David Fries on Government

This morning, I was awoken by my alarm clock which is powered by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I took a shower in the clean, safe water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the channels regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration had determined the weather was likely to be, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast, consisting of food inspected by the US Department of Agriculture and taking medicine determined to be safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurately by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I got into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work, driving on roads built and maintained by local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, stopping on my way to purchase additional fuel of a composition and quality level determined and inspected by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the US Mint and regulated by the Federal Reserve System. I also stopped to deposit my mail to be delivered via the US Postal System, before I dropped my kids off at the public school, operated by my local government under guidance from the US Department of Education.

After work, I drove my NHTSA-approved car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which had not burned down in my absence thanks to state and local building codes and the fire marshal’s inspection, and which had not been plundered of its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then logged onto the Internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense, and posted on WSJ.com about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because government CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT.

Leadership

The World Bank predicts that the global economy will enter recession this year for the first time since the Second World War. The Washington-based bank added that global trade was heading for its steepest decline in 80 years, and that the impact of the downturn would hit developing countries hardest, particularly in Asia. It said poor countries faced a financing shortfall of up to 700 billion dollars because private sector creditors have fled emerging markets due to the financial crisis. The bank’s projections are significantly more pessimistic than those of its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund, which predicted last month that the world’s economy would continue to expand this year by half a percent.

At least we can count on the years of goodwill that the U.S. has bought to further our international interests rather than relying on the benefits of capitalism and military force. I’m sure that this will in no way affect attitudes toward more open trade and that any adverse effects on trade will be the sole responsibility of Obama.

Did I Imagine the Anthrax Attacks?

As President Bush bids farewell to the nation, he appears to be using the reductio ad absurdum arguement to prove that his decisions have made America safer though I have my doubts as to whether he put any thought into his logic selection. The arguement implies several assumptions that the sorry excuses for journalists seem unwilling to challenge: 1) Americans do not travel outside of our borders so attacks on our embassies do not count. 2) Domestic terrorism does not count. 3) Natural disasters should be managed by local authorities (the same people who are evacuating their families). 4) The fact that we have an all volunteer military (not counting stop loss) means that the life of an American soldier, sailor, marine, airmen, or even a coastie is worth less than an American civilian unless the Iraq war saved more than four thousand American civilian lives. Even if we assume that there would have been another equally successful attack equivelant to the September 11th attacks, the Iraq war has still resulted in more Americans dead and we have not prevented the threat of the same attack in the future. I certainly feel safer, but of course I am still alive.

Re: Money as Debt

I find it particularly frustrating that people assume that this information is hidden because it is not spoon fed to them. The basics of the monetary system are explained in the second year of most business and economic college curriculums. People can even take the class as an elective or, God forbid, go to the library and read a book about it. The fact that a large portion of America remains willfully ignorant makes presentations like these appear to be informative rather than be recognized as propaganda. Arguements on the accessablibity of a college education will fall on deaf ears here since I owe my own education to tuition assistance available to any American willing to work for four years. The two solutions to asymptotic monetary growth proposed in the video suffer from a complete lack of forethought on implementation. First, the proposal to link monetary growth to labor assumes that everyone’s labor productivity is equal. I assume that anyone that believes this has never asked for a raise or more vacation because that would imply they believe that their labor is worth more that the guy who was just hired. It would also imply that the value of education is negative since college takes four years to complete during which time you cannot work a full time job and therefor can exchange lass labor hours for goods and services than the guy who flunked out of high school. Second, the proposal for a government that prints money and charges no taxes seems to place an abundance of confidence in the fidelity and skills of the lawyers who run government agencies not to mention the rather dubvious assumption that Congress will forever keep the budget balanced for fear of printing too much moneywhich causes inflation and results in ever increasing taxes on the purchasing power of the country. While we are living in this fantasy world, we can also assume that international trade will be balanced because all that stuff you bought for Christmas probably wasn’t made in the USA.  If you thought your Nikes were expensive now, just wait until they are made by uneducated Americans.

Energy Security

Does anyone actually believe that the Pickens Plan that relies on natural gas powered vehicles will provide energy security for the U.S.? After all, I’m sure that America will have no problems securing cheap natural gas when European demand increases due to Russian supply issues.