Month: February 2023

As someone who covers the intersection of sex and technology, I was primed to love Samantha Cole’s How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. A great book could be written on this topic—but this is not it.

The book contains tidbits of interesting internet history: the “trans activist techno nun” who ran a bulletin board system (BBS) devoted to AIDS info, the stripping “Tech Sign Girls,” the early use of nongendered pronouns (e, em, and eir) in a Usenet group. It nods to some ways sexually oriented entrepreneurs drove adoption of new technologies, and it touches on points—like how virtual worlds allow experimentation with different sexual personae—that showcase how sexual freedom can flourish online.

But these bits fail to coalesce into anything substantial about either of the book’s title clauses. Cole needed more of something—data, her own analysis, expert commentary—that could illuminate broader themes. Instead, there’s a lot of sex, and a lot of internet, but the content feels disjointed and somehow both incomplete and overburdened.

For instance, we get diatribes about sex robots, racial hierarchies among webcam performers, and deepfakes. These are certainly things related to sex and technology, and the book gives adequate surface-level overviews of them. But if there’s anything they can tell us about how sex changed the internet or the internet changed sex, Cole doesn’t elaborate.

The book is also marred by vague animosity toward tech companies. For instance, she blames corporations for making the internet “sanitized and safe,” even while acknowledging that in some ways the government demanded this, and that the same issues arose on noncommercial platforms. This bias sometimes borders on the absurd, such as when she blames Apple for killing the early BBS CommuniTree by giving computers to schools, since kids then bombarded the forum with offensive messages.

The post How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex appeared first on Reason.com.

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I’m the father of two adult sons who are thankfully out of the K-12 educational system. I say thankfully because I found education inherently anxiety-inducing. Turning your kids over to a school for years is no simple thing and my own ambivalent memories as a student didn’t help.

I’m pretty sure it’s always been this way, but today it just seems at a fever pitch of awfulness. There’s growing (and ineffective) per-pupil spending; lack of meaningful choice for many, if not most, parents and students; a lack of transparency and accountability; the lingering effects of COVID-related lockdowns; the rise of highly politicized curricula about everything from critical race theory (CRT) to gender and sexual orientation; and a return to fights over library books.

Today’s guest is Robert Pondiscio, an education expert with the American Enterprise Institute who wrote How the Other Half Learns, a fantastic book about Success Academy, a controversial and highly effective charter school system based in New York City (watch my 2019 interview with him about that). What’s more, he actually taught in a low-income public school in the South Bronx.

Pondiscio is going to add another worry to our list of concerns: Schools aren’t teaching kids to read in any meaningful way. He’s a strong advocate for all forms of school choice and reform, but he says choice itself is simply not enough to help the lower-income kids who can most benefit from a really good education.

We talk about all that, plus wokeness and a ton of other related topics. Let’s call this episode “Everything You Wanted To Know About What’s Wrong With K-12 Education But Were Too Afraid To Ask.” It first ran as a Reason livestream at YouTube (watch here) and is cohosted by my colleague Zach Weissmueller.

Today’s sponsors:

• Lions of Liberty Podcast Network. Take your first step toward freedom by checking out one of the oldest libertarian/anarchist podcast networks in the world. On Mondays, John Odermatt delivers a powerful mix of inspiration, health, and faith to set your mind, body, and soul free with Finding Freedom. On Wednesdays, Brian McWilliams will make you laugh at our broken world while providing the promise of a better future with Mean Age Daydream. Friday’s offerings include shows like Meme Wars, Hatewatch, and Libertarians in Living Rooms Drinking Liquor. Listen today at Lions of Liberty Network and everywhere podcasts are found. Past episodes featuring Nick Gillespie talking postmodernism and South Park and Rick and Morty are here and here.
• The Reason Speakeasy. The Reason Speakeasy is a live, monthly, unscripted conversation with outspoken defenders of free thinking and heterodoxy in an age of cancel culture and thought police. The next one takes place in New York City on Monday, February 6, with Nick Gillespie interviewing Reason contributor, UnHerd columnist, Feminine Chaos podcaster, and mystery writer Kat Rosenfield about celebrities caving to woke critics, cancel culture, and her new novel You Must Remember This. Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 and include beer, wine, soft drinks, and appetizers. For more details and to buy tickets, go here now.

The post Robert Pondiscio: Why Our Kids Can't Read appeared first on Reason.com.

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When Southwest Airlines underwent a historic meltdown during the Christmas travel season, canceling nearly 17,000 flights and stranding 2 million passengers, politicians pounced like passengers on a second bag of free peanuts. If the federal government only had more control over air travel, they shouted, we could have avoided such a terrible situation.

