It would seem that people only care about monopolies when they are in the hands of anyone but the government. But, when in those trusted hands of Uncle Sam, it’s A-OK for an organization to have a legal strangle hold on a market.
Enter the United States Postal Service.
For years this organization has been losing money by the truck load. The truck load I tell you. And the whole time they’re losing this money there are corporations willing and able to take the job from them. FedEx and UPS would be chomping at the bit to be able to have a shot at the commercial mail that the USPS handles right now.
I am fascinated by the study of the use of scare resources which have alternative uses. Further, I’m frustrated by the fact that I shrugged off Economics while I was going to college. Instead, I focused on engineering and math, physics and chemistry. In retrospect, how boring and useless ;-).
But the idea that all things have alternate uses is fascinating. And critical. Combine this with the fact that all people will pursue their individual self-interests and you will find the decisions people make to be interesting as well.
And it’s within this light that I judge and critique government policy.
For nearly 5.5 years now Barack Obama has been blaming Dubya for the condition of the economy. In some cases, to be fair, he’s right. Dubya and the Republicans had control of things for a number of years and they all spent like massive fools. They deserve their share of the blame.
The strategy has run it’s course. Except for the far left Liberati, the idea that Bush is to blame is a Trivial Pursuit answer; next to meaningless. The current administration has had time to try their grand experiments, the results are in and stock must be taken.
Obama has to see that what he’s doing isn’t working. In fact, what he’s doing is making it even worse. In short, he’s taken a bad, very bad, situation, and simply done wrong.
Obamacare – an economy killing piece of legislation. Feel good? Free rubbers for everyone? Sure; maybe. But a jobs driver? Not so very much:
From the post:
Correlation is not causation, but in fact we have a lot of independent evidence (including my own experience) that many small and middle sized companies have changed their hiring plans based on costs and uncertainties of Obamacare.
Say what ya want. Data seems to be adding up that kids of socialist Marxists growing up learning to despise colonizers who then go to liberal law schools and organize the poor while never holding a job that demands results within the context of larger organizational constraints don’t make good Presidents.
Ask anyone on the street if they would be willing to see the needy get the medical care they need and the answer is a massive “Hell yeah!”. But ask them HOW that is to happen and you get a whole bunch of, “Hell, I da’know.”.
And so’s the quandary of the average American.
And so it is, when faced with work, and love, and school and bills and and and…we are willing, almost demanding, that this burden be taken from us and handled by someone else. The Genesis. The lightning striking the mud.
I stumbled upon a recent report, Hat Tip Calculated Risk, that is saying a number of states are changing their unemployment eligibility standards. Apparently the number of weeks that a person is eligible for unemployment has been a standard 26 weeks:
…the maximum number of weeks that jobless workers can receive unemployment insurance to less than 26 weeks—a threshold that had served as a standard for all 50 states for more than half a century…
So, for 50 years we have been following a standard without question. It turns out that at least 6 states in the good ol’ US of A actually DO read TarHeel Red.
It turns out that this global economy has implications. Namely that money is movable and flexible. The other implication is that government is seen as damage and as much as possible people will avoid it; even uber-liberal ones like George Soros.
“It emerged that George Soros is to close his hedge fund to outside investors and will refund $1 billion to those who have put in money. The prominent financier blames new regulations that require investment advisors to register with the SEC.”
I’m pretty free market. I’m also of the mind that the best incentives are the ones that you remember your dad teaching you or that you teach your kids. Hard work, eat your vegetables, save your money, do your homework….stuff like that.
I like to think that most America teaches these things to their kids. And to the extent that some of us are better or worse, I guess that’s okay. But the idea is the same. This is a place where, if you work hard enough, you can have anything you want. Which, I’ve always thought the inverse were then true as well. This is a place where if you DON’T work hard enough, you can’t have anything you want.
So, I don’t like socialism. Either as a way to teach our kids how to live or as an economic system where we organize our society.
If you aren’t reading Carpe Diem, you should. Go, right now, check out Mark Perry’s site.
This whole thing started way back when. I was an avid reader of Rob Neyer over at ESPN. I was very much into baseball and stats and just the game. I loved me some Neyer. Since then, however, ESPN has made his stuff paid content and I no longer go to ESPN. But whatever, ‘nother story. One day, a long time ago, Rob mentioned a writer in Minnesota, Twins Geek. And Twins Geek wrote a blog. And I didn’t know what a blog was. But it had the words, Twins, Geek and Neyer, so I checked it out.
And it turns out Twins Geek is a dude from Minnesota who works in an office doing office type work who just loves to write.
And I love that.
So, now I know what a blog is and I start looking for one. And I trip upon Coyote Blog. And NOW it’s on. This is just too cool. And, after reading Coyote for awhile, I notice he refers us to Carpe Diem on a regular basis. And Mark Perry is from Minnesota. And he writes about interesting stuff in a way that just makes sense.
So I read him everyday.
In fact, he is a large inspiration for the stuff I write here. Only, like, he’s better and smarter, but hey, I have longer hair!
By the way, if you like baseball and can stand the Twins, check out this most amazing site dedicated to Sabermetrics with a Twin’s twist. This guy is the hero. Dropped out of school at the UofM, living in his mom’s townhouse blogging about baseball at 3,000 words a clip. Gets picked up by NBC sports and is livin’ large.
It would seem that people only care about monopolies when they are in the hands of anyone but the government. But, when in those trusted hands of Uncle Sam, it’s A-OK for an organization to have a legal strangle hold on a market.
