Net Neutrality is the name that has been given to the political belief that the internet should treat all data as equal. Equality has a special place in American hearts as it is one of the core beliefs of democracy, that all votes are equal and that all citizens get an equal say in how the country is run. Net Neutrality also has deep roots in the free speech. Because when you stymy data, you are in essence thwarting communication, and in an era where a vast majority of that communication is made over the internet, efforts by internet providers to choke off certain types of internet communications strikes many as a direct affront to their free speech and free association rights. While the internet may not be a traditional avenue for political communications, it is fast becoming the most popular means to exchange political opinions.
With the internet taking such an important roll in the modern world, it was inevitable that world governments want to get involved. Internationally there is great tension over who gets to control the internet. In China, and other totalitarian regimes, there is a great desire to control and censor speech in order to control the hearts and minds of its citizens. The command and control aspects of content censorship are quite obvious, which is why China and others have enacted large internet censorship and intelligence surveillance programs. With the US government signalling that it wishes to globalize DNS services instead of giving exclusive rights to the non-profit ICANN, the vultures of the world, as well as the angels, have been circling to get a piece of the action when it becomes available. If global DNS becomes nationalized, it would give governments greater power to block content providers they don't like and further censor and spy on internet communications.
In the US, the current debate focuses not only on the NSA's surveillance of the internet, but on the right of internet providers like Comcast to prioritize information transferred over their networks. Obama has recently urged the Federal Communications Commission to take control of the US internet, like it has over radio, television, wire and satellite communications, and make the internet a public utility regulated by the FCC. Under FCC proposed rules, ISPs would not be allowed to prioritize internet communications, de facto imposing net neutrality on ISPs. Obviously, companies like Comcast are against this as they have invested a large amount of time and effort into creating their internet empires and they do not like government imposing its will on them. They also don't like the government blocking off the potentially lucrative business practice of charging more to large data users and throttling the internet speeds of those who refuse to pay for more bandwidth. Ever since Comcast purposely choked Netflix's bandwidth in order to extort fees from the content provider, Comcast has been looking to expand this practice towards other large providers like Google.
So, on the surface, Net Neutrality looks like a boon to the end user. It keeps companies like Comcast from choking or censoring their content while still allowing them an avenue to make money, by charging the end user for access. For the service provider, it looks bad because it is choking a potential revenue stream and creating a new regulatory scheme which will add additional compliance costs on the business. These additional costs and regulatory constraints will use up resources better spent on expanding advanced networks. The problem that I see here is that the belief that government is a benevolent stakeholder in internet communications whose control should be embraced over that of the greedy corporation is incredibly naive. As I noted above, surveillance and censorship of the internet is of great interest to all governments of the world as a means of controlling their citizens. Moreover, when a government controls a resource, one of the ways it pays for this control is by imposing additional taxes. After all, it is tax dollars that pay the salaries of the government workers who oversee compliance with regulations. If the choice in the Net Neutrality debate is between governments who want to spy on or censor their citizens and tax internet communications or ISPs that want to prioritize the web and charge more for large data users, then the citizenry is faced with a real devil's bargain. And this is why we should both embrace and fear government enforcement of net neutrality.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
We're all Serfs
In any class on medieval history, much of the discussion of society revolved around the system of serfdom in Europe. Serfdom was the practice by which, in medieval Europe, peasants were tied to the land of a particular lord or knight. They worked particular plots of land for the lord, who in return, provided the serfs with protection. This protection took the form of both military and police protection, often with the lord sitting in judgment over civil disputes between his serfs, punishing law breakers and enforcing order. The lord got the benefits of the serfs' labor, the serfs got the protection of the lord and his armies. Depending on where in Europe you are looking, the formalities of the arrangement differ, but generally, the serf was oath bound to do the lord's bidding and put the lord's business above his own affairs. In return the serf was granted the rights to certain lands where he could earn a living. As the system grew and cities grew larger, the complexities of the arrangements changed, with taxes substituting for labor where the profession of the serf in question earned him money instead of harvests from the land. I use harvests here, because I'm including both resource extraction like mining and traditional farming yields. In the end, a serf was a man bound to work a plot of land for his lord.
This is often negatively compared with the modern era. In a modern first world country we are not oath bound to work the land, we may choose our own professions and we may leave our homestead and make a life of our own elsewhere. Serfdom is also often compared with slavery because the serfs were oath bound to a particular bit of land and a particular lord, with no ability to leave or find a new one. But this ignores a significant and important distinction between slavery and serfdom, namely that slaves lives were owned by their masters, to be dealt with as they saw fit and serfs were not. Any act, any request of the lave owner to the slave was to be followed without question, with the penalty of arbitrary death hanging over a slave's head. A serf, on the other hand, while oath bound to his lord, was still considered a living human being, he could not be denied the amenities required to maintain his life, he could not be blocked from attending the local church, got holy days off work and was not obligated to do any immoral acts for his or her lord.
Now that we have covered what serfdom was, this brings us to the title of this piece, namely, that we are still serfs despite living in the modern era. As I said above, serfs were oath bound to work for the benefit of their lords. However, as professions beyond mere resource extraction were born, serfs started to pay their debt to their lord in taxes instead of labor. Today we follow much the same practice, and in many industrialized parts of the world pay between 1/4 and 1/2 of our annual labor in taxes to federal, state and local governments. While we enjoy the freedom to move about our countries, we are still bound to the countries where we are citizens. In fact, citizenship can rightly be viewed as just an oath given to a country whereby you get the protections of the government and are given the right to work within that government's borders. So, we are bound to our government and its land and we still owe it a significant chunk of our labors; the only real difference between our situation and that of serfs then is that we have a right to vote for who runs the government whose laws we are subject to. But in an era where the parties are entrenched in both law an society, where the differences between the parties in practice is very small, where many local elections go uncontested, query whether or not our votes actually make a bit of difference in how and by whom the country is actually run. Does a sham say in government matter more than no say at all? If we are still bound to a country by citizenship, still owe taxes to our lords, and our opinions have very little impact on how the countries we live in are run, how exactly are we different from the serfs of the middle ages? We're all still serfs.
This is often negatively compared with the modern era. In a modern first world country we are not oath bound to work the land, we may choose our own professions and we may leave our homestead and make a life of our own elsewhere. Serfdom is also often compared with slavery because the serfs were oath bound to a particular bit of land and a particular lord, with no ability to leave or find a new one. But this ignores a significant and important distinction between slavery and serfdom, namely that slaves lives were owned by their masters, to be dealt with as they saw fit and serfs were not. Any act, any request of the lave owner to the slave was to be followed without question, with the penalty of arbitrary death hanging over a slave's head. A serf, on the other hand, while oath bound to his lord, was still considered a living human being, he could not be denied the amenities required to maintain his life, he could not be blocked from attending the local church, got holy days off work and was not obligated to do any immoral acts for his or her lord.
