Who is John Galt?

understanding class warfare

When we think of class warfare, we think of a political effort to pit the poor against the rich.  The premise is that someone who has more than you is your enemy, which I suppose would be correct if you intend to satisfy your own needs by means of "might makes right" -- by taking from them through force or coercion.

But, assuming that both you and he are capable of producing, free trade holds that someone who has more than you should be your friend.  They say that you can't get a job from a poor person, and it's hard to imagine a better relationship with a rich person than one which makes both of you richer.  It's certainly more productive than a relationship which seeks to make you richer by making him poorer.

An interviewer once asked Ayn Rand if it was okay for some men to have caviar while other men want for bread.  (For some reason, such questions seem more valid with a Russian flavor.)  If we know that caviar costs a hundred times as much as bread, then we can imagine that a hundred poorer men could buy bread with the money a single rich man might spend on caviar.

But money, bread, caviar -- even men -- do not really work this way.  A price is a balancing point between supply and demand.  While bread and caviar have their own balancing points -- prices -- which can be compared to each other, there is no direct translation between bread and caviar themselves. 

pop quiz

I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.

Hmm.  How might John Galt reply to this?

finally, a liberal definition of "freedom"

By now, you've no doubt seen or heard the quotes from Nancy Pelosi, extolling the virtues of universal healthcare:

Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer, a writer, without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.

 

Imagine an economy where people could follow their passions and their talent without having to worry that their children would not have health insurance, that if they had a child with diabetes who was bipolar or pre-existing medical condition in their family, that they would be job-locked.

From the American Thinker:

The problem with Pelosi's remarks, however, is that from hindsight, they are not bright, new, or liberating. On the contrary, almost identical words were penned over a hundred years ago by another champion of economic "freedom": Karl Marx. Marx criticized the private economy because it led to the "renunciation of life and of human needs." 

Like Pelosi, Marx was deeply troubled by an economic system that left most people job-locked and unable to satisfy their "human need" to become more authentic. In other words, the more you have to work, said Marx, "the less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theater or to balls, or to the public house, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc."

...This kind of sheer lunacy could have been hatched only by an unemployed academic and journalist like Marx, who, by the way, was supported financially in his authentically job-liberated struggle against capitalism by his wealthy colleague Friedrich Engels. What's most disturbing is the number of wild-eyed crusaders, both then and now, who have fallen for Marx's creative definition of "freedom."

So I guess I can quit my day job and become a full time blogger.  Sure, it doesn't pay as well, but we're well on our way to the point where so much will be "free" that we won't really need money anyway.

It's like that cartoon where Obama gives everyone freebies and then promises them jobs, too: What do we need jobs for?  Money's the same way -- once everything's paid for, what will be the point of money?

The problem is that doctors, like the rest of us, don't work for money.  They work for the things the money can buy.  And when you guarantee that someone doesn't have to actually produce anything to get money -- or health insurance -- you're left with the question of who, exactly, will produce the things of value that doctors work for.  Call it a wild guess, but I'm thinking your doctor appreciates the net value of your contribution at your regular job more than your fine art.  Your job is supposed to be what you do in exchange for the things you consume, and the idea is that everything you produce should be equal in value to everything you consume.

So I guess healthcare reform is now an extension of the National Endowment for the Arts -- another fringe benefit added to the compensation package for people who receive an entitlement for doing whatever they want instead of doing what other people might actually be willing to pay them for.

If the economy actually makes it that far, we're approaching the point where you'll be able to lose your job, take unemployment for as long as two years, and have your healthcare paid for. 

Think about it: The classic unemployment benefit problem is one of denial -- a laid-off worker holds out for his old job, his old salary, his old benefits; it's only when the money runs out that his hand is forced and he finally accepts his new position in the economy.

In a way, it comes down to an agreement about your job title.  You may call yourself an assembly line worker for as long as you receive unemployment, but the truth is that you cease being an assembly line worker the day the factory shuts down.  And all that time you think you're still in manufacturing while you're drawing a benefit?  Well, that's just the period where you don't yet realize that from now on you're going to be in retail.

