Ebay® and Auctions: Capitalism 101

Ebay and live auctions are helpful in thinking about free-market economic principles and as a way to judge a politician’s hyperbole. Ebay is a functioning free-market. Auctions are useful in explaining the effect on your wealth of a government expanding the money supply, either by printing and spending, or through deficit spending via borrowing. 

The rare example of the capitalistic ethic at work in the world today is ebay. First, ebay’s laws are clear. Its “court” system functions very well. People who sell and buy on its site are rated with dynamic regularity for their “character” as evidenced by their obedience to the laws of ebay, common courtesy, and the satisfaction of both buyers and sellers in consummating the sale. Any sale gone awry has a clear process for adjudication. Each party to a transaction has the opportunity (most participants consider it a personal obligation) to publicly rate the other party in aspects of the exchange—the quality of merchandise, veracity of the description, timeliness of payment and shipping, the shipping charges, and so forth. Sellers and buyers have a “reputation” that follows them from transaction to transaction. You do not buy from or sell to someone without checking their ebay rating--caveat emptor has never been easier. Those with excellent ratings are rewarded, those who are a problem, drop away or are “debayed,” and not allowed to participate on the site.

Now, like the real market, ebay is not perfect because the participants are not perfect. You can not possibly make rules “perfect” without encumbering the transactions and adding costs to doing business.  

Ebay's buying and selling market is the world. Listing an item for sale is simple. Present it honestly in photo and text. You may or may not choose to have a reserve price. You can make the sale a “Buy It Now” (BIN) at your stated price, or choose among several other options.

Purchasing is also straight forward. You can bid on items, or buy an item straight out if it's a BIN. The item’s shipping information is part of its description. 

Free-markets are known for their efficiency in allocating scarce resources to their most valuable use. Markets allocate through the price mechanism. The more fluid a price, the more up-to-date information that price contains. Ebay does all of that and more. Socialism of all stripes fails primarily because it has no market-driven price mechanism to allocate resources in an economical way. All forms of totalitarianism try to control people via their economic livelihood—by taking over (communism) or tightly controlling (national socialism or Nazism) the productive capacity of its citizens. 

Free markets function, as does ebay, because individual choice and valuation are given relaxed rein. Notice I did not say “free” rein. There are rules, known and upheld, and these are rules of law, not “of individuals.” Ebay participants do not care if you are Amish, atheist, or ambidextrous, blue, green, pink, straight, gay, 18 or 88. Follow its rules and you are a prized member of the community.

Auctions are instructive too, in that, as a closed “system” you can easily see the effect of certain changes. Imagine you at an auction of delightful items you wish to bid on. Everyone comes to the auction house with an amount of money they can reasonably spend to acquire items. Now suppose one person is a counterfeiter. The bidding starts and as items come up, the counterfeiter bids up the price of every item as others bid against him. Two things might happen: The other bidders might win, but always at a higher price than before the counterfeiter started bidding. Or, no one else's’ money  is sufficient to acquire objects. The counterfeiter's increase in the system’s money has made the “price level” of the system go up. It has de-valued the money of the other bidders.

This, on a more consequential level, is what happens in a nation when a government starts printing and spending money. More dollars, or Euros, or rupees start chasing a more slowly expanding supply of goods and services. The wealth people have saved that is denominated in their nation’s currency begins to erode. The value of currency substitutes as stores of value begin to appreciate. Gold, platinum, and silver begin to sparkle anew as wealth seeks security. 

In a free market, as in a marriage, character matters. In ebay character matters. Do you live up to your word? Do you follow through? Do you follow the rules you agreed to follow? Is there a process of grievance (court system) that is just and trusted by all parties?

In free markets a stable store of value (money) matters. Can a people’s money be simply printed by legal (government) or illegal (non-government) counterfeiters? Or is that store of value based on something more tangible than ink and paper? Is it convertible into a tangible asset? The beauty of the gold standard that we abandoned, was that it was a fiscal restraint on our government. When we had silver in our coins, that was also restraint on our government. If the counterfeiter at the auction could only pay with gold or silver, he would have been out of luck. Precious metals are precious precisely because they are hard to come by.

