Tag Archives: politics

Building It

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Chao Deng’s piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal chronicled the failure of People’s Republic of China rampant infrastructure spending to stimulate economic activity.

China bolstered economic growth for decades by pouring trillions of dollars into roads, factories, railroads and more, and doubled down to protect the economy from the global financial crisis of the last decade.

Deng went to lengths to point out that, for all those trillions, businesses did not appear, factories remain unused, roads and railroads are only lightly traveled, and even the high rise apartment buildings remain largely empty.

He—and the PRC government—missed the root cause of the fruitlessness of that spending.

Build it and they will come only works in a free market economy where no one needs government permission to engage in economic (or any other) activity.

The EU and National Sovereignty

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Poland enacted a law at the start of the year that lowered the mandatory retirement age of all of its judges from 70 to 65.  This resulted, among other things, in the required retirement for 27 of the nation’s 72 Supreme Court judges (a too-big Court, anyway IMNSHO, and they ought not be replaced, but that’s a separate story).

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS [Prawo i Sprawiedliwość]) party says the changes are necessary to a justice system they say is controlled by an untouchable “caste” of judges steeped in communist-era mentality.

The European Union has demurred.

The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice said Friday that Poland must delay implementation of a law that came into force earlier this year requiring early retirement for nearly 40% of the court’s judges. Poland could face fines if it doesn’t comply, but more significantly such a move would represent an unprecedented threat to the authority of the bloc’s top court.
The Polish judges sent into retirement must be allowed to return to work, the ruling said.

That supposed threat to the ECJ may, in fact, be the crux of the matter: the EU must reign supreme over the member nations.

Whether retiring the judges is a good idea or not is a good idea or not, it’s an internal, domestic affair for Poland to decide.

Joining the EU plainly requires the surrender of a potful of national sovereignty far beyond such outward looking matters as national borders, trade rules, and the like.

Drift

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Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, had some thoughts on how the US should interact with today’s People’s Republic of China.  Among other things, he wants three key areas of disagreement to be accepted and…managed.  (I’ll leave aside his blithe, and erroneous, assertion that the “trade war” between the PRC and us is our doing and not the PRC’s.)

The most realistic option for the future is to focus on managing the two countries’ major disagreements. This approach has worked for four decades when it comes to Taiwan.

No, that’s a demonstration of the utter failure of “managing the two countries'” disputes.  That approached has contributed to the Republic of China’s expulsion from the UN Security Council and from the UN altogether.  It has contributed to the PRC’s threats and political near-dominance of the RoC.

Management is also likely to be the best approach for the South China Sea. As with Taiwan, “final status” issues are best left vague.

And by extension, the supposed optimal approach to the PRC’s harassment of Japan and Japanese islands in the East China Sea as the PRC pushes to seize that water.  Again, no.  All “management” has done so far in the South China Sea is lead to acceding to the PRC’s seizure of islands owned by the nations rimming the Sea, or owned in disagreement only with others of the rim.  All “management” has done so far is lead to acceding to PRC militarization of the islands it has seized from those nations and to routine harassment of shipping passing through international waters around those seized islands and aircraft overflying them.

In other domains, the US will simply have to accept China for what it is. China will continue to maintain a large (if somewhat reduced) state role in the economy and a closed political structure.

Again, no.  The PRC as it is, is a nation that routinely steals other nations’ companies’ proprietary information, that demands “sharing” of technology and other proprietary intellectual property as a condition of doing business inside the PRC, and that demands those companies install “back doors” to allow the PRC government ready access to those same tech and IP materials.  All “management” does here is meekly accept the PRC’s economic dishonesty.

Hass’ proposals amount to drift into surrender.  This is unacceptable.

Decisions

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In a Wall Street Journal article Monday, Google’s MFWIC, Sundar Pichai, defended his decision to support the People’s Republic of China with a Google “search” engine that’s carefully compliant with PRC censorship requirements.

What interests me this time, though, is this bit:

Mr Pichai…played down the idea that the Project Maven decision was made only based on employee feedback. He said Google has also listened to experts in ethics and artificial intelligence.

Project Maven is a DoD program intended to develop artificial intelligence for American national defense purposes—including, yes, an improved ability to kill our enemies when they attack us.

Pichai’s rationalization of his decision to turn his back on our national defense doesn’t matter. Our enemies are developing AI and will use it against us. Pichai’s decision only potentiates those enemies’ relative capabilities.

Don’t be evil.  That used to be Google’s motto.  How is it evil to help our country defend itself?  How is it not evil to help our enemies, even if without AI support (other than “search” AIs)?

Now the corporate motto, handed down from parent Alphabet, is Do the right thing.  How is refusing to help our nation defend itself a right thing?  How is helping our enemies a right thing?

Sundar Pichai knows the answers to these questions full well.

Pharma and Drug Prices

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The Trump administration has proposed a rule that would require companies advertising drugs to provide the list prices of those drugs in their advertising—including their television advertising.  Big Pharma is opposed, and wants instead to be left to voluntarily provide pricing information by having links in their advertising that would guide folks to a separate Web site.

I sympathize with Big Pharma on this. Government regulation already is out of hand; the Trump administration is reducing that, and this is an unnecessary addition.

There is an alternative.

The FDA could compile a list of drug list prices; region-by-region retail prices at places like Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, amazon (note that this is not an exhaustive list of retailers); and the tier within which each drug sits.  This list then could be made available on the FDA’s Web site home page above the fold.

This more central source, in addition to encouraging competition among drug companies, would encourage more competition among retailers.