Now that we have covered what serfdom was, this brings us to the title of this piece, namely, that we are still serfs despite living in the modern era. As I said above, serfs were oath bound to work for the benefit of their lords. However, as professions beyond mere resource extraction were born, serfs started to pay their debt to their lord in taxes instead of labor. Today we follow much the same practice, and in many industrialized parts of the world pay between 1/4 and 1/2 of our annual labor in taxes to federal, state and local governments. While we enjoy the freedom to move about our countries, we are still bound to the countries where we are citizens. In fact, citizenship can rightly be viewed as just an oath given to a country whereby you get the protections of the government and are given the right to work within that government's borders. So, we are bound to our government and its land and we still owe it a significant chunk of our labors; the only real difference between our situation and that of serfs then is that we have a right to vote for who runs the government whose laws we are subject to. But in an era where the parties are entrenched in both law an society, where the differences between the parties in practice is very small, where many local elections go uncontested, query whether or not our votes actually make a bit of difference in how and by whom the country is actually run. Does a sham say in government matter more than no say at all? If we are still bound to a country by citizenship, still owe taxes to our lords, and our opinions have very little impact on how the countries we live in are run, how exactly are we different from the serfs of the middle ages? We're all still serfs.
Monday, September 8, 2014
High Taxes Have Consequences
Today's The Wall Street Journal has two seemingly unrelated stories. The first is in the "World" section entitled: "Japan GDP Shrinks at Fastest Pace in More Than Five Years", the other is in the "US" section entitled: "Lew: Imperative for Congress to Solve Inversion Problem". At first glance the flight of US multinationals and Japan's continued economic woes are not connected. However, delve into the stories a little bit and it becomes obvious that both of these articles are reporting on national crises created by bad tax policy choices.
Japan's problem is that, after a spurt of expansionary policy changes called "Abenomics", name after Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the country then hiked the national sales tax from 5% to 8% (a 60% increase). The hike resulted in a 7.1% shrink in Japan's GDP. Now, to be fair, there are plenty of other factors at work here causing Japan's continued economic stagnation, but the massive increase in what is a consumption tax hit consumers' pockets in Japan very hard. Over the relevant period, consumer prices jumped 3.4% while salaries only grew 1.6%; more over, the expectation is for that consumption tax to increase to 10% next year, further eroding consumers' purchasing power. The end result is that people bought less goods and saved for cost increases in their future and the economy wilted. This was an easily predictable result. Basic economics 101 analysis says that when prices increase, consumption decreases. When consumption represents the back bone of the modern economy, even small changes in cost can result in big disruptions.
The US's problem is that its corporate tax, and non-territorial tax system, are globally uncompetitive. With the USA's 35% corporate tax rate, and the fact that it taxes income repatriated from other countries, US based multinationals are pursuing aggressive tax strategies to minimize the cost of these terrible policies. One of the ways companies do this is through an "Inversion". This is essentially where the US company merges with a foreign company and makes the foreign company's country of origin it's headquarters and place of incorporation. The new company then buys debt from what is now its US subsidiary and use the debt on the books of the US sub to minimize its US tax burden. This results in all the company's global profits being taxed at the much lower foreign business tax rate instead of the much higher US rate. And because of the US's non-territorial system, these profits will never be repatriated into the US because the company would face a tax penalty. So the profits are used to expand operations in foreign markets instead of investing in the US market.
The politicians' response to the US crisis is predictable. They took turns getting in front of the media and tried to bully companies into not leaving the country. When this failed, they then moved on to insisting there be tax policy changes to keep this from happening. The sensible response to a crisis created by bad policy would be to improve the policy, namely make US corporate tax globally competitive. Of course, that would mean accepting declining tax revenue, so obviously that isn't what happened. Instead, President Obama is pushing to change how the IRS interprets existing regulations while congress is trying to create new tax laws to penalize companies for doing inversions. Essentially, their response to high costs causing companies to leave is to increase costs. Fortunately, congress can't even agree on the weather outside, let alone tax policy changes, so I expect most of this hew and cry to have no tangible results. What policy response will come out of Japan from their crisis is yet unclear. But expect more bureaucratic incompetence.
The problems in Japan and the USA are strait forward, but politicians lack the political will to make the necessary changes to fix them. The end result is that change must come from people in the voting booths. Bill Clinton defeated sitting president George H. W. Bush with the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid!" This was in response to Bush reneging on his promise not to raise taxes and the economy suffering as a result. Today I would like to create a new slogan to be chanted at every politician when they start whining about the very obvious economic response to their bad tax policy decisions, its: "It's high taxes, stupid!". Or, for when regulators don't understand how the ever increasing burden of their laws harm the economy: "It's the regulatory burden on business, stupid!" The economic problems in much of the first world can be boiled down to these two statements.
Japan's problem is that, after a spurt of expansionary policy changes called "Abenomics", name after Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the country then hiked the national sales tax from 5% to 8% (a 60% increase). The hike resulted in a 7.1% shrink in Japan's GDP. Now, to be fair, there are plenty of other factors at work here causing Japan's continued economic stagnation, but the massive increase in what is a consumption tax hit consumers' pockets in Japan very hard. Over the relevant period, consumer prices jumped 3.4% while salaries only grew 1.6%; more over, the expectation is for that consumption tax to increase to 10% next year, further eroding consumers' purchasing power. The end result is that people bought less goods and saved for cost increases in their future and the economy wilted. This was an easily predictable result. Basic economics 101 analysis says that when prices increase, consumption decreases. When consumption represents the back bone of the modern economy, even small changes in cost can result in big disruptions.
The US's problem is that its corporate tax, and non-territorial tax system, are globally uncompetitive. With the USA's 35% corporate tax rate, and the fact that it taxes income repatriated from other countries, US based multinationals are pursuing aggressive tax strategies to minimize the cost of these terrible policies. One of the ways companies do this is through an "Inversion". This is essentially where the US company merges with a foreign company and makes the foreign company's country of origin it's headquarters and place of incorporation. The new company then buys debt from what is now its US subsidiary and use the debt on the books of the US sub to minimize its US tax burden. This results in all the company's global profits being taxed at the much lower foreign business tax rate instead of the much higher US rate. And because of the US's non-territorial system, these profits will never be repatriated into the US because the company would face a tax penalty. So the profits are used to expand operations in foreign markets instead of investing in the US market.
