voluntaryXchange

Takfiri: Tamerlan Tsarnaev

One tidbit is so far unmentioned in the legacy media: Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a takfiri.

A takfiri is a Moslem who denounces another Moslem as being insufficiently devout (here’s a voluntaryXchange post from 9 years ago about takfiri).

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of the mosque -- the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center -- about three months ago, after he stood up and shouted at the imam during a Friday prayer service, they said. The imam had held up slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of a man to emulate, recalled one worshiper who would give his name only as Muhammad.

Enraged, Tamerlan stood up and began shouting, Muhammad said.

“You cannot mention this guy because he’s not a Muslim!” Muhammad recalled Tamerlan shouting, shocking others in attendance.

“He’s crazy to me,” Muhammad said. “He had an anger inside.… I can’t explain what was in his mind.”

Tamerlan was then kicked out of the prayer service for his outburst, Muhammad recalled. “You can’t do that,” Muhammad said of shouting at the imam.

There’s a lot of casual talk about in the media about whether Tsarnaev was radicalized.

This has just been answered.

For Moslems, there is nothing more radical than denouncing other Moslems. To go so far as denounce an imam in a mosque during the main prayer service of the week is … off the charts.

There is a weak analogy here to Christianity: it would be unacceptable to denounce a priest or minister during services.

The weakness of that analogy though, is that in Christianity those leadership positions are official — so it’s at least conceivable that someone could perceive that they must denounce someone who is using a position of power inappropriately, and that reasonable people could understand that.

But an imam, in the Sunni faith Tsarnaev was raised in, isn’t likely to any more than a volunteer using his devoutness to lead others forward in prayer.

So Tsarnaev’s actions are more like denouncing a deacon or youth group leader who’s volunteered for a position that requires speaking in front of the congregation. That’s twisted.

Technorati Tags: boston,marathon,tsarnaev,tamerlan,takfir

Welcome Back!

After a two year hiatus, 4-Block World has returned with 6 new thingies. Here’s a taste:

Technorati Tags: 4-block,world,ebert,thatcher

And a Reason Not to Worry …

Here’s King Un inspecting models of military equipment.

That’s a T-34 tank at the bottom right. That’s a Soviet tank that was in production from 1940-1958.

Don’t believe me? Check out the schematic below:

The T-34 is distinctive because of the angled rather than curved turret, and the hatch on the left rear of the turret’s top.

Via The Mirror.

Technorati Tags: north,korea,king,un,t-34

Worried Yet?

Note the map in the background.

That’s Baja, and a big yellow label by Los Angeles.

Via The Mirror.

Technorati Tags: north,korea,king,un

You Can’t Make this Up: Obamacare Edition

Under Obamacare, smokers will not be surcharged in D.C., Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts.

The purpose of the surcharge was to cover the costs of medical treatment for smoking-related diseases amid concerns that without it premiums for the general population will rise.

The surcharge is actually part of the funding model for Obamacare:

The Affordable Care Act allows states to impose up to a 50 percent surcharge for people who have used tobacco at least four times a week over the last six months.

The reasoning is that poor smokers won’t be able to afford Obamacare if the surcharge is included:

… If subjected to the maximum surcharge, a couple older than 60 years old who both smoke would face a premium equaling 48 percent of their total income …

“That’s basically unaffordable,” Dr. Akhter said.

…

Dr. Akhter said the goal of the [health] exchange is to serve as many people as possible, so he did not want to discourage people from buying insurance

The problem with this is the one-size-fits-all mentality that goes along with government programs in representative democracies.

I get that there’s a medical issue here. If smokers are addicted, getting them into treatment in the medical system is a good thing. The thing is, that’s not a public health issue: smokers aren’t infecting others with some smoking bug.

If it’s not a public health issue, then this is a funding issue. But notice that third quoted block, and how the director of this program conflates the two.

There’s a folk theorem in economics that all costs (or benefits) eventually accrue to the holders of fixed liabilities (assets). To the extent that a smoking addiction is a fixed liability, then the smokers are going to pay the costs one way or another.

Conflating smoking as a public health issue with smoking cessation as a desirable goal to be funded isn’t addressing this at all.

I think Dr. Akhter and his ilk would benefit from the services of a “Chief Economics Officer” that might dissuade them from this sort of muddy thinking. Indeed, they might point out how the endgame is going to work:

• Total costs to smokers include non-monetary costs of illness and monetary costs of treatment.
• Monetary costs will be lifted off of smokers.
• Monetary costs will be transferred onto non-smokers.
• Non-smokers, who are in the majority, will demand low ball coverage through the political system for a problem that isn’t their own.
• Sub-optimal monetary purchases will lead to poorer treatment and an increase in non-monetary costs on smokers.

This line of reasoning isn’t that hard. What is hard is getting bureaucrats to state the obvious: we’re going to charge you less and you’re going to feel worse.

BTW: I am not claiming there are good solutions to this problem. Having said that, weren’t we sold a bill of goods that sin taxes on cigarettes were going to pay for all this?

Technorati Tags: smoking,obamacare,surcharge

Just Wonderin’

Jimmy Carter has disappeared from the world stage.

I’m thinking he isn’t long for this mortal coil.

