Phil Magness discusses his new book (with Jason Brennan) about the problems with higher education. They aren’t talking about ideological conformity, bad as that is. They are discussing other problems, just as deep and pervasive.
For example, most academic marketing and advertising is semi-fraudulent. To justify their own pay raises and higher budgets, administrators hire expensive and unnecessary staff. Faculty exploit students for tuition dollars through gen-ed requirements. Students hardly learn anything and cheating is pervasive. At every level, academics disguise their pursuit of self-interest with high-falutin’ moral language.
According to Barbara Amiel, “a rapacious Asian demand for ivory is creating such terrible killing fields that elephants face extinction by poaching.” She writes this bit of economic illiteracy in Maclean’s Magazine (October 7, 2013, pp. 12-13). Before probing the reasons why this is so totally wrong, here is a bit of background. Barbara Amiel, wife of Conrad Black (and ex-wife of GeorgeJonas, another semi- demi- quasi-libertarian with whom I have also tangled in these pages) is a sort of Canadian equivalent of Ann Coulter: brilliant, beautiful, a gifted writer, conservative, vaguely libertarian on a few issues. Maclean’s Magazine is a rough equivalent of TimeMagazine in the U.S.
Back to the elephants, of which Amiel is very fond; she also states: “The magnificent and highly intelligent elephant has always been treated abominably. Today helicopter gunships shoot them down in Africa and hack off heads for ivory tusks, leaving baby elephants orphaned.” Maclean’s Magazine (September 13, 2013). Why is her first statement entirely nonsensical, and her second, in that context, misleading at best? This is because the demand for ivory has nothing whatsoever to do with poaching. There is a “rapacious” demand for pork, too, on the part of “Asians,” and everyone else for that matter, and yet the pig does not face “extinction by poaching” or from any other source. The same is true for steaks and cows, wings and chickens, etc. There is also “a rapacious Asian demand for” things like cement for building, wood for chopsticks, steel for ships, etc., etc. And, yet, miraculously, there is no shortage, let alone total disappearance of, any of these things.
No, if we want to ferret out the source of the plight of the elephant, we must look elsewhere. Where oh where? I will give Amiel one hint: this difficulty stems from an institution that has played havoc with more, far more, than merely the elephant. Yes, that is it: the government. And how, pray tell, has statism caused grief in this particular case? It is simple. By not allowing private ownership in these creatures (and the same applies to the tiger, the rhino, the whale, and every other species in danger of extinction) the “public sector” has unleashed the tragedy of the commons on mankind, and with it the endangerment of all species that are not allowed to be owned privately.
What you may well ask is the tragedy of the commons? When a resource such as an endangered species is unowned, in the vernacular owned “in common” by all of mankind, namely by no one, incentives to preserve it are greatly attenuated. If hunter A leaves an elephant alone today that he might have harvested, someone else, B, comes along and grabs it up. So A kills it right away, with no thought for the morrow. He will even slaughter a pregnant elephant, the hope for the future of this species. If these creatures were privately owned, they would of course still be hunted, in much the same way as other barnyard animals are culled, but there would be a stiff price attached to any such occurrence. Old male elephants would be the cheapest, of course. And if a hunter for some reason wanted to shoot a pregnant elephant, this too could probably be arranged; but it would costs a (human) arm and a leg. These funds of course would be used to preserve the basis of the earnings of the elephant owner.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of this phenomenon is the contrasting fates of the cow and the buffalo. The former was always privately owned, and never came within a million miles of extinction. The latter for many years was in the commons, so people had little incentive to refrain from hunting it today. They would not have it tomorrow if they did not. In contrast, the cost of butchering a cow today is precisely that bovine tomorrow, so ranchers act economically with regard to that breed. It is movies such as Dances with Wolves that misconstrue this, and blame the near extinction of the buffalo on the white man.
