Warren Kinsella on property rights...gag

Warren Kinsella performs one of his drive-by intellectually confused smears against Randy Hillier’s and Scott Reid’s plan to enshrine property rights in the constitution. He provides a list of so called consequences so I figured that I would examine the validity of each claim.

Higher drug prices, in perpetuity, as Big Pharma will win eternal patent protections

Will they really? Patent laws are part of an intellectual property framework and in every jurisdiction in the world (including all the ones that already guarantee property rights) it is treated differently than other forms of property. Claiming that property rights will mean “eternal patents” is moronic. There is no way that the court would stretch the definition of property rights that far.

The loss of anti-pollution rules

This is absolutely not true. Actually a properly constructed property rights regime makes some anti-pollution laws redundant. If you dump garbage on my property I can sue you or have you arrested. At the same time I wouldn’t dump garbage on my own property because then I destroy it and lose its value. It is only when property rights are unclear or unprotected do we see really bad pollution. In cases that property rights do not help, as in air pollution, there is no way that property rights enforcement would interfere with pollution laws.

The end of new parks and the potential elimination of existing parks

He is just making stuff up. Firstly I guess he means by “end of new parks” that the government wouldn’t be allowed to just steal someone’s land and turn it into a park. This is hardly a negative. And hey! If the government wants to BUY my land to make a park I am certainly willing to discuss it. Secondly…how in the hell would property rights eliminate existing parks? Public parks are Crown lands, that is, it is owned by the government. How would property rights interfere with that?

Elimination of zoning rules designed to prevent neighbourhoods from being ruined – noise bylaws, giant homes, etc.

This is one of two of his points that have at least some bases in fact, but it is much more complicated than he is making it seem. The relationship between zoning laws and property rights is complex and nuanced. The justification for zoning laws is to avoid externalities that would hurt other people’s property from being damaged or “ruining” neighbourhoods. I am not sure that zoning laws are the best way to deal with such conflicting rights, but I am certain that the courts would keep this goal in mind. The most likely outcome is that the courts would put a restriction on zoning laws to prevent arbitrary rules such as not allowing patios. Such a restriction would be a massive improvement.

Friction with aboriginal peoples, with land claims being overturned and challenged

With the Caledonia incident in the back of your mind, ask yourself if it is really a horrible thing that the rights of every stakeholder in an issue are considered. Should relations with aboriginals be the only consideration when negotiating land claims? The rights of people that currently own, occupy, and use the land should not be ignored the way that it often is ignored. I suspect that native groups won’t like the rights of others to be considered (only their own rights matter) so this is the other point that has some basis in reality. But again avoiding friction should not be the government’s primary concern.

Discrimination against women in divorce settlements

Here is a fun challenge. Can anyone name me any jurisdiction in the world where the protection of property rights has led to discrimination against women? In fact divorce proceedings are already mostly about property rights. By getting married you are pooling your property and extending rights to your partner. The challenge in getting divorced is to split that property in a fair manner. Defining where people’s property rights are is a major part of this area of Family Law.

The challenge of labour laws, and potential end to collective bargaining

I have no idea where this claim even comes from. This seams about as reasonable as claiming that property rights make babies cry. I welcome anyone who wishes to speculate on how labour laws would be challenged by property rights (or how property rights make babies cry).

The loss of shorelines, and commercialization of public lands

The loss of shorelines? Where did it go? Who lost it? As for the commercialization of public lands, I assume he means private commercialization since the government commercializes public lands already. This makes no sense. How do property rights allow you to commercialize land that you do not own? Actually it does the exact opposite of that.

Warren Kinsella ends his smear by posting a picture of Randy Hillier under arrest. He was being arrested for an act of civil disobedience. I guess Kinsella would have considered Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. to be “lawless” as well. Civil disobedience is such an awful thing.

Property Rights: Randy Hillier's Statement

By a lucky coincidence I was sitting in the Speaker's Gallery of Queen's Park when Randy Hillier stood to make a Member's Statement. This gave me a great view of a historical moment when he announced to the House that he attends to ammend the constition to enshrine property rights.



With Scott Reid introducing a similar motion in the Federal Parliament, I can only hope that Canadians can one day enjoy this extra protection of our liberty

Amalgamation of Toronto a mistake?

Check out this interview with Steve Lafleur as he explains why amalgamation was an enormous error.

Violating the Sanctity of Family Day

Some days I just feel like banging my head against a wall.

Greater Sudbury Police have charged six businesses with being open improperly on Family Day.
"We are not releasing the names of the businesses," Const. Bert Lapalme said Tuesday. "They are all drug stores."

Police say they received complaints from the public about eight drug stores in advance of the provincial holiday.

