Demand and Deliver

You’ve gotta love Agnes.Tony Cochran, the creator of this strip, often makes important points via Agnes.  I’m guessing this is meant only to be humorous, but I don’t want to deny Tony his due – maybe he is making a deeper point here than I am seeing.

But here is the point I want to make:  all these things that Agnes is requesting, and so many more we continue to ask governments to give, are things governments are simply incapable of providing.  Governments, at their very best (which they seldom are), can keep the peace so we can have the chance to provide these things for ourselves.

But the moment any government pretends to provide us with anything from cheese to world peace, you can expect less and less of it as time goes by.  (Now I want to start singing, “You must remember this . . .”)  Demand things all you want, but in the end government will not deliver because it cannot deliver.

For far too long, too many of us have been writing these Agnes letters to government.  It has gotten us into our current mess.  It is now time to write with only one request on our list:   keep the peace, but otherwise, leave us alone.

And They Come With Custom-Designed Wrappers, Too!

According to a recent new story:

A new campaign by Philadelphia officials to reduce sexually transmitted diseases allows children as young as 11 to receive free condoms via mail order . . .

As young as eleven?  Really?  Of course, why should anyone receive free condoms from any government?  There is, of course, a whole series of answers typically given to that kind of question:  because if we don’t give away condoms, there might be more sexually transmitted diseases and more unwanted (by their biological parents) children.  Those are problems that will cost the government in question a lot of money to clean up.  So we need to give away condoms – deliver them to your door if that helps.

Apparently, it does help.  As the story goes on to report:

"Playing it safe just got easier," the website reads. "If you live in Philadelphia and are between the ages of 11 and 19, you can now have condoms mailed directly to you for FREE. Maybe it's difficult for you to stop by one of our sites to pick up condoms. Or maybe you're just shy or feeling weird about picking up condoms."

So you might be “shy or feeling weird” about collecting your free condoms in person.  But, of course, you don’t feel at all shy about what you intend to do with those condoms.  Seems like good bureaucratic reasoning to me.

You might think someone would complain about this arrangement in Philadelphia, but apparently not:

Jeff Moran, a spokesman for Philadelphia's Department of Health, said the campaign was launched last week. No complaints had been received as of today, he said.

Probably most Philadelphians were just feeling a bit too “shy or weird” to complain.  And if no one complains, it must be a good idea!  And then, this little detail comes up in the story:

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter unveiled the campaign on April 7 as he announced the winning design for the city's custom-labeled condom wrapper.

I wonder where this contest from hell took place?  Can’t you picture all the grade school teachers in Philly announcing to their classes, “Children, the Mayor has asked that you work on a design for our glorious city’s custom-labeled condom wrapper.  And don’t’ forget – the winner gets all the condoms you can use for the rest of your life.”

I wonder if Philadelphia received federal funds for this wonderful project?

No, friends, there is simply nothing governments can do to economize.  There are no stupid, pointless, even counter-productive things that are funded by governments.  Nothing like a design contest for a custom-labeled condom wrapper for eleven-year-olds in Philadelphia.

Nothing like that.

 

GPA Redistribution

In an interesting video piece at Accuracy In Academia (well worth a look) students at a few universities approached their fellow students with a petition that would put in place at their respective universities a policy that those with extremely high GPAs would have some of their GPS “redistributed” to students with low-end GPAs.  The point, of course, was to note the reactions.

While some initially questioned the analogy, it was difficult to evade the force of it.  If you think the government should redistribute incomes (especially those of the highest earners) then why not do the same with GPAs?  Sure, some GPA low-earners are just goof-offs, but not all are.  Some are just less talented.  Some just are not as smart.  On the other hand, some with high GPAs work hard for them, but some just have a “knack” for academics.  So why not “even things up” a bit?

Many objected that this “would not be fair.”  But if GPA redistribution is not fair, why is income redistribution fair?  Many said, “It’s just different.”  But they could never explain exactly why it was different.  You could see that most had never thought of things in quite this way, and most of them struggled to respond, not dismissing the question or just walking away.  It is quite interesting.

One young lady did not reject the GPA redistribution out of hand, but she wanted to understand the proposal better:  was it just that students would be permitted to give some of their GPA to others, or would it be out of their individual control?  The proposal was to make this a policy out of the control of individual students.  The young lady did not think that was fair.