By Pelosi's line of thinking, your lost job is no longer a signal that you're more valuable elsewhere.  Now it's an opportunity for you to throw your energies into producing nothing of material value -- without having to be worried about living on the nothing that you produce.

Pelosi just increased the benefit: Instead of waiting for the day when a furloughed assembly line worker figures out that his new future is in retail, we're going to throw in a little something extra so he can try his hand at painting.  Wonderful.

Let's just hope all the doctors -- and all the people who produce all the things starving artists need -- don't suddenly decide to become violinists.  Or glass-blowers.  Or whatever.

The real mind-boggling going on here is that we're supposed to feel sorry for people who could be artists if only they weren't "job locked" in occupations of actual value.

And it's interesting how your boss -- your job -- is something to be liberated from.  People don't realize that it's your needs that enslave you -- your boss and your job are actually part of the solution.

That's the John Galt Line.

 

paying people to not work

As government prepares to subsidize unemployment past 99 weeks, joblessness soars.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

the test

It's possible to go beyond the pure politics of individual issues, and to study the underlying differences between liberals and conservatives.  Beyond the questions of whether abortion should be legal or whether we should tax the rich, there is the greater question of why people who would legalize abortion are so universally in favor of highly progressive taxes, and why people who feel differently tend to feel differently on both issues.

Not surprisingly, this has been looked at.  I've read a few accounts of it, and there are numerous theories.  But they do fall into two general camps.  One set of theories holds that liberals and conservatives are just "different."  Theories in this camp attempt to explain the differences between liberals and conservatives.

I'm in the other camp, in the sense that I recognize no "equality" between the two viewpoints.  I believe that the makeup of a liberal is a subset of the traits that make up a conservative.  Conservatives are conscious of more values than liberals are.  I think that makes conservatives better, but a reasonable argument could be made that liberal thinking is unencumbered by certain considerations that burden conservatives (such as "a conscience").  Fair enough.

Perhaps you've heard of the "Turing test."  Turing proposed that the acid test for whether computers could "think" would be to have a "chat" with computers and people via keyboard.  He believed the gold standard was a computer that couldn't be distinguished from human partners.

Along these lines, I've suggested that conservatives can impersonate liberals such that liberals couldn't tell the difference.  If the liberal relies on a subset of the values that a conservative relies on, then all a conservative has to do, in order to think like a liberal, is limit the values he uses in his decision-making.

But a liberal cannot go the other way.  The problem is that he is blind to the values a conservative uses to evaluate the right and wrong of policy.  The liberal cannot pretend to possess values he does not understand.

this is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me.

Interviewed on ABC's This Week, Nancy Pelosi is urging Blue Dogs to support the liberals' reconciliation plans even if it means losing their jobs.

I've always been fascinated by the total liberal disconnect between their policies and what voters want.  Even if liberals believe they're giving voters what they "need," if it's not what voters actually want then the libs' campaign promises were obviously lies.  That liberals were lying yesterday is confirmed by what they say today.

I do believe that conservatives do something similar, but it's not equivalent.  Yes, half the country doesn't really doesn't understand what's best for them.  But if you give it to them anyway the results will speak for themselves on election day.  After Reagan passed divisive tax cuts he was re-elected in a landslide.  The success of the policy proved Reagan right.  And not just because he thought it was better for some voters than they thought it was, but because voters were measurably better off with the policy than they thought they'd be.

In his closing remarks at the healthcare summit, Obama hinted Democrats would proceed down their unpopular course and allow their judgement to be tested on election day.  That's a reasonable principle, especially if you believe that Democrats' decision today will be vindicated by their re-election in November.  Maybe Obama actually believes that.

But it's rather different when Pelosi admits that the decisions made today will cost Dems jobs in November.  Your voters don't just disagree with this now -- they aren't going to like this by election day, either, she tells Dems.  But don't listen to them -- listen to my voters instead.

what if old people had babies?

