CEI Podcast for April 4, 2013: Reining in the CFAA

Posted on April 4, 2013 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for April 4, 2013: Reining in the CFAA

wargames-hacker
Have a listen here.

Congress is mulling an update to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1984. Under the CFAA, it is currently a federal crime to enter an incorrect age on your Facebook profile or an incorrect weight on a dating website profile. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia suggests that the CFAA should be reined in, instead of expanded, as a draft currently circulating around Capitol Hill proposes.

Comments Off on CEI Podcast for April 4, 2013: Reining in the CFAA

Posted in CEI Podcast, regulation, Technology

A Story with Neither Style nor Substance

Posted on April 4, 2013 | Comments Off on A Story with Neither Style nor Substance

President Obama Nominee’s ‘Ugly’ Hair Investigated

Comments Off on A Story with Neither Style nor Substance

Posted in General Foolishness, Political Animals

The Origin of Interest Groups

Posted on April 2, 2013 | Comments Off on The Origin of Interest Groups

It has always been fashionable to lament the decline of morals and decency. Every generation has had some variation of the “kids these days” trope. Applying this folk wisdom to modern century politics, the rise of special-interest groups during the 20th century must certainly have been a disturbing development to witness. Even today, it seems like pressure groups grow more powerful with every election cycle. What is happening to our democracy?

Whatever is going on, moral decay has little to do with it. On pp. 285-6 of their classic Calculus of Consent, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock offer a much more realistic theory on why K Street is what it is:

A hypothesis explaining the increasing importance of the pressure group over the last half century need not rest on the presumption of a decline in the public morality. A far simpler and much more acceptable hypothesis is that interest-group activity, measured in terms of organizational costs, is a direct function of the “profits” expected from the political process by functional groups.

In other words, if the amount of money in politics disturbs you, then you should advocate for less politics. Just as bank robbers go where the money is, so do rent-seekers.

Comments Off on The Origin of Interest Groups

Posted in Books, Economics, Political Animals, Public Choice

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on April 1, 2013 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

collision at sea
This week in the world of regulation:

  • Last week, 100 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 60 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every hour and 41 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • All in all, 826 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,426 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,526 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 19,362 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 79,353 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. For the third week in a row, no such rules were published, keeping the total at 10 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.632 billion to $4.910 billion.
  • So far, 67 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 151 final rules affect small business; 20 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted in regulation

CEI Podcast for March 28, 2013: The TSA’s Illegal Body Scanners

Posted on March 28, 2013 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for March 28, 2013: The TSA’s Illegal Body Scanners

tsa body scanner
Have a listen here.

The TSA’s controversial full-body scanners were implemented illegally, since the TSA never put them through the required comment-and-review rulemaking process. Despite a court order, the TSA is still dragging its feet on complying with the law. Fellow in Land-use and Transportation Studies Marc Scribner has the latest developments in the case.

Comments Off on CEI Podcast for March 28, 2013: The TSA’s Illegal Body Scanners

Posted in CEI Podcast, Security Theater

The Year 2000

Posted on March 28, 2013 | Comments Off on The Year 2000

The two iron laws of modernity are 1) things are getting better, and 2) people think they’re getting worse. Or as the comedian Louis C.K. put it, “Everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.”

That’s what makes this essay by David Bauer such a good read. The year 2000 once seemed like a distant future point, almost an abstraction. It was also the setting for any number of high-tech science fiction fantasies. Then it came and went, and nobody thought much of it. Now, in 2013, the technology that we take for granted makes the year 2000 look downright primitive. No wi-fi, no smartphones, no social networking sites, no touchscreen tablets. As Bauer concludes his trip to the year 2000:

Here you are, back in 2013, where self-driving cars, 3D-printing, and augmented reality glasses excite people. All those things you missed while travelling back to 2000? Boring, everyday stuff we don’t even think about any longer.

Pessimistic bias wins again, unfortunately.

Comments Off on The Year 2000

Posted in Innovation

Smart Process, Not Just Smart People

Posted on March 27, 2013 | Comments Off on Smart Process, Not Just Smart People

Don Boudreaux’s latest Pittsburgh Tribune-Review column is simply superb, echoing both Israel Kirzner and Deirdre McCloskey:

The undeniably smart Steve Jobs’ vision for an affordable smartphone was dazzlingly creative. But that vision would have amounted to zilch had not many other people been available to help make Jobs’ vision a reality. Some of these other people were also smart. Others were of only ordinary intelligence. And almost every one of them was a complete stranger to Jobs.

Yet somehow, they all cooperated with Jobs and with each other to create the iPhone.

What has not been around, unlike smart people, for tens of thousands of years is the smart process that encourages the globe-spanning cooperation that makes goods such as the smartphone possible.

As Don points out, this “smart process” is a market economy. This is the Kirznerian insight that a market is not a thing or a place. It is an ongoing, never-ending process. Or, as Kirzner described market competition, a discovery procedure. Don also alludes to Deirdre McCloskey’s insight that this smart process cannot work unless people let it. Public opinion has to value things like innovation and commerce, and not look down its nose at them. The more that people denigrate entrepreneurs, the fewer of them there will be — and that means no smart phones, no matter how many smart people there are.

Read the whole thing.

Comments Off on Smart Process, Not Just Smart People

Posted in Economics, The Market Process

There Is Nothing Left to Cut

Posted on March 26, 2013 | Comments Off on There Is Nothing Left to Cut

The federal government spent $3.7 million on ex-presidents last year. It’s fair to provide them some security when needed, but this is a bit much — especially since all four living ex-presidents are wealthy men.

Right in line with his spending habits in office, George W. Bush is the worst offender, hooking taxpayers for $1.3 million. Besides racking up an $85,000 phone bill, he also spent $400,000 on office space. Those two items alone almost equal Jimmy Carter’s entire $500,000 tab.

Comments Off on There Is Nothing Left to Cut

Posted in Political Animals, Spending

The Red Tape Challenge

Posted on March 25, 2013 | Comments Off on The Red Tape Challenge

The U.S. isn’t the only place in need of some regulatory housecleaning. Nor is it the only place that has some good ideas for doing so. Over at the Daily Caller, Christian Rice and I take a look at a successful model in the UK: the Red Tape Challenge:

Every few weeks, the British government publishes regulations on a government website focusing on a specific area of the economy. The public then submits comments as to which regulations in that sector are unnecessary or overly burdensome. People can also recommend ways to improve the rules or even eliminate them entirely.

The departments that administer these regulations then collect these Red Tape Challenge comments and use them to develop specific regulatory policy proposals.

There are a few more steps after that. The point is that adding public participation to a sector where there is currently almost none has worked out quite well. Read the whole thing here.

Comments Off on The Red Tape Challenge

Posted in Publications, regulation

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on March 25, 2013 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

barnyard_pig
This week in the world of regulation:

  • Last week, 59 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 60 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 51 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • All in all, 726 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,271 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,262 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 17,836 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 79,625 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. For the second week in a row, no such rules were published, keeping the total at 10 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.632 billion to $4.910 billion.
  • So far, 65 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 136 final rules affect small business; 19 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • Busy week at the FAA, with 20 new rules hitting the books – more than a third of this week’s 59 total rules.
  • Arizona may be landlocked, but that didn’t stop the Coast Guard from establishing a safety area in Lake Havasu for a local triathlon.
  • The Patent and Trademark Office issued a correction to its recent adjustment of patent fees.
  • If you export pork, you are required to file a weekly report to the USDA.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted in regulation