Paul Krugman Has Learned Some Undergraduate Economics, but Only Halfway

Regarding Paul Krugman's Markets Can Be Very, Very Wrong:

Krugman, discussing air pollution caused by coal-burning power plants, says,

It does not necessarily say that we should end the use of coal-generated electricity. What it says, instead, is that consumers are paying much too low a price for coal-generated electricity, because the price they pay does not take account of the very large external costs associated with generation. If consumers did have to pay the full cost, they would use much less electricity from coal.

To this, I say:

Wow, Krugman has discovered the tragedy of the commons[1]! I'm glad he's finally learned some undergraduate economics.

So far, everything Krugman has said is perfectly true, if rather banal. But then, he goes to make a crucial error, which will occupy the rest of this essay:

At one level, this is all textbook economics. Externalities like pollution are one of the classic forms of market failure, and Econ 101 says that this failure should be remedied through pollution taxes or tradable emissions permits that get the price right.

...

So if you really believed in the logic of free markets, you’d be all in favor of pollution taxes, right? Hahahahaha. Today’s American right doesn’t believe in externalities, or correcting market failures; it believes that there are no market failures, that capitalism unregulated is always right. Faced with evidence that market prices are in fact wrong, they simply attack the science.

The truth is, no one denies that externalities (i.e. the "tragedies" of the commons, i.e. the "public goods" which lack private ownership and personal incentives) exist. No free-market economist says that externalities are nonexistent, and that the tragedy of the commons is a fiction. Krugman creates a straw-man, by discussing a position that no one believes in.

The issue is this: Krugman says the externalities should be solved by taxes and regulations. The problem is, who will impose these taxes, and how will the tax-rate be set? It's very easy to say, oh the government should tax air-pollution so that the nominal price of coal rises to include the true cost of the externality-pollution that coal imposes. That's right nice, but it fails to answer the question of who will impose those taxes, and what the rate will.

First, as for who: Public Choice school economist James Buchanan notes that far too many political philosophers will specify what the government ought to do, but fail to ask, what will make the government do this? Great, so the government ought to impose taxes to make the cost of coal include its externality, i.e. to make the market price of coal-supplied power pay not only for the cost of the coal itself (which is not an externality, because everyone pays personally, on his own electric bill, for his own personal usage, meaning that incentives and prices will be internalized, not externalized), but also for the cost of the pollution (an externality / public good / tragedy of the commons). Okay, very nice. So go make the politicians do this, and maybe 500 years from now, you'll succeed in convincing them. In the meantime, the politicians will use energy-taxes as a means of enriching their friends and despoiling their enemies. We will get graft and corruption and cronyism. Great, so we've replaced tragedy-of-the-commons with theft. Thank you, Dr. Krugman!

In fact, it is more ironic and pathetic than that: Krugman has merely replaced one commons (with its attendant tragedies/externalities) with another! The air we breath is one commons, that is clear. But government is also a commons. The whole problem with government is that politicians can act with others' money, creating a moral hazard (lack of personal incentives for responsibility) in which they will not use the money carefully or responsibly, because it is not their own. In other words, in the eyes of the politicians, the government's money is a commons.

Meanwhile, the politicians themselves are a commons from the perspective of the voters: the entire government affects every citizen whether he wants it to or not, but he does not own the government, and he is bound not only by his own electoral decisions, but also those of his neighbors. Just as the air I breath is polluted not only by myself but also by others (and so one has either the ability or the proclivity to fix the problem, because someone else will go off and ruin all your hard work), so too government. This tragedy of the commons reduces incentives (moral hazard): why should I do my best to keep air clean, with onerous labor, when someone else will sully it anyway? So we get a race to the bottom, or, in game theory, a prisoner's dilemma and the voter's paradox.[2]

So again, we have two commons: the money is a commons to the politicians, and the politicians are a commons to the people. So in trying to solve one commons (polluted air), you created two in its place!

Krugman has learned about externalities and the tragedy of the commons, and he is so giddy to apply his new knowledge, and advocate government intervention, that he has failed to heed Frederic Bastiat's lesson, in "That Which is Seen, and that Which is Not Seen", that "Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference - the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee." Government can eliminate the commons that is the air we breath: that is seen. But exactly such a government intervention, introduces new commons just as morally hazardous as the one just eliminated: that is what is unseen. Krugman would do well to learn Bastiat.

