Tag Archives: solutions

You Say You Want Change

But you never actually do anything about it.  Oh, sure, you elected that hope and change guy, but he ended up pretty much like the rest; in some cases worse, as no President before him ordered the assassination of children by drone.

Yet you clamor, you complain.  You do everything except take responsibility.  See, the responsibility for the failing of the US Congress and Executive branch, heck, the failures at all levels, can be directly traced back to your action.

You elected these people.

Sure, you had to pick from the lesser of two evils in some cases; maybe you even believed what they stood for, or believed they were fighting the good fight, and it’s the other team who is to blame.  While one team is more a passing team, and one is more a running team, they are both playing football when we need to be playing, I don’t know, cribbage.

I’m here to help!  If you follow these simple instructions at all levels of government the next opportunity you have to vote, we can slowly, steadily, create change.  (Note:  I’m using Maryland as an example.  Rules in your state primary elections may differ.)

Step 1:  If you vote in the primary election (are a Republican or a Democrat) go to the polling place.  NOTHING changes if you don’t bother to show up

Step 2:  For each office, find the name of the person holding that office.  Vote for someone else.

Step 3:  If there is no incumbent running for office, vote for the one who does not have the same last name as someone who is in office or has been in office (In Baltimore, those names might include Rawlings, Curran, Mitchell, etc.)

Step 4:  In the General Election, for each office, find the name of the incumbent (unless that person lost in the primary!).  Vote for someone else.

Step 5:  Again, if there is no incumbent, vote for the one who does not have the same last name as someone who is in or has been in office.  Include in this group anyone running who was in a lesser office previously (For example, the Lieutenant Governor running for Governor, or Congressman running for Senate).

Step 6:  Repeat as needed, most likely for twenty to forty years.

You don’t have to vote against your conscience, at almost every level there are “third party” candidates running who closely mirror your political viewpoints.  On the off chance there are not certainly in most instances, the R and the D on the ballot agree on 80% or more issues.  If you really just can’t vote for the other team, then just don’t vote for that office.

The key here is to STOP REWARDING THESE PEOPLE YOU SAY CONTINUE TO FAIL.  Stop treating politics like it’s your team vs their team, and for goodness sake, stop giving your team a free pass.

Maybe your children will get to see some real political change.

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Confidence Follows Correction

Mario Rizzo at the Freeman has a fantastic piece up.  I suggest you read all of it, but here is an excerpt.

Recessions are not simply crises of confidence or of insufficient demand (due to increases in the demand to hold money). They also have their allocational—or microeconomic—aspects. I suggest that these systemic distortions have an important role in creating the aggregate phenomena we are witnessing. To treat these distortions and their cure as relatively unimportant is a mistake. Lasting investor and consumer confidence follows the correction of the underlying causative distortions and does not precede them. In fact, the dominant macroeconomic policy framework does not leave room for correcting distortions at all because its basic theme is to restore, prop up, and maintain the current direction of resources.

The hastily approved macroeconomic schemes of the Bush and Obama administrations will not succeed in promoting lasting recovery because they ignore the microeconomic fundamentals. The direction of spending and hence resource allocation they generate are fragile—they are not consistent with the preferences of consumers, savers, and investors. Therefore, once the putatively temporary stimulus is complete, the corrective forces that are now trying to undo previous resource misallocations will reassert themselves.

Emphasis is mine.

The key point he illustrates is Keynesians and Macroeconomists focus too much trying to fix something they can not possibly know enough about to fix. The knowledge is dispersed among all of us acting in our own interests, putting resources to their best use. There is no way a central planner can know how to use all of these resources, nor do they really care. They simply want to prop up the result, ignoring the sustainability.

This is why instead of propping up failing companies, we need to allow them to fail, and allow their resources to be reallocated freely to uses that produce profit (success!).  I don’t want to minimize how confusing all of the financial stuff that was going on – I don’t get it, and Macroeconomists do.  Clearly to me, the solution lies not in propping up a failing industry, but instead allowing it to collapse and emerge stronger.  Let those who chose not to participate in the schemes, those who planned, lived beneath their means, bought what they could afford, and remained solvent enjoy the fruits of those choices and thrive.

Link via Cafe Hayek


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