Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Fear-based Government
Never have I seen such a fear-based Administration and government. The US Government has truly become public enemy #1. Give a man motivated by fear a gun and trouble is likely to ensue. The fact that the government is the final authority and possesses and uses guns as its ultimate and distinguishing characteristic, means that we are in big trouble.
Anyone who understands freedom and the abundance it provides for all those who participate must realize that we are on a path which is 180 degrees from that course. We have gotten a man and wife in the White House which have a score to settle. That score is based in hatred and hatred is based on fear. Instead of seeing an expansion of freedom such that we all can continue to learn what life requires and which nourishes us, we are seeing rules and regulations on everything. Instead of men welcoming disagreement in order to learn more about how life works and what is true, this Administration is refusing to talk to or about anyone who disagrees with them. This, I assert, implies massive fear.
It's funny to watch Obama pretend that Fox News, e.g., is not even a news organization. This guy is massively out of touch with reality. Further he is counting on the dumbbells of this country to give him the approval he needs. No one who is interested in life and living a good life can afford to live this way. Obama thinks he can. Hmmm. Is he that stupid? I don't think he is innately stupid. I do think, rather, that fear will make one stupid. Fear of people asking questions and perhaps doubting that he is really The One must be terrifying.
Clearly we are in a battle: Freedom vs. Tyranny. Barack Obama is the first snake oil salesman of the 21st century. He has the pleasant manner and the "sweet" family that keep a lot of people lulled into an "everything will be ok" state of mind.
Believe me, it is not OK and it will not turn out well. And at the rate that things are happening, it will not take long for the consequences of this horrendous, people-fearing, Democratically controlled government to become apparent.
The wealthy people may be able to get out of the country and not be controlled by this tyranny. But for the middle class and the underclass, this promises to be one huge concentration camp, border to border.
Sounds horrendous, doesn't it? If you show me one fact, one marker, that the direction of this government is any way other than toward tyranny, I would like to see it or hear it. I assert that the people who are still believing that this Administration is acting in their interests are asleep - deeply asleep. They are deeply invested in not rocking any boats. They hate conflict and argumentation, even disgruntlement. Their wallpaper patterns consist of babies, kittens and puppies. Or, as Rand once said, their lives "are about baby blankets and hams." They would rather ride blithely in a boat headed for the falls than jump overboard and, even though difficult, work to get to a solid bank.
The solid bank IS one's knowledge of how the world works. Not how one hopes it will work. Not how one prays it will turn out. I mean how the world works. It means being grounded in how human being operates, what political freedom is and why it is important that the political system be consistent with the possibility of human being, not the control of human being. (If you think that control of human being is the way of the future, you need to get your ass on a psychologist's couch to see if you can discover why you think that.) One must have, one way or the other, the philosophical/moral basis for the requirements for a society such that a man can freely live in it. And during these trying times, that knowledge cannot be implicit. It must be conscious and explicit. Otherwise, you don't really know and know that you. Without that, one is destined to drift, float and go over the falls. Without that there can be no access to the will to speak out, to resist and finally take the action which can, if successful, save yours and your loved ones' lives.
Do you think this is a dire message? Your god-damned right this is a dire message. Do you think I'm typing this up because I want to be ostracized as a pariah? No, I'm not. I am saying this because I'm a canary in the coal mine. I understand these things. The value of freedom and the morality that works for freedom has been something which was awakened by my father when I was a kid. I could see that he cared about such things and got disgusted when people didn't act according to the principles which honored people in their rights and as a person. He could get morally outraged at injustice. I liked that. I admired that. I became that.
I know what freedom is. I am very aware of it vs. when it is not present or being threatened to be taken away. I worked for 40 years to increase the distinctions I have around this topic. I am not one who is going to blithely slip into a life where those distinctions are missing. It's not me.
If you lived on a desert island, you would be free because there would be no one else on the island. A free country, a political system whose value and organization is for freedom, is living as free in society as one is free on a desert island. In a free society, people recognize and honor the right of every person to live his life. Nothing impinges upon him other than the principle by which he chooses to live which is, to honor the right of every man, woman and child which includes him, to be free of everyone else. He can do anything he wants except initiate force against another person or his property. A free man can interact with any other man so long as he can obtain the agreement of that person for such action. A lot of this is in the unsaid that governs society, but really it's quite simple.
But now, people are primarily scared. The big motivator is fear. The blacks have been buying the victim conversation for decades and that is a fear-based conversation. Many women and gays have been generating a fear-based conversation too. With all education controlled by the government, we are now realizing that our children have no knowledge of core values. Consequently anytime their actions are threatened or something isn't magically on the table before them, they have no interior to which to repair. All they have is fear - and then the sob stories.
So we have many millions of people who are hanging onto Obama as some kind of hope. Hope for what? Their good feeling won't be interrupted? Crumbs and chump change? What exactly? That their race will have some power and won't be a barrier for them? What is it? I don't see that hope.
We know that government health care will produce a poverty of health services and care. If that comes to pass, right now we are on the mountain top insofar as the kinds of health care that an average person can obtain. The wealth of health care that we now have will be going the way of the vinyl record. Fear shrinks life. Love expands it. Tyranny and fear go together. Freedom and love go together. Tyranny and poverty go together. Freedom and wealth go together.
American freedom and wealth is about to end. It has been easy for a middle class person to live well in the United States. Eighteen months ago, I was commenting on this very fact. That is ending and it is soon going to be hard. A year from now, that will be apparent to more people although I have to admit that I am experiencing it now.
Architecture, especially so for my small business, is one of the first things to be affected by the larger economic picture. I can tell you with certainty that nothing is happening. One thing that is happening is that people who have wanted to build are still wanting to build. As this drags out, they look for the slightest clue that it would be good to move forward. So if there is any easing, I expect it to be a boom, at least for a short period of time. It could be that in 2 to 3 months I may be working as much as I can physically work.
With the kinds of things going on with the government now, I will have to have everything be put in a form that can have some power in the dry period that will inevitably follow. Damn it, I wanted a flat screen TV. That, however, may not be the thing to be buying. I don't want to be one of those dunderheads that go with the flow and wake up one day shocked within an inch of my life. I know that experience. Not good. This clearly is going to take some thought.
We are in and heading for the eye of a fear-based hurricane. Do what you can to stop it. I think stopping the government from instituting government health care, a bureaucrat who is designated to sit between your mind and your body, would put an enormous crimp in the Democrats' push for total power. I think Government Health Care means that the government, not you, owns your life. It means that you do not possess the right to your life for the simple reason that you will be unable to act in your own interest when it comes to your body. You will get the chump change. The choices that would have been possible under freedom won't be. Simple as that. Only the government's interest will matter in that world.
The Cap and Trade bill definitely needs to be defeated. That will tax you unto death. Thousands of dollars in higher prices caused by the government's tax on energy will change your life. Man's role in the climate is not understood. Frankly, I don't think it amounts to much in the face of the enormous forces of a much larger system in which we and our planet lives. Read Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer for a scenario that will place the earth in a much larger context than the global "warmist," "climate changers" have. I think Al Gore is an idiot. He's a person whose purpose is to accumulate wealth via political means.
The five primary arguments I have against the global "warmist" positions are these: 1) The science is not there. Al Gore and the desperate global warmists are not careful about the facts and they are only interested in pushing people to a conclusion that will get them the control they want. I saw An Inconvenient Truth and I was appalled at how disrespectful it was to a thinking person. It was really not about the earth at all. It was about getting the audience to like Al Gore. (Now isn't that an interesting motivation for a politician? Oh my, I should be surprised. Sounds like someone else I know.)
2) Environmentalists lie - boldly and outrageously. They lie about polar bears, for one thing. They also lie about a lot of other things. Many of these lies have been documented. They are not about the Environment. They are about religion. This is not the first time in history that the earth and nature has become the touchstone of a religion. People live on the earth and need the earth as a resource to maintain their lives. But, their lives are not to be sacrificed for the earth or nature. That would turn the whole way things work upside down. But this is the way an Environmentalist thinks. He would rather save a 2" fish than provide food for people. Something wrong here. When I see him be the first to lay down his life for a fish, he will have some credibility. Until then? No.
Another very interesting fact is that private property owners take care of the environment much better than government ever has or will. One of the reasons is that government, as it now operates, is set up on a double standard. Everything you cannot do, they can. I've read articles about tree farms and such and the private farms are far better than the government owned lands. People generally love their property and they do not go around with the intent to harm it. Also, property is an investment and it works to maintain its value. On the other hand, the government could care less. It is oriented toward power and political spoils, not real life and real property. (Of course if you organize a march on Washington with a million or more people, you might get their attention to do something. Not necessarily though.) The great devastation of land is in the public lands. Since no one owns it, the thing to do is get as much as one can while he has the access. Or to pass a law such that it cannot respond to the natural laws that govern it. There is no future that one is worried about. The future for someone with access to public lands is far more dependent on one's ass-kissing ability than one's nature-caring ability.
3) Resources never go out of existence. They are always in a process of transformation of their form. Today's trash is a potential resource tomorrow. (Actually it is a resource right now, but until we have worked out how to use it, it is in a latent form.) E = m times c squared. Energy and mass are intimately related. One transforms into the other. As we are better able to control this process, we will be able to make these transformations ourselves. There is no need to be "spiritually" worried that we are going to run out of resources. Not possible.
I think that eventually all the manufacturing may be located on other planets and asteroids. Earth, where we live, will be a country club.
4) Pollution is not something that is necessarily damaging. In a free society, pollution becomes a problem if it damages someone's property - their body or their farm, if you get my point. No one gets to dump their weekly trash on my side of the fence, the property line. If I think that factory X is polluting my property, all I have to do is show that to be true. I do that by discovering the facts that show that. Until one has discovered those facts, there is no evidence that Factory X is polluting my property. (In today's world, people try everything but the facts to get people to stop doing something. The tools are sob stories, social pressure and unearned guilt. That's the tools we now use. Nasty tools. They don't work and we don't learn anything about how things work except how to better use those tools which makes our social world an increasingly nasty place to live. Not good.)
5) The free market responds to change the fastest of any human invention ever. It is constantly changing and the entrepreneur is always on the lookout for how better to meet the needs and wants of potential consumers. If the climate changes, the last thing we need are rigid laws decided by a bunch of politicians sitting in Washington or State Capitols trying to figure out how to change the laws so they and their backers can make a buck. This is corrupt. The free market, if free, will handle the changes we are always dealing with and seeking to provide for and it will do it magnificently and quickly. That is inherent in its nature. Nothing to fear. It is imperative to separate economy and state.
There are many areas to fight the current government. The control of speech is one area. Net neutrality is an attempt to place the internet under government control rendering it unable to respond to what people want. Obama's czars have various plans for controlling talk radio, disagreeable cable channels, etc., etc. All of this is very bad for us because it makes it much harder for us to get information and adjust our view of the world as we need to do for our survival.
Do what you can to prepare. The very best thing you can do is school yourself as to why fear doesn't work and you should give it up. I'm 69 years old and I would give up Medicare in a nanosecond for a free market in health care. I guarantee you I would be far more likely to get the health care I need if the market is free. Government control of health care will, if it comes about, strangle health care. If government saw to it that freedom increased, there would be nurses in drug stores and grocery stores taking care of most of the basic questions we have about health care. Health care would be abundant. Instead, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and company trot out some sob story (what I call sore picking) which they think is sufficient reason to put the noose around the nation's neck. What a Carnival of Arrogant Asses we have in Washington.
