WEEKLY SOUTHERN ARTS
"Sometime the boogaloo 
  • Home
  • Guns, Faith and Murder
  • The Million Dollar Store
  • Artistic Con-cepts
  • Judy Garland - "Soul Singer"
  • Robert & Jimi and the Twenty Seven Blues
  • The Great Pretenders
  • Imagine
  • Me and Junior Parker
  • The Republican
  • Sweet Home Chicago (The Obama Shakedown)
  • The Ballad of Hunter & Joe
  • The 22-yr-old Bottle Blonde
  • Is It Alright...To Be White?
  • Resist the Devil and He Will Flea
  • Music & Reminiscence
  • Lowell George searching for authenticity
  • A Telling Lie
  • Part One: The Monster Is Summoned
  • Like Billy Eckstein Singing to an Empty Club at 1:00 AM on a Saturday Night in 1975.
  • Bent
  • Kelly Joe Phelps
  • Why The Devil Don't Come Around No More
  • Hearing Junior Wells “On Tap'' one more Time
  • Muddy and Me
  • Unwitting Hypocrisy is The Best Kind of Hypocrisy
  • Excess Baggage
  • Excess Baggage pt. 2
  • Fake News Is The New Real News
  • The Death of Billy Graham and Manufacturing Consent
  • American Youth: The Rise of The New Media
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Talk About Slavery and Shit
  • Just Smoke
  • Monkey in a Box
  • How The Children of Sal and Dean Destroyed The World
  • On This Cold Winter's Morn
  • The Crime of the Century
  • Evidence: What The Hell Is It?
  • They Were Pissed: America, Jack Kerouac, and the Beats
  • Negotiating The Maze Of Life and a Blues Shuffle.
  • Everyone Is Hitler (In their own Way)
  • The Mystery of The Giant Balloon Shark
  • Subterfuge and Its Discontents
  • God Debunks Global Warming
  • Day Two: God Continues To Debunk Global Warming
  • Strzoking Russia
  • The Al Franken Effect. Or, How to Destroy America and Lose Elections
  • The Big Maybe
  • The News Apocalypse
  • The Guitarticle (Guitar article)
  • The Nation of Lucifer
  • Slurring Pocahontas
  • Why Everything Good Said About Net Neutrality is a Lie
  • .....and behold, The Cause of Your Demise Is Upon You
  • The Trans-boy That Cried Wolf
  • Believe Nothing
  • Donald Trump Blasts The Heads Off Of Tiny Woodland Creatures
  • The Problem of Hypocrites
  • Roy Moore: Serial Pervert
  • I'm So Frustrated
  • The Devil's Whisper
  • Science Can't Dance
  • You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody
  • Louie C. K.
  • Common Sense
  • Hunting For Witches
  • Living in The Age of "tRump"
  • The Devil is a Hustler
  • The Skinny
  • Eric Dolphy
  • ISIS Rode in On a Donkey
  • "The Manafort Indictment"
  • The Truth About the Middle East
  • Dennis Budimer's "Alone Together" Revisited
  • The Halloween Edition
  • The 20th Century Was Groovy
  • The Salesman
  • The Dossier
  • Elmore James
  • Isle of The Poor
  • The Patriarchy is Alive and Well
  • Moving Napoleon
  • Guns and Guerrillas
  • Playing Four
  • Hollywood and Scumbags
  • Why Everything You Think, Is Wrong
  • Killing Yourself With Terrorism
  • Being Liberal
  • Laced With Hate
  • A Message From Occupy Democrats
  • A Taxing Dilemma
  • What Really Happened with Aid in Puerto Rico
  • Colin Kaepernick and Beyoncé are geniuses. Part 1
  • When the Levee Breaks
  • The Second Coming of Anthony Weiner
  • How to Never Lose a Fight
  • Creating Chaos out of Meaning
  • Crime and Punishment
  • The Man in the Mirror
  • Guitar Gods of the Sixties
  • Entopy: A Play in One Act
