The reason?

A total of 75 people have died from swine flu (in a state of 18 million).

In contrast, 1,429 people died on NY roads in 2005.

What is Paterson’s purpose other than freak people out?

as Walter Block argued with great flair, in general the police shouldn’t punish blackmailers. Yes, you are arguably a moral degenerate, a huge jerk, etc. etc. if you blackmail someone, but why is it a crime?

… if some producer happens to know that David Letterman is building his own special Top Ten List (you know I had to work in some cheesy pun in this post), and if that producer has the legal right to blog about it, talk about it, even to write a book about it, then how in the world is it a crime for him to give Letterman the option of buying his silence?

The way I see it, the only true crime involved with blackmail per se, would be if Letterman paid the guy $2 million, and then the guy went ahead and spread the gossip anyway. Of course, the crime there would be violating the deal, not the offer a deal in the first place.

If its the government’s job to enforce contracts (even private, secret contracts) but the government makes those contracts illegal, than it makes it more likely that a blackmail agreement would blow up in the way that Bob describes.

This is probably why Letterman didn’t pay the blackmailer… there’s no guarantee that he would have kept his silence. If there was a court that would enforce these agreements, however, than both parties could have been happy.

I’m sure this issue is too sticky to change, though.

The US government has relaxed its control over how the internet is run.

It has signed a four-page “affirmation of commitments” with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.

Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann – drawing criticism from other countries and groups.

I’m sure we’re supposed to like that the federal government is giving up some of its control (I wonder how game theory or public choice theory explains that), but does it count if they’re just handing the reigns over more fully to a different institution?

This is just some loose speculation. I’m fairly certain that Icann has some critical function for smooth operation and, more importantly, organization, of the internet.

I’m not sure if Hanson is continuing our discussion in this post in Overcoming Bias today, but he reaffirms this position, extending it pretty much all of nature:

Yes, nature would be saved if we destroy ourselves without destroying nature in the process, but hopefully we’ll avoid this scenario.  We might also somehow coordinate to prevent competitive growth.  For example, we might empower a world government to protect nature, prevent innovation, or prevent population growth.  But I honestly see little prospect of this.  We now live in a very competitive world, and even governments mainly just redirect competition, toward controlling those governments.

I find it a little odd that he would say this. It contains elements of truth… at what point will governments stop promoting ecological conservationism at the cost of economic competitiveness?

But I think he misses another element. I don’t think it will escape the attention of capitalist that they rely on the earth for natural resources and that technological advanced will decrease, not increase, our reliance and impact on nature and not the other way around.

People have been falsely predicting that we’ve reached the earth’s carrying capacity for centuries, and they’ve all been wrong. This is not because of government incentives (well, not totally) but because of market forces.

I think Hanson’s assumption of continuing population growth is also incorrect. As economic competition produces wealth throughout the globe, population levels will steady out without having to approach the earth’s physical limits. Add the technology of lessening out eco footprints and I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.

Hanson is being alarmist – some will say economic growth needs to happen anyway, so government interventions are just delaying, and worsening, the inevitable, while others will say that we need to stop “progress” to protect the natural rights of mother earth.

As an economist, I find it odd that Hanson would imply that population will keep growing but technology will reach a limit.

I find it much more likely that, in astronomical time, the human population will dwindle out into nothing because we no longer feel the drive to reproduce than we’ll reach the physical carrying capacity of the entire universe.

“Following implementation of the act, the trajectory of the economy changed materially toward moderating output decline and job loss,” the president’s Council of Economic Advisers told Congress.

It looks like somebody needs a lesson in post hoc ergo propter hoc. I’m sure their statistics are all nice and tidy, though.

Dan Davis, MP says that this creates:

…a huge intrusion on privacy, yet … little or no improvement in security.

But what’s the evidence of the latter. If Freakonomics is also correct in reporting that there are over a million cameras in London, then over 1000 crimes in London have been solved in London this year by cameras. The obvious question that nobody seems to be asking is whether the money could have been spent more efficiently elsewhere.

Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.

An otherwise interesting BBC article on the Google book scanning deal ends with this:

Many believe the issue of rights over out-of-print books would best be solved by legislation and not the courts.

“It is never a good thing for private parties to make deals for the public good,” said Martin Manley, the founder of Alibris.com, an online store which sells used, rare and out-of-print books.

“The public good is meant to be solved by regulators who are somewhat accountable and by legislators who are wholly accountable,” Mr Manley told BBC News.

Now, I’m not a big fan of copy right law and I support Google in their efforts, but Mr. Manley has this completely wrong. The enforcement of private contracts is certainly within the realm of the judicial system. Google is not trying, nor should be expected to, make deals for the “public good.”  They are simply trying to provide a service that consumers find desirable – and working around stone age copyright law in trying to do so. But don’t think for a second that just because Google doesn’t charge internet users directly for their services that Google is acting for the purposes of the “public good.”

Make no mistake, this is a private deal for private interests.

And as for his second quote… yes, copyright law needs to be reworked by legislatures, but it doesn’t sound like this is what he’s saying. It sounds like Manley wants congress to pass some bill that would erase private contracts and copyrights to “protect the public good” of having free books online (which, incidentally, I don’t think one of the rights protected by the constitution).

I hope this quote was taken out of context. Imagine what kind of precedent it would set if congressman could just erase copyrights or patents when deemed to violate the “public good”? Manley claims that legislators are more accountable that judges, but was it judges that were trying to interfere with private contracts during the financial bailouts?

What Manley is suggesting, using erroneous assumptions, is that judges are trying to legislate from the bench via private interests (which is false, they’re just trying to uphold bad laws) in a way which violates the public good (also false: he confuses Google and google customers for the general public). His claimed solution, if I’ve interpreted correctly: give legislators even more power to uphold subjective public good.

Hint – what legislators claim is the public good is more often than not special deals for private interests. In this case, what Manley wants is a deal that works out for Google. What happens when the next special deal is struck for some pharmaceutical company that Manley doesn’t like so much?

There is a good reason why we have checks and balances and that political power is divided the way it is. I would say this recommendation is borderline unconstitutional.