Jeffrey Alan Miron

Questions and Thoughts About the British Terrorism Plot

Questions:

1. The U.S. and U.K. authorities all say the alleged terrorists "might" have links to Al Qaeda.  Does this mean authorities have no evidence of a link?  What is exactly is a link? 

2. The alleged terrorists in this plot are mainly UK born and bred.  Did UK participation in the Iraq war inspire their plot?

3. Why are the authorities banning liquids and gels only in the cabins?  Why not in the checked baggage compartments as well?  Does one need to detonate these kinds of explosives manually?  Or could it be done with a timer or other remote device?  If so, why is there any benefit from banning the liquids and gels just in the cabins?  If it is possible to detonate liquid explosives using a remote device from the cabin, then why did the plotters not use that approach?

4. There are millions of possible targets for terrorists other than airplanes (trains, bridges, soccer stadiums, school buses, restaurants, and so on), and terrorists have chosen other targets many times (e.g., the London and Madrid subways).  Why would terrorists again focus on airplanes? Because an airplane explosion over the Atlantic is dramatic? To prove they can do it despite all the added security measures since 9/11? 

5. Why do the press and the public seem to accept that everything the authorities are telling us about this alleged plot is correct?  Consider statements made after the London police shot and killed a man suspected of being connected with the London subway attacks in July 2005:

London police say a man they shot to death in front of horrified subway riders Friday was "directly linked" to their investigation of recent bombings aimed at the city's transit system.

It turned out, of course, that the man had no connection whatsoever to the subway bombings.

Thoughts:

1. The information released by authorities yesterday seems to imply that all the waiting in line at airport security since 9/11 has been a total waste of time; terrorists have had the ability all along to blow up planes using liquid explosives.

2. A widely held view about the cause of terrorism against the U.S. / U.K. is that the terrorists hate freedom, or Christianity, or Jews, or U.S. wealth, or U.S. influence in the world.  A different view is that the terrorists hate U.S. / U.K. intervention in the Middle East and the U.S. / U.K. support of Israel. 

3. If the second view is correct, the only way for the U.S. and U.K. to substantially reduce terrorism is to eliminate their presence in the Middle East and stop supporting Israel.  Note that Germany and France, which did not participate in the Iraq invasion, have not been the targets of attacks.

3. There has been much commentary in op-eds pages and the blogosphere about whether it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel's invasion of Lebanon.  That question should be irrelevant.  The right question is whether it serves U.S. interests to support Israel.

4. My answer is No.  Our support of Israel makes the U.S. a target of terrorism, and it does nothing to promote peace or prosperity in the Middle East.   A better policy, for the U.S. and for Jews around the world, is open borders.  Imagine how the history of the past 75 years would have been different if the U.S. had offered unrestricted immigration in the 1930s and 1940s.  Jews would have left Europe in large numbers.  The Holocaust, if it had occurred, would been vastly smaller.  The U.S., U.K., and other powers would probably not have created Israel.   All the wars between Israel and Arab countries would not have taken place.  For that matter, open borders would have reduced or eliminated other humanitarian calamaties, such as the killing fields in Cambodia in the 1970s or the slaughter in Bosnia in the 1990s.  And so on.

5. To be clear, I am not suggesting elimination of Israel: it exists, and it has the right to defend itself.  My best guess is that it can do so successfully without U.S. support (which is a separate question from whether the recent invasion of Lebanon is in Israel's best interests).  But the U.S. should play no role, positive or negative.  This is exactly the position the U.S. should take regarding conflicts around the world.

Do Lawsuits Make Us Less Safe?

John Stossel writes today in Real Clear Politics about abuses of the tort liability system.  He begins as follows:

Imagine if an evil business routinely deprived us of products that would help us live longer with less pain and more comfort. We'd be outraged, and lawyers would line up to sue. Yet something similar happens today, thanks to lawsuit abuse. Makers of all kinds of products are afraid to sell them to us because one lawsuit could ruin them.