According to the Retail Business Holidays Act, the drug stores cannot be open if they are larger than 7,500 square feet in size or sell items other than pharmacy-related products and sundries.

"They cannot sell groceries," said Lapalme.

When officers went to check on the eight drug stores cited in the complaints, two were not open and were not charged. But with the other six, officers saw infractions of the act and laid charges.
A summons to attend court was issued to an employee of each of the six charged drug stores.
According to the Ontario Ministry of Government Services, the minimum fines for opening businesses on days when retail operation is prohibited are $500 for the first offence, $2,000 for a second offence and $5,000 for a third or subsequent offence.

Retail outlets may be fined up to $50,000 or the total amount of gross sales for the holiday, whichever is greater.

In some municipalities, local bylaws allow stores to remain open in locations established as tourist areas by specific municipal bylaws.

I suppose doing business with customers is not family oriented.

Minimum wage is a job killer

The National Post has published two opinion pieces by economists with opposing views on the minimum wage. Niels Veldhuis and Amela Karabegovic from the Fraser Institute make the case against the minimum wage and Jim Stanford who is with the Canadian Auto Workers union is for minimum wages. It may not surprise people much to learn that I side with the Fraser Institute but truly I feel that they made the better case.

For much of his op-ed Mr. Stanford denied the empirical evidence that increased minimum wages costs jobs. This is what the Fraser Institute economists wrote on that issue:

The single largest problem with minimum wage increases is that they result in job losses, because they increase labour costs for employers who respond by reducing the number of employees and/or the number of hours they work.

Consider the voluminous academic research on the subject. A recent study by renowned minimum-wage experts Professor David Neumark, of the University of California, and Dr. William Wascher, a U.S. Federal Reserve Board economist, comprehensively reviewed all of the academic studies on minimum wages over the past 15 years. In total, they reviewed more than 100 studies covering 20 countries and found that the “overwhelming majority” consistently show that minimum wage increases have negative employment effects.

The empirical evidence from Canada shows much of the same. At least 14 academic studies have examined the impact of minimum wage increases in Canadian provinces. Based on these studies, a 10% increase in the minimum wage is likely to decrease employment by an average of three to six percent for young workers (aged 15 to 24). For young workers most directly affected — those earning between the current minimum wage and the proposed higher wage — the impact is more acute, with employment losses of up to 20%.

Of course, like any academic research, there is hardly unanimous agreement. Mr. Stanford claims that, despite most studies showing the opposite, a “new spate of research” has produced evidence that minimum wage does not hurt employment. To demonstrate the existence of this “spate,” Mr. Standford references the work of David Card and Alan Kruger.

I assume that Mr. Stanford is primarily referring to their book, Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage. If so he should be cautious in relying on their study for empirical evidence. There are serious problems with the data that was collected for that book:

The Pennsylvania-New Jersey data were collected in two waves of telephone interviews, one before the minimum-wage increase (in February) and one after (in November). There are serious questions concerning the accuracy of that information. Studies using the official payroll records of fast-food firms in the relevant geographic areas had significantly different results and reached opposite conclusions. The major challenge has come from the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), which issued a report titled, "New Evidence on the Minimum Wage: The Crippling Flaws in the New Jersey Fast Food Study,'' in April 1995. EPI made its data available to David Neumark and William Wascher. They found that the employment effects of the New Jersey minimum-wage increase were negative and quite consistent with the prevailing wisdom.

In the case of the payroll data, employers and the tax-collecting agency have strong financial incentives to ensure that the total dollar volume of payrolls is accurately stated. There is no such incentive for accuracy in the telephone surveys. Thus, there is a strong presumption of correctness in favor of the payroll data. We would urge the disputants in this issue to attempt to reconcile the two databases, perhaps by making them available in sufficient detail to enable some neutral third party, sworn to confidentiality, to exactly match the data, record the aggregate totals, and then destroy the individual firm information. Until the questions concerning the Card-Krueger data are resolved, their natural experiment analysis must remain suspect.

At the very least the evidence that Mr. Stanford presented is highly suspect. It certainly isn’t enough to challenge the “overwhelming majority” of studies that show a negative impact on employment.

The logic that Mr. Stanford used to make his argument is also suspect:

No employer hires labour just for the sake of growing their workforce. So the fact that labour is cheaper, in and of itself, never guarantees that more people will be hired.

Absolutely true, but rather irrelevant. No one is claiming that a supply of cheap labour is all you need to have economic activity. If that was true African countries would be brimming with economic output. You also need something to produce and someone willing to invest resources into producing it. This is a point that Mr. Stanford comes tantalizingly close to realizing, but still he misses the crucial element.

