The YW Original

Treacherous Tactics And Old Objectives

2009-04-07T19:27:00.000-04:00

The left feels itself accepted by America because of the recent wins for hard leftists candidates, chief among them Barack Obama. Frankly, people like me regard this not as a rejection of conservatism, but as a rejection of moderation in the pursuit of virtue, of which John McCain may always serve as the prime example. He was never a true conservative in that his values were a patchwork of liberty and tyranny, from the time he entered the United States Senate, till such time he eventually leaves public office.

Regardless of that, the socialist and even Marxist left believes it has a wide open road and no voter-wielded police cars pursuing. But there are a number of roadblocks they don't see. The first is that our system of government is slow in operation. Any changes they make will take time. The second is the fact that the American people, by polling, don't like big government. The changes Barack and his ilk are trying to make and speed through will certainly shock the American people into returning power to originalists, given the chance. Americans like freedom, simple and plain.

But the hard left also doesn't like allowing those poor folks they intend to care for to have any say in terms of what that care is and how it is maintained or administered. They don't believe in the right to vote. They believe in their own control, their own power, and in their right to do anything to maintain and expand it.

Therefore, it stands to reason, since Barack will not be challenged in the Democrat primary, that the legions of leftists will be called upon to temporarily join the Republican party in order to foul up their primary system illegitimately. They want another moderate to run against, someone who can't rally the people, someone who is wishy-washy or flippy-floppy.

They know, even if Barack Obama becomes an economic failure, a property rights nightmare, and is absent on national security, they can control the Republican primary election to guarantee that no conservative will see office, no matter how the election results come in. They would most hope for a second term for Obama, but would not be terribly wrathful to endure four years of a moderate who will preside over a slower growth of government power but a growth none-the-less.

What the Republican party needs to do to curb this travesty and treachery is overhaul the party nomination process. There are a number of ways they can do this. They all involve setting in stone party bylaw which is exclusive. The core beliefs of the Republican party ought to exclude certain people from being candidates for nomination.

Those include tax cuts for anyone who pays taxes, abolishment of certain taxes altogether, with the possibility for an alternative tax code system by Constitutional amendment, protection of national sovereignty from military force and from foreign intervention, be it a union of nations or a nation alone, preservation of the American love of liberty by limiting access to our nation to those who hold a similar love of freedom.

A host of other principals and philosophies exist but some set must be constructed and candidates may only receive party endorsement if they have a track record of supporting, say, 90% of those party ideals. If they cannot support those party ideals, why do we have a Republican Party? These unions of politically like-minded people are not simply engines of accruing power. They are and ought to be drivers of an agenda. It's time the Republican Party return to republicanism and set in stone the conservative ideals upon which this party and our nation were founded.

A Reply

2009-03-24T21:51:00.000-04:00

This will be a different post. The first part is a reply to my comment on a YouTube Video. The second part is my e-mail response. Forgive the errors. I'm going to leave it in raw form how I wrote it at the time.

...

Reply to your comment on: Ronald Reagan on Universal Healthcare

yeah that's why its successful to the rest of the world. by the way good luck with your health care. apparently your talking without knowledge that health care gets to approve or disapprove your health if it infects their profit too much. so keep on paying your health care crossing your fingers to be accepted for your life saving surgery. did you even know that humana one of the biggest health care companies just quit covering Oxycontin and alot of pain medications that the majority need.

YW - Reply

whoever moderates that video deleted your reply so I'll respond here, for your edification.

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/product_files/WaitingYourTurn2008.pdf

http://healthcare-economist.com/2008/04/22/health-care-around-the-world-greece/

http://www.longwoods.com/product.php?productid=17059

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1112207/Four-hour-wait-lifesaving-ambulance-trip.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2069464/Cancer-patients-should-sue-NHS-if-they-are-refused-free-care-after-private-treatment.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-459574/Smokers-told-quit-surgery-refused.html

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/10/15/waittimes-fraser.html

Hopefully these links will go through. They're a mere sampling of the available information.

It's very simple really. There are limited resources in every area. Health care is no different. There are not infinite doctors and infinite medicines and infinite research and infinite equipment.

The price system encourages two things. One, people will be careful what care they purchase and from whom since they must afford the cost of taking care of themselves. Two, people will be encouraged to enter into the marketplace of providing care when the market affords a good wage.

And you can't separate these things from healthcare. If you try to you only discourage production and economizing in the system. That's why systems more socialist generally have far fewer doctors, researchers, equipment, and techniques available per capita.

People have limited time on this Earth. Few will spend their time operating in a solely charitable manner. People want to have families and make life better for them. If you allow a third party payer to ration the care given out, one or both of two things will happen. The payer will screw the recipient of the care or the pay.

You, only you, are solely concerned with your own situation. Perhaps you are not wealthy right now and by being concerned for yourself, you advocate that someone else ought to pay for taking care of YOU.

Pay close attention to the documents put out by the Fraser Institute. They do a good job of illustrating exactly and factually why socialist healthcare is a failure.

Rather than provide care for all, it rations care in place of all. It strips you of your decision making powers.

If you are deemed of less societal value, socialist healthcare decides that you receive less or no care. Coverage is not care if you are not allowed to see a specialist.

Additionally, when all something desired is made free for people (by removing their power to control costs and sources of funding) the demand for it will quickly rise toward infinity.

If you were given gasoline for life by a sweepstakes, you may be inclined to visit the beach more often, take more vacations, drive a less economic car, right?

The same is true of healthcare. When it is 'free' the demand increases exponentially. People will visit the doctor every chance they can get, which creates lines unnecessarily.

So, the money the government (tax payers) pay out for the coverage increases. Soon, the programs are over budget and taxes are increased while, simultaneously, the care is rationed more strictly.

Rather than provide care only to those who need it, governments often decide to restrict care to their favorite whipping boys; smokers, the overweight, the elderly.... Think I'm joking? Take an HONEST look at England. Those three categories of patients are currently being discriminated against.

Beyond all the statistical arguments, I would also make the case that property rights are naturally exclusive. No one has a right to live in your house without your consent. So, why should they have a right to the product of your labor to pay for their own ailment?

Shouldn't they petition you personally? Request assistance through charitable organizations?

The ability to vote away from a man, his property, does not give it any moral acceptability. It succeeds only in veiling the true nature of redistributionist theft.

What if the majority decides that it's acceptable to vote your house away from you? Or to raise your taxes to the point where you have to move out of your house and into a small apartment? If they take the exorbitant amount of stolen money and spend it giving clothes to orphans, does that make it acceptable?

If you answer yes then I submit you do not believe in property rights at all. In fact, if you believe that the product of a man's labor is not exclusively his, then you believe that man should be subservient to whomever takes and distributes the wealth he creates. That is, without question, soft slavery, a discouragement of production, a stifling of potential, and tyranny at its core.

By that course, you expose yourself, not as a person who cares about the misfortunate. Rather, you believe in establishing a world of subjects under a tyrannical committee who determines what is best for the whole population.

But you decide what is best for you and you work hard to achieve those goals. You would not advocate anyone chaining their own goals to your paycheck. So, you have a double standard to deal with, unless you spend your entire waking time in charitable efforts.

The truth is, socialism is unsuccessful everywhere it's tried. It is only maintained on the surface through the individual efforts for individual gain which remains in every population. In fact, in Britain (and many other single-payer nations as well), friends of doctors are very often examined under the radar, for private funds, private exchange. Still others travel to nations with much freer markets for healthcare, India and United States being the primary nations. They pay out of pocket to be treated out of their own country because the simple truth is this; socialist healthcare is not care at all.

As far as profit margins go for doctors, why shouldn't a doctor's expertise and training be a premium? There you go again subjecting people to your authoritarian whims. You would much rather have health care rationed, not by personal gain, but by a single budget? Well, in a system of personal gain, each doctor must compete for quality, quantity, and value. In fact, that has always been a driving force propelling American healthcare to much greater heights (though I suspect you believe the bilge propagandized by politicians and Michael Moore that America's quality of life is no good, when the exact opposite is the case). But in a single budget system there is no competition. Payment is doled out per job done, regardless of what the underlying price system demands a job is worth.

Additionally, I'll take my odds at surviving cancer in America and stack them against any odds from England, Canada, Cuba, Greece, or a host of other nations. And you know what? I'll win. Don't believe me? Compare the waiting rates for diagnosis and treatment of cancer in those nations with America's.

Also, if you wish to proclaim the free market a failure, you first have to prove that it exists. The federal government has been the source of 1/3 of all healthcare expenditures for decades now. At the moment, the amount of expenditures by government is over 50% of the total.

Primarily, the reason healthcare in America is showing signs of failure is exactly due to the half of if which is single payer. Medicare and Medicaid both refuse to operate based upon natural pricing which is the only way to ensure proper expenditure of funds.

If you really want to improve healthcare, here's what you need to push for. State governments ought not be permitted by their citizens, to restrict out of state insurance purchases. They ought not to be permitted to mandate minimum coverage. Some states require that all health insurance providers cover port wine stain removal, substance abuse, and mental illness. That drives premiums through the roof. The cause of the problem? Government mandates.

Perhaps the worst problem in American healthcare is the entitlement mentality which is expanded and enticed with programs like SCHIPS, Medicare, and Medicaid. People feel that, by birthright, they are obliged an issuance of property. Well, sorry, all property, before issued, must be produced by someone else. I've said it before, I'll say it again, such attitudes are those of slave owners.

But if you shrink government entitlement, in more areas than just healthcare as well, and force people to stand up, work hard, and provide for themselves, you'll find that most people are more than capable of providing for their own situation. And if you get government the hell out of everyone's way, success will be more common in America than it already is, and we're a very successful people here as things are.

Turns out, people want things. That creates markets. They must produce so they have things to trade (typically in the form of currency yes, but in other ways as well). Additionally, for people to buy things, someone else, still, must produce and sell them.

The real lesson is that free markets work, bureaucratic government programs do not work so well. Some don't work at all. Those that do work, are no match for free market alternatives.

And, finally, in your advocacy of socialism, you are not compassionate. You are tyrannical and you push for a system where people have no control over their own treatment, over their own self-worth. That is not compassionate. It is destructive to the fundamental human principles, which Jefferson so eloquently scribed years ago; Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (property). These are not mere suggestions of convenience. They are foundational to ethics and human interaction.

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. If you still truly feel that healthcare is too expensive for some people, by all means socialize your entire income voluntarily. But don't think you have morality on your side because you want government to steal to 'help' a situation you could very well help yourself.

And remember, when it comes to government, intentions are almost never results. And a citizen should judge on both.

No Jumpstart Necessary

2009-03-22T15:07:00.000-04:00

Politicians, as we all recognize, have become little more than mirrors for common sentiment, rather than philosophical leaders. The inherent cracks in the dam of republican government is that freedom, very often, is a restriction of ability. By virtue, freedom is the right to act toward one's own goals, typified by production of capital and the voluntary acquisition of property. This will naturally be unequally distributed as each person is different in goals and in actions. Furthermore, people are jealous creatures, sometimes more concerned with ends than means, when it comes to these goals. So, logically, pressure for redistributionist action of government will build until the politicians will bend to the pressure and burst the dam of liberty.

It is that exact mentality which is proving pervasive in our society and is slowly strangling the blessings of our liberty and the strong characteristic of freedom in our lives. With the current economic situation, many people believe it is wholly just of government to spend taxpayer money on 'stimulus' bills and spending packages designed to 'prime the pump'.

The phrase 'prime the pump' refers to a specific type of water pump which finds use at wells. In order for the pump to have the suction necessary to retrieve water, it must first have water applied to it in some fashion which varies based upon the pump design. The notion is one of a thirsty man finding a jug of water, dirtied from exposure, resting next to a well pump. Rather than drink from the jug, the man 'primes' the pump with the dirty water and is able to draw more and more fresh, cool water from the well.

Such a notion may be valid. Certain aspects of the economy may very well need a direct enticement in order to gain ground. This is the reason many people believe roads are a necessary action of government, to provide means of travel and commerce. These freedoms are advanced with an action of government which could not be logically undertaken by a private source.

But if the federal government was spending that 80% of its yearly budget on roads, it is very likely we would have roads paved in platinum. It never ceases to amaze me that around 80% of the federal budget ends up directed in ways which cannot be justified of federal action.

These stimulus packages are a great example. Barack Obama has urged that such government expenditure is necessary to 'jumpstart' the economy. But what exactly does that mean? An economy is merely an arrangement of people engaging in transactions to further their own goals.

Is an 'economy in need of a jumpstart' one where no one has goals and thus has nothing for which to strive? Or is it one where people with goals are unable or too stupid to act until the pump has been primed?

Neither is the case, I think. People always have goals, and always have some way in mind to achieve those ends. Sometimes those ways don't work out. Sometimes those methods and the objectives themselves are improper.

But nothing in the world, no lack of resources, no unprimed pump, has ever stopped a self-motivated individual from making great strides toward and sometimes accomplishing his every dream. Government on the other hand...

We do not need to prime the pump of our economy. People want things and those desires are two-way markets and that is all the priming our economy needs.

All Or Nothing

2009-03-21T04:26:00.000-04:00

I recall a few months ago, speaking to a rather uninformed voter, that she supports having a "hybrid system" of economics which joins the good points between free market capitalism and touchy-feely socialism. Everyone hears this sort of argument and quite often, I might add.

Supposedly, bipartisan support for a bill justifies whatever actions the legislation will imbue. That is populism, majoritarianism, and democracy. It is the notion that popular support provides legitimacy to any action. This is easily enough refuted in a manner of example. No one would claim that rule of the national socialist party of Germany's 1930s and 1940s were made moral pillars by popular support. The majority can trample proper rights with a more forceful proclamation of morality than the minority can. It still does not establish justice to all people.

But voters tend to think of election results as a cultural average, that people who are elected are probably middle-of-the-road type politicians because they could not have won the election without support from a broad base of Americans. Therefore, such 'hybridizing' of socialism with free markets has become a popular belief.

This is made all the more so popular in that there is any number of combinations to the effect of hybridizing the two arrangements. We may have a free market base health care system in America, where individuals and businesses operating in that industry are permitted profit, but we have a massive health care bureaucracy, continuing to grow, held by the federal government and even some state governments.

And this is only one section of the economy. Thoughtful people find themselves picking and choosing the beneficial parts of each system and then they lump them together to form yet another arrangement which has not, in history, been tried. This, they say, is the epitome, the end utopia to which we may aspire.

Yet, they find, as we are pushed and pulled closer to that 'utopia', that they were somewhat wrong in their theory, and that they must adjust it to fit the real world. These adjustments continue and continue, in one direction or another, and the end result is either a totalitarian state or, far more rarely, a truly free market system. "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."[1]

Why do things work this way? Why is it that government intervention in the markets begets greater government intervention?

The answer comes down to human nature. The organism of voluntary trade is very simple; people only conduct transactions when they feel it is in their own best interest. One should note, this axiomatic rule declares that no free person will voluntarily damage himself in trade, which in and of itself is enough to illustrate production, that two people engaging in exchange can both benefit, per their own desires, to an ultimate growth of output.

But humans are imperfect and cannot be expected to leave force aside, thus we have a government, to stop force as much as possible, and to redress it whenever it occurs. However, these responsibilities of government are often shirked in lieu of administration becoming an instrument or an instigator of force. Daily we observe government acting well outside its proper bounds and damaging nearly everything it touches as a result, notably blaming everyone and everything else for the problems.

That's really the definition of control. Freedom is the self-ownership of each person and any force which is levied against a person, above and beyond the redress and protection powers, is a gross limitation of liberty. These restrictions take the form of taxation, regulation, subsidization, tariffs, quotas, and a host of other illegitimate actions.

Compulsion is an illegitimate action. The word compelled takes on a stronger meaning than its association with the word enticed, as we tend to think of it. Compulsion is a matter of removing option. Someone who is compelled by an external force, is slave to the objectives of that force. It is a situation or an occurrence for which you granted no consent.

With that definition, we know there is no such thing as compelled employment, except by those methods which we readily condemn, the whip and the chain. Employment is entirely voluntary in America. You may sell your skills, effort, and time to whomever is willing to buy them. You may quit your job at any time for any reason, granted you wrote those things into your employment contract.

On this, the front end, we are free, by and large. But on the back end, we are very clearly becoming chained and in some cases, whipped, by the compulsive forces. When you receive pay, you must pay taxes. Those taxes do not go exclusively to the legitimate functions of government, but by 80% go to redistribution programs. Four out of every five dollars spent by the federal government goes to programs which do not qualify under the original Constitution as legitimate use of funds.

In this sense, we who work, toil by the sweat of our brow to improve our own situation, are in part stifled in our efforts by an entity who has a monopoly on force. If the government taxes 20% of our income (very often the percentage is far higher) and then doles out 80% of that money to other people, then we are clearly engaged in a soft form of indebted servitude to the recipients of those funds. The travesty is that our right to self-ownership has been limited by a system. When government mandates anything, it does so as an implied restriction of those things which are outside the bounds of the mandate.

When government sets forth to do good, by limiting those rights, it sets a very dangerous precedent. The philosophical statement which is conveyed is this: freedom is only valid as when its existence outweighs the good which may be done in its abolition. Such a statement is profound. It establishes a right of the powerful to determine what is good, and in acting toward that 'good' to be bounded only by what is determined to be anything but good. But the determination of what 'good' is cannot be universal, nor lasting in time, and the control over those determinations will eventually be consolidated behind people whose intentions are clearly anything but good. At this point, I'll point back to my example of the NAZI party.

The point is this: when any hole is poked in any part of the right of self-ownership, the entire right is in imminent danger. To make proper undermining one part is to make a logical attack against the structure as a whole. Since redistribution itself is a matter of removing property rights from some and establishing greater property rights for others, it cannot be said it is anything but a paradox in itself.

