Why I am not an anarchist

I have two brothers who are mostly living off the grid. I could, probably should, blame myself for this, since I acted this way in my 20’s. Except I was never their hero and I’d knocked off doing this stuff for 20 years before they started. I’m starting to suspect there’s a genetic issue, and I just phenotyped early, thank God. If so, they will get over it too.

I had a book-challenge with one of them earlier this year. I sent him Hayek and he challenged me to read some anarchist guy in Canada. I don’t remember who. I’m not trying to be snarky, but my wife packs up stuff, and “anarchist author canada” didn’t find him. I believe there were a bunch of B’s in his name.

Anyhow, here’s everything I’ve concluded over my entire life about political economy, the good parts version.

There are only two approaches to dealing with other people when it comes to deciding whether you should impose your will on them: libertarian or totalitarian.

Both of these approaches are mere tendencies. You can’t tell which one people really believe from what they claim to believe. But it’s really important to your life to categorize people as one or the other.

Libertarians believe that unless there’s a really really good reason, you have no right to interfere with what other people decide to do, no matter how stupid and destructive it is.

Totalitarians believe that unless there’s a really, really good reason, you should interfere with other people when they are being stupid and destructive.

Moving on, why Anarchy is Idiocy:

Being good at violence is an economic good, just like being good at making bread. The thing that makes civilization possible is that different people are better at some things, and everyone does what they do best to make the sum total of what we can do work more efficiently than if we all tried to be good enough at everything we need and do everything on our own. If we didn’t need each other, there’d be no civilization.

Most people are no good at violence, just as most people are no good at baking bread. The division of labor implies that bakers will pay those good at violence for protecting them from people who are also good at violence who want to take their bread without giving value in return.

That’s how government starts. People who are good at other stuff, but not at violence, pay the good-at-violence to keep them from getting raped and robbed.

Violence, as a business, is different from other businesses. In other businesses, competition rules. Unless you resort to violence to remove your competition, in which case, you are now in the violence business.

In violence, if you don’t have a monopoly, you’re nothing. You must have sovereignty over a territory. The business of violence, as exemplified in gang wars, the Mafia, and governments is all about nobody else but you dares to exercise violence on your turf. Violence is about monopoly. If you don’t get a monopoly, you turn into the Middle East.

The business of violence is different from other businesses. The violence business only works if you have a monopoly. And then the business is subject to all the bad things that happen to monopolies. Laziness, excess, hubris, corruption.

This is the world we live in:

Specialization of labor inevitably leads to most of us paying others who are better at violence to protect us from predation. Because we know how dangerous such people are, we inevitably hedge them in with rules, contracts and management that evolves into government. Like all businesses, government inevitably tries to grow and get more customers, thus the situation we find ourselves in today.

Anarchists talk about “privatizing” government’s function of protecting the peaceful against the violent. As if you’d want people to open up new protection services like they open up new bakeries. When you have competing protection agencies in a single territory, that’s not competition, that’s war. Even the Mafia and street gangs understand that, but anarchists remain oblivious.

The “privatized” version of government anarchists favor will always turn into de facto, and if you’re lucky, de jure monarchy, autocracy or dictatorship because of the business need for a government to have territorial exclusivity. Democracy may be subject to degeneration over time, but it provides external oversight and control of government agents. And the possibility of reigning in government without having to exercise overwhelming violence against the violence experts.

I’d rather try to vote out Obama than overthrow Assad or Putin.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Boy Genius

The more I think about this, the more impressed I am with the Strategery of John Roberts. The best part is all the idiots who think they won today but who lost–badly. How do I hate you all? Let me count the idiots:

