The Corpse Theorem

I’ve been meaning to say a couple of things about the UCLA cadaver-selling case. Jacob Sullum beat me to one of them: that part of the problem here is the legal ban on selling human body parts, which naturally just drives the market underground. Legalizing the trade would bring it aboveboard, reducing corruption while allowing heirs (including institutional heirs) to profit.

Let me take the argument a bit further. It’s clear now that the body parts illegally sold by Henry Reid, the director of UCLA’s Willed Body Program, were highly valuable. If it were possible to sell them on the legal market, UCLA would most likely have treated the bodies as assets that could either (a) be sold to increase the university’s endowment or (b) be used in the university’s medical programs. And any time the university chose option (b), the opportunity cost of the choice would have been the forgone market price of the body parts. That opportunity cost would have motivated UCLA to keep the body parts only when they were more valuable in UCLA’s programs than in alternative uses, such as corporate medical research. In other words, a legal market would have encouraged more efficient use of body parts.

Furthermore, the fact that UCLA could not legally sell the body parts, even when they had a high value elsewhere, assured the existence of a tempting opportunity for malfeasance – one that Reid capitalized on. Reid’s actions were deplorable, of course – not because he was selling body parts, but because he was selling body parts that didn’t belong to him. Still, he would have been less likely to act as he did if the black market incentive were not so great. UCLA’s authorities might also have taken greater interest in the fate of the donated bodies if those bodies had had legal monetary value.

One more observation: for people who are interested in helping their alma mater and advancing medical research, the body donors and their families are being strangely irrational about this. Consider the following passage from the CNN article:

In their lawsuit, family members said they had contracts signed by university officials, guaranteeing their loved ones' remains would "never" be sold. The plaintiffs also noted the practice violates California State law.

Shirley Williams, whose husband Richard died of a stroke two years ago, was assured by UCLA officials that her husband's remains would be used in medical research, cremated and returned to her. Instead, Williams, the lead plaintiff in the civil suit, fears his body parts were sold for profit.

Now, the donors can specify whatever conditions they want in their wills, so if they want to prohibit sale of their bodies, fine. But why impose such a silly condition? When people donate their cars to charity, they don’t generally stipulate that the car be added to the charity’s own fleet. It’s natural and expected that the car might (and probably will) be sold, so the charity can get the cash value instead. The same should go for a body. If your goal is to help UCLA’s medical program, why not let the medical program’s directors decide how best to use your donation? If they can use the body, great. But if they would get greater benefits from more centrifuges, for example, why not sell the body and use the proceeds to buy centrifuges?

And if the donors’ goal is not just to help UCLA but to advance medical research, I wonder what they think Johnson & Johnson’s doing with the bodies? By and large, it’s medical research. Even if the body ends up being used for auto safety research instead of medical research (or for some reason you think that non-profit medical research is better than for-profit medical research), it still maximizes the research value of the body to let the university sell it, because the university gets more cash to run its non-profit research program.

Here’s a more plausible argument for banning sale of the body in the will: If you want to make absolutely sure it is only UCLA’s medical program that benefits from your donation, an unmarketable body could be useful because it’s not fungible. If the body were sold, the university might allocate the proceeds to (say) the English literature program. A clause in the contract specifying that any funds from sale must go to the medical program wouldn’t prevent this, because the university could simply divert non-earmarked funds away from the medical program and into other programs. However, even this argument doesn’t quite work. If the medical program is receiving bodies, that means it is receiving assets that can substitute for funds – so the university may choose to allocate a smaller share of general funds to the medical program to compensate for the bodies’ value. Thus, if the university really wants to soak the medical program for the sake of other programs, it can almost always find a way to do so.

Bottom line: The sale of body parts should be legalized, and people donating their bodies to science should drop the no-sale clauses if they really want to maximize the value of their donations.

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No Folklore Monopolies

Tyler’s made a couple of recent posts on the topic of copyright protection for folklore. In his earlier post, he asked for arguments against it; in today’s post, he replies to the arguments.

