Eleutherian

By November, every classroom (over 3,000) in the Jersey City school district will have a hand sanitizer dispenser in an effort to combat the dreaded swine flu, and teachers will be required to force students to use them multiple times each day.

The worst part of this nonsense is that people are applauding these unnecessary, wasteful, and potentially hazardous decisions. As I previously wrote:

...the difference now is that there is no backlash against the schools for enacting it. Public schools have finally found a parental fear they can exploit...

Students will be forced to apply hand sanitizer before entering class in the morning, before and after lunch, and after every use of the restroom. The school has not stated what the punishment will be for students who decide they don't want to be forced to sanitize their hands and refuse to use it.

After quickly researching the negative side effects of excessive hand sanitizer use, it seems you can easily categorize the products as either alcohol-based and non-alcohol-based. The products without alcohol run the risk of creating drug resistant strains of various diseases - certainly a very bad thing.

Alcohol-based products must contain at least 60% alcohol to effectively kill bacteria (any less and you're just moving the bacteria around on your hands). Excessive use over several years has led to reports of arthritic-like pain. Additionally, this level of alcohol is highly flammable. I feel sorry for the poor students using Bunsen burners after lunch.

Finally, there have been numerous reports of alcohol intoxication from ingesting hand sanitizer. Intoxication can occur by simply licking your hands after applying the hand sanitizer. But it's ok...it's not like children ever put their hands in their mouths...

Besides, as Jersey City Superintendant Dr. Charles T. Epps stated, forcing students to apply hand sanitizer is the "best way to keep them safe."

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In other news, Chinese universities are forcing international students to take their temperature every day and report the results to the university. Getting ideas New York and New Jersey?

It is a natural process for modernization to reduce the influence of traditional belief systems. Such a tradition hinders progress by favoring traditional practices over developing a system based on the rule of law, sacrificing individual freedom and self-interest. These points are supported by the thorough analysis by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel in their book Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy:

The shift from traditional to secular-rational values becomes slower and stagnates, while another change becomes more powerful – the shift from survival to self-expression values, through which people place increasing emphasis on human choice, autonomy, and creativity.

The Confucian tradition fit China well for its stage of development when it was largely an agrarian society. Before agrarian societies reach proper levels of industrialization, farmers are at the mercy of nature (or in many societies, gods of the earth) for their existential security. Farmers in China found this sense of security in the Confucian tradition and trust in a strong central government.

Every society begins to shift away from traditional beliefs and practices once a certain point of industrialization is reached. Yes, it is a good thing that China has moved away from such a traditional system that hindered its growth and development. However, history has consistently shown that top-down reform movements orchestrated by the central government are not necessary to produce such a change. As a result of the infamous Cultural Revolution, economic growth stagnated or declined, the education system halted (with illiteracy reaching as high as 40% in some areas), priceless cultural artifacts were destroyed, and an estimated 400,000 to 3,000,000 people lost their lives. These atrocities could have been avoided had the natural course of modernization been followed.

The only beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution were the Communist Party. According to Friedrich von Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom:

The most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.

As a result of the revolution, the Confucian tradition, which already valued a strong central government, was replaced by a more secular belief structure through the use of extensive government propaganda, reprogramming, and occasionally violence. It was risky to destroy a system that already favored authoritarian rule to institute a new, secular system. Inglehart and Welzel have stated:

But these secular beliefs are no less dogmatic than religious ones. Secular beliefs and doctrines do not necessarily challenge unlimited political authority; they usually legitimize it, as did fascist and communist ideologies.

The Cultural Revolution was only necessary as means for the Communist Party, specifically Mao Zedong, to further consolidate power over the people.

Of course, perhaps even Confucius would agree with this quote on the virtues of self-interest by the American environmental essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson:

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

If not Confucius, then perhaps the leaders of the Han dynasty would agree with this statement, as is implied by the historical records of Sima Qian:

When all work willingly at their trade, just as water flows ceaselessly downhill day and night. Things will appear unsought and people will produce them without being asked. For clearly this accords with 'the Way' and is in keeping with nature.

I believe Emerson, who greatly appreciated environmental symbolism, would agree with this statement, as would the great free market economists of our times. This appears to be the Chinese historical equivalent of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”.