[1] Thomas Jefferson

Progress In Destruction

2009-03-16T16:45:00.000-04:00

Big chain stores, often typified by Wal-Mart, have been categorically declared a bane to the middle class. Wherever these massive warehouse vendors are built, other local shops are 'sure' to end in bankruptcy. Meanwhile, corporations and conglomerates rake in millions by selling to the middle class they 'undermine', or so the left argues.

I suppose it doesn't occur to anyone that those local businesses fail not because the corporations burn the structures to the ground. Those businesses go under because they don't provide the best product at the best price. Like it or not, the streamlining of larger businesses does allow them to cut out costs. Who benefits the most from lower prices on products? The consumer, most notably the supposed middle class.

With the advent of the internet, even some of those large businesses are going to struggle to maintain market share. If a producer of a product does not have to go through a buyer, wholesaler, and retailer to bring their product to market, it is just that fewer hands to which the profit goes. That loosens up the margins for a company and allows them to still sell their items at a discounted rate. That discounted rate, once again, helps the people who have the most inflexible incomes.

All of this is a matter of the constructive demolition of progress. "The point of progress is the destruction of jobs."[1] That's not a bad thing. Why don't we have a market for people who make covered wagons? Their jobs were laid waste by the invention and conventionalization of the automobile. That's not a bad thing. Those people found other jobs where they could be productive and society eventually adopted cars as the superior form of travel. In a marketplace failure is a crucial guideline for efficiency.

The same is true of any other realization of progress. When America was founded it took nineteen out of twenty people working on farms in order to fill the demand for agricultural goods; food. That is no longer the case. Far fewer people (less than 1 out of 300[2]) work in farming and produce a much greater output.

Clearly this increase in the level of productivity came about as a result of the technological revolution but I contend that technological revolution was made all the more profound and accelerated by America's arrangement of freedom. This is very likely the case, since every effort of the individual is supported more grandly when the individual is responsible for and solely responsible to himself. And there is no doubt, there are fewer jobs per capita in the farming industry.

That is a destruction of jobs. Is that bad? No. It makes goods cheaper and at the same time allows many more of us to pursue our careers in other industries. Destruction, in this sense, is very much a part of progress.

Is it uncomfortable at times when their jobs are no longer in demand in the marketplace? Yes, it can be but the indications, the transmission of information through transaction, is not a matter of comfort. It is a matter of efficiency. "Do you know what the greatest social program in America is, in any country is? A profitable business. It does the most good. It harnesses scarce resources in the most efficient way."[3]

The destruction of jobs in the crucial areas of life has made way for new jobs in realms which are not crucial to continuing life. Artists, entertainers, statisticians, political analysts, authors, reviewers; these are examples of jobs which are made possible by the continued advancement of efficiency. We should not remain protectionist because advancement is uncomfortable. We ought to embrace progress in the marketplace.

[1] Walter Williams

[2] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html

http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/nass/FarmLabo//2000s/2009/FarmLabo-02-20-2009.pdf

[3] Jason Lewis

More Old Notions

2009-03-13T21:48:00.000-04:00

My previous entry went into some detail about two old sayings which are great lessons in the nature of human kind. It is worth adding that these sayings are not political directions in and of themselves. They are only indications of features of humanity. I make my opinions clear as to what they indicate and other people should give thorough consideration to what they believe as well. Other items of similar interest occurred to me after I wrote that entry.

The first is a notion which I heard at a very young age but never gave much thought. It might not be very prevalent so I shall describe it fully. If everyone were to write a Christmas card to their friends, it stands to reason that the people with the most friends would receive a greater number of cards than anyone else. But if everyone wrote a Christmas card to every other person, regardless of how they feel about them or even if they do not know the person, everyone will receive an equal amount of cards and the number per person will be much higher.

That's fine, but what value is receipt of a Christmas card from someone you don't know? And why should everyone be required to put in that effort? Shouldn't the friendliest people be rewarded naturally by receiving the most cards? That way people are more likely to put a little effort into being pleasant.

Most of you reading are thinking, really? You're taking a classroom inclusive policy this far? Not really. Just expressing some ideas which have been rolling through my head.

There's a converse of this notion of making everyone happy by enforcing equal effort for equal result on everyone. This statement is much more well known; misery loves company.

It has been noted many times before. To a certain degree, jealous people are not so much interested in improving their own situation as they are in damaging the situations of others. Class envy is the emotional 'fulfillment' of exacting revenge on people who had nothing to do with your choices in life.

The reason for this is simple. It takes less effort to hate than it does to put forth effort for oneself and improve one's own situation. Initiative is a great motivator but so is bitterness.

It's childish. It is the one child who cannot pronounce words properly being angered that another child can. The angry kid ought to stop focusing on someone else's abilities and focus on improving his own. Punching the well-spoken kid isn't going to help the angry kid speak better. But it might make the angry kid feel somewhat satisfied to inflict pain on his object of envy.

The same is unfortunately true of our economic system. People used to feel empowered, primarily, to help their own situation through their own effort. Now, with the generational welfare abuse and growing dependence on the state, there is an unfortunate common sentiment of entitlement.

Majoritarianism (also known commonly as democracy) establishes the rule of force. We see the left stating that the election of Barack Obama is a formal declaration of a need and a faith in state control over the economy. There is no call for repairing the economy with freedom, and less control. Every dictum from the White House and the Capital Building is compiled of a myriad increased, modified, or new government controls on business, transaction, and private property. We are at the turning point now, where property is not owned any longer by the citizens, but rather owned by the government and distributed to the subjects of that totalitarian government.

Distribution of wealth is a principal concern for leftists. In fact, it may be one of only a few concerns upon which they center. They are not concerned with return on investment. They are not concerned with production and productivity. They are not concerned with opportunity cost. They are not concerned with the reality of transaction. Their sole refrain is an increase of government and therefore an increase of control.

I have said it a dozen times at least. You are not entitled to an issuance of property by birthright. You are entitled to the freedom that no one will enslave you, coerce you, or destroy you. With that liberty you may do what you feel is in your best interest as long as you do not enslave, coerce, or destroy someone else. The only other caveat to this principal is the response of defense of oneself in the event that those freedoms and rights are already breeched.

Misery loves company but a successful person loves the feeling of accomplishment he gets in his success to a far greater degree than any fruitless person could ever receive from oppressing a individual thriving on his own effort.

As The Old Sayings Go

2009-03-11T22:06:00.001-04:00

There are a number of well known quips which serve as great illustrations of human nature. Axioms which can only be avoided in lunacy, foolishness, or convenience of conceit are good to understand so that we can properly analyze the human condition and maintain our natural rights, freedoms.

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. This Chinese proverb is very easy to understand. Charity pursuing the provision of a lifestyle for an individual is the wrong way to go about helping people. Encouragement for each person to be self-reliant is a much more efficient design of benevolence. When people are merely given items, irreverent of the prices of those items to someone else, the recipient tends to take it for granted and even become accustomed to that gift.

Entitlement mentalities are rampant in a welfare state, such as ours. Thus, the next, slightly less known quote comes in to play. If you give a mouse a cookie he's going to want a glass of milk. It's no wonder we can't shrink the budget of our welfare, health and 'human' services. There are little to no requirements that people make an effort to rise above needing charity. In fact, with a recent bill signed by the President, welfare requirements that urged people to actively improve their own situation are now removed.[1]

The statement is very simple. When you give things away, people will try to get as much as they can. That's natural. It is human self-interest for a person to try to get something for nothing. It is the business opportunity of a lifetime, to be able to receive goods without the pesky issue of expending effort or value in return.

The government, however, does not give the mouse a cookie which the government created, nor the milk. Anything the government gives to one person, it must first confiscate from another, because government does not produce anything. Only people, through individual effort (even if voluntarily coordinated or cooperated), produce goods and value. The mouse, therefore, is in receipt of stolen property, since neither the giver nor the receiver had anything to do with owning it.

Only the producer of that value can provide it to someone else, through transaction or private charity. I have stated before, people who really want to help the poor are more than welcome to totally socialize their own income. That way, the mouse receives only those cookies and milk the proper owners determine each mouse deserves. If that is not enough for the mouse, let that human move beyond life as a mere charitable recipient and start efforting, himself, to better his own situation.

The left has always approached property, quality of life, and charity with a view wholly opposite to these basic natures of humanity. They act as though there is no production, that wealth does not expand, and when someone has more than someone else, it's a matter of redistributing to solve that 'crisis of inequality'.

But wealth is a matter of production and new wealth is created all the time, through individual effort and initiative. It is no wonder that people, when left alone to their own goals and actions, do not simply wait around for someone to give them a cookie. They jumpstart themselves, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and set about producing a cookie and a glass of milk and whatever else for which they so desire to work. That is how everything is produced, even items later redistributed by government.

[1] http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/wm2287.cfm

Socialize Yourself

2009-03-09T23:19:00.000-04:00

I find it frustrating that some people seem to design causes for themselves by generating fictional plights for others. They rarely seek to do good to these supposed victims by providing of their own effort and wealth. They seek to 'help' the 'underprivileged' by reducing the property of other people. The left will reach into pockets which they did not fill, do not morally possess, and ought not be permitted to control.

Anyone who doubts this fact ought to take an honest look at the programs the left is constantly installing and expanding. Barack Obama spoke very eloquently of doing away with government programs that don't work and putting in place government programs that do work. “An efficient tyranny is worse than an unefficient one.”[1]

We should not simply approve of government doing because government might be able to do 'efficiently'. There's an argument to be made that no one can be efficient with finances except the producer of those finances; no one else can truly know the expense of production those funds demanded. “No person spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.”[2]

Most commonly, government cannot spend efficiently because it does not have any reason to adjust itself properly to the market boundaries of its revenue. If government needs money, it does not tighten the belt in other areas. It taxes more, very simply and repressively. And because government has a monopoly on the force of taxes, it does not face competition which ought to drive those expenses down and streamline our systems.

"Government is a great fiction through which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else."[3] A fundamental axiom to life is that all things consumed must be produced. A pillar of American freedom is that every person has a right to produce, maintain, and consume all he can within the bounds of identical freedoms of each person. Modern 'socialism' states that freedom is the right of any person to take whatever is deemed 'necessary', from anyone who may have the means to provide for whatever the goal is.

Then, the funding for those goals does not go exclusively to the charitable benefactors for whom it was officially destined. Administrative costs for collection and distribution end up being a significant portion of the budget. Frequently, that portion is greater than the funds that actually make it to the supposed 'underprivileged'.

No one can deny this simple fact: the numbers of people on the roles of welfare and similar programs have increased since the inception of such redistributionist policy. "Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."[4] Yet, the number of recipients has increased faster than the growth of population. Roughly 40% of America receives some form of government subsidy of lifestyle based upon 'low' income levels (very often this check comes in the form of a tax return greater than taxes paid throughout the year).

Therefore, it is evident that these programs, which were set forward to reduce the number of people who needed financial assistance, have done the exact opposite. If the number of people who are 'in need' of financial assistance has increased per capita, then the programs are a failure and evidence of government's inability to assist anyone's situation.

In fact, redistributionist programs perpetuate inability. When government steps in and provides baseline funding for poverty, they discourage people from improving themselves. The message sent is 'stay poor and take more'.

The people who institute these programs may indeed be well meaning but that does not change the fact that the programs simply ignore reality. In discussion, I've made habit of explaining this difference. Liberals have the promise of intention. Freedom has the proof of success.

What success is that exactly, Daryl Chickens asks. How can we have a system where so many people are on the welfare dole, but have economic success? The answer is very simple. When products are carelessly given away for free, the hands out for handouts will flock, even if the product is not of very good quality. If Burger King is selling good burgers and McDonalds is giving away mediocre burgers, which restaurant would you frequent the most? Stay poor and take more.

Also, people who are able to hide their true worth can access these programs as well. There are countless ways to do it, including refusing to marry someone to whom you are dependant so you can continue to receive welfare checks, running businesses in someone else's name, faking names on welfare applications, and the list goes on and on. Every few weeks there is a discovery of a new and ingenious way to scam the system. Anyone who pays attention will hear of a great number of ways to beat the government at its own game, to the ultimate expense of the American worker and taxpayer.

Now, I have used a lot of single quotation marks on phrases in this entry. There is are two good reasons. The first has already been covered by the previous paragraphs. That is, there is no correlation between a program's intentions and its results. Clearly the results do not live up the glorious charitable intentions with which the programs are defended and expanded.

The second reason I have noted words in quotation marks is that the American definition of poverty is almost laughable. "We have the richest poor people on the face of the Earth."[5] As the great Walter Williams quips, if I were to be condemned to a life of human poverty, but my condemner was kind enough to allow me to choose where and when I live that life, I would gladly say 'the United States of America'.

The facts are very simple. Poverty in America is a level of wealth to which most of the peoples of the Earth would aspire. In America, 'poor' is a description of a first-world lifestyle without an income which could sustain much true stress. Largely, the people who never rise from a low level of income remain in their situation because they spend more than they make, and very rarely out of absolute necessity. Comfort is a primary expense for these families.

Take a look at the conveniences and comforts among the poor:

"· Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

· Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

· Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

· The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

· Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.

· Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

· Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

· Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher."[6]

I want to temper my next statement with due respect to those who are truly in tough times through no fault of their own and are actively struggling to rise from those depths. The level of wealth we see among America's 'poor' today makes the bottom 10% or 1% or 20%, whatever percentage you wish to take, merely 'poor' by reason of having no other name to assign that ever present least-earning portion of the population.

By subsidizing these lifestyles of less production than consumption, we put on the backs of the producers, the bills of the non-producers and we provide or impose a life of uncomfortable, discontented ease to those who are in the poverty trap.

Government programs threaten people to remain idle. Those who make a salary or improve their salary find aid programs yanked out from underneath themselves, rather than eased out with discernment. Easing the programs out from underneath workers would allow people to move their way up the ladder and replace subsidizing money with money earned by their own effort, without the fear of encountering a month or two having neither enough earnings nor enough welfare to cover the costs of living.

Private charity is entirely capable of assisting in this way. Dollars donated to charities are much more important to the volunteers responsible for them than dollars taxed and budgeted in the faceless government system. Not only are charities much more careful against being scammed, they are much more careful about assisting people in a specific need. Government programs cannot be written to suit every requirement of every situation, but private charities can see those needs and meet them, in large part.

Furthermore, private charity must face the marketplace of donated funds. Charities which are known not to be helpful to anyone or helpful to the wrong causes, will receive no donations and go under. Donations will flow to the best organizations, that do the most good per dollar given. This creates dynamics government can't attain.

And perhaps the best part of private charity is that it is voluntary. In general, Americans like to donate money. There is a reward for helping people. We feel better about ourselves when we truly assist people who need a helping hand.

No matter what government does with our money, on April 15th when we see how much of what we earn never came to our hand, we do not feel good about it. The difference between money given and money taken is great. "Government is a broker in pillage and every election an advance auction on the sale of stolen merchandise."[7] Property rights must be upheld in every circumstance if we are to remain a free society at all. The very core of freedom of one's self and one's destiny is the ability to control what one's goals are and how those goals are pursued. Nearly without exception, those goals and actions are productive, and thus property, subject to the same personal protections as one's own body. That is the nature of property rights.

Read this quote, despite the length.

"They said, "Do you have a moral obligation to care for a seriously injured spouse or parent?" If they get Alzheimer's disease or they get injured in an accident, more than 70% of conservatives say, "You have a moral obligation to care for that individual." Less than half, 46%, of liberals say that you have a moral obligation and the reason... liberals expect the government to care for other individuals. So, by being politically liberal, you can, in a sense, outsource your moral and social responsibility because you can say, 'Well, look, I vote for liberals. They want the government to do this so I can wash my hands clean and not worry about this.'... What's happened is that modern liberalism, and by the term modern liberalism I mean liberalism really since the 1960s, has been completely about rights. It has said very little about responsibilities and a conservative understands the balance... The fact that, yes, you have certain rights. You have the right to freedom of speech. You have a bunch of rights that exist in your life but you also have responsibilities, that you should as a citizen of the republic that you should do so and carry out willingly. The problem is that liberalism is all now about looking at yourself. Self-satisfactions, self-worth, self-actualization. They use all kinds of expression[s] for it... I think liberalism induces [a narcissistic character flaw]. That's what makes it so attractive. Think about it. If you're a young person and you're looking at the merits of being a conservative and you're looking at the merits of being a liberal; which one demands more from you? Which one expects more from you? Which one is going to make your life a little bit more difficult in the sense of requiring responsibility. Conservatism is. Liberalism is very easy. You claim the moral high ground; 'I care about other people. I want other people to be okay.' But it expects nothing of you. That's why, for example, when it comes to charitable giving, liberals, prominent liberals, from Nancy Pelosi, to Al Gore, to Barack Obama, have a horrible record when it comes to charitable giving. Conservatives don't... Look at FDR and Reagan. These are the two archetypes, liberal and conservative. FDR was a far wealthier man than Ronald Reagan. During the height of the Great Depression [FDR] gave about three percent of his adjusted gross income to charity. Three percent during the Great Depression. Reagan gave twice that. Twice, in absolute number terms and twice as a percentage of income, as FDR did. If you look at Barack Obama, Al Gore, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Robert Reich, for example, all of these individuals have a record of giving about one percent or less on average to charity according to their own tax records. Compare that to George W. Bush who, since the 1990s, has given 10+%. Dick Cheney in 2005 took 77% of his adjusted gross income and gave it to charity. The list goes on and on. Liberals simply are not charitable with their own money. They're 'charitable' with other people's money."[8]

[1] Mark Levin

[2] Milton Friedman

[3] Frederic Bastait

[4] Ronald Reagan

[5] Mark Levin

[6] http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm

[7] H. L. Menken

[8] From an interview with Peter Schweizer, author of Makers and Takers

The Need For Teeth

2009-03-07T21:50:00.000-05:00

The primary function of our federal government is the defense of the nation from foreign intervention and invasion. Other tasks exist as well, however, all these original purposes for our federal government seem to have taken a back seat role to a massive host of other illegitimate uses of force.

