Atlas Shrugged

Shortly after high school two of my oldest friends were all about Ayn Rand in much the same way they were excited about Marx a few years before. Meaning it didn't last long. It was long enough that I read a couple of her books but I never got around to her most well known works The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged. The latter is now a movie which I was able to pick up for free thanks to all these Red Box codes I have.

First as a movie I can sum it up in two words: Kinda Cheesy. The acting is wooden and the main character is a sort of Mary Sue, named Dagny. The plot is more like a water cooler joke than a plot twist. And the source material is obviously old because it doesn't seem to recognize innovations of the past fifty something years. Basically all I liked was the cinematography.

As a darling of conservative literature, in fact, a bible to some. I get it.  There is nothing elusive about the point Atlas Shrugged is pretty clear. If you know a little bit about Rand it is more extreme than you might think. Rand believes in the virtue of selfishness. There is some sense to this, it must be the prerogative of a business to make money. Steve Jobs wanted to have factories in the US but he couldn't figure out how to make money doing it.
Where I branch from conservatives is the counterpoint to the film. The villian of the movie is government regulation that attempts to make everything "fair". But it's just as easy to walk away with the lesson that it is corporate influence of government which is evil, because all the regulations that strangle these companies are passed because of one company trying to snuff out it's competition instead of innovating.
Ayn Rand is a guilty pleasure for many of her fans. The philosophy that rich people are our "heroes" because they are ruthless is a hard one to be sympathetic with because in arguing that everyone at the top is smarter and works harder there is a heavy implication that those who have not succeeded are lazy and stupid. I haven't read the book so I don't know how heavily it's implied,  but there's more.
 Social Conservatives would probably not be big fans of Atlas Shrugged as a philosophy lesson. A married man having an affair is something that happens in both literature and life. But when it happens in Atlas Shrugged it is Rand's ham handed philosophy at work. The virtue of selfishness extends even to interpersonal relationships in Rand's eyes and an affair is perfectly legitimate (Unless it's Rand's lover with a younger prettier woman from what I understand).
And finally history is against Atlas Shrugged. Published in 1957 Atlas Shrugged has had the problem of technology surpassing it. The plot revolves around a metal that is ten times lighter and stronger than steel. We have those metals now and they were developed by the government that Rand's followers constantly put down. As I've said before, most of the innovations our economy are based on came from tax payer money.

It isn't that Rand fails as a philosopher, she's given us an interesting perspective on the world, and that is all we should expect of her. The problem is when philosophers gain acolytes, who take the philosophy too literally. Yes there are pragmatic benefits to being selfish. But there are also consequences. That is why the government is supposed to administer justice. So business people can push the envelope and Feds can reign them in. The problem we face now is that the people haven't reigned in the government. Selfishness of the government is tyranny.

Who are the 1%

Besides the fact that "We are the 99%" is fairly vague, there are people invested in twisting the meaning (many of them are our elected officials). The most heinous example is the meme that 1% of citizens join the armed forces. It became obvious that the Occupy Movement isn't an anti-military movement when shortly after the meme came out a marine was nearly killed by Oakland PD.
Who are the 1% being protested against then? Technically it's the people making  $380,354 or more a year. But in practical terms 95% of that top percent are not the problem. The Occupy movement is a direct response to the Citizens United ruling, so it isn't the fact that people make too much money. The Occupy movement is against using big piles of money to manipulate the political system. Only .05% do this so "We are the 99%" is a misnomer.
If rich people stuck to buying yachts and creating jobs there wouldn't be any beef with them. Think about that image in your mind of an Occupier. Does s/he have a hacky sack and a drum? What would they do with more money? This is clearly not a jealousy thing.
Seriously though the people being protested against are the aggressors. They have taken more than their fair share and fix the game so no one else can play. And they are in defensible. Most of the people we are talking about are not job creators. They are speculators. It is not healthy for the economy to create incentives to be part of this group because their wealth is the most susceptible to bubbles.
The 1% was hardest hit by the recession because their wealth is mostly smoke and mirrors. Their investments are numbers games without substance. When the bottom fell out of the economy many of them were underwater like any other american. Banks have more private jets and yachts to repossess than they know what to do with.
And that is the cost to the 99%. When a rich person fails the bank doesn't even want to deal with their property. Either they have lawyers that keep the assets tied up or the ticket price is so high that the bank doesn't want to bother trying to find a buyer for the liquidation (because they're unwilling to sell it for the amount it's actually worth without hurting the value of neighboring properties). So the banks recoup their loss by going after the middle class or what little the lower class have.
It's class warfare because the 99% are tired of having the bad decisions of the .05% being taken out on them.