Consider the origin of the term, "caesarean section."  Presumably, Mama Caesar did not survive.  And yet the human population suggests that for every mother who died in childbirth, other mothers delivered more than one healthy baby.

It's a matter of risk.  Most women can deliver babies.  Doctors monitor them closely, often finding reasons to be concerned which ultimately turn out to be nothing.  Nature has already stacked the odds in a woman's favor -- the doctor usually just provides security, certainty.

But that's a lot of attention to be paying to women, one after another, across the country, 24/7/365, considering that only a minority will actually need some kind of life-saving intervention.  You might say that sort of care is "inefficient."  After all, there are midwives for this sort of business, aren't there?

And there's a political side to this.  These are young women.  With entire lives, careers, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax revenue ahead of them.  Families to raise.  They're significant, vital.  They're necessary.

History shows that most of them will survive childbirth without a doctor.  And some will die even with one; fewer, still, will die because of their doctor.  But there are a lot of resources which stand at the ready, and we will commit heroics to save a mother and her newborn.  Life is that important.

Dying is part of life, too.  The elderly have to die eventually, but that doesn't mean they ever have to die right now.  Heroics won't stop death, but they can often put it off for a time, even if it never seems long enough.

And yet, politically, those heroics -- arguably as effective as all those resources that attend a healthy childbirth without actually contributing anything -- are somehow less necessary.

I noted that doctors watch expectant mothers closely, looking for things to be concerned about.  And yet boards tell us not to screen so often or so early for breast cancer.  Looking too closely, or too frequently, for prostate cancers wastes money.  Our system is even accused of "wasting" care on cancers that might otherwise self-remit -- this is even used to refute our statistically superior cancer survival rates.  Our numbers are "skewed" by finding and treating cancers that would never present on their own.  We look too hard.

I can't say any choice is always wrong.  And they don't call them "tough decisions" for nothing.  But I have a problem -- a real problem -- with liberals' idea that we just pretend we're not making a choice.  Their plan is not free -- they're just relying on small, under-represented minorities of the population to pay for it.  As usual.

Extending lives costs money.  That money -- and the care it might buy -- could be used to help other patients.  Democrats see that trade, and they want to make it.  Starting with the lives that are least "necessary."

Do you want that trade, too?

Do you even see it?

"majority rule"

I'm tired of all this complaining about the filibuster, but I'm even more tired of this idiotic belief that a majority is some kind of critical mass.

People with an IQ over 150 are a small minority, but I'm far more interested in their ideas.  Business owners are a small minority, but they're still the ones we depend on for jobs, and the ones with the best incentives for keeping their own business afloat.

The United States was (were, really) never intended to be a democracy.  Yes, the founders recognized the significance of a majority -- that's why they created the House of Representatives.  But it's a complete misunderstanding of our government to believe that the Senate should therefore be ruled by a majority.

Going back to original intent, the Senate was never supposed to be selected by popular vote in the first place -- prior to the 17th Amendment, Senators were selected by state legislatures.

Second, Senate seats are not apportioned by population anyway.  Each state has two senators, no matter how large or small.  Just because all states have equal say does not imply that a simple majority is some kind of magic number.

Third, the Constitution says nothing about how the Senate must operate -- only that it sets its own rules.

There are three branches to the federal government.  The president is not elected by majority rule, and supreme court justices certainly aren't, either.  The president can overrule Congressional majorities with a veto, but that can also be overridden by even larger majorities in both houses.  The simple majority is only the beginning.

Passing the Senate should be an even greater challenge.    The Senate is not just another House of Representatives -- its very goal is to give legislation a more rigorous test than it would ever get in the majority-rule House.  They don't call it "the world's greatest deliberative body" for nothing.  Technically, it takes a majority vote to get something into the Senate.  Actually getting it through should be harder.

