Market entrepreneurs versus political entrepreneurs

I just watched the first part of Bill Whittle's interview with Dr. Burt Folsom, author of The Myth of the Robber Barons.

Folsom makes an interesting and important distinction that I would like to see work its way into our public discourse: the difference between what he calls market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs.

Market entrepreneurs are those who try to succeed by competing in the marketplace and selling things at a competitive price. Political entrepreneurs are those who try to succeed by using government subsidies or regulations to gain an advantage in the marketplace.

Market entrepreneurs are heroes. They create wealth for themselves by giving value to others. The only way they can succeed is by finding ways to deliver a better product, one that consumers will be willing to voluntarily exchange for their hard-earned money.

Political entrepreneurs are leeches. They use their power and influence to buy government favors and rig the system, typically by getting politicians to give them taxpayer dollars or pass regulations that give them an unfair advantage over the competition. We sometimes call political entrepreneurs crony-capitalists, but that is a misnomer because they aren't capitalists at all and calling them that gives capitalism a bad name.

One of the strongest arguments for small, limited government is that it breaks up the corrupt partnership between political entrepreneurs and the government they need to exploit to succeed. Without government, businesses have no real power over us. If we don't voluntarily buy their products, they go out of business.

This is why political entrepreneurs love a big government with extensive powers. It gives them many ways to bribe, control, and manipulate things for their own profit. A lean government with few powers -- like the one the Founders designed for us -- denies them a way to control us. There is less taxpayer money to steal, and a government that has little power over us is not much good to them.

Chris Christie plays dirty?

Chris Christie is being accused of manufacturing a massive traffic jam as revenge against a Democratic mayor who failed to endorse Christie in his reelection bid for New Jersey Governor. Democrats are outraged.

The governor faced swift and outspoken outrage from Democrats in the statehouse, some of whom saw the emails as the "smoking gun" tying Christie to the closures, as N.J. Sen. Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, who represents the Fort Lee area, put it.

If the accusation is true, Democrats should be outraged, and so should Republicans. We need to crack down hard and fast on corruption and abuse of power in our public servants.
 
We don't yet know all the details, but if they are as presented, and these emails can be linked directly to Christie, it should cost him not only his reelection bid, but his current governorship as well. I don't know what legal or criminal actions would be appropriate, but I'd be in favor of pursuing those as well. If you intentionally use your position to violate the public trust, you should be taken down.

Update: Christie responds:

What I’ve seen today for the first time is unacceptable. I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge.

One thing is clear: This type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it because the people of New Jersey deserve better. This behavior is not representative of me or my Administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions.

Obama's economic illiteracy

Barack Obama: "Voting for unemployment insurance helps people and creates jobs. And voting against it does not".

I wish some reporter would ask the president how taking money (via taxes) from a productive member of the private sector and giving it to someone who is producing nothing creates a job.

I also wish some reporter would ask how the above can in any way be called "insurance." Insurance is when you voluntarily pay a fee to someone in exchange for their assuming a specific risk you wish to avoid in the future. In the case of unemployment payments, we are taking money, by force, from one person and giving it to another, who hasn't worked for it and to whom it does not belong. That's not insurance.

We can argue about whether paying people not to work is a good idea, but let's call it what it is: welfare, or, more accurately still, forcible income redistribution.

The "fix" is in on ObamaCare

The deadline for "fixing" the ObamaCare website has come and gone.

I put "fixing" in quotes because Obama's definition of "fixed" is pretty pathetic. Here's how USA Today sums it up:

That seems to have worked, at least to some degree. The White House announced Sunday that it had hit its target of having the website function smoothly for "the vast majority" of people who want to sign up, which it defines as about 80%.

So Obama gave himself a passing grade for partially completing an assignment that he assigned himself three years ago and which he promised would be completed two months ago. Color me unimpressed.

But here is the section of the USA Today piece I found most interesting:

At this point, the administration has two things going for it. The first is that technological problems can be fixed. The second is that the critics have yet to propose an alternative that would deliver what Obamacare promises: to replace a harsh and costly insurance market with one that ensures good coverage at a fair price.

Things are pretty bad when one of the things the administration "has going for it" is that the site might actually work at some point. But let's put that aside. It's the second thing the administration "has going for it" that caught my eye.

To begin with, it's factually false that critics have yet to propose an alternative to ObamaCare. (See this, this, this, and this, for example.) 

Next, notice the double standard. Critics aren't challenged to propose alternatives that are better than ObamaCare -- a very low bar since ObamaCare is, so far, making things worse, covering far fewer people at much higher prices. No, opponents are being criticized for not proposing an alternative that delivers everything ObamaCare promised.

