Why the situation in Libya scares the hell out of me?

Before I begin I have to make a disclaimer: this is a pure opinion piece not pretending at any degree of analysis. I just wanted to express the feelings I have been having since the beginning of the latest adventure of western powers in Africa.

Airways are full of news from Libya: brave pilots of coalition forces bombed this and that and completed establishing a no-fly zone all over the Libya, hurray –hurray! What a great victory over an air force with two and a half planes from the prehistoric era and the pilots who think that an airplane is just like a camel only with wings! Apparently, we are supposed to fall into an ecstasy about our Western might. Do not get me wrong, I am not mocking here the coalition pilots, who are doing their jobs at highest professional level, risking their lives as routinely as we are going out for the cup of coffee at Starbucks. My beef is with those morons who actually made the decision to begin this whole operation. Or may be it is better to say, half-made, half-decision?

My problem is with so called leaders of the free world, Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Cameron. No, I have not forgotten about Mr. Obama, I did not include him in the above list intentionally. I just recognize the simple truth that Mr. Obama’s behavior in this situation is anything but leadership. He looks more like a child forced by his parents to do his chores. He does not want to, but is too afraid to refuse. So, let’s talk about our brave Frenchman, and his supporting star, Mr. Cameron. They scare me because I do not understand what they are doing in Libya, and whenever I do not understand something, I get scared. Now, may be this is it: I just do not understand. May be Mr. Sarkozy and Co. have a great design imperceptible by regular folks, like me, and I have really nothing to worry about. Daddy knows better, and children must just relax and trust daddy. This is probably what they told to Mr. Obama.

Even though I admit remote possibility of this scenario, it does not seem too likely. No one can keep secrets nowadays for too long, and if there were a hidden design, someone, somehow would have leaked at least a glimpse of it. However, all what we hear and read is about the great mission of protecting Libyan revolutionaries from evil Qaddafi. O, he is evil indeed, there is no doubt about that, but do we really go to war these days to protect one side in the civil war against the other? The idea itself seems quite absurd to me, and I know from my pre-American experience that civil wars are never about good versus evil, it is usually, evil of one kind versus evil of another kind.

Interestingly, there is very little information available about those rebels. I have not heard the media discussing their ideology, political goals, and such, except of that part, where they want to get rid of Qaddafi. Well, Osama bin Laden would love to get rid of Qaddafi, too, but I presume it does not mean that we have to help them, does it? Or we do? A few days ago, a guy from Bush’s counterterrorism team stated on NPR that at least some of these rebels are indeed connected with militant Islam, and we do provide them with air cover. What an insane world are we living in?

Still, let give our coalition a benefit of a doubt. Let assume that these rebels are indeed freedom-loving people ready to give their lives to establish a western style democratic government in Libya. Is it still a sufficient reason to go to war? I would understand it if Sarkozy and Cameron would have told Qaddafi: “Dear Colonel, we have invested billions into your country, and we need your oil. So, if you are going to f-ck with us, we will come and get you.” I, personally, do not see anything wrong with going to war to defend one’s vital economic interests and investments. Of course, any war is bad, and should be avoided, but when nothing else works, responsible governments must do whatever it takes to defend interests of their citizens. And, of course, it is reasonable to suspect that French and British doing in Libya exactly that, but why all this pretense? Since when did it become so shameful to defend one’s economic interest that some bogus “humanitarian” reasons must be invented to justify such actions? It probably happened at the same time when “profit” became a dirty word, and self-interest became something like masturbation – everybody does it, everybody knows that everybody does it, but it is improper to mention it in public.

So, while I can see legitimate reasons for the Brits and French to be angry with Qaddafi and wanting to get rid of him, I do not understand how their current actions will achieve this. Instead of a quick and decisive Falkland Islands or Grenada style operation, they conduct a bombing campaign and establish a no-fly zone. Where in the annals of the history of military art have they read that bombing can win a war? Haven’t they learned the lessons of Iraq and Kosovo? I am completely flabbergasted by their shameful bickering about the chain-of-command, by their unwillingness to accept painful reality that there can be no victory without causalities. I am stupefied that they care more about nonsensical things such as reaction of the Arab world to their action, instead of thinking how to achieve their objectives in the quickest and most efficient way. And this scares the hell out of me. If this is how our “leaders” are going to defend our way of life, we are doomed. I still hope though, that I am wrong, that there is something out there, which I am not aware of. May be some special op forces inserted on the ground in such a clandestine manner that even the journalists did not get the wind of it. Well, hope dies last, but as of now, it is hardly breathing.

