Archives: 01/2011

Revolution in Egypt? Exhilaration and Fear

By Doug Bandow

Chaos in Cairo’s streets likely signals the end of the putative Mubarak dynasty. Although Hosni Mubarak formally remains president, authoritarian regimes seldom survive after their security forces lose control. The military has been deployed, but so far its commanders have not fired on protestors—probably because the former cannot count on the loyalty of the troops.

The possible end of any dictatorship should excite Americans. However, most important is how any so-called revolution ends. Tragically, revolts against repressive regimes often lead to even greater repression: consider the French, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian revolutions.

Today Uncle Sam is little more than an interested bystander to events in Egypt. The Obama administration has issued the usual platitudes about reform, but is unwilling to press Mubarak to resign.

Not that Washington’s opinion matters much. The Egyptian crowds seeking to oust Mubarak have no interest in what the U.S. thinks. Egyptian elites may care more, but survival is their first priority. Gamal Mubarak, Hosni’s son and one-time presumed heir, likely is not the only member of the ruling establishment to have fled to London, apparently in Gamal’s case, or elsewhere overseas.

The U.S. has no good options. Washington has been attempting to influence events in Egypt for decades. Once a loyal ally of the Soviet Union, Cairo shifted to America’s side and made peace with Israel. Mubarak promoted U.S. foreign policy objectives in return for American acquiescence in his oppressive policies at home. Washington provided roughly $30 billion in aid over the years to demonstrate its gratitude.

Long identified with Mubarak, Washington desperately needs to separate itself from his regime and demonstrate that it cares more for the hopes of Egypt’s people than the power of Egypt’s elite. However, attempting to promote particular individuals or factions is likely to be counterproductive. The U.S. government has no credibility even if anyone in Cairo was inclined to listen to those who previously embraced Mubarak so tightly.

Thus, the Obama administration has little choice today but to watch from the sidelines, while preparing to deal with whatever replaces the Mubarak regime. In fact, Egypt matters far less today than during the Cold War. Having an allied government in Cairo is helpful, not vital. If a radical regime closed the Suez Canal it would risk dooming itself by cutting foreign revenue needed to pacify an angry population. If such a government was foolish enough to attack Israel Cairo likely would become another occupied territory.

The U.S. government, irrespective of administration, should back away from attempting to micro-manage politics in Egypt or other foreign nations. Americans should support democracy and a liberal society in the best sense of the word. But U.S. officials should not be in the business of attempting to oust even authoritarian governments.

Washington simply doesn’t know how to get there or exactly where “there” is. That certainly is the case in Egypt, where possible outcomes include direct military rule, domination by Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a reformulated authoritarian regime, or real democracy.

Even in pushing for the liberal ideal American officials are more likely to do harm than good. Washington likely will be blamed for whatever results. Even when the U.S. government is successful in buying friends, it inevitably makes enemies, many of whom have long memories. Of course, it is far worse when Washington backs authoritarians like Mubarak.  Just ask the Iranian mullahs.

The Egyptian people deserve liberation. Unfortunately, history suggests that it will take more than street demonstrations to create a free society. Rather than attempt to dictate outcomes in foreign nations, Washington should recognize the limitations on its ability to influence events, and even more important, to influence events positively. Americans outside of government can do more to promote the principles of liberty and the national culture in which those principles are most likely to flourish.

Topics:
Foreign Policy and National Security, International Economics, Development & Immigration

Egypt and Energy Policy

By Roger Pilon

Today Politico Arena asks:

Given that crude oil prices surged to nearly $90 per barrel on Friday, and could spike even higher if the crisis causes a shutdown of the Suez Canal, how should policymakers in Wasihngton respond regarding oil and the crisis in Egypt? Does the situation underscore a need for more domestic production? And does this crisis bolster or hamper Obama’s clean energy initiative that he called for in his State of the Union address last week?

My response:

The unrest in Egypt should have no bearing whatever on American energy policy. Like nearly every other commodity – food, clothing, shelter, education, health care – energy, from whatever source, is far more efficiently and equitably produced and distributed by the market than by governments, even when foreign governments play a part in that process. We saw that in the “energy crises” of the ’70s; we’ve seen it in every ”crisis” since.

Why, in the name of “energy independence,” should the U.S. government “promote” domestic production if foreign energy is cheaper? Do we imagine that manifold foreign producers will not supply us if the price is right? Where’s the evidence for that? Any government promotion should be by simply getting out of the way and letting the market determine where energy is produced.

Nor should today’s Egyptian unrest affect Obama’s “clean energy initiative,” which should fall on its own terms. It’s nothing but a massive government intrusion into the market, subsidizing expensive sources of energy for little environmental gain, making us all poorer, but especially the poorest among us. Do we need any better example that the ethanol boondoggle, which even Al Gore has admitted is environmentally destructive? Energy policy will be an early test of whether the new House majority is serious about reducing the role of government in our lives.

