Category: free trade & free markets

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free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture

Taboos Against Toke Talk

Not all taboos are alike. Some are backed by the full force of law. Other taboos are enforced merely by polite opinion and the snubs of the cold shoulder.

Have you noticed how the latter kind feeds the former?

John Payne, executive director of Missouri’s Show Me Cannabis Regulation, was recently asked on Mike Ferguson’s Missouri Viewpoints why the politics of marijuana has changed in recent years. His answer is worth contemplating:

[O]ne thing that’s finally changing is that the taboo around talking about this has finally started to drop away. Pretty much, people have thought that any discussion of the issue . . . has been labeled almost criminal in and of itself. Just talking about legalizing it means that not only do you support the use but you yourself are a user.

He calls the old view a “stereotype,” and says that its repulsive — shaming? — effects seem to be dwindling — the town meetings he has been conducting around Missouri have certainly been drawing huge crowds.

Interestingly, later on in the show, the pro-drug war gentleman shot back exactly in the old-school manner. He demanded to know “why [marijuana legalizers] don’t frankly come out and say ‘because we want to get high!’” He was dismissive of Mr. Payne’s reasoning. He’ll only accept the confession: “I want to get high.”

Apparently, individual freedom coupled with personal responsibility — principle — is not something the drug warrior finds very convincing. Unlike growing numbers of Americans who now seem, at the very least, more than willing to engage in what Payne calls a “rational debate.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

Greenspan’s Tarnished Standard

Long ago, before becoming Federal Reserve Inflater-in-Chief, Alan Greenspan advocated a gold standard.

The idea is that everybody pays for things in gold, a natural medium of exchange. Receipts for gold used for convenience in trade are “backed” and can be easily redeemed. With appropriate protections in place, politicians can’t dilute the value of money by printing more receipts or by shuffling phosphor dots on a computer screen.

But our world is very different.

At the Fed, Greenspan oversaw a lot of credit expansion, encouraging a horde of folks who couldn’t afford homes to take out mortgages. Any discussion of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, or why “we” “failed to predict” it, must discuss Fed policies and other government interventions.

Not, though, if you’re a former Federal Reserve chairman intimately aware of those policies and fully capable of grasping their baleful effects. Then you blather about “irrational exuberance,” or, in a new article for Foreign Affairs magazine, Keynes’s “animal spirits.”

Not a word about how monetary inflation spawns malinvestments that must eventually be washed away. Indeed, the best interpretation of Greenspan’s new book, or his appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is that Greenspan is doing his utmost to deflect attention from his own disastrous record.

He’d rather have us believe that “free markets” failed in 2008, not — oh, no! — the policies he himself had pushed since obtaining his seat as head honcho at America’s inflationary central bank.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Obamacare as Bad as Windows 8?

The spectacular failure of Healthcare.gov to sign people up for the much-promised easy-to-access “healthcare” plans, has now gone mainstream.

So, how bad is it?

Worse than Windows 8?

Just as I know of no one, personally, who has bought a medical coverage package through the new Obamacare system, I also know of no one, personally, who likes Windows 8 . . . at least, on a non-touchscreen computer.

So, are the disasters comparable?

Healthcare.gov fails to hook customers with insurers; Windows 8 fails to do basic o.s.-type tasks, like allow you to do your work.

Still, people are buying Windows 8 computers. Voluntarily. But sales are down, far enough that a number of manufacturers have been selling computers without operating systems installed. And Microsoft is offering discounts to manufacturers for including Windows 8.

Surely Microsoft will speed up the delivery of Windows 9, or at least some fix that makes Windows 8 more usable.

But what will the Obama Administration do?

There are a lot of expert Web technicians out there. For hire. Big companies — Amazon, Travelocity, Priceline — find them and manage to put together successful online trading services. So, surely if the government spends two or three times what businesses spend, it will get a workable system about half as good.

It’s what we expect from government.

Of course, Microsoft could fail, and isn’t too big to fail. But I expect it will survive, simply because of the possibility. The fear. The disincentive.

Those who believe in government über alles, however, forswear such incentives. Bad programs are expected to continue forever and ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Affordable [sic] Healthcare [sick]

The Pelosi-Obama Affordable Care Act was passed as a pig-in-a-poke. Now with that poke open, with the pig fully emergent as of next year, what do we know about “Obamacare”?