I was told there would be cake.

I recently had to drop my cable and Netflix (well I still get the streaming). My family can no longer afford those luxuries. We were thinking about dropping the DVD part of Netflix before the announced that they were raising their prices.
This has me wondering just how many CEOs don't understand what is going on out there. You can't get blood out of a stone, and you can't keep getting more and more money from people who don't have it. Credit has artificially delayed the reality of this fact. But reality is catching up but markets are setting themselves up for failure by not preparing for it.
This isn't a rant about how evil corporations are. It is a notice of concern. It bothers me that I am seeing a lack of companies attempting to widen their costumer base by lowering their rates. A profit can be made on a thinner margin if there is a bigger pool of customers so it isn't greed- it's inertia.
I believe that they truly don't get it. I think when they drive around and see five bedroom houses in lower income neighborhoods they think that we're living beyond our means. Which might be true but what is also true is more than likely everyone of those bedrooms is full. If that family doesn't have children filling those rooms they have friends/family down on their luck staying in those rooms- and they're probably not paying rent.
This is where The Beverly Hillbillies got it wrong. If the Clampetts had moved into a giant 100 room mansion they would have an overflow of extended house guests before the end of the 274 episodes were through. That's what happened to MC Hammer. He made it big and made himself broke because he brought half of Oakland with him.
Wall Street doesn't get it. And when the lower and middle class take to the streets or use elected officials as mediators they call it class warfare. But what do you call it when all the energy is being put into punishing poor people who honestly can't pay their bad mortgage deal while millionaires who simply choose not to pay their mortgage don't lose anything? What do you call it when you bail out all the banks that knew better than to offer sub-prime and not even discuss bailing out the homeowners who didn't (even if maybe they should have)?
And it doesn't have to be this way. Most of us like getting goods and services in exchange for money. 99% movement isn't a bunch of people that are pissed because their broke. It's about people trying not to be pulverized by the faceless bureaucratic of Wall Street and government.

Smarter government (cheaper more covered part 2)

I've been to hell. I spell it, I spell it DMV

Anyone that's been there knows precisely what I mean

Stood there and I've waited and choked back the urge to scream

-Primus, DMV (Pork Soda)

 When I was living in the greater Chicago-land area I dreaded going to the Illinois DMV ( though it's actually called Secretary of State's Office Vehicle something or other). But as it happened it was rather pleasant. My Republican voting uncle asked me the next day at work "wasn't it wonderful?"

Of course it wasn't wonderful. But it was painless. I wasn't frustrated. That's the most you can expect out of such a scenario. Mediacom could learn a thing or two from the state of Illinois. The difference between smarter government and what we usually get is the difference between a forgetable experience and one so hellish it must be expressed in song.
Now again, let me set up the parameters. This is not a libertarian discussion if the government should do things even if they can do it right. This is a discussion about how the government can do things better. Let's look at recent news.

Solyndra
If you don't follow the news what happened is that Obama made a loan to a solar panel company that went out of business even with the extra half a billion dollars. Is the lesson that the government shouldn't give loans no bank would give? perhaps. But let's not let the conversation die there. Next time the government wants to meddle in the private sector, they should patron it not be it's patriarch.
The Obama administration  making the same mistake with green jobs as Republicans are making with the economy as a whole. They are assuming that the problem is a lack of liquidity when the real problem is a lack of demand.
If the Obama administration is really serious about helping these companies- buy their products. Order half a billion dollars worth of solar panels for government buildings. If the company still goes out of business after that at least you were able to cut down the overhead of running several government agencies.
The same could have been done on the auto bailout (though that ended up working out okay). We could have put in an order for X amount of electric cars or hybrid hummers for the military. 

Post Office
Bad mouthing the Post Office has been a pet peeve of mine since 2008 when it seemed trendy for Republican Presidential candidates. It seems to me that the Post Office is an example of the government working, not an example of the opposite. I don't remember ever getting a letter lost (though there might have been one in my midtwenties or I might have found it behind my dresser when I moved). It's the cheapest way to send a small amount of paper. It goes much above and beyond what it's privately owned competition would do.
What is really the icing on my hatred of Post Office bashing on the part of Republicans is that they are only in office because of the Post Office. The life blood of the Republican party has been to use mass mailings to get out the older vote. So even though they say in public they would choose UPS, they go with the government owned model.
This ruckus over the Post Office seems to be manufactured. From my understanding the cash flow problems are primarily caused by a requirement that the Post Office have it's pension paid up for 75 years. That seems excessive. The fear is that the government will have to bailout the USPS in 75 years. Really? We're in a recession now and the Republican plan is to put Postal workers out of work now so don't have to worry about their pensions in the future.
I guess that's encouraging that the Republicans are so sure that we'll still be a country in 75 years because they don't seem to think that way when talking about any other issue. 