Topics:
Energy and Environment

Misunderstanding Inflation through the Years

By David Boaz

NPR reports on rising food prices across the world. They may have played some role in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, and if so, those wouldn’t be the first revolutions sparked by inflation. NPR reporter Marilyn Geewax mentioned several reasons that food prices are rising – droughts, floods, oil prices, financial speculation – but not the obvious one: the continuing creation of unbacked money by central banks around the world. As Milton Friedman said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” And as Jerry O’Driscoll wrote just two weeks ago, about rising food prices, “Inflation is here.” But that point isn’t yet universally understood, at least not at our government radio network.

Anyway, I turned off the radio and turned on the television, where TCM was just broadcasting the 1942 MGM propaganda film “Inflation” (made at the request of the Office of War Information but then never released because it was too anti-capitalist even for wartime propaganda). Edward Arnold plays the Devil, in league with Hitler and posing as a businessman who who encourages people to buy more, evade price controls, stockpile goods, and use the black market. (The film was made by Cy Endfield, who had been a member of the Young Communist League at Yale and went on to make such films as Zulu and Universal Soldier.) The film features what appears to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s April 28, 1942, radio speech, “Total War and Total Effort.” As the young couple in the film go to buy a new radio, the shopkeeper turns on the radio and they hear FDR say:

You do not have to be a professor of mathematics or economics to see that if people with plenty of cash start bidding against each other for scarce goods, the price of those goods (them) goes up.

Yesterday I submitted to the Congress of the United states a seven-point program, a program of general principles which taken together could be called the national economic policy for attaining the great objective of keeping the cost of living down. I repeat them now to you in substance:

First. we must, through heavier taxes, keep personal and corporate profits at a low reasonable rate.
Second. We must fix ceilings on prices and rents.
Third. We must stabilize wages.
Fourth. We must stabilize farm prices.
Fifth. We must put more billions into War Bonds.
Sixth. We must ration all essential commodities which are scarce.
Seventh. We must discourage installment buying, and encourage paying off debts and mortgages.

As it happens, I have a 1942 OWI poster with that same message hanging in my kitchen:

In fact, of course, price inflation was the natural result of a substantial increase in the money supply before and during the war. All of FDR’s policies – cartels, destruction of crops, wage and price controls, rationing – were misguided attempts to deal with the consequences of monetary manipulation and other bad policies.

By the way, FDR famously said, “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Which might explain another propaganda film produced by MGM, this one in 1933, that extolled the virtues of FDR’s policy of inflation, utilizing the argument that is variously called “stimulus” or “the broken window fallacy.” The film cited the successful results of Civil War inflation. “What inflation has done before it will do again! … What a man! And what a leader! Yowzer! Happy days are here again!” Yeah, that went well. And by 1942 MGM was back on board, making a government propaganda film opposing inflation.

For background on inflation, read Cato adjunct scholar Lawrence H. White at the Concise Encylopedia of Economics.

Topics:
Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, General, Government and Politics

The New York Times’ Glib Call for Internet and Software Regulation

By Jim Harper

You have to read all the way to the end to get exactly what the New York Times is getting at in its Sunday editorial, ”Netizens Gain Some Privacy.”

Congress should require all advertising and tracking companies to offer consumers the choice of whether they want to be followed online to receive tailored ads, and make that option easily chosen on every browser.

That means Congress—or the federal agency it punts to—would tell authors of Internet browsing software how they are allowed to do their jobs. Companies producing browser software that didn’t conform to federal standards would be violating the law.

In addition, any Web site that tailored ads to their users’ interests, or the networks that now generally provide that service, would be subject to federal regulation and enforcement that would of necessity involve investigation of the data they collect and what they do with it.

Along with existing browser capabilities (Tools > Options > Privacy tab > cookie settings), forthcoming amendments to browsers will give users more control over the information they share with the sites they visit. That exercise of control is the ultimate do-not-track. It’s far preferable to the New York Times’ idea, which has the Web user issuing a request not to be tracked and wondering whether government regulators can produce obedience.

Topics:
Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Reading the News from Egypt

By Christopher A. Preble

The news from Egypt is traveling fast – despite the goverment’s best efforts to clamp down on Twitter, Facebook and other social media. President Hosni Mubarak’s call for everyone else in the cabinet to resign ignores the signs and chants in the streets calling for him to go.  Nobel Prize Winner Mohamed ElBaradei, the putative leader of the reform movement, is now under house arrest. The level of support that he enjoys among the public at large is unclear. The reports that I have seen and trust suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood is not playing a very large role in the protests, despite the fact that they are the leading opposition group in the country.

Mubarak has stoked fear of an Islamist takeover in Egypt for decades, extracting billions of dollars in foreign aid from U.S. taxpayers, and convincing leaders in Washington not to push too hard for political reform. The Obama administration can’t undo years of bad policy, but it isn’t clear that they would do so, even if they could.

