Israel (sigh)

I've never been all that thrilled with Israel. A polity based on the idea that an individual has a claim to property because of his membership in a ethno-religious construct should make any American cringe. A state that exists solely for the benefit of one ethno-religious group (no one may serve in the Knesset who does not support the continuance of "Israel as the land of the Jews"), should make us uncomfortable. A legal system that recognizes the authority of religious courts is one unfit for survival among humanity.

I'm not discussing here the validity of any "Jewish" claim to any chunk of land on the eastern Meditterrannean coast, because the issue is moot (although I would note that, archeologically, the territory under the Biblical King David's control is much smaller than is claimed in the Bible). I have a pretty strong ancestral claim to a chunk of land in Baden-Wuerrtemburg, but I doubt anyone would take me seriously if I knocked on a door on Hauptstrasze and told the owner to give me his house on the basis of my claim. And if I showed up with a bunch of Harings and took the house(s) by force, it would be recognized by all for what it were: violent theft, or conquest.

Nor do I give a crap about the historical authenticity of "Palestine" and "Palestinians". How long would those morons who do have waited before they recognized the validity of "America" and "Americans"? There is no territorial name or ethno-political affiliation in the history of the planet that predates somebody making it up. The fact that Palestine is a name with ancient roots (Phillistine, Pelasgian -- you know, Greek names), also is of no relevance. Any individual or group thereof can call themselves whatever the hell they want, and call the chunk of land they live on whatever name they can agree on.

So anyway, as a reasoning, true American, I got the big ol' cold prickly whenever I thought about Israel.

However, this was mitigated by the fact that Israel's polity is much more enlightened than any other state within 500 miles, as well as by things I was starting to read in the press. These sources of hope were not about occupation of Palestine, but of how Israel treated its non-Jewish inhabitants. To be clear, the religious courts and the ministry of culture should be eliminated, and the same secular and rational law should apply to all inhabitants, and individuals should be responsible for supporting the cultural insititutions they want supported. But when I read, for example, of a non-Jewish Israeli family successfully suing for the right to live in a "Jewish" settlement, I looked to a future when Israel could transition from a "land of the Jews (and whoever else we let live here)" to a truly enlightened, egalitarian, constitutional republic with a limited government, where religion, ethnicity, and language are a matter for the individual, not the state. In short, what I wish the United States could be.

Instead, I hear the intention to create a "pure, Jewish state" when Olmert talks about the border establishment.

I don't have a problem with a state defining its borders, nor even with Israel disposing of Palestine as it wishes: it has, for want of something more noble, the right of conquest over that territory dating back to the 1967 war. There is something troubling, of course, about creating a rump of a country, with no real economic basis for sustainability, cut off from Israel and also any economic centers in Jordan (or Jordan itself, depending on just what the "security zone" along the river turns out to be). One might conclude that Olmert's plan is to make it difficult to live in Palestine, leading to a mass exodus (if you'll excuse the term) that'll leave the territory free for later annexation without concern of a large non-Jewish population coming with it.

The associated concern, of course, is a false sense of security for Israelis, while Palestinians are left with limited alternatives to strapping bombs to their bodies and hopping the fence.

No, my concern is that Israel's going to backtrack on any progress in equalizing the status of non-Jewish Israelis with Jewish ones. That Israel shall adopt the old, "if you don't like it, leave" posture towards non-Jews, or maybe the "if we don't like you, leave" posture we are starting to see in parts of Iraq, and which we saw in Yugoslavia not too long ago.

I may be wrong. The majority of Israel appears to my limited view to be vaguely secular; the militant Zionists seem to be a minority, however pissed off. It's possible that the state shall start receding from support of culture on any basis, that detachment from the contentious settlements shall allow Zionism to fade away.

But as I think about it, the most likely scenario seems to be this: 1) Palestinians, faced with economic starvation, will step up attacks against Israel, bolstered by international allies -- the "third intafada" will incorporate all the tactics honed in Iraq; 2) Israel shall have to scrutinize Muslim citizens, and conduct counter-attacks into the territory it abandoned; 3) the continuing attacks shall radicalize the now moderate majority of Israelis, leading to greater willingness to drive non-Jews out of Israel and Palestine, to push the border to the Jordan river and drive anybody there before them to maintain a "pure, Jewish state".

