TOOTH FAIRY GOVERNMENT

I call it Tooth Fairy Government: they steal your quarter, put it under their kid’s pillow, and then make believe the world is 25 cents richer. 

If you are the child on the receiving end, you like Tooth Fairy Government.  It promises to buy your car, pay your mortgage, send you to college, pay for your health care, create a green job for you, pay your pension, and bailout your business if you fail.

And Tooth Fairy Government promises to do all that without raising your taxes, increasing your debt, burning a single gram of carbon, costing a single job, creating a single percentage point of inflation, or leaving a single child behind.  

Your end of the bargain is to remain a child; an irresponsible, selfish, demanding, jealous child, focused solely on your own needs and desires, totally oblivious to the rights of others.   

You must believe you are entitled to that quarter, and you must accept that you are incapable of earning it for yourself.  You must learn to hate the child who was deprived when it was stolen from his parents, and you must agree to blame them for your troubles.  You must call the theft of their quarters “justice”, and describe your perpetual dependence as “the public good”. 

That is the only way you will accept the lie; to squeal with delight when the stolen quarter appears; to vote for Mommy and Daddy when they promise to steal another.  

Alas, there is no Tooth Fairy, and there is no Tooth Fairy Government.  It you still believe in either one, you need to grow up. 

We have run out of other people’s quarters, and it is time that Mommy and Daddy quit playing make believe and tell you where quarters really come from: the capitalists make them.  Or we would if the government would get out of our way.

Wealth is produced; it is the product of someone’s labor.  To claim an entitlement to someone else’s labor is to enslave them, to make their person your property.  And slavery is immoral, whether it is done by an individual, a corporation, or a government.  

Enslaving our most productive capitalists – i.e. “taxing the rich” – is not only immoral, it is stupid.  It prevents those most able to create the most wealth from doing so.  It means less quarters when we need more quarters.

The Tooth Fairy socialists have never understood where quarters come from.  They give it no more thought than does the child peeking under his pillow hoping another one will somehow appear.  

We should love both our children and our socialists, but we shouldn’t let either of them run the country. 

Like the blog?  Buy the book!  "Tooth Fairy Government" is available now at Dr. Tim's Moment Of Clarity www.timnerenz.com.

Free Markets

Opponents of free market capitalism ritually object to its alleged unfairness.  This is not a deficiency in economic literacy, it is a deficiency in vocabulary – “free” and “fair” are two different concepts.

In economic exchange, “fair” is a subjective term; what is fair to one is seen as unfair to another.  It is an emotional response made after the fact. “Free” is an objective term; it is an observable attribute of the process of exchange. 

Freedom in economic exchange is the absence of 3^rd party interference with the will of the principals.  Any voluntary exchange is inherently fair, as neither party would complete a transaction against his/her own self-interest.     

Our country was founded upon the principle of self-sovereignty; we are a nation of 300 million Kings and Queens.  Kings and Queens do not accept boundaries placed upon them by the minions they appoint to administer governmental affairs.  

Libertarians believe in free markets, and free market capitalism in its purest forms.  It is our point of departure from many Republicans and most Democrats on matters of economic philosophy. 

We reject all forms of coercion on principle, and we recognize that economic liberty and personal liberty are inseparable.  The regulated economy only serves the interest of the regulators.  Putting a different color jersey on the regulators each election cycle does not liberate human action in economic exchange.

Anti-capitalists point to labor abuses of the 19^th century industrial revolution as proof of the essential immorality of capitalism. They celebrate the creation of the Department of Labor in 1913 as the beginning of the enlightenment, the dawn of the age of regulated state capitalism, where public interest trumps self-interest in matters of economics and commerce. 

They have it wrong. Self-interest is the public interest.  Consider this list of goods invented during the century preceding the establishment of the regulatory state:     

Automobile, telephone, elevator, escalator, refrigeration, anesthesia, airplane, camera, motion picture, air conditioning, fiber optics, dishwasher, sewing machine, fax machine, gasoline, hydrogen fuel cell, light bulb, electric motor, railway, steamships, bicycle, radio, plastic. 

