Category Archives: Politics

Productivism

Posted on by

I sometimes read or hear of people complaining our society is plagued by (spit, spit) consumerism. This always sounded like some sort of epithet but didn’t really have much meaning to me. It was just a word that every “right thinking” person knew was a “bad thing”.

It wasn’t until I read this article that things started to jell in my mind. It was this paragraph that really connected with me:

Humans are not merely consumers. Every consumer is also a producer as well, and production is how we have improved our standards of living from the dawn of man till today. Every luxury, every great invention, every work of art, every modern convenience that we enjoy was the product of a mind – in some cases, of more than one. It then stands to reason that the more minds there are, the more innovations we will have as well. A reductio ad absudum reveals the obvious truth that a cure for cancer is more likely to emerge from a society of a billion people than from one of only a handful of individuals.

The problem I have with people that whine about consumerism is that they are only looking at one side of the picture. In order for consumers to exist there must be producers. In a free market there tends to be more production capacity than consumer capacity. And that excess capacity makes things more affordable and available to everyone.

Production and market competition yields tremendous benefits to society. Extended lifespans and higher quality of life are just the most obvious. Entertainment via Netflix, MTV, professional sports, and concerts might be considered frivolous and a waste but it is an improvement in the quality of life that is a result of our being able to produce more than what we need for survival. It is our excess production capacity that makes it possible to earn our food and shelter in fewer hours per week than it would have 1000 years ago. Back then a similar amount of effort, unless you were royalty, nobility, or politically connected, would have yielded death by malnutrition, disease, or exposure.

Yes, there must be physical limits to human growth on a single planet. But we don’t yet know what those limits are on this planet. The barriers to interplanetary travel and exo-planetary living are high. But from a simple available energy balance sheet (do the arithmetic on how many Joules of sunlight energy fall on a 40 acre field on a summer day, then extrapolate to the vastness of interplanetary space) it doesn’t seem farfetched to claim that human expansion beyond this planet is feasible.

Continued improvements in the human condition depend on increased production. In a free market producers must always produce goods desired by the consumers. Some of the products will seem frivolous but the net result has always been progress in improving the lives of people and more productivity per person. Moving society toward greater productivity will yield far greater benefits than discouraging consumption. Just look at the benefits of increased productivity of the last 1000 years.

When you hear someone use the word “consumerism” in a disparaging way demand they look at the requirements for it’s existence and consequences of it. And that is “productivism” and vast improvements in the human condition. Demand they tell you what they have against increases in productivity and improved quality of life.

The motivation for evil

Posted on by

is evil.

This Land is Mine

Posted on by

…or, the Middle East Explained.

Pop quiz – how many of them can you identify with reasonable certainty, or at least recognize that you knew them for sure at one point?

Quote of the day—Zack Beauchamp

Posted on by

There is no longer any defensible argument for a constitutional right to own a firearm, if there ever was.

Zack Beauchamp
February 20, 2014
Ban the Second Amendment: Imagine the Second Amendment didn’t exist, and try arguing for a constitutional right to gun ownership. You will fail.
[H/T to Kurt Hofmann.

Self defense, one of the easiest ways to argue it to most people is dismissed with:

The second argument in favor of untrammeled gun ownership, a right to self-defense, is equally incoherent. For starters, there’s no reason that, in a civil society, the right to defend yourself implies the right to defend yourself however you’d like. A basic part of government’s job is to limit our ability to hurt others; assuming the absolute right to self-defense constitutes, in Alan Jacobs’ evocative phrasing, “the absolute abandonment of civil society.”

Here you can see some of his incredibly scary mindset. “A basic part of government’s job is to limit our ability to hurt others”. Wow!

It’s that same old prevention instead of punishment argument. In my mind one of the characteristics of a free society is that you are free to make mistake, or be evil, it’s just that you will suffer the consequences of your actions if you do. Except in extreme outlier cases, such as true weapons of mass destruction, the government should not ever be granted the power to prevent ordinary people from doing whatever it is they want to do. In terms of citizen/citizen interaction government power is only granted to punish those that infringe upon the rights of others.