My argument against copyright protection for folklore is that the folklore has already been produced, and therefore giving it protection would create no added incentive to produce creative works. Here’s Tyler’s response:

Folklore has already been produced. TC: Of course you could say the same for a good deal of music. Why treat folklore differently?

The difference is that the music in question was produced while copyright laws were in effect. The expected monopoly rents resulting from copyright may therefore have been part of the motivation for producing the music. Of course, revoking a given work's copyright would not cause it to blink out of existence. But a precedent for revoking copyrights would indicate to potential future creators that the expected rents won't be there, thereby reducing their incentive to create. The same cannot be said of folklore, because there was no copyright to begin with; thus, there is nothing to revoke.

This is very much the same issue raised by the "Mickey Mouse Extension" Acts. Disney lobbies for retroactive extension of the copyright period whenever Mickey Mouse's copyright is about to expire. But a retroactive extension does nothing (or almost nothing) to encourage more creative work; it only extends the monopoly. The granting of copyrights to existing folklore is just a radical form of retroactive extension, which creates monopoly rents without the corresponding gain from the encouragement of new work.

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Preemptive Legislative Strike

The House of Representatives just passed a bill to ban lawsuits against the food industry for making people fat. I oppose this bill on federalism grounds: the federal government has no business deciding this kind of matter, except with regard to the federal courts. (The law would apply to both state and federal courts.) In addition, given Congress’s talent for botching even the best ideas, I worry that the law might be drafted badly. The biggest danger is that too-broad wording could make it difficult to launch legitimate lawsuits for mislabeled or tainted food. As the friend who sent me the link said, “It’s always suspicious when Congress gets involved in deciding which lawsuits are okay and which ones aren’t; particularly when a member of Congress receives political contributions from cigarette or gun manufacturers, or, most likely in this case, the fast food industry.”

Still, at least Congress is on the right side of the substantive issue here. The McDonald’s-made-me-fat lawsuits are outrageous, and it’s pleasing to see Congress taking a stand in favor of personal responsibility and choice for once. Yeah, they’re assuredly getting campaign donations from Big Food corporations – but in this case, the corporations are right. (Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if they backed small changes in the wording that would protect them against more legitimate lawsuits.)

At the moment, the problem is not dire, and the legislation is premature. None of the fat lawsuits has succeeded – yet. So far, the courts have done the right thing. But if these lawsuits begin to win, legislation (federal or state, as necessary) will indeed be justified. Congress mucks with judicial precedent all the time to limit freedom and weaken personal responsibility. A movement, however small, in the other direction would be a welcome change.

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Random Observation

When you eat any chocolaty Girl Scout cookie right after brushing your teeth, it tastes like a Thin Mint.

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Does Abortion Decrease Abortion?

Alex links to a cool article by Donohue, Grogger, and Levitt, which claims that legalized abortion is responsible for the recent decline in unmarried teen childbearing. This is not as obvious as it sounds, because the drop in unmarried teen childbearing began about 16 years after Roe v. Wade. DG & L attribute the decrease to an abortion-induced drop in the number of teenagers who would be likely to get pregnant. In short, people aborted the fetuses that would have been most likely to get pregnant 13 to 19 years later. Here’s how DG & L put it:

While the link between the current availability of abortion and teen childbearing is straightforward (since abortion is an alternative to carrying a baby to term), the relationship we focus on is far more subtle: legalized abortion in the 1970s led to fewer babies being born under circumstances in which their parents were less willing or able to provide nurturing environments. When these cohorts grew up to be teenagers, their improved childhood environment had the benign effect of reducing the frequency with which they themselves became teen mothers.

