iPandora

There are many misconceptions standing in the way of informed consent on the part of the American Electorate.

Bugbears and villains and bogey-monsters are trotted out each election cycle to herd the voting populace into the desired frame of mind.

One of the common scape-goats (ab)used by many is the spectre of “Big Business”. And not merely content to blame big business, the abusers often employ shake-down tactics when they need additional revenue.

After all, nobody likes their boss, and everybody knows businesses are endless sources of greedy men with far too much money, right?

Sticking it to “the Man” is the favorite sport in much of America, and it’s bred and grown in an environment free of logic and fact into a monster few can avoid.

Well, here’s one shot.

Business does good for people.

It’s not that they hold your hand and sing Kumbayah, or even that businesses that contribute financially to causes we agree with are good.

This is a blanket statement without conditions: The average business in America does good.

What is good?

Good is a quality of action or intent that brings about, supports, encourages some reasonable benefit to another.

Me winning the lottery is not good. Yes I get tons of money, but that money to one not capable of handling it wisely will with great consistency, harm me and cause me greater damage than were I not to have such largess.

Me working and earning a reasonable wage is good. I earn the money and therefore know its worth to me. I use that value to trade for other things of value which have greater good to me.

Now what just occurred? Each of the players in that last paragraph exchanged something for something else.

What is that called? It’s an economy.

Let’s look at it closer: The business I work for values my work more than a certain amount of money, so we trade. My work for their money. But I can’t live eating money or in a house made of money, so I trade the money for other things I consider more valuable than the actual cash, usually with other businesses such as landlords, grocery stores, utility companies, etc.

Each of us has something we can trade for something else and it is the constant trading and exchanging throughout America that creates the immense wealth we have.

If you think you have little and you live in America, you’re most likely very, very wrong. And this pernicious lie, that we have little, that helps fuel the constant badgering that businesses ought to do this and that and owe us one thing or another.

There are plethora ways the government inhibits business, and in each and every situation where regulation and restriction purport to keep businesses playing “fair”, it is the consumer, you and I, who are hurt most.

In order for you and I to survive we must efficiently and effectively trade what we have for what we need, hopefully increasing the value of what we have in order to trade it more efficiently and for more.

Education is one key way to increase our value. By increasing our skill, our versatility, our ability, through learning and practice, we increase our value to those we’d trade our abilities to. We make a higher wage when we have more skills.

Looking at our small economy described above, government inhibits the economy, making exchanges more difficult, by taxing. By taking away percentages of the money value being used in the trade, they lower the value of our abilities. When we give a business our labor in exchange for an agreed-upon amount of their money, government takes a significant percentage of that money given to us in the form of income taxes.

They also tax the business itself, not just our wages. In fact, America has some of the highest business tax rates of the industrialized world. The government takes around one-third of businesses reported Net Profit.

Do you want to know why businesses try to write off so many expenses? Because for every dollar they cannot right off as a valid business expense, the government will take 30 cents.

What would happen if the government took 30 cents of your pay check? Well, unless you’re making very little, the government very well may be.

So maybe a better question is: What if you made 30 cents MORE for every dollar you currently make?

Let’s say you make 40 thousand dollars a year now. What would you do with 52 thousand? $12,o00 extra per year would add up significantly. A house payment in just a few years, the kids in private schools (or home schooled, grin), a new business you start yourself.

Instead, the government takes it.

I don’t begrudge the government a fair share of money. After all, government is necessary in a fallen world. And government has reasonable and rational expenses. And they are immense, relative to each of our individual budgets.

But when the government tells us it knows, better than we  ourselves do, how to do things which could either be left well enough alone or by private industry and a knowledgeable populace. Then coerces us into giving it an exorbitant amount of money to perform those services. That is not right. And it hurts us.

A business must, by nature, make more money than it spends. It must be profitable in order for it to stay in business. When people talk about windfall profits and how we ought to tax businesses making more than there fair share, they illustrate only how imbecilic their own level of understanding is regarding the economy.