The politicians' response to the US crisis is predictable. They took turns getting in front of the media and tried to bully companies into not leaving the country. When this failed, they then moved on to insisting there be tax policy changes to keep this from happening. The sensible response to a crisis created by bad policy would be to improve the policy, namely make US corporate tax globally competitive. Of course, that would mean accepting declining tax revenue, so obviously that isn't what happened. Instead, President Obama is pushing to change how the IRS interprets existing regulations while congress is trying to create new tax laws to penalize companies for doing inversions. Essentially, their response to high costs causing companies to leave is to increase costs. Fortunately, congress can't even agree on the weather outside, let alone tax policy changes, so I expect most of this hew and cry to have no tangible results. What policy response will come out of Japan from their crisis is yet unclear. But expect more bureaucratic incompetence.
The problems in Japan and the USA are strait forward, but politicians lack the political will to make the necessary changes to fix them. The end result is that change must come from people in the voting booths. Bill Clinton defeated sitting president George H. W. Bush with the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid!" This was in response to Bush reneging on his promise not to raise taxes and the economy suffering as a result. Today I would like to create a new slogan to be chanted at every politician when they start whining about the very obvious economic response to their bad tax policy decisions, its: "It's high taxes, stupid!". Or, for when regulators don't understand how the ever increasing burden of their laws harm the economy: "It's the regulatory burden on business, stupid!" The economic problems in much of the first world can be boiled down to these two statements.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Tokenism
I was hesitant before picking this topic as one to write about, both because it is so overtly political and because it is emotionally charged. The history of the human race is one chock full of atrocities perpetuated by one gender against another, one race against another, one religion against another and even one form of sexual identity against another. The effects of these atrocities can still be seen and felt in modern, supposedly more enlightened, society. Because of this, the political left has been using these historical atrocities and the continuing effects thereof, as a rallying cry for statist intervention into all aspects of life to promote equal opportunities. This takes the form of tokenism.
Tokenism most frequently appears in law as requiring a certain percentage of the population of an entity to be made up of a supposedly disadvantaged class. In the USA this has been called affirmative action, and has been most recently fought over in the context of college admissions. The argument from the left is that because of the historic under representation of certain disadvantaged classes in college admissions and academia, it is imperative on the institution to admit a certain percentage of these disadvantaged people, even if that means lowering academic standards to let them in. Since there are limited seats in an incoming class, this necessitates them not accepting an otherwise qualified student of the non-disadvantaged classes. The social goal here being that increasing the population of educated people from the disadvantaged class will erode the disadvantage over time. The right argues that giving advantages to one class is to take them away from another, which is a form of discrimination, and that it is not the roll of the state to pick winners and losers in society.
The most obvious way of addressing tokenism is to discuss whether it works at its goals, and whether there are statistically measurable benefits to society that derive from it. That is however not the approach I'm going to take, partially because this has been tackled countless times by others, but also because I think, in the end, that it doesn't actually yield any meaningful conclusions. In discussing the efficacy of tokenism, you are accepting that furthering social goals is a legitimate use of government power. Also, because the issue of whether state intervention in the private economy is so politically charged, both sides of the tokenism debate have ample statistical studies to back them up. Worse, because it is political, most of these studies were created to drive political debate in one direction or another, and thus are inherently untrustworthy. But even if they were trustworthy, it's not relevant because the debate over tokenism is over whether it is appropriate for the state to intervene in the economy at all, even for what is a laudable social goal. This is a philosophical question, and thus not driven by statistical analysis.
Personally, I think the state is incredibly bad at picking winners and losers. I could post up all its attempts at venture capitalism in the energy industry, how Europe's economy is demonstrably worse than the USA's due to its interventionist policies and any one of a number of common examples. But as I said, this is a philosophic question. A person that is in favor of government intervention in economies believes in the power of the government to right wrongs, and that this is a laudable goal. A person who is against state intervention is in favor of individual liberty and property rights and believes any curtailment of these rights is wrong. You can see how neither of these positions really cares about stats. They are both, fundamentally, about what the proper roll of government is in society; social justice versus individual rights and property rights.
So why go to all the trouble to define the debate more clearly and then not pick a side? Because I think far too much time and ink have been spent arguing in fundamentally ineffective ways. Statistical analysis fails here because it doesn't address the disagreement. Instead, we should broach the subject of the philosophical differences between the two political philosophies that are driving the debate. We should be talking about what is the proper roll for the state in a modern first world society. Once we have established whether interventionism is appropriate for the state, we can then decide whether or not tokenism is a proper exercise of governmental authority.
P.S. The likely outcome here is that the left and right political divide will just be expressed in peoples' choices of political philosophy and there will be no fundamental resolution of the debate. But I hope that by viewing the disagreement in better focus, less time, money and ink will be spent on studies and statistical analysis that miss the real reason people are in disagreement.
Tokenism most frequently appears in law as requiring a certain percentage of the population of an entity to be made up of a supposedly disadvantaged class. In the USA this has been called affirmative action, and has been most recently fought over in the context of college admissions. The argument from the left is that because of the historic under representation of certain disadvantaged classes in college admissions and academia, it is imperative on the institution to admit a certain percentage of these disadvantaged people, even if that means lowering academic standards to let them in. Since there are limited seats in an incoming class, this necessitates them not accepting an otherwise qualified student of the non-disadvantaged classes. The social goal here being that increasing the population of educated people from the disadvantaged class will erode the disadvantage over time. The right argues that giving advantages to one class is to take them away from another, which is a form of discrimination, and that it is not the roll of the state to pick winners and losers in society.
The most obvious way of addressing tokenism is to discuss whether it works at its goals, and whether there are statistically measurable benefits to society that derive from it. That is however not the approach I'm going to take, partially because this has been tackled countless times by others, but also because I think, in the end, that it doesn't actually yield any meaningful conclusions. In discussing the efficacy of tokenism, you are accepting that furthering social goals is a legitimate use of government power. Also, because the issue of whether state intervention in the private economy is so politically charged, both sides of the tokenism debate have ample statistical studies to back them up. Worse, because it is political, most of these studies were created to drive political debate in one direction or another, and thus are inherently untrustworthy. But even if they were trustworthy, it's not relevant because the debate over tokenism is over whether it is appropriate for the state to intervene in the economy at all, even for what is a laudable social goal. This is a philosophical question, and thus not driven by statistical analysis.
