disillusionment.

This morning I just realized, while reading an article opposed to “bailing out” the auto companies, the cause of this hostility toward American auto-makers.

You see, when a child reads Popular Mechanics they believe it. When they see images of flying concept cars and streamlined coupes, they expect to own them once they grow up. They see the swept-wing stylings of  ‘57 Thunderbirds and  ‘59 Cadillacs. They grow into budding teenagers driving big-block GTOs and souped-up Mustangs. Or at least, sitting idly aside while envying those who did.

But as they came oh so near to their piece of the pie, to the slice of iron that they were owed, it all fell apart; The oil ran dry, the prices ran high, and the style, the power, the panache went dim. Engines were systematically choked by the Clean Air Act, they were starved by CAFE standards, speed limits plummeted to 55, and worst of all, innovative designs were marred by NHTSA regulations as well as crash impact requirements.

The piece of Americana which these men and women had felt entitled to, had felt promised, was quietly taken behind the barn, and they didn’t even notice. They just turned to the new imported wonders. They bought up the cheap steel which was stamped together in foreign lands, by unknown soiled hands, under paid, over worked, endangered on a daily basis; and the profits went to their overseers.

Meanwhile, out to pasture, the American worker starved too, but not because he was underpaid, and not because he could not make a superior product, but simply because of free trade.

But I’m not here to lecture on free trade, god knows I’ve done that before; I’m here to show that the disillusionment so many have felt toward Detroit is unfounded. Unlike Exxon, they have not extorted the American public. They have not reaped inordinate profits. They have never starved their workers as Hyundai does on our own shores.

My point, quite simply, is a request to all; please target your hate at the appropriate cause. Do not starve your dog and justify its death by saying it did not eat. And especially, when it’s weak and dying, do not give it a bite and expect that to absolve you of guilt.

a Case Against USF’s Filesharing Policy

I should be asleep, but I cannot with this on my mind.

The University of South Florida scans all internet usage for potential violations of file sharing law/policy/whatever the heck it wants. I assume that it is somewhere in the usage agreement which must be agreed to prior to use. Regardless, this is an unconstitutional violation of my protection against unreasonable and unwarranted searches as well as a violation of my right to use those services for which I’ve paid.

Specifically, the use of the internet is required for modern college education. Honestly, that point needs no explanation. From the required online research to the required use of Blackboard; denying use of the internet, while simultaneously requiring it, is the same thing as denying students an education.

I don’t mean to say that the school does not have the right to deny admissions for any number of reasons or specify rules for the use of included services, but the requirement that students forfeit the right to privacy is not one of those rights. The University of South Florida, is a state university. It is an agent of the State of Florida, and its requirement that searches be allowed is similarly, an action of the state.

This is, however, a false choice. While it appears a option exists to maintain your right to privacy, this option is plainly that you do not receive a college education. Public universities are THE mechanism for higher education. They are funded by state-wide and federal taxes. They are the only semi-affordable educational opportunity. And, they are not an option at all.

College education is a requirement in today’s society. It is a Right. Without at least a bachelor’s degree no reasonably good job may be had. The old option(or rather standard), of apprenticeship has not only died, but has been brutally killed by the systematic licensing of every possible profession. It has gotten to the point that the word profession, is defined by whether a license is required. If not, it is simply a job or career, but no profession. And if these reasonable professions cannot be reached without a college degree, imagine something like, god forbid, a lawyer. In that case, you can’t even get into college to qualify to take the licensing test to be admitted to the bar to practice law without first going to another college.

So the ‘options’ are simple: 1. Forfeit your right to privacy or 2. Forfeit your right to Education and to Pursue Happiness

PS. Doesn’t a College’s aliegence lie with its students? It is not their duty to protect the interests of their students? To protect their rights to the utmost allowed by law? To promote liberty? Democracy? Dare I say, Civil Disobenience?

Social Moralism

What is just? How is an action determined to be just or unjust? Do the ends justify the means? Do the means justify the ends? Is it a balance between the two? Is the evil result of good intentions ever bad within its self. Is anything good within its self. Ultimately, who are we to determine right from wrong for anyone other than ourselves.

It’s hard to say what is just. It’s much less hard to come up with examples of what is unjust. It’s much easier to agree with others on certain actions which none of us want to suffer under or from. It’s easy, in these cases to make law on the topic.

But ‘economic’ law seems far more difficult. Instead of focusing on what actions are truly ‘crimes’ which harm society, we focus on how it ought to be. We focus on how to manipulate the markets and adjust so as the arrive at the outcome we’ve deemed just. And yet we haven’t even reached a conclusion about what IS moral?

In truth, we will never agree on a concept of complete morality. Since the dawn of religion, we’ve sought it, and never has it been found except perhaps in Buddhist Supra-Morality, because by definition morality attempts to impose a concept of justice upon others. It dictates how they should act, and in short attempts to oppress people into a particular way of life.

This nation has been founded on a denial of such moralism. We separated religion, and morality, from the state leaving only those laws which dictate fundamental codes necessary for social interaction. How you act, what you do, and what you believe are all beyond the scope of government. Merely a few ways of interacting with others are prohibited, you cannot kill, steal, defraud, injure, rape, etc.

Regrettably, this has not also been true in matters of economic affairs. Where Socialist agenda attempts to guide the nation, and impose its sense of economic morality, it oppresses the people. But Capitalism does not push such an agenda. Capitalism is simply economic freedom. It has no moral agenda, or prospected outcome. The magic hand does not necessarily give the “best” distribution of wealth, it does not necessarily provide to people that which they “earn”. For both of these words are subjective. No matter what system processes the economy, the concepts of optimal and equitable distribution are independent of it’s operation and thus should not dictate it.

You do what you do and you get what you get. If you work efficiently, then by definition you receive a good return. If you work extremely hard pushing your broken back against a brick wall… what did you earn with your strenuous labor? What distribution would be equitable? IMO not the same as he who quite lazily came up with a multi-million dollar cost-cutting measure. But what I say doesn’t matter. If someone’s willing to pay for you to push against a brick wall, if you’re able to find another to agree with on your sense of equitable wealth distribution, then for you two, that is just. For others, with different interpretations of justice, the market determines that too, where the hand does not mold or slam people into its own conception of morality, it simply lets one connect to another, and allows individuals to act on their own with others of similar moral disposition.

Capitalism is truely Supra-Moral.

On Federal Assistance

As I’m sure it’s clear, I’m not one to support Federal “Assistance”. Companies come and go, they grow and die, and as one passes into bankruptcy another takes it’s place. As a man told me today, there’s always someone right behind you to pick up the pieces, for themselves that is, and that’s not necessarily bad, because they’ve seen you carry it. They’ve watched your techniques and when a critical failure occurred they saw it, learning from the mistake.

But if the government is to give 150 Billion dollars to AIG as the NYT reports today, then why them? I do not like the idea of spending 150 billion, let alone all in one place. After all, if every single American, man woman and child, is going to have to pay $500 then darn well better be for something important.

In another paper, I read that GM is receiving a 25 Billion dollar Loan. Honestly, this makes more sense. While I do not doubt that AIG employs many and has a significant role in world markets, I’d suggest that GM plays a larger role. Indeed, after all the talk about alternative fuel sources and our dependence on foreign oil for transportation, doesn’t  GM directly control a major portion of the US energy policy?

While it’s become popular to complain about American cars, a trend I much disgust and is entirely unwarranted, their costs must be considered. On on hand they’re slammed for cutting and negotiating pension releases. They’re insulted for laying off workers and closing plants for their “profit”. Yet, at the same time, they lose market share to foreign their competitors. Why is it so hard to connect the two? Is it not obvious that it’s hard to compete with companies that don’t treat workers as well when you do? Is it not clear that technological development is dependent upon the amount of free capital available to be invested in such research? Is it not clear that as a result of free trade many foreign companies gain an unfair advantage by foregoing civil liberties and labor rights which are taken for granted here? Is it not also so true that as a result of this American companies have been less able to adapt, to re-tool for smaller cars, and to shift to other fuels.

