Tag: investment

Categories
individual achievement

The Division of Adventure

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson

On Sunday, billionaire Richard Branson became the first person to ascend into space in his own spacecraft — assuming that myth, old rumors and sci-​fi stories of god-​kings and mad scientists going to the Moon or Mars remain just that, myth and rumor and fi.

“The launch with Branson marked the 22nd test flight of Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity space plane,” writes Alex Veiga for MSN. “The company has planned at least two more space test flights this year.”

Thus Branson beat Jeff Bezos into space — depending how you figure. Later in the month Bezos’s Blue Origin spacecraft is set to launch Amazon’s less-​than-​beloved billionaire even higher above the planet.*

The billionaire space race is on, with the next level to be reached when regularly scheduled flights become the norm, ticket sales and all.

This is really “just” thrill-​ride fare we are talking about here — and likely when commercial space travel first becomes normalized. Neither man is aiming to rocket into orbital space.

Yet.

Which is not to say this is not of great significance.

Of course, the fledgling industry receives criticism. Why go to space now, some say, when we have so many problems on Earth?

Well, explorers and adventurers did not wait till Europe’s problems were solved to explore and settle the Americas. They pushed forward.

Just as there is a division of labor in society, there is a division of ambition, of venture.

I will likely never go into space. But I am happy Richard Branson got there.

And I’ll applaud if you, too, jaunt upwards.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Branson and Bezos publicly squabble about what “space” is. Virgin Galactic went above the American standard of about 50 miles, while Bezos aims for the worldwide “accepted” standard of 62 miles.

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Jeff Bezos| Elon Musk | Richard Branson

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Categories
paternalism too much government

Save Me, Good and Hard

SEC, Security and Exchange Commission,

The problem with making my own decisions? I might make a mistake.

That’s not good for me, is it?

So what you government boys ought to do is make me scrape and bow and beg for permission. Make me fill out more forms, struggle with invasive new privacy-​invading requirements. Make it super-​hard to comply — so I give up before I do anything … ill-considered.

That way, you prevent me from taking actions that might just possibly go badly — like investing my own hard-​earned money the way I want to.

The SEC is seriously considering meeting this demand. 

Give it to me good and hard, SEC! 

But let me clarify. By “me” I mean every small independent investor. By “give it to me” I mean “don’t give it to me.”

Don’t do what Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton and other SEC commissioners are considering: imposing a regulation to “effectively ban many middle-​class investors from buying mutual funds and exchange-​traded funds.”

Don’t make it lots harder to use the Robinhood app to make certain low-​fee or no-​fee purchases. Don’t prevent investors from buying funds through discount brokerages and apps like Robinhood unless they first fill out an intrusive questionnaire about their personal finances and pray for permission.

Don’t make us beg to invest.

Don’t. 

Stop mulling whether to further harass Americans who want to be free to make their own choices and live their own lives. 

Don’t enslave. 

Liberate. Laissez nous faire, you condescending thugs.

This Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Why Such Slow Growth

Why such slow growth, after the federal government spent trillions to spark recovery?

Could it be that binges of throwing borrowed money around don’t matter? Spending money can’t be the solution if the problem is low or dark expectations of the future — and the spending of borrowed money feeds that dark view.

So what is the solution? 

Well, take a step back. According to economic historian Robert Higgs, the key to economic growth is “private domestic business net investment.” And that’s down. 

The peak occurred in 2007. The next two years saw the very opposite of growth, a precipitous fall in investments in private business. Last year, Higgs tells us, “net private investment increased smartly for three quarters, reaching an annual rate of $270 billion in the third quarter, then contracted sharply — by almost 47 percent — to $144 billion in the fourth quarter,” which is about a third of what it was at peak in 2007.

“Jobs,” which everybody’s thinking about, don’t come from spending as such. New jobs happen when people who save take their unspent money and invest it in production processes that they hope will yield goods that consumers in the future will spend money on.

So, private investment depends on positive expectations, a kind of rational hope.

What could government do? 

Provide less reason for fear by putting a halt to doing things that elicit rational fear instead of rational hope.

Saner government, more productive economy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.