Category Archives: political-economy

Not too in love with the President right now…

“When the Texas Rangers [professional baseball] opportunity came along [1989], Bush was a man of modest wealth….Young Bush got on the telephone and raised money from truly wealthy investors to buy the team. He bought a two-percent stake for $600,000 using borrowed money….

“One of the first moves was to threaten to move the Rangers out of Arlington….The tactic worked. Bush and his allies arranged for a special referendum, held in January. Arlington voters were asked to approve a half-cent increase in the sales tax….

“The Bush investor group hired professional campaign consultants — Democrats — to manage the election. The opposition, predictably, objected to higher taxes. More than that, they protested that it was just not right for people rich enough to finance their own stadium to force others to buy it for them. The campaign pros, with $130,000 to spend, easily rolled over the barely organized local opposition in the special referendum….

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Ramble: free-market ideal of individual economic freedom has to be a novelty

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Individual economic freedom: I’m all for it, being me and all.

But I doubt it had that much relevance to, say, the American Revolution (which I think counts as a revolution because, rather than fighting the king to force him to acknowledge their rights, they simply cut off the king to enforce their rights for themselves–I’m not judging this one way or another, just recognizing the revolutionary step). It may have had a bit. It all depends when you date the industrial revolution and how far you date it at the time.

I had, coming out of college, more or less seen individual liberty as a progress of constitutional recognitions of rights that could be tracked as a series of political wins. For example, the Magna Carta would be a part of this heritage.

But, at the same time, being deeply immersed in libertarian/”capitalist” theory/propaganda, I more or less correlated or even smudged this with economic individual liberty. Free individuals making free choices about price, purchase, investment, and risk were the key ingredient in a prosperous and civilized community.

But to even begin thinking that way, there is a necessary precondition: It must be widely understood that your carreer is largely undetermined and unconstrained by your father’s career. Otherwise, it simply makes no sense. If you are a blacksmith because your father is a blacksmith dealing with landlords and with farmers whose lives have been determined the same way, then you are not going to think much about the freedom of “a person” as an individual needing economic freedom. You will think of yourself as a member of a class that is trying to find a correct fit with other classes.

You will think this way because anything else would be irrelevant and stupid.

You go to the bookstore and you will find a whole industry on how to choose a career, how to measure your gifts/skills/proclivities/turn-ons, how to present yourself and find your place in the economy. Did this literature even exist in the 1770s. Maybe Poor Richard’s Almanac was the start. Maybe geographic displacements make this sort of thinking more likely. Maybe. But I doubt it was that common compared to the 1850s. And so on. Continue reading →

Retraction: John Perkins on Economic Enslavement

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I quoted this entry because the bare economics sounded plausible. But Paul Duggan sent me this link and now I’m highly doubtful. In any case, I’m more interested in a discussion of economic systems than alleged conspiracies.

Today is tax day (as was yesterday and will be tomorrow…)

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Fiduciary mythology I just saw awesome quotation about magic, money, and hallucinations that is inspiring this really brief post.

So I thought I would share this lovely book cover put out by a private yet public yet private national yet private institution, the Federal Reserve of NY, NY.

Once Upon a Dime if considered objectively, should compare favorably to any creationist book from the perspective of Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris. (That’s not my perspective–I’m just pointing out I’m waiting for Letter to a Scamming Kleptocracy to hit the NYTimes bestseller list any day now). If we applied the rigorous history and scientific standards displayed in this work, it is about like a comic book teaching children that bleeding is good medicine or that bugs come into existence spontaneously in bags of rotting potatoes.

In the book, a particular need arises and in the middle of trying to meet the need through complicated barter negotiations, the natives realize that they need money.

So they invent it.

They find something worthless that is just lying around, put an official stamp on it, and all agree to treat it as money. How are prices set, we are never told. The authors actually show that, in the barter system, the trades are ad hoc decisions based on needs at they arise. there is no hint of standard trade values between goods. So prices fluctuate–that much is realistic.

So why would anyone accept these “dimes”? Or, if they did, how would they set prices? There is no way.

I bring this up because, even though today is tax day, the most important tax is going on every day. Over and over again new money is pumped into the economy devaluing the money already in circulation. Take this rather uncontroversial observation:

Recession is upon us, economists seem to agree, and now we need only discuss how to get out of it. One popular solution is to cut interest rates and print money. That has worked in the past for most of the U.S., but it did not work for Rust Belt states and cities such as Michigan, Cleveland, and Buffalo. The Rust Belt was unattractive to new business investment due to its high labor costs, high taxes (many of which were necessary to pay for commitments made decades earlier, either bonds or pensions for public employee unions), and inner-city crime (Detroit). Companies did invest the newly printed money, but they invested it in other regions of the U.S.

