Oh look, a goblin socialist

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/12/market-cant-solve-everything-alone.html

This is a common market problem: while the action is good for the whole, the gain is so little that the people don't care, while the few negatively affected do. Here comes the necessity for rules and enforcing agencies, to stop things that are bad for lot of people just a little. If my car is emitting too much CO and NOx, no person in the county are poisoned enough to personally sue me. On the other hand not fixing my car saves me $500, so I won't. But the National Traffic Agency forces me to get my car checked every second year and takes its license plate if it has bad emissions, making me to fix it.

The perfect example is the 2008 depression: whenever a banker repacked a bunch of crap papers and insured them and repacked the insurance too and sold it to several investment funds, he made lot of money, while harming no single individual. He increased the risk of everyone by a tiny little bit. You know how that story ended, right?

Ayn Rand would be crying right now at this blatant support for socialist and government intervention in the market. That is, she would be crying if she was not dead and incapable of human emotion.

Let's get to the facts: if people can't protect themselves from 'the market' or 'externalities', it's because they're too cheap or economically weak to do so. If people get tricked by bad derivatives, it's because they were too stupid to investigate them properly. If they were smart they'd have been the ones selling them.

So there's no market problem here, just a whole lot of people who were too lazy to see what they were buying. Should we really be letting lazy, stupid people dictate the market? Well sure, if by "dictate" you mean "be lazy and stupid so we can take their money", but if you mean have regulations to protect them, no.

But let's just say we do want to think about this "greater good" that the socialists love so much. Even then, since the market efficiently distributes resources while socialism kills millions of its own subjects, we can see that a so-called imperfect market is still for the greater outcome. In other words, any regulation at all, even the slightest bit, is not just the slippery slope to socialist takeover, it is itself socialist takeover.

But what else should I expect from someone raised in the Soviet mentality?

Random idiots on the random bus

The other day I was waiting for the bus and this old lady with all these bags hobbles up next to me. I moved away a bit. She tried to talk to me but was all screechy: "DO YOU KNOW WHERE THIS BUS GOES?" I told her to look it up and not bother me. She wandered over and bothered someone else. Someone needs to learn2internet.

Eventually the bus comes, I swipe my card and get on, grab a good seat. She starts bugging the driver about where the bus goes. I yelled at her and eventually she shut up and tried to pay. Had all these crumpled bills that didn't fit. I yelled at her for that too, but she didn't go any faster. Eventually the driver traded some bills with her and then she's shaking while putting them in and I'm face-palming. I mean, wow, why are you taking the bus if you can't even use it properly?

Just to confirm it all, or if you're smart you could have predicted it beforehand, she's dressed in these dirty rags. And yea, the bags. Had these thick glasses that I swear I saw a like recycling symbol on, literal coke bottle glasses.

Ugh.

Hey city government, you want to know why people don't like taking the bus? It's because of people like this who don't know what they're doing. How about a dress code? If you're wearing terrible clothes you're clearly not going to a job, so you're worthless anyway and don't need the bus. And don't get me started on the damn kids who are taking the bus for the first time. Kick them off! It's ridiculous that a respectable person like me gets stuck on the same bus as these lowlifes, and even worse, they get to the exact same stop as me.

We should just start running our own buses, charging our own fees, and checking to not let on these scum.

The BP spill was caused by communism

In this case I am using communism to refer to communal ownership. Or more accurately, ownership by no one, but benefit taken by whoever can get it.

Why would BP let this happen? Oh, sure get all up in arms. Yes, they let it happen. Why should they not? Of course they dislike the loss of the oil. But most of the economic loss is not theirs. They will never pay the full cost. They know this and it factors into their calculations of how to spend resources.

We've seen this before with the Ford Pinto. Short version: the cost of recalling the car and fixing the problem was estimated to be more than the cost of lawsuits or whatever else would come up. Human life was indirectly given a value, in the form of how much people would whine about deaths. It sounds horrible, doesn't it?

It's merely rational economic choice for the company. Why should they spend more than they'd benefit? They are not a charity.

I'm a monster, aren't I? Oh no. I am just able to see the problem and the solution. The problem isn't corporate greed. That is merely a force; like gravity. Do we blame gravity for plane crashes? That would be stupid. No, the true problem is externalities: benefits or costs which are not incurred by the groups which are part of an economic decision.