When a business operates effectively and efficiently and makes an immense profit, those large profits entice other businesses into the same market. When multiple businesses operate in the same market, they must give reason for their consumers to choose them over their competitor.

Competition drives prices lower, as this is the most visible way to differentiate ones product. Competition also drives quality up, as a second, very visible differentiation.

So because a market was allowed to become lucrative, the consumers have better access to cheaper and higher quality products. Sounds great to me.

And it’s not just looking on the outside, at the balance sheets of the business and on the store shelves, at the price tags.

Those businesses that make more profit are able to employ more and more skilled workers to further improve their products.

Sure, this is a sunny picture. But in the market, averages work out in favor of the sunny picture. Your job may indeed suck, but have you tried looking for one that doesn’t?

It may not be the best time, in the present economy, with government ham-handed handling of the economy stifling the recovery and prolonging this downturn. But there are still companies looking for workers.

Maybe leaving the big city, with is stifling regulation on top of already onerous federal meddling causes most businesses to fail or move away, to a smaller city which is more willing to lower it’s regulation and encourage businesses to build and hire is what needs to occur.

But when you hear a politician or government bureaucrat tell you that businesses must pay “their fair share”, remember that business may be employing you with the money the government wants to take.

And what the government takes, it does not give back readily.

Business Friendly means employee friendly.

Employee friendly means you have a job. A good job. One where the employer has the means to take care of you and compensate you well.

As for me, I’m already paying my fair share and more, and I’m getting fed up.

On Wednesday afternoon I was laid off from my job, along with two others from the Service Desk.

ACS Inc is going through a belt-tightening and they cut the McDonalds IT Service Desk US Crew from 8 to 5.

We were a good team and I had good times with all the good people there. I’ll miss working alongside them.

But to the future.

I admit it’s a little worrisome being laid off in such times as these. But at the same time, it’s an adventure in trust, and in possible being forced into some of those free-market principles I’ve espoused philosophically, if not in actual practice.

It’s not a dire situation: ACS Inc let us go with 2 weeks severance pay (Yay! 2 weeks paid vacation! Right when my baby boy is due!). Insurance will continue through August 15th, which should cover the birth. And I signed up for unemployment insurance which will cover our needs quite well.

Be praying for Grace and I as we look forward to the birth of our son very soon. And that God would grant us peace and trust as He continues to lead us in the way He has for us.

Stay tuned for the future.

And if you know of someone looking for a skilled technologist, point them to my presence on the web where they can find my latest resume: Music2MyEar.com

…the more they stay the same.

How command-economy solutions failed the free-market and extended the economic dip of the 1920′s – 1930′s into the Great Depression.

And how far we’ve come today.

One question: They aren’t good at foreign policy, and they’ve been incapable of learning how to lead a national economy: What are Democrat’s good for again?

The Democrat party is apparently entirely represented (in the halls of power at least) by those incapable or unwilling to either read or learn from history, and are therefore doomed to repeat it. Can we stop them from dragging the rest of us through their own private hell?

…without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. ~Franklin D Roosevelt

I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. ~Thomas Jefferson

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. ~Ronald Reagan

It’s the economy, stupid!

In case you had trouble guessing: I like businesses.

If there weren’t business there wouldn’t be internet, iphones, cars, bicycles, buildings, tents, sleeping bags, fresh produce in the middle of winter, heat and A/C, in cars too, hospitals, medication, surgery…

You get the picture.

We’ve had government since the beginning of time, and it hasn’t done a thing directly to benefit or develop beneficent products and services (except nuclear energy and other war-related items).

We’ve also had businesses since the first person decided he’d rather spread and grow his wealth instead of laboring over the same rows in the same farm for his own families sustenance.

Chipotle is an excellent example of a good business.

Our wealth allows us to pay premium price for food raised and prepared in a reasonably environmentally conscious and sustainable manner.

And it tastes good, too.

Walmart is not too different from Chipotle.

