Thursday, February 9, 2012

Freedom Lessons is Changing

Freedom Lessons is undergoing some changes. We'll be back with a new face, a.s.a.p.!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

On Dirty Diapers and Market Scarcity

"The efficient allocation of scarce resource which have alternative uses is not just an abstract notion of economists.  It determines how well or how badly millions of people live."  Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics

In fourteen short weeks I have learned a lot being a full time daddy.  A clunky sing-songy nursery rhyme, for example, can be whipped up for most any sentence if one needs to preclude a fuss or a cry.  The tune to "Wheels On The Bus" works best.  Please-Oh-Please-Don't-Scream-And-Cry, Scream-And-Cry, Scream-And-Cry / Please-Oh-Please-Don't-Scream-And-Cry / Oh! Thank-You!... (Copyright pending.)

And I can change a dirty diaper so fast enough to impressed NASCAR pit crew member.

I have also had a real life lesson on how scarce time, our most precious resource, truly is.  Time's scarcity is not news, of course; being a full time daddy has simply revealed just how scarce it is.  Multiple diaper changes, feedings, play time, book time, walks, and daily errands consume portions of the time.  All this time with our beautiful baby girl greatly assists me in appreciating the importance of economizing time.

Similarly, all the products and services we use and pursue are scarce; some are more scarce than others.  Most people probably understand there is a limit to, say, the amount of coffee beans available that were grown in west Africa.  The mechanism that reveals scarcity and allows free people to economize most efficiently to deal with such scarcity, however, is more often taken for granted or, worse, blamed for scarcity.

Free market capitalism reveals scarcity; it does not create scarcity.  When markets are not artificially manipulated or influenced through force, fraud, or government regulations, the minute-by-minute communication of the price system communicates how limited or ample resources are.  Countless millions of people, acting respectively out of self-interest, both compete and cooperate voluntarily to deliver goods and services as efficiently as they know how.  Consumers demand, producers produce, and I can have fresh shrimp on my dinner plate, at an affordable price, in landlocked Pennsylvania.

This fluid mass of organic movement is "the market."

What all this frenetic, unplanned activity does create is division of labor, efficiency, broadened economic activity, and wealth.  What's more, productivity increases to provide once scarce items more abundantly in order to keep up with demand.  Consider keeping the supply of those coffee beans up with the world's voracious demand for that yummy wake-up-in-a-cup.

And I've arrived at an entirely new strata of appreciation for coffee these last three months.  In fact, it is time for another cup of free market capitalistic efficiency before my little Sweet Pea wakes up.  I have to be fresh for what she has to teach me today.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Slowly Making My Way Back

It's been just over four weeks since we've been blessed with our darling baby girl.  Life has changed to say the least!  And this is a blessed thing.

As far as the blog posts go, my plan for getting back in the swing of things is to truncate the length of posts and increase post frequency.  When time allows (between poopy diapers and naps) I'll read and post as frequently as possible.

Topics that are churning around right now include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • Capitalism: What is it and what is it not?
  • Is American society a caste system?
  • Which is more interested in creating jobs, unions or businesses?
  • A second look at the "Robber Baron" era. (Related topic: Which is prone to monopolies, a free market or an overly regulated market?)
  • On education: Universal education proponents were interested in the goal of universal education, not the means to that end
  • Foreign policy: Hey everyday Republicans and Democrats, we need to talk
As always suggestions are welcome.  E-mail me at freedomlessons@gmail.com or adam@freedomlessons.net  I check the gmail account freqently.

Thanks for your patience while we adjust to being parents of a newborn.  She is a beautiful little girl and is everything to us.  I'm heading back to her and Mommy right now...

Thursday, March 10, 2011

I'm a Daddy!!!

I won't be posting for a while as I'll be preoccupied: We are the proud parents of a  baby girl!

This would a great time for more guest contributions. Be encouraged to send your scribblings to freedomlessons@gmail.com or adam@freedomlessons.net

God bless!