Personally, I think the state is incredibly bad at picking winners and losers. I could post up all its attempts at venture capitalism in the energy industry, how Europe's economy is demonstrably worse than the USA's due to its interventionist policies and any one of a number of common examples. But as I said, this is a philosophic question. A person that is in favor of government intervention in economies believes in the power of the government to right wrongs, and that this is a laudable goal. A person who is against state intervention is in favor of individual liberty and property rights and believes any curtailment of these rights is wrong. You can see how neither of these positions really cares about stats. They are both, fundamentally, about what the proper roll of government is in society; social justice versus individual rights and property rights.
So why go to all the trouble to define the debate more clearly and then not pick a side? Because I think far too much time and ink have been spent arguing in fundamentally ineffective ways. Statistical analysis fails here because it doesn't address the disagreement. Instead, we should broach the subject of the philosophical differences between the two political philosophies that are driving the debate. We should be talking about what is the proper roll for the state in a modern first world society. Once we have established whether interventionism is appropriate for the state, we can then decide whether or not tokenism is a proper exercise of governmental authority.
P.S. The likely outcome here is that the left and right political divide will just be expressed in peoples' choices of political philosophy and there will be no fundamental resolution of the debate. But I hope that by viewing the disagreement in better focus, less time, money and ink will be spent on studies and statistical analysis that miss the real reason people are in disagreement.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Negtive Interest Rate in Europe.
As many have noted, the European Central Bank, or ECB, just announced negative interest rates on money held with it. The ECB announced this because the inflation rate in Europe has come dangerously close to deflation. The ECB is concerned with a deflationary spiral taking hold in Europe and damaging the world's economy. A deflationary spiral is when prices drop encouraging people to save more and spend less. This would further depress the economy and accelerate deflation. As no one buys anything unnecessary, anticipating their cash to gain value, the economy shrinks, people lose their jobs and output recedes.
Much of the current commentary focuses on how the negative interest rate is supposed to stimulate lending. Basically, since the negative rate penalizes banks saving excess funds with the ECB, they will need to do something else with that money. This something else, the ECB hopes, will be investments that grow the economy. The problem here is that there are a ton of things banks can do with the money that have no impact on global growth. Because of banking regulations, a large portion of bank holdings have to be in government debt. So the most likely effect will be that short term excess funds will be used to buy short term government bonds, which still yield a small return on investment. Unfortunately, this is not the lending the ECB wants. The ECB wants these banks to lend to private businesses to fund hiring and wage increases. Unfortunately, lending to private companies is risky and current banking law discourages it in favor of government debt. So the likely effect of this rate change is, at best, psychological.
The real problems in the European economy do not stem from banks not lending, and as a result, this policy change is not going to be a panacea for the worlds economy. The problem most of Europe faces is that the cost of doing business on the continent is much, much higher than it is in the developing world, or the third world. As a result, there has been little growth in employment or wages over the years. More over, Europe has one of the most protected labor economies in the world. It is very expensive to hire workers there, and very difficult to downsize operations once they are opened. This acts as another regulatory impediment to growth. Without loosening the labor economies on the continent, lowering regulatory barriers to entry and exit and generally lowering the cost of doing business in Europe, companies are going to have a strong incentive to move their operations out of Europe. While this pressure remains, European recoveries, if they exist at all, will be tepid, regardless of what the ECB interest rate policy is.
Much of the current commentary focuses on how the negative interest rate is supposed to stimulate lending. Basically, since the negative rate penalizes banks saving excess funds with the ECB, they will need to do something else with that money. This something else, the ECB hopes, will be investments that grow the economy. The problem here is that there are a ton of things banks can do with the money that have no impact on global growth. Because of banking regulations, a large portion of bank holdings have to be in government debt. So the most likely effect will be that short term excess funds will be used to buy short term government bonds, which still yield a small return on investment. Unfortunately, this is not the lending the ECB wants. The ECB wants these banks to lend to private businesses to fund hiring and wage increases. Unfortunately, lending to private companies is risky and current banking law discourages it in favor of government debt. So the likely effect of this rate change is, at best, psychological.
The real problems in the European economy do not stem from banks not lending, and as a result, this policy change is not going to be a panacea for the worlds economy. The problem most of Europe faces is that the cost of doing business on the continent is much, much higher than it is in the developing world, or the third world. As a result, there has been little growth in employment or wages over the years. More over, Europe has one of the most protected labor economies in the world. It is very expensive to hire workers there, and very difficult to downsize operations once they are opened. This acts as another regulatory impediment to growth. Without loosening the labor economies on the continent, lowering regulatory barriers to entry and exit and generally lowering the cost of doing business in Europe, companies are going to have a strong incentive to move their operations out of Europe. While this pressure remains, European recoveries, if they exist at all, will be tepid, regardless of what the ECB interest rate policy is.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
An Open Letter to the Video Game Industry
Dear Video Game Industry,
I'm writing to you as a life long gamer. A person who has owned and played just about every game system that has been made to date. I say just about, because I do not own either the Xbox One or PS4. Why don't I own either of these machines? In short, because there aren't any god damned games for them that are remotely interesting to me. Note, I used the term god damned to emphasize how much it frustrates me that you seem incapable of making any good games anymore, not as an indictment of gaming in general. This is a problem that you could easily fix, but probably wont. This isn't a problem unique to the new gaming systems. There are few new games worth buying for any system currently.
So, how did we get to this point? This point being producing new hardware for games that don't exist. I think a lot of it has to do with the video game companies EA and Activision. Both of these companies work in very similar fashions, they buy up existing video game makers who have successful intellectual property (IP) and then cut costs, cut quality, and shit out sequels until no one wants to buy any more. Then they liquidate the company, fire all the staff, and look for their next acquisition. The end result is that most quality gaming studios get killed. Perfect example of this is when Activision bought Blizzard. Blizzard made the old War Craft strategy games, Diablo I & II, and Star Craft. These games were all hugely popular in the gaming world. After they were bought by Activision, they crapped out Starcraft II a game decidedly inferior to the original in every way except graphics. Then it did the same thing with Diablo III; worse, they didn't have enough server capacity so the game constantly crashed thanks to the required always on internet connection. Diablo III is in every way worse than Diablo II. If I could return it to get my money back I would. I don't even like the graphics any better. And just so you don't think I am shitting on Activision exclusively, here's one for EA. Bioware was a software company that made such games as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. Once EA got a hold of them, gaming quality quickly deteriorated. Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3 were roundly criticized and were, again, in every respect worse than the games that went before them. And since EA and Activision dominate the gaming industry, the end result is no new quality games.