The monstrous store chain that’s easy to hate until we need cheap razer blades and jeans and socks and hand towels and garbage can liners. Then everybody loves it.

Except the unions, who are never going to love Walmart until it caves to their regressive and stiflingly stupid and anti free market strong man tactics and effects.

I pray Walmart never does, and for good reason.

When Walmart enters an area, consumers win as the often cheaper prices at Walmart “encourage” the other stores to moderate their own prices.

The prices are not always better, but they are better enough of the time and for enough products to justify the crowds you normally find at these supercenters.

Does Walmart Save You Money? (read the comments, many people report savings in the $1000′s each year while others disagree with their perception of the business practices)

But enough about prices already, Walmart benefits your health!

Huh?

Indeed, studies are showing that people living near a Walmart or “club store” (Costco, Sam’s Club, etc) are lighter on average.

But don’t all the fat and ugly people shop at Walmart? No, it’s just the ugly people and me.

In an article published in Forbes Magazine, Art Carden, an Professor of Economics at Rhodes College in Memphis TN, reports on studies showing that the increased buying power people experience when benefiting from the Walmart effect has a direct and close correlation to the health of those people.

There are several reasons this may be, and the why or how is always a bit murkier than fact of correlation, but all of the possibilities enjoy sound economic sense.

Those benefiting most from the Walmart affect are…

…women, the poor, African-Americans and people who live in urban areas.

The arguments as to why and how and many, as I noted earlier, and some may find them difficult. Read it a few times if necessary.

Our evidence is indirect, but we think it shows that price changes can have subtle and sometimes hard-to-detect consequences. Any change in price results in two phenomena. The first is the substitution effect: a change in consumption mix due to a change in relative prices. If a bag of salad is $2 and a bag of potato chips is $1, then the price of salad in terms of chips is two bags and the price of a bag of chips is half a bag of salad. If a Wal-Mart opens and reduces the price of salad to $1 a bag and the price of chips to 75 cents a bag, the “salad price” of chips has risen (from 1TK2 bag to 3TK4 bag) and the “chip price” of salad has fallen from 2 bags to 4TK3 bags. In short, salad has become cheaper relative to chips.

This argument is based on basic price comparison. If the salad cost 2 times what chips cost before Walmart,  Jack and Jill are more likely to buy the salad now because it only costs 1.3 times more than the chips now.

Then there is the income effect:

If Wal-Mart sells food at lower prices–even if our incomes don’t change–every dollar can buy more. Therefore, we’re richer.

The crux of their findings is that people, when given a choice and a suitable price range, will purchase healthier foods.

Our data suggest that we buy healthier food when our purchasing power increases. There is a small increase in consumption of fruit and vegetables in places where Wal-Mart does a lot of business and a decrease–or smaller increase–in fatty food consumption relative to places where Wal-Mart doesn’t do business. That is, people might consume more fatty foods, but consumption of those unhealthy goods increases more slowly than it does for the rest of the population.

There are other facts, findings, and arguments in the article. I urge you to read the whole thing: Wal-Mart’s Weight Effect.

The point is, don’t be too quick to denigrate or disparage the current state of our free martket system.

It’s not always pretty, and it’s easy to find fault.

However, compared with any other system out there, capitalism and the free market are the best at providing escalating levels of service and product to the most people most equitably and with the least amount of downside.

It’s been proven time and again, yet we in America now are dangerously close to forgetting completely, if we haven’t already.

The free market and capitalism isn’t about the blind, mindless pursuit of money at all costs, that’s anarchy.

Free markets and capitalism are about working in tandem with those around us to maximize our return by providing the best service or product to others. It’s a mutually beneficial system.

And we’re in danger of throwing it away.

The fawning over Obama has not yet ceased in the mainstream media.

BBC headlines a story this morning with the appallingly thoughtless “Obama to curb vehicle emissions“.

First off, grammar police here to say: didn’t your mother tell you that every word in a headline or title is capitalized?

