Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Dentistry! What a job, sticking fingers into opened mouths. Probing. Drilling. Filling. Ugh.

And it must not be easy managing patients, or clients, or whatever they call the people who pay their bills.

It’s bad enough here in America; It is obviously much harder in Britain, where dentists were just told to go on vacation. By the government. Why? They had filled their work quotas. Even while millions — yes, millions — of English people can’t get in to see any dentist!

Dentistry is socialized in Britain. The government hires the dentists. Tax money — not patients directly — pay for the dental work.

So no wonder there aren’t enough dentists in Britain, and why British teeth, in general, are getting worse, even though the service is “free of charge.”

Just try to provide a free service using tax monies — you still can’t void the laws of scarcity and value by edict. If you want something, you still have to pay for it. You still have to invest. Scarce resources must go from some use and be put to another.

The trouble, as economists starting with the Austrian Ludwig von Mises have shown, is that when you try to run things by bureaucracy, forfeiting private means of production and capitalist investment and competitive markets, you give up some amazingly effective tools to organize scarce resources. And you are left with guesswork. And politics.

And, under socialized medicine, bad teeth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

If he attends the opening ceremony of the Olympic games in Beijing, President Bush will miss an opportunity . . . an opportunity to protest the Chinese government’s crackdown and jailing of dissidents in Tibet and elsewhere.

On the eve of Olympic festivities, China jailed oft-detained human rights activist Hu Jia for “inciting subversion of state power.”

A spokesman for the International Olympics Committee says Hu’s fate is a “matter of Chinese law,” that there should be a “big, fat, red line” between sports and politics. But by keeping mum the IOC is indeed making a statement. Just as they did when they picked China as the Olympic venue. They’re giving the Chinese government a green light.

At the same time, though, IOC vice president Kevin Gosper urges China to lift any censorship of the Internet during the games. It’s fine before and after the games, I guess. Gosper also objects to a law under which the Chinese can detain anyone, including athletes and ticket-holders, for up to two days without informing anybody.

That fat red line stretches thin.

Democrats like Hillary Clinton urge President Bush to skip the opening Olympic ceremony. Is she sincere or an opportunist? Doesn’t matter. In this case, politics should indeed be set aside — American domestic politics, that is.

Mr. Bush, do the right thing. Don’t attend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I am all for transparency in government. That’s why I may have expressed some skepticism, in the past, over how the Federal Reserve operates.

Alan Greenspan, former and most famous Fed chairman, was especially . . . opaque. He spoke as if he were trying not to communicate.

He could be clear, though. He said that, if he had his druthers, he would dissolve the Fed and go back to the gold standard.

But his prognostications and explanations of economic movement and Fed policy were more like something out of the Journal of German Metaphysics rather than designed to be understood by citizens and their representatives.

Now, maybe we should be amused by how Greenspan played his tough job, as Obfuscator in Chief. There’s this idea of expectations in economics, which says that if the people know what’s going to happen with money, they’ll discount the policy, and render much of its intentions without effect.

Greenspan obfuscated for a reason.

Now we learn that his PhD thesis is unavailable, kept in a locked vault. In a new book, Deception and Abuse at the Fed, author Robert Auerbach argues that this secret thesis is “symbolic of a career marked by prevarication, cover-ups and a general aversion to making the Fed more publicly accountable.” That’s how an article in Barron’s explained it, anyway. I think I’m siding with Auerbach.

But also with Greenspan. You know, the Greenspan who preferred the “transparency” of the gold standard. Or some kind of standard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Banned! First alcohol prohibition, then other drugs. Now candy.

Yes, candy is now banned on many school campuses. Why? Refined sugar is so bad for you it’s wicked.

I’m sure you know many of the major bad guys here. Twinkies. Ho Hos. Nestle’s Crunch. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Maybe you consumed some of these unsavory savories yourself in your youth. They’re not fruit and vegetables, that’s for sure.

In California the ban on intra-curricular sugar is legislative and statewide.

So, that’s that, right? No candy ever winds its way into a Golden-State kid’s lunch pail or backpack. Right?

Uh, not quite. There’s a black market. Valiant pint-sized entrepreneurs are sneaking the nefariously edible junk food onto school grounds despite the risks. According to Jim Nason, principal of Hook Junior High School, some of these rule-breakers “are walking around campus with upwards of $40 in their pockets. . . .” Forty bucks? That’s almost as high as the national debt.

It’s not just California. Sugar trafficking stretches from one coast to the other. In New Haven, Connecticut, eighth-grader and honors student Michael Sheridan was suspended for a day for buying a bag of Skittles. And banned from an honors student dinner. And not allowed to be class vice-president any more.

Seems the public schools are always panicking over something. Now, it’s sugar. When will they panic over poor education?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Everybody who wants a car that gets 100 miles per gallon, raise your hand.

Me too.

The Progressive Automotive X Prize is an international competition that will award ten million dollars to the first team to produce and market an affordable 100-mile-per-gallon car.

Many groovy possibilities are in the works. One prototype would be powered by compressed air. Another is an all-electric automobile slim as a motorcycle. Another runs on gas fumes.

I like the contest even though I dislike some of the ideas of some people who also like the contest. Modern “green” activists — as opposed to blue or yellow — too often pursue their goals by trying to block human exploitation of nature that they disagree with. They often treat property rights as an annoying impediment.

Free markets are vibrant because they provide so many ways for producers to reach us with goods we are willing to pay for. We are willing to pay for something when we’re persuaded it would be of value to us. So, it’s great when economic entrepreneurs test new products in the marketplace. Not so great it when political entrepreneurs try to impose new products on us by force. Or try to stop us from using viable alternatives.

Frankly, I’d go for a decent-priced car that gets 100 miles a gallon even if politicians and environmentalists weren’t trying to tax oil and gas out of existence.

That’s just — well, this is — Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Ever hear of outside funding, outside influence, so forth?

It can happen when somebody across the street drops by to share ideas with you. It’s pretty horrible, because somebody who was external to your location comes over and maybe has an impact on you. Which should be illegal.

Do I sound sardonic?

I have my reasons: Two other citizen activists and I are being victimized by this sort of anti-outsider attitude. In our case, as practiced by the political establishment of Oklahoma. Trying to jail us for failing to predict how they would re-interpret their own rules prohibiting so-called “non-resident” petition circulators. For the sordid details, visit freepauljacob.com .

But a recent story from Russia shows how tyrannical the anti-outsider prejudice becomes when taken to its logical (or illogical) conclusion.

President Vladimir Putin’s hand-picked successor, a previously unknown functionary, just won a meaningless political election in Russia. And now Putin is complaining about foreign funding of Russian political activists — whose activities are regularly censored and impeded by Putin’s own government, most conspicuously so during the recent non-election.

The plight of would-be practitioners of Russian democracy underscores the dangers of bans on “outside” influence. For influence, read “support for democratic rights” and “dialogue.”

Let’s hope Putin’s not taking his cue from Oklahoma. Or vice versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.