Secondly, as for the tax-rate: how, just how, will you set the rate for the tax on air pollution? How do you price clean air? In a free-market, economic calculation is possible, because consumers demonstrate their subjective values by paying prices. A consumer will pay only that price which does not exceed his own personal subjective value for that commodity. Thus, for example, if a consumer wants clean air in his own home, he will spend money on an air filtration system, but only if the cost of the system is less than his desire for clean air. But in an un-free market, this is impossible. The government has no way of knowing how much consumers value clean air, so it has no way of knowing how to set the rate for the tax on pollution. Is the pollution of a given coal-burning power plant worth $1 million to the consumer? $1 trillion? Only a penny? The government has no way of knowing. Thus, in a socialistic system, the entire economy shuts down, as all prices, as set by the government, become entirely arbitrary, as Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises shows in his book, Socialism, which predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union decades before it occurred (originally published in German in 1922, in English in 1936), while everyone else was proclaiming socialism as the wave of the future.[3] By contrast, Krugman has not yet learned about the marginal revolution of Austrian School economist Carl Menger (as well as others simultaneously, namely William Stanley Jevons and Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras), which showed that all value is subjective, and that it is therefore impossible for the government to calculate economic value. According to the marginal theory of value, all government intervention into the economy is fruitless and destructive. The marginal theory of value is a subject of undergraduate economics, but apparently, Krugman has not yet reached that part of the curriculum.

In short: Krugman has learned well about market failure, but he has not yet reached the part of the curriculum where one learns that every attempt to solve market failure, merely introduces a government failure every bit as - if not more - disastrous as the market failure it attempted to solve. It is like trying to eradicate one invasive species with another. Krugman errs in stating that his opponents deny the reality of externalities and market failures. No, that would be like saying they deny the existence of foreign, invasive species. It is only that unlike Krugman, they realize that government failure, introducing a second invasive species to eliminate the first, is hardly a suitable solution to an admittedly very real problem.

But okay, I have pointed out Krugman's flaws, and showed that his solution is none at all. But do I have an alternative? Well, notice: the tragedy of the commons is solved by eliminating commons, by privatizing them. What worked for the farmland of England, works for everything else. The solution is more private property rights and more privatization. If commons are exploited, and externalities result, due to moral hazard, then privatization, by incentivizing responsibility and long-term planning, solves the tragedy of the commons. I confess, I do not know how to privatize air, but the point is, privatization is the only solution. It may not work in every case, but there is no alternative.

[1] The tragedy of the commons, is the observation that publicly-owned grazing land is overgrazed, because no one farmer has an interest in preserving the value of the land. He realizes that even if he takes care to preserve the land and avoid overgrazing, his fellows will not do so. Likewise, if one coal-burning plant stops polluting, the rest will keep on polluting. However, the tragedy of the commons observed, as soon as grazing land was fenced, i.e. de-commonized and instead privatized, the tragedy ceased. When someone has his own private property, for which he alone is responsible, and of which he alone eats the fruits, he guards it more carefully. If everyone had his own private air supply, no one would pollute the air. (return)

[2] In the prisoner's dilemma, two prisoners cannot communicate, and both are offered the choice of either being silent or ratting out the other. If both are silent, both do relatively well, say +5. If one is silent and the other rats him out, then the silent one loses immensely, say -10, and the ratter-out gains immensely, say +10. If both rat each other out, both lose a little bit, say -5. Now, logically, they both ought to be silent, and each get +5, right? The problem is, they cannot communicate! Each one, fearing the other will rat, himself rats, so they both get -5. After all, if you don't rat, he will. So the problem is essentially the same as the tragedy of the commons. But just as the tragedy of the commons is solved by privatizing land, so that it is not common anymore, so too, the prisoner's dilemma is solved by restoring communication between the two prisoners, so that they can cooperate. As for the voter's paradox, that states that voters will not have an incentive to vote wisely, because for all the effort it takes to learn the issues at stake, you get only one paltry vote. Should you spend 10 hours every day, for years on end, learning politics, just so you can contribute one vote? Of course not. You will instead have "rational ignorance". But if your vote were to affect you and only you, meaning your vote would be one vote out of one vote, instead of one vote out of millions, then you would indeed take the time to learn. Again, it is a tragedy of the commons. (return)

[3] Mises's friend, Historical School economic Max Weber, also conceived of his same problem of economic calculation, and likewise doubted socialism for the same reason as Mises. Weber was an odd fellow: his own Historical School was pro-government and pro-bureaucracy, the opposite of Mises's own Austrian School, but Weber himself was a methodological individualist, recognizing - as the Austrian theory of praxeology, "human action" does too - that as an objective fact, all of society comes down to individuals. Weber was anti-liberty, but he still knew that economic science comes down to individuals, not collectives and aggregates. (return)

Just what is the Jewish claim to the land of Israel?