Anyone who understands freedom and the abundance it provides for all those who participate must realize that we are on a path which is 180 degrees from that course. We have gotten a man and wife in the White House which have a score to settle. That score is based in hatred and hatred is based on fear. Instead of seeing an expansion of freedom such that we all can continue to learn what life requires and which nourishes us, we are seeing rules and regulations on everything. Instead of men welcoming disagreement in order to learn more about how life works and what is true, this Administration is refusing to talk to or about anyone who disagrees with them. This, I assert, implies massive fear.
It's funny to watch Obama pretend that Fox News, e.g., is not even a news organization. This guy is massively out of touch with reality. Further he is counting on the dumbbells of this country to give him the approval he needs. No one who is interested in life and living a good life can afford to live this way. Obama thinks he can. Hmmm. Is he that stupid? I don't think he is innately stupid. I do think, rather, that fear will make one stupid. Fear of people asking questions and perhaps doubting that he is really The One must be terrifying.
Clearly we are in a battle: Freedom vs. Tyranny. Barack Obama is the first snake oil salesman of the 21st century. He has the pleasant manner and the "sweet" family that keep a lot of people lulled into an "everything will be ok" state of mind.
Believe me, it is not OK and it will not turn out well. And at the rate that things are happening, it will not take long for the consequences of this horrendous, people-fearing, Democratically controlled government to become apparent.
The wealthy people may be able to get out of the country and not be controlled by this tyranny. But for the middle class and the underclass, this promises to be one huge concentration camp, border to border.
Sounds horrendous, doesn't it? If you show me one fact, one marker, that the direction of this government is any way other than toward tyranny, I would like to see it or hear it. I assert that the people who are still believing that this Administration is acting in their interests are asleep - deeply asleep. They are deeply invested in not rocking any boats. They hate conflict and argumentation, even disgruntlement. Their wallpaper patterns consist of babies, kittens and puppies. Or, as Rand once said, their lives "are about baby blankets and hams." They would rather ride blithely in a boat headed for the falls than jump overboard and, even though difficult, work to get to a solid bank.
The solid bank IS one's knowledge of how the world works. Not how one hopes it will work. Not how one prays it will turn out. I mean how the world works. It means being grounded in how human being operates, what political freedom is and why it is important that the political system be consistent with the possibility of human being, not the control of human being. (If you think that control of human being is the way of the future, you need to get your ass on a psychologist's couch to see if you can discover why you think that.) One must have, one way or the other, the philosophical/moral basis for the requirements for a society such that a man can freely live in it. And during these trying times, that knowledge cannot be implicit. It must be conscious and explicit. Otherwise, you don't really know and know that you. Without that, one is destined to drift, float and go over the falls. Without that there can be no access to the will to speak out, to resist and finally take the action which can, if successful, save yours and your loved ones' lives.
Do you think this is a dire message? Your god-damned right this is a dire message. Do you think I'm typing this up because I want to be ostracized as a pariah? No, I'm not. I am saying this because I'm a canary in the coal mine. I understand these things. The value of freedom and the morality that works for freedom has been something which was awakened by my father when I was a kid. I could see that he cared about such things and got disgusted when people didn't act according to the principles which honored people in their rights and as a person. He could get morally outraged at injustice. I liked that. I admired that. I became that.
I know what freedom is. I am very aware of it vs. when it is not present or being threatened to be taken away. I worked for 40 years to increase the distinctions I have around this topic. I am not one who is going to blithely slip into a life where those distinctions are missing. It's not me.
If you lived on a desert island, you would be free because there would be no one else on the island. A free country, a political system whose value and organization is for freedom, is living as free in society as one is free on a desert island. In a free society, people recognize and honor the right of every person to live his life. Nothing impinges upon him other than the principle by which he chooses to live which is, to honor the right of every man, woman and child which includes him, to be free of everyone else. He can do anything he wants except initiate force against another person or his property. A free man can interact with any other man so long as he can obtain the agreement of that person for such action. A lot of this is in the unsaid that governs society, but really it's quite simple.
But now, people are primarily scared. The big motivator is fear. The blacks have been buying the victim conversation for decades and that is a fear-based conversation. Many women and gays have been generating a fear-based conversation too. With all education controlled by the government, we are now realizing that our children have no knowledge of core values. Consequently anytime their actions are threatened or something isn't magically on the table before them, they have no interior to which to repair. All they have is fear - and then the sob stories.
So we have many millions of people who are hanging onto Obama as some kind of hope. Hope for what? Their good feeling won't be interrupted? Crumbs and chump change? What exactly? That their race will have some power and won't be a barrier for them? What is it? I don't see that hope.
We know that government health care will produce a poverty of health services and care. If that comes to pass, right now we are on the mountain top insofar as the kinds of health care that an average person can obtain. The wealth of health care that we now have will be going the way of the vinyl record. Fear shrinks life. Love expands it. Tyranny and fear go together. Freedom and love go together. Tyranny and poverty go together. Freedom and wealth go together.
American freedom and wealth is about to end. It has been easy for a middle class person to live well in the United States. Eighteen months ago, I was commenting on this very fact. That is ending and it is soon going to be hard. A year from now, that will be apparent to more people although I have to admit that I am experiencing it now.
Architecture, especially so for my small business, is one of the first things to be affected by the larger economic picture. I can tell you with certainty that nothing is happening. One thing that is happening is that people who have wanted to build are still wanting to build. As this drags out, they look for the slightest clue that it would be good to move forward. So if there is any easing, I expect it to be a boom, at least for a short period of time. It could be that in 2 to 3 months I may be working as much as I can physically work.
With the kinds of things going on with the government now, I will have to have everything be put in a form that can have some power in the dry period that will inevitably follow. Damn it, I wanted a flat screen TV. That, however, may not be the thing to be buying. I don't want to be one of those dunderheads that go with the flow and wake up one day shocked within an inch of my life. I know that experience. Not good. This clearly is going to take some thought.
We are in and heading for the eye of a fear-based hurricane. Do what you can to stop it. I think stopping the government from instituting government health care, a bureaucrat who is designated to sit between your mind and your body, would put an enormous crimp in the Democrats' push for total power. I think Government Health Care means that the government, not you, owns your life. It means that you do not possess the right to your life for the simple reason that you will be unable to act in your own interest when it comes to your body. You will get the chump change. The choices that would have been possible under freedom won't be. Simple as that. Only the government's interest will matter in that world.
The Cap and Trade bill definitely needs to be defeated. That will tax you unto death. Thousands of dollars in higher prices caused by the government's tax on energy will change your life. Man's role in the climate is not understood. Frankly, I don't think it amounts to much in the face of the enormous forces of a much larger system in which we and our planet lives. Read Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer for a scenario that will place the earth in a much larger context than the global "warmist," "climate changers" have. I think Al Gore is an idiot. He's a person whose purpose is to accumulate wealth via political means.
The five primary arguments I have against the global "warmist" positions are these: 1) The science is not there. Al Gore and the desperate global warmists are not careful about the facts and they are only interested in pushing people to a conclusion that will get them the control they want. I saw An Inconvenient Truth and I was appalled at how disrespectful it was to a thinking person. It was really not about the earth at all. It was about getting the audience to like Al Gore. (Now isn't that an interesting motivation for a politician? Oh my, I should be surprised. Sounds like someone else I know.)
2) Environmentalists lie - boldly and outrageously. They lie about polar bears, for one thing. They also lie about a lot of other things. Many of these lies have been documented. They are not about the Environment. They are about religion. This is not the first time in history that the earth and nature has become the touchstone of a religion. People live on the earth and need the earth as a resource to maintain their lives. But, their lives are not to be sacrificed for the earth or nature. That would turn the whole way things work upside down. But this is the way an Environmentalist thinks. He would rather save a 2" fish than provide food for people. Something wrong here. When I see him be the first to lay down his life for a fish, he will have some credibility. Until then? No.
Another very interesting fact is that private property owners take care of the environment much better than government ever has or will. One of the reasons is that government, as it now operates, is set up on a double standard. Everything you cannot do, they can. I've read articles about tree farms and such and the private farms are far better than the government owned lands. People generally love their property and they do not go around with the intent to harm it. Also, property is an investment and it works to maintain its value. On the other hand, the government could care less. It is oriented toward power and political spoils, not real life and real property. (Of course if you organize a march on Washington with a million or more people, you might get their attention to do something. Not necessarily though.) The great devastation of land is in the public lands. Since no one owns it, the thing to do is get as much as one can while he has the access. Or to pass a law such that it cannot respond to the natural laws that govern it. There is no future that one is worried about. The future for someone with access to public lands is far more dependent on one's ass-kissing ability than one's nature-caring ability.
3) Resources never go out of existence. They are always in a process of transformation of their form. Today's trash is a potential resource tomorrow. (Actually it is a resource right now, but until we have worked out how to use it, it is in a latent form.) E = m times c squared. Energy and mass are intimately related. One transforms into the other. As we are better able to control this process, we will be able to make these transformations ourselves. There is no need to be "spiritually" worried that we are going to run out of resources. Not possible.
I think that eventually all the manufacturing may be located on other planets and asteroids. Earth, where we live, will be a country club.
4) Pollution is not something that is necessarily damaging. In a free society, pollution becomes a problem if it damages someone's property - their body or their farm, if you get my point. No one gets to dump their weekly trash on my side of the fence, the property line. If I think that factory X is polluting my property, all I have to do is show that to be true. I do that by discovering the facts that show that. Until one has discovered those facts, there is no evidence that Factory X is polluting my property. (In today's world, people try everything but the facts to get people to stop doing something. The tools are sob stories, social pressure and unearned guilt. That's the tools we now use. Nasty tools. They don't work and we don't learn anything about how things work except how to better use those tools which makes our social world an increasingly nasty place to live. Not good.)
5) The free market responds to change the fastest of any human invention ever. It is constantly changing and the entrepreneur is always on the lookout for how better to meet the needs and wants of potential consumers. If the climate changes, the last thing we need are rigid laws decided by a bunch of politicians sitting in Washington or State Capitols trying to figure out how to change the laws so they and their backers can make a buck. This is corrupt. The free market, if free, will handle the changes we are always dealing with and seeking to provide for and it will do it magnificently and quickly. That is inherent in its nature. Nothing to fear. It is imperative to separate economy and state.
There are many areas to fight the current government. The control of speech is one area. Net neutrality is an attempt to place the internet under government control rendering it unable to respond to what people want. Obama's czars have various plans for controlling talk radio, disagreeable cable channels, etc., etc. All of this is very bad for us because it makes it much harder for us to get information and adjust our view of the world as we need to do for our survival.
Do what you can to prepare. The very best thing you can do is school yourself as to why fear doesn't work and you should give it up. I'm 69 years old and I would give up Medicare in a nanosecond for a free market in health care. I guarantee you I would be far more likely to get the health care I need if the market is free. Government control of health care will, if it comes about, strangle health care. If government saw to it that freedom increased, there would be nurses in drug stores and grocery stores taking care of most of the basic questions we have about health care. Health care would be abundant. Instead, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and company trot out some sob story (what I call sore picking) which they think is sufficient reason to put the noose around the nation's neck. What a Carnival of Arrogant Asses we have in Washington.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Types of Government - Image
Click on image to enlarge or read below
Perfecting the self.
