Eleutherian

Reuters reports that African Union leaders met ahead of the UN summit on climate change to agree on a request of $67 billion per year from "rich nations." The request rests on the argument that "rich nations," not African countries, are responsible for the climate change in Africa.

I won't deny the existence of climate change. However, it is more a regional phenomenon than a global one. For example, many environmentalists cite the melting glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro as a sign of global warming. These people overlook basic science. The area surrounding Mt. Kilimanjaro has been largely deforested by the local population. Due to the deforestation, less water evaporates from the trees, providing less snowfall to replenish the glaciers each year on the mountain.

Deforestation and land degradation is rampant throughout much of the African continent. It was not caused by "rich nations."

As for the request of $67 billion per year, this sum will have no effect at best. In 2005, the Center for Global Development released a study, finding that short-impact aid worked better than aid that had a long-term goal. The study also found that aid "had a zero effect on growth when it reached 8 percent of the recipient’s GDP, and after that the additional aid had a negative effect on growth."

So, up to a certain point aid can work, but efforts past that actually impede growth. Therefore, the continued aid given to the average African country is actually harming it, with 15% of its GDP coming from aid in the 1990s. Most likely, that percentage has increased, especially with the Millennium Development Goals.

The additional $67 billion per year will likely cause more harm than good.

This post concludes a series on privacy, stemming from Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother (on the Libertarian Reading list).

A common response in support of trading privacy for security is "I have nothing to hide" or some variation to that regard. However, the "nothing to hide" argument assumes privacy is about secrecy/deception, or as Bruce Schneier puts it, "...they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not." Rather, privacy is most often an issue of accountability and trust.

Here's an extreme example of this point from Little Brother:

There's something really liberating about having some corner of your life that's yours, that no one gets to see except you....There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about [getting naked or squatting on the toilet]. But what if I decreed that from now on, every time you went to evacuate some solid waste, you'd have to do it in a glass room perched in the middle of Times Square, and you'd be buck naked?

However, one of the handicaps in the battle against privacy invasion is the vague definition attributed to "privacy." Daniel J. Solove does not attempt to provide one standard definition, instead referring to privacy as a "web of related problems."

This web goes beyond the typical complaints of surveillance, including information processing and dissemination. Solove expanded, "The problems still exist regardless of whether we classify them as being 'privacy' problems."

Since "I have nothing to hide" is a poor argument, Solove rephrased it to make it stronger:

The NSA surveillance, data mining, or other government information-gathering programs will result in the disclosure of particular pieces of information to a few government officials, or perhaps only to government computers. This very limited disclosure of the particular information involved is not likely to be threatening to the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Only those who are engaged in illegal activities have a reason to hide this information. Although there may be some cases in which the information might be sensitive or embarrassing to law-abiding citizens, the limited disclosure lessens the threat to privacy. Moreover, the security interest in detecting, investigating, and preventing terrorist attacks is very high and outweighs whatever minimal or moderate privacy interests law-abiding citizens may have in these particular pieces of information.

While this argument is stronger, it is still flawed. First, the original assumption of "hiding a wrong" remains. Second, intense data mining, especially impersonally by computers, looks for irregular/nonstandard trends in collected data. Essentially, this data mining approach creates suspicion out of irregular/nonstandard behavior. This promotes conformity and discourages free expression, as the surveillance of even legal activities discourages their use.

Advocates of security over privacy will often justify their position on data mining by touting the technology as the solution to finding a needle in a haystack. However, the combination of surveillance and processing created the haystack in the first place. These techniques also create a problem known as the false positive paradox.

Wikipedia provides a good definition and example:

If there is a medical test that is accurate 99% of the time...about a disease that occurs in 1 out of 10,000 people, then the expected value of testing one million people would be the following:

Healthy and test indicates no disease (true negative)
1,000,000 * (9999 / 10,000) * .99 = 989901
Healthy and test indicates disease (false positive)
1,000,000 * (9999 / 10,000) * .01 = 9999
Unhealthy and test indicates disease (true positive)
1,000,000 * (1 / 10,000) * .99 = 99
Unhealthy and test indicates no disease (false negative)
1,000,000 * (1 / 10,000) * .01 = 1

However, as Doctorow points out in Little Brother:

Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent.

