*shudders*

"Private" highways

The Washington Post today had a very interesting, but also depressing, article on the Bush administration's latest effort at corporatizing what is currently socialized: the roads. The United States, unlike countries in Europe, has largely resisted calls for the "privatization" of the nation's highways and highways-to-be (of which we have many). As a result, the government, by some estimates, spends 10% of our GNP on highway and parking subsidies.

Already, there are some conceptual issues with private highways. Firstly, and most obviously, highways derive their value from the millions of miles of auxiliary, feeder roads. These are almost never private, except in rare cases of large office parks, malls, etc. Oftentimes, the road itself was built with public money and is being privatized – it is quite possible (and likely) that in the absence of that road, no private builder would be willing to construct it. And finally, these so-called private companies make use of eminent domain, taking on quasi-governmental roles and acquiring land at non-market rates. In Colorado, the legislature banned the use of eminent domain in the building of private roads, and the governor vetoed it. The end result was an agreement whereby the state DOT makes the call, which makes me wonder how Colorado Senator Wiens could say with a straight face: "no private toll-road company will be able to condemn the private property of a Colorado citizen, period, end of story."

But as the article continues, the contradictions become startling. First of all, the focus is on a federal program that took $850 million away from the regular budget in earmarks from the Democrats (I get the feeling a lot of it was mass transit-related), which has so far not led to the construction of any highways. The money is the same money that Bloomberg wanted to use for New York's congestion fee idea. These supposedly-free market roads were not only benefitting from the government's power of eminent domain, but also received (along with private freight lines) $15 billion in tax-exempt bonds, essentially a subsidy. Pseudo-private roads have become a big industry – attracting over $100 billion in 2006. And then there's the cascading patronage, with a healthy exchange of high-salaried executives between private road operators and builders and federal government.

To me, this seems like another effort by the Bush administration to cash in on libertarian rhetoric while putting in forth plans that subsidize favored industries. The idea that a private company could ever independently build the kinds of roads that we're used to in America and be profitable while doing it is as absurd as thinking that mercenaries would have any clients if governments stopped hiring them. What these crypto-libertarians are looking to do is privatize government and have it perform the same function, and since that's obviously impossible, they settled with just corporatizing it.

Socialized music?

Of the many bizarre things to come from SXWX, your latest* act of rent-seeking: from Wired, "Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs." Jim Griffin of the IFPI (RIAA international, basically) wants a $5/month charge on broadband connections, ostensibly mandatory, although they blabber on about seeking voluntary solutions (as if the price elasticity of demand for any given ISP were so inelastic that no one will notice a 10-20% increase in cost). They say that they will divide the money up based on the frequency of an artist showing up on file sharing websites. This is not at all unprecedented – many western countries have them on most, if not all, recording media, from cassette players to iPods. Among recording media, the US is relatively lax in that it only levies a 3% tax on stand-alone CD burners and those stupid enough to buy the Music CD-Rs. Finland has some of the most onerous levies, with a sliding scale tax up to €21 on DVRs and MP3 players with over 250 GB capacity.

The implications of it, though, are kind of perverse: who could honestly say that you were being unethical if you downloaded your fair share of music? The law, however, leaves no provision for you to download $5 worth of illegal music per month. And at today's rate, that comes to about $6 billion dollars per year, which probably is probably a small chunk of total music sales in America. And if illegal downloading doesn't slow down, they'll be in a better position to either ask for either more money or force ISPs to filter illegal downloads (legally and technologically awkward). Who knows – maybe the surcharge will increase so much that the mainstream music industry will be essentially nationalized?

*not really – there have probably been millions of acts of rent-seeking throughout the world in the few days since this article was published.

Rating site for cops gets kicked around the Internet

Rating sites have been a permanent feature on the internet since at least 2000 with Hot or Not. At first they were trivial, but then along came Rate My Professors, beloved by college students across the Anglosphere. (Web 2.0 sites have intense network effects, so hideous and poorly-designed sites like Rate My Professors and MySpace become entrenched.)

Now comes along a rating site with a civil libertarian edge: RateMyCop.com. It's only been live for about two weeks, and you'll notice right now that it's down, because its host – GoDaddy, the largest web hosting site – took it down. This is just a day after a story was published about law enforcement officials' disdain for the site, some calling for a legislative prohibition on sites of that sort (obviously in violation of the First Amendment). Apparently, they even lied to him about the reason, blaming it on him surpassing a bandwidth limit that he obviously hadn't. (Later they backtracked, and blamed some really broad contract provision.) After that, the operator of the site went with RackSpace (remember those heady days when web hosting companies advertised on TV commercials?), only to be given the axe and told that RateMyCop could "could create a risk to the health and safety of law enforcement officers." According to that same Wired article, he apparently is now hosting the site temporarily himself, but my DNS servers haven't updated because I'm still getting GoDaddy's page.

