Wimps One and All

We are becoming a nation of wimps and “girlie men.” Rather than providing for ourselves we are letting the government provide for us. It is a certain road to poverty because the government is only efficient at doing one thing – destroying wealth. Oh, the very wealthy will be alright and so will the Machiavellian political class. But the backbone of America will perish into the oblivion of poverty. Geithner and Obama together, Beelzebub and Satan want to control everything. Take over control of any bank or insurance company or car company or perhaps any other company as their whim desires.

Are we going to let them get away with it? Haven’t they already done enough damage in devouring our great grandchildren and their grandchildren as well?

People are forgetting one thing. The government is composed of – other people. Are people so gullible that they believe that the people in government are infallible? If you make a mistake, you learn from it and carry on, having done harm only to yourself. But when people in the government make mistakes, the harm done is to the whole nation or to large segments of it. Furthermore, the harm being done can be quite long in duration because yet another law must be passed to undo the damage of the first law. And that only after the cause of the harm is determined.

Does it make sense to bring down the whole country in order to save a division of AIG or GM?

Unhealthy health care

Just watch this 6 minute video and then think about what you want.
http://www.onthefencefilms.com/video/brainsurgery.html

Dichotomies

A coin has two sides, heads and tails. Effort has two results, success and failure. A wager has two outcomes, win and lose. A nation has two choices, capitalism and socialism.

The nation is being dragged into oblivion by our Machiavellian “leaders” in Washington. Their insanity is truly amazing; they are now discussing whether any company can be too big to fail. Rather than any company, such as GM, is too big to fail, they must first see that the company got big because individuals, at one time in the past took risks. They made bets that they could provide a product or service, better or more cheaply than others. That is an idea that is at the very core of capitalism.

The idea of socialism is to prevent failure. But if failure is prevented, success will be prevented as well and the nation will collapse into despair and darkness. It has been nearly 25 years since the Fed stepped in to directly help out a tottering bank, Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust in Chicago. It was wrong headed then, as was the bailout of Chrysler when Lee Iacocca ran it, as is the current round of bailouts.

I do not trust the government to be able to “fix” the current situation because they have been so complicit in its cause.

The Good Ole USSA

Ain’t it great, the socialism we have? It’s like we’re all one big happy family. Soon we’ll be working our fannies off, but we won’t receive anything because it will all be taken away in taxes. But, hey, that’s okay, the almighty government will provide. The United Socialist States of America will become the USSR of the 22^nd century.

The government will tell us all where to live, and a four bedroom house will be the abode for four families. We’ll have to work out bathroom and kitchen schedules though.

There will be the kings and queens that run the government and there will be the worker bees (that’s the rest of us).

Well, if we don’t turn around, and soon, that is what it will be like for our great grandchildren.

Our Government is Destroying Progress

Did Robert Fulton, when he developed the steamboat, set about improving the lot of mankind, or did he do it for his own gain, or self interest, or as some would call it selfishness? I will postulate that he did NOT do it for altruistic motives. When Henry Ford developed the assembly line, did he do it to increase man’s productivity, and thus his wealth, or did he do it for profit motives? Again, I’ll argue that he did it to increase HIS wealth, and thus the wealth of all of us. Much the same can be said of any of the men or women who advanced our knowledge base, or instituted improved techniques, or invented innumerable devices. They allowed the modern man to be more productive and thus to enjoy more time for study, recreation, and enjoyment.

Many years ago, following the collapse of the Berlin wall, I was on a business trip to England, when I struck up a conversation with a German businessman at a pub. I asked him how the German reunification was going. He said that it was not all that smooth because the East Germans only knew how to use the ancient (by about 40 years) machining tools such as lathes while the Westerners were accustomed to using more advanced computer controlled machine tools. As a consequence the West German workers were more productive than the East German workers. They were worth more to the company.

So goes the lot of socialism everywhere it has been tried – men stagnate. Whereas under capitalism, men work, produce, innovate, and invent. Adam Smith had a term for this - the “invisible hand.” We must resist the temptation to allow ourselves to become dependent upon government for surely that is where we are headed. And government must reject the altruistic ideas of tending to the needs of the individual, or AIG, or General Motors, or Chrysler.

Thus the folks who used to call themselves liberal, wanting more government interference in our lives, some of whom now call themselves "progressive" are actually non-progressive. Kind of Orwellian isn't it?

Are You Ready for it?

Ready or not, here it comes. What, you ask? Hyper inflation, That's what. I'm talking about. $50 for a loaf of bread or $100 for a gallon of gasoline.

Within two years the Carter era inflation will seem like a mild upward drift in prices. This is because the Fed has absolutely FLOODED the system with cash, and this while production is down. That is two inflationary pressures acting in tandem to reinforce each other. So have some value stored up in non monetary non-dollar based investments such as precious metals, stocks in sound companies (not bonds), or precious gems, ANYTHING that is NOT tied to the dollar.

The Abusive Commerce Clause

The raging political debates aren’t so much about conservative versus liberal (or progressive as they are calling themselves now). The political debates are not so much about the partisanship views of Republican (Libertarian) versus Democrat. I think the real hot button issues of today center around capitalism versus socialism and what kind of society we are to have.

While the capitalist places the ultimate responsibility on the individual, the socialist places the ultimate responsibility on the state. The question then is under which type of society the individual will enjoy the better life. I hold that capitalism, which Friedrich August von Hayek describes as “the extended order of human cooperation,” is the system which benefits the individual the most. If there is any disagreement upon this point, send me an email (jownley@tampabay.rr.com).

It has been noted that the United States has never really enjoyed a laissez-faire capitalism. Even the U.S. Constitution permits the federal government “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” This “commerce clause” as it is known is the source of all manner of abuse by the federal government; see the government’s own commentary at http://www.america.gov/st/usg-english/2008/April/20080416203407eaifas0.6335565.html. Because of this clause and its interpretation by the Supreme Court all manner of abuses have been perpetrated upon the people. It virtually gives the government absolute control of your life as well as mine and should be limited in its scope.

The crazy French

I think we are getting as crazy as the French. The front page photograph in this morning’s IBD is an Associated Press photo of protesters holding a banner. Under the photo is this description:

“CRISIS, IT’S THEM” reads a banner paraded through Bordeaux on Thursday. More than a million people marched in 200 protests around France to demand the government do more to overcome the economic crisis. The French economy, sluggish even before the crisis, is shrinking at the fastest pace in more than 30 years. “We need a general rise in salaries and a better distribution of wealth in this country,” said one Paris protester.

Let’s unwrap that protester’s comment a bit. Is he asking that the French government redistribute the wealth of France? Is he asking the government to set all salaries the same? Or both? Either way, he is asking for the government to use force against the people of France. Forcibly to take away wealth from people who have worked for it, or forcibly to set the salary of the ditch digger the same as the salary of the highly trained scientist or engineer.

If that is done would a person invest the time and effort to learn to be a scientist or an engineer in order to earn a larger salary? I think not. If I could have made as much pushing a broom as I could have made during my career fixing computers or programming them, I would not have put in the many hours of study to do so.

Let’s remember Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.”