Thursday, August 16, 2007

Liberty or security?

I heard part of a radio show discussing whether we are leaning too far to security, too far to liberty, or striking a good balance. That's obscenely ignorant. That we are told we have to choose between liberty and national security means we have already lost far too much of the former (and the education to know about it), and could lose the latter at any moment.

Our national security cannot depend upon the wisdom and benevolence of the government. It is a matter of free, armed people defending themselves. Unfortunately, "liberals" want to take away our right to arm ourselves, and "conservatives" want to keep us from getting in the way of law enforcement (by doing something rash like, say, protecting ourselves).

Perhaps the most shocking instance of our government making us less secure by making us less free is federal control of our airports. This is inherently a violation of our property rights - that if we invest our money to build an airport and want to host some airlines and serve the people of our county or city in that way, the government takes that airport from us and installs TSA airport security to protect the passengers. But at least we are safer in the government's hands than in the hands of profiteering capitalists, right? Hardly.

I would literally bet my life that a capitalist would provide better airport security than the TSA, unless that capitalist were forced to follow outrageous government regulations. Which he probably would be - the government can't seem to let go of anything anymore.

If we had airports where our fellow citizens, trying to make a dollar, were buying terrorism insurance, you can bet your life the insurers would find all kinds of brilliant ways of keeping us (and their money) safe. If we were allowed to carry guns on college campuses, maybe shootings at college campuses would be as rare as they are at gun shows. If we armed public school teachers (and trained them to use their guns) as Israel does, maybe school shootings wouldn't happen here either.

If we were a well-armed people, free to defend ourselves (and each other) from enemies foreign and domestic, we would have national security. As Benjamin Franklin said, "those who yield essential liberty for a little temporary safety will have neither." We have neither liberty nor safety to the extent that we should, and and we could increase both with the same actions.

SRS

Note: the Franklin quotation was originally misattributed and not word for word. (I was in a hurry at the original writing, and I apologize.) It has been corrected.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The important housing sector

The idea that there is some inherent "importance of the housing industry to the overall economy" is so commonplace, it is glossed over in an article on a conservative periodical's website. This idea seems self-evident, and perfectly in keeping with conservative ideals of private property, family, and individual prosperity.

Upon closer examination, however, the idea of "importance" in one segment of the economy implies that the economy can be segmented and those segments, in turn, can be assigned different levels of importance. These ideas, particularly the latter, are mistaken and dangerously close to the flawed reasoning that puts government in the role of protector of the stock market, banks, farm policy, energy policy, air travel, airwaves, and (sadly) more. For if something has primacy in the economy, it cannot be allowed to suffer a downturn or collapse, as some industries do from time to time. Housing is key to the economy, the thinking goes, so if people are defaulting on their loans, losing their homes, and/or unable to take out a mortgage to get a new home, something must be done! Particularly, government must act!

It was government action to try to help out stock investors in 1929 that caused a recession, and government tariffs, wealth redistribution, minimum wage laws, forced employment and such that turned that recession into the Great Depression. One bad policy followed another as new ideas turned a fast-growing, opportunity-rich economy into a shambles in which people were starving as the government bought crops and destroyed them, and the poor couldn't get jobs in a private sector that was terrified of the caprice of the Roosevelt administration (which was even worse than the lamentable Hoover administration).

Some of you are perhaps arguing that the causes of the Great Depression are more complicated than that. The causes of the Great Depression are indeed numerous, as numerous as the interventions Hoover and Roosevelt tried. It is a sad coincidence that the stock market correction of 1929 took place under an interventionist presidential administration. Had Coolidge been president during such a correction, it is doubtful any government action would have been taken, except perhaps to lower taxes. In that case, the correction would have been corrected, recession (let alone the Great Depression) would have been averted, lives would have been saved.

Why did Coolidge take such a passive stance with the economy? Because he viewed it as a whole, capable of adapting and changing to fit its environment. Imagine that Woodrow Wilson said that blacksmiths were an important sector of our economy, and that they had to be saved from wage suppression caused by a move away from horses (and horseshoes) to the auto car. What if he had limited car production to achieve this, or had the government buy horseshoes to destroy them? He would have been considered crazy, wouldn't he? (That seems to testify to the immense propaganda power held by Keynesians and other FDR types, doesn't it?) Government "solutions" have likewise always bound adaptivity and stifled innovation in the economy, and the Great Depression was no different. Doesn't any FDR fan wonder why it was so long?

More to the point, here we are in the 21st century, looking at the housing sector and worrying about the damage that might be done to the economy if this "important sector" is allowed to suffer. Well what damage might be done to the economy if we get the government to fix these problems? Getting government help with a sector of the economy seems to me to be like getting Jason Voorhees to cut your hair, because "it's a disaster." To paraphrase Groucho Marx, if you think the economy's bad off now, just wait till they get through with it.

SRS
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