Why do employers hire workers? To work: that is, to produce something. Employment is a derived demand, dependent on sales of whatever good or service workers produce. Their employment depends mostly on whether there’s enough demand for their output, so that their employers can profitably produce it.

The key words are right there and he misses it. In case you missed it too, the key words are “profitably produce it.” That is to say that if someone is going to invest money they want to see a profit. The greater the likely profit they will get the more they will invest. Inflated wages means that profit will go down and thus investment will decrease. In terms of employment this means fewer jobs created.

That is not just the common wisdom among economists; it is what the empirical data is showing us. So I am sorry Mr. Stanford but I remain unconvinced. Minimum wages is a job killer.

Ontario Happy Hour Law

I previously posted about happy hour being banned in Ontario. I realize now that I was slightly off, or at very least I wasn't precise enough. Happy hour was banned in 1984, but since then it seems bars/restaurants are allowed to have lower prices and certain times of the day.

In 2007, the Ontario government released and update to these laws: INFORMATION BULLETIN – No. 014 Pricing and Promotion of Liquor by Liquor Sales Licensees. So while prices are now allowed to fluctuate throughout the day, thereby allowing for what is commonly known as "happy hour", actually advertising a happy hour is explicitly against the law.

The posting and advertising of prices and promotions must be responsible in nature. A licensee is not permitted to advertise or post liquor prices and promotions, inside or outside of the licensed premises, in a manner that may promote immoderate consumption. For example, the use of the terms “Happy Hour” or “Cheap Drinks”, or something similar, is prohibited.

So bars are allowed to have a happy hour, but they aren't allowed to tell their customers about this happy hour, or even advertise that they have "cheap drinks", which would be 100% truthful since the drinks would be cheap, at least relative to their normal prices. I don't see why our prudish attitude needs to stifle free speech.

Even with the silly regulation on not being allowed to tell customers the truth, being able to change prices of drinks more than once a day is a step in the right direction. Of course, the government wouldn't want to liberalize one regulation without adding more on. There is now a minimum price on alcohol in bars that previously did not exist. Minimum price for a pint of beer is $3.33, a mixed drink (1.5 ounces of liquor) is $3 and a 6 ounce glass of wine for $2.40.

This just seems like madness to me. Why is this any of the government's business? There are a list of restrictions on this bulletin from the AGCO that just restricts the freedom of choice among bars and patrons. Our freedoms in Ontario are not just hampered by our retail system and the price floor on beer (though they are hampered by these too). If the government were to just get rid of most of the Liquor Licence Act, it would save money immediately since there would be less inspectors to hire.

The CRTC is jumping the regulatory shark

Last week I wrote a post criticizing Conservative MP Nina Gewal for her private member’s bill that would regulate the volume of television commercials. I characterized such a regulation as being silly, pointing out that Canadians have remote controls and can adjust their own volume. It appears that there is no silliness that the CRTC doesn’t want a piece of.

The CRTC has announced that they will preempt Ms. Gewal’s legislation (though they deny that their decision has anything to do with Grewal’s Bill) by holding consultations on this very issue. In my mind I picture the CRTC chairman jumping up and down saying, “no no no, it is my job to regulate every minuet detail of Canada’s broadcast industry. Back off Nina you bitch!”

Of course the chairman in real life gives a more eloquent though nauseating defense of the proposed regulation:

"Loud ads on television can disrupt an otherwise enjoyable program and are a source of significant annoyance for Canadians. Viewers should not have to adjust the volume at every commercial break, and we will work with the broadcasting industry to find an acceptable solution," he said in a statement.

The above quote fills me with a desire to bang my head against the wall, or perhaps escape to the sea.

Note that we are talking about a “significant annoyance,” not a “significant risk of harm.” This proposal lacks even the virtues of most statist plans. Do you really think that it is the job of the government to protect us from being annoyed? As I write this a dog is barking in the street. It is really annoying. CRTC can you handle that for me?

“Viewers should not have to adjust the volume…” why the hell not? Seriously why the hell not? Are we so allergic to taking personal responsibility or are we so lazy as a people that pushing a button more than once a half an hour has become an onerous task?

Fortunately there is still time for reason to be heard. The CRTC has opened a page on its website for comments. Please I beg you to take the five minutes it takes to submit a comment. Let the CRTC know that we can control our own volumes.

Here is what I wrote to the CRTC:

This is clear regulatory overreach. Canadians are capable of adjusting their own television volume. A few hundred complaints are not enough to justify this interference with private individuals and companies.

I encourage you to post what you write in the comment section.