Would the critics of capitalism prefer to live without the products it has given us?  I think not.  Organized societies of humans had existed for thousands of years before 1800, so why do you think that this explosion of invention occurred in this place and in that time?  What happened to unleash a century of unparalleled prosperity, charity, and improvement in living standards? 

America happened, that’s what. 

For the first time in history, government was limited by liberty instead of the other way around.  For the first time in history, individuals truly owned the fruits of their own labors.  Innovation, ingenuity, and industry were liberated in the human spirit and the result was prosperity beyond imagination.  It was no accident; we were not just lucky, our prosperity was the deliberate consequence of our liberty.

Along the way, we abolished slavery, institutionalized charity, extended life expectancy, established a middle class, and introduced the dynamic of economic upward mobility.  Yes, there were abuses, as there are in any human endeavor.

That was then.  Now we live in a different age – the age of regulated state capitalism.  What will our 21^st century statists list as their greatest inventions – Credit Default Swaps?  Sub-prime mortgages?  The Internet kill switch?      

Free markets select winners and losers on merit alone.  The order goes to the best supplier, however the customer defines best.  The employee joins up with the best place to work, however he/she defines best.  It is the consumer who wields absolute power in the free market, not the producer.  Each dollar has the same market power, regardless of what color hand is holding it – or gender, age, sexual preference, or physical state.

The consumer decides what products will be sold and at what price.  The consumer rewards success and punishes failure.  Producers only survive and thrive when they give consumers what they want.  This is the only reliable expression of “the public good”.  Those who can’t or won’t fail; failure is essential to the capitalist system, as it redistributes productive assets to those better able to meet the needs of consumers.  Markets redistribute wealth more efficiently than any government could.

The state-regulated market transfers power to the producers and their regulators.  Consumers are deprived of choice and their power to choose.  The State places its self-interest above the individual consumer’s self-interest, and the State defines “the public good” in collusion with large and powerful producers seeking to insulate themselves from open competition in the market.  Regulation, by its nature, stifles innovation, protects the bad operator, and constrains the good.

It is delusional to imagine that the state regulators are superior to unregulated producers and consumers, that their motivations are nobler.  Statists and socialists who rail against individual self-interest are the most self-interested of all, demanding that millions of us comply with their own preferences, whims, and fancies against our wishes.  They will not tolerate choices that deviate from their own; their idea of diversity is for us to act on their beliefs.  When they can’t convince, they coerce.

They produce nothing, and yet they dictate what is to be produced and what is to be consumed.  They substitute their rigid ideologies for the rightful self-interest of the producer and consumer in voluntary exchange.  They suppress innovation, ingenuity, and industry, and then curse the very free enterprise system they have just disarmed. 

The statists are not a necessary annoyance, they are an affront to the dignity of every free man and woman and everyone who aspires to be free. 

In the economic history of the world, progress has been achieved by the disruptors, not by the states regulators. We will not unleash another era of unimaginable prosperity until we liberate our markets, and we will not liberate our markets until we dismantle our regulatory bureaucracy.  We can begin this November, and we must.    

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.

 

  

Smart People

If I wanted to research the Tea Party, I would not send Katie Couric to interview Sheryl Crow for Glamour magazine.  But then again, it would not occur to me to ask for Shakira’s advice on immigration law.         

Prompted by Ms. Couric, Ms. Crow recently informed Glamour readers that all Tea Partiers are uneducated, angry, and ignorant.  She forgot to say racist and violent - perhaps she should have wrote a list on her palm.  The mainstream media was happy to run with “uneducated” in a woofing contest that lasted three days.

This past March I spoke at an event that the media described as a Tea Party, so I guess that makes me a Tea Partier.  There were over a dozen speakers at the event, all of us university educated, most with graduate degrees and several with doctorates. Granted, our degrees are only in economics, law, medicine, and commerce, not something rigorous like, say, music appreciation; but uneducated would not be an appropriate description for either the speakers or the crowd.    

And besides, those really, really, really smart people in Washington who sneer with contempt for us common folk don’t have any reason to gloat.           

Those really smart people spent $700 billion on a stimulus plan that didn’t stimulate.  Every firm they took over to avoid bankruptcy went bankrupt. They gave $750 billion to banks that didn’t need it.  They bought Freddie and Fannie to stop them from bleeding millions every month; now they bleed billions.  