  1. It’s not socialized medicine, but it is heavily regulated- and subsidized-medicine, almost designed not to work. Its inevitable failures will be said to require more government as “fixes,” eventually (some Democrats hope) going all the way to, yes, socialized medicine.

  2. It’s chockfull of new subsidies, which raise medical costs by making demand for services even more inelastic . . . and thus can only increase taxpayer burdens and more strain on budgets. The original reason so many Americans opposed the reform was that promoting a new “entitlement” even as the old entitlements of Social Security and Medicaid teetered further into insolvency was the very opposite of common sense.
  3. It’s filled with new “mandates” at every level, for businesses as well as individuals. A few have been postponed, but the bulk of the increased regulations are indeed going into effect next year. That will generally raise prices.

But by how much? Well, a new all-state study predicts that

insurance premiums will increase under the first year of Obamacare in 45 of 50 states. This finding flies in the face of President Obama’s promise that his health care overhaul would cause premiums “for the typical family” to fall by $2500.

Why the decrease in five states?

Those had already embraced the goofy over-regulations that Democrats just seem to love.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Resistance Is Not Futile

Who says signing up for Obamacare is all snarls and snafus?

Thirty-year-old law student Brian Mahoney already had a high-deductible, low-premium insurance plan. But the day the Obamacare exchanges went online, he decided to check it out. For him, unlike thousands of others, signing up was easy.

Great. Except that . . . Mahoney had been paying for medical insurance, and now he’s on Medicaid. The website told him he was eligible. Thus, the “success” here is the triumph of making a capable adult less self-responsible and more dependent on government handouts.

And that’s bad. If we care about our freedom, what we must do is resist appeals, or demands, that we forfeit control over our lives — even if offered a mess of pottage in return. Refuse to cooperate with the bureaucrats and politicians. Not become martyrs, but resist to the extent that we can resist. Even if it’s, well, more than a tad inconvenient. Certainly we should not submit to new chains and crutches eagerly.

A reader at the Hot Air blog reports that when he asked his doctor about “about how our electronic records would be used and protected” under the Obamacare regime, the doctor replied: “We’re not keeping electronic records. We refuse to comply with Obamacare. We’re not switching over.”

Good for you, Doc. We need more like you.

I certainly don’t want my medical records in the hands of government . . . to name just one of the things having to do with me, my rights and my life that I don’t want government anywhere near.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Billions to Billionaires

I began the week talking about opera. If I end the week discussing football, you can be sure that I’m closer to my home turf.

Which doesn’t make this any easier, for, though many operas stay afloat with taxpayer funds, far more taxpayer money goes to football.

The National Football League, owned by billionaires whose product rakes in big bucks through ticket sales and eye-popping broadcast fees, could certainly support itself. And yet these rich folk don’t merely pass the hat, they wave guns under the table, extorting money out of taxpayers across the country.

Writing in The Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook surveys the damage. He might as well channel Carl Sagan, for the answer to “how much do taxpayers waste on football?” is “billions and billions.”

Santa Clara’s new “home” for the 49ers is a $1.3 billion stadium, which, writes Easterbrook, although largely “underwritten by the public,” will drive revenue that will mostly “be pocketed by Denise DeBartolo York, whose net worth is estimated at $1.1 billion, and members of her family.”

So much of subsidy ends up helping mainly the rich. Opera? Mainly an upper class thing. Football? It may reach the lowbrow, but boy, do the rich make out like bandits, off the taxpayers.

Indeed, argues Easterbrook, this is worse than the bailouts. “Public handouts for modern professional football never end and are never repaid.”

If you don’t oppose subsidies to football, which are obviously unnecessary transfer payments from the poor to the super rich, what subsidy would you oppose?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture too much government

A Shrill Note

The New York City Opera — the one that just produced an opera about Anna Nicole Smith — may close its doors soon unless it comes up with seven million dollars. That’s the gist of a New York Times story that doubles as an appeal to philanthropic opera buffs.

From comments at the site we learn that some readers feel that the opera house has been mismanaged. Others issue instructions to various deep-pocketed luminaries, telling them that here’s their chance do something for the city and their own legacy. Others heatedly defend the “Anna Nicole” opera against detractors.