So next time a politician sings the siren-song of spending money government does not have, and talks monetary expansion (printing or borrowing from China), think auction or ebay. Would you go to an auction under those theories? Would the pol’s prescription fly on ebay? 

Golden Hill: Golden Goose or Golden Noose?

Golden Hill: A Golden Goose or Golden Noose?

Whenever I am considering the wisdom or legitimacy of any government program or proposal, I consider the underlying idea its proponents espouse by taking the idea to its full “gestation.” For instance, take minimum wages. Why mandate just $7.50 an hour? If it is really good for low-wage workers, how about just naming a sum that would really change the life of said workers, say $25 an hour? It brings clarity in a hurry. You know that those workers would be tossed out on their ears. Anytime you try pricing labor above its actual financial benefit to an organization, there will be fewer jobs. Remember, the equation is not just supply and demand, it is supply and demand coinciding at a particular price—the price at which the seller and buyer are willing to seal the deal.

Consider the unemployment rate for untested or uneducated individuals in Ulster County. You don’t need a statistician for this. Can your teenager find summer employment? In the late 1950s and early 1960s in Ulster County I could have worked three jobs if I had been allowed to drink coffee. Today, young people (and even older ones) rarely find even a part-time position.

I don’t want anyone to have to work for $5.00 an hour. On the other hand (this is why there are no one-handed economists), most beginning workers are worth only that or less to an employer (otherwise there would be no need to legislate a “minimum wage”). Once the new employee learns something, hopefully he/she becomes worth more to the organization and will be worth more pay. Sadly, under minimum wage laws, the employer may simply do that menial job himself rather than hire a youngster or trainee. In addition to the outright wage and benefit cost of the worker, the government paperwork on employee withholding and the time to train someone who may very well walk away after a couple of days or weeks, it is easier and less expensive to forego the new hire. The law hurts many of those it is supposed to help.

Which brings me to Golden Hill. If it is a good idea or an economic benefit to the taxpayers for Ulster County to be in the nursing home business by continuing to run Golden Hill, why doesn't the county buy the all private facilities in our county and run them, too? According to the Web, Ulster has the North East Center for Special Care, Wingate at Ulster, Ten Broeck Commons, Mountain View, and the Hudson Valley Rehabilitation and Extended Care Facility listed as residential homes in Ulster County. Is there something special about Golden Hill that makes it “the one” our county should run, and not the others? If so, I hope that gets some press before the legislature votes to spend your money on continuing to run it.

While you are at it investigative media, I would also like to know who gets to reside at Golden Hill? Is it a different demographic from those who are residents of the Hudson Valley Rehabilitation? Wingate at Ulster? I would like to see that spelled out. In light of the belief that “we owe it to our seniors,” exactly who owes it and to exactly which seniors?

Another thing impacting nursing homes and the ability of residents to pay personally for their care are the laws allowing me to put my house in my child’s name and live in it until I need nursing home care. Then, because I have successfully transferred assets to my heirs years before, I can count on you taxpayers to pay for my infirmity at a nursing home until I enter that big tax-free, government-free place in the sky. Taxpayers of all levels of wealth subsidize the wealthiest and most tax-savvy residents of Ulster County (and elsewhere). It’s hard to fault people who do take advantage of this estate planning technique. If you are the only one who does not, you look like a dope, but maybe you sleep like a baby.

How did such an unfair and unscrupulous law get on the books? Like all laws of that description, someone went to some congressman and lobbied—that is, promised votes or donated to his/her campaign— in other words, the law got passed because someone had the money or the pull to get it passed. I am sure they sold it as “the right thing to do,” or said “we owe it to our _______,” (fill in the blank depending on the law in question with seniors, children, teachers, etc.). You can bet it was not lobbied for by the un-connected poor schlep who will now pay for me to be taken care of for a lot of years if I am lucky and the taxpayers are not.

I had a very long conversation with an Ulster County legislator who said the numbers were “on the side of keeping Golden Hill.” I have no doubt this man is sincere and believes what he was saying. My question to him is: If it is a good idea and makes all residents of Ulster County better off, then let’s buy up all the facilities and make us all richer.

