There is considerable academic research on the growth-maximizing level of government spending. Based on a good bit of research, I’m fairly confident that Cato’s Richard Rahn was the first to popularize this concept, so we are going to make him famous (sort of like Art Laffer) in this new video explaining that there is a spending version of the Laffer Curve and that it shows how government is far too large and that this means less prosperity.

The Wall Street Journal reports Saturday that Turkey and Pakistan are blocking, monitoring, and threatening such websites as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, and Amazon. At least you’ve got to give them credit for going after the big guys! The Journal notes, “A number of countries in the Islamic world, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, have banned Internet content in the past for being sacrilegious. But those countries have authoritarian governments that closely monitor the Internet and the media.” Of course, it’s not just Islamic countries that try to protect their citizens — or subjects — from dissenting thoughts. China has been involved in well-publicized battles with Google, Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV, and other media companies.

But it’s hard to make your country a part of the world economy and keep it closed to outside thoughts and images. North Korea may be able to do it — though recent stories suggest that even the benighted people of the world’s most closed society know more about the world than we have previously thought. Countries that don’t want to be North Korea have a harder time. The latest example: Thomas Erdbrink reports in the Washington Post that Murdoch’s Farsi1 satellite station is

pulling in Iranian viewers with sizzling soaps and sitcoms but has incensed the Islamic republic’s clerics and state television executives.

Unlike dozens of other foreign-based satellite channels here, Farsi1 broadcasts popular Korean, Colombian and U.S. shows and also dubs them in Iran’s national language, Farsi, rather than using subtitles, making them more broadly accessible. Its popularity has soared since its launch in August.…

Satellite receivers are illegal in Iran but widely available. Officials acknowledge that they jam many foreign channels using radio waves, but Farsi1, which operates out of the Hong Kong-based headquarters of Star TV, a subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corp., is still on the air in Tehran.

Viewers are increasingly deserting the six channels operated by Iranian state television, with its political, ideological and religious constraints, for Farsi1’s more daring fare, including the U.S. series “Prison Break,” “24” and “Dharma and Greg.”

Those who want to build a wall around the minds of the Iranian people denounce Murdoch and his temptations:

Some critics here hold Murdoch responsible for what they see as this new infestation of corrupt Western culture. The prominent hard-line magazine Panjereh, or Window, devoted its most recent issue to Farsi1, featuring on the cover a digitally altered version of an evil-looking Murdoch sporting a button in the channel’s signature pink and white colors. “Murdoch is a secret Jew trying to control the world’s media, and [he] promotes Farsi1,” the magazine declared.

“Farsi1’s shows might be accepted in Western culture … but this is the first time that such things are being shown and offered so directly, completely and with ulterior motives to Iranian society. Does anybody hear alarm bells?” wrote Morteza Najafi, a regular Panjereh contributor.

The Iranian state — Akbar Ganji calls it a “sultanate” in Weberian terms — has tried to block access to Farsi1. It jams foreign channels, it sends police out to confiscate satellite dishes, but it can’t seem to prevent many citizens from tuning in to officially banned broadcasts.

Way back in 1979, David Ramsay Steele of the Libertarian Alliance in Great Britain wrote about the changes beginning in China. He quoted authors in the official Beijing Review who were explaining that China would adopt the good aspects of the West — technology, innovation, entrepreneurship — without adopting its liberal values. “We should do better than the Japanese,” the authors wrote. “They have learnt from the United States not only computer science but also strip-tease. For us it is a matter of acquiring the best of the developed capitalist countries while rejecting their philosophy.” But, Steele replied, countries like China have a choice. “You play the game of catallaxy, or you do not play it. If you do not play it, you remain wretched. But if you play it, you must play it. You want computer science? Then you have to put up with striptease.” 

North Korea and Burma choose to “remain wretched.” That’s not the future Iran’s leaders want. But they too will find it difficult to keep their citizens in an information straitjacket while participating in a global economy. 

Footnote: In all this discussion of how authoritarian governments try to protect their citizens from offensive images, alternative ideas, and what’s going on in the rest of the world, I am for some reason reminded of the “30 Rock” episode in which NBC executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is trying to figure out how to deal with a high-strung performer. Another actress tells him, “You’ve got to lie to her, coddle her, protect her from the real world.” Jack replies,“I get it — treat her like the New York Times treats its readers.”

Oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico from the site of the BP oil rig, yet the Obama administration refuses to relax a protectionist U.S. shipping law known as the Jones Act that makes it more difficult for foreign-owned ships to help contain the damage.

According to an article in the Daily Caller this week by our former Cato colleague Chris Moody, foreign-owned ships have offered to assist the American-owned fleet in skimming oil and other tasks. But some of the foreign ships have hesitated to enter U.S. waters because of the 1920 law that reserves inter-coastal shipping to vessels that are built, owned, and crewed by Americans.

Although cloaked in terms of national security, the act is really a protectionist measure designed to insulate U.S.-based shipbuilders, ship operators, and their unionized crews from global competition.

Three GOP senators representing Gulf states have introduced legislation to temporarily suspend the Jones Act in the region of the spill. So far, President Obama has refused to act, despite his assurances that he is doing all he can to contain the damage.