Since the Vietnam War era protests, one main staple of the left is that war is never the answer and that usage of the military is never an option. Using that theme, every Democrat President and Congressional leadership has sought to reduce the size of the military. They have also put barrier after barrier in the way of any usage of the military with the exception of a handful of skirmishes here and there. The point is, since JFK, the left has found no reason to have a large military, outfit it with modern technology, much less concede occasion to go to war. “(Liberals) are more than happy to support the troops as long as the troops aren’t fighting.”[1]

It would seem that many people simply want to ignore reality. That is covered in very great terms in Dave Grossman's On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs.[2] It you be well for any readers to read through Grossman's article before looking at the rest of my two cents. While Grossman focuses a lot on the whole of society and the dangers and protectors of society, I will choose to focus on the politics of the left.

Every single dollar which is spent on our military or our military engagements is used as a complaint multiple by the left. Authoritarians consider that dollars are not best spent on military uses. They ask why we cannot appropriate those dollars away from battlefield engagements and use them to build schools, bridges, wind farms, or increase the Medicaid budget.

The answer is very simple. We live in a world of dire threats, ever present enemies, and spiteful wolves. Anyone with a vigilant eye can see teeth being bared against our nation and our citizens every day. Shouldn't we have teeth of our own to bare, to ward off, scare those wolves against their plots of evil?

Very often the left asserts that any teeth bared against this nation are only a response to our 'foreign intervention' of other nations. This as even become a typical libertarian example for why portions of the world hate America. There is probably a case to be made that we frequently go farther than we would tolerate other nations doing to us. There is a difference, however. We protect freedom from tyranny. Enemies against us destroy freedom to establish tyranny.

It cannot be said that wolves exist because the sheep are protected by sheepdogs. That's backward reasoning. If the world were perfect naturally, there would not be any reason for governments to exist. But the world is chock full of people who seek to rule over all others, and are willing to pursue such ends with the worst sort of vengeance.

The proper, limited role of American government has been a unique break away from the typical situation of government. Our Constitution lorded no power over anyone. It established what limited government was necessary to defend the sheep from the wolves.

For this reason, the distinction between the wolves of the world and America's military sheepdogs is fundamental and thoroughly accurate. The wolves don't have teeth because we bare ours. They shy away when they see there's teeth in opposition to their violent reign of power.

But consider our current President's declared stance on weaponry. "I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems." "Third, I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. I will seek a ban on the production of fissile material."[3]

The notion of nuclear disarmament is like the sheep defanging their protectors, the sheepdogs, in hopes that the wolves will follow voluntary suit. It doesn't work that way. The wolves will seem to comply, goading the world along until no defense of justice remains. Then the wolves reveal their teeth once more, unopposed.

As Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. He was right. The Soviets signed accords of voluntary minimization of certain weaponry, all the while continuing development in secret.

I hope that Barack Obama is not so blissfully ignorant of the world in which we live, that he would, indeed, fulfill his primary role of the defense of this nation from foreign threats.

The world we live in is moving ahead with weaponization of space. It is not concerned with doing justice to America. It is not shutting down its nuclear ambitions. It is not complying with moratoriums on biological and chemical weapons developement.

I say, build defensive weapons shields. Prepare to shoot down missiles destined for American cities. Why would a President refuse to fund interceptor missile technologies? Continue to develop fissile material, not only for nuclear weapons but for nuclear power plants as well. Design, test, and deploy weapons in space to counter threats to our satellite networks. "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."[4]

[1] Jason Lewis

[2] http://www.gleamingedge.com/mirrors/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html

[3] Barack Obama

[4] Barry Goldwater

The Yellow Cake Road

2009-03-06T23:42:00.000-05:00

Have we become a nation of sheltered fools? We take entirely for granted our ability to live our own lives, irreverent of the tumult which roils throughout a significant majority of the world.

There are a number of reasons for this. First off, our lives have been so completely protected for us, by two centuries of building up our nation into a superpower and also by the volunteer military force which does so fine a job of continuing our status.

Secondly, we choose not to look at the ugly face of such reality, again because do not have to. Very few, growing up in such luxury and ease, would decide to confront evil around the world even if there was an imminent threat, perceived or otherwise. “It is well that war is so terrible or that we should grow fond of it.”[1]

Thirdly, the citizens of our great nation live their lives so lavished with second-to-second entertainment. Many of them, are totally unaware of the reality of the world beyond the walls of their homes and workplaces.

It is very likely that these reasons are intermixed, and perhaps I’ve left a few out. Whatever the case, it is important to note that we do not live in a world of peace. There never has been peace on this Earth, and without direct intervention by God, Himself, we are likely never to see peace in our lifetimes. The peace which we enjoy has been a result of strength, frightening those evils into our own protection.

As I state so often, humans are flawed. Not only do most of us sometimes fail to do what we know to be right, we cannot even unite behind a common belief in something to be right, save the absolute basics. Murder is not found to be socially acceptable, neither is rape. Yet, even theft is found to be socially acceptable in certain circumstances. Social acceptability, however, is not justification. Things are right or wrong regardless of a moral consensus.

So, now, we flawed Americans are faced with an ever growing dilemma. As much as we may wish to shelter ourselves from the world’s tumult and chaos we must come to grips with the fact that technology has stripped us of the ability to isolate ourselves. This is not a call for a new world order. This is a plea that we do not delay in facing up to the challenges which are before us.

When Germany was restricted from having an army, and yet, an army they raised, the world stood by and failed to enact pre-emptive measures against so obvious a rising enemy. Weak-kneed appeasers stood by while the threat grew. “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”[2]

America, and every life-loving human, faces the same growing crocodile everyday. Radical Islam is rising around the world, preparing to strike in more ways than blatant terrorism. Cultural overrun ought to be of grave concern to each person. Diversity for diversity’s sake is among the most flawed lines of thought which, perplexingly, remain prevalent.

Iran is raising a nuclear arsenal and the notable difference between the Islamocrats controlling that nation and the Nazi party of Germany is this, the Germans wanted to survive their victory. Radical mullah Islamists may not find it so necessary to live through their onslaught against the rest of the world. They have the contacts, guts, will, and intent to provide nuclear weapons to terrorists, or even use those weapons themselves. "Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others."[3]

But in the White House, the new administration is entirely unwilling to do anything more than talk, negotiate with the madmen on the kill switch; feeding the crocodile, as it were. I believe Barack Obama stated at one point the flaw with this approach; “mere words”. It's difficult to make peace with someone whose sole purpose is to kill you.

It is worth looking at the wisdom laden words of this century's greatest President. “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the US was too strong.”[4] Iran may be prepared to fire a suicide nuclear shot into Israel or even help terrorists attack the United States with a nuclear weapon. But a weak stance about their technical prowess can only serve to further enable them.

Were I to advocate a direct action, I would be rightly met with skeptical inquisition. I am not qualified to plan out tactics and foreign policy. What frightens me more is that I seem to be more qualified than the yahoos running our tactics, strategy, and policy. Anyone with a breath of pure air can tell you that "mere words" will be insufficient at reigning in the mullah madmen. The left has always hopped and skipped down the yellow cake road, hoping to find the magical wizard who, with "mere words" can set right the ailments of the world. The left has unified behind Barack Obama.

If we wish to remain a nation, we had better learn to bare our teeth to show the wolves that the sheepdogs have the means and fortitude to protect the sheep. Otherwise, we set ourselves up to be dined on by the dogs. One can only 'hope' that Barack will 'change' his policy and do what must be done to protect America.

[1] Robert E. Lee

[2] Winston Churchill

[3] Alexander Hamilton

[4] Ronald Reagan

Defending The Marketplace

2009-03-06T01:21:00.000-05:00

Many make the mistake of assuming that people who advocate in free markets are pro-corporations. Any attempt to point out flaws in government controls and regulations receive vicious and libelous accusations of 'payoffs' by big business. This is the pre-cast response of the left to any challenge against the orthodoxy construction of radical environmentalism.

However, similar associations are made whenever the leftist finds himself backed into a logical corner. You lay out the principles and benefits of freedom and the response is not a logical rebuttal, but an example of the flaws which exist in that system.

Flaws exist within every human system. Humans are flawed creatures. But the left wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater and decries anyone who disagrees with their misguided assessment, as only a shill for big business. This is an ensemble of ignorance which may carry tune, but the lyrics are written in a garbled language which makes no logical sense.

Defenders of the free market do not defend business. We defend rights and in many cases those rights are harmful to the desires of businesses. "What all businesses want is a government sanctioned monopoly so that other businesses can't compete with them." "Free markets are the enemy of business. In a true free market, business has to compete or die. Who wants to do that? It's much easier to bribe the politicians. It's much easier to get government on your side and then you don't have to compete in a free market."[1]

Very often businesses support government regulation of the products they manufacture and sell to damage competition which drives prices down. If the government steps in and sets restrictions, the businesses which are already in place have a chance to lobby for those limitations to dissuade any competition from getting into the marketplace.

Such intervention in the marketplace can also take the form of government banning alternatives to a product in order to assist a powerful lobby. One such example is the outlawing of incandescent light bulbs at the current energy efficiency. GE, a massive producer of one form of light bulb has spent an exorbitant amount in Congress lobbying for 'energy efficiency standards'. These 'standards' have, in one case, taken the form of bans of current level incandescent light bulbs, for which GE must compete at a much more vigorous level, due to the alternative companies producing the same product. However, GE also sells a more expensive light bulb, the CFL. Far fewer companies produce this bulb, so GE stands to profit by government banning the cheaper alternative.

Sure, the market will eventually adapt and provide more competition for the bulbs which are protected by legislation. But in the meantime, GE will increase its shareholder value through the use of regulation and consumers will bear the cost of limits on their freedom to buy what they want to buy.

Business is more than happy to exempt itself from the rigors of competition which is foundational to free markets.[2] "There is no moral code that justifies law fixing prices, or fixing wages, or preventing a man from earning a living unless he joins a union and submits himself to the disciplines of the union, or forcing you to buy more expensive goods at home when cheaper goods are available abroad. When the law prohibits things that most people regard as moral and proper, they are going to break the law. Only fear of punishment, not a sense of justice, will cause him to obey the law."[3]

Because corporations wish to control a larger market share, they can either engage in the difficult task of providing a better product at a better value or they can get the iron hand of legislation and regulation to fight their battles with the force of tyranny. All too often business and government work together in this fashion. Sometimes liberals even point out such discretions and defame those involved. Yet, it is leftist authoritarianism which is implemented to remove the freedom of market choice. Corporations want to control their market. Leftists want to control the market and destroy as much of it as possible. “One of the many ironies of politics is that the politicians who do the most to reduce supply often express the greatest outrage about high prices.”[4]

Free market capitalists, on the other hand, urge one basic notion; that every man is free to set and pursue his own goals, how he pleases. Since wealth is a matter of production, not who takes what from whom, a system where people engage in voluntary transaction for their own benefit would result in the greatest effort of each person to accomplish their own success. There is a secondary effect of their actions as well. They benefit others because commerce is centralized around pleasing your fellow man. The act of trade must be mutually pleasing.

"The beauty of capitalism between the customer and the provider is cooperation. I have to please you in order to get you to buy my product. In fact, capitalism is the epitome of social work, of human kindness. The only way I can get rich in a truly capitalist society is by providing for my fellow man. If I'm not making something that other people want, I'm not going to sell it. Where government, on the other hand, gets wealthy by simply going to with a gun in their hand saying, 'I'm taking your money every April 15th and if you don't like it too bad.'"[5]

The paradoxical nature of the business/government relationship is a true rainbow of control and freedom. Every possible wavelength of the spectrum can be found, but rest assured business wants government out of the way unless they can receive special exemption from the roadblocks.

Wal-Mart may be the corporation most despised by the anti-corporate left.[6] There is one main reason for this. Wal-Mart has not allowed unionization of their employees. A majority of their workers have voted, on secret ballots, to keep employment contracts open and free from third party arbitration. Wal-Mart has simply complied with the majority opinion on this matter, but the left hates them for it.

Anti-Wal-Mart types have found convoluted reasons to deride the super-store chain. They call the store a slayer of mom-and-pop businesses. "The point of progress is the destruction of jobs."[7] If Wal-Mart provides a better transaction for the customer, in terms of quality, quantity, and price, isn't the customer better off? Success in a competitive market comes with providing the best bargain possible. The customers are the beneficiaries of a hotly competitive marketplace.

But, the primary reason the left hates that corporation is the refusal of the employees to voluntarily organize against their 'oppressors' as the left so perniciously chides. So, in effort to reduce the number of employees willing to stand on their own two feet and refuse to pay union dues, the left is now pushing to remove the right to a secret ballot when voting for or against unionization. This would allow union agitators to harass people who vote down union intervention. (One small note, I do hope those who oppose unions use the same tactics on those who give them a hard time. People should take a stand and refuse to give in to fascist tactics.)

Now, most of you readers are not seeing the connection here. My statement was that business and government will conspire to reduce the freedoms of the consumer and the producer. They will seek special status at the expense of everyone else. But Wal-Mart has not done that in this case.

No, but the unions have. Yes, unions are corporations which sell labor to businesses. And unions have certainly received special status from government. If half the employees of a business desire to be unionized, the business has no choice but to purchase labor from that conglomerate indefinitely. Wal-Mart would not even be allowed to seek a different union from which to purchase employees.

Government regulation allows workers to tie an ever increasing weight around the neck of any employer. Corporations do not have the option of throwing in the towel. The events following a corporation that unionizes is a slow bleed, decreasing profit margins per share held until the company goes under. We see it with Detroit auto companies, other manufacturing jobs, and airlines.

If unions were made to compete for their sales as all other businesses naturally must, they might economize. But so long as they receive special dispensation from government of rights over the business that employs them, that will never change. The voting block of dedicated union members is simply too large.

In a free marketplace, businesses could still reject the unionized labor, and hire workers willing to cross the picket-lines to find employment. Such rights to associate and contract no longer exist. Unions have a monopolistic stranglehold over labor wherever they can claw their way in and they have such a monopoly because government establishes, maintains, and expands it in conjunction with the desires of the union bosses.

Freedom is not a matter of business versus government. It is a matter of reducing coercion as much as possible, where ever possible. This may be distasteful to many people who desire or have control, but it is an axiom by which all human freedom and equality survives. Reducing the power of business to coerce entails reducing the power of government in the arenas of production and consumption.

[1] Jason Lewis

[2] It should be noted that a free market can exist without competition of a specific product or industry. The market generates competition when the source of a product is inefficient or inadequate. If a product is both sufficient and efficient, it may not necessarily be challenged in the marketplace until it becomes insufficient and/or inefficient, by progress of standard technique or regress of tactic.

[3] Milton Friedman

[4] Thomas Sowell

[5] Jason Lewis

[6] While the left make themselves known to be anti-corporate, free market capitalists tend to support liberty, which may in turn provide the logistical foundation upon which corporations can be established. They are only groups of regular people co-operating to achieve a greater productive level.

[7] Walter Williams

A Matter Of Effort

2009-03-03T23:02:00.000-05:00

I've constructed a phrase that I like to use frequently. It changes a little from time to time but the concept is consistent and fundamental to our liberties.

Being born does not qualify you for an issuance of property. Yes, everyone needs food and water to survive. Housing, clothing, education, transportation, health care, and heat are also helpful and to a first world lifestyle, intrinsically necessary.

But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity and desire are great motivators. They encourage people in the strongest possible way, to do things they otherwise would never have any interest in doing. To do things which are of material benefit to society, even though that is not the intended objective of the acting person.

Every city and even most small towns have people who are paid to haul trash away from the city. The workers don't want to haul trash all day. No one was born wanting to do that honestly disgusting, strenuous, and hazardous work. But they want to make some money and pay for those necessary things in life, so they find gainful employment pleasing their fellow man and receiving payment for it.

Similarly, the people who live in those cities and towns don't want to hand out money to random people for no reason. Garbage collection is not a source of delight or entertainment for property owners and residents. It is a matter of desire. They do not wish to live on a foul-smelling, cluttered property. They would rather pay good money, earned by their own effort, so that someone will come and get rid of all the rubbish. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Imagine you had to farm a large plot of land all year in order to feed yourself and your family. It would take a huge amount of your time to work that farm and ensure that you will not go a day without food, much less work a job or sell any of the produce. After a hard year's worth of work, should the government have the right to come onto your farm and confiscate part of your food stores? Even if they declare it is needed to feed some hungry people, you would ask why the government doesn't send the hungry people to your farm to work for you so you can increase your production.

Being born does not qualify anyone for an issuance of property and the reason behind this is that things do not simply come into existence spontaneously. Many of the left try to urge the view that the economy is a set value which neither increases nor decreases and that rich people have an 'unfair share' of the available wealth.

That is utter nonsense! That worldview indicates that computers always existed but we only just now started to divvy them up properly. No, everything people consume was produced, and it took individuals working to produce those goods.

So, if government comes in and takes part of what you produce for yourself and gives it to someone else they have made you work involuntarily for that person's benefit. That, readers, is a form of soft slavery. Under this philosophy, you, by the effort of your production, are made subject to the desires of someone else; slavery. Your own goals may require additional effort to meet because part of what you had produced is forcibly made unavailable to you.

On the other hand, a free society becomes very productive because each person can make use of his hands to his own total benefit. If every extra widget I produce and sell is another stack of revenue in my pocket, I will make and sell as many as I possibly can. My benefit and my family's benefit are my chief concerns, whether the government is all powerful or not. That drives creation of people-pleasing goods.

Wealth and riches are a matter of production and productivity. The wealthiest people in our society are those who organize productivity in new and more efficient ways. The middle income levels of our society are those people who produce and consume at relatively equal rates, although the quality of life is still increasing for them as well. The poorest people of our society are those who either do not produce at all or produce at a rate which is lower than the level of goods they consume.

