Apparently the folks at Media Matters didn’t care for my July 12 article in the Daily Caller debunking the cell phone cancer scare.
The trouble is, I’m not quite sure why. They never say. Jamison Foser’s blog post doesn’t touch a single argument I made in the article. Instead he attacks me personally, as well as CEI. For all I know, he agrees with everything I said. Or maybe he disagrees. I don’t know.
His main point is that corporate funding makes arguments untrustworthy. Since CEI receives some corporate funding, we are therefore suspicious. This is not a rigorous line of thought. Arguments are either right or wrong. The presence or absence of corporate funding has nothing to do with whether an argument is right or wrong.
There is also the matter of Media Matters’ own very generous corporate donors, which Foser does not address.
Media Matters’ fixation on corporate funding is an easy way for them to avoid genuine intellectual engagement. It is a diversion. If you are unable to attack the argument, then attack the person making it.
This ad hominem attack deserves a rebuttal. The Daily Caller was kind enough to run mine this morning. I hope you will take a few minutes to read it.
Posted in Argumentation, Correspondence, Everybody Panic, Philosophy, Publications, The Partisan Mind
Tagged ad hominem, argument, argumentation, attack, cancer and cell phones, cell phone cancer, cell phone cancer scare, corporate funding, daily caller, jamison foser, media matters, media matters for america, mmfa
This letter of mine ran in today’s New York Times in response to Paul Krugman’s July 4 column.
To the Editor:
Paul Krugman is at a loss to explain why some people oppose extending unemployment benefits. One reason people hold such an opinion is that when government subsidizes something, there tends to be more of it.
The more government subsidizes unemployment, the more people will indulge in it for longer periods of time.
Ryan Young
Washington, July 6, 2010
The writer is a journalism fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Price and Wage Controls, Publications, Spending
Tagged new york times, ny times, paul krugman, subsidies, unemployment, unemployment benefits, unintended consequences
Here’s a letter I sent recently to The New York Times:
May 14, 2010
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Your May 12 article “With Obama, Regulations Are Back in Fashion” (page A15) asserts that the Bush administration had a “deregulatory agenda.” If that is true, then President Bush failed miserably in executing it.
His administration added 31,634 new regulations to the books, and repealed hardly any. The cost of complying with federal regulations exceeded $1 trillion for the first time on Bush’s watch. 587,321 new pages were added to Federal Register during the Bush years.*
Even the regulation-intensive Obama administration is passing new regulations at a pace nearly ten percent slower than President Bush.
Contrary to the article, the Bush administration was the best friend regulators have had in a generation or more.
Ryan Young
Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, DC
*All data from Wayne Crews, Ten Thousand Commandments.
Posted in Correspondence, Media, regulation
Tagged bias, bush, busting myths, Correspondence, deregulation, letter, lte, media bias, misconception, myth, new york times, obama, regulation
A reader sent the following email to Wayne Crews and I in response to our article that ran in today’s AOL News. My reply follows.
Your vague double-talk would likely indicate that you are republican. The final statement in your opening paragraph seems to insinuate that the current administration (democrats) will escalate the already enormous number of federal regulations. If my recollection is correct, Clinton was the last president to really chisel away at some of this, and not only balanced the budget, but facilitated a surplus. Republicans, led by the renegade Bush, put us into a war, based on COMPLETE LIES which is the true base of the current enormous deficit. (Oh, and by the way, lots of Bush affiliates made a fortune over in Iraq. Hhmm?) This along with the deregulation pushed thru by the republican-controlled congress during the Clinton administration (giving banks ridiculously dangerous new powers) led to the economic CRASH of our current RECESSION (to put it lightly) – not to mention the crazy policies of the Federal Reserve and lack of oversight by the SEC during Bush’s DESPOTIC REIGN. The bail-outs pushed by Bush as he was leaving office and the subsequent pressured NECESSITY for Obama to continue in the same vein was certainly NOT the fault of the democrats. They were forced to deal with the CRAP left behind by the republicans, or face complete collapse of our entire economy. Bush and the republicans are the crazy lying right wing bigots that have the Christian right SNOWED. They could not care less about righteousness. They simply coddle the Christian right to get their votes with issues like Anti-Abortion and Anti-Gay-Marriage. The members of the early Church (followers of Christ after His death) sold everything and everyone put all their wealth together, and each was given as was needed (sort of like SOCIALISM or even COMMUNISM). The dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest stance of the republican party, supported by the Christian right, could not be any further from the system of the original followers of Christ, His Church.
I sent him this reply:
[Name redacted] – Thanks for writing. I am actually an independent. So is Wayne. I opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, am pro-gay marriage and pro-choice, I oppose the drug war and the PATRIOT Act, and I favor separation of church and state. It would be quite a stretch to call me a Republican. I share your negative opinion of Bush, and am proud that I never voted for him.
One point of correction, though: Bush and his fellow Republicans didn’t deregulate a thing. In fact, more than 30,000 new regulations hit the books on his watch! You can check the data for yourself in Wayne’s new study at http://www.cei.org/10kc/.