Now here’s an interesting possibility: abortions in the 1970s may have had a downward impact on the number of abortions in the 1990s. DG & L’s results show that unmarried teen childbirths decreased in the 1990s as a result of earlier abortions. So far as I can tell (from skimming the article), they do not break down the different routes for the reduction in childbirths – some of the reduction would be from abortions, some from pregnancies that never occurred in the first place. Thus, earlier abortions presumably helped to reduce later abortions.

This is, of course, a partial offsetting effect, not a total effect. Looking at DG & L’s Figure 3, we see that the total number of abortions rose from 1973 to 1981 and then stabilized. But interestingly, the figures are not per capita (unless they’ve been population-adjusted without any note of that fact), which means there must have been a decline in abortions per capita since 1981. I’m not sure where that would put the latest per capita abortion figures relative to pre-1973, but I’m guessing the recent figures would still be higher. Nonetheless, it’s fascinating that abortion could actually produce its own offsetting effect.

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Theories of Punctuality

I love it when economists show up sociologists. Alex points to a seemingly good example: why do different cultures have different attitudes toward punctuality? The sociologists’ explanation appeals to “national personality,” religion, etc. The economists’ explanation relies on simple game theory. Arrival-time behavior is a kind of coordination game: you want to arrive at the same time the other guy does, and he wants to arrive at the same time you do. In this kind of game, there exist multiple equilibria, all of them viable (though not necessarily all desirable). Alex’s analogy to left-versus-right-side driving is excellent: both left-side driving and right-side driving are equilibria of the system, so there’s no particular reason to predict one equilibrium over the other.

Economists: 1
Sociologists: ½

Why am I willing to give the sociologists half a point? Because Alex’s analogy also illustrates a problem with the pure game-theoretic explanation. Although it explains why we can observe different equilibria, the theory tells us very little about why one equilibrium happens and the other does not. Why do the British and Japanese drive on the left, while Americans and French drive on the right? Yes, both left and right are equilibria, but why did some cultures end up in one and some cultures in the other? Random chance is one explanation, but legislative decree (as in Alex’s Swedish example) is another. So the antiseptic game theory model tells us just enough to indicate more historical and cultural research may be required. And the same goes for punctuality: the game theory explains why it makes sense that we’d observe different norms, but it doesn’t tell us why the punctuality norm occurred in the places that it did. Random chance might explain the pattern – it was just an accident that Latin American countries happened to evolve a lateness norm – but then again, maybe something else was at work. Maybe influential people at some point in Spanish history had a propensity for lateness, and their activities created the focal point around which others’ expectations formed. In short, an economic theory that predicts multiple equilibria doesn’t shut the door to sociological explanations – it opens it.

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Old Yeller

Radley approvingly posts a letter he found in the Washington Post, which says among other things:

The Feb. 14 editorial "Focus on Red-Runners" mentioned a Fairfax City study that apparently showed a 44 percent drop in one year in red-light running at five intersections with cameras. But it did not mention the results of a 2001 analysis by the National Motorists Association of a Fairfax County intersection. That organization found that red-light violations dropped 96 percent at the intersection when yellow light time was increased from 4 seconds to 5.5 seconds.

A 1998 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also found that 80 percent of red-light entries occur within the first second of the light turning red, indicating that inadequate yellow time is the major cause of red-light entries.

The implication, of course, is that the government should extend the length of yellow lights. Apparently something is “special” about the difference between 4.0 and 5.5 seconds, which makes those added 1.5 seconds especially useful in avoiding accidents.

I don’t buy it. The 96% reduction in red-light violations was almost assuredly a temporary effect, brought on by the fact that people adjust their driving behavior to the expected duration of yellow lights. People are willing to go through a yellow if they think it will last just long enough to get them about halfway through the intersection before it turns red. If the duration were permanently raised to 5.5 seconds, people’s unconscious timers would gradually readjust, and they would start blowing through yellows that under the 4.0 regime would have seemed stale.

And then, if someone performed another study on the effect of increasing the duration of yellows from 5.5 to 7 seconds, I’ll bet it would have the same effect: a dramatic but temporary reduction in red light violations, which could be used by the credulous to justify another increase in the yellow light time.