Again about unions

I decided to continue our discussion of unions on a new thread since the previous one became too clattered with particulars. Do not get me wrong, though. I would be happy tot talk about Keynesian versus Friedman economics, or about education any time, but I believe that these topics are too important to be buried somewhere in the middle of the discussion about unions.
Nathan, in one of his last comments, very passionately defended union’s role during Gilded Age and the first Progressive era of American history. I am afraid, however that he has wasted all this passion busting a door, which was already open. Presently, hardly anyone (with a possible exception of extremely hardcore libertarians) doubts that at that time unions played an important role in funneling angst of the workers into a socially more or less acceptable form. Even though Adam Smith considered collective bargaining analogous to price fixing by manufacturers, and, therefore going against the free market principles, one can still accept this practice as a way to compensate extensive power of the Capital against a much weaker position of an individual easily replaceable worker.
One, however, must clearly separate private sector unions and organizations of state employees. In the early days of the labor movement, the idea of unionizing workers on government’s payroll was perceived as a perversion even by labor leaders, and for very good reasons. First, the politicians and appointed by them bureaucrats, who negotiate salaries and benefits of people working for government, divide money, which is not theirs. All these salaries and benefits come from the taxes, but the taxpayers have no say in the negotiation process. Therefore, out of share sense of fairness, the suggestion by Wisconsin governor that all pay raises for governmental workers going beyond the corrections for inflation must be approved by the taxpayers makes to me a lot of sense. If this idea seems too extreme, one could delegate this decision to the local legislatures, which are elected, and are, therefore, responsible before the taxpayers. Unions, in this case would have to “negotiate” with the public convincing them that their members do such a good job that they deserve a pay raise.
Second argument against collective bargaining by government workers has been restated many times, but is still misunderstood, thus I will repeat it here. If a politician is elected with a primary support (financial and organizational) of people whose salary he/she is supposed to negotiate, this process becomes inherently and irrevocably corrupt. In this case, they are not negotiating, they are fulfilling their campaign promises, and since the money does not come from their personal pockets, they do not care much if they are spent efficiently or not. They main area of concern for the politicians is to deliver on the promises in order to get support for the next election.
The rule is, of course, not absolute, as nothing in politics is absolute. An interesting situation is developing in Connecticut, where the new governor, a democrat, who was elected with a heavy union support, suddenly demanded huge concessions from the unions. The union’s reaction was sheer disbelief in what is happening: their man turned against them, a scandal! The problem for the unions in this particular case came from changing political situation due to events in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Besides, the governor Malloy was elected with a very narrow margin, and perceived that union’s support actually coasted him votes. Thus, there is nothing surprising in Connecticut’s events, just a politician being a politician, and nothing is really new or unusual: investment in politicians always carries a risk. This is true for unions or for any other donor giving monies to politicians.
This brings me to Nathan’s assertion that union’s support of politicians is no different from the similar support of, for instance, defense contractors, contributing financially to politicians making decisions about defense spending and writing military appropriation bills. I agree that these relationships can and often do result in corruption, which is an unavoidable evil of government interaction with private companies. Still, since we cannot privatize defense, in this area government and private sector are necessarily intersect and corruption becomes an issue. However, I do not think it is correct to compare the political support provided to politicians by private firms, even if they receive governmental contracts, with support provided by unions. Private companies, unlike unions, receive taxpayers’ money as a payment for goods, which government needs (tanks, airplanes, etc.). Obviously, these companies sell these things to the government at a profit, and it is this profit, which they use to secure a continuous flow of governmental orders by supporting “friendly” politicians. Besides most government contracts are awarded on a very competitive basis (with few exceptions, when there exist only few companies able to produce required goods, like Boeing), so that even if you pay off a politician or two you still must be able to deliver the tangible goods to win the contract. At the same time, there cannot be any competitors for unionized government workers, and their financial support of elected officials is pure ugly bribery. It is even uglier than usual corruption involving private companies and municipal bureaucrats, because in the case of unions, the bureaucrats virtually paying bribes to themselves using unions simply as a conduit for the money.
The last arguments explaining why unions of government workers should not have rights for collective bargaining was presented recently in a very clear form by Thomas Sowell in National Review On Line. Basically he makes a point that competition makes unions in the private sector responsible for their action, while lack of thereof in governmental sector enables unions of state employees make exuberant demands without any real consequences for union bosses and their membership. For instance, unions virtually destroyed the coal industry in this country, but paid for it with its own extinction. Unions of public employees, however, do not have to face reality of the market, and, therefore, their power can only be limited by limiting their right to bargain.

Should teachers be paid more?

There was a column in the Times today that touched on the topic of our previous discussion of unions and budget cutting.  As you'll see, Nicholas Kristof is no fan of teachers unions, in fact he echoes a few of Lev's points, but his argument that we do a disservice to ourselves by treating teachers poorly is very well taken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html?hp