Ten Reasons I Hate Politics and One Reason I Don’t - Part 9

9.  To Hell With Freedom, I Like Control

Many years ago, a friend of mine that had served on our local city council told me an interesting story. During one of the council’s open meetings, a young couple came to request an exemption to the zoning laws for their house. They wanted to start a new dog grooming business, but they couldn’t afford to rent a separate space to house the business. Thus, they were requesting that they be allowed to start their business in their home and, if successful, move to a storefront later. After their appeal, the council sent the couple out of the room so they could deliberate.

Several people were opposed to allowing the zoning waiver. Their biggest concern was the issue of customer parking. They didn’t want cars blocking the couple’s neighbor’s property. This was a valid concern, but some councilpersons pointed out that occasionally people in neighborhoods have parties where the guests are parking all around other people’s property, but it was a temporary condition. Besides, a dog grooming business wouldn’t have a bunch of people there at any given time. Most people would be dropping off their dog and returning later to pick it up. This convinced enough councilpersons, so a waiver was approved.

But when the chairperson acknowledged the approval of the waiver, she added that they should limit the number of dogs at their house at any given time to two. My friend thought about that for a bit and said, “Why would we want to limit them to two? I own more dogs than that and they’re at my house all the time.” Ultimately, the council granted the waiver with no limit on the number of dogs they could have at their house at any given time, with the understanding that if any issues came up, they could modify the waiver at a later date.

This story had a happy ending, but in many cases around the country that is not true. It just seems that when people gain any level of power, they suddenly believe they must exert it. In some cases, these people love the feeling of power and want to see others squirm under their thumb. In other cases, they simply believe they are not doing their jobs if they aren’t placing limits on their constituency.

I had a boss that was this way even with the limited power of a low-level manager. Once I planned a project and had the steps all laid out. He came in and made several changes to it. I told my supervisor, who was between the manager and me, that I could make those changes, but then the plan would not be correct. I was told the manager wanted them anyway. A couple of days later, the manager looked at my changes and requested some more. Upon seeing what he wanted, I realized that those changes would make the plan identical to the one I originally submitted. You see, he simply did not believe he was doing his job if he didn’t have some level of input into the process. Just saying to me initially, “Job well done,” was not being managerial. He HAD to DO something.

These examples are minor compared to how some politicians behave in office. In many cities, states, and in DC, the people’s elected leaders are screwing over their citizens without concern for their freedom and wellbeing. There have been many cases where people have had eminent domain used to take their property for something other than public use. In many cases, a city government turns the property over to a private business using the excuse that they will collect more tax dollars from it than from the original owners. Despicably, the government sometimes takes the property without any particular use in mind. They just want to have it in case they come up with something later. You’ve probably heard about the bureaucracy Uber and Lyft have had to deal with to be allowed to compete with local cab companies. Or how about the hair braiders that have been told they must spend many hours and many dollars to get cosmetology training which doesn’t even teach hair braiding. In these latter cases, it’s pure protectionism. The government gets hefty fees and taxes from businesses and in return the government essentially gives them monopoly status in their city or state.

All these actions by government, at any level, are deplorable. Politicians are all about promising more jobs, but then turn around and limit jobs by suppressing rising entrepreneurs. Fortunately, there are a number of not-for-profit organizations that are fighting these kinds of government abuse with great success. I support several personally. If you’d like to read up on what they are fighting or if you want to make a contribution, check out the Institute for Justice, the Goldwater Institute, and the Pacific Legal Foundation.

First Contact – Part 19 – Objectivism

Hal and I shared an office and lab in graduate school. One day the topic of Social Security came up. Hal said, “I don’t like Social Security.”

I was dumbfounded. How could anyone be opposed to a program to help old people? (Well, old to me then, but now not so much.) My father was a big fan of the program, having told me how many older people had a tough time before Social Security.

I queried Hal. “Why?”

“Because of that first word in its name: Social.”

“Why are you against Social?”

“Because of what it represents. It’s a government mandated program of wealth transfer from the young to the old. I don’t like socialism.”

Well, I was opposed to socialism also because I associated it with communism. I had just never thought of Social Security as being a socialistic program. The reason was that I just didn’t think about such things very much in those days. I knew I lived in a free democratic republic with a capitalistic economy that didn’t believe in socialism. How could our country have a national socialistic program when it didn’t even believe in socialism?

This short exchange of words with my friend Hal made me realize that I couldn’t just assume certain things were true. I needed to analyze and decide for myself what was actually true.

