It seems like one of the big issues doing the Republican presidential that primaries are the super PACs, and the huge amount of money that they amass. Which made me wonder why does campaign spending go up at every presidential election? But before I start on my analysis, lets first look at what is a Super PAC?
Super PACs are a new phenomenon in American politics; actuarially this year’s presidential election will be the first post-Super PACs. Super PAC is an “independent” committee that may raise an unlimited amount of money from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals. Before the change in 2010 the traditional PACs where limited to only receiving up to $5,000 per year per individual/company/etc.
Many commentators have interpreted this change in campaign funding as the reason for why the presidential election 2012 looks to properly be the most expensive election yet. According to opensecrets.org $43,922,722 has already been spend, by outside sources such as the Super PACs, in the Republican presidential primaries. That is already 20 % of the aggregate outside spending in the 2008 presidential election. This might not sound like much, but we should remember that the twenty percent is Pre-Super Tuesday and this year we do only have the Republican primaries, with still four candidates in the race.
If we consider the spending on the various presidential campaigns as the bidding sums for the presidency of the untied stats, then what economical reasoning can we find for this price increase? Well in economical theory the price that a given individual is willing to pay for a given commodity, is the subjective value of this commodity. What the individual is willing to pay for the commodity varies and is influenced by a wide range of factors, which include other individuals’ willingness to pay for the same commodity. This is essential the economical explanations for actions. Where the commodity is the same but where the price increases until the individual that values the commodity the most has been identified. Another reasoning for an increase in price could be that the perceived change in the commodity’s characteristics. But since that the president’s power has not changed over the last 12 years I do not think that the reason for the increase of 34.5 % between 2000 and 2004 and 27.4 % between 2004 and 2008 can be explained with a perception of the commodity. Which leaves us with the conjecture that the affirmative price of the presidency has not been found, and therefor the bidding-war must continue.
The concept of natural rights is a topic that I have wanted to address for some time now. It all started when my friend Jacob Hedegaard challenged me to address the rational behind the concept without referring to a deity in the end as the source for the natural rights. The quick and dirty definition of natural rights is the right that human beings have that are not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable. Therefor natural rights are something that any given person can claim regardless their status in society. Some examples of classical natural rights would be ‘The right to not be enslaved’ and ‘ The right to not be killed’. Natural rights in contrast to legal rights should always be stated as negative rights because only then can they truly be universal and not contingent upon others. For example, if we sad that ‘All human being has a right to life’ instead for ‘the right not to be killed’, then it would be implicit that society then should preserve every human beings life or else they would violet their rights.
In an effort to answer the question of where human beings does get those rights, philosophers tent to end up by pointing to either a deity or some type of social contract. But do we need a deity to argue for natural rights? Well Murray Rothbard tried to solve this “problem” by pointing too property rights. He’s reasoning goes to something like this: ‘I own my own body, and therefor it would be theft to either kill or enslave me’. At first glance, this only postpone the question to ‘Why do you own your own body?’ or to ‘Whom have given you your body?’ To the question of why Rothbard would say that ‘I own my own body because I am inalienable from my own body’. To the question of who bestowed human beings their body we again end up at either a deity or at Nature, and therefore not solving the dilemma.
The reason for why we can’t solve this dilemma of the need of a deity, I believe, is because we deliberate the issue of natural rights as an ontology issue. When rights are analysed as an ontology issue rights become an object that can be transferred between subjects. One individual can give some rights to another individual. This might be the affirmative way of addressing rights when we are talking about legal rights, where society, thought the laws, provides individuals with rights. Therefore, I suggest that natural rights should not be considered form an ontological point of view but rather from an epistemological point of view. By doing this, natural rights become a matter of knowledge, a matter of something that can be judged to be either true or false. And we don’t need a deity to enlighten us with what is true and right, and therefore neither what our natural rights are.
An epistemological reasoning for natural rights could be something like this:
‘I am a human being’
‘I find it to be true that I have the right not to be killed’
‘Therefor I find it to be true that all human beings have the right not to be killed.’
