BINGHAMTON REVIEW Contents
P.O. BOX 6000 BINGHAMTON, NY 13902-6000 EDITOR@BINGHAMTONREVIEW.COM
Founded 1987 • Volume XXXI, Issue III Editor-in-Chief
Patrick McAuliffe Jr.
Managing Editor Matthew Rosen
Copy Desk Chief Yvonne Tyler
Business Manager Kayla Jimenez
Social Media Shitposter Tommy Gagliano
Editor Emeritus Jordan Raitses
Associate Editors Adrienne Vertucci
Staff Writers
Jordan Jardine Thomas Sheremetta Mason Carteri Sarah Waters Jonathon Mecomber
Contributors John Restuccia
Special Thanks To:
Intercollegiate Studies Institute Collegiate Network Binghamton Review was printed by Gary Marsden We Provide the Truth. He Provides the Staples
CAN THE FDA PASS THE JUUL?
PAGE 10 by Kayla Jimenez 3 Editorial by Patrick McAuliffe 4 Press Watch by Our Staff 5 #MakeCollectingRainwaterLegalAgain by Jordan Jardine 6 Debate vs. Discussion, a User’s Guide by Mason Carteri 7 Stop Pretending to Care about Dead Kids by Sarah Waters 8 Seasteading: Feasible or Fantasy? by Jordan Jardine 9 A Rant About Bing’s Traffic by Jonathon Mecomber 12 Relax, Unwind, and Have a Cigar by John Restuccia 13 Enough Jok(er)ing Around by Tommy Gagliano 14 Correcting Woodrow Wilson by Matthew Rosen 15 The Literal Solution to Global Poverty by Patrick McAuliffe
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK! Direct feedback to editor@binghamtonreview.com 2
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Vol. XXXI, Issue III
EDITORIAL Dear Readers,
From the Editor
G
ood morning to everyone that’s waking up at the end of September! The weather is getting colder, which means people’s body odors will begin to smell faintly of pumpkin spice and sweat as we welcome the fall season. Elections for lots of offices are right around the corner, so be sure to read up on party platforms and vote with both your brain and your conscience. Don’t neglect local politics, either! Let me introduce you to what we have in store for this issue. Tommy discusses the world of online poker, arguing that gambling for fantasy sports and gambling for poker are indistinguishable (and should both be legal). Jordan tackles an often-overlooked instance of government overreach: the illegality of collecting rainwater on one’s own property. Mason offers a contrast between debate and discussion, and gives some helpful tips to know how to approach each encounter. Jonathon criticizes Binghamton’s highly inefficient traffic patterns with the frustrations many commuters may feel. John analyzes an issue we should have looked at a while ago: the university’s tobacco-free policy. He offers a few solutions to allow for people’s freedom to smoke, as well as arguing that such a policy is inherently immoral. Moving beyond campus issues, but staying with the smoking theme, Kayla writes her first article of the year covering the FDA’s warnings to e-cigarette companies about targeting teens with advertising. Sarah lashes out at those that politicize the deaths of children at the hands of guns, citing school stabbings to be just as rampant and terrible of an atrocity. Matt analyzes the many mistakes of Woodrow Wilson’s term, including the passage of the 17th Amendment and the establishment of the Federal Reserve. I write about how to solve global poverty: allowing the poor to have easily accessible legal titles to their property and businesses. Finally, Mason covers a libertarian proposal to establish independent states on the water through seasteading, or building an artificial, habitable island. Have you started looking for your Halloween costumes yet? Not to fear, our next issue will be out with plenty of time before Cultural Appropriation Day, so we’ll be able to offer our suggestions for making you stand out at your Halloween party. Because this issue will probably be stolen by people that hate freedom, be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, binghamtonreview.com, YouTube, and our Public Affairs show on WHRW. Every Wednesday from 6-6:30pm Matt, Jordan, and I are in the studio discussing news, politics, and philosophical questions. We accept callers and guests, and we hope that what we talk about will not necessarily convince our listeners of one position or another, but that they will start to ask questions and think more critically about the important questions of our day. Be sure to tune in!
Sincerely,
Patrick McAuliffe Jr. Binghamton Review is a non-partisan, student-run news magazine of conservative thought founded in 1987 at Binghamton University. A true liberal arts education expands a student’s horizons and opens one’s mind to a vast array of divergent perspectives. The mark of true maturity is being able to engage with these perspectives rationally while maintaining one’s own convictions. In that spirit, we seek to promote the free and open exchange of ideas and offer alternative viewpoints not normally found or accepted on our predominately liberal campus. We stand against tyranny in all of its forms, both on campus and beyond. We believe in the principles set forth in this country’s Declaration of Independence and seek to preserve the fundamental tenets of Western civilization. It is our duty to expose the warped ideology of political correctness and cultural authoritarianism that dominates this university. Finally, we understand that a moral order is a necessary component of any civilized society. We strive to inform, engage with, and perhaps even amuse our readers in carrying out this mission.
Views expressed by writers do not necessarily represent the views of the publication as a whole. editor@binghamtonreview.com
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CPampus resswatch “Binghamton is not part of upstate New York” By Nicholas Walker September 26, 2018, Pipe Dream I’m already triggered and I haven’t even started reading it yet. “Geography should be absolute, not relative. The Americas are labeled from the equator: North, South and Central America. Using the same methodology, we can label Syracuse, my homeland, as the center of New York state.” You say geography shouldn’t be relative, and then you go on to describe the geographic location of Syracuse in relation to the rest of New York state, and the location of the Americans in relation to the equator. Everything about geography is relative. You can’t describe things as north, south, east, or west unless you’re comparing them in relation to something else. “High school and college teachers always warn against citing Wikipedia in papers, and here is a prime example: On the upstate New York Wikipedia page, it says, “Upstate New York is the portion of the American state of New York lying north of the New York metropolitan area.” Clearly, someone from the metropolitan area has hacked Wikipedia to display false information.” It’s been like that for years actually, because that’s how it’s defined by the overwhelming majority of the state. “Poughkeepsie is downstate; it sits below the majority of New York’s area.” It sits below the majority of New York’s area, sure, but it sits above the majority of New York state’s population. According to a 2010 census, New York State has a population of
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Written by our Staff
We know you don’t read the other campus publications, so we did it for you. Original pieces are in quotes, our responses are in bold.