1. The greedy, lazy and stupid “working poor.” It’s fine to be a member of the working poor if you’re a young person just getting started. But if you’re a full-blown adult (now defined as someone 26 years of age or older), there is (should be) some shame in it. If you’re in your 30’s and still making close to minimum wage or half of the median income, not only aren’t you trying very hard, but you either don’t know what median means or you have twice the median student loan debt. In short, you are a lazy dumbass. You are about to get a tax hit night in the ruts. If Obamacare is implemented through the tax code, as the four liberals that John Roberts sucker-punched have agreed it must be, this tax will be incredibly regressive. Meaning, for you working poor, most of whose genes are incredibly recessive,  that you are going to get put in the pool that right now pays for the most expensive treatments for the sickest people.
2. The greedy rich elderly. As it should be, the older you get, the richer you get. You have more skills, you add more value, you have more time to save and invest and you get smarter about the impending reality of the future. The stereotype of grandma eating dogfood is mostly false, except for grandmas who stayed “working poor” their whole lives. Those bitches should be glad they live in a country where dogfood is safe and nutritious and, so I hear, doesn’t taste half bad. Anyhow, most of the diseases and conditions that affect old people are hard to treat and effectiveness depends greatly on innovation. Look at what’s happened with heart surgery. One thing that will be DOA after Obamacare is rapid innovation. If you don’t understand why, go read Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics, or just trust me about this, because I’m obviously a lot smarter than you are. Bottom line: implementation of ObamaCare is a death sentence for millions of the elderly. It will cut years, soon decades, off life expectancy.
3. The stupid boosters of socialized medicine. I will digress here to make my point: The most important reason that the Soviet Union and other socialist/central planning regimes survive as long as they do is the existence of market-driven economies. You’ll have to go beyond the Sowell book and read Mises or Hayek if what I’m saying here goes over your head. The free market price system communicates invaluable, detailed information about how to best use resources. Absurd over- and under-supplies result when free negotiation and pricing of economic goods is interfered with. (See, student loan debt bubble and 5 year famine, for examples.)  The Soviet planners didn’t have a lot of outright famines after a while, because they learned to cheat off free market planning to get price signals. After a while, they just had chronic shortages and misery. Just because you look over someone’s shoulder doesn’t mean you’re going to get an A on the test. Had there not been market information available to tutor the commissars, the Soviet Union would have imploded long before WW2. Similarly, socialized medicine benefits even more dramatically from the information, innovation and competition of free market medicine. Compare patent applications and grants in socialized medicine countries compared to pre-Obama America. There is no question that socialized medicine strongly negatively affects medical innovation. If you don’t think this matters then you’ll be willing to take this deal: Free healthcare for any treatment that is more than 50 years old. Free market prices for everything else. You accept this deal for movies and music, why not have “public domain” medical care? I would absolutely support the government paying just for public domain medical care. If you’re still not getting what I’m putting out, if Obamacare had been ratified in 1787, you’d be getting taxed for $200 leeches now. Canada and England and Sweden are in deep shit if we ever start acting like they do. They will no longer be able to second-hand our 10 year old innovations. If Obamacare is fully implemented, today will be about as good as it ever gets in healthcare. That matters more than it ever did before as we are on the edge of quantum leaps in treatment that need free market pricing and profit to keep them going.  Leeches, motherfucker! Do you speak it?
4. The Democrat Party. They’ll probably lose the presidency in 2012 because of this. What these turds don’t realize is that with Obamacare only partly implemented, millions of Americans have seen the promises of lower costs and better coverage betrayed. Hell, my healthcare is sucking it hard. Of course, I’m one of those “Cadillac-plan” people so I deserve it. My wife’s health care plan has always sucked, but she works part time. Now it’s sucking with force. No matter how much that smug little bitch Obama talks, everyone notices that money is already being hoovered (obama’ed?) out of their wallets every paycheck.  Obama says it’s going to get better as time goes on.  Let’s say he’s right. Who’s going to believe him? That speech today was one of the weakest touchdown dances of all time. It will come back to haunt him.
5. The Republican Party. They’ll probably squander this opportunity to roll back government and they’ll make a hash of it like GWB did. At a certain point, the system collapses and I don’t the see the Republicans doing much to stop it, just feeble attempts mostly for publicity to retard it, like the retards they all are. I do have to admit that I have this sneaking admiration for Mitt Romney as a guy who can navigate all this and keep it going for as long as possible. President Ahab.

I have a huge crush on John Roberts right now.

