Tag: international

Categories
politics

Federalist Nos. 15 – 16

Federalist Nos. 15 and 16 led me to two conclusions. First, Hamilton is accusing those who oppose the Constitution of hoping for a different result by repeating their previous actions (sounds like our modern politics of perpetual incumbency). Second, the confederacy that Hamilton describes that preceded our current (theoretically) Constitutional government sounds a lot like the United Nations – it lacked sufficient authority to effectively enforce its edicts on its members. This tells me that the U.N. is bound to be ineffective until it disintegrates or is replaced by a stronger version of world government.

I’d hate to think what would happen if the U.N. were given better enforcement powers unless it is done with a very firm limitation on what areas of life the U.N. had authority to regulate (as our federal government had at its inception).

Categories
culture politics State

Embracing Broad Perspectives

I was listening to a story on NPR about young Indians abroad returning to help their country. One statement that caught my attention was the assertion that Indians who have lived in Western cultures have experienced the problems and some of the attempts to fix problems that the West has been dealing with for decades and which the Indian culture and economy are just beginning to experience as the economy there expands. Because of their perspectives from other nations they have a unique ability to help India avoid some pitfalls that the West has seen – if enough people will listen to them.

Later I was having a conversation about transportation issues in Utah and it occurred to me that the same phenomenon applies here. People in Utah who have spent appreciable time back East in areas of higher population density are much more likely to be supportive of mass transit options, tolling, and other transportation options that are often distasteful to those who have lived in the sprawling west all their lives. If those with the perspective of having lived back East are heard we might be able, as Utah continues in its rapid population growth, to avoid some pitfalls such as becoming another concrete urban jungle like Los Angeles. Only if we start making better use of transportation infrastructure options besides increasing amounts of asphalt.

Trax is good, FrontRunner is good, but lets try to make sure that such transportation options are part of the fabric of the area, not just an anomaly that feeds people into the downtown Salt lake City area.

Categories
politics

Free Marketer’s Dilemma

I’m a proponent of the value of free markets and their ability to enrich people. The problem is that the free market only works in a closed system, in other words a free market is not favored when intersecting with markets which are being manipulated. The issue of how to compensate for intersecting our supposedly free market with other markets which impose duties and protective tariffs on imported good led me to think of the Prisoner’s dilemma from game theory.

Briefly, the prisoner’s dilemma is a situation where the results of your actions will vary depending on the actions of others over whom you have no control. If one market imposes tariffs and the other does not the market with tariffs benefits at the expense of the other market. If both markets impose tariffs then the playing field is level, but both are worse off than if neither of them impose tariffs.

Thankfully there may be a solution to the problem by studying the prisoners dilemma. Our economic interactions specifically resemble a specific form of the prisoner’s dilemma called The iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Under this specific variation the interactions are repeated so that the participants have a history of interactions. In a competition of computerized players the winning algorithm was one called “tit for tat” (later improved versions have been classed as “tit for tat with forgiveness”). This kind of a strategy encourages others to play nice without simply being a doormat for those who wish to use tariffs.

Does this sound like it would work in international economics?

Categories
politics

Our Crisis in Foreign Policy

Frank does a good job discussing One Lesson From Two September 11th Events. He is completely right to ask:

What will it take for America to learn a similar lesson–that if we expect to be respected and not feared, that we must give respect? Why does America think it is better than the rest of the world, and that we don’t have to abide by the same rules and morals when dealing with the rest of the world? If we learned and practiced this one simple lesson, we would once again have the respect of nearly everyone. As it stands, they would spit on us if they didn’t think we’d drop a smart bomb on them for it.

Our crisis seems to be that the loudest voices in foreign policy seem to be those on the right who think that war is good for our popularity here at home (they’ve been proven wrong since we went to Iraq) and those on the left who think that spreading our money around the globe will make us popular internationally (they were proven wrong on September 11th, 2001). The fact is that both courses to action lead us to be resented. If our foreign policy was not bad enough, our domestic policy does the same thing as we insist from both camps that we must have the highest standard of living in the world. The fact is that we need to work hard and respect others and just take the standard of living that results from our hard work.

Categories
culture technology

Looking to Europe

I do not look favorably on many of the traits common among many European countries (higher taxes to fund broader social programs, shorter workweeks, that kind of thing). However a brief mention of Europe in Transportation Watch reminded me that there is one area where we could learn from Europe. They have learned to make use of transit systems so much that many people have no need of cars. Admittedly their population density almost demands this, but our population density is not decreasing so we should be planning ahead.

California is looking at a high-speed rail line that would make lots of short-distance air travel obsolete between San Diego and Sacramento. Here in the States we love to fly everywhere. It’s so bad that Amtrack is almost useless because we are not willing to take the extra time to ride the train that is slightly cheaper. If California actually puts in the funding to build this high-speed rail line they will have a train that is cheaper than the planes and faster than airport security. If that could be done in a number of other travel corridors as well we would have fewer planes in the sky, less fuel being used, and faster travel through airports due to lower volumes of travelers when most air travel is for longer distances.