And all that deliberation isn't for entertainment.  It's an opportunity to amend and improve the bill.  If your bill can't be amended, then search it for a partisan agenda.  Universal healthcare may be liberals' ultimate "reform," but to conservatives it's a poison pill.  If your legislation can't even be amended to pass the Senate, maybe the problem's with your legislation.

climate tragedies

Okay, suppose you're a crazy liberal obsessed with concerned about global warming.  Every day, a little evidence turns up to suggest that things are not as bad as global warming alarmists have been saying.  The question is: How are you supposed to feel about this?

I mean, if you're a rational person, and you're worried about a climate apocalypse, then anything that turns the balance of available data against the gloom-and-doom forecast is a good thing, right?

But how do you think liberals really feel when they learn that global warming "science" is made up?

Try it this way:  Maybe you're a liberal, and you actually like big government regulating all the wealth that you think mankind should feel guilty about.  Sure, climate-saving measures overlap with your Master Plan, but that's just a perk, right?  I mean, the real point is drowning polar bears, rising sea levels, evaporating glaciers, record temperatures and the hockey stick graph, isn't it?

So I guess if you learn that the polar bears were just swimming, and that their population is growing, that could be a good thing.  Unless, of course, you fear that we could all remain complacent about the rising sea levels, record temperatures and the hockey stick graph, right?  After all, if you care about those things, you might be a little troubled by news that the polar bears are okay.  At the very worst, it's good-news/bad-news, and it still threatens the Master Plan.

Then you find out that the whole sea-level thing's not so bad, either.  We're centuries from drowning.  That's a relief, right?  Unless of course, it fosters complacency about evaporating glaciers, record temperatures and the hockey stick graph.  And, ultimately, the Master Plan.

You see where this is going.  So the question is, which are the fools who really believe the global warming stuff a little too much, and which are the ones who are really in it for the Master Plan?

Well, your first clue is that the ones who really care will be relieved by good news, and the ones who care about the Master Plan will say anything to keep the scheme alive.

And the problem is that the Master Plan is much more important to many more people than it should be. 

Perhaps even enough to reach that critical mass "scientists" call "consensus."

Oh, I almost forgot -- this is very powerful stuff.  Imagine going up to a tree hugger liberal every time some aspect of climate change is debunked, and asking them two questions:  First, "Do you feel relieved at this news?"  And, second, "Why or why not?"

Because you already know how he's going to feel about it, even if he says he's relieved.  But I'm willing to bet that he's never stopped to ponder why.

It'll make them think.  And God knows they need that.

in the long run, keynes is dead.

Hat tip to CafeHayek.  I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of "snowmageddon" turns out to be in the billions, but make no mistake about it: that cost is a cost.  Here's someone who explains how Keynesians see that same cost as "stimulus." 

Bastiat first described the broken window fallacy over 150 years ago.  Apparently, it wasn't translated into English in time to help John Maynard Keynes.  Fortunately, it's been translated since then, and so we don't all have to make the same mistake today.

When you pay to have your streets plowed (or your city's snow plows repaired), it's true that certain workers do get welcome employment.  But if you're the taxpayer footing the bill, it's not like you weren't going to use your money to buy something else.

Suppose you were going to buy some nice steaks instead of having your street plowed.  Bastiat's point was that in addition to the plow driver getting paid, you not only have to go without steak, but the butcher shop now goes without a sale, too.

Keyesians believe it would be stimulus if the government just paid people to dig ditches.  The scary part is that an actual demand for ditches never enters into the equation.  Philosopically, Keynesian stimulus is just welfare with a couple of unusual means tests: You must be able to work, and obviously you can't show up to dig ditches if you already have a real job somewhere else.

For purely political reasons, Keynesians try to keep the work a little more constructive than just digging ditches -- using the workers for public works projects, for example, or perhaps contracting them out as cheap/free labor for contributors' projects.  But to the Keyesian, if we simply divided the labor into two teams -- one of which dug ditches while the other filled them back in -- that would suffice.  It's the job, not the productivity, which matters to Keynes.