Think not just about what he did but how he gamed it out. He went Bobby Fischer without the crazy. He torpedoed Abomicare from a direction they did not expect and made them like it. He took advantage of liberal/progressive illiteracy about economics and real politics (where you have to get other people to agree with you voluntarily), and created a disaster for Congress. Those dbags now have to figure out how to implement this as a tax, not a “mandate.”  He set all the MSM idiots back on their heels with their attempts to discredit the Court. He fired a warning shot at the Feds that the commerce clause stretches only so far. He got the liberal dumbasses on the Court to think they’d won a victory when they just signed the ugly, mob-violence death of Abomicare.

And he did it all with simplicity and elegance. He cut through to the fundamental prevarication of Obamacare–that it wouldn’t cost anybody anything–and exposed it. He made everyone realize they have skin in this game, and if your costs go down, mine go up. And that the IRS is going to enforce this. He blocked the bastards on the commerce clause, for the first time in the last 100 years.

Roberts’ decision is one of the most beautiful solutions to a problem that I have ever seen. He trusts this to play out for the best. That’s what it really means to have the courage of your convictions, and he did.

A lot of people are already talking about how Roberts was bullied into this. Fuck you, every one of you. You have no idea of the difference between the mundane and the sublime.

Pink Slime, RIP

A horrible little bitch celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, went ballistic over “pink slime” in ground beef recently. We’ve all been eating “pink slime” for years. Especially you morons who want 90% lean hamburger. You idiots are going to pay a lot more for your lean rabbit meat than you used to.

“Pink slime” aka LFTB (lean finely textured beef) is bits and pieces of cow parts rendered and added to hamburger to cheaply make it more lean. To make sure that it’s sterile it is either exposed to an ammonia gas or mixed with citric acid.

Cargill, the pre-eminent producer of LFTB in the USA has had to lay off nearly 700 people since TLBJO (That Little Bitch Jaime Oliver) went on his ooh! ick! rant.

Cargill uses (used to use) citric acid, not ammonia, to sterilize LFTB. I didn’t see a single lamestream media outlet say that. Instead, they talked only about ammonia, which sounds much grosser. It’s not, by the way. You’ve been eating this forever and going yum yum. Whether ammonia gas or citric acid is used, tastes the same is safe the same. You can’t tell, you’ve never been able to tell.

That’s right, American pink slime really is lean beef of indeterminate composition mixed with a little bit of lemon juice. If you eat hot dogs or sausage, really, stop your bitching. LFTB is way less worse than hot dogs and sausages. Even the FDA agrees it’s a good idea to use LFTB in hamburger. You’re getting a little bit of filet mignon and the occasional heart tissue mixed with your burger. It’s good for you, idiot. It’s more nutritious. Come the apocalypse, pink slime might keep you alive.

As for citric acid, have a coke and some citric acid. Or some commercial ice cream. It’s in damn near everything.

So here’s what really happened: that horrible little foodie bazillioniare Jamie Oliver just cost 700 hard-working Americans their jobs. Aided and abetted by NBC, CBS and ABC. And all you idiots who went ooh! ick! ….  You jackasses just got a significant price hike for hamburger at the grocery store. You deserve it. I don’t. Nice job, you finicky assholes. And you got 700 American workers fired for no reason. Feel good now?

You and TLBJO should send those Cargill un-employees their un-employment checks, but you won’t because you’re stupid douchebags who shit where you eat and then move on. My taxes will go up to pay for what you did. As usual.

This is a minor story. And a major parable.

Stealing from future generations

You can’t steal from future generations. For generations, Republicans have been saying Democrats are stealing from future generations, but they’re wrong. And not just because Republicans are pious thieves too.

It might be possible to enslave future generations to make them pay for the stuff that’s been stolen and squandered already. Good luck with that. Future generations are highly unlikely to respect these debts.

I’m going to explain the federal debt and the so-called “unfunded liabilities” of the federal government in a way that you may never have heard before. I bet you won’t forget it.

