Table of contents for October 2016 in Reason

“Don’t argue about it. Build the alternative.” Just after midnight on July 18, Darren Charrier grabbed a surfboard, headed out past the breakers near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and settled in to wait. Before long, he got what he came for. His buddy—paddling just behind on his own board—documented the moment for Twitter. In the striking snapshot, Charrier is in silhouette, backlit by the flare of a rocket returning to Earth and settling upright on its launch pad. Inspiring feats of aeronautics are not terribly unusual at Cape Canaveral, home to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. But this particular rocket doesn’t belong to NASA. It belongs to Elon Musk, a man who is almost certainly both richer and smarter than everyone you know. His aerospace company, SpaceX, does have a contract with…

Phone tracking There You Are Scott Shackford American citizens should have no expectations of privacy when it comes to location data transmitted by their smartphones. So the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined in a 12—3 decision at the end of May. The question was whether police can obtain information about where cellphone users are at any given time without getting a warrant. The case revolved around the use of cellphone location data provided by Sprint to track two customers accused of armed robberies in Baltimore. Under the “third-party doctrine” established by Supreme Court precedents in the 1970s, private data held by third parties— such as phone records—are not subject to the same Fourth Amendment warrant requirements as the records or potential evidence people keep in their own possession.…

Brian Doherty Nicholas Sarwark Nicholas Sarwark was elected to his second term as chair of the Libertarian Party’s National Committee at the party’s Orlando convention in May. At the same event, former GOP governors Gary Johnson and William Weld were chosen as the Libertarian presidential ticket; the pair were soon getting as much as 11 percent of the vote in some national polls. Senior Editor Brian Doherty interviewed Sarwark by phone in June about his party’s potential banner year. Q: What are some objective signs of the L.P.’s success? A: Revenue is nearly double this year compared to the same time in 2012. [Dues-paying] membership numbers have risen around 46 percent. Our presidential candidate is consistently polling above 10 percent. They are receiving a level of media attention we just…

The U.S. economy is teetering on the edge of a cliff. The federal government’s mounting debt combined with slow economic growth and exploding entitlement spending all but guarantee a recession is in our near future. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Recessions are part of the natural economic cycle. In the best-case scenario, they restore balance to an economy by “cleansing out the misuses of labor and capital,“ says John Tamny, senior fellow in economics at Reason Foundation. “Recessions, while painful, are the happy sign that growth is on the way.“ Unfortunately, the upsides of recessions can be wiped out by bad government policies that prevent the economy from making needed adjustments. What’s more, many policies aimed at “moderating“ recessions can lead to excesses in the economy that make the…

Here’s one bright spot in a bleak election year: This summer’s Democratic and Republican conventions were not subsidized by taxpayers. In 2012, the public contributions to those distinguished demonstrations of democracy—the shows where you could see Clint Eastwood hectoring an empty chair or a weepy video tribute to Ted Kennedy—ran upwards of $18.2 million each (not including the cost of security), according to a May 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service. But this year, for the first time since 1972, the parties and their host cities’ host committees were on the hook to raise all the money to stage their own four-day infomercials. Under the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act, passed in 2014, funds that once went to subsidize political conventions have been diverted to pediatric health care…

“Cities are incredible things,” says activist Sonja Trauss. “They’re places where freedom is possible in a way that is just not as possible in a small town. So I feel like San Francisco and the Bay Area should be taking advantage of its opportunity to build a big city.” But San Francisco isn’t getting that much bigger—at least in terms of places to live. In 2015, the Bay area added 64,000 jobs but less than 5,000 residential units. One of the reasons for the housing shortfall is the existence of NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) groups that have been able to successfully organize against development in the region. That in turn has sparked a countermovement of YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) groups that believe the solution is to build, build,…

appeal a ticket(uk and ny) compensation for delayed flight contact us sign out Described as “the world’s first robot lawyer,” DoNotPay is a free online program that helps drivers appeal traffic tickets by walking them through drafting appeal letters. Using artificial intelligence, a chatbot asks users a series of questions to select the appeal most likely to actually get the ticket overturned. While this service is only available to citizens of New York City and London right now, drivers there are already benefiting handsomely from it. According to British newspaper The Guardian, DoNotPay has a success rate of 64 percent, and has aided in squashing over $4 million worth of penalties. This isn’t the first effort from the service’s young creator, Joshua Browder. Currently a student at Stanford University, he…

The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture, by Pamela Haag, Basic Books, 528 pages, $29.99 Sarah Winchester was the widow of William Winchester, and William’s father Oliver was the pater familias of the Winchester gun company. Oliver died in December 1880, and William succumbed to tuberculosis four months later. Two months after that, Sarah’s mother died. By mid- 1881, Sarah was essentially alone. But she also held 48 percent of the stock for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. And the stock paid dividends, between 21 and 79 percent of profits every year from 1869 to 1914. Upon William’s death, his wealthy widow got on a train in New Haven and went west until she couldn’t go further. She ended up in San Jose, then a…

Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism, by George Hawley, University Press of Kansas, 376 pages, $34.95 George Hawley appears to have completed Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism before Donald Trump began his rise, which makes it all the more surprising that this scholarly tome is the best guide we’re likely to find to the bizarre reality of the 2016 GOP. Even the definition of “right-wing” is up for grabs As Hawley, a political scientist at the University of Alabama, points out in considerable detail, the post– World War II conservative movement has never been a monolithic bloc. Many of its left-wing critics have perceived it that way, but those who Hawley calls its right-wing critics have known better—particularly the ones who were purged and consigned to the ideological equivalent of Siberia.…

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a columnist for The Week. She emigrated from India to the United States in 1985, and lately she’s noticed one of the main sources of conflict from her native country—“there’s always been a lot of tension between the majority Hindu population and the minority Muslim population,“ she explains—is rearing its head here in her adopted home, especially in the Detroit area, where she now lives. In “Muslim in America,“ she explores that development (page 34). “The same tropes that are becoming popular in America have always been popular in India, and it’s led to a lot of bloodshed“ against Muslims, Dalmia, 54, laments. Freelance journalist and researcher Tate Watkins recently published Haitian Coffee Grows on Trees, an account of his…

Rand Paul had the relaxed, casual glow of someone who had recently spent some significant time on a beach somewhere decompressing. It was July 15 in Las Vegas at the libertarian gathering FreedomFest, three days before the start of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland, and the Kentucky senator was strolling across the stage in white pants and white shoes, delivering a confident, off-the-cuff spiel about how Congress needs to stop abdicating its constitutional responsibility to trim the sails of presidential power. He didn’t mention Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton by name, but he didn’t have to “Have you heard any of the candidates saying... that there is too much power that has gravitated to the presidency?“ the 2016 presidential flameout asked. “I’m hearing the opposite. I’m hearing people…

Algorithms are everywhere. You can’t see them, but these procedures or formulas for solving problems help computers sift through enormous databases to reveal compatible lovers, products that please, faster commutes, news of interest, stocks to buy, and answers to queries. Dud dates or boring book recommendations are no big deal. But John Danaher, a lecturer in the law school at the National University of Ireland, warns that algorithms take on a very different profile when they’re employed to guide government behavior. He worries that encroaching algorithmic governance, or what he calls algocracy, could “create problems for the moral or political legitimacy of our public decision making processes.” And employ them government agencies do. The Social Security Administration uses the tool to aid its agents in evaluating benefits claims; the Internal…

What if you committed a crime, got caught, and served time? Most people would say you had paid your debt to society. But for certain drug, property, and violent crimes, incarceration is frequently accompanied by a fine—with the first payment typically due right after you walk out of prison. In Florida, for instance, an individual caught selling just seven grams of oxycodone (the equivalent of roughly 14 five-milligram Percocet pills) can receive a three-year mandatory minimum prison sentence and a $50,000 fine. Fifty five-milligram Percocet pills—less than a month’s prescription in some cases—will set you back 15 years and an extraordinary $500,000. Legal financial obligations, which include fines, court user fees, restitution, and collection charges, exist in every state, in Washington, D.C., and at the federal level. These fines and…

In the village of Bois Coffre there is a small mountain house, tucked at the back of a dirt courtyard surrounded by banana trees and hibiscus bushes. Growing right next to the structure, so close that its roots almost certainly threaten the foundation, is a towering 60-year-old coffee tree. The plant is nearly barren; it produces perhaps two coffee cherries a year—a harvest of four beans—but the tree’s owner does not prune it back. In Haiti, there is a joke: If a coffee tree still gives a single cherry, a farmer will not touch it with a machete, lest he lose the income that cherry represents, minuscule as it may be. The joke isn’t very funny. In Haiti, coffee grows on trees. Well, technically all coffee grows on trees. The…

Spontaneous cooperation, not social chaos, is the norm after a natural or technological disaster. That fact looms large in Jacob Remes’ Disaster Citizenship (University of Illinois Press), a book that looks at two devastating events—a 1914 fire in Salem, Massachusetts, and a 1917 shipyard explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia—and shows what happened when that grassroots mutual aid ran headfirst into the Progressive Era’s passion for rule by “expert” professionals. Remes examines everything from ethnic networks to labor politics to the battle for control of government aid. (The people of Salem and Halifax were often happy to take the help, but only on their own terms.) As an undergrad at Yale, Remes took a class from Seeing Like a State author James C. Scott, and a very Scottian theme runs through…

Purge: Election Year (out on DVD in October), the third installation of the Purge series, could be the most idiotic yet. The old sci-fi trope underpinning the movies—society sets aside one 24-hour period to “purge” its violent tendencies with a criminal free-for-all— could go in plenty of interesting directions, but Election Year misses them all. In the film, the Purge is referred to as a product of “predatory capitalism,” with no explanation other than a vaguely Keynesian assertion that the destruction has eliminated unemployment. Purge America has been controlled by the same party for 25 years—the “New Founding Fathers,” an incoherent caricature of the left’s worst fears about conservatives, who have mobilized white supremacists and co-opted Catholicism to endorse the annual slaughter. In this silly political fantasy, elections are still…