Beauchamp’s mindset is that of one who yearns for an all powerful, all seeing, all protective government. A government with widespread informants which interrogates and tortures people in response to anonymous or torture induced testimony. That is the only way you can even hope to approach a preventive model for citizens hurting others.

Beauchamp should study history rather than yearn for an utopia who’s quest has resulted in the murder of 10’s of millions by their own government in the 20th Century.—Joe]

Government at work

Posted on by

This is what happens when the government tries to do something. It is in part because it’s “someone else’s money”:

Employees at an ObamaCare processing center in Missouri with a contract worth $1.2 billion are reportedly getting paid to do nothing but sit at their computers. 

“Their goals are set to process two applications per month and some people are not even able to do that,” a whistleblower told KMOV-TV, referring to employees hired to process paper applications for ObamaCare enrollees.  

The facility in Wentzville is operated by Serco, a company owned by a British firm that was awarded $1.2 billion in part to hire 1,500 workers to handle paper applications for coverage under the law, according to The Washington Post. 

The whistleblower employee told the station that weeks can pass without data entry workers receiving even a single application to process. Employees reportedly spend their days staring at their computers, according to a KMOX-TV report. 

“They’re told to sit at their computers and hit the refresh button every 10 minutes, no more than every 10 minutes,” the employee said. “They’re monitored, to hopefully look for an application.”

Obamacare will make healthcare more affordable. All the government has to do is pass a law declaring something to be true and that is what will happen.

That is what the suckers believe. Historic data to the contrary is always ignored. Present results are ignored. They believe intentions are more valid than results. These people do not operate in a world of facts. They operate in a world of good intentions. Most of them anyway. Some are truly evil and take advantage of this flaw in the nature of many people.

Daniel Webster and Henry David Thoreau both had it nailed over 150 years ago.

It’s time people put their brains to work and stop relying on their “hearts”. If we don’t the consequences may be extremely severe. Their ideology puts millions of people at extreme risk.

Wishful thinking?

Posted on by

Clearing out my spam folder just now, I spied one from Senate Republicans out of the corner of my eye, way down the list. My first thought was that it said “Why we lose”, which would have been an excellent and highly relevant topic. In fact it said “Lyle, we are close.”

Actually, we are not close. “We” are not even on the right path and so we’ll never be close until we change paths. Since it was titled with a falsehood, and since they’re not going to address the all-important question of why we lose, there was no point in reading it.

That is of course assuming that “We” means “we Republicans” which in my case is big stretch. Since TR, over 100 years ago, “Republican” has meant “Progressive who must pander to conservatives and libertarians for votes, and who therefore hates his job”.

Stereotypes

Posted on by

Weer’d made a comment in this post that kind of bugged me:

Still I’ve noticed that the more homogenous a population is in an area the more revolting the racism can be. I knew a ton of people in Maine who would drop the N-Bomb frequently, and would make horrible cracks about blacks….but I always wondered if they had even SEEN one.

It’s a LOT harder to make such cracks when you know people of a minority or other groups.

Where I grew up there were virtually no “people of color”. Technically the family farm was (and is) on an Indian reservation but most of the land had been purchased by whites over the years and no Indians have lived there since before I was born. 20 miles away, in Lapwai, the entire town was (and probably still is) essentially Nez Perce. But we only saw them when our schools competed. They were serious competitors just like the kids from Grangeville and Kamiah who also had few, if any, non-whites. Their athletic ability was everything. The only pigmentation that mattered was that of their uniform. The inferiority of that pigmentation did not extrapolate to an inferiority in the pigmentation of their skin.

Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Ludwig von Mises

Posted on by

The welfare of the nation takes precedence over the selfishness of the individuals … was the fundamental principle of Nazi economic management. But as people are too dull and too vicious to comply with this rule, it is the task of government to enforce it.

Ludwig von Mises
1949
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (4 Volume Set)
[For more context see here.

“Dull and vicious.” That is what they think of you if you do not place the welfare of the nation above that of your own. When people tell you this today inform them there have been a lot of people in agreement with them. It was the fundamental principle of Nazi economic management.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Posted on by

We have a slave class in this country.