The US Gubmint is about $15 trillion in debt. Not to future generations. To people who have invested in the US Fedrule Gubmint like I might have invested in Apple or IBM or Enron. Unless the USFG can figure out how to force “future generations” to pay off that debt, those investors will have to deal with the real value of their investments.

Here’s the thing about all those people who’ve invested in the USFG: they believe that the USFG can enslave future generation to pay them back. They invested in the USFG because they thought that even Apple was too risky, since Apple doesn’t have guns to make people buy iPads.

So, to all you investors in the USFG: I say FUCK YOU! How dare you count on the USFG pointing a gun at the heads of my children to make them pay you back because you’re too chickenshit to invest in real businesses?

Here’s what’s really going to happen: Future generations are not going to pay back the USFG debt. Current creditors of the USFG are going to get wiped out. The USFG is not a perpetual motion machine. Naive people who thought it was will be wiped out.

Here’s the real Hurt Locker: All those Chinese families who work every one of them 12 to 15 hours a day and have sent their “surplus labor” to fat American fucks who work for the USFG, sure that they’d get paid back because America isn’t near as horrible and corrupt as China. Which it isn’t. Which isn’t saying much. Those people are going to get wiped out.

A lot of people are talking about the “unfunded liabilities” of the USFG at being over $100 trillion as if that’s meaningful. It’s not. It’s like someone who makes $40,000 a year promising to pay to send his 20 kids to Harvard, somehow. It’s bullshit. The promises will be broken.

There is no scenario where the USFG doesn’t lose most of its authority, credibility and doesn’t ruin everyone who believed in it.

The times, they are a’ changin’ and not just in hippie dippie ways.

We’re not going to save Medicare.

We’re not going to save Social Security.

We’re going to let them slam into the wall hard.

Profit off collecting the shrapnel!

Innumerate Unemployment News — It’s all good!

The government is jubilant that the unemployment rate has fallen to 8.3% this month, from near 9% before.

Do you know how they calculate the unemployment rate? By that, I mean, do you know how the ratio of unemployed to employed people is derived and who is counted in that ratio? (HINT: not everyone who doesn’t have a job is counted as unemployed.)

Let’s say there are 50 unemployed people and 850 employed people. What is the unemployment rate? It’s 5.5%. The universe of people who are employed + people who want to be employed (the “unemployed”) is 900 people. 50/900 = .055.

Now, lets say that 5 of the unemployed got jobs, and none of the 850 got fired. The unemployment rate becomes 5.0 %.

Now, what if, instead of getting jobs, 10 of those unemployed people just said, fuck it, I’m tired of trying to get a job. The unemployment rate would become 4.4%.

In the last 2 months 2+ million people dropped out of the official government “group.” They still exist. They still eat, shit, pay sales tax and buy lottery tickets. And they don’t have jobs. For whatever reasons, they aren’t officially counted by the government anymore as “unemployed.”

If the 2 million people in the last 2 months who said “fuck it!” were to be counted as unemployed, what would the official unemployment rate be? I’m not going to answer that question for you. Go find some official government stats and calculations, do the arithmetic and enjoy your own HOLY FUCK! moment.

If you can’t figure out how to find official government stats and calculations, please stop voting.

 

Investing in Debt

I was just reading the esr blog. There’s a wacko libertarian commenter who’s nom de guerre is shelby. He reminds me of many of the libertarian activists I used to hang out with. Wicked smart, but approaching the world like it’s a game they are in charge of designing.

Shelby said something that really made me think, paraphrasing and condensing:

All the institutional economic evils of the world are built on consumption debt. Take a minute and let this thought sink in.

This means your VISA bill, your mortgage (which is dressed up to pretend like it’s an investment), car loans and the social security “trust fund.”

The only people who should have debt are people trying to start or grow a buinsess.

Debt used to finance consumption is what makes fractional reserve banking necessary, along with a host of other evils that are hard to keep in their boxes.

I think Shelby has a great point, a la Glengarry Glen Ross: Debt, like coffee, should be for closers, not consumers.