We have the technology. We’ve seen Hydrogen Fuel-Cell cars. They’ve made prototypes, they’ve showed off design concepts, they’ve built partnerships with leading American research companies to design viable alternatives. We’ve seen this out of American companies well before the Toyota Prius. We need to put our money where our mouth is. And I don’t mean write yet another check, but overturn the allocation of the trillions and use that for change, not the maintenance of an already flawed financial system.

Sadly, that’s not going to happen.

In response to the Oracle’s “Plunging Gas Prices About to Slow”

To say the recent drop in gas prices is the result of supply and demand is patently misleading. While the US DOT cites a 78 billion mile decrease in driving, this 5.6% year to year reduction can in no way account for the 38% price drop that America has seen over the past three months. Further, when considering OPEC’s 5% cut in production, simple supply and demand would suggest little to no decline in retail prices.

As AAA spokesman Gregg Laskoski noted, supply and demand has played a role in the futures market where speculators purchased oil for well more than its current value. However, the concept that these prices were in some way justified in the ‘real’ economy is both entirely unfounded and the cause of such prolonged rampancy.

The fall of such inflated gas prices marks a great failure of the American media. It demonstrates that the endless excuses, from hurricane ravaged refinaries to increasing Chinese consumption, served only to stay popular disgust, thereby allowing price inflation to continue.

As is the nature of market corrections, it’s true that that the price decline will slow, cease and, as with the housing market, once more begin to grow. However, had newspapers, TV and other media sources properly reported on these values to be unjustifiably inflated far fewer would have suffered and for far shorter a time.

edit: This was just printed in my college’s paper, The Oracle.

A summary of the flow chart…

Labour is labor, it is employment, and it produces both Income for the laborer and Capital for the employer. This income is either spent on goods, driving demand, or it is saved. Investment arrives from both the Savings of the company and the savings of the Individual as lent by banks. This leads to the relationship between demand and investment, or demand and production which requires investment and determines employment. This means that the unemployment rate measures the efficiency of the demand + investment equilibrium. On one hand demand for goods drives the demand for labor, if there’s no demand for goods there’s no reason to hire people to make them. But if there is demand for goods, and there’s no investment/capital, there’s no money to hire people with.

The final aspect, I’ll explicitly consider here is that the effeciency of labor plays a role. Specifically, what I mean by the effeciency of labor is that a worker makes $500 worth of products in a day and is paid $70, the employer makes $430 minus other costs. The labor’s transaction is ineffecint because he is not getting the full value of his work. The less the value of his work he gets, the more that money is centralized in the hands of the employers and locked into drive investment. This also means less money is available to drive demand. It thereby leads directly toward disrupting the equilibrium between demand and investment. Some may argue that this is exactly the check with Marx cited, and although I’m not entirely ready to disagree, I tend to think not, for as long as the worker is not making enough, the system slows to a halt, the employer stops profiting…. idk there’s more i can say but I’m hungry.

Economics

I’ve always thought that both supply side and demand side economics seemed to be oversimplified. They both almost seems to go out of the way to support their particular preferences, and it wasn’t until about a week ago or maybe less that I sat down and came up with the following flow chart of the economy.

Shot at 2008-10-20

This seems like the best blend of the two and makes sense. A supply of goods does no good if buyers have no money to buy with, yet buyer’s can’t buy anything if suppliers don’t have the capital to produce goods. Thus income from labor is split into savings and expenses, where expenses fuel demand and savings fuel production. It requires a balance between the two for the economy to work properly. Also the efficiency of the laborer is ‘profiting’ is important and I haven’t fully thought that out yet, butt.. I was reading on plastic.com a note on the argument of ‘conservatives’ that supply side creates wealth whereas giving money to the middle/lower class only spreads it around..

