Tag: free markets

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism property rights too much government

Of Salt and Socialism

Venezuela, socialism, free markets, capitalism, poverty, celebrities, freedom, repression, starvation

Nearly 75 percent of Venezuelans have lost 19 pounds or more in 2016. “People have become so desperate,” the Miami Herald reported recently, “that they are butchering and eating flamingos.”

While acknowledging the problem, TeleSUR, a television network based in Venezuela and funded by governments including Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, called the Herald’s story “kooky” and suggested taking reports “like alleged flamingo eating with a grain of salt.”

If, in socialist Venezuela, one could find a grain of salt.

In America, salt is necessary, too, when listening to our socialist Hollywood celebs blather about their kooky diets, for which some are blaming President Trump.*

Socialism kills. The deprivations in Venezuela are no joke, for along with economic chaos, Venezuelans are experiencing political repression on a grand scale. A new report from Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), documents the thousands arrested for protesting or “having posted something against the national government or a public official on Twitter.” The report details the “curtailment of civil, political and electoral freedoms” and “torture” and “censorship.”

Almagro calls for the suspension of Venezuela’s membership in the OAS, which is long overdue. The Human Rights Foundation demanded that nine years ago.

The Obama administration opposed such a move, as the Washington Post editorialized, in order to pursue “a legacy-making détente” with “the Castro regime in Cuba.”

At Townhall,** I urged Trump to support the effort to boot Venezuela out of the OAS, which might provide some assistance toward political change there . . . and Venezuelans eating more.

And perhaps to socialists in Hollywood and elsewhere eating crow . . . but not flamingo.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I covered this last week, when I compared their Trump Diet nonsense to the “Maduro Diet,” named for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the socialist dictator presiding over the complete economic collapse of what, prior to socialism, had been South America’s richest country.

** From which this Common Sense is adapted.

Printable PDF

 

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets government transparency ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

A Diminishing Lagtime

Flint, water, crisis, government, austerity

The modern age sports an amazing feature that used to be hard to detect, because so drawn out: a shorter-than-ever-before lag between the proposal of some popular inanity and its complete debunking.

It used to take seemingly forever for a bad idea to be shown up, either in argument or evidence. Now it can be a matter of days or even hours. Call it the Buncombe/Debunking Lagtime.

Take the Flint, Michigan, water fiasco.

When the story hit the news cycle, almost immediately the progressive meme machinery began cranking out slogans imposed upon visuals — jpegs and gifs — to the effect that the poisoned water was the result of Republican “austerity” or (even) “libertarian” policy.

Somehow a Democratic mayor was less to blame than a more distant Republican governor, but in the minds of knee-jerk partisans, common sense is not as important as an in-your-face accusation.

But now, days and scant weeks into the story, it turns out that the story behind the story is not merely wrong, but entirely, upside-down wrong. The Flint water fiasco was caused by a stimulus project, and the switch from bad to worse water sources was made to promote “jobs”!

In the words of Reason’s Shikha Dalmia, “the Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong.”

Yes, another failed Big Government policy — just like progressives are always pushing.

And it didn’t take years for the truth to seep out.

Hooray for today’s accelerated history! Now, if we could only decrease the lagtime between lesson given and lesson learned.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Flint, water, crisis, government, austerity

 

Categories
folly free trade & free markets ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Flint Water Crisis

Flint, water, crisis, poison, government, free market, austerity, failure, Common Sense, Meme, James Gill, Paul Jacob

Government failure checklist. . .

Reference:

The Government Poisoned Flint’s Water—
So Stop Blaming Everyone Else

Flint’s water crisis isn’t a failure of austerity. It’s a failure of government.

Click below for high resolution version of this image.

Flint, water, crisis, poison, government, free market, austerity, failure, Common Sense, Meme, James Gill, Paul Jacob

 

Categories
folly general freedom too much government

All Wet

Water Shortage

Which is worse, paying for stuff you use . . . or being constantly harassed for using it?

One consequence of widespread failure to charge market rates for water turns out to be hyper-regulation of hydro-usage, and the penalizing — even criminalizing — of using “too much” H2O.

To deal with drought, California now regards it as criminal to “waste” water. Don’t hose down that sidewalk! Las Vegas tries to save water by paying people to rip out their lawns. The EPA is developing technology to force hotels to monitor guests’ specific water usage.

In unhampered markets, sudden and big drops in supply tend to cause sudden and big rises in prices. People economize without being forced. If you must pay more for orange juice because of frozen crops, you either buy less juice or buy less of something else (if orange juice is your favorite thing). But the shelves don’t go bare.

The worse supply problems are, the higher the prices, the more customers economize, the more producers produce. So when there’s a local drought, what will a water company do (as opposed to an overweening water authority)? Charge more. Pipe in water from other states. Other solutions I can’t think of offhand . . . because I’m not running a water company. I lack the direct incentive that the possible profit from solving the problem provides.

Let people cooperate with each other. That is how they’ll solve their water problems — without governmental bullying.

The water will come like rain.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

 

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

The Chamber, Loaded Against the Free Market

You are familiar with the notion that businesses support the free market, while concerned citizens demand some sort of “regulatory oversight” by government.

It’s a canard.

Oh, some businessmen do indeed support free markets and decry subsidies — and lots of businesses oppose this regulation or that — but, on the whole, the major support for a regulatory regime, or for subsidies and tariffs, for almost any scheme of government control of business, is usually business itself.

Like individuals, businesses too often turn to government for special advantages — over other businesses, or over taxpayers.

That’s why the United States Chamber of Commerce gave Congressman Ron Paul such low marks. You could hardly find a more pro-free-market gentleman in Washington. But, as Timothy Carney notes in the Washington Examiner, 90 percent of Democrats got higher marks on the Chamber’s 2009 congressional scorecard than did Paul, who also got the lowest marks of any Republican.

Why?

Rep. Paul opposed the recent stimulus bill. And he opposed subsidizing the tourism industry as well as solar energy.

The Chamber is a typical business lobbying outfit, favoring an inefficient, mixed economy because some of its leading members hope to milk the taxpayers.

If you are a member of the Chamber but support the fair play of the free market, not the rigged play of government-business “partnerships,” you might want to speak up against your Chamber’s policies.

Or join another group.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Big Brother vs. Burger and Fries

Restaurants in some towns are now being forced to stop using trans fats. According to the latest biochemistry, trans fats are bad for you.

No doubt. Many foodstuffs are bad for you, can even kill you, at least in the long run. Maybe — if you eat too much of them, exercise too little, and don’t get flattened by a Mack truck before your vessels clog.

But what business is it of anyone in government what risks I take to enjoy my candy bar? And if it’s kosher to ban restaurants from using trans fats, what’s next, outlawing sugar, grease, and fast food?

Outlawing fast food? McDonald’s will always be with us.

Except in South Los Angeles, where a town council has just passed a year-long moratorium on new fast-food restaurants.

And so yesterday’s argument from absurdity becomes today’s compromise and tomorrow’s legislation. South LA is not facing an outright ban on fast food. But what the  nutritional tyrants are doing there comes close. And nudges us closer to the outright prohibition they would prefer. They just don’t want individuals to make their own choices about what food to eat or restaurants to patronize.

What’s next, a moratorium on . . . well, let’s not give these guys any more ideas, even absurd ones. What we can conceive as idiotic they can spiff up as policy. And somehow not laugh.

But then, I’m not laughing now, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.