I covered the obesity issue when I was at Cato, and my experience is that there’s a strong anti-market, anti-commerce component to the public health movement. And it’s public health activists who are pushing this stuff. Kelly Brownell, Marion Nestle & Co. would definitely be described as well left of center.

Regarding the interns issue: As someone wrote above, Cuban should quit the damn whining. Is he seriously suggesting that he’s so poor that he can’t pay some kid the minimum wage for his “internship”? Maybe the minimum wage laws don’t fit his situation to a “T,” but it seems to me they are likely to protect other employees in other situations from being exploited. That’s assuming, of course, that you think the minimum wage laws are a good idea, which is not a safe assumption here.

Not funny. ENCOURAGING. But I’m not holding my breath.

That was an amazing article! There was more hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth by the police spokespeople over playing a Wii than if they had killed someone!

I have a Wii. If I’m ever raided, I’ll let the SWAT team know I have one and maybe they’ll go easy on me!

If this is actually true, it is the funniest damn thing I have heard in a very long time.

And I agree with the statement above that because it’s a matter of voluntary contract, unpaid interns should be allowed. For the same reason I think minimum wage laws are unjust.

You really do. It’s all the good articles without reading the angry commentary on the Hit-and-Run page.

I need to subscribe to Reason.

“It’s the left that’s turning conservative. Well, not conservative, but pushy.”

YES! Well said, Mr. Saletan.

Actually, it’s not well-said. The statement betrays an ignorance of recent history that can only be described as mind-boggling.

I’ve pointed out for a long time that Communism, as implemented in the real world, is as much a right-wing phenomenon as it is left-wing (looking at it from the POV of the US), it’s just that the left loves the forced equality aspect so much they’re willing to ignore the rest of it.

Communists still outlaw drugs, prostitution, the whole lot of it. You’d find that your normal moralist has as much in common with them as not.

But the bottom line is that both the left and the right want to force their worldview on you using the force of the government.

In fact, the Heller case was brought by a bunch of Cato folk — often referred to (derisively) as cosmotarian.

Far as I know, everyone at Reason is pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment. Hell, we ran a cover story last year on why it should be legal to own a bazooka.

There’s plenty of these out there Helmut. Sometimes they’re called “cosmotarians”. I used to be one, then I changed my mind about guns. Now I’m a full-blown libertarian and moving to Vermont :)

Once again this HTML tyro pleads for a preview function at The Agitator.

Umm no, libertarians should not have a problem with unpaid internships. As a principle, libertarians are fine with free individuals engaging in contracts where all parties are sufficiently informed as to the terms of that contract.

As someone who has done both paid and unpaid internships, I can say that it is a mixture of training and work. In an unpaid internship, I basically paid for my training through my labour. I had no problem with this, and I do not regret it (it actually turned out to be a great investment).

As for the argument that unpaid internships discriminate against the less wealthy, this is true, in the same way that most things discriminate against the less wealthy (would Bill Gates have dropped out of Harvard to found Microsoft had he not had his parental cushion to fall back on?). If the less wealthy unpaid intern values their training above the temporary value of their labour, then they should take out a loan to cover that period, much as many do with their education. If not, then it simply suggests that employers who offer unpaid internships end up with substandard paid employees subsequent, and that there is a business opportunity to deliver a better product than them using paid interns.

Seems to me that libertarians ought to be okay with a ban on unpaid internships, just as they are okay with a ban on indentured servitude. Both involve people willingly working under a given set of conditions, and both are exploitative of the worker.

A stretch worthy of Reed Richards. Lemmee know when an unpaid intern (who thinks the experience gained has value at least equal to his efforts) is forcibly prevented from saying “This place blows! I QUIT!”