... in response to A Question, posted by Keith Smith on Oct 27, 2003There is nothing quite like posting two responses to the same question before anyone else does...and I haven't even had any coffee yet...
IMHO, the Patiot Act, part of the 'war on terror'...is this decades answer to "the war on drugs", "the war on poverty" and generations gone by "war on literacy", prohibition, etc. They are reasons for the gov't to spend money and for another bureaucracy to be built and erode civil liberties.
I do not take the conspiracy angle...I do not think the gov't is 'out to get us'...but I do think governments at all times, all through history, have been good at only one thing, erecting bureaucracies that accomplish nil, or at least not what was intended. An excellent example is the war on drugs; taking inflation into account, illicit drugs are far cheaper, better quality, arguably more available than 20 years ago. That is the true measure of a market...anyone who tries to talk about 'how much cocaine was interdicted on a boat', or 'how many addicts responded to our survey saying they are using less' is putting on a smoke and mirror show. The illicit drug market is healthier than ever, ergo; the war on drugs was an unmitigated failure.
On the other side, due to the war on drugs, we have larger than ever policing agencies at all levels of gov't, who are better armed and have more legal options before them. The end result has been that other more convienient targets suffer, but the drugs certainly never stopped.
This will be no different; again IMHO potentially far worse. Now a computer sets off a flag when you open a foreign account, even buy an internatonal ticket, and they are doing fuzzy logic analysis of travel patterns...so I trot down to SA to have fun or meet someone, and John Poindexters computer goes into purple alert mode because Locii is clearly bonking a FARC agent, and he can no longer be trusted.
I make a joke but I think the long term effects of the Patriot Act and its kin are quite bad...and will have serious economic implications down the road.
Caio
PS: Here is anintro to the Patriot Act, probably critical by the title but I haven't read it yet: http://slate.msn.com/id/2087984/