19,378,102. 11,008,015 of those people (56.8 percent) live in New York City or on Long Island. Why should we base geographic terms on empty land and cows instead of basing it on people? -----------------------------------------“Criticizing Israel does not always amount to anti-Semitism” By Sarah Molano September 20, 2018, Pipe Dream “Michael Harel stated in his Sept. 13 column that ‘anti-Semitic groups should not be given a platform on college campuses,’ per the title of his piece. While this is undoubtedly true and anti-Semitism should never be tolerated, accusations that Students for Justice in Palestine is anti-Semitic are unfounded.” You’re wrong two different ways in one sentence. SJP is undoubtedly anti-Semitic. They praise terrorists, support Hamas, and advocate for the destruction of Israel and expulsion of Jews from their own indigenous homeland, among other things. However, they absolutely should have the right to speak about their ideas. “It’s no secret that the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces disenfranchise, harm and even kill Palestinians who protest their treatment and assert their right to exist there.” Storming the border with the intent to kill Jews is not the same as “protesting their treatment and asserting their right to exist”. “However, calling legitimate criticisms of the Israeli government ‘anti-Semitic’ is unproductive when so many instances of anti-Semitism are really occurring, even at Binghamton University, like when a drawing of a swastika appeared on campus last fall.” Yeah, an anonymous swastika is so much worse than literally supporting terrorists and terrorist organizations. Let marginalized peoples define what constitutes bigotry directed towards them. -------------------------------------------
“John McCain does not deserve an adulation” By Jacob Hanna September 16, 2018, Pipe Dream “McCain, both in the real world and outside of his invented “maverick” persona, was a virulent misogynist and racist warmonger who contributed to the reason why we have President Donald Trump in the White House today.” The reason we have Donald Trump is the White House today is because of ridiculous statements like this. The people that elected Donald Trump were tired of everyone and everything being labeled “sexist, misogynist, racist” etc. “He has called his Vietnamese captors blatantly racist slurs and compared the president of Iran to a monkey.” He called the people that were holding him captive and torturing him bad words? Oh no! “The real McCain ‘defended’ Barack Obama while implying that to be an ‘Arab’ and a ‘family man’ was to be a living contradiction in terms.” How would you have liked him to respond? The person asking the question was clearly accusing Obama of being a traitor, or of being unloyal to the United States, and McCain responded by saying that he was actually a “decent family man”. There was no malice towards Arabs.
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#MAKECOLLECTINGRAINWATERLEGALAGAIN
#MakeCollectingRainwaterLegalAgain By Jordan Jardine
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ver 60 percent of the adult human body is made up of water. We use water for drinking, washing, cooking, and much more. Water is an essential resource for sustaining life, and every living being on this planet deserves to have as much access to this precious liquid as possible. However, several U.S. states currently ban or heavily restrict the collection of rainwater. Some people could face jail time as a result of doing this seemingly harmless and natural act. For instance, according to the site AccuWeather, a 64-year-old Oregon man was arrested and jailed for 30 days for collecting rainwater on his own private property. Oregon isn’t the only state to crack down heavily on rainwater collection. States with similar policies include Colorado, Ohio, California, Nevada, Texas, Utah and Idaho. To varying degrees, these states regulate the collection of rainwater, thus restricting the freedom of individuals to have tax--and regulation--free water for any number of purposes. Some of the states mentioned above do allow residents to collect rainwater for drinking, but there are still burdensome forms that must be filled out in order to get permission from the state government to do so. This is a horrendous and unacceptable system. Collection of rainwater should not be an action which requires permission from the government to perform. AccuWeather also said that the federal government is now stepping in to try to enforce rainwater collection laws. The site claims that in 2013, the EPA tried to pass federal rainwater regulations and was even sued by Virginia’s attorney general for this clear demonstration of federal overreach. There is already so much that we do in our everyday lives that is regulated and/or taxed by the government in some way, shape or form. The least the federal and state governments could do is allow free individuals to gather whatever resources they need in order to survive, as long as they don’t hinder
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another individual’s access to those resources in the process. The freedom to collect essential natural resources should be a basic human right, but, of course, the government has to step in and exercise some level of control, thus preventing free citizens from having complete autonomy over their own lives while not harming anyone else. Frankly, corporations should also not make a profit off of what should be a priceless commodity for survival like water. Americans spend billions of dollars on bottled water every year, destroying the environment and hurting their wallets as a result. Why should the hard-working citizens of this country, from New York to Iowa to Texas, have to spend endless amounts of money on something that should be free of charge due to its essential, life-sustaining properties? Rather than spending billions of dollars on plastic water bottles, Americans could spend only a few hundred dollars on a water filtration system which can filter rainwater and purify it for drinking, cooking and cleaning purposes. Not only would this make it so Americans would have to spend less on bottled
water, but they could also see a drop in their water bills during rainier months because they wouldn’t have to rely on municipal water supplies. Americans from all walks of life, whether from the costal urban centers or the heartland, are hurting right now and in order to function, they need to be able to cut costs anywhere they can, especially in times of great economic inequality. According to data from the Social Security Administration, more than half of Americans (about 51 percent) make $30,000 a year or less. This is morally reprehensible in a country that claims to be the best one in the world. Even more repugnant is the idea that these same Americans have to worry about providing water for their families, something they shouldn’t even have to waste a second thinking about. Both corporations and state and federal bureaucrats should not have the right to regulate or put a price tag on water, the very fabric of the survival, longevity and prosperity of almost every form of life on this miraculous planet we call Earth. In the only home we’ve ever known, everybody can live and thrive off of the resources at our disposal, created by God or whatever higher power or deity one believes in. The matter here is allocation of these vital resources. This is not only a problem in America, but it is still a colossal problem around the world. However, before America can contribute to solving the problem of global shortages of water, it must first focus its attention on allowing its own citizens the freedom to collect water, rainwater in particular, for themselves. Federal and state bureaucracies should stay out of the way. Corporations should also stay out of the way. Nothing should stand in the way of the chance for humans to live free lives and be liberated from the fear of not being able to thrive and survive. A new hashtag must trend. We must tell our state and federal governments this: #MakeCollectingRainwaterLegalAgain.