"We" by voluntary association.
Life by agreement and contract.
All property privately owned.
Unlimited resources; Wealth created.
Free trade for mutual benefit.
The conquest of nature.
Emancipation of human energy.
Capitalism
Limited principled Government
Limited by a Constitution.
Constitution protects individual rights, freeing men from men.
Separation of church and state; separation of economy and state.
Morally justified by the Right to Live for One's Self - Life as an End in Itself.
Unstable Mix -- Welfare State
Morally justified by the Greater Good - Life as a Means to Another's Ends.
Theocracy
Man of God
Socialism
Dictator
Oligarchy
Monarchy
King
Unlimited arbitrary Government.
Searching for Saviors.
All forms of "us vs. them."
All property owned or regulated by the State.
Emancipation of human energy.
Capitalism
Limited principled Government
Limited by a Constitution.
Constitution protects individual rights, freeing men from men.
Separation of church and state; separation of economy and state.
Morally justified by the Right to Live for One's Self - Life as an End in Itself.
Unstable Mix -- Welfare StateMorally justified by the Greater Good - Life as a Means to Another's Ends.
Theocracy
Man of God
Socialism
Dictator
Oligarchy
Monarchy
King
Unlimited arbitrary Government.
Searching for Saviors.
All forms of "us vs. them."
All property owned or regulated by the State.
Resources limited - Perpetual war.
Society devolves to battling ethnic and racial groups.
Society devolves to battling ethnic and racial groups.
The conquest of men; Live by permission - slavery.
The control of human energy.
Also see here.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Are You Crazy?
Have Americans completely lost their minds?
America is the best producer of goods and services the world has ever known. Right now it has the best Health Care available for the most citizens of any place in the world. It produces more procedures and medicines and has more facilities to cure or ameliorate the ailments of mankind than anyplace else. There are some problems, but a poor person is rich in America compared to the poor around the world.
And you want to trade that for someone telling you what, how much and who you can go to for your health care? ARE YOU NUTS?
Every place that has GOVERNMENT Health Care must, by necessity, move to the lowest common denominator of health care. The GOVERNMENT harnesses, i.e., ENSLAVES, the doctors and all others in the system by refusing to pay them what they want and would otherwise get in a free market. The best ones leave the business. It controls the pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical research so that you get what the GOVERNMENT wants to pass out. It controls the hospitals, it controls the nurses, it controls the ambulance services, it controls every bit and piece of an otherwise complex system with abundant options and practices. It chokes, i.e., asphyxiates, i.e., takes the breath of life away from every doctor, every nurse, every office, every prescription and drug producer, every ambulance service, every person in the industry with paperwork.
And for that reason it will kill people too. Yes, I said kill them - by deprivation, by neglect, by policies which will follow the book, not the needs of the patient.
It will destroy the doctor - patient relationship. You will be a cipher, not a person.
Because the demand for Health Care will go through the roof because it is FREE, which it isn’t, it will be rationed. You will not be able to get the very thing that may save your life. You will have to wait too long or it won’t be available. What you will get are excuses and delays and government policies. None of these will do a damn thing for you!
In the scarcity of Health Care that will be CAUSED by THE GOVERNMENT, guess who will be selected to suffer this scarcity the most? The old, the infirm, the handicapped – anyone who is determined by THE GOVERNMENT to not be in the mainstream of productive citizens doing the work that the GOVERNMENT considers valuable. Of course they will never say that. It will just happen by default. Since you do not get to choose your health care, the GOVERNMENT will make the decisions. And they don't know if you are a genius or an idiot, a producer or a moocher. Why would a bureaucrat care about those things that are not reflected in their numbers? There is no other possibility.
And because Health Care will be costly and scarce, you will be regulated regarding your own life. If you eat a Twinkie, followed to its ultimate conclusion, you will violate the law, can be fined or taken to jail or simply spurned. If you smoke a cigarette, you will violate the law and can be fined or taken to jail or refused treatment. You will be required to diet, to exercise, to sleep the right number of hours, to eat the right things, drink the right things, everything that THE GOVERNMENT says, by fiat, you must do to obtain its health care. It will use ladles of guilt and post millions of banners and signs that no one reads about how you are a good boy if you follow their instructions. It won't be like that you say? Not immediately, but the pressure will always be in that direction.
And have you seen the GOVERNMENT’S health care facilities? Take a look at the public facilities they have now. Go to your county health department’s waiting room, get in line in a dingy shabby room painted institution green and see how you like it. Or go to the veterans hospitals and watch the tired nurses, who will be on a GOVERNMENT pay scale along with the doctors and secretaries and all the other employees, complain about their job. Or go to the big public hospitals where you wonder why it is not as clean as your home?
When the GOVERNMENT controls everything, there won’t even be the attraction of security that the GOVERNMENT offers to its employees. With everyone employed by the GOVERNMENT that distinction won’t exist. It will be all about we HAVE TO. Whining will be elevated to an art form. This is the result of having no choice.
And are you aware that regimentation via GOVERNMENT control causes stupidity? If you don't think the I-don't-care attitude of government workers will not spill over into their care, you are really crazy. Livers will be accidentally removed, a wrong leg will be amputated, the anesthesiologist will accidentally kill your loved one instead of anesthetizing them. Simple procedures will become complicated and complicated ones will be incorrectly made simple. Instead of keeping their mind on the business at hand they will be thinking about their latest tweet or when they can get back to Facebook.
Here's a video interviewing ordinary people in Canada about their healthcare. And here is an interview with someone who lived under England's single-payer health care system. They don't even get Novocaine when their teeth are drilled.
This is your future. Are you willing to trade the riches that a free system which encourages superb service and good care in order to attract business FOR THIS? What are you thinking?
People do not get that Universal Health Care is a DIRECT ATTACK on them as human being. It attacks everything that gives rise to being human: your valuing nature as such, your particular values, your mind, your reason, your life and those you care about.
An American watching the above video can see how Canadians are no longer people in the full sense of the word. They have given up. They have ACCEPTED the system, its craziness, and their plight. They make excuses for it. Most Americans I know would have said, "Enough of this horseshit. I'm going some place else!"
ARE YOU CRAZY?
Health care is too costly, you say?
Then free it up. Allow more competition, not less. Allow it to meet more needs at all levels instead of less. Already health care is bound hand and foot with regulations that are completely unnecessary. I don’t remember anyone complaining about health care 60 years ago. You had the doctor you trusted and you went to him if you had a problem. You worked out the cost and paid it. Insurance was varied and available at any level you wanted it. If you want better and less costly health care, FREE IT UP! Freedom is the answer, not GOVERNMENT control and regulation.
Here is a conversation about getting the GOVERNMENT out of the way.
Freedom has always been the answer. It unleashes the human engine that produces a torrent of goods and services. It unleashes the ideas and production of the best minds as well as the lesser ones. It unleashes the entrepreneur. There is no waiting in freedom. If you want it, you think about it, you work for it and you pay for it. If you don’t want it, you don’t.
I can’t believe that people are willing to trade abundance for poverty, pennies for the gold they now have and could have more of. But apparently they are about to do so. What has gotten hold of you? Are we now to wear hair shirts for no reason except to prove we are suffering? Are the Liberals, the Progressives, among us as unenlightened as medieval Christians? We have to be gripped by some vast superstition.
When Obama, Reid and Pelosi give up their special government health care program and go stand in line in Canada as an ordinary citizen, I will believe they have something other than pure lies to say to us.
ARE YOU CRAZY?
STOP RIGHT NOW, AMERICA.
WAKE UP!
CALL AND WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND THE PRESIDENT NOW. NO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. ABSOLUTELY - NO! NO! NO!
ARE YOU CRAZY?
America is the best producer of goods and services the world has ever known. Right now it has the best Health Care available for the most citizens of any place in the world. It produces more procedures and medicines and has more facilities to cure or ameliorate the ailments of mankind than anyplace else. There are some problems, but a poor person is rich in America compared to the poor around the world.
And you want to trade that for someone telling you what, how much and who you can go to for your health care? ARE YOU NUTS?
Every place that has GOVERNMENT Health Care must, by necessity, move to the lowest common denominator of health care. The GOVERNMENT harnesses, i.e., ENSLAVES, the doctors and all others in the system by refusing to pay them what they want and would otherwise get in a free market. The best ones leave the business. It controls the pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical research so that you get what the GOVERNMENT wants to pass out. It controls the hospitals, it controls the nurses, it controls the ambulance services, it controls every bit and piece of an otherwise complex system with abundant options and practices. It chokes, i.e., asphyxiates, i.e., takes the breath of life away from every doctor, every nurse, every office, every prescription and drug producer, every ambulance service, every person in the industry with paperwork.
And for that reason it will kill people too. Yes, I said kill them - by deprivation, by neglect, by policies which will follow the book, not the needs of the patient.
It will destroy the doctor - patient relationship. You will be a cipher, not a person.
Because the demand for Health Care will go through the roof because it is FREE, which it isn’t, it will be rationed. You will not be able to get the very thing that may save your life. You will have to wait too long or it won’t be available. What you will get are excuses and delays and government policies. None of these will do a damn thing for you!
In the scarcity of Health Care that will be CAUSED by THE GOVERNMENT, guess who will be selected to suffer this scarcity the most? The old, the infirm, the handicapped – anyone who is determined by THE GOVERNMENT to not be in the mainstream of productive citizens doing the work that the GOVERNMENT considers valuable. Of course they will never say that. It will just happen by default. Since you do not get to choose your health care, the GOVERNMENT will make the decisions. And they don't know if you are a genius or an idiot, a producer or a moocher. Why would a bureaucrat care about those things that are not reflected in their numbers? There is no other possibility.
And because Health Care will be costly and scarce, you will be regulated regarding your own life. If you eat a Twinkie, followed to its ultimate conclusion, you will violate the law, can be fined or taken to jail or simply spurned. If you smoke a cigarette, you will violate the law and can be fined or taken to jail or refused treatment. You will be required to diet, to exercise, to sleep the right number of hours, to eat the right things, drink the right things, everything that THE GOVERNMENT says, by fiat, you must do to obtain its health care. It will use ladles of guilt and post millions of banners and signs that no one reads about how you are a good boy if you follow their instructions. It won't be like that you say? Not immediately, but the pressure will always be in that direction.
And have you seen the GOVERNMENT’S health care facilities? Take a look at the public facilities they have now. Go to your county health department’s waiting room, get in line in a dingy shabby room painted institution green and see how you like it. Or go to the veterans hospitals and watch the tired nurses, who will be on a GOVERNMENT pay scale along with the doctors and secretaries and all the other employees, complain about their job. Or go to the big public hospitals where you wonder why it is not as clean as your home?
When the GOVERNMENT controls everything, there won’t even be the attraction of security that the GOVERNMENT offers to its employees. With everyone employed by the GOVERNMENT that distinction won’t exist. It will be all about we HAVE TO. Whining will be elevated to an art form. This is the result of having no choice.