Some would say my last sentence ignores the 'fact' that business is always taking advantage of workers at lower levels of income. That is true but workers are also taking advantage of business just the same. The phrase 'taking advantage' tends to resound negatively in people's minds when the opposite is quite the case.

A business needs work done and a potential worker would like to make money. They both feel advantageous about a contract for employment otherwise, the worker would not show up to work or the business would fire the worker for incompetence or laziness. The act of barter is a mutual benefit between productive economic agents.

Why does a significant portion of the population remain in what America labels poverty? The truth is multi-fold. The primary piece of the problem is government making them comfortable recipients of tax-payer money, an enormous topic for another entry. Another big reason is that it truly is difficult to rise from poverty to wealth. It can be done though. It's done all the time in America and this is the best place in the world to do it, but that does not mean it is effortless to increase the value of one's own production.

The first two reasons are primarily why many people succumb to the third; some people in poverty are simply lazy and incompetent. They do not have the skill to obtain gainful employment and they do not have any compulsion to improve. “I am for doing good to the poor but I differ in opinion of the means. I think that the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but driving them out of it.”[1] What sense would it make for a poor person to rise to the truly difficult challenge of improving their situation, if government will continue to subsidize their lack of effort?

Government continues, at all levels, to take property from someone to whom it belongs and provide it to someone to whom it does not belong. That is the softened essence of slavery and tyranny, that a person's effort is not for his own benefit but for a 'societal benefit'. The only thing which separates this notion from absolute tyranny and slavery is that the person producing gets to keep part of his earnings and he still has the right to decide how to go about producing. How far away from changing that freedom are we? Probably not far, with how redistributionist we have become.

Majoritarianism (democracy) is the gradual death of freedom[2] for the immediate aggrandizement of some, at the expense of others. Our liberty is under deadly assault every day from our centers of government and political unions.

Rather than an issuance of property, existence establishes a right to life and freedom and the pursuit of personal goals within that free arrangement. There is no justification for taking what belongs to one person, by toil, trade, or gift, and allocating it to someone to whom it does not belong. Human nature provides no route for one person to lord over another, except in defense liberties and redress of violations.

[1] Benjamin Franklin

[2] http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/

Protecting Both Sides

2009-03-01T18:59:00.001-05:00

Earlier this month, I covered a topic of bitter controversy.[1] Minimum wage sounds good on its very surface. Who would not be opposed to people making more money at their job? None of us would refuse a raise when offered, so what could possibly make minimum wage law bad? That is the attitude with which it is approached. It helps people on the lowest rungs of the work force, Daryl Chickens tells me.

Voluntary association freedoms allow people to enter into contracts that most of us would never find acceptable for ourselves. Since most of us would never work for $3.25 an hour, some of society feels guilty that certain jobs may only offer that level of pay. Those emotional reactions ignore return on investment and encourage support for a minimum wage to “protect” workers from an employer, taking advantage of them. It is interesting that most people who support establishing a minimum wage would never accept a job that paid that level of income. But that’s beside the point today.

If the purpose of minimum wage law is to protect the worker from being exploited by an employer, what is to stop the worker from exploiting the employer? Now, I know a lot of readers are thinking, YW, that could not possibly happen. The employers would never pay enough money to their employees to be scammed. They hold the money!

But that begs the question. The employee holds the work, which is equitable to the money they barter from the employer with their effort. Where is the difference? Employment is a voluntary contract on both sides of the transaction. Employers want work completed and workers want money. The two come to an agreement to mutually obtain these goals. This agreement may not be bliss for either. It may be that neither party receives their dream of a deal, but the exchange is voluntary, none-the-less. If it were not worth the value to one particular party, it would never occur at all.

We are told constantly that the employee needs to be protected. Should we not also protect the employer from coercion of labor? Perhaps we should not only maintain a minimum hourly wage but a maximum hourly wage as well.

Everyone’s necks okay? Yes, it’s quite a statement but I think the knee-jerk reaction will show the fallacy of arbitrary controls on wage rates in general. You would say, a worker should be able to get whatever he can get for his work from an employer. But should the same not be true of the employer?

If a restaurant can find someone to mop floors for $5.50 an hour why should the employer not be able to hire that person? Is it fair to that person if the employer decides to have only one employee mopping floors instead of two because the floors are not worth $7.50 an hour to clean every night as opposed to every other night? But if the law demands that wage, the employer would be stupid to employ at a net loss. He would go out of business rather quickly with that approach and then no one would be employed. Businesses cannot make decisions solely for the benefit of their employees. The business must come first otherwise there won’t be a successful business at all.

Jobs don’t exist for the purpose of providing income to people. Employment exists because smart people organize effort to increase productivity. A beneficial side affect of this is that people can be employed much more stably than any form of self employment. People on both sides should be free to enter into whatever employment contracts they feel are appropriate, regardless of how the rest of us feel about it.

[1] http://yworiginal.blogspot.com/2009/02/intervention-is-unnatural.html

Odd Justice

2009-02-27T23:06:00.000-05:00

Are we a just society? The foundation of justice is almost mathematical; action and reaction. When you do something, you do it for the result. It can be said that we are not a just society because people are not held to the consequences of their actions. People who fail to produce for themselves are subsidized by those people who pushed themselves to success despite encountering the same drawbacks, even before government intervention. Property is taken from one to whom it rightly belongs and given to someone to whom it does not belong.

Is that fairness? Is it fair to ignore the right of each person to own himself and thus the product of his labor? Many leftists argue that people need certain things. People need food to survive. They need shelter. They need clothing. They need transportation, communication, education, entertainment, healthcare, and retirement.

But no one's birth indebts society to them. The state of existence does not qualify anyone for an issuance of property. It never has and it never should, though, through illegitimate force of government, many people try to change this statement to the ultimate detriment of production and freedom.

I would like to introduce or perhaps even coin a phrase; natural consequence. That is, the results of actions are natural. Someone who goes out and works a field will, very likely, reap a more bountiful crop than the land would otherwise produce. That is natural consequence. The choice of A will lead to the result of B.

The principal of natural consequence generates a family unit, property rights preserved by law(without which one is not free), and many other axioms absolutely crucial to liberty.

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”[1] The funny thing about reality is that it always forces people to face the consequences of their actions, even if those actions are all made in effort to separate reality from this law.

See, all the redistributionist policy that is being advocated can only harm us. One cannot take a bucket of water from the deep end of the pool, carry it to the shallow end, and dump it in expecting a change in the depth of the pool. Rather, they will spill a great deal of water on the way, and slowly lower the overall depth of the pool. The shallow end will be dry a lot sooner than the deep end.

A tragedy of the damaging policies we are undertaking is that many of the harmful effects of this patchwork establishment of socialism will not be seen for another generation, and will start being seen with the people who struggle to afford things the most; the supposed 'lower class'. We tamper with the future for the unjust and fleeting pleasure of the present. America was not established so that everyone could be average. Freedom was set forth so people could be all they want to be, whether that was financially wealthy or not.

Justice demands that consequences match actions and no one is fit to modify how actions and results work out naturally. When someone works hard they receive payment from whomever they worked to please. When someone procrastinates and ignores his own responsibilities, he will soon face the prospect of being financially unable to care for himself without assistance.

Charity will flow to those who are deserving, instead of rewarding simple laziness. Government is the opposite. Effort is ignored and the anonymity of government programs encourage many people to scam the programs, making good intentions a wash in the end. (I have often said, the left has the promise of intention. But liberty is the proof of success.)

I find it an odd matter of consequence that we should receive the awful government this culture desires. Many of the totalitarian left believe an authoritative state would benefit most of America. They ignore all history, logic, economics, science, human nature, and philosophy. If we continue in this mode, we will reap what we sow.

Unfortunately, that odd justice is less acceptable than the alternative. To establish a free society, protected by necessary, limited government, our framers sought to ensconce the consequences of liberty. Those consequences are a bountiful Earthly fruit sweeter than anything else this world has seen, which provides equality to all of life and of liberty, and the actions of those two ideals.

But when we choose to reject freedom, we dilute the bounty, we tarnish the honey of liberty, and we obliterate our rights for ourselves. That is also the consequence of actions.

Which would you prefer to have? Sweet honey and individual choice or obliterated rights and communal servitude?

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last.... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government."[2]

“It would be hard to think of a more ridiculous way to make decisions than to transfer those decisions to third parties who pay no price for being wrong. Yet that is what at least half of the bright ideas of the political left amount to.”[3]

[1] John Adams

[2] Alexander Hamilton

[3] Thomas Sowell

Term Limits On Freedom

2009-02-25T18:04:00.000-05:00

I cannot name all the people in Congress because of whom I feel America's situation would benefit from term limitations. Alas, in trying, I lose track of who I have counted and who I have yet to count. You may be able to add up the number of Senators and Representatives for whom I approve, multiply that sum by itself, and still not have a figure as great as the amount of Congressional members for whom I hold utter contempt and disgust.

But is the problem really the members of Congress, themselves? Or is our true sickness the ill-informed numbskulls that keep electing these mendacious Ludites, time after time, irreverent of what they do?

There is no doubt, I would have to side with the second paragraph. Term limits are not a matter of reigning in government power, they are ways of reigning in electoral liberty.

People vote for campaigners whom they wish to have in office and ought not be obstructed from their choice merely because of an arbitrary number of days in service. Should Ronald Reagan have been kept from office, despite popular support, simply because he had already served two terms? And what should restrain politicians from moving from the Senate to the House after their limit is reached: then from there to a governorship, to the presidency and so on? How would one equate the toll of these positions?

I know the old refrain; power corrupts. That, most certainly, is true and accurate in our Congress. Those two bodies are primarily composed of lawyers who have spent far more time in their political career than anything else (including childhood). They know how to manipulate the system and even the voters, in order to get their way. Sooner or later, though, such manipulators lose their way if the voters are really concerned about political corruption and the destruction of liberty. A frightening observance for those of us who still actively promote freedom as the only acceptable arrangement. We receive the government we deserve.

It is conceivable that a political union could form, educating those wheel-and-deal abilities into their nominees, so that term limits have no impact on corruption. On the other hand, people who do not politically game to their advantage would be routinely ineligible for election to their positions, due to no basis other than their prior, just service.

Term limits are not necessary. Only free and fair elections are necessary. For, if term limits serve as the only means to remove a despicable politician from office, then the people deserve to be ruled over by a despicable politician. Similarly, if that politician were removed from office by term limits, what would be in place to make sure the fools who voted him in don't find another candidate of similarly dubious character?

A much better idea for limiting power is this; all federal employees should have their pay severely limited. Federal employment, even by election, is a form of service. It is not production and therefore ought to be subject to the limits of production, which support it.

If each Senator and Representative had their pay capped at the national average income, overnight, many of those Congressional members would become free market capitalists in order to raise their own income, since only success of the private sector would increase the pay of the public sector. Any amount a member took in, privately, above and beyond that national average would come out of his Congressional pay in taxation. No member of Congress ought to make more than the average America wage, in philosophic theory. That arrangement would incentivise federal employees to stop hampering people from realizing their full potential.

Drawbacks from this concept include cronyism. For instance, government, to raise its own wages, may simply mandate wages for other companies. Or government could simply take over more and more of the private sector and finance wages with printed dollars. This would have the effect of raising their wages by reducing the buying power of privately held money, ultimately battering the next generation with outrageous inflation rates. In theory the idea is a good one but it has many flaws. It would not pass through Congress, anyway.

Term limits, however, are a very hotly debated idea. Many on both sides support or dislike the notion. Politicians and analysts on each side of the aisle see equal opportunity to rid the body of Congress of that pesky one opponent to their particular concern.

Essentially, it limits the right of the people to representation. We have age, citizenship, and residency requirements which must be met by those who serve in Congress. We should be very careful about adding to this list. The qualification for whether we add or subtract is whether or not such a change would support the liberty of free people to decide who represents them. Political gaming is not a problem to be solved by making a political game of Constitutional amendment.

Freedom is, in every instance, subject to the imperfection of mankind to eventually make the wrong choice, and freely decide that liberty is less important than some other ideal. We are struggling with this like never before. In every facet of life, the government is starting to intrude. We should recover our love of freedom and our passion to reduce government to its proper size and role

But that can't happen by denying boneheads and brigands their misused right to vote. If anything, we should urge, and not force, such people to stop voting until they learn a thing or two about how reality works.

Contract Law

2009-02-24T19:02:00.001-05:00

Everyone wants the long end of the stick, the best possible deal, as it were. Most people don't recognize, with voluntary transaction, each person gets a long stick, otherwise, they wouldn't engage in exchange.

Implied contract is a notion that escapes few people. No one likes to be 'screwed' on a deal. When you go to a nice restaurant and the waiter serves you a steak, the implied contract is that the steak is fit for human consumption. Similarly, the consumer of the steak agrees that he will be able to pay for the meal when he is finished, that his credit card won't be declined.

The concept is natural to all of us. People don't assume they should bear the cost of the other party's mistake. If I sell you something that I said works and it doesn't work, then you have the right to return it, even if my statements denied the possibility of return. If I lied, I violated that implied contract. Lawsuits are settled on a regular basis over such events.

ACORN members have been protesting foreclosures for some time now. It seems, certain people are immune from their contractual obligations if those obligations can be berated as 'predatory' in origin.

Last time I checked, banks don't break anyone's arm into signing on the dotted line, though. The lenders don't sell mortgages by going door to door with a gun. In order to get a loan, you have to contact a lender yourself. They set up a loan that they find acceptable and if you sign it, then you are agreeing to the terms and conditions they set forward in the contract. Also, you are not required to accept the terms. You can walk out of the bank and refuse to accept the loan.

The protestors have called an end to evicting people 'from their homes'. Well, that brings up an interesting point. It's not their home. The occupants of a house, which is not paid off, are not home-owners, they are living in a home owned by a lending institution while they repay that institution. The lender owns the home. They put forward the money as their end of the contract, and if the occupants refuse to uphold their piece of the bargain, paying the money back, then they ought not have the benefit of owning a residence, much less living in it without meeting their obligations.

That's the real key. The left wants banks to hand out money to any yahoo that comes in asking for it, and then the left doesn't want the banks to ask the yahoo to pay back the borrowed money. Essentially, the left dislikes anyone who has more money than anyone else, (Excluding themselves, of course. They'll never sit in judgment of their own 'excess'.), and they are perfectly happy with anything that takes from the wealthy and gives to themselves or someone else.

But if the lender will not be repaid the money they loan out, there will be no loan to begin with. No one likes to be screwed. Congress, in the past, has acted to demand that banks allow themselves to be screwed and arguably this current housing 'debacle' is the result of those 'fair housing' policies of the 90s. But the only way Congress could keep the banks screwing themselves was if they promised tax-payer backed insurance, so that the lenders would not lose the money at all. So, government forced lenders to act foolishly and then makes the tax-payer foot the bill for foolish, involuntary action.

You see, one invasion from the government inevitably leads to more and more and more, until the market is not free at all, but is totally controlled by an authoritarian government. What's worse, liberals love that aspect of snowball growth. The gathering of power behind a political force is their pride and joy, bread and butter, their meaning of life.

Sooner or later, reality catches up with all this government waste and spending. The ultimate result is brutality against the success of personal freedoms. Liberals have attacked contract law at its core. So, contracts now mean nothing. If a person can merely state that he was hounded into signing a contract, then the contract, in ACORN's eyes, becomes null and void. Well, how many people can screw how many other people by using that exact tactic? Shouldn't people take the personal responsibility to put their name only on contracts to which they agree to submit themselves?

In a stable, ordered, and sensible society, the answer is yes and absolutely so. If contracts are to be made void whenever it's convenient, then we do not live in a society of law, where people are free to pursue their interests. Rather, we live in a society of lawlessness where common sense does not rule and people are able to screw each other ad infinitum.

The legal and legitimate recourse for a lender whose debtor has violated the loan contract, is foreclosure and repossession. Imagine trying to buy a house with 'cash' and simply not pay the person who owns it. Do you think you'll be moving in to that structure? Not on your life. The same is true of the lending institution's contract, except that you are permitted to live at the residence before and while you are paying for it.

Without these basic precepts of transaction, how is anyone supposed to efficiently conduct business? If people cannot be trusted at all to live up to the terms of contract, then the contracts are useless and no home loans would exist. It would be very hard for most people to buy a house if they had to pay for it in cash.

But since the left has found another place to chisel away at our economic liberties, perhaps it is to be expected when they lie and manipulate in this fashion.

The best way for conservatives to approach this might be as follows. We ought to encourage the big three auto-makers to bring suit in federal court against their union contracts. They ought to argue that they are unable to live up to such contracts and were rope-a-doped into them in the first place. There is ample evidence to suggest that union contracts are far more predatory than any contracts in the housing industry.

Auto-makers should ask the court to rule that the unions to tear up old contracts and write brand new ones that match the criteria of the business owners, whether or not it helps the union or even destroys the ability of the union to operate.

If the left seeks to destroy banking and lending by operating in such a scurrilous manner, we ought to turn it around, throw it right back in their face, and give them a taste of their own vitriolic, poisonous medicine.

Defining Our Rights

2009-02-22T20:22:00.001-05:00

The American Revolution, and the events surrounding our nation's earliest days, are something of a miracle. A perfect alignment of sentiment for personal and national freedom, with the logistical marvel of our military rebellion, accompanied many other events to provide a route for liberty. As well as this, tyranny was not replaced with an alternate tyranny, but with limited republican government, reserved in its powers for decades to come and only now re-engaging in the tragically common mode of government, which is authority over all, in some way or another. In those days, freedom was a goal to be achieved, a condition not widely seen among humanity for over two thousand years.

Most children, these days, still learn phrases like 'Don't tread on me', and "Give me liberty or give me death" as was so well put by Patrick Henry, and "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country," the model of service to a just cause from Nathan Hale. Although real history remains largely untaught in our government schools, some of these great points manage to seep through the revisionist bilge. (Yet another argument to defend freedom of debate, speech, and of information.)

