Monday, May 28, 2012

Recovering from the Nightmare

I had a good night's sleep, but my computer didn't.

Instead of going into sleep mode when I shut it's lid, my laptop computer fell into some sort of nightmarish half sleep with its little processors churning away in the darkness.

When I was sat down at the computer this morning, my little laptop was all hot and bothered with its fans racing at top speed to cool its burning CPU.

The event was so nightmarish, that the computer was unable to come out of its coma and I was forced to take the drastic step of pressing its kill switch.

Ah, the inhumanity of it all.

I've had this same problem in the past. If my computer doesn't get a good night's sleep it is sluggish in the morning.

The moral of the story is that you should always be sure that your laptop computer has fallen safely into sleep mode before doing so yourself. Computers, after all, require a great deal of love and nurturing.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

On Head Gear and Hypocrisy

Conservatives play an ugly game in which they encourage people to agitate for free market reforms when Democrats are in power. Once in power, Conservatives kick down the libertarians and expand government.

The disingenuous nature of the conservativism movement is a primary cause of the unbound expansion of government.

Today's Mero Moment, by the Sutherland Institute, provides some insight into this ugly philosophy. The Sutherland Institute is a group that takes money claiming to support free market economics, then doesn't.*)

Today's Mero Moment is about about helmet laws. The post starts with the scientific evidence that wearing bike helmets reduces harm.

When, the left sees data like this, their knee jerk reaction is to pass laws that uses the power of state to force kids to wear helmets.

Speaking of bike apparel. Pactimo is a great source for custom bike apparel, including matching bike helmets.
Libertarians love the science. However, they question the use of state force to promote helmet usage. Passing helmet laws require spending money on enforcement and complex rules for compliance. Even worse, the people who decide not to wear helmets for whatever reasons become de facto criminals by making the choice to go helmet free. Libertarians aren't against helmets. They simply don't see the law as the right vehicle for promoting helmet usage. Libertarians look at the data and see that the data is compelling enough to make the market respond. Sure enough, bike shops, eager to get a commission, aggressively sell and promote helmet usage. Groups that organize biking events are sufficiently worried about liability to require helmets at their events. There does not need to be a costly new law.

Mero scoffs at Libertarians. His reason to oppose the law is: "The prescription to wear a helmet subordinates the primary authority of parents to the secondary authority of the state."

This is different from the position that freedom is inherently good. Mero does not believe people should have the freedom to make their own choices. His argument is about which "authority" imposes the order.

Imagine a situation in which the parents tell their kid not to wear a helmet and a the school tells the kids that any kid who rides a bike to school must have a helmet. In such a case, I would be on the side of the school.

Mero's bizarre statement about conflicting authority might help the paradoxical situation in which Conservative Republicans reject ObamaCare, but support laws that are identical in form and intent.

Social Conservatives are not driven by a love of liberty. They are driven by concerns of which authority is in charge. ObamaCare is bad because Obama is one of THOSE people. The Utah Health Exchange and RomneyCare are good because the group Sutherland likes is in charge of the program.

This strange statement also explains why Conservative groups balk at any discussion of substantive free market health care reform. They love the corrupt health care system which puts their precious little insurance companies at the top of the social feeding chain.

Once again, a post from The Sutherland Institute shows that Conservatives are not interested in restoring liberty. The primary concern of Conservatives is to maintain a top-down social order. As such, they encourage free market rhetoric when out of power and are simply unwilling to engage in discussions of substantive free market reform.

(NOTE: The reason I keep picking on Suterhland Institute is that I am trying to figure out why Conservatives encourage people to agitate against ObamaCare, but run for the hills the second a person starts talking abour real free market reform)

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The Bane of Capitalism

IMHO, Bain Capital should be an issue in the 2012 election.

Clearly, there is something wrong with the world's financial system. The world is in dire need of substantive financial reform. I contend that the way different political groups approach Bain Capital will tell us a lot about how they will approach financial reform.

For example, if we see a partisan group immediately deflect all discussions of Bain Capital, then we can conclude that the partisan group is unlikely to engage in substantive reform. To such partisan groups, politics is about protecting friends and attacking enemies. Reform efforts by such groups will be biased.