Of course, it would not be fair, any more than is income redistribution.  But in our current cultural climate, I would not be surprised to hear some university official propose just such a system in some form or other.

More A Slave Than You Thought

In a recent National Review article, Iain Murray complains that:

Every year we are reminded how much money the government filches from us on Tax Day. However, there is no equivalent ‘Regulation Day’ to remind us the extra cost government imposes on us through pettifogging regulation. The fact is that federal regulations (never mind state and local) cost even more than the skyrocketing federal budget deficit, and help bring the federal government’s share of the economy to over 35 percent.

However, Americans for Tax Reform does calculate a “total cost of government” day each year.  Here is a summary of what they found for last year:

In 2010, Cost of Government Day falls on August 19.  Working people must toil 231 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government -8 days later than last year and a full 32 days longer than 2008.  In other words, in 2010 the cost of government consumes 63.41 percent of national income.

Many lower-income people pay little or no national income tax.  Some pay very little state income tax.  Of course, there are many other taxes that everyone pays, regardless of income.  When you try to catalog all these, a database is required.

But beyond all the taxes – and they are legion – there is the cost of government imposed on everyone via regulations.  These regulations simply (?) makes many things much more expensive than they would otherwise be.

But these regulations certainly make many things unavailable to us.  Of course, “things that might have been” are difficult to imagine sometimes.  But when regulations inhibit human creative activity, it is inevitable that those regulations also preclude the development of many ideas that might have been useful things.

But these things remain forever unseen – which is exactly what purveyors of government regulation want.  So last we were slaves of the state, on average, for 231 of the 365 days available to us.  Not only that, but we slaves of the state worked in a world missing some amazing things that might have been.

 

Lock and Load

This excellent piece came today:

Three More Attacks on Civilization

Mises Daily: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by Jeffrey A. Tucker

The article concludes with this:

In these three examples, we can see the model at work: Puritans and paranoids work with bureaucrats to unravel all the gains that markets have made for civilization. And they do this not with persuasion or an attempt to convert us to their primitive faith. Instead, they do it by force, driving us back to the compost pile, the river for cleaning, and, eventually, having to hunt and gather for food that we take back to our caves, which serve as domestic environs for those lucky enough to survive their regime of coerced poverty.

Read it for the details.  Those details would be funny if they did not represent what is now a clear and present danger to civilization:  environmentalism.  Of all the recent “isms” this one might be the worst.  It now infects almost all educational institutions, many retailing corporations, most churches, and (of course) governments at all levels.

I have tried to be forgiving and understanding of environmentalists.  But the luxury of those days is over.  It is now time for all those who prefer not to live in caves to declare war on environmentalism and all of its followers.

Not long ago at the grocery store I was presented with a cloth grocery bag that was inscribed with a slogan about “saving mother earth.”  I told the store employee (in a rather loud voice so everyone around would hear) that the earth was not my mother, that the earth was in no danger from human activity, and that I was more than a little bit sick of having this garbage foist upon me when trying to buy some groceries.  This employee – a nice lady with whom I am somewhat acquainted – was baffled by what I said.  She had never thought about it, it seemed.

We are constantly bombarded with environmentalist excrement to the point that we don’t know that we are covered with it and standing in it.  It is past time to clean ourselves up, and take out the trash. 

For now this is a war of ideas.  But there could come a time when, in order to defend even the possibility of civilization, we might have to defend ourselves physically against the aggression of environmentalists and their “ism.”  As Tucker points out above, environmentalists routinely use force to achieve their insane goals.

Remember, self-defense (even according to Augustine) can be a justification for war.

To Market, to Market . . .

 

People delaying religion: study

BY DEREK ABMA, POSTMEDIA NEWSAPRIL 11, 2011

Not only are longer life expectancies allowing people to postpone retirement, they feel less rushed to make peace with God, a new study suggests.

Research out of the United Kingdom links the decline in religious participation in developed countries, where life expectancies are high, and the idea that time isn't running out as fast on people's chances to secure a place in heaven.

"Many religions and societies link to some degree the cumulative amount of religious effort to benefits in the afterlife," said Elissaios Papyrakis, an economist at the University of East Anglia and one of the study's authors. "We show that higher life expectancy discounts expected benefits in the afterlife and is therefore likely to lead to postponement of religiosity, without necessarily jeopardizing benefits in the afterlife."