A few years after becoming a Christian, I met a fellow believer named Larry who was heavily involved in what I call the Freedom Movement. He challenged not only Social Security, but also things like the fractional reserve banking system that is ubiquitous throughout our nation. To help me understand freedom more, Larry gave me a copy of a small book entitled “The Law” by a 19^th century French assemblyman, political economist, and classical liberal theorist by the name of Frédéric Basiat. I loved it. It laid out the case for freedom and a limited government in a very convincing way. After seeing my enthusiasm for “The Law”, Larry convinced me to share in the cost of 100 copies to give away to our friends and family. Thus began my mission to spread the idea of real freedom to the world.

Reading “The Law” whetted my appetite for more freedom literature. Somewhere I ran across the name Ayn Rand. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I had heard it. After reading about her novels, I thought I remembered having read one. I pulled out my old paperback books and discovered that I actually had a copy of Ayn’s novella “Anthem”. I immediately reread it. The book is about a dystopian future where people have reverted to living primitively, and new technology is severely limited. I was a fan of dystopian future novels, having also read George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, as well as haven seen the movies “THX 1138” and “Logan’s Run”.

Upon reading “Anthem” I decided I wanted to read some of Ayn Rand’s non-fiction. The first book I purchased was “The Voice of Reason”. It was a collection of essays by Ayn Rand and her protégé Leonard Peikoff. I soon discovered that she was not just a writer, but also a philosopher, having developed her own secular philosophy called Objectivism. Much of what I read in that book hit home with me. It was as if the writers had plucked my unorganized thoughts on the subject of freedom from my brain, logically reordered them, and then edited them for clarity. I was astounded; so much so I started buying more and more books on Objectivism and actually became an adherent. I read more of Rand’s non-fiction and fiction books including her magnus opus “Atlas Shrugged”.

I began sharing some of Ayn Rand’s ideas with a friend of mine from work named Mike. Interestingly, I considered myself a conservative while Mike considered himself a liberal. Yet Rand’s ideas changed us both into Objectivists. We did not agree with everything Rand taught, but in its essentials, we both agreed with the principles of Objectivism.

In case you are unfamiliar with Objectivism, I will present a short synopsis. Ayn Rand was once asked to define her philosophy on one leg, meaning in as few words as possible. She answered this way, “In Metaphysics, Objective Reality. In Epistemology, Reason. In Ethics, Self-Interest. In Politics, Capitalism.” Her expanded explanation was this:

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Most people don’t have a problem with number 1. We understand that the Universe exists apart from ourselves and operates independent of our wishes and desires. We have to learn to work with it to be successful.

Most people agree with number 2 except for the part that says that reason is man’s only means to knowledge. Everyone gains knowledge by reasoning about their observations of the world around them. However, religious people also believe that one type of knowledge, spiritual knowledge, comes by revelation, which is a direct transfer of knowledge from God or the spiritual realm to men’s minds.

The great majority of people live by number 3, but a large number of them don’t seem to like it and perhaps even deny it. Many people have an altruistic mindset, believing we should put others before ourselves. But if you examine those people’s lives, the vast majority will be found coming up short. Most people are generous and want to help others in need, but the people they help the most are themselves and their immediate families. Rand simply recognized that fact and said there was nothing wrong with it. In fact, it was a good and moral thing. And even if you have an altruistic bent, remember the emergency instructions given by flight attendants on a plane. Put the mask over your own face first so you will be in a better position to put the mask over your child’s face.

Number 4 is a whole other matter. It seems that most people have a big problem with pure capitalism. I admit that I have a bit of a problem with it also. But I also understand that if implemented properly, it truly is the only moral political system. That is because it is a completely voluntary system. Businesses are allowed to freely create their products and potential customers are allowed to freely decide whether they want to purchase them or not. In other political systems, like socialism or fascism, force is used. This typically manifests itself as the government telling businesses how to operate and telling customers what they can and cannot buy, or even what they must buy.

Yet, to have a pure capitalist society requires a huge majority of good and moral people in leadership positions both in the businesses and in the government. Otherwise, corruption occurs. Businesses support candidates in their election bids, and in return the winning candidate skews the laws in favor of the supporting business. It may be for this reason that an economics professor I had in college said, “Capitalist systems never last. They always ultimately lead to communism.”

Anyway, as I said, I came to consider myself an Objectivist, and so did my friend Mike. Later we discovered that a lady that worked with us, Susanna, and her husband Charles, were Objectivists. Or rather, they discovered we were Objectivists. Charles and Susanna invited Mike and me and our spouses to dinner to discuss our beliefs. It was interesting to find out that Charles and Susanna had been heavily involved in the early years of the Objectivist movement, having gotten training, I believe by audio tape, from Ayn Rand and her original protégé Nathaniel Branden.

At a later date Charles and Susanna invited several Objectivist friends from around the country to our corner of Alabama for a party. When I found out that one of my favorite Objectivist authors, Robert Bidinotto, was going to be there, I knew I had to attend.

