Jeffrey Alan Miron

U.S. Options in Iraq

The positions of most politicians on Iraq are either hoplessly naive or unspeakably hypocritical.

It is difficult to imagine any reason why a modest increase in troop strength (the Bush administration's surge) could make any meaningful difference.  Perhaps an enorous increase might install some level of calm in the form of martial law.  But this would merely suppress the political, ethnic, and religious divisions in the country temporarily; they would resurface whenever these trooops withdraw.

Similarly, it is difficult to see why any diplomatic approach or set of timetables and deadlines will work any better in the future than it has so far.   The Iraqi government has neither the ability nor the desire to achieve the various transitional goals.   Thus, this approach is just a way to shift blame from the U.S. to Iraq in preparation for eventual withdrawal.

So what options are left?  Withdraw now.  This approach has its own negatives; in particular, it might unleash a torrent of bloodshed.  That outcome is not entirely pre-ordained; the Shiite majority might take control quickly enough that transition to a Shiite-dominated theocracy is less violent than the current situation. But a prolonged and deadly civil war is unquestionably possible.

But, whatever is going to happen is going to happen whether we withdraw tomorrow; or in a year; or in a decade.  Our continued presence, if anything, only makes matters worse. So, we should just get out now.

Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok on Adverse Selection

See Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok on adverse selection.  We will discuss these issues later in the course when we examine Medicare and Medicaid.

How to Implement Vouchers

The Nevada legislature has passed a school voucher plan (see Greg Mankiw's blog). The plan provides a voucher worth between $500 and $3,000 to every school-age child in the state.

I have no doubt this plan will help many families.  But I have serious reservations about this approach because the plan does not eliminate public schools.  In my view this means many benefits of vouchers have been missed, namely, disenfranching the teachers' union and reducing other bureaucracy and inefficiency.

One standard argument for maintaining public schools asserts that the private sector cannot create enough private schools, at least not quickly.  I disagree.  My guess is that a sufficient quantity and quality of private schools would arise in months, if a state eliminated public schools and offered universal vouchers of, say, $5,000 per child.

My hunch here relies in part on a broad view of what might constitute a school under universal vouchers.  Good schools do not require orchestras, football teams, and fitness centers; or drama, photography, and drivers ed; or innumerable guidance counselors, vice principals, and learning "specialists."  Some of these things are nice to have, but a quality education can proceed with far less. 

No doubt, under universal vouchers, elite schools would exist charging tens of thousands in tuition and providing many amenities.  But a good education can occur in a basement with one teacher and a reasonable number of willing students.

The Costs of Border Control

Can any attempt to seal our borders make a significant difference to the flow of immigrants?

Drugs and Terrorism in Afghanistan

Which war is the most important one to win? The one on drugs, the one on terrorism, or neither?

George Will on School Choice

This article is interesting in part because Topeka, Kansas, was the locale of the famous Brown v. Board of Education controversy.

Welcome

Dear 1017 Students:

This blog will post links to news articles, op-eds, and other blogs of relevance to this course.  Welcome, and enjoy.

Jeff

A Pause in My Blogging

Dear Readers:

I am going to take a break from blogging for a while.  Some other commitments have become too time consuming.  I hope to return to blogging in 6-8 months.  In any case, thanks for reading.

Jeff Miron

Privatizing Airplane Security

In a column earlier this week, John Tierney of the New York Times suggests that current approaches to safeguarding airplanes are ineffective because the Transportation Safety Authority is bogged down with bureaucratic inertia and misfocussed Congressional mandates.  The particular issue Tierney highlights is whether screening should consist of searching bags or of identifying people who behave suspiciously.   His overall concern, however, goes beyond this one issue:

It’s not that the T.S.A.’s leaders don’t see the problem. Kip Hawley, who took over the agency last year, is a smart manager who has been trying to change the agency’s focus. He removed small scissors from the taboo list, and he has complained about all the time spent by screeners seizing cigarette lighters to comply with an order from Congress.

But he’s making little headway because he has inherited an unworkable mess created by Congress after Sept. 11. It ignored the security model in Israel and much of Europe, where screening programs are run by airports under the guidance of a national agency. Instead, Congress ordered the T.S.A. to both supervise and run the screening programs itself.

The result has been a waste of billions of dollars on an unwieldy federal agency that’s become known as Thousands Standing Around. The T.S.A. should be trying to anticipate new terrorist tactics, like the bomb plot uncovered in England, but it had to raid its research budget to pay for the screening program, as Eric Lipton and Matt Wald reported in The Times.

I do not know whether Tierney and the sources he quotes are correct about screening bags versus screening people, but I do think there is only one way to find out:  get the government out of the airplane security business and leave security matters to the airlines.

Now, this suggestion will strike many as lunacy.  A standard assumption is that without government provided security measures, there will be no security provisions.   Airlines, so this thinking goes, are only interested in profits.  Security is expensive, so airlines will undersupply it to the determinent of their passengers and anti-terrorism efforts more generally.