La la la Liberty

Check out this video featuring the theme song of the Liberty Summer Seminar. LSS was recently saved from destruction caused by by-law bullies with no respect for private property. (notice the odd close on blogger Roy Eappan?)

The ongoing battle for property rights

As cheered as I am by the victory that Peter Jaworski’s parents won for property rights (thanks to the help of the Canadian Constitution Foundation). The Ontario Landowners Association reminds us that not everyone is so fortunate:

Bob Mackie wasn't among the lucky contenders. He has been fighting an attempt by the Niagara Escarpment Commission to shut down his archery business. The NEC ordered Mackie to stop all archery activities and remove a sign, portable classroom and an addition on his home.

He lost his case before a Justice of the Peace and was fined $15,000.

Mr. Mackie attempted to use an obscure document called Land Patent Grants to defend his case. According to the OLA these grants are the original agreements between settlers and the Crown. The OLA says that these contracts supersede legislation and they cite historical cases to support this claim.

I know nothing about Land Patent Grants. I had never even heard of them before I read the article that I linked above, but I do hope that the OLA is successful in turning this document into a tool for protecting property rights.

Because though the Jaworskis won their fight, the battle to secure property rights never ceases.

Are the Poor getting Poorer? Nope

Reason on Obama's budget: 3 Reasons This Budget Won't Win the Future

Canada becoming unfriendly to investors

Foreign investors become interested in acquiring a Canadian firm. Provincial government objects for its own political reasons. The provincial government puts pressure on the federal government and the foreign investors are told to take their money elsewhere.

This is what happened with Potash Corp. in Saskatchewan and it looks like it will become a pattern with TMX in Ontario.

For 20 years the federal governments of different parties have worked to create a reputation for Canada as a safe place to invest. It is partly because of this investor friendly political culture that Canada has been able to weather the economic storm better than any other industrial country. We owe much of our current prosperity and relative economic security to the foreign money that has created wealth for Canadians.

A good reputation, as the cliché goes, is hard won and easily lost.

It is not enough for Canada to call itself investor friendly by lowering corporate taxes. Canada needs to be actually open to investment for low taxes to attract investment. The current Conservative government should consider this very carefully before they make a decision on the TMX-LSE merger.

Jaworski family wins court battle with help from the CCF

The Canadian Constitution Foundation has announced that the charges against Marta and Lech Jaworski has been dropped by the Municipality of Clarington. This is fantastic news and truly heartening. I am glad to live in a country where someone can defend their rights against government intrusion, and actually win.

This vindication of course does not make up for the months of strain that municipal officials put on this innocent family. It doesn't make up for the threat to their future that the $50 000 fine represented. Hopefully the Jaworski's victory will make government officials more hesitant in the way that they wield power.

This the press release from the CFF:

Press Release

For Immediate Release: February 14, 2011.

Liberty Summer Seminar & Jaworski Family Win Freedom of Assembly

The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) today announced that it has succeeded in getting charges dropped against Marta and Lech Jaworski for hosting the Liberty Summer Seminar on their rural property in the Municipality of Clarington.

For video footage, click here.

Background

The Liberty Summer Seminar (LSS) has been held annually outdoors at the Jaworskis’ home for 10 years. The seminar brings together university professors, think-tank executives, and liberty-minded activists to speak to an audience consisting primarily of students about political and economic freedom.

The Jaworskis, who fled Poland in 1984 while it was still a totalitarian regime, were astonished to find themselves charged in August, 2010 with an offence under Ontario’s Planning Act, merely for hosting the seminar on their 20-acre property. “We left Poland seeking freedom, but when we tried to help celebrate freedom in Canada, we found ourselves being treated like suspected criminals,” said Marta Jaworski, 57.

The Jaworskis retained a local lawyer to help them fight the charges but Clarington refused to budge.

Freedom of Peaceful Assembly

In December, 2010 the CCF took on the case. The CCF is a registered charitable organization that engages in public interest litigation in selected cases where it perceives government bodies to be breaching citizens’ constitutional rights.

The CCF filed court documents maintaining that the forbidding of the LSS would constitute a breach of the Jaworskis’ constitutional right to freedom of assembly under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The municipality informed the CCF last week that the charges against the Jaworskis would be withdrawn, in recognition of the fact that “their use of the property was purely for the purpose of a peaceful assembly and expressive activity”.

CCF Litigation Director Karen Selick said, “We are very satisfied with this result, and we’re particularly pleased that Clarington conceded the Jaworskis’ constitutional rights instead of putting them through the ordeal of a trial”.

Governor Gary Johnson at CPAC

Rarely have I seen such arguments made so eloquently and simply.