It was quite an interesting evening, but started out badly. It had been raining heavily that day, so when I arrived there were pools of water and mud in the yard. I got out of my car and headed towards the cabin, carefully avoiding the muddy areas. Suddenly I noticed a big dog heading straight towards me, and from the look in his eyes I knew he wanted to greet me by pouncing on me. I couldn’t let that happen given his muddy paws and all. When he got close, I raised my leg and swiped at him yelling, “Get away!” Well, he did indeed get away, but my knee popped out of joint and I plummeted to the ground. Great! Just great! My knee quickly self-corrected, but I was in pain. Nonetheless, I picked myself up and hobbled to the cabin; wet muddy clothes and all.  I explained to my hosts what had happened, and they showed me the bathroom where I could tidy up as much as possible. During the party my knee pain subsided some allowing me to have a good time. I was excited to meet Robert. I had taken some of his articles with me to be autographed.

Objectivism has seen some rocky roads along its way. Early in the movement large numbers of people became interested in it. Nathaniel Branden even established an institute for the study of Rand’s new philosophy. However, as is often the case, the philosophers don’t always follow their own philosophy. Ayn Rand had an affair with her protégé Nathaniel which ultimately led to a big split between the two. Rand seemed to become more dogmatic about her beliefs over time even though she originally said that her philosophy was about individualism, thus requiring each individual to draw philosophical conclusions on his own.

In 1985, three years after Ayn Rand’s death, the Ayn Rand Institute was established by her philosophical heir Leonard Peikoff to carry forward Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. In 1990, philosopher David Kelley had a falling out with the Ayn Rand Institute over whether or not the philosophy was an open or closed system. Kelley believed Objectivism should be open, meaning that it should be willing to change as new information became available. Peikoff, on the other hand, believed that the philosophy was closed and that any changes made to the Objectivism that Rand had laid out would necessarily have to be considered a different philosophy and should not be called Objectivism. Kelley went on to form a new group named the Institute for Objectivist Studies. It is now known as The Atlas Society.

Yet, despite all the turmoil in the Objectivist community, Rand has continued to influence many people with her ideas. Her novel “Atlas Shrugged” still sells well today almost 60 years after its release. In recent years a three part movie of “Atlas Shrugged” was produced. It did not do very well at the box office, but I saw all three and thought they were well done and captured the essence of the novel quite well.

Back in 1988 I began writing some philosophical articles of my own and continued to do so for many years. None were published until 1997. At that time a group called The Objectivist Club of Michigan published a well known newsletter entitled “Full Context: An International Objectivist Publication”. I submitted one of my articles and it was published in their December 1997 issue. I had two other articles published in this name newsletter in 1998 and 2000. You can read them along with other unpublished articles on my personal Web site. The published articles were “Virtues and Meta-Values”, “The Truman Show: A Review”, and “Truth and Happiness”.

Most of my philosophical articles were serious in nature. However, my life has always been a balance of serious and humorous. In fact, as much as I enjoy a serious discussion, I think I would go nuts without my humorous side. So, to balance out my serious philosophical articles, I wrote a humorous philosophical book entitled “Beginnings to Endings: Philosophical Ramblings for Avoiding Global Destruction”. It was initially published as a paperback book in 2001, but was also released as a Kindle book in 2011.

While I continue to agree with Objectivism to a great extent, over time I have become a bit jaded. There seem to be too many people in the world who simply don’t want to be free. Perhaps it is because freedom is hard work. In a free society you are on your own. You must provide for your own welfare or convince others to help you out. Sure, there will be volunteer groups to help the less fortunate, but most people seem to believe that those would not be enough. They believe the government must step in to fill the gap. But government uses force to accomplish its mission. To fund its programs, it forces citizens to turn over their earnings via taxes. It heavily regulates businesses. It tells citizens what they can, cannot, and must do. It colludes with businesses, passing laws that benefit some and hurt others. And on and on it goes. Coercion is the name of the game.

So, yes, my hopes that our world might move more towards reason and freedom have been greatly dashed. Of course the occasional ray of sunshine burns through, but I despair that there will be a mighty movement in that direction. But alas, I am getting older now. I suppose I will leave these matters to the next generation.

In closing I would like to present an interesting fact. I was born on February 2, 1955. Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, exactly 50 years before me. Also, notice that the name Ayn Rand can be created with just the letters in my first name (if the “a” and “n” are used twice). I’m sure there is some type of mystical connection here, but after many years of searching I still don’t know what it is.

Britain From A to Z: Z

Zeitgeist

I admit that it took me a while to decide what Z topic to talk about. My initial thought was to make the topic Zebra Crossing, which is a striped speed bump seen throughout the UK. I was going to simply show the photo below and leave it at that.