Deep in their hearts, I think the legislators know they should divest the county of Golden Hill for sound economic reasons and because government has no business in health care. However, there is a bureaucracy and union with vested interests in keeping the status quo. Therefore, they fall back on the tried and true “senior citizen is owed” ploy. If seniors were not allowed to give away their assets they could afford care in most instances, or at least many years of care before becoming wards of the county, state, and federal taxpayers. Better yet, the eventual heirs could take care of the person with the benefit of inheritance.

On another note, if the legislature votes to keep Golden Hill and there is an upgrade to or even rebuilding of the facility, who will be responsible for its cost overruns? Was the Ulster County jail not enough proof that public projects are problematic and expensive to taxpayers?

The unions and the families of Golden Hill residents continue to lobby the legislature, but there is no one lobbying for the taxpayer. Remember, the ultimate lobbying technique is your vote. Any legislator who votes for keeping Golden Hill should be tossed out in the next election. We can't keep obligating future generations to make ourselves “feel good.” We owe it to taxpayers now and in the future.

Welcome To Oklastan

Two seemingly unrelated things happened recently, one in Oklahoma, the other in Pakistan, that focused my attention on our fragile American culture. We think all people are like us, are similarly motivated, see the world as we do, abide their religions as we do, and most importantly, believe all religions are basically much alike and life affirming. We are endangered by our own blissful ignorance of other cultures.

Ruling in Oklahoma
A recent ruling in Oklahoma, by Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange, has blocked a change the voters of her state had approved. The voters said the state must not use the laws of other nations, nor Islamic Sharia Law in the deliberations of its courts. In over-ruling the electorate, the judge said she believed Sharia Law changes from environment to environment. I read that as saying that Sharia Law here wasn’t the same as (as bad as?) in Somalia or Pakistan. Laughable were it not such a dangerous notion.

We don’t like to think of any religion or culture as not being equally protected by our laws and Constitution. However, if being a religious Muslim meant living by a code similar to that of a good Lutheran, that is, dealing mostly with the “inner world” of the individual and following the Golden Rule in the outward culture, the issue would not have been on Oklahoma’s ballot. The judge failed to understand what the citizens did: Islam is a complete culture, a way of life, a system of law, not just another religion as we understand “religion” in the West.

As a way of life and culture, Islam dictates almost all of an adherent’s major “choices.” Most of the substantive actions in life are demanded by Allah in the Koran. Some actions are proscribed in a second book (The Hadith), and a tiny portion of actions Allah does not care about. A large number of actions are forbidden. Sharia Law is there to spell out details of marriage, divorce, child rearing, food, clothing, hygiene, prayer, commercial and criminal law, and much more. A complete code of daily conduct. It is religion, politics, and law. Most important of the things forbidden is to question any part of Islam.

Unfortunately for the women of Islam even the activities that Allah does not care to direct, husbands or other male family members do. The men believe they are empowered to control females—totally, like their sheep or their cell phones. The voters of Oklahoma don’t want Sharia Law in their courts because they understand the consequences of Sharia’s underpinning culture and it is not ours: Steal? Cut off the hand. Raped? Four men must bear witness against the rapist. If the rapist is exonerated, the woman is stoned to death.

I recently opened a National Geographic magazine and staring back at me was a young woman. Her nose was gone. So were her ears. After suffering beatings from her husband, she decided to run. She was caught, held down, and her husband disfigured her.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial “Fulfilling Our Duty as Muslim-Americans” by Dr. Quanta A. Ahmed, author of In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom, “Justice is the cornerstone of Islamic life—despite the appalling reality of many Muslim-majority countries today. Every faithful Muslim must contribute to the preservation of justice within their society.” She goes on to say that can be accomplished by providing “expert testimony, informing on radical entities and perhaps foremost, educating ourselves about our religion.”

Assassination in Pakistan
The hard fact is, critical examination of Islam is forbidden. Even to question is heresy. The recent assassination of Salman Taseer in Pakistan, by one of his own guards, was in retaliation Taseer’s belief that the Islamic blasphemy laws needed to be examined. Taseer was responding to a case in which a Christian woman was under arrest and in danger of death because she was alleged to have said something Muslims believed to be blasphemy.