Not that’s not a wording I’ve heard before, and it’s one which makes a lot of sense. If money is invested then it allows for the production of more efficient means, and produces goods. If money is spent, it moves from person to person. I need to figure this out, because there’s good logic in it.  But I’m too tired. It’s a shame, there’s a real breakthrough in the relationship between labor’s production and this concept, and I’m tending to think it results in a need for consistent(though not necessarily predictable) revolutions. Probably crazy. /goodnight

Falling Gas Prices

Well, I’m watching NBC Nightly News, and as you know, gas prices have dropped quite dramatically. However, the certain cause, as the media sees it is dropping demand. This is simply not true, or at least not as they portray it. It is honest in that the demand for oil futures had plummeted, but in terms of actual consumption… think about your personal consumption. You may have cut usage by 5, 10 or even 20%, but you did this back when oil was nearing $3.50. You did this back when it was $4, but prices didn’t drop then. Prices dropped with the market for the simple reason that the prices we’ve been seeing were entirely unjustified. It’s true that China has been using more oil, but they did not double consumption in the past year or so then magically cut it coincidentally when the US market fell. The point is, investors who’ve been buying oil futures at exorbitant rates realized that like home prices, these were unrealistically high. My point is, the news is utterly failing to comprehend even the most basic elements of our economy. My all means, keep an ear to the ground, but do not believe the word on the street.

The more important point is, if you believe that consumption has dropped 30% in the past month(fueling the 30% price drop), then you’re the same person who believed the rise in prices was the result of an increase in consumption or the “closure of oil refineries” in the southeast during a hurricane…In all truth, that doesn’t make sense. We’ve got plenty of gas refined before and after the hurricane that it shouldn’t jump, and if it did, it should immediately drop back down to pre-hurricane prices within a week or so of passing.

Regarding the buyout.

So, if I understand this correctly, John Doe buys/gets a mortgage for 200,000 house he’d buying, and say he’s paying 6%, meaning over thirty years he’s gonna pay a total of 431,000 including 231,000 of interest. So the bank will make a profit of 231,000 over 30 years, or 7,700 a year for 30 years.

Now the bank packages 35 of these together. Now you see they lent out $7 million and over 30 years will get that plus $8 million profit back. However, it takes a long while to get that money back. So instead of waiting, they sell the package to Frank Richass for 9 million. They get their 7 million back, make 2 million profit, and are free to walk away. 2 Million profit today is better than 8 over 30 years.

Well the bank quickly realizes, shit, all we have to do it give out a bunch of mortgages sell them off. Now, people aren’t stupid. They say, hey, how do I know these people are gonna pay their mortgages? And banks say… Well I guarantee it. If they don’t then then we’ll pay the difference. But what about when people actually start defaulting on their mortgages?

Well, the people who own the MBS stop making money. If everyone’s paying it they get their 269,500 a month, if 5 of the 35 don’t then it’s 231k a month. However if 20 of the 35 don’t pay if off, then that only gets to 9 million, and they don’t make any profit. Plus! If people who do pay it off pay pay off the mortgage quicker than anticipated, then they don’t have to pay as much interest.

My math is clearly not perfect, and the numbers/rates/and percentages are off from the real world, but at the end of the day, if they make a bunch of bad loans, the back can’t pay off all they guaranteed. So the bank goes bankrupt, and the investor either doesn’t make a profit/as much of one/or even the money he put in.

Apparently the 700 billion would purchase the MBS, now I’m not certain if that’s the cost of the MBSs. If it is, we theoretically could get some of the 700billion back, if theoretically everyone kept paying their houses then we’d get it all back.

Of course, that’s not gonna happen. If the banks are going bankrupt paying to MBS holders what the homeowners didn’t, then it’s clear that those securities are not good ones. The big companies wouldn’t be pushing them on the government, and Congress/Bush wouldn’t be so eager to buy them if they were good investments.