And then? Well, 200 years from now, Israel'll be just like France, or any other nation-state that drove out minorities to establish itself, and even an enlightened, egalitarian, constitutional republic with a limited government, where religion, ethnicity, and language are a matter for the individual, not the state.

So really, why am I worried?

Economic eschatology

I recently read Richard J. Newman's "Can America Keep Up?", in last week's U.S. News & World Reports, and I just couldn't shake this feeling of deja vu.

Y'all know the arguments, right? America isn't graduating as many engineers, or spending as much on municipal and telecommunications infrastructure, or supporting the high tech industry as much as other countries. America's priorities, in short, are misdirected, and as a result America shall fall behind, lose its standard of living, and become a second-class country before too long.

The only problem with these arguments is that, with regard to many of their facts, there is no America. America doesn't create engineers, scientists, and mathemeticians: individuals choose to go into those fields. America doesn't build monorails or mag-lev trains in cities: the city governments, in cooperation with the relevant counties or states, make the decision and allocate the funds (and create new taxes) to create them. America doesn't connect homes to broadband internet access; private corporations do, on the expectation of economic rewards of doing so (oh, and I should note that the World Economic Forum recently concluded that the U.S. ranked highest in the "network readiness index", a set of criteria including science and math education and "diffusion of various technologies"). The implication in articles such as Mr. Newman's is that the federal government should, somehow, do these things.

My contemporaries may remember that, in the 1980s, the blabber was all about the Japanese, how they were spending more on this or that and we should be more like they are. Except that at the end of the 1980s, the problems inherent in Japan's central economic planning were fully revealed: subsidization of bank loans to unprofitable enterprizes led to a credit crisis that spun the Japanese economy into a pit whence it did not emerge until a couple of years ago.

When a government allocates funds extracted by force from the population to support this or that industry, the inevitable basis for such allocation is not the value of the industry or enterprise, but the political clout of representatives of that industry or enterprise. Government subsidies have the well-known effect of distorting the economy by sheltering inefficiencies from challenge by improvements within the country and elsewhere, until the industry or enterprise is incapable of surviving on its own. At that point, either the subsidies continue to increase to bolster the artificial competitiveness of the entity, or they are cancelled or prove insufficient. The company collapses, workers lose their jobs, and women and children run through the streets screaming "Why? WHY?" Or, of course, some unscrupulous individual diverts the subsidies into his or her own accounts, and the money just disappears.

Of course, even if the subsidies are allocated on the basis of value and efficiency, both estimates could prove wrong. The Soviet Union, the biggest centralized economy in the world not too long ago, was notorious not just for corruption, but for just making the wrong choices. China, especially under Mao, was even worse at picking the right course of action for its economy. There are cases in U.S. history where the U.S. government lost a chunk of money because it gave it to the wrong person or entity.

In short, centralized control of the economy, or of technological research et al., is exactly the worst idea. In fact, the problems cited by supporters of such a scheme are the product of the limited involvement the federal government already has. Tax (and tax subsidy) policy, visa policy, these have argued against exploitation of the world's talent in U.S.-based or U.S.-owned companies (because, you know, foreigners are terrorists) and against smaller companies being able to compete on an equal economic footing with larger ones (because subsidies are based on scale, and government regulations fall more heavily on small companies than large ones). The complexity of tax law, patent law, and other laws makes the practice of law not only profitable but necessary: more talented individuals opt for law than math or biology, both to exploit the situation and to help individuals victimized by it, and no company can afford to not have a lawyer on retainer. The lack of a front-end evaluation of patent applications, in favor of a back-end, litigious evaluation, means that innovation is constrained by the need to verify the lack of a patent on a given idea and by the cost of disputing an overly general claim. And, of course, laws based on ideological objections to certain biological advances force anyone into cloning and related technologies to leave U.S. jurisdiction.