  • The Ragged Tale of a Poverty Stricken Economic Genius
  • The Dreamers
  • Hey There Georgy Girl
  • This Is Not a Defense of Joel Osteen. Or is it?
  • The Ballad of Poindexter Glockenspiel
  • The Big Dummy
  • More Florida in Pictures and Text
  • How Do I Hate Thee
  • Florida in Images and More Images
  • "How To Solve The Healthcare Crisis and Why It's So Damned Hard To Fix"
  • The Big Lie
  • The Demise of the West
  • “Good Times! Good Times! You know, we talkin’ bout Good Times!”
  • "Justice My Ass!"
  • Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
  • The Coming Apocalypse and How to Avoid it: a Historical/Biblical Perspective.
  • "Muthafuckin' Chains!"
  • Lies Our Father's Told Us
  • Poetry and Politics - a few mixed verses
  • The Inner Man
  • The Vampire and The Carpet Salesman
  • Comey Speaks!
  • A Word From Nostradamus about the Comey Hearings
  • The Towering Babble
  • Chain of Fools
  • I Got Ramblin' on My Mind
  • Telling Ourselves Stories
  • Shit! Make Me Wanna Holler!
  • Even More Reasons Why The Paris Accords are Total Horseshit.
  • When Life Imitates Satire
  • Jethro and Becky Sue Come To America
  • Random Apocrypha
  • Why The Paris Climate Accords Are Total Horseshit
  • Urban Stories
  • The Kingdom of God: a personal rant
  • Urban Week @ South Beach
  • Serpico Revisited
  • The Road To Surf-dumb. Or, is it The Road To Serfdom?
  • This is Not a Political Article
  • My Hometown
  • What Does This Mean?
  • We're All Fools Sometime
  • One Pill Makes You Larger
  • "What a Maroon!"
  • Secrets and Lies
  • A Tale of Wine and Murder
  • "White House Under Siege!"
  • The Amateur Narcissist
  • Like a Rock
  • The Greatest of Ally of a True Idiot is.....
  • How To Prove someone's a Witch
  • Jesus Was a Sly Dog
  • An Open Letter From The Democratic National Committee
  • The Power of Language
  • The Existential Croûton
  • Random Facebook Thoughts
  • A Play "The Poverty Racket"
  • The Demise of the 4th Estate
  • Love To Hate My Enemies
  • Feelings, Oh, Oh, Oh, Feelings
  • Art or Reality
  • The Prison Yard Blues
  • Who is Richard Spencer and Why Does He Matter?
  • __an excerpt from "The Power of Voltron "
  • A Plea From a Progressive
  • ANTIFA - The Anti Fascists, Fascists
  • Conspiracy Theory
  • 4 More Poems, 4 More Pictures
  • "Are You Freaking People Insane?"
  • 4 Pictures 4 Poems
  • The Ballad of Carlos Slim
  • Pretending What's in Your Head is True
  • The Cognitive Dissonance of a Faithful Democrat
  • The Human Snakepit
  • George Freeman - Unsung Master of the Jazz Guitar
  • The Price of Milk
  • Suspicious Minds
  • Bill O'Reilly Sexual Predator?
  • The New Soldier
  • Orwell Revisited
  • Larry Coryell - The Godfather is Dead
  • A Tiger Beat
  • South Florida - HOT & COOL
  • Jean Paul Sartre & the Existentialist Mojo
  • Culture Matters, Immigration Matters, Sharks Matter
  • Thomas Sowell
  • A Tree Falls In Central Park on a Gay Banker
  • Black Codes From The Underground
  • Does an Idiot know they're an Idiot?
  • A Poem for Pooh
  • It's All or Nothing Baby!
  • Racism is Alive and Well
  • "Shut the Hell Up!"
  • Jerry Seinfeld - Social Pariah
  • A Man Must Nurture His Pet Peeves
  • Not the Usual Immigration Article
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 1
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 2