ObamaCare promised to defy the laws of economics. It promised a lot more stuff to a lot more people at a lot less cost. It was a blatant con, and it's no surprise that it's failing miserably, as was predicted.

But, according to USA Today, ObamaCare still has a chance because the people who pointed out that you can't do the impossible can't do the impossible either.

Considerable quote

I first came across this Chesterton passage about a year ago and found it powerful. Unfortunately I neglected to add it to my collection and have been frustrated on several occasions when I didn't have it at hand. I rediscovered it today and find it potent as ever.

 There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
~ G.K. Chesterton

Bully for the Boy Scouts

Connie Schultz believes that it is "bullying" for the Boy Scouts of America to have a policy that bars homosexuals from being Scouts or serving as leaders. She has this precisely backwards.

According to my dictionary, bullying is "the act of intimidating a weaker person to make them do something." That's a pretty straightforward definition of the word as it's universally understood.

So is it bullying to have a policy that restricts membership? Most organizations have membership restrictions. I assume I need to be a doctor to join the American Medical Association, or that I need to have a law degree to become a member of the American Bar Association. Are those organizations bullying me? If so, I wasn't aware of it.

The Constitution restricts those who can be a member of the Senate:

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

If restricting membership is "bullying," we'd have to conclude that every person in the United States is being bullied by our very Constitution, for none of us is permitted to be a Senator of a state in which we don't live. Yet no one considers this bullying -- because merely having a membership requirement doesn't intimidate anyone. It doesn't force anyone to do anything.

So how is the Boy Scout membership policy different? It's different only in who it excludes. Instead of discriminating against those without medical or law degrees, or against young people or outsiders, it discriminates against homosexuals. And why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't a private organization have the right to define itself and determine the makeup of its own membership? Ms. Schultz may not like it -- just as I may not like the fact that I can't represent the state of Hawaii in the United States Senate -- but we don't have an inalienable right to not be offended by others' choices.

But back to Ms. Schultz' bullying charge...

Can it fairly be argued that the Boy Scouts are intimidating anyone simply by restricting their membership? Can it fairly be argued that they are forcing anyone to do anything? As far as I can tell the Scouts aren't on any crusade to combat homosexuality, or to impose behaviors or values on anyone. They're not activists, overtly political, or overtly anything, really. They simply want to be left alone, to do what they've always done, promote traditional values and foster thoughtful, responsible young men -- something America badly needs at this juncture.

And that, I submit, is what this is really all about. It's not that the Boy Scouts have intimidated anyone, or that they are attempting to force anyone to do anything. The Scouts is a voluntary organization. It hasn't bullied anyone. The true source of the conflict is Ms. Schultz, and so many like her on the Left, who hold traditional American values in contempt. The Boy Scouts represent everything they wish do destroy -- traditional families, Judeo-Christian values, personal freedom, individual responsibility.

The Left brand the Boy Scouts as intolerant and bullying. But ask yourself, who is the real aggressor here? Which side is minding its own business, and which side is trying to intimidate and force the other side to do something? Who is the real bully?

The Left -- always the Left.

Considerable quote

“When I speak I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off.”
~ Claude Adrien Helvetius

Obama is a Big Fat Liar

Ira Stoll asks:

Where are the “fact-checkers” when you need them?

On CBS News’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, President Obama said, “Taxes are lower on families than they've been probably in the last 50 years. So I haven't raised taxes.”
As of Monday morning, neither the Washington Post’s Pinocchio-awarding Fact-Checker, nor the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org, nor the Tampa Bay Times’ Pulitzer-Prize-winning Politifact.com had risen to this opportunity, so let us take a stab.

Stoll takes more than a stab. He sets Obama's well creased pants ablaze. Using the Obama administration's own numbers, Stoll looks at the facts nine different ways and concludes that Obama is a Big Fat Liar. It doesn't matter if you look at taxes paid, tax rates, payroll taxes, whatever -- Big Fat Liberal Liar.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Michael Cannon says Stoll was generous.

You keep using that word...

I'm posting this chart just so I'll have it handy next time someone says we need to "invest" more in education.

We've increased our "investment" in education nearly 300% over the past several decades. We've got exactly nothing in return.

Distrust of the media at record highs

A new Gallop poll suggests that 60% of Americans have little or no confidence in the news they get from the media. This is the highest level of distrust ever recorded and, sadly, I think its entirely warranted.

One interesting breakdown in the poll is the difference in trust by political affiliation. Only 26% of Republicans and 31% of Independents say they trust media reporting. Democrats are roughly twice as trusting, with 58% saying they trust the media "a fair amount" or  "a great deal."