Their theory is that if we buy them, and take the loss, then the banks won’t go bankrupt paying what they guaranteed the securities would. (I’m not sure if they want to buy both the MBS which “people” hold or even the bad loans which banks hold). As a result the banks and MBS holders could keep their money and keep lending to people(presumably with legislation to make sure they didn’t go too crazy again). But what if we don’t pay $700+ billion for them?

Then, the banks have to pay out what they guaranteed the MBSs would until they run out of money. Now shouldn’t they have a lot of money stockpiled? Probably not, as soon as they sell it for 9 million they go out and give 9 million in loans and sell it for 15, then again then again, and then the shit hits the fan. People start realizing the housing market’s crashing. They realize that people are defaulting on mortgages, and the bank has to start paying what they guaranteed the MBSs would. But all their free money is tied up in more bad(and even worse mortgages given at the height of the boom) which no one is willing to buy as MBS. So the bank is stuck with a ton of bad mortgages and so are the MBS holders. And the cards fall where they may, and people lose money.

But why do we need the banks need to give mortgages? Well the argument is Demand-Side. They say, if banks don’t have the money then businesses can’t get loans to start or expand, if they can’t start or expand, they can’t hire people, and no one will be able to get a job or buy a house since there won’t be anyone to give you a mortgage.

But does that make sense? Housing prices are lower and still falling. Other than money in the stock market… People still have income, they’re still working, they still need houses, they still need cars, they still need all the same things they needed before. And at the end of the day.. That money’s still out there.

As a matter of fact, remember who why it was lent in the first place? It was lent to people to purchase overpriced homes. Which means, all this money ended up going to the former owners of the homes. Some of it went to construction companies, some went to reality companies, some went to developers, and a whole lot went to private individuals who sold their home.

So where is it now? two places: those people who profited off selling a house, put it in the bank(or stock market), others spent it or are going to spend it on goods. Ultimately, it’s no big deal. Its a little hard for the people who put money in the stock market and it will be hard to get a loan for something you can’t afford…

Well you know what? You shouldn’t buy something you can’t afford…. Did you see what I saw at the top when writing this????? On a 200,000 loan at 6% you pay $231,000 in interest! How about you save and just wait to buy a damn house when you have the money? It takes 14 years at the most. Or maybe instead of saving for 14 years and spending 300k save for 7 years and get a 150k house and work for 7 more). Most importantly!! When you’ve bought the house you won’t have to keep paying a mortgage to the bank for 16 years. You’ll be able to actually save for your own  retirement.!

spending money that isn’t there

Ok, lets say the gov has $200billion but wants or needs to spend $500billion. The obvious solution is to borrow $300billion from someone. The government says by these “bonds” or IOUs and we’ll pay you back with interest later. But what everyone you talk to is only willing to let you borrow $100billion? Well then the government just “prints” $200billion more. However the government doesn’t print it and forget it. That, as well as the $100billion it borrowed gets listed as “debt”. So when it comes time to pay the bond-holders back we pay them and all is good.

But what if we still don’t have the extra $100billion to pay off that debt? Well, we “print” the money. At the end of the day, all the debt ends up being extra money we printed. This causes inflation. Since there’s more money in the system the money you have is worth less. Everyone’s money is worth equally less. Indeed, the government just borrowed that money, the value lost due to inflation, from you. So to pay it back, the government must tax a total of $300billion, then burn it all. This revalues the money in circulation, “paying back” the public.

At the end of the day, assuming this money isn’t “earned and burned”, deficit spending(thats the right term right?) is just another way of taxing the public. However it is one which allows for immediate spending and does not tax through regular means such as income, but by taxing accumulated wealth at a flat rate. Now progressive tax structures are another talk. But.. you see where it goes.