So how do we get around this and get to a point where new gaming studios can flourish? First and foremost, game makers, when you have a successful game that is roundly adored, DON'T SELL YOURSELF TO EA OR ACTIVISION! I put that in caps to stress how important that is. Follow the lead of Bethesda, just keep on trucking and making quality games. Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was such a huge hit that people are still playing it religiously years after it was released. The fear here is that even Bethesda is somewhat susceptible to the money game, after all they did license their Elder Scrolls IP to another company to make an MMO (I have no idea if the MMO is any good because I hate MMOs so haven't even so much as read a review of it). Second, have some faith in the IP you are making. You do not need to sell out to these companies to take advantage of their huge marketing infrastructure. If you are making a good game, people will find out about it and buy it thanks to the internet. And lastly, you do not need to keep making the same cookie cutter games to generate sales. Not every game is going to be Call of Duty, and more over, as creative people, you should aspire to better. Innovate with new and novel ways of telling a story. Invest in quality writing. I can't tell you how important a good plot and strong characters are in a game. If you create a world with a compelling story and good characters, you may well be surprised by how many people will be willing to pay you money to explore it.
I love video games. I have spent a large portion of my life playing them. It pains me to see where the industry as a whole is today. The once proud dynasties from Japan now an afterthought, most new IP being sequels or first person shooters, the new hardware coming out without any compelling launch titles... It's a sad state of affairs. I can't tell you how disappointed I have been watching it happen. Video games for me were escapist fantasy, interactive combinations of books and movies where I was the hero. They told me stories and created worlds that I had never seen or heard of before. They sparked my imagination in myriad ways. Gaming can be this again, but it is going to take some help from you, the industry that makes them. Because otherwise, kids are going to start playing outside again, and we can't have that.
I'm writing to you as a life long gamer. A person who has owned and played just about every game system that has been made to date. I say just about, because I do not own either the Xbox One or PS4. Why don't I own either of these machines? In short, because there aren't any god damned games for them that are remotely interesting to me. Note, I used the term god damned to emphasize how much it frustrates me that you seem incapable of making any good games anymore, not as an indictment of gaming in general. This is a problem that you could easily fix, but probably wont. This isn't a problem unique to the new gaming systems. There are few new games worth buying for any system currently.
So, how did we get to this point? This point being producing new hardware for games that don't exist. I think a lot of it has to do with the video game companies EA and Activision. Both of these companies work in very similar fashions, they buy up existing video game makers who have successful intellectual property (IP) and then cut costs, cut quality, and shit out sequels until no one wants to buy any more. Then they liquidate the company, fire all the staff, and look for their next acquisition. The end result is that most quality gaming studios get killed. Perfect example of this is when Activision bought Blizzard. Blizzard made the old War Craft strategy games, Diablo I & II, and Star Craft. These games were all hugely popular in the gaming world. After they were bought by Activision, they crapped out Starcraft II a game decidedly inferior to the original in every way except graphics. Then it did the same thing with Diablo III; worse, they didn't have enough server capacity so the game constantly crashed thanks to the required always on internet connection. Diablo III is in every way worse than Diablo II. If I could return it to get my money back I would. I don't even like the graphics any better. And just so you don't think I am shitting on Activision exclusively, here's one for EA. Bioware was a software company that made such games as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. Once EA got a hold of them, gaming quality quickly deteriorated. Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3 were roundly criticized and were, again, in every respect worse than the games that went before them. And since EA and Activision dominate the gaming industry, the end result is no new quality games.
So how do we get around this and get to a point where new gaming studios can flourish? First and foremost, game makers, when you have a successful game that is roundly adored, DON'T SELL YOURSELF TO EA OR ACTIVISION! I put that in caps to stress how important that is. Follow the lead of Bethesda, just keep on trucking and making quality games. Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was such a huge hit that people are still playing it religiously years after it was released. The fear here is that even Bethesda is somewhat susceptible to the money game, after all they did license their Elder Scrolls IP to another company to make an MMO (I have no idea if the MMO is any good because I hate MMOs so haven't even so much as read a review of it). Second, have some faith in the IP you are making. You do not need to sell out to these companies to take advantage of their huge marketing infrastructure. If you are making a good game, people will find out about it and buy it thanks to the internet. And lastly, you do not need to keep making the same cookie cutter games to generate sales. Not every game is going to be Call of Duty, and more over, as creative people, you should aspire to better. Innovate with new and novel ways of telling a story. Invest in quality writing. I can't tell you how important a good plot and strong characters are in a game. If you create a world with a compelling story and good characters, you may well be surprised by how many people will be willing to pay you money to explore it.
I love video games. I have spent a large portion of my life playing them. It pains me to see where the industry as a whole is today. The once proud dynasties from Japan now an afterthought, most new IP being sequels or first person shooters, the new hardware coming out without any compelling launch titles... It's a sad state of affairs. I can't tell you how disappointed I have been watching it happen. Video games for me were escapist fantasy, interactive combinations of books and movies where I was the hero. They told me stories and created worlds that I had never seen or heard of before. They sparked my imagination in myriad ways. Gaming can be this again, but it is going to take some help from you, the industry that makes them. Because otherwise, kids are going to start playing outside again, and we can't have that.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Crimean Crime Drama
Take some time to review the BBC time line on the crisis in the Crimea (Here). It is interesting to see how the crisis progressed from general protests, after the President threw away a deal with Europe and its Western allies, to a near civil war condition. After the events in the Arab spring, you would think that world leaders would understand that persecuting and killing protestors is a good way to escalate a political protest into a government destabilizing crisis. Still, once President (now ex-President) Yanukovych got anti-protesting laws on the books and used them to persecute the protestors, the whole country quickly descended into chaos. Compare that with the situation in Thailand where continued demonstrations have not escalated (yet) to civil war, and you can see that the glaring difference is that the government/military of Thailand has not turned its guns on its populace. Here is a timeline in which the current crisis appears at the end of the article (Here).
What is strikingly different in the Crimean situation than anything that has gone on either in the Arab spring or any of the Asian disputes is that a large neighbor with regional ties and a large ethnic ex-pat population stepped in and further escalated the situation. Russia surprised the world by massing its troops at the border and then seizing the Crimean peninsula and some of the eastern most portions of the Ukraine leading to it. It's excuse for doing so, other than the above mentioned large ex-pat population, is that it has a large military base on the peninsula and agreements with the former Ukrainian government that allows it to protect its interests in the area. In the modern era of diplomacy, the West was caught completely off guard by what is a pre-world war era style annexation of territory. More over, Russia was able to do this without alerting Western intelligence agencies to its intentions, rattling the already shaky foundation of modern intelligence work. Undoubtedly Russia used much of the information that Snowden gave them access to, in exchange for virtual asylum in Russia, to avoid detection from electronic surveillance. This has set off a scramble in the intelligence community to improve intelligence gathering capabilities in this region. NATO has gone so far as to warn other former soviet block countries with breakaway or restive populations of further land grabs by Russia.
The future of the Crimea is uncertain. Western countries have assessed various sanctions on Russia and Russian companies and today agreed to shut Russia out of the Group of 8 by only meeting now as the Group of 7. These actions make sense, in that no one is looking for a military confrontation, but they don't want a repeat of what happened in Georgia either, where Russia was able to take a large chunk of Georgian territory with little to no repercussions. So they are targeting the weak leg of the new Russia, its economy. The results of these sanctions have already been felt, with Russian securities markets losing value and the ruble losing a large chunk of its value versus Western currencies. Still, it is not clear whether this will be a significant enough harm to Putin and his allies to halt further aggressive action. Likely we will not find out until Russia makes its next move.
The open question then is whether Western effort will lead to a conciliatory Russia that halts its expansionist policies, or if it instead will embolden Russia to grab even more territory, or move against other ex-soviet block countries. Or worse, will it embolden China, which itself has been rattling the saber at its neighbors over control of a variety of geographic regions and the resource rich South China Sea? The worst outcome may well be if both Russia and China form an alliance and start seizing more territory in concert. That could well result in world war three.
What is strikingly different in the Crimean situation than anything that has gone on either in the Arab spring or any of the Asian disputes is that a large neighbor with regional ties and a large ethnic ex-pat population stepped in and further escalated the situation. Russia surprised the world by massing its troops at the border and then seizing the Crimean peninsula and some of the eastern most portions of the Ukraine leading to it. It's excuse for doing so, other than the above mentioned large ex-pat population, is that it has a large military base on the peninsula and agreements with the former Ukrainian government that allows it to protect its interests in the area. In the modern era of diplomacy, the West was caught completely off guard by what is a pre-world war era style annexation of territory. More over, Russia was able to do this without alerting Western intelligence agencies to its intentions, rattling the already shaky foundation of modern intelligence work. Undoubtedly Russia used much of the information that Snowden gave them access to, in exchange for virtual asylum in Russia, to avoid detection from electronic surveillance. This has set off a scramble in the intelligence community to improve intelligence gathering capabilities in this region. NATO has gone so far as to warn other former soviet block countries with breakaway or restive populations of further land grabs by Russia.
The future of the Crimea is uncertain. Western countries have assessed various sanctions on Russia and Russian companies and today agreed to shut Russia out of the Group of 8 by only meeting now as the Group of 7. These actions make sense, in that no one is looking for a military confrontation, but they don't want a repeat of what happened in Georgia either, where Russia was able to take a large chunk of Georgian territory with little to no repercussions. So they are targeting the weak leg of the new Russia, its economy. The results of these sanctions have already been felt, with Russian securities markets losing value and the ruble losing a large chunk of its value versus Western currencies. Still, it is not clear whether this will be a significant enough harm to Putin and his allies to halt further aggressive action. Likely we will not find out until Russia makes its next move.
The open question then is whether Western effort will lead to a conciliatory Russia that halts its expansionist policies, or if it instead will embolden Russia to grab even more territory, or move against other ex-soviet block countries. Or worse, will it embolden China, which itself has been rattling the saber at its neighbors over control of a variety of geographic regions and the resource rich South China Sea? The worst outcome may well be if both Russia and China form an alliance and start seizing more territory in concert. That could well result in world war three.
Friday, February 28, 2014
The Failure of Stimulus Spending in a Global Economy
One of the big questions in economics since the great recession began has been whether stimulus spending has been an effective driver of growth for the United States. On one side of the debate you have Keynesian economists. They believe that without the intervention of the government into the economy during the great recession, and the extraordinary monetary easing since, that we would be in a much worse situation than we are now. They point to the continued failure to grow in European markets undergoing austerity budget cuts as proof of concept. Their argument is, when the broader market contracts its spending, it is the government's job to expand spending to keep people employed and return the country to fiscal solvency. On the other side of the argument, economic conservatives and Austrian economists say that government spending comes at the expense of the broader economy and that government economic interventions create economic miss-allocation which lead to future economic contractions (which they view as market corrections). They point to the continued failure of alternative fuels to become economically viable, despite the large amount of government support they receive, as proof that government intervention is a waste of money and a net loss to the economy.
Recently this debate has heated up as the Federal Reserve has begun tapering its quantitative easing program. Quantitative easing is the program by which the Federal Reserve is intervening in capital markets and buying assets to prop up prices and increase liquidity (i.e. the money supply). The belief is that this, coupled with keeping the federal interbank lending rate at near zero, will flood the broader economy with money which will lead to more hiring and more production. The debate has heated up as a result of what is actually occurring as the Fed is reducing its asset buying program. If you believe that quantitative easing supports the domestic economy, then you would imagine that tapering it, reducing these funds, would cause the domestic economy to slow down. What is actually happening though is that it is the developing world that has seen their economies decline as a result of the taper. Here is a good short summary of this by The Economist.
The reason that the developing world is being hit so hard should not be that big a surprise if you think about it. The companies that are best positioned to take advantage of Fed policies are financial companies. They borrow from the Fed, own large quantities of assets to sell it on the open market, they are constantly seeking to leverage their holdings for greater returns, and are always searching for greater yield. Recently, the economies with the highest growth rates and the highest returns on investment have been in the developing world. Since most of these investment companies invest internationally, it makes sense for them to look internationally to make the most money for their investors and stock holders. This is only a problem if you are the government extending them virtually free money in order to boost your domestic economy. The implication here is that in a global economy, traditional liquidity measures and even more radical quantitative easing, are not an effective way to stimulate the domestic economy. This also would go a long way towards explaining why hiring has not picked up, and the economy has grown at record low levels for a recovery, despite record levels of government support.
Recently this debate has heated up as the Federal Reserve has begun tapering its quantitative easing program. Quantitative easing is the program by which the Federal Reserve is intervening in capital markets and buying assets to prop up prices and increase liquidity (i.e. the money supply). The belief is that this, coupled with keeping the federal interbank lending rate at near zero, will flood the broader economy with money which will lead to more hiring and more production. The debate has heated up as a result of what is actually occurring as the Fed is reducing its asset buying program. If you believe that quantitative easing supports the domestic economy, then you would imagine that tapering it, reducing these funds, would cause the domestic economy to slow down. What is actually happening though is that it is the developing world that has seen their economies decline as a result of the taper. Here is a good short summary of this by The Economist.
