At the right is a picture of the space shuttle Columbia breaking up in 2003. Here's the caption that accompanied it: "Debris from the U.S. space shuttle Columbia streaks across the sky over Tyler, Texas. The shuttle broke up as it was returning to Earth in February 2003." As is well known, the astronauts inside died in a ball of fire, 200 thousand feet up in a silent sky. An institution, NASA, has its credibility damaged.

A similar breakup is underway at a renowned Ivy League university. Or maybe a breakdown. It is not of a spacecraft, but of something equally lofty- the institution of free speech on college campuses in the US. I refer, of course, to Columbia University's invitation to Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejhad to speak on its campus. Roger Kimball explains:

Universities are institutions dedicated to the pursuit and transmission of learning and the furtherance of civilization. They are not circuses for the exhibition of politically repugnant grandstanding. Free inquiry is not a license for moral irresponsibility. At a university, as at every other human institution, freedom can thrive only when it is limited by allegiance to certain positive values--the value of historical truth, for example, or the moral truth that human dignity is worth preserving. President Bollinger's sophomoric conception of free speech is precisely the sort of supine intellectualism that, if consistently embraced, would make free speech impossible. President Bollinger primly lectures us that "It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas," etc. But he is quite wrong about that. By providing a madman like Ahmadinejad with a platform at Columbia University, President Bollinger has in effect welcomed him into the community of candid reasoners. He has granted him a patent of legitimacy that no amount of "dialogue and reason" can dissipate. In this case, "listening" is indeed tantamount to an endorsement. It reduces free speech to a species of political capitulation and renders dialogue indistinguishable from a suicide pact.

No image and no caption available for this breakup, nor for the damaged to credibility. And the voices of any that may be dieing can't be heard. At least not yet.

Continue reading "Columbia: Space Shuttle and University" »

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Compared to their Liberal and Social Democratic counterparts, conservatives both in the US and the UK have a reputation for being the party that promotes individual liberty and self-responsibility. Perhaps as a consequence of these stances, they also are known as the "eat-your-spinach" party. A recent health care proposal advanced by the UK's Conservative party will do nothing to reverse that image. In short it's a combination of carrots (incentives), sticks (penalties), and carrot sticks:

Failing to follow a healthy lifestyle could lead to free NHS treatment being denied under the Tory plans. Patients would be handed "NHS Health Miles Cards" allowing them to earn reward points for losing weight, giving up smoking, receiving immunisations or attending regular health screenings.

Like a supermarket loyalty card, the points could be redeemed as discounts on gym membership and fresh fruit and vegetables, or even give priority for other public services - such as jumping the queue for council housing. But heavy smokers, the obese and binge drinkers who were a drain on the NHS could be denied some routine treatments such as hip replacements until they cleaned up their act. Those who abused the system - by calling an ambulance when a trip to the [general practitioner] would be sufficient, or telephoning out of hours with needless queries - could also be penalised.

The report calls for a greater emphasis on the "citizen's responsibility" to be healthy and says no one should expect taxpayers to fund their unhealthy lifestyles.

While I am sure that Popeye would approve, I have never lived in the UK and can't predict how the public there will react to such plans. My hunch is that it won't be long before advocacy group says it's unfair to deny artificial hips to those eating too much fish and chips. I also suspect that if implemented, the government will have considerable problems with monitoring people's unhealthy behavior. I mean, how exactly will the government hope to find out who "binge" drinks and smokes "heavily" and who does not? With a network of informers? By video cameras outside every Dunkin' Donuts around the country? And how will those terms be defined and by whom? Who determines what is a needless question and what is not? Finally, at what point does promoting self-responsibility become too much of a good thing and begin to be an infringement on people's individual liberty? If this plan is implemented, we may soon find out.

