The ULTIMATE Chain Letter and The Invisible Hand

I found this old Russ Roberts essay while looking for something else.  It's pure, undiluted greatness. 
It's about who you trust with your stuff.....

To read more old Russ Roberts stuff, hit the Cafe Hayek and Russ Roberts labels at the bottom of this post.  And if my favorite current Troll, Mr. Invisible Backhand, shows up, I'm sure he can tell us all about the virtues of the U.S. Postal Service. 

Here's Mr. Roberts:

 The other day I had to get some important tax receipts to my accountant. He’s in St. Louis, it was getting close to April 15, and it was very important that the papers didn’t get lost. To give my accountant plenty of time, I wanted the papers to arrive the next morning.


So what did I do? My first choice was to get on a plane and deliver the letter myself. Too expensive. Too much time.

So I did the next best thing. I went down to the airport and found someone headed to St. Louis. I told her how important it was for my accountant to have my receipts by the next day. Fortunately, she seemed really nice. She said she’d be happy to help me out. I sealed up the envelope, and she promised not to open it after I left.

I guess I’m naive. I know it was foolish to trust a stranger with something so important, but she seemed very honest. She smiled a lot, but I suppose a good thief could learn to do that.

I got a little nervous when she confessed she wouldn’t be able to actually deliver the letter herself. She had a business commitment that kept her tied up the next morning. But she promised to find some other people to make the delivery. I may be naive, but I’m not a fool. That scared me. I wouldn’t be able to meet the other people who’d be helping me out. How would I know whether they were as honest as she seemed to be? Maybe I could at least talk to them on the phone?

No dice, she said, but not to worry. She’d make sure they were good people like her—people who wouldn’t open my envelope. People who wouldn’t steal my credit card numbers off the receipts. People who wouldn’t throw the package away just to avoid the hassle of delivering it. Really, it would turn out fine. Besides, she wasn’t sure in advance who would be available to help so I would just have to hope for the best.

It seemed nuts, but by now it was getting late. I had to trust her. There was no other way to get the job done. I didn’t have any other options.

I gave her some money. She didn’t object. Maybe she had done this before.

I slept like a rock that night. I’ve always thought people are basically good.

How about you? How would you have felt that night, knowing that your crucial package was in the hands of strangers, strangers you would never see and whose honesty and unreliability were unknowable?

Maybe I should have worried more. How much did I give her? A lot less than it would have cost to get the package there myself—19 bucks. That’s all she asked for. Besides, if she pulled it off and got the package to my accountant, I’d have a story I could tell for the rest of my life.

Truth is, I never gave it a second thought. I trusted that strange woman at the airport. I’d never seen her before in my life, and I’d never see her again. But I felt somehow she’d come through for me.

And she did. I called my accountant the next day, and sure enough, he had received my letter a few minutes before 10 o’clock.

A miracle? A lucky break for me? Or maybe a dangerous lesson that might cause me to rely naively on strangers in the future?

None of the above. My trust wasn’t a miracle or a lucky break. And I’m a little less naive than you might think.

That stranger I entrusted with my financial secrets was standing behind a FedEx counter wearing a FedEx uniform.

It changes everything doesn’t it? You go into a FedEx, give a stranger $19, and you can walk out without a worry in the world, knowing that your package is going to get there by 10 the next morning.

I never worried that the woman behind the counter might open the package after I left the office to see what I was sending or enjoy its contents. I didn’t worry that the man or woman who would touch the package next might open the package to see what was in it. I didn’t worry that the myriad of people who might come into contact with my package would check it out to see if there was anything in it worth stealing.

I also never worried for an instant that one of the people who would come into contact with my package might just decide it was too much trouble to deal with and throw it away.

Total strangers I would never see. What word best describes my lack of worry? Was it trust? Faith? Confidence? And what was the source of my contentment as I left my package behind?

It wasn’t trust. The chain of people who interacted with my package was long, and there was no way to interview each of them to explore if they were reliable. So how could I trust them? Never saw them. Never would. The woman behind the counter seemed like a decent enough soul. I trusted her in some sense. But it’s certainly the wrong word to describe her coworkers who brought my package safely to St. Louis. I can’t say I trusted them. I knew nothing about them.

Faith? Seems too open-ended. Faith comes from having used FedEx before and knowing that it always gets the job done. There’s a little of that. But I wasn’t even worried the first time I used FedEx.

Confidence seems like the right word. Confidence born of an understanding of how the division of labor works in a modern economy. What Hayek called the extended order of human cooperation.

You can see the miracle of the modern economy if you contrast FedEx with a different system, one where I actually find a real stranger, who seems honest, down at the gate at the airport on the way to St. Louis. Here, I say. Take this money and this package. And don’t worry if you need some help taking the package the last few miles. Take it part of the way, and give the package and some of the money to the next person on the promise that each person will keep the chain unbroken.

Who could be confident that such a gambit would succeed?

So what’s different about FedEx? On the surface, there’s no difference. I’m expecting somehow that a lot of strangers are going to come through for me and keep their promises. Yet everything is different.

When I use FedEx there are consequences of failure if the strangers let me down. There are feedback loops that reward excellence and punish dishonesty or failure. These feedback loops create accountability.

FedEx tries to hire honest, pleasant people who smile when you talk to them. They fire rude people who consistently lose packages or steal them. It honors and rewards people who do their job well. And why does FedEx try so hard? Part of the answer is reputation. But why does FedEx try so hard to keep its reputation intact? Competition is part of the answer. But there is more to it as well.

Even those feedback loops that keep the FedEx employees honest work best when people feel guilty about being thieves and slugs. Does capitalism work best when people are basically honest, or does capitalism help create the virtues that make it work well? Probably both.

The system works so well that we hardly notice it or appreciate the marvel of it. The smiling FedEx employee is always behind the desk waiting to take my package onto St. Louis. A stranger delivers my paper every morning to my driveway. I don’t even know what he or she looks like. Strangers built my car, wove my clothes, and filled the prescription for the antibiotic that cured my wife’s pneumonia this past winter. A myriad of strangers working together in some research lab in a location unknown to me discovered that antibiotic.