UPDATE: Radley responds, pointing out some studies that apparently show the driver adjustment effect I’m talking about is small. Unfortunately, the studies are unavailable on the web. Radley also gives more details about the 96% reduction:

In 2001, the National Motorists Association persuaded the Virginia DOT to lengthen the yellow light at one particularly egregious intersection in Fai[r]fax by 1.5 seconds -- from 4.0 seconds to 5.5. A camera installed at the intersection monitored the number of infractions. About 70 days after the yellow was increased, infractions fell from 52.1 per day [to] less than one per day -- or about 96%.

That was three years ago. NMA reports that infractions at that intersection have remained at about .80 per day in the three years since.

I’m still skeptical, because this could easily be the result of the change having been made at a single traffic light. My “internal timer” is not so finely tuned that it knows the typical length of all the different traffic lights, even the ones I go through regularly. I assess the expected length of a yellow light by reference to all the yellow lights I deal with. So it doesn’t surprise that extending the yellow on a single intersection might result in a substantial reduction in red-light infractions at that one light. But it doesn’t follow that extending the duration of yellows at all the intersections would have a similar effect, because people would then get used to the longer yellows. The conclusion that does follow is that extending the yellow at especially notorious intersections might be an effective strategy, because it makes use of internal timers that have been calibrated on the basis of shorter yellows.

I’ll concede (as I did in the comments box) that there might be an optimal duration for yellow lights, but I still stand by my argument that this experiment is very far from proving it. I also agree with Radley's broader point, which is that local governments seem more interested in maximizing revenue than preventing traffic violations.

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Can This Be Right?

Eugene posts the following New York statute, and I want to know if I’m reading it correctly:

If any clergyman or other person authorized by the laws of this state to perform marriage ceremonies shall solemnize or presume to solemnize any marriage between any parties without a license being presented to him or them as herein provided or with knowledge that either party is legally incompetent to contract matrimony as is provided for in this article he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not less than fifty dollars nor more than five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year.

The statute is suddenly relevant because the mayor of New Paltz has been performing marriages of gay couples (who don’t have marriage licenses). But as written, this statute would apply to clergymen as well.

Now, suppose that I’m a minister, and as such I am authorized by the state to perform marriage ceremonies. And suppose that I officiate for a marriage ceremony without a marriage license, and with no pretense of this marriage having the state’s sanction. Everyone involved understands this to be a religious marriage, with no more legal significance than the state should choose to grant it. Notice that I haven’t specified the sexes of the participants. My actions would seem, under a commonsense definition of “solemnize” and a strict reading of the text, to fit within the statute’s language and therefore constitute a crime. If so, then the statute would also pretty clearly constitute a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of speech, association, and free exercise of religion. Does anyone know if “solemnize” has a more specific statutory meaning of which I’m not aware?

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Federalism Cuts Both Ways

Eugene (who tentatively favors same-sex unions) says the following Constitutional amendment would be defensible on federalist grounds:

No part of this Constitution shall be interpreted as requiring any state, or the federal government, to recognize or allow same-sex marriages.

I agree. But if we’re going to insert a new amendment purely for the purpose of safeguarding federalism, why not add the following?

Nor shall any part of this Constitution be interpreted as prohibiting any state, or the federal government, from recognizing or allowing same-sex marriages.

This addendum would assure the correct federalist interpretation. Now, I suppose it might be superfluous, because the “part of this Constitution” that might conceivably be interpreted to require recognition of same-sex marriages is the Full Faith and Credit clause, and no plausible interpretation of that clause would prohibit a state from recognizing another state’s authorized same-sex marriages. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a little redundancy in defense of principle and clarity. Furthermore, tacking on this extra bit would force conservatives who oppose it to admit their disagreement with the federalist principles to which they so often pay lip-service.