However, I do wonder if perhaps Sima Qian, in writing “the Way” (note the capitalization), was not referring to market forces but rather to Daoism, which began during the Han dynasty. In fact, this passage from his historical account seems to conform to the Daoist concept of wuwei (无为). The forces of nature, like a river, work harmoniously with the world. Problems only arise when outside forces (such as government) exert its will against it, disrupting the harmony.

Oregon State University recently released a study linking carbon emissions to human reproduction. Besides providing fodder for China's population control agencies, the report contains a common economic fallacy. I previously posted on the same fallacy with regard to carbon abatement.

The study concludes:

When an individual produces a child - and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future - the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.

Under current conditions in the United States, for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent - about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.

Apparently, carbon Malthusianism is the next big theory in population control. Thankfully, the study's authors state that they do not support government efforts to control population; they simply want to make people aware of (guilty for?) their actions (having sex).

However, their study fails to consider how couples will spend their extra money that would have otherwise been used to raise their children. According to MSN Money:

For 2004, the newest data available, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that families making $70,200 a year or more will spend a whopping $269,520 to raise a child from birth through age 17.

The report's authors failed to determine how couples will spend this quarter-million dollars and the resulting carbon emissions. Additionally, you must incorporate the future loss to the labor force. This has drastic consequences, as China will experience in coming decades.

In 2050, China's population will reach its peak, given current fertility rates. The country will begin to feel the effects of population aging. As an increasingly larger percentage of the country’s population enters old age, the available workforce declines and the medical and social costs of supporting such a demographic increase drastically.

A Chinese friend just informed me that Eleutherian Blog is blocked in China. Some of her friends paid money for a DNS to access blocked pages. Free proxies are available, but the speed is not as good.

She also pointed me to a site that covers China's media: danwei.org (which is also blocked in China).

In recent years, China has eased on its tight-fisted control over Internet access to certain social networking sites. Typically, access would only denied leading up to certain infamous events such as the Tiananmen Square student protests. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears to have changed their policy direction. Several prominent social networking sites have been blocked in China since as early as March of this year.

Wikipedia supplies an ongoing list of blocked websites in China. Here is a sample:

• Chinese Wikipedia (certain articles are also blocked in English Wikipedia)
• YouTube (since March 2009 - previously blocked several times)
• FlickR
• Yahoo
• certain Blogspot blogs (I am currently unaware if this blog is accessible in China. I will post an update when I know.)
  

The Associated Press article also lists the following sites as currently blocked in response to the ethnic uprising in turbulent Xinjiang Provence. Apparently, China is willing to take actions that the Iranian government was either unwilling or unable to do during their protests.

• Facebook
• Fanfou (Chinese site similar to Twitter - Twitter was recently unblocked)

Thankfully, prominent Chinese bloggers have not remained silent over the increased government invasion into their web access. According to Wen Yunchao, a popular blogger from Guangzhou (a large city in southern China, near Hong Kong):

I am especially pessimistic about this fall and next spring. I expect they will be more and more restrictive because they have yet to come up with a good way to manage the Internet. They are aware that it has this great power and they are afraid of it.

I will post updates on any major developments, but don't expect any kind of uprising in China over this. They are still at least 10-20 years away from the kind of mass-social unrest we saw earlier this year in Iran.

Government attempts to legislate morality has been an all-too-common theme around the world. No country seems immune to the unwarranted desire to dictate the morality of its citizens, including the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Russia, and now Ukraine.

The Ukrainian ministry of culture (read: censors) voted 9-5 to completely block the release of 'Bruno' in the country. They stated, "The film contains unjustified showing of genital organs and sexual relations and shows homosexual acts and homosexual perversions in an explicitly realist manner." They fear the movie's themes "could damage the morality of citizens [emphasis added]."

Ignoring the fact that bootleg copies of the film are likely already available throughout the country, after reading Ukraine's constitution, I see no statute that gives the government authority to legislate morality in the country (same as in the United States, et. al.). In fact, Article 4 states:

Human rights and freedoms and their guarantees determine the essence and orientation of the activity of the State. The State is answerable to the individual for its activity. To affirm and ensure human rights and freedoms is the main duty of the State.

