A few weeks ago, i was looking through old issues of The Spectator and I found a piece by Mark Steyn from a little over a year ago. He was talking mainly about his dislike of the UN, and the silliness of Libya being at the time the newly elected chair of the UN Human Rights Commission and Iraq being about to become president of the UN Conference on Disarmament. (Looking back, I think Iraq and Libya have both learned quite a bit about disarmanent and human rights since then. But I digress).
However, Steyn went on to say that some international organisations were okay.
I’m all in favour of the Universal Postal Union and the Berne Copyright Convention (America was a bit late signing that one), but they work precisely because Sy Kottik and his chums weren’t involved.
I’m not so sure, actually. Certain aspects of the Berne Copyright Convention are somewhat controversial, and I would argue that parts of it are more about certain countries attempting to implement protectionist policies more than anything else. No doubt we could now have one of those long heated arguments in the comments section as we often do when intellectual property issues are brought up. But let’s not. It’s Christmas.
For it was the other one of those international organisations, the Universal Postal Union, that made me think about Steyn’s article when I was posting Christmas presents too my family in Australia a couple of weeks back. You see, there are three postage rates for air mail. The most expensive is the “standard letter rate”, which can be used to send anything, other than items considered actually dangerous to send through the mail. The first of the other rates is “printed matter”, which is defined as
advertisements, books, calendars, catalogues, diaries, directories, greetings cards, illustrations, magazines, maps, musical scores, newspapers, order/subscription forms, leaflets and pamphlets, plans, postcards, price lists, printed drawings and notices, proofs, prospectuses and timetables, but not letters, including personal messages or greetings (other than five words allowed on greetings cards), handwritten receipts, photographic negatives, slides or film, postage stamps or blank stationery
Got that? The other is the “small packet” rate which is defined as
goods, gifts and trade samples, audio/video tapes, magnetic tapes, and photographs. You can include a letter, invoice or other document, if it relates to the contents of the item
These definitions are defined by the treaties that created the Universal Postal Union, and it is impossible for any one country to change them. This is what happens when you put representatives of lots of governments together to negotiate anything. They come up with stupid, overly bureaucratic definitions and rules. But somehow the idea that it is their business what I choose to put in the mail is taken as a given.
They probably had some reason for setting rules like this, at least theoretically. Were books and newspapers considered morally virtuous and letters and photographic negatives not (huh?), or was is considered desirable for people to write their letters on thin paper but it was not considered desirable for people to send light gifts rather than heavy gifts?. In any event, letting people who send things from one almost arbitrary list of things subsidise people who send things from a different list seems somewhat peculiar to me.
But I suppose the international postal system does work on the whole. And even if it does produce silly outcomes like this, multilateralism is generally better than bilateralism
And things are changing. I cannot remember the last time I sent a personal letter to anyone. Business letters occasionally, and occasionally Christmas cards, but otherwise I use the mail service entirely for sending packages. Perhaps the letter rate will fade into non-existence and the costs of sending packages will revert to something resembling the actual costs of sending them because there is no other mail. I suppose we can hope.
But I still have this peculiar vision of somebody working for the post office whose job is to open people’s packages to check that they haven’t written any more than five words on their greeting cards. Clearly this is important. Civilization would obviously collapse if it was not done.
Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone.
That ‘five words’ is certainly silly but the ‘small packet’ rate seems to include some things that it would not be wise to send through x-ray machines and/or otherwise treat roughly. It probably did have some original logic.
What about Interpol? Can’t say that I know much about them- I don’t think most Americans do. The name pops up in the news here and there but there’s never anything in the way of mission or organizational detail.
My understanding is that Interpol performs the same duties as the US Marshals Service. They’re made up of agents from most of Europe (and the US and perhaps other countries as well) and their job is to hunt down international fugitives. I don’t think they have anything to do with enforcing international law. I hope not, anyway.
Law enforcement in the US, by and large, does a pretty good job. However, the FBI, DEA and various state and local agencies have been known to get a bit…….overzealous every once and a while. Does Interpol put on the jackboot from time to time? Would they perhaps qualify as a good int’l organization?
What about FIFA ?
What about the European Patent Office?
Not beholden to any government and totally paid for by end-user fees, so that should fit right into the libertarian framework.
Now, I know some of you have a problem with intellectual property, but some countries tried without patent law for a while (late 19th century, The Netherlands for example, IIRC) and found that nobody wanted to invest there as a result – it stifled competition & research and development.
