Category Archives: Free Markets

We Are The World

Bush, Economy, Free Markets, Government

“Whether the economy is better off for their labor is a debate nobody will have. An interminable supply of such workers creates its own economic realities, chief of which is a shift to labor-intense, rather than innovation-oriented, forms of production. A never-ending supply of cheap and unskilled workers actually retards the productivity and progress of a modern economy by preventing mechanization and delaying important breakthroughs, thus reducing competitiveness.

More importantly, the purely economic argument about the price at which American workers will perform menial work is meaningless without a reference to borders and to the thing they bound—a nation. Render asunder the idea of a nation, make borders obsolete—and the world is your labor market.

Bush has zero understanding of things metaphysical—and has no appreciation for the bonds that unite members of a civil society in common purpose. He brazenly contends that Americans won’t do certain work. But he leaves out that they can’t afford to toil at a price that is a function of an artificially created, ceaseless supply of immigrants.

Bush’s Brave New Borderless World is at work here, not the invisible hand.”

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily column, “We Are The World.” It deals with the “Bush-backed immigration bill, penned by the unholy McCain-Kennedy-Specter trinity.”

Continuous Cronyism Update: Pretend the Ports Were Private

Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Government, Private Property, The State

DP World is owned by the government of Dubai, which is, in turn, “one of seven emirates that form the federation known as the United Arab Emirates.” This state-owned corporation will soon be operating port facilities in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, New Orleans and Newark, N.J. The deal embroils politicians—ours and theirs—in the usual tangled and tainted interests.

For instance, after Katrina struck, the UAE gave the U.S. government 100 million for disaster relief. Talks about the ports began shortly afterwards. Quid pro quo? CorpWatch alludes to an intricate web of war profiteers. Like Halliburton and other well-connected American companies, the Dubai conglomerate “does brisk war business.”

Tracing the slimy trail of the Bush administration and its corporate cronies reveals that Treasury Secretary John Snow “was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004.” Another edifying tidbit from the New York Daily News has it that “David Sanborn, who runs DP World’s European and Latin American operations…was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.”

Also, former Congressman Vin Weber, a Minnesota Republican, is a consultant to the United Arab Emirates; and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole is a “fixture” at Alston & Bird LLP—a company that’ll be consulting and lobbying privately for DP World. Bling-bling (as in the sound of a cash register, not a rapper’s accoutrements)!

If U.S. ports were private, and not state run; if the deal were devoid of the cupidity and corruption that comes with government “enterprise”—all those politicized paybacks—then it is more than likely that the private property owners involved would react just as Americans have reacted to the involvement of a Middle-Eastern, state-owned company in the management of their ports. Most Americans are against this deal; only 17 percent approve.

If ports were privately owned, their proprietors would have to underwrite the endeavor and would thus be extra cautious, since it would fall to them—and not to taxpayers—to cover the costs of an attack. There’s no doubt that port owners would then express the same trepidations most Americans are now voicing over who manages—and has easy access to—their ports. Why, in a free market, even the perception of insecurity would cause insurance costs to skyrocket. Fairness doesn’t factor into this.

In all likelihood, if ports were privatized, we’d be witnessing a similar reaction. Right or wrong, the UAE would probably not be doing a rip-roaring trade in managing ports. So, to the extent that popular response to the Dubai deal mirrors what would transpire under private property, it’s neither unethical nor unreasonable; it is what it is.

When the issue at stake is near and dear to their hearts, people become propertarians.

* Related Reading: Whose Property is it Anyway?

Director of Premier Israeli Free-Market Think Tank Responds to ‘Reality on the Palestinian Ground’

Free Markets, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism

Daniel Doron, director of The Israel Center for Social & Economic Progress, and a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, responds to “Reality on the Palestinian Ground“:

Dear Ilana,

As usual you write brilliantly, and with incandescent moral passion. Two small remarks:

Yes, we should hold the Palestinians responsible for their actions, but we should consider (even when sentencing a murderer) extenuating circumstances.

Palestinian society was destroyed during the 1936-9 “Arab revolt” when the British for their nefarious divide-and-rule purposes established the arch terrorist Haj Amin El-Husseini as Mufti of Jerusalem. He embarked not only on a war against Jews and the British but mostly on his own people, assasinatng many of his political opponents, and making most of the Arab elites flee their country. This is why in 48 Palestinian society, deprived of its traditional legitimate leadership and at the mercy of terrorists and hired hands, could not undertake a project of state building.

The Mufti’s wholesale liquidation of any alternative leadership is also the reason why while all other Arab dictators have an opposition, albeit in exile, Araft had none. All potential opposition was simply eliminated or terrorized.

So was the Arab population. It was not only terrorized but it has been, since Oslo, subject to the most horrendous camapign of indoctrination and brainwashing (with funds donated by Europe and the US). Before Oslo hundreds of thousands of Palestinians worked in Israel, and they could have created mayhem and destruction had they tried to engage in terrorism. But terrorist incidents were far and few between until Oslo brought Arafat and his criminal gangs to the West Bank and Gaza, and until the Arab population was subject to intnese brainwashing. (Consider what three years of Geobbles indoctrination did to a nation that was reputedly very civilized!)

Another factor that is often neglected is that Palestinian factions are usually proxies of Arab nations plus Iran and Saudi privateers. They are financed by them and advance their intra-Arab rivalries. The only factor that unites them is hatred for Israel, which they exploit to advance these Arab imperialist interests, all the while betraying their own people and their best interests.

Best,
Daniel