I later decided I wanted a bit more substance, but was having a hard time coming up with a Z word that had any relevance to my Britain trip. Ultimately I settled on Zeitgeist.

For those that don’t know, zeitgeist means “spirit of the age” or “spirit of the time”. It refers to the dominant school of thought that influences the culture of a particular place at a particular time. In this post I will be concentrating on the prevailing British zeitgeist as it relates to freedom.

While traveling across Scotland, England, and Wales, my sense was that I was in a free country. Our tour bus traveled about without governmental checks. We had to show our passports upon our initial entry into the country in Glasgow, Scotland, but I do not recall having to show them ever again, even when crossing borders into England and Wales. We traveled across a lot of rural areas and visited quite a few urban areas. Mostly, I felt about the same as I do when traveling across the United States. The main difference I observed was the accents.

Despite the overall decline of freedom around the world over the last few years, Freedom House still lists the UK and the US as free countries. When it comes to economic freedom, the US has been declining rather quickly. We are now no longer listed among the Free nations. Rather, we are listed as Mostly Free by The Heritage Foundation. Only six countries are listed as free. The US is now at number 12. The UK is slightly less free at number 14. It is sad to me to see countries like Chile and Estonia being ranked higher in economic freedom than the US.

Two social areas of freedom of interest to me are gun control and healthcare.

Here in the US, gun control has been a topic of hot debate for many years. Some would like to outright ban guns for ordinary citizens, only allowing the police and the military to have them. Others point out that criminals would still have guns even if they were all banned. Therefore, as long as the criminals have them, honest citizens need them for protection. From what I have read, Britain is further down the road on banning guns. They are still available, but my understanding is that it is more difficult to get a permit there than in the US as a whole. In fact, when we met Baron Dafydd Wigley in Wales (see my post on Xenophobia), one of the things he said was that the Brits simply don’t understand the US’s lax position on gun control.

Another area where Britain is further along the social trail is healthcare. Publicly funded healthcare has been around for years now. Interestingly, several people I encountered seemed to not like this. They pointed out how those with enough money also bought private insurance because the public system was inadequate in some ways. I think the biggest issue is the waiting time for certain tests and procedures. This is similar to some of the complaints coming out of Canada. While every Canadian I’ve talked to about their healthcare seem to like it, there are those times when Canadians have to travel to the US to get a test sooner than their system allows so that any necessary treatments can begin earlier rather than later.

Let us hope that in the midst of Britain, the US, and other free countries moving more and more down the socialist path, we will love freedom enough to stop before we lose control of our lives as has happened in too many countries around the world. 

Bill Clinton’s Home Run

Well, I am here to tell you: Bill Clinton hit it out of the park with his Democratic National Convention speech. He made a very convincing case for reelecting Barack Obama as president. I really liked the approach he took. He didn’t just throw out innuendo and make snotty remarks about the Republicans, he actually started out talking about how he had worked with many Republicans on a number of projects by cooperating with them. He then turned to answering most of the negative charges leveled against Obama by Romney, Ryan, and other Republicans. I don’t know if all his answers were totally truthful or not, but they seemed credible. And the fact that both parties like to skew facts to make their candidates look good while making their opponents look bad made Clinton’s refutations even more believable. Or, could it be that he was just skewing the facts back in the other direction? That is the frustrating thing about elections. It is extremely difficult to know the exact truth about the things politicians talk about because those things are usually so complex and nuanced a person who is trying to live his own life and not shadow politicians simply does not have the time, resources, or background to thoroughly investigate these things. This leaves us with having to depend on other people to investigate them for us. But which investigators should we trust?

My favorite line in Clinton’s speech was when he told the crowd that he had been asked many times over the years what the secret was behind his balancing the budget. He said he always responded with one word: ARITHMETIC. I love that. Indeed, if somethin’ dudden add up, it ain’t gonna work. But again, which party has the best plan for making things add up? It’s difficult for an average Joe to know.

Given the difficulty of knowing the real facts so as to be able to call out politicians on their lies, I have found it helpful to rather listen to what their vision for the future is. And I have to say that my vision for America is very similar to Bill Clinton’s and the Democrats’ vision. I very much want to see everyone have an opportunity to succeed in life. I want everyone who wants an education to be able to get one. I want everyone who needs healthcare to be able to get it. I want everyone to have a job. I want world peace. (Yes, inside I am a beauty pageant contestant.) I want all those things. But here’s the problem. Republicans want all those things too. I dare say that there is only a small percentage of Americans that want to see any of their fellow citizens fail. So, why can’t we all just come together and work to accomplish these things? Well, it boils down to methodology.