And are you aware that regimentation via GOVERNMENT control causes stupidity? If you don't think the I-don't-care attitude of government workers will not spill over into their care, you are really crazy. Livers will be accidentally removed, a wrong leg will be amputated, the anesthesiologist will accidentally kill your loved one instead of anesthetizing them. Simple procedures will become complicated and complicated ones will be incorrectly made simple. Instead of keeping their mind on the business at hand they will be thinking about their latest tweet or when they can get back to Facebook.
Here's a video interviewing ordinary people in Canada about their healthcare. And here is an interview with someone who lived under England's single-payer health care system. They don't even get Novocaine when their teeth are drilled.
This is your future. Are you willing to trade the riches that a free system which encourages superb service and good care in order to attract business FOR THIS? What are you thinking?
People do not get that Universal Health Care is a DIRECT ATTACK on them as human being. It attacks everything that gives rise to being human: your valuing nature as such, your particular values, your mind, your reason, your life and those you care about.
An American watching the above video can see how Canadians are no longer people in the full sense of the word. They have given up. They have ACCEPTED the system, its craziness, and their plight. They make excuses for it. Most Americans I know would have said, "Enough of this horseshit. I'm going some place else!"
ARE YOU CRAZY?
Health care is too costly, you say?
Then free it up. Allow more competition, not less. Allow it to meet more needs at all levels instead of less. Already health care is bound hand and foot with regulations that are completely unnecessary. I don’t remember anyone complaining about health care 60 years ago. You had the doctor you trusted and you went to him if you had a problem. You worked out the cost and paid it. Insurance was varied and available at any level you wanted it. If you want better and less costly health care, FREE IT UP! Freedom is the answer, not GOVERNMENT control and regulation.
Here is a conversation about getting the GOVERNMENT out of the way.
Freedom has always been the answer. It unleashes the human engine that produces a torrent of goods and services. It unleashes the ideas and production of the best minds as well as the lesser ones. It unleashes the entrepreneur. There is no waiting in freedom. If you want it, you think about it, you work for it and you pay for it. If you don’t want it, you don’t.
I can’t believe that people are willing to trade abundance for poverty, pennies for the gold they now have and could have more of. But apparently they are about to do so. What has gotten hold of you? Are we now to wear hair shirts for no reason except to prove we are suffering? Are the Liberals, the Progressives, among us as unenlightened as medieval Christians? We have to be gripped by some vast superstition.
When Obama, Reid and Pelosi give up their special government health care program and go stand in line in Canada as an ordinary citizen, I will believe they have something other than pure lies to say to us.
ARE YOU CRAZY?
STOP RIGHT NOW, AMERICA.
WAKE UP!
CALL AND WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND THE PRESIDENT NOW. NO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. ABSOLUTELY - NO! NO! NO!
ARE YOU CRAZY?
Friday, July 10, 2009
A Cartoon from 1934
Chicago Tribune
1934
Those unwilling to learn the lessons of the past
are condemned to repeat them.
are condemned to repeat them.
An economic bubble takes an average of two years to correct itself - with one requirement: that the economy is free to make the correction. In the 30s, that correction was stretched to 10 years and even then it was not in the process of correcting itself. It was the war that drafted the unemployed (many to their death) and put the women and old folks to work.
A free economy designs itself to provide whatever the people in the economy need and are willing to work for. It is constantly correcting itself unless the government intervenes and thwarts the corrective process - the mechanism that led to the crash in 1929 and the collapse in 2008 as well as other bubbles between those times. The rational government action is to cut spending, get rid of onerous and irrational regulations, and sell off assets, all in order to lower taxes so that people can use their resources for productive effort. No one, including the individual, the county, the state or the country, can borrow and spend their way out of lost income. The way out is to create and produce some value that one can live on, either directly or through exchange with other people for the things one needs. Political freedom, including economic freedom, is the underlying requirement for this to occur.
Ask yourself: Is this happening now? If not, why not? And the answer is somewhat different than it was in the 30s. Then socialism was an erroneous, but inspired ideal. Its failure was not perceived until the fall of the Berlin Wall whereupon the whole world could see the utter poverty, the imprisoned and tortured people who didn't agree with the system, the starving of millions and the massive waste of resources - all caused by government planning and control. Given that socialism is a failure, what is different now? The motive? Looks like it could be. So, what is the motive now?
Hint: The Greater Good is not the motive. That is the cover, the drapes that soften the window so the unvarnished truth is not realized.
Think about it.
A free economy designs itself to provide whatever the people in the economy need and are willing to work for. It is constantly correcting itself unless the government intervenes and thwarts the corrective process - the mechanism that led to the crash in 1929 and the collapse in 2008 as well as other bubbles between those times. The rational government action is to cut spending, get rid of onerous and irrational regulations, and sell off assets, all in order to lower taxes so that people can use their resources for productive effort. No one, including the individual, the county, the state or the country, can borrow and spend their way out of lost income. The way out is to create and produce some value that one can live on, either directly or through exchange with other people for the things one needs. Political freedom, including economic freedom, is the underlying requirement for this to occur.
Ask yourself: Is this happening now? If not, why not? And the answer is somewhat different than it was in the 30s. Then socialism was an erroneous, but inspired ideal. Its failure was not perceived until the fall of the Berlin Wall whereupon the whole world could see the utter poverty, the imprisoned and tortured people who didn't agree with the system, the starving of millions and the massive waste of resources - all caused by government planning and control. Given that socialism is a failure, what is different now? The motive? Looks like it could be. So, what is the motive now?
Hint: The Greater Good is not the motive. That is the cover, the drapes that soften the window so the unvarnished truth is not realized.
Think about it.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
A Citizen's Letter to Her Senator
E. Let us not forget the examples of a not so distant past that illustrate very well the efficiency of free markets and the wastefulness and inefficiency of a controlled economy.
The Soviet Union, one of the greatest empires in the world, collapsed mostly due to economic reasons, due to the inability of the government to predict and control supply and demand or efficiently launch and promote innovations. I myself came from that unfortunate country to the United States in search of freedom, and it horrifies me to see my new home repeating the mistakes of my old one and slipping into the abyss of socialism. You don’t need terrorists or nuclear weapons to destroy a free country. All you have to do is to make the people of a free country embrace socialism and they will destroy themselves and their country.
If we look back at the history of the United States, in the 19th century we see how much private initiative had to do with real progress and technological advances, especially in the energy market. In the 19th century our energy market was developing, as Alex Epstein put it so well, literally with the speed of thought. A new idea was tried as soon as it was thought of, because there were no obstacles in the form of government regulations.
Back then people were afraid that as soon as they ran out of coal they would be doomed. There were many so called scientists and analysts trying to predict the end of the world due to the limited amount of resources. If back then the US government had stepped in and monopolized the energy market and had tried to regulate coal distribution and the production of candles and lighting oils, we would all still live in the dark ages. Yet we were lucky, because that was the time of truly free markets, and in search of profit many innovators came up with the ideas of how to use oil. Those ideas changed history, and we leaped into a new more advanced era because we had oil and knew how to use it.
Do not forget that before oil and before coal people had to use wood. And then coal was a major discovery. What if back then the governments tried to regulate wood distribution and stifled any new ideas about alternative sources of energy like coal?
And by the way, carbon dioxide is not a threat. Oceans produce more carbon dioxide than all humans together. CO2 is required for life and in different historic periods more CO2 usually meant more vegetation and more prosperity. And it is not a general consensus of the scientists that the Earth is warming, in fact there is new data that the Earth is actually cooling, One of the EPA scientists, Alan Carlin, tried to express these ideas to his superiors. However this information was suppressed. Doesn’t it look like a conspiracy directed to destroying the USA's independence and competitiveness? Here is an excerpt from the interview with Alan Carlin.
How about instead of regulating our energy sector the government deregulated it? What if we gave the initiative back to private entrepreneurs? Private businesses are always in search of profit and a competitive edge. If we get to the point where oil is no longer viable, the one who finds a better, cheaper and more efficient alternative source of energy will not only beat their competitors but solve another energy crisis problem for the rest of mankind.
A free human mind is always in search of solutions to problems. An enslaved human mind does not function that way. You may force slaves to do physical labor, but you can’t force a slave’s mind to work. It will always be inferior to the mind of a free man. American inventors have always been on top of the world precisely because they were free not only to come up with new ideas, but also to profit from them. No matter how many great scientists worked in the Soviet labor camps, American scientists could always beat them because they were free.
The Cap and Trade bill will enslave American scientists to a predetermined government-controlled paradigm. Instead of being truly free to exercise their minds and harvest the fruits of their labor, they will have to struggle through a limited amount of alternative energy choices (most of which are not economically viable) in their government-created jobs.
How much efficiency do you expect from that? Are you so naïve that you truly believe that this kind of arrangement can help America solve her energy problems? I fear that if we stifle the human mind, if we rob private companies of their profits in order to invest in dubious government enterprises, if we impoverish people through higher taxes and prices in order to force them to convert to more expensive and less efficient sources of energy, we will create more problems than we are now hoping to solve. It will put this country at a huge disadvantage compared to what is possible and to other countries. And what is worse than that is we will destroy private innovation that has always been a source of American wealth and prosperity.
Please, stop and think twice before you vote for any bill (this or any other) that will put private America in government chains. I believe that there are many other Americans who write petitions to you asking to support things like Cap and Trade or public healthcare. You have to remember that any such initiative will enslave one part of the population in order to serve the other part of the population. This is exactly the kind of democracy that our Founding Fathers were warning us against. When two wolves and a sheep decide what is for lunch the outcome is predictable. This country is a republic based on the rule of Law not the mob, and the Supreme Law of this country is the Constitution of the United States.
You have all taken an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, and these kinds of bills are in complete violation of this monumental document. Stop thinking that more government is the solution to our problems. Stop thinking that you can please the ignorant masses by giving in to their irrational desires while violating the Constitution and the rights of the minorities, with the smallest minority being an individual. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the Soviets. More government is the problem that is now leading America on this path to nowhere.
Take a stand for freedom, this is what all free Americans expect from you. Don’t sacrifice the American principles for the sake of keeping your seat in Congress. You have to care about justice - an authentic justice based in reality, not some idea that does not work and makes no sense. You have to care about freedom and principles. You have to care about the real values that this country is based on, even if the majority sometimes thinks otherwise.
Remember it was not the majority that founded this country and its laws. It was not the majority that made this country great. It will never be the majority!
You have to take a stand. Simply voting or not voting is not enough anymore. You have to take a real stand for protection of the Constitution of the United States, for protection of the American principles and values. You have to take a real stand for the protection of individual rights. These rights do not include a free house, or a guaranteed job, or free healthcare. You have to take a stand and make yourself heard, so that others can join you! We have to save this country and what you are doing now is not helping this cause. You have to take a stand for what is right, not for what is required by the expediency of the moment!
We The People of this great country, the United States of America, are watching you!
Elena Carter
[Elena is a Russian translator and a co-owner of a fitness facility, East Cobb Exercise Excellence in Marietta, GA.]
The Soviet Union, one of the greatest empires in the world, collapsed mostly due to economic reasons, due to the inability of the government to predict and control supply and demand or efficiently launch and promote innovations. I myself came from that unfortunate country to the United States in search of freedom, and it horrifies me to see my new home repeating the mistakes of my old one and slipping into the abyss of socialism. You don’t need terrorists or nuclear weapons to destroy a free country. All you have to do is to make the people of a free country embrace socialism and they will destroy themselves and their country.
