Índex per July 2016 a Reason

Should we just go ahead and throw global warming deniers in jail? A surprising number of pundits and politicians suddenly seem to think that’s not such an outrageous idea. “Was it appropriate to jail the guys from Enron?” Bill Nye, a.k.a. the Science Guy, mused in an April interview with Climate Depot. “We’ll see what happens. Was it appropriate to jail people from the cigarette industry who insisted that this addictive product was not addictive, and so on?” Nye, the former host of a popular PBS show in the 1990s, maintains that those who doubt the severity of, and human impact on, the warming climate, “are leaving the world worse than they found it because they are keeping us from getting to work. They are holding us back.” In March,…

Bill Clinton wants you to know three things about the 1994 crime bill: He is proud of it, he is sorry about it, and it wasn’t his fault. In any case, he says, his wife had nothing to do with it. The former president’s position on the 22-year-old Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act is newly relevant now that Hillary Clinton, who enthusiastically supported the bill as first lady, is running for president as a criminal justice reformer. Depending on your sympathies, her husband’s take is either nuanced or incoherent. Speaking in Philadelphia on April 7, Bill Clinton was repeatedly interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters who blame him for contributing to the “mass incarceration” he and his wife now decry. He defended the crime bill as an appropriate…

Faced with innovation that operates outside of their control, many lawmakers can’t stop themselves from grabbing the steering wheel. Sometimes literally. “So, I’m in the Tesla,” Sen. Ben Nelson (D–Fla.) told a March hearing of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. “And we’re coming back across the Anacostia River and getting up on—on the bridge then to get on to the ramp on to 395. And I’m instructed in the driver’s seat: ‘Engage the autonomous switch.’ I click it twice. ‘Take your hands off the wheel.’ And so all of a sudden the car is speeding up and they say: ‘It automatically will go with the flow of the vehicles in the front and back.’ But now we are approaching the on-ramp on to 395 and it is a…

Three men stand behind presidential-looking podiums on a Fox News soundstage in midtown Manhattan. One is the former governor of New Mexico, who was the first major American politician to support legalizing marijuana. Another is a pioneer of antivirus software, whom Belize authorities still would like to question in connection with an unsolved murder. The third used to work in the building as a producer on the Andrew Napolitano–hosted show Freedom Watch, and is on record telling a hostile interviewer in 2015 that he swims in a “pyramid pile of pussy.” It’s March 29 in an already-weird election year, and a live studio audience of 50 libertarians is buzzing with anticipation. One of these three candidates will almost certainly be on the ballot across the country this November for the…

Set amid dusty sandstone-colored hills in northern Shaanxi, Yan’an is a hallowed place. Taken over by Communists at the end of the Long March in 1936, it served as the temporary Red Capital during the Second World War. Decades later, Yan’an had become the symbolic home of the ideal Communist man, one who merged with the collective in war and work alike. The “Yan’an spirit” heralded selfless dedication to the greater good, as people fused into a force powerful enough to move mountains. But when a team of propaganda officials arrived in Yan’an in December 1974, they were shocked to find a thriving and sophisticated black market. The country was eight years into the Cultural Revolution, a massive effort to purge Chinese society of bourgeois influences and move it closer…

The Google Play Store and the Apple App Store are filled with apps—CCW, Concealed Carry Weapon Laws, USA Carry, USA Firearm Training, Legal Heat, and others—that lay out the details of concealed and open carry laws in all 50 states. Sometimes their information is written by attorneys, so gunowning smartphone users can avoid potentially needing to hire an attorney. Some, such as USA Carry, also offer information on handgun maintenance and safety. Others, such as Concealed Carry Weapon Laws, stick to summaries of gun laws, searchable by state. Some offer news stories about gun owners, and many generate maps based on what kind of permit you have that will tell you where you can legally carry. Some will even guide you to local gun businesses and gun deals. The free…

“I’m a fifth-generation New Yorker and I care a lot about the city,” says Reason TV Producer JIM EPSTEIN. “I like covering local issues.” But Epstein, 39, is frustrated by government interventions that make “it harder and harder for people who aren’t rich to live here.” The $15 minimum wage passed in April, for instance, will eliminate jobs in one of the few industries where low-skilled immigrants can still find work in New York City, as Epstein explains in “Minimum Wage vs. the Carwasheros” (page 26). Manhattan Institute fellow JARED MEYER moved to Washington, D.C., shortly after graduating college in 2013, just as Uber was beginning to expand beyond its “black car” service. “At the time, very few people in policy focused on the regulatory challenges that disruptive platform technologies…

