Tabla de contenidos para October 2018 en Reason

IN MILTON FRIEDMAN’S memoir, written with his wife and partner Rose, he recounts the story of the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society in the late 1940s. “Although all of the participants shared the same basic values,” Friedman writes of a crew that included Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, and Karl Popper, “they were by no means agreed on how to counter the attack on those values, or on the politics required to implement them.” This disagreement culminated in a particularly touchy meeting where the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, frustrated with the direction of the conversation, stood up, declared “You’re all a bunch of socialists!” and stomped out of the room. If that is what happens when the gods gather at Olympus, what hope is there for peace among mere…

IT WOULDN’T MAKE much sense to require employees at Best Buy to understand the inner workings of vacuum tubes. Or to mandate that Apple Store staffers be fluent in the ancient language of telephone switchboards. Yet Florida says “hearing aid specialists” must pass multiple tests and be certified to conduct a full audiological exam, essentially quizzing them on skills and tech dating back to the 1950s. Those requirements are completely unnecessary for the proper fitting and testing of modern hearing aids, which are radically different than the obtrusive, potentially painful devices of your grandparents’ era. Today’s aids are sleek mini-speakers that nestle inside the ear canal. They can be configured over a Bluetooth connection with a computer or smartphone. And making people take antiquated classes limits access to hearing assistance…

“WE’RE NOT PRIMARILY advocating a slightly different public policy from other people,” declared Ludwig von Mises Institute senior fellow and popular podcaster Tom Woods. “We’re encouraging people to look at the world in a refreshing new way.” Woods was speaking at a raucous gathering hosted by the growing Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party (L.P.) down the street from the party’s biennial national convention in New Orleans this summer. “So yeah, we won’t get the 70 million votes, but maybe we get 1 million people who say, ‘I never looked at the world the same way again after I listened to those people.’” That basic mission conflict—quixotic electoral vehicle or galvanizing educational project?—has gnawed at the Libertarian Party ever since its humble beginnings in 1971. But now that the L.P.…

AFFIRMATIVE: I’m a Vegetarian and You Should Be, Too WORLDWIDE EACH YEAR, human beings torture and kill approximately 56 billion animals for our gastronomic pleasure. Two years of factory farming slaughters more animals than the total number of human beings who have ever existed on the earth. I believe meat consumption is, in almost all actual cases, morally wrong. My basic reasoning is simple and obvious: (1) pain and suffering in itself is generally bad; (2) it is wrong to cause an enormous amount of bad for the sake of relatively minor benefits for oneself; (3) human meat consumption causes enormous pain and suffering for the sake of relatively minor benefits for us; therefore, (4) human meat consumption is, on the face of it, wrong. This strikes me as about…

WHEN THEY STARTED planning Our Towns in 2012, it looked like James and Deborah Fallows had found a clever new way to explore the heart and soul of flyover country. For the next four years, with James at the controls of their $600,000 single-engine prop airplane, the married pair of Atlantic writers intermittently dropped in on about 30 small towns and cities, from seaside Eastport, Maine, to James’ hometown of Redlands, California. Sometimes going back once or twice, sometimes staying for a week or even three, the couple explored the civic and socioeconomic health of such disparate American places as metropolitan Columbus, Ohio, and dusty Ajo, Arizona. They sipped local craft beers with the hippest, brightest, most progressive residents to find out how they were resurrecting deindustrialized towns, handling waves…

“Cancer took 65 pounds off of me and beat the hell out of me,” says Wilbert “Billy” Tauzin, the former congressman from Louisiana’s third district. “Now I’m watching patients use medical marijuana products to get through that a lot easier than I did, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, why didn’t we have that opportunity 15 years ago?’” After serving in Congress from 1980 to 1995 as a Democrat and from 1995 to 2005 as a Republican, Tauzin made his way through the revolving door to PhRMA, the lobbying powerhouse that represents the American pharmaceutical industry. Now 75, Tauzin is living a third—some might say fourth—act as an advocate for marijuana reform with LenitivLabs, the medical cannabis company founded by TV host Montel Williams. At this year’s Cannabis World Congress and Business…

THE NATIONAL BIOENGINEERED Food Disclosure Standard, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2016, was billed as a compromise that would put an end to years of litigation over the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food. Now that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has gotten around to actually writing proposed regulations as required under the law, it’s more apparent than ever that the legislation will likely trigger years (if not decades) of continuing controversy, confusion, and court battles. Despite clear evidence showing GMOs are safe to eat, they have long been targeted by a variety of activists. In recent years, some states responded to the whims of these anti-GMO activists by passing mandatory labeling laws. Vermont’s short-lived law was so bad that it drew a…

WHEN SEATTLE OUTLAWED single-use plastic straws in September 2017, the decision drew snickers from spectators as the latest, silliest example of nanny state excess—and one that could happen only in the famously progressive city. But by the time the ban went into effect in July 2018, straw bans had taken the world by storm. Vancouver, British Columbia, banned straws in May. Active efforts are underway to do the same in San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. California is mulling a bill that would prohibit restaurateurs from offering their patrons unsolicited plastic straws, and Hawaii considered a bill this year that would have outlawed both businesses and individuals from selling or even giving out straws free of charge. In April, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced plans…