Obviously, one can make a religious claim to the land of Israel. On the first verse of the Torah, Rashi asks why the Torah begins with "In the beginning, God created" (Genesis 1:1), rather than, "This month shall be to you" (Exodus 12:2), the first commandment (mitzvah) in the Torah. After all, wouldn't it make sense for the Torah to begin with the commandments? Rashi answers, so that when the nations of the world dispute our claim to Israel, we can say, God created the earth, and can apportion it however He wants. The sense of the passage of Rashi, however, is not that we shall tell the world this, but that we shall tell ourselves this. That is, the point is not to convince the world of our rectitude, but only to convince ourselves. We take Genesis 1:1 seriously, and if they do not, that is their problem, not ours. So what argument do we make to the world?

Today, a friend of mine claimed that Jews are a genetic people, and I replied,

We're an ethnic group, but a cultural one, not a genetic one. Saadia Gaon says we are a people due to the Torah. Thus, Jewish peoplehood is about Sinai. Of course, there are citizenship requirements, and so you can be a Jew without believing in the Torah, and you can believe in the Torah without being a Jew. But putting the technical citizenship requirements aside, being Jewish is about following the Torah.

Now, Jews will happen to have a genetic commonality, but that's not what makes us Jewish. Jews marry other Jews, so you'll form a self-contained genetic pool, but that's not what makes person Jewish.

Studies show that Jews from around the world (Europe and the Middle East alike) have more in common with each other than with their neighboring gentiles, but

it's coincidence. We merely happen to have common ancestors, but that is not what makes a person Jewish.

Imagine a Jewish man marries a gentile woman. They have a daughter. She marries a Jewish man. They have a daughter. She marries a Jewish man. And so forth, ad infinitum. In the end, you have a gentile with 99.99% Jewish blood.

Conversely, imagine a gentile man marries a Jewish woman. They have a daughter. She marries a gentile man. They have a daughter. She marries a gentile man. And so forth, ad infinitum. In the end, you have a Jew with 99.99% gentile blood.

My friend said to me,

dont you feel like our not being an ethnic group semi-legitimizes arab claims? like if israel isnt the birthplace of our ethnic group, what do we have? i feel iffy about using religious claims

I responded,

We are still a people. Just because you're not a genetic relative, does not invalidate your being a cultural relative. We are a peoplehood. It's just that the criteria are different.

Why should ownership of land be genetic? Why not cultural? See http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1726 [ = "The Gene Wars" by Diana Muir Appelbaum and Paul S. Appelbaum, AzureWinter 5767 / 2007, no. 27]. The authors argue that even if the Palestinians do have a genetic relationship to the original inhabitants of Israel (which is a very doubtful claim, they show, but they temporarily accept it, for the sake of argument), that even so, Israel belongs to those who believe in the Biblical religion of Israel. That is, blood or no blood, it is Jews, not Palestinians, who have a cultural relationship to the land of Israel. In other words, who says everything comes down to genetics? Maybe it depends on culture.

Or, if you want to take a libertarian property-rights tack, then the land of Israel belongs to anyone who has a deed of ownership. Well, the Jews who were expelled by the Romans, they never renounced their ownership. Palestinians are squatters. Now, we cannot always determine which contemporary Jew is a lineal descendant of which Roman-era Jew (meaning he has inherited the deed of ownership), but the least we can do is say that the whole Jewish people have inherited those deeds of ownership, whether by blood-descent or by culture. Every convert who converts to Judaism, is regarded by the Jewish people as a valid member, and so the blood-Jews let him join in their property claims.

