New School Politics

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From a recent George Will article:

Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 22 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: “It’s a lucky number because it’s three times seven.” His treasury secretary wrote that if anybody knew how gold was priced “they would be frightened.”

The president that Will is speaking of is of course Franklin Roosevelt. And keep in mind that this is the president who so many (too many) believe to be our greatest president.

Its not like anyone should be surprised at how trivial FDR behaved when fixing the price of gold–its not like he ever demonstrated restraint with economic intervention. But consider for a moment how the price of gold is determined today, in the free market: day to day, hour by hour, millions of investors buy and sell the commodity on their own volition, by their own intelligent judgment, risking their own savings that they earned because they estimate that their endeavor will in the end reap them the greatest reward. In economics people talk about “supply and demand” and “the invisible hand” as if they were vast and mysterious concepts removed from individual, day to day activity just like government price controls. But the reality is that is completely incorrect. Supply and demand is the manifestation of the sum of the day to day decisions of all individuals.

Now compare that alternative to the reality under Roosevelt. If the free market is a sort of economic democracy–where all people can vote (and ultimate have the freedom to choose whether or not to buy or sell at a given price) with their wallets on what the price should be–then an economy where prices are controlled by the government is economic tyranny where the price is determined for all on the whim of an autocrat. During the 1930s FDR served as economic dictator over breakfast in bed.

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In the past, the Live ___ concerts have been hugely successful. Both, Live Aid and Live 8, have had a clear purpose in mind: raise money to either pay off debt or help to feed starving children. Al Gore, however, utilized his well-publicized Live Earth to “kick start a global movement” to react to global warming. Not everyone agrees with global warming, and there are certainly ways to persuade individuals to look at scientific backup in its favor.

Is a concert, however, the best way? After briefly attending the Washington, DC gathering at the National Museum of the American Indian and watching bits and pieces of the concert on TV, I can conclusively say that it’s most definitely not. Although it was the most watched webcast ever, it was not very well attended at the various locations throughout the world. Furthermore, would an anti-global warming activist attend or watch the concert? Short snippets between musical acts were dedicated to global warming lessons, most of which were ridiculously stupid.

The LA Times and several other sites point out some interesting facts about the concert, showcasing the hypocrisy of many of its participants. LA Times columnist Jonah Goldberg sums up the concert perfectly:

considering the energy required to put on the show, the nine Live Earth concerts doubtlessly raised more CO2 than awareness. NBC’s three-hour televised version got trounced by “Cops” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” Moreover, surely most of the people who attended or tuned in already knew about global warming before they saw the video tutorial about Ed Begley Jr.’s eco-friendly home and sanctimony-powered go-cart.

While I appreciate Gore’s efforts in attempting to help to solve the global warming problem, it’s difficult not to view much of this global warming “awareness” as hypocrisy as well.  I’m not a staunch global-warming observer, but I don’t refuse to acknowledge that it exists either.  Gore’s excellent film “An Inconvenient Truth” provides some excellent facts and justification for his claims.  Regardless of global warming’s existence, Gore should have realized the impropriety his concert practiced.  Why hold a concert railing against a problem you’re claiming to solve?

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We at New School Politics are committed to enhancing your experience on our site. Currently, New School Politics looks pretty great in a desktop browser, but, if you try to go to it from your mobile phone, the site rapidly deteriorates. Today, we’re changing that. I’ve done some backend coding and added some plugins to the site in an attempt to make it more mobile-friendly. If you’re not reading our RSS feed, which is already usable on the go with RSS readers like Google Reader and my favorite, Netvibes, you can visit the site on any WAP-enabled cell phone and be sent directly to the special version of our site.

The Apple iPhone is the most recent “got to have it” gadget, and I bought mine last week. That’s why we’ve prepared a special treat for iPhone users, whether they’re using the site over WiFi or over EDGE. As with the WAP version of our site, all iPhone users have to do is browse over to NewSchoolPolitics.com, where they’ll be greated with a special version of our site.

The New School…Now on an iPhone Near You

We hope you enjoy the most recent additions to NSP, and we thank you for reading. If you encounter any trouble, or have any comments about mobile support, just leave us a note after this post. We encourage you to stay tuned to NSP for the next couple of days, as we have some large announcements to make in our quarterly review. Thanks!

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In the excellent John Stossel’s 20/20 interview with the maker of the new (and surely exciting) healthcare documentary, Sicko, Michael Moore seems stunned to find out that the government uses force to get its way:

Stossel: But government is force

Moore: Why do you see it as force?

Stossel: Because government takes money with force from people and gives it to others.

Moore: No, it doesn’t, actually. The government is of, by and for the people. The people elect the government, and the people determine whether or not they’ll allow the government to collect taxes from them.

I wonder if I really need to take my time to explain why government is force. I figure those who are rational already know, and those who don’t–like Moore–have no chance. Keep in mind the implications of Moore not recognizing government’s fundamental nature: he wants the government to completely take over healthcare, but he never even took the time to find out how the Feds might go about doing that.

But observe the biggest difference in how Stossel and Moore approach government force. When Stossel–a libertarian–refers to those who are subject to government force, he refers to them as “people”–as in a plurality of individuals. When Moore refers to the subjects of a government, he refers to them repeatedly as “the people”–as in one amorphous entity. The dichotomy demonstrates how any person’s moral code goes hand in hand with their political one: when one permits altruism and sacrificing one man to the whims of many, he will always choose collectivism; but when one recognizes that every individual is sacred and an end in himself, he will always fight for individual freedom.