The simple fact is that no one, including the very few genuine experts on Egypt and the wider region, knows what is going to happen next. So we watch. And wait. And hope for the best.

The best case from my perspective is for the violence to abate. That would allow the inchoate reform impulses within the protest movement to coalesce around a clear alternative to Mubarak. And if Mubarak somehow manages to stay on a while longer, I hope that he will use that respite to move Egypt towards a genuine democracy, not merely invoke fears of further chaos in the country as an excuse to perpetuate his autocratic rule.

Washington’s long-standing support for Mubarak nearly ensures that some of the people marching in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria and Suez will eventually direct their ire on the United States, but the protests now seem focused on purely domestic matters: not enough jobs, too much corruption, and a general lack of political and economic opportunities. If the United States is seen as attempting to pick a successor for Mubarak, it will likely undermine that person’s credibility, and merely deepen suspicions that the Egyptian people aren’t really in control of their country. As with all successful political reform movements, the ideas might come from elsewhere, but the impulse for change must come from within.

Topics:
Foreign Policy and National Security

Shades of Warning: What It Means to Inform

By Jim Harper

Ben Friedman helpfully supplies more information to go with my positive reaction to the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to scrap color-coded threat warnings.

Our colloquy leaves somewhat open what should replace color-coding. Because most threat warnings are false alarms, and because exhortations to vigilance will tend toward the vagueness of the color-coding system, Ben hopes “DHS winds up being tighter-lipped.”

His points are good ones, but they don’t dissuade me from my belief that DHS should “begin informing the public fully about threats and risks known to the U.S. government.”

The right answer here centers on who is better at digesting threat information—experts in the national security bureaucracy or the public?

There is a great deal of expertise in the U.S. government focused on turning up threat information and digesting it for policymakers. However, that expertise has limits, often manifested as threat inflation, as Ben notes, and as myopia. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Secrecy: The American Experience illustrates the latter well (especially the edition with Richard Gid Powers’ fine introduction).

The public consists of hundreds of millions of subject matter experts in every walk of life. They include owners and operators of all our infrastructure, reporters and commentators in the professional and amateur press, academics, state and local law enforcement personnel, information networks, and social networks of all kinds. We have security-interested folk in the hundreds of millions spread out across the land, all in regular communication with each other. We’re a tremendously powerful information processing machine. I believe this public can do a better job of digesting threat information than “experts,” particularly when it comes to terrorism threats, which can—theoretically, at least—manifest themselves pretty much anywhere.

The public constantly digests risk and threat information from other walks of life. We digest information about ordinary crime, health and disease, finance and investment, driving and walking, etc., etc. There is nothing about terrorism that disables the public from making judgments about threat information and incorporating it into daily life. People can figure out what matters and what does not, and they can apply information in the spheres they know.

When I say “fully inform,” I don’t argue for broadcasting every speck of information the U.S. government collects. There are limited domains in which information sharing will reveal sources and methods, undercutting access to future information. Appropriate caveats are part of ”fully” informing, of course. Natural pressure will cause too speculative threats to be winnowed from public release. But even opening a firehose will get people the water they need to drink.

Tight lips sink ships. The presumption should fall in favor of sharing information with the public. After a period of adjustment lasting from months to a year or more, the American information system would incorporate open threat information into daily life, and the country would be more secure. People made confident by the ability to consume and respond to threat information will feel more secure, which is the other half of what security is all about.

Topics:
Foreign Policy and National Security, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

From the Public-Employee-Tenure Files

By Walter Olson

Why are public-sector managers often reluctant to fire errant employees, even when the stakes of misbehavior are high? One reason is fear of outcomes like that in Aurora, CO, where a civil service commission has just ordered reinstatement and back pay for an officer terminated from the police force after he “allegedly kneed a female suspect in the face while she was handcuffed and on the ground,” to quote the Denver Post, and then failed to report her injuries even though she was bleeding profusely. The police chief said he considered the incident an “egregious” use of excessive force, and the woman, whose orbital (eye-socket) bone was broken, won $85,000 in a settlement with the city.

That was not good enough for the civil service panel considering the officer’s firing, which said excessive force had not been proved to its satisfaction. It did find that the officer had violated a number of department policies — he should have reported the woman’s injuries, for example — but said termination was too severe a penalty; instead, it said, he should be docked 160 hours of pay and made to undergo training. The docking of pay seems to be of a somewhat notional variety, however, given that the commission ordered him awarded back pay for the salary he would have earned had he not been dismissed in June 2010 (the underlying incident took place in February 2009).

So there you have it. Municipal taxpayers get to pay both ways — to defend against allegations that there was excessive force, and that there wasn’t. Public managers are sent the message that it’s unsafe for them to manage. Aurora residents nervous about possible encounters with the local constabulary are given fresh reason to be nervous. Is it any wonder long-overdue reform of government-employee tenure keeps returning to the national agenda?

Topics:
Government and Politics

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