There is a segment of the population that lives solely off the toil of others without making their own contribution. Their grandparents, parents, and children insist they are entitled to being supported by their slaves. They deserve to be supported and appear to have no remorse, see anything wrong with the situation, and fully expect they and their offspring to be able to continue to live off the back of others forever.

We have the slave overseers who punish the slaves who do not “contribute their fair share”. And actively seek the favors of their master who give them their power. They promise more and more benefits if only they will vote for them in the next election.

As Ayn Rand said, socialism is the enslavement of people by vote. And we have made great “progress” in becoming a socialist society.

Yes. I know. Comparing modern-day wage earners to slaves trivializes true slavery. But Marxists have been doing this for a long time and I’m not going to accept criticism for using the same tactic they use against us.

Footnote 1
From here: “It can be persuasively argued,” noted one concerned philosopher, “that the conception of the worker’s labour as a commodity confirms Marx’s stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as ‘wage-slavery;’ that is, as an instrument of the capitalist’s for reducing the worker’s condition to that of a slave, if not below it.”[249]

Footnote 2
While doing a bit of poking around in the process of writing this blog post I ran across this fascinating tidbit:

A black man named Anthony Johnson of Virginia first introduced permanent black slavery in the 1650s by becoming the first holder in America of permanent black slaves.[116]

And this:

Some of President Obama’s ancestors were slave owners.[263]

Quote of the day—Jay Leno

Posted on by

We wanted a president that listens to all Americans – now we have one. Yeah.

Actually, President Obama clarified the situation today. He said no one is listening to your phone calls. The president said it’s not what the program is all about. You know, like the IRS isn’t about targeting certain political groups. That’s not what it’s about!

I mean what’s going on? The White House has looked into our phone records, checking our computers, monitoring our e-mails. When did the government suddenly become our psycho ex-girlfriend? When did that happen?

Jay Leno
June 7, 2013
From here.

[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ayn Rand

Posted on by

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

Ay Rand
“Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon,”
The Los Angeles times, Sept. 9, 1962, G2
From here.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brian Anderson

Posted on by

Besides the Constitutional issues with gun control, the thing that bothers me the most is that the anti-gunners just don’t know what the hell they are talking about. They say they want to have a “conversation” about gun control, but they aren’t even armed with the basic knowledge of how firearms work, let alone stats and facts to back up their attempts to disarm the American populace.

Brian Anderson
April 28, 2014
Anti-Gun NJ Politician Confused About Guns
[H/T to JPFO.

They don’t have basic knowledge about how firearms work, stats, and facts because they are irrelevant to them. Their “reasons” for wanting to disarm us are independent of such things or the facts that do matter to them must be carefully hidden from us in order for their plans to succeed.—Joe]

Mixed feelings

Posted on by

I approve of the end result but I wish we had got there via the legislature rather than the courts:

A federal judge has issued an injunction Tuesday blocking enforcement of Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage, saying it is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Magistrate Candy Dale issued the ruling in the case of four same-sex couples who challenged the constitutionality of Idaho’s marriage laws, which voters approved as an amendment to the state constitution in 2006.

In her decision, Dale wrote that Idaho’s laws barring same-sex marriage unconstitutionally deny gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry.

I see marriage law as being in the domain of the state legislatures. I haven’t read the court decisions but it would seem to be a stretch to find a fundamental right for same sex couples to marry in the U.S. Constitution, common law, or natural law and yet there be some question about the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms being protected.

Random thought of the day

Posted on by

If corporations were really legally treated like individuals then they wouldn’t be prosecuted for organizing like unions and engaging in collective bargaining with labor organizations.

Quote of the day—Hillary Clinton

Posted on by

At the rate we’re going, we’re going to have so many people with guns everywhere, fully licensed, fully validated, in settings where [one] could be in a movie theater, and they don’t like someone chewing gum loudly or talking on their cell phone and decide they have the perfect right to defend themselves against the gum chewer or cell phone user by shooting.