We think nothing of it. It has become natural to us to rely on those we do not see and cannot examine for their honesty, reliability, or excellence. Yet, most of the time, this extended order of human cooperation fulfills our expectations that the products and services we want will be waiting for us when we want them.

We understand the role of competition in sustaining this system. Having alternatives helps create accountability and raises the costs of failing to meet our expectations. But we often fail to understand or notice the resulting cooperation among strangers whose coordinated actions within and across companies serve us.

Surprisingly, relying on strangers beats relying on friends. We don’t have enough of the latter if we want to enjoy the standard of living with all of its material and nonmaterial satisfactions. Relying on friends or relying only on our family would lower our standard of living back to the level of subsistence. Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty.

Relying on strangers also frees up our friends to specialize in being friends and do what friends do best. I don’t want to buy a shoulder to cry on from the low-cost seller behind a counter. I want friends and families to give that out of love. But my friends and family have more time for comfort and delight because the extended order of human cooperation out in the marketplace means I’m not expecting them to sew my clothes or forge a car for me.

Relying on strangers creates the extraordinary web of cooperation that is the modern economy. A world where the division of labor and specialization—the fruits of trade and trust enforced by the feedback loops of price, profit, and competition—can let me send a package from Washington to St. Louis for about an hour’s worth of work for the average American worker.

What a lot of confidence can be bought for only $19. And this marvel of cooperation works even though most of us are oblivious to it and know not how it works. But appreciating the marvel may help us remember the value of the system of prices and profits that holds it together.

Billie Holiday on the evils of Occupational Licensing

If you've read Les Miserables (or seen the recent film of the musical) you know that Jean ValJean had a heck of a time getting a job.  Something to do with having the word "Convict" stamped on his papers. 

On a related note, here's Billie Holiday, courtesy of Bryan Kaplan, talking about the evils of Occupational Licensing.  This is from her autobiography: 

Before you can work in a joint where liquor is sold you have to have a permit from the police department and the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. This is a life-and-death matter. According to the law, which must be a hangover from the days of prohibition, nobody who has a police record can hold a liquor license...

When I got out of jail they threw the book at me. My application for a cabaret card was turned down flat. Without a card no one would hire me, and there was no place I could work in New York - not if they sold juice there.

I could play in theaters and sing to an audience of kids in their teens who couldn't get in any bar. I could appear on radio or TV... But if I opened my mouth in the crummiest bar in town, I was violating the law...

That's how screwy the setup is. The right to work everybody screams about doesn't mean a damn. If I had been a booster or a petty thief I'd have the parole board helping me to get a job so I could go straight and keep straight. But as a singer, the parole board couldn't do a thing for me. It was out of their hands.

Sometime in the next few weeks, I have to attend a Drug'n'Alcohol Awareness Seminar for work.  The cheapest one is $100.00 and the more expensive ones are $200.00.  This is so I can tell if a truck driver is drunk or stoned.  The instructor will have little or no idea what he's talking about.  But someone, somewhere, convinced a congressman once started an Awareness School and convinced a bureaucrat to make his school a requirement for Freight Brokers and Dispatchers.  (I promise you, the Congressman responsible didn't have the idea himself.) 

The same thing happens with interior designers, hairdressers, food-handlers, and coffin-makers. 
Here's a handy chart, broken down by state, of the funnier ones. :

Occupation	State(s)
Athletic Trainer	Most
Auctioneer	Several
Barber, Cosmetologist	All
Beekeeper	Maine
Casket Seller	Several
Chimney Sweep	Vermont
Dietician	Most
Elevator Operator	Massachusetts
Florist	Louisiana
Fortune Teller	Maryland
Hairbraider	Several
Hearing Aid Dispenser/Fitter	All
Interior Designer	Several
Interpreter for the Deaf	Illinois, Texas
Jai Alai Athlete, Umpire, Vendor, Ball Maker, Ticket Seller	Rhode Island
Junkyard Dealer	Ohio
Lightning Rod Installer	Vermont
Lobster Seller	Rhode Island
Manure Applicator	Iowa
Maple Dealer	Vermont
Motion Picture Projectionist	Massachusetts
Mussel Dealer	Illinois
Photographer (Itinerant)	Vermont
Prospector	Maine
Quilted Clothing Manufacturer	Utah
Rainmaker	Arizona

If I'm going to hire an Arizona Rainmaker, I want to have the confidence that John McCain has approved his license.  Sheesh....

When time permits, hit the 2nd link in the Bryan Kaplan piece.  It's an outstanding PDF about what all this licensing does to the economy, and how it harms entrepreneurs.  Even Interior Designers and Lightning Rod Installers....

Here's some Billie Holiday. 

I don't care who you are, this is funny !!

They Passed A Law !!

@Whited79

I've got a 60-hour a week job. 
I'm chair of the Tarrant County Libertarian Party. 
I've got a daughter at Texas A&M who costs more than The Hundred Years' War. 
I'm setting up Libertarian Meetups, Speaker Series, Book Discussion Groups, and Barroom Gripe'n' Moan sessions.
I've got a pile of books on my bedside table, another in my truck, and three shelves at work - all of books that I've been meaning to get to. 
I'm working on an e-book. 
I've started interviewing people at work about a libertarian-ish business book about the value they bring to our company. 
I've got scraps of about ten songs that I need to finish writing. 
I've got a very busy bar schedule. 
I think I've been inside a church four times in three years. 
I don't really know how many dachshunds are in my back yard, and I may have forgotten some of their names. 
Any given week, more people on Facebook invite me to more events than Paris Hilton actually attends in a month. 

What's missing? 

A Twitter feed !!!!  

If you are so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter.  Allen Patterson  @Whited79  

(Whited, for the name of this blog.  '79 for the year I was released from high school.) 

This should be fun. 

Fascism: 3 Definitions And 1 Example

From The Library Of Economics And Liberty:

"Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace." 