Five hundred clerics in Pakistan lauded Taseer’s assassin who smiled for the press cameras from the police car. The clerics told their people not to mourn Taseer, he had been dealt with justly.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Experts believe the outpouring of praise for the killer of Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab who was slain by his own security detail in Islamabad on Tuesday, reflects deep support for religious intolerance and will have a chilling effect on reform-minded public figures.”

Chill indeed. Europeans are reaping the harvest of their silence and the refusal to rightly name the adversary within. Large European cities, such as Paris have Muslim enclaves where police fear to enter. Many, if not most, of the disturbances outside these enclaves are from bands of male Muslims, euphemistically called “roving youth” by the cowed European press. The authorities are afraid their culture will be completely overwhelmed if they try to stem this violence head-on.

The Muslim birthrate in these countries and in Russia far exceeds the aging native populations. Demographers estimate that by 2050 (and many say sooner), Muslims could simply vote in a Sharia-compliant government in some European countries.
Sometime the death knell of a people and their culture is the physical environment. Sometimes change is wrought through conquest, sometime by demographics. And, sometimes, because ignorance is not bliss. America can survive all of those influences by upholding the inherent cohesive force of our culture embodied in our laws.

To understand why that is imperative, we need to start learning about Islam, Sharia, madrassa schools, The Hadith, and the heros of Islam. We need to speak up against rulings like Judge LaGrange’s. We need to be counted, like the 70% of Oklahomans who understand that our way of life, not just religious freedom, is protected by the Constitution; we need to affirm that if we start bringing in laws that have not been sifted through the historical process of our courts and our Constitution, we are in danger of becoming a culture with courts that can excuse murder and mutilation, and eventually, exert rigid control of all education and personal activity.

Thoughts on Truth and Power

The November attack by North Korea against its southern neighbor raises the old question of the genesis of dictatorial “power.” How does a Kim Jung Il, a Stalin, or an Ahmadinejad come to power and stay “in power” when their people are so miserable?

The sources of that kind of control leads to thinking about just what is “power.” We think about power in terms such as horse power, purchasing power, muscle power, brain power, or wind power. It is impossible to conceive of any power except in connection with a source. We know useful motive power emanates from rationally developing things in the service of a human objective.

The other power, to convince or persuade, when honestly used is based on truth. It emanates from rational argument, wisdom, experience, reality, logic, proof. It has respect and love for fellow men. A person using this kind of power, the power of persuasion, attempts to illuminate a topic or an idea. To clarify.

Both motive power and persuasive power are based in objective reality and truth. Motive power can’t be faked. It either delivers or it does not. Persuasive power has a more uneven record.

The dishonest user of persuasion, (propaganda, deceit, or fraud) seeks to obfuscate his ideas or agenda, to make them seem complex, beyond the understanding of mere men (the electorate). Or, the deceiver may carefully chose a hot topic laden with emotion that defies cool logic and then presses it upon others. “Disaster is at our door” ushers in bad ideas and then sneaks them quickly into laws no one really understands. Taking advantage of a crisis is the seed of many a demagogues’ ascent to power. First, convince the people of something that is not true or merely half-true, then find the scapegoat (insurance companies, bankers, foreigners, atheists, fundamentalists, the list goes on). Then, based on the falsehood, you pass laws, institute injustice, and rule without much interference from the ruled. Where there is no logic in law, there is no justice. We revert to a jungle ruled by the biggest teeth.

To convince men of an idea’s worth through thoughtful debate and conversation, and over time is the genesis of good law. That path to good law is built into our Constitution through the Amendment Process—a process that takes debate and time and permission (votes) from the consenting-governed. Judges legislating from the bench create the antitheses of this. Unconstitutional laws are curtailing more and more of our right to choose our own course of action. It is the fundamental undermining of America’s promise because poorly considered law results in ever stronger coercion.

Unfortunately, coercion can be an effective substitute for sound ideas if the populace is cowed. Only power that is coercive can cause man to do what he does not see as being in his self-interest or as morally correct. Coercion may be gloved in velvet, or naked, but it is always the threat behind any idea that can not be defended with logic.