Hillary Clinton
May 6, 2014
Hillary Clinton pushes gun control, Obamacare
[I find it very telling that her concern is about the number of people with guns. Does she also worry about the number of people exercising their First Amendment rights? And does she think it would be appropriate to license and “validate” people that exercise their First Amendment rights?

And since she used the example of a movie theater does she also worry that if people don’t have their mouths locked shut before they enter a theater that they might yell “FIRE!” when there is no fire?

With bigotry and prejudice this severe Ms. Clinton is unfit to serve in public office. She doesn’t want to be a public servant. She wants to be a tyrant.—Joe]

At least read the book…

Posted on by

…before you attempt to discredit Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Darwin’s theory is an excellent example of conroversy created out of nothing but gossip, speculation and misinformation.

Oleg Volk reintroduced me to Fred on Everything recently. Fred has some very good and provocative essays. This one however seems to have been written in a vacuum.

I think nearly every question or concern in the essay is addressed carefully and in detail in “On the Origin of Species”.

Also, Darwin was a religious man. I don’t understand the conflict between religion and science. It seems to me that they have the common goal (ostensibly at least) of furthering the cause of general understanding. The only way that conflict makes sense is if those individuals fomenting the conflict are more concerned with power and control than with the process of enlightenment (one cancels the other).

The best American is a stupid, silent American

Posted on by

(that is to paraphrase the radio show host, Michael Savage)

Teacher gets suspended for showing kids his tools. Via the Second Amendment Foundation (saf.org).

Properly, that school would have all of its funding suspended until it publicly apologizes to the teacher and agrees to allow tools in the classroom.

Seriously; who doesn’t think there’s been a war going on against individual capability, productivity and self sufficiency in this country? If people are aware, knowledgeable, strong, confident and self-sufficient, who’d need our current nanny style government, after all? That would put 90% of our government right out of business, and we can’t allow that, now can we? “Oh no, Preciousss….nassty kids musst bow to our greatnesss, yesss they mussst. Make them crawl, we will…”

ETA; I wish people would stop using that word (liberal) to describe authoritarians. We CAN take the language back. That would be a great first step. Just use words correctly. It’s easy. Authoritarian. There; I just did it. See? I wasn’t hit by lightning or anything. Don’t be afraid. Go on; try it. It doesn’t hurt a bit.

I’ve stopped getting it

Posted on by

I got it earlier. It made sense earlier. It was predictable. In the fall of ’08 when a certain someone was promising to Fundamentally Transform America, and Spread The Wealth Around, it made sense that people began buying guns and ammo in huge quantities, bracing for a new round of restrictions or worse.

That was six years ago. That’s longer than the time between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the A-bombing of Nagasaki, with all the design, procurement, tooling, production and logistics efforts involved in fighting and winning a highly mechanized, all-out war over most of the planet.

So why is there still almost no powder or 10 mm bullets on the shelves?

Yes, I’m venting, and yes I’m sitting on the sidelines complaining while doing nothing about it.

Quote of the day—Michael Snyder

Posted on by

Did you know that the number of Americans getting benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million?  In other words, the number of people that are taking money out of the system is far greater than the number of people that are putting money into the system.  And did you know that nearly 70 percent of all of the money that the federal government spends goes toward entitlement and welfare programs?  When it comes to the transfer of wealth, nobody does it on a grander scale than the U.S. government.  Most of what the government does involves taking money from some people and giving it to other people.  In fact, at this point that is the primary function of the federal government.

Michael Snyder
April 17, 2014
18 Stats That Prove That Government Dependence Has Reached Epidemic Levels
[That’s an almost unbelievable number. But after paying my taxes last week it certainly seems plausible because they sure took a lot of money from me this year.

I can’t help but think the end is near.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mary Sanchez

Posted on by

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been the best membership recruitment tool the NRA could hope for: a walking, talking, Big Gulp-banning embodiment of government overreach. And look what he’s done now, given the NRA yet another gift on the eve of its national convention.

Mary Sanchez
April 18, 2014
Bloomberg’s The Wrong Guy To Lead Gun Safety Push
[She’s anti-gun but she’s not politically stupid.—Joe]