Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets

How They Did It

For 70 days, 33 Chilean miners were trapped a half mile below the surface of the earth —  “swallowed into the bowels of hell,” as one miner says — waiting for rescue. A billion viewers watched as they finally began to emerge to safety.

A fierce determination at both ends of the slowly constructed shaft aided the rescue. The miners had to outlast the first few weeks of despair, when they had scant information about the rescue mission. Throughout the ordeal they maintained the mine and their own morale. The rescuers had to figure out how to first get supplies to the miners and then create the narrow but stable shaft through which the miners could escape, as all 33 of them did.

A less-noted aspect of the story is that the rescue could not have happened without technology that did not exist even a quarter century ago. This included everything from the powerful drill bit donated by Center Rock Inc., a Pennsylvania company, to copper-fiber socks that consumed foot bacteria. But especially that drill bit.

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger observes that Center Rock’s drill bit exists because of the firm’s pursuit of profit in an economy where pursuit of profit is possible. It exists because of what Henninger calls the “profit=innovation” dynamic. Indeed, capitalism saves lives every day; markets make our lives better and sometimes makes our lives possible.

You don’t have to mine very hard to get a moral out of the story.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Trading One Right for Another

Trades are not unheard of in politics, but somehow they rarely exhibit the up-front honesty and clarity of the trades that make up the bulk of our economic life. When I go to the super-market, or the record store, or Wal-Mart, I pretty much know what I’m getting and what I’m giving up.

Not so clear, though, in politics.

Take Arizona’s “Hunting and Fishing Amendment,” Proposition 109 on this November’s ballot. Much has been made of the first element of the ballot’s title, establishing a “constitutional right” to hunt and fish. Outdoorsmen love it.

But a second element gives to the state legislature “Exclusive authority” to regulate hunting and fishing, which may grant regulatory power to various wildlife commissions.

It basically disallows Arizona’s citizens from future influence through the initiative and referendum. That’s what citizens trade away for the first part. Citizens get a “right” to hunt and fish “lawfully,” a right they already have, but give up their current rights to influence what that “lawfully” means, via the ballot.

Prop 109 also declares that hunting and fishing would be the preferred means of controlling wildlife, and it says that “no law shall be enacted” that “unreasonably restricts” hunting and fishing, etc.

Of course, constitutions can say “no law” all they want. History shows legislatures don’t abide by that prohibition. Neither do courts.

Just read the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and consider . . . and cringe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Brains in Crisis

The Atlantic offers a fascinating portrait of the Honorable Ron Paul in “The Tea Party’s Brain.” Its blurb neatly explains the subject’s significance: “One way to measure the surprising . . . rise of the Tea Party is to chart the relative position of Ron Paul, who has never flinched from his beliefs. He’s not alone anymore.”

But I want to focus not on writer Joshua Green’s take on Ron Paul but on Austrian economics — which Rep. Paul, almost alone in Washington, supports — and economic policy regarding crises:

The Austrian school . . . had fallen away after the Great Depression, which it claimed was caused by an expansion of the money supply and could be met only with chastened submission as the market corrected itself. Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, offered similar counsel, famously urging Hoover to “liquidate” and “purge the rottenness out of the system.” But this failed to stop the catastrophe.

From Green’s statement you would think that President Hoover had accepted Mellon’s advice. He had not. Hoover often took pride in the fact that he did all sorts of things to prevent prices from coming down — from “liquidating” — after 1929.

Green followed the above-quoted passage with a plug for strong, activist government to pry the economy out of crisis. In light of the facts? Not so persuasive.

A truth for Tea Party brains: The Great Depression featured a spendthrift, meddling Republican prez followed by an even more spendthrift, more meddlesome Democrat.

A pattern history now repeats.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling

Diminishing Diminishing Returns

In late September, President Obama announced a goal. Noting that American students average out in the middle of the pack, vis-à-vis students worldwide, in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), he pledged to recruit 10,000 STEM teachers over the next two years.