From Lew Rockwell, director of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute:

Everyone knows that the term fascist is a pejorative, often used to describe any political position a speaker doesn’t like. There isn’t anyone around who is willing to stand up and say: "I’m a fascist; I think fascism is a great social and economic system."

But I submit that if they were honest, the vast majority of politicians, intellectuals, and political activists would have to say just that.
Fascism is the system of government that cartelizes the private sector, centrally plans the economy to subsidize producers, exalts the police State as the source of order, denies fundamental rights and liberties to individuals, and makes the executive State the unlimited master of society.

From Whole Foods Market founder John Mackey:

The CEO of Whole Foods Market said President Obama's healthcare law is more like "fascism" than "socialism," a parallel he drew in 2009, to some backlash.

John Mackey made the remark in an interview Wednesday with NPR.

"Technically speaking, it's more like fascism," Mackey said of the Affordable Care Act. "Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control it, and that's what's happening with our healthcare programs and these reforms."

 

Damn.....

Looks like the NRA has settled on a strategy....

Different ways to interpret the 2nd Amendment

I wrote this a couple of years ago.  Figured that today would be a good time for a re-post. 

There's usually a lot of noise and confusion surrounding the 2nd Amendment, the section in our Bill Of Rights which, in my opinion, gives me the right to own guns. 

The amendment reads as follows:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.


There it is, sitting in the second seat of the bus, with all the other restrictions on government power. 
Every other bullet point in the Bill Of Rights is designed to limit the power of government in relation to the governed, and we drift off into silliness when we try to see Amendment #2 through any other lens.   The 2nd Amendment, just like all the others, is meant to protect us from government, just like the other nine amendments in the Bill Of Rights. 

Unfortunately, after years of court cases brought by the Nanny State, this is how many of us now see the original intent of the amendment:

Since our government needs an army to preserve freedom and ward off foreign invaders, we grudgingly admit that members of our primitive Citizen Militias should be allowed to own weapons. 

And since we no longer have a Citizen Militia that has to get out of bed in the middle of the night to fight the Redcoats, we no longer have a need for guns in our homes.  Or so they would have us believe. 

The guys who composed the Bill Of Rights wanted to put some severe limits on government power.  They knew that if left unchecked, without ironclad protections, the governing class would try to restrict freedom.  I don't understand the mindset of nannies and busybodies, but the last 10 years have seen an alarming rise in those pesky species of political varmints.   Most libertarians share that concern with The Founders.  Mostly because they believe that the 2nd Amendment, just like all the others, is meant to protect us from government, just like the other nine amendments in the Bill Of Rights !!

Go here and browse through the complete Bill Of Rights.  Look at how they're worded.  Many of them have a little disclaimer that grudgingly admit that, dammit, some level of government is necessary.  But look at the phrases used:

....but in a manner prescribed by law.
....but upon probable cause....
....unless on a presenment or indictment....
....shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.


In these amendments, The Founders are saying that because of the necessary evils of courts, trials, responses to emergencies, and the occasional need to search a house, there are going to be certain rules in place to ensure that government doesn't go too far. 

In Amendment #2, The Founders agree that the government needs a militia.  The militia is a necessary evil, no more, no less. 
But because the government gets to have a militia, and government always needs to be held in check, guess what?  Well, the right of everyone else to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. 
Here's an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that I believe is much closer to the original intent:

Since a government militia is an unfortunate necessity, and we have a distrust of government in all its forms, the citizens who are not members of the militia have a duty to keep and bear arms.  Just in case the government's militia starts getting uppity. 

If you read that version in the context of the other nine government restraints in the Bill Of Rights, the wording makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? 

The 2nd Amendment cartoon came from here. 

Get your kids and small animals out of the room before watching this one

In which Bill Moyers gives Paul Krugman a nice, long, loving tongue-bath. Not for the faint of heart. Warning: toward the end of the video, both men praise the Depression era's WPA art projects.

Trickle Down Economics Doesn't Work

Between bars, taverns, restaurants, Facebook, McDonald's drive-thru's, and work, I somehow find myself in arguments with lots of Statists. 

After they get through saying GEORGE W. BUSH!!!! and SARAH PALIN!!! they will usually say something about the need to protect us all from Big Bidness.  I usually hit that one out of the park.  Big Bidness doesn't send me an invoice for a huge chunk of my income every year. 

If the discussion goes on long enough, Obama's Representative Of The Sheeple will then go waaaaay back into his talking points database and triumphantly say TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS DOESN'T WORK !!!!!!!!!, and then sit down, exhausted, the way Leonard Bernstein used to crumple at the podium after conducting Beethoven's 9th, letting the waves of adoration and applause wash over him. 

Here's how you respond:

Sir, I agree somewhat, but would like to expound on that a bit.  "Trickle Down Economics" isn't an economic phrase, it was just a marketing phrase for a government policy.  "Government Involvement In The Economy" is what doesn't work. 

When Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi gave out billions and billions and billions to big banks and big corporations in the form of The Stimulus Package (instead of just cutting a check to each of us little people for $6,000.00), it was because they believed that "Trickle Down Economics" works. 

Same thing for what The Fed is doing with the money supply. 

Neither of those is working. 

You're right, sir.  "Trickle Down Economics" doesn't work.

The Statist will act like he didn't hear a word you said, and will then reply "But Who Will Build The Roads?" 
Keep fighting the good fight, folks !!!

A long rant about Paul Krugman

If Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid and Co. were to break into Fort Knox, throw all the gold into the Atlantic,  then shoot the CEO of every Productive (i.e.  non-green) company, and then, as a follow-up, pour radioactive waste into every functioning oil well in North America, I wonder what Paul Krugman of the New York Holy Times would do to justify it.  Because he would find a way to justify it.    

If the only way to hire one more government bureaucrat involved adding 3 trillion to the national debt, selling our children to China as household slaves, and worsening the condition of every low income family in the nation, I wonder what Paul Krugman would write to justify it. 