Likewise, groups that immediately fall into apologetic form on hedge funds are unlikely to engage in deep discussions about reform.

President Obama's approach to Bain seems interesting.

A politician who was weaned on socialist thought is caught up in the question of whether equity should be privately owned or state owned.

Barack Obama appears to be struggling with the very concept of private ownership. Marx promised a utopia that would magically appear when everything is state owned and under the direct thumb of political leadership.

I am a die hard free marketeer. I look at our market dominated by huge equity firms, my every gut instinct tells me that something is dreadfully wrong.

A market dominated by large politically connected equity pools is not really a free market. If you are dominated by some artificial political contrivance, you aren't exactly free, n-est-ce-pas?

I've been studying demographic changes. The United States was conceived as a nation of property owners. In the progressive era, the small property owners have been systematically shoved aside by a combination of big government, big finance and big business.

The huge private equity firms seem to be about using insider political connections combined with huge leveraged capital pools to dominate entire markets.

The equity firms start with a large pool, then take outlandish leveraged position against the pools to dominate and control a market.

This structure concentrates wealth and power in the center. Financial history seems to show that concentrating power in this way leads to systemic faults in the economy and economic collapse.

If we were wise, we would seek leaders who would work to restore the concept of widespread property ownership and who would stand against the massively leveraged equity pools that currently dominate the market.

Mitt Romney's career is one in which the son of a governor skipped seamlessly between big government, big finance and big business. Romney appears to be a creature groomed by the political establishment that seeks dominance over industry and not a person who has been trying to build businesses in adverse climate.

The highlight of Mitt Romney's political career was the passage of RomneyCare.

RomneyCare seeks to fund health care through the confluence of big finance, big government and big medicine. RomneyCare leaves little room for privately owned health resources or private medical practices.

Since financial reform is the most important issue of the day, I hope that we will see deep and substantive discussions about Romney's business history.

The debate is important not simply in helping us judge the candidates. It is important because it will help determine the direction of financial reform.

The position that political leaders and pundits take on this issue tells us a lot the political leaders and pundits. If a person is complaining about private ownership, we will know that person to be a socialist. If a person automatically dismisses or launches into apologetics, we know that that person is a partisan.

Since there is clearly something wrong with our financial system, I am hoping to see independent thinkers challenging these massive, highly leveraged equity pools.

Pool Lifts

I visited the web site for High Country Pools of Fort Collins. Rather than selling pool designs, the site was focussed on new requirements by the ADA that all swimming pools with public access must install expensive and resource intense pool lifts.

I confess, the only time I've been in a pool in the last couple decades was to serve as a pool lift for large gangs of little children.

My job as a human pool lift involved lifting young children out of the pool, then throwing them back in.

Being a human pool lift can be fun.

I don't knock mechanical pool lifts. I think it is great that we live in a country with thousands of pools with advanced access devices. I don't see why we need a totalitarian rule from the government that all pools have expensive, resource intensive pool lifts.

if I was wanting pool therapy, the absolute last place I would want to go is to a pool filled with screaming kids. My direct observation is that kids at a pool scream a lot. They have loud animated conversations with their OUTDOOR VOICES. Screaming kids at pools manage to hit high notes that are rarely experienced in other forms of activities.

Different pools reach different markets.

If I was seeking physical therapy in a pool, I would want to go to a pool designed from the ground up for that purpose. In a free society, businesses could seek different markets by having different resources ... such as pool lifts, waterslides, and what not.

The idea that EVERY pool must have a lift is totalitarian. It destroys the important differentiation.

Looking through web sites, I discovered that the big pool lift corporations that passed the law are delighting by the mandates. The ADA rule allows these firms to make out like bandits as cash strapped property owners must scramble to achieve compliance.

All the silly little motels, apartments and other groups that have silly little pools must now find a way to raise their prices, reduce salaries, or reduce other services to pay for the mandated pool lifts.

The therapy companies that offer swimming therapy are loosing one of the features that differentiate their services from the pack.

The law affects public pools, which means a ton of taxpayer money will go to the politically connected pool lift companies that benefit from the law. Every school district must raise taxes or divert some money from the school budget to pay for the lifts.