Continue reading "Eat Your Spinach... or else!" »

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I order a book today- "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole" - by Benjamin R. Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld. I don't expect that I will like it very much. That's not judging a book by its cover, however. I like the cover. It's the book's central thesis, as recently expounded in very well-written but off-the-mark LA Times editorial entitled "Overselling Capitalism", that makes me say this. That's not to say the entire argument is wrong. Here are the parts Barber gets right:

Capitalism's core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself.

Here's where the argument starts to go awry:

Capitalism's success, however, has meant that core wants in the developed world are now mostly met and that too many goods are now chasing too few needs. Yet capitalism requires us to "need" all that it produces in order to survive. So it busies itself manufacturing needs for the wealthy while ignoring the wants of the truly needy. Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth.

Agreed. Free markets have enabled the developed world to meet our most "core" or material wants. And yes, the world is full of poor and needy people. The question is "why?" According to Barber, it's the developed world's promotion of infantile "consumerism" that's to blame for the crisis that he sees threatening capitalism and democracy:

The world teems with elemental wants and is peopled by billions who are needy. They do not need iPods, but they do need potable water, not colas but inexpensive medicines, not MTV but their ABCs. They need mortgages they can afford, not funny-money easy credit.To serve such needs, however, capitalism must once again learn to defer profits and empower the needy as customers. Entrepreneurs wanted! With micro-credit, villagers can construct hand pumps and water filters from the clay under their feet. Pharmaceutical companies ought to be thinking about how to sell inexpensive retro-virals to Africans with HIV instead of pushing Botox to the "forever young" customers they are trying to manufacture here. And parents can refuse to relinquish their gatekeeping roles and let marketers know they won't allow their kids to be targeted anymore.

This is where Barber has it wrong. The problem of the undeveloped world is not that too few n the developed world care. Nor is the problem that we are self-absorbed consumerists. Rather, it's because too much of the developed world doesn't provide the appropriate environment and precursory conditions that would allow for investment. The poorest and neediest people live in countries that do not have capitalistic-friendly institutions like respect for the rule of law, property rights, and individual liberty. Corruption and illiberal political systems are what keep people needy. Those who run their countries are the ones that need to change their ways. As soon as they do, their will be more business of the kind Barber wants to see, but not before.

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"Take a number." "Please be seated and wait for your number to called." "Now serving # 4165." These are not phrases you are probably used to hearing in a hospital or a doctor's office. But according to a recent LA Times article, you will if the advocates of universal health care have their way. Entitled "Universal Healthcare's Dirty Little Secrets", two Cato Institute scholars describe the numerous "hurdles to care" experienced by patients in several countries whose governments provide health coverage.

Simply saying that people have health insurance is meaningless. Many countries provide universal insurance but deny critical procedures to patients who need them. Britain's Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year. In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than a year. Many of these individuals suffer chronic pain, and judging by the numbers, some will probably die awaiting treatment. In a 2005 ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin wrote that "access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare."

But this is not news, really. Everyone has heard about the long waiting lists, about people dying waiting for care. What is news is that the underlying assumption motivating much of the debate doesn't have much empirical support:

You may think it is self-evident that the uninsured may forgo preventive care or receive a lower quality of care. And yet, in reviewing all the academic literature on the subject, Helen Levy of the University of Michigan's Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured, and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago, were unable to establish a "causal relationship" between health insurance and better health. Believe it or not, there is "no evidence," Levy and Meltzer wrote, that expanding insurance coverage is a cost-effective way to promote health. Similarly, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year found that, although far too many Americans were not receiving the appropriate standard of care, "health insurance status was largely unrelated to the quality of care."

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Alicia Colon of the New York Sun writes about Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, who's fighting back against the Al Gore and the global warming lobby's attacks on the coal industry:

"Some wealthy elitists in our country," he told the audience, "who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns."

Mr. Murray was a coal miner in Ohio who survived two mining accidents and built funds from a mortgaged house into a private coal mining company with more than 3,000 employees. He expresses concern about the proposals in Congress that will ration the use of coal, warning of much worse adverse consequences to Americans than those experienced after the 1990 amendment of the Clean Air Act.