Putting aside the issue of how much trust in media reporting is actually warranted, this poll underscores a fundamental fact: Republicans and Democrats live in different worlds. They start with different assumptions, view the world through different lenses, and draw different conclusions about the same information.

We often hear calls for Rs and Ds to put aside partisan differences and work together for the good of the country, but how is that possible when they have such different ideas about they way the world works? How can they find common ground when one group readily accepts what the other views with skepticism? And why should we have any confidence that compromise will yield good results when the two sides wish to take the country in such different directions?

From God's lips to your ears

Matthew 20

New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ² He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

³ “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴ He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. ⁶ About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
⁷ “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
⁸ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
⁹ “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰ So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹² ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
¹³ “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
¹⁶ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

I'm not a Christian, so I defer to others on how this passage should be interpreted. For my part, I find verse 15 instructive. Christ, the very embodiment of altruism, relies on the individual right to do as one wishes with one's own money to support his teaching. Further, He exposes the pettiness of envy. The grumblers were not wronged in any way by the landlord's generosity to others. Yet they took offense at a perceived slight and became ungrateful. There's a powerful lesson there for those who trade in class envy.

A related point: many liberals appeal to the concept of "Christian charity" to justify higher taxes (inevitably on the rich). They either don't understand, or pretend not to understand, that charity is a voluntary act. You can't force someone to be charitable, and you can't be charitable with other people's money. What these people are promoting is much closer to theft than charity.

And another: President Obama often insists that we need this or that government program because the Bible teaches that we are our brother's keeper. I'm pretty certain he's got this wrong. In the first place, I can't find the part in my Bible where it says I'm my brother's keeper. In the second place, even granting that we have a duty to help those in need, why does he take this as a call for bigger government? Government is notoriously bad at identifying those in need, let alone helping them. Individuals, on the other hand, are very good at this. Most people don't realize that poverty rates in America were dropping steadily right up until government declared its "War on Poverty." Since then, poverty rates have flat lined, and even gotten worse.

Ask not what your country can do for you, nor what you can do for your country. Ask instead what you can do for yourself, your family, and your community.

Oh, and keep your self-righteous hands out of my wallet.

Considerable quote

Freeman Hrabowski:

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes destiny.

Obama votes present on the economy

Yesterday, I learned that President Obama has been blowing off his "daily" national security briefings. Today, I read that he's been blowing off his "daily" economic briefings as well.

Just what is this guy doing? And why does he deserve another term?

Considerable quote

Richard Epstein:

It is not possible to have such a thin and immature understanding of how an economic system is put together by accident. That can only arise from the failure to adopt the right premises in the first place.

h/t: Instapundit

"Mind Hacks" by John Hawkins

John Hawkins shares 5 Simple Mind Hacks that changed his life:

1. 1. "A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me." (Frederick Douglas)
2. “When you have to make a decision, think carefully about it, pick the best option, and then don’t revisit it again unless you receive new information.” (Richard Branson)
3. “You always do the best you can right now.”
4. “Will this matter in five years?”
5. “If you have to choose between two roughly equal options, always take the one that leads to you doing something.”

The president who wasn't there

With apologies to Hughes Mearns:

Yesterday upon a chair
I saw no POTUS sitting there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away

Obama votes "absent" on national security

How big a deal is it that President Obama skips more than 50% of his daily intelligence meetings?

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting...

During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB [Presidential Daily Brief] just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting. 

This seems like a big deal to me, and indicative of a Commander in Chief who isn't very engaged in being Commander in Chief, particularly considering that we are at war. But Obama's National Security Council spokesman says the meetings aren't all that important.

Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions.

This makes no sense to me. If my top priority were keeping the country safe, there's no way I'd be blowing off face to face meetings and relying on executive summaries.

Compare Obama's approach to that of his predecessor:

[President Bush] held his intelligence meeting six days a week, no exceptions — usually with the vice president, the White House chief of staff, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, or their deputies, and CIA briefers in attendance. Once a week, he held an expanded Homeland Security briefing that included the Homeland Security adviser, the FBI director and other homeland security officials. Bush also did more than 100 hour-long “deep dives” in which he invited intelligence analysts into the Oval Office to get their unvarnished and sometimes differing views. Such meetings deepened the president’s understanding of the issues and helped analysts better understand the problems with which he was wrestling.

Now that sounds like a Commander in Chief who takes his constitutional oath to protect the country seriously. Obama sounds like he's just going through the motions.

The science behind "throwing like a girl"

Tamar Haspel of the Washington Post:

“The overhand throwing gap, beginning at 4 years of age, is three times the difference of any other motor task, and it just gets bigger across age. By 18, there’s hardly any overlap in the distribution: Nearly every boy by age 15 throws better than the best girl.”

