Showing posts with label common sense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label common sense. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Debt Limit - A Guide to What is Going on.
The guy requesting more debt is postmodernist philosophy in action. He's acting as if his world of values is the truth even though it does not correspond to reality. We see this same absurd way of being in President Obama.
Postmodernist philosophy holds that everything is political and if enough people believe something, it is true. Not!
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Friday, May 28, 2010
Our Incredibly Shrinking President
(Today I would like to register a rename for this article. It should read, "Our Incredibly Shrunken President." It's clear to me that Obama has never had a stature that he could shrink. He's been operating from the premises he's operating from now for a long, long time. He is stricken with the incredible facility to be Alinksy incarnate. I think he is a monster, my category for his character. 
Allowing Louisiana, to the tune of blocking efforts to save her shores and her industry and then suing Arizona when the Federal Government's role is to protect her borders, is beyond the pale. This man, to me, is on the order of all the heartless dictators the world has known and I don't see how he can do anything except get worse. His work to keep America in a perpetual Jerry Springer drama as a way of life has me write him off as a misguided, evil human being. It's definitely unfortunate for us that he has so much power to wield, and I hope we get him out of office before he develops paranoia to a degree whereby he feels justified to act even more irrationally. He's definitely animating the forces to vote him out of office. July 6, 2010)
_______________________________________________________
Yesterday was a new low for President Obama. We are now witnessing the "chickens coming home to roost" on a host of his bad premises. This happened yesterday in his remarks about the oil spill.
First, and I think the most despicable, happened when he used his daughter to create an appeal to his listeners' emotions. He said his daughter said to him, "Plug the hole, daddy." That was theater, nothing more. However, it was revealing because he threw his daughter under the bus and ran over her privacy all in service of his "any means necessary" modus operandi premise. Because this statement came off as inauthentic, his use of his daughter opened her to public "use" in service of political points and who knows what else.
This morning on the Glenn Beck show, who, by the way, I'm liking more all the time (see next paragraph), he had a segment where his associate played the daughter, asking her "daddy, the President", all kinds of questions and offering her observations about the world. Obama opened his daughter to this. We can now look forward to a "do as I say, not as I do" upbraiding of Beck. I suppose this megalomaniac will attempt to ban free speech rather than apologize to his daughter and stop using her as pawn in his political power games.
Today I ran across this quote of Obama's about 9/11: "The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity." Yet, when it came to using his daughter as a pawn in his games, he forgot all of this and used her anyway. Obama is the disconnect that he names in his 9/11 remarks.
(About Beck: Beck is doing such investigative and historically integrative work. The last couple days he has been showing how the structure of the Progressive Administration of the "evil" (his description and one I agree with) Woodrow Wilson was picked up by FDR and now picked up by Obama, albeit using different particular forms for the same basic purposes in the latter two cases. Also, I give Beck a big medal of courage for the "teaching" he is doing. Really great. He's one of the amazing media people of our time. And my accolades are in spite of his ultimate grounding in God [faith] rather than in nature [facts] when he gets to the roots of his conceptual structure.)
The second thing O did was tell us his experience in his own bathroom, looking morning and night in the mirror at his constantly worried face. I was listening to his remarks for the facts I could learn about what is going on and what his plans are in relation to it. Instead I get this trip to his bathroom. (Faulty premise: The personal trumps our common values.)
Talk about whiplash. I wondered: "Where has this man's mind gone?" It is gone, I'm sure of that. He's not capable of knowing what is on purpose and what is not, and where his listeners are, and so he's now trying to enroll us that he, after all, is worrying about this problem. Sorry. Doesn't fly, Barack. We expect that. That would be normal and not mentionable.