Habits of the Passive Heart

the world is just about over. Or so at least the prophets claim, and while prefaces edited revise the prediction to cast it further into the already arrived upon future, we see that there is little that can be done to save us.

we must learn to help one another. we must learn to destroy our individualism and materialism. it is through community which the whole may survive. for the free market has only allowed the few to prosper and the masses to sink. social security is the security of society, …

But when we take from the youth to pay for the elderly, we are in fact acting on the belief that the youth and middle-aged are unable to plan for their future. In fact, we are acting on the belief that the masses are unable to care their own basic needs, and if this is the case… does that not mean that this experiment of a nation has failed? Indeed it was founded on the concept of liberty, and inherent to liberty is the concept of individualism and self reliance. Without individualism and the self-determination which it implies, there is no freedom.

There is no future in this line of thought. While it may seem to some that the actions of Europe have proved successful, they are still the actions of old Europe. They are based in a conception that man is incapable of self-governance. Incapable of governing his immediate surrounding and daily aspects of life, and incapable of governing his fellow man.

Nay. Patrick Henry had it right; give me liberty or give me death for I’m riding this one into the dirt. I’m putting all my eggs in this basket. I cannot say without a doubt that a free nation can forever endure, but so long as it’s citizens prefer a secure life to the dangers of a free one I know that it cannot.

A peculiar cycle

There is no doubt that at least some illicit drugs are harmful to the user. The individual detriment of marijuana, alcohol, and lsd may be minimal or at least manageable by a non-addictive person. And while I’m also sure there are others with limited inherently harmful effects, there is no doubt that many are harmful, and even the three previously listed can have very harmful effects if not used wisely and in moderation. So it’s clear that there is a social motivation to restrict access or prohibit the drugs.

However, as with speed limits, the compliance is often either rare or at least frequently broken by very significant portions of the public. As I write this I can can say with confidence that you have probably broken substance laws, if not do so fairly often.

But the effect of this, other than millions of arrests for drug charges, is far more detrimental than many would initially suspect. Many cite that crack cocaine for example can cause crime as it drains the financial resources of the addicted and drives them to illegal means of profitability like robbery, or drug dealing.

However, that is not nearly the worst affect of drug’s illegalization. Rather, since many many individuals, especially the “black”/poor community commonly possess marijuana or crack they are constantly breaking the law, and frequently felonies which carry significant jail time. Because of this, when they are the victim of a crime against them, they are in a particularly sticky situation. While law enforcement is established to protect everyone, including petty criminals, they are still subject to arrest for that pot/crack. This causes those individuals to resort to other methods of self defense and community policing that don’t subject them to the constant threat of jail time.

In fact, I feel it is solely because of the illegal status of popular drugs that gangs exist. It causes large portions of the public to fear the police and the government which are intended to protect them. They feel that the police are not there to protect them, and to some extent, they are not.

And while I didn’t initially intend to go into the affect of gangs, I must note that since gangs operate through largely illegal means(many arrested for felony drug charges thus prohibiting the possession of firearms while are society’s main tool of self defense). And because individuals come to rely on the protection of gangs, they enter a place where they can no longer report the socially harmful actions of the gang. And as their power grows so does their ability to harm without repercussions.

So the question remains as to what should be done. And while I wasn’t sure when I began writing, I now lean to the idea that we should legalize at least those drugs which are popular such as marijuana and crack. While crack is almost universally understood to be very harmful, that is in some way why it should be legal. With cocaine as tobacco, the fact that it’s harmful is known by all. And with the assistance of educational campaigns very very few would fall into the harmful effects without doing so by their own weighed decision.

On the other hand, the presence of gangs, not only harms very many in the community and promotes crime such as robbery, retributional murder, and so forth, it challenges the authority of the government. It steals the public allegiance from the the stable government to unstable social organizations, and as they realize the instability of this ancient social design, they lose all sense of security. They become essentially citizens of no state with no defenders but themselves, and as a result of felony drug charges, they are not even allowed to own guns to protect themselves with.

