Category: too much government

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Road to Number One

Good news and bad news.

The good news: F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, an exploration of the fallacies of socialism and the very real political hazards of bureaucratic, centralized planning, has been riding high on Amazon.com’s bestseller list. It even made it to No. 1 on the list, and is No. 6 as I write.

Pretty amazing for a reprint of a 66-​year-​old treatise on how economic controls foster tyranny.

Economist Hayek’s most accessible tome first hit it big in the 1940s, especially after Reader’s Digest excerpted it. The book resurges in popularity now thanks to something a bit different than a Digest excerpt. Glenn Beck featured it on his controversial talk show, praising it in glowing terms.

But there’s a deeper reason for its comeback, the reason Beck turned to in the first place: Its insights seem particularly relevant in an era of spastic expansion of government power. 

That’s the bad news.

Gene Healey, at Cato Institute’s blog, suggests that “the underlying reason for the sustained interest in Hayek’s book is that it taps into a profound dissatisfaction in the public mind with the machinations of its government. Both Presidents Bush and Obama have presided over huge growth in the size of the federal government.… Things seem out of control.”

Maybe, with Hayek’s help, we can hang a U‑ee and reverse course.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

The Maywood Solution

What do you do when your town’s politics has been bitter and internecine for years, when your police force is best known for hiring disgraced cops from other departments, and when your town budget is nearly half a million bucks in the red?

Give up.

Well, not quite. The town of Maywood, not far south of downtown Los Angeles, was in just such a pickle, and resorted to a rather extreme solution: The elected officials, town manager, and city attorney kept their positions, but everybody else was let go.

The move was forced by the fact that no insurance company would guarantee the burg. The town had grown so iffy on all counts that it would have been crazy to bet on it. Thus placed in legal jeopardy, the town’s leaders decided that the only way to keep their jobs was to get rid of all others.

No. Wait. That’s too cynical. With a civic culture so corrupt something had to be done to move forward.

That makes Maywood’s next step almost sheer genius: Contract police, fire, everything else to neighboring, better-​run jurisdictions. The county Sheriff takes over police patrols. Bell, a neighbor city, takes over the bulk of municipal services.

The new arrangement begins July 1. This makes Maywood one city to watch. Could it be a bellwether? In collapsing California, very likely.

And what about other cities in other states? It might mean a revolution: Economic competition for public services.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets tax policy too much government

Cinema Without Subsidy

Yesterday I insisted that states stop subsidizing filmmaking. Implied, I hope, was the notion that states needn’t provide tax credits to lure movie shoots to their state, either.

No sooner did I wrap up that argument (with the premature proclamation “end of story”) than I read a fine article on Show Me Daily about how “States Can Entice Businesses and Industries Without Credits.” The article begins talking about making films in Wisconsin, where the tax credits were just cut by two thirds. And yet the state has nabbed some major film efforts.

According to Show Me, “Wisconsin sets a great example.…” Every state has something going for it, unique locations, geography, architecture, people, climate, what-​have-​you. “Firms will locate” where they do for relevant reasons; “they don’t need to be bribed with generous incentive packages.”

But, but, but, but! some will sputter. Film companies are special firms. They start up, inhabit a location for a while, and then vamoose. State regulations and business taxation often makes it very difficult to shoot in a particular place. Filmmakers need special help around encumbering bureaucratic obstacles.

I’m sympathetic. For example, the business-​and-​occupation taxes that increasing numbers of states are instituting are horrendously burdensome: They take from gross revenues, of all things! 

But the proper way around such counter-​productive laws is outright repeal, setting up better state revenue programs … ones that are not so generally destructive of industry, including the film industry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Knot Cannibalism!

Midas, in honor of his peasant-​turned-​king father, King Gordias, dedicated an ox-​cart to the gods, tying it with a knot so complex no one could undo it. It was there years later when Alexander of Macedon stopped by, and turned his hand to untying it. He couldn’t. So he took his sword and cut it open.

Some seemingly insoluble problems are best solved by stepping back and “cutting the Gordian knot.”

Take a current knot, fictional cannibalism. The auteur responsible for the gore-​fest The Offspring recently sought funding for another cannibalism horror film, to be entitled The Woman.

The funder turned him down. “This film is unlikely to promote tourism in Michigan or to present or reflect Michigan in a positive light,” said the head honcho of the funding institution, the state’s film commission.

Two years ago, that tax-​funded organization produced 26 separate efforts. “Isn’t that just amazing?” Commissioner Janet Lockwood gurgled.

But her turning down funding for a horror film, for reasons of content, have let loose a storm of criticism. Some say that when government says “no” to an artistic product on content grounds, that’s censorship.

They are right.

Others say they don’t want their tax dollars going to vile, disgusting depictions of cannibalism and other vices and crimes.

And they are right, too.

The solution? Cut the knot of this problem in one swipe: Governments shouldn’t fund films. End of story. [Roll credits.]

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people political challengers too much government

The Story of Our Time

The election season is heating up and challengers are making headway. So, here comes the name-​calling by media hot-​heads. The boiling point was quickly reached when Keith Olbermann called a Tea Party candidate a liar and a traitor, declaring that the challenger should be arrested and jailed.

This is, sadly, not unexpected.

In the 20th century, what was once considered radical and extremist became mainstream. The common sense wisdom of America’s founders was thrown out for imported philosophies like socialism and “dirigisme.” The leading intellectuals at the start of the century, many educated in Germany, took home doctrines of limitless government and added a can-​do American spirit, creating Progressivism and then the New Deal.

Big Government went from the thing most feared to Our Friend.

Then, in England, a socialist noted that this alleged Big Brother could be awfully cruel, the opposite of fraternal. An Austrian economist explained how even well-​intentioned government, if unlimited by a rule of law, could send us all down the road to serfdom. A backlash began.

Though increasing numbers of intelligent, concerned citizens began to doubt and then decry the growth of government, government continued to grow. And establishment opinion called supporters of limited government “extremists” and “radicals.”

Now, as government spending lurches beyond all sanity, it’s the establishment that appears extremist.

Expect a few skirling kettles to boil over this season. And then boil dry — and empty. Like the establishment’s big government philosophy itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights media and media people too much government

Liberty and Licenses

Oh, no. We’re being drowned — in alternatives.

Remember the good old days, with three choices for national broadcast news, Walter Cronkite and whoever the other guys were? Plus the local paper and the New York Times? Sure, there were other avenues. But if the big boys happened to have a unitary government-​approved perspective on something, you could battle uphill for years with hardly anyone noticing your particular flag.

Then cable arrived. The Internet. Zillions of webzines and blogs. If you want an alternative to whatever the Official View is, you don’t have to look very far or for very long. It’s harder for the powers that be to burble baloney unchallenged.

Big, big problem, all this competition, right?

It is according to Michigan State Senator Bruce Patterson. He wants to license journalists the way Michigan licenses plumbers and hair dressers.

From what I can tell, the state can’t be trusted with protecting us from bad hair cuts, let alone tell us who’s best suited to toot out the news. But Patterson says we’re being overwhelmed by all the media outlets. Poor us! So we need guvmint — which always puts the truth first, of course — to tell us good reporting from bad. 

Think about this: The traditional job of journalism is to provide a check on lying politicians. Now politicians will vet those who get the privilege to criticize them?

Puh-​leeze.

Patterson, we’ll take a pass.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.