“Our big cities, even New York, could comfortably hold quite a few more families than they do. The reason they don’t is that rules and regulations block construction.” —liberal economist Paul Krugman, in a column for The New York Times, April 4 “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” —Sen. Jeff Sessions (R–Ala.), at a Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control hearing, April 5 “It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails.” —Justice Department spokes woman Melanie Newman to Ars Technica, reported March 29 “I’m a Democrat, so if you’re a Republican you’re going to disagree, but we need to take the…

In the February 1998 issue of reason, Richard Seder documented the rise of America’s powerful national teachers unions. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association had grown to a combined 3 million members, making public school teachers the most unionized group in the country. Unfortunately, the price of this power was lower public school quality and less long-term innovation. “By controlling the process, the unions control the pace of change while dictating what those changes will be,” Seder wrote, “whether or not they are in the interests of the teachers they represent.” Meticulously detailed contracts left principals without the flexibility to pursue new ideas. Uniform salary requirements kept those with high demand skills, particularly in science, technology, and math, from earning more. Union opposition to merit pay…

What do home Bible study classes, transgender bathrooms, lemonade stands, cat litter, and marijuana have in common? To the blind eye, not much—but in fact, they’re all things state and local governments are actively working to regulate. Recent legislation in North Carolina blocking cities from allowing trans individuals to use public bathrooms that are marked for the sex they identify as (instead of their biological sex at birth) has caused quite a ruckus. Many libertarians take issue with a state moving to quash a local ordinance—in this case, one written by the Charlotte City Council to allow transgender people to pee where the hell they want. This is hardly the only instance of a state government acting against cities that want to implement freedom-enhancing policies. But while states are rarely…

Many politicians are excited about autonomous vehicles—so excited that some have accidentally banned them in their attempts to promote the technology. In California and a handful of other states, lawmakers have outlawed fully autonomous vehicles in their comprehensive authorizing legislation. Fortunately, elsewhere legislators have rejected attempts to prematurely define autonomous vehicle technology and have opted for a much more thoughtful, piecemeal approach. California THE WORST In 2012, California enacted a comprehensive autonomous vehicle law, mandating the regulation of a variety of technologies, functions, and administrative procedures. California DMV officials charged with implementing the statute soon discovered the law actually outlawed fully self-driving cars. The legislature is actively blaming regulators, but for once, this is not the fault of unelected bureaucrats but rather the fault of elected incompetents. The legislature is…

“I am not a great fan of Uber—you can quote me on that,” declared Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders in August. The main reason he has “serious problems” with the ride-sharing service? It’s “unregulated,” he told Bloomberg. In this, if little else, Sanders finds himself in agreement with rival Hillary Clinton, who decried the “gig economy” in a major economic address around the same time last summer. On the face of it, the sharing economy should make people of virtually all political stripes feel warm and fuzzy. Nearly any 21st century stump speech is going to be full of buzzwords—entrepreneurship, fairness, choice, opportunity, consumer empowerment, flexibility—that best describe this fast-growing commercial sector. The vast majority of people who have taken an Uber, shopped on Etsy, or found a place to stay…

A vibrating piano score, moody lighting, and a generalized feeling of unease are pretty standard in a J.J. Abrams (Lost, Star Trek) production. But they sit oddly against the subject matter of his new nine-part documentary series, Moon Shot, on the companies participating in the Google Lunar X Prize competition. The series, which is available on YouTube, profiles companies with names like Part-Time Scientists, Team Plan B, and Astrobotic that are vying for $30 million in prizes for technological and entrepreneurial solutions to low-cost robotic space exploration. Coverage of space exploration errs on the side of dry technical exposition or bombastic nationalism (or too often, both) and Abrams has done a service by showing the human face and commercial motivations that drive the current phase of the race to the…

BLDZR: The Gospel According to Moses is a new well-intentioned but overly simplistic off-off-Broadway rock musical in the tradition of Rent. It dramatizes the rise and fall of New York “power broker” Robert Moses, who for decades was the nation’s most influential unelected official. Moses reshaped New York (state and city) by building beaches, parks, and highways. But he destroyed many neighborhoods to achieve his grand vision. The protagonist’s foil is writer and community activist Jane Jacobs, frequently credited with ending Moses’ grip on power when he tried and failed to build an expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village. Jacobs is referred to as a “commie” during the show, but in real life she had renounced her membership in the Federal Workers Union because “it was communist dominated.” Her opposition…

Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era, by Thomas C. Leonard, Princeton University Press, 264 pages, $35 What to do with George, your dear progressive friend who stoutly defends the minimum wage? One idea is to point out how it excludes low-productivity workers from jobs. (To the smart-aleck supposition that “monopsony” is widespread, and so the minimum wage raises employment, Café Hayek’s Don Boudreaux has challenged George to pick up the unlimited profits implied by the supposition. No dice so far.) Another idea is to try to explain the difference between a minimum wage, which interferes in voluntary deals, and a minimum income, which economists such as Milton Friedman and James Tobin have proposed. If you don’t like the income that poor people have, then tax…