Yet just a few days later, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees air traffic control, caused a system-wide travel stoppage affecting all airlines, the same pols denouncing Southwest mostly went missing, like Amelia Earhart.

There’s an important lesson in all this: Companies fail, but those responsible usually pay a high price for screwing up. When government agencies fail, not so much.

As the Southwest debacle unfolded, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hit cable news and talked about jawboning the airline’s CEO, telling CNN, “I made clear that our department will be holding them accountable for their responsibilities to customers, both to get them through this situation and to make sure that this can’t happen again.”

No fewer than 15 senators, including Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), sent a letter to Southwest demanding answers as to why the airline once best known for low fares and leading passengers in song had ruined the holidays for millions of travelers. Warren went further still, insisting that Southwest’s failure meant that a planned merger between low-cost carrier Spirit and JetBlue needed to be put on ice faster than the champagne in first class.

There’s no question that Southwest screwed up royally, mostly because it relies on antiquated, low-tech crew-scheduling software and because its leadership has lost focus on customer satisfaction since its late, legendary founder Herb Kelleher retired more than a decade ago.

It is already being punished by customers and investors—losing more than a projected billion dollars. It has squandered an incalculable amount of customer goodwill that it built up since first taking flight in 1971. CEO Bob Jordan will be stuck in the equivalent of a middle seat surrounded by screaming babies for the foreseeable future:

But what about the FAA? When its Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) system, which gives pilots information about flights, crashed due to a corrupted file, the agency halted all domestic air travel, triggering 1,700 cancellations and 9,000 delays that screwed up air travel for days.

Secretary Buttigieg has pledged to get to the bottom of it all and update the system with the enthusiasm and single-mindedness of a Transportation Security Administration agent confiscating your toenail clippers. Looking forward to the next FAA reauthorization bill, he says that he’s going to make sure the FAA “has everything they need in terms of systems, resources, and staff.”

Don’t expect much to happen anytime soon. Rep. Pete Stauber (R–Minn.) introduced legislation to modernize the NOTAM system in 2019 and 2021, but it ultimately went nowhere. And when it comes to the air traffic control system that actually governs all takeoffs and landings, the FAA has been de-icing its wings for decades. As Reason Foundation analyst Marc Scribner points out, the FAA is “about two decades behind” other countries when it comes to directing air traffic.

Back in 2009, Reason produced a video about how Canada and other countries had privatized air traffic control and saw delays decrease and safety increase. In the U.S., we’re still stuck in the olden days.

What would actually produce safer, cheaper, and less-disrupted air travel? More deregulation of the sort that took place in the late 1970s, under the auspices of President Jimmy Carter, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and consumer activist Ralph Nader. Inflation-adjusted ticket prices declined 60 percent between 1980 and 2020, which explains how air travel went from something only businessmen and the wealthy did to common practice. By 2018, 88 percent of Americans had flown on a plane.

But too many aspects of air travel remain under government’s inept and stuck-in-the-past control. Foreign-owned airlines are blocked from competing with domestic carriers in the name of national security. The number, placement, and operation of airports are controlled by various levels of government, leading to insane monopolies and fewer flight options in places such as Atlanta, Denver, and Las Vegas.

Even in today’s less-than-free market, Southwest will have to fight like hell to win back customers by keeping prices low and performance high. The FAA—and the government more generally—doesn’t face the same pressure.

We’ll see which one fixes its problems before the next Christmas travel season.

Produced by Nick Gillespie; edited by Danielle Thompson; audio by Ian Keyser.

Photos: Ana Ramirez/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Newscom; Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call/Newscom; Michael Ho Wai Lee/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Ana Ramirez/ZUMA Press/Newscom

Music: “Oh Christmas Tree” by Falconer via Artlist; “Happy Hour” by Evert Z via Artlist; “Echoes of the Past (Instrumental Version)” by Max Hixon via Artlist

The post Southwest Is Already Paying Billions for Screwing Up Your Travel. What About the FAA? appeared first on Reason.com.

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The Washington state legislature is considering a new mandatory voting proposal, S.B. 5209, that would compel registered voters to return ballots in each primary and general election. The proposal is “about behavior modification,” Sen. Patty Kuderer (D–Bellevue) argued at a committee meeting on Tuesday, likening the government’s role in promoting voting to that of a parent.

To its credit, the bill states that voters may return blank ballots and allows citizens to opt out of registering to vote at all. It establishes no punishment for non-compliance.

