Fear the Boom and the Bust Rap
Posted on February 5th, 2010 by dooglio
The “other side” to the debate of whether man is causing Global Warming…and if it’s even a bad thing. According to Stossel, there are plenty of reputible scientists out there who are questioning mankind’s role in Global Warming.
My eight year-old son and I have a business arrangement. He takes out the trash and I pay him a dollar. A couple of weeks ago, he did his job (well, I do have to remind him that it’s trash day, but he eventually empties all the baskets in the house and hauls the containers to the curb), but upon searching my wallet, I discovered I didn’t have any one dollar bills to pay him with. So I had an idea–I could pay him with a copper Liberty Dollar until I got enough change.
Tail-side of the Tea-Party Dollar
Head-side of the Liberty Dollar Tea Party Dollar
My dad and I had a political discussion on the phone a couple of days ago. It’s interesting that he and I agree on a lot of issues, but I’m afraid he still holds with his old Republican Party ideals. In other words, he’s emotionally invested in the partisan system of politics and due to this, I believe he can’t see the forest for the trees. For some reason, he is convinced that Sarah Palin is going to be the next Ronald Regan. Okay I’m being facetious–I know why, and it has to do with how partisan he is. He is hoping for a savior, a leader who will unite everyone. I argued that we already have a leader, and his name is Barrack Obama, and that is the best Washington will have to offer.
When I bring up the fact that the social state is a system built upon violence against its own citizens, it’s amazing the reactions I get from average people. One of my friends told me tax evaders and people who resist arrest are not patriotic. When the state gives a command, it is your duty to follow it without question. And if you don’t like it, write to your congressman! I believe that by classifying the people who question the authority of the state as “extremists,” we don’t have to face the cold and ugly truth about the so-called benevolent state.
Some dissenters would label my friend mentioned above as a “statist” or “state apologist.” I don’t like labels; they just divide people. I think of people like my friend as just, well, people who went to the same state-run schools as I did. Of course the state is going to teach all of us that it is benevolent and ours is the freest society in the world (maybe it is, but it looks less so with each passing day). It’s in the state’s best interest.
Everyone is going on about the health care reform that is happening in Washington DC. There, a bunch of men and women get together in a room and decide how best to rule us. This latest reform is just more of the same.
Forget the Tea Parties. Like Alexander Hague said, “it does not matter who protests, as long as they pay their taxes.” So I have a suggestion–tell Obama and the rest of the oligarchs on capitol hill that they can pass all the laws they want–we just won’t comply with them. Tell them we boycott all taxes. Voting does not matter, only removing the consent to be governed.
SMUD is proposing a major rate hike for electricity, blaming the recession:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29978318
There are those who are quick to blame capitalism, thinking that this is what happens in the free market. The trouble is, this has nothing to do with a free market. Notice that if you live in Sacramento you have only one choice: SMUD. That is because SMUD is a monopoly.
One misconception that people these days seem to labor under is that capitalism promotes monopolies–that they are inevitable and we need the government to step in and stop them. Afterall, we cannot trust a freedom in the marketplace–people are likely to abuse it! The truth is that only the government can create a monopoly. A monopoly is where one company or organization has 100% of the market-share. They only way you can achieve 100% is to outlaw your competition.
I’ve heard arguments to the contrary, and they usually involve Standard Oil and Microsoft. The truth about Standard Oil is that they never had 100% market share. According to Mary Ruwart in her book “Healing our World,” Standard Oil had 90% of the market share for crude oil in 1879. By 1884, their competitors began to eek into their market share. By 1911, Standard “refined only 64% of the domestic petroleum. The competition included Gulf, Texaco, Union, Pure Oil and Shell.” The federal government’s anti-trust suit was too little too late, and, well, pointless as the free market had already cut Standard down to size.
Microsoft is also sited as a monopoly. The truth is, you can run a PC without Microsoft’s OS. Yes it may be difficult, but for example, I can go to Frys and build a computer from scratch (motherboard, CPU, memory, hard drive, a case, monitor, keyboard and a mouse) and install the GNU/Linux or FreeBSD operating systems. I could do this even during the MS heyday when Apple was bust. The point is, you still had a choice, even if it was inconvenient. Now we see the reemergence of Apple, and GNU/Linux’s market-share on the rise. The free market was responsible for Linux–that was the one product Microsoft could not “embrace, extend and extinguish” since it was…free (not “free” as in beer). And this time, the DOJ was completely unsuccessful at doing anything to stop Microsoft. I’m not a bit fan of MS, but the truth be told–people vote with their dollars and buy Microsoft. By choice.
SMUD is a different animal. Like AT&T of old, the government has outlawed their competition. Where can you go if you don’t like SMUD and their prices? We have the same problem on the other side of the Sacramento River where we’re forced to use PG&E. In a true free market, you would have a choice of power providers. SMUD (and PG&E for that matter) could never price gouge like this because people could switch. This is a built-in regulation in the free market, one that keeps prices down and benefits consumers. But again, we don’t have the benefit of the free market here. So we are stuck with the prices the monopolist decides to set.
This past spring, the Social Security Trustees released their annual report on the state of the Social Security and Medicare programs. The report on the state of entitlement programs is rather grim — the combined unfunded liabilities of both programs are a $101 trillion, says Mike Whalen, policy chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17104
According to a dispatch from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a report from the Institute of Medicine, commissioned by the White House drug czar’s office, which was released in 1997, “contradicted the claims of the drug czar and other federal officials.”
According to the dispatch:
“1. It showed there is scientific evidence indicating that marijuana has medical uses.
2. It recommended that people with AIDS, cancer, and chronic pain who have an urgent need for marijuana be provided with immediate legal protection while further research is done on marijuana’s medical uses.
3. It debunked the “gateway theory,” saying that there is no evidence that using marijuana will “lead” someone to use cocaine and other drugs.
4. It said there is no evidence that allowing sick people to use medical marijuana will cause an increase in the recreational use of marijuana.
That report has been used as the intellectual foundation of most medical marijuana efforts in the decade since.”
I still think that freedom and responsibility for self make the best possible society. I hope that we will return to those principles and stop the drug war.
Geeze what has happened to me? Here is it a historical event, the nation’s first black president, and a man that appears to be an intellectual, taking over from that dreadful idiot cowboy GW (good riddance by the way). I should be stoked but I’m feeling apathetic instead.
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