In fact while drugs alone only harm the user and those close by, the gangs which their illegalization create harm the whole of society. It makes it so that government, no matter how much it wishes cannot represent large portions of its citizenry.

It is exactly what we saw with the prohibition of alcohol. That was far worse because almost all of society drink alcohol at least occasionally and many do frequently. However while the effects of alcohol prohibition may have nearly devastated the government and society in just 14 years, the popularity of other drugs is just at the level that government/society can survive under the costs. Yet while the we continue to survive the costs (financial and not), the social harm significantly outweighs the benefits. It merely hasn’t yet bankrupted society.

The Great Depression

This isn’t a metaphor. I’m just frustrated by the ignorance displayed by my professor, so I’ll correct him here instead of putting my grade at risk bickering with him.

“No one knows why the great depression started.” BS. Everyone should know why. During the Roaring Twenties, consumerism grew. Many people made money, and put it into banks. Some took out loans on cars, on refrigerators, appliances. More importantly, with the rising stock values, many took out loans to buy stock in hopes of selling it for a profit. However when vastly overvalued stocks fell, these people were unable to pay off the loans. When people went to the bank to withdraw their money, they found there was none. The banks had loaned it out to other people who bought stuff from other people, who then put the money back into the bank, to be loaned out to other people, to be…

This is why we have a little thing called the reserve rate. It is a percentage of money which the bank cannot loan out. So if a bank has $1,000,000 dollars in it, a 15% reserve would mean it has to keep 150,000 available at all times(maybe not in cash). If people tried to withdraw $200,000 the bank would go bankrupt, but the FDIC insures each account up to $100,000 so everyone would be left with up to that amount.

I’m not sure what a usual reserve rate is, but i believe that 15% is quite high. I think I might take some sort of econ soon.

Optimism

In the eyes of the Optimist
The Tank is always Half Full.
Introducing the new 2006 Lincoln Zephyr.
An open road. An open mind. The possibilities are endless. Lincoln Zypher.
With DVD-based navigation* and class-exclusive six-speed automatic transmission.***
Adventure is at your fingertips.
Lincoln. Reach Higher.

---

They say there is no truth in advertising, but perhaps by Freudian slip. However this piece is very truthful, directly attacking the mentality which competes against American car companies. They have fought the claims of alarmists for decades pollution, global warming, fuel “crisis”.

Yet if it one would believe any organization when it came to the life of oil reserves, wouldn’t it make the most sense to listen to the ones selling the least efficient cars? It is their live which the knife is pointed at. The blood spills from their futures into the engines of their own cars.

They have a legal obligation to protect their shareholders. To make money not only now, but more importantly, in the future. So why are they selling inefficient cars? Because they’re profitable, and they have time to create alternatives. That, or they already have.

I beg you to do the research. Who is furthest along? The Japanese have a good number of hybrids, but so do the Americans. But that’s chicken shit in the grand scheme of things. That’s conservation, not evolution. The Americans, they are evolving. They are investing the money, they are researching fuel cell technology, hydrogen, etc. They are building the prototypes, not for show, but for advancement.

What are the Japs doing? Making tiny 4-bangers and hybrids, and overcharging; 25k for a 17k car. That’s profit. Short term profit.

In no way though, am I saying tha the Japanese/Koreans are stupid. They don’t need to invest. The Americans are investing. Just as they always have done, they will steal the technology. They save their money till the Americans come out with a solid solution, then spend. Then they tweak it a bit and remarket it. Say they developed a better one.

Look to the past.
Who first introduced airbags? Ford and then GM.
Who invented side, and side curtian airbags AutoLiv an American/European company. Just the name DaimlerChrysler is responisble for 6 fuel cell cars.

Robin’ (the) Hood

Remember that judgment that the Supreme Court handed down about the fifth amendment? Yes, the one which ruled that although no person may “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”, the government can take that land for what many consider private use of that “private” use pays more taxes. Let’s talk about that.

