Category Archives: Economics

Blind faith

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I’ve met and talked to a lot of anti-gun activists. With perhaps one exception I always got the impression they were generally nice people. Misguided, sometimes ignorant, and frequently not very bright but they were nice and I wouldn’t have minded having one of them as a neighbor or socializing with them if the topic of guns didn’t come up.

That said we sometimes ascribe evil intent to the anti-gun people. In the case of certain politicians such as Chuck Schumer, the Clintons, and President Obama (none of which I have ever met or talked to) this may be true. But generally there is something else going on. The people just aren’t the “evil type”.

But of course just because someone is a “nice” person doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t inadvertently advocate for and enable something terribly evil all the while believing they were doing good. Like I said, a lot of these people aren’t that bright.

Lorne Gunter said something on this topic that struck me as highly likely (emphasis added):

There are around 340,000 violent crimes reported to police in Canada each year. Just over 2% of those (around 8,000) involve firearms. (There’s another reason to question the initial wisdom of the gun registry: Why was Ottawa expending so much time, effort and taxpayer money on such a tiny percentage of violent crimes, while doing comparatively little to prevent the 98% of murders, robberies, kidnappings, rapes and beatings not committed with a gun?)

Typically, gun crime is committed by street criminals using stolen or contraband weapons. The gun registry never had any effect on this class of thug. Some of the 8,000 violent gun crimes no doubt were committed by licensed owners using registered guns — people who might be tracked or even deterred using a registry system. But since no one in Ottawa ever had any idea how many people are in this latter group, they had no way of determining the usefulness of the registry.

A cynic might say that not knowing was the point all along. Backers of the registry knew it would produce very little impact, so they deliberately didn’t bother collecting data that would confirm the database’s uselessness.

I think the truth is less conspiratorial (and far more arrogant): Backers were so sure the registry would produce tangible benefits, they never thought they might need to show proof. After all, they were experts and they had thought it up, so how could it not work?

…

It was purely on blind faith that supporters of the registry — police chiefs, victims’ rights groups, women’s shelter operators and grandstanding politicians — assumed that making Canadians register their guns would magically cut down on violent crime.

Faith, in this context, means believing in something without, or even in spite of, evidence. It was, and is, blind faith motivating these people to continue advocating for gun control. As I have pointed out before and some of them have even agreed, they do not know, or care, how to determine truth from falsity.

As an engineer this is abhorrent to me. When I design a filter using an op-amp, a couple capacitors, and resisters I can predict the frequency response within a fraction of a decibel. But I still test it because it’s possible I made a mistake someplace or a part doesn’t meet the vendor’s specification that I used for the design.

When I design an algorithm for estimating the location of a phone based on the presence of visible Wi-Fi access points and cell towers I know pretty darned close what the accuracy is and how long it will take to do the calculations. But I still test it and there is a test team doing their best to shoot my design and implementation down.

I recognize that human behavior is far more complex and less predictable than electronics and software algorithms. But that just screams that tests have to be done on social experiments. Yet, these people are so stupid (or, granted, in some cases malicious) they not only don’t even bother trying to predict the results or think to do tests but cannot imagine why tests would be needed.

These people deserve all the “respect” of a cargo cult or Heaven’s Gate followers.

Unfortunately this faith is not confined to just gun control. It is my hypothesis that this same blind faith template would match most U.S. government program of the last 100 years.

Dear ‘Web Directory’ Company

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Don’t waste your time or mine by calling me on the phone, asking me for my company’s name, address and such like.  Everything you need to know (and a thousand times more) to list my company in your ‘directory’ is right there on my web site.  If you haven’t looked at my web site, you don’t really care at all, and in that case I don’t understand what you think you’re doing.  You make no sense.  You’re phony.  Go away.

On a not altogether unsimilar note; Dear customer; I continue to fail to understand why you get on your computer, find our web site, and then e-mail us from the web site asking for a catalog.  There has never, in the history of retail been a print catalog that has as much information and imagery (including moving and talking pictures) as you have right now in front of you on the web site.  It’s always there, you can’t lose it in a stack of magazines and mail, you can access it from anywhere in the developed and semi-developed worlds, it won’t get damaged by your kids and pets, it won’t sit around getting in your family’s way, and your spouse won’t have to ask you six months from now if it can finally be thrown out.  I know that you, as the customer, are always right, and I appriciate your interest.  I just don’t understand some of your aspects.

