Government: A Herd of Bulls in Search of the next China Shop
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Menken
Liberal fanboy Michael Tomasky made this silly comment in one of his insufferable propaganda pieces:
It's not magic, it's the natural way things work. Markets are nothing more than human beings exchanging goods and services. They work well until governments intervene, masking price signals and other organic information that guides free people. Governments and the oligarchs who control them make it even worse by inventing money out of thin air and calling it wealth.
"The fact that Romney has no actual jobs plan beyond letting the free market work its magic..."
It's not magic, it's the natural way things work. Markets are nothing more than human beings exchanging goods and services. They work well until governments intervene, masking price signals and other organic information that guides free people. Governments and the oligarchs who control them make it even worse by inventing money out of thin air and calling it wealth.
See the crashes everywhere? All man-made disasters triggered by government trying to spin straw into gold, straighten every curve and flatten every hill.
International Interventions have also Failed
Then I read Realism Prism: US Power and it's Discontents. Nikolas Gvosdev explains how US unpredictability can have unintended consequences...
International Interventions have also Failed
Then I read Realism Prism: US Power and it's Discontents. Nikolas Gvosdev explains how US unpredictability can have unintended consequences...
This sense of exposure is heightened by what appears to them to be the unpredictable way in which the U.S. exercises its power. In other words, the question they all must consider is, what will “set Washington off”?
How and why the U.S. intervened in Libya when Washington routinely ignores humanitarian crises elsewhere raises the unpleasant notion that the United States does not operate according to any fixed set of criteria.We should butt out. Our unpredictability causes some poor souls to tragically wait for us instead of stringing up the bastards on their own. It has caused others to act rashly in the vain hope we would join in on their fight.
Worst of all, we have given the benighted, the superstitious, and the stupid of this world ready-made excuses for their own misery: US interventions, the Jews, Stalinist dictatorships...
Eventually they will run out of excuses and be forced to look themselves in the mirror. We can't do it for them.
We are interrupting the natural flow of humankind. Yes, I know, our natural state is not luxury and technology, with flush toilets and sewer systems literally shielding us from having to deal with our own crap. As Hobbes stated, mankind's natural state is...
We owe it to ourselves to improve our lot, but we should refrain from doing it for others. I know, conservatives are worried about Islamist takeovers in Libya, Egypt and Syria, but I say let it roll. Those people want Islam? We should give it to them good and hard.
Same goes for the international financiers and businessmen. They need a free market. Free most of all from the taxpayer-funded safety nets.
We are interrupting the natural flow of humankind. Yes, I know, our natural state is not luxury and technology, with flush toilets and sewer systems literally shielding us from having to deal with our own crap. As Hobbes stated, mankind's natural state is...
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
Same goes for the international financiers and businessmen. They need a free market. Free most of all from the taxpayer-funded safety nets.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
ReplyDelete-- H.L. Menken
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Exactly, like the scary Muslims and the nasty homos.
They work well until governments intervene ...
ReplyDelete---------
Showing your true colors again. Markets only fail because of government intervention.
You pull a Thomas Sowell right on cue like a performing seal.
And you're a barking moonbat who continually mischaracterizes what free-market advocates say.
ReplyDeleteSince you continually act like a child, I'll treat you like one:
Did the system fail when you carelessly touched a hot stove and burned your hand?
Ducky hates people voluntarily and freely exchanging and doing what they want with what they have. He much prefers strong arming and pointing guns, forcidably confiscating, and residtributing those goods as the Harvard educated intellectuals believe "best" for the country...
ReplyDelete"The free market must be abolished. We need a command economy because people can't be trusted to do what's right... only intellectuals can be trusted!"
"All man-made disasters triggered by government trying to spin straw into gold, straighten every curve and flatten every hill."
ReplyDeleteVery well said, Kurt. Mankind left alone will cause its own share of prolems but when government gets involved, the problems multiply in number and intensity.
That's right Silverfiddle, after you were robbed blind by the first equity bubble the thieves decided to stop doing that.
ReplyDeleteTalk about a slow learner.
I am starting to come your way with this islamo thing. Let them have it. In return, I want one heck of a missle defense system.
ReplyDelete"That's right Silverfiddle, after you were robbed blind by the first equity bubble the thieves decided to stop doing that."
ReplyDeleteI wasn't robbed blind, moron. I never bought into the hype in the first place.
Robbed blind? Have you seen what government has done to our money? Go see what a dollar is worth compared to 1970, and come back and talk to us about robbery.
Equity bubbles? Caused by easy money and a government standing ready to backstop the high finance gamblers.
Bad things happen in life, we don't need government encouraging it.
