Mob Rule

Posted on September 6, 2012 by alsanblog

According to Slate’s Raul Gallegos, Hugo Chavez has run Venezuela’s state run oil company into the ground to the point where it is now paying its suppliers with IOUs. Gallegos characterizes this as a lesson in “oil wealth mismanagement,” but I think it can also be viewed as a lesson in mob rule. Chavez is an authoritarian, but he is still needs to win elections. Chavez may rely on fraud and general thuggery to win his elections, but he also needs the support of the mob, which he bought by stripping Venezuela’s oil industry. The result has been steady decline. Considering how Obama has been handing out the money in this country, we may be creating the conditions for our own version of mob rule. Perhaps the Venezuelan example should serve as a warning for us.

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Saving American Capitalism

Posted on September 2, 2012 by alsanblog

Steven Pearlstein’s long, rather useless article (doesn’t even mention Hayek or Friedman) about saving capitalism contains several questionable comments. For example, he suggests that conservatives reject the notion that it “takes a village to create a successful company.” This is a straw man; everyone knows that we live in a highly interdependent society.

The question is how to organize society in a way that produces the greatest prosperity. Conservatives believe (backed by historical results) that this is achieved through freedom, which means a market-based economy and competition. In contrast, liberals can only imagine and “hope” for a centralized, authoritarian approach, complete with central planning (soon to be seen in the 20% of the economy that we call healthcare).

Pearlstein also suggests that it’s odd to think that anyone in America these days is “seriously” proposing socialism or communism. I’m not sure what Pearlstein means when he refers to socialism or communism, but such societies are clearly authoritarian in nature. If we consider a political spectrum ranging from authoritarian on the one end to freedom on the other, we not only already are leaning to the authoritarian side, but Obama clearly has us moving even further in that direction. This isn’t a fact to be taken lightly.

Saving capitalism is not rocket science. We might start by realizing government’s role should be limited to providing the legal framework in which markets and competition will thrive (btw: authoritarian government is inconsistent with the development of the “social capital” that Pearlstein and others praise so much).

This means rejecting the idea of central planning; choosing instead to enforce the antitrust laws:  breaking up the entities that are too big to fail, stopping the consolidation in health-care, and requiring firms to compete. Yes, this would be a start. And anyone who thinks that a market approach is what caused the real estate and financial meltdown in the first place should think again. Government led the way in the whole sorry mess.

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Terminating Bin Laden

Posted on August 30, 2012 by alsanblog

Liberals often claim that one of Obama’s great foreign policy achievements, as mentioned yet again by Slate’s Fred Kaplan, is that he “ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden.”

To analyze this claim properly, however, it’s necessary to think of the world “but-for” Obama (that is, the world in which John McCain is president), and ask what McCain would have done. The most likely answer is that McCain also would have ordered the killing of bin Laden. If bin Laden would have been killed whether or not Obama was president, then Obama can hardly take credit for bin Laden’s death. Doing what would have happened anyway is not an accomplishment, although liberals fail to comprehend this.

Kaplan also claims that Obama’s foreign policy has been “quite successful,” but Kaplan conveniently ignores a number of Obama’s failures. For example, the “reset” policy (aka appeasement) with Russia has accomplished nothing, Iran continues to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, Iraq has been abandoned, and Afghanistan most likely will be abandoned to the misogynists who will continue to oppress and enslave women. Not a peep from Kaplan about any of these other issues.

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World’s Oldest Person

Posted on August 27, 2012 by alsanblog

So at this time, it seems that the world’s oldest person is 116 years old.  What I’d like to know is the record for the length of time that someone has held the title of the world’s oldest person. The answer to that doesn’t appear to be available at Guiness World Records.

Update:  The record for the length of time that someone has been the world’s oldest person is probably held by Jeanne Calment, who became the oldest person at age 112 and died at age 122.

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Difference In Kind

Posted on August 27, 2012 by alsanblog

In her WSJ column, Kimberley Strassel outlines what Americans can expect to see from Obama in a second term: higher taxes, greater spending, growing deficits, fine tuning of the regulatory apparatus, and continued decline of American influence in foreign affairs. She correctly concludes that the real choice in the upcoming election is one between Romney’s reform agenda and a “Supersized Obama.” But a problem with this sort of review is that it suggests the difference between Romney and Obama is simply a difference in degree rather than the difference in kind that it actually is.

Conservatives should argue more forcefully that we are looking at fundamental differences in this election. Romney and Ryan believe that a market-based economy and competition is the best way to organize society to achieve the best results (e.g., greatest prosperity, least inequality). Obama goes in the opposite direction. Since his election in 2008, Obama has proved to love centralized government and central planning. Obama’s plan for healthcare (i.e., his plan for almost 20% of the economy) does not promote the use of markets and competition, which means that in the end, the authoritarians will resort to price controls and restrictions on access in a futile attempt to control costs. And this would only be the beginning (see Obama’s calls to control prices in education).

The majority of Americans agree with Romney and Ryan about the efficacy of a market-oriented economy and society. Liberals are worried about this fact (e.g., see the ridiculous attempt by Matthew Yglesias of Slate to equate a market-based economy with central planning). By not explicitly emphasizing the difference in kind between Obama and Romney, conservatives are missing an opportunity to better clarify what is at stake in the upcoming election.

