being destroyed.  She had already carried an unbearable weight for 7 years, knowing that her son was innocent yet he languished behind the bars of Cuba’s dungeons.  Now, that same son was slowly dying just because one government decided it should be that way.  This story is the story of Reina Luisa Tamayo, the dignified mother of the Cuban political prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo who died after an extensive 85 day hunger strike and a brutal beating on behalf of the prison authorities as they carried out orders from Cuba’s dictators.  But Reina’s suffering did not cease there.  She decided to take to the streets to protest her sons assassination and to confront the Cuban dictatorship, echoing her son’s demands: freedom, democracy, and the respect of human rights.

The violence on behalf of the Cuban tyranny only multiplied itself.  Days after the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Reina Luisa was victim of, together with other Ladies in White, a physical mob attack where she was arrested, beaten, and threatened while the eyes of the democratic world only stared at their television screens as if it was all part of a horror film.  The weeks, months, and, in total, the year which followed only got worse.  Cuban political police agents, as well as soldiers in uniform, constantly impeded this hurt mother from marching through the streets of her own town as she tried to pay homage to her fallen son at his tomb.  Dozens of other dissidents were beaten just for accompanying this brave Lady in White, her house was constantly surrounded by political police agents, and the rest of her relatives suffered from blackmail and layoffs in their work places, in school, and even in their day to day lives in their own neighborhood.  Reina feared that they were going to take another son from her, or a daughter, a granddaughter, or her husband.  But she never feared what could happen to her.  She suffered innumerable arrests, beatings, and harassment but she always raised her voice on the streets, in her house, and through the international press, demanding that the murderous brothers who rule the Caribbean island leave power and pay for what they did to her peaceful son.

The rain fell heavily on that 7th of June over the small town of Banes when Reina had to firsthand witness how they exhumed the remains of her son before parting to exile in Miami.  And even then she remained strong, but the repressive watchdogs also remained stationed all around the cemetery ready to beat, detain, and even kill.  “The military, the police, and State Security took control of all the streets“,  explained the dissident Marta Diaz Rondon who stood at the side of Reina during such a difficult moment.  This long day began at 7 in the morning and that meeting at the cemetery was followed by a march which set off from Reina’s home.  Relatives and dissidents alike began screaming the usual slogans, “Zapata Lives”, “Freedom for Cuba”, and “Long Live Human Rights”.

Liberalism is a damned expensive habit.

Dinner with Mamet

By John Gapper

Even sitting at a banquette in one corner of the nearly empty Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, an old-style grill in Greenwich Village, with his orange Perspex-framed glasses lying on the table in front of him, David Mamet is at work.

We have met at the Knickerbocker because he is in New York with his producer to scout locations for a film he has written and will direct for HBO about Phil Spector, the legendary music producer. “We call it a red-booth restaurant in the movie. This is close. It’s ox-blood,” he says, prodding our leather-lined booth. “We’ll have to dye it.”

Spector, to be played by Al Pacino with Bette Midler as his lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, was jailed for murder in 2008 after being convicted of the killing of Lana Clarkson, an actress, at his California mansion. “I don’t think he’s guilty. I definitely think there is reasonable doubt,” Mamet says briskly when I ask what interested him about the case. “They should never have sent him away. Whether he did it or not, we’ll never know but if he’d just been a regular citizen, they never would have indicted him.”

The crisp certainty and rhetorical force makes Mamet sound like one of his characters. At the age of 63, with close-cropped grey hair and a beard, he is not only one of the most celebrated of American dramatists but one of the most prolific. From plays such as American Buffalo (1975), a Pinter-esque drama about four petty thieves, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Glengarry Glen Ross (1982), an intense clash of competing property salesmen, to harrowing films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and the Oscar-nominated courtroom drama The Verdict (1982), to novels and essays, he rarely rests.

If not Now, When ?

Another day, another crime in the Cuban Prison

Cuban dissident to be interred in Miami:

The ashes of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died following an 85-day hunger strike, arrived in Miami Thursday in a shoe-size box held by his mother. His final resting place will be in exile — among veterans killed during a failed invasion 50 years ago in a battle against the same dictatorship.

