Common Sense with Paul Jacob

On Jan. 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.

Today

Molinari died, January 28

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 28, 2015
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On January 28, 1912, Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari died. One of the last major economists of the French Liberal School, heir to Frederic Bastiat, and a prominent advocate of laissez faire, Molinari’s last book, “The Society of To-morrow” (the only one of his many books to be translated into English in his day) envisioned a future of extremely limited government, and argued against the growing tide of socialism and war that was becoming all too apparent as the future of Europe.

responsibility

Learning from Defeat

Coach Michael Anderson and the girls on his team did too well.

At least according to officials at Arroyo Valley High School in San Bernardino, who suspended him for “running up” the 161-2 score.

Here we go again.

Anderson is, alas, apologetic. But there’s nothing morally wrong with winning — or with losing, either — an honest basketball game. No matter what the margin.

And it’s vicious to teach either adults or kids that they should shoot for less than their best. Should kids also be telling their bosses, twenty years down the line, that they’re deliberately doing third-rate work this month so that less able co-workers (or competitors) won’t feel so bad?

Bloomington Coach Dale Chung says people should not feel sorry for his team, but for the Arroyo team, which “isn’t learning the game the right way.”

No, coach. To accept responsibility for a bad loss without casting blame, then to work to improve, takes grit, persistence and grace. It’s something we all must learn to do in life. It’s the real magic of sport. And easy wins don’t teach us that. Hard losses do. Why are you communicating the opposite?

If you’re doing very badly at an important task — figure out how to do better. Don’t assume that you should be accorded a fraudulent “better” regardless of actual effort and achievement; don’t chastise winners and call them “unethical” for doing their very best; don’t teach your charges that winners should hobble themselves out of “fairness.”

And if you’re a winner? Don’t apologize.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags sports, sportsmanship

meme

On This Day: January 27, End to Military Draft

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 27, 2015
No Comments on On This Day: January 27, End to Military Draft

The day the U.S. military draft ended:

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Today

Draft ends

On Jan. 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force. However, the Selective Service System, the federal agency that would administer a military draft, continues to be funded and American males continue to be forced to register for the draft.

Today

Auschwitz liberated

On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp built by the Nazis.

Thought

Alexander Cockburn

A “just war” is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

free trade & free markets too much government

Experience Denied

Jan Ellison is grateful for the low-wage jobs she had as a kid.

“The difference from the way my own children are being raised is that I was acutely aware of the financial burden of these [educational and other] pursuits. . . . I made money of my own from age 11 onward. I had a paper route. I cleaned houses and swimming pools. I took clerical temp jobs. . . . I can’t say that any of this was important work, but the act of doing it mattered.”

She learned to “work for the ticket” that would take her to better things.

That minimum wage laws make it harder to gain such experience is a problem raised not by Ellison but by a Cafe Hayek reader, Mike Wilson, who calls her memoir “as powerful a case against raising the minimum wage as I have encountered.” (Strictly speaking, against establishing or enforcing any wage-rate floor.)

Wilson’s sensible point is that when you’re just starting out in the work force, you must develop the habits and skills needed to do a job well and to then go beyond it. These include punctuality, mastering procedures, accepting corrections with grace, being civil, staying productive and careful when you’re tired, and more.

What you can bring immediately to a job is willingness to learn what’s necessary. But the higher your pay must be before you’ve made yourself worth that pay, the harder for employers to give you the chance to make yourself worth it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags minimum wage, price floors, regulation

Thought

Kirkpatrick Sale

Everyone is shy — it is the inborn modesty that makes us able to live in harmony with other creatures and our fellows. Achievement comes not by denying shyness but, occasionally, by setting it aside and letting pride and perspiration come first.