Because he would find a way to justify it. 

There are people in politics that I admire.  I think Ron Paul is as close as they come to being an American hero.  But he plugged in the occasional earmark here and there.  Ask him why, and he'll say that that's how the game is played.   It's what the system requires.  He shouldn't have done the earmarks. 

He also should've paid more attention to his newsletters in the 80's, and not allowed any racist commentary to get in.  If you want to be president, you've gotta keep your eye on the ball. 

See???  I just criticized Ron Paul.  I think it helps my objectivity a bit. 

I think the world of former New Mexico governor and LP presidential candidate Gary Johnson, and would probably volunteer to be the mother of his next child.  But I totally disagree with his stance on privatizing prisons, and I don't care how much money it saved the state of New Mexico.  The government should have a monopoly on initiating force.  It's that simple.  I think Gary Johnson is wrong, wrong, wrong on this issue. 

But Paul Krugman?  If Barack Obama were to start locking up people for bing left-handed, confiscating their illegally earned left-handed incomes, and sending them to Montana for "re-education", I truly believe that Paul Krugman would write a column about how this will eventually help the economy. 

Jesus Christ Almighty, what a puppet....

They are reporting this like it is news

And this is a surprise to who?  (Or whom?  I've always had trouble with hte who/whom thing....)

Go here. 

Joy. Bliss.

I try not to update this website during work hours, but....

Al Gore, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee, one of the people who made me so absolutely nuts that I had to start blogging, the best-known Greenie on the planet, and one of the recipients of the Kleiner/Perkins Green Scams....

Al Gore, who won a freakin' Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm about your SUV changing the weather....

Al Gore, who wants to require you to purchase Green Energy Credits (from his companies) to atone for your environmental sins....

Al Gore has sold his "Current TV" network to Al-Jazeera, the broadcasting wing of the nasty, polluting, Arab Oil States. 

He lobbied hard for the sale, and used all the political muscle at his disposal to make it happen. 

I'm laughing so hard that I'm almost crying.  This is a great day.  LOL. 

One other thing....It looks like he timed the bill to avoid the increased taxes associated with the Fiscal Cliff deal.  It saved him five million. 

Person Of The Year For 2012

I started the Person Of The Year awards back in 2010, when Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, decided that ebooks, Kindles and Nooks discriminated against blind people, and banned their use as State College/University textbooks. 

That was a hard act to follow, since Thomas Perez is going to hell for that.  Think of him during the next State Of The Union speech when The Teleprompter Jesus starts making noise about making college more affordable. 

Then, out of nowhere came Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, and chief "business advisor" to the president best known for stating that everyone (except you, of course) should pay more taxes.  General Electric hadn't been paying ANY taxes for a couple of years.  That was enough to snag the 2011 award for Mr. Immelt. 

This year the committee has set forth the following standards:

1) 2012 was defined by Tribalism and "identity politics".  Economic, ethnic, political and social tribalism.  If tribes could be set apart from any larger herds, our politicians did their best to make it happen.  Therefore, the successful candidate for Person Of The Year will have displayed an uncanny ability to identify with unlikely tribes and to help further divide the nation into irrational voting blocs.

2. This was the year of the 1%. And the 98%. And the 47%.  2012's Person Of The Year will be a master of Advanced Victimology of this sort.

3. "You didn't build that." To create is evil.  To be a parasite is a virtue. Most people with a lot of money have their money because they've created more than they've consumed. The successful candidate will be one who believes those people should be punished.

Here's a great character study from the John Galt radio speech in "Atlas Shrugged". Think of our godawful economy and hellish employment rate while digesting this. This is the type of person the committee wants to honor:

In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils, which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty. You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins; it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection.

That's who the committee is looking for this year.
I know she's out there....

Ayn Rand, John Galt, and Original Sin

I just finished reading the John Galt "radio speech" from "Atlas Shrugged".
Parts of the early section are tiresome; the last half is some of the greatest stuff I've ever read.

The short section on "Original Sin" jumped out at me. For those of you who weren't raised in the Bible Belt, Original Sin is a St. Paul/St. Augustine invention which states that ever since Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we've been cursed (pre-birth) as sinners.
In the eyes of God, we're guilty as soon as the doctor cuts the cord. Here's some context from Genesis:

The Fall

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
¹¹ And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
¹² The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life.
¹⁵ And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring^[a] and hers;
he will crush^[b] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.”

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

²⁰ Adam^[c] named his wife Eve,^[d] because she would become the mother of all the living.

²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²² And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ²³ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

For most of my life, I've tried to reconcile my somewhat fundamentalist religious upbringing with the reality that I saw around me. 
I've seen that Knowledge is a good thing, as opposed to being something that is the consequence of a curse. 
I believe that Knowledge keeps us warm, fed, healthy, and happy.  
I believe that people are fundamentally good, and will help each other without being forced to do so at gunpoint. 
I've noticed that a lot of kids who weren't raised in any particular religious rigmarole seem to have fewer problems than some of those who were. 
And, of course, I've noticed that people who don't believe that most foreigners are going to go to hell....well, they get along better with foreigners. 
Here's the section on Original Sin, from John Galt's infamous "radio speech" near the end of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". 

"Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accepts his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.


It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some explicable claim upon him - it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man.

Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."

Damn. 
This book, which was the Gateway Drug into Libertarianism for a lot of people, is slowly making my head explode. 
I've read plenty of excerpts, and skimmed it a few times in the past, but reading all 1200 pages cover-to-cover has been one amazing experience. 
I think I'm going to read Paul Krugman's "The Conscience Of A Liberal", just to cleanse the palate, and then read "Atlas Shrugged" again.  This time with a highlighter. 
We have a lot of problems in the U.S.   According to some, honest accounting would prove that we have more unemployed workers in 2012 than during the Great Depression.  Team Red and Team Blue are putting on Performance Art about an idiotic "Fiscal Cliff" deal.  We're 17 trillion in debt.  Obama is sending drones to kill children, and, incidentally, create more terrorists. 