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Kim Severson of the New York Times documents the latest initiative by New York City government to change the way its residents eat.

(Mayor Bloomberg)...shot down trans fat, forced large restaurant chains to post calorie counts and took on a cutting-edge culinary technique called sous vide.The mayor’s raucous takeover of the public school system in 2002 led to a culinary bonus for the city’s 1.1 million school children. They now have an executive chef, whole wheat bread, salad bars and little plastic bags of sliced New York state apples. And the Mayor has now turned his attention to hunger and poverty, working with the City Council to get more people to sign up for food stamps and looking with renewed vigor at how to get healthy food to people who live in neighborhoods with no grocery stores.

I don't live and New York but I can't help but wonder if there has been failure of the market or of the institutions upon which they depend. What is clear is that Mayor Bloomberg's interventions do have serious consequences for the food industry.

Tags: trans fats | transfats | restaurants | diet | food | health | food and drink | nyc

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Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 18:3

I held off posting anything concerning ex-Senator John Edwards' inquiries to Wal-Mart about obtaining a PlayStation3 until more facts came to light. Boy did they ever. The reason why this story is news is because Edwards has become a very vocal critic of Wal-Mart of late. Clearly aware of the rank hypocrisy of trying to get a copy of PS3 before it goes on sale to the general public and from a retailer that one has just attacked the day before, the Edwards camp yesterday shifted the blame onto a "young" volunteer:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Thursday that a staff member for former Sen. John Edwards -a vocal critic of the retailer- asked his local Wal-Mart store for help in getting the potential 2008 presidential candidate a Sony PlayStation 3. Edwards said a volunteer did so by mistake. Edwards told The Associated Press that the volunteer "feels terrible" about seeking the game unit at Wal-Mart a day after his boss criticized the company, saying it doesn't treat its employees fairly.

"My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people," Edwards said. "That staff person mentioned it in front of a volunteer who said he would make an effort to get one. He was making an effort to go get one for himself. "Elizabeth and I knew nothing about this. He feels terrible about this. He made a mistake, and he knows he should not have used my name," Edwards said. Edwards said the volunteer was "a young kid" unaware of what he called flawed Wal-Mart policies. He called the Wal-Mart statement an effort to divert attention from its own problems.

Commentary

Continue reading "Be Ye Like Little Children" »

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The first article for Assignment 11 is entitled "Starbucks: To Drink or not to Drink"

Again we have an article which is especailly amenable to analysis using Baron's "Four I's". And again there is considerable variation in what you identified as belonging to the four major elements of the framework. Here is a sample of what you defined as the "Issues": "Globalization"; corporate social responsibility, labor and environmental standards, e.g. recycling, organic and sustainable agriculture; food safety, e.g. genetically modified organisms; economic and social justice, especially for coffee pickers and for cooperatives owned by them.

Your list of interests included: vandals, anti-globalization and anti-capitalist protesters, especially those at the 1999 World Trade Organization talks in Seattle; the Organic Consumers Association; Conservation International; Fair Trade & Global Exchange; and the Dead Dog Cafe.

Discussion of "Institutions" in the article is minimal. The only one that comes immediately to mind is public sentiment. That is to say, Starbuck's is concerned about its public image. What is not clear is whether the company is concerned only about its image with its actual and potential customers or for everyone. We are told that they support literacy programs and community projects in neighborhoods where they own stores. From that statement I might reasonably infer that they do not (materailly) support such programs in the neighborhoods where they do not own stores. If so, then even public opinion is not a major factor here.

Either way, Starbucks seems to be concerned in a way not shared by large coffee companies like Phillip Morris, Kraft, Sara Lee, and Folgers. The difference in how Starbucks has been treated by non-market interests is instructive: its good deeds and its desire to be seen as doing good make them a target of non-market action rather than protecting them from it.