Dear computer, computer software company, mobile device manufacturer or sellers and ISPs.  I frequently talk with people who do not have internet access.  I was told just today by a customer, for example, that he didn’t have a computer because he though he’d have to take a computer class and he just didn’t have that much interest or willingness to undergo what he believed would be a pain in the neck.  There are thousands and thousands of these people out there.  Maybe you don;t care about them one teeny tiny bit and that’s why you’re njot making any effort to get their business.  Instead all I can remember from any comercials is; “Spam, Malware, Viruses, SPY WARE!!!!  You could lose all your personal data!!!  Identity theft!!!  Your hard drive Will Crash, FOR SURE!!  Subscribe to our backup service or you’ll LOSE EVERYTHING!!!”  That’s your industry’s image in the minds of the people who represent the pieces of the pie you’re not going after.  They’re afraid, and for some good reasons.  It’s fine and understandable going after your competition’s customers, but there are a whole bunch of other potential customers no one’s going after.  Grow the pie, Man.

Yes I know; paragraphs two and three are closely related and both apply to my own business.  Yes, I’m being slightly hypocritical.

The laws of economics cannot be violated

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Recently I’ve been listening to Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell as I drive to and from Idaho and on my commute into Seattle. One of the lessons was that if prices are fixed by the government you will have problems.

If the prices are fixed too low it results shortages, poor quality, and under the table payoffs to suppliers and/or government price control enforcement agents. If prices are fixed too high it results in surpluses, wasted resources, less efficient means of producing the product (no incentive to reduce costs), and a heavier tax burden. Letting the free market adjust prices dynamically results in much closer to optimal allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses.

This lesson has been known for decades, if not a century or more, but politicians have no incentive to adhere to the laws of economics.

Via email from Ry we have the further proof that the laws of economics cannot be violated without suffering known punishments:

A federal power agency discriminated against wind operators in the Pacific Northwest when it unplugged their generators to cope with a surplus of renewable energy on its transmission system this year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled on Tuesday. It ordered the agency, the Bonneville Power Administration, to rewrite its rules.

Bonneville had argued that it had no option but to lock out the wind generators to protect salmon in the Columbia River.

While the agency could have reduced the power output of hydroelectric dams by routing excess water through a spillway, doing so would violate the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, it said.

…

But a group of wind companies filed a complaint with the energy regulatory commission saying that instead off turning off wind turbines, Bonneville should have resorted to “negative pricing,” or paying customers to take the excess power. Bonneville countered that this would conflict with its obligation to repay loans from the federal government and to provide power cheaply.

…

The problem could crop up more often as companies build wind and solar farms to meet state requirements for renewable energy.

“Negative pricing”?

We need a Constitutional amendment that guarantees freedom of commerce. That would have prevented the health care bill, the war on drugs, subsidies for farmers, and the $200 tax on firearm noise suppressors as well as crazy stuff like people advocating “negative pricing” for electrical power.

Atlas may shrug

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Son James, his wife Kelsey, and I had an interesting conversation about the possible coming collapse of the Euro this evening. I read part of this story to them:

British embassies in the eurozone have been told to draw up plans to help British expats through the collapse of the single currency, amid new fears for Italy and Spain.

As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.

Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis.

The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way.

A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.

That’s the background. What’s more interesting to me is this article:

About a year ago, I spoke at a conference in Europe that attracted a lot of very rich people from all over the continent, as well as a lot of people who manage money for high-net-worth individuals.

What made this conference remarkable was not the presentations, though they were generally quite interesting. The stunning part of the conference was learning – as part of casual conversation during breaks, meals, and other socializing time – how many rich people are planning for the eventual collapse of European society.

Not stagnation. Not gradual decline. Collapse.