With 157,000 pages of regulations on the books from 59 different federal departments, it is quite difficult to even find a free market to blame for our troubles. That’s why there’s a growing consensus in the economic literature that decades of federal interventions into the housing market was a major cause of the recession.
All the best,
Ryan
UPDATE: My correspondent replied with a very kind mea culpa this morning (4/16). He originally wrote in a fit of anger, and now retracts calling Wayne and I Republicans. Seems like a nice guy, actually.
Here is a letter I sent recently to The New York Times:
February 17, 2010
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Michael Cooper’s article, “Stimulus Jobs on State’s Bill in Mississippi” (February 16, page A1), lists several people who have directly benefited from the stimulus package.
The article names none of the roughly 300 million people directly hurt by that same stimulus package. The money that pays for Roshonda Bolton’s factory job was taken away from other people. They would have spent that money in other job-creating ways.
The stimulus doesn’t actually create jobs. It rearranges them. The best possible result is no net effect. Stories touting jobs saved or created by government are at best incomplete.
Ryan Young
Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.
Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Stimulus
Tagged bastiat broken window, bastiat broken window fallacy, broken window, broken window fallacy, creating jobs, econ 101, Economics, economics 101, economy, jobs, mississippi, new york times, roshanda bolton, saving jobs, Stimulus, the new york times, unemployment
Here’s a letter I sent recently to the New York Daily News:
December 3, 2009
Editor, New York Daily News
450 W. 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001
Washington, D.C.: In his December 3 column, “On jobs front, President Obama needs to show a little audacity,” Errol Louis worries about America’s trade deficit. He shouldn’t.
I run an ongoing trade deficit with my local grocery store. I import food from them every week. They have never purchased a thing from me in return. Even so, we both benefit. I’d rather have their food than my money, and they’d rather have my money than the food on their shelves. This is true even if an international border separates us.
If Mr. Louis is as worried about trade deficits as he says he is, he would never again set foot in a grocery store, start growing his own food, and engage only in barter transactions. If he doesn’t, he is either misinformed, or else he doesn’t really believe what he writes.
Ryan Young
Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.
Here is a letter I sent recently to The Wall Street Journal:
September 22, 2009
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
Your article “Bad News for Broadband” (editorial, Sept. 22) hints at, but does not make, a key point: net neutrality proposals are driving a wedge between service providers like AT&T and content providers like Google.
Strange, is it not? Their interests are actually closely aligned. If AT&T upgrades its network, Google benefits from the increased bandwidth. If Google improves its products, AT&T benefits from increased demand for broadband.
Net neutrality proposals give companies the incentive to seek rents at each other’s expense when they could be benefiting from each other’s innovations instead. This must be music to the ears of lobbyists, but how sad for consumers.
Ryan Young
Fellow in Regulatory Studies
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.
Here’s a letter I sent recently to The New York Times:
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Eric Zencey’s article “G.D.P. R.I.P” (August 10) correctly points out that GDP has limited usefulness in measuring well-being. But his case is muddled by confusing money with wealth. Money is a unit of measure, like a mile or a ton. But it is not itself wealth.
He writes, “If you get into a fender-bender and have your car fixed, G.D.P. goes up.” It actually stays the same. If I don’t get into the accident, I’ll just spend the repair money on something else. While the accident may have no effect on GDP, it does have an effect on wealth; I am inarguably poorer. Instead of a working car plus a new tv, I can enjoy only the car.
Zencey’s confusion is itself an example of why GDP does a poor job of measuring well-being.
RYAN YOUNG
Fellow in Regulatory Studies
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, Aug. 10, 2009
Here’s a letter I sent recently to the Financial Times:
July 29, 2009
Editor, Financial Times
1330 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
From Mr Ryan Young.
Sir, Mario Monti’s call for harmonized and reinvigorated EU and U.S. antitrust policies (“Watchdogs of the world, unite!”, July 29) is misguided. Consumers are best served when competing firms concentrate on bettering themselves, rather than hobbling their rivals. Antitrust policy discourages the former, and encourages the latter. Why bother with the ongoing challenge of competing in the marketplace if one can merely go to Brussels or Washington?
The great irony of antitrust policy is that it reduces market competition whenever and wherever it is applied. Such is its very nature.
Ryan Young
Fellow in Regulatory Studies,
Competitive Enterprise Institute,
Washington, DC, US
Here’s a letter I recently sent to The Wall Street Journal:
July 20, 2009
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
Amy Schatz’s article “New FCC Chairman’s Agenda Includes Broader Internet Access, More Transparency” (Corporate News, July 20) is most revealing. Chairman Genachowski seems to believe that forcing companies to share proprietary networks with their competitors would not reduce the incentive to build and improve such networks.
Just as puzzling, AT&T’s exclusive deal to provide service for Apple’s iPhone has come under scrutiny on anti-competitive grounds. This exclusive arrangement has encouraged competitors to come up with new and better devices of their own; thirty attempts have already hit the market. Competition is alive and well.
Chairman Genachowski is right that the Internet has been “the most successful driver of economic growth” in recent years. Why, then, pursue an agenda that would discourage investment in wired and wireless networks?
Ryan Young
Fellow in Regulatory Studies
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington
