Hear and you forget;
see and you remember;
do and you understand.
Confucius
Chart of the Day
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| Courtesy of Mercatus Center |
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| Reagan vs. Obama via Being Classically Liberal |
Image of the Day
Obama, Tell Me Again: Who Ended Your War in Iraq?
I Had the Judgment To Argue Against Your Resumption of Intervention in Iraq Internal Affairs...
The Market IS Democracy....
In an earlier edition of FB Corner, I independently argued that the real democracy is the market... This is a point I've raising with decreasing consumer inequity; even poor Americans routinely have running water, enjoy air conditioning, have a refrigerator, television, and cellphone, things that just a few decades ago were unavailable to the elite at any price. Economies of scale brought goods and services to the masses, often seeded by early adopters; perhaps we don't live in mansions, wear the latest designer clothes, or eat at 5-star restaurants, but increasing percentages of people under liberalized economies are able to achieve a reasonable good standard of living.
There are other ways of democratization of marketplaces; for instance, Microsoft owns the industry standard Office Suite, but there are free (outside of any download costs) full-featured alternatives like Apache and Libre Office, not to mention free cloud-based alternatives like Google Documents. Many bills can be paid without the need for an increasingly costly first-class USPS stamp.
There are collaborative work products, forums on any number of practical issues, products and services from around the world, and other types of decentralized transactions and endeavors (e.g., ridesharing), not to mention virtual classrooms and alternative currencies like Bitcoin. There's a related FEE essay, and I'll simply quote the ending paragraph:
In one sense, decentralization is a form radical democracy. That is, at any given moment, someone can fork a social technology and start something new. People can migrate to the new system, voting with their phones, their boats or their feet. But in another sense, this is not the king-of-the-mountain democracy of Democrats, Republicans, and Tammany Hall. It’s radical federalism. It’s opt-in governance. It is a fluid order of shifting values, continuous innovation, and the power of lateral relationships. It’s Tocqueville’s nation of joiners on steroids. And in this fluid order, politics and hierarchy—at least as we know them—will soon be obsolete.Hillary Clinton and the Greatness of America
I was born a military brat. I don't need a lecture from anyone on patriotism. But this is not to say that I endorse mistakes made by American political leadership in domestic and international intervention. I KNOW that the Progressive Era was an American tragedy. I was trying to find the exact Hillary Clinton quote that America can be great again. This clearly suggests that America once was great but somehow lost its greatness; it also seems to suggest that with the "right" political leadership, we can regain our lost greatness again.
I want to argue that the greatness of America is tied to its fidelity to its foundational limits of government, that the health of its robust economy is directly related to economic freedom, free markets and free trade, that government intervention, whether regulatory or military adventures, is antithetical to the nation's economic growth, which benefits all market participants. The idea that professional politicians, who know squat about a market and seek to control it for ease of bureaucratic management, somehow "know" how to allocate legally plundered resources from the private market, is sheer hubris.
Hillary Clinton seems to follow the failed examples of Al Gore and Barack Obama in her megalomaniac belief that politically correct climate change regulatory industrial policy is one such example how political intervention can allegedly "restore" American greatness. The fact is that the government has been "investing" in alternative energy since the 1970's, and the largest decreases of greenhouse gases have been achieved by proven natural gas and nuclear technology, which have gained despite of and certainly not because of government policy, based on market, not government policy actions. In fact, "progressives" have been hostile to nuclear waste disposal and fracking activities. I submit that clean energy endeavors, if and when viable, will be introduced without corrupt political incentives. What will be inspired American political leadership is when the political whores allow decentralized market forces work by innovation and creative destruction, which is possible only when central planners and bureaucratic regulators get out of the way of the invisible hand and spontaneous order.
TSA Propaganda: Tricks Are For Kids
(HT Reason). I'm still not sure what party--American Airlines or TSA--heavily damaged my hardcase suitcase without leaving a Texas airport. (I eventually got rescheduled through another airline, which required going to baggage claim and checking baggage through the other airline and going through TSA again. The second airline had to heavily tape in a side which looked like it had been pried open. The suitcase wasn't locked. I filed a complaint with AA, no response to date.
More Proposals
Facebook Corner
(Independent Institute). Senior Fellow John Goodman calls out Paul Krugman.
I'm tired of the same "progressive" nonsense, the idea that healthcare is more equal than other areas of the economy. You would think that any economist with intellectual integrity would note that government healthcare programs have routinely gone over budget, that government tax policies have exacerbated sector cost pressures, that occupation licensing, government benefit mandates and state cartels have corrupted the free market and innovation. That Krugman otherwise worries about not enough inflation in the economy wants to attribute some recent market moderation of costs to ObamaCare, never mind exchange participants only make up a small percentage of the insured base (and most of those reflect economically perverse subsidized policies) and as Goodman points out, merely part of a more global economic trend which has nothing to do with American healthcare policy, not to mention ObamaCare has been phased in (including a deferred employer mandate) so you are trying to assess a moving target.
The interstate commerce clause was intended to promote a free market, not to micromanage industry sectors. We need to get government out of the sector and let innovation and creative destruction transform the sector, no more fascist centralized planning.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Barry Manilow, "Mandy". I've had in my mind for years an alternative arrangement of this song and fantasized about producing a remake. For listeners who don't know, the original song title was "Brandy", but Manilow changed it because of Looking Glass' earlier phenomenal hit by the same name. I will say that I have an urge to tweak some lyrics: I don't like lyrics that argue without another person's love, I'm nothing; life isn't worth living; I need you; etc. I don't like verses that imply male dependency, which make me cringe. This is not to say men can't experience heartbreak and regret or feel confused, lost or alone. But no matter what "Murphy Brown" thought, I'm an unabashed Manilow fan. He was at one point the hottest vocalist in pop music, hitting 8 #1 adult contemporary hits in his first 9 singles released, and this was the first of 3 #1 hits on the hot 100, although his pop success crested by 1980 and on the AC charts by 1990. My personal top 5 favorites: "Could It Be Magic", "Mandy", "The Old Songs", "I Write the Songs", and "Memory".