The reason that the developing world is being hit so hard should not be that big a surprise if you think about it. The companies that are best positioned to take advantage of Fed policies are financial companies. They borrow from the Fed, own large quantities of assets to sell it on the open market, they are constantly seeking to leverage their holdings for greater returns, and are always searching for greater yield. Recently, the economies with the highest growth rates and the highest returns on investment have been in the developing world. Since most of these investment companies invest internationally, it makes sense for them to look internationally to make the most money for their investors and stock holders. This is only a problem if you are the government extending them virtually free money in order to boost your domestic economy. The implication here is that in a global economy, traditional liquidity measures and even more radical quantitative easing, are not an effective way to stimulate the domestic economy. This also would go a long way towards explaining why hiring has not picked up, and the economy has grown at record low levels for a recovery, despite record levels of government support.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
People Who Are Offended
I have noted with much disgust how frequently people get offended by just about anything. There seems to be an ultra politically correct movement, especially in academia, that tries to censor peoples' speech and writing by claiming that anything they disagree with is offensive. The root of this movement seems to be that colleges, once the bastion of the rich cultural elite, have opened up their doors to the general populace. This is undoubtedly a good thing, as an educated populace tends to be a more affluent and happy populace. But because college used to be a place for the rich to rub elbows during their formative years, colleges are uniquely sensitive to concerns of one group dominating and intimidating another. Because colleges want to have a diverse student population, they try to censor speech and behavior in the name of inclusiveness.
The problem here is that I live in a country (the USA) where freedom of speech is highly valued. So much so that we enshrined it in the first amendment to our constitution. More over, academic institutions are nominally dedicated to the craft of educating their students in a variety of subjects and preparing them to go out into the real world and succeed in whatever endeavor they choose to pursue. The real world is not academia, and with the exception of certain harassing behavior which our laws protect people from, it does not shelter people from views they don't like. Being offended is irrelevant unless the speech or action also offends the law. And yet our academic institutions continue to coddle this anti-social behavior within their student bodies. Inclusiveness is not irreconcilable with free speech, and academic institutions would do well to educate their students about this.
A good example of this is a recent kerfuffle at Wellesley College over a statue of a sleep walking man in his underwear. Link. Within hours of its installation there was a petition circulating to have it removed. The petition claimed that the statue had: "become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community." The aim of this is obvious, to suppress the artistic speech embodied by the statue in the name of those who it offends. And while I agree that the statue is creepy looking, to start making allusions to sexual assault seems a little far fetched. More over, the complaints betray how thin skinned the community at Wellesley is. How are these people going to function in the real world if a statue makes them fear assault? Not well.
If colleges are going to remain bastions of learning and productive debate, students are going to have to be confronted with views they do not agree with, argued passionately by people who do. To silence the voices of dissent so that there is no real dialogue or debate is to do a disservice to the student population and to tacitly endorse censorship. It robs students of the chance to participate in a constructive debate, it robs them of the ability to exercise their critical thinking skills and develop coping mechanisms that they will need to function in a professional environment.
The problem here is that I live in a country (the USA) where freedom of speech is highly valued. So much so that we enshrined it in the first amendment to our constitution. More over, academic institutions are nominally dedicated to the craft of educating their students in a variety of subjects and preparing them to go out into the real world and succeed in whatever endeavor they choose to pursue. The real world is not academia, and with the exception of certain harassing behavior which our laws protect people from, it does not shelter people from views they don't like. Being offended is irrelevant unless the speech or action also offends the law. And yet our academic institutions continue to coddle this anti-social behavior within their student bodies. Inclusiveness is not irreconcilable with free speech, and academic institutions would do well to educate their students about this.
A good example of this is a recent kerfuffle at Wellesley College over a statue of a sleep walking man in his underwear. Link. Within hours of its installation there was a petition circulating to have it removed. The petition claimed that the statue had: "become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community." The aim of this is obvious, to suppress the artistic speech embodied by the statue in the name of those who it offends. And while I agree that the statue is creepy looking, to start making allusions to sexual assault seems a little far fetched. More over, the complaints betray how thin skinned the community at Wellesley is. How are these people going to function in the real world if a statue makes them fear assault? Not well.
If colleges are going to remain bastions of learning and productive debate, students are going to have to be confronted with views they do not agree with, argued passionately by people who do. To silence the voices of dissent so that there is no real dialogue or debate is to do a disservice to the student population and to tacitly endorse censorship. It robs students of the chance to participate in a constructive debate, it robs them of the ability to exercise their critical thinking skills and develop coping mechanisms that they will need to function in a professional environment.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Censorship, The Ugliness of Ignorance
I'm surprised I have not addressed this before, but I am not a big fan of censorship. The reason I am not a big fan of censorship is that I am not a fan of ignorance; also, willful ignorance is a huge pet peeve of mine. Throughout history the value of knowledge and insight has been shown time and again. Whether it is knowledge gained in school, practical knowledge gained in life, or professional expertise gained through years of hard work, knowledge has enriched human life. So much so that it is too broad a category to go into in depth in a limited forum like a blog. Censorship, on the other hand, is keeping people ignorant of certain knowledge. It can be as trite and pointless as editing out curse words from movies so that they can be shown on TV, to as pernicious as banning or burning books to ensure societal conformity. In the end, it is an attempt by the powers that be to influence the populace by denying them access particular pieces of knowledge.
Censorship has a long history in public discourse and political theory. Going as far back as Plato's Republic, it has been argued that governments should take active steps to limit their citizens' knowledge of certain things in order to promote a more harmonious existence. In the Republic this was left to the ruling oligarchy, which was populated by philosophers, who Plato believed were best capable of determining what was best for the populace. In the modern era governments across the world, and China in particular, are using internet firewalls, the ability to take down web sites and block IP addresses to limit their population's access to knowledge. Practically speaking, what this does is allow ruling regimes to limit access to news and political discourse that would threaten the current regime. In the US we mostly limit censorship to banning certain "curse" words and sexual content from public broadcast on network television. However, in Europe this has taken the form of banning certain far right political parties in Greece, or providing people easy access to civil law suits for public statements "defaming, slandering or libeling" other people in England.
So what arguments can be made in favor of censorship? The easiest are arguments promoting censorship of things like child pornography and snuff films. Both child pornography and snuff films are created by victimizing someone in a criminal way in order to produce the offensive material. Because it is created by harming others, the argument goes, the government should censor and destroy all such materials it comes across to prevent future victimizations. And it is true that child rape and murder, regardless of whether either is filmed or not, are terrible crimes against other human beings. And it is absolutely right for government to criminalize child rape and murder, just as it is right for government to criminalize most acts that harm other people. But does it necessarily follow that we should then ban the derivative works (i.e. the portrayal of such acts)?
