Tag: Slate

Yes, Nationalizing Facebook Is a Nonstarter

By
Jim Harper

The other day, I was asked to review a draft slate of pro-innovation proposals that might be put before the next presidential administration (regardless of who heads it). I went down the list, typing again and again, “Education policy is not a federal role.”

The rather amateurish list was packed with ideas for injecting book-learnin’ into our economy. It betrayed little awareness of how our constitutional republic is structured, including the absence of federal authority over education. I guess some books are better than others…

It occurred to me as I typed that people coming after me to look over the innovation proposals might think I was an idiot.

“Look right there! There is a federal Education Department. Don’t deny it!” they might say.

When I say education policy is not a federal role, I am saying something normative, about how things should be. As a present-day literal matter, there is rather obviously a federal role in education. And the sooner we restore authority to localities and especially parents, the better.

That how-things-could-be lens, though, is how to look at a self-described “thought experiment” on Slate called “Let’s Nationalize Facebook.”

It would be better to have a national privacy commissioner with real authority, some stringent privacy standards set at the federal level, and programs for making good use of some of the socially valuable data mining that firms like Facebook do. … Facebook would have to rise to First Amendment standards rather than their own terms of service. The company could be regulated the way public utilities often are.

It’s thinking far more magical than my statements about education policy.

Were Facebook nationalized, its privacy problems would not evaporate. They would double. The obscure (and, for some, concerning) uses Facebook makes of data in commerce would be joined by secret uses of data and equivocal denials by military spymasters.

Would Facebook be prevented from “serving authoritarian interests”? Tell that to the activist/whistleblower who has been driven into the arms of Ecuador, of all countries, because he fears extradition to the United States.

Public utility regulation of social media has already been made mincemeat. Nationalizing Facebook is indeed a nonstarter.

“If only we elected the right people,” our friends on the left seem to think, “things would be better. If only our elected officials dedicated their lives to careful balancing of our precious American values, if we got a real regulator in there, if only they didn’t come under outside pressure…” If only, if only, if only.

It is quite conceivable to have some wise and neutral authority make better decisions about how every organ of society might operate. I think this dream is what brings our friends on the left to believe so strongly in increasing government control over society.

The thing is, it is quite impossible for that wise and neutral authority ever to exist.

We can go to the aphorisms—“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”; we can go to school: the public choice school of economics, specifically; or we can go to the lessons of history to show that there is not a beneficent government in the kitchen, lovingly brewing coffee for you, when you wake from your ‘democratic’ dream.

My dream of having education policy restored to its rightful place with localities and families is more likely—well, I’ll put it this way—less unlikely than a powerful, all-seeing, yet benign central government.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

A Soda Tax Completely, Utterly, and Totally Unrelated to Individual Choice

By
Sallie James

An interesting article in Slate today about the social psychology of “sin taxes”  and how people in general resent being told what to do. They may, in fact, react by consuming even more of the sinning item than before the nannies intervened, just to prove a point.

Unfortunately, the point of the article seems to be how to implement sin taxes – in this case, a soda tax – without annoying people to the point where the tax is counterproductive.  Something about “refram[ing]” the tax so it doesn’t tip people off as to its real purpose. The author concludes with this gem:

If we want to implement a sweetened beverage tax and maximize its effectiveness, the best approach would be to dissociate it from the larger issue of individual choice and focus on its immediate practical benefits, such as the revenue it produces. Over time, we’ll get used to it. We might even wonder why we didn’t do it sooner.

To end on a positive note, many of the comments are striking a distinctly libertarian tone.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Regulatory Studies

Lying and the Federal Government

By
David Boaz

Speaking of White House gate-crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi (as we were trying to think of an excuse to do, to increase blog traffic), Slate says they might be guilty of a federal crime. What crime? Well, possibly trespassing on federal property. Or maybe the “broad prohibition on lying to the federal government.” Title 18, section 1001 of the U.S. Code

can be used to prosecute anyone who “knowingly and willfully … falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact” or “makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” to the government. That could include lying about your arrest record on a government job application, claiming a fake deduction on your taxes, or telling someone you’re on the White House invite list when you’re not.

I can’t help wondering, is there any equally broad prohibition on lying by the federal government? If the federal government, or a federal agency, or a federal official “knowingly and willfully … falsifies, conceals, or covers up” information or “makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” – about the costs of a new entitlement, or how a candidate for reelection will act in his next term, or case for going to war – is that prohibited? Or are the rules tougher on the ruled than the rulers?

Topics: 
General, Law and Civil Liberties

Liberals in Power

By
David Boaz

Will Saletan writes that he and his colleagues at Slate seem to be increasingly engaged in libertarian sallies at the food police and other nanny statists. “Are we becoming conservative?” he worries, wringing his hands. Not quite:

We’re what we were five or 10 years ago: skeptics and fact-mongers with a bias for personal freedom. It’s the left that’s turning conservative. Well, not conservative, but pushy. Weisberg put his finger on the underlying trend: “Because Democrats hold power at the moment, they face the greater peril of paternalistic overreaching.” Today’s morality cops are less interested in your bedroom than your refrigerator. They’re more likely to berate you for outdoor smoking than for outdoor necking. It isn’t God who hates fags. It’s Michael Bloomberg.

Yes, that’s the same Jacob Weisberg who wrote In Defense of Government and blamed libertarians for the financial collapse. Older and wiser every day.

When Saletan takes on the stretches that the fat-tax advocates have to make to justify government regulation of what we eat, he would have done well to cite Glen Whitman’s Cato paper on paternalism.

And as genuine liberals recoil in horror at the actions of liberals with power, it’s a good time to read Damon Root’s new Cato Policy Report cover story on liberals who fled “right” from the economic and constitutional malfeasance of the New Deal. Let’s hope Saletan’s “new Whiskey Rebellion” spreads beyond the pages of Slate.

HT: Jacob Grier.

Topics: 
Government and Politics