In fact, airlines face strong incentives to make their planes safe.  Consumers will refuse to fly on airlines that do not provide adequate safety.   Pilots and flight attendants will do the same.  And insurance companies will not insure airlines that fail to take adequate security precautions.

The real question, therefore, is whether a privatized system would be more effective than the current system?  What exactly might a privatized system do differently?

The short answer is, we do not know.  A crucial negative of government imposed "solutions" is shutting down the innovation and experimentation that would occur if the private sector were free to act.

But it is easy to imagine approaches that airlines might adopt if they could provide security in whatever manner they saw fit.

Some airlines might develop preferred flyer lists that allow individual passengers to submit to extensive background checks and then become eligible to board planes without waiting in long lines.  The TSA has considered this approach, but so far it has not been implemented.

Some airlines might decide that the best approach is complete separation of passengers and baggage.   That is, you fly on one plane while your bags fly on another, thereby elminating the risk of bombs in either checked or carry-on bags, at least for planes with many people on board.

Some airlines might utilize extensive air marshal programs.

Some airlines might utilize extensive profiling.

But what airlines would not do is spend countless hours screening people who pose no risk.  They would not expend enormous resources screening checked luggage even while carrying cargo (packages sent by third parties who are not traveling on the planes) that is totally unscreened.  And airlines would not pay inflated union wages to employees with minimal skills or training.

To be clear, no system can be entirely safe.  A determined terrorist will occassionally find a way to beat any system.

But privatization will not only provide information about what works and what does not; it will do so in a far more efficient manner than the TSA and the government imposed system it operates.

Drugs and Terrorism

Are drugs and terrorism linked?  The Drug Enforcement Administration thinks they are:

A photograph of President Bush waving a flag after the Sept. 11 attacks is juxtaposed against a black-and-white image of an African American mother smoking crack cocaine in bed next to her baby. Larger-than-life portraits of Osama bin Laden and Pablo Escobar line the walls. The central message of a traveling Drug Enforcement Administration exhibit unveiled at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry yesterday is that terrorism and drugs are inextricably linked.

This is just the most recent example of a message that U.S. drug warriors have pushing for years. Many will remember a sequence of television ads that aired during past Super Bowls making the same claim. The premise is that if no one purchased drugs, terrorists could not profit from drug trafficking.   

The logic is unassailable as far as it goes, but it tells only half the story.

Many terrorist organizations do profit from illegal drugs. Usually, terrorists sell protection services to drug traffickers, who have huge profits at stake and are at war with law enforcement authorities and each other. Terrorists organizations are natural suppliers of protection services since they are already fugitives from justice and have the necessary expertise and equipment.  This symbiotic relation between drug traffickers and terrorists has persisted for years in Colombia and Peru, where the FARC and the Shining Path finance their campaigns against the government with drug profits.   

But the reason for this connection between terrorism and drug trafficking is that drugs are prohibited. If drugs were legal, the producers would not need protection from government or from rival suppliers. If drugs were legal, their prices would fall to competitive levels so there would be no excess profits to protect.

A different reason for the connection between terrorism and drug trafficking is that both tend to locate in countries with weak governments, such as Afghanistan. But opium poppy, marijuana, and even coca grow in a broad range of countries, not just those where production currently occurs. If drugs were legal, production would be widely dispersed and have no particular overlap with countries that harbor terrorists.
 
Thus, there would be no drug trade if no one purchased drugs; but there would be no connection between drugs and terrorism if drugs were legal.

So which approach to fighting terrorism is most likely to be effective: the interdiction and eradication efforts the U.S. has pursued for decades; or the legalization of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana?

Past attempts to eliminate drug trafficking have had no demonstrable success. After billions spent on interdiction and eradication over the past several decades, drugs are far cheaper and more readily available—and indicators of drug use little different—than twenty-five years ago, before Ronald Reagan launched a major escalation of the War on Drugs.

Legalization, however, would eliminate excess profits from selling drugs, forcing terrorists to rely on more limited sources of funding. The U.S. could not unilaterally impose legalization on other countries, but since the U.S. has been the driving force behind prohibition, much of the world would follow the U.S. lead.

Legalization would also reduce the bloodshed in countries that produce drugs by stopping the violent resolution of conflicts between drug traffickers, politicians, and law enforcement authorities. Legalization would allow the police and the armies in drug-producing countries to fight terrorism, not drugs. Legalization would undercut the corruption that is funded by drug profits. And legalization would bring drug production above ground, providing additional tax revenue.

The legalization approach does have its own risks; drug use might increase. Claims that use would skyrocket are scare tactics based on no evidence, but an honest defense of legalization must acknowledge that use could rise. Thus, the fact that legalization would hinder terrorism does not by itself mean legalization is the right policy (although in my view, it is).

But blaming terrorism on drug use is a cynical attempt by Drug Warriors to cash in on concerns over terrorism.  The sponsors of this new industry exhibit know it will have no effect, but they also know it makes good press.  Only the country’s fight against terrorism will suffer.