The Environment

Sorry for the delay, I've had a busy 2 weeks. I'll try to be on more.

I don't know that this is a totally political thing, but the more I know about environmental issues, the less I care. Personally, I don't like the idea of humans contributing to animal extinction, that's a different issue, but when it comes to the atmosphere and ice caps melting and climate change, I don't give a crap.

People talk about "saving the earth." Saving the earth from what? The earth isn't going anywhere. The core isn't about to implode. We need to talk about saving ourselves. I'm not going to deny global climate change, obviously we're causing it or at least speeding it up, causing glaciers and the ice caps to melt at a faster rate than they were. And of course there's the issues of global flooding and much less drinking water, but really, I don't care. It's not something anybody can stop at this point, I mean, are we going to convince the developing world to stop developing? Are we going to all stop using fossil fuels in an instant? No. So why not instead worry about how to deal with the changes that will happen? We already know the weather is going to be less predictable. We are on the verge of losing the gulf stream, which will make parts of Europe much different than they are now. That's what we need to deal with. It's not stopping.

But all in all, I really don't care. The changes will be relatively slow, we'll deal with them. The earth has survived more extreme changes for billions of years. It might be expensive and unpleasant, but if you're reading this there's a good chance you are pretty rich compared to the average person in the world. Being relatively rich allows us to deal with these problems. The developing world will take the majority of the pain of global climate change. The more and more I know about how the world and the environment reacts to changes, it seems like climate change, even if we caused it, is so natural that I'm willing to let it happen.

And hey, there are a few good things about climate change, too. Once we get rid of all the ice in the north pole, it'll open up new shipping routes, that will save us some money. We should probably harvest some of that fresh water, though, we will definitely need that. It is not energy efficient to convert saltwater to fresh water. A lot of animals will go extinct, but there are plenty of animals that thrive in human-controlled conditions. Pigeons, crows, raccoons, squirrels, lots of insects. Do you think it was normal to just see a squirrel running around a forest when there were foxes and wolves everywhere? No, but look now, they're everywhere! And raccoons never had trash bags full of stuff to eat before there were people.

The end result is, I don't care. I don't expect climate stability, so I'm not going to try to contribute to it. When the problems arise, we'll deal with them.

Home Team Politics

I don't know if Home Team Politics as a term has been coined before. I googled it and came up with a few things, but nothing defining. I define Home Team Politics as a type of behavior toward a chosen political party that is akin to the way somebody thinks of their favorite sports teams. Rooting for the party for the party's sake, without thinking, without question. All they want is to win. Also, this ties in to the way the media treats politics like a sporting event.

My favorite baseball team is the Baltimore Orioles. I am a huge fan, and I try to watch all of their games. Whenever there is a close play, maybe a check-swing, a strike that was iffy, questionable fan interference, or a sliding baserunner with an umpire out of position, something like that, I'm pretty much always going to take the side of my team. Almost always, I will probably believe that they were robbed on every close play that went the other way, and I will probably think of sending a thank you card to the umpire if the play goes their way. I don't really care if they make the right call. I want my team to win. It usually averages out with bad calls for and against the team, so I just root for all of them to be for my team, right? I just want them to win. I'm a homer.

It's perfectly fine to be a homer, it might be annoying to some people, but I'm not hurting anybody. It's just a game, it's entertainment, it's supposed to be fun, and I'm not having fun if I'm not winning. But you can't take that attitude into the real world. You can't take that attitude into your political opinions. You can't overlook all the negative aspects of a politican you support or legislation you support, and at the same time express outrage at the negative aspects of an opposing view. It's not fair, it's not honest, and it's in nobody's best interest.

I talked about Mark Sanford being a hypocrite, but I can only imagine how many critics of his are digging through their archives to see what they had previously written about political adulterers, just to make sure they were on the same page with themselves. And then there were the people who didn't even care. I mean, someone said 10 years ago that Bill Clinton didn't get a fair shake, but somehow that same person said Mark Sanford is should resign? Or the other way around, depending on who was talking. Both of them were equally stupid and equally wrong. I already outlined all the reasons Mark was stupid, and Bill was stupid because he knew how easy it was to get that girl to open her mouth!
If Twitter had existed then, it would have looked something like this: MonLew: Jst blw prz - OMG it got on my dress.

And both of them were wrong because you don't cheat on your wife, you don't lie to your constituents, and you don't do stupid crap like this while you are holding a major office! Show some f'ing restraint!

