To Write or Not to Write

Yeah, I would have expected something better than a tired Shakespearean reference after nearly a year and a half of silence, too. 

I will not offer apologies for my blog silence because I don’t find it necessary.  According to Google, I have 8 followers, and one is my mother (who has heard from me much more frequently in the last year and a half).  I do not pretend that the remaining seven were sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for me.  I do appreciate you seven, however, very, very much.

The initial reason for my silence was my first pregnancy and birth of our first child.  At first I felt guilty that pregnancy took all of my energy, leaving me with only enough vigor to shower and get into bed after work each night.  Now, as I hold my daughter in my arms and rock her to sleep, I realize that the real guilt would come if I didn’t devote every ounce of my energy to her creation.  My strength was rightly aligned, without my even knowing it.  It is funny how so much of what works in my life has so little to do with me.

After settling into life as a three-piece family, instead of two, I found it difficult to get back into blogging.  Granted, we are in the middle of a primary season, and the country is in worse shape than when I stopped writing, which would normally stir my sense of indignation.  Yet I was not feeling moved.   

I recently read This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  While I am no Amory Blaine, his comments did resonate with me when he explained to a friend why he was not interested in writing for a newspaper…

We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can’t.  Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It’s worse in the case of newspapers.  Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food.  For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy.  A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper’s ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them---

He paused only to get his breath.

And that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideas either clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soul without putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into people’s heads…

It made me want to write a private journal about my everyday life to satisfy my pen to paper urges and leave the politics and ballyhooing to the junkies that feed on the never ending cycle of pronouncements and denouncements.  But then I was reading one of my favorite girlie bloggers (the non-political side of me loves cooking and decorating blogs…just fyi) who happens to be a big C.S. Lewis fan, who said, “Like Lewis, I don’t write to be understood but to understand.”   Well now, that resonates as well. 

I do believe that I shall go on writing on this little blog.  It may be sporadic, as I no longer have ambitions of being the loudest voice in the cacophony of political opinion.  However, writing out these thoughts of mine does aid in the understanding. 

I still have one of my literature professors rolling around in my head who said that we must write well to be understood.  He was adamant that bad writing leads to unintended interpretations and a need for clarification that could have been avoided with proper writing in the first place.  So I do intend to continue writing to be understood, but only in the sense that my words should convey their meaning and nothing further.  My writing will now have the more consequential aim of targeting my own understanding.  In short, I may be less politically correct, more direct, and less concerned about appealing to the masses.  Honest thoughts shouldn’t be stifled on the altar of the Big Tent. 


I hope that you will keep reading. 

Greatest Generation?

I am feeling a little down on the greatest generation lately.

It may be a product of having lived with my grandparents for a time, and having a keen appreciation of history and the defining struggles that shaped their generation, but previously, the "greatest generation" could do no wrong in my eyes. But we all have lessons to learn, and the sheen of our youthful naivete eventually wears off.

I still hold great admiration for this generation. Our nation, and the entire world would not be what it is today without the fortitude and perseverance of the men and women who were born into the depression and cut their adult teeth in World War II. They came back to a country that could have taken a million different paths. They chose building a nation that would be more prosperous and and strong than any other free nation in history. I cannot and will not give up the polished image that I hold of my grandparents. They are good people who worked hard and raised good families, like so many millions of Americans in their generation.

However, our nation is now on its knees under the weight of an unconstitutional government that began to rear its ugly head in the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the progressive entitlements and government power grabs began before the greatest generation was born, and much of it occurred during the New Deal when they were in their adolescence. Blame for this behemoth does not rest on the shoulders of one generation. But I still cannot shake the idea that the greatest generation did not do anything to stop it, or better yet, reverse the tide. In fact, the greatest generation continued to grow government and entitlements. When problems arose, they were solved with government and entitlements.

I have a lot more learning to do on the subject, so these thoughts are just the thoughts that have been rolling around in my head as of late. The economic impact of the greatest generation's policies will be studied by many, and for decades to come.

Maybe it is just my perspective standing at the end of this time span, but the twentieth century brought so much change and upheaval the world over. Tyrannical governments brought down nations, world wars decimated entire generations, government interventions and economic failures cut humanity to the bone, genocides raged, and atomic bombs dropped. But at the same time, innovation has never moved at so quick a pace. Individuals have never been healthier, more secure in their freedoms, land, resources, and food supplies. Life was never easier than it was in the twentieth century. It was simultaneously the worst and the best century the world has known. To have been one of the defining generations of that century bares tremendous accolades but also tremendous responsibility.

I feel that when WWII was over, the greatest generation had earned their rest. They earned their GI houses in the suburbs with their family cars, backyard parties, washing machines, family dogs and 2.5 children. But they also bore the responsibility for engineering our future. Time marches on, and a lot of damage had occurred in the first half of the century. Americans in the greatest generation had the responsibility to roll back the war-time encroachments and budgets, and Depression-era entitlements. Some of this was done. But some of it is still on the books 60 years later.

