Inhaltsverzeichnis für December 2018 in Reason

“YOU’RE ABOUT TO be untricked,” boasted the opening line of a groundbreaking 1981 Reason investigation about high-profile chemical leaks in upstate New York. In the early ’80s, Love Canal had already become synonymous with corporate willingness to destroy the environment and human health in the name of profit. But careful reporting revealed the anti-corporate narrative was wrong; the primary malefactor wasn’t the greedy businessmen at Hooker Chemical but the Niagara Falls Board of Education, which developed a plot of land despite many warnings from Hooker about the presence of dangerous chemicals. Unfortunately, Reason’s story did little to change the anti-market tenor of the environmental reforms that followed. That’s because when a narrative is powerful and useful to highly motivated activists, it can be fiendishly difficult to roll it back. Zombie…

WHEN THE FREEDOM of Information Act (FOIA) was passed in 1966—about five years before public trust in government started to crater as a result of the Pentagon Papers and then Watergate—it was a landmark law and an exciting, promising new tool for reporters, researchers, and concerned citizens. More than 50 years later, it is a wheezing, arthritic artifact of more optimistic times. More people than ever want to know what the government is doing in their name and with their money. The number of submitted FOIA requests has steadily increased year-over-year, a trend that has only accelerated under the daily controversies of the Trump administration, which said it received roughly 800,000 such requests in 2017, a record. At the same time, despite recent legislation to strengthen the law, it’s more…

SHOPPERS IN VENEZUELA needed a stack of 9.5 million bolívar fuertes—equal to just $1.45 U.S.—to buy one kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of steak earlier this year. In summer 2018, the socialist-run country was experiencing an inflation rate of nearly 100,000 percent, leading President Nicolás Maduro to introduce a new currency: the bolívar soberano. (Each new bill is worth 1,000 fuertes.) Maduro has yet to figure out how to fix the other problem with shopping in Venezuela: The country’s shattered economy has left many stores nearly empty, making it all but impossible to purchase basic goods for any amount of cash.…

IF SAN FRANCISCO attempts to move forward with establishing supervised injection facilities (SIFs), places where those addicted to drugs can safely shoot up, it will have to do so without the state government’s blessing. In early October, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed A.B. 186, a bill that would have authorized the city and county to create such facilities. The sites, found in urban areas around the world but not yet in the United States, allow users to get high under the supervision of people who could help them in the event of an overdose. They also generally offer treatment options and access to social workers. In short, SIFs prioritize harm reduction over deterrence, and a 2014 report looking at 75 different studies found that the sites are successful in reducing…

IT IS 2012 in Washington state, where voters are facing an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. The airwaves reverberate with ads on both sides. At a glance, it’s not always obvious which side is which. One pro-legalization ad features an authoritative man who introduces himself as “the former chief federal prosecutor.” Initiative 502, he says, “brings marijuana under tight regulatory control.” In another 30-second spot, a “Washington mom” looks up from her newspaper and coffee to declare that she does not like marijuana personally, but “what if we regulate it? Have background checks for retailers? Stiff penalties for selling to minors?” In Alaska’s 2014 legalization campaign, a police officer intones: “Passing Ballot Measure 2 will allow law enforcement to focus on serious issues in Alaska.” Nevada’s spots in 2016 urge…

THESE ARE NOT encouraging times for libertarians on campus. Studies show millennials’ political views are much more reliably liberal than those of the population at large, and college students increasingly lean to the progressive left. In 1981, about 20 percent of freshmen described themselves as “liberal” or “far-left” (as opposed to “middle of the road” or “conservative”); today, more than a third do. Students and professors who dissent from leftist orthodoxy often keep their views to themselves, for fear of suffering social or reputational harm. That can make it difficult for libertarians to identify each other. Some of the most elite colleges in the country maintain academic departments that teach, with a quasi-religious fervor, that capitalism is the root of all the world’s problems. The activist left increasingly views free…

THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO, Reason contributor Thomas Hazlett and Senior Editor Manny Klausner sat down with University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) economist and social scientist Thomas Sowell for a sprawling interview about race, gender, poverty, economics, and what he viewed as the government’s many failed and misguided attempts to lift up poor minorities. Sowell talked about his history as a Marxist, his frustrations with working in government, and why he rejects the label “libertarian,” preferring instead to describe himself as “a person who dissents from the current liberal orthodoxy.” That interview occurred not long after the publication of one of Sowell’s most influential and widely read books, Knowledge and Decisions, which resulted in The New York Times labeling him “America’s most distinguished black social scientist.” In the years since, his…