Anything negative about the World Wildlife Fund? Does it impose politically correct views on pandas or chivvy elephants into giving up fattening foods? I don’t know, so am open to being corrected, but, unlike Greenpeace, which started out saving whales and then subverted donations to pursue vendettas against nuclear power, the WWF seems to have stuck to its last. I could be wrong. They seem to be OK, though; and only supported by willingly given donations …
Since it seems that we’re not just talking about international organizations created and sponsored by governments, I must mention the Universal Esperanto Association as a “good” international organization. It may be a bit idealistic, but it’s promoting an idea which would be of tremendous service to humanity if it ever gets implemented.
Adam:
The idea of a universal linking language is certainly a good idea for intergovernmental bodies like the EU or the UN for getting rid of all the translators.
But when I learned Esperanto I discovered that most of the other speakers were politically of a tranzi bent.
It’s true that an unfortunately large (or maybe just vocal) portion of Esperantists seems to be leftist/tranzi, but that hardly means that all are, nor does it inherently reflect on the underlying idea. I’ve come across a number of libertarian/anti-leftist Esperantists, and anti-idiotarian Esperantists certainly do exist.
Also, while there can be no doubt that a language such as Esperanto would be a great help for multilingual organizations such as the UN and EU (two organizations which are not particularly well liked on this blog), I think that a greater benefit would be in facilitating more informal communication among people. Take blogs for instance; you might read many blogs from many different countries, but you are still probably limited to English-language ones, or at most to ones in a small handful of languages. There might be a great Italian, or Kenyan blogger out there, who just doesn’t speak enough English to blog in English. Likewise, even if you can find a few foreign bloggers who do blog in English, that is necessarily a small and self-selected group. The same logic applies to any number of other formal and informal ways of sharing information.
Sorry, guys, I think Esperanto is a crock for many of the same reasons that the UN is:
1. It’s based on fallacious assumptions (in the case of Esparanto, that troubles are [mostly] caused because we can’t understand each other, as opposed to the realist view that sometimes we understand each other well enough but just want different outcomes) and
2. Its existence means that other more realistic, pragmatist solutions don’t even get considered. (More so here in the case of the UN than Esperanto–actually, now that I think of it that way, if the UN ends up as fringe as Esperanto, that would be a fine thing!)
Kirk,
1. Many Esperantists think that widespread adoption of Esperanto would be conducive to resolving conflicts; however almost none think that Esperanto is sufficient all by itself for that. Zamenhof himself (Esperanto’s initiator) denied that Esperanto is sufficient for such purpose, IIRC. I’m personally quite skeptical of such claims, and you’ll notice that my argument for the benefits of Esperanto is based on network effect that a common language would provide, rather than some mystical problem-solving power that Esperanto provides.
2. You certainly won’t find me supporting the UN, so I’m going to have to concentrate on how your argument applies to Esperanto. I suppose that a “more realistic, pragmatist solution[]” to the language problem would be to use English. That certainly has a lot to say for it, and it’s certainly more pragmatic, but it also has major disadvantages. I suppose it’s hard for a native English speaker to realize just how hard it is to learn English (or any other national language) to fluency, so that problem with English probably tends to be downplayed. Esperanto has a completely regular grammar (verb and noun conjugations, etc.) and a relatively small word base (it normally creates new words and nuances by compounding rather than by using wholly new words as French and English typically do), thus it is much easier and faster to learn than any national language. In fact, there have been studies which suggest that it’s faster to learn Esperanto as one’s first foreign language and then learn a national language than to spend the whole time learning the national language. Even if someone spends the effort to learn English for the purpose of international communication, a non-native English speaker is still often inferior in his ability to a native speaker, which can cause subtle disincentives to participate in English-language communications, whereas Esperanto speakers generally do not have advantages from birth over other Esperanto speakers (even native Esperanto speakers are not easily distinguishable from skilled non-native speakers).
Of course, there are many more English speakers than Esperanto speakers, both native and non-native, there are many more English teachers, textbooks, translators, etc. Clearly Esperanto is not a short-term solution to most language problems, and clearly it is presently much more idealistic than pragmatic. Sometimes idealistic ideas are still worthwhile, even if they can’t realistically be implemented immediately. (Could anyone call Samizdata’s political program pragmatic?) Such ideas may still deserve one’s support, at the very least in the abstract as a long-term goal.