Les Jones

Ayn Rand

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 | Economics, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | 4 Comments |

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.”
– Ayn Rand

I’ve picked up a couple of Ayn Rand novels and couldn’t stomach them. Occasionally I’ll read something like this and cheer, but wonder how the author of that snippet is the author I tried to read.

I looked up that quote. It’s apparently from Atlas Shrugged, and is part of the so-called “Francisco Money Speech.” That nugget above is buried in the ore of a long-winded polemic that no one could speak, much less listen to in its entirety. But that nugget really is golden.

Another fine example of a modern rail project

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | Political Survival Kit | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Megan McArdle - Does High Speed Rail Have a Future?:

The Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, established in 1992, is expected to finish its final environmental impact statement sometime in 2011.  Some unspecified time after that, it will begin building out the links between Washington DC and Charlotte, North Carolina.  For somewhere between 2-5 billion dollars, and three or more decades, we will finally be able to travel from Washington to Charlotte in 6 hours and 50 minutes–just 30 minutes more than it takes to drive the same route.  On the plus side, you can read while you travel.  On the minus side, it will cost at least three times as much, and you’ll still have to rent a car when you get there.

Whenever someone suggests building a new passenger rail line the immediate response should be “why not just use buses?”

Seriously. Buses use existing infrastructure, so you won’t waste years of time and millions or billions on environmental impact statements or lawsuits. You won’t have to condemn private homes and businesses, kick out their owners, or buy up their land, which is a whole ‘nother nightmare for the people being evicted.

If the bus routes get popular, add more buses. If they aren’t popular, run the route less often, use smaller buses, or drop that route completely. And of course you can send buses into areas where no train can or will ever run.

Because of the presumed speed advantage over a bus, high speed rail would seem to be the exception. Thing is, the odds of an unencumbered high speed line in the U.S. seem unlikely due to terrain and politics. Every politician with constituents on the route will trade their vote for a stop in their town, which kills the high speed part.

Previously

• U.S. utilizies rail for freight more than Europe
• California attempts to build world’s most *optimistic* commuter rail
• Local Rail Revisited in Light of High Gas Prices?
• Everything You Need to Know About Mass Transit

Tags: fish barrel gun some assembly required

Delicious free lunches for everyone!

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | Political Survival Kit | Permalink | No Comments |

Tim Hawkins - The Government Can

Tags: free lunches, youtube

Marko on government health care

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Health Care, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“A mandatory public health care system is a universal adapter for unlimited Nanny State legislation, because there’s very little personal behavior that wouldn’t impact public health care costs in some way.”
– Marko Kloos

On the ineffectiveness of government retraining programs

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 | Political Survival Kit, Politics | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Megan McArdle - Retraining Isn’t the Answer:

Thus did I make one of the best and worst decisions in my life: I signed up for a course to become a CNE–a Certified Netware Engineer. I’d done some light network administration at the startup, and I thought I’d like to make a career of it.

The IT types among my readers are cringing. No one gets hired because they took some low-rent course and passed a computer adaptive test. Indeed, back in the day, hearing someone officiously announce that “I’m a CNE” was a warning sign not to let them anywhere near your network. It’s like having a job applicant hand over their eighth-grade graduation certificate. Of course, everyone qualified has one to stick on the resume, but they don’t talk about it, because it’s not even a basic qualification. Anyone whose main qualification is a CNE knows just enough to be extremely dangerous.

But I didn’t know that at the time. I financed a $3,500 course on credit cards, and dutifully trooped off to class four evenings a week. I passed all the tests. Then I found out what any professional could have told me: without actual work experience, no one would hire me.

And that’s for one of the more reasonable-sounding career training options. There are lots of shady operations out there thay prey on people’s hopes. I have a relative who pinned her hopes on a medical transcription course that she paid for out of her own pocket, but which never produced a job. Beware.

Read the whole thing, which predicts poor prospects for government-retraining of laid off autoworkers, based on not just McArdle’s experience, but past studies. Politicians like retraining programs, because it looks like they’re doing something, and also no doubt because in some cases the training companies are sending money their way. What - me cycnical?

Ayn Rand on government interference in the economy

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | Economics, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”
– Ayn Rand

Via Mark Peacock’s Facebook wall.

Lamar Alexander on executives vs. legislators

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“Governors are accustomed to solving problems rather than taking positions. When you get some people in a room who are accustomed to solving problems, you usually can do it. When you get people in a room, all of whom are accustomed to taking positions, you just get a lot of positions.”
– Lamar Alexander

Louis Brandeis

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
– Louis Brandeis

Healthcare as a right?