First, and I’m talking on moral grounds rather than legal ones, can the government take private land for public use? In an “Anarchist Area”(there’s got to be a real name for that), what someone owns, they own, and they should not be deprived of that under any circumstances. But we’re a Democracy, and in Democracies the will of the people is law. So if the government, made of the people and for the people, should decide to take private property for “public use”, as defined by equal access by all the people, then certainly that would be fair, assuming that the private party was justly compensated.

Now the question becomes; “Does greater tax revenue constitute public use?” The government does have the right to enable it’s fulfillment of duties. It can levy taxes, which enable it to commit actions on the public’s behalf. It can reasonably do many other things, but “Does greater tax revenue constitute public use?” Well, by taking private property to give to another private entity which pays more taxes, the government is enabling a private entity to enable themselves to commit acts on the public’s behalf. Although this adds another chain into the link, it does end with the government committing acts on the public’s behalf.

While you and I may argue that there are too many chains in the link, the Supreme Court of the Unites States(SCOTUS). Ruled it to be public use, and there’s no changing that. Only changing the laws which are already on the books.

Still, even with that conclusion, a great injustice exists. How can the government take the property of a lower income household/entity and give it to a higher income household/entity. Why, that’s… that’s discrimination. And it is. Regrettably that isn’t the end.

15th Amendment Sect. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
So no the constitution does no protect against discrimination based of income. Nor do any of the Civil Rights Acts. They protect against “employment practice [which result] in a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin…” So how can we correct the problem if it is completely legal to discriminate based on income? Pass new legislation, preferably a constitutional amendment.

I feel in my uneducated non-legal opinion that such an amendment would have a good fighting shot at passing. It would gain support from the “underprivileged” since they don’t want to be discriminated against for being poor. The wealthy would do so to protect their property.

And if we wanted to, and we would have to in order to get it to pass, we could have it exclude discrimination based on income in situations pertaining to financial aid(scholarships, welfare, etc.). That way the middle and upper classes could be discriminated against for having good jobs.

To Free Trade or not to Free Trade!

Free Trade and Tariffs shouldn’t be about protectionist ideas of helping out the American worker. As with welfare, help weakens those that receive it. The government has no place supporting private enterprise, only maintaining security and acting in foreign affairs(and possibly other things which I haven’t thought of but are irrelevant to this discussion).

As a Capitalist nation our goal is to have a perfectly free market. Of course, a completely free market, one with no rules or regulations would foster the development of monopolies and bullies which would inevitably collapse the system into complete anarchy. That is the difference between a Free Market, and an “Anarchist Arena”. Rules are set to make sure that no one gains control or an unfair advantage.

In a global economy I can think of two major examples of how companies gain control and take an unfair advantage over others. First a company can gain control by selling products below cost forcing others out of business, a clear attempt to Monopolize. The second, a company may take advantage of foreign governmental support, or the lax domestic policy of foreign nations.

This second case is what occurs when companies export jobs. By paying workers less than American minimum wage, paying lower taxes, and or harming the environment in ways illegal within the States, companies gain an advantage over American companies.

This is where the government gains jurisdiction(They always had legal jurisdiction, this is moral jurisdiction). To protect the people of foreign nations, the government must levy tariffs greater than or equal to the unfair advantages gained by residing in another country.

This does not mean they should tax companies from “Country A” because it has large reserves of cheap iron. That is not an unfair advantage since it is available to everyone. If “Country A” only allowed companies from their own country access those reserves, then it would be unfair. It’s really fairly simple.

The effect of taxing these imports is that it deters companies from setting up there, forcing these countries to treat workers properly, quit unfair practices because after all, they need to make money off their economy. And if they don’t mind having no companies operate there and thus a crappy economy, then screw ‘em. They’re probably a Dictatorship anyway and need to be “restructured”.

Later I’ll write on something else. I would be why the Free Market is stable, but I haven’t been in Macroeconomic in weeks so I forgot all the info that I’d need to think it through.