This was put in proper context by Andrew J. Coulson, on a Cato website. He displayed two graphs. One compared employment rates versus enrollment rates in public schools. The enrollment rates have slightly risen since 1970, while the employment rate has skyrocketed. In the other graph, the inflation-adjusted cost of a K-12 education contrasts with achievement scores for reading, math, and science during the same period. The costs skyrocketed, while the test scores had barely moved.

Perhaps students should be encouraged to apply a little math to this.

From economics we have the concept of diminishing returns. For each expenditure of input, smaller increases are expected of output. So, if we’ve been increasing teachers and administrators during this period, but the scores have neither diminished nor increased, this suggests a number of things, chief being that, well, expenditure of funds on public schooling is not the chief variable in improving knowledge or achievement. Not now, anyway.

So why would we increase expenditures?

Could the expected returns be political rather than academic? Could President Obama care more about teacher union support, say, than what kids actually learn?

Far be it for me to suggest this. Let the data alone do that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Election Addiction Fiction

Poor Willie Brown. Ever since California slapped term limits on state lawmakers, Brown’s lacked a permanent perch in power.

For many, Brown’s 15-year reign as speaker serves as Exhibit A in the case against unlimited terms. Brown himself bragged that he had been the “Ayatollah” of the assembly — though later he seemed to repent of his support for untrammeled spending in that role.

He next lathered patronage as mayor of San Francisco. But this was another term-limited post, so he couldn’t barnacle himself there either.

It still bothers Brown how voters limited tenures. He’s always opposed term limits. And now the papers quote him telling a Republican political club that term limits are a “disaster. . . . We’ve allowed ourselves to become addicted to elections.” (You guessed it: He disdains citizen initiative rights too.)

Elections, an addiction? Like heroin? Of course, we’re “addicted” to everything these days. Obama says we’re “addicted” to oil (as did Bush). We’d all admit a compulsion to consume food and oxygen.

To learn what weaning ourselves off term limits might be like, check Ballotpedia, which reports that even in this roiling political year, only 19 incumbent state senators out of 1,167 running for re-election lost their primaries. Less than 40 percent — the exact number is 459 — even faced an opponent. In general elections, incumbent re-election rates typically exceed 90 percent, even in tough political times.

That’s fine with politicians like Brown, who always crave another fix — of political power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

My Enemy’s Money

American democracy is uglier than necessary. We don’t have to talk so nasty about our opponents. Or their money.

The usual snipe about this process is that funders of “our side” (whichever side that happens to be) are Good and True and Selfless, while funders of the other side are Evil and Dishonest and Selfish.

So, Democrats decry — and often seek to regulate — the spending of wealthy conservatives and “major corporate lobbyists”; Republicans decry — and, perhaps less often, seek to limit — the spending of unions and billionaires such as George Soros.

Because organizations like MoveOn have been funded by Soros, they are said to be somehow less “legitimate.”

When it was discovered that the Koch brothers of Koch Industries had funded various “Tea Party” organizations to the tune of (it is said) many millions, Obama-hurrahing pundits and activists decried this, charging that it proved that there was no “grassroots” element to the movement. “Astroturf!” they cried.

All nonsense.

Now, Democrats from Obama on down claim that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money for ads. But Democrats haven’t produced a shred of evidence. It’s simply a wild accusation.

Look: It’s not tainted money when the other side gets it and you don’t. Or vice versa. Besides, rich people should be as free as less rich folks to give to their causes.

And perhaps we’d see less money pouring into politics from billionaires were campaign contributions for the rest of us less limited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture individual achievement

A Literary Giant, a Giant of Liberty

Had we but world enough, and time . . . we’d read all the books on our reading lists.

Last week I contemplated the classics of political liberty and a book I hadn’t read. After that, the days of the week clicked off, as they do, and a writer I was familiar with (but had never read) won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I wonder: Will I ever make time to read his books?

They don’t exactly look like my cup of tea. But, perusing the list of novels of Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature, there seems to be something for nearly everyone.

What I knew Vargas for, mostly, was his notorious move away from trendy communism and towards an appreciation of freedom. Individual freedom. Liberty. He even ran for the presidency of his country on a limited-government platform, and raised quite a lot of interest, only to be beaten by a sly, dark horse of a candidate who went on to stay in the news for quite some time.

