Category: folly

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Whose Side Are They On?

Uber, Lyft, Taxi, protection, tax, crony, cronyism, illustration

Excuse me if I drive over familiar roadways. But we are witnessing one of the great revolutions in human cooperation.

And our governments and politicians are working mightily to block traffic.

I refer, of course, to Uber and Lyft and the like.

The innovation that these companies bring to market? Enabling everyday drivers to leverage their personal investment in a capital good — a car or SUV — to make extra bucks (or even a living) while efficiently serving people who want rides.

Ride-​hailing apps on smart-​phones provide more security and consumer guidance than the old taxi services ever bothered to even try. The elaborate online rating system, where drivers rate riders and vice versa, provides a new market in information that outstrips government “regulation” as a consumer defense system.

And consumers get better rides, cheaper.

The Uberization of ride sharing competes directly with taxis, of course, and that’s a problem … for taxi companies. And the politicians who have regulated them for years. This regulation never was about consumer protection, but politicians just feathered their own nests with campaign contributions through crony capitalism, helping some taxi services at the expense of others.

And customers.

The latest idiocy hails from Massachusetts, which has enacted a 20¢ per trip tax on all ride-​sharing apps, with 5¢ of each charge slated for subsidizing the old, established taxi services.

Taxachusetts’s Republican governor, Charlie Baker, has been sucked in to the government racket, choosing to support old cronies rather than customers.

Still, it could have been worse. The advocates of the tax had initially demanded Uber be banned.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Uber, Lyft, Taxi, protection, tax, crony, cronyism, illustration

 

Illustration based on original cc photo by GörlitzPhotography on Flickr

 

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Two Headed Beast

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Godzilla, beast, business as usual, presidential, meme, illustration, collage

More War, More Cronyism, More Corporate Give-​Aways, More CrowdedPrisons, More Taxes, More Regulations, More Drug War, More PoliceMilitarization and Civil Rights Violations, More Assaults on Free Speech, More Economic Bungling, More Debt, More Control, More Corruption.

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Godzilla, beast, business as usual, presidential, meme, illustration, collage

 

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education and schooling folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Miseducated and Unemployed

minimum wage, illustration, money, economics

The persistence of the issue of raising the minimum wage is an indictment of public education, for at least two reasons:

  1. It shows that “our” schools are not teaching basic economics. Generally, those who think minimum wages help the poor do not understand what wages are (price of labor), why they are paid (worker productivity bolstering the bottom line) and what a minimum wage law is (a prohibition on contracting for work below the arbitrary government-​prescribed rate).
  2. It shows that schools aren’t preparing the young for real-​world activity. Wages track productivity. If disturbingly large numbers of people are affected by the minimum, that means they haven’t been adequately trained in the skills they need.

Bernie Sanders wanted a 15-​buck minimum. Hillary went on record supporting a 12-​buck rate. Donald Trump would prefer that the minimum wage regulations be enacted by the states, though he says a hike to ten dollars per hour would really help the less fortunate.

It wouldn’t.

That is the tacit theme in a Wall Street Journal piece on the recent minimum wage rate hikes in 14 American cities, including the nation’s capital. A classic, succinct article on BET makes the point even more stark: a duo of economists from Trinity University “report that when a state, or the federal government, increases the minimum wage, Black teens are more likely to be laid off. The duo analyzed 600,000 data points, which the Employment Policies Institute says included ‘a robust sample of minority young adults unprecedented in previous studies on the minimum wage.’”

Just as theory predicts.

Could it be that politicians promise a raise because they believe government-​schooled Americans too miseducated to know better?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies too much government

More Common Sense from Tom Paine

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine, quote, quotation, wrong, right, meme, illustration

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

Quote (from Paine’s “Common Sense”) verified here.

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine, quote, quotation, wrong, right, meme, illustration

 

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Accountability folly moral hazard national politics & policies

The Longest War

Afghanistan, Obama, war, quagmire, illustration, photo

Is there a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel?

President Obama announced, Wednesday, that he would leave more troops in Afghanistan when he exits office than previously planned. Instead of cutting the current troop deployment of 10,000 down to 5,500 soldiers, Obama will now keep 8,400 “in country,” continuing our longest war.

Entering the 15th year of armed conflict and military occupation, thousands of lives lost along with hundreds of billions in treasure spent to equip and train Afghan forces and build infrastructure — and buy off warlords — recent U.N. estimates find the tyrannical Taliban controlling more actual territory in Afghanistan today than before the 2001 U.S. invasion.

Don’t blame the military. Our all-​volunteer army is the greatest fighting force on the planet. But militaries break things; building new institutions and especially new modes of thinking among a foreign population is more difficult.

No political magic exists capable of turning Afghanistan into Arizona. Not this year, not the next, a decade from now, or two decades … not even a century down the road.

We must never forget that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”

And the politics don’t add up. There’s no credible plan to “win” in Afghanistan. All our leaders can muster is the witless maintenance of a deadly charade: nation-​building a nation that balks at being built, hoping the roof falls in on someone else later … in the other party.

Sometimes courage means recognizing reality.

Our men and women in uniform have better things to do than fight and die for decades in a no-​win war.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Afghanistan, Obama, war, quagmire, illustration, photo

 

Photo credit: Joseph Swafford on Flickr, courtesty of DVIDSHUB

 

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights

The Return of the Philosopher King

technocracy, expert, epistocracy Brexit, illustration

On Sunday, at Townhall, I addressed the whining attacks on referendums and “democracy” that followed the Brexit referendum.

The most outrageous? A broadside from Jason Brennan.

“To have even a rudimentary sense of the pros and cons of Brexit,” argues this Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, “a person would need to possess tremendous social scientific knowledge. One would need to know about the economics and sociology of trade and immigration, the politics of centralized regulation, and the history of nationalist movements.”

In other words, most Brits needn’t worry their pretty little heads about deciding their future; experts have everything under control.

Brennan has a new book coming out, Against Democracy, wherein he posits that we need “a new system of government — epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable.”

Sound familiar? ’Tis the old Platonic whine in new wineskins.

This Philosopher King is necessary, you see, because citizens don’t posses the advanced degrees to judge whether Brennan is right or wrong. We can’t even find a Holiday Inn Express in the phonebook. Or a phonebook.

Nonetheless, why not consult other known knowers?

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., well-​educated and well-​spoken on political matters, once declared that he would “rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory, than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

“Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-​proclaimed expertise are always rank-​closing and mutually self-​defending, above all else,” warned journalist Glenn Greenwald, an expert on such hooey.

“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

Most decisions in a free society are thankfully made by individuals (not voters, bureaucrats, or academics) about their own lives.

But when legitimate decisions of governance must be made, I’ll take democracy over rule by experts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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