The Republicans by and large believe that society as a whole rises the highest when its citizens are left free to pursue their own interests and interact with others on the basis of voluntary trade and contract. This is the concept of the “rugged individual” and is the idea our country was founded on. The Democrats for the most part believe that citizens are “in it together”. We all rise and fall in unison. Well, there is some truth to that. After all, if there was only one person on the Earth, he would pretty much live in poverty. Further, if all seven billion people on the planet lived only by and for themselves, never interacting with anyone else, it would be as though each person was the only person on Earth. They would all live in poverty. It takes a large number of people cooperating in creating and building to take a society to the mountaintop. But the issue is the motivating force behind people cooperating.

Bill Clinton mentioned several times in his speech about building a 21st century society of shared prosperity and shared responsibility, in other words, a we’re-all-in-this-together society. When a modern day Democrat uses these words, he is usually talking about a redistribution of wealth using the force of government. He is saying we all share the responsibility to work hard, and those who become successful MUST share their prosperity with those who didn’t. Now, there is nothing wrong with successful people sharing their wealth with the less fortunate. In fact, I have heard a statistic that says conservatives give away a larger percentage of their income than do liberals. So, contrary to what a liberal might have you think, conservatives like helping others. It’s just that they want to be able to choose for themselves who they help rather than have government choose for them. Liberals like to talk about the “right to choose” when it comes to abortion, but how about the “right to choose” how we use the wealth that we earned ourselves?

So, here’s what it all boils down to for me. Do I want to live in an America where the government decides where my charitable dollars should be spent and then uses the force of government to take that money from me for those purposes? Or do I want to live in an America where the government respects the rights of its citizens to keep the fruits of their labor and decide for themselves who they want to help? For me, I want to live in the latter. While no society will ever be perfect as long as there are imperfect people living in it, I believe a free America will lead to the best America.

Thoughts About 2016

Last night I went to see the new movie by Dinesh D'Souza entitled 2016: Obama's America. The movie is based on two books D'Souza has written: Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream and The Roots of Obama’s Rage. In the movie, D'Souza attempts to explain why President Obama thinks and makes decisions the way he does. In other words, he tries to define the motivating force behind this world leader. D'Souza presents some very compelling evidence based on Obama's own words, as well as those of his relatives and friends, that the driving principle behind Obama's decisions is anticolonialism. Obama's father was born and raised in colonial Kenya and became a strong anticolonialist. Several of Obama's mentors were anticolonialists also. To better understand the anticolonialist mentality, one must understand what it is like to be a part of a colony.

Throughout history, mighty empires have arisen that felt it was their destiny to conquer other peoples and extract the resources of their land. Some of the better known ancient empires were the Assyrian, Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman empires. In more recent times, the best known and most powerful empire of all time was the British Empire. It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire because it reached around the world. Part of the makeup of this empire was other countries that had been conquered and made colonies. The British would set up some form of government in these colonies and then go about extracting resources to take back home. As you might expect, many of the indigenous people of these colonized nations were not happy with this arrangement. They wanted independence and self-autonomy. They wanted the resources of their land to be used to enrich their own people rather than the country of their overlords.

Kenya was a colony of the British Empire from about 1890 until 1963. So, President Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr, who was born in 1934, grew up in a colonized Kenya. Had I been in his shoes, I would most likely have been anticolonialist also. In fact, I am very much an anticolonialist now, even though I was fortunate enough to have been raised in an independent country. So, if President Obama and I both share an ideology of anticolonialism, why do I disagree with many of his decisions about the direction of our country? That has to do with what one believes should replace the oppression of colonialism once the oppressors leave and the autonomy of a nation is re-established.

Some anticolonialists viewed the people of the British Empire as being capitalists. So, it was natural for them, once they became independent, to want to move as far away from capitalism as possible. Typically, people who reject capitalism, embrace some form of socialism. This is what many Kenyans did. This seems to be the mentality of President Obama as well. But the problem is this: colonialism is anything but capitalism. Perhaps once the resources were extracted from the colonies and made into products, the Brits dealt with other nations on a capitalist basis. But the way they dealt with the colonies was not capitalist by any stretch of the imagination.

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defined socialism as “A) a system of society or group living in which there is no private property” and “B) a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.”

The definition of capitalism is “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”

So, based on these definitions, you can see that colonialism is more akin to socialism than capitalism in that you have a government expropriating the wealth of some people for the benefit of other people. Had the British dealt with Kenya in a capitalist manner, they would have come in and negotiated a contract whereby they paid an agreed upon price for the resources they wanted. That’s how free markets work. Yet, for the colonies that viewed their overlords as capitalists, socialism became the alternative of choice upon becoming independent. They basically jumped from the frying pan into the fire. As George Obama, President Obama's half-brother, said in the movie, Kenya would be better off today if the “whites” had stayed longer.

Fortunately, socialism is not the true alternative to colonialism; freedom and capitalism are. This is the path the forefathers of the United States of America took. Remember that the USA was originally colonies of Great Britain. The Revolutionary War was the result of an anticolonialist movement. Yet, upon gaining independence, the movement led to liberty and capitalism. This smart move led to the creation of what would become the most prosperous nation on the face of the Earth. All because this country embraced the idea that a man's labor was his own and thus the fruits of that labor were his own also. This produced a great incentive for individuals to work hard because they were working for themselves rather than others.

Yet, somehow President Obama has come down on the side of viewing capitalism as the system that oppressed nations and socialism being the cure. D'Souza believes it is due to the influence of his father, mentors, and friends. Perhaps. But whatever the reason, Obama is unfortunately wrong in his assessment. Freedom, liberty, and capitalism are the cure for colonialism. Socialism is but a form of internal colonialism in which government takes the wealth of people by force and passes it on to others, just as the Brits took the wealth of other nations for the benefit of themselves.

I believe our country needs Change and Hope just like President Obama does. However, Obama's cure for our ills is akin to a doctor attempting to cure cancer by injecting the patient with poison. It only makes things worse. What we need is a leader that has a real cure for our nation's problems. Perhaps it is Mitt Romney. Perhaps it is Gary Johnson. I have personally grown skeptical of most politicians. Yet, I do know one thing. I agree with President Obama when he says we shouldn’t return to the failed policies of the past. History shows clearly that liberty works far better than oppression. So, let’s go back to that.

The Arrow of Freedom

As you have probably heard, the Supreme Court has been hearing the case brought against the individual mandate portion of Obamacare. At issue is whether or not the Commerce Clause of the Constitution combined with the power of the federal government to tax it citizens are sufficient to give the federal government the right to dictate to its citizens the mandatory purchase of health insurance. The thing that confounds me most about this case is that it had to be brought in the first place. The individual mandate is clearly unconstitutional. It is quite obvious that the intent of the Constitution was to put restraints on the federal government so they could not get to the point of being oppressive like the governments the colonists had once been under. If indeed the Commerce Clause grants our national leaders the power to mandate private purchases, then in essence they have unlimited power. What will come next? Preventing people from purchasing fatty and sugary foods? Mandating that businesses must hire people until unemployment is zero? Preventing people from pooling their money in an attempt to oust an incumbent politician? Our country now stands at a very important juncture. If the Supreme Court rules that the individual mandate is Constitutional, then basically our Constitution will have been ruled to be of no consequence. Congress and the President will be handed the keys to the nation. They will be able to open any door without resistance. This is a very dangerous road to go down, if indeed we want to remain a free people.

Historically, the courts in the United States have held that any contract that was signed under duress was invalid because the essence of a valid contract was that it was entered into on all sides voluntarily. If a person was coerced in any way, he could go to court, present his case, and have the contract invalidated. Now we have our very own government saying that that aspect of contract law is wrong. They are attempting to hold that they have the power to force a person to enter into a contract that he does not wish to enter. And the contract would be valid, regardless of the duress. What other contracts will our government force us into should this one be validated by the Supreme Court?

When this nation was founded, liberty was a great idea that was only enjoyed primarily by white males. Over time, as people became more enlightened, freedom began to expand. It took a civil war, rallies, writing, discourse, civil disobedience, and protests (sometimes violent), but over the years the arrow of freedom continued to move in the right direction. Blacks gained their freedom and eventually were able to overturn discriminatory laws. Women became full citizens with the right to vote and become leaders in industry and politics. More recently we see gay citizens standing up for their rights and gaining them little by little. We have seen a lot of progress in our country as its citizens of all stripes stand up for themselves and gain independence. Are we really willing to let our desire for safety reverse this progress? For if we give the federal government the power to run our lives in the marketplace, it won’t just be select groups of people who will see their freedom slip away. It will be everyone who calls himself a citizen.

GREED

I recently posted a one-sentence thought about greed on several social media sites. I decided to expand on this thought with a blog post. Here is what the original post said.


“Greed can be found more in the poor who demand the goods of others than in the wealthy who earn their own.”


I have found that a number of people balk at such comments and may think I have something against poor people. But just the opposite is true. I want all of us to live in a society where it is possible for poor people to become wealthy. I have nothing against poor people, but I do have something against being poor. Therefore, to better understand my one-sentence thought, let’s take a look at a typical definition of the word greed.