Terrorism tests aren’t anywhere close to 99 percent accurate. More like 60 percent accurate. Even 40 percent accurate, sometimes.

What this all (means) is that the Department of Homeland Security (has) set itself up to fail badly. They (are) trying to spot incredibly rare events - a person is a terrorist - with inaccurate systems.

Let's assume that a terrorist test is 80 percent accurate. In New York City, the test would indicate false positives for over 4 million citizens. Instead of finding 10 terrorists, the test would label millions of citizens, who likely love their country, as enemies of the state.

Unfortunately, the U.S. judicial system has consistently ruled in favor of security over privacy. Solove concludes, "...the lack of Fourth Amendment protection of third party records results in the government’s ability to access an extensive amount of personal information with minimal limitation or oversight."

The courts ruled this way because plaintiffs were unable to meet the court's demand to prove harm caused by privacy invasion. However, like the environment, overtly harmful single events rarely occur. Rather, harm occurs as very small events compile over time.

The extent of harm caused in an individual case should not be the judicial litmus test for its legality. In Smith v. City of Artesia (1989), the court ruled, "Privacy is inherently personal. The right to privacy recognizes the sovereignty of the individual." Privacy holds a social value; it need not conflict with the interests of society as a whole.

I touched on this social value in a previous post:

Data from the World Values Survey has dispalyed a significant correlation between confidence in state institutions with effective democracy (Confidence in non-state institutions shows no correlation). If government security measures continue to intrude on privacy, the relationship between citizens and government institutions will continue to decline.

The courts risk further eroding institutional trust if they do not, at the very least, begin upholding the privacy clauses in contracts. One of the very few proper roles of government is upholding contracts, maintaining the trust necessary for the free market to work effectively.

Privacy is not all about secrecy and deception ("hiding a wrong") - although it can be used for such purposes. Privacy is, first and foremost, about trust and accountability.

USA Today reported yesterday that the recession has increased demand for publicly funded burials. Why does the government fund burials in the first place?

First, it is difficult to separate burials from religious practices. The government has no business funding religious activity.

This leaves the question of what to do when a person dies. The solution is simple - donate the body for scientific research. Hospitals, universities, and other scientific institutions are always accepting donations.

If a family cannot afford a burial or cremation, the government has no responsibility to provide one for them. A family can donate a body to science and still celebrate the life (or mourn the passing) of the deceased with a quiet, inexpensive service (minus body).

Even if money isn't a problem, donation should still be an option. Even as a man of faith, I recognize the fact that I will not care what happens to my body after I die. Respect for the dead applies only to their memory, not their bodies. I will have my body donated to science, perhaps allowing a researcher or medical student to grok my life. The loved ones I leave behind can celebrate/mourn in whatever way they see fit. The government will not have a hand in my burial (unless, of course, they kill me).

The idea for this post came from a video by the Motorhome Diaries crew interviewing Steve Horwitz, blogger and professor of economics at St. Lawrence University. I recommend checking it out (under five minutes).

As recently as one hundred years ago, in many more developed societies, husbands had nearly total control over the family. Going back another hundred years, families were essentially enterprises. Today, it's difficult to think in such callous terms, but each family member was essentially a unit of production. Families had many children, not out of love, but out of necessity. At the time, many children increased economic security through additional units of production and to ensure that parents had a safety net if they reached old age.

Economic freedom allowed families to hire workers outside the family (by extension, allowing children to find work outside the family). Previously, the only work found outside the family was through an apprenticeship with a tradesman, guild, or clergy. However, they required family connections. This is a similar process found in labor unions today. In postmaterialist societies, unions are backward (i.e. reactionary), antiquated entities, continuing a practice that is no longer necessary in more developed countries.

Additionally, increased economic freedom reduced the average family size (so carbon Malthusians should give credit where credit is due). Children are no longer viewed as a necessity (except in Russia, which speaks volumes as to the country's level of economic freedom). Rather, children are born out of a loving couple's honest desire for children. Instead of forcing them to work, parents are now able to invest in their children, demonstrating societies' changing views with regard to children.

