Updates on July/August Commentaries

The stories in this section provide follow-up information on two Navigator commentaries.

In the July-August Navigator, Patrick Stephens wrote about the possibility that dissenters in authoritarian countries might successfully use the Internet to undermine the repression of their governments. He argued that the gain from new communication tools was likely to be small compared to the potential gains from new values.

The Wall Street Journal of July 9, 2001, reported that international communications companies were not broadcasting news reports that they expected would be displeasing to their host countries. For example, in June, the "world news" section of the U.S. Web site of Yahoo carried a news report that Chinese doctors were harvesting the organs of prisoners who had been executed, including some prisoners not yet dead. But the Chinese-language Web page prepared in Beijing by a Chinese unit of Yahoo contained no menion of the allegations. Even Chinese residents who speak English might not have been able to get the report from Yahoo's U.S. site. The Chinese government sometimes prevents its residents from visiting American Web sites by blocking access to them at the centralized "routers" that control Internet traffic in and out of China. Indeed, some sites are blocked all the time, such as those that deal with the Falun Gong.

Also in the July-August issue: Donald Cooper wrote about the California energy criss. Now, the Cato Institute has issued a report on the subject, written by Jerry Taylor (Cato's director of natural resource studies) and Peter VanDoren (editor of Cato's Regulation magazine). Interestingly, unlike many libertarians, Taylor and VanDoren argue that the fundamental cause of the price spike in power costs in California was not state policy. Instead, according to Cato's news release, "the cause stems from a 'perfect storm' of high regional natural gas prices, a large drop in hydroelectric power from dry weather conditions, and a demand shock due to the unseasonably warm summer of 2000. These factors were then exacerbated by air pollution regulations and retail price controls." Read the report at Cato.org

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