As in riots, social disarray, plundering, and chaos. A non-trivial number of these people think the rioting in places such as Greece and England is just the tip of the iceberg, and they have plans – if bad things begin to happen – to escape to jurisdictions ranging from Australia to Costa Rica (several of them remarked that they no longer see the U.S. as a good long-run refuge).

Of course. Once it is pointed out it is obvious.

Those with money will escape the collapse if it occurs. They will take a big hit and won’t be able to get all of their wealth out but they are generally smart and will generally succeed. The looters (by this I mean to include the socialist governments) will attempt to prevent the wealth from leaving but even if they were successful eventually the looters will run out of loot.

Much of the wealth and nearly all the brain power that generated that wealth will “take a holiday”. There is also a good chance, as in the book, that the escape of these people to another place will hasten the downfall. Rand may have missed a lot of the details but the basic concepts may be close enough that the end result is essentially the same.

Atlas may be shrugging.

This is Sort of Cool

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I guess.  It’s an electric milti-copter.  It has one thing going for it that a number of flying machines don’t have– it’s actually gotten off the ground with a human aboard.  I don’t know what it has to offer that a regular helicopter or auto-gyro doesn’t.  Maybe it’s the power transmission system being electrical wires instead of drive shafts and belts.  I immediately though of a hybrid (gas/electric) system, and they talk about that on their web site.  Great as batteries have become, they’re still no match for gasoline.

Still, the main obstacle to wide-spread (affordable) personal aircraft is the FAA and similar, tax-payer-funded authoritarian gangs.  Note that one of the benefits to the multi-copter sited is the fact that it can be flown as an ultra-light– it gets past a lot of the aviation regs.  In a free market we’d all have viable, affordable options for our own aircraft right now.  Poor college kids would have them, as easily as they now have old beat-up cars.

I suppose that would scare the pee out of the authoritarian cowards, so maybe it could be said that we have our current, restrictive system as a means of avoiding the embarrassment for certain people who would soil themselves in public, falling into the fetal position and sucking their thumbs, or simply getting angry and losing control that way.  Frankly, I’d kind of like to see that.  Not in that it would be pleasant, mind you, but it would indicate that we’re on the right track.  In a society where cowards are given any notice other than to receive our contempt, or where cowards actually run things, there will be much impediment to real progress.

HT to the Blaze

Where Has This Newt Been All Our Lives?

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I’d commented just this morning that I’d seen more than enough of Newt.  Then this was sent to me by a relative of a relative;

Not too shabby for a Republican.  The problem for Newt though is that we know Newt.  He has a history.  I can only assume that this was a trial balloon for him– to see how this sort of thing sells in the marketplace (in the minds of people like him) in which the industry of political rhetoric sells its wares.  He’s a craftsman in the art.  I still think the world is better off with Newt as a history teacher.

“Isolate and crush the secular socialist left” he says.  The only reference to liberty he makes is to religious liberty.  OK, what about the religious socialist left?  Why bring in the “secular” bit when you could just say “crush the socialists”?  He still talks about “running” the country too.  That bugs me– Raise your hand if you want to be run by someone in Washington.  See?  Didn’t think so.

Quote of the day—Glen Utzman

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Only tax the poor, not the wealthy. This would motivate the poor to work harder and not be poor anymore.  [Paraphrased]

Glen Utzman
Fall Semester 2011
[Via daughter Kimberly who is taking a class from Professor Utzman.

While this does make a great deal of sense I somehow doubt the idea would receive widespread support.—Joe]

When looters run out of places to loot

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Socialism is reaping the usual results in Greece:

Airliners will be grounded, trains halted and tax offices shut when Greek state workers strike against austerity measures on Wednesday, defying a plea by the government to rally behind its effort to fend off national bankruptcy.

Most probably don’t really understand what is happening. They think they can just demand the government hire people and people will have jobs. What their simple model doesn’t take into account is that they are no different than looters with the government doing the actual theft. The one level of indirection and the facade of respectability allows them to believe they are not engaged in immoral behavior.

The truth is that while economic laws are less well understood and probably more subtle than the laws of physics they are no less certain. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. They have been looting the people who produce for so long the producers have either left the country, given up, or have simply run out of wealth to loot.