Mixed martial arts Free to Fight 3COTT 3HACKFORD For nearly two decades, the state of New York has banned professional mixed martial arts (MMA) events, even as the sport has skyrocketed in popularity. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the premier MMA event production and promotion company, logged more than $500 million in revenue in 2014, according to Moody’s Investors Service. For nearly two decades, the state of New York has banned professional mixed martial arts (MMA) events, even as the sport has skyrocketed in popularity. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the premier MMA event production and promotion company, logged more than $500 million in revenue in 2014, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Though politicians have frequently maligned the sport for its brutality, their complaints did little to stop MMA’s cultural ascendance. Attempts…

ARE GOOD FOR THE U.S. ECONOMY Immigrants play an important role in the U.S. economy through entrepreneurship and consumption. Businesses Over half of U.S. startup companies valued at $1 billion or more were founded by immigrants. 51% 44 out of 87 COMPANIES 760 jobs per company on average Over 40% of companies on the Fortune 500 list were founded by immigrants or their children. FORTUNE 500 40% Immigrants employ 1 in 10 Americans. Consumers $2 TRILLION As consumers, immigrants pump over $2 trillion into the economy annually. 16% Asian and Latino immigrants account for 16% of the nation’s total purchasing power. for sources visit reason.com/immigrantseconomy…

Greg Lukianoff Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an organization that opposes speech codes and other forms of censorship on college campuses. He’s also an executive producer of Can We Take a Joke?, a feature-length documentary that premiered at the DOC NYC film festival last November. In March, Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie talked with Lukian off about what’s driving “one of the worst years for campus free speech” the Stanford Law School graduate has ever witnessed—and what his group is doing about it. Q: Let’s talk first about the campus situation. A: I have to say, this has been one of the worst years for campus free speech that I’ve seen in my entire career. FIRE was founded in ’99,…

“States should adopt an international, legally binding instrument that prohibits the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons,” declared Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) in an April statement. The two groups issued a report titled “Killer Robots and the Concept of Meaningful Human Control,” as experts in weapons and international human rights were meeting in Geneva to consider what should be done about lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS). It was the third such meeting, conducted under the auspices of the Convention on Conventional Weapons. What is a lethal autonomous weapons system? Depends on who you ask, but the U.S. definition provides a good starting point: “A weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.”…

Labor activists have long claimed that working conditions at New York City’s car washes are the worst of the worst. In the Big Apple, an estimated 5,000 men scrub and vacuum other people’s vehicles for a living. A decade ago, it was common for these so-called carwasheros, many of whom are illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, to earn $3 per hour plus tips, with no extra pay for overtime. Straight cash, off the books. When demand peaked in the winter months, they would often put in 12 hours a day, six days a week. Regulators paid little attention, so by and large car wash operators ignored labor laws. The city’s car washes will simply play catch-up with the rest of the country—replacing men wielding hoses and rags with…

The biggest development in Black Panther #1, the newly relaunched series featuring Marvel Comics’ first black superhero, wasn’t anything inside the issue, but the name on the cover: Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer and blogger for The Atlantic who recently won a MacArthur “genius grant.” Coates is a devout fan of superhero comics: Even before landing the Black Panther gig, he could often be found ruminating on comic book lore on Twitter. As a journalist his writing has often focused on nationhood, race, and identity. The combination makes him a strong fit for Black Panther, a super-powered costumed hero who is also the king of a highly developed fictional African nation, Wakanda. Coates’ first issue, which sold out a print run of 300,000 (a huge success for the current comics market),…

Attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution have a success rate of just 0.2 percent, according to a new temporary exhibit at the National Archives. Over 11,000 changes have been proposed over the last 225 years, but the criteria to actually alter our founding document have only been met 27 times. “Amending America” showcases not just the procedural requirements as outlined in Article V but many of the modifications groups have thought worthy of writing into constitutional text. Often they’ve involved imposing contemporary morality on future generations, as when people tried to ban, among other things, child labor, absenteeism in Congress, not telling “the whole truth,” and drunkenness. (A cheeky handwritten comment on the last proposal wonders why we don’t strike Saturday nights from the calendar, too.) But the ones that…

Why does our immigration system fail anyone who uses it? We’ve gathered reason’s best articles on the subject since 2006. This collection, featuring work by Nick Gillespie, Brian Doherty, Shikha Dalmia, Tim Cavanaugh, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and others, is intended to advance an informed discussion about realistic and workable reforms appropriate to America’s self-understanding as a Land of Immigrants—and to help, at long last, to put these reforms over the finish line. Head to reason.com/ebooks to download your copy for Kindle, iPad, or Nook today! reason Free Minds and Free Markets…