Personal-injury lawyers claim they make America safer, but that's a myth. It's easy to see who benefits from those big damage awards we read about. Less obvious -- but just as real -- are the things we'd all like to have but never will get because of this climate of fear. Here are a few examples.

Monsanto once developed a substitute for asbestos -- a new fire-resistant form of insulation that might save thousands of lives. But Monsanto decided not to sell it for fear of liability. Richard F. Mahoney, the CEO at the time, said, "There may well have been a safe, effective asbestos replacement on the market, and now there isn't."

Stossel goes on to provide many other examples where fear of litgation has allegedly prevented companies from researching or producing valuable new products.

I am a big fan of John Stossel, but I am not sure he is on target in this particular case.  Stossel's lament is a common refrain among conservatives and libertarians, and the anecdotes that Stossel and others offer in support of their view are indeed disturbing.  But the criticism may suffer the same short-sightedness as the judge in the beauty contest who, having seen the first contestant, declared the second one the winner.  We have to be careful what we wish for; the tort liability is plausibly better than the alternatives, despite its own imperfections.

To see this, note first that everyone benefits when companies consider the potential risks and liability from any products they produce.  Without question, an overly zealous liability system might result in too little innovation and too few new products; but an insufficiently zealous one could produce the opposite effect.  To know we are on the wrong side of the tradeoff requires more than examples of products that "should have been introduced" but were not; it requires a systematic accounting for all such cases and for the cases where companies thought better of developing and selling products that would have carried excessive risks relative to their value. I am aware of no such accounting, nor it is obvious how one could produce it.

In addition, it is a mistake to compare the current, imperfect tort liability system to a hypothetical but "perfect" tort liability system; that is not the choice we face.   Perhaps there are reforms of the current system that make sense, but there will always be abuses.  Lawyers are simply too clever at circumventing rules that attempt to limit their payoffs.

Worse yet, the alternative to a tort liability system, with all its warts, might be a government regulatory agency that decides what products can be researched and sold.  That is roughly what occurs for medicines under the Food and Drug Administration, and the result is not encouraging.  In particular, the FDA seems to err on the side of caution and introduces enormous delay and cost in the production of new drugs.  The actual choice society faces, therefore, is likely between an imperfect tort liability system and an imperfect regulatory system.  At a minimum, the choice is not obvious.

My own hunch is that the tort liability system is the lesser of the evils.  One reason is that, for the most part, this system is run by individual states.  This allows for variety, innovation, and experimentation.  It also means competition between states to provide a business environment that is not excessively hostile.  These considerations will not guarantee an ideal outcome, but I suspect the results will be better than under a federal regulatory approach like the FDA.

Joe Lieberman and the Iraq War

Joe Lieberman, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, is facing a tough primary re-election fight because of his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq: 

In a dramatic bid to stave off a potential defeat in Tuesday's Democratic primary, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) on Sunday rejected charges from rival Ned Lamont that he has been one of the chief cheerleaders for President Bush's Iraq policy, but he reaffirmed his belief that a hasty withdrawal of U.S. forces would prove disastrous for Iraqis and for the United States.

With polls showing Lamont leading the three-term incumbent, Lieberman at last moved to confront the issues -- opposition to the war and anger with Bush -- that have put his political career in jeopardy. The decision came after a lengthy debate within his campaign over whether he could win the primary without directly addressing his position on the war and his relationship with the president.

Lieberman stated his position on the war as follows:

Saying he still believes his vote to authorize the war was correct, Lieberman added: "What I don't think is right, as I've said over and over again, are many of the Bush administration's decisions regarding the conduct of the war. The fact is I have openly and clearly disagreed with and criticized the president."

Lieberman cited what he called Bush's failure to develop more allied support before the war, to have a plan to win the peace and to put more troops into the conflict.