I’ve often wondered what it looks like when those who know no life outside of looting run out of places to loot. We sort of saw what happened in the USSR in the ‘80s but that was before the Internet and they were a much more closed society than Greece.

Popcorn anyone?

This is why Boomershoot

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Roseanne Barr advocates people who earn too much money and don’t “pay it back” to be sent “to the reeducation camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded”. This was while being interviewed on Russia Today so I suppose she had a more receptive audience than in the U.S. I would like to suggest she move to Russia and run for President there because that isn’t the way things are supposed to work in this country.

I have another message for Barr and her supporters—the “reeducation camps” and the executions far too frequently advocated by my political opponents are why I put on Boomershoot and delete the records of who participated.

H/T to Tamara.

Radical Democratic Vision

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That’s Left-Speak for “a People’s [communist] Revolution”.  Cornel West wrote an article for the NYT to describe it.  “Martin Luther King Jr. Would Want a Revolution…”

Often has the left attached itself to good causes, co-opting them and bending them into radicalized socialist movements.

Have you heard much about the protests on Wall Street?  Me neither.  Here is Cornel West leading a group of drones in one of those protests.  Listen carefully.  He wants an “American Fall” to coincide with the recent Arab Spring.  The Belt-way left is in a pickle.  The base was fired up and ready to go, but they didn’t get their revolution.  They feel it’s time to pounce.  They’ve taken off the masks, taken to the streets, and now they’re feeling let down.  Wait ’till they’ve simmered and seethed for another year and then see their hopes and dreams, their radical democratic vision, slip away.  That could get ugly.

This is why we aren’t supposed to feed the bears in the national parks.  You give them a little bit of socialism here and there, and before you know it they’re ripping the doors off your car trying to eat your children.  Then you’re forced to shoot them.  It’s inhumane.  DON’T FEED THE SOCIALISTS!  The Republicans have been happily feeding socialists for generations, trying to prove their own good intentions, the fools;
“Look!  Aren’t they cute?  And that one has some little cubs!  Awww!  I’ll be nice and give them my cold french fries, so they don’t go away unhappy…” 
I think we should convince some park rangers to have words with the GOP leadership.

Quote of the day—Mike Jensen

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I’m all for shared sacrifice.  But I think it should be shared sacrifice of those responsible for this mess in the first place.  So instead of punishing the super rich, who didn’t spend us into oblivion, let’s have shared sacrifice among those responsible for this mess.

I propose this:

  1. Collect the name of every member of Congress—Republican or Democrat—who ever voted for a federal budget that included a deficit.
  2. Determine which of these members are still living.
  3. Add the names of all living presidents.
  4. Increase THEIR taxes.

I propose that we tax all former members of Congress at a 50% flat tax rate.  Former presidents would be taxed at a flat 75% of annual income.  Finally, current members of Congress and the current president would be taxes at 100% of their annual income.  Any other Americans who would like to can volunteer to join either of these groups (time to walk the walk, Warren!).  These tax rates will stay in effect until the debt is erased and we have a balanced budget.

How about we stop coddling those who caused this problem in the first place?

Mike Jensen
August 30, 2011
Coddling
[Yup. Those responsible should be the ones to pay the price for fixing the problem.

And if insufficient progress has been made by the time their term in office is over consideration could be given to auctioning off their body parts.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Krugman

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Fortunately, physicians no longer believe that bleeding the sick will make them healthy. Unfortunately, many of the makers of economic policy still do.

Paul Krugman
September 19, 2011
Decline in manufacturing capacity is probably only the beginning of the bad new: Paul Krugman
[He is apparently oblivious to the irony as he goes on to say, even though the U.S. Government is broke, “For the time being we need more, not less, government spending, supported by aggressively expansionary policies from the Federal Reserve and its counterparts abroad.”

Krugman believes that budget austerity is the equivalent of “bleeding the patient” when sane people would recognize it as reducing the hemorrhaging. One has to wonder if Krugman is practicing doublethink, doublespeak, or both. In any case he has crap for brains if he thinks the majority of the people will believe him.—Joe]

Living With Sclerosis

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In this case, the sclerosis of the USPS.  My wife thought I’d taken care of it, and I thought she’d taken care of it, so neither of us took care of it and our P.O. box rental lapsed.  “No problem” says the postmaster to my son on Friday, “you can still renew it on-line by the end of day Saturday.”