If we look back at the history of the United States, in the 19th century we see how much private initiative had to do with real progress and technological advances, especially in the energy market. In the 19th century our energy market was developing, as Alex Epstein put it so well, literally with the speed of thought. A new idea was tried as soon as it was thought of, because there were no obstacles in the form of government regulations.
Back then people were afraid that as soon as they ran out of coal they would be doomed. There were many so called scientists and analysts trying to predict the end of the world due to the limited amount of resources. If back then the US government had stepped in and monopolized the energy market and had tried to regulate coal distribution and the production of candles and lighting oils, we would all still live in the dark ages. Yet we were lucky, because that was the time of truly free markets, and in search of profit many innovators came up with the ideas of how to use oil. Those ideas changed history, and we leaped into a new more advanced era because we had oil and knew how to use it.
Do not forget that before oil and before coal people had to use wood. And then coal was a major discovery. What if back then the governments tried to regulate wood distribution and stifled any new ideas about alternative sources of energy like coal?
And by the way, carbon dioxide is not a threat. Oceans produce more carbon dioxide than all humans together. CO2 is required for life and in different historic periods more CO2 usually meant more vegetation and more prosperity. And it is not a general consensus of the scientists that the Earth is warming, in fact there is new data that the Earth is actually cooling, One of the EPA scientists, Alan Carlin, tried to express these ideas to his superiors. However this information was suppressed. Doesn’t it look like a conspiracy directed to destroying the USA's independence and competitiveness? Here is an excerpt from the interview with Alan Carlin.
How about instead of regulating our energy sector the government deregulated it? What if we gave the initiative back to private entrepreneurs? Private businesses are always in search of profit and a competitive edge. If we get to the point where oil is no longer viable, the one who finds a better, cheaper and more efficient alternative source of energy will not only beat their competitors but solve another energy crisis problem for the rest of mankind.
A free human mind is always in search of solutions to problems. An enslaved human mind does not function that way. You may force slaves to do physical labor, but you can’t force a slave’s mind to work. It will always be inferior to the mind of a free man. American inventors have always been on top of the world precisely because they were free not only to come up with new ideas, but also to profit from them. No matter how many great scientists worked in the Soviet labor camps, American scientists could always beat them because they were free.
The Cap and Trade bill will enslave American scientists to a predetermined government-controlled paradigm. Instead of being truly free to exercise their minds and harvest the fruits of their labor, they will have to struggle through a limited amount of alternative energy choices (most of which are not economically viable) in their government-created jobs.
How much efficiency do you expect from that? Are you so naïve that you truly believe that this kind of arrangement can help America solve her energy problems? I fear that if we stifle the human mind, if we rob private companies of their profits in order to invest in dubious government enterprises, if we impoverish people through higher taxes and prices in order to force them to convert to more expensive and less efficient sources of energy, we will create more problems than we are now hoping to solve. It will put this country at a huge disadvantage compared to what is possible and to other countries. And what is worse than that is we will destroy private innovation that has always been a source of American wealth and prosperity.
Please, stop and think twice before you vote for any bill (this or any other) that will put private America in government chains. I believe that there are many other Americans who write petitions to you asking to support things like Cap and Trade or public healthcare. You have to remember that any such initiative will enslave one part of the population in order to serve the other part of the population. This is exactly the kind of democracy that our Founding Fathers were warning us against. When two wolves and a sheep decide what is for lunch the outcome is predictable. This country is a republic based on the rule of Law not the mob, and the Supreme Law of this country is the Constitution of the United States.
You have all taken an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, and these kinds of bills are in complete violation of this monumental document. Stop thinking that more government is the solution to our problems. Stop thinking that you can please the ignorant masses by giving in to their irrational desires while violating the Constitution and the rights of the minorities, with the smallest minority being an individual. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the Soviets. More government is the problem that is now leading America on this path to nowhere.
Take a stand for freedom, this is what all free Americans expect from you. Don’t sacrifice the American principles for the sake of keeping your seat in Congress. You have to care about justice - an authentic justice based in reality, not some idea that does not work and makes no sense. You have to care about freedom and principles. You have to care about the real values that this country is based on, even if the majority sometimes thinks otherwise.
Remember it was not the majority that founded this country and its laws. It was not the majority that made this country great. It will never be the majority!
You have to take a stand. Simply voting or not voting is not enough anymore. You have to take a real stand for protection of the Constitution of the United States, for protection of the American principles and values. You have to take a real stand for the protection of individual rights. These rights do not include a free house, or a guaranteed job, or free healthcare. You have to take a stand and make yourself heard, so that others can join you! We have to save this country and what you are doing now is not helping this cause. You have to take a stand for what is right, not for what is required by the expediency of the moment!
We The People of this great country, the United States of America, are watching you!
Elena Carter
[Elena is a Russian translator and a co-owner of a fitness facility, East Cobb Exercise Excellence in Marietta, GA.]
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Bail Bill Upholds Unreality - Kill It
Here is an article by Robert Tracinski who writes the TIA Daily column. I'm copying it whole as it is great to get your feet on the ground in terms of free market principles. Also, I must say that I am shocked regarding Bernake's complete disregard for what has the free market work. After reading this and his attempt at Czardom, I'm persuaded the guy is a psychopath.
TIA Daily • October 1, 2008
Kill the Bailout
The Government Can't Rewrite Reality
The House of Representatives deserves praise for taking swift action to avert a growing economic crisis—by not approving the trillion-dollar financial bailout plan.
The bailout bill was blocked Monday by a rebellion among House Republicans, who voted two-to-one against a plan they consider a step down the "slippery slope to socialism," in the words of Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling.
They are absolutely correct, and the 133 Republicans who voted to stop this coup against the financial markets—not to mention some of the 95 Democrats who may have balked for similar reasons—need to find the courage to stand firm. That's especially true since the Senate is likely to vote today to approve the bailout.
The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House—but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.
Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.
Congress wanted everyone to be able to get a mortgage to buy a home, regardless of income, credit history, or ability to save for a down payment. The name for this contradiction was "affordable housing," an initiative aimed at providing the benefits of home ownership to those who could not, in fact, afford it. So when the market concluded that low-income borrowers could not meet the credit requirements for mortgages, the Clinton administration invoked trumped-up charges of racism to expand enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, bullying banks into dropping as "arbitrary" such old-fashioned credit standards as proof of income. And when the market balked at the increased credit risk created by these loans, Congress backed the expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that used federally guaranteed money to buy up the increasingly risky mortgages.
At every point, when the market sent the message that reality would not support the higher level of risk being taken on by mortgage lenders, the government used its power to override this message.
The vigorous government-created market for riskier "sub-prime" loans masked the real dangers, creating the illusion that increased profits could be obtained without increased risk—an illusion that encouraged some private lenders to follow Fannie and Freddie's lead. To be sure, some of this private risk-taking was part of the normal process of failure in a capitalist economy. A large part of the current financial upheaval originated with high-risk investment banks and hedge funds that held large amounts of mortgage-backed securities. These securities were carefully balanced against one another according to mathematical formulas that were calculated to cancel out their risks. But the mathematical formulas were new and hadn't been tested in a bear market. When the downturn came, they failed.
This is a normal part of the rough and tumble of capitalism. All of the current talk about the "failure" of the free market ignores the fact that the process of failure is a crucial benefit of the free market. In a capitalist system, high-risk firms are always trying out new and untested ideas, and failure is the messenger that tells the market which strategies work and which strategies don't. It is also an indispensable corrective mechanism that moves capital from enterprises with failing strategies to those with successful strategies.
But the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have repeatedly short-circuited this mechanism by trying to outlaw failure. When the market sent the message that too many bad loans had been made and that this needed to be corrected by a contraction in the amount of available credit, the government wanted to avoid the unpleasant consequences of such a contraction. So the Federal Reserve papered over the facts—with a flurry of paper money—by artificially reducing interest rates and loosening up credit just when it needed to be tightened.
But that didn't change the underlying facts, and the bad investments still went bad. Yet as the market has sent the message that some firms have become over-extended and are no longer solvent, the government has still tried to avoid letting the market face the facts. The Treasury and the Fed kept trying to rewrite reality by orchestrating a series of government-backed bailouts.
Over at RealClearMarkets, Joseph Calhoun points out a crucial part of this assault on facts:
There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question.
Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.
So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.
Or consider the SEC's ban on short sales for a list of about 700 stocks—with more companies lobbying to get themselves put on the list. Again, the whole approach of the SEC is not to prevent companies from failing, but to help them pretend that they are not failing, by outlawing trades that would tend to drive their stock prices down.
In fact, all that this sort of policy has achieved is to expand business failures. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, for example, it had been in negotiations with several major financial institutions who were considering investing billions in a private buy-out of the firm. But they balked at making the deal because they were waiting for the Fed to offer incentives and guarantees. Thus, the Fed's yelping about how each bankruptcy of a Wall Street firm poses a risk of "systemic failure" turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the prospect of an open-ended series of bailouts is blocking all of the mechanisms by which a free market actually prevents widespread failure.
The bailout package would have the government buy out up to $700 billion worth of bad loans. But this is merely delaying the re-pricing of those loans to their proper value. Left to themselves, the holders of these loans would eventually find it necessary to sell them at pennies on the dollar; Merrill Lynch sold its bad loans at 22 cents on the dollar. Private companies could then recognize the magnitude of the loss and start to rebuild their businesses with the remaining assets they possess. But now no firm has an incentive to sell off its bad loans. Why dump them for 22 cents on the dollar when the government might buy them, a few weeks later, at 50 or 80 cents?
So instead what is going to happen is that the federal government is going to go into the financial markets and dictate which securities are worth how much. It is still unclear exactly which loans the government will buy or how much it will pay for them, so no private investor can say whether an investment will pay off or not. This is how the prospect of a government bailout blocks the private buyouts that would actually clean all of the bad debt out of the system.
Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders—us—that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal—in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.
The bailout represents more of the same problems that got us here because it is backed by all of the same people who created those problems. And I'm not just talking about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who organized the series of ad hoc bailouts that spread uncertainty through the financial industry. Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.
Fortunately, the public has the good sense to smell that something is rotten. I just got an e-mail recounting what Virginia Representative Jim Moran told Fox News: that calls from constituents commenting on the bailout were running 50-50—50% "no" and 50% "hell, no."
The House should not simply delay the bailout bill or mitigate its worst features; that will prolong the uncertainty in the financial markets. Instead, they need to make sure that the bailout meets with firm and repeated rejection over the next week, preferably by a growing margin of votes.
It is time for the House to kill the bailout and kill it decisively.
It is time for Congress to stop the government from rewriting reality, so that the market can be free to recognize the facts, pick up the pieces of failing firms, and begin rebuilding.
TIA Daily • October 1, 2008
Kill the Bailout
The Government Can't Rewrite Reality
The House of Representatives deserves praise for taking swift action to avert a growing economic crisis—by not approving the trillion-dollar financial bailout plan.
The bailout bill was blocked Monday by a rebellion among House Republicans, who voted two-to-one against a plan they consider a step down the "slippery slope to socialism," in the words of Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling.