This law that concentrates benefits on the politically connected few selling pool lifts and spreading the costs on the many is a great example of why our nation is in the economic toilet.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Happy Mother's Day

As far as mothers go, I won the lottery.

My mother was born in Denver and raised in Wyoming where learned a deep love for the open skies of the west. She developed a keen interest in the wildflowers of the Mountain West. She was a conservationist before radicalized environmentalism.

In college she had classes on classical logic taught by Sister Marium Joseph. The Trivium is a great book on classical logic.

After college, my parents lived in the deep south before the Civil Rights movement. Yep, they were carpetbagging Republicans back when it was entirely Democratic.

Fortunately, my parents moved back to Denver before I was born. So, I have the distinction of being a third generation Coloradan.

In the 1960s, my parents campaigned for Barry Goldwater. In  that experience she discovered that the Rockefeller Republicans were as bad as the Democrats.

Having learned some classical logic she launched in on a multi-decade study of the differences between classical and modern logic. The primary focus of her studies was the logical education of the founders.

The founders of the United States received a refined version of classical logic distilled by the likes of Arnauld and Watts. They adored Addison.

Logic took and extremely ugly turn in the early 1800s when Kant and Hegel became the rage. It was through my parents that I learned that its the underlying system of discourse and not the Democrats that is destroying our freedom.

We moved to Utah in the 1970s. Utah is the absolutely most beautiful place on the planet.

Sadly, Utah is people challenged.

So, my poor mother has four decades of research on the education of the US founders in a state that has no interest in the subject.

I've published some of my mom's writings on the sites: The Roots of Sound Rational Thinking and Affirmative Rationality. It is hard to work on a project when there is absolutely no interest in it.
Anyway, the projects I work on, like the Medical Savings and Loan, etc., are attempts to apply sound rational thinking to health care. The goal of this program was to challenge the underlying thinking behind socialized health care and show that a rational system that held individuals in high esteme would achieve better results.

If there was one present I could give my mother it would be a weekend at a mountain retreat with people who loved the Founders and wanted to discuss classical logic while taking a few breaks to look at wildflowers.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Fiscal Conservative Configuration

I wish Washington would just reduce the spending and institute some fiscal sanity.

The US Founders gave us an interesting set up. In their design, Congress controls the budget, but the president spends the money.

History shows that when one party controls Congress and the Presidency, the government will engage in unprincipled spending as it rewards friends and attempts to buy even greater influence.

There might be some budget cuts in a pure Republican government as the party punishes enemies, but the few cuts will be unbalanced and add to the social instability.

For the fiscal conservative, the best combination seems to involve a Republican controlled house and a lame duck Democratic president.

The Congress, which holds the purse strings of the government, will want to choke off the spending of the opposition president.

The Miracle balanced budget of Bill Clinton happened with just such a set up.

This set up would happen if fiscal conservatives voted for fiscal conservatives candidates for Congress, but voted for a third party presidential candidate.

Much as I dislike ObamaCare and the stimulus, I would find it preferable to suffer another four years of Obama than to repeat the fiasco of a progressive Republican rapidly expanding government as we saw with George W. Bush.

The best outcome for the 2012 would have Obama winning as the result of a split vote.

Empowered by a split vote, the Republican majority would really set to cutting spending while both parties would develop a freedom agenda for the 2016 election.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Utah Takes Up Gardening

The Sutherland Institute praises Utah for taking up economic gardening.

Economic gardening is a practice in which the state, political party, or other ruling group declares itself the gardener.

The gardner then spreads fertilizer on entities that it favors and poisons those that it dislikes with taxes and regulations, and works diligently to rip up those declaire weeds.

I enjoy gardening vegetables. This year we had to kill a couple moles that have been diggigng up the beds.

But, wait a second!

Economic gardening means gardening people.

Do you remember when the Obama Adminstration chose which car dealerships would be closed, and which would thrive? Yeah, they were just weeding the car dealership garden.

Yes, it is true that the ruling elite will spread fertilizer on friends ... but what about the enemies?