It is the first time a Cuban not associated with the Bay of Pigs invasion will share space at a mausoleum reserved for heroes of the 1961 fight against the Castro regime — a symbolic unity between the "old" and "new" Cubans in the call for change on the communist-ruled island.

“It’s an honor for us to have the ashes of this man buried with us,’’ said Felix Rodriguez, president of the Association of Veterans of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. “We consider this man a hero and a patriot for standing up to Cuba’s communist government and fighting for a free Cuba.”

“I thank the people of the United States, their government and all of those who have fought to make possible that today our family can be in a free country,” Tamayo said. “This mother, this family, will continue the fight to made the Castro brothers disappear. They murdered Zapata depriving him of water for 18 days.”
She immediately shouted slogans in favor of Cuba’s freedom and repeated “Zapata lives” amid a strict police cordon. People waved Cuban flags and banners with Zapata’s photograph.  The Miami Herald

                             ___________________________________

Reina Luisa Tamayo scheduled to arrive in Miami this afternoon

J

une 9 - Family members of late political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died in a hunger strike last year, were taken to the Havana airport and kept away from the press as they prepared on Thursday to emigrate to the United States.
His mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, said by telephone the 13 people, including herself and husband Jose Ortiz, were to take a mid-afternoon flight to Miami where members of the Cuban exile community awaited them.
"This whole process has been very hard, but we have endured it," she told Reuters.
"It satisfies me that I have in my possession the ashes of my son and that I could see everything from the exhumation until they delivered his warm ashes," she said. Tamayo insisted she would not

 leave without the remains of her son. Zapata was 42 when he died in February 2008 after an 85-day hunger strike. His body was exhumed in the eastern city of Banes on Tuesday, brought with the family to Havana and cremated in the Cuban capital.
The process has been directed by the Cuban government, which is happy for the dissident family to go elsewhere.
Zapata was serving a long jail sentence for crimes such as disobedience and contempt when he launched his hunger strike for improved prison conditions.
The Cuban government said he was nothing more than a common criminal, but his death brought criticism of Cuba's human rights situation from the United States and Europe and contributed to Cuba's decision a few months later to release its political prisoners.
"We were very repressed by the government. The opposition is oppressed," Tamayo said.
In Miami, the International Rescue Committee said the family would be settled in four apartments, assisted with essentials such as clothes and food and provided English classes and job placement help. The group gives aid to victims of humanitarian crises and helps resettle refugees worldwide.
Tamayo said she would carry on her son's opposition to the Cuban government. Reuters

Quote of the day

Socialism 2011

Cuban activist Laritza Diversent on her blog:

"Who can protect you if the State is the one in control and hides the members of its repressive machinery that will kill if necessary behind the name of the Revolution, its olive green political party? Later, they all calmly say that his death was a pretext to provoke a conflict with the United States. To whom would you present your appeals demanding justice? To the courts that receive their instructions from the State's council? A political organ that is led by the leaders of the only political party on the island. The same that publicly threatens through its official press those who do not share their ideology."

______________________________________________________________________

The eternal shame of "intellectuals"

Nat Hentoff talks about a meeting he once had with Argentine terrorist che Guevara

David Vs the killer Goliath State

Khodorkovsky moved to unknown prison camp

By Catherine Belton

Prison authorities in Russia have transferred Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former oil tycoon, to a prison camp in an undisclosed location. The move was decried by his lawyers as unlawful and aimed at derailing his parole hearing.

Mr Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man until his arrest in 2003, lost an appeal at the end of last month against a second case convicting him of embezzling almost all the oil his Yukos oil major produced and laundering the proceeds. He is now set to serve out the remainder of a 13-year sentence that will keep him in a prison colony until 2016.

The arrest of the tycoon, who had openly defied the rule of Vladimir Putin, marked a turning point in the former KGB official’s presidency as the Kremlin clamped down on political opposition and tightened its grip on the economy. Mr Khodorkovsky’s Yukos was dismantled over back tax charges and taken over by the state.

Critics say the continued campaign in the courts against Mr Khodorkovsky highlights the limits of a drive by Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Mr Putin as president, to boost the independence of the judiciary.

Mr Khodorkovsky’s lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, said his client had been removed from his cell at Moscow’s infamous Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre without warning on Friday morning, and his lawyers and family had yet to be informed where he was being sent.