Around the world, at all ages, boys throw better — a lot better — than girls. Studies of overhand ball throwing across different cultures have found that pre-pubescent girls throw 51 to 69 percent of the distance that boys do, at 51 to 78 percent of the velocity. As they get older, the differences increase; one U.S. study found that girls age 14 to 18 threw only 39 percent as far as boys (an average of about 75 feet vs. about 192 feet). The question is why.

Since boys generally learn to throw young and do more throwing than girls do, it would make sense that they’re better at it, and Thomas acknowledges the nurture component. “The gap is much larger than it should be, and it would be smaller if girls got more practice,” he says.

To try to distinguish nature from nurture, Thomas studied aboriginal Australian children, who grow up in a culture where both men and women hunt, and both sexes throw from childhood. “Our hypothesis was that [the aboriginal] girls would be better throwers and not as different from the boys as in European, Chinese, Australian and all the U.S. cultures.”

The data bore him out. Aboriginal girls threw tennis balls at 78.3 percent of the velocity of boys — closer to boys than in most other cultures, but still significantly slower.

 h/t: John Miller

So the president likes golf

I read today that President Obama has played 140 rounds of golf in the past 9 days. (Those numbers may be off; I'm going from memory and I'm too lazy to look it up.) I'm sure I'm supposed to be outraged by this, but I have no idea why. Why should I care if Obama plays a lot of golf? Is he supposed to be presidenting 24 hours a day? I figure his days are plenty full, and plenty stressful, and if golf is his way of getting away from it all, that's okay with me.

I felt the same way about Bush-43 and his vacations. People complained that he vacationed too much, but that didn't upset me either. It's not like these guys drop off the grid when they take time off. People know where to find them. And they still seem to have plenty of time to figure out ways to spend my money and meddle in my life, so it's not like they are getting behind in their work.

I also read today that Michelle Obama spent a billion dollars on a dress. (Maybe it was only a million; I'm going by memory again.) But unless she bought the dress with tax payer money, again, so what? She's filthy rich, and rich people buy nice stuff. That's kind of the whole point of being rich in the first place, isn't it? I can tell you right now that if I ever get rich I'm sure as hell going to buy a of nice stuff.

I guess the point is supposed to be that the Obamas are "out of touch." I'm not even exactly sure what that means, but I do know that I don't care. I don't need the president or his family to "feel my pain," and I don't give a putt what they do with their own money.

All I care about is what the president and his friends are doing with my money -- and that is definitely a cause for outrage.

A confusing cartoon

I think the point of this cartoon is to poke fun at those who denounce government-run health care as socialism while they are perfectly happy to embrace socialism when the benefit is one they like. But maybe I'm wrong, because it really doesn't make that point very well. Let's break it down:

1) Government-run health care does smack of socialism. It's an intrusion into the affairs of private companies and private citizens. It attempts to force economic outcomes by managing an entire industry through centrally planned government. That's why it's called socialized medicine.

2) Regulation of the airwaves is not socialistic. Governments of all types regulate all sorts of things. True, regulations can, and often do, become too restrictive. But free market advocates challenge such overreaching when it occurs; they don't embrace it, as the cartoon suggests.

3) The automotive bailouts are an example of socialism, as the government came in took control of private companies. But far from celebrating this, the majority of Americans opposed the bailouts, and still do. The cartoon suggests that the passengers are fine with it, but in reality they would be as apt to object to government-run car companies as to government-run health care.

4) The Interstate Highway System was constructed with the aid of the Army for the purpose of national defense, so that equipment and personel could be mobilized efficiently throughout the country. National defense is universally acknowledged as one of the right and proper responsibilities of government and has nothing to do with socialism.

5) Our public education system does smack of socialism, and the public generally embraces this, so the cartoon's creator got that one right. Unfortunately, the government monopoly on our schools ensures that millions of kids, especially minorities, aren't receiving a good education and are condemned to remain in lives of poverty. The good news is that this is changing, and parents are increasingly demanding free market reforms like school choice, charter schools, and vouchers.

6) A municipal water system isn't a hallmark of socialism. The word municipal refers to a city or town, not a centrally planned government. This simply makes no sense.

7) The National Park System has a tinge of socialism to it. There's no reason why the federal government needs to own or run our parks, and it could probably be done more efficiently by the states or by private companies. Still, this doesn't represent a huge intrusion into our lives the way socialized medicine does, so most people don't think about it much. I suppose this technically makes the artist's point, but it seems like a very weak argument to me.

If I'm understanding at all the artist's intent, I'd have to say that he fails miserably at making his point. His examples are very hit and miss -- mostly miss -- and, on net, undermine his argument more than suport it.