As written, S.B. 5209 is essentially unenforceable. It is nevertheless bad policy since it would deploy the state’s authority, albeit impotently, to compel political speech. 

S.B. 5209’s lead sponsor, Sen. Sam Hunt (D–Olympia), tells Reason his bill wouldn’t violate citizens’ free speech rights. “People eligible to vote have the option of opting out by filing a form,” with election officials, says Hunt. “They also have the option of sending in a blank ballot to meet their civic duty of casting a ballot. Nothing in the bill requires them to vote for a candidate of issue. It requires them to participate.”

“Even with its contradictory language and lack of penalties, SB 5209 is unconstitutional,” says Andy Craig, director of election policy at the Rainey Center and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. “Under the First Amendment, you can’t force people to vote, just like you can’t force people to say the Pledge of Allegiance,” he adds. “There’s a long tradition of Americans abstaining from the polls for religious, philosophical, or political reasons, as is their right.”

Washington’s Republican legislators reportedly oppose the bill, due in part to the high likelihood that it won’t hold up in court.

Some politicians may favor mandatory voting to remedy low voter turnout—like California’s abysmal 42.2 percent turnout in the state’s November 2014 general election—which is often driven by embarrassingly poor candidates. They may also assume that higher voter turnout will benefit their party, though there is “substantial, reliable data indicating that turnout, in the range seen in the United States for the past 70 years, has little to no systematic partisan effect,” academics Daron R. Shaw and John R. Petrocik wrote in National Affairs.

Besides non-voting dissenters, many Americans are politically ignorant by choice. Proposals like S.B. 5209 would likely boost voter participation, but not necessarily pre-voting research or consideration. “When relatively ignorant voters go to the polls, they aren’t doing the rest of society a favor,” George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin wrote at The Volokh Conspiracy, which is hosted by Reason. “They are instead inflicting harm on us by making poor choices and incentivizing politicians to cater to their ignorance.”

The First and 14th Amendments state that governments may not compel or disallow political speech. Decades of jurisprudence have bolstered these protections. Washington’s state legislators ought to realize that soft coercion, with few consequences, is coercion nonetheless.

The post Washington State's Democrats Float a Proposal To Make Voting Mandatory appeared first on Reason.com.

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A pair of bills in Utah would impose draconian requirements on social media platforms in the name of protecting children. Under Senate Bill 152, social media companies would be required to verify the ages of all users from Utah, get parental consent before allowing someone under age 18 to open or maintain an account, provide parents or guardians of minors with “access to the content and interactions” of accounts maintained by their children, and “limit hours of access [for minors], subject to parental or guardian direction,” per a summary of the bill. Minors would be prohibited from using social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.

SB 152—sponsored by state Sen. Michael K. McKell (R–Spanish Fork)—would also prohibit platforms from displaying advertising to minors or suggesting any sort of content or accounts to them, among other provisions.

Utah’s Division of Consumer Protection would be authorized to investigate allegations that a social media company was running afoul of this law, and to “seek enforcement through an injunction, civil penalties, and other relief.”

The bill would also authorize a private right to sue social media companies for violations.

Meanwhile, House Bill 311 would also require age verification. All Utah residents wishing to maintain or open social media accounts would have to show their driver’s license, birth certificate, passport, or state identification card.

Additionally, HB 311—from state Rep. Jordan D. Teuscher (R–South Jordan)—would entirely ban people under age 16 from having social media accounts and require parental consent for 16- and 17-year-olds. Enforcement would likewise be delegated to the Utah Division of Consumer Protection and to private lawsuits.

Not only would both bills violate the privacy of Utah social media users and require an insane amount of additional work for social media companies, but they would also open platforms up to all sorts of liability—including for violations of vague prohibitions that are open to interpretation.

For instance, HB 311 would prohibit social media companies from using any “practice, design, or feature” which could cause “a Utah minor account holder to become addicted to the social media platform.”

Bills like these should concern folks outside of Utah. They’re part of a trend of anti-tech legislation sweeping the states (see, for instance, in Florida and Texas), pushed by lawmakers with no regard for free markets or free speech.

Complying with any one of these state laws would be difficult for social media companies. Complying with them all would be nearly impossible, at least not without some serious changes to their business models that would burden users everywhere. And the more states start considering and passing their own rules, the more likely that tech companies are to jump on board with national regulations as a lesser evil.

Either way, it means less autonomy for social media companies and less privacy and free speech for users across the country.

In Utah, SB 152 passed out of the Senate Business and Labor Committee yesterday.