The fatal conceit the naive like you fall for Ducky, is that government politburos can come up with something better than a free market.
Never has happened, never will.
I guess it's not "those scary muslims" England had to hire thousands of cops for to protect the West from during their Olympics. who knew?
ReplyDelete"nasty homos"? You know any? I don't.
Z: Ducky can't refute what I say, so he traffics in the sensational and the irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteSilver, you are truly a Corporatist Social Darwinist.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
Do you even know what a corporatist is?
ReplyDeleteDid you read what I wrote?
There is no way in hell anyone can create static economics, Ducky's communists tried and failed miserably in every attempt.
ReplyDeleteGiven the invention of the electric light, the government could do nothing to prevent the collapse of the whale oil and kerosene markets. Government doesn't cause or fix economic, in reality only has a slight influence over the market in the positive, although they can have one hell of a negative one. Without unlimited funding or dictatorial legislation, and even then it is fairly hit or miss, government cannot control market forces and more than it can control the wind.
Government doesn't cause or fix economic problem, it's all about rigging the game for their friends. The only thing government can do with markets is spend other peoples money to shield their friends and political contributors. In the long run, rich or poor, you're eventually going to get screwed.
We're only just beginning to accurately model climate... we're a long, long way from accurately modeling economics, anyone who tells you otherwise is either a fool or a liar.
" ... Governments and the oligarchs who control them ..."
ReplyDeleteThat small phrase inserted so unobtrusively into a fairly large body of text made my old heart leap with the satisfaction that comes with vindication. You are seeing The Light at last.
The OLIGARCHS who CONTROL us!
WHEE! An evil could never be reckoned with unless it is first acknowledged and properly named.
HURRAH! There is Hope after all.
The entire post is excellent -- I LOVE H.L. Mencken. And where might his like be found today now that he is needed more than ever?
Jonah Goldberg can't hold a candle to Mencken. Not even P.J. O'Rourke was up to that mighty a task.
MARK STEYN is the closest we have, I suppose.
Ann Coulter is too abrasive and too witless to qualify. Incessant invective -- even when warranted -- become dull very quickly.
It takes a helluva lot more than heavy doses of DEROGATION laid on with a trowel to beat the bastards that bedevil us these days -- stolid and witless though THEY be.
~ FreeThinke
The Menken quote is right on the money.
ReplyDeleteVery disappointing to witness so many chimps falling for the same cheap theatrics year after year after decade, after century.
Silverfiddle,
ReplyDeleteOff topic...Calling your attention to THIS, in case you missed it.
AOW: Doesn't surprise me. I have a blog post planned next week on what is going on here in Colorado. Non-citizens ended up on voter registration rolls.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to butt out of countries like Syria and Libya when they pose no threat to us and when the people choose Islam. But I do believe that we need to intervene sometimes, like in the case of Rwanda, where one segment of the population was being systematically slaughtered by another I do believe that as a society the U.S. along with other countries around the world have a moral obligation to intervene and stand up for people who are unable to do so for themselves.
ReplyDelete@ the Kid who said - "Very disappointing to witness so many chimps falling for the same cheap theatrics year after year after decade, after century."
ReplyDeleteIt's Barnum and Bailey don't cha know?
Rational Nation, Yes Sir, Born one a minute.
ReplyDelete@Kid -- Very disappointing to witness so many chimps falling for the same cheap theatrics year after year after decade, after century.
ReplyDelete----
That's you, bubba.
http://www.batemansbaypost.com.au/news/world/world/general/radicals-push-members-out-on-a-wing/2624001.aspx?storypage=1
ReplyDeleteJMJ
Barnum & Bailey, Les?
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid it's become much more like Trilby & Svengali these days.
Barnum was at least pretty upfront about being a charlatan. He just labelled it a little differently. He called it SHOWMANSHIP. ;-)
I doubt if any lives were lost as a result of Barnum's light-hearted chicanery?
Did you ever hear the tale of his successful venture at selling tickets to see "The Egress" when his place became overcrowded one hot summer's day?
Fewif-any knew at the time that The Egress was just another term or the EXIT. Barnum succeeded in getting them to PAY to GET OUT.
A dirty trick?
Maybe, but frankly I LOVE IT.
~ FT
"That's you, bubba."
ReplyDeleteCut out the crap, Canardo.
Kid doesn't deserve that, and it reflects very poorly on you.
You're really not THAT bad, bucko.
We've penetrated your snotty little kid disguise and don't buy your self-deprecatory act any more. Come into the real world and be one of us -- you are anyway, whether you want to admit it or not.
I've come up against REAL monsters. That ain't you, Blueballs.
~ FT