RateMyCop is no doubt legal, and will in the next few days find a host. Having feedback about officers online in such an easily accessible format (Gino Sesto, the operator, said they were considering letting the officers authenticate themselves and respond to comments) might increase pressure on law enforcement to reign in some of the more uncouth elements amongst them. I know that in my home town – a wealthy, low crime area – I've heard pretty nasty stories about one officer in particular, who apparently called his boots "nigger kickers."

Spitzer's prostitute's MySpace

Befriend the girl who led to Spitzer's downfall! 'Cause there's nothing like having a $1000/hour prostitute in your top 8.

Mass transit ridership increase

Something I hear often when I try to convince people that the prevalence of the automobile has everything to do with its below-market cost is that it wouldn't matter how much it costs, people like riding in cars. Today, though, comes a study by the American Public Transportation Association (reported by Yahoo, here's the original report) that shows that mass transit ridership has increased about 2% in the US over the last year, and about 4.5% in Canada over the same period. Population growth, I believe, is lower than this, which indicates an overall increase in mass transit ridership over the same time period as the cost of gasoline has risen about 20%.

Though I'm not up for it right now, it would be interesting to calculate the total cost of travel by car (which surely rose by much less than 20%, given that gasoline is only one of the costs), and then calculate the price elasticity of demand for car travel. Unlike most, I'd be willing to bed that its elasticity is closer to 1 than to 0.

Business method patents litmus test.

Good news on the anti-intellectual property front: the Supreme Court US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear a case over business method patents, that some say could render them entirely unpatentable. Business method patents are pretty self explanatory – they patent a non-physical process, in this case, a commodities trading strategy. But they can range from the totally abstract and trivial (Amazon's infamous 1-click check-out patent) to the highly technical (like this one, apparently). The Court will hear arguments in "Bilski," as the case is known, in May. Here's the case as ruled by the last judge.

Denver legalizes small amounts of weed, Denver police arrest even more people for it

Though the drug warriors could never win on rationality, they always had the "it's the law" argument. However, in 2007, the citizens of Denver tried to change that with a ballot initiative that made policing petty marijuana crimes "the city's lowest law-enforcement priority." Earlier, the city had outright repealed municipal penalties for possession of under an ounce for those over the age of 21. Though this conflicts with state law, it's a pretty obvious sign that the citizens of the the city of Denver do not agree with the prohibition of small quantities of marijuana – if the law says it's illegal, the law is clearly inflexible and anti-democratic.

Anyway, the news is that on the backdrop of all of this, the number of adults faced with misdemeanor pot charges has actually risen by 18% in 2007 as compared to 2006. The police department is flagrantly disobeying the will of its supposed bosses, and has shown themselves stubbornly resistant to even this minor retreat in the war on drugs. Just imagine the resistance someone would encounter if they had the gall to suggest legalizing all drugs!

Ronald Bailey on global warming

After reading about libertarian science journalist Ron Bailey's recent conversion to the man-made global warming camp, I asked myself the question that I often ask myself when reading about libertarians and global warming: why the hell wouldn't you believe in it? It's obvious to most conservatives and libertarians that communism and central planning would produce horrific environmental tragedies: the tragedy of the commons would destroy communally-owned property, and the state wouldn't have proper incentives or knowledge to maintain the environment that it controls. However, they fail to apply that logic to the American economy. Though we might indeed be one of the freest economies in the world, it would be absurd to say that the economy is totally free. In fact, the sectors of the economy which emit the most carbon – transportation, energy production, and "buildings" – are incredibly subsidized and regulated, often with environmentally damaging results.

Since at least the beginning of the 20th century, various levels of government have decided that America's mode of transportation should be almost exclusively the automobile. Before World War II, in cities, the majority of urban commuters' journeys were made via mass transit (mass transit, but rarely public transit). This all changed when local governments began instituting low density zoning regulations and building tax-payer funded roads free for public consumption, and when state and federal governments began ponying up the cash for extensive highway systems. Given that low density development, roads, and police officers patrolling roads are all complementary goods for the automobile, it's no wonder the technology took off. Throughout Americans cities and suburbs, medium or high density development is all but impossible in a lot of places, and this is an obvious prerequisite for profitable mass transit. Today, the largest public works project in the nation's history is the Interstate Highway System, governments still don't cover anywhere near the full cost of their roads with gas taxes, and the overwhelming majority of the trips made by Americans are made in cars (definitely over 90%). Due to the intense network effects associated with transit and land use, it's no surprise that the entire transportation industry has been co-opted by the state, and that it is impossible to run a profitable transit firm that doesn't rely heavily on government subsidies (as do all auto manufacturers and even privatized highways).