Similar benefits could be realized on a smaller scale by implementing good transit options in population centers so that we would not be so reliant on cars for all our local travel. At least on those we can look to some examples of good transit systems here in the States rather than wondering what the rest of the world knows that we have not figured out yet.

UPDATE 5/14/97: I stand corrected – as Hyrum points out, Amtrack is not slightly cheaper than the airlines on cross-country trips.

Categories
culture life politics

Non-Binding Resolutions

While listening to NPR today I heard a senator talking about many agreements we have made with the Iraqi government where the Iraqi’s failed to do what they promised. He attributed that failure to the fact that “the agreements [had] no teeth.” That got me thinking. We don’t have to look outside our country to see ineffective government posturing related to agreements without teeth. Just look at any non-binding resolution ever passed by a legislative body. For that matter we can look at any legislation that gets passed without funds to carry it out. In case anyone is wondering – legal teeth start like this “$” and end like this “.00” and each digit that comes between that beginning and that end constitutes a tooth. For private citizens three teeth is generally enough to encourage compliance, but once we start dealing with governments and corporations it takes a lot more teeth to be convincing.

I think that wherever government passes any measure to redistribute wealth there must be teeth to ensure compliance with the law, and great care that the law be written to discourage abuse of any such program. I believe that government should generally avoid such laws because bureaucratic programs tend to be magnets for abuse, especially where money can be gained, but when they do legislate those things they need to put teeth into the law.

That lead my train of though onto a new track – we have our share of non-binding resolutions at home with the kids. As I think about it there are times (at least times in the home) when laws without teeth are a good thing. The children should learn to obey because it is the right thing, or because they trust us, not merely because they will lose some privilege.

So my question is, when do you think teeth are necessary? When do you think that they are unnecessary? I ask this not just with regard to government, but also to home and community situations.

Categories
life

The Pope Fixes A Broken Doctrine

All I could think was, “wow, he got that one right,” when I read that the Pope renounced the doctrine of limbo. The idea that infants who die without baptism cannot go to heaven is offensive to common sense if you believe in a loving God. Limbo seems like nothing more than hell without personal responsibility. This all came about because of “Vatican studies that said there were ‘serious’ grounds that such souls could go to heaven, rather than exist between heaven and hell.”

Little had I realized that Limbo was actually an improvement in status from what had been taught before then – that infants dying without baptism were consigned to hell.

Categories
culture politics

Semantics

I have been wanting to write about this for a while but never got around to it – while listening to The World on NPR, which is produced in part by the BBC, I have noticed British reporters refer to the democrats as “the opposition party.” Many democratic governments around the world are structured differently than ours. They refer to the party in power as the ruling party and the largest party to challenge them is called the opposition party. The reason for this is that the parties come and go more than ours and the ruling party often cannot rule by themselves, but must build a coalition with other parties to rule.

As I was noticing this, I began to think about the significance of the fact that we do not consider the Democrats to be the opposition party even though the Republicans have controlled all branches of government for multiple election cycles now. So long as we consider both parties to be legitimate voices in politics then I have hope for this country. As soon as one party starts to act like “the opposition party” by standing for “whatever the ruling party is against” I think our political dialog goes downhill and we quit making progress as a country.

Categories
culture life

Slow Way of Life

While running errands this afternoon I was listening to the radio and I heard about a movement that started in Italy in 1999 that really seems to embody the lifestyle I would like to create for myself. The movement is called Cittaslow and their philosophy is basically described as slowing down and not becoming caught up in the fast pace of our modern life.

It was very interesting to learn about this movement. They currently have 100 partner cities in 10 countries. I don’t know that they have any partner cities in the United States, but the US probably has at least as great a need for some “slower” towns as any other country. I wonder how the principles of the philosophy embodied by Cittaslow could be implemented by an individual or family. They are geared towards municipalities, but there must be an application on a smaller scale.

Categories
politics

Well Stated

I stumbled onto Peonicus’ View of Politics the same day I started my new blog and I thought it would be a good excuse to post a reaction and test out my blog a little more.

I was amazed to hear criticism for both the left and the right so early in the post. Right off I was saying to myself “my thoughts exactly.”

When I read:

What we need is for the existing society to behave with the primary goal of the good of the whole. This means that we focus less on our personal fortunes, and more on using our influence to do good. We must start at the most fundamental unit of society: our families. First, we need to respect and honor our spouses even more than ourselves. Then we must be loving parents, and teach our children to love and respect others despite inevitable differences.

I recognized some positively primitive thinking – like my own. The answer does not lie in making new laws to govern campaign finance – although those might be helpful. The answer lies in returning to who we are – people who want better lives for ourselves and our children. If that is our primary focus, and if we can remember to “forgive and ask for forgiveness,” we may be able to get past our mudslinging and divisiveness and start to find actual solutions. That makes me begin to wonder, is Peonicus right in suggesting:

What would happen in the Middle East if everybody there, Jews and Muslims alike taught their children that there is no us and them, there is simply us. I think the fighting would end tomorrow, and the poverty of the region could be ended by 2007.

It would be nice if he was, but we’ll never know unless more people think like this.