At a hearing on the bill, the Libertas Institute’s Caden Rosenbaum raised concerns about the personal information SB 152 would force companies to collect. “That kind of data in the hands of any company really is dangerous, because it’s not a matter of if it will be breached; it’s a matter of when,” said Rosenbaum.

Khara Boender, state policy director at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, suggested that decisions about social media use should be left up to families. “Every family has a different approach to how they use technology and the internet,” Boender testified, “and children and families have the ability to learn, explore interests, and maintain connections with family and friends.”

Boender was then scolded by Sen. Dan McCay (R–Riverton), according to KUTV. “You are selling a product that is addicting in nature, and you build algorithms with a primary purpose of institutionalizing that addiction,” he said.

The idea that algorithms are ruining our children and our democracy has become a favorite of tech fearmongers. For a thorough dressing-down of algorithm myths, see Reason‘s January 2023 cover story.

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FREE MINDS

Vice celebrates recent positive portrayals of sex workers in popular media, including White Lotus and The Menu. These and several other recent films and TV shows “have represented sex work as ordinary work, and sex workers as complex characters, not singularly defined by the way they make money,” writes Abby Moss. In addition, these sex worker characters “are not only among the most likeable (or, in the case of The White Lotus and The Menu arguably the only likeable) characters, they are not caricatures of ‘fallen women’ or exploited men. They have genuine agency and their choices are front and centre in the narratives.”

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FREE MARKETS

We’re headed for a wave of pricey and pointless new stadium subsidies, suggests a paper from economists John Charles Bradbury (Kennesaw State University), Dennis Coates (University of Maryland), and Brad R. Humphreys (West Virginia University). “We identify a regular replacement cycle of venues at intervals of 30 years,” explained Bradbury in a Twitter thread. “If you look at when the last wave peaked (2000), you may notice the problem. We’re entering a new wave of stadium construction that should peak around 2030.”

Government subsidies for the construction of these new stadiums are likely to be bigger than before, since “median government subsidies of sports venues are increasing,” noted Bradbury. “The share is falling bc venues are growing more expensive. Total public outlays (the relevant metric) continue to grow. At current funding levels, replacements will result in $20 billion in new public funding by 2030.”

But the justification for these subsidies is just as empty as ever. “Recall that subsidizing stadiums is terrible public policy that goes against all evidence and policy advice,” tweets Bradbury. “Most stadium spending is reallocated local spending. We also review recent designs that supposedly overcome the dismal economics of stadiums and demonstrate that they do not improve outcomes.”

You can read the full paper here.

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QUICK HITS

I’m so thrilled to be able to share my essay in The Atlantic adapted from my forthcoming book #Shielded. Give it a read!

Why Police Officers Almost Never Get Punished – The Atlantic ⁦@VikingBooks⁩ ⁦@TheAtlantic⁩ https://t.co/ZgFNeYO7vh https://t.co/vuIUf5jrNR

— Joanna Schwartz (@JCSchwartzProf) January 31, 2023

• Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, plans to announce that she is running for president.

• “The Biden administration is evaluating the possibility of declaring a public-health emergency on abortion,” reports National Review.

• Police dogs aren’t necessary to protect police or prevent suspect resistance, according to new research. “The sudden suspension of K9 apprehension” at one large municipal policing agency “was not associated with a statistical increase in officer or suspect injury, or suspect resistance, during felony arrests,” according to the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

• A federal prisoner in North Carolina faces an additional 40-year prison sentence for possessing buprenorphine, a drug that helps people deal with heroin withdrawal. Prosecutors allege that he intended to distribute it to other prison inmates.

• Prosecutors bungled the case against a crooked former New York City narcotics detective. Joseph Franco was charged with perjury and other crimes, leading to more than 500 convictions he was involved with being overturned. Now, a New York state judge has ruled “that prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office had failed to turn over evidence to the detective’s lawyers on three occasions, a major ethical violation, and dismissed the charges” against Franco.

• The Supreme Court’s oral arguments calendar for March and April has been released:

#SCOTUS released its oral argument calendars for March & April today! pic.twitter.com/HmaaIU2OdQ

— Zack Smith (@tzsmith) January 31, 2023

• What happens when ChatGPT hosts a dinner party? A thread:

This weekend I hosted an AI generated dinner party.

We decided to test the limits and let ChatGPT generate the theme, menu, and even the recipes.

What ensued was surprisingly delightful. pic.twitter.com/LVKQJKmvev

— Sean Linehan (@seanlinehan) January 30, 2023

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