Monday, February 28, 2011

Public and Private Unions: Not The Same

Is the much-maligned Wisconsin bill involving public employee unions an assault on all unions?  Listening to opponents of the bill, pundits, and campaign contributions-conscious politicians, one would think so.

Attempting to marry the status and interestes of public employee unions to labor unions in the market economy makes good strategic sense on the part of core opponents of the bill such as the unions and politicians that profit--premature pun intended, tuck that one away--tremendously from the current system.  Such a rhetorical move broadens opposition to the bill by pulling in union empathy nationwide.  And where there is union empathy there will most likely be a shadowy corporate-conspired threat to the existence of the middle class lurking behind the closest tree.  Now you're talking opposition!  

The problem with conflating the tax-consuming interests of public employee unions with the interests of regular, wealth-producing labor union members does not rise above the integrity of  rhetoric.  The two unions operate as differently as those with whom they respectively "bargain," government and private businesses.

For starters, the fundamental management-labor relations paradigm in the free market is completely turned on its head in the public union-state government scenario.  Private labor unions collectively negotiate with company management, a management unions do not have the luxury of choosing.  When public employees sit down with "management," however, they negotiate with a government they had a hand in forming via massive union campaign contributions to the very people representing the government that unions bargain with.  These same politicians draw up the legislation that sets the terms of compensation and benefits for public employees.

This politicized institutional arrangement amounts to a self-perpetuating, legalized system of graft that can only expand with time and tax funds. Tax payers are coerced, via laws that require mandatory dues paid by public employees, to subsidize a union that in turn donates heavy campaign contributions to politicians who, once in office, pass laws eliciting additional tax funds for the salaries that pay the dues that fund the campaign contributions of--you guessed it--their own campaigns.  Higher wages and new jobs means higher taxes and more dues for the union, which means more campaign funds for the union's favorite politicians.  The government and public unions have every incentive to swell the ranks.  Everyone wins except the taxpayer.  It's win-win-lose.

No such arrangement exists for labor unions in the market economy.  (At least unions not affiliated with companies bailed out at tax payers expense.)  The closest labor unions come to this arrangement is donating to the campaigns of politicians who pass pro-union legislation, but that is not even marginally close to the public union-state bargaining government system.

Additionally, private unions seek compensation for their members based on greater shares of the profits their members help to create in business operations.  They negotiate for more of the profits they have a hand in creating.  Consequently, they are wealth and tax creators.

Public employee unions, by contrast, "bargain" for more tax money.  Public employees create neither profit nor wealth; they consume wealth through the taxation required to pay for their compensation.  This is not a slam on public employees.  (Far from it.  Certain public services are a must and society should be prepared to incur the reasonable cost of those services.)  This is just a statement of economic fact that is sidestepped by the conflation of public and private union interests.

One more notable difference: In the market economy, unions and management have a shared interest in making reasonable agreements that do not hazard either the public image or economic health of the business.  Consumers, remember, vote voluntarily with their dollars and can easily switch support to competitors in the market.  Less profits generated freely through the market is bad news for labor unions and management alike.  There is therefore sufficient incentive for both parties to make reasonable labor-management agreements.

Public employee unions and their supportive politicians in government, on the contrary, have no fear of alienating the economic fount of their paychecks and benefits packages.  Except by moving to a different state, tax payers cannot opt to take their funds elsewhere; they are coerced by the force of law--laws lobbied for by public employee unions--to keep the tax-funded promises streaming to governors' desks to be signed into effect.  There is no incentive to make reasonable agreements; on the contrary, as we can see by the situations in most state budgets, the current system is situated for the exact opposite.

It is telling that FDR, the progressive responsible for the monumental labor relations piece of legislation, the Wagner Act of 1935, unequivocally asserted the very idea of public employee collective bargaining was "unthinkable and intolerable." In 1955 the head of the AFL-CIO quipped "It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government." To take the private union model and apply it to tax-funded government just does work.  So, too, with conflating the immediate interests of private market unions with public employee unions.