“An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.” -- The Free Dictionary


Most people tend to concentrate on the first part of this definition, “…more than one needs”, rather than the second part, “…more than one deserves”. I tend to think of the former as a good type of greed and the latter as a bad type of greed. Why? Because of the consequences of each. Let’s take a closer look.

When someone says that another person is greedy because they have a great desire to have more than they need, a number of questions need to be asked. How much does a person truly need? Does need end at the point of survival? Or does need mean having enough to live comfortably? What do you consider to be an excessive desire as opposed to a moderate desire? Does a person’s actions in pursuit of more possessions play into the equation at all?

Here in the United States as well as other developed nations, the free enterprise system has provided its citizens with the means to become wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations. In countries where free enterprise is non-existent, the populace tend to live in poverty. Sure, the leaders may live a life of opulence, but the average person does not, and has very little chance of getting out of his situation apart from leaving for a freer nation. Most countries today have mixed economies, meaning that the economy is free to some degree, but controlled by the government to some degree also. In general, the wealth of a nation increases with the degree to which it is free.

So, what happens when a greedy entrepreneur decides he wants more than he needs. WEALTH! That entrepreneur, in order to gain what he so desires, must develop a product or service that other people want and are willing to pay him more than he put into creating it. That provides the entrepreneur profit. But it also benefits the buyer because they needed or wanted the product or service more than the money they paid for it. It also benefits all those people the entrepreneur had to hire to design, develop, and produce his product. Most people understand this. When people think of greedy people, most are probably thinking of the ones that are willing to cheat or steal to get their wealth. Yes, those actions are wrong. But one must keep in mind that it is not the greed that is wrong, but rather the means by which they went about satisfying their greed. Let’s simplify. There is nothing wrong with my desiring to have a new flat screen TV, and there is nothing wrong with me working at a job to earn the money to buy the TV. However, if I just went down to Best Buy and took it without paying, that’s stealing, and it is wrong. Yet, my desire for the TV was still not wrong, just the means I chose to satisfy my desire.

This leads to the second definition of greed: an excessive desire for more than one deserves. What does one deserve? This should be easy. A person deserves whatever they can obtain honestly. If a person has skills that only earns them $10,000 per year, then $10,000 in goods and services is what they deserve. If a person has skills where they can honestly earn $6,000,000 per year, then they deserve $6,000,000 in goods and services. To say otherwise is to create artificial boundaries. Yes, it sometimes appears that there are a large number of people who become wealthy by cheating and stealing. I personally believe this is mostly perception rather than reality. The press writes a lot about rich crooks, but very little about rich honest people. So, in our minds, we tend to think that a large proportion of rich people got that way by cheating. But even if I am wrong, my point is still valid. It’s the actions one takes to satisfy his greed that determines right and wrong, not the greed itself.

So, can poor people be greedy in the sense of having an excessive desire for more than they deserve. Well, of course they can. And they can cheat and steal just like rich people can. They may not steal as much as the rich, but the principle is still the same. It is wrong to cheat and steal to obtain that which we did not earn. Acting on this type of greed almost always requires one to do wrong. Why? Because how else can one obtain more than they deserve? I can only think of one moral way. Charity. This is where people voluntarily donate time, goods, and money to help those who got a bad break in life though no fault of their own. Yet, there are quite a few people who believe they are due more than they can obtain honestly or through charity and are willing to commit a crime to obtain it. Or, and this is a big OR, they get government to obtain their largesse for them.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing more and more of these days are able-bodied people mooching off the working public via a state-sanctioned welfare program. If one were to suggest that these particular people should be removed from the rolls, many protests would arise because this charity is now thought of as something deserved.

So, let’s summarize. Desiring more wealth is not wrong in and of itself regardless of your status in life. Call it greed if you want, but don’t call it wrong. I call it wanting to improve your lot in life. Even if you consider it wrong for the super wealthy to desire more, surely you can’t believe that it is wrong for a person to desire more, even strongly desire more, if they live at subsistence level (meaning they have just what they need and no more). Would you be willing to walk up to a frail person in a third world country who is surviving, but not thriving, and tell him he is greedy for desiring more out of life? If so, then shame on you. All people should be free to pursue whatever status they so desire. And therein lies the problem. The countries where the people do not thrive are the ones where the leaders are oppressive. Most of these nations’ citizens probably desire a better life, meaning more wealth. What they need are new leaders that allow them to be free.

Now, back to my one-liner. “Greed can be found more in the poor who demand the goods of others than in the wealthy who earn their own.” Here I am using the word “greed” in the sense of desiring more than one deserves. As such, I believe my statement to be true.

