New Slate Article and Miscellaneous

Making Political Sense: Reality Popped Heenes' Balloon

By: James E. Miller

Published 02/01/2011

With the exception of living under a rock, the story of 6-year-old Falcon Heene floating away in a helium-filled weather balloon is still relatively fresh in the public’s mind.
 
Crowned the “balloon boy,” millions around the world watched in morbid curiosity as the UFO-shaped balloon that was supposedly carrying a child made a crash landing in a Colorado Desert. 

It was the equivalent of rubbernecking at the site of a car accident, but on a more massive scale.  Once it was discovered that Falcon was not aboard the balloon and was instead hiding within the family’s attic, many news outlets speculated that the incident was a hoax.
 
This suspicion was soon confirmed during the family’s infamous Wolf Blitzer interview on CNN where Falcon, being the typical naïve child, uttered; “You guys said that, um, we did this for the show.”

Felony charges came soon after to which both Richard and Mayumi Heene pleaded guilty.  Mayumi was sentenced to 20 days in jail while Richard received 90 days along with a fine of $36,000 to be paid in restitution. 

Depending on the view of exploiting a child for publicity gain, some viewed the sentence as overly harsh, while others saw it as not as punitive as it should have been.

Judging by the difficulty Richard Heene is facing now, it is clear that the reparation and jail time was unnecessary. Recently in an interview with Geraldo Rivera on Fox News, Heene revealed that he has been unsuccessful in four separate attempts to get a job after his time in prison.  The unnamed companies, as Heene tells it, are unwilling to hire him because of the incident. 

With his reputation as an honest man tarnished, he will most likely face a great deal of difficulty securing employment in the near future.  The last thing any business wants is to have the kind of publicity that comes along with hiring a world-renowned hoaxer. 

Such is the price Heene and his wife will pay for exploiting their child for the sake of fame.  Even the television channel Lifetime has refused to re-air an episode of the reality show Wife Swap that featured the couple.

This is a perfect example of how social justice should work.  This is not the government forcing schools to accept minorities over their white counterparts that may be more qualified. 

And it is not granting a family who would normally be unable to afford a home or a mortgage backed by taxpayer dollars.  The government has no role to play in businesses refusing to hire Heene. 

It is society judging a man by his dishonest actions and imposing justice outside our legal system.  In a free society, government enforcement of legal remedies is an unnecessary option compared to the voluntary actions of individuals who decide whether to impose their own kind of penalties.

Of course, the kind of social justice built upon voluntary action is not limited to just preventing a person from obtaining a job.  People banding together to boycott a company because it has a poor record of disposing its waste and harming the environment is another instance of voluntary social justice. 

By purposefully harming the environment, a company destroys its reputation among the general public much like Heene has done.  Instead of the government swooping in and levying a one-time fine for the damage, a boycott can be much more ruinous to a company’s long-term health. 

There is no authoritative institution forcing it to clean up whatever mess was caused, but if that company has any desire to stay in business and continue to make money, then it would be in its best interest to rectify whatever damages it was responsible for.

This process is reliant on perfect competition, though.  With perfect competition, and an easy entrance to every sector of the economy, companies can be effectively boycotted through patronizing alternative businesses. 

Corporations granted monopolies by the government interferes with this process and increases the incentive to engage in actions that may not be deemed appropriate by the public.

When looking at social justice, it comes down to the choice between short-term coercion employed by the government and long-term solutions utilized by voluntary means. 

Unfortunately for Richard Heene, the “balloon boy” hoax will likely plague his family for many years to come.  The real victims of this tragedy will be Falcon Heene and his two brothers who have to witness their parents struggle to find jobs in order to support them. 

Yet justice still gets served outside the sphere of government.  While I am sympathetic for the Heenes’ children, I am equally optimistic to see social justice rendered by the spontaneous enforcement of the kind of moral code that is the driving force behind modern society.

It is the true application of the golden rule: by exploiting their child, Richard and Mayumi Heene have shown they value fame over honesty.  And no company wants the proverbial blood of “balloon boy” on its payroll.

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In other news, Ezra Klein's column today lays out precisely why Obamacare won't be overturned by the Supreme Court:

To make this more concrete, when an uninsured person breaks a leg and needs hospital care, that care is paid for by the rest of us. It'd be a bit odd for your economic inactivity to cost me money. But your decision to remain without insurance does cost me money, because you're an active consumer of health-care risk and an active participant on a health-care market that affords you certain benefits. When you don't purchase insurance, you've not decided against participating in the American health-care system.

The correct solution would be to get rid of the law that mandates that everyone gets treated when they arrive in the emergency room.  Without it, Obamacare doesn't stand a chance.  Call me heartless but if you let someone get something for free (and by free I mean someone else pays for it) then why would they pay for it if they can get away with it?  Instead of heavily regulating the health care industry, which drives up costs by creating cartels through licensing, get the government out and let the market take care of it.

I figured I would put this up for someone special.....

Showing Fareed Zakaria was ingenious!

Update- For those who missed my column in the Slate last week, it is in this week's Press and Journal:

Will Corbett treat a drilling tax like it's 'royalty?'

by James Miller

While Tom Corbett’s election as the 46th governor of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania was undoubtedly due to the nationwide Tea Party outrage over the size and spending of government, he has a bigger issue to deal with than downsizing his own office. 

Certainly reducing the size of state government amid falling tax revenue is a necessary cause. What is more pressing, however, is the means by which Corbett deals with the vast reserves of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region that lies under much of Pennsylvania.

The stance he takes may end up being the focal point of his first term as governor.

With the extraction at Marcellus Shale comes the prospect of thousands of jobs to a state suffering from an unemployment rate of 8.1 percent. There also is the prospect of a raging collision of environmentalists who, though once in favor of natural gas over coal and oil, are now against drilling because of understandable environmental concerns.

These environmentalists protested at Corbett’s inauguration – shuttled, ironically, to Harrisburg in a pink gasoline-powered bus – against his anticipated pro-drilling stance. Without a potential moratorium to stop extraction altogether, the only way to stem the natural gas drilling appears to be taxing the industry at a high enough rate to suppress what looks to be a booming industry.

Unfortunately for opponents of drilling, Corbett campaigned on not raising taxes if elected.

Even more unfortunate is that many actually believed him and voted him into office accordingly.

Soon after taking the “no tax” pledge, Corbett let it be known that he would consider charging “royalty fees” to those who benefit from drilling, including companies and homeowners who lease out their property for drilling.

Hate to break it to you, Tom, but a “royalty fee” imposed by the state is no different from a tax.
That has not stopped the protesting environmentalists, though.

Ever since 1889, when President William McKinley signed the Rivers and Harbors Act into law, the federal government has been taking sole ownership of various parts of the country in the name of creating “public land” for the purpose of “protecting” the environment. States have certainly engaged in this practice as well, but government at both levels did not begin to significantly impose environmental conservatism until the beginning of the 20th century.

Taking monopolistic control over parts of land is a simple and short-term solution for governments to protect the environment from pollution. But what environmentalists who support it fail to recognize is that the land-grabbing is actually more detrimental to the public in the long run.

All it does is drive up costs for prospective buyers because the property is effectively taken off the market.
At the same time it provides a kind of “tragedy of commons” mentality in that the land is now seen as a fertile dumping ground since it has no concrete ownership.

Robert P. Murphy, an adjunct scholar and economics professor at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama, points out how capitalism and a strict adherence to private property rights are incredibly beneficial to the environment in his book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism.’’

Murphy writes that free markets encourage conservation in that any practical businessman or woman strives to preserve the value of their land by not damaging it through pollution.

Upholding property rights serves as a deterrent – and punishment, in some cases – to polluting another’s property.
Murphy misses an important point that makes his argument stronger: As our society progresses and population grows, a kind of natural expansion will occur due to most people’s innate desire for privacy.

As this happens, the demand for a more natural and aesthetically pleasing environment will grow as more land is developed.

If one were to come along and treat the land as a commodity, the profit incentive would enhance the need for conservation of the land in order to draw more people.

No matter how much society progresses and develops, there will be a desire to enjoy a setting far away from the technological achievements and industrial developments that have increased our standard of living.

By taking advantage of the simple supply-and-demand mechanism that guides a market economy, the environment could be better preserved by using its natural beauty as a product to sell, not just to preserve.

While I am not holding my breath for Gov. Corbett to keep his “no tax” pledge, I am certainly not expecting environmental groups to change their view anytime soon.

Doing so would be the changing of short-term satisfaction for long-term prosperity.

Environmentalists may claim to see the proverbial forest for the trees, but they fail to see the rationality through their own ignorance.

James Miller is a public administration major at Shippensburg University and a 2006 graduate of Middletown Area High School.