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Cato Policy Report, January/February 1998

Cato Studies:


Concealed-Carry Gun Laws Reduce Crime

In 1987 Florida passed a law allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms in public. Since that time, 22 other states have enacted similar statutes. In "Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun" (Policy Analysis no. 284), Jeffrey Snyder, a New York-based attorney, demonstrates that such laws have not produced an increase in violent crime, as many people predicted, but rather a decrease. "Concealed-carry reform," writes Snyder, "reaffirms the basic idea that citizens have the right to defend themselves against criminal attack. And since criminals can strike almost anywhere at any time, the last thing government ought to be doing is stripping citizens of the most effective means of defending themselves."


FDA v. Consumer Choice

No manufacturer can market a medical device, alter manufacturing processes for a device, or propose a new use for an existing device without the prior approval of the Food and Drug Administration. Delays caused by the lengthy and burdensome approval process have resulted in thousands of deaths, reports Noel D. Campbell, an economist at Gordon College in Georgia, in "Replace FDA Regulation of Medical Devices with Third-Party Certification" (Policy Analysis no. 288). To counter the FDA's monopoly, Campbell proposes that the certification of medical devices be turned over to private organizations, in much the same way electrical products are now approved by the privately funded Underwriters Laboratories. Certifying organizations are not only likely to be more efficient than the FDA; they also would be more exacting in their safety requirements. "Certifying organizations, anxious to maintain their reputation as guardians of safety and efficacy, will protect consumers from a 'race to the bottom' and from 'fly-by-night' manufacturers," writes Campbell. "The incentives for certifiers in a free market are far more effective for generating good results than are the incentives for bureaucrats with monopoly powers."


No Crisis in Child Care

Recently, the Clinton administration hosted the White House Conference on Child Care, at which many participants urged the federal government to increase subsidies for day care and to more tightly regulate the industry. In "The Advancing Nanny State: Why the Government Should Stay Out of Child Care" (Policy Analysis no. 285), Darcy Olsen, entitlements policy analyst at the Cato Institute, shows that such actions are unnecessary. She writes that "96 percent of parents are satisfied with their child care arrangements; child care fees have not changed in real terms since the late 1970s; and the number of child care providers has kept pace with the swelling demand for child care." Given the facts, she concludes, "Congress should resist any attempt to increase funding for child care and to impose federal standards on providers and parents."


Transportation Subsidies Promote Congestion

Randal O'Toole, executive director of the Thoreau Institute and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, argues in "ISTEA: A Poisonous Brew for American Cities" (Policy Analysis no. 287) that the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act has promoted traffic congestion and thus increased air pollution. The act, originally passed in 1991 and scheduled to be reauthorized in 1998, allocates billions of dollars from the federal gasoline tax to mass transit programs such as light rail and subways. While those systems make great pork-barrel projects for urban politicians and planners, they are very inefficient. They carry only a tiny fraction of commuters and cost from 10 to 100 times more per mile to build than do roads. Increasing congestion on the roads--which, O'Toole claims, is the goal of many supporters of ISTEA--will not result in significant shifts by commuters to mass transit. It will only result in millions of lost hours and environmental damage as commuters sit in gridlocked traffic. "The only way out of the current dilemma," concludes O'Toole, "is for the federal government to take itself out of the transportation planning and funding process. That is to say, it is time to repeal ISTEA."


Fast Track Would Liberalize Trade

Since 1974 every U.S. president has been granted authority to negotiate trade treaties for an up-or-down, no-amendments vote in Congress. In "The Fast Track to Freer Trade" (Cato Briefing Paper no. 34), Daniel Griswold, director of trade and immigration studies at the Cato Institute, argues that Congress should once again grant the president such "fast-track" authority. "The case for passing fast-track trade legislation is simple," writes Griswold. "The most promising approach for advancing free trade in today's global economy is through negotiated trade agreements, and those agreements will be difficult if not impossible to reach if the president of the United States is denied fast-track authority." Griswold maintains that Congress should resist the temptation to pass anything other than a "clean" fast-track bill. "Language that would allow the president to hold free trade hostage to labor and environmental demands should be rejected" because such demands could provide "yet another pretext for protectionism."


Costs of NATO Expansion Greatly Underestimated

As the U.S. Senate prepares to debate admitting the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to NATO, it should consider just how costly expansion will be, says Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute. In "The High Cost of NATO Expansion: Clearing the Administration's Smoke Screen" (Policy Analysis no. 286), Eland maintains that even if one accepts two dubious assumptions made by the Department of Defense--that the current benign threat environment will continue and that no NATO forces will be permanently stationed in new member countries--the administration's estimate of the total cost of expansion is wildly inaccurate. Instead of $27 billion to $35 billion, real total costs are likely to be about $70 billion, and they could reach $167 billion. And instead of $1.5 billion to $2 billion for the U.S. share, a more realistic estimate is at least $7 billion. "To guard Congress's constitutionally mandated powers of the purse and the Senate's informed advice and consent on treaties," Eland concludes, "Congress has a right to a reasonably accurate and methodologically rigorous analysis of how much expanding the alliance is likely to cost. The administration's cost estimate is woefully inadequate in both regards."


Privatize Internet Domain Names

Milton Mueller, associate professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, reports in "Internet Domain Names: Privatization, Competition, and Freedom of Expression" (Cato Briefing Paper no. 33) that the registration of Internet domain names mushroomed from 400 per month in 1993 to as many as 70,000 per month in 1996. To ensure that such dynamic growth is not stifled and that efficient registration takes place in the future, he proposes that the government remove itself from the matter entirely. Currently, a private company, InterNIC, working under contract to the National Science Foundation, is responsible for the assignment of domain names. Mueller concludes, "Resolution of the domain names issues will determine whether the people who control the Internet of the future will be in the state sector or the private sector, whether national governments can control Internet content, and whether the Internet will be controlled by state monopolies or market forces."


Anti-Dumping Laws Are Anti-Competitive

In "Anti-Dumping Laws Trash Supercomputer Competition" (Cato Briefing Paper no. 32), Christopher M. Dumler, an international economist based in Washington, D.C., argues that "by imposing punitive tariffs of up to 454 percent, the U.S. Department of Commerce has effectively killed import competition in the domestic supercomputer market." Dumler reports that in the past 17 years the International Trade Administration has found foreign companies guilty of dumping in 96 percent of cases filed. "Given that consumers have benefited from constantly falling computer prices," Dumler concludes, "the worst policy prescription is to reduce competition and keep prices paid by consumers and taxpayers alike artificially high. We must dump the whole U.S. anti-dumping code."


Hungary-Serbia Relations: A Potential Tripwire

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty obligates signatories to assist a fellow member that falls victim to aggression from any source. Thus, as a result of admitting Hungary--which has long-standing problems with three of its neighbors--alliance members, including the United States, could potentially find themselves embroiled in dangerous conflicts in Eastern Europe, warn Ted Galen Carpenter and Pavel Kislitsyn in "NATO Expansion Flashpoint No. 2: The Border between Hungary and Serbia" (Foreign Policy Briefing no. 45). Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, and Kislitsyn, a former research assistant at Cato, show that the danger of armed conflict between Hungary and Serbia is particularly serious, because of Belgrade's continuing mistreatment of Hungarian citizens in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. "The prospect of U.S. forces slipping into a Bosnia-style morass on the Hungarian-Serbian border," argue Carpenter and Kislitsyn, "is one reason among many that the U.S. Senate should refuse to ratify the proposal to expand NATO."

This article originally appeared in the January/February 1998 edition of Cato Policy Report.