Free Health Care For Everybody

In the January 30, 2012 issue of our local newspaper, the TimesDaily, there was a photo of some graffiti left by an Occupy Oakland participant in California. The graffiti consisted of the exact words I used for the title of this post: “Free Health Care For Everybody.” Now who could disagree with that statement? Everybody likes free stuff, and given how expensive healthcare can be these days, getting it free would be a great money saver.

So, how do we start? What plans must we put in place to make this worthwhile venture a success? Well, a good place to start would be to ask doctors to quit charging for their services. Most of the cost of healthcare most likely resides here since millions of people visit doctors of one type or another every day. I suspect that they will object to this and try to convince us of how expensive it was to attend medical school, how much money it takes to rent a space for their practice, and how they must pay for equipment, utilities, malpractice insurance, staff salaries and benefits, and a myriad of other things. Well, don’t be fooled. Healthcare is too important a commodity to be left to the vagaries of a free market with the greedy doctors trying to actually make a profit. But we can expect most if not all doctors to claim that supporting their families is more important to them than helping the rest of us. So, we must be prepared to force them to provide their services without recompense.

The same will have to be applied to hospitals and all the people that work for them. And let’s not forget about all those pharmaceutical companies. We will have to forcefully make it known that we still expect them to spend billions of dollars developing new lifesaving drugs, but provide those drugs at no cost to the public.

We can expect retaliation from all these medical professionals in the form of strongly urging the rest of us to provide our services to them for free also. They’ll probably say something like, “Food is just as important to a person’s health as is medical care. Since we don’t have any money, and we need food to survive, we should have our food provided for free. And while we are at it, we also need housing and transportation. So, give us these things also.” No matter how logical their arguments may be, we must stand strong and insist that they pay us for the goods and services we provide while they continue to provide their services at no cost to us.

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Well, as you can hopefully tell, I’m being facetious. There isn’t any such thing as FREE healthcare. And for that matter, there is no such thing as having any goods or services that cost nothing. What the Occupy Oakland graffiti writer really means is “free healthcare for me at somebody else’s expense.” So, how would that work?

There have been many methods suggested for how to provide universal healthcare within the US. Some methods are already being used in other countries. But the bottom line for all of these methods is that some people pay nothing, some pay less than the cost of the services provided to them, some pay the same as the cost of the services provided to them, and some pay more than the cost of the services provided to them. So, it ends up being a great deal for some and a terrible one for others.

You might ask, “Isn’t that exactly the same result people get when buying insurance?” And indeed, the answer is “Yes.” Insurance is one of those strange commodities that people purchase with the hope of NEVER getting their money back. But, there is one major difference. Insurance is voluntary; a government program is not. There has been a lot of controversy lately about the Constitutionality of an individual mandate for health insurance. In other words, is it Constitutional for the federal government to force all individual citizens to purchase some form of health insurance?

I personally believe that it is extremely UN-Constitutional for the federal government to force its citizens to buy ANYTHING, including health insurance. But even if it were Constitutional, I believe it can ultimately lead to some very bad consequences, such as taking away many of the freedoms we currently enjoy. It may take many years for the problems to manifest themselves to an unacceptable level, just as communism took many years before it failed in the Soviet Union. However, I believe the problems will eventually come.

Suppose we implement a healthcare plan here in the US that provides all people with any medical services they need at any time. Almost immediately all of those expensive procedures that people chose not to have done due to the cost will be scheduled. Over time, as more and more procedures are done, the authorities will begin to see that there is more money being spent than being taken in. Choices will have to be made. Charge everybody more for their “insurance,” or cut costs in some way. Most likely both will occur. They will begin paying doctors and hospitals and drug companies less for their goods and services. This will cause some on the edge to go out of business, and it will most likely affect people in rural areas the most. Eventually, the feds will begin to realize that they cannot cut payments anymore and will try to ration care to cut costs. This will upset many people who will have to forego medical procedures that could help them. Additionally, the feds will also realize that many of the procedures that people are getting relate to bad lifestyle choices. They will begin pushing for regulations on a number of different fronts. Some of these would be: smoking, fat and sugar intake, alcohol consumption, and the amount of exercise people are getting. So, little by little our healthcare will dwindle as our lifestyle choices become more and more regulated. In other words, we will become less free.

When people buy insurance, they do so with the knowledge that certain activities on their part can lead to their insurance costing more than another person’s. For instance, if a person is a smoker, they will pay more. If they are overweight and already have high blood pressure and high glucose levels, they’ll pay more. If they are into extreme sports, they’ll pay more. But the individual’s lifestyle choices remain his or her choice. On the other hand, the tendency for government plans is for the leaders to begin mandating actions rather than charge people differently according to risk.

So, which would you rather have? Freedom or “free” healthcare? I’m afraid the evidence points to a fact that many simply refuse to accept: WE CAN’T HAVE BOTH.