You can't justify either of them*. You can't justify anything that is wrong. On the same note, you shouldn't go looking for things that will vilify somebody. Republicans "show solidarity" by opposing anything the Democrats try to do, and vice versa. Is that right? Aren't they reducing their work to a game? Why don't they look at everything in front of them, and decide what is best for their constituents? That is their job. Their job isn't to push forward an agenda, or to pretend to be outraged, or to fall in with other representatives. They don't represent a party, they represent the people. All of the people in their district, in fact, not just the ones that voted for them. More and more it seems like the only way to get representation is to buy a campaign.

You can find pros and cons to every issue, every piece of legislation, every person in the world, but if you take a side before the facts are presented, if you take a side just because your home team is on that side, you are doing a disservice to them, yourself, and your country. If you allow yourself to be mindlessly led like cattle, without asking questions, without demanding that your elected officials answer to you, without trying to take the perspective of the other side to check yourself, you are undermining democracy and no amount of nationalistic rhetoric will change that fact.

I have a hard time believing that you can draw a red and blue line down the middle of the nation and put half on one side and half on the other, and everybody on each side will agree with everybody else on their side - about everything. Even crazier, I think when you get down to it, most people have differing opinions on many issues, and it's a great thing to have a varied society where so many points of view are present, but when you really get down to it, almost everybody, red and blue, wants pretty much the same thing. They want life. They want liberty. They want to be happy. At the end of the day, Republicans and Democrats don't disagree on much that is important. They argue about taxes, it's a few percentage points one way or the other. They argue about government relief, we're already up to our necks in government programs. The arguments are for show, and they don't care if you are alive, they don't care if you are happy, and every time you support them without putting your brain to work, you lose what's left of your liberty.

I also wanted to mention the way the media covers politics, especially elections. If you switch the channels between CNN and ESPN during an election, you might have trouble telling which is which. They will both show a lot of scores, multiple tickers, schedules, results from different games/races, and that's just visual. The commentators and analysts start to sound alike, too. They break down the competitors in a similar way. It truly is just a game to the media. They have trivialized the governing of our country, they have turned it into a sporting event, and that's possibly why people treat their selected party the same way they do their favorite sports team.

*While you can't justify adultery, you can certainly downplay it, considering how common it has become.

Using Common Sense Volume 1- When you are a major public official and you are cheating on your wife.

I know everybody's gotten on the Mark Sanford thing already, but in the interest of delving into a topic that is relevant to something in the news, I'm going to do it. The only problem is that there is just so much to say about it! I really want to deconstruct it from every angle.

Angle #1 - Cheating on your wife when you have made a name for yourself condemning other people for cheating on their wives, and also being an adulterer who wants to make laws restricting marriage rights.

Didn't Jesus say something about casting the first stone? I'm not religious, but there is no bigger hypocrite than the man who is involved in something he has publicly condemned.

On that same note, do you know what sanctity means?? It's a pretty big, important word. If you don't take your own marriage seriously, how can anybody take your views on marriage seriously? Maybe it's time for sanctimonious people to look in the mirror before they condemn other peoples' sexuality.

Angle #2 - Choose your mistress more wisely.

Mark, you couldn't get somebody local?? You couldn't fly this lady in from Argentina? This is going to tie into my next angle, but seriously, you really blew it with this. It was too much work.

Angle #3 - Disappearing mysteriously.

Just dumb. Everybody wanted to know where you were. You need a better cover story. On top of that, and this ties into the next angle, you need to stop leaving a trail. You left your car at the airport parking lot. Take a cab. My old boss made me drive him to the airport once, and I didn't even get paid for it. You couldn't do that?? Nobody in the world would have known he was gone except me, and I keep my mouth shut when reporters ask me questions.

Like I told somebody after the Eliot Spitzer mess, for half a million dollars I could probably take the fall for something that wouldn't really be embarrassing to me but would ruin your career. I COULD BE THAT GUY. Again, I'm not saying I approve of anything you did, see Angle #1, but none of this stuff is world ending and for a whole lot of money I could have really helped you out.

Angle #4 - DO NOT USE YOUR WORK E-MAIL!

What were you thinking? Politicians are supposed to represent the best of us, and they keep getting caught the same way! Don't you know the IT guy just has to basically type CTRL+F and type the word "boobs" or "sex" or something and all the dirty e-mails show up on his computer? They said they considered you for McCain's VP, but I'm sure your IT guy was just waiting for you to be involved in a national race to blackmail the hell out of you. A prepaid cell phone and a secret computer won't set you back like Spitzer's whores, so nobody's going to investigate you for paying for them with cash. Get a super slim computer, use random wifi networks in the parking lot at McDonalds or Starbucks, and hide the thing when you aren't using it.