After much searching I find the PO boxes link in that grey fine print at the bottom of the page.  Then I have to create an account.  Funny – I’ve never run into this hurdle before, “profanity in the password. please choose another password”.  I always figured no one would ever see your password, so why the hissy fit?

After much fussing around, I finally get to enter my particulars.  “Street Address”  That’s an easy one.  It’s been the same for decades.  As far as I know it’s been the same since the house was built, more than 100 years ago.  “Invalid Address.  Please select from the the alternatives below.”  There were none, so I click through and this time it accepts it.  Next is “Post Office Box Number”.  So I enter that along with my zop code.  That box number with that zip code has only existed since that post office was built, sometime in the mid 20th century, so I can understand how they might not have gotten it entered into their database yet.  So it comes up “invalid Post office box”.  I quit.  I did get a nice e-mail notice this morning though, thanking me for setting up an account.  It listed four or five things that were really super great about having an account with them, one of which was “manage or renew a post office box”.  Super.

So I went in to the post office this morning, saying I’d tried the on-line thing and failed, explaining in detail.  “Oh, No!” the flabby man behind the counter says, “you should have entered your PO box number, not your street address…”
“It asked for the street” and I spell it out for him “Ess Tee Awr Eee Eee Tee, Street Address.” He ignores that. “So what can I do”  Now this is the Monday after the Saturday that was our last day to renew.
“I have to change the lock, and you’ll have to pay the fee. How many of the new keys do you want?”
“I’d rather keep the same keys if it’s all the same to you. Charge me the fee and you can avoid the absurdity of changing the lock” Well that put him all in a pother.
“I’ll have to fool the computer….” and he pittered and pattered around the office for a bit, printed something off, cussed, threw it away, printed something off again, I wrote the check, thanked him, and was on my way.

All I could think of after that ordeal was the old saying among business owners everywhere; “If they ran a business like that, they’d be bankrupt.”  Oh wait.

It also reminds me of Douglas Adams’ Vogons, or of Ayn Rand’s description of the Soviet Union as a “morbid absurdity”.

Seldom Do I LOL…

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…even when I’m watching good comedy.  Maybe it comes from growing up in a large family.  If you LOL, shut up already.  I’m trying to listen, and anyway, how can you listen while you’re cackling?  (In a live social situation, at least the deliverer of the comedy usually has the sense to wait for some degree of quiet, so that’s different)  Stuff like that.  But I LOL’d at this, from Tam;

Meanwhile, I’d like to offer my services to moderate the next GOP debate:

“Now, if you will all look down at your podiums, you will notice that you’ve all been provided with a short document. A few of you might even be vaguely familiar with it. If you don’t mind, could you each just look in the part headed ‘Article II’ and point out to me the sentence or phrase that indicates that ‘job creation’ or ‘the economy’ is within the presidential purview?

We’ll start with you, on the end, with the hair. No, not you… the other one on the end, with the hair…”

It’s absurd in its truth.  Funny and sad.

When thinking of the most recent, absurd rationalizations and excuses for government meddling, and the obvious expectation from politicians that we revere them (why is never explained) I find, more and more frequently, the phrase, “None of your filthy, stinking, rotten business, you sniveling, made-up, hairsprayed, lying piece of shit with the painted-on smile” comes to mind, followed by the thought that if you actually told them to mind their own business they wouldn’t understand– they actually believe that your business IS their business.  Tam made it funny is all.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I should clean my guns.

Quote of the day—John Robb

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Looking for a safe asset class today, is like a Soviet bureaucrat in 1989, sensing trouble ahead, looking for the directorate with the safest job.

John Robb
August 30, 2011
JOURNAL: Where Should I Put My Money Before Things Collapse?
[I think there is some truth in the statement above but there are some flaws in the rest of the post. He seems to believe the problems are with capitalism rather than government interference in the free market.