Debating the validity of public unions and collective bargaining does not equate to denigrating or vilifying public employees.  It should never be inferred from the hubbub in Wisconsin that many public employees do not provide valuable services.  On the contrary, if society deems certain services are worth of the costs they incur, by all reasonable means those services should be appropriately funded. 

Valuable public services should be sustained on the merit of their service to the public, and all public services should not be propagated by an inherently unworkable system that is so susceptible to narrow self interests, graft and the detriment of tax payers. 

Private economy unions do not get to operate that way, and insisting on the perpetuation of such a system is the antithesis of public service.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

"It's Not You. It's Me." The George Costanza Guide to a Freer Society

"To the unknown civilization that is growing in America."~~from the dedication page of F.A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty

It was a great scheme to initiate a break-up.  Once George Costanza needed out of a relationship he made his own issues and neurosis the core reason for breaking up. 

It's not you; it's me.

How brilliant.  One can imagine the recuperative thoughts of George's exes: "He doesn't want me anymore. He's changed, not me."



I think this pithy ploy would be a great paradigm for a way out of society's dysfunctional relationship with the bloated federal government and concomitant welfare state.  If more of us would have our attitudes about the proper role of government changed and prefer liberty and a freer society, more of us would have one thing to say to those vote-catching demagogues (to borrow from Hayek) who, at every election cycle, inevitably come pandering with all manner of goodies and handouts and incentives to not pay for our own wants and needs. 

"We need to talk. I've changed. We need to end this relationship.  It's not you; it's me."
 
There will always be a number of people disinterested in changing, who have no compunction about being part of the welfare state.  The key, it seems, is persuading that larger number of people who know better but are tempted to follow the siren song that sings: Don't worry about it.  It's some other part of the budget that's the problem. The more of these folks who don't become part of the welfare state, the better.

Consider the unsettling number of people who want the deficit cut but do not, of course, want their entitlements cut.  And gander for a moment at the recent backlash of public sector union members and teachers who believe they have a God-given and constitutionally-guaranteed right to not pay for their own health insurance.  Once enough (too many) people fall into the entitlement machinations of the redistributive welfare State that State becomes a self-perpetuating machine.  It's a simple matter of mathematics: attach the financial self-interest of enough voters to entitlements and those same voters will never break off their dysfunctional relationship with their nanny state.

 For sure, it would be very good to get more limited government, pro-liberty citizens elected to offices of power.  The hope there is, I suppose, to initiate political momentum and reform from within the government.  Rand Paul's recent election to the senate, for example, is encouraging.  As much as I respect Senator Paul, however, it needs stressed that he is now part of Leviathan at large and is therefore surrounded by the institutional incentives to prop up and prod along the welfare state.

The State is the State, no matter who is pulling its levers.  The key is to reduce the levers, not rely on who is pulling (or not pulling) the levers.  (The only real reason we pay attention to that Man Behind The Curtains is that he has the power to confiscate our lives, liberty, and property at his fingertips.)

Paul shows signs of being the recalcitrant contrarian to the welfare State (thank God),  but the sobering lesson of history teaches that depending on getting enough Rand Pauls into the system to change the system is a political pipe dream.  By its own volition, the State will always want to grow and slither and slide past whatever constitutional and legal limits are placed in its path.  The only viable manner of stopping it, or slowing it down, at least, is to starve it of its most fundamental and renewable resource: votes.

Whatever kind of relationship a majority of Americans want with their government, their vote-lusting and reelection obsessed politicians will provide for them.  It's not an easy task, for sure, as more and more people are drawn into the entitlement siren song of the free lunch (mixed metaphors allowed this late in a post), thus creating a vested fiscal self-interest in the perpetuation and growth of the welfare state. 

It also was not an easy task to advance the abolition of slavery or, for that matter, individual liberty with centuries of customs and established authorities determined for the status quo.  Ideas and persuasion changed public sentiment, and public sentiment eventually carried the day.  And besides, the opportunities to engage and converse are everywhere--who isn't aware that something is really screwed up out there? 