They are absolutely correct, and the 133 Republicans who voted to stop this coup against the financial markets—not to mention some of the 95 Democrats who may have balked for similar reasons—need to find the courage to stand firm. That's especially true since the Senate is likely to vote today to approve the bailout.
The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House—but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.
Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.
Congress wanted everyone to be able to get a mortgage to buy a home, regardless of income, credit history, or ability to save for a down payment. The name for this contradiction was "affordable housing," an initiative aimed at providing the benefits of home ownership to those who could not, in fact, afford it. So when the market concluded that low-income borrowers could not meet the credit requirements for mortgages, the Clinton administration invoked trumped-up charges of racism to expand enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, bullying banks into dropping as "arbitrary" such old-fashioned credit standards as proof of income. And when the market balked at the increased credit risk created by these loans, Congress backed the expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that used federally guaranteed money to buy up the increasingly risky mortgages.
At every point, when the market sent the message that reality would not support the higher level of risk being taken on by mortgage lenders, the government used its power to override this message.
The vigorous government-created market for riskier "sub-prime" loans masked the real dangers, creating the illusion that increased profits could be obtained without increased risk—an illusion that encouraged some private lenders to follow Fannie and Freddie's lead. To be sure, some of this private risk-taking was part of the normal process of failure in a capitalist economy. A large part of the current financial upheaval originated with high-risk investment banks and hedge funds that held large amounts of mortgage-backed securities. These securities were carefully balanced against one another according to mathematical formulas that were calculated to cancel out their risks. But the mathematical formulas were new and hadn't been tested in a bear market. When the downturn came, they failed.
This is a normal part of the rough and tumble of capitalism. All of the current talk about the "failure" of the free market ignores the fact that the process of failure is a crucial benefit of the free market. In a capitalist system, high-risk firms are always trying out new and untested ideas, and failure is the messenger that tells the market which strategies work and which strategies don't. It is also an indispensable corrective mechanism that moves capital from enterprises with failing strategies to those with successful strategies.
But the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have repeatedly short-circuited this mechanism by trying to outlaw failure. When the market sent the message that too many bad loans had been made and that this needed to be corrected by a contraction in the amount of available credit, the government wanted to avoid the unpleasant consequences of such a contraction. So the Federal Reserve papered over the facts—with a flurry of paper money—by artificially reducing interest rates and loosening up credit just when it needed to be tightened.
But that didn't change the underlying facts, and the bad investments still went bad. Yet as the market has sent the message that some firms have become over-extended and are no longer solvent, the government has still tried to avoid letting the market face the facts. The Treasury and the Fed kept trying to rewrite reality by orchestrating a series of government-backed bailouts.
Over at RealClearMarkets, Joseph Calhoun points out a crucial part of this assault on facts:
There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question.
Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.
So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.
Or consider the SEC's ban on short sales for a list of about 700 stocks—with more companies lobbying to get themselves put on the list. Again, the whole approach of the SEC is not to prevent companies from failing, but to help them pretend that they are not failing, by outlawing trades that would tend to drive their stock prices down.
In fact, all that this sort of policy has achieved is to expand business failures. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, for example, it had been in negotiations with several major financial institutions who were considering investing billions in a private buy-out of the firm. But they balked at making the deal because they were waiting for the Fed to offer incentives and guarantees. Thus, the Fed's yelping about how each bankruptcy of a Wall Street firm poses a risk of "systemic failure" turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the prospect of an open-ended series of bailouts is blocking all of the mechanisms by which a free market actually prevents widespread failure.
The bailout package would have the government buy out up to $700 billion worth of bad loans. But this is merely delaying the re-pricing of those loans to their proper value. Left to themselves, the holders of these loans would eventually find it necessary to sell them at pennies on the dollar; Merrill Lynch sold its bad loans at 22 cents on the dollar. Private companies could then recognize the magnitude of the loss and start to rebuild their businesses with the remaining assets they possess. But now no firm has an incentive to sell off its bad loans. Why dump them for 22 cents on the dollar when the government might buy them, a few weeks later, at 50 or 80 cents?
So instead what is going to happen is that the federal government is going to go into the financial markets and dictate which securities are worth how much. It is still unclear exactly which loans the government will buy or how much it will pay for them, so no private investor can say whether an investment will pay off or not. This is how the prospect of a government bailout blocks the private buyouts that would actually clean all of the bad debt out of the system.
Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders—us—that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal—in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.
The bailout represents more of the same problems that got us here because it is backed by all of the same people who created those problems. And I'm not just talking about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who organized the series of ad hoc bailouts that spread uncertainty through the financial industry. Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.
Fortunately, the public has the good sense to smell that something is rotten. I just got an e-mail recounting what Virginia Representative Jim Moran told Fox News: that calls from constituents commenting on the bailout were running 50-50—50% "no" and 50% "hell, no."
The House should not simply delay the bailout bill or mitigate its worst features; that will prolong the uncertainty in the financial markets. Instead, they need to make sure that the bailout meets with firm and repeated rejection over the next week, preferably by a growing margin of votes.
It is time for the House to kill the bailout and kill it decisively.
It is time for Congress to stop the government from rewriting reality, so that the market can be free to recognize the facts, pick up the pieces of failing firms, and begin rebuilding.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
The Moral Basis of Capitalism
This interview is excellent in distinguishing the moral base of capitalism from the moral base that governs our culture and the cultures around the world. Here
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Anti-Energy, Anti-production, Anti-human being
The Democrats have reached the apex of stubborn irrationality. For what? Misplaced environmental concerns that value snail darters and various species over the individual right to own, i.e., the use and disposal of, property and to take care of one's property including the species thereon as seen fit; and, for a global waming theory (alias climate change theory) that is not proven and for which data relentlessly piles up disproving it and which, if carried out, will completely upend the industrial economy that is in existence and on which we totally depend.
Neither of these motives are worth anything except as the basis for an over-reaching, unjust, and stupid power-lust run amok. These politicians and their hangers-on deserve to lose their influence as soon as it can be accomplished.
This video is a stark demonstration of how little the Democrats care about individual people in their daily lives (i.e., their right to their life) and our economy. This is stark irresponsibility and is utterly exasperating that it is going on, let alone continues. Get out of the way! Freedom immediately! Now is the time to deliver a "Come to Jesus" conversation to your Congressman.
Don't exclude McCain and many Republicans for their support of Environmentalism as Religion. They need a "Come to Jesus" talk too.
We as citizens are not free when it comes to economic activities - probably the bulk of our lives. The Civil Rights issue in this century, the 21st, is economic freedom - the individual right to apply one's reason, one's knowledge and one's ingenuity in one's economic decisions - which is essentially the right to own property, a corollary of the right to one's own life.
The ultimate individual right is the right, unfettered by government interference unless one commits a crime against another, to fully use one's mind since it is man's basic means of survival. Rather, we are as pets in a cage with the government as pet farmer.
I'm sorry, but I hate my master. And the last thing I want them to do for me is to care. I just went them to do their goddammed job set forth in the Constitution and which they have under oath agreed to do.
Neither of these motives are worth anything except as the basis for an over-reaching, unjust, and stupid power-lust run amok. These politicians and their hangers-on deserve to lose their influence as soon as it can be accomplished.
This video is a stark demonstration of how little the Democrats care about individual people in their daily lives (i.e., their right to their life) and our economy. This is stark irresponsibility and is utterly exasperating that it is going on, let alone continues. Get out of the way! Freedom immediately! Now is the time to deliver a "Come to Jesus" conversation to your Congressman.
Don't exclude McCain and many Republicans for their support of Environmentalism as Religion. They need a "Come to Jesus" talk too.
We as citizens are not free when it comes to economic activities - probably the bulk of our lives. The Civil Rights issue in this century, the 21st, is economic freedom - the individual right to apply one's reason, one's knowledge and one's ingenuity in one's economic decisions - which is essentially the right to own property, a corollary of the right to one's own life.
The ultimate individual right is the right, unfettered by government interference unless one commits a crime against another, to fully use one's mind since it is man's basic means of survival. Rather, we are as pets in a cage with the government as pet farmer.
I'm sorry, but I hate my master. And the last thing I want them to do for me is to care. I just went them to do their goddammed job set forth in the Constitution and which they have under oath agreed to do.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Wall Street Got Drunk?
The hell they did. Bush's statement is absurd, not from the standpoint that Wall Street didn't run with the openings they saw because of Washington's regulation, but because he places the cause as Wall Street.
A legitimate authentic businessman doesn't get "drunk" about these matters and he does not allow himself to be thrown off track by eating the manna dropped from Washington.
Suppose I have decided to be a bank. I offer safe-keeping for people's money. In an unregulated market, the value I'm offering is safety and liquidity. People want to know that their money is secure from theft and they want to know that they can go get it when they need it.
The issue of lending money becomes a potential threat to those values unless I know what I am doing. Loans of all kinds have to be set up first with the depositors such that they are compensated for the risks they incur with their deposits that can be used for making loans. I, the banker in this case, have to know how much reserve I must have to protect the basic values I offer lest people come to the bank and find that they cannot get their money. If that happens, I'm bankrupt and my business is over.
The government has told the banks that they can lend more than they otherwise would and they have told them to loan to risky would-be borrowers. The government, they said, will ultimately back their depositors via the FDIC and other institutions. They have refocussed the concerns of the bank by removing the urgent reality of their accountability to their customers. The government will cover it.
The fact that the government isn't a bank dealing with people nor an insurance company who sets up reserves for the risks it takes is another story. The government is FORCE and has to take everything out of the hide of the population. It does it by taxation or inflation, i.e., the printing press.
All of the shenanigans of the banks and mortgage companies in the current fiasco result from the government's removing the principles of sound banking from the concern of the banks and mortgage companies. Hence a bubble which, when the piper plays his tune better known as when profligate ways hit the wall of reality, has to burst. Bush's fingerpointing is ludicrous and ignorant of what is going on. He should know better. Until we make sure the government stops inserting their FORCE via regulations into the situation this will not change.
The moral of this story? Force obviates the seeking of authentic values and the responsiblity for achieving those values.
A legitimate authentic businessman doesn't get "drunk" about these matters and he does not allow himself to be thrown off track by eating the manna dropped from Washington.
Suppose I have decided to be a bank. I offer safe-keeping for people's money. In an unregulated market, the value I'm offering is safety and liquidity. People want to know that their money is secure from theft and they want to know that they can go get it when they need it.
The issue of lending money becomes a potential threat to those values unless I know what I am doing. Loans of all kinds have to be set up first with the depositors such that they are compensated for the risks they incur with their deposits that can be used for making loans. I, the banker in this case, have to know how much reserve I must have to protect the basic values I offer lest people come to the bank and find that they cannot get their money. If that happens, I'm bankrupt and my business is over.
The government has told the banks that they can lend more than they otherwise would and they have told them to loan to risky would-be borrowers. The government, they said, will ultimately back their depositors via the FDIC and other institutions. They have refocussed the concerns of the bank by removing the urgent reality of their accountability to their customers. The government will cover it.
The fact that the government isn't a bank dealing with people nor an insurance company who sets up reserves for the risks it takes is another story. The government is FORCE and has to take everything out of the hide of the population. It does it by taxation or inflation, i.e., the printing press.