What do I think are safe “asset classes”? The essentials of life: water, food, shelter, communication, health care, security, and the means to produce them. Which isn’t all that far off from what Robb advocates.—Joe]

It’s a start

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I’ve often wondered if budget cuts would lead to less infringement upon our freedom. This is just a drop in the bucket and the effect will probably go completely unnoticed at our level. But it is a start:

The Transportation Security Administration is soon hoping to offer buyouts to about 3,000 administrative workers, one of dozens of federal agencies aiming to trim the payroll amid a budget crunch.

TSA is seeking authority from the Office of Personnel Management to offer buyouts to about 3,000 administrative and managerial workers based at its Northern Virginia headquarters and at regional offices nationwide, the agency said late Thursday.

Something that is more than a little telling about this organizations is the following from the same article:

The agency has offered voluntary early retirements to workers since December 2004 — about a year after the agency first opened.

It sounds to me like a major function of the agency is redistribution of wealth. When the budget crunch really hits I won’t have any probably advocating for the letting these guys and the politicians who enabled this sort of crap fend for themselves.

Hunger is coming

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I’ve been saying for years that hunger is coming and that lots of people are going to die. I can’t find it on my blog but I know I have said it many times in private, “People have to get hunger before they revolt.”

Instapundit linked to the overview (via Kenneth Anderson) and David linked to the paper supporting my claims.

One of the biggest questions that comes to mind is what about the government forced famines in the Ukraine in the 1930s? Were there riots then? If so we know they weren’t sufficient to overthrow the communists but they didn’t have personal firearms either.

I agree with some of the others, the August 2013 date is a little too precise. The world could have bumper crops for a while and push the date out or there could be a bunch of crop failures and the date gets closer. But the bottom line is the conditions for revolt are approaching. As a general rule revolutions are bad for liberty. Will the U.S be different? What needs to be done to hold on to a free market and freedoms in general if there is a revolution? Would the preservation of private property via the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms be sufficient? Or will the forces demanding the abolition of private property be overwhelming? If the latter then it is my opinion that many more millions will die.

A Little History

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I’ve long suspected (“suspected” as in I hadn’t set out to prove it, though I knew for sure anyway) that many of our gun restriction laws were vigorously supported by the gun industry.  It’s the only explanation for some of the import restrictions, and it makes sense to explain licensing requirements for manufacturers– protection for the established companies against cheap imports and upstart competitors, respectively.  This motivated American companies, and even the NRA, to get into bed with the anti-rights movement.  Add to that the government’s multi million dollar contracts potentially held over company’s heads, and you have an extremely powerful influence against liberty.  I bring this up because this sort of thing has been going on all throughout our society for, well, essentially forever.

Researching an answer for a customer, which is something I spend a lot of my time doing, I came across this (emphasis mine);

“The patent on the M1 carbine was owned by Western Cartridge Co. and David “Carbine” Williams, and still in effect when Penney and Arnold wanted to begin manufacturing M1 carbines in 1958. Penney and Arnold contacted Winchester-Western and offered them a percentage per carbine manufactured, in return for permission to manufacture the M1 carbine. John Olin, owner of Winchester-Western, refused. Olin, Winchester-Western, and more than a few other American manufacturers were opposed to all of the surplus weapons being returned to the United States, where they were being sold at prices the manufacturers couldn’t compete with. This opposition eventually led the manufacturers and the National Rifle Association to support the Gun Control Act of 1968, which, amongst many other things, prohibited the importation of U.S. military surplus.“

The capitalist in me, which comprises my entire being, says; “Why didn’t Winchester and other manufacturers buy up all the cheap imports, then, or at least strike a deal with the new company?”  But some obvious questions often go unanswered, or un-asked.

Point being; a huge number of the vast mountain of restrictions and barriers to entry into the marketplace we have now, started with a politician getting into bed with someone in business, and working out a deal.

What to do about it?  First be aware of it.  Then understand that our government was set up, partly, to avoid this sort of thing.  Hence I lay the majority of the blame on the corrupt operators in our government.  There will always be one person willing to sell out his country for money, but government is specifically charged with protecting liberty.  Tar and feathers, anyone?  And be aware of what your favorite advocacy group is really doing before you give them money.