  • The Bad Seed
  • Dogma Never Sleeps
  • Trump and Clinton Debate
  • Was Jesus a True Pacifist?
  • Brexit Was the Shot Heard Around the World
  • Obama, How Great Thou Art
  • War is Good
  • The Willful Ignorance of Intellectual Children
  • What about All Those Peacful Muslims?
  • Terror! What Terror?
  • Biff and Shorty Play The Blues
  • Forty Miles of Bad Road
  • How Obamacare Became the law of the land: And Other Fairytales for Adults
  • Genteel Republicans vs The Alt-Right
  • Should Drugs be Legal?
  • The Prophet Speaks
  • The Dream Sequence
  • Voting 3rd Party and the Moral Low-Ground
  • Sayonara America
  • What does Never Trump Mean?
  • Barack Obama is the Most Brilliant Man Ever to be President?
  • If God Created War, Does That Mean That War is Good?
  • Never Let Your Enemies Define You
  • Facebook, Science & Religion
  • Bullshit by the Numbers
  • Bullshit by the Numbers - part II
  • The Heated Quest for the "No Information Voter"
  • I Love The Dead
  • Those Who Lurk
  • Battered, Bruised and Beaten
  • Trump and Hitler
  • America in Black and White
  • Trans-Athletics
  • Playing a Rigged Game
  • Who was that Mass Murderer?
  • The Kidnappers
  • The Game
  • Terror in Nice: A Variation on a Theme
  • The Idiots Guide on How to Destory the World
  • Terror in France
  • A Fictional Conversation Between a Pastor and a Historian About the Bible
  • The Immoral Necessity for Scapegoats
  • Who Really Shot Those Eleven Cops? Was It Donald Trump?
  • Killer Cops and Cop Killers
  • Happy 4th of July
  • How Do You Cast Your Vote When You've Only Got a Few Bullets Left?
  • "Yes, She's a Lying Sack of Shit....but She's our Lying Sack of Shit."
  • All Apologies
  • Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up
  • Goodbye Scotty Moore
  • If a Bluebird Plays the Blues Why Can't it Play Free Jazz
  • Terror in Turkey
  • When David Slew Goliath
  • The Life & Death of a Global Fat Cat
  • Intentionally Censoring the News
  • The Brits Leave the EU
  • Chick, Christian, Roy & Kenny G
  • Who Really Committed Mass Murder in Orlando
  • The Tale of the Prince and the Shrew
  • A Dying Father's Last Father's Day
  • Mass Murdering, Terrorist's Father is Obama and Hillary's Best Friend
  • Why Cream still Matters 50 Years Later
  • Misguided Anger and Partisan Politics
  • The Deep Guilt of the Religious Left
  • Radical Islam! What Radical Islam?
  • Denial is a River in Egypt
  • A Response to all the Haters
  • Why Muhammad Ali was my Hero (in spite of being a Racist)
  • Why Trump Matters
  • The New Progressive Racism
  • A Tragedy in Cincinnati
  • The Evil that Men do (Women too.)
  • Differences? What Differences?
  • Racism Revisited
  • Battling Immigration Straw Men
  • Blood Quantum
  • Fighting Transgender Straw Men
  • Logical Fallacies about God and Money
  • Progressive Straw Men
  • Everybody is Robbing You Blind
  • On The Road To El Donaldo
  • Dear Mark: About Donald Trump
  • Identifying the Enemy
  • Why I Will Vote For Trump
  • I Totally Agree With Myself
  • Teaching Americans Where to Pee
  • Goodbye Lonnie Mack
  • Bernie Wants You To Pay His Fair Share
  • Bruce Springsteen vs. North Carolina
  • Mr. Smiley Is an Idiot
  • Why Does College Cost So Much?
  • Black Power and Bad Vibes At Whiteness History Month
  • How Facebook Showed Me That We're Doomed