Cheaper and covers more people...

Watching either the CNN or MSNBC debate Herman Cain said something about the free market making things cheaper and covering more people. I could look it up but then I'd be tempted to take on the specific example instead of the philosophy.
There is a fine line between me and (many/most)conservatives on this but it's an important line. I think that the free market CAN offer cheaper services that reach more people than a government program. But I do not believe that it always does. There are several reasons for this, including:

Incentive
Government programs and businesses have different incentives. A government program is created to serve the masses, who often have more votes than dollars. A business is created to make money. A business is obligated to make it's stock rise every month (greed is a legal obligation in a way). And serving more people is not always going to be the most effective way to make money.

Imagination
Sometimes the market solution just hasn't been thought of yet. I don't think it's impossible for a private business to do a better job than the post office. But I haven't seen anyone come up with the way to do it yet. What about FedEx or UPS? Let's just say apples and oranges for now.


Inertia
If a company is already making money serving a few people it is less likely to go out of it's way to change it's strategy to widen it's costumer base. FedEx and UPS are competing with each other on shipping boxes. They are so busy trying to come out on top over the other they might not even have the resources to invest in trying to figure out a way to send one or two pieces of paper for less than fifty cents a piece.

That's it for now but I'll be sure to expand on this as I come up with more. There may be an argument for why government shouldn't get involved with things like healthcare or delivering the mail. But for now I am focusing on whether or not the market is always the best solution for the most people. The answer is only if helping more people equates to more profit. And it raises another question. What do we do about all the people the market doesn't help?
The government didn't take on all these responsibilities on a lark. There was a vacuum.
Public Schools were created because the private schools weren't educating enough people. Obamacare was created because insurance won't/doesn't serve enough sick people. OSHA was created because it is sometimes cheaper for employers not to provide a safe work environment. And welfare was created because living expenses were not low enough for the under- and unemployed.

Rand Paul defends tea party but fails...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sen. Rand Paul today issued a statement regarding the current mud-slinging and finger-pointing toward the Tea Party for the U.S. credit downgrade.
"Blaming the Tea Party for America's debt crisis and downgrade is like blaming the fireman for fires.
"The Tea Party has been fighting for a serious solution that would rescue our finances through immediate spending cuts, spending caps and most importantly, a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. With the support of the Tea Party, I offered the only solution that could have prevented our downgrade with our Cut, Cap and Balance plan.
"While Democrats would like to lay blame on the Tea Party for the current economic failure, it is their President who has failed in leadership, failed to lower unemployment, failed to rescue our economy, failed to prevent a downgrade of our debt, and failed to control spending."
###

This is a statement Rand Paul put out and it enforces what I've always said about him. He doesn't get it. He is wearing his dad's shoes but they don't fit. I do like Ron Paul and voted for him in the 2008 primaries.
I actually agree not to blame the tea party. I blame the politicians trying to placate them while also trying to placate the lobbyist that donate to their campaigns. Rand Paul would have been right to say "Don't blame the Tea Party, Blame the hawks who are pretending military spending isn't part of the budget." instead of blaming the Democrats.
The reason I like Ron Paul is he is an honest critic of both sides of the aisle. Ron Paul actually thinks about the issues. Rand Paul seems to just say what he thinks people who like his father want to hear. Rand doesn't think who/what is actually to blame. Rand starts this press release with criticizing finger pointing then ends it with pointing his own finger at the Democrats.
Now there is something I disagree with both Ron and Rand about: how we define limited. The easiest way to condense it is that they would say "the government should do as little as possible" while I would add the word probably in there. The manifestation of that difference is that I don't believe in the market as dogmatically as they do.
I bring this up with the statement above is that Rand uses a sort of embarrassing example

"Blaming the Tea Party for America's debt crisis and downgrade

is like blaming the fireman for fires."

I point this out because the firefighters in this country were not always government run- they used to be privatized. The business model for these free market fire brigades is that the brigade that actually puts out the fire is the one that would be paid. The result was sometimes that two brigades would show up at the same time and get in a brawl with each other while the building continued to burn.

Now it wasn't the fault of the firefighters that the fire was started but it was their fault that the building burned down. Firefighters are actually the perfect example of the divide between the left and right.