This position -- that invasion was the right policy but that the administration bungled the occupation -- is one that politicians of both parties are likely to embrace this fall.   Most incumbents in Congress voted to support the invasion, but they now face an electorate that has become disenchanted with the progress of the occupation.  Thus, they need a way to rationalize their earlier support while distancing themselves from the current situation.

In all likelihood, however, nothing we could have done would have avoided the current mess.   A multinational force, or a greater number of troops, would not have eliminated the religious and ethnic tensions.  Nor would a greater number of troops have decreased resentment of the US; indeed, it might have exacerbated that resentment.  Better planned or executed reconstruction efforts, especially in the immediate aftermath of invasion, might have eased frustrations with the occupation.  But the task was so enormous as to defy a fix sufficiently fast to make any real difference.  Other controversial decisions, such as whether to fire Baathist members of the Iraqi Army, look unfortunate now.  But hindsight is much easier than foresight; at the time it was understandable that the U.S. wanted to remove those affiliated with Saddam Hussein.

So, I am dubious we could have "won the peace" had we simply conducted the occupation "better."  More fundamentally, the possibility of all the difficulties the occupation has faced should have been recognized by everyone before the invasion.  So defending the invasion while criticizing the conduct of the war is a dodge.

And, as I have noted previously, all that is water under the bridge.  The question now is how long to stay.   Lieberman argues against hasty withdrawal.   Drawing on our recent experience, however, what reason does he have to think continued occupation will do any good?

A New Schedule for This Blog

Beginning this week, I plan to reduce my blogging to roughly 3 posts a week.  With luck, the lower frequency will mean higher average quality.

As always, thanks for reading.

The Liberal "Bias" in Academia

A long-standing complaint of the political right is that academia displays a strong liberal bias.  In a recent op-ed, Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle discusses two recent studies that document the overwhelmingly prevalence of Democrats among academics:

Then step back into the real world, where academia has become a solid bastion of the Left, as demonstrated by two articles in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Current Review. One article presents a survey of academic social scientists that reports that 79.6 percent of 1,208 respondents said they voted mostly Democratic over the last 10 years, with 9.3 percent voting Republican.

Call that a near monopoly marketplace of ideas.

A second article studied the voter registration of California college professors and found that the ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans (among professors located in voting registers) is 5 to 1. Let it be noted that the researchers made an effort to include schools reputed to be right-leaning. Some disciplines demonstrated more orthodoxy than others -- with sociology departments showing a ratio of 44 Democrats to 1 Republican, but economics departments employing 2.8 Democrats for each member of the GOP.

Thus, the dispoportionate share of Democrats is not in serious dispute.  And no one who has spent time in academia would find any reason to think otherwise.

The facts raise an interesting question, however, and one that should trouble right-wing critics of the current situation:  why is liberal dominance of academia a problem given that it represents a market outcome?  That is, if liberal academics are so bad, why does the market support so many of them?  Why is there not a demand for conservative universities?  If one believes markets do things right, in what sense is the liberalism in academia excessive?

A possible response from conservatives might be that higher education is not a competitive market; a substantial fraction of higher education is owned and operated by state governments.  This line is not persuasive, however, since many of the most successul colleges and universities are private, and they are every bit as liberal as their government counterparts.

So free-market critics of the liberal "bias" in academia need to think through their criticism.  In what sense is Democratic predominance a problem?  And what "market failure" is responsible?

Perhaps the truth is that many conservatives do not really believe in competition; instead they want conservative ideas imposed because these ideas are not doing well in the marketplace.

Robert Pape on Hezbollah

Robert Pape is a political scientist at the University of Chicago and perhaps the leading authority on the motivations of suicide bombers (see his book, Dying to Succeed).  He has a sobering op-ed in today's New York Times about Israel and Hezbollah.  The key paragraphs:

In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.

What these suicide attackers — and their heirs today — shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.

Thus the new Israeli land offensive may take ground and destroy weapons, but it has little chance of destroying the Hezbollah movement. In fact, in the wake of the bombings of civilians, the incursion will probably aid Hezbollah’s recruiting.

The claim that foreign occupation is the key driving force behind suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks is in contrast to the more widely held view that terrorists are motivated by religion or by hatred of the U.S. and Israel.  If Pape's analysis is correct, a broad range of anti-terror actions by the U.S. and Israel are far more likely to generate terrorism than to prevent it.

Cuba and Iraq

Recent news stories about Fidel Castro prompted me to refresh my memory about U.S. relations with Cuba.  This passage in Wikipedia about the Bay of Pigs invasion had a familiar ring:

Documents released by the National Security Archive show that the CIA expected the Cuban people to welcome a U.S.-sponsored invasion, spontaneously rising up against the Castro regime. It expected Cuban military and police forces to refuse to fight against the CIA's 1400-man mercenary invasion force.^[48] President Kennedy had withdrawn support for the invasion at the last minute by canceling several bombing sorties that could have crippled the entire Cuban Air Force.^[49] The brief military invasion ended in total failure and quickly became a foreign policy debacle for Kennedy. He had approved the plan just three months into his presidency. ^[50]  ...

Many theories are offered for the failure of the operation. Some argue that Kennedy's last minute decision to withdraw air support caused the invasion to fail, though this has been more recently discarded. ^{[citation needed]} The likely cause of the failure, was that the Americans misjudged Cuban support for Castro. ^{[citation needed]} They had believed the testimonies of the Cuban exiles, who told them that Castro was not well supported by the Cuban people, when in fact, Castro enjoyed wide support at this time. The idea that Cubans would rise up against Castro, was simply a misconception on the part of the Eisenhower, and then Kennedy administrations. As well, the CIA-trained force of 1,400 armed only with light-arms, faced a Cuban force of tens of thousand armed with tanks, and artillery. ^{[citation needed]} In addition, the covert placement of dozens of Cuban intelligence officials in the invasion force gave the Cuban government detailed information on the operation. ^[53]

The parallels with our Iraq experience are striking.  No doubt many Cubans, and many Iraqis, did have positive attitudes toward the U.S. and did welcome U.S. help in removing a dictator.  Overall, however, invasion appears to be a problematic mechanism for achieving this goal.

An alternative approach in the Cuban case is for the U.S. to end the longstanding trade embargo.  This embargo probably has small effects on the Cuban economy, since most other countries still trade with Cuba.  But the embargo is a key political tool that helps Castro demonize the U.S. in the eyes of many Cubans.   Free trade would promote a broader view of the U.S. among Cubans and likely undermine support for Castro's socialist policies.

Again there is a parallel with Iraq.  The UN-imposed sanctions perhaps affected the Iraqi economy more than the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba. But the publicity value to Saddam Hussein of portraying the world as anti-Iraq may have more than compensated in helping him maintain his totalitarian regime.

More on Milton Friedman, Libertarians, and Iraq

My post yesterday concerned Tunku Varadajan's WSJ interview of Milton and Rose Friedman.  I noted that I was pleased to learn about Milton's opposition to the Iraq invasion. 

In the next section of the interview, however, Milton says,

But, having said that, once we went in to Iraq, it seems to me very important that we make a success of it.

I find that statement puzzling, since the invasion is a sunk cost. The only relevant question now is whether our continued presence does more good than harm.  As I have written previously, I believe it does not:

What is the right policy toward Iraq?  That depends on what effect our presence has on the prospects for peace and prosperity.   

My view is that U.S. presence hurts those prospects, partly because our presence is one source of conflict in Iraq, partly because our presence delays the kinds of reconciliation that are necessary before peace and prosperity can develop on their own.   In particular, my best guess is that Iraq will dissolve (further) into civil war once we leave, whether that departure is in a year, or five, or fifty.  That civil war will be costly to the Iraqis, but it is an unavoidable part of the transition to a better situation.

If my forecast is accurate, our continued presence generates large costs to the U.S. while harming Iraq. So, under this scenario, cut-and-run is the right policy.