  • Muslims kill Muslims by means of White People
  • The Slap
  • America Wants a 3rd Party Candidate
  • Jesus Loved Everybody
  • Call it what it is.
  • Belgium vs. Turkey. Which One is Worse?
  • Barack, Fidel and Che
  • How He Gonna Get His Money pt. 2
  • How He Gonna Get His Money
  • The Turn of The Screw
  • Dear America: Now, about Trump....
  • The Attack of the Anti Trumpers
  • Did You Know that America is Socialism....and boy, ain't it Swell
  • Trump - Prophet or Blowhard?
  • Black Lies Matter, All Lies Matter
  • The Donald and the Debate
  • Leonardo and The Bear
  • The Thunder Rolled and the "Trump" Blows em all to Hell
  • Fragmented Fairytails
  • Cars That Never Were but Should've Been, Part 6
  • Building The Perfect Beast
  • America: A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1
  • Uncle Bernie in New Hampshire
  • The Big L
  • The Diary of a Former Leftist
  • Free Speech not Hate Speech?
  • State of the Union
  • Losing My Religion
  • Don't Take Our Guns Away Until We Kill Those Honky Bastards
  • Bye Bye Europe
  • "Trump is a Racist!"
  • "Hell Yeah! I've Got Obama Care!
  • Trumponomics
  • Woman of the Year
  • Malicious Intent and the Art of the Microaggression
  • Muslim No-Go Zones - Myth or Reality?
  • Donald J. Trump and the Muslim Migration to America
  • There Is No God But Allah?
  • Roadhouse - The Reboot
  • Sometimes You Just Can't Win
  • A Few Thoughts Regarding Trump
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been, Part 5
  • You Can Have My Steering Wheel When You Pry It From Cold, Daed Hands
  • The Great Debate
  • Al, Thomas and Paul - Malthusians Then and Now
  • A Prophet Debates Global Warming and other retated Dogma
  • Memes, Scapegoats, Propaganda
  • Little Hillary and Her Monsters
  • A Prophecy for America
  • The Basketball Metaphor
  • Vladimir Putin: An American Hero
  • Little Things
  • The Democrats Debate
  • It's All Ablout da Benjamins
  • Remember When?
  • Mass Shooter
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been: Part 4
  • Should A Muslim Be President in America?
  • The Strange Case of Ahmed Mohamed
  • Debt and Other Devious Angels
  • Bernie Sanders is Caesar not Jesus
  • An inconvenient Truth
  • Who's really a Native American?
  • The Rebirth of the Silent Majority
  • Money That's What I Want!
  • The Syrian Crisis and the Memeing of America
  • Why Societies Have Generally Valued Men More than Women
  • The Problem of Evil
  • A few Thoughts on a Few Things
  • The Authentic pose of a Black White Man
  • Sweden: Socialist Utopia or Progressive Madhouse?
  • Why Dogs Matter
  • Guilty Until Proven Innocent
  • Was Jesus a Socialist?
  • "The Donald" A Man for the Ages
  • Harvesting the Wheat - or - Karma's a Real Bitch
  • Cecil The Lion
  • Cars That Never Were but Should’ve Been, Part 3
  • Secrets and Lies
  • Can Minorities Be Racist?
  • I Was Just Thinking....Hmm?
  • Iran Deal - Good or Bad?
  • Jihad or Not Jihad? That is the Question.
  • "Let's Do Lunch" with Planned Parenthood
  • America The Contemptible
  • Marriage, Bigotry and Cooties
  • The Things We Care About
  • The Simplicity of it All
  • A Dissenting Opinion
  • Cars That Should've Been, But Never Were: part II
  • Live Now, Pay Later
  • I Am, Whatever I Say I Am!
  • Bernie Sanders is the Dumbest Bastard on Earth