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DEBATE VS. DISCUSSION: A USER’S GUIDE
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Debate vs. Discussion: A User’s Guide By Mason Carteri
D
ebate and discussion are two words thrown around regularly in the realm of political discourse – and for good reason, as they represent two of the most effective ways we present our ideas to others. At the surface level, each term seems almost synonymous with the other. We might think of them both as “talking about an issue with someone who disagrees.” However, despite these common threads, the two styles of discourse have wildly different applications, purposes and audiences. The difference between the two, and when they should each be used, is critical. When two opposing politicians go head-to-head in a verbal contest over the issues, this is rightly called debate. Debate is confrontational. It is a “face-off ” between two opponents staunchly embedded in their views and ideas, where the goal is to “win” by out-competing the opponent in oration, factuality and practicality. Although debate is (usually) governed by certain rules of civility, it is not itself a civil undertaking – it is a war of words in which the goal is the total refutation of the opponent’s points. It shouldn’t be too shocking to discover then that most opponents in political debates do not have their minds changed by the arguments of the other side. After all, it’s quite hard to force someone who considers you an opponent to look at things from your point of view. So then what is the higher purpose of debate if your opponent’s mind is so often unchangeable? Is it simply a medium for entertaining the ego? Or virtue-signaling to those with whom you already agree? No. Debate’s true and noble purpose is still to change minds – the minds of the audience. While an individual “in-the-fray” of it all is unlikely to see things clearly while doing verbal battle with their opponent, an outside audience is much more receptive to good and bad ideas, and faulty or effective logic. When an audience
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watches one side fail to argue fairly or logically, they may see that side as having weaker points, and thus sway towards the ideas of the “winning” side. Of course, this isn’t foolproof, especially in an era where people are so secluded in their media bubbles and so ready to hide in the trenches of their existing ideology without braving the “no-man’s land” of the countless other philosophies and ideologies outside theirs. Many people will refuse to be convinced by even the clearest logic and most obvious facts. Many, sure, but not all – and thus debate still has its merit, especially when it comes to shaping the minds of the younger generations. Debate should therefore be used when your intention is not to convince your direct opponent, but instead to change the minds of those watching your “duel” from the stands. Expect your opponent to remain as so; but hope that onlookers may sway your way! Discussion is debate’s more charitable cousin. A discussion might be two friends talking over political issues and considering each other’s opinions and what logic each uses, or a group of thinkers parsing through the merits and failures of each other’s philosophies, with the intent of divining the closest thing to absolute truth. It is not a face-off, but more an intellectual conversation. Discussion involves an exchange of ideas between individu-
als who may disagree, but who fundamentally respect each other. This conversation isn’t meant to be won or lost, it is instead meant to be fruitful for both “sides.” The goal of discussion is mainly to change the mind of your fellow discussioneers, to better understand their ideas and why they think the way they do, and maybe even to have your own mind changed. Therefore, it should be used when your goal is to directly change the mind of the individual(s) with which you are speaking. Although discussions may also cause onlookers to change their views and understandings of the issues discussed, as many adherents of programs like the “Joe Rogan Experience” insist, a true discussion should be for the individuals involved, not the audience. Understanding the differences between these two mediums is critical to actually changing minds. If you were to carry out a debate with the understanding and open-mindedness of a discussion, you would likely appear weak and unsure of your own ideas – a clear indication to the audience that your opponent is more credible. On the other hand, if you were to enter into a discussion with the aggressive and victory-oriented style of a debate, you will likely learn next to nothing and only convince your opponent of your own entrenchment and partisanship. If it’s a discussion before and audience, you’ll probably look like an asshole, too. Now more than ever, proper articulation of your views and competency in changing minds is critical if you have any desire to bring others closer to your own worldview; or even any hope of bridging the ever-growing divide between different ideologies. Proper application of all the tools of verbal communication and argumentation almost certainly will not save our discourse, nor will it bring everyone to your side of the aisle alone, but it will help.
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STOP PRETENDING TO CARE ABOUT DEAD KIDS
Stop Pretending to Care About Dead Kids By Sarah Waters
W
arren Fitzgerald High. William Dick K–8 School. McNair High. Montgomery High. Roslindale Middle School. Gibbs High. Luther High. Dunbar High. Jim Hill High. Automotive High. What do these schools have in common? They have all experienced a school stabbing since the start of the 2018-19 school year. 10 schools, 10 stabbings. As of September 24th, a child has been stabbed at school in America once every two days since the beginning of the school year. Some have died, others have been hospitalized. Friends and families grieve, students fear walking the hallways and riding the school bus, teachers are in shock. And you? You didn’t say a word about it. No outraged social media posts. No walkouts. No moments of silence. No marches. Nothing. Not a single peep. You were too busy demonizing gun owners to pay attention to the violence erupting in our schools. It’s time somebody exposed the cold, hard truth: You don’t care about dead kids. You only care if you can exploit their suffering and deaths to push your own, selfish political agenda. If you actually cared about stopping violence in schools, you wouldn’t be pointing fingers at semi-automatic rifles while most school shootings involve handguns. You wouldn’t be focusing on a single type of weapon used in school violence. You wouldn’t be acting like curbing our Second Amendment rights was the solution to students killing one another. You would be out there marching for the students in those 10 schools, and the hundreds more before them. You would know that school stabbings are about as common as, if not more common than, school shootings. If you actually cared about dead and injured kids, you would fight for all of them. In the 2017-18 school year, 35 students were killed in school shoot-
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ings. To put that in perspective, in 2016, there were an estimated 147 stabbing deaths among school-aged children, and an estimated 60,000 nonfatal stabbing injuries among the same age group, according to CDC data. The latter figure is four times the total number of shooting incidents among children ages five to nineteen that year. And while weapon tracking in school violence incidents is not great, school stabbings are hardly unheard of, and it is estimated at least a full quarter of all student slayings are accomplished with a blade or puncture instrument, such as a screwdriver. And those are just deaths. If stabbing survivors are included (and they are not included in most government data), the numbers are much higher.