Via the Volunteer:

Ummm...okay

Who is John Galt? (part 1)

Buck-a-beer not coming back, McGuinty says

Hugh and I have already written about the price floor for beer in Ontario within the last week. Since then, The Star posted this article with a comment from McGuinty:

McGuinty said people have more important issues in mind when it comes to the Oct. 6 election, such as the economy, jobs, education and health care.

Of course, McGuinty is completely correct here. Most people would certainly rank the economy, jobs, education and health care above a reduction in the price floor of beer. While being correct, the statement is also largely irrelevant as well. The government is able to do more than one thing at once. This line that McGuinty used is almost exactly what he said while still defending the ban on mixed martial arts (MMA) in Ontairo.

Here is the quote from McGuinty under a year ago:

There are more important issues the governing Liberals must focus on, such as harmonizing sales taxes and developing clean-water technology, McGuinty added.

"If I was to knock on 1,000 Ontario family doors and ask them for their top three concerns, I'd be surprised if anybody said, 'Well, my top three, one of those is we've got to start this new kind of mixed martial arts in Ontario -- that's going to mean a lot for me and my family and our future together,"' he said.

What happened after that? Hudak kept pressing the issue and eventually McGuinty buckled and legalized MMA in Ontario. Similar to reducing/eliminating the price floor on beer, there was no work to be done for the government in legalizing MMA, it was just a simple act of making it legal. Just this week tickets went on sale for the first ever UFC event in Ontario. If McGuinty was
right that no one would care, well, then I don't know how he would explain this: UFC sees record ticket sales for Toronto event. Yes, not only has the event basically sold out before the "official" on sale day for general public tomorrow morning, it sold out the biggest venue the UFC has ever used in North America.

So that's great, UFC is popular in Ontario, but what does that have to do with a price floor on beer? Well, similar to the UFC event, there are going to be many people that would appreciate having cheaper beer available. Maybe it isn't the number one issue of almost anyone in the province, but there is certainly a voter base that you can do something positive for - the average person. Hudak fought on the right side of the MMA debate and he seems to be thinking of stepping into the debate on beer prices in this province. Neo-prohibitionists and the big brewers will oppose this, but it never seems like a bad idea (politically) to argue for a benefit to the average person. Can you get more of a folksy issue than cheaper beer in Ontario? There is a reason average people are sometimes referred to as "Joe Six-Pack".

Ontario Government may block stock exchange merger

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is pulling a Potash and saying that the TMX is a “strategic resource” and perhaps shouldn’t merge with the London Stock Exchange. His main rational against the merger is that a part owner will be the ruler of Dubai:

“We do business with the Middle East,” Mr. Duncan told reporters at Queen's Park on Friday. “I am just not sure I want them owning our stock exchange.”

Is it just me or does this sound vaguely prejudices? I don’t usually jump to the racist conclusion but there are two elements of this statement that makes it spring to mind. First that he is lumping a huge and diverse group of people together and second that he is denying any member of that group a right based on their membership in that group.

I would like Mr. Duncan to clarify if he meant that no one from the Middle East should be allowed to own a portion of the stock exchange, or did he mean that this particular person should not be allowed? And I would like to hear his justification in either case.

Another statement made by Minister Duncan has me scratching my head:

“If you went to try to buy the Dubai stock exchange, do you think you’d be able to?,” he said. “If you tried to by a resource based industry in China do you think you’d be able to?”

Umm…no you wouldn’t and the reason you wouldn’t is because neither country is a free society. There are a lot of things that I can do in Ontario that I couldn’t do in China or Dubai. This is not an argument for Ontario to emulate these countries. It is an argument for why Ontario is better than these countries.

It sounds like the Government of Ontario is preparing to use the same old tired xenophobic arguments to block freedom of trade.

Peter Jaworski's Libertas Post interview

I just noticed this interview that Peter Jaworski gave last week. The Jaworski family has been charged by the municipal government and face $50 000 in fines for hosting a liberty friendly seminar in their backyard. Check out the background information here and then take a look at the interview here.

Nina Grewal: MP or grumpy old man?

Conservative MP Nina Grewal has introduced a private member’s bill that will be debated in March. I always liked the concept of private member’s bill. Our backbench legislators have shockingly little power in this country. Compared to other democracies (even parliamentary democracies) there is very little that a run of the mill backbencher can do to affect policy. A private member’s bill is a rare opportunity where any Member of Parliament can try and change the laws of the land.

Nina Grewal is going to use that opportunity to make commercials not too loud.

To be clear the only restriction on what MPs can introduce as bills is that private member’s bills cannot call for new spending or adjust taxes. This is an admittedly large restriction but it still leaves a whole breadth of issues that can be addressed. Private member’s bills have been used in recent history to show leadership on national debates, such as the gun registry or the Human Rights Tribunal.