“Crusts on his face from nasal discharge.” That was just one observation in the 60-page report compiled on a healthy, happy, and apparently snot-nosed 2-year-old, under a new parenting surveillance program in Scotland. Under the Named Person Act, a professional will be assigned to every child born in that country, and one of these “named persons” will watch how the child is parented for the next 18 years. You read that right: A government- appointed busybody will oversee the upbringing of every child from the day she is born until she’s no longer a minor. In August the program becomes mandatory throughout Scotland. But for the past two years it has been rolling out sporadically. After eight months of badgering, one dad managed to get the named person report that…

In 1981, when the French elected a member of the Socialist Party as their president, free marketeers looked on uneasily. “Is Francois Mitterrand’s election just a regular and welcome democratic change, with one team of competing politicians replacing another?“ asked Henri LePage, reason’s correspondent in France, in that year’s September issue. “Or is it a precursor to much more dreadful events, the beginning of a true socialist revolutionary process that would have terrible consequences for the whole Western world?“ Thirty-five years later, a vote by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union this summer provoked analogous concerns: Though many supporters of Brexit said they were motivated only by a desire to take back national sovereignty from Brussels, strong anti-immigrant sentiments were also a major part of the movement. Since…

Hillary Clinton supporters should have a new appreciation for the legal concept of mens rea—usually translated as “guilty mind”—because it saved her from federal prosecution for using a personal email server as secretary of state. In recommending that the Justice Department not bring charges against the former first lady, FBI Director James Comey differentiated her “extremely careless” handling of “very sensitive, highly classified information” from other cases involving “intentional and willful mishandling.” Not everyone gets the benefit of such distinctions. Consider the retiree on a snowmobile outing in Colorado who got lost in a blizzard and unwittingly crossed into a National Forest Wilderness Area; the Native Alaskan trapper who sold 10 sea otters to a buyer he mistakenly believed was also a Native Alaskan; and the 11-year-old Virginia girl who…

It was eight hours before the biggest media opportunity any Libertarian Party candidate had had in decades, and Gary Johnson was in a New York hotel room talking on the phone with Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron about the nuts and bolts of entitlement reform. “When it comes to Social Security,” Johnson told his senior economic advisor as they rehearsed for a June 22 CNN town hall that would end up being viewed in more than 900,000 households, “I’m mimicking the lines from four years ago regarding raising the retirement age, fair means-testing, being able to self-direct as many funds as Congress would authorize....” After wondering aloud whether even these reforms would prevent the Social Security Trust Fund from going “bust,” Johnson arrived at his bottom line: The system as currently…

If Southeast Michigan’s claim to fame is that it’s the auto capital of America, its claim to notoriety— in certain circles, anyway—is that it’s the Arab and Islamic capital too. Around 300,000 Muslims live in the area. Muslims make up less than 2 percent of the nation’s population but more than 40 percent of two cities in the Metro Detroit region, Hamtramck and Dearborn. The former, a 2-square-mile town of less than 30,000 people, triggered a national freak-out last November when it elected a 4–2 Muslim majority to its City Council. The punditocracy’s lead Muslim-baiter, Pamela Geller, instantly predicted Shariah, terrorism, and persecution of Jews in Hamtramck’s future. A Texas Republican councilman, Micky Garus, earnestly declared that the “end of Western civilization” was nigh. There was a similar outcry in…

Disaster Progressivism Armed with a dry, acerbic wit, rock-jazz-classical-freakout composer Frank Zappa was unafraid to get idiosyncratically political in his defenses of free expression and opposition to government meddling. The new documentary Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words consists entirely of archival footage delivering a pure jolt of Zappa’s personality and thought. On being offered a lot of money to play an event hosted by French Communists, he said, “Fuck the Communists. I don’t like those people.” At 1985’s infamous Parental Music Resource Center congressional hearings—which led to parental advisories on recordings— Zappa called the Tipper Gore–led commission’s recommendations “a sinister toilet training manual...whipped up by the wives of Big Brother.” On a mid-1980s episode of CNN’s Crossfire, a socially conservative journalist appalled with Zappa’s strident opposition…

The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp in World War II, by Jan Jarboe Russell, Scribner, 432 pages, $18 Most Americans are aware of the War Relocation Authority camps established after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That program rounded up and interned 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, more than half of them born in the United States. Less well known is the Alien Enemy Control Unit program, which scooped up other Japanese Americans, along with German and Italian Americans that the Justice Department considered national security threats, often on the flimsiest of evidence. The Alien Enemy Control Unit camp in Crystal City, Texas, was the program’s only detention center specifically designed to accommodate families. It is the focus of The…

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) is famous for writing weird tales about eldritch monsters and the unfortunate human beings who cross their dreadful paths. He is infamous for being an inveterate racist and xenophobe who depicted nonwhite characters in the most offensive manner possible. Lovecraft Country (Harper), the new novel from fantasy author Matt Ruff, offers a fresh spin on the horror icon and the fictional universe he created. Set in 1954, Ruff’s book follows the adventures of Atticus Turner, a young black veteran; his uncle George, the intrepid publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide; and several friends and family members. They all square off against a series of occult forces and Lovecraftian entities while simultaneously doing battle with the many real-world terrors of Jim Crow America. Not only is Lovecraft…