Additionally, Article 15 declares, "Social life in Ukraine is based on the principles of political, economic and ideological diversity," and, "Censorship is prohibited [emphasis added]."

In the U.S., 'Bruno' topped the box office in its opening weekend, grossing over $30 million (while being shown in approximately half as many theatres as the Transformers and Ice Age sequels, but this is a result of private sector censorship - NOT public sector censorship - Fahrenheit 451, anyone?).

In China, films cannot promote sex, crime, violence, or gambling in order to pass government censorship requirements. However, they have shown a willingness to ease these restrictions, as China was the only country to show the 2007 film 'Casino Royale' completely uncut (no sex, crime, violence, or gambling there!).

This week, Russia's Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has ordered the closing of all gambling facilities across the country (except for specialized zones in four remote regions). The economic effects are staggering: 500,000 jobs and $1 billion in tax revenue lost.

According to the general manager of Metelitsa, one of the closed casinos, "We were hoping with the current financial crisis that there would be some leniency for two or three years, but they didn’t do it. It’s hard to understand why this decision was made in the first place." One gambler at the casino stated, "It's a stupid law."

Putin insists that the measure is meant to control Russians' gambling problem. This is just another case of a government attempt to legislate morality. In this matter, the economic costs are quite clear. The $1 billion that once flowed into Russia's coffers are now crossing boarders to casinos in the relatively freer countries of Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Georgia.

I received word from a friend in China late Wednesday night (Thursday morning in China) that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) "in all its wisdom" (to quote my friend) decided to block access to Gmail.

Apparently, this is part of China's renewed crackdown on Internet pornography. According to the Wall Street Journal, enforcement have grown so strict, even websites on sexual health face restrictions. It appears that Google has finally put its foot down (fingers crossed) and has refused to further censor its content in China to prevent users with Chinese IP addresses from accessing pornographic material through its search engine.

Of course, an easy way to get around this is to use either a web proxy (like this or this) or use a proxy from a free list server. These methods are very popular among Chinese students and tech-savvy adults.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Trade Representative Ron Kirk issued a letter to the Chinese government on a related subject: the "Green Dam Youth Escort" filtering software. The software will come pre-installed on all new computers sold in China beginning July 1st. However, the government has come down a bit after citizen reacted strongly against a requirement to actually use the software. Unfortunately, not all citizens will know how to deactivate the software.

I feel obligated to begin this post by stating that I know far more about Chinese affairs than I do of Iranian affairs. Having stated that, we must take caution in making comparisons of the current events in Iran to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Since the dust has yet to settle on the Iranian situation, let's focus on the perception of these current events within China.

Little has been reported on the Chinese reaction to the protests in Iran because, frankly, there has been little media exposure of these events within mainland China. As James Fallows reports:

Over the past six weeks, as H1N1/swine flu has been waning as a front-line concern in most countries, it has been end-of-days news inside China. And right now...when Iran's fate is dominant news in much of the world, it's a second- or third-tier item in the official Chinese media.

When the government-controlled media does mention the unrest, the focus rests on Iran's claims of western interference in their domestic affairs - a tune the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knows well. (However, the Global Times has reported on the recent violent crackdown by security forces).

I have maintained friendships with several Chinese citizens from the eight months I spent as a student in China. According to one, now a graduate student at a major Chinese university, the students know a problem in Iran exists, but the Chinese language media has been restricted from even mentioning it. This censorship has upset many students, but the Chinese government has two key factors in their favor right now (and neither involve the expansive reach and power of the CCP):

1. Final exams - Most Chinese students are in the midst of studying for their final exams which will take place over the next two weeks. With their minds on their books, the Chinese government does not have much to worry about from the long politically-inactive student population.
2. The economy - Many students simply don't care about any international situation apart from the global economic recession. According to my friend, "Chinese students concern more about future jobs rather than Iran."

While you could view this as a setback on the road to freedom in China, the consequences for the Chinese government are potentially important. The government's reliance on censorship is no longer an effective means of preventing the free flow of information to its populace. The information is available. The Chinese people just have too many other factors influencing their inattentiveness to the Iran situation. It may not be so next time.