(Makes you wonder if he had to say that. Is it because he isn't worrying about it? Or is he worrying that people who mean something to him are getting upset with him? Or maybe he really likes the oil spill and wants to use it to kill energy production in all traditional forms through taxation and regulation. I don't know, but his behavior raises such questions - especially when he is going off to Chicago over the weekend, playing golf, and generally living life as he always does - I'm sure justifying, all the while, that this current trouble requires getting away to clear his head. Actually I think he is doing that because he suffers from victim's disease - "I'm entitled." (Faulty premise: I'm somehow not constrained by the morality that mere mortals are constrained by.)
One thing I do know. THIS MAN IS NOT COUNT-ON-ABLE! He will never be there when the country needs him. Frankly, I think he's committing disloyalty to our country, our home, on a grand scale - treason - and he needs to be called to account as soon as possible.
The last thing he did was address people accusing him of not getting on the problem and causing a solution. He's been railing against BP and big oil, capitalist, and the all of it. So in his fear, he runs for the high ground only to see that it's not solid. (Faulty premise: Words is all that matter. Deeds and the meaning of words count for nothing.)
His answer is to declare that he and his Administration have been in charge of this matter from the first hours of its happening. So, if he's responsible, he owns it - all of it. So all the vituperation to BP and anyone trying to get the problem fixed is now useless by him when uttered in public. After all, it is only Barack being pissed at himself since he is the owner of it all. Woops!
Obama's mind is shot. There is no doubt about that. Our work is to maintain the grounding to be sure that we can see what is true and what is b--s---. True to a sociopath's nature, his job is to get us to think he is God and we don't know what we are talking about. Good luck. It's woolly out there.
A person, by the way, doesn't have to have a degree from Harvard or Columbia and in fact, one is likely better off if he doesn't have that. That's because these universities are notoriously intellectually corrupt, and in order to have power to produce results in the world depends on one's solidly grounded, conceptual structural. Then when some high blown guy comes along, one can hear where his assertions and underlying premises don't jive with the basics. Obama has no clue about this. Nada. He thinks we cling to our guns and our religion. Oh my.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend in this great country that still enjoys the bounty of the independent minds that have continued to create it.
Allowing Louisiana, to the tune of blocking efforts to save her shores and her industry and then suing Arizona when the Federal Government's role is to protect her borders, is beyond the pale. This man, to me, is on the order of all the heartless dictators the world has known and I don't see how he can do anything except get worse. His work to keep America in a perpetual Jerry Springer drama as a way of life has me write him off as a misguided, evil human being. It's definitely unfortunate for us that he has so much power to wield, and I hope we get him out of office before he develops paranoia to a degree whereby he feels justified to act even more irrationally. He's definitely animating the forces to vote him out of office. July 6, 2010)_______________________________________________________
Yesterday was a new low for President Obama. We are now witnessing the "chickens coming home to roost" on a host of his bad premises. This happened yesterday in his remarks about the oil spill.
First, and I think the most despicable, happened when he used his daughter to create an appeal to his listeners' emotions. He said his daughter said to him, "Plug the hole, daddy." That was theater, nothing more. However, it was revealing because he threw his daughter under the bus and ran over her privacy all in service of his "any means necessary" modus operandi premise. Because this statement came off as inauthentic, his use of his daughter opened her to public "use" in service of political points and who knows what else.
This morning on the Glenn Beck show, who, by the way, I'm liking more all the time (see next paragraph), he had a segment where his associate played the daughter, asking her "daddy, the President", all kinds of questions and offering her observations about the world. Obama opened his daughter to this. We can now look forward to a "do as I say, not as I do" upbraiding of Beck. I suppose this megalomaniac will attempt to ban free speech rather than apologize to his daughter and stop using her as pawn in his political power games.
Today I ran across this quote of Obama's about 9/11: "The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity." Yet, when it came to using his daughter as a pawn in his games, he forgot all of this and used her anyway. Obama is the disconnect that he names in his 9/11 remarks.