“A child killed by a scary, black, loud machine is worth more to the media and the gun control crowd than a child stabbed to death in front of her whole class with a kitchen knife. You’re jumping on the anti-firearms bandwagon because it’s popular, because it’s what all your friends are doing.” School stabbings, coupled with the fact that stabbings are at record highs in countries with strict gun control like England, prove that gun control laws will not stop violence. Victims attacked with knives and other weapons do not at all benefit from gun control. Guns are just one single weapon. To actually address violence, we cannot focus on a narrow category. We have to address all school violence. Because the bone-chilling truth of the matter is, students don’t need access to guns if they have their sights set on murder. They will find a way. Just ask Joao Souza and Haley Anderson. According to the Michigan Ed-
ucation Association, educators are looking to address the root of school violence. Retired teacher Jim Pearson says that educators “want more funding for mental health counseling to prevent tragedies from happening in the first place,” not Band-Aid solutions that still leave children vulnerable. We cannot feasibly save every child with counseling, but we sure as heck can save a lot more with it than by banning semi-automatic rifles, which are used in only a tiny fraction of all murders and school shootings. The value of a child’s life lost nowadays is measured in likes, retweets, reblogs, and political brownie points. A shooting garners far more attention and outrage than a stabbing. A child killed by a scary, black, loud machine is worth more to the media and the gun control crowd than a child stabbed to death in front of her whole class with a kitchen knife. You’re jumping on the anti-firearms bandwagon because it’s popular, because it’s what all your friends are doing. You don’t want them to think you support the Other Side, heaven forbid. That would be social suicide. Maybe part of you feels fearful, due to skewed statistics and biased media blowing shootings out of proportion. But you don’t really care about those kids, deep down. You’re simply virtue-signaling. Guns are not the problem. Yes, it is easier and more comforting to blame the violence on a single tangible object and pretend that getting rid of that object will be the end of it. But we live in a harsh and frightening world, where answers are more complex and murders are not monolithic. The truth is messy and uncomfortable. If you care about stopping school violence, you will face the complexity. If you care about victims, you will fight for those murdered with weapons other than firearms. But if you don’t, at least stop pretending to care. You’re not helping anyone. You’re just exploiting dead kids.
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SEASTEADING: FEASIBLE OR FANTASY?
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Seasteading: Feasible or Fantasy? By Mason Carteri
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n the last two decades the construction of autonomous communities floating on the open ocean, known as seasteading, has become increasingly popular among libertarians and other political theorists. With support from billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel, the idea has even garnered some mainstream attention. To seasteading advocates, it represents a chance to start fresh by building a new society and government, completely free from the tyranny, corruption, and inefficiency they see in many contemporary mainland states. The idea of a completely fresh start, where the social and political orders are to be made from the ground up using all of mankind’s philosophical and historical knowledge, while leaving ineffective traditional practices or the status quo behind, has been extremely appealing to social and political thinkers, especially libertarians. To some libertarians like Thiel, seasteading and similar projects where the old state is left completely behind are the only way to break out from the continuum of overly intrusive or downright oppressive government. Understanding that a total overthrow of contemporary society is unfeasible, and would most likely produce significant suffering and chaos, these individuals opt instead for concepts like seasteading that, in theory at least, would allow them to start their own utopian society, free from the oppressions and biases of existing governments. The dream is often a nearly stateless floating community where government only exists to protect the basic rights of each citizen, and the people remain mainly free and autonomous. Seasteading advocates believe that without an oppressive and cumbersome state to hold them down, the floating cities could become a haven for medical and scientific development, as well as medical tourism, banking, and gambling. Supporters argue that this would keep the platforms economically sound and self-suffi-
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cient, and that these speculative new technologies could provide necessary services to the rest of the world that might otherwise have been lost in layers of red tape. Just a few years ago, the movement was at a peak when the Seasteading Institute, the project’s main advocacy group, reached an agreement with the government of French Polynesia and the organization Blue Frontiers to begin construction on the first “floating cities” off the coast of the small island nation. According to the New York Times, the Floating Island Project was projected to cost about $60 million for the construction of a dozen artificial habitats by 2020. However, the seasteading movement suffered a recent setback when the French Polynesian government cancelled the agreement this year after significant public outcry. As Business Insider reports, many Polynesians feared that they would gain little to nothing from the project, while their country would be subject to “tech colonialism.” With the public pressure increasing and opposition parties planning to make the agreement an issue in the next election, the ruling Tapura Huiraatira party appears to have decided that the project was more trouble than it was worth. While critics have been quick to name this the end of the seasteading interests and their dreams of a libertarian utopia, the Seasteading Institute and fervent supporters like Peter Thiel continue to argue that the idea is still feasible – to them, this is just a minor setback in their long quest for political paradise. Critics have also leveled several broader claims of infeasibility, as well as immorality, at the seasteading project. Some, like those in French Polynesia opposed to the project, argue that the man made islands would be nothing more than tax-havens and miniature paradises for the ultra-rich, allow-
ing them to live away from the common man and avoid paying out their “fair share.” Similarly, Professor Peter Newman at Curtin University argues that the high-cost nature of the project would likely raise the barrier to entry for each microstate so high that only the ultra-rich could even afford to move to a seastead. Additionally, skeptics like Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute argue that the seasteads would be unable to resist external pressures from the established governments on Earth, and so they would likely succumb to the domination of the state regardless, either as puppet-states or annexed properties of traditional countries. Newman also describes the seastead idea as extremely undesirable because, by necessity, it commands distance from the amenities and culture of land-based life. To Newman, even a self-sustaining seastead would likely be cramped, boring, and lacking significantly in most goods and services it could not produce itself. Could seasteading really be the future of human social and political advancement? Or will the movement burn out or burn down like other utopian visions in the past? With a sizeable base of both skeptics and loyal supporters, the future of seasteading remains to be seen. Considering current trends in technological and economic development in the US and around the world, it appears that the question may be answered in the next few decades.