Another cause of any lack of competitiveness in U.S. companies is the Myth of the Universal Manager; this notion that anyone with an business degree (or, since too many folks have them now, an MBA) can run any kind of business, and that nobody can manage a business without one. That's led to a preponderence of non-technical types making business decisions for technical companies -- and, of course, the perception among individuals that it is easier to advance in the less intellectually rigorous field of business and business administration than any of the sciences. Like lawyers in the legislature, this preponderence is self-escalating: business managers look for other business types to promote, and may even not trust (or not understand) technical types. Market research trumps R&D. But, well, this is really not an issue that government can address, except in removing artificial protection of companies that move too far away from R&D to be able to compete against small start-ups. So again, government can help in this area only by getting the hell out of it.

As for education, there is the inherent problem of national educational standards. I recognize that the Department of Education arose because of a perceived (and actual?) gap between the math and science proficiences of U.S. and Soviet kids, and it was useful in shoving especially the biological sciences (evolution) down the throats of regressive school districts. But bad decisions can be made at any level. If a district (or state, say) has crappy standards for science and math, a company shan't find talented employees there, and will take its business and tax revenue elsewhere. Parents may do the same, either for better schools or to get the jobs that have left. But if, say, a religiously conservative President appoints a Secretary of Education who puts Intelligent Design into the national standards, where can we go? Economic competition, undistorted by federal subsidies or overly complex laws, weeds out poor business strategies, inefficient implementations -- and inadequate school curricula. And for those of you who say "what about the children?", well, they can work in low wage jobs, save up money, and take night course to supplement their crappy primary and secondary educations. Then they can get jobs at the companies that returned because the pool of talented workers reappeared after a revision of state or local curriculum standards.

So the next time you read something about the need of the federal government to support this or that industry (in my case, when I hear about subsidies of renewable energy sources), remember China, the USSR, and Japan: centralization makes bad decisions worse. China as the next economic powerhouse? Unlikely: the strains centralized planning are putting on the currency, and as a result on the living standards of those in the "old economy", shall lead to a wide-scale security problem (demonstrations and violence), forcing the government to back-pedal, essentially collapsing the structure. India? They may avoid China's fate, but economy is inexorable, and the cost of workers shall rise, reversing U.S. outsourcing trends, while the centrally controlled social support system and subsidy structure shall ultimately erode competitiveness. South Korea, Singapore, Iceland -- too small. All of these countries will chip away at U.S. hegemony, but that's not such a bad thing. If the federal government can resist the temptation to control the industry and instead yield more authority and liability to individuals, our students and professionals will find a way to compete and even reverse that erosion.

But it is not "America's" responsibility.

Activity 1 for folks with too much time on their hands

Haven't posted in a while, but I promise to get back to the energy series -- ethanol, et al., and my solution yet to come. I just have wanted to avoid the blog, what with my apparent inability to not talk about Iraq (sigh). Or TALON. Don't get me started.

So, as I was filling up my gas tank at $2.459/gallon (85 octane, no less: we in Colorado are gouged), I thought, as I often do, that if I had more time I would take my receipt to the cashier and demand credit for the fraction of a cent difference between the calculated cost of the gas and the whole-cent value to which the automated pump had rounded it. As it turns out, on this occasion I was actually saved .0939 cents, so it wouldn't have done any good anyway.

Wouldn't that be fun? Demand the .3 cents or whatever amount in store credit, and then, having gotten another few like amounts, turning in those chits for a full cent discount! And not just for that asinine if universally accepted practice of charging a unit price out to a digit that can't be represented in currency -- the infamous .9 cents on a gallon of gasoline: anytime somebody rounds up on sales tax. Like at McDonald's, where a 99-cent item with 6.2% sales tax winds up costing $1.06 (where's my flippin' .862 change?). Or like Kinko's, where 8 cents per copy becomes 9, instead of 8.5 or whatever. I mean, with my mutual funds, at least the full value of the fraction of a share I have bought is noted, and, in the digital world of trades, the price out to the tenth or even hundredth of a cent is deducted from or added to my account. So it looks funny, but it all works out (until I take it out in cash, but, you know, it's a flippin' IRA, and don't get me started on that).

It just pisses me off, to varying degrees, to see these fractional amounts get consolidated in extra money that I should be accumulating. In this case, it's perfectly rational -- I'm paying more than I should -- but almost completely impractical. Any honoring of credit valued at fractions of a cent could be avoided by any company if its owner posted notice that all prices are rounded to the nearest cent. But it would make them actually take that step, and score one for rigidly adherent truth.