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Regulating Healthcare = Regulating Religion

Libertarians often emphasize that the distinction between personal liberties and economic liberties is a phantom one, because restrictions on economic liberty inevitably affect the personal sphere. Here’s an outstanding example: The California Supreme Court has ruled that the Catholic Church must provide birth control in its employees’ health plans.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) 3.1.04, 11:50a -- A Catholic charitable organization must include birth control coverage in its health care plan for workers even though the nonprofit is morally opposed to contraception, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.
…
The high court said Catholic Charities is no different than other businesses in California, which is one of 20 states that require company-provided health plans to include contraception coverage. In California, "religious employers" such as churches are exempt from the requirement.

When the state starts meddling with the terms of contracts, as it does when it dictates the contents of health plans, entanglement with personal liberties, including freedom of religion, is sure to follow. The state can either (a) treat religious enterprises just like other enterprises, as the California high court has done, or (b) make a special exemption for religion, which puts the state in the position of deciding what a religion is and what its defining doctrines are (e.g., is opposition to contraception really inseparable from Catholic doctrine?). I'm curious to know whether abortion coverage is also required under state law.

In an earlier post, I argued that, when it comes to subsidies for education and other activities, the state ought to adopt a neutral policy that does not require it to decide what is religion and what is not. But in this case, we are not talking about the provision of a benefit by the state, but the imposition of a regulatory burden with the potential to interfere with free exercise. Forced to choose the lesser of two evils, I would reluctantly take option (b) above, as it provides at least a limited opportunity for people to escape the state’s regulations when they conflict with conscience. But it is the state’s unjustified regulatory policy that generates the need to choose between evils.

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Stale Jackson Joke Makes Comeback

Look where Michael Jackson’s been shopping:

Michael Jackson was pulled over by police and asked to identify himself after shopping at a Wal-Mart while wearing a ski mask.

Yep, he must’ve heard little boys' pants were half-off.

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A Constitution Is Not a Dictionary

Here’s the best thing I’ve seen written on the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage – and I found it on a linguistics blog.

Go ahead, make my day (as Dirty Harry used to say): if they want a wedge issue, bring it on. Let them go ahead and try to pass, for the first time in the history of our country, a constitutional amendment aimed at taking rights away from a proper subset of the people. (The prohibition amendment was an ill-advised subtractive social amendment of similar type, but at least it took away the specified rights from all of the people. It was a big mistake, anyway, and soon had to be repealed.) But don't let them try to tell me they are revising a definition. It's nothing to do with defining the word "marriage". Webster's has done that perfectly well. It's about a denial of rights. The idea is that if you fall in love with a lesbian and want to marry her and live with her forever and share your life and property with her and be with her until you sit by her side at the hospital when she dies, that's O.K., but your rights will be subject to a limitation: you will be permitted all this under the sanction of the institution of marriage if you are male, but denied such permission if you are female. To add an insistence on that point in the constitution would be an act of discrimination, not of definition, so let's call things the way they are.

RTWT.

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We Won't Punish You, We'll Just Reward Everyone Else

The blogosphere is awash with discussion of the Supreme Court’s Davey decision, which essentially said the state can create a blanket education subsidy that specifically excludes religious education. I won’t rehash all the arguments – instead, I’ll link to both Amy and Eugene, both of whom get it exactly right. So does Justice Scalia’s dissent: “No field of study but religion is singled out for disfavor in this fashion.”