This could be improved if every industrialist, business owner, and creator were to send John Galt's message to Washington:

"Get The Hell Out Of My Way." 

Chronica 2012 with DFW/NORML

The good folks at DFW/NORML are letting me speak at their "Chronica 2012" year-end party. 
Here's what I plan to say....

Hello, my name is Allen Patterson, and I’m Chair of The Tarrant County Libertarian Party.


For those of you who aren’t familiar with us, the Libertarian Party is dedicated to the radical idea that other people are not your property. I’ll be glad to talk with any of you about our beliefs later on tonight.

I’m here for four reasons, and I’ll be brief…..

First, I want to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For years and years, the Libertarian Party made small increases in its Tarrant County results. Bounced around with somewhere with a 10-15% increase every couple of years.

From 2010 to 2012, straight ticket Libertarian voting DOUBLED, from 1500 votes to 3000. Think about it, folks….there are now 3,000 people in Fort Worth and Arlington who are willing to go to the ballot box and vote for your right to be left alone. 3,000 voters willing to stand up against the Prohibitionist. And you good people at DFW/NORML are responsible for a huge part of the increase. Shaun McAlister, I love you like a brother, sir !! And in 2014, we’re going to go for 6,000 Libertarian straight ticket voters, or die trying.

The second thing I want to do tonight is piss you off. How many of you have seen the new Quentin Tarrantino movie “Django Unchained”? Slavery was a horrible system, wasn’t it???

That movie was set in 1855. It was an awful time. People did awful things to each other. But in the year 2012, 155 years later, we have more black men living in steel cages, or on probation or parole, than The Confederacy had living in steel cages in 1855. Most of those guys are in that situation because of the Drug War. 31% of Florida’s black male population can’t vote. They’re convicted felons. Convicted for owning a weed !! (And Shaun, we’ve got to get some more Brothers into the movement. Agreed?)

Since Richard Nixon started the War On Drugs in the early 1970’s, our government has spent 1.5 TRILLION dollars (that’s a fifteen with eleven zeroes) on the Drug War. That doesn’t include the amount we suffer from lost productivity, by the way. 1.5 trillion dollars !!

So how many of you have ever voted for one of these people as candidates for President or Vice President, in a primary or a general election? Bill Clinton George W. Bush Howard Dean John Edwards Newt Gingrich Al Gore John Kerry Sarah Palin Gary Johnson Barack Obama ?

Guess what they have in common? They’ve all smoked weed. Just like the 1.5 million people who were arrested for non-violent drug charges in 2011, all of them, at some point in their lives, have lit up a fat one. If you get caught, you get locked up in a steel cage with violent criminals. If you don’t get caught, you can be President. Go figure. So why do all these former tokers and smokers still support the drug war?

It’s because if the War On Drugs were to end tomorrow, it would eliminate the need for approximately 1 million government jobs. Barack Obama has one million jailers, narcs, border patrollers, torturers, parole officers, probation specialists and prison contractors who are voting for the status quo.

So what do we do?

Colorado and Washington State recently passed voter referendums on marijuana legalization. HMMmmmmm….. Let’s do that. But there are still some legal hassles involving growing, possession, transportation and the like. We need some people on the inside.

That gets me to point number three. The Libertarian Party needs candidates. We want to give voters a choice between Freedom and Prohibition, instead of flipping a coin between Team Red and Team Blue. If you want to put yourself out there, we’re waiting with open arms. We’ve got three levels. You can run as a “paper” candidate, just to offer a real choice for your neighborhood. All we ask is that you fill out newspaper surveys about your campaign. Better yet, you can run as an “educational” candidate, someone who goes to candidate forums and college campuses and speaks about why freedom is better than slavery. Then there’s the third level – you go out and do some fundraising and sink some money into a campaign that will scare the crap out of the Prohibition Parties.

We need you ! If you’re interested, go to the Tarrant County Libertarian Party website. You’ll see how to contact me.

Plus, Tarrant County’s going to be doing something special in 2014. We’re going to look at this year’s results by precinct, we’re going to look at the opposition in each race, and we’re going to try to determine which part of Tarrant County already has the most freedom lovers and NORML members. Then we’re going to select one candidate for that area’s Texas House race. We’re still going to give all the other candidates some love and affection. But the big effort is going to go into that one campaign. And it could be yours. We’re going to have a winner. I’ve heard a lot of County Chairs say that they weren’t in the business of picking winners and losers among their candidates. Screw that. We’re going to pick a winner, and we need your help knocking on doors, making phone calls, putting out yard signs and stuffing envelopes. If you love freedom enough to be a part of DFW/NORML, you already one of us.

I’m looking for a Moses to come out of the wilderness. I’m looking for someone who will get elected and go down to Austin and Washington to tell Rick Perry and Barack Obama to bulldoze their steel cages, lay off their Narcs, and fire their jailers. I need someone who will look Barack Obama in the eye and say “Barack Obama……..LET YOUR PEOPLE GO!!”

That gets me to point number four, and this is the last one. I don’t smoke, so I’m gonna go have a drink. Thanks so much for your support, your future support and your attention!!!

New Senator From Hawaii Wants To Change The Weather

The recently deceased senator Daniel Inouye was, by most accounts, a good guy.  But he also brought enough pork from Washington to Hawaii to sink the islands.  Daniel Inouye was serious about bringing home the bacon.  He wasn't ashamed of being knows as "The King Of Pork". 

I predict that Daniel Inouye (and my sympathies go out to all his contractors, bureaucrats, looters, and contributors, BTW) will soon be seen as an amatuer. 

His replacement, Brian Schatz, wants to change the weather.  Go here. 

The replacement for the late Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye (D) said Wednesday that climate change is at the top of his legislative agenda.

"For me, personally, I believe global climate change is real and it is the most urgent challenge of our generation,” Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz (D), whom Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) tapped for the seat, said in brief comments Wednesday.