I’m still mulling this over, but I’m starting to think that:

• In terms of how much you contribute to the moral and economic decay of civilization, there’s no difference between a $300K mortgage and a $300K VISA bill. Actually, the mortgage might be worse.
• Stealing is better than borrowing, if you’re that close to the line. I’ll call this the Jean Valjean Principle. At least stealing takes thought, effort and risk. Criminals can be reformed, welfare moms and welfare kids, not so much.

If you have debt related to consumption, including your house, your car, your Xmas gifts, you are not only being a dumbass, you are contributing more to the ultimate moral destruction of Western society than Snookie. The only excuse for having debt is if you are starting or growing a business.

At least my ass isn’t as big as Snookie’s.

Safety Net or Flypaper?

Item: Teachers in Tacoma, WA are on an illegal strike. Their students are demonstrating in support (in support of not having to go to school). The governor of Washington, Christine Gregoire, a typical Democrat moron, gets on TV and wink wink nudge nudge sides with the teachers as much as she can without being in open contempt of court and inciting insurrection.

Item: Aforementioned Gubner Gregoire is talking about cutting state budgets 10% across the board. Good for her. News story following that announcement showcases young single mother with children ages 2 and 5, bitching about the cuts and how they’re going to hurt her. She’s dumb as a box of hammers. No wonder she’s so easy to impregnate. It probably takes more game to get your cocker spaniel to let you fuck it. One of the kids obviously has a white baby daddy, the other obviously has a black baby daddy. I’m not making a racist point here–I’m making the point that she has shitted out 2 brats in 5 years from two different guys, neither of whom is in the picture and she is filled with righteous anger at the thought of me not paying for brat #1’s pre-kindergarten checkup. The moron producing the news story doesn’t ask where’s daddy, much less where’s daddies? If the checkup included spaying, I’d gladly pay and give her a coupon for a free Happy Meal. Or lifetime free abortions.

Item: People’s Court today, starring Judge Cutie. Couple breaking up, she took the 60 inch Mitsubishi TV that they are making payments on RENT TO OWN. Been together 7 years, since he was 18 and she was 16. Lived the first few years in her parents’ house. She’s stabbed him in the head with a screwdriver and broken his nose with a hairbrush. He’s choked her out a time or two.  He’s suing for the TV, which she took when she moved out taking everything while he was at work. She’s been banging some other guy for the last several months, the proximate cause of the breakup. But wait, there’s more….they have a 10 month old daughter.

How likely do you think it is that you and I won’t be paying routine bills for that poor little brat? Or that the brat won’t turn up the volume to 11 listening to her stupid slutty mom and her stupid abusive dad?

I don’t care if you’re a fat, incompetent schoolteacher getting paid way too much or a skinny, stupid girl who cain’t say no, you are ruining this country. Well, I guess  you’re not ruining it. You’re just cattle being stampeded by liberal douchebags. These days, there’s not even that much difference between the fat teacher and the skinny slut in terms of literacy and eloquence. They’re both just people who think their shit don’t stink, so the rest of you pay me. That’s really what about half this country thinks:

My shit don’t stink! Pay me.

Fuck you. Either we’ll send these lazy, horrible people a message in 2012 or they’ll send a message to us. Either way, the days of getting paid for thinking you have stink-free shit are coming to an end. It’s only a matter of how much these people will have their noses rubbed in it.

Just to be clear, by “lazy, horrible people” I do mean schoolteachers. Yes, I know there are good schoolteachers, and I know there some poor people who deserve help. But most of them are horrible, lazy people who use the “good ones” as cover.

 

 

 

 

Eat the Rich, part 1

I’m kinda loving President Toonces the last couple of days. Not because he’s done anything smart, reasonable or Presidential, but because he’s offered himself as chum to his “base.” What a herd of piranha they’ve shown themselves to be.

The mask is off now–the Left hates the rich like Hitler hated Jews. And they have an enormous, childish sense of entitlement to the money you earn.

Check out the weepy bathos over people who have been on unemployment for 99 weeks (they even have a term for them now–the 99ers!).  The horror that they might have to take work that’s BENEATH them. I’ve done a lot of work that’s beneath me. Hell, I do a lot of work every day that’s beneath me, but since the pay isn’t, I still do it.