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A RANT ABOUT BING’S TRAFFIC
A Rant About Bing’s Traffic By Jonathon Mecomber
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f you commute to campus like I do, then I’m sure that you are more than familiar with the perils of university traffic. I came to Binghamton as a transfer student last fall and from the moment that I arrived, traffic has been one of my greatest qualms. Maybe it’s just because I come from the backcountry that is Upstate New York, where traffic congestion is almost never an issue outside of the tourist season. However, I remain convinced that traffic is one of Binghamton University’s biggest issues at the moment. During my time here, I have identified three main areas of frustration related to traffic. The first issue is simply the amount of students who choose to commute to campus. Now, I’ll be the first to point out my own hypocrisy with this. I love the convenience of having my own car. It certainly is one of the greatest luxuries to be able to take my own vehicle to campus at a time when it’s best for me to do so. However, as students, we have access to a fantastic public transportation network. Not only can Binghamton University students use any OCCT bus without having to pay a fare, but they can also board any of the buses operated by Broome County Transit with a valid student ID, free of charge. Though it may be harder
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for more remote areas to find reliable transportation, if you live almost anywhere within the City of Binghamton or Johnson City, getting to campus via bus shouldn’t take any more than an hour at the most. I can’t help but grind my teeth when I see students who live at the U Club in the University Plaza (which is less than a mile from campus) driving their cars to campus despite the constant OCCT shuttle service and the fact that U Club even has its own shuttle service. Even if just a quarter of the students who currently commute switched to public transit, traffic congestion could be drastically reduced. The second issue is the relationship between cars and pedestrians. Of course, legally speaking, drivers bear the largest amount of responsibility when it comes to avoiding a collision with pedestrians. However, safety is a two-way street (pardon the pun). I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve seen people step out into the road directly in front of my car without looking. I’ve also witnessed groups of people casually walking in the middle of the road during busy times on numerous occasions. Luckily for them, I try my best to be a cautious driver. If the sidewalks are crowded with people, I will try to drive under the speed
limit, and I’m always anticipating to stop for a car, cyclist or pedestrian. However, if my years of driving experience have taught me anything, it’s that most drivers aren’t cautious. I’m often amazed by the amount of trust that pedestrians seem to frequently grant drivers. The third and, in my view, largest issue is the swarm of pedestrians that uses the group of crosswalks which connect the Lecture Hall area to the Hinman community and to the Rockefeller Center. During the times when several classes are dismissed at once from the Lecture Hall, there are hordes of students which crosses at this area. Of course, drivers must yield to pedestrians in these crosswalks, but they can sometimes be waiting for a break in the crowd for several minutes at a time. This increases stress for drivers. Stressed out drivers are more likely to make unwise decisions, such as attempting to barge through the crosswalk when they see even the slightest gap. Furthermore, vehicles sometimes block the crosswalks during this daily gridlock catastrophe which creates an unsafe situation for pedestrians who may be unable to see oncoming traffic. If the administration truly cares about student safety, then I believe that they should seek to alleviate this dangerous traffic problem quickly. Whether they decide to have police officers directing traffic, to install traffic lights or to even build something as ambitious as pedestrian bridges, anything which would allow cars and pedestrians to flow more smoothly would be preferable to what we have now. Let’s not wait for a tragedy like a struck pedestrian to occur before deciding to take action.
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CAN THE FDA PASS THE JUUL?
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Can the FDA Pass the JUUL? By Kayla Jimenez
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he first time I saw someone using a JUUL was almost two years ago. I was sitting in a group study room at Bartle when a friend of mine pulled out this strange flash drive looking thing and starting vaping. Suddenly, I started seeing people across campus JUULing left and right: in the Marketplace, in line at Dunkin, on the blue buses, in class… by the end of 2017, I didn’t even notice them anymore. But I did notice when my then 15 year old sister began JUULing. And my boyfriend’s younger brother. And all of their friends. “Bro, my friend hit the JUUL so hard he almost threw up!” I’d see videos on Snapchat of sixteen year olds with three JUULs in their mouth at a time. I knew things were going too far, and it became clear that there was a broader trend of young people vaping at ridiculous levels. I was waiting for something to happen, though I’m not sure what. It wasn’t until this past spring that articles began to appear proclaiming the concerns of parents, health professionals, and regulators nationally. Then came the FDA drama that escalated about a month ago, when Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced new potential regulations to come to the e-cigarette industry. A variety of regulatory options came into discussion, with the most extreme consideration being banning the sale of e-cigarettes on the whole. The ultimate conclusion was announced on September 12th: JUUL has sixty days to prove it can keep its products out of the hands of kids and teens. This is because the FDA’s primary concern is that minors are developing nicotine addictions due to the JUUL craze. To get a deeper dive on this issue, I’m posing a couple of questions here: Why are JUULs the focus? Why now? And why consider regulation? Why JUULs? Vaping was popular before JUULs, but not this popular. I remem-
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ber kids when I was in highschool hitting e-cigarettes and other various vaping devices. But nothing has taken off as the JUUL has. According to The Wall Street Journal, the JUUL accounts for “72% of the estimated $2.3 billion annual U.S. e-cigarette market.” Additionally, JUULs do not resemble cigarettes in the slightest. Their sleek look disguises their potentially harmful content. High school and college students assume there really aren’t side effects or risks involved when hitting JUULs. Unfortunately, there are health risks associated with JUULing and vaping nicotine products in general. According to the Boston Globe, “Chronic nicotine exposure may lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. . . . Inhaled nicotine increases heart rate and blood pressure. Nicotine is highly addictive in its own right, and it may lead to changes in the brain that increase the risk of addiction to other drugs, especially in young people.” Though the risks of getting lung cancer and other diseases typically associated with cigarette use are reduced, there is still the
concerning fact that young people are addicting themselves to nicotine. To get a better idea of what role JUULs play in high schools, how high schoolers are getting JUULs and pods, and how much they typically consume, I asked my sister a few questions. She said that she was in 10th grade when she bought her first JUUL at a local convenience store – she has bought three total since then. In order to buy more pods, she either asks her twenty year old friend to purchase them for her at 7-Eleven, or she simply purchases them herself from a local shop… mind you she turned seventeen only a few weeks ago. In my area, the legal age to purchase nicotine products is twenty one. When she described her consumption levels, she noted that she usually goes through about a pack, which contains four pods, in two or three days. This adds up to about 2 packs a week! According to Vox, one JUUL pod contains as much nicotine as two packs of cigarettes. So she’s consuming the nicotine equivalent of sixteen packs of cigarettes every week. Yikes! I know anecdotal evidence is trash, so I wanted to note that my sister is probably on the heavier side of the consumption distribution curve. Since there really isn’t a lot of specific data out there detailing how many pods are being consumed by minors, I’d say the average teenager likely intakes about half of the nicotine she does. But that still adds up to inhaling the amount of nicotine contained in 8 packs of cigarettes on a weekly basis. No other e-cigarette has gained the level of popularity that JUULs have. Not only is the FDA after JUULs, but countless other state and local governments are looking into the company’s practices. Lawsuits, bans, restrictions, education campaigns… it goes on and on. People are particularly upset because they feel as if JUULs are specifically targeted towards a young audience: they look cool, come in fun colors, have sweet and appealing
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BINGHAMTONREVIEW.COM flavors, and charge on a laptop. After decades of anti-smoking campaigns, people are blaming the JUUL for the rise in teen nicotine consumption. Vice stated “JUUL seems to be insanely popular among kids who otherwise might not smoke.” The FDA is stepping in because of this: teens who otherwise would not have consumed nicotine products are now much more likely not only to vape or JUUL, but also to try cigarettes and other nicotine products. Business Insider explained this concern, reporting that “Young people who vape are between two and seven times more likely to eventually smoke conventional cigarettes compared with teens who never try e-cigs, according to a spate of research published over the last three years. A March study from Dartmouth University put the trend into stark numerical terms: the results suggested that 2,070 adults across the US used e-cigs to quit smoking in 2015, but another 168,000 young people who used the devices went on to become smokers of conventional cigarettes.” JUUL is making puffs of smoke (now vapor) cool and trendy again, going against the public health efforts of the previous few decades. On a positive note, it is overall healthier for people to consume nicotine through JUULs than through cigarettes. However, there is nothing good that can come out of addicting another generation to nicotine. It’s an expensive habit with potentially adverse mental and physical health impacts. Why now? The alarming rates at which e-cigarette use is spiking amongst teens is cause for concern. People have begun referring to it as an “epidemic”: one standout quote from Gottlieb states “The number of teenagers we believe are now using these products… has reached an epidemic proportion.” A 2017 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 11.7% of high schoolers had vaped in the last 30 days. Nearly 3.6 million students are expected to graduate from high school in 2018–19, so roughly 421,200 high schoolers are vaping on a regular
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CAN THE FDA PASS THE JUUL?