Saturday, March 7th, 2009 | Health Care, Political Survival Kit | Permalink | 18 Comments |

Professor Bainbridge via Instapundit:

Think Progress is blasting Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) for saying that health care is a privilege rather than a right. The privilege/right dichotomy is certainly inept politics, but its also inapt legally and constitutionally. The real distinction is between negative and positive rights.

Positive rights — such as a right to health care, an education, a job, etc… — cannot be achieved without limiting the liberty of individuals. During the Cold War, for example, totalitarian regimes justified their (egregiously bad) humans rights records by stressing how they achieved positive rights the West left to the vagaries of the market place. Yet, they did so through totalitarian regimes characterized by central planning vthat proscribed both freedom of contract and private property.

If politicians could tax baby bunnies they would

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | Economics, Environment, Political Survival Kit | Permalink | No Comments |

“No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
– Lily Tomlin

I’ve said it before. If a politician says he wants to enact a tax to protect baby bunnies, the truth is usually that he’d just as soon tax the baby bunnies if he could get away with it.

Investor’s Business Daily - Dems Cool On Climate Change As Economic Pressures Escalate:

Pelosi said earlier this year that she wouldn’t even try to bring up a climate-change bill in 2009 because she lacked the votes. She reversed course last month, telling the San Francisco Chronicle that the House would try to set a vote by December to coincide with a global warming summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

One reason for the change, Pelosi said, was that the government needed the money it could get from the auctioning off of the emissions permits under a cap-and-trade program. “I believe we have to because we see that as a source of revenue,” the Chronicle reported her saying.

When a politician says “it isn’t about raising taxes” it’s about raising taxes. At this point Pelosi isn’t even denying that the emissions permits are all about the Benjamins. And that other thing, too, the enviro-whoozit.

“it is only a matter of time before civil servants become civil masters”

Saturday, January 24th, 2009 | Economics, Political Survival Kit, Politics | Permalink | 6 Comments |

Chicago Boyz - California’s Tipping Point:

California has ~2.3 million unionized government workers and ~18.6 million civilians. With so many people organized with a laser-like focus on increasing taxes and spending, the private working citizens of California find it nearly impossible to prevent government workers from voting their own paychecks.

In effect, government workers have hijacked democracy. Instead of state employees working for the people, the people now work for the state employees. As far as the state government is concerned, people in the private sector work merely so that they can be taxed for the benefit of the tax consumers. They’ve entered a condition not unlike like that of pre-industrial serfs.

Of course no one is being whipped, but in effect an ordinary citizen of California cannot get their desires for reduced state spending implemented due to the disproportionate power of the State’s employees and allied interest. It appears now that the government unions will not accept any solution to California’s budget crisis except increased taxes in a declining economy. Ordinary citizens have no choice but to either emigrate or just lie there and take it.

By long custom and law, the U.S. military has remained ruthlessly apolitical. Serving members do not endorse candidates, organize politically in any fashion or make independent public statements about campaign issues. That standard evolved due to the obvious danger of having a military with a positive feedback loop into the political system that controls its budget. The same danger exists for all other state employees, albeit in a slower and less dramatic fashion.

No one should be able to vote their own paycheck. Government-employee unions should be legally restricted from engaging in any kind of political activity. If not, it is only a matter of time before civil servants become civil masters.

From a previous post of mine on Vallejo, California’s bankruptcy: “The insanity here is that public service unions are allowed to donate to candidates. The system allows taxpayer money skimmed from public employee salaries to fund political campaigns to elect more politicians to give more money to government employees … and the system just reinforces itself.”

And now the U.S. has more people working in government than in manufacturing.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Previously

• CA pension loses 25% of assets since July 1 due to real estate investments
• California will lead states seeking bailout
• How did Vallejo, California go bankrupt?
• Goldman Sachs warns on NJ, CA, WI, FL, OH, MI bonds
• Britain’s public pension problems
• Vallejo, California declares bankruptcy
• How irrational are California public pensions?
• State pension funds heading for insolvency

Tags: california

Why I’m glad proponents of a Tennessee income tax failed

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | Political Survival Kit, Politics | Permalink | 1 Comment |

A number of years back there was a push for a Tennessee state income tax. At first I was for it.

It seemed reasonable. Unlike our 9% sales tax an income tax would be progressive. There were promises to eliminate the sales tax on food, which is in fact an onerous tax. Later I became convinced that it was unwise to give politicians more power to tax more things.

Seeing this made me believe even more that you can’t trust politicians’ promises about taxes:

TAXES AND SPENDING IN CONNECTICUT: “Governor Rell pretends to order a hiring freeze, garnering accolades for her stern budgetary discipline. Result; 824 new employees hired since May. . . . Our former Governor Lowell foisted an income state on us by arguing that we could actually save money by having a reliable source of income to calculate our budget on. Proving that if you give a politician a dollar he’ll spend two our state payroll has more than doubled since that tax was enacted, while our population dropped. Now we’re returning to the estate tax which was abolished when the income tax came in, to fill some of the shortfall in our projected multi-billion dollar deficit.”

And as he notes, one governor was a Republican and one was a Democrat, so don’t count on party-line voting to save you.

Great post from Melody Byrne

Friday, January 2nd, 2009 | Political Survival Kit | Permalink | No Comments |

I’ve linked to Chris Byrne many times, but this is the first time I’ve linked to one of his wife’s posts. The Most Basic of Differing First Principles:

Then I realized Og was having the exact same problem in his anarchy discussions. In fact, Jane’s position and Billy Beck’s position could be summed up as

The world is perfect. People are perfect. If we could just keep from messing things up, everything would stay perfect.

If we could keep from getting sick, things would be perfect. If we just didn’t mess with other people and kept our own boundaries, we wouldn’t need government because everything would be perfect.

If only evil man would stop polluting the planet and save the polar bears, everything would be BACK to perfect.

This entire principle assumes that there is such a thing as “perfect”.

My position, however, and Og’s position could be summed up as

The world is chaotic and shit happens. Nothing is intrinsically perfect. Deal with it.

I fall firmly in the “The world is chaotic and shit happens. Nothing is intrinsically perfect. Deal with it.” camp. Scout’s motto: be prepared. Or as Beck Weathers discovered alone and blind atop Everest, you may find yourself in deep shit and the cavalry not coming. What are you gonna do then?

Likewise when news happens I don’t believe it all could have been averted if only Bill X from Politician Y had passed. Bad things happen sometimes and they aren’t always avoidable.

A word to the wise from Michael Shedlock

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | Economics, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“It is the very nature of the market that it takes the convincing of nearly everyone to believe that something cannot happen, to actually cause it to happen.”
- Michael Shedlock

That’s from his piece, Things That Can’t Happen, published one year ago today, about all of the things that couldn’t happen that did.

One of the reasons the Fed was created was to manage the economy and prevent further depressions. Guess What? The biggest deflation in history, the great depression, happened 17 years later.

At one time economists thought that inflation and recession could not happen at the same time. It happened anyway. A new term was coined for it “Stagflation”.

Deflation supposedly couldn’t happen in a fiat regime. Japan proved otherwise.

If you asked anyone in Japan if housing prices could fall for 18 straight years, they would have said “It can’t happen”. It did happen.

For 30 years people have said US housing prices would never again decline on a national scale. They were wrong. It happened.

Tags: inflation, the fed

Henry Ford

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 | Economics, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
 – Henry Ford

Ludwig von Mises on Keynesian economic policy

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | Economics, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the “deficit spending” policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations.

“Yet no effusions of authors however brilliant and sophisticated can alter the perennial economic laws. They are and work and take care of themselves. Notwithstanding all the passionate fulminations of the spokesmen of governments, the inevitable consequences of inflationism and expansionism as depicted by the “orthodox” economists are coming to pass. And then, very late indeed, even simple people will discover that Keynes did not teach us how to perform the “miracle … of turning a stone into bread,” but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.”
– Ludwig von Mises, Lord Keynes and Say’s Law, 1950

Tags: austrian school, inflation

The bailout: Did someone say “free money”?

Monday, December 8th, 2008 | Economics, Political Survival Kit | Permalink | No Comments |

The finance industry bailout begat the carmaker bailout. Assuming the economy gets worse next year you can expect other industries to come hat in hand, followed by cities and states.

One of the disturbing things about the bailout is how undisciplined it is. What criteria is Congress using to examine the companies seeking money, what screening tool are they using? None, from what I can tell. The question of who gets money seems to be determined by who has the ear of people in power. If the financial situation of these companies is as dire as they say, then Congress is deciding which companies live and which companies die by the same sort of sweetheart political processes that helped in part to create these very problems.