The Declaration of Independence has long been heralded as a triumph of the colonies over oppression, but oppression could, just as easily, have come from the new independent government as it could from the British crown. That would have been the normal. Statistically speaking, an alternative was impossible. The miracle that is American history is the battle between government power and personal freedom.

Too often in this world, freedom is oppressed because of the corruptibility of people, who see the reigns of authority within their grasp. For a man to obtain power and then abdicate himself from it, is exceptionally uncommon and yet our founding was composed almost exclusively of those same men.

America is fortunate that our founders had such sturdy philosophies of liberty that time and again they broke away from that shameful anti-human average." In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."[1] Hamilton was right. It doesn't make any sense, when placed in their shoes, for the powerful to give up their command of others, unless that philosophy of liberty is firmly in place.

In such respect, what is the purpose of a Declaration of Independence? Thomas Jefferson was willed into penning the document by John Adams and he spent a great deal of time constructing it, as well as suffering revisions with Adams and Benjamin Franklin. What was the purpose of 'declaring' the colonies to be 'independent'? What good, against a king ignoring pleas both written and ushered by ambassador, would a succinct page of parchment and quill do?

The Declaration of Independence is a document formalizing our national sovereignty so that no other nation may make subjects of Americans. The continental congress was making clear to the world, through the example of the time's foremost world superpower, that no nation of people can justly be subjects. People are citizens of their nation and subject to no master but themselves and their God.

The treatise was very specific in charges against the crown, but the principles held within the text are applicable to all of humanity and all of history and of future. These "self-evident truths" are "unalienable" and cannot be removed without the violation of natural rights. Equality of life, individuality of liberty, and the personal pursuit of happiness were laid out plainly.

Ultimately, slavery was made illegal from the application of these principles. (Many of the left berate the Declaration for hypocrisy since Thomas Jefferson held and never freed his slaves. However, Jefferson was financially obligated in debts and slaves were held, by law, as collateral. A number of other reasons prevented Jefferson from taking action.[2])

The Constitution of the United States of America was a document not wholly different from Jefferson's work. It was not a statement to the world. It was an announcement of no sort. But what it did not have in world application, it made up for in specificity and tact. Where as Jefferson's Declaration was broad and sweeping, avowing rights of all mankind, James Madison's (the accepted father of the Constitution) document provided broad, sweeping limitations of government.

In effect, this became known as a charter of negative rights. The Constitution was a list of actions government can and must undertake and that government was limited to those roles only. Jefferson wrote of the freedom of all people. Madison wrote of the limitation of all government.

You see, the two different approaches are entwined irrevocably. More freedom means less government.[3] The word govern is "the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it".[4] Government is the reigning in of power and the use of such control to affect the goals of government. The Constitution strictly limits that power of our political authorities to those things which are defined within its texts.

Whereas one work was created to assure national freedom from foreign powers, the other was created to indemnify individual liberty against domestic command. The key here is that the founders and framers all fought to recover, restore, and resolve individual freedom against the intrusions that so often violate natural law.

Such intrusion is the purpose for having government. The duty of our political system, first and foremost, is to ensure national security from foreign invasion and attack. The second and perhaps equally as important is to establish common law so that no man within the nation may restrict the liberty of another man.

Neither document was an establishment of new rights or new limits on government. Rather, it was the implementation of original truth and original justice that was refreshing.

These works, while fantastic in their scope and history, are mere formalities. They describe in plain words the natural laws of justice and freedom, to which all men must be held. For liberty to exist, the law must be established and applied equally to all men. No true, lasting freedom can exist without a principled, unbiased application of justice to each man.

"If the Constitution's meaning can be erased or rewritten, as Obama suggests, and the framer's intentions ignored, it ceases to be a Constitution but instead a concoction of political expedience that serves the contemporary policy agendas of the few who are entrusted with public authority to preserve it." "By now it should be clear. The debate over Constitutional interpretation is a false one. The leftist is not interpreting it, but manipulating it."[5] "Anybody that tells you the Constitution is a living document is telling you we don't have a Constitution. For the rules of the game to mean anything they must be fixed. How many of you, for example, would like to play me poker and the rules be 'living'. That is, maybe my two pair may beat your full house depending upon the circumstances."[6]

Were we to try to write such documents today, Congress would soon find itself a vocal brawl over every triviality and even the intent of the documents as a whole or their necessity in the first place. My work here is not to assert that our fore-fathers were without contention. That claim could only be made by fools and liars. But each of our ancestors understood the prudence of freedom.

Today, the common ground of liberty has grown absent from a significant part of our society, namely, the political left. They do not advocate liberty of a different fashion. They advocate slavish authority under which all end result differences of economics are forcibly remedied, even to the utter detriment of society. Furthermore, many of them advocate economic disparity of a different sort. Some leftists feel that the wealthy should be 'made to suffer' the same circumstances that the poor have lived under. They ignore incentive, ownership, and production.

It is time for Americans to stand up to this sort of nonsensically childish approach of the tyrannical left and state that we will not be subjects of any tyrant nor union of tyrants. We must stop playing the part of the frightened, silent majority.

[1] Alexander Hamilton

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96oct/obrien/charactr.htm

http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/2993311.html

[3] Walter Williams

[4] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/government

[5] Mark Levin

[6] Walter Williams

No Reason Necessary

2009-02-18T22:33:00.001-05:00

"I am very upset about the whole thing," said Joyce Gorycki of Mineola, widow of a Long Island Rail Road official killed in the 1993 train shooting and co-chair of Long Island's New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. "I don't know why she needs two rifles."[1]

As I read, this quote stuck out to me like a broken toe during a marathon. The article itself is mildly intriguing in that it speaks to the right of self-defense by the best possible means. But this particular quote reveals a terrible character flaw which has seeped and festered in our society.

First off, a question jumped to the front of my mind. Why does it matter to this woman that someone else has two guns? What business is it of hers? Is it really a big enough deal that she ought to become very upset? Were these two rifles somehow part of Joyce's husband's demise?

I'll not make any bones about it. I have no sympathy for the dictatorial activism of people arising tragic circumstances. This anti-gun woman has no cause to bother herself about the ownership of firearms by people whom she does not know and has no legal control over. Especially so, since the person about which the article was written, has no record of criminal use or even dangerous neglect when it comes to firearms.

We can go back and forth till the cows come home about the stances on either side of the issue. The Brady Campaign will use their own numbers, though I think John Lott has definitively shown the statistics to support the case for firearm freedom. One such statistic illustrating the fallacy of gun control laws is this; criminals disobey laws. A shockingly high percentage of mass shootings take place in supposedly 'gun free zones' such as colleges and school grounds. Bloodthirsty people know that they will be the only person there with weapons, so they know no one will be able to fight back. On the other hand, where concealed carry law is unrestricted, the odds of survival for a potential murder drops significantly. Even when they are insane enough to try, the average death count is far smaller, since the regular citizen does not have to hide and wait for police to show up and clean up the bodies.

But, all this information is readily available. Perhaps later I'll cover the reasons why gun control causes more crime and gun freedom prevents more crime. For now I'll focus on a basic question, rather than focusing on crime rates. What does the philosophy of gun control do to the average citizen?

"If you deny a person the means of self defense, you've also denied them the right of self defense."[2] Reiterating; the problem with banning guns is that criminals pay no attention to laws against armed robbery and murder much less against weaponry controls. In order for the average citizen to be safe from harm, he has to be prepared to meet force for force against an assailant. Above and beyond that, he has to be prepared to level that force first. A gun, therefore, is called 'the great equalizer.' Because people who are otherwise too frail to defend themselves have the ability to level direct, protective force.

Simply put, guns cannot be un-invented. They are here to stay. Most gun control advocates realize that. They simple wish to mandate that only police and military personnel have firearms and even they only have access to weaponry during their duty shifts. How intelligent is that?

Nonsense, I tell you. That is rubbish. If a police officer is worth trusting with a firearm on duty, why would we trust him less off duty? Furthermore, a nation where only the police and military (agents who act at the bidding of government) have guns is one ready to submit itself to total control.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." "The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers." "The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."[3] “The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”[4] "If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people."[5]

These words from great men speak for themselves. I could go on and paste another three pages worth of quotes but the point is well outlaid and defended. The right to 'keep and bear arms' is one of individual sovereignty in freedom.

I think there is more to this issue than the mere protection of man from government, as the proper reading of the 2nd Amendment implies. The Constitution does not restrict people to the ownership of guns for a singular purpose. In fact, the document avoids purpose at all and merely states that the government shall not infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

One of these purposes may be for use of personal defense against assault. This is especially crucial since the Supreme Court has ruled several times that police and the government have no responsibility to ensure your protection. All too often, law enforcement, though they do try, shows up after the carnage has taken place. Such absolute assurance of safety could only come from an omnipotent government and even that level of tyranny would be insufficient to protect all people from individual, criminal harm. It would certainly enable the government to engage in such heinous activities while shrouding itself in legitimizing propaganda.

A simple example of the right to self defense is this; should people, who are given liberty to drive massive vehicles, such as cars, trucks, jets, and other motorized transportation, being trusted with the hazardous task they undertake everyday, be trusted identically with the right to bear the best means of self defense? Until they prove they are untrustworthy, I would say yes and more so than the licensing to pilot a vehicle.

Firearms are frequently misunderstood and for that reason, people fear them. But guns are, in statistical terms, less dangerous per owned unit than cars. People don't call for the banning of vehicles (on the basis of their danger to mankind. Environmentalists call for the ending of cars for a very different reason to be covered at another time) because they are used to them. They use them every day. Guns ought not be licensed or regulated by government specifically because that government would ban them at the behest of the loudest voices. Consider this; the original restrictions on gun ownership in America were local laws that kept blacks from buying guns as a way for white racists to keep them defenseless.[6] This is exactly the cronyism that the left would use to permanently suppress all opposition. "When the people fear the government there is tyranny. When the government fears the people there is liberty."[7]

Another purpose to own a gun may be for sport. Many people have strange hobbies and firearm sports would be nowhere near the top of the oddity list. These sports include pin shooting, steel shooting, accuracy competitions, speed competitions, western-style competitions, re-enactments, and countless other safe, enjoyable sports. Target ranges are frequently full of enthusiasts who have never broken a law, except for the occasional traffic ticket. In fact, the vast majority of guns owned in America are owned by people who have yet to sit in a courtroom under prosecution. Why should these people have their liberty to property offended, especially when such offense makes disarmed citizens targets for law-breaking criminals?

Another legitimate use of weaponry is hunting. Each year in America, hundreds of thousands of meals are brought to the table by the use of firearms to take down wild game. We have organizations, as many private as well as public, in place to ensure that game is not made scarce. In fact, deer populations have been on a steady increase in my area, and the numbers have grown to the point where there are too many deer. The animal may starve some numbers of its population because there is only so much out there that deer consider consumable. Thus, my state has recently increased the bag limit in the past years.

There are still other uses for firearms. Many family heirlooms are guns passed down from father to son to grandson. As well, other guns are collectible due to their historical nature. Guns are also excellent to study if one wants to learn number of different trades; thermodynamics, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, and a host of other studies.

So, I return to the last sentence in the first paragraph. Joyce Gorycki "[doesn't] know why she needs two rifles." It's none of your business Joyce. You have absolutely no right to stick your nose between someone and their property rights, including the right to protect those freedoms with the best means possible. Gun owners do not have to explain to you why they have guns. They also don't have to tolerate your arbitrary, and with sympathetic respect, emotionally driven diatribe. Your opinion is of no consequence to anyone else unless that person deems it worthy of their time. That is the essence of freedom, Joyce. You're free to speak. I'm free to disagree. Guns protect freedom.

Gun control advocates demand that no one be permitted to legally own a firearm, thus relinquishing firearm ownership to become the domain of criminals and government agents. The rest of us would become mere victims of both.

[1] http://www.newsday.com/news/local/politics/ny-usgill0217,0,903835.story

[2] Alan Gottlieb

[3] Thomas Jefferson

[4] Samuel Adams

[5] Alexander Hamilton

[6] http://www.constitution.org/cmt/cramer/racist_roots.htm

http://www.lizmichael.com/racistgc.htm

[7] Thomas Jefferson

Communism Is Democratic

2009-02-16T23:05:00.000-05:00

True communism is a unified and totalized democracy. That is to say, democracy is the rule of the majority. When that majority encompasses the whole of the population, and is seated in a goal held by each member of that population, you have true communism. But that cannot happen. It isn't possible, for a number of reasons.

The cause, foremost denying communism as a reality to be achieved, is the natural diversity of humanity and drive of the individual. Everyone has differing goals and ideas about how to attain those goals. This keeps us from unifying behind any centralized plan, especially since those centralized plans often would have to supersede or even cancel our personal goals.

In communist states people are not permitted to keep what they produce if that would allow them to own more than someone or everyone else. One way to verify that no absolute communist states exist, is to see whether or not those nations allow the people in charge to have property disproportionate to that owned by the people. There is no example, in history or in modern day, where the bureaucrats, setting policy to take from some and give to others in the name of fairness, apply that policy to their own wealth. In the exemplary book 'Animal Farm', the author accounted such discrepancies this way; "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."[i]

By all accounts, the sole discretion held within ownership rights of property is axiomatic when applied to self. Unfortunately, too few, in this fallible world, apply that same principal to the property of others. The reason this application is a crucial component is because we do not want to live in a world of anarchy. Everyone is infuriated when someone steals property from them, but in taking property, illegitimately, from someone else, the emotions invoked, on the part of the taker, are far less severe, even though the rightful owner is equally incensed and damaged. No one wants to have to stand guard all day and night beside one's own possessions, fearing that a moments lapse of defense would allow hordes, or even individuals, to steal from one's own earnings.

That is the essence of anarchy. In each instance, the strongest of any situation rules with absolute authority, unchecked. But how quickly does that situational control turn into an authoritarian government? If the strongest dictator manages his actions well, it does not take long for his power to reign over all else. Anarchy is brutally chaotic while it exists and fleeting before totalitarianism is instituted.

Democracy, on the other hand, is not the rule of the strongest agent. It is the rule of the strongest union of agents. The difference between the two, morally, is proportion of support per capita. While one allows a mighty minority to seize control, the other allows a mighty majority to do the same thing and somehow claim higher ground for an equal absolving of justice. Democratic popular sentiment is capable of fascism and fiat to a greater measure than any totalitarian dictator could ever dream. Numeric statements provide their coercion a mistaken sense of legitimacy, and those greater numbers reduce the ability of the minority to stand against it or organize. No ethical code can grant authority simply based upon a numeric establishment of support.

Ethics are not up for a vote. Things which are true, are true regardless of the opinion of the majority. That is why we have freedom to believe as we wish, that a massive ruling class may not stifle all opposing viewpoints. Such oppression does not take its primary form in the control of people's beliefs, but in having power over of people's capital, as a function of their principle set. The biggest problem we run into, amongst ourselves, is the attempt of mankind to wrest away from reality, the determination of what is good, proper, and acceptable. Is theft of property made morally just because the majority decides that it is no negative consequence? Certainly not and anyone who believes so, I will accept your checking account numbers and credit card numbers. Thank you, much.

True communism would be the absolute unity of all humanity behind a few basic precepts of the commune. We would all support and equally engage for equal returns so that no man is better or worse off than any other. But is economic fairness served by ignoring effort and focusing solely on results? Sure, a carpenter might not have as much in the way of material goods as a civil engineer. But to look only at the end product is to miss the entire point. One cannot compare these jobs. They fulfill different desires of customers and cannot be considered equitable, except that you can draw an end dollar amount and declare that evidence of economic disparity. Perhaps, if the carpenter charged as much as the civil engineer, no one would buy from him and he would not have any money at all. Customers would find a more affordable carpenter. And why should the civil engineer accept smaller fees? His services are clearly worth the amounts he is paid or else he would be out of work as well.

The truth is, no transacted amount is exorbitant, if the transaction was voluntary between both parties. No amount of wealth, built up by a man, is disparate to anyone else's wealth, if that production was created through the free market. Each agent of the free market should seek to maximize their own production as well, to better their own circumstances and advance toward their own goals.

Alternatively, individuals who look solely at the results of economics, feel that members of the populace are owed material goods by mere reason of existence. This is not the case. We are all human and are thus limited in our circumstance. There is no release from the compulsions that drive and limit humanity on an individual basis. We are slaves to the necessities of our human nature and we ought not use that fact to make slaves of each other as well. One cannot establish fairness by unfair means.[ii]

Communism functions very well for machines. When those machines are all engineered, programmed, and powered, they each do as they are set forth operate. In such occasion that they do not, they are forcibly repaired or they are destroyed and replaced. Communism functions very much this way. You are subject to and the property of the commune. You operate as you are commanded or you are discontinued as a destructive element to the equation. No factory would continue to feed power and materials to a press if the press does not churn out usable products.

Even still, those machines need engineers, maintenance workers, and programmers. Are we to lay all our liberties at the feet of the most intelligent five percent of the population? Are they to tell us the wisest actions to take in bettering humanity as a whole? What if the smartest five percent make a mistake? Will we not all suffer the worst of consequences since central planning is for a unified result?

Beyond that dangerous united democracy, one should note that such a system demands a subjugation of rights to the necessities of all people. How can we call that anything but soft slavery? Such control is rarely levied with care and if it is, not for long. Rationing is common among communist states because the lack of personal achievement makes lazy many people. Acquiring personal wealth drives production. Just ask the Chinese.

What would be most egregious of a society's decision to relinquish personal liberty, is that the choice is not ours to make. If 51% of a society decides that property rights are subject to popular repeal, then 49% have their beliefs utterly trampled. The two differing viewpoints are incompatible. Similarly, when such decisions are made, they are not made solely for our generation but for generations yet unborn.