BP will never pay the full cost of the gulf spill. Is the solution greater regulation, greater fines? No. That is just going to add more government, more taxes, and doesn't actually fix the problem and more than sticking a box on the leak would fix it (it hasn't, btw). Instead the solution is to make BP responsible for the damage to the Gulf of Mexico: the coastal areas, the fisheries, the tourism.

How do we make them responsible without more government? The free market of course! Remove the communism, the free use of the water, the ability to cause damage without incurring any cost: Privatize the water.

Sell the gulf to BP and other companies. This would settle a huge portion of the government debt, while also reducing government burden, thereby killing two birds with one stone and poisoning their food supply. In this metaphor the birds are bad government (redundant).

They could then lease the fisheries and beaches and whatever else. That profit stream would give a strong incentive to keep the water clean, much stronger than government bureaucrats looking over their shoulders.

If it happens that they still don't care, then it only means that the non-oil revenues were insufficient. It means that they were not viable as a sustained source of economic benefit.

The crisis of the commons is most easily fixed by privatizing the commons.

Socialist Salt

You might have heard that the FDA is moving towards regulating salt. That means Obama is taking over the salt and soup industries just as he did with healthcare.

It's a scheme to boost the retail salt business. Obama is in the pocket of Big Salt. He's removing the freedom of soup-makers to buy cheap salt in bulk, instead forcing consumers to buy expensive salt in small cardboard containers with those metal lid things.

Regulated salt means higher prices and less choice. Also food will taste bad. You know where else food tasted bad? Communist Russia.

Think about where we are headed.

The Pinko-tailed Inn

You may or may not be aware of a gnomish blogger named Larisa. She runs the aptly-named Pink Pigtail Inn. She's a nice, motherly sort of blogger. Or should we say paternalistic? Perhaps.

I suspect she's actually a Communist. Soviet-style, authoritarian, world-domination-obsessed, murderous Communist. Let's paint the picture.

She hates capitalism.

She insists on leadership which tells everyone what to do exactly when. One might think this means the efficient capitalism of Henry Ford, if she didn't hate capitalism.

Then there's the double-talk that the Soviets used to love.
Time to Make Our Own Cataclysm
The week before: Peace! Please!

She gets lonely. Sounds like a real anti-individualist. There are plenty of friends at the collective farm!

A post including the title: "The curse of choice." Really, the curse? Do you need the Party to tell you what to do all the time?

Blogging about your guild may put you in trouble. Can you say censorship?

This is all surface-level. Let's go deeper. She's friends with another gnome who runs a blog called "Armaggedon's coming!" Sounds a bit like the revolution, doesn't it, COMRADE!?

One might expect gnomes to gno better. Aha, a pun. Get it? Soviets don't. They always say "In Soviet Russia, pun gets you," which I assume is some sort of threat.

Gnomes had their capitol blown up by the infighting of their leaders and foreign invasion. Nuclear Armageddon. Hm... where have we heard that before?

I rest my case.

Dog is to Wolf as Socialist is to Human

What are dogs? They are the lazy beggars of the world. They were once wolves, intelligent and capable of cooperation, but not collectivist. Then the lazy ones, the social ones, started following the humans. They accepted a submissive position in return for handouts. And then they were bred for greater submissiveness, greater social behavior.

The result is that the proud wolf is now the lowly, mindless dog.

And the wolf? The capitalist of the animal world? It is hunted to extinction.

God is a Socialist

Gods are the ultimate form of government. They can do more than imprison or kill; they can take your very soul, burn it for all eternity, and then after that, kill it. Yes, they can do something after an eternity. They're gods.

They can demand taxes: sacrifices. They tell us how to act. They give no privacy and make it clear that we have none from them.

Which brings me to my point: evolution.

There is a certain sort of blind, unthinking idiot who believes in the literal word of Genesis the same way he believes in the unregulated and unrestricted free market. They do not know why either of them are true (or not). They only believe because they've been told to. Those who disagree are called socialists and godless. I'm all for attacking socialism, but only by those who know why. These people take it as a matter of faith that the free market is better.

Blind idiots.

Anyone who believes in the free market and creationism is a fool. An unthinking fool.

What is evolution? It is a word which attempts to encapsulate a process of success or failure of combinations of genes and environments. This is an unregulated process. There are no bailouts, no free lunches, no minimum wage. Species rise and fall only as they are able to adapt to their environments.

Evolution is the free market of genetics.

Logically that makes creationism or intelligent design the socialism of genetics. That makes God a socialist and all who teach creationism (sorry, teach 'the controversy') cosmic communists.

Reagan spoke of godless Communists, but he never bothered to see the God Communist.