Do I need to amend this claim that “rapacious” demand is irrelevant to poaching? Could not a critic object to the analysis offered above on the ground that no one would poach anything that was not valuable? That is, if ivory lost its value, no one would poach it? No. Of course, no one would steal something that had no value at all. But, if a thing had no value at all, it would not be considered an economic good. So, yes, no one steals air, or worthless rocks, because they are not economic goods. But, when there are prohibitions placed on any economic goods, in effect a price control of zero on them, then there will be incentives unleashed to reward just that kind of behavior. For example, no one, nowadays, at least in the U.S., steals carrots (I ignore minor pilfering or shoplifting in making this statement). But suppose that government in its infinite wisdom declared a price ceiling of zero on carrots (they could only be given away, not sold), or, worse, banned them outright. Then, the black market price of these vegetables would rise above present carrot prices, and there would be far greater incentives to steal them than at present.
Let me consider one other objection to the tragedy of the commons thesis offered above. This one is not at all hypothetical, but actually served as the basis for the bestowing of the Nobel Prize in economics on Elinor Ostrom. This political scientist, the first woman to win this Award, was also economically illiterate. She explicitly rejected the tragedy of the commons thesis, one of the most powerful in all of economics. In her book she offered numerous cases which supposedly ran counter to that insight, ranging from water in California to grazing pastures in the Alps, to fishing in the Far East. But none of these cases were really “commons.” They were all something very different, partnerships. Take the library of a large law firm of several hundred partners. There is no tragedy of the commons here, to be sure. The books, or in the modern era, electronic compilations, are not mistreated, abused, lost. These resources are there for all the members of the law firm to utilize. There is no analogy to the tragedy of the commons that afflicts the elephant and other such species. But the point is, there is no “commons” here, either. If you are I, gentle reader, were to attempt to make use of the law firms’ resources (or grazing lands in Switzerland, or water in California), we might be able to do so, but only with the permission of the real owners of the enterprise, and probably not even then. For a blistering attack on this author for making this very elementary mistake, see Block, Walter E. 2011. Review essay of Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the commons: . Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; in Libertarian Papers, Vol. 3, Art. 21.
The dominant view of World War II is that it was the “good war.” Hitler bears exclusive responsibility for the onset of war, because he aimed to conquer Europe, if not the entire world. The United States tried to avoid entering the war but was forced into the fight by the surprise Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The authors on this list dissent. For them, Responsibility for the war was mixed, and Roosevelt provoked Japan’s attack. Allied conduct of the war, furthermore, was characterized by grave ethical misconduct.
Alperovitz, Gar. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb Comprehensive study that shows dropping the atomic bombs was not needed to bring about Japanese surrender.
Baker, Nicholson Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization Stresses the violations of the norms of civilized war in World War II, with full attention to the role of Winston Churchill.
Barnes, Harry Elmer, ed. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace A collection of essays by leading revisionist historians, concentrating on Franklin Roosevelt’s policies.
Beard, Charles A. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 Beard, one of the foremost twentieth-century American historians, argues that Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Buchanan, Patrick J.Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. Argues that the British guarantee to Poland in March 1939 was a mistake, because there was no feasible means of fulfilling it.
Chamberlin, William H., America’s Second Crusade A highly critical account of American policy during World War I. America failed to learn the lesson of intervention in World War I.
As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the worst incident of domestic terrorism in our nation’s history, we now know for certain that our government’s public account and explanation of circumstances surrounding that heinous crime was bogus. The truth lies in a suppressed version of events, one which was described by President Bill Clinton’s General Counsel Abner Mikva as “not information that should be on paper.” (Emphasis added.)
This article will for the first time present key elements of that suppressed information, on paper for the public.
For such an order to be issued by Mikva, the Oklahoma City bombing must have posed what can only be described as a mortal threat to Clinton’s political future, and to the reputation of many federal agencies involved.
During my Marine Corps career with nearly five years with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, I have seen our nuclear war-fighting plans as well as our most sensitive intelligence reports – both were “on paper.”
The account offered here is the result of 24 years of research on my part, including 11 years of working closely with the legendary McCurtain Daily Gazette reporter, J.D. Cash, and collaborating with dozens of other professional and citizen journalists committed to uncovering the full truth behind the Oklahoma City bombing and its aftermath.