Success or no, by standing up for constitutional limitations and private property and civil liberties as one coherent package, Vargas made an important contribution to world culture that almost deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Too often, literary types feel (like his friend-enemy-frenemy Gabriel Garcia Márquez obviously feels) destined to ally themselves with “the Left.”

Mario Vargas Llosa broke that tradition.

So, congratulations to an eminent man of letters . . . and liberties.

Too bad he lacks a North American counterpart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

A Wealth of Joblessness

Did you know that the unemployment rate — as high as it is — is actually very much understated? It doesn’t include those who are out of work but have given up trying to find a job.

This puzzles me.

Oh, I see the rationale for not counting those who have abandoned their job searches (the information gets harder to collect and maintain, and you enter into the farther regions of statistics), but, nevertheless, they certainly do remain unemployed.

What puzzles me is the ability to remain permanently jobless. I don’t think my wife would let me make that choice. And even if she did, without income where would we get the money to pay the mortgage or buy food?

There’s unemployment insurance, which helps tide folks over when they lose a job. Yet, a condition for receiving unemployment benefits is continuing to actively seek a new job.

Like many, we could fall back on family and friends. But I’d feel bad enough about that if I was pounding the pavement every day in search of gainful employment. I can’t imagine doing so without any intention of landing a position and getting back on my own two feet.

So what can we conclude about folks who don’t have a job and aren’t looking for one? There are apparently a lot of rich folks out of work.

This yields the unwelcome-to-many conclusion that, in America, everyone is rich. Inequality notwithstanding.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Going After the Gold

What does gold have to do with medical care? Ingested, it’s a poison. It’s not often used in treatment.

So why did the Obama administration place a provision further regulating the buying and selling of gold into the Democrats’ medical reform legislation?

Economist Thomas Sowell explains, in a recent column, why politicians are obsessed with the yellow metal. Before FDR, gold provided a check against politicians’ desire to spend the money government could “just print.” Because, in those long-ago days, paper dollars were backed by gold, Americans would cash the paper in for gold when it looked like the Treasury had gone on a printing spree. So inflation (the increase of the supply of money, and the consequent diminishing of its value, leading to increasing prices) was checked.

In 1933, FDR confiscated most of America’s circulating (and hoarded) gold, and Nixon took us off the gold standard completely in the ’70s, morphing our monetary system into a pure fiat (inflationary) standard.

Also in Nixon’s time, it became legal, again, for Americans to own gold.

So why make it harder, now, to trade in gold — when gold is not money?

Because investors, in times of inflation and crisis, turn to gold as a hedge. Against politicians, basically. And, says Sowell, “the Obama administration sees people’s freedom to buy and sell gold as something that can limit what the government can do.”

Gold, like freedom, “cramps the government’s style.”

That speaks volumes about gold . . . and “Obamacare.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture

Should I Read This?

Yesterday I talked about a New York Times piece on the Tea Party reading list. I mentioned several authors, including Bastiat, Mises, Hayek, and even Saul Alinsky. As an astute reader mentioned, I did not bring up W. Cleon Skousen’s The 5000 Year Leap, which Ms. Zernike’s article treats at some length.

I also did not deign to mention a few books merely cited, such as Atlas Shrugged and The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.

Why?

Well, of the books I didn’t mention, I’d only read one. And it wasn’t The 5000 Year Leap. More importantly, the title of the Times piece, what interested me about it, were the classics. The 5000 Year Leap isn’t a classic yet.

But perhaps I should ask you: Have you read it? Does it deserve to be a classic?

The New York Times didn’t exactly entice me into the book’s pages. According to the paper, Skousen thought Jefferson urged teaching Christianity in state public schools. This seems to fly in the face not only of Jefferson’s humanistic “Epicureanism” but also of the disestablishmentarianism of the Baptists for whom Jefferson supportively coined the expression “wall of separation between church and state.” (It’s often forgotten, these days, that, during our nation’s founding period, Baptists were ardent supporters of keeping religion and politics separate.)

But I’ve learned long ago, you can’t always trust the Times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.