And who wouldn't support that?

Happy Anniversary!

So I guess we're officially at three years (+1 day) since the invasion of Iraq. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Alawi said, "If this isn't civil war, I don't know what is"; Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Iraq's been in civil war since Saddam was deposed, in the sense of a violent struggle for political power. Two points for me, but I have to concede that Iraq doesn't meet the standard of civil war that I would use: that is, near constant fighting, with calm only in areas firmly in the control of one side or the other; no Sunnis in south Iraq, no Shi'ites in central Iraq, that sort of thing. So, I guess I lost my bet. With myself, just to be clear.

But there's enough sentiment that what is happening is at least a precursor to civil war --the sorts of events that, when looked at from a future civil war, can be seen as the actual start of that war -- that I think my point's been made.

To summarize, in the spirit of commemorating the anniversary:

• We are not "at war" with Iraq: we invaded it, destroyed its current government, but since then we have been occupying Iraq. This is therefore the Iraq occupation, not the Iraq war.


• The invasion was not a necessity of national survival, and therefore does not fit the model of WWII that some politicians have advanced; further, the Bush administration lied when justifying the reasons to go to war:
  
  
  
  • Iraq was not, as the administration on several occasions implied, involved in the 9/11 attacks.
  
  
  • Iraq was not, as the administration explicitly stated, supporting al Qaeda; in fact, the only Islamic terrorist group based in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam, was in the northern, Kurdish-controlled region, protected from Saddam's regime by U.S. and British aircraft.
  
  
  • Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and the administration lied when it released statements like Cheney's "there is no doubt that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction":
    
    
    
    • Iraq did not seek to buy uranium from Niger, and the source saying it did was known to be discredited before Bush's 2003 state of the union address.
    
    
    • Those aluminum tubes were known to be unsuitable for centrifuge of uranium, and the Bush administration blocked any effort to test the possibility that they were suitable for use in Iraqi missiles, starting almost immediately upon interception of the tubes.
    
    
    • It was known that the source ("Curveball") promulgating the mobile chem-labs story was unreliable long, long before Powell's address to the UN.
    
    
    • et cetera
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • democratizing a country through external force is not a reasonable goal, and it has no historical precedent outside of Japan, which was a homogeneous nation united in loyalty to an undeposed emperor -- a model that in no way fit Iraq; further, it is not the responsibility of the U.S. government, as it does not represent protection of the rights of U.S. citizens, but rather endangerment our soldiers and expenditure our money for no legitimate purpose.
  
  
  
  
• the invasion was initiated without a shred of Constitutionality:
  
  
  
  • the President is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces only when "they are called into actual service of the United States", and the only governmental entity authorized to do that is Congress.
  
  
  • HJ Res 114 and SJ Res 23 were not declarations of war, but rather legislative attempts to delegate war-declaration discretion to the President -- something only a Constitutional amendment could do. Every legislator who voted for these acts betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution, and is therefore a traitor.
  
  
  • Our Contitution does not grant the right to commit our forces to a conflict to any international body, not even the U.N. Security Council.
  
  
  • By launching the invasion in the absence of a Constitutional initiation of war or calling into service of the armed forces, President Bush betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution, and is therefore a traitor; any soldier who deployed on this basis also betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution in preference to being mindful to the orders of the President, and has done little more than facilitate the un-Consititutional act of an overambitious executive.
  
  


• the invasion was carried out without sufficient consideration of securing the peace, especially given the asserted goal of bringing democracy to Iraq; it has been known for some time that the force required to secure a country in peace is larger than that required to defeat a country in war; the Bush Administration is therefore not only deceitful and traitorious, but incompetent.


• Iraq fits the model of Yugoslavia much more readily than the model of Germany or Japan, to which several politicians have referred; its population contains more than sufficient numbers of individiuals belonging to groups that seek favored or dominant positions in the state, or vengeance against other groups, to sustain and inflame internecine violence up to civil war -- no matter how long we stay there.

Tell me I'm wrong. I've fleshed out my position on these points in lots of different places, so specific points may require elucidation in the context of this post.

But here we are, three years later. Any predictions for March 20, 2007?