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been
  • Bruce Jenner
  • The Good Society
  • A Personal Jesus For My Own
  • Take a Ride on a Hell Bound Train
  • Requiem For a Car Show
  • Obama Channels Neville Chamberlain in Dealing with Iran
  • The Short Life of a Political Lemming
  • The Strongman
  • The Broken Window
  • The Selective Outrage of The Anti Israel Left
  • When the Blind Lead the Blind
  • Top Brass With Class
  • Living In A world On Fire
  • Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell
  • What The Hell Is Esotericism?
  • Unicorns, Free Healthcare and other Mythological Creatures
  • Heroes and Dunces
  • A Few Thoughts On a Few Things
  • The Return Of Super Fly
  • Should You Ever Bet On A dead Horse?
  • Money For Nothing
  • Across The Great Divide
  • Tom, Jerry, Eddie & Sydney
  • The Folly of Foibles
  • Who really killed Eric Garner?
  • The Art of The Sale
  • Political Bullshit and All That Jazz
  • Oh, The Horror of It All
  • To Torture or Not To Torture, That is The Question
  • Selective Justice
  • Executive Action
  • Give Us Your Tired, Poor and Ambitious
  • Johnny Winter, Ahhh-Yeahh!
  • Homeless and Transgender "Let My People Pee!"
  • Are We Insane? You Betcha!
  • Ebola and Racism
  • You're a Racist, Just Admit It!
  • To Discriminate or Not to Discriminate, That is the Question
  • The Life of an Imaginary Historian
  • Why Most Debates About The Minimum Wage are Bullshit
  • The Return of the Infinite Monkeys
  • Politically Correct Genocide
  • Language and the illusion of Meaning
  • Obama vs. Reagan
  • Is Barack Obama our Most Successful President Ever?
  • White Racism Black Racism
  • The Race
  • Should People Be Free to Discriminate?
  • Science, Religion and Brother Neil
  • Welcome To America
  • The Reincarnation of Jimmy Carter and the Return of Scarface
  • SCOTUS, Condoms and Collateral Damage
  • The American Dream
  • Attack of the Bloated Leeches or "Why Does the Economy Suck pt. II"
  • Why Does the Economy Suck?
  • Jaco Pastorius - A Passage in Time
  • How can we save the world, from people who want to save the world?
  • A Short Political rant: pt I
  • Jerry Reed, Tom Jones and the Original Guitar Heroes
  • Part Two: The Politics of the Eloi and the Morlock
  • Angel: part 7
  • Wayne Cochran "Going Back to Miami"
  • Matt Damon & the Teachers Union vs. the Capitalist Pigs
  • The Last Damned Healthcare Article You'll Ever Need
  • The Gospel According to Mark
  • Angel: part VI
  • Ted Bundy & The Hunt For The Devil
  • Charlie & Clint: Dead & Deader
  • Trayvon & George : An American Hate Story
  • Jury Duty
  • Little Tommy & The Blues Kings
  • Kayaking "The Big Cypress" with Crocodlies
  • The Birth of The Jazz Guitarist
  • Gay Marriage
  • Garage Band - The 1960's
  • King Arthur, Pelagius and Original Sin
  • The Story of Ricky
  • In the News and on the Web
  • When is a Horse not a Horse
  • Hidden Miami
  • I Hate the 60's: A Personal Rock Odyssey
  • Crocodiles and Alligators in Florida: Monsters in our Backyard
  • The Legend of Robert Pete Williams
  • Saturday Night At Big Tinys
  • The Mad Hatter and the Tea Party
  • The Case Of The Infinite Monkeys
  • The American Heritage Series
  • Here Comes the Sun
  • The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
  • Blue And Green
  • Mundi's, a Love Story

