Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast,
and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
Edward Teller
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
Chart of the Day: ObamaDebt Ownership
 |
| Via Learn Liberty on FB |
Obama Isn't Even a Good Car Salesman:
No Test Drive Without Loan Application and Credit Check...
Forbes has an interesting post, arguing that the bungled rollout reflected the fact that the Administration was worried about people getting sticker shock from plan premiums: after all, they might qualify for a taxpayer-paid substitute. But to figure out whether they might qualify for a subsidy required verification from multiple sources, all requiring bandwidth. This is patently absurd: if you were buying a new/used car, would you agree to fill out a long application and wait for a credit check just to do a test drive? I wouldn't. This was incompetent management, not trusting people with basic pricing information almost any private-sector company provides from the get-go. They fear people will find out the Affordable Care Act is not so affordable. Totally political.
Via Patriot Post:
According to CNSNews, “Bureaucracies in the Obama Administration have thus far published approximately 11,588,500 words of final Obamacare regulations, while there are only 381,517 words in the Obamacare law itself. That means unelected federal officials have now written 30 words of regulations for each word in the law.”My Greatest Hits: October 2013
It's very clear for some reason certain posts are picking up false statistics, most likely Russian spammers. (For example, another statistic over the past day showed more Russian than American readers, and the two posts picking up the most hits are September posts, not my latest.) So the posts listed below don't include the ones with suspect statistics. On a brighter note, daily readership seems to have picked up since my new Facebook digest segment (and/or maybe some Facebook group members are Googling my blog).
- Is the Pope Catholic?
- Miscellany: 10/13/13
- Miscellany: 9/28/13
- Miscellany: 10/11/13
- The Government Shutdown, James Madison and a Clueless "Progressive"
(from LFC) I believe the federal minimum wage should actually be at least double what it is right now (so around $15 or $16 an hour). I believe the minimum wage should actually be a LIVING wage. In other words, I don't believe a person should have to work their ass off just to barely make ends meet. The minimum wage in Australia is $16/hour, and its economy is thriving and its people actually have a decent quality of life. Also, Australia is one of the only countries that was able to avoid the global economic meltdown and subsequent recession. If we raise the minimum wage, people will have more money in their pockets, and they will spend more money buying goods and services which will create more business which will create more jobs and we will once again have a thriving middle class. It's that simple.
You have a friend whom is an economics illiterate? Listen, wages are a matter of productivity and are decided by relevant market conditions, by considerations of competitive labor markets. The fact is that price controls, including wage controls, create winners and losers when economics-illiterate politicians try to set a "fair" wage. The only way a wage floor works is when the market-clearing wage is at or above the wage floor--in which case the wage floor is entirely unnecessary. This hurts especially young/inexperienced workers trying to find their first job. Ask any unemployed person their choice of a low wage vs. no wage at all.
 |
| Economics-illiterate "progressive" propaganda via LFC |
 |
| Via the Bastiat Institute |
LPC posted yet another piece of provocative "progressive" nonsense comparing the minimum wage to CEO pay. I had two comments:
- We already know what happens when you hire incompetent managers to head companies--companies go bankrupt, employees lose jobs, investors lose everything. Your low-skilled minimum-wage worker can work his 40 hours, and he's done. Ceo's have to cope with changing conditions, financing, competitors, the government, and one mistake can be disastrous. A great CEO is hard to make or find--take Warren Buffett. The Politics of Envy is self-defeating; what other people make is none of your business. If you think it's easy to create or manage an enterprise, put up or shut up.
- What's killing the US economy is economically illiterate elected leadership, particularly, professional politicians, many whom have never managed a business or been on a private-sector payroll, in the Senate and the White House, an unaccountable Fed , and self-important bureaucrats, whom impose a $1.8T bureaucratic drag on the real economy and countless rules and regulation, which gets in the way of necessary economic liberty.
 |
| Via LFC |
The LFC moderator argued his opinion: "Intellectual property" is an infringement on real property. If I own some chemicals, then I have the right to mix them however I want and sell them, patents be damned. Enforcing patents and copyright is theft, tantamount to a burglary or mugging. (Two comments.)
I think it depends on the nature and extent of the contribution. For example,if I proved a mathematical theorem, I wouldn't want another mathematician to claim that he published a similar proof first and I owe him compensation. On the other hand, if I hid a comment referencing my mother's birth date in a novel computer algorithm I designed and published, and I later discovered someone copied my work byte by byte and was profiting off my work without acknowledging my ownership or paying a reasonable percentage of the proceeds, I would consider it theft.
I think I have the right to be compensated for my labor of thought just like any other type of work. I remember I once solved a software problem that the client couldn't resolve on their own. A Unix administrator watched me and complained I hadn't done anything he couldn't have done. But if he had known what to do, I wouldn't have been there.
The LPC moderator responded: You have to apply that logic consistently, though: No invention exists in a vacuum. Every new idea involves the product of thousands of previous ideas. To pay money to everyone whose idea was involved is to stifle economic ingenuity entirely.
No. there's a distinction between fair use and wholesale theft. For other people to present my work effort as theirs is outright theft. There has been only one Shakespeare, Leonardo, etc. To argue individual achievement belongs to the collective seems a variation of the "you didn't build that" nonsense. Of course Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. But he was alone at the time.
I got yet another challenge on this point: Ronald, presenting another's work as your own would be fraud. However, we can probably have a more productive conversation over intellectual property if one were to define the bounds you'd expect one to abide by for your idea or execution.
If you create a miracle drug and someone else comes up with the same formulation, should yours be protected and theirs not simply because you arrived at it first? Or do you propose that one who actually uses theft (steals property to arrive at the formulation; ie. industrial espionage) be prosecuted? If one manufactures this miracle drug, one can (under contract) negotiate silence from those producers or negotiate contractual terms for not disclosing its formula; however, by that same token, should one be allowed to stop people from trying to match its success or improve upon it?
I would license my innovation to those providing value-added features; there may be other approaches to treating what my drug addresses; I have no problem with competitive products approaching a disease from an alternative approach. Some innovations are more substantive than others; if I have to spend time and resources (labs, groups, testing, etc.), I have expenses to pay--and someone parasitically copying or freeloading off my work (e.g., reverse engineering) is basically stealing my work and contributing nothing of value. You are making a fundamental error: it's one thing to say intellectual property is different; it's another thing to argue intellectual property doesn't exist. By the way, when I was a professor, I did some scholarly work on usability issues, including the interface. I don't really like protections on basic interface concepts. For example, if VP Planner had a Lotus 1-2-3 emulation mode, I wouldn't mind--so long as Paperback Software's underlying code and design were not a copy of Lotus'.
The Libertarian Republic asks whether Reagan would have sided with Rand Paul or Obama on bombing Syria. In part, I'm responding to a "progressive" troll bad-mouthing Reaganomics.
Ronald Reagan had to deal with a spendthrift House. Tax rate cuts resulted in higher growth and revenue in the 20's, the 60's and 80's. Reagan was quoted "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." After the Beirut barracks bombing, he saw unintended consequences of interventionist behavior. No doubt in my mind that Reagan would cheer Sen. Paul .
On an image on "Teach a man to fish vs. liberal politicians buying votes with fish"
I would have tweaked the image: "Teach a man to fish, and the government demands a portion of his catch; give a man a fish, and he thinks the supermarket is a pond stocked with dressed fish."
Responding to a progressive's rant blaming bankers for the 2008 economic tsunami:
Departure from reality. The Bush Administration added to regulation. Banking is one of the most highly and ineptly regulated industries. The real estate and credit bubbles were exacerbated by both monetary and fiscal policy. The worst part was that when government issued deposit insurance, it created moral hazard, providing banks with an incentive to take on more risk. This is GOVERNMENT failure--same crap with the GSE's whom formed a duopoly using cheap Treasury loans to win market share against the private sector competitors. Part of the problem is that government makes it harder for the economy to grow and generate jobs. Nobody is arguing against charities helping people. The problem is your friend is making things worse by expanding government's reach beyond their very limited core competencies.
We CAN Afford to Do Nothing:
We CAN'T Afford to Do the Wrong Things....
Remembering the Wisdom of F.A. Hayek
Political Cartoon
 |
| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and Townhall |
How many of you are only here because you had trouble signing up for Obamacare? - David Letterman
[They were there because of ObamaCare. The independent board determined laughter is the best medicine. They issued tickets to the Letterman show, and they showed the new policyholders their first month's premium and reminded them that Democrats called it the "Affordable Care Act"....]
Today was day 14 of the government shutdown. I am starting to forget what it is like to have a government. There was a guy with big ears and a suit who talked about hope. That is all gone. - Jimmy Kimmel
[Hope was laid off along with all the other non-essential White House personnel...]
Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen would have benefited from watching cartoons as kids.... Bernanke would have been bored since not enough helicopters, and Yellen would have noted that she doesn't need a duplicator to create money out of thin air.... She's working on the Alchemy Project to convert greenbacks to gold.
Musical Interlude: Motown
The Commodores, "Brick House"
