War on Terror

Archive for War on Terror

Murphy Twin Spin on TSA and Subjective Value

This month I have the EconLib article. It is on privatizing airport security. You have seen some of this discussion in other venues but here I take it further, for example: By taking such critical decisions out of the hands of a government agency—which is not bound by rational cost-benefit calculations and yet, in a […]

Naomi Wolf Says What Guys Can’t

Here is her letter to Interpol (which I assume was an open letter, not something that was leaked): Dear Interpol: As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating. I […]

Murphy TSA Twin Spin

Here’s the full version of privatizing airline security, complete with a numerical example: [An] actuary could tell the airline, “Using only conventional metal detectors and X-ray machines on luggage, you should expect 10 terrorist incidents, each costing on average $300 million in legal damages, for every 100 million passengers who fly on your airline.” The […]

Some Concerns With the Amazon Boycott

Woo hoo, I already got 1 hate mail on this one. An excerpt (from the article, not the hate mail): It’s ironic to think through exactly why Amazon ended up being the target of the boycott, when even the boycotters would all quickly admit that it was Lieberman who was more culpable than the Amazon […]

A Question for the anti-TSA Team

The more I think about it, the more it seems the TSA did the right thing, in saying pilots should be subjected to the same security filters as everybody else. (Note that I AM NOT DEFENDING THE TSA’S PROCEDURES.) A lot of critics have been saying, “Those idiots! The pilot doesn’t need to take a […]

Ron Paul: “Enough Is Enough”

I have seen plenty of people endorse Ron Paul’s short speech on the House floor, but I hadn’t watched it until today. It’s really great that there is an actual guy in Congress saying this:

Naomi Wolf Doing Her Part

I was thrilled to see Lew Rockwell post another interview with Naomi Wolf. (In their last one, you could see it finally dawn on her why “right wingers” might oppose government control of education besides them hating literacy and/or minority children). In this interview, Wolf says she is moving from being a progressive to a […]

Glenn Greenwald Sounding Like an Economist

From this blog post: It really is the case that every new Terrorist incident reflexively produces a single-minded focus on one question: which rights should we take away now/which new powers should we give the Government? We never reach the point where we decide that we have already retracted enough rights. Further restrictions on rights […]