Quotes on government and taxes

Monday, December 1st, 2008 | Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

In comments to Tam’s post on the limits of government to bailout anyone but themselves, Divemedic offers some choice quotes.

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
– Winston Churchill

“The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.”
– Thomas Sowell

Eric Posner on American Exceptionalism

Friday, November 7th, 2008 | European Union, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | 1 Comment |

“There are two versions of American exceptionalism. American-American exceptionalism is “we’re richer because we’re better.” European-American exceptionalism is “you’re better because you’re richer.” Both sides agree on exceptionalism, and just see different causes and implications. The Europeans expect us, on account of our wealth, to live up to (their) ideals, while we think that our wealth ought to prove to them that our ideals are better than theirs.”
 – Eric Posner

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Frank Herbert

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 | Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | 1 Comment |

“If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.”
– Frank Herbert, “The Dosadi Experiment”

Found here.

“Economics in One Lesson” on government loans and government-backed credit

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | Economics, Political Survival Kit | Permalink | 3 Comments |

(LATER: Links weren’t working before. Fixed.)

From the Credit Diverts Production chapter of Economics in One Lesson (emphasis mine):

The case against government-guaranteed loans and mortgages to private businesses and persons is almost as strong as, though less obvious than, the case against direct government loans and mortgages. The advocates of government-guaranteed mortgages also forget that what is being lent is ultimately real capital, which is limited in supply, and that they are helping identified B at the expense of some unidentified A. Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to “buy” houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly overexpansion. In brief in the long run they do not increase overall national production but encourage malinvestment.

A contemporary reflection of the economic mess in 2008? Nope. Economics in One Lesson was written in 1946, with the last update in 1978. Here’s the one lesson: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

• 1. The Lesson
• 2. The Broken Window
• 3. The Blessings of Destruction
• 4. Public Works Mean Taxes
• 5. Taxes Discourage Production
• 6. Credit Diverts Production
• 7. The Curse of Machinery
• 8. Spread-the-Work Schemes
• 9. Disbanding Troops and Bureaucrats
• 10. The Fetish of Full Employment
• 11. Who’s “Protected” by Tariffs?
• 12. The Drive for Exports
• 13. “Parity” Prices
• 14. Saving the X Industry
• 15. How the Price System Works
• 16. “Stabilizing” Commodities
• 17. Government Price-Fixing
• 18. What Rent Control Does
• 19. Minimum Wage Laws
• 20. Do Unions Really Raise Wages?
• 21. “Enough to Buy Back the Product”
• 22. The Function of Profits
• 23. The Mirage of Inflation
• 24. The Assault on Saving
• 25. The Lesson Restated
• The Lesson After Thirty Years

William Rusher

Monday, October 20th, 2008 | Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | 1 Comment |

“One difference between a liberal and a pickpocket is that if you demand your money back from a pickpocket he will not question your motives.”
– William Rusher

Hat tip to Tam.

Some quotes from the library that “Joe the Plumber” might enjoy:

“Politicians never accuse you of “greed” for wanting other people’s money — only for wanting to keep your own money.”
– Joseph Sobran

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
– Frederic Bastiat

Fred Smith on ideologues

Friday, October 17th, 2008 | Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | 2 Comments |

“Ideologues have created far more horrors than have even the most rampant of business villains. My understanding is that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung were not motivated by profits.”
 – Fred Smith

To which I would add they were also not motivated by religion, which is frequently cited by left-leaning folks as the cause of $huge percentage of wars. For the actual stats on 20th century murders see here.

• Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
• Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
• Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
• Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
• Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
• Stalin’s Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
• Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths

John Hood on politics

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 | Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“Politics has no ultimate victor. It has no final, decisive battle. It just goes on and on, like soap operas and Law and Order.”
  — John Hood

Word of the Day: NIMBY and BANANA

Friday, August 15th, 2008 | Political Survival Kit, Word of the Day | Permalink | 1 Comment |

I knew NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard, usually in reference to a garbage dump, power station, etc.). BANANA is a new one on me:

It is no longer not in my backyard. It is BANANA; build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. It has been that way for a long time. In the long run things are going to start to stop working if we don’t do something. But once the lights start to go off, the environmental movement will be completely discredited. That will be a sad thing. The fanatics are going to destroy their own movement.

Hat tip to a Hit & Run commentor.

Previous WOTD - Brutalism (architecture)