ON A SATURDAY night in July, I swallowed a tiny square of paper containing about 100 micrograms of LSD and took a walk on the Las Vegas Strip. On the way back to my hotel, the garish lights suddenly seemed lovely. I stopped short, a beatific smile on my face. “America is awesome!” I thought, enchanted by the economic freedom and entrepreneurial energy that had created this entertainment mecca. Surrounded by roving packs of bros and bachelorettes, I resisted the urge to pass judgment on the tastes and preferences of the people who flock to Las Vegas from all over the world in search of a good time. The main point was that they mostly had found what they were looking for, whatever that might be, which is no small…

Joshua Browder was drowning in parking fines when he realized the British government’s labyrinthine appeals process could be navigated more quickly by software than by a person. As a teenager he built the DoNotPay app to do just that. But three years later, Browder has much bigger ambitions: He’d like to see robot lawyers replace humans, doing all manner of legal work for (virtually) free. Now 21, the Stanford-trained wunderkind is developing artificial intelligence–driven algorithms to help American and British residents navigate the web of laws that can turn a small mistake, such as a traffic ticket accidentally left unpaid, into a bench warrant. And he’s particularly interested in helping people make sense of the two countries’ immigration systems. “One of the biggest projects we have coming up is helping…

IN 1960, SIX years before the start of Medicare and Medicaid, America spent about $27 billion on health care. That figure represented just under 5 percent of an economy that was about $543 billion in total. By 2016, combined public and private spending on health care had reached more than $3.3 trillion, or nearly 18 percent of the total economy, with almost half the bill paid by government. Now, thanks to factors such as increased drug prices and an aging population, official projections have health care spending increasing indefinitely. In the five decades after the passage of America’s two largest health care entitlements, that sector has become a maw, eating everything in its path. Health spending has reshaped the nation’s job market, its household finances, and its public budgeting. Between…

JUNE’S SUPREME COURT ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) freed public sector workers from being required to pay dues to unions to which they do not belong. It was kind of a big deal, and a single sentence in Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion hints at what might be the next major legal fight over American unionism. “The State may require that a union serve as exclusive bargaining agent for its employees,” Alito wrote. He then called that arrangement “a significant impingement on associational freedoms that would not be tolerated in other contexts.” The associate justice was likely talking about something called “exclusive representation.” Section 9 of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947—the federal law that set many of the rules still governing American…

IF YOU WERE drafted in 1968—and in fiscal year 1968, about 334,000 Americans were drafted into the U.S. armed forces—the government controlled the next two years of your life. Assuming you lasted two years, that is. In 1968 more than 16,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. (The Vietnamese had it worse. Their death count that year was well over 200,000.) Even if you weren’t conscripted, the government owned a piece of you. Officials used draft deferments to steer people in what were seen as socially beneficial directions, such as teaching and engineering. A host of other rules limited people’s lives in more direct ways. Entrepreneurs faced artificial entry barriers aimed at protecting entrenched industries from competition. If you wanted to buy a truck and start hauling goods for a…

IT WAS MAY 1993. Barely two years earlier, a failed coup attempt had marked the last gasp of Soviet Communism. The Cold War was over. Germany was reunified. The Baltic countries were independent. In the former Yugoslavia, Sarajevo was under siege. Bill Clinton, a New Democrat who spoke the wonky language of neo classical economics, was in his first months as president. Ross Perot’s upstart candidacy had made the budget deficit a high-profile issue. A free trade treaty with Mexico and Canada was awaiting ratification. The European Union would be born in November. Later that year, I’d visit Silicon Valley and ask computer whiz Mark S. Miller how Reason should “get on the internet,” as our techie friends kept telling us to do. I had a Compu-Serve account. Should we…

THE LIVING STANDARDS of Americans have vastly improved during the past 50 years, with the quality of available consumer products steadily rising even as their prices have steeply fallen. In 1968, Americans could buy a top-of-the-line 19.3-cubic-foot refrigerator for $499.95. In 2018 dollars, that’s $3,695. Today, consumers can purchase a 21-cubic-foot Kenmore with external water and ice dispenser for $999.99 at Sears—a 73 percent price drop, in real terms. The downward trend in television prices has been even more dramatic. In 1968, an Admiral Color 23-inch TV cost $349.95, or about $2,586 today. Consumers had to walk across the room to switch between three national networks. Best Buy now sells a 24-inch smart TV for $139.99—nearly a 95 percent price reduction. It comes with a remote as well as instant…