Now, to address the fallacy here: The President is not tasked with invention, nor with development. His expect forte is not to spearhead industrial progress, nor is his path laid alongside that of Carver, Watt, or Fermi.

The purpose of the President is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. And nowhere within that auspicious document, envied and imitated by many and equaled by none yet, does it state the role of the Government of the United States or the President thereof have either the responsibility, prerogative, or power to direct industrial invention.

The Times of London leads with the much less misleading but no less grammatically faulty  “Obama to introduce emissions curbs on gas guzzlers“.

It is true I parts of me would prefer the no less true but much more provocative headline “Obama Corks US Industry, Innovation”.

The BBC article begins by quoting the talking points of the White House Press Release:

The plan will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil by 2016 and be the equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road, White House officials said.

Words sure to bring warm fuzzies to everybody with fuzz between their ears, for sure.

I’m completely for innovation making things more efficient and development making things more clean.

I’m all for using the incredible wealth and depth of technology to preserve the environment. I love clean air, camping, tree climbing, fishing, and all the good things tha come with living in a clean place.

But arbitrary requirements which have only shown in history to destroy and hobble and prevent and impoverish have no place here.

A dirty little secret about gas mileage and lower emissions is that, with current technology, there is a bit of a trade off.

My current car qualifies in the state of California as PZEV: Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle. It is a small SUV, crossover-type from Mitsubishi. It is in the same emissions category as the Hybrid Toyota Camry. But it would fail Obama’s new “standards”. I only get 20-25MPG. Good for this car, but much less than the 35MPG proscribed by our Inventor In Chief.

One thing consistently noted in the reviews of this vehicle was that Mitsubishi decided to go with lower fuel economy to achieve the lower emissions.

On it’s face this trade-off doesn’t make much sense: burning less gas should mean less emissions, right?

But when you take into account all the various factors that affect emissions, compression in the engine, efficiency of the catalytic converter, richness of gas mixture, you will find that the cleanest burning calibration of the various elements is not the most energy efficient.

And, according to the Times of London article, these regulations and constraints will cost us more:

New vehicles at present average 25mpg, with most cars required to reach 27.5mpg and light trucks 23.1mpg. New Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules passed by Congress are already expected to add an extra $700 to the price of a new vehicle, and today’s announcement will add about another $600.

So in this economically difficult time the Savior of the Earth is costing each family who needs a car an extra 5-10% of the normal cost. So those claims about how these changes will make it as though there are 177 million cars aren’t lying, except for the “as though” bit.

It won’t be an “as though”, it will be fewer cars. It will be reality.

If I ran the world I would tell people:

I’m the government, and the government cannot fix all your problems. The good things I can do are limited to:

• Protecting the entire nation and it’s immediate interests of safety and commerce through foreign war.

• Protecting each individual equally and without preference through the rule of law.

That’s it. That’s all.
Anything else I, the government, tries, I fail at.
I am not efficient or practical.
I am not flexible or creative.
I stifle.
I limit.
I take.
I hurt you.
Limit me. It’s in your best interest.

RE: Twitter Updates for 2009-01-09

This was more in reference to those who would agree with the condemnations of a consumer culture as strident as those found in “The Story Of Stuff“.

Efficiency in production: the ability to produce things using fewer pre-production resources of all types for each unit produced.

Increasing efficiency in production required a more advance production system. The advanced and efficient production system costs more money and resources, but the increased cost is off-set by the resources saved over the production life of the machinery.

Developing nations generally do not have the up-front resources to set up advanced and efficient production systems, nor the skilled labor markets to run such systems.

They must begin by producing a very inefficient product. Then as they gain money, in subsequent construction and expansion, they can afford the higher upfront cost of the increasingly more efficient productions systems, lowering their longer term costs and increasing productivity.

The issue with many current opinions today is that a high level of wealth spread across a broad, educated society is necessary for advancements in efficiency.

Many proponents of the more radical environmental causes tend to believe a more naturalistic system is superior, with people living ‘one’ with nature.