What makes Starbucks a target of organizers? In part, people are reacting to those Coke and Disney aspirations, the threat that Starbucks is propagating cafe monoculture throughout a globalized world. In part, it may be the company's desire to be seen as a corporate good citizen. Writing in the Financial Times, Alison Maitland quotes Ronnie Cummings, director of the US Organic Consumers Association: "We target them because they're the only big coffee company that pretends to be socially responsible. It's better to start with them. Kraft is never going to do anything. When you're the grassroots with limited resources, you have to pick your targets carefully."

This gives new meaning to the phrase "no good deed goes unpunished."

Continue reading "The Human Costs of Coffee, II" »

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The second article for Assignment 11 is entitled "Children: The Other Side of the Coffee Tour." It seems ideally suited for a Baron's Four I's analysis. Still, there is plenty of room for discussion about what exactly are the "Issues", who are the "Interests", what are the important "Institutions", and what "Information" is relevant.

Defining Terms

Recall that the Four I's are defined by Baron as follows:

• Issues are "the basic unit of non-market analysis and the focus of non-market action."
• Interests include "the the individuals and groups with preferences about or a stake in the issue.
• Institutions include "government entities such as legislatures and regulatory agencies as well as nongovernmental institutions such as the news media and public sentiment."
• Information "pertains to what the interested parties know or believe about the issues and forces affecting their development."

Of those who used the Baron framework for thsi article, there was widespread agreement on the major issue. As shown below, almost every one mentioned the exploitation of child labor along with a host of other broader economic, social, and cultural problems.

• " the usage of child labor in very bad working conditions"
• "Malnutrition, safety and health problems, and wages..."
• "abusing children"
• "child labor"
• "pay, working conditions, and living quarters"
• "the usage of child labor to work in very bad conditions.
• "Child and old labor, low wages, poor living and health conditions"
• "child labor, low-wage labor, saftey and health conditions in the workplace."
• "Child labor; poverty, high unemployment and illiteracy
• "low wage labor."
• "Child labor-social problem"

There was less consensus, however, about who the Interests and Institutions are. At the end of the article were the names of four organizations. Given the above definitions, you should have been able to classify them accordingly:

Interests:

COFFEE KIDS: An international nonprofit working with local organizations to improve the lives of families in coffee-growing communities. Programs range from economic development to health care to providing scholarships for schooling. The website has links to project profiles, coffee facts, and community solutions.

US/LEAP U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project
A nonprofit organization that runs a variety of campaigns to support rights for workers in Central and South America. Their efforts largely support workers employed directly or indirectly by US companies. Click on the coffee link to find out how they are urging corporations to ensure that coffee growers who supply them are paying their workers a decent wage with decent working hours.

Institutions:

THE UN WORKS PROGRAMME
Its "Department of Public Information" has developed programs to "end child labor around the world."

THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION, International Labour Office
They are currently sponsoring IPEC (International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour) to help phase out child labor on Central American plantations. The program includes social rehabilitation and protection to help the region's 800,000 children working in agriculture.

Although there could be some discussion about whether or not the last two organizations might also be considered Interests, no one should have missed including these four groups in one or the other category.

Continue reading "The Human Costs of Coffee" »

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"Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or, ah, politically. They are also being targeted for real, um, in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality and the cavalier nature of the US military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it's just a scandal."

"They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity."

Continue reading "What Conflict of Interest?" »

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"Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or, ah, politically. They are also being targeted for real, um, in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality and the cavalier nature of the US military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it's just a scandal." "They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity."

Continue reading "War Journalist Action Figures" »

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Fox, via WebMD, reports that the US House of Representatives has recently passed a bill banning obesity-related lawsuits against restaurants and food manufacturers. Interestingly, while obesity knows no party distinction- nearly 2/3 of American adults are classified as overweight; almost 30 % are obese; 15% of children aged 6 to 11 are also classified as overweight- there is a partisan divide over the issue. The bill, which passed 306-120, saw Republican lawmakers stressing the ideal of personal responsibility and accountability. No surprise there.

Continue reading "Fat Food Industry to Avoid Lawsuits" »

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