The Founder Fathers understood the danger in government always had to do with using the legitimate force of government for illegitimate or secret ends. Instead of guaranteeing freedom, power-seekers would use the apparatus of government to beat us (or coddle us) into submission. Today, abuse of power might flow from the halls of the IRS, TSA, FDA, ATF, or any of many other appointed power brokers, and it is easily used as weapons against the people. Bureaucratic rules, never reviewed by the judicial process of the Constitution, take on the force of law (body scans and pat-downs at airports).

“All unuttered truths turn poisonous,” Nietzsche wrote. The more I think about the abuse of power around the world historically and currently, the more I understand truth as the antidote to abusive political power. The Founding Fathers understood the importance of an individual being able, without fear, to stand up to those in power and tell them and the world where governing policies are destructive or wrong.

Freedom to speak in the public square and freedom to print and analyse the news are enshrined in the Constitution because information and debate are the tools of navigating for the long-run in the real world. Only by freely “uttering” ideas and examining them by debate can we determine whether they are likely to be right for a free people. Any person or group advocating to end debate by taking away the microphone or shouting the speaker down because they disagree with the speaker’s position, is advocating political poison via political correctness.

In an essay by Robert Grudin titled The Truth About Truth, he warns to beware of the man who “rushes you” to accept his truth. To be rushed into an idea stifles thoughtful criticism. It condones “do as I say, not as I do” and doesn’t work well in raising children, nor in running a nation. We find it disgusting when Congress exempts itself from legislation that inhibits or prescribes the actions of less “powerful” citizens. Can it be the truth that a piece of legislation is good for you and me if it exempts Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, or McDonalds?

Speaking truth to those in power can be personally dangerous. To stand up to a strongman and speak of his destructive policies is at least frightening. When the time comes that you have to consider retribution from a bureaucrat, a politician, or any group if you speak, you are on the road to “powerlessness.” That is the time it is most important to speak. Wait too long and you may not even recognize the truth. I often wonder, did anyone live to tell about confronting Mao, Pot Pol, Stalin, Hitler, or Saddam Hussein during their reigns of terror?

There is little hope for North Koreans to overcome the Kim family. The current generations have never known anything other than the Dear Leader’s proclamations of reality. Stalin’s Russians had a better chance when he died in 1953. They at least knew something of the world outside. In Iran, truth is whispered because the people are better educated and have a living memory of freedom. Additionally, they have the internet to communicate with the freer world and be reminded of truth.

The Timeless Gifts of Hayek, von Mises, and Read

The Timeless Gifts of Hayek, von Mises, and Read

In 1944, as Europe was slipping gracelessly under the sea of socialism, two small life rafts of common sense, Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Ludwig von Mises’ Bureaucracy, were published. The messages of both are must-reads today.

The authors were of the Austrian School of Economics noted for its study of economic man as he is, not as social and economic planners wished him to be (and often murder him when he is not). The Austrian school recognized that man’s inherent objective is to live and that his rational choices to achieve life are most successful under the least governmental burden. Under the whip of severe governmental interference, men become serfs directed in all aspects of their lives, often with little hope of even a subsistence existence for themselves and no real hope for a better life for their children.

In addition to taking away their right of acting in their own best interest, citizens are coerced into giving up truth. Hayek writes, “To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends. Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far a possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants.”

The Austrians also understood and articulated that under any centrally planned economy there was no way to rationally allocate resources, that is to calculate the true value of productive inputs: land, labor, and other resources of production--there was only a government official somewhere decreeing what was to be produced and by whom. As communist and deeply socialist nations eventually come to recognize this huge shortcoming of their system, they either loosen the reins of economic control (China) or fall into fifth-rate nations living on the handouts of other dictators not so far down the road of communist bankruptcy (think Cuba, first economically supported by USSR and today by Chavez of Venezuela).

The Road to Serfdom garnered much attention in the United States at the time it was published and is credited in some circles for saving us from ending up even more like Europe. The Road to Serfdom is experiencing renewed interest in the face of America’s relentless slide toward socialism under the Obama crusade. This year it has sold 70,000 copies as word spreads among a disaffected populace. Part of Serfdom‘s popularity in 1944 America was its condensation in Readers’ Digest. Its popularity today is based on the yearning for answers to the Obama administration’s destructive initiatives.