(About Beck: Beck is doing such investigative and historically integrative work. The last couple days he has been showing how the structure of the Progressive Administration of the "evil" (his description and one I agree with) Woodrow Wilson was picked up by FDR and now picked up by Obama, albeit using different particular forms for the same basic purposes in the latter two cases. Also, I give Beck a big medal of courage for the "teaching" he is doing. Really great. He's one of the amazing media people of our time. And my accolades are in spite of his ultimate grounding in God [faith] rather than in nature [facts] when he gets to the roots of his conceptual structure.)
The second thing O did was tell us his experience in his own bathroom, looking morning and night in the mirror at his constantly worried face. I was listening to his remarks for the facts I could learn about what is going on and what his plans are in relation to it. Instead I get this trip to his bathroom. (Faulty premise: The personal trumps our common values.)
Talk about whiplash. I wondered: "Where has this man's mind gone?" It is gone, I'm sure of that. He's not capable of knowing what is on purpose and what is not, and where his listeners are, and so he's now trying to enroll us that he, after all, is worrying about this problem. Sorry. Doesn't fly, Barack. We expect that. That would be normal and not mentionable.
(Makes you wonder if he had to say that. Is it because he isn't worrying about it? Or is he worrying that people who mean something to him are getting upset with him? Or maybe he really likes the oil spill and wants to use it to kill energy production in all traditional forms through taxation and regulation. I don't know, but his behavior raises such questions - especially when he is going off to Chicago over the weekend, playing golf, and generally living life as he always does - I'm sure justifying, all the while, that this current trouble requires getting away to clear his head. Actually I think he is doing that because he suffers from victim's disease - "I'm entitled." (Faulty premise: I'm somehow not constrained by the morality that mere mortals are constrained by.)
One thing I do know. THIS MAN IS NOT COUNT-ON-ABLE! He will never be there when the country needs him. Frankly, I think he's committing disloyalty to our country, our home, on a grand scale - treason - and he needs to be called to account as soon as possible.
The last thing he did was address people accusing him of not getting on the problem and causing a solution. He's been railing against BP and big oil, capitalist, and the all of it. So in his fear, he runs for the high ground only to see that it's not solid. (Faulty premise: Words is all that matter. Deeds and the meaning of words count for nothing.)
His answer is to declare that he and his Administration have been in charge of this matter from the first hours of its happening. So, if he's responsible, he owns it - all of it. So all the vituperation to BP and anyone trying to get the problem fixed is now useless by him when uttered in public. After all, it is only Barack being pissed at himself since he is the owner of it all. Woops!
Obama's mind is shot. There is no doubt about that. Our work is to maintain the grounding to be sure that we can see what is true and what is b--s---. True to a sociopath's nature, his job is to get us to think he is God and we don't know what we are talking about. Good luck. It's woolly out there.
A person, by the way, doesn't have to have a degree from Harvard or Columbia and in fact, one is likely better off if he doesn't have that. That's because these universities are notoriously intellectually corrupt, and in order to have power to produce results in the world depends on one's solidly grounded, conceptual structural. Then when some high blown guy comes along, one can hear where his assertions and underlying premises don't jive with the basics. Obama has no clue about this. Nada. He thinks we cling to our guns and our religion. Oh my.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend in this great country that still enjoys the bounty of the independent minds that have continued to create it.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
The Insanity of Government Health Care
For all those that think that public health care, i.e., Government Health Care, is good, this man, Representative Rogers of Michigan, is very clear as to what the issues are and what’s more important, the insanity of the plan and the callous, arrogant, disgusting attitude of the government toward the people of the United States.
I suppose there are some sweet little old ladies out there advocating government health care who we think are soooo innocent that they would never be so evil and anti-human as to advocate a system of institutionalized evil - which is what government health care is. It’s time to call them, all of them, no matter what form they come in, to account. They are not your friend, not my friend, not humanity’s friend.
There should be no Government Health Care. None. Freedom which provides innovation in every aspect of that field is the answer if we want health care. The last anyone should want is the dead, corrupt, entangled, unaccountable, violently costly, political hand of government. I can't think of anything worse than that. No man should have to live with that institution directing his life. It is simply anti-human and sucks the life out of HIS life.