No one seeks to subjugate himself. Rather, each person acts to make his own situation improve. Regrettably, many people seek to improve their situation by the illegitimate use of force through the government. When that force is imposed through government, it remains for those generations which must tolerate it or undergo rebellion, frequently violent in nature and unsuccessful in returning justice. If a person feels he will be better off without some certain liberty, he must also realize that to give up his own independence in some ways, will be to take it from someone else as well. No one can morally relinquish freedom on someone else's behalf.

At the moment, our government is currently passing on a hardening slavery to our children and grandchildren, in the form of inflation and legacy cost mandates. We have no right to demand such indentured servitude from people who are neither out of grade school or as yet born.

Who speaks up for them? Who stands up and speaks out against such blatant slavery? No productive adult would tolerate this level of vicious redistribution. So, they pass it on to those who cannot speak out. Meanwhile, much of our population is happy to continue in this manner, unethical as it may be, as long as their own immediate demands are met. What's coming next? Do we make ourselves and our children slaves unto eternity? I hope not, but I fear that may be the current paradigm.

I should note as well, America was not created as a democracy, and in fact, the framers and founders were terrified by such notion of making America a democratic nation. We are a republic. We are not a nation of majority rule. We are a nation of freedom which is protected by laws applied equally to each man and woman. America has, to her misfortune, adopted a great many features of democracy, yet, the Constitution, with exception of some of the more recent amendments, sets forth the case for solely republican form of government.

Anyone who is ensconced in partisanism, I do not use these terms in their capitalized fashion, as refers to the two major political unions. I use then in their defined nature, to refer to forms of government. The parties display qualities of their namesakes but both trend too heavily toward democracy at the moment and as such we do not have a Republican party and a Democrat party. We have democratic Republicans and communist Democrats.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.[iii]

[i] George Orwell

[ii] Mark Levin is to be credited. This paragraph is very much straight along his line of logic. It is my own words but generally concepts he invoked among my thoughts.

[iii] Winston Churchill

Mere Jealousy

2009-02-12T23:50:00.001-05:00

There is an alarming trend in American politics and populism that is skewing against private property. Lately, people seem to be furious about 'golden parachutes' and corporate jets.

For those who are unaware, a golden parachute is a bonus given to an executive when he leaves the company, or even is fired. Typically these bonuses are contractual obligations the corporations agree to when they hire the executive.

I noted one person the radio stating that it is the business of the American people, and particularly the government, that corporations purchase jets and spend large amounts of money on executives. Frankly, these expenses are fractions of a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue and turn-over rates at these businesses.

That, notwithstanding, the radio show caller stated that businesses are losing large amounts of money and spending it on these expenses all the while. Sure, that might be occurring. But, I missed the part where it's any of your business. Are you a shareholder, caller?

If not, my response is, live your own life and stop trying to control someone else's over whom you have no rights.

Should a corporation be subject to the whims of people who have not committed investment to their success? The reason that shareholders are given a vote per share of the held stock is that they have a vested interest in the success of the company.

Why would people whose entire roles are completely arbitrary have any say over what a company chooses to expend its capital? The real answer is this; if those companies are behaving irresponsibly, a number of things will happen and in no particular order. First, the profit-per-share will go down, the share price will not increase as investors hoped, and investors will pull their money and seek to invest in a venture that more wisely controls their spending. Second, the company will fail and be replaced by a competitor who does a better job of managing their resources. Third, the shareholders will vote to replace the people who are foolishly wasting money.

To be perfectly honest, I do not regard it as a waste for a large corporation to have a company jet. The amount of travel necessary for an international company to maintain itself is staggering. Government mandates forcing the businesses to sell off their private jets and send their people different places via commercial airliners would be horribly detrimental to each company's productivity. It's much more cost effective to have a private jet which is in constant use.

Also, corporate jets and golden parachutes are not what they are made out to be. A corporate jet must be built, maintained, licensed, fueled, flown, crewed, and taxied. Thousands of jobs exist for each privately owned jet aircraft. Golden parachutes, typically, come in the form of investment options in the company. Those executives do not receive cash money for their contract. They receive stocks, generally speaking. Those stocks held, increase the value of the company and let it expand jobs and produce more for people to buy.

Even if a company gave away millions in cash bonuses, wouldn't that be helpful to the economy? Wouldn't a rich person want to hire people to maintain his home and lawn? Perhaps he would hire a drive, a landscaper, a cook, and a maid. There's four jobs created just because one guy received a bonus that is being called 'ludicrous'. Would the cook consider that his salary shouldn't be paid because the money goes to someone who is hated by the public?

As well, what business is it of the government how property is used by the owners of that property? The term property ownership makes the controlling of that property exclusive to its owner. If, by popular demand, CEOs can have their contracts torn up and businesses can have their right to buy transportation circumvented, the rest of us have no preservative against absolute tyranny in our lives.

Large corporations have press agencies and lawyers who can defend them. Who would defend we who make less and have no organization? No one. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another but let him work diligently and build one for himself thus by example ensuring that his own shall be safe from violence when it is built.[1]

I like that quote a lot. It speaks very simply to the matter at hand. If we are to take from the richest 1% and distribute to the rest, we make a moot point of effort. The purpose of government is to protect liberty. Liberty is an opportunity of each individual to set and act toward individual goals as they see best fit. These rights are circumvented only when they directly infringe upon the identical and individually held rights of others.

How long must we clip off the top ten percent before those calling for the clipping are in the top ten percent? I see no reason, whatsoever, for cutting down all the trees that are the tallest so that no tree remains taller than another.[2]

Humanity did not start to work to enrich all humanity. Humans don't work to enrich everyone all at once. That as a byproduct is very clearly seen but the fundamental reason people effort is to enrich their own lives and reach their own goals.

I've found it very unnerving to listen to people in low-paying jobs complain to Barack Obama about how they do not feel they are being paid enough. They compare their wage to the salary of the CEO of their company. Well, the CEO is a very difficult position to fill with a qualified candidate. On the other hand, how many people out there can flip burgers?

Still, my point is, these people moan endlessly about how the rich shouldn't be allowed to have as much as they do. That if there was justice the rich should be made to give to the poor. A wonderful example of this mentality is Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". In the story, a rich miser was supposedly keeping people poor by holding them to their debts. But did these people not take out loans from the miser? Was the miser not a source of investment for them? The debtors could buy houses, start businesses, or many other things because they took out loans from mean old Scrooge. Shouldn't someone who borrows something be held to account for it?

Furthermore, what was the solution to Scrooge's evil, miserly ways? In the end, he began giving away money to people including the good and lowly employee Bob Cratchit. But did Cratchit not receive employment? Perhaps a raise may have helped such an employee and perhaps he would even deserve it. But in one scene of the piece, Cratchit's wife curses Scrooge for being tight-fisted with his money. Yet, her love was purchased at the end of the book when Scrooge doled out generously upon the Cratchit family.

Dickens misses the point as do many readers of the classic. Generosity is commendable but for people to hate someone else because that person owns property you desire is the epitome of greed. It is not greedy for someone to be accomplished. It is a good trait to accomplish and have wealth. It is deplorable to demand that you should have access to wealth that is not yours.

Should companies be allowed to give out golden parachutes and buy company jets? Absolutely. Anyone who really and truly believes that a company should not do this ought to buy a controlling interest in the company and stop such practices. That way, you legitimately own the business you seek to control.

That is really what the left-wing movement comes down to; control. They seek to control people and property. But it is even more sad that many people with very little political affiliation to the tyrants on the left have sought to end private property rights out of such a bitter thing as mere jealousy and greed.

[1] Abraham Lincoln

[2] Milton Freidman

Intervention Is Unnatural

2009-02-10T15:31:00.008-05:00

The nature of barter is quite simple. In order to get what he wants, a man must provide something similarly desired by someone else. This is accomplished by the representation of value in the form of money. You work hard and your company pays you in American dollars which you barter for goods and services. These transactions are essentially the same. Your company buys your effort and time and you buy someone else's effort and time with that money.
Take a look at this diagram.

Here we see how people come to agreements in conducting exchanges. On the left is a circle that represents your desires in a product, you are the buyer in this case. On the right is a like circle illustrating the desires of the product's vendor.
For your criteria, perhaps part of that circle is comprised of the quality of the product. Another part may be the price of the product. Still another might be your loyalty to a particular vendor for whatever reason. It is anything that you might consider important as to whether or not to conduct any particular transaction.
Likewise, the seller has his own set of criteria determining whether or not he will sell to you. His criteria may concern making a profit or a salary from the sale. Are your desires within his ability to fill or are you looking for a product he does not provide? Can he convince you that his good and service are better than the competition, so much so that you become a regular customer?
The place where these circles overlap is the range of agreements you and the seller may come to terms on. You conduct business on a voluntary basis only if you feel it best serves your goals. Within that orange spot lies all the possible transaction agreements you could come to terms with a seller on. You may take a slightly lower quality product for a discounted price. You may spend extra money and get the best possible product available.
While this always plays out as an individual transaction, the range of agreements available is almost always greater than a single term of agreement. Additionally, there might not be an overlap. There will be many sellers or buyers with which you will never agree. Toyota sells cars but that doesn't mean that every person out there wants to buy a car from Toyota. Still, all transactions are voluntary. Toyota will sell you a car if you want a Toyota.
Each party has something that the other wants to in some measure. But neither of them have a right to coerce the other. They have a right to try to make the sale more appealing and vendors do this by throwing in extra items. Potential buyers sweeten the deal by offering to buy warranties or accessories. The action of desires creates a marketplace where people can voluntarily agree on mutually beneficial transactions. It establishes price mechanisms, determines value, determines how best to produce, and who may consume what. And it does all this through voluntary action in the marketplace.
That is the simple nature of free enterprise. These transactions take place everyday, everywhere in the world, even in societies without a standard currency. In fact, it is so common and basic that many people are unaware that this function exists within their actions. It does not have to be explained to anyone that they should not buy something they don't want or don't want for the asking price.
But what we all can directly observe, most often, is that these voluntary transactions are partially curbed by government in the form of regulation, subsidization, taxation and tariffs, and outright banning.
Look at this next illustration.

Here we see a great number of transactions which may have taken place, increasing economic activity and theoretically benefiting the economy. But now those transactions have been made illegal by governmental intervention. In this instance, the intervention is regulation or mandates. An excellent example is minimum wage. Government minimizes the number of people who can be employed by requiring that any employee be paid at least the declared minimum rate.
Arguably, there are a number of youngsters out there, just starting out in their lives, who would rather work for a handful of dollars than not work at all. If the youngster's parents are okay with that and the worker himself is, as well, why should the government step in and declare such voluntary transactions a criminal offense?
Take a look at the isolated sections

The end result of government declaring minimum wage of, say, $7.25 an hour will not be that more people will make more money. It will not even result in the same amount of people making more money. The effect of that legislation is that fewer unskilled laborers will find employment at all, while the cost of some products will go up to accommodate the higher rates necessary to produce those goods.
Look at the graph. Suppose, Johnny G. decides he would like to get a job so he can earn more money than his parents pay him to cut the grass each week. In order for him to make money flipping burgers, stocking shelves, or sweeping floors, Johnny G. must produce at least $7.25 per hour, plus whatever additional amounts the employer will have to expend to satisfy other government demands such as employer-matched social security and disability insurance.
Well, most people would say that the average worker could produce much more than ten dollars of value for the employer each hour. That is very simple. Yet, that ignores the root of the problem. Those workers produce that much value not because the minimum wage law exists but because those jobs only exist for a profit. The employee must profit but the employer must profit as well, otherwise, he will not employ anyone. Employment is not a matter of charity, it's a matter of increasing value to a company. If those workers were not producing that amount of money, their jobs would be a net loss to the company and eventually they would be phased out, minimum wage law or not.
An untraceable statistic is the amount of jobs that do not exist because the value produced is less than the minimum wage, therefore, those jobs are always a net loss. Perhaps Johnny G. has tried to get a job but cannot. Perhaps an increasing minimum wage law has encouraged people to stay in unskilled positions rather than seeking to increase their own worth through self-actualization. Is Johnny G. aware that he could have a job if there were no laws demanding more effort than his level of experience can output?
Many people think it is cruel to take a hands off approach when employers of unskilled labor 'exploit' the workers they employ. But isn't it worse to destroy employment for many at the introductory level and worse still to do so by restricting liberty? The freedom of association applies to transactions quite readily.
Remember, this is a voluntary agreement made between the two parties. Johnny G. does not have to seek a job if he feels his time is worth more than those companies would pay. They do not force him into employment. Similarly, Johnny G. does not force an employer to give him a job. The two must come to terms and find agreement for a job to exist and be filled.
In the real world, an unimpeded market will correct itself and tend to draw toward the desired result of such regulation, if the problem exists, and I would contend that it does not. Exploitation comes through government intervention and collusion with business. Regulation has far-reaching and unintended consequences.
Understand, if minimum wages laws were to be abolished there would be almost no net decrease in wages that exist today. Overall, the average wage for unskilled labor may decrease as a result of new, competitive jobs created at lower wages. But the pay rates of most jobs would remain the same. Those people were already producing enough value for their employer for the job to be filled. Even if an employer decided to cut wages or replace the higher wage personnel to save money, the workers, just like the employers, must participate in a marketplace to sell the value of their effort, time, and talent. That is the only way to determine real value. Things are worth what they are worth to the people that want them.
At the same time, the existence of numerous jobs at the minimum wage level may, indeed, be the result of necessity. Suppose a company has engineers designing a surge protector wall plug. That plug cannot simply be engineered and then bought by consumers. It must be stocked onto shelves and someone has to complete the transaction order as a customer buys the plug.
So, due to minimum wage laws, the pay rates of the shelf stockers may be higher than their productive rate or their competitive market value. Yet, that negative value to the company may be absorbed by the engineers having to take a slight decrease in their skilled labor rates in order to pay for government intrusion on the unskilled labor rates. After all, the product must be sold for anyone to make any money at all.
Perhaps in that sort of instance, the wages of the shelf stockers may decrease but consider this: with a return of freedom in the market place of unskilled labor, there will be businesses who must compete with each other to fill jobs. That competition may grow fierce as more people see nothing but their own effort as the determining factor for their wage rate. More people will seek more gainful employment and will acquire training to accomplish that desire. Thus, the number of unskilled workers available to a company would decrease and the value of those workers would increase as a more limited resource.
But the wage would be determined only by free market transactions without the arbitrary hand of government pushing its way between people. Those government bureaucrats have nothing to do with those transactions, have no interest in them except as a political issue with which to garner votes. Government cannot know and cannot care how much the values involved are because they are arbitrary in the contract. Neither decision affects government one way or the other except in the extremely distant effect of taxation.
So, if Johnny G. decides he would rather remain out of work for whatever reason then he may do so. But he may also decide that making some money and gaining experience might be worthwhile and in that case, he will have a much easier time finding employment that is agreeable if no laws restrict what agreements he and a potential employer can make.
The real travesty of minimum wage law is that it leads people to believe that wages can be increased or decreased by government declaration with no affect on the marketplace other than 'beating back evil corporations'.
Such faith neglects market forces that are fundamental to any form of transaction. Principals which we all understand, sometimes unknowingly, and upon which we all operate, subconsciously, are ignored in favor of emotional rhetoric, railing against business and employers. The laws of supply and demand will not be avoided, no matter the amount of legislation. They are key and inseparable from reality. They are, in fact, the laws that govern much of our behavior and any attempt to distort the operation of those laws is an illegitimate invasion of destructive force.

Slavery Recovered

2009-02-09T23:24:00.000-05:00

Justice is inseparable from means to a far greater degree than from the end results. We have all heard the phrase that the 'ends' do not justify the means. This is one reason the authoritarian left is fundamentally flawed in their thinking. There are more contradictions to the beliefs held by leftists than can be explained in a mere article or book even.

For starters, we are told that no one in society ought to own anything, if that product could be put to better use for the community. This is the justification that accompanies every expenditure of government on social programs and redistribution. I've written before that people adjust their behavior based upon the rate of return, that if you take a greater amount of the product of someone's labor, they have less incentive to produce at all. Thus, higher taxation garners a weaker economy all around. This doesn't even mention that value confiscated by government would continue to change hands in the economy with the net result of increased production and greater prosperity. Everyone should know that [a] rising tide lifts all boats.[1] A more competitive economy makes products cheaper for everyone.

But what is at the core of the redistributionist philosophy? Honestly? I am quite sure that few people have thought it through past mere jealousy or guilt. It is very simple to see one person having more than another and saying that it is unfair. What takes a more thoughtful approach is to look at why one person has more than another.

Effort is what produces value. Effort is individual and voluntary. It cannot be coerced without the institution of slavery. If one person efforts far more than another or if one person makes better business decisions than another, then the rewards to that person will be greater. This is how markets encourage the best possible products at the best possible prices. Rewarding success is not a matter of economic injustice. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is the direction of Adam Smiths' 'invisible hand' guiding innovation, production, and, ultimately, the satisfaction of people's earthly desires and needs.

While the ends do not justify the means the reverse is most certainly an axiom. The means justify the ends rather than the ends justifying the means. In a free market, wealth is acquired by hard work through the constant satisfaction of someone's desires.[2] What I am saying is this: one cannot form economic justice or fairness, by dispensing property. Government cannot distribute property proportionate to effort and action. There is only one way that property can be fairly held. That is through the actions of a marketplace by which each person produces, trades, and maintains rights over whatever they produce or acquire by trade.

Numeric equality is most often a sign of economic injustice because people are not the same. People do not have the same amount of drive and make the same decisions. Some people want to go into carpentry. Some people want to be accountants. Some people want to be professional jet ski racers. How are we to determine by central planning the value of these things relative to each other so that the jet skier can buy get the carpentry work he needs to have a table? The equations involved in so organizing an economy would make impossible the function of central planning and by such capping of the profit rates one would encourage laziness. Some would see the profit line and hit it and do nothing more. Some would say 'There's not point if that's all I can make' and not try at all.