Come on, if the delightfully despicable George Costanza can muster the chutzpah to end dysfunctional relationships and reclaim his freedom, we should too.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Republic or Empire? A Book Recommendation: "American Empire: Before The Fall"

I just finished reading American Empire: Before The Fall by Bruce Fein. I highly recommend this book.

Expositing founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Washington’s Farewell Address, and John Quincy Adam’s July 4, 1821 address to Congress, Fein cogently illustrates the Founders’ shared devotion to a republic devoted to the blessings of liberty and a constitutionally-limited government for Americans at home, as well as their aversion to the empire-building and foreign intervention that has historically led to the downfall of nations.

Fein also lays out the history of America’s rejection of non-intervention abroad and embrace of military projection across our borders and around the globe.  He argues the genesis of Empire started with the fallacious reasons for initiation of war with Mexico in 1848, and the reader sees similar initiations for war through history right down to weapons of mass destruction and Iraq. 
   
Common and deleterious political consequences run through all the wars and foreign interventions, most prominently the aggrandizement of executive power and the unconstitutional abdication of Congressional war-making to the executive.  Other common features of Empire include the crippling of rule of law, loss of civil liberties at home, the squandering of vital defense appropriations, and the building of resentment around the globe as a result of a ubiquitous military presence and flagrant disregard for the sovereignty of other nations.

The international War on Terror adds additional constitutional and political deviations from the Founders’ vision for our Republic.  

Fein notes that the Empire psychosis (my words, not his) rests on two flawed orthodoxies that most Americans reflexively accept as gospel, what he calls “Twin Myths of the American Empire” (the title of chapter 5).  The first orthodoxy is that America must spread democracy and human rights around the globe and then remain in strategically-viable posts in order to maintain global stability.  The premise of this orthodoxy is that the US is obligated to spread freedom abroad and that U.S. security depends on such military globe-trotting.

The second orthodoxy is that an American military umbrella providing international stability is vital to economic growth at home and abroad.  

Fein succinctly obliterates both orthodoxies.  Before and during America’s all-out embrace of global Empire following World War II, history tells a different story that what these orthodoxies hold.  Being the world’s policeman makes us less free and less safe at home and comes with a very high price tag in the lives of American military personnel and foreign citizens.  It also wastes resources and adds to our national insolvency while stoking resentment around the globe.

Interestingly and unfortunately, “Making the world safe for democracy” has become the unquestioned bedrock of foreign policy for both political parties and the cover-all excuse for projecting American force into sovereign nations abroad.  Two years into the Obama administration illustrates presidents of both parties have little interest in returning their office to the constitutionally-limited scope of the Republic.  Sadly, Congress is all too ready to neglect their institutional prerogatives to reign in the president, no matter which party controls Congress.   

(Oddly, many conservatives eagerly evoke the notion of world democracy policing even though it originated with their ideological nemeses, Woodrow Wilsonian Progressives, as a means of cementing “war socialism” at home during times of peace.)

Fein closes American Empire with a call for the restoration of the American Republic.  It is a tall order with steep challenges: 

“For seventy years, the American Empire’s orthodoxies have indoctrinated citizens and leaders alike in the belief that the United States has been obligated by divine Providence to made the world safe for democracy and freedom, and to crush every conceivable foreign danger it germinates.”


Ultimately, as Fein suggests, restoration of the Republic begins with changing the substance of public opinion such that elected leaders will feel obliged to again follow the Constitution and wisdom of the Founders.  It is a matter of persuasion and numbers: the more minds that are changed the better.

Speaking as a citizen who formerly (and unwittingly) parroted the orthodoxies of Empire, I can attest that minds can indeed change for the better.  I have Mr. Fein and a handful of other persistently persuasive, principled, and patriotic lovers of liberty to thank for the wake up call. 

Read this book, pass the word, change a mind.