To answer this, let's look at a harder ethical quandary. Is it right for a government to censor political speech in order to protect the ruling regime? China certainly believes that it is, and it is very active in monitoring and censoring public speech on the net and in print. The argument for such censorship is that disrupting the government creates political instability. Political instability leads to protests and frequently violent confrontations between pro and anti government forces. As we saw during the Arab spring, while it is possible to have non-violent regime change, it is much more frequent for these confrontations to become violent. Such violence is invariably harmful to the populace as a whole. Thus, censoring disruptive elements is in everyone's best interest. What are the counter arguments to this? That censoring political speech allows the powers that be to stay in power and prevents political change. In the extreme, such as in North Korea, Soviet Russia or East Germany, this lead to societal decay, a breakdown of basic social structures and the suffering of the populace.
The problem I have with both the easy arguments and the hard arguments is that, in the end, the appeal is to social stability and the health of the general populace. In order to get to the point where the censored material poses a threat to the populace, you invariably are relying on actions that are already criminal without having to rely on censorship (i.e. violent acts against fellow members of society). Take the censorship of political speech to promote social stability argument. The action that actually harms society is the violent confrontation between protestors and the government. Similarly, with snuff films, the action that is harming the populace is the murder of one of its members. You can criminalize the action without limiting the knowledge or portrayal of it in any way. In other words, the offense is the action, not its portrayal.
So why is this distinction between harmful criminal action and the censorship of its portrayal so important? Art and political discourse. When you censor the portrayal of things you object to, you prevent artistic and political discourse on the subject. It is this discourse through which we make progress as a society. In America, and in most democratic societies, political and artistic discourse serves to shape the public's opinion on important issues. We make progress as a society through such discussions. The USA would have had trouble emerging from its colonial past if the founding fathers were unable to get together and discuss politics. Moreover, the horrors of war in the ancient world would no longer be known if the societies of the time had prevented the portrayal of it in paintings and books. By censoring knowledge you are limiting this discourse and thus limiting the intellectual development of society.
To conclude, I don't like censorship because I believe it limits political and artistic discourse. And while the goal of protecting society from harm is laudable, I believe it is possible to accomplish this goal without harming positive discourse about it. This can be accomplished by criminalizing the harmful actions and rigorously enforcing those laws. You don't need to prevent the painter from painting Rape of the Sabine Women to enforce the belief that rape (or in this case, abduction and rape) is a horrible criminal action that harms society. In fact, through the artistic portrayal, the horror of this moment in History is portrayed for all to see.
Censorship has a long history in public discourse and political theory. Going as far back as Plato's Republic, it has been argued that governments should take active steps to limit their citizens' knowledge of certain things in order to promote a more harmonious existence. In the Republic this was left to the ruling oligarchy, which was populated by philosophers, who Plato believed were best capable of determining what was best for the populace. In the modern era governments across the world, and China in particular, are using internet firewalls, the ability to take down web sites and block IP addresses to limit their population's access to knowledge. Practically speaking, what this does is allow ruling regimes to limit access to news and political discourse that would threaten the current regime. In the US we mostly limit censorship to banning certain "curse" words and sexual content from public broadcast on network television. However, in Europe this has taken the form of banning certain far right political parties in Greece, or providing people easy access to civil law suits for public statements "defaming, slandering or libeling" other people in England.
So what arguments can be made in favor of censorship? The easiest are arguments promoting censorship of things like child pornography and snuff films. Both child pornography and snuff films are created by victimizing someone in a criminal way in order to produce the offensive material. Because it is created by harming others, the argument goes, the government should censor and destroy all such materials it comes across to prevent future victimizations. And it is true that child rape and murder, regardless of whether either is filmed or not, are terrible crimes against other human beings. And it is absolutely right for government to criminalize child rape and murder, just as it is right for government to criminalize most acts that harm other people. But does it necessarily follow that we should then ban the derivative works (i.e. the portrayal of such acts)?
To answer this, let's look at a harder ethical quandary. Is it right for a government to censor political speech in order to protect the ruling regime? China certainly believes that it is, and it is very active in monitoring and censoring public speech on the net and in print. The argument for such censorship is that disrupting the government creates political instability. Political instability leads to protests and frequently violent confrontations between pro and anti government forces. As we saw during the Arab spring, while it is possible to have non-violent regime change, it is much more frequent for these confrontations to become violent. Such violence is invariably harmful to the populace as a whole. Thus, censoring disruptive elements is in everyone's best interest. What are the counter arguments to this? That censoring political speech allows the powers that be to stay in power and prevents political change. In the extreme, such as in North Korea, Soviet Russia or East Germany, this lead to societal decay, a breakdown of basic social structures and the suffering of the populace.
The problem I have with both the easy arguments and the hard arguments is that, in the end, the appeal is to social stability and the health of the general populace. In order to get to the point where the censored material poses a threat to the populace, you invariably are relying on actions that are already criminal without having to rely on censorship (i.e. violent acts against fellow members of society). Take the censorship of political speech to promote social stability argument. The action that actually harms society is the violent confrontation between protestors and the government. Similarly, with snuff films, the action that is harming the populace is the murder of one of its members. You can criminalize the action without limiting the knowledge or portrayal of it in any way. In other words, the offense is the action, not its portrayal.
So why is this distinction between harmful criminal action and the censorship of its portrayal so important? Art and political discourse. When you censor the portrayal of things you object to, you prevent artistic and political discourse on the subject. It is this discourse through which we make progress as a society. In America, and in most democratic societies, political and artistic discourse serves to shape the public's opinion on important issues. We make progress as a society through such discussions. The USA would have had trouble emerging from its colonial past if the founding fathers were unable to get together and discuss politics. Moreover, the horrors of war in the ancient world would no longer be known if the societies of the time had prevented the portrayal of it in paintings and books. By censoring knowledge you are limiting this discourse and thus limiting the intellectual development of society.
To conclude, I don't like censorship because I believe it limits political and artistic discourse. And while the goal of protecting society from harm is laudable, I believe it is possible to accomplish this goal without harming positive discourse about it. This can be accomplished by criminalizing the harmful actions and rigorously enforcing those laws. You don't need to prevent the painter from painting Rape of the Sabine Women to enforce the belief that rape (or in this case, abduction and rape) is a horrible criminal action that harms society. In fact, through the artistic portrayal, the horror of this moment in History is portrayed for all to see.
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