Instead of showing leadership Ms. Grewal is using her lottery assigned turn to introduce a new law to display her inner grumpy grandfather. Defending the bill she said that it is too much to ask Canadians to adjust their own volumes (I paraphrase). It is the responsibility of the state, the mighty leviathan, to ensure that people are not mildly annoyed and don’t have to press a few buttons every once and a while.

How many people are annoyed?

CRTC says that it received 304 complaints in 2010.

304 whole complaints! It is no wonder that Ms. Grewal wants to designate Parliamentary time discussing this. There is a total grassroots outcry against having to use your remote control more than once every half an hour. I would say that this is totally comparable to the mass protests demanding a change of government in Egypt.

Thank you Nina Grewal for bringing this issue into the forefront of public debate, you are truly doing your constituents a service.

P.S.

To all those people who complained to the CRTC:

Get a freakin hobby.

P.P.S.

This is my impression of Nina Grewal:

Damn commercials! Too dang loud. Where is that goddamn remote. Okay how do I work this bloody thing? Billy! Where is that damn kid! Billy how do I work the remote? I want to turn off the volume. The damn commercial is too loud. I said the damn commercial is too loud! No I don't want to fucking mute it, I just want to turn down the darn volume. Oh what? The arrows? No Billy damn it that made the fucking channel change. Why didn't you say I should use the arrows marked volume? Damn stupid kid. Why did my daughter marry his loser father in the first place? Wait Billy! That just made it fucking louder! what? The down arrow? Why didn't you say that first you idiot! Wait never mind the commercials are over now. There ought to be a fucking law that's what I say.

Money won't fix our health care system

The Globe & Mail is reporting that a $5.5 billion program to reduce wait times has largely been a failure. Though there has apparently been some success in some areas, overall wait times are not much lower than they were when this program was initiated in 2004. So after more money then I could even count in my life time, there is little or no improvement to the health care problem.

At some point policy makers are going to have to realize that throwing money at the health care system is not enough. The incentives for patients, doctors, and hospitals have all been perverted by our current government operated health care program.

Rather than piling more resources onto an unsustainable health care system, we as a nation should be having a serious grown up discussion on how we can bring more market incentives into the system. It is only with market incentives that costs will decrease and quality will increase.

Lowering the cost of beer would be a winning issue for Hudak

Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak mused on Monday that many Ontarians miss a buck a beer (I certainly miss it). Premier Dalton McGuinty dismissed any discussion of the government enforced price floor as a “distraction” from more urgent issues. There is also the suggestion that it would some how be irresponsible to allow people to buy a good at market price. I thought I would take a moment to address both of these points.

If his point is that beer prices shouldn’t be the main focus of the next provincial election, I agree with Mr. McGuinty. The focus should be his abysmal fiscal performance and the resulting economic mess that is the province of Ontario.

That being said, there is not reason why “Premier dad’s” growing interference in the lives of responsible adults should not be an important side issue of the election. The attitude of the current Ontario Liberal leadership seems to be that the entire population of Ontario is made up 15 year olds. I agree that a 15 year old should not be drinking 1$ beer (as slightly hypocritical as that position makes me) but there is no reason that an adult shouldn’t be allowed to buy beer at any price that he/she can negotiate.

Surely we can include this debate without “distracting” too much from Mr. McGuinty’s other failures.

There are those that would disagree with my claim that there is no reason adults shouldn’t be treated as adults when it comes to beer prices. That position is presented in this CBC article:

Juergen Rehm, the director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH in Toronto, which treats addiction and mental illness, said there's a reason beer prices are higher.

"What [Hudak is] saying is actually contradicting all science about the consequences of such a move," said Rehm.

"We know that if prices would actually be lowered, the death toll would increase. Of course there's tremendous costs also with the non-fatal consequences of alcohol, all the hospital costs, all the costs in criminality, etc."

I will ignore that he refers to sociology as a “science,” because my reflex is to simply tune out anyone who makes such an absurd and misguided claim. Instead I will look at core assumption of the above statement.

Mr. Rehm is assuming that alcohol is the cause of personal and social problems. For him, more access to alcohol means that there would be more criminals and binge drinking. Such a claim is completely unsubstantiated. Someone with a psychological dependency on alcohol and drinks in a destructive manner would be willing to pay a high price for beer. They have already thrown away their health and their lives so why wouldn’t they spend a few dollars more?

The people that are actually affected by a price floor in beer are the responsible drinkers. The drinkers that enjoy an odd beer here and there may decide to drink less if the cost is higher, but such drinkers are not the ones being cited by price floor proponents. The people that they want to help are not helped by price floors and everyone else is hurt by a higher cost or a less than optimal beer supply.