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The Liberals’ Orwellian Strategy

Posted on August 23, 2012 by alsanblog

Using Medicare as the backdrop in a recent post, Matthew Yglesias claims that the difference between an economy based on markets and competition and an economy that is centrally planned (of the sort that Obama desires) is “superficial.” According to Yglesias, both types of economy are “centrally planned.” So Yglesias is telling us here, in an example reminiscent of Orwellian mind control, that decentralization = centralization; no doubt he dreams that his formulation will take its place beside the FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and WAR IS PEACE inconsistencies that permeate Orwell’s 1984. Maybe his next post will explain how 2+2=5.

Most people (liberals and conservatives alike) prefer to live in a society that produces the greatest prosperity for the greatest number of people. Of course, the difference between liberals and conservatives is that  liberals favor the centralized, authoritarian approach that accompanies central planning whereas conservatives believe that a free society based upon markets and competition is the best way to organize society. The majority of American voters tend to think that a free market approach is preferable. Perhaps a desire to eliminate such distinctions and thereby confuse matters explains Yglesias’s bizarre attempt to equate central planning with free markets. Liberals are desperate indeed.

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Decentralization Is Centralization?

Posted on August 22, 2012 by alsanblog

It seems fair to characterize Obama’s “vision” as one that would move America even further along the road to centralized authoritarian government, and that in stark contrast to this, Romney and Ryan favor an approach where economic and political power is more decentralized. Now comes Matthew Yglesias, arguing, in a recent post relating to Medicare and ObamaCare, that decentralization (i.e., markets and competition within markets) is really centralization. If Yglesias keeps this nonsense up, his photo will soon appear in the dictionary beside the word “Orwellian.” Indeed, liberal desperation is not a pretty sight.

By the way, the Peter Orszag example that apparently inspired Yglesias to his decentralization is centralization absurdity makes no sense. If the expensive beneficiary stays in traditional Medicare, then the average costs for the private insurer would not be $100, but would in fact be $50, which then would be the price that the inexpensive beneficiary would pay. Total costs would be $200 ($150 plus $50), not the $240 claimed by Orszag. And if we go beyond a static example and consider the dynamic aspects of competition, we could expect these costs to come down.

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Teeth

Posted on August 21, 2012 by alsanblog

Come on people, cut Todd Akin a break.  He obviously saw IFC’s recent showing of the movie “Teeth,” mistakenly thought that vagina dentata was real, and applied it to his analysis of rape and abortion. Probably not the first time someone has been misled by what appeared in a movie.

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Attacking Federal Employees

Posted on August 16, 2012 by alsanblog

Now for something entirely bizarre. In a USA Today article, Dennis Cauchon reports that 21,000 federal retirees have pensions of $100,000 or more, but it isn’t until the second to last sentence of the article that he happens to mention that 96% of the six-figure pensions are part of the old retirement system, which ended in 1984. So, if I understand this correctly, Cauchon is making a fuss about a system that ended almost 30 years ago.

Not only is the article fundamentally incoherent, but it also illustrates several of the ploys used by those who attack federal employees. For example, Cauchon refers to the “average” federal retiree pension, finding that it exceeds the average for the private sector. Talking about “averages” is entirely meaningless, however, unless the composition of the two workforces is identical, which it isn’t:  The percentage of federal employees in the nine highest paying occupations is significantly higher than such employees in the private sector (50% vs. 33%). Given this fact, the average pension naturally will be higher for the federal sector. Anyone who doesn’t understand how this works really is not qualified to hold an opinion about federal compensation, let alone write articles about it.

Not content with confusing matters in this way, Cauchon also misrepresents that federal pensions (at $70 billion per year) are a growing federal “budget burden.”  Not true: even if pensions were reduced by 10%, the $7 billion of annual savings would represent less than 2/10ths of one percent of federal spending.  We all know that federal spending is driven by entitlements, yet people like Cauchon continue to state or imply that federal compensation is a budget issue. Cauchon certainly did not distinguish himself with this article.

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“Independent” Experts

Posted on August 15, 2012 by alsanblog

A panel of independent experts, in a new medical study, concludes that drugs used to treat mild cases of high blood pressure are not very effective.  According to Slate’s Jeanne Lenzer, the study turns “decades of medical dogma” on its head, and she’s especially gaga about the “independent” nature of the panel, by which she means that the panelists who conducted the study don’t take money from drug companies.

Well, that’s nice, but I would want to know the answer to some other questions before becoming too excited about the independence of the panel.  For example, who did pay for the study? Did these esteemed researchers vote for Barack Obama in 2008? Do they support ObamaCare? If the government financed the study or the researchers are Obama supporters, then we rightly should question their independence and integrity. It seems a little too convenient that studies lately have been popping up everywhere showing that, whaddaya know, various treatments and procedures really aren’t necessary after all (e.g., mammograms, PSA tests, and now blood pressure medications).

After the impending government takeover of healthcare, the authoritarians not only will attempt to control total costs by instituting price controls, but also will have to restrict the volume of services. Of course, these volume restrictions will be the job of the infamous “death panel,” and I wonder if all of these so-called independent studies are setting the stage for the work of the death panel. Funny, but I didn’t notice Lenzer raising that issue.

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