There are more people on the outside than on the inside. When Sutherland sets itself up as gardener, it will be reducing more people to poverty that it will raise to success.

When you look through history, you will find rogues of every sort alluding to metaphors from agriculture to justify corruption.

Feudalism was an agrarian society. The classical liberals (US Founders, Adam Smith, etc.) realized that these metaphors were off base.

The founders of the US realized that people are not weeds. Everyone has fundamental rights and it is not the role of the state to chose which people thrived and which were salted, torn up and discarded as weeds.

Sutherland's declaration that they are gardeners charged with picking the winners and loser in society is a prime example of the corrupt thought process of the Republican Ruling elite. These people are every bit as bad as Obama and the Progressives.

The Sutherland Institute takes money with the false claim that they support free market economics.

The reason we are losing freedom in this nation is due in part to the fact that the self-proclaimed defenders of liberty that dominate the right always fail to actually defend liberty and property rights.

The second rogues like Mitt Romney, Paul Mero or any of this corrupt lot get their hands on power, they abuse it to reward friends and punish enemies.

People are not weeds. "Economic gardening" is simply a synonym for corruption. By promoting a system in which a corrupt ruling elite chose the winners and losers, The Sutherland Institute proves, once again, that it is as bad as any progressive think tank.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Monday, May 07, 2012

Plagerizing Myself

I just wrote this in a response to a post trying to define Tea Party:
"I wish the Tea Party took more time to define what it was before it took on the label "conservative." The ideas that were starting to incubate in the Tea Party were far stronger than the ideas of mainstream political discourse. By jumping on the partisan wagon too soon, the ideas never reached fruition."

It is the ideas that matter, not the terms. The terms in our modern political discourse is so thoroughly poisoned that attempts to associate the movement with political labels destroyed the movement.

Thursday, May 03, 2012

The Answer to a Duopoly

I read another "Mero Moment" and feel like gagging. This one was titled "Huntsman's Fine Whine"

Apparently, Jon Huntsman recently gave a presentation in which he mentioned that the correct strategy against a duopoly is a strong third party candidacy.

Huntsman is correct on this point. History shows that both parties are responsible for the debt. Both parties are expanding the Federal Government beyond its Constitutional Constraints. The duopoly has created a system where each sides use freedom rhetoric when out of power, but expands the central government when in power.

The third party candidacy of Ross Perot forced a small correction in downward spiral caused by the two parties.

I contend that, if a third party split the vote in 2012, both the Republican and Democratic Party would adopt a freedom agenda for 2016.

Mero, however, is a blind partisan for Mitt Romney; so he attacks:

"But what’s annoying about Huntsman’s sentiment is something we’ve seen historically. The whiner, the self-deported outcast lamenting how he was ill-treated is actually the problem, not his party."
Come off it!

Everytime an issue doesn't go Mero's way, he lets out a whine.

I am filing this disgusting piece by Mero in my examples of projection. The post simple says.

"Huntsman isn't supporting my candidate! Whaaaahhhhh!!!!!! He's a Whiner,  Whaaaahhhhh!!!!!! He's a Whiner. Whaaaahhhhh!!!!!!"

In his attack piece, Mero does not address the debate about a duopoly and the solution of a third party. Mero simply attacks the character and motives of Huntsman with stupid phrases like: "These Huntsman-like politicians are unmanly".

Unmanly!!?

Dear Mr. Mero, Attacking an opponent's character to skirt an issue is an unmanly thing to do.

The Sutherland Institute is such a pathetic group. They take money on the false pretense of supporting free market reform, then spit out trip like the "Mero Moment." It's pathetic.

PS: I do not like that Huntsman supports socializing medicine through a government controlled health exchange. I actually find it funny that Huntsman, whose views are very close to Romney. This is like the hatred between Camus had for Satre. One dislikes their familiars.

The fact that Huntsman spoke about the dangers of duopoly and the value of a third party shows some independent thinking and raises Huntsman in my estimation.

I believe that, if the Tea Party split the vote by voting third party and Obama won, both parties would spend the next four years adopting a freedom agenda. If Romney wins, Romney will move left to capture the center and Democrats will move further left in reaction.

The split vote is the best option at this time.