Whatever Mikva ordered not to be put “on paper,” was seen as more threatening to his client, the president, than the compromise of any other information in the entire U.S. government. But, as is the case of any federal government cover up, information was spread far too widely among various agencies for Mikva’s edict to be completely effective.
Over the past 25 years records have been released, often in seemingly unrelated cases, which have provided key elements of this mosaic – enough for us now to piece together the core of the damaging information of such concern to the president’s senior legal adviser.
OKBOMB, as the FBI titled the case, was the result of a federal law enforcement operation that went terribly wrong for reasons still unknown.
Suppressing information about this ugly truth was Mikva’s objective when he issued his extraordinary order to go off paper. Released as a memorandum on letterhead marked, “EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,” the date was May 25, 1995, five weeks after the bombing and after the case had supposedly been solved.
This date was exactly three weeks after this newspaper published J.D. Cash’s first story on OKBOMB. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were in jail awaiting trial. Bombing conspirator and white nationalist Michael Fortier had agreed to be the star prosecution witness against his former Army buddies.
Mikva’s order confirming the mortal threat to the Clinton presidency was released by the Clinton Presidential Library in 2016 as one of the 1500 pages characterized as pertinent to President Barack Obama’s nomination of federal judge Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Garland arrived in Oklahoma City just two days after the bombing and was the senior on-site Justice Department lawyer in charge of the investigation. After four weeks, he returned to Washington where he continued to supervise both the investigation and preparing the government’s prosecution for McVeigh’s and Nichols’ federal court trials.
A memorandum between two White House attorneys recorded Mikva’s unprecedented order and was intended for Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, with this subject line: “Terrorism note for H”.
These first two sentences offer a candid disclosure of what will be referred to as the suppressed “Mikva version”:
The Justice Department has stopped working on the terrorism question. They say this is because Ab [Abner Mikva] instructed them that this is not information that should be on paper. (Emphasis added.)
Please read this historic statement again.
To put it in context, at the very time the president’s General Counsel issued his extraordinary suppression order, there was much ongoing work on “terrorism” questions that was on paper. Oklahoma City bombing documents publicly accessible at the Clinton Presidential Library show hundreds of pages of legal, policy and political questions regarding terrorism being examined by lawyers both inside and outside of the federal government.
Any question about whether Mikva’s edict dealt with OKBOMB, was answered three years later in a media interview. No longer in the White House, Mikva was interviewed about a dispute concerning congressional oversight between the Department of Justice and the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
The Chicago Tribune reporter wrote of Mikva’s admission:
Abner Mikva, a former White House counsel, federal judge, and Chicago congressman said Congress must move cautiously. [The Department of] Justice handles sensitive investigations, from terrorism to organized crime, and many techniques must remain secret, Mikva said.
“If Chairman Hyde starts asking about all the dollars they spent in Oklahoma City, that can compromise some very, very delicate information,” added Mikva, a Democrat. “How much of that does he really want to get into?” (Emphasis added.)
Mikva belatedly attempted damage control, having blurted out some sensitive words of his own about the suppressed truth, but it was too late. His claim that this matter was a budget issue is ludicrous. The Justice Department and the FBI had previously boasted about the 82 million dollars spent on OKBOMB, presenting this figure as yet another indicator, albeit a phony one, of the thoroughness of the investigation, and assurance that all perpetrators had been identified and convicted. (Mikva died in 2016 without public comment on his “not-on-paper’ order.)
Adding to the critical importance assigned this suppression effort are other White House records showing that Garland met during this period with Mikva’s Deputy General Counsel, Elena Kagan, who now serves on the U.S. Supreme Court.
This document from the Executive Office of the President confirms what had been obvious to J.D. Cash and others who observed this unprecedented suppression of evidence and obstruction of justice in a federal criminal case.
More importantly, we now know why OKBOMB federal prosecutors suppressed evidence on such a massive level: it incriminated more than a dozen additional perpetrators who either directly participated in the bombing, or provided support to the wider conspiracy that murdered 168 of our fellow citizens.
The version crafted by Garland and presented in the federal trials of McVeigh and Nichols was a bogus one whose purpose was to conceal the identity of federal informants who were members of the wider bombing conspiracy.