Apparently during this time in our history, a large number of people want the "mommy" state. Whatever that means, one thing is for sure. The state will not fulfill on that requirement. It has none of the characteristics of a mommy unless your view of a mommy is a "Mommy Dearest."
There is a place for government, but a proper government is nothing like the government we have today. For one thing - and for a teaser - it must not be able to arbitrarily levy taxes. There has to be another, voluntary way for the state to raise money. It must, as all of us must, be created to depend on enrollment and registration, not force of arms to obtain money from the people who it is designed to protect.
Great minds ought to be creating how, and the system required for a voluntary payment to government to work. Then it should be tried in small, and then increasingly larger, jurisdictions until it gets perfected as a working method for the government to raise money. We are never going to be politically free until we get rid of the arbitrary force of Caesar. I'm not persuaded by the Bible's command to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." I might be persuaded just to keep myself from having to go to prison, but I definitely am not persuaded as a design principle for a moral, principled and just government.
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.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Destroy the Economy to Save the Economy
Biden is explicit about it.
Where are the intelligent? Where are those that understand that the economy is an integrated whole? Where are those that understand that money stolen from those who have it and given to those who don't does not put money in the hands of the creators of businesses and jobs? Why is there so much emphasis put on the destruction of wealth and none on the principles to be be followed in order to create it?
Is this stupidity or intended? And who should pay rather than who will pay for this reversal of cause and effect?
Where are the intelligent? Where are those that understand that the economy is an integrated whole? Where are those that understand that money stolen from those who have it and given to those who don't does not put money in the hands of the creators of businesses and jobs? Why is there so much emphasis put on the destruction of wealth and none on the principles to be be followed in order to create it?
Is this stupidity or intended? And who should pay rather than who will pay for this reversal of cause and effect?
Will someone please tell me where this has ever worked?
S e a of D e b tTuesday, 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.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Why Are Things Upside Down?
[I posted this comment on the Ann Althouse website where she was taking on Maureen Dowd for blasting Palin.]
If you go to a basketball, football or baseball game, you go to see the game. You don't go to see the referees.
The government is supposed to be in the background making sure the players, the individuals in society, are playing the game according to the rules. Government only makes sense as a background activity.
Now the government is a foreground activity. Everything revolves around it. It changes the rules and the score at whim - whatever it wants to do, thinking only of itself, not its purpose.
Of course, MDowd is attracted to this reversal. The government is where the bullies hang out. They love it. And bullies are not nice nor fun people. Few like them, not even the other bullies.
Who wants to play on any team that gets jerked around in this way? Not me.
If you go to a basketball, football or baseball game, you go to see the game. You don't go to see the referees.
The government is supposed to be in the background making sure the players, the individuals in society, are playing the game according to the rules. Government only makes sense as a background activity.
Now the government is a foreground activity. Everything revolves around it. It changes the rules and the score at whim - whatever it wants to do, thinking only of itself, not its purpose.
Of course, MDowd is attracted to this reversal. The government is where the bullies hang out. They love it. And bullies are not nice nor fun people. Few like them, not even the other bullies.
Who wants to play on any team that gets jerked around in this way? Not me.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Unfree Market has Failed
With the economy slowing and the home mortgage industry reeling from the stupidity of government fostered regulations and money which obviated the need for sound financial judgment, we hear frantic cries, "Save us! Save us!!" directed to the government. If a person is trying to drown you, what good is it to scream for him to save you? Alas, this is the widespread response.
I read an argument last night the point of which was that gas prices are rising not because of rising demand but inflation. I hear scant mention of inflation as the cause and none of those come from Washington. We know when other currencies are rising relative to the dollar our currency is worth less. The dollar has been the currency of choice around the world for years and now people don't want it.
