Eleutherian

"Why are New Yorkers nihilists?"

"Because the light at the other end of the tunnel is New Jersey."


I heard this joke in a World Views course in college, and it came to mind immediately when I read that the northern city of Paterson, NJ is debating a curfew on adults (a first in the nation). The city's police officers are incapable of doing their job, so they want to mark every resident of the city as a potential criminal.

The city is currently spending taxpayer money to legally justify the action. However, since the ACLU has promised to file suit against the city, it is a waste of time and money. The city would be better off spending all this money to improve their police force instead of using it to harass its residents and then to defend this harassment in court.

I recently finished reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (found on my Libertarian Reading List). Other than being one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read and one of the greatest dystopian works of literature, Little Brother has had me pondering the issues between privacy and security. The book combined the themes of surveillance in Orwell's 1984 and information processing in Kafka's The Trial. This will be the first of several posts on privacy.

A recurring theme in the book was the sense of powerlessness felt by the innocent victims of government security measures. Daniel J. Solove, in I've Got Nothing to Hide, defines this as a problem of information processing (like in airports):

[Problems of information processing] affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but they also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.

The relationship of a citizenry with its government institutions holds important implications for human development. According to Ronald Inglehart:

...socioeconomic development, self-expression values, and democratic institutions work together to broaden autonomous human choice....The process starts with socioeconomic development, which reduces constraints on autonomous human choice by increasing people's economic, cognitive, and social resources.

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.

After several weeks of tinkering, I finally have the new site design up and running. If you notice any flaws/errors, please comment or email me. No new content today...be back with more tomorrow!

Pennsylvania plans to build four new prisons in coming years. Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) were originally assured that the prisons contracts would not utilize project labor agreements (PLAs), effectively prohibiting nonunion contractors form working on the projects. However, strong lobbying by labor unions influenced the Pennsylvania Department of General Services to reverse their promise.

Even without a PLA, Pennsylvania's outdated prevailing wage law makes it difficult for nonunion contractors to receive large, government contracts. The Keystone Research Center (a union-funded think tank) supports the use of project labor agreements. According to its labor economist, Mark Price:

The work requires a broader range of training. The union sector succeeds in tracking people into the industry and training them.

This statement flies in the face of evidence in Ohio and Kentucky where prevailing wage laws were overturned for school projects, and over 95% of school districts found improvements or no change in construction quality for nonunion contractors. Additionally, studies have found that construction workers in market wage states are 6.3% more productive than workers in prevailing wage states. Since wages are directly related to productivity, prevailing wage laws are counterproductive.

For example, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 102 is picketing the construction site of a Giant food store because their nonunion contractor is not paying prevailing wages (i.e. union wages). However, only projects receiving state government funding are required to pay prevailing wages. In Monroe County, the prevailing wage for electricians is 127.04% higher than the market wage. It is no wonder a nonunion contractor won the contract.

Returning to the prison contracts, the total estimated cost to taxpayers for the four prisons comes to $800 million. If Pennsylvania repealed the state prevailing wage law, taxpayers would save a significant amount of money on the contracts. For the two prisons in Montgomery County, the estimated cost comes to $400 million. Market wages would reduce the cost by 15.58% or $62,320,000.

The Forest and Centre County prisons are expected to each cost $200 million. Prevailing wages inflate the cost of the Forest County prison by 14.29% ($28,580,000) and the Centre County prison by 17.78% ($35,560,000).

Pennsylvania's prevailing wage law inflates the total cost for the four prisons by 15.81% or $126,460,000.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has ignored the religious freedom of the Catholic Church in ruling that Belmont Abbey College must include health care coverage for artificial contraceptives for employees of the college.

Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society sent a letter to the EEOC, stating:

It is ironic that the federal agency responsible for protecting against discrimination has so blatantly engaged in an inexcusable violation of religious liberty in its Belmont Abbey ruling.

No Catholic college or other institution should be required by government to violate the Catholic Church’s clear moral teachings.

Belmont Abbey President William Thierfelder adds:

As a Roman Catholic institution, Belmont Abbey College is not able to and will not offer nor subsidize medical services that contradict the clear teaching of the Catholic Church.

Reilly and Thierfelder make good points, but I'm not entirely convinced. A Catholic college hires non-Catholic employees. Offering contraceptives in the employee health care plan is not the same thing as endorsing their use.

However, there is a legitimate issue regarding government mandates increasing the cost of health care. When the government requires a health care plan to include additional coverage, it increases the cost of the coverage.

The Transportation Security Administration began collecting additional data on airline passengers taking domestic flights this week to aid in catching terrorists. If a terrorist is clever enough to enter the United States, the terrorist is also clever enough not to get caught on a domestic flight.

Storing more data on innocent U.S. citizens may not reduce false positives as intended. It may actually increase the number of false positives caused by clerical errors and chance similarities.

This brings me to a point I touched upon yesterday when discussing a hypothetical libertarian airline. Passengers do not need to show ID before boarding an airplane. After all, there are countless stories of passengers who lost or had their ID stolen while on vacation. The government should not force airlines to turn these passengers away. If airlines turn passengers away of their own regard...hello, Libertarian Airways.

John Gilmore fought the government on the ID issue and lost to a secret government mandate. The text of the mandate is still not available to the public.

According to security expert Bruce Schneier:

The TSA focuses too much on specific tactics and targets. This makes sense politically, but is a bad use of security resources. Think about the last eight years. We take away guns and knives, and the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and knitting needles, and they put explosives in their shoes. We screen shoes, and they use liquids. We take away liquids, and they'll do something else. This is a dumb game; the TSA should stop playing....Oh, and stop the ID checking—the notion that there is this master list of terrorists that we can check people off against is just plain silly.

Last year, my friend Kevin over at Questing for Atlantis and I attended a conference at the Heritage Foundation on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and civil liberties. Michael Chertoff was the keynote speaker.

Chertoff spoke on why it is necessary for the DHS to largely ignore civil liberties in protecting the country. He seemed to get annoyed at the line of questions he received, particularly with regard to airline security. In an attempt to take a shot at the apparently libertarian-leaning audience, Chertoff wondered aloud who would want to travel on an airline without security checks. Kevin and I quickly acknowledged that we would gladly frequent such an airline.

Here are some characteristics of such a libertarian airline:

• No ID would be necessary for domestic travel (national laws regarding passports and visas will obviously still apply)
  
• Flights will be less expensive due to less overhead for security
• No security lines before reaching your departure gate
• You may bring any amount of liquids/gels in your carry-on luggage (When traveling alone, I will often only bring a carry-on to minimize my time in the airport. I strongly dislike having my toothpaste confiscated)
• Passengers may carry concealed weapons (Who will pull a gun on a plane full of gun-carrying passengers?)

The benefits of a libertarian airline can be summarized as less expensive, less time, and less invasion of privacy.

If you don't feel such an airline is safe, then fly on another airline.