But imagine the pollution from the camp fires necessary to keep all of us warm? A modern heater in a home is vastly more efficient and less polluting per person or volume warmed than earlier systems.

At the end of the remake movie (which has been recommended highly by Orson Scott Card) the alien reduces humanity to a primitive situation, following his directive with the goal of lessening the environmental impact of humanity.

In a primitive state, the resources required to support humanity would be enormously beyond what is required today. The greater the wealth and social construct of a nation or group, the greater it’s efficiency in production and the “cleaner” it will be.

Production efficiency is a basically amoral process that each and every society goes through as part of its technological and societal progression.

Obama is now saying this recession could last for years, will cause double digit unemployment, and cause $1 Trillion drop in GDP.

In other words, his policies and “stimulus” will not work.

Big surprise.

But since the liberal mindset cares more about “doing something” and accomplishing anything, he will not be criticized by any of his own.

He’s lowering the expectations of his adoring fans so when they are clustered around the trash fire in the garbage can on the street corner 4 years from now wondering why Obama did not pay their mortgage, he’ll be able to justify himself.

And all this suffering AFTER he’s taken and spent a bloated “aid package” worth of our money.

However you look at it though, his election was a breakthrough to all the old Democrats who couldn’t stand the sight of a black person anywhere but bending in front of a shoe shine stand:

The consensus… is that Obama’s election at least shows that race barely matters to most people when they pick a leader. In the vanguard of that change are people under 40. They grew up in an America where people of color were routinely part of daily life – at schools and shops, and at sporting and social events.

Continued from part 6

Salvation: God set up a system of free will. It is not the nicer, or cleaner, or prettier system. But it is the best system. In the short run (life here on earth) there is much pain and suffering, but in the long term those who find the truth and are set free through their acceptance of it experience the personal peace and freedom which the rest of the world will never understand.

Also, looking at America. God does not necessarily reserve His blessing for those who follow exactly in His way, and we often cannot see why it is God bestows blessing upon one and appears to withhold it from another. America, for whatever reason, is blessed far beyond any other nation right now. We have an incredible level of personal wealth spread throughout a percentage of the population unprecedented in the history of civilization. This has many benefits, dangers, and opportunities.

The benefits are obvious: a level of development and technological advancement with only a few equals, a level of stability and available leisure unmatched through history by a greater amount of the populace, and many other. The dangers are real: an apathy for anything worthwhile. The opportunities are endless: the ability to send money and resources to corners of the Globe with such volume that entire nations make base their economies on our own, sending us goods to get our money.

The Christian in this economy has many responsibilities. The foremost is to not allow themselves to be controlled by anything except Christ. The next is to provide for his own as God has given him. The next, but not less important, is to use what he has been given to meet the needs of those around.

This is done with wisdom and grace. Even Paul used strong language when advising the churches that they should not give money to just anyone who asks. He said that it is wrong to give money to someone who is able to work and does not. He said that hunger will teach that person the necessity of work. It is better to allow the person to starve now and learn, than to feed him and harm him by that food.

Further, in the StoryofStuff, it become obvious that the narrator believes the entity primarily responsible for her desired salvation is the government. Our Constitution prohibits the government from taking that sort of responsibility from private industries, a policy Barack Obama knows about and wishes to change. The very idea of government being capable of successfully supporting the social needs of a dependent population is a historical, philosophical, and theoretical demonstrably false idea.

Think Communism/socialism/Marxism. Think the philosophers of the French Revolution and Enlightenment. Think of who is best able to decide how to use their own money? You or the government.

And even if you think the government is better suited to that task than yourself: who then will God hold responsible for the use of the resources He has gifted to us? The Government? I think not.

God will judge governments in His own way, and He will judge me by how I made use of the resources available to me. If I abdicate my responsibility by passing my buck to the government willingly, allowing them to decide how to spend my dollar wastefully, I am held responsible by God for that abdication.

No, I stand with the resources God has given me, knowing the myriad problems plaguing the world, and using my resources to accomplish the most good according to the conscience God has given me. I can and will do no less.