A Libertarian Christmas Poem

I don’t plan to do lots of linking to my other blog, but I am quite proud of this post at My Own Pie.

Please tell me if you love it or hate it or feel something in between.

Moore the Millionaire

     Michael Moore was on Sean Hannity’s program, talking mostly about his new movie.  During the conversation, Hannity tried to get Moore to admit that he is a millionaire.  All Moore would say was that he had “done well.” 

     Come on.  His movies have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.  Even if Moore’s take was a small percentage, it would be in the millions.  If he has gotten good financial advice he should have tens of millions, I would guess.

     Why does it matter?  If you are going to make a movie that castigates wealthy people and capitalists, then you had better not be one yourself.  To do so is hypocritical.

     Besides pointing out Moore’s hypocrisy, I would like to make an even more significant point.  If Moore doesn’t believe the message that he is selling, then why should anyone else buy it?

     Why doesn’t he make and distribute his movies in Cuba, a country he seems to love so much?  Why does he depend on America’s evil capitalist movie industry?  Why does he depend on America’s movie-going public, who can only afford the expensive tickets at movie theaters thanks to capitalism?  Why not ask all those free, well-taken-care-of Cubans to fork over the price of a movie ticket?  Better yet, why not ask Fidel Castro to fork over $300 million dollars to bankroll the film and make it free to the public to view it?

     And why support capitalistic movie theaters and capitalistic movie rental companies and capitalistic food vendors and capitalistic advertisers who also get rich from the showing of the movies?

     Michael Moore should make a film about the fee clinics that he has built with his own money.  Then I would listen to him complain about rich people having no compassion and how “we” need to provide health care for needy people.  Until then he is the man behind the curtain.

Capitalism Rising

     Isn’t it interesting when the pendulum swings?  I was born at the end of the era during which doctors urged mothers to give babies prepared formula because it was much healthier.  At the time of my birth a movement began that urged mothers to breastfeed babies as the more natural and healtheir way.

     We are now living in a time when the government is taking over one industry after another.  Regulations, taxes, incentives, and penalties strangle the economy.  The majority of Americans have fallen in love with big government and look to the Nanny State to take care of all their needs–housing, banking, health, education.  We even seem to want the government to tell us what kind of cars to drive and what kind of lightbulbs to use.

     But there is a backlash, as I knew there would be.  The pendulum is already beginning to swing back.  The United States Chamber of Commerce has launched a program called “Campaign for Free Enterprise.”  Good for them.  I hope that the program influences many people, especially young people who will guide us in the future.

     Michael Medved gives us reasons to believe that capitalism is not dead yet.  I hope that he is right.

Republicans I Can Admire

     Some members of the Republican National Committee have signed a resolution that attacks the bailouts of major industries.  The resolution rightly calls the use of bailouts and the nationalizing of industries socialism, or at least another step toward it.  I’m glad.

     I would like to see the Republican Party return to a platform of fiscal conservatism and support of free enterprise.  The idea that the bailouts were undesirable but necessary is like saying that a person should max out his credit cards to get cash for playing craps in the hopes of raising money to pay off a hospital bill.  It might be a huge temptation, but it’s a very bad idea.

     May the resolution pass!  May the Republican Party return to the principles that made it dominant in the 1980’s!

Where Have All the Car Makers Gone?

     Have you heard of these automobile manufacturers:  Pierce Arrow, DuPont, Studebaker, and Packer?  Where are they today?  They did what all unsuccessful businesses do.  They closed.  Hundreds of other car makers have come and gone.

     Should the government have bailed them out?  Should the government bail out every business that is struggling and about to fold?  Can the government do so without going broke?

     I think that a lot of people are looking at our economic problems in a way that is not helpful.  Instead of asking whether this or that company should be rescued, I think we should first ask whether it is the job of the national government ever to rescue any private company.  Some things to consider:

1.  How would members of Congress ever choose which companies are worthy of saving and which ones are not?  Are they blessed with some special grace that allows them to make such decisions inerrantly?

2.  Wouldn’t the members of Congress act on such matters based on how they could win the most votes?  Nobody’s naive enough to doubt that they would, I hope.  Isn’t that a form of bribery, and wouldn’t we usually refer to it as corruption?

3.  Is there enough money in the national treasury to bail out every business that faces bankruptcy?  (HINT:  Our country is currently in debt–huge debt.)

4.  Is it what the people want?  You do remember that we are a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” don’t you?  Do the majority of Americans want our hard-earned money confiscated in order to prop up businesses that are already selling us products of questionable quality at inflated prices?  In other words, do we want to pay for our loans, our cars, our insurance, our airline tickets, or anything else, two times (once when we buy them and once when we are taxed to support their purveyors)?

5.  If a certain company closes, isn’t that good news for other companies in the idustry that are doing a better job?  Won’t that help  consumers in the long run, because the other companies will have to win over new customers with higher quality and/or lower prices?

What I Think About Iceland

     I don’t know much about the economic crisis in Iceland.  I read this article about it at Wikipedia, and it makes my head spin.  I simply don’t understand economics well enough to make sense of it.  Maybe some of you can simplify it for a dunderhead like me.

     What I do get out of it is that I wouldn’t chalk the bank failures up to any weakness in the free market.

     For one thing, those banks had formerly been government-regulated.  I would be surprised if they could suddenly make it as private entities after all those years of tight control, especially the way that global banking markets work these days.  For another thing, those banks were mired in deals with a lot of banks that are highly regulated in various places of the world.  To some extent the global economic crisis simply worked its way over to Iceland.