                          Good Intentions
                                                                                          Bad Results


Picture
I was having a conversation with a young man about voting.  He suggested that people should never vote on the issues alone, but should vote according to their conscience.  I thought about it for a few seconds and said, "OK, but what if your conscience is a moron? " 

A lot of Americans seem to believe that if you have good intentions, motivated by deeply held convictions, you'll arrive at the truth.  The truth being some mystical idea or experience that you tap into, like "The Spirit of the Great Eagle" or God as expressed by endless television preachers who offer a vision of God as, “The Great Sugar Daddy"—“'Ask and it shall be given, knock and the door will open, Rub the lamp and you’ll get three wishes'—'War, famine, pestilence and natural disasters, they'll have to wait, 
it’s your prayer for that new linoleum for the kitchen that God's really interested in!'”

The wisdom of the ages is rendered as so many meaningless slogans, instant success, eternal beauty; fast cars and prodigiously-fake hooters are its gifts.  God, the Universe, or some unknown power is always eager to grant your requests, you only have to ask.  And with God and the Universe as your best pals, what more could you want?  Should there be any surprise that our political ideas follow a similar path?   


A primary difference between conservatives and liberals is in the theory of government and its appropriate role in society.  Liberals believe that it can be used for the common good by leveling the playing field and giving opportunity to the disadvantaged, which most of us would see as a noble idea.  Conservatives argue that government isn't supposed to be a partial judge, one that can bestow favors as they see fit, but is supposed to be an impartial third party, a referee, not an enabler—and that any government powerful enough to give you everything you want or need can just as easily take it away.  This is the foundation of our political archetypes, with liberals as “The Grand Political Mother” and conservatives as “The Grand Authoritarian Father.”  The American electorate are the children riding in the back seat, screaming, “I want some ice cream” while mom and dad argue about the best approach to good parenting in the front. 

As a libertarian/conservative, with more than a few ideas that would be considered liberal, I empathize with both perspectives.  Government can do much good.  It can and should be the place where men and women of substance offer leadership and vision for their country, even if their ideas are unpopular.  Governmental leadership can compel us to move forward, make tough choices and look beyond self-interest.  It championed the end of slavery and Jim Crow laws, but let’s not forget that without government, slavery and Jim Crow would've never existed to begin with.  Government has made landing on the moon a reality
, and helped to create the most lethal weapons of war ever imagined.  Government is never benign, and is seldom ever either purely good or bad.  

The problem may be one of perceived intuition, or the myth of common sense.  What seems reasonable, may in fact be anything but
, and that's where the Devil or God always resides, in the details.

This leads me to what I believe to be the primary question; how much government is necessary and how much is too much?  In order for democracy to exist at all, governmental powers must be limited.  Why? The answer should be obvious.  Government has the power to make laws which can turn its citizens into criminals and, with a wave of the legislative wand, it can abscond with your money through taxation, start wars, and enslave whomever it wishes, simply because it has either been given authority by the people or seized it thorough legislative or military force.  Once the power has been transferred from the citizens to the state, it can be nearly impossible to take it back, at least not without misery and bloodshed.   That's why the Founding Fathers separated and diffused governmental power.  It was intended to be shared between The President, the Congress, the Courts, and most importantly, the people.  This can make the process of governing cumbersome, which is its intent.  It’s the difference between the hope of a benevolent king, and the individual responsibility that is inherent in democracy.  Increasingly, it seems that Americans want a king, a benevolent one, mind you, but a king nonetheless.  And, it should be clear that nothing is that simple, freedom is never really free, neither is lunch, the military, or healthcare.  

That's why forcing people to buy healthcare doesn't constitute free healthcare anymore than forcing people to buy auto insurance makes it free.  This is especially difficult in a recession where workers already have declining wages while still paying inflationary prices for everything from housing to fuel and food.  The Obama Administration intends to deal with the problem by subsidizing the cost of healthcare using taxpayer dollars for those who can’t afford it.  Meaning they’ll raise taxes on an already overtaxed, over-regulated economy, taking more of American’s hard-earned money while increasing the size of government. To say nothing of siphoning off money that would be more efficiently used by the private economy to create new jobs.  This will, in turn, produce a demand for even more taxes, making the problem circular in nature, which extends from the circular logic used in formulating the program to begin with.  The net effect will be rapidly inflated costs with no mechanism to restrain them.  Why? Because that is the nature of all monopolies, which is the real intent behind Obamacare. By eliminating the potential evil of market-driven forces, the well-intended, true believers can ensure that greedy, for-profit businessmen are replaced by altruistic politicians.