Ludwig von Mises’ (1881-1973) small book, Bureaucracy, is read mostly by students and economists, but his writing is easy to follow and has a message for us clearly paving “the road to freedom” that also leads to abundance for all of us.

Mises poses the question if production is not being planned and set in motion by government directive and carried out by a bureaucracy, how will it happen? Who will run it? Who will be “the boss?”

Mises answers in his introduction to Bureaucracy, “The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.”

Another gifted voice for the free market was Leonard E. Read (1898-1983). In 1958, Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE.org) wrote the booklet I, Pencil, My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read. It is the amazing story of a yellow #2 lead pencil. Yes, that amazing instrument (a typical pencil is good for about 45,000 words or a line 35 miles long...) you probably used learning to write.

I, Pencil provides a clear understanding of how the specialized knowledge and production of disparate workers across the globe from the digger of graphite clay to the manufacturer of yellow paint, each pursuing his own well-being, contribute to the construction of a pencil. Read traces the discoveries of substances (rubber, zinc, copper, graphite), the design of machines (mining equipment, paint mixers, sawmills), and the hundreds of other kinds of knowledge that combine without coercion under a free market to produce what we want at a price we can afford.

When we look around the globe at countries that have a command leadership, whether plain vanilla dictator as in North Korea, or dictatorship of the proletariat as in Cuba, or a theocratic dictatorship as in Iran, and look at our own government of czars and bureaucrats appointed with no check from elected representatives, we are provided with evidence that it can and is happening here and now. Every time we give over any power regarding our personal decisions, over what is the truth, over what our children are taught in school, over our agreements and contracts, over what we eat, over who we see as a danger, over how much government is too much government, we fall into the muck of an “uncivilization” that will be run by a bureaucracy of non-elected, non-responsive men. Men who will paint the road signs to our new state of being...serfdom.

Oh, and you won’t need that pencil because it might be used to foment revolution...


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I, Pencil is available free to download at the www.FEE.org website. Read it with your children. You will also find a huge library on line of valuable insight in FEE’s other publications and jargon-free lectures. FEE is located in Irvington-On-Hudson and has regular lectures by world-renown freedom-loving authors and teachers. Founded by Read in 1946, it really is the foundation for economic education for a free nation.

Why I Love “Obscene” Profits
by Vivian Yess Wadlin

Admittedly, “obscene” is the word of choice used by people who don’t make any (or enough) profit. They use the word to define the outcome of very successful business models. A successful business perceives a need, finds a solution, and provides it in the marketplace at a price people are willing and able to pay. You find the adjective, “obscene”, used almost exclusively by pandering politicians, government employees (who by the way, make more than the average taxpayer), socialists of all stripes, government bureaucrats, community organizers, and assorted business failures.

They all mean that somehow “the public” must have been duped or cheated for any entity to make profits of “that magnitude.” It is never defined what that magnitude is nor is the amount of investment that created the profit in question ever discussed. The value of the driving idea, the rate of return on the investment, the research and development costs, the investment in terms of time to bring the profitable enterprise into being are also glossed over, if acknowledged at all.

Congress members act as if they produce something of value and act as heroes when they give away what they have not earned. Remember: Government activity produces nothing of real value. If it did, it would not have to tax you. Government can only give by confiscating from its truly successful sector— a productive individual or business enterprise. Yes, Congress can and does “borrow,” but that is just a hidden confiscation of your wealth. When Washington can no longer honestly pay its debt, its printing presses begin paying it. Inflation is less painful for politicians than taxing, but it is ultimately destructive for a nation.

The politician is always there protecting you from the company earning “obscene” profits, and which, God forbid, pays their executives–based on contractual obligations–obscene salaries.

Profit to government is a flag. It uses profit to target businesses that are satisfying the desires of a large number of people. Profit gives bureaucrats a straw man. Honest profits are only available to individuals and businesses who buy or produce scarce resources (any resource that is not free), reconfigures them, and turns out something that their fellow human beings are willing to trade hard-earned dollars to acquire. That is, if the market is allowed to operate unimpeded. Big “if,” I admit.

Where the market is left unimpeded, and where individual efforts have succeeded, there is the possibility of temporary, but very large, in government-speak, “obscene” profit. (Low profit or outright failure is simply an indication the business is not supplying something people want at a price they can afford).