“Though regulation is not always the solution, in this case, enforcing already existing regulation and figuring out a way to enforce this existing regulation in the online space is the best way to prevent minors from purchasing JUULs.” basis. That is significantly higher than in years past. Why regulation? As we are all too familiar with, whenever there is panic or concern in this country, people immediately turn to the government to step in and do something. But is federal regulation necessary? Will banning JUULs to any extent be a legitimate solution? Spoiler alert: this is the Review, so you already know I’m not going to support a full on ban of JUULs. We already have laws in place, such as age restrictions, that are not being effectively enforced. As part of the “you have 60 days to prove you can keep JUULs away from kids” announcement, Gottlieb also sent a warning to retailers. The FDA website states, “In the largest coordinated enforcement effort in the FDA’s history, the agency issued more than 1,300 warning letters and civil money penalty complaints (fines) to retailers who illegally sold JUUL and other e-cigarette products to minors during a nationwide, undercover blitz of brick-and-mortar and online stores this summer.” I think this is a great first step in limiting teen access to e-cigarettes… actually enforcing laws that already exist and holding retailers accountable! Also, what does the FDA mean exactly when it says JUUL Labs needs to prove it can keep its products away from kids? Developing sh*tty marketing campaigns? Stopping online sales? That is not going to happen. One thing I do agree with is the fact that this ambiguous statement puts the ball in the court of the company to take action rather than jumping straight to new legislation. Give JUUL Labs the chance to solve the problem it (may or may not have) created.
On September 25th, Gottlieb said the FDA is considering a ban of all online sales of e-cigarettes. While that is extreme, it is the most challenging to regulate the age of buyers online because so many third party sites resell e-cigarettes. Instead of fully banning online sales, my recommendation is limiting who can sell e-cigarettes online so that these sellers can be regulated and can ensure only those of age are purchasing these products. Though that would benefit very few companies and artificially create an oligopoly, that’s a loss I’m comfortable with. If only a few companies have the opportunity to profit off of e-cigarettes, but there would be a reduction in underage access, it seems like a tolerable trade-off. Let the manufacturers sell directly to consumers, as they do already. Restrict online sales to the manufacturers and a few primary sellers. This would preserve the industry while decreasing accessibility for minors. Though regulation is not always the solution, in this case, enforcing already existing regulation and figuring out a way to enforce this existing regulation in the online space is the best way to prevent minors from purchasing JUULs. I personally do not want to see young people developing nicotine addictions because JUULs are irresponsibly sold to them and all too easy to access. Additionally, developing public health campaigns and educating people about the high levels of nicotine in JUULs and other similar products, and detailing the expense of a nicotine addiction, can discourage people from developing the habit in the first place. We have the legal minimum age of purchase on substances like these for the purpose of providing a barrier to a young mind making a costly and long-term mistake for themselves. On the other hand, with so much education on the dangers of nicotine and other similar substances, can young people start to be held (at least partly) responsible for the unhealthy choices they make, whether that’s for the JUUL or another substance? I’ll let you decide, but it will be interesting to see whether the FDA will, in fact, pass the JUUL.
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RELAX, UNWIND, AND HAVE A CIGAR
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Relax, Unwind, and Have a Cigar By John Restuccia
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he first thing that you should know about me is that I am a transfer student from a small Catholic Franciscan school in the middle of nowhere. When transferring to Binghamton University, the thing that stood out to me the most was the lack of smoking on campus. No one was smoking cigarettes, cigars, or chewing. I do consider myself a smoker; I enjoy cigars on a frequent basis. Where I work, everyone smokes everything from cigarettes to vape pens, so I have picked up some things about the subject of smoking cigarettes as well. So when I asked a student I met if he wanted to enjoy a cigar before class, the student informed me of the school’s no smoking policy. To me this seemed ridiculous. Why should the school tell legal aged adults what to do, especially when more than 60% of college campuses in New York alone allow smoking on their campuses. Now if students are under 18 then the policy is completely understandable but most college kids are likely to be over 18. What gives? The 3 main points about why Binghamton University is tobacco free are as follows: second hand smoke affects everyone around; cigarette buds are likely to be littered around the campus; cigarette buds themselves are not biodegradable. The first two notes I would like to make is that even though campus is supposed to be “tobacco free”
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I constantly see cigarette buds on the ground outside of buildings. The second is that I not only see students vaping but faculty members have their own vape pens and Juuls that they use. So clearly the policy is not working. My proposal would be to have designated smoking areas around the school, somewhat away from main walking paths, that have smokers stations that people can smoke and drop their buds into. In fact upon researching this idea I came across something known as “Butt Huts” (ignore the stupid name for a minute). The idea is the same as mine but is actually a solution given by the SUNY Student Assembly themselves and implemented on several SUNY campuses to curb smoking issues. These “Butt Huts” (sounds like a prostitution ring) have been shown to decrease the waste around campus and are chosen locations by the campus. That means the campus can strategically place them wherever they feel that students can easily dispose of their butts. Not only that, but they reduce the threat of second hand smoke, which would be contained to one area away from other students who do not like smoking. On the topic of second hand smoke, the media has exaggerated the actual deadliness of second hand smoke. According to the CDC, 2.5 million adults have died from second hand smoke that weren’t smokers since 1964. That is on average 46,000 deaths per year, which seems like a lot. However, alcohol-induced deaths makeup 88,000 deaths per year, which is almost twice as many deaths. In 2014 alone Influenza and Pneumonia killed over 55,000 people a year. So on the scale of deaths per year, second hand smoke is quite a small one. The biodegradability problem of the butts is a fantastic point. However, companies like Green Butt are working to develop biodegradable ciagrette buds that will revolutionize the way cigarettes are made. Now cigarettes are certainly addictive, but it’s the person who is
smoking’s choice, not yours. If you think cigarettes are gross, that’s great! You shouldn’t be able, however, to put others down for making that choice to smoke. I sell cigarettes at my workplace. Every single person who buys that pack of cigarettes already knows the dangers of it (how the hell could they not?!). People are flooded with ads about how they are going to die from them 24/7 on TV, any place that sell cigarettes has signs plastered everywhere about the health effects, and the warnings are even written on the damn box. New York State spends over $3,000,000 each year in their anti tobacco crusade. Very clearly people know what they’re getting into when they light that first Marb. However, cigarettes do provide some benefits. They reduce stress, they increase moods, and even increase concentration according to MentalHealth.org. Of course they have downsides, but so does everything in this world from eating too much to drinking too much water. So what I am asking is a call to the SUNY Binghamton faculty and students. Fight for your right to smoke safely, making students walk off campus to smoke is ridiculous especially when it is their personal choice to do it. By law you have the right to smoke, so if you want to unwind after a hard class or a hard shift at work you should be able to go outside to a smoking area to relax, unwind, and just have a cigar.
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ENOUGH JOK(ER)ING AROUND
Enough Jok(er)ing Around By Tommy Gagliano
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h nice, you made a straight! Too bad your opponent has a flush. Oh that river card completed your acehigh flush? It also gave your opponent a full house. Holy crap you just flopped quads! Too bad your opponent has sixhigh and will fold immediately to any bet. Situations like these happen all too often in the world of online poker. If you’ve ever played you know exactly what I’m talking about. However, I’ll assume most of you haven’t played, since online poker is actually illegal in 47 of the 50 states, including New York. Online gambling exists in some form in most states. The most notable form of online gambling that has become popular in recent years are daily fantasy sports (DFS) websites, such as DraftKings and FanDuel. Daily fantasy sites are now legal in 40 of the 50 states. If gambling on which athletes are going to perform well on a given day is acceptable, why is gambling on a game of poker unacceptable? The answer, of course, has nothing to do with morality. The lobbying pressure for daily fantasy sports to be legal was immense, and therefore changes occurred. No one thinks that online poker is any better or worse for society than daily fantasy sports, there just aren’t enough people that care about it to pressure politicians into action. The initial ban on online poker goes back to the dated idea that gambling, and more specifically poker, are
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“I would even go as far as to argue that poker is actually beneficial for society. It is a very complicated game that requires a lot of skill. You need to think deeply about hands. You need to be able to interpret what your opponent is trying to tell you based on his or her actions (bets, checks, raises, etc) as well as his or her verbal and body language.” associated with criminal activity. Historically, there may have been some truth to this. Doyle Brunson, two-time World Series of Poker Main Event champion and author of Super System (also known as the Bible of Poker) used to tell people he worked at a factory in Fort Worth back in 1956, because “pro poker players were looked at like they were gangsters, thieves, and worse.” When asked how many pro poker players in the 50s and 60s actually were “gangsters, thieves, and worse” he responded “90%”. Although the stigma still lingers, a lot has changed since then. Poker has become a lot more mainstream, and many have been able to make a career out of it (without also being a gangster or a thief). According to their website, The World Series of Poker reached 123,865 entries in 2018. Tournaments are broadcast on TV channels such as ESPN. Although the legality of it is still questionable, you don’t need to associate with gangsters and such to get into a poker game anymore. I would even go as far as to argue that poker is actually beneficial for
society. It is a very complicated game that requires a lot of skill. You need to think deeply about hands. You need to be able to interpret what your opponent is trying to tell you based on his or her actions (bets, checks, raises, etc) as well as his or her verbal and body language. You need to understand the mathematics of the game, such as how likely your flush draw is to hit on the turn or river or the odds you are getting if you call a bet. People that learn to play poker develop critical thinking skills that can be applied to other aspects of life. But what if I’m wrong? What if poker is evil and detrimental to those that play it and all it does it suck money out of people’s wallets? What if everyone that plays a single hand instantly gets sucked into an unrelenting addiction? Ok fine, let’s assume that’s all true… so what? Why does it matter? It is still your money, and the outcomes only affect you. So you should be free to make that choice. The government has no right to tell you what you can and can’t do with your money. By the way, we already have something that fits those hyperbolic “what ifs” pretty well, and it’s legal. They’re called cigarettes. If the logical appeal didn’t tickle your fancy, I guess I’ll try the emotional appeal. I just want to play some poker, man. Just let me play! Trying to find 5 to 8 friends to play with is a pain in the ass (*cough* unless you’re in the BU Poker Club *cough*). I just want to be able to play whenever I want, from the comfort of my own home. Sure there are sites where you can play with fake money, but those aren’t nearly as fun. When you don’t actually have anything at risk, there is much less of an incentive to fold. You can read that your opponent is weak, make a really strong play against him, and still get called by bottom pair no kicker and lose. So please, government, let me have some fun. Legalize online poker, so us poker players have more to do in our free time than J-K off.