This is not a difficult case to make because most Ontarians intuitively know all of this. The average beer drinker knows that they are being hurt by price floors and they know that a drunk is a drunk regardless of the price. If Mr. Hudak sticks to his guns, this could easily become a winning issue for him.

Hudak wants a slightly smaller price floor on beer

I first wrote about the price floor for beer in Ontario being raised from $24/case to $25.60/case in this 2008 post: McGuinty Raising Price Floor for Beer. As far as I could tell at the time of posting that, John Tory never really mentioned this as being unfair (he may have later come out against this, probably a moot point now to search).

Now Tim Hudak is the leader of the Ontario PC Party and he seems to be considering going back to the 2008 price floor on beer. I suppose this is an improvement, but Hudak is justifying the existence of this silly price floor. A buck a beer was too expensive in the first place. For the exact same products in other jurisdictions, you can get beer much cheaper than $1/beer.

The price of beer in Ontario (in many provinces) is impacted both by federal and provincial sin taxes that go to the government and the price floors that are implicit taxes that go to private companies. As I've talked about before with Quebec, the big brewers obviously are huge fans of the price floors.

If Tim Hudak is serious about lowering the price of beer in Ontario, there are two areas to do this. The first step will be the remove the price floor. This is more unfair than taxes because it just benefits private business at the expense of taxpayers, instead of at least theoretically going towards something that benefits the taxpayer. The provincial sin taxes should also be lowered because the affects the price of all beer, not just the lower priced varieties. This would give a break to all beer consumers, regardless if the purchase the cheapest or the most expensive beer in the province.

I'm hoping Hudak saying he wants the buck a beer back wasn't the whole policy and just an off the cuff response. It is a step in the right direction, but a step so small that it is barley worth mentioning. It is also probably too small to be worth the political fight with MADD and other neo-prohibitionist groups.

Tribal partisans and prejudice

A couple of weeks ago Slate published an article by Shankar Vedantam comparing racism with partisanship. Initially I rejected the idea but as I read I could see the parallels that the author was trying to draw. I still think that the level of hate and destruction that is associated with racism dwarves partisanship, but the comparison is valid.

People make assumptions about other people based on their “political tribe.” You are a Liberal/Conservative therefore you must be corrupt/racist. Even if a partisan is not that extreme in their assumptions, they adopt an instant negative attitude towards partisans of a different stripe (or colour?). I have seen it happen many times.

Mr. Vedantam points out that there is a real social element to partisanship that has nothing to do with your attitude towards public policy:

In recent years, a number of political scientists have argued that our party loyalties drive our views about issues, not the other way around. But if our views don't make us Democrats or Republicans, what does? Consider this thought experiment: I have two neighbors, Jack and Jill. Jill is an African-American woman and a yoga instructor. Jack is a white man and an evangelical Christian. I've told you nothing about Jack and Jill's views about abortion, government, guns, taxes, or foreign policy. Yet most of us would have no trouble guessing that Jill is a Democrat and Jack is a Republican. How do we know this? Because social identity—race, gender, religious affiliation, geographical location—play an outsize (and largely hidden) role in determining our partisan affiliations.

This paragraph reminded of an incident at a party my girlfriend and I attended. It was a party that was exclusive for conservative/libertarian bloggers, activists, and academics. At one point the host brought out snacks and my girlfriend declined because she doesn’t eat meat. Another guest asked her if it was for moral or health reasons. She said it was moral and he sneered at her.

In what polite society do you sneer at someone for something as harmless as being a vegetarian? Actually I don’t think he sneered because of the vegetarianism. I think he sneered because her being a vegetarian led him to make assumptions about her being “one of the bad guys.” That just about fits the definition of prejudice.

Making flawed and rude assumptions is not what concerns me the most about this form of tribal partisanship. The real concern is that people might close their mind to certain policy solutions because the idea supposedly belongs to another tribe.

In University I use to amuse myself by figuring out the political tribe of a stranger and then confusing him/her. For example, in a conversation with a socialist (it is not a slur) I first antagonized him by talking about the virtues of a flat tax. Then just as he was getting whiled up, I switched the topic to the evils of the drug war.

He stared at me in disbelieve and asked, “What are you? Left wing or right wing?”

At the time I laughed at the question but the older I get the less funny and the more disheartening that question seams to me. Too many people base their entire intellectual life on this false dichotomy of left versus right. Both the “left” and the “right” do not prescribe to a consistent set of policies. Far from being policy distinctions, “left” and “right” are in reality social distinctions. It is defined by who your friends are.

