Socialist Paul Kanjorski [D-PA] further spearheads our descent into destruction with a gem of barbaric brilliance he’s named the “Consumer Reasonable Energy Price Protection Act of 2008″. H.R. 5800 would establish a “Reasonable Profits Board” that would serve to determine if oil companies are bringing in too much money.

Since we’ve, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the founding principles for this nation, and are no longer chained by constitutional justification, this measure is fair game.

Here’s uncle Sam’s claim - “You don’t have a right to your profits, we do. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how you might reinvest your profits, we’d rather confiscate them by force as a form of pandering and income redistribution.”

It escapes me how any human could claim the right to dictate the appropriate profitability of another. Unless he’s the consumer, by what right can he tell another how much the product of his labor and resources should be worth in barter? A producer and his voluntary consumers are the only entities with any justifiable means to determine price. Any man that claims such determination can rightfully be made by anyone other than the producer and consumer, and then imposed by force, is an advocate of slavery.

The proper response to this meddling is for the victim (big oil) to simply say “no, we quit”. It would only take once, as the crumbling economy would send a message to congress reminding them who’s rightfully in charge - the men of production, not crooks and cowards who scheme their way into office and pander to stay there. Kanjorski and all the other rodents would scurry in a desperate attempt to officially retract the 13th amendment in order to fix their boo boo. I long for the then day where men proudly assert their right to the product of their labor. When the victims realize their sanction is the only power Washington thugs maintain, the sick little game that is American politics will be nothing more than a footnote in history.

So, keep pushing Paul. The more you push, the sooner those of us who understand life, liberty and property can rebuild the nation you’re doing your best to obliterate.

“Stimulus Package” - what a colossal parade of ignorance. This episode of pandering is about nothing more than a bureaucratic desire to appear to be ‘doing something’ about the economic situation resulting from previous desires to appear to be ‘doing something’ - in both cases, economic ignorance is to blame. Walter Williams nails the do-gooders as he always does.

There are three ways government can get the money for a stimulus package. It can tax, borrow or inflate the currency by printing money. If government taxes to hand out money, one person is stimulated at the expense of another who pays the tax, who is unstimulated and has less money to spend. If government borrows the money, it’s the same story. This time the unstimulated person is the lender who has less money to spend. If government prints money, creditors, and then everyone else, are unstimulated. As my colleague Russell Roberts said in a NPR broadcast, “It’s like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing — the water in the shallow end doesn’t get any deeper.”

This “package” is nothing more than income redistribution, just like all other economic meddling perpetrated by our government. When government touches the free-market, regardless of how, value is taken from one person and either given to another, or simply destroyed - by force.

Yet we don’t hear the “price-gouging”, “greedy-executive” monkeys screaming about Apple’s financial numbers.

Why is that? Could it be that a computer is a trendy luxury item who’s value is more emotionally appealing than the gas we pump into our cars? Where evasive perception and consensus trump the fact that both offer immeasurable value to our lives. Or, could it be simply a symptom of altruism’s decay on our culture - one’s need of a product invoking a sense of entitlement which results in many emotional manifestations voicing that irrational claim. People don’t want, they need gas more than computers.

Interesting to note also that the computer industry is one that is virtually unregulated in comparison to the energy market, which becomes obvious when you consider the rate of innovation and increase in value that freer market has displayed. I mention this in context of the cyclical nature of irrationality it illustrates. Entitlement inspires envy and hatred. The market is demonized, regulated, tweaked - all which drive up the price, which ignites more emotional chaos, which incites more do-gooding regulation. The cycle goes on. If only big-oil could market itself as trendy and hip! On the flip side, with some variance in degree due to more emotionally fulfilling aspects of computers, that industry is doomed to the same dichotomy of an existence subject to interference in direct proportion to the value it adds. I contend that as soon as computers are “needed”, the pioneers of the field will be clubbed just as oil execs.

The Undercurrent’s latest article reviews perhaps the most fundamental force in Capitalism, who’s role and significance is also unfortunately the most demonized, underrated and ignored by our population, the profit motive.

Many people believe that without government regulation, pharmaceutical (insert any market) companies will dupe consumers and cut corners in order to make a quick dollar. They believe that the regulatory restrictions imposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (insert any government agency) are necessary to reign in companies whose greed would otherwise lead them to engage in a range of unscrupulous practices.

This view fails to recognize that the free market already has a means of rewarding integrity—the profitability of a good reputation.

[parenthetical emphasis added to make statement universal to any market or bureaucracy]

Laws which are written by those ignorant of this fact, designed to enforce morality on individuals, result in tremendous economic destruction and waste. Government essentially taxes citizens in order to fund the multitude of regulatory agencies that sink their fangs into the necks of businessmen, in order to keep them from taking (what they consider) unethical or immoral action. This tremendous undertaking, one which aspires to micro-manage millions of people in their endeavors ignores the fact that the motive of profit will eliminate wretched or incompetent individuals, and in a manner which is morally, economically, and justly superior. Individuals who make poor, short-sided or unethical decisions detriment the value of their barter, and more importantly, their reputation. Detract value from your product, or tarnish your reputation; and you won’t last very long in a free market.

Not only does it cost tremendous amounts of money to fund the variety of big-brother task forces, the larger, and more inconspicuous costs are the wider affects on the markets and our economy as a whole.

Last week’s grounding of American Airlines flights are a perfect example. The FAA induced groundings were due to a breach of the regulations pertaining to wiring standards, which obviously are important with regards to safety. The fact that most fail to see is that American Airlines already has a tremendous incentive for their wiring to not only be adequate, but to be as close to perfect as they can afford. In an industry already plagued by the remnants of 9/11, fuel costs, and our lazy economy, a catastrophic event and it’s associated overhead could easily send an airline limping down the road to their demise.

Why would anyone think that a successful airline could afford to be ignorant of the need for safety or the potential repercussions of failing to achieve it?

Instead, our government thinks that airlines need “incentive” to maintain safety, and those incentives come in the form of regulations, fines and if needed, seizure of their ability to operate. In other words, you don’t have a right to run your business as you see fit, because we’ve abandoned property rights in this country. Besides, we know how to run your business better than you do, so you’ll do it our way or cease to exist.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gus Van Horn writes of an alarming example of state sponsored religion in Minnesota. I urge anyone who’s on the fence with regards to supporting public education to read. Also, anyone who doesn’t object to Christianity, or any other religion, creeping into education should realize that the underlying principle is exactly what enables situations described above. In other words, when you give government permission to indoctrinate your kids because you may happen to agree with the particular variant of indoctrination, the permission grants the practice, not the subject matter, which could change at any whim of consensus. In fact, the same risk applies when allowing government sponsorship of any religion in any way.

The point that Gus makes that I think is noteworthy is this:

In a mixed economy, controls breed controls (and not just in the economic realm), making all arrangements inherently unstable. This is partly because of distortions in the economy created by the controls, and partly due to the fact that there are always people willing to take loot when it’s being passed around. In other words, mixed economies foster bad decision-making and dishonesty.
[bold added]

Control breeds control - in every form, every time. Economic laws are absolute and just. As long as there are objective laws pertaining to theft or fraud, the market will operate smoothly. Players seeking reward will always act in their best interest or the market will punish them either immediately, or in time. Unless there is some form of external meddling, some entity forcing a player in the market to act against his better judgment, a free market is self regulating. When there is meddling of any form or degree, the balance is disturbed and reverberative waves will result to the degree of the tinkering. Players react and adjust to the waves, often times acting against their self-interest, which inevitably entices government to further regulate. The cycle of destruction continues until the economy is a wreck. Look no further than our current “housing crisis” for a perfect example where government promotion (via rates, policies and bailout) of subjective, economically ignorant lending and borrowing was a recipe for disaster. Yet another social and economic engineering project attempting to defy reality.

Once again we hear the cause is the “free” market and the remedy is more onerous restrictions which will wreak more havoc, and will leave the central planners calling for more regulation.

while(governmentMeddling==true){
     result = furtherEconomicDestruction;
     if(economicDestruction == true){
        bureaucrats.blameCapitalism();
        bureaucrats.callForEmergencySuperPowers();

        moreBandAidRegulation++;
     }else{
         a!=a;
     }
}

These days, our corrupt political parties are virtually indistinguishable. Neither give a damn about individual rights, both will gladly march us into the bowels of statism. Both of which project either a complete ignorance, or smug disdain for the just nature of economics. In a move which will result in nothing but economic destruction (in the name of the public good), our current administration announced it’s intention to further sink it’s meddling fangs into our economy.

The Fed would become the government’s “market stability regulator,” given sweeping powers to gather information on a wide range of institutions so that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues could better detect where threats to the system might be hiding.

They, in fact, are the only threat to the system. A market left free of meddling will respond and eliminate any threats, as long as they aren’t delivered at gunpoint, in which case Government is supposed to the one responding to the threat, not the one holding the gun.

“It will have broad powers and the necessary corrective authorities to deal with deficiencies”

Well, well… wonder what they mean? Surely they aren’t implying that they’d trample the rights of a business owner by forcing him to comply with their vision of how he should do business? Not here, not in America? The deficiencies they speak of only exist in any relevancy as a result of intervention in the market. Removing the safety net introduced via government bailouts would force those who didn’t want to lose money to invest or lend it wisely. Instead, we have beaurocrats with very little to lose enforcing their will on the market, then blaming the results on the market in order to justify more meddling.

Regulation, like always is the culprit. All problems, true problems, one’s which cause destruction that impacts our country negatively in terms of years, decades and centuries; where rights are trampled, and wealth is destroyed, are caused by illegitimate government action.