All of the shenanigans of the banks and mortgage companies in the current fiasco result from the government's removing the principles of sound banking from the concern of the banks and mortgage companies. Hence a bubble which, when the piper plays his tune better known as when profligate ways hit the wall of reality, has to burst. Bush's fingerpointing is ludicrous and ignorant of what is going on. He should know better. Until we make sure the government stops inserting their FORCE via regulations into the situation this will not change.
The moral of this story? Force obviates the seeking of authentic values and the responsiblity for achieving those values.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
John A. Allison IV - A Celebration of Freedom
The following is a tribute to a courageous freedom fighter in our time - John A. Allison IV. I delivered this speech to the Fellowship of Reason for its monthly Celebration of Freedom, April 6, 2008.
__________________________________
John A. Allison IV was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1948. He went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Business Administration, and was graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa Society, a measure of his academic achievements. While at UNC, he discovered articles by Ayn Rand and was profoundly influenced by her philosophy. He went on to receive his MBA from Duke University and then entered the banking industry. His first job came in 1971, at the age of 23, when he went to work for BB&T, a regional bank headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He rose through the ranks to President in 1987 and then to CEO in 1989. He is still the CEO. The bank gained notoriety and romantic appeal when it announced that it would not lend to anyone who gained their property through eminent domain. The bank has grown to the 9th largest financial holding company in the United States with currently reported assets of 131.6 billion dollars. Beyond its headquarters state of North Carolina, it has branches in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.
If you go to the webpage of the bank, you learn that the principles of the bank's operation are straight out of Rand’s ethics. The company business is “brazenly stated” to be based on the facts of reality. Psychologizing, "do-gooderism" and excuses do not get play here. An outstanding BB&T employee, the website says, embodies Purpose, Rationality and Self-Esteem, the primary moral values of a Randian hero.
As the company grew it formed the BB&T Charitable Foundation. The kinds of projects that the Charitable Foundation have supported have been various but one kind of project has thrust John Allison and BB&T into the middle of one of, if not the greatest of all cultural battles of our time. He has chosen to offer universities grants if they will teach a course in which Atlas Shrugged is one of the books used.
John Allison - along with many others - have seen that capitalism has won the materialism side of the argument. With the collapse of communist Russia, and the inability of many other socialist societies to produce the basic needs for a society possible in this modern time, and the quick turnaround of countries that have embraced capitalism, such as Ireland, Poland, India, China to the extent it is able to be free, plus the older cases of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the evidence is in. To the extent a country’s government fails to provide a legal structure that recognizes private property or it economically controls its society it will remain primitive or fail. If it controls the economy completely, it will fail completely. If it mixes control with some free aspects, it will be sluggish to the extent of the mixture.
So. What is capitalism? I quote Allison’s mentor, Ayn Rand:
Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
Rand’s definition makes sense and can be rationally validated. But, morally we, as a culture, cannot whole-heartedly abide it. We, at this point in time, are committed to a different moral base – altruism – where everything has to be justified in terms of the society as a whole or the welfare of another person. To stand up for one’s own life and the right to live it by using the individual faculty of one’s mind and the economic freedom that entails which is the basis of capitalism is impossible to do unless you are MORALLY prepared to do so. (By that I mean that you have developed within yourself moral certainty, which I call a “tap root.”) Mr. Allison’s mission, which he chose to accept, was to establish in the culture the moral basis of capitalism, the weak leg of its foundation. The book which elucidates that foundation most clearly at this point in time is Atlas Shrugged, hence, his requirement that Atlas Shrugged be taught in the course(s) supported by BB&T’s grants.
The grants Mr. Allison offers are voluntary. No university is required to accept the grants. To this point, 27 colleges and universities have chosen to accept BB&T’s gifts and its conditions. In fact, now colleges are seeking out BB&T’s offers.
In some cases, the gifts pay for a professor to teach the moral basis of capitalism. In other cases, BB&T has funded a chair at the university or a separate department. The colleges and universities which have accepted these grants are the following:
Carolina Colleges
Appalachian State University
Campbell University
Clemson University
Duke University
Greensboro College
High Point University
Johnson C. Smith University
North Carolina State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
University of South Carolina
Other than the Carolina Colleges
Christopher Newport University (VA)
George Mason University (VA)
Marshall University (WV)
Rockford College (IL)
University of Charleston (WV)
University of Florida
University of Kentucky
University of Texas at Austin
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech
West Virginia University
Western Kentucky University
Wheeling Jesuit University (WV)
As these gifts have been announced, they have kicked up the dust that must arise by confronting the prevalent moral code. Professors have argued that they are being “forced” by these gifts. They are confused between choosing freely and not having a choice. In the context of their original freely chosen selection, they cancelled their right to the “force” argument. What happened that they forget that?
Or, they argue that this undermines academic freedom and the right of the professor to select what he wants to teach. They fail to mention how other gifts have been designed to specialize in a particular area or of government grants that shape research and hence course material. They don’t want opposition to the ideas they profess. If you go online and Google BB&T and the grants, you can find any number of newspaper columns and letters to the editor that argue against the conditions of the grant. Also, there are bloggers who feel they must let us know that they are disgusted by Atlas Shrugged and its advocacy of selfishness as a virtue. Or how boring the book is. Or how long it is. Or how poor a writer Ms. Rand is.
So the battle goes on.
Lest you worry about the complaints leveled at Atlas Shrugged, C. Bradley Thompson, the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, says it this way:
“I’ve taught Atlas Shrugged for fifteen years during which time I’ve witnessed many remarkable things. For example, some 95% of my students report that Atlas Shrugged is the best book they’ve ever read. No book that I’ve taught comes remotely close to fostering a more robust exchange of ideas in the classroom. My students typically come to class after pulling an all-nighter debating Atlas with their friends, and then they pepper me with dozens of questions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Ayn Rand’s ideas, few could deny that this is what the college experience is supposed to be like.
“During those few weeks each year when I teach Atlas Shrugged, I’ve seen hundreds of students become intellectually engaged in ways they weren’t before reading this extraordinary book. The comment I hear most often from students goes something like this: 'Atlas Shrugged sums up everything that I’ve always admired and believed but could never put into words.’ Ayn Rand’s novel speaks to many students’ deepest values and aspirations: it appeals to their sense of justice, integrity, honesty, and independence, and it appeals to their desire to live in a world where achievement and heroism are rewarded.
I chose to celebrate John A. Allison IV of BB&T and his courageous commitment to political freedom because it is one of the most crucial, philosophically fundamental, exciting, pro-freedom advances happening in the world today. Now that you know that it is happening, I hope you will join me in my joy of seeing this mighty moral battle unfold. The United States, the only country founded on individual rights is either going to blossom into full flower or fade from the earth.
__________________________________
John A. Allison IV was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1948. He went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Business Administration, and was graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa Society, a measure of his academic achievements. While at UNC, he discovered articles by Ayn Rand and was profoundly influenced by her philosophy. He went on to receive his MBA from Duke University and then entered the banking industry. His first job came in 1971, at the age of 23, when he went to work for BB&T, a regional bank headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He rose through the ranks to President in 1987 and then to CEO in 1989. He is still the CEO. The bank gained notoriety and romantic appeal when it announced that it would not lend to anyone who gained their property through eminent domain. The bank has grown to the 9th largest financial holding company in the United States with currently reported assets of 131.6 billion dollars. Beyond its headquarters state of North Carolina, it has branches in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.
If you go to the webpage of the bank, you learn that the principles of the bank's operation are straight out of Rand’s ethics. The company business is “brazenly stated” to be based on the facts of reality. Psychologizing, "do-gooderism" and excuses do not get play here. An outstanding BB&T employee, the website says, embodies Purpose, Rationality and Self-Esteem, the primary moral values of a Randian hero.
As the company grew it formed the BB&T Charitable Foundation. The kinds of projects that the Charitable Foundation have supported have been various but one kind of project has thrust John Allison and BB&T into the middle of one of, if not the greatest of all cultural battles of our time. He has chosen to offer universities grants if they will teach a course in which Atlas Shrugged is one of the books used.
John Allison - along with many others - have seen that capitalism has won the materialism side of the argument. With the collapse of communist Russia, and the inability of many other socialist societies to produce the basic needs for a society possible in this modern time, and the quick turnaround of countries that have embraced capitalism, such as Ireland, Poland, India, China to the extent it is able to be free, plus the older cases of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the evidence is in. To the extent a country’s government fails to provide a legal structure that recognizes private property or it economically controls its society it will remain primitive or fail. If it controls the economy completely, it will fail completely. If it mixes control with some free aspects, it will be sluggish to the extent of the mixture.
So. What is capitalism? I quote Allison’s mentor, Ayn Rand:
Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
Rand’s definition makes sense and can be rationally validated. But, morally we, as a culture, cannot whole-heartedly abide it. We, at this point in time, are committed to a different moral base – altruism – where everything has to be justified in terms of the society as a whole or the welfare of another person. To stand up for one’s own life and the right to live it by using the individual faculty of one’s mind and the economic freedom that entails which is the basis of capitalism is impossible to do unless you are MORALLY prepared to do so. (By that I mean that you have developed within yourself moral certainty, which I call a “tap root.”) Mr. Allison’s mission, which he chose to accept, was to establish in the culture the moral basis of capitalism, the weak leg of its foundation. The book which elucidates that foundation most clearly at this point in time is Atlas Shrugged, hence, his requirement that Atlas Shrugged be taught in the course(s) supported by BB&T’s grants.
The grants Mr. Allison offers are voluntary. No university is required to accept the grants. To this point, 27 colleges and universities have chosen to accept BB&T’s gifts and its conditions. In fact, now colleges are seeking out BB&T’s offers.
In some cases, the gifts pay for a professor to teach the moral basis of capitalism. In other cases, BB&T has funded a chair at the university or a separate department. The colleges and universities which have accepted these grants are the following:
Carolina Colleges
Appalachian State University
Campbell University
Clemson University
Duke University
Greensboro College
High Point University
Johnson C. Smith University
North Carolina State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
University of South Carolina
Other than the Carolina Colleges
Christopher Newport University (VA)
George Mason University (VA)
Marshall University (WV)
Rockford College (IL)
University of Charleston (WV)
University of Florida
University of Kentucky
University of Texas at Austin
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech
West Virginia University
Western Kentucky University
Wheeling Jesuit University (WV)
As these gifts have been announced, they have kicked up the dust that must arise by confronting the prevalent moral code. Professors have argued that they are being “forced” by these gifts. They are confused between choosing freely and not having a choice. In the context of their original freely chosen selection, they cancelled their right to the “force” argument. What happened that they forget that?
Or, they argue that this undermines academic freedom and the right of the professor to select what he wants to teach. They fail to mention how other gifts have been designed to specialize in a particular area or of government grants that shape research and hence course material. They don’t want opposition to the ideas they profess. If you go online and Google BB&T and the grants, you can find any number of newspaper columns and letters to the editor that argue against the conditions of the grant. Also, there are bloggers who feel they must let us know that they are disgusted by Atlas Shrugged and its advocacy of selfishness as a virtue. Or how boring the book is. Or how long it is. Or how poor a writer Ms. Rand is.
So the battle goes on.