Increased economic freedom changed families for the better. In today's society (at least in more developed countries), arranged marriages are a rare and antiquated practice. Families no longer require the political and/or economic benefits of marriage. Marriage has become about love over finances (for the most part).

This same process (one might call it the human development process) has increased homosexual rights, particularly with regard to same-sex marriage. As marriages are no longer about economic/political partnerships and families no longer need to rely on children as units of production or to provide a future safety net, it is financially realistic for gay and lesbian couples to marry.

At the end of the video, Dr. Horwitz makes the following statement:

You have people on the right, conservatives, who love (or they say they love) free markets but don't like these sort of changes [e.g. homosexual rights] that capitalism has brought forward....If you're going to really have markets, you can't stop this kind of ongoing cultural change.

On the other hand, people on the left have the opposite problem. They like the cultural change but refuse to give credit where credit's due, which is to recognize the role that capitalism has played in bringing those about. To the extent that they're stifling capitalism, they're stifling the very dynamism that produces those social changes they like so much.

The hypocrisy by both major political parties is rather amusing (and sad). Katherine Mangu-Ward with Reason Magazine touched on a related issue regarding homosexuals and the major political parties, stating:

But you know who your real friends are, LGBTers. And we're going to help you get through this. Besides, who knows better than libertarians what it's like to be in a long-standing lopsided love affair with a mainstream political party?

She's right, LGBTers. Given that the libertarian platform has formed the basis for your rights, it's in your self-interest to support the continuation of this platform - libertarianism.

The United States government has a monopoly on marijuana research. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is the only government institution legally allowed to provide researchers with marijuana. Unsurprisingly, the government uses its monopoly status to only fund and/or provide marijuana for studies seeking to depict marijuana's negative attributes.

According to Reason Magazine:

Even when researchers have received Food and Drug Administration approval for their studies, NIDA frequently refuses to sell them the pot they need to carry out their research, essentially exercising a veto on the FDA’s decisions.

With NIDA bogarting America’s only federally sanctioned weed, the number of privately funded medical cannabis studies currently taking place in America right now is exactly zero. Of the 14 studies investigating marijuana in any way, 13 are NIDA projects looking into drug abuse.

This is too bad, as not only does it put the United States at odds with Latin America, but also censors viable research linking marijuana use to reduced risk of cancer.

A recent study by researchers at Brown University, Boston University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Minnesota has found that even with cigarette smoking and drinking alcohol, "10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma..."

Lead researcher Dr. Donald Taskin admitted that the government funded his team's research to find negative health effects of marijuana use. Instead, Dr. Taskin stated:

What we found instead was no association (between marijuana smoking and cancer) and even a suggestion of some protective effect.

At this point, I'd be in favor of (marijuana) legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm (than marijuana).

Continuing my series on privacy vs. security, I would like to draw your attention to a recent post at the Blog of Bile. New York City police officers were harassing would-be subway passengers, forcing a bag search or turning individuals away from using mass public transportation (no wonder public transportation can't turn a profit).

However, while the city's police officers were taking time away from pursuing actual criminals to harass innocent pedestrians by invading their privacy, their efforts were completely ineffective. Not every subway station was checking bags. A terrorist would have to be completely incompetent to simply not walk a few blocks to station without a police bag check, affording him/her complete access to the NYC subway system.

New York City wasted taxpayer money and police resources to create a false sense of security by invading the privacy of innocent pedestrians.

Vogue model Liksula Cohen wants to sue an anonymous blogger for calling her a 40-something skank who "may have been hot 10 years ago." A New York court ruled in her favor, ordering Google to unmask the anonymous blogger, making her open for a defamation suit.

First, I can't believe a U.S. court ruled to unmask an anonymous blogger for stating her opinion. Justice Joan Madden rejected the defendant's claim that blogs, "serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting."

This Canadian model is apparently accustomed to Canadian defamation law, where the courts will convict and imprison citizens for speaking their opinion about other people.

The only leg Cohen has to stand on is New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). However, this precedent only applies to defamation of public officials. Cohen's ego doesn't stretch that high. Additionally, the decision in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974) removes liability for defamation when the defendant is stating an opinion. As far as I know, stating that someone is hot or not is still an opinion.