I will make one argument that I haven’t (yet) seen on anyone’s blog. This decision validates the notion that the state can draw a line between religion and non-religion, thus allowing it to fund the latter while denying funds to the former. The problem is that no such line exists. There is no unambiguous way to distinguish spiritual from secular ethical belief systems. Where, for instance, does Scientology lie on the spectrum from religion to non-religion? Originally, the Scientologists did not call their organization a “church”; they changed their tune when they realized they could get the benefits of First Amendment protection plus tax exemptions by going the full-on religion route. But there is nothing in the Scientologists’ belief system (so far as I know) that implies the existence of a deity or even a supernatural realm. Although the Scientologists chose to go in the secular-to-religious direction, it would certainly be possible for other groups to go the opposite direction in light of the Davey decision and policies like those of Washington state. Even if very few groups alter their creeds at the margin to exploit the state’s definition of religion, there will exist groups that sit near the arbitrary borderline, and these groups will be treated differently for essentially arbitrary reasons. Rather than put the state in the position of deciding what's religion and what's not, I would have the state adopt a neutral stance that requires no definition of religion.

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No One Expects the Spammish Erudition

The last time I raised a puzzle about spamming strategies, a reader solved it in the comments box. So here’s another: What’s up with bogus sender names like the following?

Aristocracy O. Spengler
Pique I. Prorating
Acanthus E. Dragooning
Pricy B. Hijacker
Corpulence P. Ecology

Naturally, spammers can’t give their real names. But why pick such bizarre fake ones? Do some people’s spam filters filter out normal names? Is some kind of random word generator being used? (If so, why not just use random letter sequences?) Does curiosity induce recipients to open more emails with unusual sender names?

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Book Me

Other libertarian bloggers who take the “What book are you?” Quiz have turned out to be Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But me, I turn out to be the freakin’ dictionary. Maybe that’s why their blogs get more traffic than mine.

You're The Dictionary!

by Merriam-Webster

You're one of those know-it-all types, with an amazing amount of knowledge at your command. People really enjoy spending time with you in very short spurts, but hanging out with you for a long time tends to bore them. When folks really need an authority to refer to, however, you're the one they seek. You're an exceptional speller and very well organized.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

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Bigots for Religious Tolerance

An audiotape with the voice of an Al Qaeda officer threatens more terrorist attacks – and criticizes France’s ban on Muslim head scarves in public buildings:

Two audiotapes purportedly of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant were broadcast on Arabic TV stations, one taunting President Bush and threatening more attacks on the United States, the other criticizing France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves in schools. ...

The audiotape aired by Dubai-based al-Arabiya criticized France's decision to ban religious symbols in public buildings, including headscarves worn by Muslim women. The law is expected to go before the French Senate early next month.

"The decision of the French president to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their heads in schools is another example of the Crusader's malice, which Westerners have against Muslims," the recording said.

The irony is rich. A leader of Al Qaeda, an organization dedicated to the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in the Middle East, champions the Western value of religious tolerance. France’s policy is, of course, abominable. But isn’t this a case of the cast-iron pot calling the tarnished-copper kettle black?

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Quote of the Day

Alex Tabarrok, on the topic of excessive security measures: "It seems to me that the price of eternal vigilance is liberty."

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Dissing the Disinfopedia

Will draws attention to the newly created Disinfopedia. It’s like a Wikipedia for information on interest groups, think tanks, and other potential sources of disinformation. But as Will notes, the site is explicitly ideological in nature; the idea is to show just how beholden such organizations are to the wealthy and powerful. The Wiki format, which allows readers to freely edit the text, does not seem ideally suited to the ideological goal. Says Will: “Wikipedia works because of its ethos of neutrality on contentious issues. If somebody writes something biased, somebody comes along and balances it out. It will be interesting to see if an overtly ideological wiki can survive.”

I was surprised that Will didn’t point out the double entendre of Disinfopedia’s name. It’s supposed to be an encyclopedia on sources of disinformation – but the more natural interpretation is that the site itself is a source of disinformation.

In the “think tank” entry, in which Will inserted a minor edit just for fun, I found the following passage:

Of course, some think tanks are more legitimate than that. Private funding does not necessarily make a researcher a shill, and some think-tanks produce worthwhile public policy research. In general, however, research from think tanks is ideologically driven in accordance with the interests of its funders.

