October 22, 1999

by Peter J.M. Orvetti

Any Volunteers?
Private Eyes On The Web
Subcontinental Sanctions

Any Volunteers?

President Clinton praised participants in the AmeriCorps program this week as the paid volunteer program marked its fifth anniversary. Over 150,000 people have participated as volunteers, spending a year teaching, working with police, constructing houses and more. But even five years on, the program is widely criticized by Republicans for investing funds in work that many volunteers do without government stipends as a reward.

Doug Bandow criticized the program in a March commentary, "Taking the Voluntary Out of Voluntarism": "Shortly after taking office, President Clinton proposed a multimillion dollar program to hire volunteers: AmeriCorps. As with so many programs, it seemed to be animated by the best of intentions. Service has a long and venerable history in the U.S. Americans' generosity and penchant to organize to meet community needs were both noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic, Democracy in America. And so it continues today. Three-quarters of families give to charity; some 90 million adults volunteer. But the President has never been satisfied without expanding government, so he convinced Congress to put tens of thousands of 'volunteers' on the federal payroll. The resulting Corporation for National Service has turned service into a job, one that, counting the educational tuition voucher, pays more than other entry-level employment. Some participants admit that they chose AmeriCorps as a good job option to help them get through college precisely how Bill Clinton sold the program. Nor are taxpayers likely to get their money's worth from AmeriCorps. Supporters cite impressive statistics about trees planted and beaches restored, but even the government finds it hard to spend billions of dollars without doing some good. Moreover, the true price of such jobs, however attractive they appear, is the opportunity cost, that is, the value of the other activities forgone.

"A more subtle problem is the likely long-term effect of federal funding on the volunteer groups and their supporters. The availability of government support is likely to skew the activities of eligible organizations in an effort to obtain more aid. Moreover, turning the job of funding private groups over to the state encourages people to further abdicate their civic responsibilities. Thoughtfully choosing which charities to support, and monitoring the activities of those charities, are themselves important forms of voluntarism."

The Cato Handbook for Congress concurs: "People working together, volunteering their own time and resources, to solve problems within their communities are part of what makes America unique. The AmeriCorps program, operated by the Corporation for National Service, perverts that notion by paying 'volunteers' $7 an hour-plus educational vouchers to be used to retire student loan debts-to do community service. Furthermore, it is sometimes difficult to describe volunteers' activities as 'community service.' For instance, a nonprofit group in Colorado forced AmeriCorps members to draft and distribute political fliers attacking a city councilman who was up for reelection. Other AmeriCorps members were bused to an Earth Day rally in Maryland in 1996. The $600 million a year Corporation for National Service and its thousands of paid volunteers should be taken off the dole immediately."

Private Eyes On The Web

The Federal Trade Commission is determining how it will execute the Child Online Protection Act, AP reports. For the next two years, the government will allow businesses on the Internet to send e-mail to parents for permission to ask personal questions of their children but only if that information is not shared with other companies. The ruling is intended to protect the privacy of children under 13 on the Internet. Many marketers fear economic fallout, as the standards impact Web sites aimed at children that offer online games in exchange for personal information then used in marketing.

But "[w]e have no good reason to create new privacy rights," Solveig Singleton wrote in the Cato Policy Analysis "Privacy as Censorship: A Skeptical View of Proposals to Regulate Privacy in the Private Sector". "Most private-sector firms that collect information about consumers do so only in order to sell more merchandise. That hardly constitutes a sinister motive. There is little reason to fear the growth of private-sector databases. What we should fear is the growth of government databases. Governments seek not merely to sell merchandise but to exercise police and defense functions. Because governments claim these unique and dangerous powers, we restrict governments' access to information in order to prevent abuses. Privacy advocates miss the target when they focus on the growth of private-sector databases."

An earlier Cato Policy Analysis addressed the Communications Decency Act's child protections, many of which are mirrored in the new regulations: "Perhaps government could claim a compelling interest in protecting unsupervised children, children whose parents do not purchase or use filtering software? Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the plurality in Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. FCC, a case involving the constitutionality of restrictions on the transmission of indecent material over cable television, restates that protection of children is a compelling or at least important interest, and suggests, without further analysis, that such interest allows the federal government to intervene to protect children of 'inattentive' parents. There are substantial reasons to believe that protecting children from a danger that the childrens' parents do not recognize as particularly grave should not amount to a compelling interest. As pointed out above, filtering software is affordable to anyone who can afford a computer system. Nonsupervising parents have implicitly decided that exposure to material of a sexual nature probably will not harm their children enough to bother with. If the parents do not find the interest sufficiently compelling to take action, there is no reason to think that government should."

Subcontinental Sanctions

The Clinton administration is prepared to permanently waive trade sanctions imposed on India after the Asian nation joined the nuclear club, but will not do the same for Pakistan at this time because of that nation's instability following last week's coup, AP reports. The sanctions were imposed on both nations last year after they conducted nuclear test explosions. "Until we see a restoration of democracy in Pakistan, we have made it clear we would not be in a position to carry on business as usual with Pakistani authorities," said Karl Inderfurth, assistant secretary of state for South Asia.

Aaron Lukas wrote in "Two Cheers for Sanctions" that the effectiveness of the sanctions was unclear: "In the past 30 years, U.S.-backed economic sanction schemes have failed in the overwhelming majority of cases. They're likely to fail against India, too; only modest economic punishment will be inflicted. Moreover, the purpose of additional sanctions is unclear. Indian leaders have already signaled that they will end testing and stop stockpiling plutonium if sanctions are lifted and they are allowed to buy U.S. civilian nuclear technology. That's a reasonable request, especially since India has never exported nuclear and missile technology to rogue regimes. Fortunately, many of the measures directed against India so far can't properly be called sanctions. Instead, they simply halt wasteful foreign aid and corporate welfare spending…

"It's time for Congress to realize that disrupting private business transactions is not an effective foreign policy tool. Sanctions damage domestic interests at least as much as the target country and have little chance of inducing policy changes. Acting unilaterally, Congress squanders U.S. diplomatic capital and punishes the wrong people. The United States has already strongly signaled its displeasure with India by cutting off aid and export financing. Those measures should be made permanent; anything more would be a mistake."