If you live in California today, you can buy private fire protection, and your house will not burn down in wildfires. The private company will cover your house in retardant foam and be completely safe while all of your neighbors without the service have all their houses burn down.

Someone right leaning hears this story as a testament to the free market. Fire departments run by the government can not protect someone's house like that. And once someone is paying for such a service they start to wonder why the government is taking their money to pay for crappy government run fire protection.

The progressive left hears about private protection and  might think "Well that's nice for the people who can afford it but what about the rest of us?"

I haven't heard Rand Paul say it but the only right-leaning rebuttal to that question I have ever heard is that they believe in the generosity of Americans. That seems to be too easy an answer after the government has been taking care of a social need that generosity never seemed to handle right before.

GOP thou shall not bare false witness

On GPS this week, Fareed Zakaria made the argument that conservatives are being irrational in their philosophy because they keep repeating the same statements about tax rates being directly related to economic strength, dispute the fact that taxes are proportionately at historic lows and countries with higher taxes are doing better than America.
Where I disagree with Zakaria is that the 'conservatives' are not being irrational they are being dishonest. These talking points are #notintendedtobefactual. The first evidence of this is all the socialist talk about Obama. The fact that Bernie Sanders didn't rise to power should be a clue to the fact that it just isn't true. The second evidence is all this Reagan revisionist history. If you watch the documentary "I want your money" (available for streaming on netflix) one of the first things the film tells you is that Reagan cut taxes, but they never got around to mentioning that this wasn't feasible and Reagan was forced to raise them back up. Remember when Bush Sr. said "Read my lips no new taxes"? The reason he had said that was that because the previous 'conservative' did introduce new taxes.
This goes back to a previous post I wrote about what republicans care about. The GOP tells it's operatives to SAY they care about abortion and fiscal responsibility. But they never DO anything about abortion or fiscal responsibility unless it's part of a political stunt.

Can we cut spending in a recession?

One of the reasons I like Ron Paul is because he is practical and compassionate enough to realize that, though he thinks the government is providing services it shouldn't, he realizes that people are dependent on those programs. If given the opportunity Paul would cut the programs, but he would do it gradually.
I bring this up in the context of the tea party fueled Republicans demanding $100 Billion in cuts. I bring it up in the context of 20% increase in CEO salary and an unemployment rate of nearly 10%.
How do you cut spending when the government is the only one hiring? Do you remember that polar bear study John McCain used to make fun of in his campaign? That spending is jobs.
In fact the entire economic strategy for our economy is subsidized by tax money. Both Republicans and Democrats are banking our future on American Innovation. But American Innovation is heavily bankrolled by Congress.
It's because we fund things like studies of polar bears that we figure out new medicines and technology. Medicines and technologies that lead to more jobs down the line. We can not both cut spending and count on the dividends of that spending.
If Republicans have a different route to ensuring America stays ahead in innovation, they have failed to share a convincing argument. De-regulation isn't an area we can compete in. There will always be another country with even lower regulations and standard of living.

Sharia isn't as bad as you might have heard.

From the political right I've been hearing some fear mongering over Islamic/Sharia law and how horrible it is. I'm about the last person who would want to live under religious rule but even I am not afraid to see what it's all about. A little skimming through some pages on Sharia and I found two things that don't make it sound evil.
The first isn't something I'd want to implement but it shows that Christians do not own the market on compassion for the poor. Zakat is a tax on the wealth (not income) of everyone who can afford to feed themselves. The tax is used to ease the suffering of those in extreme poverty.
The second is something that I hope catches on more in America. Islamic law forbids interest on loans. Banks adhering to Islamic law share the risk on any loan or investment by partnering with the person looking for the loan and selling their 'shares' to the client over time.  Charging a percentage owed is considered amoral. The bank makes it's money from a negotiated flat rate.
Islamic style loans are not immune to exploiting the clients ( someone will always try to beat the system). But in a 'free market' we are supposed to have purchasing power from having a variety of choices. The problem is that the corporate environment is to make us believe that purchasing power comes from a lot of companies offering more or less the same deals. It is much better if they would offer us different solutions for the same problem.
Instead of fear mongering ideas like we should be dissecting them. We should take the parts we like and discard the rest. The constitution it's self 'borrows' from earlier language of older documents (pursuit of happiness wasn't an original idea) and improved on them. We should continue to do that with taboo ideas like Sharia. And as a side effect people who are being taught to hate the west will find that harder to do when they see pieces of their culture assimilated into ours.