Again, I'm not approving of anything, but if you are going to do something, at least do it right. It just disappoints me that people make the stupidest mistakes. I think cheating on your wife is an awful thing, I think lying to your family and your constituency is awful, and I also think that an acting governor needs to let everybody know where he's going to be just in case something happens. It's an important job. But if you can't take the simplest of steps to hide a scandal, you are not smart enough to be the governor. It's a simple test, and you failed.

Time To Talk Economy and Government Part 2 - Regulation

Note: The stunning conclusion! Read part 1 first, or don't.

Regulation is not really part of a free market. The only things we need to regulate are the obvious things, fraud, theft, things that are illegal in and out of business, and the only other thing you really have to regulate is competition. Lack of competition leads to monopoly. Most people believe that monopolies are bad because a monopoly can jack the price of their product up to wherever they want to. But take it a step further, a monopoly is growth unchecked. A monopoly is very close to a monarchy. If I controlled the sale of all the wheat in the country, not only could I charge whatever I wanted, I could use my control as political power. On top of that, as I'm growing richer, I'm buying a monopoly in textiles. Then I move on to energy, and other industries until I own everything, or close enough to everything to literally buy the entire nation. That may seem extreme, but it's not. When your growth is unchecked you tend to grow really fast. That's probably how the first monarchy started, some guy owned everything and before long he's making the rules. I don't like regulation, but a monopoly will always hurt a free market, because without competition, no fair price can be established.

A monopoly can also be a coalition. It can be competitors colluding for the sake of their mutual benefit. This, in its most simple form, is already illegal. The problem, however, is much less simple. We have collusion in almost every major industry, and we have collusion from the government allowing it to happen. In a free market, in a true market, nobody makes a profit (or much of one) outside of what it costs them to do business. I'm including the cost of making a living from your business in the cost of doing business, you can't work if you can't eat. In a true free market, I couldn't sell an apple for a penny more than I needed to without some opportunist setting up shop across the street selling it for a penny less and putting me out of business. It is basic, basic economics. It is capitalist selection. Survival of the fittest. Any company that makes massive profits is either charging too much, or they are paying too little in expenses (or both). The only way this is possible is if their competitors agree to the same tactics. Whether it's the pay of employees, what they will pay for stock and supplies, or what they charge the customer, they have to collude to make profits above and beyond their needs. If they were not colluding, one would lower their prices to make a play for a larger market share. The other would follow suit or go out of business.

This type of tacit collusion still forms a monopoly. It's called an oligopoly, but I will to call it a monopoly for simplicity right now. It's not technically illegal if the two companies don't actually pick up the phone and say, "let's collude." They could just monitor each others' prices and find out what they pay their employees and keep their numbers in line with that. Both companies can be more successful working together than working against each other. The only problem is that they work against consumers, and they make enough money to buy power.

The way our lawmakers are elected, they are all from large campaigns that are funded by rich donors. Who has large amounts of money? Some big corporations, and the people who own and run them. If an organization or a company wanted to get a lawmaker elected who would go to work for them instead of his constituency, and they had the money, they could make it so that he was one of two or three candidates you heard from. In fact, if a candidate doesn't have large amounts of donations to his campaign for a major state or national elected post, you will never hear from him. And as companies are always looking out for their own best interest (like all of us), and they would throw their support behind a candidate (or candidates, or possibly an entire political party, or both political parties) who would have their back. If I'm a serious politician, and I take getting elected seriously, I have to have somebody's back. I have to be corrupt, because my true constituent is the one who got me elected. The only electable politician is the corrupt politician. And the corrupt politician will never do anything about tacit collusion, because without it, he doesn't have a job, nor the illusion of power that comes with it.

Our country is truly run by the few rich people who can afford to. We elect our leaders based on choices handpicked by corporations, who use their lobbies to write our laws. This is the cost of letting the market get out of hand, an oligarchy that hides itself behind a fake democracy. If we could regulate trade so that competition was forced, so that organizations weren't allowed to collude, nobody would be rich enough to buy our government from the people.

Time To Talk Economy and Government Part 1 - The Market

Note: This is going to be a hell of a read. I started going one direction, and I ended up going somewhere totally different that I was eventually going to get to with another blog. So I made it in two parts, and it's long-winded, but in the beginning I'm laying the foundation for what comes later.

