RIGHTS AND INITIATIVES

Why is it that, come November, most people will either vote to
violate rights of contract and uphold rights over one's body, or vice
versa? The Nov. 7 ballot will feature three important measures.
Referendum I would create domestic partnerships. It makes sense to
assure legal standing for gay couples. Amendment 42 would raise the
minimum wage and adjust it annually for inflation, and Amendment 44
would legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for adults
age 21 or over.

My guess is that Boulder will vote in favor of the marijuana
initiative, but it will fail statewide. I also suspect that Boulder
will vote for the minimum wage law, but I hope that the rest of the
state will come to its senses and reject this rights-violating,
economically destructive proposal.

The argument in favor of Amendment 44 is fairly straightforward.
People have a right to control their own bodies. Many people use
marijuana for medical purposes, and the current registration system
is onerous and unnecessary. Many adults also use marijuana
recreationally without hurting others. Indeed, most users, including
professionals from all walks of life, use marijuana at least as
responsibly as others use the drug alcohol.

The fact that Pete Coors was arrested for drunk driving, for
instance, is no argument for the renewed prohibition of alcohol. It
is instead an argument for getting drivers under the influence of any
substance-or who are simply reckless-off the streets. That some
commit crimes against people while under the influence of marijuana
implies only that police should spend their time going after
criminals, as with alcohol.

That marijuana use has mildly bad consequences for most users is no
argument for the drug's prohibition. Living in a free society means
we get to live our own lives, even if some people don't do that very
well sometimes. The fact that some people have irresponsible sex or
eat too much is no argument for state control of sex and food.

Then, as economist Jeffrey Miron points out, the drug war causes a
dramatic increase in violent crime by driving drug sales to the black
market. Amendment 44 is a step toward reducing such crime.

It is also a step toward reducing police abuses. The Cato Institute
recently published Radley Balko's Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary
Police Raids in America. The executive summary reviews, "The most
common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants...
These increasingly frequent raids... are needlessly subjecting
nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians
to the terror of having their homes invaded... These raids bring
unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders,
many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize
innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they
have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of
drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders,
and innocent suspects."

Just as people have the right to control their own bodies, so they
have the right to interact peaceably free from state coercion. They
have the right to contract. That is fundamentally why any minimum
wage law is wrong: It violates the individual rights of both
employers and workers.

The basic economic case against minimum-wage laws is that they price
some of the least-experienced workers out of a job by requiring
employers to pay more than those workers can produce. Thus,
minimum-wage laws, allegedly passed to help the poor, in practice
result in throwing some of the poorest workers out of a job, thereby
preventing them from gaining the experience necessary to become more
productive and demand a higher wage.

As Thomas Sowell summarizes, "The minimum-wage law is very cleverly
misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero-and that is what many
inexperienced and low-skilled people receive as a result of
legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently
worth to an employer."

Generally those who earn minimum wage soon earn the experience
necessary to earn more. And, by the way, "the vast majority of
minimum-wage earners contribute second and third incomes to a
household," notes Whitney Blake for The Weekly Standard.

Of course, the left is perfectly able to dredge up a few politically
motivated economists who claim that minimum-wage laws don't hurt the
poor. Similarly, some economists have claimed that full-blown
socialism is a good idea, and some biologists have claimed that
evolution is false. The difference is that wage controls are now
politically correct. Support for minimum-wage laws derives from two
main fallacies. The first fallacy is that equality of income is a
desirable goal. Advocates of this view typically see wealth as a
"fixed pie" that must be redistributed, rather than as something that
is produced and that grows over time to the extent that people's
economic rights are protected. The second fallacy is that employers
can somehow get away with paying wages approaching subsistence. The
reality is that, as improved capital and technology increase
productivity, workers progressively bid up real wages.

If you vote for the minimum-wage law, you are voting to hurt some
among the poor and violate their rights to compete for a job. Vote
"no" on Amendment 42.