Now, this is clearly a problem from an economic point of view, but more relevantly, it's a huge problem from an environmental point of view. The direct effects of road travel are pretty large: over 25% of all carbon emissions in the US come directly out of the tailpipes of cars and trucks. The indirect effects are even larger: low density development encourages larger living spaces, which require more materials to construct and more energy to heat. They are also less efficiently heated/cooled than stacked spaces (i.e., tall buildings) due to the fact that they're surrounded by the elements, whereas an apartment on the 25th floor of a 50-story building is much better insulated.

So, I come away from that article wondering primarily why free market adherents are so blinded to government intervention in transportation (a complementary good to...everything) to the point that they can't fathom that our supposedly free market system could ever result in a poor outcome. But secondly, how come Ron Bailey doesn't see this, and instead decides that the way to deal with the issue is a carbon tax? Or does he recognize that it's a problem of government intervention, and believes simply (and perhaps correctly) that these state policies are too ingrained to change? (How do you explain to the American people that the American dream of owning your own single-family home in the suburbs and two SUVs parked in the driveway is a sham?)

Blackboard and software patents

Personally, I think software patents are an absurd idea, and that eventually they will start doing damage to technological innovation (if they haven't already). Just recently, a court decided in Blackboard's favor (you probably know it if you go to an American university), against a company that was essentially providing a similar service. The problem? Blackboard has a patent on software like this! Like what, you ask? Well, essentially a web service that helps teachers and students share information, the key being that a user can be both a student and a teacher, depending on what class it is. Those who have used multi-user operating systems, or online code repositories, will find the idea quite familiar. If anyone isn't convinced that the US patent system has gone absurdly out of control, here is a particularly absurd quote from the Blackboard patent:

However, electronic networks, including the Internet, are complex technological systems requiring the user to have or acquire specialized knowledge in order to use them effectively. Even graphical user interfaces (GUIs) designed to enhance simplicity of use, such as that provided by the World Wide Web, may require specialized knowledge of network terminology and technical aspects. For example, an Internet user's ability to access information using that medium is significantly reduced if the user lacks understanding of how to use Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to traverse (i.e., navigate) web pages. Slow adoption of new technology and lack of technological sophistication have a chilling effect on the widespread use of the medium in general. Applied specifically in an educational context, these chilling factors apply to instructors who, while possessing high expertise in their respective intellectual or educational fields, would be required to further attain technological knowledge necessary to effectively use the Internet to educate non-collocated students.

Furthermore, the complexity of using the Internet for educational purposes is compounded as the number of user choices required at the user interface increases because not only must the instructor and students acquire technological competency in the use of the medium, but they must in addition understand the presentation and consequences of a plethora of choices required by a particular user interface (e.g., a web page). The design of the user interface therefore can be critical in enabling widespread use of the medium in an educational context. Solutions other than the present invention may be characterized as having relatively complicated and confusing user interfaces. Users, including both students and instructors, of these other solutions are confronted with one or more web pages that typically require the user to review and select a subsequent web page or function from among a large array of potential user choices, thereby complicating the user's task of interacting with the system.

This is about par for the course for software and business method patents. The trick to earning one, you see, is just to overwhelm the patent office with extremely long and convoluted descriptions of trivial and common things. You see, no one will give you a patent if you apply for one for "a website that allows users to be either teachers or students in individual classes, and then allows teachers to post links online and students to click on them after they enter some username and password." However, if you make it so long and use language like "traverse web pages" and "chilling effect on the widespread use of the medium in general" (I for one am mortally terrified that people aren't using the internet because they don't know how to type in URLs!), there's a good chance that the overworked, underinformed patent officer reviewing your application is not going to understand the blinding simplicity that they're being shown, and will approve your patent. The US patent office has essentially adopted the attitude that it'll take a couple of years, but it will accept almost any patent, with the real test coming when people sue over it. This is an incredibly warped system, as it essentially forces you to pony up millions of dollars in patent lawyers' fees to get the government to take a dispassionate, careful (if you're lucky) look at the monopoly privileges that they grant by the dozens each day.

For some more software patent idiocy: Apple tries to patent the pinch; Amazon successfully patents one-click checkout (which is later revoked, but only after intimidating other online retailers); Priceline gets patent for...an auction?