Moreover, any observers who share this perspective will raise their opinion of the U.S. if we display the intelligence and guts to admit our mistake and do what we can to correct it.

Now, I cannot prove that the scenario I have described is the correct one. It seems the most likely one to me, but only the future can say for sure.

But this is the right question, not whether withdrawal looks weak or cowardly.  Perseverance in a misguided cause can only lower the world's opinion.  We look smarter and more courageous if we save our resources for battles that can and should be won.

Milton Friedman, Libertarians, and Iraq

Tunku Varadajan's WSJ interview of Milton and Rose Friedman appeared while I was in France, and I did not get a chance to read it until last night.  I apologize for being late with my reactions, but they are still timely.

One thing that struck me was Milton's views on the Iraq invasion:

Mr. Friedman here shifted focus. "What's really killed the Republican Party isn't spending, it's Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression."

I was pleased to see that Milton shares my view of the invasion.  I have been frustrated for the past several years that many libertarians endorse the invasion and offer an unpersuasive defense, along the lines of "Libertarianism endorses government and the use of force in self-defense, and the Iraq invasion passes this test."

This justification for the invasion is not persuasive.  Libertarianism holds that government intervention and the use of force can be good policy if motivated by self-defense, but that in no way endorses any given intervention.   There must still be good reason to think the benefits of intervention exceed the costs.

In the Iraq situation, the case for benefits-greater-than costs was weak.  Saddam had no incentive to use WMDs against the U.S. or its allies, since that would have caused an invasion and his removal.  And the expected costs of invasion were unquestionably substantial, including not only the resources used to conduct the invasion and occuption but any unintended consequences such as civil war.  So, the expected costs of invasion exceeded the benefits even in the worst case scenario where Saddam had WMDs.  And given the uncertainty that existed pre-invasion about the WMDs, the case for invasion on self-defense grounds was weaker still.

Non-libertarians make arguments for the invasion other than self-defense, such as nation-building and humanitarianism.  Libertarians are highly skeptical of such arguments, however, again because the benefits of intervention rarely seem to exceed the costs. The common endorsement of the Iraq invasion by libertarians is thus puzzling and disheartening.   Milton's comments in the interview are a welcome exception.

More on the interview tomorrow.

Politicians and Donuts

An article in today's Washington Post discusses the "donut hole" in the Medicare prescription drug benefit:

The program was designed to give all participants a certain level of insurance and to protect elderly and disabled recipients with chronic or catastrophic illnesses from huge prescription expenses. To afford those two goals, Part D's designers built in an annual period during which individuals have to pay for medicines themselves.

Under a standard plan this first year, Medicare handles 75 percent of drug costs after a deductible until the bill reaches $2,250. It does not kick in again until those costs total $5,100. After that, prescriptions are almost completely paid for. The very poor can get special subsidies.

Why does the program have this odd structure? In a word, politics.

The part of the program that is defensible is the coverage for catastrophic expenditures. A program limited to this goal does not necessarily generate more benefits than costs, but an intelligent case for such an intervention exists.  The argument is that private markets undersupply insurance due to adverse selection problems.

A prescription drug program that covered only catastrophic expenditures, however, would not provide benefits to most elderly.  So the politicans designing the system, who wanted to please their constituencies, included coverage for everyone up to the "donut" level.

This component makes no economic sense.   Remember that the poor already had prescription drug coverage through Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor.  So coverage for Medicare recipients is a transfer to the middle class, not the poor.  And reimbursing Medicare recipients for low to moderate expenditures is not fixing a market failure in insurance markets.  Insurance is valuable for large, unpredictable events not regular, moderate expenses.

So the Medicare prescription drug benefit is expensive mainly for political rather than economic reasons.  And the program illustrates perfectly why laissez-faire can be better than intervention, even when a case for intervention exists.  Actual government interventions often bear little resemblance to any policy that has a reasonable justification.