But I’ll do work that’s beneath me for pay that’s beneath me if I have to and be grateful that I live in America where being poor means having to clip coupons, count pennies, rent a studio apartment or sleep in a friend’s storage shed. You can be homeless right now in America and live a lot better than what passes for the middle class in a lot of countries.

Hey, President Toonces, if you want to send the unemployment rate back to 6% real quick: cut off all unemployment benefits past 6 months.

Toonces, you realize, don’t you, no, you don’t, do you? that most of the unemployed are no goddamn way going to get serious about taking a job that isn’t cushy until they have to? That at least a third of the high unemployment rate is because of middle-class morons who surfed the bubble and now don’t want to stand in line for their haircut like everyone else.

And the majority of you assholes on unemployment for more than 6 months vote Democrat, especially now that you’ve officially become welfare bums. They can call it unemployment, but the unemployment insurance funds ran out long ago. This is welfare.

They should kick every one of your asses off unemployment and make you go stand in line at the welfare office.

I’m reminded of Robert Ringer’s Quick As Hell Full Employment Theory: Cut off all welfare and unemployment benefits and people who couldn’t find a job will find one QUICK AS HELL.

I know more than one 99er who QUICK AS HELL found a job when the benefits ran out. You have to be a completely stupid asshole to say things like, “Do you really think that people on unemployment would rather take the check than find a job?” Of course, they would. I’m a reasonably hard worker, and if I got shitcanned and could surf on government cheese for 99 months, I’d do it too.  I was quite annoyed when I didn’t get layed off the last couple years, because I’ve always wanted to have time to learn to paint.

I swear the next numbnutz liberal who says that most people on unemployment really want to find work is going to get kicked in the nuts and we’ll see how numb they really are.

Let’s get clear about what would happen if we did end all unemployment benefits after 6 months. Nobody would really suffer. Suffering is shivering with an empty belly while the rain pours down on you unprotected. Unless you’re the most ridiculously misbehaved of the homeless in America, that’s not you. Losing your house equity and credit rating is not suffering. It just sucks. Losing your job is not suffering.  Shit happens.  There is a huge bureaucracy that wants to buy your vote to perpetuate their power and all they ask is that you pretend to be Helpless and Suffering. Go ahead, keep voting. That’s not going to work much longer. Your bread checks will start bouncing and the cable company is going to turn off your circuses.

Finally, if you are so seriously fucking stupid that you really think that more unemployment checks will stimulate the economy, stop reading this blog. If you comment, I will save your IP address, track you down in meatspace, kill you and cure you for jerky.

part 2 of this post will be more incendiary.

The Rainmakers – Government Cheese

Give a man a free house and he’ll bust out the windows
Put his family on food stamps, now he’s a big spender
no food on the table and the bills ain’t paid
‘Cause he spent it on cigarettes and P.G.A.
They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please
They’re feeding our people that Government Cheese

Give a man a free lunch and he’ll figure out a way
To steal more than he can eat ’cause he doesn’t have to pay
Give a woman free kids and you’ll find them in the dirt
Learning how to carry on the family line of work
It’s the man in the White House, the man under the steeple
Passing out drugs to the American people
I don’t believe in anything, nothing is free
They’re feeding our people the Government Cheese

Decline and fall, fall down baby
Decline and fall, said fall way down now
Decline and fall, fall down little mama
Decline and fall, decline and fall

Give a man a free ticket on a dead end ride
And he’ll climb in the back even though nobody’s driving
Too goddamn lazy to crawl out of the wreck
And he’ll rot there while he waits for the welfare check
Going to hell in a handbag, can’t you see
I ain’t gonna eat no Government Cheese

Eat the Rich, part 2

 In part 1 of this essay, I fulminated against the unemployed.

In part 2, I shall lambaste people who work for a living.

The other day, I heard congressman Anthony Wiener (hereafter to be referred to as Wiener Wiener, as in Major Major), screaming about how obscene it was to tax “unearned” income at a lower rate than money earned by work. His assumption, and that of many other economic ignoramuses, is that money earned by sweat of the brow has an inherent moral superiority to money earned by clipping coupons.