She asked, but doesn't genetics show precisely who is a lineal descendant, who has inherited the property? I said,

Okay, perhaps, yes. The problem is, most of the people who make the genetic argument, are not libertarians, and they do not believe in staunch, absolute personal-property rights. So they don't really have the credentials to argue that the Palestinians deserve the land by virtue of being the lineal descendants and inheritors of the deeds of ownership. If you generally do not believe in absolute personal property, you cannot suddenly invoke personal property claims when it is convenient.

For these people, who do not believe in personal property, cultural is as good a criteria as genetics. They have no basis to prefer genetics, because genetics presumes a libertarian take on personal property. Karl Marx, for example, advocated the abolition of inheritance. So anyone with socialist or social-democrat leanings, cannot use the genetic argument, because they already believe in the abolition of inheritance.

Only the libertarian who believes in personal property, can make the genetic argument. For everyone else, the cultural argument is as valid as the genetic one.

I neglected to say to my friend, that another crucial claim by Appelbaum and Appelbaum, is their precise justification for why culture should trump genetics: their claim is that property ownership (or rather, they speak of "national identify") is a cultural identification. If a group of Poles voluntarily moved to Germany, and married other Polish immigrants to Germany, would anyone claim these Poles deserve to be given Poland? Of course not. Or, in their words,

For example, no one would argue that the descendants of the several hundred thousand Poles who migrated to the Ruhr Valley at the end of the nineteenth century are anything but German, even those among them who have married only the descendants of other Polish immigrants. Nationality is a matter of culture, not genetics.

Sure, they have Polish blood, but they no longer identify as Poles, but rather, as Germans. To maintain a national (or property-ownership) claim, requires not just blood, but also the explicit identification and articulation of yourself as the legitimate heir. The problem with the Palestinians would be that, even if they have Biblical Jewish blood, they nevertheless came out of nowhere, and suddenly, in 1967, began making a claim they had never made before. For 2000 years, while in exile, Jews would constantly speak of a return to Zion, several times daily in the daily prayer liturgy. Where were the comparable Palestinian claims? How is it possible that someone in 1967 suddenly makes a claim to a land lost in 70, and claims that blood alone compensates for the cultural identification as heir which he neglected to previously make? The problem is that being someone's heir requires some sort of maintenance of that inheritance right. Jews have been claiming for 2000 years to be the exiled descendants of the Biblical Jews; the Palestinians have not.

I added,

Also ... if anyone says the Palestinians own Israel, tell them that apparently, it's because Mohammed's army conquered Israel. If so, then Israel's conquests are valid too! That is, if the Palestinians own Israel, one must either claim that (a) they are the descendants of the Biblical Jews or the Canaanites (a preposterous claim with no genetic or historical evidence), or (b) that conquest makes ownership. If (b) is true, then Israel's conquests are just as valid.

And, if one claims that property is owned by its original owner, then fine, it's the Canaanites, but please, find me a Canaanite, and I'll gladly hand over all of Israel to him. In the meantime, the second owner is the Jews. Whether Israel goes to the original owner or to its latest conqueror, either way, it's the Jews.

Haaretz: "Court to rule on legality of Israeli ultra-Orthodox 'Taliban sect'"

Yes, you read that right: Haaretz, "Court to rule on legality of Israeli ultra-Orthodox 'Taliban sect'" (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/court-to-rule-on-legality-of-israeli-ultra-orthodox-taliban-sect-1.388187)

But it gets better:

"In a precedent-setting move, an Israeli court is expected to decide next week whether it is legal to belong to the extreme ultra-Orthodox group Lev Tahor, known as 'the Taliban sect.' ... The Jerusalem court's ruling will have implications for all members of the Taliban sect in Israel. Should the court find that it is illegal to belong to the community, social welfare agencies will be able to take immediate steps to remove children from the control of parents who are affiliated with Lev Tahor."

We read further,

"The two [daughters] were forcibly returned to Israel on Sunday under an order issued by the court."

Oh, great, the Israeli government is abducting young girls now. As if the government weren't totalitarian enough.

"Bringing the Beit Shemesh sisters back to Israel was an international operation, involving the foreign ministry and Interpol. The goal of the operation was to stop the pair from entering the ultra-Orthodox community in Canada."

So now, the Israeli government will not only try to stop you from leaving the country, but they will even send agents after you to return you to Israel! Not for committing any crimes (as no trial has been held yet, nor have the parents even been accused of any crimes themselves other than belonging to a certain sect that has not yet been outlawed), but just because the government doesn't want you to leave.