IF THERE IS a silver lining to the Supreme Court’s summer ruling in Trump v. Hawaii, which upheld President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries, it’s that the Court finally denounced its own error in Korematsu v. United States. That 1944 ruling validated Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s order to relocate and imprison 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II. It has been a blight on the Supreme Court’s record ever since. Signed by FDR in February 1942, Executive Order 9066 was a brutal and authoritarian document rooted in fear, racial prejudice, and sweeping generalizations unsupported by the data then available to policy makers. After the Japanese navy’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, fear of a West Coast invasion seized California. The state…

AFFIRMATIVE:: Libertarian Anarchists Are Collectivists “ALL KINDS OF people today call themselves ‘libertarians,’ especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That’s worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons….I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. Anarchists are the scum of the intellectual world of the Left, which has given them up. So the Right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the libertarian movement.” NEGATIVE: Objectivists Are a Type…

AFFIRMATIVE: Republicans Get Elected; Libertarian Party Members Don’t IT’S MY OBSERVATION that libertarians argue about a lot of things, but at the end of the day we all want to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. So is it wise or useful for libertarians who want to shrink government to run for office as Libertarians? My answer is the same as my vote on the Republican version of Obamacare this term: Hell no! First, there’s the existence proof. Even on the worst days, there are two libertarians [Massie and Rep. Justin Amash (R–Mich.)] on the floor of the House of Representatives. On the best days there are a dozen. None of these libertarians are in the Libertarian Party. So if you want to introduce libertarian bills, force…

MERICA’S DEFEAT IN Vietnam produced a surge of men who felt betrayed by the federal government and who feared communism’s spread to the United States. Further incensed by government scandals, economic struggles, and a changing cultural landscape in the wake of the civil rights movement’s successes, some of these men sought to regain control through white power organizations. So argues Kathleen Belew, a historian at the University of Chicago, in Bring the War Home, an engaging account of how and why the modern white power movement emerged from 1975 to 1995. By Belew’s account, the movement encompasses the Klan, white separatists, neo-Nazis, and even radical tax resisters. Her research is thorough: She compares news reports, government records, and materials from the groups she studies to cross-check her analysis. Her argument…

AFFIRMATIVE: Big Corporations Want Your Data. Don’t Give It to Them. IF I FORGET where I’ve been shopping online, I can just head over to Facebook. Ads on the social networking site will quickly remind me what I’ve been browsing, and perhaps even offer a coupon code to help close the deal. I appreciate the discounts, but I’m creeped out by the thought of the profile that can be stitched together from the sites that I visit. Libertarians rightly fret about government databases that assemble sensitive information about finances, movements, and beliefs. That information can be weaponized against individuals for official purposes (hello, J. Edgar Hoover!) or for personal gain and amusement. It’s also a treasure trove for hackers, as we’ve seen with breaches to the IRS and the federal…

AFFIRMATIVE: Don’t Use the Law to Compel Conformity LIBERTARIANS GENERALLY TAKE a live-and-let-live approach, advocating freedom of association over anti-discrimination mandates. Moreover, a key aspect of libertarian policy is a commitment to choice and consent in personal and business relationships. This approach is embodied in the Libertarian Party’s 2016 platform, which reads: “Libertarians embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights. We reject the idea that a natural right can ever impose an obligation upon others to fulfill that ‘right.’ We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual’s human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. Members of private organizations retain their rights to set whatever standards of association…

AFFIRMATIVE: I.P. Holders Need the Legal System To Uphold Their Rights IF ANY GATHERING of people of libertarian bent becomes dull, raise the topic “intellectual property.” The result will be an entertaining escalation in both outrage and decibels. The only certainty is that no minds will be changed, because the pros and the cons emphasize different values and the twain show no signs of meeting. The case for recognizing a creator’s right to his creations and his claim on the state to help protect this right rest on the same foundations as the arguments for protecting tangible property: Lockean entitlement to the fruits of one’s labors; economic con siderations of the importance of incentives and mechanisms for investment (and of the freedom of anyone with an entrepreneurial idea to bet…

JONAH GOLDBERG IS worried about the state of the nation. In his new book, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (Crown Forum), he makes the case that the liberal democratic project is not only in danger—it has become a danger to itself. The United States, Goldberg argues, has forgotten or rejected its core values, allowing its institutions to decay. The result is a nation that no longer has a coherent self-image, a culture that no longer knows what it lives for. “I like getting rich really fast, and I want to make the world get richer really fast,” he says. “But the violence that does to established institutions and customs and norms sets a lot of people adrift.”…

YOU ARE, I am confident in declaring, reading this within the boundaries of a nation. Virtually every square inch of land on the planet (with the partial exception of Antarctica) has been assigned to one polity or another—as have the world’s people. We are all citizens of a country. That is the easily digested story we have been told since childhood. Almost as easy to understand is the answer to the question, “What if you don’t like the country you’re in?” You can leave it for another country, or you can make a new one. The history of the last century is rife with examples of peoples creating new states: There’s Yugoslavia. There’s the cluster of countries where Yugoslavia used to be. If the map doesn’t suit you, then draw…