Over the last couple of days, I have been pondering over different aspects of what would happen if the united stats switched back to the gold standard. Especially I have played around with the thought experiment: ”What would the cost be to switch back to the gold standard?” So in this post, I will not past judgment on whether it would be a good idea for the united stats or the world economy if we where to go back to a gold standard, I am purely focused on identifying the practical perspective of the cost of such a switch. These reflections are prompted by the fact that Ron Paul presently is doing better, then ever before in the republican primaries. Meaning that for the first time there is actually a realistic probability that the united stats could consider a return to the gold standard.
In doing this, I first have to identifying the two pars of this analysis: How much gold and how much US-currency are there in the world? According to howstuffworks.com there is extracted around 1.555.210 kilograms of gold every year, and if we assume that this correlates to an average every year and that we have extracted gold for 400 years there would be 622.084.000 kilograms of gold currently in the world. With the current gold price at 53.133,61 US$/kilogram the current marked value of all the gold currently above ground would then be US$ 33.053.568.643.240. If we then compare that to the latest data from the US Federal Reserve Statistical Releases there are US$ 9.641.700.000.000 in circulation. Let me just quickly says that I am using the seasonally adjusted M2 numbers from November 2011. So what does this tells us?
First of all if the united stats where on the gold standard right now they would have to control 29% of all the gold existing. To my knowledge, there has never been any given country that at any single time in human history that has dominated almost a third of the world gold reserves. I might be wrong in this, but in any case to say anything significant about the cost we need to look at how much gold the U.S. Treasury presently holds. According to the U.S. Treasury’s Resource Center the U.S. International Reserve Position in gold is 7.413.372 kilogram, which means that they presently only covers 4,1% of their gold need, should they switch back to the gold standard.
I the end if, we for a moment actually ignore the overt dilemma buying up all that gold or where the money to do this would come from, without having to devaluate the US$, it would take the US 112 years to extracting enough gold to implement the gold standard, without suffering any currency penalties in doing so. So even if Ron Paul where to become 45th President of the United States, it is unlikely that the US would return to the gold standard, the cost is simply to high.
The national DNA registry is something that has been debated here in Denmark over the last couple of years. It is strangely a system that is seen, by it supporters, as analogous to a magic bullet that would make us all safe from rape and other violent crimes. It will properly not come as a surprise that I am adamant averse to the whole idea of a national registry, a database that contains everyone’s genetic information is not only the ultimate Orwellian nightmare but in it self contains a series of possible problems.
But before I dig in to that, I would like to first address the most comment counter argument averse to any opposition to a DNA registry the “If you do not have anything to hide”-argument. The underlying premise of that argument is that if you don’t have anything to hide, meaning that you haven’t done anything wrong, why would you mind voluntary giving the requested information, in this case your DNA – But, the premise is flawed; the issue of having once DNA registered is not an issue of what if I do any wrongdoing but an issue of what if the individuals in charge of the register did something wrong. Which leads me to the series of possible problems with the register? First, there is the issue of trust. On what grounds should the individuals registered in the DNA registry trust that the government would not use their access to other goals then the capture of violent criminals.
I know that this makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I would like to point out that the same utilitarian arguments that are used in support of the DNA registry could be used to use the DNA registry as a preventive measures. Because why should society wait for the criminals to actually cause someone harm, when a search in the DNA registry could identify those that with a high probability would at some point commit a violent crime. Another and more practical dilemma is the issue of expectation. If such a registry where to be created then society would expect that any violent crime will be solved swiftly, since the police would have access to the DNA information of everyone in society. Regardless, that it presently takes an estimated 4 weeks to process any DNA found at a crime scene, and with the increase of DNA need to be processed we can contemplate, with a high probability, that this estimation would increase. Both do increase in volume of DNA material and the numbers of false positive results.
In the end, we return to the debate between freedom, the right to privacy (and what is more private then DNA?) and societies needs to feel safe. It is an age-old debate, and one we probably never will solve, not even with the creation of the Orwellian DNA database.
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