Let me go waaaaaay out on a limb here, and say that Brian Schatz is full of shit. 
He's going to try to implement some carbon taxes, get some more money for green energy boondoggles, and hire a plague of regulators to pester the productive members of society.  He might try requiring people to purchase "carbon offsets" (LOL) from one of the Al Gore/Kleiner Perkins companies. 
Let's assume that the amount of carbon we put into the air changes the weather. 
Let's assume that the remedies listed above are helpful in some small way. 

You cannot individually undertake any green energy rituals that will offset one trip to Hawaii, unless you're willing to travel by kayak. 

I'll start believing in man-made climate change when Brian Schatz encourages people from the U.S. mainland to stay home instead of travelling to Hawaii.   Until that day, he should be viewed as a con artist.  End of story. 

Update from Friday afternoon:  Cold weather in Europe and Asia is killing hundreds of people. 

The Tragedy Of The Commons

I used to be in charge of a warehouse in Everman, TX.  Everything that happened in the place was my fault, for better or worse.  The warehouse usually looked good.  We had good controls on the inventory there. 

We eventually outgrew it and moved into a much bigger facility in north Fort Worth. 

In the meantime, we still had the lease for the Everman facility, and kept a few dead or slow-moving products there.  And so did everyone else at other shops in the company.  Instead of a facility devoted to shipping only, it has become a storage bin for a wood shop, a metal shop, a plastics shop, and a trade show group.    

It isn't my place any longer.  It belongs to everyone in the company who has more crap than space.  It looks like hammered shit.  I would post before and after pics if I was sure it wouldn't offend co-workers. 

Here's why the place is now a dump.  And incidentally, it's why Socialism usually doesn't work very well.  This is from the Library of Economics and Liberty, on a concept called "The Tragedy Of The Commons":

In 1974 the general public got a graphic illustration of the “tragedy of the commons” in satellite photos of the earth. Pictures of northern Africa showed an irregular dark patch 390 square miles in area. Ground-level investigation revealed a fenced area inside of which there was plenty of grass. Outside, the ground cover had been devastated.


The explanation was simple. The fenced area was private property, subdivided into five portions. Each year the owners moved their animals to a new section. Fallow periods of four years gave the pastures time to recover from the grazing. The owners did this because they had an incentive to take care of their land. But no one owned the land outside the ranch. It was open to nomads and their herds. Though knowing nothing of Karl Marx, the herdsmen followed his famous advice of 1875: “To each according to his needs.” Their needs were uncontrolled and grew with the increase in the number of animals. But supply was governed by nature and decreased drastically during the drought of the early 1970s. The herds exceeded the natural “carrying capacity” of their environment, soil was compacted and eroded, and “weedy” plants, unfit for cattle consumption, replaced good plants. Many cattle died, and so did humans.

The rational explanation for such ruin was given more than 170 years ago. In 1832 William Forster Lloyd, a political economist at Oxford University, looking at the recurring devastation of common (i.e., not privately owned) pastures in England, asked: “Why are the cattle on a common so puny and stunted? Why is the common itself so bare-worn, and cropped so differently from the adjoining inclosures?”

Lloyd’s answer assumed that each human exploiter of the common was guided by self-interest. At the point when the carrying capacity of the commons was fully reached, a herdsman might ask himself, “Should I add another animal to my herd?” Because the herdsman owned his animals, the gain of so doing would come solely to him. But the loss incurred by overloading the pasture would be “commonized” among all the herdsmen. Because the privatized gain would exceed his share of the commonized loss, a self-seeking herdsman would add another animal to his herd. And another. And reasoning in the same way, so would all the other herdsmen. Ultimately, the common property would be ruined.

Even when herdsmen understand the long-run consequences of their actions, they generally are powerless to prevent such damage without some coercive means of controlling the actions of each individual. Idealists may appeal to individuals caught in such a system, asking them to let the long-term effects govern their actions. But each individual must first survive in the short run. If all decision makers were unselfish and idealistic calculators, a distribution governed by the rule “to each according to his needs” might work. But such is not our world. As James Madison said in 1788, “If men were angels, no Government would be necessary” (Federalist, no. 51). That is, if all men were angels. But in a world in which all resources are limited, a single nonangel in the commons spoils the environment for all.

Hit this link to read the whole thing.  I'm working to try to appoint ONE random person to be in charge of the place.  That's really all it takes - ownership and authority. 

Who Was The Most Intriguing Person Of 2012?

What makes someone intriguing?

What makes you take a few minutes to swing by someone else's workspace to hear what they have to say? 

I have some employees and some co-managers that I try to contact as often as possible.  They're usually up to something different, something out of the ordinary. 

There are others who depress the living hell out of me, because when I ask them about their night, what they did with their lives, etc., they say that they went home and watched "Dancing With The Stars".  To each his own, and all that, but we have a limited amount of time on this planet to define ourselves. 

I think that former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson is intriguing.  I think he has ideas about government that are different from almost anything else out there.  Get out of other countries' bidness.  Reduce the size of the military.  Cut government by 43%.  End the Drug War.  End the ban on gay marriage.  Gary Johnson will say these things in short, concise sound bites.  Try to find a recording of someone from the Obama/Boehner team saying the same things in words anyone can understand.   

I've hung out with Governor Johnson a couple of times and listened to him explain how he could have easily cut New Mexico's state government size in half, and no one woulda noticed. 

Gary Johnson climbed Everest with a broken foot.  He paraglides.  Hops on his bike and goes a hundred miles every now and then.  I sat beside him at our Joe T. Garcia's fundraiser, and they brought him a special order, one that someone had obviously arranged long ahead of time.  This platter of meat made an Atkins Plan look like something from a donut shop.  A serious carnivore, that Gary Johnson. 

On the other hand, there's Barack H. Obama. 

I swear, I think I can finish his sentences for him.  At this point, I wouldn't go out of my way to hear his opinions on the NBA draft, much less his opinions on the economy, the unemployment rate, foreign relations, or the national debt. 

He's an absolute failure on all of those issues.  Why his blather is of interest to anyone is beyond me. 