The market, on the other hand, will take care of it. It doesn't matter to you or me how much the jet skier should make. The people who sponsor him will come to an agreement with him, or not and that has nothing to do with us. They buy his advertisement of their brand. Suppose you go out to buy a handcrafted bench, though. You and the carpenter will have to agree on a price and that determines how much the carpenter will make and how much of your own effort, in the form of earned money, you will have to trade for his effort. He will try to get as much as he can. You will try to pay as little as you can but you will come to an agreement or he'll have to sell his bench to someone else and you'll have to go without or find another carpenter willing to settle for less.

The total frame of liberty is a matter of self-ownership. From this flows personal responsibility, freedom of association, absolute ownership of property rights, property defense, and a host of other ideals.

Given that perfection cannot be obtained amongst men, we all need a government to set and enforce equal justice under the law. No man should be able to steal or destroy the property of another man. Government is here, primarily, to ensure that justice is met in the event of violations of liberty. Yet, we see, to a greater degree everyday, government intervening in voluntary transactions. Government is an uninterested third party, yet, they claim to be protecting one side or the other. The real damage of such regulation or subsidization is that it limits arbitrarily the scope of voluntary transactions.

Realize that human potential is always greater than the results of all action. If full human potential could be achieved then communism may actually work for the benefit of mankind. But such mastery of production demands an unblemished coordination of all humanity towards a singular goal of universal success. It also requires maximum effort from each person so that no shortfall destroys the entire achievement, since we're all linked.

This way leftists replace self-interest with societal accomplishment. It removes the incentive of personal gain and sets all wealth as a hostage to be saved only by serving the community to an ultimate benefit. That success is never achieved so the hostage always dies. In this way, men are made slaves to one another; that we are to follow a single goal and have no other. Humanity is not perfect nor perfectible on this Earth and all attempts to generate total and equal success is a greater imposition of imperfection in soft slavery.

My usage of the term slavery is accurate. What is slavery but the usurpation of one's own right to determine one's own goals, as well as the confiscation of one's actions? In history, slavery means people do for a master. In politics, that master is most often the ruling class. In a democracy that class is the tirade of the majority who stomps upon those it chooses to merely on a whim of passion. Are the middle class not far greater than the rich in terms of the percentage of the population?

A universal system does not extract universal payment. If it did, there would be no need for a system in the first place. Rather it takes from only the producers and gives to the idle. The system cannot be said to be fair in that it unfairly burdens some while liberates others from the payment, the good, or service. Such is the socialist ploy; that equality of the ends matter while nothing else does; quality of those ends, nor means to those ends.

Also, if things are owned by the community, the consumers of the community goods are the property of the community just as much as the goods they consume. So, no man has a right to his own organs if the community can better utilize them elsewhere. This can mean not only a forceful displacement of effort but, in fact, a confiscation of individual organs to be transplanted in people of greater efficiency or whose tasks are deemed more important. I've mentioned before the indications that this may actually be occurring in communist China.

By placing supreme the total goal of societal success, the leftist makes less important the life and rights of the individual. He murders the non-compliant and often physically and mentally handicapped. He enslaves the rest to a life of total servitude and almost every example in history as well as in modern day, where such tyranny of totality is imposed, declarations are made that it will form utopia if people simply comply. Well, such utopias never form. Leftists deny basic human nature and in trying to create perfection, develop nightmares of horror beyond belief. We must as a nation get away from this madness of equality in only the ends. Other nations would be well to do he same.

Here are some quotes from smart people who agree:

Corporate liberalism is a guarantee of no failure in return for no growth.[3]

To allay the suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives, that is the craving for freedom, socialists began increasingly to make use of the promise of a new freedom. Socialism was to bring economic freedom without which political freedom was not even worth having. So to make this argument sound plausible the word freedom was subjected to a subtle change in meaning. The word had formally meant freedom from coercion, from arbitrary power of other men. Now it was made to mean freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choices of all of us. Freedom in this sense is of course, merely another name for power. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name only a demand for old demand for a redistribution of wealth.[4]

Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be it’s own tribal collective good. The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights. Under socialism the right to property, which is the right of use and disposal, is vested in society as a whole that is in the collective with production and distribution controlled by the state that is by the government. Socialism may be established by force as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or by vote as in NAZI Germany. The degree of socialization may be total as in Russia or partial as in England. Theoretically the differences are superficial. Practically they are only a matter of time. The basic principal in all cases is the same. There is no difference between the principals, policies, and practical results of socialism and those of any historical or prehistorically tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy that is a system of absolutism without a fixed head open to seizure of power by all comers, including any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue, or thug. When you consider socialism don’t fool yourself about it’s nature. Remember, there is no such dichotomy as human rights versus property rights. No human rights can exist without property rights and since material goods are produced by the mind and the effort of individual men and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his own life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as cattle.[5]

When the law has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective. It has been applied to annihilate the justice it was supposed to maintain, to limiting and destroying of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right in order to protect plunder and it has converted lawful defense into a crime in order to punish lawful defense.[6]

If men, through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of Almighty God , it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.[7]

We are fundamentally against force, that's all. We are against other people using the force of law, that's backed up by police and armies, to tell us what to do. We are the quintessential leave-us-alone crowd. That's all we are. There are people on the liberal left, which has invaded both parties, who simply think it is there prerogative to use the end of a gun to make you do something that you wouldn't otherwise do. Now, if that isn't the focus of evil in the world, I don't know what else could be.[8]

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent, moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelties may sometimes sleep. His cupidity may at some point be satiated. But those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end. For they do so with the approval of their own intentions.[9]

Liberty and private property go hand in hand. By dominating one the leftist dominates both. For if the individual cannot keep or dispose of the value he creates by his own labor then he exists to serve the state.[10]

[1] Stephen Lindsay

[2] We don't and may never have a purely free market but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Even socialists realize that some capitalism must exist to generate the property they seek to redistribute.

[3] Jason Lewis

[4] Mark Levin

[5] Ayn Rand

[6] Frederic Bastiat

[7] Samuel Adams

[8] Jason Lewis

[9] C. S. Lewis

[10] Mark Levin

Education Cartel

2009-02-06T10:02:00.002-05:00

The word monopoly is thrown around quite a bit in our society. Particularly when people hear that word, oil companies tend to be the subject of attack. It seems that some are convinced beyond debate that oil companies 'price gouge' and manipulate the market in order to 'screw' the little people.

I'll refute that one some other time, though that task is arguably far simpler than the one setting before me today. While the oil companies still must sell a product, there is one monopoly that has no such requirements. Often its service is lauded with praise or detracted but under no circumstances does it ever decrease the cost per unit. It is the biggest, and most often ignored, monopoly of power in the United States; government education.

Merriam-Webster online defines a monopoly as, "1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 : exclusive possession or control 3 : a commodity controlled by one party".[1]

Notice the first definition. Legal privilege means an intrusion of government into the economy, something our framers would be horrified to see. The entire purpose of the Constitution, as they emphasized a negative rights approach, was to establish but strictly limit government to a few necessary but limited roles.

They sought this minimalist approach because government is inefficient economically. "No person spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own."[2] Many socialists argue that government is capable of efficiently spending money, if only the right people were put in charge. But one should never want a system like that. If good government depends upon the right people at the helm then it is doomed to utter failure when, as will invariably happen, the wrong people gain control. I recall a quote, though its original author evades me; "If it's in the yellow pages, the government shouldn't do it."

"But what does all this have to do with schooling? Shouldn't every child be given a chance to learn reading, writing, arithmetic?" asks Daryl Chickens. "After all, that was he original purpose for government schools and compulsory education." Sure, the public school system was set in place because the government felt and knew that competition in the world demanded a highly educated American population in order to stay on top.

But that's just it. America was driving toward meeting competition head on. Perhaps at the time education was so exclusive and disorganized that some form of public education was necessary. In the long run it was beneficial, whether or not it was a morally acceptable undertaking for the government is debatable.

Our history is such that the level of education of Americans increased but so did just about everything else having to do with the quality of life. Could similar increases in education have been made without government taking the reigns? We will never know. Yet, this is irrelevant to the modern situation.

What we see today is a monopoly of government schools who use 'exclusive ownership through legal privilege' as a means of shutting out competition. Daryl Chickens would argue that private schools exist regardless of the government's fiat over schooling, even schools that are non-religious, non-military, and non-vocational. That is absolutely correct but the existence of an alternative does not mean the market is free. Government schools do not have to satisfy a customer in order to be justify their existence. They have only to tax more and spend more as they see fit, leaving the consumer of the good little recourse to complain about the quality of education. It also has the unfortunate effect of forcing people who aren't using the education system to pay into it.

Individually, administrators and school boards sometimes seek to satisfy the parents or at least soothe their concerns a bit. This is a far cry from a free market, however. Private schools not only have to provide an excellent product at a great price, they have to do it for mere survival.

On top of that, private schools must currently sell a product that is being given away wholesale. The flourishing of private schools at all makes a statement far different and far more profound than the existence of a market system. If government schools can give away an educational product and private schools can still sell that product, the government schools are clearly providing a lousy result.

Imagine it this way: what if government decided that McDonalds is too expensive, much less high-end restaurants, for every American, and every American deserves McDonalds? The government would set up burger houses across America that would give away low-graded burgers and meals. Invariably, the product would almost certainly be worse than McDonalds, as it does not need to participate in competition to stay alive, but it would almost certainly drive McDonalds out of business. Yet, the higher-end burger places would be alright because the government product is so bad that people are willing to spend money for a great burger, rather than save money and eat a burger that is a hair's breadth away from disgusting.

Am I calling government schools terrible? You bet I am. Sure, one could point to a dozen, dozens of suburban public schools that do very well, score just as high as the private schools in some cases. But one could also point to atrocious schools, primarily in inner city areas, where the students are not learning anything and have no hope to.

In fact, many public schools in those situations have become more daycare centers than anything else. 'Social advancement' policy graduates students who cannot read their own diplomas. Dropout rates are stunningly high in cities like Washington D.C. and Detroit. Every major city faces massive problems in certain areas with schools that don't seem to be capable putting out any quality education.

The real problem here is that government schools are immune from failure and disruptive students are not expelled. Staff can all be replaced at schools but the failure remains because the school curriculum itself doesn't function for the students that are there. If a school is immune from failure, it will not correct the problems that cause failure and if it can't go under, there is no hope of it being replaced with a school that doesn't fail in it's educational mission.

But in the outskirts of those same inner city situations, schools are held to a more accountable standard. After all, the parents (and non-parent or parents of adults) in those areas pay property taxes and other taxes, state and federal, which go to fund all the schools, not just their own. Those parents are more involved with the decisions at the school. They participate in the PTA. (There is also a significant difference in family situations between the inner city schools and the suburbs, however, that is a related topic for another entry.)

Although the government schools in the suburbs do better than the inner city institutions, even they are not the optimum. The mere continued existence of a product for sale when a supposedly 'equal or better' educational product is being given away belies the fallacy of these arguments on behalf of public school. Such events only occur when the item for sale is heads above, and thus much more preferable than the socialized item. Government schooling is not all it is cracked up to be and if it was, there wouldn't, at all, be such a thing as private schooling, save religious, vocational, and military schools.

Even the best public schools in existence are not engaged in a marketplace. Remember the definition of monopoly. Government appropriates money for schools, separating the customer from the product cost and quality control. Even with alternative schooling, parents are left with few options. In order to send their children to different centers they must pay once in taxes and pay again in tuition. Only a few states have tuition tax credit or tax deduction programs for schooling and those programs have proven to be steps in the right direction. Essentially, the idea is to have they money appropriated for a child follow that child to whatever school the parent decides is best.

Thus that right direction, I state blatantly, is the elimination of all public schools that cannot compete in a free market. If government schools are so much better than the market could provide, then they have nothing to fear by allowing parents to decide where their money goes. If the social schooling system is truly better the money will always naturally flow back toward it, voluntarily.

Alternatively, if the government schools are not better and the money flows to schools that provide a better education, isn't the real beneficiary of that quality increase, the students and their parents from whom the money comes in the first place? Yes. A marketplace for education is better for the people whom it is supposed to help. (As well, it should be observed that education, like anything else, is a commodity. Teachers are a limited resource, as are textbook producers and any other job involving education.)

Being a commodity, naysayers, like our good friend Daryl Chickens, will argue, "But if the government doesn't provide some schooling, the inner city kids won't have a school at all and even you, YW, wouldn't say there is absolutely no value at all in the schools that are there." There may be some small value to ineffective education systems which never fail. Recognize, there is not only a marketplace for sales.

There is also a marketplace for charity. Charitable schools used to exist to a far greater degree and to a small degree still do. However, those enterprises have been nearly destroyed by government acting as a forceful charity. Though, charity by force is not charity at all. It is government theft. People who currently call for more money to be pumped into failing government schools for inner city kids ought to be screaming the loudest that such funding go to schools that really do teach kids. I believe it is time for charity schools to make a comeback. They are not perfect, no system ever is, but they cannot be any worse then that awful schools that inner city kids are sent to each day.

Now, there is one cartel which stands in the way of making these necessary changes and that is the conglomeration of teachers unions from the National Educators Association to various others on a statewide and local level. Almost entirely without exception, those bureaucrats who run the Unions' cartel, and large amount of administrators, school boards, and even teachers, realize that the marketplace would destroy their monopoly. Rather than prove their worth by beating out competition legitimately, they refuse to allow such competition fair ground.

In doing this, the cartel restrict access to the best schools, private schools who flourish despite the free alternative, so that only well-to-do parents can afford to pay the taxes as well as pay for tuition. The real sham of government schooling is that it is mediocre and demands continued, even expanded support for mediocrity rather than increasing the quality as all private schools must to merely remain in business. Meanwhile, this supposed program, set forth to educate every American, entirely ignores the inner city plight where students receive no effective education through the system that is designed solely to provide an education to each student.

Perhaps when public schools began they were necessary and perhaps not. Nowadays, there is no doubt that the market for education would explode given a chance in the free market. Many who argue for public schools, paid for, in part, by people who do not have kids, excuse such redistributionist methods by saying the whole of America is better off with education guaranteed. The lack of a real education for many notwithstanding, I contend the market could do a far better job in terms of quality and even expand real education in terms of quantity. Wouldn't that be the better system? A guaranteed minimum does nothing to accomplish maximum potential.

And there is no excuse for not trying.

A note for my choice of words: I used the term 'given' to describe the schools which are paid for by the government. That gives the air that those schools are free. While this is not the case, it is frequently the perception. People who pay property taxes, and other taxes, pay for schools. But some people who have kids going to school pay nothing. A universal system does not extract universal payment. If it did, there would be no need for a universal system in the first place. Since it doesn't, the system cannot be said to be fair in that it unfairly burdens some and liberates others from the costs of the good or service. Such is the socialist ploy; that equality of the ends matter while nothing else does; quality of those ends, nor means to those ends. In this case, government schools are a redistribution of wealth and a convoluted one at that. However, the product is only 'given' away as a matter of hiding the expense in taxation which the payers are accustomed to paying and frequently are unaware of the extent to governments misuse of the funds.

Additionally, about the last two paragraphs. One has to be extremely careful about giving the government authority to do anything on behalf of the population. The government that gives can take away. Just as well, one should have a sense of proportion. If every American is educated to a minimum level, the primary beneficiary of that education is the American receiving it, not the American whose life has nothing to do with it, except that his wealth is tapped to pay for it, against his will. The beneficiary is the student and the parent who have a vested interest. The case can be made that each educated person benefits the economy in production. It is said that no man is an island unto himself but no sense of justice can establish a moral authority for redistribution of wealth. Socialism destroys the right of each man to own himself and it always does so for the 'common good'. Beware government seeking to benefit society.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly

[2] Milton Friedman

Hidden Wealth

2009-02-04T18:02:00.004-05:00

There is no doubt that a rather large chunk of the wealth in America is held by the 'richest' few. Although a number of methods to measure wealth exist, each displays a very large portion of the wealth which exists in the hands of a very fractional percentage of the population. Observe below.

"In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%."[1]

The article goes on to factually illustrate similar statistics which could be logically derived from that information alone. For instance, if the top 1% of households own 33.4% of privately held wealth, it stands to reason that this should be reflected in inheritance, investment, and income.

I stated in my previous entry that the wealth owned by others is generally irrelevant to me, that my effort and initiative are the sources of my own wealth. To this end, one should ask of people declaring our system to be plutocratic: how does one person owning wealth harm the rest of us?

There are a host of answers one will receive to this query, far too many to be covered by a simple blog. So, let us break all of this down into a simpler form. Rather than addressing each particular concern of each anti-free market type, I will address broadly, all concerns.

There are only a handful of things that can be done with capital: reinvestment, savings, investment, purchases, donations, and storing. Each of these ends have numerous methods to their purpose, with even more diverse results. But what does each do?

When a wealthy person reinvests his money, essentially, he is putting money back into whatever venture garnered him the value to begin with. Almost without fail, this means more jobs or continued jobs as well as more products. The only way to generate revenue in the free market is to satisfy your fellow man enough that he will give you his money for your product.

Savings is another route along which the top 10% guide their money. Savings provides liquid assets to banks in order that other people can get loans for things like cars, and even business ideas.

Investment is obviously good for the economy because it enables companies to expand, create new jobs, create new product lines, and create new market ventures. Investment also establishes commodity prices and monetary exchanges.

When the well-to-do purchase items, sometimes they are berated as being 'hogs' or lavishing themselves in a lifestyle far and above that of the average American. But if a millionaire buys land and builds a house doesn't that create work for a construction company? If he buys a car and needs it maintained, that too, provides jobs for engineers, mechanics, fabrication workers, and on down the line. In fact, everything purchased by every person must be sold by another person. The wealthy purchasing items they desire could in some senses be considered the best redistribution of wealth.