Here is the rest of Stossel’s article on the topic, including his reaction to Moore’s statement. Its very good, I strongly recommend reading it.

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From GMU Economics Chair Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek :

Today’s New York Times reports on Sen. Barack Obama’s record-breaking fund-raising spree to finance his bid for the Presidency.  Last quarter Sen. Obama raised, as the Times puts it, “a whopping $31 million.”

These funds, of course, are all voluntarily contributed.  The fact that I, personally, do not care for much of what Sen. Obama espouses is irrelevant: lots of people like what he says.  They like it enough to contribute to his campaign.  The result, designed by no one, is a huge campaign chest for Sen. Obama.  He will be well-financed to pursue his ambition.  (In my opinion, this ambition is an especially greedy and venal one, but that’s just my opinion.)

In May, however, the very same Sen. Obama called for Senate hearings into allegedly excessive pay for CEOs of corporations.

The Senator is either ethically inconsistent or intellectually inconsistent (or both).  The pay of private-sector CEOs is determined by market forces.  No one — absolutely not a soul — is forced to contribute money to fund CEO salaries.  Those who pay such salaries do so voluntarily.

The point is very astute, and the fact remains that both Obama and the CEOs are entitle to their large sums of money because both of them received it by voluntary payments–the only difference is that the CEOs actually helped produce something worthwhile in exchange for the donations they received.

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This Sunday, (libertarian) Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Sunday Political talk show “This Week”.

Other good news for the small government candidacy of Dr. Paul:

He was number two in a recent straw poll of Georgia GOP big wigs

His campaign has more money in the bank than Senator McCain

What you will find about the Paul candidacy is that although it is not very mainstream the support it garners is very, very staunch and enthusiastic and it certainly represents a portion of the populas that believe our government is too big and that for the sake of our freedom it must be vastly reduced.

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Liberals defend many causes. They want us to back the people of various countries by giving them aid. They also advocate wealth distribution and other socialist programs. Thirdly, they want to protect the environment.

Unfortunately, here is our problem. These all conflict with each other.

Our world population stands at about 6.7 billion people and counting. The carrying capacity (for those of you without a high school education, that means the sustainable population size of a group in an area) of Earth for humans ranges between 500 million and 3 billion. That means that about 3.7 billion people extra are alive.

To make up for this, we decide to give away our “abundance” of resources to other nations. Unfortunately, these nations percieve us Western, developed nations to be a utopia of overabundance. Thus, they consume aid faster than we can provide it in such useless things as armies, genocide, weapons, beauracracy, and unnecessary goverment programs.

Well, guess what left-wingers. We’re consuming our environment’s resources faster than it can regenerate. Thus, the environment will keep shrinking and producing less, while we consume more. At the same time, if we try to share everything, we’ll just use it up faster. Some people will consume their share immediately, while others will decide to conserve their resources. Then the have-nots will demand a share from the haves, and we will keep repeating this until eventually nobody has any resources and we leave a barren, lifeless planet behind us.

There are three ways to solve this problem.

The first way, and the one I think is most effective, useful, and least infringing on my rights, is to stop sending aid to other countries, and to stop trying to share the wealth and divide everything up. Let natural selection take its course, I say, and prevent the unproductive and the unfit from reproducing. Otherwise, we favor the people whose genes are not the innovative, the intelligent, the athletic, but rather those whom reproduce the quickest. In our society, that would be people whom I personally would not trust running our government. Not only will we be able to filter out a whole bunch of people that leech off of the productive ones, but we would also be able to help conserve our resources and let them regenerate. Think about it, the people whom keep bringing back smallpox, polio, and drug resistant tuberculosis are infringing on my right to be healthy. The reason they have these is because they were too stupid to not follow the instructions of their doctors: thus, they shouldn’t be able to remain able to spread disease to me. We should let them die off quicker, so we don’t get infected.
As for those people in other countries, they can fight amongst themselves, reducing populations for us without the expenditure of my hard-earned tax-paid resources. It will also help to filter out a new generation of intelligent, hard-working peoples, instead of a generation of druggies, gangsters, warmongers, prostitutes, religious hypocrites, idiots, and disease-spreaders.

A second way to reduce populations, of course, is mass genocide. I’m not even going to discuss this one because it is too immoral for even my tastes. It would do wonders for the environment, though-all that biomass will help propogate species.

As a side note, I, unlike other libertarian-capitalist-objectivist-neocon peoples on this blog, support the environment, because without it, I wouldn’t be able to have foods, cures to diseases, oxygen, and other necessities of life. Plus, we need it to help suppress unwanted species from growing, like poison ivy, weeds, and Homo Sapiens.

The third way to control the population is to establish space colonies. Unfortunately, all the resources that may go to that are instead going to random countries to build more weapons to kill our people. Seriously, if people want money, they’re going to have to earn it by working, not by pulling strings.

And as a side note, for those whom complain at how rich children control all of the wealth anyways, one will figure that they will squander all of their money away anyways, and help to remove their stain from our gene pool.

And that’s my Darwinistic look of our world today.

Editor’s Note: Profanity was removed from this post and it was edited for further grammatical consistency at 10:45PM on 7/4/2007.  

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