ANYTIME YOU HEAR the words “for the safety of our precious children,” grab your little ones and run. Someone who thinks he cares more about your kids than you do is about to make you grovel. If he’s from the government, run faster. Chicago mom Kim Brooks learned that lesson a few years back when she was hurrying to get everything ready for a plane trip home from visiting her parents in Virginia. Brooks knew that if her son didn’t have a set of headphones, it would be a miserable flight for him (and anyone seated near them, I would guess), so she drove to the store to buy a pair. When the boy said he didn’t want to come in with her, she made the kind of split-second decision…

JAMES MADISON ONCE said that the job of the U.S. Supreme Court was to act as “an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Unfortunately, the justices have not always seen their role in the same light. Here are five cases from the past five decades in which a majority of the Court fell down on the job. 1. Smith v. Maryland (1979) THE FOURTH AMENDMENT guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” But according to the Supreme Court’s 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Lawyers call this the third-party doctrine. Prosecutors and police…

THE NEW REPUBLIC was launched in 1914 by three of the most famous intellectuals of the Progressive era: Walter Lippmann, Herbert Croly, and Walter Weyl. National Review was introduced in 1955 by an oil tycoon’s son named William F. Buckley, already notorious for provocative books criticizing Yale and defending Joseph McCarthy. The Weekly Standard was founded with Rupert Murdoch’s money 40 years later by former Dan Quayle speechwriter William Kristol, whose legendary magazine-editor father Irving was considered the godfather of neoconservatism. Prestigious journals of opinion often emanate from prestige. Not so Reason. The magazine you are reading was the brainchild of a 20-year-old Boston University student nobody had ever heard of named Lanny Friedlander, who stapled together and mailed out the first mimeographed issues from a hopelessly disorganized room at…

WHEN IT COMES to individual liberty, the United States has become a much better place in the 50 years since Reason magazine was born. Transformative technological advances have given Americans from all walks of life the opportunity to enjoy comforts and conveniences that only a particularly prescient futurist could have predicted. Women and minorities are unquestionably better off than they were in 1968, thanks to a largely successful though admittedly unfinished fight against discrimination. But while our ability to live as we please has been enhanced, the massive growth in the size and scope of the federal government remains a large—and growing—threat to Americans’ overall well-being. In 1968, total inflation-adjusted federal spending was $1.2 trillion (in 2018 dollars), or 19.8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This fiscal year,…

REIHAN SALAM IS not a grim guy. In fact, he comes across as preternaturally ebullient in person. Yet his book Melting Pot or Civil War?: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders predicts a dark future for this nation of nations if it doesn’t rethink its immigration policies to keep out the wretched and huddled masses. Salam admits no costs or unintended consequences to his program—only benefits that, in his telling, include making the country more socially cohesive, as conservatives want, while paving the way for a new egalitarianism, as liberals want. The cost of ignoring his advice, meanwhile, would allegedly be nothing short of a racial civil war. THE BASIC STORYLINE goes something like this: Admitting large numbers of poor, linguistically challenged immigrants with nothing to…

IN MARCH 1981, I delivered a comedy routine cum keynote address at a convention of Yippies. I asked the audience a rhetorical question: “How would you like to be a Secret Service agent guarding Ronald Reagan, knowing that his vice president, George Bush, is the former head of the CIA?” Satire would soon be outdistanced by reality: At the end of the month, John Hinckley shot the president, hoping to impress the actress Jodie Foster and take her bowling. On April 2, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner quoted a dispatch from the New Solidarity International Press Service, an outfit run by followers of the unlovable conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. “A group of terrorists and drug traffickers linked to Playboy magazine,” it said, “met in New York City’s Greenwich Village area and…

50 YEARS AGO BEHOLD THE VERY first pages of the debut issue of Reason magazine, published in the summer of 1968. With hand-drawn masthead lettering and typewritten text, founding editor Lanny Friedlander previews the content on the pages to follow—reflections on violence, racism, and poverty, three subjects that have continued to be of great and terrible concern in the decades since—and introduces to the world the journalistic philosophy that is to guide his creation. “Others preferred to be incomprehensible and incoherent,” he writes. “We don’t. Others preferred to ignore your mind. We won’t.” For 50 years, the writers, editors, and artists of Reason have sought to make good on the promises first articulated in this inaugural issue.…