Lest you worry about the complaints leveled at Atlas Shrugged, C. Bradley Thompson, the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, says it this way:
“I’ve taught Atlas Shrugged for fifteen years during which time I’ve witnessed many remarkable things. For example, some 95% of my students report that Atlas Shrugged is the best book they’ve ever read. No book that I’ve taught comes remotely close to fostering a more robust exchange of ideas in the classroom. My students typically come to class after pulling an all-nighter debating Atlas with their friends, and then they pepper me with dozens of questions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Ayn Rand’s ideas, few could deny that this is what the college experience is supposed to be like.
“During those few weeks each year when I teach Atlas Shrugged, I’ve seen hundreds of students become intellectually engaged in ways they weren’t before reading this extraordinary book. The comment I hear most often from students goes something like this: 'Atlas Shrugged sums up everything that I’ve always admired and believed but could never put into words.’ Ayn Rand’s novel speaks to many students’ deepest values and aspirations: it appeals to their sense of justice, integrity, honesty, and independence, and it appeals to their desire to live in a world where achievement and heroism are rewarded.
I chose to celebrate John A. Allison IV of BB&T and his courageous commitment to political freedom because it is one of the most crucial, philosophically fundamental, exciting, pro-freedom advances happening in the world today. Now that you know that it is happening, I hope you will join me in my joy of seeing this mighty moral battle unfold. The United States, the only country founded on individual rights is either going to blossom into full flower or fade from the earth.
Friday, March 21, 2008
BB&T Foundation Gives $2M to Establish Chair at the University of Texas
BB&T Donates $2 Million for Ayn Rand Research At The University of Texas at Austin
March 20, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas — BB&T Corporation, one of the nation’s largest banks, has awarded $2 million to the Department of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin to establish the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism.
Tara Smith, professor of philosophy, has been named the first holder of the chair. Over 10 years, the gift will support research on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, as well as conferences, workshops, guest lecturers, visiting scholars and research on the moral foundations of capitalism.
Smith spearheads Objectivism scholarship in the university’s philosophy department. She has published several articles on Rand's philosophy and the 2006 book, “Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist” with Cambridge University Press. She holds the Anthem Foundation Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism and is organizing the interdisciplinary conference, “Objectivity in the Law,” April 4-5.
“Ayn Rand’s philosophy has been the subject of increasing academic interest in recent years, and this generous gift will allow us to deepen examination of her thought and engage leading scholars in other fields, such as law,” the Rand scholar said. “It’s an exhilarating opportunity and a testament to BB&T’s recognition of the vital importance of philosophy in people’s lives.”
Rand, a Russian-born American philosopher and novelist, is best known for her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged.” A joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that “Atlas Shrugged” is the second most influential book for Americans today, after the Bible. According to the Ayn Rand Institute, an estimated 20 million copies of her books have been sold.
“We believe that ideas matter. In this context, BB&T is trying to encourage a thorough and fair discussion of Rand’s philosophy and the moral foundations of capitalism on university campuses,” said BB&T Chief Executive Officer John Allison. “We are pleased to support the philosophy department's important work in the study of Objectivism at The University of Texas at Austin.”
BB&T Corp., headquartered in Winston-Salem, N.C., is a financial holding company with $132.6 billion in assets. With more than 29,000 employees, its bank subsidiaries operate more than 1,500 branch offices in 11 states and Washington, D.C.
For more information, contact: Jennifer McAndrew, College of Liberal Arts, 512-232-4730; Tara Smith, professor of philosophy, 512-374-0532.
_______________________
Here's another article from the Winston-Salem Journal.
Friday, March 21, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas - The BB&T Charitable Foundation said yesterday that it has given $2 million to the philosophy department at the University of Texas at Austin to establish the BB&T chair for the study of objectivism.
Tara Smith, a philosophy professor, has been named the first holder of the chair. The BB&T donation, over 10 years, will support research on author Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, as well as conferences, and guest lecturers on the moral foundations of capitalism.
BB&T, through its charitable foundation, has made similar $1 million-plus gifts that support programs in the moral foundations of capitalism to Appalachian State University
Duke University
N.C. State University
UNC Chapel Hill
UNC Charlotte
UNC Greensboro
UNC Wilmington.
_____________________________
With this kind of support universities will begin to appreciate the proper moral basis of capitalism. It was recent news that Marshall University of Huntington, WV received a million dollar grant to teach a course on the moral basis of capitalism using Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Clemson Universisty has also received a grant for setting up the BB&T Center for Economic Education and Policy Studies. One of its aims is to study the ethics of markets and capitalism. They have a summer program where an in depth study of Atlas Shrugged is taught. Principlex
March 20, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas — BB&T Corporation, one of the nation’s largest banks, has awarded $2 million to the Department of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin to establish the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism.
Tara Smith, professor of philosophy, has been named the first holder of the chair. Over 10 years, the gift will support research on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, as well as conferences, workshops, guest lecturers, visiting scholars and research on the moral foundations of capitalism.
Smith spearheads Objectivism scholarship in the university’s philosophy department. She has published several articles on Rand's philosophy and the 2006 book, “Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist” with Cambridge University Press. She holds the Anthem Foundation Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism and is organizing the interdisciplinary conference, “Objectivity in the Law,” April 4-5.
“Ayn Rand’s philosophy has been the subject of increasing academic interest in recent years, and this generous gift will allow us to deepen examination of her thought and engage leading scholars in other fields, such as law,” the Rand scholar said. “It’s an exhilarating opportunity and a testament to BB&T’s recognition of the vital importance of philosophy in people’s lives.”
Rand, a Russian-born American philosopher and novelist, is best known for her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged.” A joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that “Atlas Shrugged” is the second most influential book for Americans today, after the Bible. According to the Ayn Rand Institute, an estimated 20 million copies of her books have been sold.
“We believe that ideas matter. In this context, BB&T is trying to encourage a thorough and fair discussion of Rand’s philosophy and the moral foundations of capitalism on university campuses,” said BB&T Chief Executive Officer John Allison. “We are pleased to support the philosophy department's important work in the study of Objectivism at The University of Texas at Austin.”
BB&T Corp., headquartered in Winston-Salem, N.C., is a financial holding company with $132.6 billion in assets. With more than 29,000 employees, its bank subsidiaries operate more than 1,500 branch offices in 11 states and Washington, D.C.
For more information, contact: Jennifer McAndrew, College of Liberal Arts, 512-232-4730; Tara Smith, professor of philosophy, 512-374-0532.
_______________________
Here's another article from the Winston-Salem Journal.
Friday, March 21, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas - The BB&T Charitable Foundation said yesterday that it has given $2 million to the philosophy department at the University of Texas at Austin to establish the BB&T chair for the study of objectivism.
Tara Smith, a philosophy professor, has been named the first holder of the chair. The BB&T donation, over 10 years, will support research on author Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, as well as conferences, and guest lecturers on the moral foundations of capitalism.
BB&T, through its charitable foundation, has made similar $1 million-plus gifts that support programs in the moral foundations of capitalism to Appalachian State University
Duke University
N.C. State University
UNC Chapel Hill
UNC Charlotte
UNC Greensboro
UNC Wilmington.
_____________________________
With this kind of support universities will begin to appreciate the proper moral basis of capitalism. It was recent news that Marshall University of Huntington, WV received a million dollar grant to teach a course on the moral basis of capitalism using Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Clemson Universisty has also received a grant for setting up the BB&T Center for Economic Education and Policy Studies. One of its aims is to study the ethics of markets and capitalism. They have a summer program where an in depth study of Atlas Shrugged is taught. Principlex
Basic Types of Political Systems
I use the words socialism and fascism in describing particular political systems and actions. People react to these words. Frankly, since for me they have specific meanings, I don't get upset by the words.
Political systems break down into two primary categories. One places the individual as primary and the government's purpose is to protect the individual's inalienable rights. The other places the society as primary and subjugates the individual to the needs/purposes of the society as a whole. Who determines what those needs or purposes are? Those in power. I hope you didn't think that your one vote among millions and millions determined that.
Since man is a real being who must produce the requirements of his life in order to keep his life in existence, property is a primary concern. Who controls the property is the primary way to understand the system that one is in.
The first system is called capitalism. In capitalism, all property is privately owned. Ownership means the right to use and dispose of one's property.
The second system is called statism. Here the property is controlled by the state, hence the state has the right to the use and disposal of the property. This takes several forms:
If the property is owned by the state, the system is communism. If the title of the property is in the name of the individuals and yet it is regulated by the state, the system is fascism. The use and disposal of the property. i.e. the ownership, is according to the state's laws. In these two categories, the society is the good by which all laws are justified, so they are both forms of socialism.
Statist systems divide in other ways too: If the state is a kingdom, then it is a monarchy. In this case, the king's will is the justification for laws that he decrees. If the state is a church/religion, it is a theocracy and it is God's will that is the justification for laws the church leaders decree.
Finally there is a mixture of freedom and statism known as the welfare state. This unstable system moves toward full-fledged fascism or, at some point when it is clear that it is not working, it frees up, at least for awhile.
Democracy is not a political system at all although it is bandied about as if it were. A democracy is a state which uses a systematic means of legitimizing power by the vote of the citizens. Without a Constitution (i.e., a specific set of rights, government structure and rules) in the background, a democracy would be meaningless except possibly as a distraction to keep the masses mollified.
Another current term is "progressivism." A "progressive" is a person who thinks that the government should "progress" society according to a particular purpose or values. Having government do this means that it will be done by force and thus a progressive is a fascist by another name. The origin of this term is at the beginning of the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson was the first fascist/progressive president.
Political systems break down into two primary categories. One places the individual as primary and the government's purpose is to protect the individual's inalienable rights. The other places the society as primary and subjugates the individual to the needs/purposes of the society as a whole. Who determines what those needs or purposes are? Those in power. I hope you didn't think that your one vote among millions and millions determined that.
Since man is a real being who must produce the requirements of his life in order to keep his life in existence, property is a primary concern. Who controls the property is the primary way to understand the system that one is in.
The first system is called capitalism. In capitalism, all property is privately owned. Ownership means the right to use and dispose of one's property.
The second system is called statism. Here the property is controlled by the state, hence the state has the right to the use and disposal of the property. This takes several forms:
If the property is owned by the state, the system is communism. If the title of the property is in the name of the individuals and yet it is regulated by the state, the system is fascism. The use and disposal of the property. i.e. the ownership, is according to the state's laws. In these two categories, the society is the good by which all laws are justified, so they are both forms of socialism.
Statist systems divide in other ways too: If the state is a kingdom, then it is a monarchy. In this case, the king's will is the justification for laws that he decrees. If the state is a church/religion, it is a theocracy and it is God's will that is the justification for laws the church leaders decree.
Finally there is a mixture of freedom and statism known as the welfare state. This unstable system moves toward full-fledged fascism or, at some point when it is clear that it is not working, it frees up, at least for awhile.
Democracy is not a political system at all although it is bandied about as if it were. A democracy is a state which uses a systematic means of legitimizing power by the vote of the citizens. Without a Constitution (i.e., a specific set of rights, government structure and rules) in the background, a democracy would be meaningless except possibly as a distraction to keep the masses mollified.
Another current term is "progressivism." A "progressive" is a person who thinks that the government should "progress" society according to a particular purpose or values. Having government do this means that it will be done by force and thus a progressive is a fascist by another name. The origin of this term is at the beginning of the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson was the first fascist/progressive president.
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