     It’s clear to me that the people running the banks took huge risks.  They were way too deep in debt and promising very unrealistic returns on investments and even interest on savings accounts.  To say that they were mismanaged is an understatement.  Under those circumstances it seems to me that anyone who invested or deposited in those banks, especially if they invested a significant percentage of their assets in them, was about as simple and thick as they come.  I wouldn’t have even put $200 into an account there, knowing the banks’ practices and policies.

     Which leads me to say that those banks deserved to fail, and the people who made idiotic deposits with them or invested in them deserve to lose.  I feel sorry for them, but I blame them for the decisions that they made.  It’s the only pitfall that I know of to the free market–it rewards stupidity appropriately.

A Different View of the Standard Oil Company

     In a comment on an earlier post, “Why I Am Afraid,” Scott Erb mentioned the Standard Oil Company and anti-trust laws.  Unlike Scott, I still believe in free markets, even if it means that a clever and diligent person can do so well that it makes life hard for competitors.  When a company makes such a good product for such an affordable price that few can compete, that benefits everyone.  If somebody can make the product better and cheaper, that also benefits everyone.  Either way, consumers win.

     Here’s a good, well-sourced and very logical article on the subject:  “Witch-Hunting for Robber Barons:  The Standard Oil Company” by Lawrence W. Reed.  I won’t assert that the standard “Standard Oil Was Greedy and Evil” line is completly wrong and that Mr. Reed is completely right, although his article seems fair and reasonable.  I would simply like people to read what it says and consider that the standard view of Standard Oil, which you probably got fed in school, is a bit biased.

     Call me an extreme cynic, but it seems to me that the people who don’t like efficiency-based monopolies are just envious of other people’s success.  Call me an even more extreme cynic, but some of the people who say that they don’t want monopolies want the government to run certain industries.  What more powerful kind of monopoly could there be than one with an army to back it up?

Raking in the Dough on Obama

     There have been so many ironies surrounding Barack Obama’s candidacy and election.  The latest is that lots of entrepreneurs are selling merchandise related to him.  They’d better sell the stuff now, because Obama’s tax plan won’t make it easy for them to keep their profits.

Spreading the Wealth Is Shortsighted and Immoral

     Our economy is in pretty bad shape right now, and at such a time it is particularly bad to “spread the wealth around.”  It is both shortsighted and immoral.

     It is shortsighted because at such a time we need more businesses.  We need more businesses to create more jobs for people.  Earning a living at a job is a whole lot better than getting a monthly check from “the government.”  At least I think it is.  We need more businesses to increase productivity so that a greater supply of goods and services will bring prices down.  Lower prices will make it easier for working-class people to provide for themselves and for their families.  We need more businesses to create wealth, so that people will spend that wealth on the goods and services that working class people provide–thus keeping more of them working.  If wealthy people horde their wealth out of fear, then fewer people are getting paid for their goods and services, and less money is in circulation.

     What we really do not need right now is to have companies driven out of business.  We do not need to have amibtious young people give up their plans to start new businesses.  Where will the jobs come from then?  Where will people earn money to spend to drive the economy?  How will people pay off their debts?  What will happen to big business if nobody has extra money to invest in those companies?  What will happen to people’s retirement funds if they are invested in those companies?  And–for my more liberal friends–where will the increased tax revenues come from to pay for the government programs that you love so much?

     It is immoral to spread wealth, because it means taking money from people who produce and giving it to people who do not.  That’s just plain wrong.  I don’t care how much lipstick you put on that pig, it is still a pig.  Taking things from people by force is called stealing–in any other context than government confiscation of wealth. 

      It is also immoral because it is deceptive.  Politicians who want to spread wealth around are promising more than they can deliver.  They make themselves out to be secular messiahs who can answer our every prayer and grant our every wish.  But the more they burden business and stifle the creation of wealth, the less wealth there is to spread around.  The less money the government has to spend.  Their programs will not be sustainable, because eventually (after how many trillions in the red, I don’t know) the money tree will be picked clean.  Then these all-powerful saviors will have to tell the starry-eyed people who voted for them:  “Sorry there isn’t any more.” 

     It is immoral to create a class of people, as we have done, who are completely dependent on the few crumbs that Uncle Sam gives them.  Are people better off as slaves to Uncle Sam than they would be as slaves to an individual?  No.  It is better for people to have jobs and earn their money and have dignity and pride in what they have accomplished for themselves.  I have watched my parents do it their whole lives.  One time they actually got government assistance, and they both said, “Never again!”  They decided that it would be better for each of them to have two jobs than to be dependent on the labor of others.

     Which brings us back to the shortsighted bit.  People need jobs, and jobs are created by businesses, and businesses thrive where they are free and where it actually pays to start new ones.  By starting businesses, working class people can become middle-class people.  By investing the money they earn in business, middle class people can become wealthy people.  And while they are moving upward economically, they are stimulating the economy and giving other people opportunities to follow in their footsteps.  That’s what real opportunity is–it’s not a few food stamps or a substandard house in a crime-ridden neighborhood.  It’s having the chance to get a job and work your way up the economic ladder.

     I have a better idea than spreading wealth around.  Let’s spread freedom around.  Let’s spread the ideals of responsibility and hard work around.  Let’s spread the admiration for producers and inventors and employers around.  Let’s spread joy whenever businesses earn a profit, since that means the investors will be able to retire well and the company might create even more jobs.  Then we might actually improve people’s lives–including the poorest among us.

Is The Government Big Enough Yet?

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

–Gerald R. Ford

      If you care about freedom, then you shouldn’t want a government that is big enough to do either one.  I certainly don’t.

     Let’s make a deal with Washington:  we won’t ask you to take care of us, and you won’t ask us to feed your bottomless coffers.

     What do you think?