OK. What does that tell us? That not only did the people of Michigan, Cleveland, and Buffalo have to put up with a slumped economy, they also had to experience the government gradually robbing them of the value of their money so that people could get rich elsewhere.

Through the Fed, every day is tax day, from the poor to the rich, from the workers to the investors. From those going down to those on their way up.

Why didn’t Machen have any peace children?

This isn’t a mobile phone blog, but…

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Obviously, I’m obsessing over this post about Motorola (see my Tumblr rss feed in the side bar as well as the previous post). But while the letter is prophetic, I have to comment on this:

In order to turn the handset division around, you need to bring in another Frost; someone worldly and dynamic who is more interested in Motorola’s success than their own corporate career. You need to task the company’s designers with the same mantra that created the RAZR — make me a phone that looks, feels, and works like a symbol of wealth and privilege. Recognize the superiority of American software, and bring back those jobs so irresponsibly outsourced to China and Russia.

Yeah, I’m OK with nice design but the idea of millions of American consumers running up their credit cards to have a symbol of wealth and privilege seems less than glorious. But the fact is that Nokia is now the world’s leader (or was at the end of last year; I haven’t been keeping up and these things seem to turn around on a dime) in handsets by a large margine in good measure because they sell cheap handsets to emerging markets around the world. So this isn’t the only path to growth.

Also, how often can this be repeated? People who thought their RAZR was hot and now think it is old are probably going to realize that they had over-valued it in the first place. So part of the allure is probably not repeatable.

One of my favorite political books is coming back into print–actually, my only favorite for American politics

An Owellian version of “law and order”

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New reminder of how criminality comes from a badge:

So far, Chesapeake police have given no indication that they did any investigation to corroborate the tip from their informant. There’s no mention in the search warrant of an undercover drug buy from Frederick or of any extensive surveillance of Frederick’s home.

More disturbingly, the search warrant says the confidential informant was inside Frederick’s house three days before the raid—about the same time Frederick says someone broke into his home. Frederick’s supporters have told me that Frederick and his attorney now know the identity of the informant, and that it was the police informant who broke into Frederick’s home.

Chesapeake’s police department isn’t commenting. But if true, all of this raises some very troubling questions about the raid, and about Frederick’s continued incarceration.

Special prosecutor Paul Ebert said at a recent bond hearing for Frederick that Shivers, the detective who was killed, was in Frederick’s yard when he was shot, and that Frederick fired through his door, knowing he was firing at police.

Frederick’s attorney disputes this. Ebert also said Frederick should have known the intruders were police because there were a dozen or more officers at the scene. But some of Frederick’s neighbors dispute this, too. One neighbor told me she saw only two officers immediately after the raid; she said the others showed up only after Shivers went down.

What’s clear, though, is that Chesepeake police conducted a raid on a man with no prior criminal record. Even if their informant had been correct, Frederick was at worst suspected of growing marijuana plants in his garage. There was no indication he was a violent man—that it was necessary to take down his door after nightfall.

The raid in Chesapeake bears a striking resemblance to another that ended in a fatality. Last week, New Hanover County, N.C., agreed to pay $4.25 million to the parents of college student Peyton Strickland, who was killed when a deputy participating in a raid mistook the sound of a SWAT battering ram for a gunshot, and fired through the door as Strickland came to answer it.

In the case where a citizen mistakenly (and allegedly) shot through his door at a raiding police officer, the citizen is facing a murder charge; in the case where a raiding police officer mistakenly shot through a door and killed a citizen, there were no criminal charges.

Over the last quarter century, we’ve seen an astonishing rise in paramilitary police tactics by police departments across America. Peter Kraksa, professor of criminology at the University of Eastern Kentucky, ran a 20-year survey of SWAT team deployments and determined that they have increased 1,500 percent since the early 1980s—mostly to serve nonviolent drug warrants.

This is dangerous, senseless overkill. The margin of error is too thin, and the potential for tragedy too high to use these tactics unless they are in response to an already violent situation (think bank robberies, school shootings or hostage-takings). Breaking down doors to bust drug offenders creates violent situations; it doesn’t defuse them.

Another example of how the state of nature is actually a political creation in real life.

More examples here and here.

Hat Tip: Chris

CA (anti) homeschooling news

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After treating patients for 15 years, Kathy Adams Morgan hung up her stethoscope to educate her daughter full time at their Point Loma home.Eight years later, Morgan has no regrets. It’s easy to see why.

At 13, Jenny scores high on standardized tests and balances academics with organized sports, Girl Scouts, dance – and the ever-important teenage social life.

But according to a recent state appellate court ruling, it is illegal for Morgan – and the thousands of California parents who home-school their children – to teach without credentials.

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

The ruling has rattled home-school families in San Diego County and throughout California. It is the subject of much speculation on the blogs, Web sites and networks that link thousands of home-schoolers statewide.

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Finland & Education