What, exactly, was the point of the recent Summit of the Americas in Argentina? President Bush’s participation there seemed to accomplish little more than to excite street mobs and vandals. And then there was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, doing his best Fidel impersonation as he led opposition to a U.S.-backed free trade agreement. Alejandro Chafuen, president of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, uses the occasion of the summit to succinctly catalog the ills that plague Latin America. “With few exceptions,” Chafuen writes in the Washington Times, “Latin Americans have reverted to feel-good nationalistic populism, while rejecting free-market growth strategies: They can feel good while doing poorly.”
Archived Posts November 2005 » Page 2 of 6 | Acton PowerBlog
Hans Mahncke, an International Law and Trade scholar at Hong Kong’s Lion Rock Institute, takes to task recalcitrant NGOs in a recent TCS article. The essential sticking point is the inability to reform the WTO:
For those of you who are fluent in Portuguese, from a Portuguese speaking country, or who are just interested in Português, please check out our newly updated Portuguese language section. We have many translated articles, papers, editorials, interviews, and a whole catalog of biographies from “In The Liberal Tradition.”
Every now and then you come across something in the news that makes you want to laugh and weep at the same time. Today’s International Herald Tribune contains one such article.
Acton is starting a new ad campaign which aims to raise awareness of effective ways to overcome poverty and world hunger. We encourage everyone to view our ads and to consider them seriously as they join the rest of the developed world in extending a hand to those in need.
The system that administers special education in the United States is one that “parents find unresponsive, and schools find expensive,” writes Jennifer Morse, Acton Senior Fellow in Economics. She takes a look at the implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling and comes up with a solution that involves the dreaded V-word: Vouchers.
Alan Anderson of the Sydney Morning Herald notes that Ronald Reagan’s joke about the Government’s view of the economy has become United Nations policy toward the internet. The Belmont Club blog notes that placing control of the Web into the hands of UN regulators will have far reaching negative consequences:
The newest phase in the fight for digital/intellectual property rights involves the recent Digital Rights Management software from Sony. Apparently, Sony’s “protected” audio CDs have been installing a “rootkit” onto your computer, and opening up your computer to yet more malicious software on the Internet (as if it isn’t bad enough already without a Sony rootkit). There are a couple of things I want to say about this – first, a short description of exactly what the problem is; and secondly, a look at the ethical/moral implications of this situation. (All you Computer Science professors out there: this is a very good case study if you are teaching a class on Software Ethics.)
Check out this Marketplace story about real money being spent in the virtual world. The commodities of online gaming have real-world value to people, to the extent that a virtual island can cost upwards of $26,000 in the world of Project Entropia.
This month’s Esquire magazine is the annual “Genius” issue (with Bill Clinton as the coverboy, which might seem strange until you realize that the word “genius” is related to the words “genii” and “jinn,” which in mythology were often negative spiritual beings, “commonly believed to be responsible for diseases and for the manias of some lunatics”).
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