Government control of the money supply is certain, albeit sometimes slow, death and the expanding (once in a while it deflates) money bubble is where we have been perched for about a hundred years. Obviously money is something whose reputation has to be earned, as we are now seeing. It is done by the judicious maintenance of value, a quality that the US Government cancelled via the legal tender laws. See below: Money by Consent Not Force posted June 20.
The government is a political institution, not a business that must maintain its value to the world in order to exist. The governement deals with everything by the use of force, not value, and once it steps beyond the protection of individual rights, that force becomes an enemy of its people.
Every major industry is now regulated to the point that people cannot make rational decisions. Time is spent doing what we can get permission to do rather than what is creative, intelligent and prudent. The human mind is the source of values, production, wealth and happiness. The government, on the other hand, acting beyond its proper purpose, cancels the human mind except as a slave to its needs and whims.
Bribes to the legislators and regulators are commonplace because no other way to get their blessing to be their slave is possible. If you don't know how you are paying them bribes, think about it a minute. You buy a license to drive your car. You buy a license to open a business. You pay them fees and taxes to have a phone. The list is endless and would not be if these goods and services were the products of businesses creating appealing values and we were free. Now isn't this a mess? Nevertheless, it's true.
Government to Blame for Housing and Financial Crisis
by Yaron Brook (7/22/08)
Irvine, CA--In “The Government Did It,” an opinion piece published last Friday on Forbes.com, Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, argued that our government’s massive control over the housing and financial markets has led to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.
“The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Dr. Brook pointed out, “should help expose the lie that today’s financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.”
Citing the government’s hand in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, the irrational lending standards forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, and the quasi-official policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, Dr. Brook argued that “our government contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually,” Brook concluded, “the bubble burst.”
“We do not need more regulation or economic ‘steering.’ What we need to do,” said Brook, “is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.”
Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
I read an argument last night the point of which was that gas prices are rising not because of rising demand but inflation. I hear scant mention of inflation as the cause and none of those come from Washington. We know when other currencies are rising relative to the dollar our currency is worth less. The dollar has been the currency of choice around the world for years and now people don't want it.
Government control of the money supply is certain, albeit sometimes slow, death and the expanding (once in a while it deflates) money bubble is where we have been perched for about a hundred years. Obviously money is something whose reputation has to be earned, as we are now seeing. It is done by the judicious maintenance of value, a quality that the US Government cancelled via the legal tender laws. See below: Money by Consent Not Force posted June 20.
The government is a political institution, not a business that must maintain its value to the world in order to exist. The governement deals with everything by the use of force, not value, and once it steps beyond the protection of individual rights, that force becomes an enemy of its people.
Every major industry is now regulated to the point that people cannot make rational decisions. Time is spent doing what we can get permission to do rather than what is creative, intelligent and prudent. The human mind is the source of values, production, wealth and happiness. The government, on the other hand, acting beyond its proper purpose, cancels the human mind except as a slave to its needs and whims.
Bribes to the legislators and regulators are commonplace because no other way to get their blessing to be their slave is possible. If you don't know how you are paying them bribes, think about it a minute. You buy a license to drive your car. You buy a license to open a business. You pay them fees and taxes to have a phone. The list is endless and would not be if these goods and services were the products of businesses creating appealing values and we were free. Now isn't this a mess? Nevertheless, it's true.
Government to Blame for Housing and Financial Crisis
by Yaron Brook (7/22/08)
Irvine, CA--In “The Government Did It,” an opinion piece published last Friday on Forbes.com, Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, argued that our government’s massive control over the housing and financial markets has led to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.
“The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Dr. Brook pointed out, “should help expose the lie that today’s financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.”
Citing the government’s hand in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, the irrational lending standards forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, and the quasi-official policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, Dr. Brook argued that “our government contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually,” Brook concluded, “the bubble burst.”
“We do not need more regulation or economic ‘steering.’ What we need to do,” said Brook, “is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.”
Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
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