Jesus the Socialist

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This has come up over and over, but then the leftist playbook is only about four pages, and those are all double-spaced.  If you have to lobby for your B.S. for 150 years without pause, you end up being very repetitive.  When your repetitions are all lies, you also end up looking both stupid and insane, which of course makes a good enough definition of socialism right there.  This was my comment over there;

I never read the whole Bible, but I did see the movie. [back when I was a kid]
If Jesus ever lobbied the Roman government, calling for forced redistribution and centralized control, I haven’t heard of it.  Let’s demand that the socialists point us to that passage in the Bible.  He didn’t lobby the government employees to form public employees’ unions who would then take to the streets, calling for revolution if they didn’t get their way, did he?  Let’s see THAT part in the Bible.  (if Jesus did that, he must have been a dumb jerk anyway, and I wouldn’t listen to him)

If we were put here with free will, then forcing “charity” takes away that free will along with the distinction between those who give willingly and those who “give” only under threats from the government.

The socialists know all this of course, so let’s not make the mistake of taking their gibberish seriously– they’re just making up lies to sow doubt among the less attentive of Christians.  The only time we should ever take socialists at their word is when they’re making their threats.  They have a long history of carrying out the most outrageous of threats.  In that case we must be very serious in our resolve to defeat them.  Otherwise, socialism is nothing but a sick joke.

When Jesus shows up in person, dressed in a black ninja outfit with his own team of storm troopers to take my property, I’ll believe he was a socialist.  Until then; Girls, you be trippin’.  I’ll go with Douglas Adams’ definition of Jesus; “A man who got nailed to a tree for suggesting we be nice to people.”  I suppose today he’d be labeled a “terrorist” and the Brits would shut down his Twitter and FaceBook accounts.

The War Got Us Out of the Depression?

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That’s the claim.  World War Two got us out of the Great Depression.  It’s become an almost Pavlovian response.  Mention the end of the Great Depression, and the pre-programmed, rapid-fire response is “The-War-got-us-out-of-it!”  Ring the bell and the socialist dogs drool.  No thought about how such a thing could be– Just blind faith that it was so.

I heard one of the talk shows hosts (I think it was Limbaugh) bring this up recently.  The very same people who claim that W.W. II “got-us-out-of-the-Depression” are now the ones claiming that the current “Bush Lied, People Died/Inside Job” wars are dragging down the economy.  I don’t think the socialists can have it both ways.  We have troops in active fighting in what, four countries now?  I lost count, and it’s not “fighting” anymore, but “Kinetic Somethingorother” anyway.  We should be doing great about now if their Keynesian economic theories are correct.

Sure.  Just try this experiment with your own business or family; apply all your best efforts, using all your best resources, to build all your best products, for four years, go deeply into debt doing it, and then package up all of that best stuff, along with all your best workers, and send them overseas to be expended with no compensation.  Then build new houses for a German family and a Japanese family, going further into debt to do that, while you engage in years of litigation and appeals with a Russian family with no clear outcome.  See how rich you are at the end of it.

You can’t advocate two opposite ideologies at the same time.  One negates the other.  Either Keynesian theory is spot on, or it’s crazy.  Your perpetual motion machine either works or it doesn’t work.  Don’t claim both or you’ll look even more blitheringly stupid than you looked when you only said your perpetual motion machine generated a net energy output (oops; I’m assuming you know what “net energy output” means, which, if you believe in Keynesian economics, you don’t. Sorry).

PS.  I read several years ago that we don’t have “Infantry” anymore.  Oh no.  That would be much too.. “yesterday”.  Now we have a “Soldier-centric Force Structure” so it’s all new and shiny, you see.  Makes all the difference in the world.  To a moron.

Since having a “War Department” to fight real enemies sounded too unfriendly, and we now have the “Defense Department” and “Peace-Keeping Forces” instead, I figure it won’t be long before we have the “Department of Peace” that will bomb the shit out of you if you advocate liberty.  You’d better hope that the Peace Squad never shows up in your neighborhood.  It’ll be a bunch of government hippies shooting up your private flower pots.  Or something.