Then we have this remark, from someone who calls himself BullMoose: “Tell me again how private charity works better than government subsidies.” That’s it. No argument, just a hit-and-run exclamation of ideological discontent with private enterprises, which don’t invariably succeed. Government-subsidized enterprises don’t necessarily succeed either; but the dole can keep them in operation regardless of whether they are doing something worth doing and doing it well enough to please customers willing to pay.

Private charity works better than funds forcibly extracted from me and other taxpayers because private charity is voluntary. When our contributions are voluntary, it means we don’t have to support artistic or other projects that we have no interest in and may even oppose. We are free to use our own judgment, devoting our limited resources to the things we care about . . . instead of the things BullMoose cares about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

To Dream the “Impossible” Repeal

Senator Ted Cruz’s non-filibuster filibuster, monopolizing the Senate floor for the ninth hour as I type these words, is easy to characterize — if you are Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

Easy to make fun of, especially when the senator read Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story for his children — via C-Span.

It’s not a filibuster, since it stops no vote. It’s not even a speed-bump on the way to a vote. It’s something of a demonstration by one senator and a few of his allies to highlight the dangers of the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, and the necessity to repeal it. Marshaling emails, tweets, and open letters, Cruz hopes to pressure the unmovable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow a vote on an amendment to defund Obamacare.

The point is this: Attacking Obamacare can’t help but seem quixotic. Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, we who want less government — who want to limit government — often find ourselves jousting with giants who don’t budge, or (ahem) budget.

So of course we do appear comic, now and then.

But there’s also a reason that when Broadway and then Hollywood turned Cervantes’ classic into a musical, Don Quixote became something of a hero. The dream of justice, of economy, of equality before the law, of humility before the forces of nature, and resilience before the hordes of delusional politicians, does seem impossible.

But not fighting it, whatever peaceful way we can, would be disgraceful.

Ted Cruz is heroic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets

Dis-united We Stand

In 2011, when the battle in Wisconsin raged between Governor Walker and his allies on the one hand and the public employee unions on the other, the two sides seemed monolithic. Especially the union side, with thousands of members swarming the state capitol to march in angry protest.

It would be calamity, union reps declared, were any concession made to the requirements of fiscal sobriety. Union members should not be required to contribute more to their health care or pension costs; suffer any limits on pay raises or collective bargaining; and certainly not be required to let their own members decide whether they wished to remain in a union.

It’s this last point that suggested a not-so-very-monolithic union force after all. Now that members are being asked whether they want their unions, the state’s public employee unions are losing between 30 to 60 percent of their members in various cities and counties.

In the Kenosha Unified School District, Wisconsin’s third largest, only 37 percent of the membership voted to re-certify their union. An official with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) trade union admits that “the majority of our affiliates in the state aren’t seeing re-certification, so I don’t think the KEA is . . . unique in this.”

“As it turns out,” writes blogger Brian Fraley, “Act 10 was the largest anti-bullying initiative in the nation. Who knew?”

Well, now, we all should.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Bailout Follies

Economic news, these days, seems to be driving home some very old economic wisdom — about foolishness.

In an essay on banking from the 19th century, a writer quipped, “The ultimate result of shielding men from folly, is to fill the world with fools.” This basic lesson — that it is dangerous to shore up bad practices with bailouts and specially tuned central banking policies — is being borne out, once again, in the American economy. Thank the L.A. Times’s sad, sad article “Forget too big too fail: some banks now too small to succeed.” The article’s blurb nicely synopsizes smaller, non-bailed-out banks’ plight: “Small banks are finding it increasingly tough to survive, in part because of the cost of complying with regulations stemming from the financial crisis.”

Remember that 2008’s financial implosion led to a double whammy of governmental overkill:

  1. Bailouts for the biggest fools and
  2. Regulations for everybody, including the wisest players.

The former kept the fools in place and ready to do more damage, since their folly had basically been rewarded. The latter burdens all players, but the costs are hardest for smaller outfits to bear, while bigger outfits can easily jump those regulatory hurdles.

The details of all this constitute “news,” but the principles are old (I’ve discussed them here many times). Bailouts reward the biggest fools, and regulations protect the biggest players from competition from smaller ones.

Yes, indeed, the ultimate result of shielding bankers from the effects of their folly is to fill the world with foolish bankers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.