The greatest generation is the generation that still stocks way too many canned vegetables in the pantry, and saves plastic baggies like they are going out of style. Grandpas can fix anything and grandmas are still the caretakers for large broods. They are the generation that can fend for themselves and provide for others. Nothing could stop them. But they are also the generation that needed a security net to ensure that their hard work in pulling the nation out of depression and war was not in vain. I can't blame them for thinking this. Yet I also am now a member of the generation that has to figure out for itself that the safety nets are unconstitutional and that the safety nets are what will create the economic depressions and wars that my generation will have to fight.

Without our Constitutional foundation, we lose our freedom and the logic behind the existence of our nation. In the midst of a collapsed economy and the international threat of war our Constitution may not have seemed that significant. But in the aftermath, when we were so focused on building up a free nation and fighting the specter of communism abroad, why were we creating entitlements at home? Why were we growing the scope of government power? Why were we increasing the budgets? Why were we creating unaccountable departments and commissions that would institute political regulations in lieu of Constitutional congressional law? Why was the greatest generation giving in to the slow creep of everything that that they had already fought against?

A Pension is Not a Right

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/11/the-secret-sauce-behind-bloated-state-pensions.html

Shocked as hell that MSNBC is reporting on this. From where I sit in my bureaucratic school district paper-pusher job, I can attest to the truth in these deplorable shenanigans.

Needless to say, as a twenty-something, I expect to pay for the retirement of others through the ponzi schemes of social security and state pension systems (at the risk of legal penalties if I do not comply), while still saving for 100% of my own retirement, because I will not draw one cent from the public funds. Regardless of moral principle, the money won't be there 50 years from now.

Why Wage and Price Controls Fail

Follow the link below for an excellent article on the fallacy that setting wages (for example, teacher's salaries and the car maunufacture industry), protects workers.  It is titled "The 1822 Refutation of the Spitalfields Act of Wage and Price Controls," by Anders Mikkelson, and it is a commentary that stems from The Man vs. the State by Herbert Spenser...yet another book that I wish I had already read. 

http://mises.org/daily/4809

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If you are not already aware of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, I would highly recommend getting familiar with them.  The institute is based out of Auburn University in Alabama, and they are the premiere proponnents of Austrian Economics in the United States.  Get to know Austrian Economics, and the world will make sense. Tu Ne Cede Malis.

A Beautiful Recession

Man I do love a good recession! Who doesn’t?

Maybe I need to clarify.

Recessions occur when resources in the market are misallocated. Say someone builds a widget that sold very quickly and for a high price, so everyone took their investing dollars and started making the widgets. Soon, the market was flooded with widgets, and demand crashed. Prices crashed as well, widget companies had to lay off widget makers, and sell of the raw materials that they used to make the widgets. That is a recession. People generally think this is bad, because no one likes to lose their job, or see businesses go under.

However, recovery from a recession is the period when those misallocated resources are re-allocated to new ventures. Employees are freed up to work on projects that might be profitable, costs for materials come down and so new start-ups can afford to make new products with these newly available materials. Ingenuity resumes and the market rebounds now that it is better aligned with consumer needs.

A recession is a good thing because it allows bad businesses to fail, and it frees up resources so that good businesses and new businesses can have a better chance at meeting the needs of the market. Meeting the needs of the market is key to success, and makes everyone happy by providing jobs, and keeping prices in line with consumer expectations, needs, and desires.
When the government interferes in a recession, they are forcing an unnatural element by allocating resources towards enterprises that cannot naturally fulfill the needs of the market or the people. Deep recessions are felt because of government meddling. A natural recession might, and often does, go unnoticed. You do not see the ill-effect of bad restaurants going out of business, or slow technologies becoming obsolete. You enjoy the new and better goods that are created with the freed up resources. Natural recession is good.

Deep recessions are cyclical. Resources are tied up where they are not being properly utilized in the market, so the government goes in and give companies money or tax incentives to keep doing the thing that isn’t working in the first place. Sure, they may put limits or restrictions on the resources handed out, but the point still holds that the government is giving resources to people who mismanaged the resources that they had in the first place. By doing so, the government is simultaneously diverting those resources away from the good companies that are meeting the needs of the market, yet now can’t expand, and the new companies that have yet to begin because of the lack of resources.

Because the allocation of resources is now even less capable of meeting the needs of the market, the recession deepens. When the government says they want to “shore up” a company, that means they are shoring up resources that are being mismanaged, and are needed elsewhere.

Further, not all investment is immediate. When there is uncertainty, people will not act to create a job today (the immediate effect), but they will also slow or even halt their plans for expansion in the future. This means fewer prospects for recovery 6 months to even 10 years from now.

If the government leaves the market alone, it will remove the uncertainty that businesses feel. People will see the failed businesses, but they will also see the influx of resources. The market will continue. Companies may not hire today, but they are free to invest in their company’s future and jobs will follow in the coming months. If the government intervenes, enterprise halts, because once the government gets in the game, resources are choked, and there is no limit as to how far the government will interfere, or how long they will be there.