CNN just named Barack Obama the "Most Intriguing Person Of 2012".   

On Jesus And Santa Claus

I was in the 2nd grade, working on homework at a desk in our den. It must have been close to Christmastime, because my mother was explaining something about Santa Claus to my little sister.
I don't remember my sister's question, but it probably involved the North Pole, elves, reindeer, Rudolph, or (temporal) punishments and rewards for being either naughty or nice. In one blinding moment the Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy Axis Of Impossibility revealed itself to me.
There are no elves. Reindeer can't fly. Old fat guys can't get down chimneys. A giant rabbit can't leave us colorful plastic eggs (from Gibson's department store) filled with coins or candy.
Any fairy with a tooth fetish must be very lonely fairy indeed.

I had figured out the conspiracy, and needed some clarification on the finer points so I looked up from my homework and asked "Hey, there can't be a Santa Claus who brings all this stuff. Is it just you and Daddy, or is it somebody else?"

My Mother went through a frantic series of shushing gestures, throat slashings, and brow-furrowings, and then said something like "Of course there's a Santa Claus", followed by a wink-wink nudge-nudge. Once my sister left the room, she explained that Santa Claus was something that parents did to make Christmas more fun for children, along with a follow-up conversation about the need to conceal this from my sisters and brother. I immediately felt like more of an adult since I was in on what was obviously a very adult secret.

I relished the conversations I could have with my parents and other adults about what other kids were getting from Santa Claus. I had access to the people behind the curtain, the ones who made the magic happen.

I had a friend named Glenn Williams who was a year younger than me. (Note to self: write a post about the day Glenn was working at The Rushing Winery and managed to bottle his thumb.) Another friend, Walt Burns, took Glenn aside one day and told him all about Santa Claus. Glenn has told me at least three times about how mad he got at Walt for doing this.

Up until the time Walt spilled the beans, Glenn had a worldview that included a benevolent old guy who paid attention to his behavior and rewarded him with great stuff every December 25th. People were killing each other in Viet Nam but Santa was watching. Elves were making toys for people who were good, even if kids our age were starving in communist China. And Walt Burns had to ruin everything. There was no magic guy in a sleigh.  It was just Pat and Guy B. Williams waiting up past their normal bedtime to bring Glenn's toys down from the attic.

Other kids claimed to believe, or pretended to believe, until they were in the 5th or 6th grade. In their families, once you stopped believing, the quality and quantity of gifts from Santa declined. Why rock the boat?

Flash forward about 15 years.

I briefly attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Cemetery Seminary in Fort Worth. The place seemed to operate on two levels. In some classes the professors spoke as if every word in the Bible was inspired by God, and that all of scripture hung together as a unified statement and plan. But a few other professors would sometimes imply that the book was a mishmash. It was filled with time and place-specific rants that had to be twisted and tortured into relevance. A few brave souls, usually at the doctoral level, would introduce Biblical Criticism into the mix.

No professors publicly confessed any doubts about whether the basic story was true. And by true, I mean in the sense that this event happened, not true in the sense that something is a true to life parable or narrative that can teach us something about blah blah blah....

However, I found that if I could get these professors off the clock, and they would sometimes confirm that doubt was a valid response. Some of them would go so far as to give me further reading on the subject.

But by and large, the main response to doubt went something like this: "These stories have given comfort to millions. They are the foundation of our morality, our ethics, and our hope for the future. They are the received wisdom handed down from previous generations. If they weren't true, would God have given them to us? And one last thing.... people will give 10% or more of their income to spread God's Eternal Truth. But can you imagine anyone giving 10% of his money to spread a story that's just a parable? Churches and ministers that waver in their professed beliefs have a hard time paying the light bill."

In other words, once people start thinking of Santa Claus as a metaphor, you can't rely on them to put out milk and cookies in front of the fireplace.

We now have ministers all over the U.S. who no longer truly believe what they're preaching.  They no longer have a separate "carve-out" for stories about walking on water and resurrections and hells - a separate cubbyhole for the miraculous stories that otherwise would go the way of evles, reindeer and giant magic bunnies.  So why do they continue?

They don't want to be the Walt Burns who tells Glenn Williams what they've learned. They don't want to hurt their colleagues, financially or professionally, who still claim to take it all literally instead of figuratively. In some groups, to go against the story is to go against the entire tribe, and would mean rejecting family, town, denomination, and (ahem) salary. Sometimes it's too late to re-invent yourself as an insurance salesman, retail manager, or freight broker.

Plus, the church still owes $250,000.00 on the new education wing they built 10 years ago, and somebody needs to keep paying retirement funds into the Annuity Fund. 

When I'm feeling particularly dark, I sometimes tell people that I didn't learn the truth about Santa Claus until I spent 6 years training to be an elf.

Could there be anything sadder than a 25-year old who still believed in Santa?

On the other hand, could there be anything sadder than a 50-year old minister who lives on the same planet as theologian/scholars like Marcus Borg and John Spong, but who continues to proclaim the virgin birth, angelic visitations, and the eternal damnation of dead Muslim, Chinese, and Indian teenagers?

Let's make some changes, starting with a few obvious propositions. I don't believe in hell. I don't believe that I'll die and get some wings and a harp either. What happens after we die? I don't know. Neither does anyone else. But we can all agree on what happens to a tree when it dies, can't we? Let's start there.

Here's another one. I don't believe that Jesus got his Mama pregnant with himself.

I don't believe that languages were invented when people got uppity and tried to create a tower that would reach the sky and God felt threatened and punished everybody by giving them different languages. You don't believe that either. I promise, you don't. People... Just... Don't... Believe... That...

So if you're a minister who happens to read this rant, you have the blessing and approval of a lot of people to crawl up into your pulpit Sunday and admit what you don't believe certain things anymore. You're probably a good person with some good ideas. Give your folks something new to think about. The Santa Claus guided by Rudolph/Wise Men guided by the star in the east business - those stories don't work any more.

Sunday morning, tell us what you think will make the world better, without resorting to mythology.