Now, think tanks’ positions do have an uncanny tendency to reflect the interests of their funders. But the implicit conclusion that causality runs in the funding-to-viewpoints direction does not follow. If the think tank is operated by committed supporters of some ideology, and they go out in search of funding, they are most likely to attract the support of those whose interests will be advanced by the ideology in question. Other sources of funding will withhold their funding and go elsewhere. As a result, we will observe a correspondence between funding and viewpoints, but with causality in just the opposite direction: from viewpoints to funding.

I’m not claiming that the choices of think tanks (and other non-profits) are never influenced by the desires of their financial supporters. If making a marginal change in a think tank’s position on a single issue could ease the job of attracting funds, even ideological managers might be tempted to do so, on grounds that gains in other areas from greater funding will outweigh the losses on a single issue. We could even imagine a slippery slope process that runs from a marginal decision like this one to wholesale changes in the think tank’s ideology, by way of personnel changes induced by the seemingly small position shifts. Moreover, the equilibrium number and size of think tanks presumably will have something to do with the general availability of funds for different positions. Nonetheless, the nefarious “guns for hire” implication of the Disinfopedia blurb does not seem justified. The interaction between funds and viewpoints is assuredly a two-way street.

Hey, maybe I should go insert all the above in the Disinfopedia entry and see what happens.

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Inflation via Medicaid

Alex Tabarrok explains, briefly but lucidly, how Medicaid drives up prescription prices for everyone – and why the severity of the problem grows as Medicaid’s share of the market increases. I suspect the argument could be generalized to cover other markets in which government is a large-scale buyer.

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More on Publicly Funded Expression

Jack Balkin has responded to my post below. I won’t try to reply to all of his arguments, in part because Sasha Volokh and Juan Non-Volokh have already replied to some of them. But I do want to make a couple of points.

First, Jack overstates my position, thereby creating a strawman. He says, among other things:

But Glen overstates his case when he assumes that use of subsidies and provision of public goods is always suspicious and tyrannical in the same way that the use of criminal fines and penalities is suspicious and tyrannical. I think there is a big difference between throwing a person in jail for being a communist and deciding to create a public library so that children and adults can have books to read. There is a big difference between preventing all demonstrations on the town green and requiring that all schools that receive public funding teach reading and mathematics. There is a big difference between the local sheriff giving parade permits only to Democrats but not to Republicans and the local university deciding that it will offer courses on microbiology but not astrology. Glen has run together a wide variety of different activities under the simple rubric of government tyranny. [emphasis added]

I never said that public funding of viewpoints is just as deplorable as the penalties and fines for the expression of particular views. It is not. I agree with all of the comparisons Jack makes (e.g., that it’s better to fund a public library than to jail a communist). But saying program A is preferable to the clearly awful program B does not imply the desirability of program A.

Second, in focusing on my final comment about the danger of having government try to distinguish good from bad ideas, Jack misses the primary argument of my post: that ideas create both positive and negative externalities. For that reason, his economic justification for public funding of the “ideas infrastructure” doesn’t stand up, because it rests on the implicit assumption that the positive externalities outweigh the negative ones at the margin. Jack focuses on the benefits of the public subsidy, without much consideration of the costs. I’ll point out just two examples of how state subsidy for particular forms of expression creates problems: (a) The Office of National Drug Control Policy spends lots of money funding anti-drug commercials that muddy the policy waters with bogus claims (e.g., by suggesting that drug users are funding terrorists) and gin up greater support for the immoral and destructive war on drugs. (b) Science funding that excludes politically unpopular areas of research, such as cloning and fetal stem cells, diverts resources and research programs away from those areas and into other areas likely to produce smaller benefits (such as adult stem cells).

Third, this is not just a First Amendment issue. I don’t claim that the First Amendment invalidates all forms of government-supported expression (hence, there is no constitutional requirement to “blow up” the Washington Monument). Some forms of government action are constitutional but still unjustified or undesirable, and that is my position on most, though perhaps not all, forms of public subsidy for expression.

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