I wish him no ill will, but I’ll be glad when he’s off the geo-political radar screen for good.

Technorati Tags: jimmy,carter

“First Sale” Comes to Books

The DVR … and Tivo … YouTube … and independent films … are legal and popular, in part, because of a 1984 Supreme Court decision that established the precedent of “first sale”.

The legal terrain at that time included the argument that videotape itself should be made illegal because it might be used to make illegal copies.

That sounds silly, and it was shot down.

On the other hand, there is a practical point: if there was no videotape, it would be a lot easier to enforce and defend copyright. So you should be able to see the interest, if not the merit, in that side of the argument.

The precedent established, first sale, holds that if you purchase a legal, original copy, of copyrighted material … that it is yours to do whatever you want with. You can’t sell it for profit, but you can make as many copies as you like — whether or not they are later used illegally.

Flash forward, and the Supreme Court ruled this month that the principle of “first sale” applies to books as well. The case involved a Thai student in America, and the publisher Wiley.

Wiley practiced third degree price discrimination:* it sold the same book at different prices in different markets. In particular, it sold textbooks more cheaply in Thailand. No surprise there: lower incomes in Thailand are likely to make demand more elastic, and thus optimal markup lower.

But, the student saw an arbitrage opportunity: buy the books new in Thailand, ship them to America, and then resell them as mint condition used books. He made $900K doing this. Wiley sued and won. The student appealed, and the Supreme Court sided with the student.

How will this change the managerial economics landscape? Well, price discrimination will still be the first move on the part of managers. But, it may end up being less common in practice.

One thing to note is that this decision applies only to copyrighted goods, not to patented goods. So, pharmaceutical reimportation is still illegal.

* Some authors call this direct segment price discrimination.

Technorati Tags: first,sale,kirtsaeng,copyright,price,discrimination,managerial

Did You Miss Me?

If blogging has been light here at vX, it’s because I’ve been giving my students in-depth coverage of the Cyprus crisis over at SUU Macroblog.

Here’s all of those Cyprus posts in reverse chronological order:

• Cyprus
• A Little More On Cyprus
• More On Cyprus
• Even More On Cyprus
• More Light than Heat About Cyprus
• Today’s News On Cyprus
• What Now?
• Thursday’s News On Cyprus
• Friday Morning’s Cyprus News
• Saturday’s Cyprus News
• Cyprus’ Capital Controls
• Cyprus’ Solidarity Fund
• Sunday’s Cyprus News
• Just the Same, Only Worse
• The Other Shoe Drops

Technorati Tags: cyprus,eurozone,financial,crisis

Today, the Role of the Republican Party Will Be Played by a Tween Girl

Consider the last panel of today’s Sally Forth comic:

The Republicans version of “who we are” is that they are the party of reducing government spending, cutting taxes, and reining in entitlements.

The reality of “what we do” is that over the last decade the Republicans have been the party that just as happy to raise spending, that needed a leftist President to get their tax cuts made permanent, and has done nothing but make the entitlement problem worse.

Technorati Tags: republican,sally,forth,what,we,do,who,are

Brooks On Sequestration

David Brooks gets cynical:

… Politicians in both parties are secretly discovering that they love sequestration now. It allows them to do the dance moves they enjoy the most.

Democrats like the idea of a sequester (after all, it was their proposal back in 2011 that is coming due this week):

Democrats get to do the P.C. Shimmy. Traditional presidents go through a normal set of motions: They identify a problem. They come up with a proposal to address the problem. They try to convince the country that their proposal is the best approach.

Under the Permanent Campaign Shimmy, the president identifies a problem. Then he declines to come up with a proposal to address the problem. Then he comes up with a vague-but-politically-convenient concept that doesn’t address the problem (let’s raise taxes on the rich). Then he goes around the country blasting the opposition for not having as politically popular a concept. …

Republicans like it too:

Republicans also secretly love the sequester. It allows them to do their favorite dance move, the Suicide Stage Dive. …

In this dance, the Republicans mount the stage and roar that they are about to courageously cut spending. In this anthem they carefully emphasize cuts to programs the country sympathizes with, such as special education, while sparing programs that actually created the debt problem, like Medicare.

Then, when they have worked themselves up into a frenzy of self-admiration, they sprint across the stage and leap …

Brooks nails the Republicans and the sequester:

… Voters disdain the G.O.P. because they think Republicans are mindless antigovernment fanatics who can’t distinguish good government programs from bad ones. Sequestration is a fanatically mindless piece of legislation that can’t distinguish good government programs from bad ones.

And, oh yeah … don’t forget it was proposed by the Democrats.

It doesn’t matter much though, since no one in D.C. is getting to the heart of the problem:

… What’s America’s biggest problem right now? It is that business people think that government is so dysfunctional that they are afraid to invest and spur growth. So what are the parties going to do? They are going to prove that government is so dysfunctional that you’d be crazy to invest and spur growth.

From Brooks’ February 22 column in The New York Times, entitled “The D.C. Dubstep”.

FWIW: Someone leaned on Brooks after this column was published in print. Online there is a correction that sounds like an apology to the Obama administration.

Technorati Tags: David,brooks,sequester,dysfunctional