Kent comments:

First of all, the University of East Anglia rings a bell.  That’s the place where some purveyors of the phony “climate change” hype were caught “massaging” the evidence.  We will assume, for the moment, that since is a different department, the economist cited here is giving this to us straight.

Now, on to the important points . . .

My first thought was:  Really?  People are doing an implicit cost/benefit analysis on when to “buy your ticket for heaven” so to speak?  Really?  I’m likely to live longer, so I can put off religion a bit longer, live it up in the interim I suppose, and still “make it to heaven” by becoming religious in my older age.  Really?

The study even had some recommendations for the Canadian church as to what could be done about this:

The U.K. study said religious organizations looking to attract members should focus less on benefits in the afterlife, and more on what can be offered in one's worldly life from the Church. Such things could include expanding one's social circle, participation in various activities, spiritual fulfilment and guidance.

In other words, “religious organizations” should market themselves more toward the “what you can get here-and-now” rather than talking so much about eternity.

But a good guess would be that the pandering that is already being done by churches (I’ll limit my thoughts to Christendom here) could well be part of the cause of this whole attitude.  Think of the kind of mindset that would even consider this cost/benefit “how long can I put it off and still cash in” approach.  It is the mindset of a consumer.  And consumers are exactly the group and attitude to which the “marketing church” has been appealing for the last few decades.

Maybe the real lesson to be learned here is not how better to “market” religion, but rather, that religion – Christianity at least – is not something that should be “marketed” at all.  Perhaps “marketing” – which might be fine for goods and services – is simply not compatible with the Christian faith, because the Christian faith is not at all something to be consumed, but rather, something to be believed, embraced, lived, and hoped.

And no, that is not a marketing appeal!  Just a statement and an invitation.

The Inflation Beast

There is a nice piece out from the Mises Institute today titled:

“The Fed Obliterates the Savings Ethic”

I won’t review all the details here; go have a read for yourself.  But the point is that when our government, via the Federal Reserve System, creates more money (there are several ways it can do this) it has the predictable effect of making existing money worth less – and perhaps, eventually, worthless.

This has, in turn, a predictable effect on how we tend to behave economically.  It becomes counter-productive to save dollars “for a rainy day” (more in the article on this) because you notice that the dollars you are holding are decreasing in purchasing power – you have probably noticed some of that lately.

Correctly speaking, inflation is the act of creating additional money or its equivalent.  Prices increases, per se, are not inflation.  You will often hear the talking heads and their kin speak of someone increasing prices as inflation.  Unfortunately, the word has been used this way for so long that it has taken on this misleading connotation.

Strictly speaking, general money prices increases are the predictable, eventual result of inflation.  The Federal Reserve intends to create constant, moderate inflation – although it has often gotten our of control.

This is based on the faulty economic views of J. M. Keynes.  The economic theories of Keynes have become the unquestioned orthodoxy of most governments today.  There is a rich abundance of literature which displays the failings of Keynes’ views, which are generally ignored by those in power.  Keynes’ views support government control of money, and government control of money is government control of people.  Thus, it is not surprising that those in power are likely to say, along with Richard Nixon, “We are all Keynesians now.”

It is interesting to think of what would most likely be the case if governments did not control money.  People trading freely would – as they have done in the past – generally settle on some commodity or commodities to use as a medium of exchange.  Precious metals have been the historic pattern in this, because it is almost impossible to increase their supply enough to be inflationary.

In this kind of setting, you might decide to save some money, whatever money might be.  If the economy grew, and the supply of goods and services continued to increase, your money would gradually become more valuable.  You would have an incentive to save “for a rainy day.”

As things now stand, government policy in regard to money encourages people to consume – which is what governments want because this is what Keynes said made economies grow.  But notice how this comes back to create an even more, and ever more, powerful state.  When people do not save, they become more dependent on government, giving government an excuse to grab more power.

So to sum up:  government controls money and maintains a policy of inflation.  Inflation discourages savings.  Lack of savings makes more people demand help from the government.  This increases the power of government.

Free people cannot tolerate this for long, or they soon will not be free.  We are probably not significantly free people in this regard even now.  The only question is whether or not it is too late to do anything about it.