Why I really love any “obscene” profit though, is they are a “turn on.” Any large profit is a beacon to other entrepreneurs to compete. It says “Look here! This is a product or service that people want. You can make money here. Come. Compete. Do better. Make more people happy, healthy, wealthy, or wise. Get rich.”

As soon as other entrepreneurs enter the market, price drops. More of us can afford the product. The profit normally drops and additional resources are not then sequestered for additional units of that product or service.The businesses are not expanding output because the profit margin is shrinking. That is, unless the originator or the new competitors add something so wonderful that the consumer is willing to pay more for it. Through time, the “”obscene”” profit continues to provide us with better and better, and/or less expensive, things. Most often, both.


I’ve never seen a justly acquired profit, tiny, “obscene”, or pornographic, that did not inspire my admiration for the person or company earning it. The sooner you fall in love with “obscene” profits, the sooner we can tell the political class their truly obscene game is over.

Don’t let them make you believe that productive people are your enemy. Envy is not attractive. Profit is.

9-12-09
American Patriot March on Washington, DC


One of the photos I took at the 9/12 march on DC focused on a women surrounded by protesters —her worried expression, yet defiant stance summed up the entire experience. The size of the demonstration has yet to be determined, but suffice it to say, it was BIG. One DC policeman (with more than 20 years on the force) said he had never seen a crowd of this magnitude. My guess is over a million of us expressed our disgust. All I can say is peaceful, but fed-up people kept arriving throughout the day. 

In addition to the size, was the feeling generated by this huge gathering. For me, it was like a huge family reunion but without the few self-pitying, angry, entitled uber-liberal relatives. 

Every state of the Union was represented. Individuals of every color, every sexual preference (believe it or not!), every political stripe, every age range (many, many young libertarians-disappointingly to me--they were all male,), every freedom-oriented organization, and every clothing style marched. They carried every funny and serious message you could originate, and many you probably could not. Most of the signs were serious. Some were funny. One of my favorites was, "A Village in Kenya is missing its idiot" with the letter "O" the famous Obama red, white, and blue symbol. American and "Don't Tread on Me" flags flew everywhere in every size. Many of the signs had to do with the administration and congress' disregard for Constitutional restraints. Mine did, too: US Constitution, Read it and Weep. The other side read, "Shrug, Atlas, Shrug." 

The speakers were difficult to hear. I was able to catch snatches of Jim DeMint and Dick Armey's remarks, but the cheering drowned most of them out. With huge government edifices surrounding the crowd, it was an awesome sight. Americans demanding their government repeal intrusion into their lives, and to refrain from passing additional rights-slaying laws. 

"Squash ACORN,"  "No Government Health Care," "We came unarmed (this time)," and thousands of more signs and banners passed before me. I stopped to read the inspiring mottos and poems carved in three and four foot letters on the surroundings buildings and thought, do the people who govern here ever read these before voting on freedom-usurping and initiative-destroying laws? 

Although literature was handed out through out the hours I marched, I saw very little debris. This was a march by people who had manners and respect for others. I heard no foul language, people helped each other. There were wheelchairs, baby carriages, walkers, canes, people who had probably not self-propelled that far in 10 years. All walked along in solidarity of principle, not concerned with the minutia of the details of their beliefs, knowing that if you follow the Constitution, it keeps the details safe from government interference. It keeps you safe from me, but most importantly, from the actions of a government seemingly bent on the destruction of this nation from within.

Yours in freedom,
Vivian

PS.
Something stuck with me from the subway because it was just one more poor "Washington welcomes you to your capital." The system that generates a ticket was confusing to most people, especially those who did not know the names of the trains, and the set up of the station stops. Some purchased tickets that cost them more than it should have, some bought tickets they thought was good for two people and had to go back and stand in line a second time. One woman, bless her, stood there after she figured out the poorly designed ticket purchase panel and helped more than a dozen dazed protesters get the right ticket and not hold up the line trying to figure out the magic formula. Then, adding insult to injury, the change generated was in the fake gold dollar coins that people mistake for quarters--As we stood in huge lines to get our tickets, I could not help thinking, "just like a government run entity, forcing us to take fake money in a form that was another government failure and that we all detest."