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CORRECTING WOODROW WILSON
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Correcting Woodrow Wilson By Matthew Rosen
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he United States has had its fair share of mistakes throughout its history. While most of these mistakes are pretty well known, some of the United States policies that I believe were huge mistakes are overlooked. As it turns out, all of these policies were enacted under President Woodrow Wilson. So instead of analyzing a current event, I want to bring attention to these policies that have still not been repealed. 17th Amendment: The Legislature is made up of two chambers: the House and the Senate. When the country was established, the founders made a system where members of the House were elected in small districts and represented the public’s interest. The Senate instead was intended to represent the States’ interest. To ensure this, members of the House would be elected on a simple popular vote within their district while members of the Senate were to be appointed by state legislators. This system was set up to make sure the federal government did not take rights from the public by holding Congressmen accountable to the people. It also made sure the federal government didn’t overtake powers that were reserved to the States. The passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913 completely took away this second aspect. Having a chamber in Congress that represented States’ rights was the whole point! As a direct result of the passage of the 17th Amendment, the federal government was able to overtake powers that are reserved to the states, since they could no longer be held accountable. Basically everything that the federal government currently has a hand in, besides defense, justice, taxes, and foreign affairs, is an overreach of their constitutional boundaries. Things like healthcare, drugs, education, marriage, energy, the environment, and others were never meant to be federally controlled, but rather held in the jurisdiction of state and local governments. Although I agree with some of the policies that the federal government has implemented or promoted, that does not mean that they were pursued constitutionally. This is very dangerous, and in my opinion, the 17th Amendment is a direct attack on the 10th Amendment. Federal Reserve: As for economic policy, the creation of the federal reserve bank is one of the worst ideas that have been pursued. Ever since its creation in 1913, the federal reserve’s job has been to regulate the money supply, which in turn is supposed to steer the economy through inflationary or contractionary policy. The way this is primarily done is by artificially choosing the interest rate, or more specifically the federal funds rate, by increasing or decreasing the money supply. The federal reserve and monetary policy is horrible for the US because it sends false signals to the economy, causing malinvestment, and therefore creating a bubble. For example, suppose the targeted interest rate is lower than the equilibrium interest rate that banks and bor-
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rowers would have naturally decided on in a free interest rate market. What this would do is convince more people to borrow money and invest in projects that there was no economic demand for. This is because if the natural interest rate is 5%, but the federal reserve targets a 2% interest rate, borrowers who see a 3% or 4% rate of return on their investment will choose to invest, even though in a free market they wouldn’t. Then the supply of that product on the market is larger than the demand, creating confidence where there shouldn’t be, and a large bubble in the economy. To explain it more simply, it changes the price of money (the interest rate), to something it normally wouldn’t be. This process is how we get large booms and busts in the economy. The artificially low interest rate inflates the economy to a seeming “boom.” But when the bubble pops, we get a bust. And the worst part of it is that when we have a “bust,” the federal reserve tends to lower interest rates more to counteract it, but that just makes the coming bust even more painful. Another reason the creation of the federal reserve was awful, is because it allowed the US to print large amounts of money, which devalues the dollar, and allowed us to pay for more guns and butter (wars and welfare) than we could actually afford. The creation of the federal reserve also played a role in taking away the gold standard, which the US was on for most of its history. The gold standard allowed the US dollar to be pegged to the value of gold. This was good because gold has held value very well for thousands of years. Holding the value of the dollar is beneficial in limiting inflation, preventing the devaluing of the dollar, eliminate fluctuating exchange rates, etc. Also it makes logical sense to have currency backed by something with value, as opposed to the current dollar bill which is backed by faith and debt alone. There are many other issues with the Woodrow Wilson Presidency. His World War I policies are my main concern. Personally I find fault in even getting involved in a war that we had no need to be in, putting excessive punishments on Germany, trying to create the League of Nations, allowing the Middle East to get carved up, etc. In reality he should have continued to aid the Allies without getting directly involved. The war would have ended up closer to a stalemate and the German economy wouldn’t be ruined. Also, as many who have read my articles before know, I am a non-interventionist, and Woodrow Wilson basically created American interventionism. The League of Nations is a horrible and unconstitutional idea, and carving up the Middle East was just plain ridiculous. However, the reason I didn’t focus my article on these issues is because these are past foreign policies that can’t be undone. In contrast, there is still a chance to repeal the 17th Amendment and abolish the Fed.
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THE LITERAL SOLUTION TO GLOBAL POVERTY
The Literal Solution to Global Poverty By Patrick McAuliffe
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he World Bank reports that in 2015, 736 million people around the world live on less than $1.90 per day. This is about ten percent of the global population, and the lowest number on record in history. Still, that’s almost twice the population of the entire United States and a gargantuan number of extremely poor people. How would you go about getting them out of poverty? The United Nations has its own ideas for a better global tomorrow through its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). They want the world to achieve these goals by 2030. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory on why they are good things to do (vaccinate your children, avoid wasting water, even help children in your community to read), but we’ll focus on the number one goal: no more poverty. The first target listed for Goal 1 on the UN website is “substantial coverage of the poor and vulnerable” through “nationally appropriate social protection systems”. By 2030, they hope that this will cut poverty in half. Any fan of national sovereignty is glad that the UN by definition is more of a suggestion and not a commandment, because any sort of mandate to implement this goal would be wildly unpopular with the governments and people forced to do the actual funding. The second target listed for Goal 1 is arguably more beneficial to the poor in the long run and can help them contribute to the global economy. It is more in the spirit of what inspired me to write about this topic. Target 1.4 (the second one; I know the numbering is weird) hopes for the poor to have “equal access to economic resources”, including “access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property…”. This is, in my analysis, where the root of the poverty cycle grows from, and why lots of socialists will argue for capitalism’s failure in truly helping the most vulnerable around the world. To see why it actually might
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be “not true capitalism”, to use the frequently cited conservative cop-out, we need to turn our attentions to Peru and the ILD. Peru in the late twentieth century was wracked with poverty and turmoil. A communist student group called The Shining Path (because what goes better together than students and communism?) began to commit acts of terror in the country, often using poor, desperate people as their foot soldiers. The Institute for Liberty and Democracy, founded in 1981 by Hernando de Soto, was their main target. (Liberty and democracy were being targeted by communists? Never in a million years!) The ILD was committed to helping poor people realize the source of their frustrations lay not with any oppressive corporation or foreign invader, but with the current economic system they wanted to enter but could not because of their country’s own laws. De Soto and his team tried to open a small shop on the outskirts of Peru to see just how difficult it was for the poor to operate within the system. To register a business took 289 days and costed more than 32 times the minimum wage; to acquire a title to one’s land took six years. Because of barriers to entry like these, the poor are forced to operate extralegally. Many claim that poor countries are poor because of a culture that doesn’t promote entrepreneurship or because of insufficient foreign aid. These claims are empirically incorrect; the poor are incredibly industrious and much of foreign aid puts a relatively small dent in global poverty. The ILD and de Soto argue that the poor cannot improve their condition because they cannot legally register themselves and their property. They have no legal identity and cannot break out of local, pre-modern economies into the mod-
ern global one. Their governments are not fully protecting their property rights. Here is where I trigger the libertarians and communists reading this article: individuals need the state in some capacity. That capacity is to protect their property rights with the legal monopoly on violence. The fault for poor people remaining poor lies not with the capitalist system itself, but with these governments, more interested in bureaucratic mazes and corruption than helping the poor take control of their lives through property. The ILD estimates that the global poor actually own billions of dollars of assets, yet they cannot properly capitalize on them because they are not legally recognized. I encourage you to check out the ILD’s research on this topic. The fact that the poor work quite well within a capitalist system, yet cannot join our broader one because of institutional barriers, is something I had never considered before. It gives me hope that the successes of the capitalist West can be brought to the global poor in full effect, if only their governments would allow it. The top-down recommendations of the UN pale in comparison to how the poor can be helped in the long run. They already help themselves, but they’re locked out of the global market; it’s time for their governments to let them in.
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