{ Daily Archives }
June 19th, 2002
If only states were unitary
If only states were unitary rational actors, William Saletan’s arguments in favor of Israel’s new “we take your land if you take our peace” strategy would be compelling:
To the extent that the purpose of Palestinian terrorism is to get land — and it must be understood that this extent is limited — the clearest demonstration of the failure of that approach is to take land from the Palestinians each time they commit terrorism. If it wasn’t crazy for the Israelis to halt their surrender of land under the Oslo agreement on the grounds that they weren’t getting the peace they had bargained for, why is it crazy for them to raise the ante? The new policy simply pushes the Palestinian reward/punishment calculus into negative territory. If Israel is deprived of peace, it won’t just stop giving up land. It will take land back.
As long as Palestinian extremists can provoke an Israeli response, any political solution remains utterly infeasible. Obviously, Arafat has proven himself completely unable to contain extremists, including those in his own Fatah faction. Which is why I support a NATO occupation of the West Bank, with a complete disarmament of the population, leading to an independent but demilitarized state. Just have no illusions about “exit strategies”. US forces have been in Germany, South Korea, and Japan for 50 years, and would need to stay in an independent Palestine at least as long. But, I also believe a just resolution to the conflict there could be the linchpin that catalyzes positive changes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
WSJ reports on growing anti-spam
WSJ reports on growing anti-spam legislation efforts. However, these only affect the most blatantly fraudulent practices, and wouldn’t eliminate the right for an essentially unlimited number of businesses to send at least one email each, with the burden still on each user to unsubscribe from every company (it’s opt-out instead of opt-in). The Direct Marketing Association says: “We think our guidelines are working and are very concerned about overly broad regulation.” If you define working as stopping any anti-spam legislation that might actually reduce spam (as they do), then their efforts are certainly “working”.
Brad DeLong’s superb piece on
Brad DeLong’s superb piece on why Noam Chomsky is the most pathetic intellectual ever: “Arguing with [Chomsky supporters] seems to be a lot like trying to teach Plato’s Republic to a pig: it wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.”