The only people who object to escapism are jailers.
C. S. Lewis, as quoted by Arthur C. Clarke, God, The Universe and Everything Else (1988).
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C. S. Lewis
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Good Sailing
On May 6, 1862, American author, philosopher and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau died, after many years of tuberculosis.
Aware he was dying, Thoreau’s last words were “Now comes good sailing,” followed by two lone words, “moose” and “Indian.” Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau’s works, and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral.
His remains, as well as those of members of his immediate family, were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.
His most famous works are An Essay on Civil Disobedience (1849) and Walden (1854).
One of the objections people often make to the idea of private enterprise as a solution to government inefficiency is The Argument from Incredulity.
It’s not an argument at all, actually, just a harrumph and a guffaw: we cannot have free-market police, or fire suppression, or . . . garbage collection!
But of course all those things are successfully managed in the private sector.
No media outfit has a longer history of pointing this out than Reason magazine. So when the editors of Reason brought us Joe Lancaster’s “Government Waste Monopoly Pits Private Dumpster Business Against Garbage Bureaucrats,” yesterday, I hope they took a moment to revel in a little nostalgia. For this is the kind of story that made Reason what it is today, one of the best sources for retail political economy.
The tale tells of Steven Hedrick, an Arkansas man who put together a business renting out dumpsters — like you often see on construction sites, but smaller — which he would haul away after customers filled them. He built the business without ever going into debt, and then . . . came the government.
“[I]n April 2022, the City Council in Holiday Island passed Ordinance 2022-004, which required all residents and businesses within the city to contract with the county sanitation authority, Carroll County Solid Waste (CCSW), for trash pickup and disposal services,” Reason informs us. “Anyone using private companies would have to switch, and anyone who did not have contracted trash service would have to sign up.”
And Hedrick’s little business must be . . . dumped.
What this is, at base? Sheer bigotry: preferring monopoly government to competitive private services.
For those of us who’ve been reading Reason for decades, it sports a familiar smell.
Just not a good odor, for the drive to monopolize everything stinks.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Jerry Pournelle
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Jerry Pournelle, at jerrypournelle.com.
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Cinco de Mayo
In 1862, troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza stopped a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico — an event leading to the popular “Cinco de Mayo” celebration.
No cause for celebration, however, is the anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth 205 years ago.
“Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down,” challenges Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Never. I never did,” he told the New York Times last week.
We sure are a long way from the heady days when he proclaimed, “I am the Science.” It’s more like in the book of Genesis, where Cain asks the great rhetorical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
In other words, Fauci’s trying to set the record . . . crooked.
For Fauci was the Authority that bolstered all the advice from the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere, urging mask mandates and lockdowns and what-have-you.
Now, he is doing more than back-pedaling. He is shifting blame. Blame for failed policies.
But he’s not alone in this. For The Epoch Times, Petr Svab notes another famous back-pedaler: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Watch Ms. Weingarten declare on C-Span, “We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open,” but click that link and read the Twitter crowd-sourced fact-checks, showing how that’s . . . deceptive:
- “Weingarten is misrepresenting her prior positions. She called attempts to reopen schools in the fall of 2020 ‘Reckless, callous, cruel’
- “Her union pushed aggressively at the local level
- “Areas with high union influence remained closed much longer
- “They continued in 2022”
We still argue about how much COVID leaders lied during the heat of the panic. I advised, at the time, to give them a little leeway.
Regarding policy, that is.
Not lying.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Alexis de Tocqueville
The foremost, or indeed the sole, condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), as quoted in Robert Nisbet, The New Despotism (1976).
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Prescott, Tiananmen & the Freedom Riders
On May 4, 1796, American historian William H. Prescott was born. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico and his Conquest of Peru remain classic works of well-researched, “scientific history.” Prescott, Arizona, was named in his honor.
The May Fourth Movement began on May 4, in 1919: Student demonstrations took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan.
In 1961 on May 4, the “Freedom Riders” began a bus trip through the South.
Thirty-two trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money we don’t have.
I checked the U.S. Debt Clock last night. The federal government was, at that time, $200 billion shy of owing that amount, $32 trillion.
It’s such a big number that it doesn’t seem real.
Maybe that’s why politicians ignore it. And keep spending, adding to it.
All spending that seems fishy contributes to that debt. But so, alas,does spending that a majority of Americans may want. When you are over-spending, all spending contributes to the red ink.
Still, to witness elected government officials throw money around with reckless abandon is especially irksome. Consider all the taxes that pay for that debt, continually as well as eventually. And the misdirected investments that get derailed from productive activity just to fund that debt.
Today’s example of idiotic spending? A mere $500,000. Half a million bucks. Chump change — next to the trillions on budget lines.
So this half-a-million is slotted to go to Pakistan.
To train Pakistanis to speak, read and write in English.
But the kicker’s in the headline, courtesy of The Epoch Times: “Biden Earmarks $500,000 for Transgender Youth, Other Groups in Pakistan.” The blurb makes the obvious point I wish to drive home: “Biden ‘hell-bent on spending money we don’t have,’ said Rep. Ralph Norman’s office.”
Biden’s prodigality will provide “intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth.”
The old saw about such foreign aid runs, “Don’t we have transgender youth in this country to help?”
But better to join Rep. Norman and point to the debt clock. And shake our heads.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Niven & Pournelle
In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.
Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven, Lucifer’s Hammer (1985).