The Jones Act is such an egregious trade barrier, I devote a whole page in my 2009 Cato book Mad about Trade describing the damage it imposes on the U.S. economy. The Jones Act is most costly during times of war or other emergencies. As I write on page 163:

Defenders of the Jones Act claim it promotes national security by maintaining a merchant marine fleet in case of war. But Jones Act ships tend to be old and of limited use in times of real emergencies. In fact, during the 1991 Gulf War, only one Jones Act ship actually went to war; President George H. W. Bush suspended the law because it was interfering in the efficient transfer of goods. President George W. Bush again suspended the law in 2005 so that fuel and other needed supplies could more quickly reach New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. What is an expensive indulgence for domestic shippers during peacetime becomes an intolerable liability for the nation during time of emergency.

President Obama should suspend the Jones Act now, followed by a vote in Congress to repeal it permanently.

Raymond Raad, physician and coauthor of the Cato study, “Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation,” has an oped at the Daily Caller arguing that the United States could save thousands of lives per year by allowing individuals (or insurance companies, or the government) to pay people who agree to give their organs to patients who need them.

Raad cites the experience of Iran, which has eliminated its waiting list for transplantable organs. (The United States has 83,000 people waiting for kidneys alone. Forty percent will die waiting, and those who do receive a kidney die sooner because their health deteriorates while waiting.) He also cites the three main criticisms of compensating donors/​sellers — “One, the prospect of payment can be so tempting that it blinds donors to the risks involved; second, it may lead only poor people to donate; third, it may turn altruistic donors away” — and shows that recent polling data contradicts all three.

Raad concludes:

Since this is the best data we have, and with 5,000 people expected to die this year on the waiting list, we owe ourselves at least a geographically limited experiment in monetary incentives for kidneys.

For more on how eliminating this government-imposed price controls would save lives, read Arthur Matas’ Cato study, “A Gift of Life Deserves Compensation: How to Increase Living Kidney Donation with Realistic Incentives,” and Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care, and How to Free It.

Why do public schools create lots of conflict? Because, as I labored to explain in my Policy Analysis Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict, they force people with diverse views to support a single system of schools, making battles over whose values the schools will teach almost inevitable. Well, in Shenandoah, Iowa — where the people are in a huge row over sex ed – district superintendent Dick Profit summarized the problem much more colorfully, and effectively, than I have:

It’s a political hot potato; it’s a religious hot potato; it’s a parental hot potato…It’s all of these things that cause a crack in the system between society, parents and schools, and we’re still required to do it.

Diane Ravitch, give Mr. Profit a call.

Among the many ways ObamaCare will increase the cost of health insurance, it will require all Americans to purchase unlimited annual and lifetime coverage. The latter requirement takes effect this September. The former will require consumers with non-grandfathered health plans (i.e., about half of the market) to purchase coverage with an annual limit on claims of no less than $2 million by 2014, and unlimited annual coverage thereafter.

In interim final regulations and a “fact sheet” released this week, the Obama administration claims that the mandate to purchase unlimited annual coverage will increase the cost of employment-based and individually purchased coverage by an average of about 0.1 percent. That average glosses over the fact that these mandates will have zero effect on consumers who already purchase the required coverage. Consumers who are actually affected by the mandates will see larger premium increases.

For example, the regulations indicate that the phased-in mandate to purchase unlimited annual coverage will increase premiums for the 18 million Americans affected by a weighted average of 0.15–0.18 percent. Even that weighted average hides the fact that this mandate will cause premiums to rise as much as 6.6 percent for 278,000 Americans. This mandate will increase premiums by even more — and for more people — once it is fully implemented. But the administration did not include an estimate of the premium impact beyond 2014.

The Obama administration also estimates that the mandate to purchase unlimited lifetime coverage, when spread across all insured workers, will increase premiums by about 0.5 percent. Yet that requirement would not affect the 40 percent of insured workers who already purchase unlimited lifetime coverage. When spread across the 93.6 million affected workers, the average premium increase rises to 0.8 percent. The increase will be greater than that for the 26.5 million workers with lifetime coverage limits at or below $2 million, and greatest for the 1.5 million workers with limits at or below $1 million. But the administration offers no estimates for these workers.

Spread across the entire individual market, the unlimited-lifetime-coverage mandate would increase premiums by an average of 0.75 percent, according to the administration. But since the mandate won’t affect 11 percent of that market, the average impact on the 8.7 million people affected will also be 0.8 percent. Again, the 300,000 consumers in that market with lifetime limits at or below $2 million will face larger premium increases. And again, the administration provides no estimates specific to these consumers. Which is a shame, because — aside from the uninsured — it is these consumers on whom ObamaCare will place the greatest burdens.

All told, ObamaCare’s unlimited-coverage mandates will increase the premiums of affected consumers by an average of about 1 percent, and as much as 7 percent for some consumers. Or maybe more: the administration acknowledges that a “paucity of data” about the impact of these mandates means that there is “tremendous,” “substantial,” and “considerable” uncertainty about the mandates’ costs.

John Stossel’s weekly show has a new time: 9 p.m. and midnight every Thursday on the Fox Business Network, plus Fridays at 10 p.m., Saturdays at 9 p.m. and 12 midnight, and Sundays at 10 p.m. (Don’t get Fox Business? Tell your cable company you want Stossel!)

On this week’s show Stossel will interview 76-year-old Otis McDonald about his lawsuit seeking the right to protect himself with a gun, which is now before the Supreme Court. He’ll also talk to John Lott about the new edition of his book More Guns, Less Crime.

While you’re waiting for Thursday night, check out Stossel’s show on Milton Friedman, which featured interviews with Johan Norberg, Tom Palmer, and me. Or indeed his classic ABC special on politics and limited government, where I got even more air time!