Frequently the rich are given little credit for their charitable donations. By comparison any credit at all is better than the detraction they receive for the proceeding dispensation of money. But a great deal of the top 10% donates wealth each year to charities. This has the obvious effect of creating a market where good charities thrive and bad charities die. (With governmental charity, money is expended in inefficient or plainly bad ways far too often but since the money is taken by force there is little reason for government to shape up.) Charitable ventures, laudable as they may be, do not hold a candle to the good done by wealthy people in creating jobs and products by other means.

Finally, the last, and most uncommon of all, wealthy people do on very seldom occasion stash their earnings away untouched. The usual metaphor for his is the rich man who sleeps on a mattress he stuffed full of money. The biggest complaints in modern terms are offshore accounts and tax loopholes.

One should recall, however, a monetary system is not set up in order that people may acquire the largest stash of dollars they can. It is set up as a stable exchange for people to trade their effort with one another. (Without a monetary policy each person would have to take his product and scour all the sellers not only for what he wants but for the one seller who might be interested in trading for what he has. Not only is that terribly inefficient, it provides each willing seller an opportunity to take advantage of a temporary monopoly.)

So, if a rich man earns $1 billion and he takes those dollars and stuffs them in a mattress, stashes them in an offshore account, or piles and burns them, what does he do to damage someone else who wasn't going to earn that money? Nothing. In fact, his action, tiny as it may be, reduces the amount of paper dollars in circulation. That has the net effect of increasing the value of those dollars. Why is it that this does not happen very much? Because wealthy people realize they can earn a return on their money and that is always the wisest opportunity.

Many people try to make the case that rich people use convoluted methods in order to screw regular people and that is declared the reason they have so much wealth. Rather the opposite is true. The most successful people in a free market are those who organize effort to produce a better product at a better price. Such organization creates jobs and drives competition. Competition pushes prices down to ever more affordable levels increasing the quality of life for more people.

It is no wonder in America the quality of life has risen so quickly since our founding. All people needed to succeed was stable ground and the liberty to reap the reward of one's own actions.

Can there be instances brought up where the wealthy have done wrong? Certainly, and usually Enron is in the sentence. There is such a thing as contract law and that is why people who 'cook' books are prosecuted when the discovery is made. The availability and affordability of products in our society screams that such abuses are far less than standard, indeed, the exception to the rule.

As I always enjoy, a few more quotes on the matter.

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association -- the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."[3]

“I see no reason whatsoever for cutting down all the trees that are the tallest so that no tree remains taller than another.”[4]

[1] http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

[2] Jason Lewis

[3] Thomas Jefferson

[4] Milton Friedman

Of Plutocracy

2009-02-02T15:38:00.001-05:00

Scores of the calls for authoritarian powers of government and the relinquishing of freedoms to a powerful system are gypped on declarations of plutocracy. This term, for those who haven't heard it before, is supposed to represent a system where the poor get poorer and the rich get richer at everyone else's expense.

Recently, politicians have propagated that the 'middle class' has been losing ground and sinking back into the 'lower class'. All they while, they rant, the super-wealthy increase their lead above everyone else. Specifically, members of the Democrat party state that the wealthy have a disproportionately large piece of the pie, restricting the less fortunate from having as much as they should. I recall two particular instances. In one, a liberal advocated that the rich should thank the poor for allowing them to keep so much more than they should. Another, a socialist stated that capitalism is the belief that people actually have a right to keep their wealth.

Well, yeah? I don't know about anyone else but the last time I produced something, I didn't think anyone else has a right to it. My initiative, my effort, my product. The same way no one has a right to tell me how to expend my effort, on what cause to use my talents, no one has any right to confiscate and discharge the product of my effort. The two items are linked. I work so that I can achieve goals. Whether those goals are circumvented in my sales of labor or purchase of my goals, the impropriety of such invasive action is identical.

No one states that people have un-exclusive right to their organs when others desperately need replacements. My kidneys are mine and it would be egregious assault to violate my authority over them, even if someone needs them to stay alive. I may generously donate a kidney or, if permitted, sell it. Still, ownership remains mine.

'This is a big leap,' says Daryl Chickens. 'No one would ever advocate that.' Except that many reports from the totalitarian communist state of China indicate that such inhumanity may actually be occurring to Chinese 'criminals' whose 'criminal records' may be just as questionable as their whereabouts.

Regardless, reasonable people agree that each person owns himself. Yet, generally reasonable people still seem to dispute the logic of property ownership as a matter of self-ownership. They do so by calling freedom plutocratic. Their logical reaction to this perceived situation is to call for government intervention in the form of protectionism and regulation as well as a myriad of other economically unsound systems.

It is true; the wealthiest 1% of Americans are stretching the numeric distance between themselves and the rest. But does this indicate anything at all? Not really. It does not illustrate another more important fact. The quality of life for Americans at all levels of wealth is increasing and has been since the founding of the nation. That is because free people are unhindered from acting in whatever manner they find best to achieve whatever goals they may desire.

In my opinion, the wealth of someone else is inconsequential to me. What matters is my wealth. Now, if Bill Gates had never founded Microsoft and thus never become one of the wealthiest people in America, would I be wealthier? No. I wasn't going to found Microsoft. I wasn't going to write software that hundreds of millions of people find beneficial enough to consume. My situation is primarily unchanged by the transactions of others.

The only instances of Bill Gates' efforts toward super-wealth affect me are beneficial to me. I consume Microsoft products myself. I am happy to have them. They benefit me and increase the quality of my life.

What I have stated here is that the economic 'pie' is not a set amount. The total pie is based upon individual effort. Each transaction creates a new little sliver. I sell my labor and buy products. That's my sliver of the pie and it’s mine because of my effort and action. So, if more people complain that Bill Gates has too much when they have so little, perhaps the real answer to their problem is not to take what Bill Gates has because of his own effort. Perhaps they should work and create a new piece of the pie all for themselves. “Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another but let him work diligently and build one for himself thus by example ensuring that his own shall be safe from violence when it is built.”[1]

Happily enough, this is what most Americans do. Yes, the number of people taking government money is increasing but this still does not rise to the level of people who effort to fix their own situation. Given time and a philosophic revolution, perhaps we can increase the number of people who work for themselves rather then stealing from their fellow man with the iron fist of government.

I have also heard it stated that the reason the quality of life increases for everyone, not just the rich, is that the government has engaged in redistributive efforts to take what the rich try to keep from themselves. They also defeat their own points moments later with statements that the top marginal tax rates should increase and 'loopholes' should be removed because too many of the rich get around paying taxes. It may frustrate these propagandists to realize that the top 25% of income earners pay 86% of taxes paid.[2] However, to state that redistributive efforts increase the quality of life ignores economic justice and simple morality.

As stated before, free people can set and act toward any goals they so choose to as long as those goals do not hinder anyone else from setting and acting toward their own goals as well. The creation of wealth damages no one. Competition can be perceived as damage but one has to have a sense of proportion. Progress cannot be allayed in order to make people comfortable in inefficiency.

Essentially, declarations of plutocracy ignore the quality of life and focus solely on a tiny portion of the numbers. Sure, the wealth of the top end may increase but how must it increase? Under a system of organized liberty the wealthiest have no authority to oppress anyone. Only through government action is that possible. The wealthy, like anyone else must please their fellow man in order to gain wealth.

Furthermore, plutocratic faith disregards the clear improvements in the western way of life. We now have air conditioning, cars, HD television, video game consoles, microwaves, refrigerators, health insurance, multi-bedroom houses, and a plethora of other luxuries compared to the world. These items are common in every household even in the lower income levels.

Let us disassociate with this notion that the wealthy control all capital and therefore control all people. Perhaps soon I’ll explain how the ownership of capital is not restrictive to non-owners.

[1] Abraham Lincoln

[2] http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/22652.html

Freedom Is Naturally Exclusive And Restrictive

2009-01-30T16:59:00.003-05:00

The common understanding of freedom in society portends a fundamental lack of understanding of the word in its original meaning. When asked for a definition of freedom a majority of people will respond that it is doing whatever one feels he should do or something similar.

This is dangerous territory to venture into and I cannot help but think this reinvention of words may have been, in part, deliberate. Certainly, other totalitarian nations engaged in a total modification of culture, language included, to ensconce power to the state. Therefore, it stands to reason that totalitarians in America would seek to do the same.

No longer does this word, freedom, illustrate an arrangement of people in which their lives are absent of force. It now is used to describe a society of lawlessness where the mightiest brute can do as he pleases, trampling the rest in the process. But isn't that the essence of dictatorship and plutocracy? Or isn't an alternative, everyone using brute force against everyone, an example of total anarchy?

Such pollution of the term freedom stems and feeds a distaste for freedom itself. Those who do not wish to permit others to rule themselves demonize the moral structure through which that self-government is accomplished.

Too, another new definition of freedom has cropped up and is just as dangerous if not more effective. "The word had formally meant freedom from coercion, from arbitrary power of other men. Now it was made to mean freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choices of all of us. Freedom in this sense is of course, merely another name for power."[i]

But my point today is that much of society misunderstands or outright rejects the truth of freedom. I desire few things greater than to remedy that character flaw in modern man, which rejects this core principal.[ii]

Here are some misunderstood facts of freedom.

The first is that freedom is necessarily self-restrictive. A person who believes in tyranny believes he can lord his desires over those of the entire population. Some modern tyrants in America's political system lord the desires of some voters over the whole of the nation. "Tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant believes they ought to do."[iii] Simply put, freedom knows no tyrant. No force can be used by anyone under any circumstance to generate any amount of freedom. Force is only used in the preservation and protection of freedom from violation. But a liberty-minded citizen realizes that his power is restricted to himself and over only his own life has he absolute sovereignty. While he maintains total power in his own choices, he has none over others'.

This brings up the second notion. Freedom is exclusive. The primary extrapolation of liberty is the exclusive ownership of private property. A man who is in control of himself will mold his decisions to his gain. "People are dynamic agents. They adjust their behavior based upon their rate of return."[iv] Private property is the outgrowth of self-ownership. It is the bettering of one's own situation through one's own effort. If a man does not own the product of his effort, to sell it or keep it, then he is enslaved to the person who does.

Further, there is no such thing as social ownership. If all people own all things then the phrase to own means merely to exist and by existence have birthright to all things. But wouldn't such a birthright to every person mean nothing? In Soviet Russia, the people who 'owned' the Soviet Navy did not instruct the submarines where to go and what to do. That is because social ownership is a farce. It always requires central planning which maintains itself as the arbiter of property rights. A Soviet citizen had no right to eat bread unless those planners allowed him to do so. 'Social ownership' becomes a form of dictatorship in every instance. So, freedom, in property rights, makes exclusive the controlling of capital to the generators of that capital.

A quick note on the previous statement. Transactions are always mutually beneficial, otherwise they would not take place. Many try to berate freedom by claiming that transactions in some way hurt third parties but this is not the case. Third parties who do not take rigorous advantage of themselves and engage in the free marketplace hurt themselves. The production and consumption of goods and services by agents who have nothing to do with person A does not change person A's circumstance. The only measure by which person A's circumstance changes is relative to the men engaging in the voluntary transaction. They improve their situation by engaging their efforts and skills. So, who's fault is it when those transactions do not assist an arbitrary individual? Person A should produce and consume and then he'll be better off. Be very careful to see things any other way. "People will not work perpetually for the benefit of the collective."[v]

The third point I have to cover today is that freedom is incompatible with alternatives. Liberty does not permit the lording of power, the establishment and expansion of coercion from one person to the next. It is quite the opposite of those arrangements. No one has a right to force you to adjust your life and similarly you don't have a right to force anyone else to adjust their lives. All too often, as seen with the commonly held definition of freedom, people assume they have authority to steal if it benefits them. Examples of these authoritarian measures include progressive taxation, socialist healthcare, welfare, and abuses of eminent domain.

As a society, we need to return to the more consistent and simple understanding of freedom. Liberty allows each person to set, work toward, and achieve their own goals. The byproduct of these actions is an increasing quality of life for all who are engaged. And no one tells anyone what they must do against their own will.

[i] Mark Levin

[ii] Though total remedy of the flaws in the human condition is not possible on this Earth, many great strides toward a more just society can and must be made.

[iii] Walter Williams

[iv] Jason Lewis

[v] Jason Lewis

For Starters

2009-01-28T15:23:00.002-05:00

This is the first post on this blog and I'll use it to inform any future readers as to my intentions.

First off, I am not looking to gain readership. Frankly, I don't read blogs and I haven't yet cared to start. I don't care if anyone reads this one. My sole reason for beginning this is to post my thoughts online and on occasion point people to them in the course of a discussion if they wish to gain further insight about my beliefs.

Secondly, I have very little intention of making this about me. It's about my views, my beliefs, my moral code. On rare occasions the subject at hand my have to do with me in particular but this is not a blog so that people can get to know me. On that note, it will not be personable. I will pull no punches for the sake of politeness or friendship. Those who know me well understand and generally tolerate my refusal to compromise my statements for the sake of someone's feelings. Any potential readers should take this into account.

Now, since I will primarily refrain from discussing my personal life in the future (unless it pertains to the focus of this blog), perhaps I should inform you, at least to a minimum level, who I am.

I was born in 1984 to white parents in Cincinnati, Ohio. I've attended private and public school. I've attended, though not graduated from, college and vocational classes. Since then I have spent an overwhelming amount of my time researching and writing. I do not write solely political/economic/philosophic material. In fact, I have spent a great deal of time on more entertainment style writing. With hope, my first book will be published soon and has nothing to do with the focus of this blog. (On this note, I should inform readers, I will occasionally use this blog to update information about my writing, in the event I manage to create a career from it). I have written politics in the past and I was a contributor to a relatively popular conservative website for a while. I am a non-denominational Christian. I am also a regular talk radio listener and will frequently discuss or reference topics/arguments from several shows.

On to my views.

I believe there are two things central to the stability of society; the sanctity of life and the absoluteness of private property. Neither of these moral bulwarks are superior or inferior to the other and the development of policy and belief stem from the two ideals remaining hand-in-hand.

Taking logic from those views I have concluded definitively the following.

-There is no right or left. There is freedom and authority. Tyrants wield an authority of control while freedom-minded people wield nothing but a desire to maintain liberty. Liberty is an absence of force or coercion. No one, who believes in freedom, forces anything upon anyone or from anyone unless that person has first violated the natural agreement of liberty to which such force is necessary to maintain freedom.
-There is no perfection on Earth. Humanity is blessed with a stunningly diverse array of people, in thought as much as anything else. No arrangement will work perfectly to everyone's complete and satisfactory benefit. What we must seek is the best arrangement whereby people can coexist and attain their objectives for themselves.
-People have a right to defense of one's self and one's property as well as the persons or property to which one feels obligated in defense, contractually or otherwise, thus the right to items which can best assist that defense cannot morally be withheld by law.
-The right to own property is absolute and not subject to repeal based upon popular demand or fiat. Redistribution of wealth through theft or progressive taxation is immoral, discouraging to an economy, and an initiator of snowball effect which functions against production, societal values, and morality. An owner has total discretion as where, when, how, and why to distribute, destroy, dispose, dispense, stock, save, or reserve any property owned.
-The right to associate is a crucial and basic principal to mankind and may not be restricted without prior violations of these rights against someone else. This applies not only to political parties and movements but also to labor and sales. An employer has an absolute right to determine who will work for them and why someone will or will not work for them. A worker has the right to determine who they will work for by formulating contracts with whomever they wish for any reason. A salesman has sole discretion as to whom they will sell to and for whatever reasons. A customer has the right to decide where they expend their value for any reason at all.
-Life is the most valuable commodity of all to a person. It cannot be violated without just cause (self defense) or consent (that is, for example, as a person may give consent for dangerous assignment by contract to a construction company whose specialty is high steel).
-Willful violation of the right to one's own life or one's own property repeals all these rights for the violator and thus they subjugate themselves to the necessary steps for a society of ordered liberty to maintain it's precarious stance.
-Travel is as necessary as the rest of the rights. A person who is free to do as he pleases (rights circumscribed by the identical rights of others) but only permitted to be so in a certain area, has no rights at all. With the ability to travel comes increased abilities to associate, contract, and transact. Therefore, no restrictions may be placed upon mobility except for those to ensure mobility is not a direct threat to the other rights. This is why we have drivers' licenses and we search people before they board aircraft among other things
-Legislation is, in originalist principal, for the restriction of government to its sole duties which are to protect and preserve life ,liberty, and property. Freedom-minded people do not need governing in any sense. The diversity of mankind not only demands a system where people are not subject to collective will but requires a government to preserve the natural rights of mankind from those who wish to impose unnatural violations of humanity. Those violations vary from petty crime to invasion from an enemy force. Thus, government has a function in an imperfect society, not to create perfection, but to protect and justify as much imperfection as possible. In that sense, government is the greatest threat to liberty and must be governed, itself, harshly. That is the purpose for the Constitution of the United States of America.
-Goals are a right of an individual to create and seek unless the goals violate the identical rights of others. People are born, individuals, and are interested as individuals. Individuals have goals which are separate and distinct from each other. No central planning can reign in all people without violating their rights to have and grasp for individual goals.
-Freedom of advocacy and speech is necessary, however, not as wide open as commonly thought. Harassment and public endangerment circumscribe this right which is otherwise unencumbered.
-A nation of ordered liberty must be a republic of some sort. All other forms of governance are fundamentally at odds with liberty.

I may amend and append these statements as necessary but the ideals are sound, though incomplete.

A few final notes.

From time to time I will use arguments of opposition, of no particular association though I may name an association at the time. In that event I will reference those statements to Daryl/Darlene Chickens. There is a back story to this but it's not interesting and this name will suffice my purposes. Hopefully, the name is uncommon enough that no one is offended. If someone is, that was not my intention but do please get over it.