“They didn’t tell us anything,” Mr Klyuvgant said. “His wife made an official request asking where he was but the authorities returned it without an answer, only saying he had been taken away and that was all.”

Mr Klyuvgant said the tycoon’s wife had been denied her legal right for a meeting with Mr Khodorkovsky before being sent to the prison colony.

Mr Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, have already served more than half of the 13 year sentence since their arrest on a first set of charges of fraud and tax evasion and would have been eligible for parole. Mr Khodorkovsky filed a new request for parole this week after a Moscow court had earlier refused to hear a request, saying he had not filed proper documents.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russia violated Mr Khodorkovsky’s rights during his 2003 arrest, but it said his lawyers had failed to provide the incontrovertible proof necessary for a ruling that the arrest was politically motivated.

Mr Khodorkovsky had served part of his first seven-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion in a prison colony not far from the border with China in the uranium mining town of Krasnokamensk.

Amnesty International last month declared Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev prisoners of conscience.

Grand plans of the few rarely work

Too much aid will hobble Arab spring

By Saifedean Ammous

Within months of toppling their dictatorships, Egyptians and Tunisians have been promised significant financial help from the international community, with the Group of Eight leading economies most recently pledging £12bn in aid, loans and debt relief. The wisdom of heaping cash upon these countries has been taken for granted. In fact, it may do more harm than good.

The record of development assistance leaves much to be desired. In the past six decades donors have often sought to bring about growth by funding infrastructure, agriculture and social services, with little success. Development organisations too often follow a discredited central planning model when history is testament to the way in which the grand plans of the few rarely work, while the freedom of the many succeeds in lifting one society after another from poverty to prosperity.

The billions already pledged to help Egypt and Tunisia will again see well-connected officials dictate spending. They will doubtless embark on large investments, such as the plan presented to the G8 by a group of Tunisian technocrats aiming to spend $20-$30bn on transport, infrastructure and industrial zones to “open up and connect the regions of the country”. Yet it is not clear why Egyptians and Tunisians would want go down this road again, given the miserable record of similar initiatives, not least in Egypt and Tunisia themselves.

Worse will follow if they do, as the debt burden from loans weighs down already-strained budgets. The likely outcome will be increased taxes and tariffs, along with fiscal and currency crises, as governments devalue their peoples’ wealth to pay off international creditors. Sovereignty is quickly compromised on the altar of repayment schedules, as some richer governments are also now discovering.

Perhaps most important, aid has a political impact too. Those calling for new support seem to forget that the deposed regimes already received plenty of international aid finance. Under the aegis of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, they presided over elaborate privatisation and reform programmes, which benefited those close to power but did little to help the wider population. In truth the regimes tended to use this support to strengthen their rule, building state security apparatuses and creating kleptocratic governments accountable only to their foreign bankrollers.

Today, with both Tunisia and Egypt led by provisional caretaker governments, the risk is that the power granted by control of this spending will subvert their precarious democratic transitions. Generous aid programmes mean leaders do not need to please their citizens, or gain their trust to secure power; they can instead use donor money to build a security state and buy off their opposition. Without aid, however, governments find it harder to build corrupt client networks, and must instead be responsive to the demands of their people.

A better approach would be for assistance to wait until elections are completed, and elected governments are formed. Even better, donors should be willing to put the question of funding to the public in a referendum, allowing the people to choose whether they really want projects today and then debt tomorrow. Indeed, given the strong relationship between donors and the deposed regimes, it is not impossible to imagine free elections producing new leaderships that reject new funding, aiming instead to reduce or eliminate foreign aid and debt.

Without this, a dysfunctional body politic and a large debt burden may be all that Tunis

A state kidnapped by KGB hit men

Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/high-profile-lawyer-murdered-in-central-moscow/
http://rt.com/news/six-women-found-dead-in-chechnya/
http://rt.com/news/human-rights-activist-kidnapped-and-killed-in-the-caucasus/

Murdered by the State

Murderer of Chechen woman freed

by RT

A Russian court has ordered the release of an ex-army officer who confessed to strangling a Chechen woman.

A judge in the southern city of Dmitrovograd ruled on Wednesday that Yuri Budanov should be freed because he had “repented” for his crime.

Budanov, a former tank commander, was jailed for 10 years in the summer of 2003 for murdering Elsa Kungayeva – an 18-year-old Chechen woman.

Budanov admitted killing the teenager but said he thought she was a sniper. He claimed temporary insanity and a fit of rage.

Russian society was divided over the trial. Human rights groups demanded that the killer be convicted while others, including the military, supported him.

In July 2003, Budanov was found guilty of kidnapping and murder. He was stripped of his rank and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Wednesday’s decision followed a lengthy legal process to get Budanov released, which included two appeals.

In 2004, the Kremlin turned down an appeal to pardon Budanov, made by General Vladimir Shamanov – the governor of the Ulyanovsk region.

The Kremlin said the guilty verdict was correct because it punished those who tarnished the reputation of the Russian Army.

Sin City

Obama Goes Green and Detroit Goes Black . By Henry Payne   Since President Obama signed the stimulus bill in early 2009, Washington has spent over $100 billion of it “transforming” America to a green electric grid. In Michigan alone, hundreds of millions have been distributed to rich utilities for upgrades to “smart grid” systems that enable better power management to accommodate electric cars; to rich multinationals like Dow and LGChem to produce batteries; and to wind-energy projects run by rich institutions like Dow Corning, Michigan Aerospace, and the University of Michigan And on Thursday, the city of Detroit — one of the nation’s largest and poorest cities — lost power. Is there a better metaphor for the Obama administration’s utopian transformation of America than the Detroit power blackout of 2011? Like Obama nationally, Michigan has ignored its biggest city’s power infrastructure and instead poured money into quixotic wind projects on Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to feed the state’s Renewable Power Standard and the ideological demands of Washington. “A wind turbine has over 8,000 individual parts and they all can be made right here in Michigan,” said Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow upon handing her state $1.9 million of wind pork back in July, 2009. “I am pleased these grants will support the important research efforts happening across our state as we continue to lead the way in developing clean energy technologies in the 21st century economy.” Meanwhile, Detroit’s antiquated electricity infrastructure can’t even provide power through two 95-degree days before imploding. City officials said the blackout — which struck all of the city’s major buildings including city hall, museums, and the courts — was “caused by extreme power demand for air conditioning after two days of temperatures in the 90s.” Really? Just two days? And what happens when summer comes? Vice President Biden told Time magazine in 2010 about stimulus brainstorming sessions with Obama “about an all-in push for a smarter electrical grid that would reduce blackouts, promote renewables and give families more control over their energy diet: ‘We said, “God, wouldn’t it be wonderful? Why don’t we invest $100 billion? Let’s just go build it!”’” So how’s that working for you, Detroit? The city’s antiquated electric lines from its 1927-vintage, natural gas-and-oil-fueled Mistersky power plant failed, plunging the city into darkness. But Green Obama doesn’t have time for these “20th century” sources of energy. He’s busy remaking the Rust Belt into the Green Belt — in the memorable words of his former green disciple in the governor’s office, Jennifer Granholm. Why, you might ask, while we’re on the subject, does Detroit have its own utility at all? Because city unions refuse to give up this public-jobs bank and connect to the larger grid run by Michigan’s more efficient Detroit Edison utility (which produces power at less than half the cost per megawatt of Detroit’ Power and Lighting Department). Mr. Obama would be proud. Government, after all, is all about providing jobs, yes? Obama could make a real difference in Detroit — not just in upgrading its power system (if you must spend federal money), but as a family-man model for a city with a crippling 80 percent illegitimacy rate. But Obama has barely visited here. He has bigger ideas to pursue. How ironic that Detroit is a model for Democratic policy — welfare, living wage, high taxes, city-run services — yet the collective havoc these policies have wrought on this city are so embarrassing the Liberal-in-Chief barely acknowledges its existence.

Progressive's Illusions

Is a Nation Something That Can Be Built?

By Steven Horwitz

In the wake of both the collapse of the Soviet empire and the more recent U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have seen a lively debate on nation-building. Many people who are ordinarily skeptical about the power of the U.S. government as a force for good, either at home or around the world, have come to believe that it can take on the supposedly noble task of rebuilding nations that have been plunged into chaos by political upheaval and/or war.

