Scheduling Conflict

April 21-27, 2003, has been designated as Turn Off TV Week. It’s a nice enough idea, I suppose, encouraging people to read, exercise, and go out drinking more… But dang, couldn’t they have scheduled this thing during the summer, when almost all the shows are in reruns? Spring is prime TV-watching season, because all the major shows are building up to their climactic season-ending episodes. The organizers of this event need to get with the program, because they’re clearly out of touch.

I guess I have could have set my two VCRs to tape everything I wanted to see, but then the week after Turn Off TV Week would have been Watch Twice As Much TV Week.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis in Lifeboat Situations (Literally)

Mark Kleiman has a brilliant post in which he applies cost-benefit analysis to explain why it might have been sensible for the Titanic not to have enough lifeboats for everyone. Among other things, he points out the likely unintended consequence of a hypothetical law requiring one lifeboat seat per passenger: that ship lines would have shifted toward carrying more cargo and fewer steerage passengers, thus curtailing opportunities for the poor and desperate to immigrate to the New World. Overall, a beautiful little gem of economic thinking. I may expose my law-and-econ students to it next semester. Still, I do have to wonder: were the steerage passengers *aware* of the limited quantity of lifeboat seating? It's one thing for people to rationally accept a higher risk in return for a lower price. It's quite another for them to be misled about the service they're getting, thereby inducing them to accept prices that reflect lower risks while being exposed to higher risks.

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Putting Incest to the Test

Between Eugene (see links in post below) and Amy, the defense of legalizing consensual incest is pretty much complete. But I want to raise one more question, of the sort that economists are apt to raise: what is the elasticity of incestuous acts with respect to criminal punishment? My strong suspicion is that it’s damn near zero. It’s hard for me to imagine that a large number of people are just waiting for the chance to nail their siblings -- and are being deterred on the margin by the existence of a law against it. If I’m correct, then resources spent on prosecuting and punishing those who commit consensual incest are mostly wasted from the standpoint of deterrence, even if you agree that it’s the state’s job to deter such things.

A similar observation applies to bestiality. How many folks would not currently do a sheep, but would suddenly give it a try if the law changed? Again, I’ll bet the number is just about zero. I suspect that basically everyone who leans that way, and who has access to a sheep, is doing it already.

Of course, the folks who support laws to enforce their own sexual preferences probably don’t agree that deterrence is the main purpose of the law. They like to pass laws purely for the “message” value. But unless that message actually prevents some acts of incest *on the margin* (no fair counting acts of incest that will be deterred by social disapproval, regardless of law), then I just don’t see the point.

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Hot Blog-on-Blog Action

Lots of politico-sexual analysis over on the Volokh Conspiracy, thanks to Sen. Rick Santorum. Short version: Santorum likened homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, and incest. Eugene, giving Santorum the benefit of doubt, defends him by saying the comparison could be construed as a kind of constitutional slippery slope argument: even if homosexuality is not the same as incest, the Supreme Court might perceive it to be sufficiently similar, and therefore a precedent that constitutionalizes a right to (consensual) sodomy might be extended to protect a right to (consensual) incest as well. Jacob, after examining the full context of Santorum’s interview, concludes that Eugene has given him too much credit: Santorum really was condemning all these practices (homosexuality, polygamy, incest) as damaging to family values.

But the sex talk doesn’t stop there. Eugene also (in the same post) enunciates the libertarian position on all of these matters – to wit: we believe in freedom of sex, as long as it’s consensual – and he responds effectively to a reader’s denunciation of his position on incest, twice. In a later post, he wonders why lesbianism is subject to the same legal prohibitions as male homosexuality, even though none of the arguments against male-on-male action (weak as they are) apply to female-on-female action. And then he defends bestiality – not as a cool thing to do, but as something that should be legal so long as it doesn’t constitute excessive cruelty to animals. All this following last week’s speculation on attitudes toward vibrators.

Eugene’s right on all of this (except for giving Santorum too much credit), but I have to think his future political career, if he wanted one, is probably shot. I’d vote for him, though, and not just for his views on the sex-related stuff. (I’ll post my own comments about incest and bestiality later.)

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Is Strategic Disengagement in the Cards?

I was pleased, if somewhat skeptical, about this L. A. Times article about the Bush administration’s future plans in the Middle East. If true, then I may have to give the administration a little more credit:

WASHINGTON -- With the threat of Saddam Hussein all but extinguished and Arab suspicions of American intentions running deep, senior administration officials say the U.S. military has begun taking steps to significantly reduce its presence in much of the Middle East.

Last week's quiet removal of 30 of the 80 fighter jets and almost half the 4,500 personnel from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, where the U.S. has maintained thousands of troops since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, is just the beginning, officials said.

Within months, the Pentagon plans to close down most of its operations at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, leaving only a skeleton crew, and to move most of its aircraft and troops out of Qatar and Oman.

The plans, which are preliminary and subject to review, are a response to pressure from Arab governments incensed by the U.S. military buildup in the region over the last 12 years, the financial burden of maintaining vast numbers of troops overseas and the strain it has caused for families and military readiness.

(I recommend reading the rest -- these are only the first few paragraphs.) This is, of course, the strategy that libertarians have been advocating all along. Interestingly, the article also provided probably the most persuasive argument for invading Iraq I’ve heard yet:

"One of the unstated goals of the [Iraq] war was to be able to lance that boil and get out of this steady state of a very high-level commitment of forces in an area where that not only wears out the force, but causes all sorts of political problems," said retired Army Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, who commanded U.S. forces in the Mideast from 1991 to 1994 and helped negotiate agreements to base U.S. troops throughout the region after the Gulf War.

"The [Iraq] war has always been envisioned as a way to get out of the need to have forces in place designed to protect against an immediate assault," he said.

I wonder why no one said that *before* the war? On the downside, however, there doesn’t seem to be universal agreement on this approach within the administration. For instance, according to this article, “An undersecretary of State told Israeli officials in February that the U.S. will ‘deal with’ Iran, North Korea and Syria next.” Time will tell whether the administration is serious about making a strategic retreat.

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Peanut Gallery Temporarily Disabled

Yes, I’m aware the comments feature isn’t working. I don’t know what the problem is, but it appears to be on SquawkBox’s end, not mine. I hope they’ll be up and running again soon. If you have any urgent comments to make before then, you’ll have to, um, do whatever you did before I installed the comments feature less than a week ago.

UPDATE: The comments are now back in service, as of Monday morning.

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