Picture
For those of us old enough to remember, think of Bell Telephone when it was a monopoly—poor service, high rates and exorbitant long distance fees were the norm. Once Bell Telephone was broken up and competition was allowed, prices plummeted and the free market, through innovation, made it possible to have small, portable cell phones with cameras, that were also video recorders, MP3 players with amazing sound, and unlimited talk anywhere in the world for less than you would've paid for basic phone service forty years ago.  Forty years ago that would have sounded like science fiction, or an episode of the Jetsons—and that is only the tip of the iceberg when talking about the remarkable economic and technological benefits that are created by competition and innovation within a free culture and economy.

Little more than a decade ago, home computers and the internet became the norm.  There was one hitch however, how to get computers into the hands of the poor?  There was a consensus that computers were the future and poor kids would be at a significant disadvantage without access. Jessie Jackson suggested that computers should be made available to inner-city kids first, which he hoped would level the playing field for the poor by making them affordable through government subsidies. 

All subsidies have essentially the same effect, they make goods and services affordable to whomever is receiving the subsidy, but keep prices artificially high for everyone else.  That is the unintended consequence of good intentions, creating a disincentive to lower prices through competition, while stifling innovation, which is the lifeblood of any economy. 

Thankfully, no one listened to Jackson’s well-intended, but economically illiterate theory—and within a few years prices fell so far that computers were given away for free if the taker would simply sign up for a nominal, monthly internet fee.  The computers were likewise more powerful and faster than ever before.  That is the nature of competition—meaning that untold numbers of highly-educated specialists work independently to create the best product at the best price.  It isn’t altruism that is the prime mover of social well-being, but individuals, freely acting on self interest, working to meet the public’s needs, wants and desires.  This shouldn't be defined as self interest, but is really shared interests.  Business can't exist without customers, and in an attempt to entice potential buyers, businesses have to provide a better, cheaper product and better service.  If their actions were purely motivated by self-interest, they wouldn't survive.  Only if they are subsidized by government can bad business practices be sustained.  That’s why virtually all government-run institutions are costly and bleed money.


Picture
The U.S. Postal Service loses about $25,000,000 a day or more than $8,000,000,000 a year, and those numbers are growing.  Just about every other government-funded institution functions with the same gross inefficiency, including public schools and the military. If any for-profit business were to be run the same way, they would rapidly be forced to shut their doors.  Government, by comparison, can simply raise your taxes to pay for its bad decisions and then blame the opposition, whoever that might be.   

Businesses, unlike government, must adapt to meet the public’s demands for their product or suffer the immediate consequence.  Government, on the other hand, can alter the public demand by changing the incentives.

The recent housing boom and bust was created by government incentives in two forms: 1) subsidies that were intended to get banks to lend to buyers who couldn’t normally qualify through the use of government insured loans and, 2) artificially low interest rates by the Federal Reserve which drove housing prices through the roof.  Congress lowered the standard for securing the debt for both lenders and borrowers and helped to create, in direct collusion with Wall Street, ways of minimizing the risk for global investors.  The result was immediate; creating over-inflated home values, massive debt accumulation by businesses and individuals alike, and something close to a global economic collapse.  All subsidized by the good intentions of the Federal Government.  Without those same incentives, banks would simply do what they've always done, lend to those who can meet the necessary credit requirements.  The government skewed market demand by giving incentives to lend to unqualified applicants, and everyone else, including Wall Street, simply followed the money trail.