Lately it seems like there are only 2 ways to do business. Either you are a capitalist or you are a socialist. I think I've already covered that to an extent, we are already a hybrid system that is neither truly capitalist or socialist. Our economy, right now, is healthy enough to support that system, so we can debate the merits of it but as long as we live in a society of abundance, it's really not going to matter. We can afford to completely support some of the population. It's not going to be the downfall of our economy or our sovereignty, probably even without long-term ill effects. I just want to put that out there. I don't agree with that or think it's the best or right thing to do, but I am not a person who thinks there is only one possible solution for every problem. I am not a "if it's not black, it's white" person. Rarely is there more than one best solution, but often more than one way could work.

Here's the best solution. I love a free market. I love the thing that comes naturally, I love the path of least resistance. People have been using a free market forever. Even nature uses a free market. You don't have to establish capitalism, you don't have to establish a free market. It already exists, you'd have to destroy it just to change it. Supply exists, demand exists, your market is ready made. Also, a free market will solve its own problems. If you sell a product, and your prices are too high, your competitors will eat you alive. You will have to bring your prices down to the place where they should be, and as long as your product is quality and you have some business sense, you should have a healthy business. But the market forces the right thing to happen. If somebody is not successful, they are either not selling enough or they are spending too much, or both. The market will put you out of business for doing business poorly, just as it will reward you for doing business well.

There's a problem, though. The market isn't perfect. The market can't defend itself from outside forces. It can't defend itself from regulation. You can't tax dry-clean businesses in one county more than another, or you will put the dry cleaners in the other county out of business. You can't subsidize a preferred industry and let another industry flounder. The market will try to fix those problems, but since those problems were never the market's to begin with, it will spiral out of control.

We subsidize farming in the United States. There are too many farms and farmers in our country. It's been that way for a while. Supply is high, so demand is low. The prices have to be low. Well, the farmers aren't making enough money because the prices are low. So they farm more. It sounds idiotic, but I don't know that I can blame them, it's their job and they've got to eat somehow, and that's all they know to do. The result is that supply is even higher, demand is the same. They are making the same amount of money doing even more work, because the market only has so much money for what they do, and regardless of how much they produce, that number can not change. That number is demand and it is set in stone. In a real market, some farmers would just have to find other jobs. It sucks, but sometimes life sucks. But we subsidize them. We take tax money, and we pay the farmers more than the value of their work. This hurts our pockets by paying excess taxes for our food, but it also keeps food prices extremely low, and it screws up the world markets, who can't compete with American farmers' artificially low prices. The market can't fix a problem when there are forces actively working against it. Also, it's not fair to pay somebody for nothing if you aren't going to pay everybody for nothing. It's not my fault the market isn't there for their goods. Plenty of people get laid off when the market changes. They find new jobs. It's not my fault the farmers can't find a way to live on less money, because there are plenty of people in Africa that would love to pay our farmers their going rate for our grain. But our farmers can't live inside the market like everybody else, so they leech off of the rest of us. Like I said before, we can afford to pay them, our society is more than abundant, but it's not right, and I can think of better things to do with my money than pay too much for our food. On top of that, by subsidizing our farms, we are also subsidizing the food cost of anybody in a foreign country that buys from those farms.

This is just one example of why socialism doesn't hold a candle to a free market, and why you should have the balls to pick one or the other. It's not fair to bail farmers out, or carmakers, or lenders, but then you don't bail out everybody else going through a tough time. We could be socialists, it would probably even work for 100 years or so. But we're not. We could have a free market without government intervention. But we don't. We've got something in the middle that helps some people and doesn't help other people. And that's not fair. It's not right. At least socialists are fair for a little while.

Next I'm going to delve into the necessary evils of regulation.

Who are you calling a socialist?

With the new administration, I've been hearing a lot of people accuse other people of being socialist. I'm definitely not a fan of socialism, but I think any one American person calling another American a socialist as a derogatory term is kind of hypocritical.

Before the election, there was so much talk by Republicans about how Obama's tax plan was socialist because it was going to tax the rich far more than anybody else, and some people wouldn't pay taxes at all! There's only one problem with that argument, not that it's socialist, it sort of is, but it's THE SAME SYSTEM WE ALREADY HAD. Obama was going to raise taxes for the rich by a relatively small amount, definitely more than McCain was going to. John McCain never said he was going to stop taxing the rich at a higher amount than everybody else, John McCain never said he was going to make people with low incomes pay taxes, so John McCain and every Republican that supported him is also a socialist by that same argument.

Our society/economy/government/whatever has been mixed socialist since 1933, and possibly even before then. The New Deal was definitely the point where socialism became an accepted part of life in America. The government stepped in to manhandle the economy and the market, and on top of that stepped into the personal lives of American people, at great cost. Nothing has changed since then. I don't see any Republicans seriously considering getting rid of Social Security or the FLSA or even farm subsidization, so how can we call somebody else a socialist without looking into the mirror to see that we accept, if not defend socialism on a daily basis?

