Arizona's Law SB1070 - "show us your documents"

I drove through Arizona last week, there were protests everywhere. The radio was talking about nothing else. I got my car washed for $5.

I see the political issue and legal issue as separate.

Politically, Latin people will be the only ones facing the harmful effects of this law that come with mistaken enforcement. On the other side, undocumented workers do not receive adequate employment standards and wages, and this creates an economy of exploitation. Roofers and gardeners, who can earn $15+ an hour in northern states, cannot find work for minimum wage in southern states. It follows that all workers should be documented and legal.

Legally, the federal laws and federal immigration enforcement already have much the same powers, but it's not being completely enforced. The state has, with SB1070, given their state troopers the same powers. The power to demand documented proof of status when there are reasonable grounds during an investigation of an unrelated matter. The two challenges are, first under the supremacy clause, that the state law conflicts with and is knocked out by the federal law, and second, under the equal protection clause, that this state law discriminates against Latin people.

I think the supremacy clause argument will be difficult, for the federal and state laws seem consistent, not contradictory. However, perhaps the federal law establishes exclusive jurisdiction, I'm not sure. The equal protection clause argument will be easier, because Latin people are going to be the ones who police demand documents from, and Latin people are going to be the ones who in some cases will be legal, but not have their documents on them. The government may respond by pointing to the Canadian border and arguing that if Canada had a weak economy and people were sneaking into the U.S. for work, the same documents would be demanded of non-Latin people there. This may or may not be true, but it does not change the reality that Latin people in Arizona face today.

What I find most interesting is that the equal protection argument seems stronger, and this would also seem to kill the federal immigration law for the same reasons. If the state law discriminates, the same federal law does too [EDIT: as pointed out by Ken in the comments, equal protection does not apply to the federal government, and a federal law must discriminate to a higher degree in order to violate the threshold of due process.] And if that happens, once someone from Mexico is able to, by any means, gain entry to the U.S., they will effectively have made it in for good. But they won't have documents, so they can't take someone to court or get a proper job.

There has to be a better solution. First, people must decide if they want to have a border at all, or completely integrate with Mexico. If they want a border, then they must decide how many people they want to permit to come in and work. If they agree on a number, then perhaps the solution is for inspectors to visit all workplaces, thereby taking this out of the police enforcement realm, and have working documents ready for production on site. Document production could even be made the burden of the employer.

Airport Security: Trading Liberty for the Illusion of Safety

I could beat Micheal Jordon in a game of 1 on 1. Sure I could, if the rules for the game were that I win when I score once, and he only wins if I quit playing. He wouldn't stand a chance.

In a similar game North American governments are playing with terrorists, we're attempting to step up our defense with nude body scanners in our airports. The purpose is to "make us safer", or at least, make us "feel safer". Once it's understood that subjecting millions of our own travelers to these machines does not make us safer, it may not make us feel safer either.

Consider the body scanned picture above like those airport security will see. The gun is visible enough, but what of the white stuff around the body? Is that just thick underwear or a plastic explosive? The gun would have been detected by conventional screening anyway, so what we're gaining here is a big fat nothing. What we lose is a piece of liberty.

The value of such liberty is subtle but significant. We have been losing bits of liberty, step by step, each time a terrorist attempts to attack a plane. Authorities act quickly with measures that may have caught the last attempt, even though we have every reason to believe the next terrorist will try something different. Shoe bomber failed, take off your shoes. Liquid bomber failed, no more drinks. Underwear bomber failed, let's have a peek inside your underwear. And so these vain steps will continue ad-nauseam, so long as the public puts up with it. And by putting up with it, we are only asking for more.

Anal cavity searches are coming, after a terrorist inevitably packs explosives there, undetected by these new machines. Those who accept these security measures today will deserve the anally intrusive search tomorrow, which they've been asking for with each metaphoric bending over to new security regulations.

Should we really fear dieing by midair explosion?

Between 2002 and 2010:

Total deaths in U.S. motor-vehicles: 293,823

Total deaths on U.S. commercial flights: 105

Total deaths in U.S. by terrorism: 0
















To put it mildly, we can afford to lose a few more planes, or we should get scared about cars. Let's say the terrorists were to blow up few dozen planes per year, we'd still be winning on the safety scale by a tremendous margin.

Some may say that all of this security is the reason for the low death rates on commercial flights. As it happens, I believe that if all security were removed, a rise in the number of terrorist attacks on airplanes would be subtle. This is supported by the facts. Airport security had no effect on either the 2001 shoe bomber, the 2006 liquid bombers, or the 2009 underwear bomber, all of whom managed to fail due to prior police work or passenger intervention.

The cost of airport security adds up to the billions. Trillions have been spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all in the name of security. There are also hidden costs. Millions of people fly each year, and each hour they arrive early to the airport could be spent being productive. So subtract their wages and output from the GDP. All in the name of safety and security.

Why this irrational fear of planes blowing up?

All of this wasteful spending could be replaced with some psychological education about why our fears are irrational. Fear sits in the very primal middle of the brain. It developed during a pre-historic animal state, we know this for we share it with other animals, like mice. Inherent fears, such as fear of snakes, the dark, spiders and heights, were bred into our species after a good number of our ancestors were killed. Flying involves heights, an inherent fear, so to die this way seems particularly scary. Once we realize the cause of this fear, we can look at the statistics, rationalize, and overcome it.

We have to understand our fears and accept the fact that some people want to blow us up. We cannot stop them entirely. We can, however, make fewer people want to blow us up by not buying into the jihad or the war on terror (whichever name you prefer). Our best response is to live our lives without fear. To be terrorized is a choice.

Wikipedia eclipses academia

Wikipedia has a reputation for lacking credibility. While in university, I recall professors scoffing at the thought of citing wikipedia as a source. This reputation and contempt are mis-directed. The only reason for the academics to look down on wikipedia is because wikipedia threatens the entire structure of academic publication, and thus the scholar's traditional way of earning money.

Most academic research labs are set up in a pyramid structure, with the senior PhDs at the top collecting the glory while the grad students at the bottom do all of the work. The only motivation for the grad students is to get their name on a paper, leading to their PhD, and ultimately to a comfortable tenured position. Nearly all of the papers published into academic journals will sit on a hidden shelf collecting dust, having fewer than 5 readers ever skimming their abstracts or summaries.

Fields such as psychology pull in billions of dollars in tuition and textbooks, but this field doesn't actually do anything... nothing ground-breaking has come out of psychology since the 70's. It's a self-perpetuating system that continues to function because those within it still buy in, just like any pyramid.

Wikipedia removes the barriers to publication. Years spent in school can be by-passed by wiki-peer reviews that will bring the best articles to the top, and eliminate the weaker ones. Not only does wikipedia give access to publication, it also gives consideration to controversy by linking both sides. Traditional academic journals are more like speeches than dialogues, with the fame of the writer often determining the credibility of the work.

With more writers and editors, Wikipedia will continue to improve in both scope and quality. The future of publication is the wikipedia. In the near future, a well published article on Wikipedia that stands the test of re-edits will attain more credibility, certainly more readers, and more prestige than a traditional academic journal publication.