All business involves risk. Businessmen take the risk that they will succeed based on their own tolerance for the consequences of failure. If the government interferes and the business owners have no barometer with which to measure their risk, they are very hesitant to commit to the market.

The last several years have taught me that the American people have been trained to fear the recession and look to the government to regulate the economy. We need to reverse that logic. We should fear government intervention in the marketplace and look forward to the mild recessions that keep the market healthy.

For an example of government interference in the healthcare market, read this article, posted to a local news website by a local doctor. Listen to the language of regulation by the government and how the market (doctors and patients), are trying to adapt. Also notice the uncertainty of consequences.

http://fbindependent.com/impending-problems-in-healthcare-p3013-89.htm

Stop the Blame and Start the Penance

I need to take a moment to clarify a point.

People in the Baby Boomer generation and older keep talking about how they don’t want their children and grandchildren to be saddled with the debts of today. I have an unfortunate truth for those who have reared the children and grandchildren that you are so worried about. What makes you think that we are going to pay this debt? What in our society and culture today makes you think that you could do this to our nation, yet future generations (that were raised and steeped in this ideological kamikaze horse sh*t) will buckle down and do the right thing?

Here is the truth of my generation: For every person under 40 who understands the ramifications of our fiscal and regulatory crises, there are hundreds of thousands of us who can’t even tell you how many zeroes are in one billion. We are not only the first generation to live entirely under the welfare state, but we are the first generation to live our whole lives under Jimmy Carter’s NEA. We are the generation that learned in 7th grade that the president can lie to every single US citizen, including our governing bodies, and get away with nothing more than an SNL chuckle. We have no respect for the government, because the government has never functioned as it is mandated to in our lifetime. We have no concept of economics or trade because we grew up in the era of consumerism without limits, while our educators came from the schools of 60’s and 70’s radical politics.

And you expect that we will foot the bill? Take your rhetorical flourish and shove it.

“Future generations” will pay, but it won’t be with money. We will kick the can down the road and turn to others who will pay at the cost of our freedom. (Why should we pay? We didn’t do this to America.) We will hand this burden off to others because you have created a society in which debt is cool, but freedom is unpopular. Debt gets us all the things we could ever wish for, without having to earn those things; while freedom is only the language of the “fringe” groups, like the tea parties.

You think that you are giving us debt as a legacy and you say that is bad. What you are still too stupid to see through your irresponsible progressivist stupor, is that through this debt-socialism 1-2 punch, you are condemning us to slavery. While focusing on your own consumerism and entitlements, you have given us neither the tools nor the knowledge to save this once free nation. You have burned Rome, and you are hoping that the few of us out there who actually understand the consequences are going to be able to drag the rest of the future towards freedom and prosperity.

Do not place the burden of this failure on future generations. This failure is yours.

Common Knowledge?

In contrast to the last post (Daniel Hannan's interview on Uncommon Knowledge), I present the following:



Apparently this is what passes for common knowledge in Liberal/Progressive America. 

More on John Maynard Keynes will be posted in the coming months.  I will forgive people not knowing about him, since our whole nation seems resistant to learning.  But there is no excuse for not being able to read.  Keynesian does not equal Kenyan. 

This is why The Mindful Citizen exists.

Uncommon Knowledge: Daniel Hannan

Daniel Hannan is a member of the EU Parliament representing Great Britain. He has a keen eye for recognizing the economic fallacies that have led to the decline of Europe, and hopes to reach people in the United States with the message that we are trotting the same path, and we must turn back to our original intent: maximum liberty in the hands of the people, with the government present to protect our liberty and nothing further.


Here is his recent interview with Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge:




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Uncommon Knowledge is an interview program put out by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. On the program, Peter Robinson interviews some very intriguing people about their work in economics and history. Past episodes can be found at http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uncommon-knowledge. They are worth a listen.

My New Favorite Word...

Legerdemain
-a noun meaning an artful trick or slight of hand; trickery, deception.

Good word, right?

A Damn Good Nutshell

A lot of bloviating goes on here at the MC, but it all boils down to this:

[G]overnment power is inherently limited by the role of other social institutions, such as families, religious congregations, schools, and businesses. The rightful authority of these institutions helps to check the authority of the state. ... As government claims responsibility for more tasks, it absorbs the allegiance that citizens once placed in other relationships and forms of association. When the federal government assumes more responsibility for fulfilling the moral obligations among citizens, it tends to undermine the perceived significance and authority of local institutions and communities.

This encourages citizens, instead of looking to their families, churches, or local communities for guidance and assistance, to depend on the government for education, welfare, and various other services. As individuals begin to look more consistently to the government for support, the institutions that are able to generate virtues like trust and responsibility begin to lose their sway in the community. Excessive bureaucratic centralization thus sets in motion a dangerous cycle of dependence and social decay.

-The Heritage Foundation's Ryan Messmore

America's principles establish religious liberty as a fundamental right. It is in our nature to pursue our convictions of faith. Government must not establish an official religion, just as it must guarantee the free exercise of religion. Indeed, popular government requires a flourishing of religious faith. If a free people are to govern themselves politically, they must first govern themselves morally.

-The Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Spalding