Personally, I don't like socialism. I think it's wasteful and it has the (possibly unintended) effect of overtaxing the middle class. I accept that socialism is here, I accept that it's probably not going away, but I do not support it. I realistically understand that the best approach at this point is one that reduces and streamlines, but does not eliminate socialism from our nation.

I'd like to see Social Security slowly eliminated. I have a hard time believing that it's more effective to pay millions in administrative costs just to save money. If I take my money down to the bank, not only will they save it for me for free, they'll also pay me some on top! Whoa! Also, if I decide that saving my money over decades is a bad idea because inflation will make it worthless by the time I get to it, and I want to invest it somewhere that will hold onto its value even inflated, I can do that. If Social Security was a voluntary program, I would be OK with that, but right now it's just the government reaching into your pocket and taking your money with no input. It serves the purpose of keeping middle class Americans from properly saving their own money, so they are dependent on the government to pay them when they get older, but the money they are paid when they are older isn't enough for them to live on. All the while, Social Security becomes an issue that a politician can use to manipulate elderly voters, who depend on that money. And this is only the argument against the IDEA of Social Security. There are actually many more arguments against it that actually take into account the implementation of the SSA and the probability that it won't be able to exist in its current form for much longer.

This is not the intended purpose of government. This is the government becoming its own individual and preserving itself through the manipulation and manhandling of its own people. This is what happens when socialism is the norm. This is what happens when people believe their government is all-powerful and they stop questioning it and let a small number of people run it, and whoever runs the government controls the people.

Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.

Small Government

I hear a lot of people talk about small government. "Small Government," it's easy to say, but I don't think people always understand what that means. To me, small government is a government that exists for a purpose, and executes that purpose and nothing further.

In our case, government is supposed to exist to protect our mutual interests as a society. Really, nothing more than that, at any level. The Constitution is mostly administrative stuff, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty it's all about what the government CAN'T do. They didn't establish a right to free speech. They said that right was automatic and they aren't allowed to take it away. When somebody says that you shouldn't take it for granted, tell them that it should be taken for granted, it's supposed to be! That's what small government is about. It's about the government getting out of your daily affairs and letting you go about your business.

I think a government is good for some things, it can protect our mutual interests pretty well. We need an organized system to deal with criminals. You can't let people run around murdering and stealing all the time, so there has to be a way to deal with that, there has to be a system in place that provides a consistently fair response to crime. A national government can also protect our interests in the form of defense.

The government rarely earns its own way, so the burden of paying for the government rests with the people, who probably have better things to pay for than the government. That is why it is in our best interest to have a government that is as small as possible, to reduce the waste of government excess like bureaucracy, frivolous spending (that the people being "represented" have no input on), bailouts, etc.

Personally, I think the worst of the waste is at the national level. In fact, I'm of the opinion that the federal government should be the weakest of all the governments in the nation. I think that any local community/city/town laws should be held in higher regard than the laws of a larger area, since those laws are the closest to being the will of the people. Here's an overly convoluted example: I don't think it's right that if Town A is represented with a majority of people who want to establish a casino in their town, and Town B is represented by people who don't want to establish a casino anywhere, but Town B is much larger and populous, and they're in the same state, for Town B's vote to override the will of the majority of people in Town A. Why not just let the people have what they want in their respective communities? Every time there is a national election you see the red states and the blue states. Why does federal law override state laws?? Shouldn't the will of the people WHERE THEY LIVE be more important than the will of everybody else?

I liked the idea of 13 states with individual governments, that established a federal government mainly for their defense. Whatever happened to that? I believe in democracy. I believe that the people generally know what is right for them personally. If 84% of the state of Kansas voted to be a monarchy, or communist, or a theocracy, I really don't agree with that, and I'm not sure any of those options would work long term, but I can't argue with the will of the people. In our current form, that wouldn't be allowed to happen, it would be stopped by our federal government.

When somebody says they are a supporter of small government, ask them how small they are talking. A smaller government could still be a massively huge government. Small government has not been seen for a long time, but it's possible, and we can work toward it.

I don't have time to go over every aspect of small government, but it's probably a topic I'll get back to on a near-daily basis. I just wanted to do a quick rundown, and it ended up long and convoluted. I have some ideas for the rest of the week, so keep your eyes peeled. Also, there is a link for my twitter at the bottom of the page, if you want to sign up for it I'll send out a notice when I post a new blog.