This is exactly backwards.

Capital gains is money earned on SAVINGS.  Saving money takes more discipline and maturity than working for it. It’s no exaggeration to say that the most important “job” in any society is saving part of what you produce and loaning it to other people so they can create wealth in ways that are impossible in a subsistence society.

If you work and support yourself economically, good for you.  That’s morally praiseworthy, and is the least we should expect of every normal human being. But if you work and you don’t save money, I’m taking off major points–you’re not really supporting yourself. You’re just supporting yourself FOR NOW.

Saving and investing are both morally and economically more virtuous than merely living paycheck to paycheck. If you don’t save and invest, you are doing very little in terms of absolute contribution to “give back” to society. Working 5 nights a week for free in a soup kitchen does far less to help other people than investing money you’ve earned. Savings and investment are the sine qua non of societal improvement and wealth. Even if Arab societies fixed everything else that is wrong with their miserable countries and culture, if they still outlawed making money off loaning money, they’d still stay dirt poor and primitive. The only reason they’re not as bad off as most African countries is oil.

And you can’t underestimate the personal growth that comes directly from the discipline of saving. You learn to be future-oriented. You learn to manage and respect limited resources.  It makes you a better at ordering your values and priorities in every area of life.

The billionaires who’ve been lately bragging about giving away their fortunes are doing society a terrible disservice. They’re removing large sums from the investment pool to spend it on mere charity. Think about this: Is it better for the sick that billions be spent on building AIDS hospices or to invest that same money in drug companies? Are more people better off now because there’s no shortage of AIDS hospices or because a cocktail of new drugs makes AIDS a chronic condition rather than a short-term death sentence?

Writ large, all charity accomplishes less long-run general good than investment. The purpose of charity should be to mitigate the impact of emergencies and great misfortunes. Anything more than that is misalloation that robs us of innovation.

So much for that smarmy phrase “giving back.

The great majority of people who have jobs have them because somebody invested savings and came up with new ways to be productive. The guy who’s got a job hasn’t given anything to the innovators who made it possible. Shouldn’t he be the one first expected to give back?

Thus, I propose an 80% flat tax rate on all earned income and a zero tax rate on all capital gains. I’ll compromise, and make that zero rate apply only to  long-term capital gains if that makes anyone feel any better. If it makes you feel even better, I’ll propose any income tax rate you want as long as we keep the long term capital gains tax at zero.

Every increase in capital gains taxes throws sand in the economic machinery.  Capital becomes less liquid because people hold on to equities too long to avoid the sting of realizing their gains. Money that would likely be reallocated to undervalued industries is sucked into the government waste machine. Many people on the margins, those who are young or poor or with low self-control, are further disincentivized from joining the pool of investors. (By the way, as an interesting thought experiment, ask yourself, why does the government cap the amount people are allowed to contribute to retirement accounts? and cap it pretty low too? what would happen if they didn’t?)

Every tax break we give to low wage earners encourages them to be even more profligate and short-sighted. Currently, there is a general societal expectation that all children should grow up and work all their lives. Imagine a society where the expectation is that you’ll grow up, work, save and invest so that by the time you’re 40 you’ll no longer HAVE to work. This is the worst thing about resenting and disincentivizing investment: it keeps the majority of people trapped in envy, short-term thinking and believing they have no alternative but to keep trudging 40 years through the job tunnel.

If you resent the rich and want their wealth “spread around” you are a douchebag. Or a Wiener.  And unless you make yourself part of the parasitic system, you will end up as one of life’s pathetic losers.

Yeah, I know my glass is full but I still feel half empty

Anthony Lane, film reviewer for The New Yorker, writes this about the new wave of 3-D movies:

3-D will ravish our senses and take us on rides that no drug can match, but my guess is that, like so many blessings, it won’t make us happy. It will make us want more.

Ok, so what? Another self-important self-conscious mopey New York asshole who thinks he shits gold nuggets raining down rhetorical pyrite,  working it wringing deep sigh-laden meaning out of the mundane and trivial.