Why do government subsidies tend to have a negative long-term effect?  Ninety percent of businesses fail within the first two years.  Starting any business is risky and costly, which is why smart businessmen won’t invest without making sure that the economic climate is favorable for investment.  Ask the average person, "Would they take a job if they weren't guaranteed to be paid for their work"?  For most people the question seems ridiculous, but, that’s exactly what investors do every day.  They invest their hard-earned money in exchange for nothing more than the “possibility” of turning a profit, the greater the potential payoff, the greater the incentive they have to invest.  Create an environment where the rules of the game are constantly changing, or the payoff is low, and investors will stop investing. That’s exactly what has happened over the last four years. The result being that job creation has been stifled and unemployment has soared. 

What does this have to do with subsidies?  Going back to Jessie Jackson’s model of government-subsidized computers for the poor, we can begin to see how incentives alter behavior.  The average cost of a computer in 1999 was $1,300.00, too expensive for most low income families.  So, the government says to computer manufacturers, “We’ll pay you $1,100.00 for your product, and we’ll subsidize your manufacturing costs, making computers cheaper to produce, while still guaranteeing you a profit.”  This seems like a win-win for both the public and the businesses.  The computer companies have lowered their prices, poor folks get computers and everyone else gets a bargain.  The subsidy has changed the incentives completely, and this is where the problem begins. 


Why take risks, when you can have guarantees? That means that companies stop taking risks and innovation is placed on the back burner.  It also means less competition.  Why? Because the amount of subsidies that can be provided is limited by the government’s ability to tax its citizens, which is its primary source of income. The result is that new technology is put on hold and more powerful computers that are more efficient are shelved because the financial incentives have changed the industry from risk to guarantee.  "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" becomes the norm.  All of this has the effect of stifling innovation, keeping prices artificially high, even though there’s an initial drop in cost.  The effect is a static market with little growth and fewer new jobs. What seems beneficial, or a win-win, is really the end of prosperity.  One need only look at what happened in the computer market to understand why this is true.  It may seem counterintuitive, but only because we aren't looking beyond the moment, or the bird in the hand.  That kind of limited vision is lethal to human productivity.

Picture
Today, we have portable computers that are ten, twenty and thirty times as fast and powerful, with a range of tools that make the computers of 1999 seem like obsolete toys, which they are.  We can likewise buy them for about one third of the cost of those being produced more than a decade ago—and that’s without adjusting for inflation.  The market, which is made up of risk-taking investors, made this possible, not the government—it’s Bell Telephone all over again.  We could go on to automobile production, gas prices, welfare, television, taxi companies, food, even cigarette manufacturers and find exactly the same phenomenon.

All living things act on incentives.  Birds instinctively fly south for the winter; they can, however, be coaxed by incentives into acting against their natural instincts when being fed by well-intended people, with a result that generally ends badly for the animal.  Feed an alligator and he will begin to associate people with food—and you don’t want an alligator to see you, your child, or pet, and think of food.  These basic principles undergird all of nature, including the way in which animals and people organize socially and behave economically.

That is why Obamacare won’t do what its creators say it will do.  It will only increase the Federal Government’s size and power, which, in turn, will require more taxes—and it will cause healthcare to become more expensive.  In the end, it will fail for the same reason socialist ideas always fail, because they are a fundamental misreading of human nature.  The Twentieth Century stands as a testament to the failure of this kind of thinking, which includes two global wars and the two most pernicious political systems ever created, communism and fascism, both of which were government centered and socialist, not capitalist. 

If history teaches us anything, it’s that those who remain ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.  But in the case of many progressives, it reflects a willingness to reinterpret reality to coincide with their deep-rooted need to be needed—meaning government as the “Great Enabler” where feelings trump facts and good intentions are all that matter.  Whether their actions turn out to be good or not, is beside the point. 



Mark Magula

    Please Enter Your Comments Below: