Thrifty, Principled Republican Plans to Defund NPR

Taxation, The Right, Vulgar Politics
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In a bold move that promises to prove the Republicans’ dedication to preserving the First Amendment and fixing up the federal budget, Senator Jim DeMint has introduced a bill to eliminate federal funding for NPR. This is following the great controversy over NPR’s decision to fire Juan Williams, who made some commentary on Muslims and air travel that his bosses at NPR didn’t quite like.

DeMint, I’m sure, of course has a heroic record of free speech advocacy. I assume, though I have not found evidence at the time of writing this, that he introduced bills and fought vigorously for an end to this ridiculous idea of “free speech zones” which were used during the Bush Administration to stifle free speech. Because, surely, Jim DeMint is all about free speech, and this latest move was not simply motivated by his approval of Williams’ commentary, but rather from a deep philosophical opposition to government restriction of speech.

Some might also think that the $420 million that defunding NPR (and PBS) would save is a bit on the paltry side as far as budget cuts go, given that federal spending for FY2010 was officially about $3.5 trillion, or, to use like-terms, $3,500,000 million. But hey, that’s something, right? And, after all, if you exclude Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt, all the other “mandatory” spending, and everything to do with the military, is there really that much else to cut?

So good on you, Jim DeMint. Keep up the good work.

Not labeled: The 0.00012% of the budget that NPR represents

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Article: Healthcare Is Not a Human Right

Articles, Health Care, Libertarian Theory
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Of all the arguments favoring the coordination and control of the healthcare industry by the central planning agency of the state, the healthcare-is-a-human-right argument seems to be the most convincing one, even to those who may favor a free market approach to the problem of coordination of scarce health resources. How can we as a society possibly deny healthcare to someone in need? Shouldn’t the state assume that task?

Gabriel E. Vidal is the chief operating officer of a hospital system in the United States. He has a BA in politics, philosophy, and economics and an MBA in finance.

Read the Full Article by Gabriel E. Vidal

Afterwards, discuss it below.

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A Thought Experiment about Patents and Taxes

IP Law
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In Reducing the Cost of IP Law, I argued that one improvement to the patent system (short of abolition) would be to eliminate injunctions and provie for a compulsory licensing system. As I noted there, the compulsory licensing approach is not new. Some countries impose compulsory licensing on patentees who do not adequately “work” the patent. I discussed provisions in US patent law that do permit compulsory licenses already in some situations.1 I was reminded of this when discussing with some friends a comment to this blogpost, Pirated Software Could Bring Down Predator Drones. The commentor stated: “Just declare the IP a state secret. The market value is then zero, as the company cant sell it legally. Buy it from the company for 1 cent. Then classify the contract as top secret. If the company complains, send the people to jail or gitmo.”

As I noted in the previous posts, the feds have the authority to license third parties to manufacture patented articles, without patent infringement liability; this was threatened in the Cipro anthrax drug a couple years ago. The feds then have to pay “compensation” to the patent holder. Something similar happens if the some federal agency issues a “secrecy order” for military or other reasons for a pending patent.2

It occurs to me that the very notion of a compulsory license for IP can help to illustrate how IP is an obvious transfer of wealth. Consider: under current law, the state grants a patent monopoly to some applicant. Then, the state can declare a compulsory monopoly (or issue a secrecy order), and pay you some compensation for this “taking”. Obviously this payment comes from tax payers. So the IP step can be seen as just an intermediate step to justify transferring money from everyone else to the patentee. It’s as if you tell the state you have an idea and the state takes money from others and gives it to you. Come to think of it, this is exactly the idea behind proposals for tax-funded “innovation” awards–proposed even by some libertarians (!).3 The point is that even when the state does not issue the compulsory license, they are simply deputizing the patentee to go out and extort the money himself; it’s like taxation.

(Incidentally, in An Objectivist IP Argument for Taxation, I provide another argument for why IP could be used to justify taxes.)

  1. See Ciprofloxacin: the Dispute over Compulsory Licenses; Tom Jacobs, Bayer, U.S. Deal on Anthrax Drug, Motley Fool (Oct. 25, 2001); Compulsory Licensing in the US. See also Kinsella, Brazil and Compulsory Licenses, Mises Blog (June 8, 2007); Kinsella, Condemning Patents, Mises Blog (Feb. 27, 2005). ↩

  2. See The Secrecy Order Program in the United States Patent & Trademark Office; 35 USC ch. 17 §§ 181, 183. ↩

  3. See my posts Libertarian Favors $80 Billion Annual Tax-Funded “Medical Innovation Prize Fund”; “$30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The ‘Progressive-Libertarian’ Solution“; “Re: Patents and Utilitarian Thinking Redux: Stiglitz on using Prizes to Stimulate Innovation.” ↩

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Our Efficient, All-Volunteer Killers

Imperialism, War
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Steve Chapman extols the benefits of having an all-volunteer military force:

A few decades ago, the draft was a requirement for any major military undertaking. No one would have dreamed of fighting the Germans and Japanese, or the North Koreans and Chinese, without calling up young men for mandatory service. Not until the waning years of the Vietnam War did the nation elect to rely entirely on volunteers.

It was a controversial step, and one whose durability was very much in doubt. But in the intervening decades, the draft has gone from being indispensable to being unthinkable. Even the extraordinary demands of two difficult wars have not induced a reconsideration.

Anti-conscription badge from WWIEven the military’s leadership recognizes now that armies perform better when they’re filled with people who actually want to be there, and as Chapman points out, it’s a more efficient use of training dollars to spend them on Army careerists than on guys who’d rather be smoking pot and watching football.

If this is the extent of Chapman’s argument then I agree, but I’m not any more comforted by the fact that the military’s bombing and killing of poor people overseas are performed by people who actually want to do that sort of thing.  And he ignores the fact that young men must still notify the government of their whereabouts via Selective Service in case the draft is reinstated.  If the military really does not want conscripted men (and possibly women) among its ranks, why does the infrastructure for conscription still exist?

More dubious is Chapman’s concluding paragraph:

It was once a novel experiment: fielding a force to protect freedom without grossly violating freedom by dragooning young men to serve. But it’s worked so well we’ve almost forgotten there’s an alternative.

“Protect freedom” is a canard I expect from National Review, not a supposedly libertarian publication such as Reason.  Few if any all-volunteer forces have ever been used to protect Americans’ freedoms, even during the Revolutionary War (see volume 4 of Murray Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty); and there isn’t a single military campaign undertaken in the past century that could be called a legitimate defense of freedom.  If one wishes to sing the praises of America’s efficient, all-volunteer killers, at least one shouldn’t pretend they exist for any reason other than to satisfy the imperialist aims of the Washington elite.

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Does Going to the DMV Hurt Worse than a Root Canal, or Is It Just Me?

Nanny Statism, Taxation
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Some time ago, having just gotten rid of a car, I figured it best to turn in my plates and get that magnanimous refund from NY State for the registration fee on my erstwhile means of transportation.  Being somewhat “unplugged” from the typical goings-on at the Department of Motor Vehicles, I decided to drop by on a Friday afternoon, the last Friday afternoon of the month to be exact. A mistake. A BIG mistake.

You see, on the last day of the month, there apparently is a big rush to get things done at the DMV.  Well, there’s a big rush for the customers.  The people working at the DMV frankly didn’t seem all that rushed.  And that’s from whence the question that titles this essay emanates.  First, let’s recap my visit.

Arrival:  1415 hours (That’s 2:15pm for those who are military-time-challenged.)

Obtaining of Ticket:  1455 hours  (That’s 40 minutes later.)

Visit with Cashier:  1525 hours (That’s 30 minutes after that.)

Departure:  1530 hours (That’s 5 minutes later still.)

Yes, it took me 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) to accomplish a 5-minute task at the DMV.  For those unfamiliar with this incredibly demeaning scenario, allow me to explain some of the subtleties.  When one arrives at the DMV, at least in my county, he is met with a line that leads to an “information counter.”  This is where they tell you where you need to go next, what forms you have to fill out before you get there, and where they also—in a stroke of bureaucratic genius—give you a ticket with a number on it.  This number corresponds to an electronic display that provides a sort of visual presentation of the “Next!” one hears at the barber shop.  On the ticket is the number for which you should look, and an estimate of how long you’ll be waiting.  You may then go to any one of the fine church-style pews to sit and wait.  Hopefully, you brought a book.

In essence then, one has waited in a line that is not hidden to wait in a line that is hidden.

The punch line:  All of this is an improvement—a vast improvement—over what used to happen at the DMV.  I’m not saying it was bad.  It was worse than bad.  If one was smart, he showed up with a lunch box, or at least a snack.  Standing on line for an hour or so on an empty stomach is tough!  Plus, once one got to the counter, he was faced with a person who himself was pissed off to be there.  A disgruntled worker meeting a disgruntled customer does not a recipe for statist happiness make.

Here’s what I’m trying to figure out:  If I had a choice of vendors for this service, would it still be so terribly inefficient and, frankly, crappy?  I don’t think it requires a degree in, or even an understanding of, Austrian Economics to emphatically declare, “No.”

Cross-Posted at the LRCBlog.

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