I think you'll feel better afterwards. I feel better just writing all of this.

Merry Christmas !

Poverty has won the War On Poverty

Libertarians are often caricatured as uncaring bastards who would throw their grandmothers out on the street if Granny ever stops harvesting her percentage of the wheat crop.  But it really is possible to be in favor of Granny's continued existence in her old age, while opposing John Boehner and Barack Obama being her means of support.

Libertarians generally oppose wealth redistribution by force, therefore we dislike Uncle Sam’s welfare schemes.

Statists claim it’s because we’re greedy. (We are greedy. You are greedy.  We all want more than we have. Lots more. Unlike the Statists, though, we want you to have more also, so you'll spend it on what we produce. We know that your success doesn’t require our failure.) But greed isn’t the reason we oppose mandatory government welfare programs.

Here’s the real reason, folks: Government welfare isn’t an effective method for fighting poverty.  In fact, it looks like welfare is keeping poverty alive. 

Check out the chart, from Economist Daniel Mitchell’s International Liberty website.  LBJ’s War On Poverty was the equivalent of spreading top-notch fertilizer on a weed patch. Poverty was dying until Washington D.C. got involved in killing it.  Incredible, isn't it? 

Folks, poverty was disappearing !!  Dropping like VHS sales!!!  But when anti-poverty programs appeared, poverty stabilized between 11-15%.   How much would you give to learn what woulda happened if the War On Poverty had never been declared????  Think of the fifteen trillion or so that they've spent on anti-poverty programs.  Do you think that might have been better spent by producers rather than D.C. looters? 

People are poor because they can't be productive.  (Or in a few cases, won't be productive.)  Yeah, some prosper because of lotteries, and a few eventually claw their way out and prosper because of handouts. But most of the poor get stuck, generation after generation after generation, sitting by the mailbox waiting on the goodies from Uncle Sugar.

When Washington demonizes success (especially from the entrepreneurial side as opposed to the sports/arts/entertainment side) and demands an ever-increasing cut of the profits from any business or individual, the productive members of society are left with less and less to spend on other things, like employees. George Soros, Warren Buffett, and dotcom jillionaires might be political numbskulls, but their instincts on how to spend money are far superior to John Boehner’s and Barack Obama’s. Let ‘em keep more of their money and the jobs will follow.

If we were to cut the U.S. tax burden in half, poverty in the U.S. would die. There would be a sprinkling of unemployed disabled people who could easily be provided for by using pre-LBJ methods. In that era, we had thousands and thousands of civic, fraternal, and church benevolence funds in place that we’ve almost forgotten how to administer.

We could easily end poverty.

But we’re too compassionate to even consider doing so. 

Note to self:  Create another chart showing how Islamic Extremists were dying off until our government got involved in trying to kill them. 

The Case For More Guns

I read this in The Atlantic Monthly (hardly a right-wing Tea Party rag) a few days before the shooting in Connecticut. 
It's easily the most reasonable piece I've seen on the subject of guns in America.  Jeffery Goldberg is the author. 

Go here.  Kinda long, but worth it.

Here are the final paragraphs.....

But even some moderate gun-control activists, such as Dan Gross, have trouble accepting that guns in private hands can work effectively to counteract violence. When I asked him the question I posed to Stephen Barton and Tom Mauser—would you, at a moment when a stranger is shooting at you, prefer to have a gun, or not?—he answered by saying, “This is the conversation the gun lobby wants you to be having.” He pointed out some of the obvious flaws in concealed-carry laws, such as too-lax training standards and too much discretionary power on the part of local law-enforcement officials. He did say that if concealed-carry laws required background checks and training similar to what police recruits undergo, he would be slower to raise objections. But then he added: “In a fundamental way, isn’t this a question about the kind of society we want to live in?” Do we want to live in one “in which the answer to violence is more violence, where the answer to guns is more guns?”

What Gross won’t acknowledge is that in a nation of nearly 300 million guns, his question is irrelevant.

Ayn Rand's Philosophy

I'm trying to plow through the complete works of Ayn Rand.  I thought "Anthem" was brilliant.  "The Fountainhead" was ok, but only redeemed by the wonderful speech at the end. 

This is probably my 3rd attempt at "Atlas Shrugged".  I think my first stab at it was in high school, where I skimmed it thinking it was a novel about railroads.  The second time was when I started working at Bookstop, almost 25 years ago, at the recommendation of a few employees (Tim Lebsack, maybe??) but life intervened.
I picked it up for the third time a few days ago.   
It's been sitting there like a time bomb. 

I've read several critiques of the novel which state that it is best appreaciated by 17-year-old boys.  That's horsecrap.  I'm about 2/3rds of the way through it, and now believe it can best be understood by 51-year-olds living under the Obama Administration. 

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."  All of them.  Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren, Jimmy Hoffa, Jr.,  The Texas Department Of Transportation, The Texas Unemployment Commission, and Ayn Rand.  Rand wrote the play, and the rest are clumsily acting it out. 

When I finish this book, I'm going to instantly go back through it with a highlighter, and bore the shit out of everybody on this site and on Facebook with quotes from the book, illustrated with pics from 2013.  As events develop. 

Here's Rand's general philosophy, a set of beliefs now in opposition to everything most voters stand for or believe in.  Think of the misery all over the U.S. and the world if governments were to adopt this:

At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows:

1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2. Epistemology: Reason
3. Ethics: Self-interest
4. Politics: Capitalism

If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1.”Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.” 2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”
If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency—to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them—requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot—or while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics.
My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:
Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

The Taggart Transcontinental Comet just blew up inside the mountain, killing everyone aboard including the idiot politico who demanded that they go through the tunnel.  Dagny has come back to take over the railroad.  Hank Rearden is torturing himself for putting his zipper problem ahead of his company. 

I want to find myself some Rearden Steel to make fruitstands that will last forever. 

Great book so far, and John Galt hasn't said a word yet. 

If you love the book and think that's a cool painting, go here to buy a poster.