Although the phrase “nation-building” sounds much more constructive and well-intentioned than the destruction and death that have normally accompanied the use of American power, the reality is that attempts to build nations are likely to fail. What the nation-builders overlook is a distinction made by Ludwig von Mises almost 100 years ago: A nation is not necessarily the same as a “state.” In his underappreciated little book Nation, State, and Economy, Mises argued that “nations” are defined not by geography or by political institutions, but most fundamentally by language and other similar cultural institutions that provide a basis for “mutual understanding.”

Therefore the nation, Mises argued, cannot be understood as a static object that we can manipulate as we wish: “Nations and languages are not unchangeable categories but, rather, provisional results of a process in constant flux; they change from day to day, and so we see before us a wealth of intermediate forms whose classification requires some pondering.”

This evolutionary perspective on what constitutes a nation suggests that it may be very difficult for an external observer to even know whether a given mass of people constitutes a “nation,” much less be able to know what it would take to build a nation out of their current “intermediate form.” As we know from F. A. Hayek, people learn how to coordinate their behavior with one another via such evolutionary processes. In other words nations are spontaneous orders that emerge from the daily choices of people about the language they use and the other ways in which they participate in, or withdraw from, a variety of cultural forms. The people themselves constitute a “nation” by their individual choices.

States imposed on nations by princes, Mises contended, are doomed to fail because they normally attempt to eliminate all forms of community that lie between the prince and the people. Anything that doesn’t come from the State is to be dissolved. In other words imposed States dislike and destroy the delicate, complex, and evolved connections that comprise a true nation. This is why totalitarian regimes try to control language, religion, family, and all of the other intermediary institutions between individual and State: because those institutions help to define what it means to be a nation as distinct from a State. They provide a buffer between the evolving choices of individuals and the attempt to control those choices from the top down.

Like other attempts to control spontaneous orders, nation-building faces significant knowledge problems. It is no different in principle from attempting to plan an economy domestically. As Mises and Hayek pointed out decades ago, when planners attempt to allocate resources from the top down, they have no market signals to guide their behavior or to indicate what value people place on various outputs and inputs—that is, no prices with which to engage in economic calculation.

Political Illusions

A Primer on Government for Idealists Fed Up with History Repeating Itself

By James L. Payne

You don’t believe in magic, do you? Magicians employ a variety of tricks to deceive audiences into thinking that something has happened that can’t. They are masters of illusion. Adults know that they’re being fooled when the rabbit seems to materialize out of an empty hat.

Magic is harmless fun, but the government is not. It squanders vast amounts of money while simultaneously whittling away at people’s freedom. Instead of solving problems, it makes them worse, often creating brand new problems. Why don’t more of us rebel or at least denounce the State? In his latest book, political scientist and Freeman contributing editor James Payne explains why not: Most Americans have fallen for six political illusions. Although opinion polls show that a large majority of the population is fed up with the government, most think we must continue to rely on it for a wide array of “services.” They just want better politicians in charge. Those people aren’t stupid; they’re under the spell of the following illusions:

• The Philanthropic Illusion: the idea that government has money of its own.

• The Voluntary Illusion: the impulse to want to believe that government action is not based on force.

• The Illusion of the Frictionless State: the idea that the State can transfer resources with negligible overhead cost.

• The Materialistic Illusion: that money alone buys public-policy results.

• The Watchful Eye Illusion: the idea that the government has greater knowledge and wisdom than the public.

• The Illusion of Government Preeminence: the belief that the government is the only problem-solving institution in society.

In short, Payne admonishes people to start examining government as it really is, not the way children see magic. The book’s cover, a reproduction of an 1842 painting by Thomas Cole, gives a visual analogy to its thesis. In the painting a lad in a boat on a river is entranced by an apparition in the sky—a gleaming temple. Unfortunately, he is oblivious to the reality that his boat will soon go over a waterfall unless he gives up on the apparition and grasps the truth confronting him. That’s an excellent depiction of modern America.

Payne does a superb job of explaining and illustrating each of his illusions. I will focus my comments on the last two of them, as they are particularly critical at this juncture.