Looking forward to the next thirty years, after we have decisively defeated wage rigidity by ensuring that the unemployed are numerous and miserable, don’t you think we should devote just a bit of our attention to tackling that other sticky price? As we reduce the bargaining power of labor, perhaps we should think about the bargaining power of creditors as well, so that if we get ourselves into a pickle where the “cost structure” of honoring debts is high, we have technocratic and politically acceptable means of managing the burden of loan contracts just as we’ve developed mechanisms to control wages.

Like counterfeit currency, there is a vast range of quality when it comes to counterfeit passports, and as a rule of thumb, you get what you pay for. On the streets of places like Bangkok, Hong Kong or New York, one can buy counterfeit passports from a wide array of countries. There is, however, a vast difference between the passport one can purchase for $100 and the one that can be purchased for $10,000. Also, like currency, some passport counterfeiters will even attempt to use elements of genuine passports, like the optically “dead” paper with little or no fluorescence used for the pages and the holographic laminates used on the photo pages. However, like photo-subbed passports, it is far more difficult to create a functional counterfeit passport today than it was several years ago. Not only does the passport have to be of high quality, but the number needs to correspond to the database of legitimately issued passports. Therefore, most counterfeit passports are useful for traveling in the third world but would not withstand the scrutiny of authorities in the developed world.

In spite of these problems, there is still a market for counterfeit and photo-subbed passports. While they may not be useful for traveling to a country like the United States or France, they can be used to travel from a place like Pakistan or China to a gateway country in the Western Hemisphere like Venezuela or a gateway country in Europe like Albania. Because of this, American and European passports still fetch a decent price on the black market and are frequently stolen from or sold by Westerners. Citizens of Western countries who travel to terrorist training camps are also frequently encouraged to “donate” their passports and other documents to the group that trains them. There are also many reports that Mossad makes use of the passports of foreign Jews who move to Israel and give their passports to the intelligence agency. Stolen or deliberately lost passports not only can be altered or cloned but also can be used for travel by people who physically resemble the original bearer, although once they are reported stolen or lost and entered into lookout databases, their utility declines

A dramatic opportunity to use the Rogerian method in a political crisis arose in March 2003, during the interview of Saddam Hussein by CBS’s Dan Rather, just before President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. At one point, Rather asked Saddam what the Iraqi government could possibly do to prevent an imminent destruction of his country and government.

Rather looked very serious when he asked this question. The situation became palpably tense: I held my breath as I listened to Saddam, whose fate as well as the fate of thousands of Iraqi citizens and U.S. troops was just about to be sealed.

Saddam answered, very sensibly, that he was prepared to engage Bush in a televised debate moderated by a neutral third party. “I would let President Bush present his case,” said Saddam, “and then I would present mine.” The two sides would have a chance to listen to each other, and so would the citizens of the United States and Iraq, as well as the rest of the world.

Perhaps, I thought, common sense is not so uncommon. Perhaps Bush may have heard about Rogerian argument.

But of course, it was not to be. The White House immediately dismissed Saddam’s offer as another ploy to avert the war — as if trying to avert war is evil.