Monthly Archives: March 2009

And suddenly I wonder if I missed my calling to be a labor advocate…

So I got my first Teamster magazine (no, I’m not joking). And the first news item I turn to tells me that the freight Teamsters voted for a pay decrease. (Here’s an earlier story).

At first I was really touched to see this level of realism. We are in a deflationary spiral and all our wages (as well as prices) are going to shrink (probably fairly soon). So it was awesome to see these guys displaying wisdom.

But then I saw what it was that they think they are going to get to keep because of their sacrifice. They are trying to keep pensions and health care benefits.

I’ll leave the health benefits alone right now. Lets talk pensions.

Right now, you should never believe any corporation that claims they will give you a pension.

  • Even if they are honest, they can’t be sure they will be around to provide the funds.
  • Whether or not they are honest is something you probably won’t ever be able to discover until it is too late.
  • The laws are not sufficient to predictably force the people involved to keep their word, and once the money is gone there is nothing the government can do.
  • You won’t have a second chance to work all your life to get a pension once your first company goes bankrupt.

I think it is intrinsically fraudulent to motivate people with pensions as “compensation” for a job.  If I had the power, I would simply make it illegal.  We would all be better off getting paid more and then finding various (!) ways to save and invest for the future.  The idea that the company you work for should provide for your entire life seems patronizing and feudalistic anyway.  Whether my gut is right about that or not, the fact remains that no company can be trusted to do it.

What has the government done to our money?

YouTube – Peter Schiff interview (Taki’s Magazine, March 9 2009).

I’m only posting this video for the first ten or fifteen seconds or so.  I’ve been hearing about how the DOW is back down ten years or so.  But what about inflation.  The interviewer says that we are back to the eighties.

Which explains one reason why stock market speculation (Oh, I mean “investment”) seems so necessary.  Keep you money in the bank and watch your purchasing power dwindle.  You are forced into the market to race with inflation.

So we are now all the way back to the Reagan era.  Back when Paul Volcker was courageous enough to put us through a recession to clear out the bad economy and put us in a better place.  I doubt will see that kind of courage this time around.

Pro-war but anti-soldier? Can this get any worse?

Wow.  Michele McGinty posted a news story that makes me want to scream.  I seem to have understated the problem with Obama as an antiwar candidate.

Just to be clear, I think our nation is broke and we need to massively cut back on spending.  Given the cycle that we have seen in history between depression and world wars, we can’t afford to let a new FDR drag a bubble crash into a major years-long depression (note there are already signs of Europe responding as before).  This can arguably seen as a necessity of national defense.

So we should be cutting spending!  If only for the economics of it we should be pulling troops from not only Iraq and Afghanistan but also South Korea, Germany, and all other foreign locations.  We can’t afford our national defense strategy any more.  We need to shrink the military and settle for border protection.

But the Commander-in-Chief is increasing spending and stepping up our presence in a major hot zone: Afghanistan.

So where does he cut spending?  He cuts medical care for troops after they have been damaged by our foreign wars.  I don’t even know how to express how perverse this is.

Various and Sundry Political Opinions

  • Parliamentary democracy (or republicanism) is, over all, the worst possible form of government.  It is a context in which rational people pursuing self-interest act in a way to commit national suicide and destroy everything they hold dear.
  • Legislatures are to The Law what state economic planning boards are to the economy.  Law should be made by judges settling cases according to known ethical standards with an eye on precedent.  Law made by gigantic committees are as likely to be conducive to just laws as the post office is likely to be efficient or Amtrak to turn a profit. Legislation is to law what Esperanto is to language.
  • Controlling the world is not a workable defense strategy.
  • It is perfectly possible to imagine an unelected ruling class making society better for everyone, so long as that ruling class is made up of a genuinely superior culture.  But it is impossible that a ruling class will do anything but damage a society if the ruling class is at the same cultural level as the servile class.  And the ruling class will always believe that they are a superior culture.
  • The best way to run a tyranny is to train everyone in “the rule of law” and get them to believe in it and be proud of it.  If you are an open dictator you will have to micro-manage way too much to have any fun.  Everyone will be paralyzed awaiting your pleasure.  But give people confidence in the rule of law and you will have a prosperous society.  All you need is to provide a way to force exceptions for yourself when you want to.  This will actually be easier to do when everyone is confident that they have the rule of law.
  • Rule by elected parliamentarians means rule by invisible people.
  • The war between the haves and have-nots is an illusion.  It is actually a war between the have-mores and the have-not-as-muches.  They always say it is “about the children” when it is actually about the teachers’ union.  The have-nots never have real clout.  They get benefits that provide jobs to managers of their benefits.