The formula is simple:  Bitch about a cool new bit of technology or other progress by waxing eloquent about any one or more of:

• Pining nostalgically for the previous status quo, having instantly transmuted a previous annoyance into a lost spiritual ritual.
• C0mplaining about side effects, lost jobs, obsolete business models and all the dmage done
• Moping that the improvement will only temporarily break the surface tension of everyone’s ordinary, inevitable ennui. What is that only me?
• Bemoaning the impact on global warming, social cohesion, childhood obesity, traffic congestion, traffic accidents, distracted driving, ADHD, toxins, landfills, autism, and, the last refuge of an effete, pampered, attention-whoring big city liberal scoundrel–becoming an option glut slut.

This kind of whining is really easy to imitate, once you see the trick. Watch:

• Microwave ovens have ruined the American dinner table, robbed kitchens of their rightful aromas…
• Double-paned windows lock Americans away from neighborhood sounds, make them more alienated from seasonal changes by saving them enough money that they can afford to turn the thermostat up to 70 in the winter…
• eBooks take away the wonderful smell of mildew, the pleasure of having your whole house overrun with bookshelves, the joy of marking up books with post-it notes, underlines, dog-ears, and then still having to look for 20 minutes to find the thing you needed….I fear nobody will be able to add numbers in a world where paper books disappear like slide rules…

This attitude is more than annoying, it’s dangerous. From the Franken-phobia of the “precautionary principle” to the world’s-smallest-violin framing of the health care debate  to the asinine control-freak measures proposed to deal with global warming, the dreary liberal way of seeing the world completely rejects “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” because if you’re a liberal everything’s fucking broken.

That’s really the essence of the Democrat party and mainstream liberalism today: no matter how cool it looks, whether it’s America or a new IMAX 3-D movie, it actually sucks and it’s suckiness is in direct proportion to how much it doesn’t seem to suck. Everything chafes them. All underwear binds. Each new thing threatens some old thing that now that we think about it doesn’t suck anymore because the new thing is what really sucks. Liberals aren’t conservative: they’re Luddites.

The left/liberal establishment has adopted a reflexive piss-in-your-own-punchbowl attitude toward everything except The Other. Everything new in their culture is fraught with Frankenstinianism (I just made up that word–pretty good word, huh?) Everything in other cultures is Whole-Foods-cool.

The only thing old that they don’t like is Western values.

They’re allergic not only to their own blood, sweat and tears, but to the Western idea of blood, sweat and tears. The result is a perpetual sneer and rejection of actual progress in favor of defining progress as government programs that promote MY ideals with YOUR money.

This goes beyond grievance politics or identity politics to having a Grievance Identity. America is a miserable, racist place with a (half) black President where children grow hungrier and fatter, and the greedy super-rich cause accidents by trying to drive their hummers while texting and beating their servants in the back seat. Thank god for Me days or I don’t know how I’d survive in Thunderdome Amerika.

Listen to liberals snarl the word corporation. Or business interests. Or America. No need to modify these terms with adjectives like  greedy, heartless orcorrupt anymore–the meme has firmly taken hold, and liberals spit the word corporation like Nazis used to say Juden.

Look at the Obamas, poster children for resenting where they eat.

Both Michelle and her consort have played their race cards skillfully, graduating from top schools, taking faux jobs like “community organizer” or finding soft featherbeds like “community affairs officer” for $300K a year. They are among the most privileged in the country they scold for rewarding the over-privileged. They show no indication of noticing or appreciating or wondering why they have been given so much for giving so little.

Affluent liberals drive SUVs and have big screen TVs, plant their big fat carbon feet-prints in far-flung places on regular vacations, move into bigger and bigger houses, all the time griping about how it doesn’t really fulfill them. The only actual lifestyle choices I see liberals making that are different from their conservative SES peers are buying expensive organic edible status symbols at Whole Foods instead of normal food at Costco and religiously sorting their trash like they’re worshipping at a curbside shrine.

Jackwagons.