Yes, that's right: not only can the government declare a sect illegal, without giving individual due process to the members, but it can confiscate your children as well. So now the government decides not only which sects get money, but which sects are allowed to exist???!!! The article claims that parents in this sect abuse their children, but if so, put the parents on trial! But to outlaw a religious sect per se, without giving due process to the individual members, is simply totalitarian. That is what terrifies me: that the government can define an entire sect - irrespective of its individual members' conduct - as illegal, without due process. You might be doing nothing criminal, but all you have to do is be defined as a sect that is illegal - without trial! - and the Israeli government will abduct you from across the world.

So granted the girls might have Stockholm's Syndrome and need protection. I do not deny that. Perhaps the girls really do need protection from their parents. But the idea of accusing and trying and convicting a sect, and never giving the individual people a trial, terrifies me. Imagine if the government decided that certain Orthodox Jews are a danger, and so held a trial for "Orthodox Judaism", in the abstract, and convicted every Orthodox Jew at once. Or, for example, I am an anarcho-capitalist, which basically makes me a conservative anarchist, who wants to privatize and deregulate everything - including the police and military - but in a very stable, conservative, tentative fashion, not through vigilante force, but through persuasion and legislation. By contrast, there are anarcho-socialists, anarchists who believe (or, at least, traditionally believed, in the late-19th-century) in "propaganda through the deed", in committing terrorist acts of violence, and in dispossessing the capitalists of their property and redistributing it the poor. (Today's anarcho-socialists often disavow "propaganda of the deed", i.e. terrorism, but they still believe in socialistic confiscation of wealth.) Obviously, both have little in common, but both are "anarchists". What if the government held a trial for "anarchism" in the abstract, and convicted every living anarchist - of every stripe and persuasion? That is the danger I fear: of trying the whole sect and dragging innocent parents into a net they do not deserve to be in. I say, the individuals must be accorded due process.

Also, there is something else fishy in the article:

Rituals of the Lev Tahor community reportedly involve ... sending 14-year-old girls to the wedding canopy.

Now wait, what is the problem with that? Even if the government holds that such marriages are not binding, what crime has anyone committed? It doesn't sound like the parents are compelling the girls to marry; the article said "sending", which implies the girls are going willingly. That is, the parents are "sending" the daughters to be married, but it is the daughters themselves who consent to the marriages. Even if one holds that such marriages are invalid, it doesn't sound like the parents have done anything criminal. If the parents of a 14 year old send their child to the store to buy alcohol, then obviously, the liquor store will refuse to sell to them, but merely sending your child on this errand to buy alcohol under-age is not illegal. (At least, as far as I know.) In fact, while halakhah does permit a man to marry off his underage daughter, "underage" means prepubescent. (The Talmud says that for a father to do this, while permissible, is nevertheless evil.) After that age, when a girl has reached puberty, it is literally impossible in halakhah for a marriage to be conducted without the woman's consent; for the marriage to be religiously valid, she must express her explicit consent to marry. So if the Lev Tahor sect really believes in halakhah, then they ipso facto must be letting their daughters consent. Thus, apparently, while the parents are sending their daughters off on the errand to be married, it is the daughters themselves who are ultimately responsible for their own (underage) marriages. One might say that the daughters are not old enough to consent to this marriage, and that the marriage is therefore null-and-void (from the state's perspective) but that doesn't mean the parents compelled them, the same way that sending a 14 year old on an errand to buy alcohol will be fruitless, but not illegal.

But maybe you say that Lev Tahor pressures their daughters in some way? I admit this is quite likely. And the article says,

[T]hey [viz. the daughters] would be compelled to wed male members of the cult.

But somehow, I doubt they put guns to their daughters' heads and force them. I suspect that Haaretz is confusing strong cultural and societal and familial censure and pressure, with actual coercion. Suppose my mother told me that if I marry a gentile, she'll disown me. Is she forcing me to marry a Jew? No. She is merely exerting strong moral pressure. But there is no gun to my head. I suspect that Haaretz is failing to make this distinction, and so I suspect that the whole (implied) accusation - that the parents force their daughters to marry against their wills - is false. I suspect that while the parents send their daughters on the errand to be married, and maybe even exert very strong familial pressure, that the parents nevertheless do not use force to compel their daughters.