The tragedy of this is that it blinds people to solutions that would otherwise seem obvious. If you reject ideas solely because you don’t like who came up with it (or who supports it) then how can an honest debate exist? How are we going to find the correct course if you do not consider all the options?

The flip side of all this is that tribal partisanship is not nearly a prolific as Mr. Vedantam implies (to be fair he was writing about a different country). The vast majority of people do not self identify with political labels. If you ask random people on the street to pick five words to describe themselves I doubt that many would say left, right, conservative, or liberal. I suspect that Toronto Maple Leafs would come up more often (and if ever there was an argument against blind tribal loyalty it is the Leafs).

This means that most of the public are actually open minded about policy ideas. Most people do not have a set entrenched position on tax policy. At the end of the day we are still a society of non-partisans.

Opening up Canada's internet provider market?

National News Watch is claiming that Maxime Bernier "let the cat out of the bag" by revealing government plans to open the ISP market to foreign investors.

The link on the National News Watch site doesn't seem to be working, but here is the text that is visible on the home page:

Maxime Bernier reveals Clement's ISP plans
NNW: During an interview Friday with Halifax talk radio show host Jordi Morgan, Maxime Bernier revealed that Tony Clement plans to introduce legislation that will open the ISP market to foreign companies... Bernier was responding to a question on whether or not he agrees with his government's position on Internet usage-based billing..

As of yet there is no confirmation but if it is true then it would be a powerful step forward. It will bring in more investment and competition to take on the government protected oligopolies.

I've heard Tony Clement call himself the "consumer minister." Considering the benefits that a more open market will bring to the consumers, Minister Clement may be earning that title.

*Update*

This is what Mr. Bernier said according to Canada.com:

"First of all, we need more competition, and the way to have more competition is to open foreign investment, foreign ownership in the telecom (industry) in Canada, we don’t have that, and I think that (current industry minister) Tony (Clement) wants to bring legislation before the Parliament, and I hope he’ll do that as soon as possible. That’s the solution in telecom, having more players. You’re going to have more choices, and you’re going to have lower prices, so in dealing with different parts of the telecom industry, like the decision of the CRTC, it’s dealing (with) that block by block, and I think the way to deal with it is on the global … look at the global picture, and we need more competition, and the easiest way to do it, (is to) open to foreign investment. There’s a lot of companies out there who want to give good services to Canadian."

Also this is the statement given by Minister Clement's office:

Clement's office issued the following response by email: "As you know, Minister Clement speaks for the government on these issues. Should there be something to discuss, he will be the one to do so."

Are the Liberals turning into the NDP?

The Liberal Party of Canada has announced that they will reintroduce their childcare centre/bureaucracy plan that failed to win them the election in 2006.

I find it stunning that at the same time as claiming that the Conservative Party has lost credibility on fiscal matters (which they have), the Liberal Party of Canada keep throwing its own credibility out the window.

Seriously, has no one in the Liberal Party looked up the word deficit in the dictionary? It means that you have negative money.

Having negative money means that you have to borrow to pay for what the government already does. As the C.D. Howe points out, borrowing year after year is not a good long term plan. So if we are facing a fiscal crisis with current spending levels, why in the name of sanity would you propose more spending?

The Liberal Party likes to claim a history of deficit fighting, and yes the Liberal Party was the party that brought the country out of deficit in the 1990s. But they did it by making cuts. “Cuts” is another word that today’s Liberal Party needs to look up in the dictionary.

Why isn’t today’s Liberal Party talking about how to bring us out of the coming fiscal crisis? Why are they instead busily dreaming up ways of making that crisis worse?

Today’s Liberal Party is stuck in this constant cycle of looking for that one big idea (or leader) that would put them back into its rightful place as the natural governing party. Yet the only ideas that anyone in the party can come up with involve billions of dollars that just don’t exist in the government coffers.

As a result the Liberal Party no longer looks like the Liberal Party of only a few years ago. The Liberal Party of a few years ago was a party that you could realistically expect to govern responsibly (if not necessarily govern well). Today the Liberal Party looks like an opposition party that can come up with hopelessly unrealistic spending proposals because no one really expects them to ever actually have power.

In short, the Liberal Party has turned into the NDP.

Rocco Rossi

I'm completely late to this, so by now everyone knows that Rocco Rossi will run for the PC Party of Ontario in the upcoming provincial election. I seem to have way too many negative posts, so this will just be a short post saying that I am quite happy with the news. I endorsed Rossi during the mayoral election in Toronto, so I'm pretty consistent on praise for him. I really don't know all that much about Rossi's history before 2010, but Rossi campaigned on less government during the campaign, so I'm glad he'll be joining the party's team in the next election.