Plus, I simply don't trust the government's claim that it is protecting the girls from abuse (which I admit is a legitimate function of government). Why should I believe they have good intentions in this? The government claims the goal is to protect the girls, but I suspect the goal is to corral us all into a country-sized concentration camp. Why I am so suspicious that this is all a pretext to tighten Israel's borders against emigration? Let us look back at the article:

A decision reached this week by a family court in Rishon Letzion indicates that a ruling on Lev Tahor's legality is imminent. The decision follows what appears to be the conclusion of an international family drama involving two sisters from Beit Shemesh who belong to the Taliban sect. The two were forcibly returned to Israel on Sunday under an order issued by the court. The sisters, 13 and 15, were en route to a Lev Tahor village located on the outskirts of Montreal, Canada. ... The Jerusalem court's ruling will have implications for all members of the Taliban sect in Israel. ... The community was established about a decade ago.

In other words, the court decided to try the sect only after the parents already left the country! That is, it is not that the parents were indicted of a crime before they left Israel, and now the Israeli government is just bringing them to trial. No, the government waited until after the parents left the country to begin the indictment. Why did the government wait? If Lev Tahor is so dangerous, shouldn't the government have already indicted them long before the parents left the country? Why did the government wait until after the parents left? It seems that the government is troubled not by Lev Tahor per se, but only by their emigration. If they would just stay in Israel, the government would do nothing. "The community was established about a decade ago", but the government waits until now, when the parents try to leave the country, to do anything about it. What took so long? No matter how you cut this, the government is guilty: either innocents have been abducted for the sake of closing Israel's borders to emigration, or else the government has waited a decade to do anything about people who are (probably, pending trial to confirm) guilty of abusing minors.

Ron Paul put it well recently: speaking of illegal Mexican immigration, he said that one should be terribly afraid that the fences to keep Mexicans out, will be used to keep Americans in. See the 7 September 2011 GOP debate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esp-ruhkZqQ):

"Every time you think about this toughness on the border and ID cards and REAL IDs, think it’s a penalty against the American people too. I think this fence business is designed and may well be used against us and keep us in. In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital and there’s capital controls and there’s people controls. Every time you think about the fence, think about the fences being used against us, keeping us in." (transcript via http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-border-fence-could-be-used-to-keep-us-in/).

The United States is actually sending agents around the world to capture Americans who live outside America and have foreign bank accounts they have not reported to the IRS. In some cases, the children of American citizens elsewhere in the world, don't even know they're American citizens, and the American government comes after them. In one case, a family of Canadians who didn't even know they were American citizens, were prosecuted by America for hundreds of thousands of dollars for unreported bank accounts and unpaid taxes. (See Wendy McElroy, "The Attack on Accidental Americans", http://mises.org/daily/5666.) I suspect Israel is going for the same thing. The first step for any totalitarian government is to find a good scapegoat, and sell it as protecting the public. "The child abusers are extraditing their children." Yes, and with that, the government has gotten the ball rolling.

In Spain, we said it couldn't happen. It did. In Germany, we said it couldn't happen. It did. Why should Israel be any different?

Think I'm exaggerating? Let us look at history. In 2005, the Israeli government sent 10,000 police to confront 4,000 protesters. Yes, you read that correctly: there were 2.5 police officers for every protester. And what did the police do? MK Aryeh Eldad, former IDF Chief Medical Officer, testifies that the police would bludgeon people on their heads until they were unconscious, and then continue to bludgeon them further:
("INN - Girls Beaten at Amona עמונה": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ_8JSr2eZ0)
The police also corralled a group of girls onto a rooftop, where the girls had no way of escape, and they proceeded to beat the girls:
("עמונה Amona - Police Assault on Teen Girls on Roof": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oq91Uv1JV0)
Here is a news program, with more footage:
("עמונה Amona - News Report on Police Pogrom מתנחלים": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDh85y7vM9)
That is what the Israeli government is all about.

(By the way, what's with the editorializing throughout the article? "Taliban sect"? That's not objective fact! To compare them to the Taliban in an opinion piece would be (technically) fine, but not in a news article! At one point, the article says, known as 'the Taliban sect', but for the rest of the article, they are referred to as the Taliban sect, without quotation marks. The intent is obviously to scare readers with baseless invective. )