When those really smart people played nice with North Korea, Li’l Kim sank a South Korean destroyer. When they put the sanction beat-down on Iran, I’m-a-bad-Jihad told them to go pound enriched uranium. They sent a retired smart guy to fix the Israeli/Palestinian conflict once and for all, and he managed to get Turkey caught up in it.  Their hand-picked commander mutinied on them in Afghanistan.

Mexican drug lords invade Arizona and those really smart people put up a sign.  Millions of barrels of oil invade the Gulf beaches and they count life jackets and check the date on fire extinguishers.   Their anti-terrorist plan is apparently to hope that bad guys continue to blow duds while they dither around about Gitmo.   

Those really smart people have Cabinet Secretaries ordering Under Secretaries to tell Deputy Secretaries to fetch coffee for Czars.  They have commissions that study committee reports on task force recommendations.  Their Senators don’t ask, and their Supreme Court nominees don’t tell.  They boycott states they can’t find on a map.  

The Smartest One went personally to get us the Olympics and got stiffed.  He went to get us Climate Change and got stiffed.  He went to the G20 twice to get them to spend as much borrowed money as he does and he got stiffed both times.  

The President of the European Central Bank recently called the smart people’s economic philosophy “incorrect”, and the head of the European Union said our fiscal policies have put us on “the road to hell”.  

Just how bad do you have to be at running a government for the Europeans to think you suck at it?  When Cash-4-Kias is your best stuff, even the Greeks laugh.  

All those really smart people spent a whole year on a health care bill that none of them read and none of us wanted; now they find a two-scoop smart guy – Harvard professor and head of a think tank – to run it.  He says he doesn’t believe in market forces; he says he only trusts “leaders with plans”. 

Note to Dr. Berwick: every bankrupted CEO is a leader with a plan; every defeated general is a leader with a plan; every tin horn dictator is a leader with a plan; Jimmy Carter was a leader with a plan; the Detroit Lions have a leader with a plan.  Market forces eat leaders with plans for lunch, as you are about to discover. Buckle up.   

We tried all this stuff before.  In May of 1939, President Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau had this to say about the New Deal our modern day smart people so revere: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…..We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot”.

The Liberty movement is not complicated: the socialists are ruining our country, and we are trying to stop them before they finish the job.  You don’t need a Grammy to understand the choice and you don’t need a Ph.D. from Georgetown to pick a side.  You need only to decide whether their theories are worth your liberty.  

Well, are they?  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.

 

Suing Ourselves in Arizona

If Arizona can’t enforce a federal immigration law, does that mean Wisconsinites can now speed on federal highways, smoke crack, and brandish machine guns?    

Why not?  Using the logic of the U.S. Justice Department, if a Wisconsin sheriff deputy pulls me for a traffic violation and sees a back seat full of banned assault rifles, he can’t ask me to show him a permit for them.  That’s ATF’s job.     

This silly DOJ lawsuit in Arizona isn’t a principled stand for civil rights; it’s a badly written union grievance. 

States enforce federal highway safety laws, federal drug laws, federal firearms laws, a federal drinking age, federal labor laws, federal racketeering laws, federal anti-terrorism laws, and a whole gamut of other federal statutes every single day.  Does the President really get to pick and choose which ones will be ignored, and in which states?  Won’t that be fun?   

How ironic that this administration which mocks the Constitution when it comes to rights of individuals went running for its protection when they felt their own power threatened by the state of Arizona. That's rich.

It probably has taken all these weeks for them to find a copy of the Constitution in the White House and locate the section on enumerated powers.  Libertarians love Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution; it is the government’s job description. That’s where we grant it authority to do a few specific things on our behalf, not that our government pays the slightest attention anymore. We would be thrilled if the Obama administration would adhere to the enumerated powers provisions.

But forgive us if we find it difficult to believe that an administration busy prosecuting two undeclared wars, imposing a national health insurance mandate, implementing a free-speech kill switch, wiretapping citizens without warrants, fixing prices and wages, terminating bondholder contracts without due process, shutting down drill rigs without cause, and intervening in commerce willy-nilly has suddenly discovered a sincere appreciation for the virtue of limited Constitutional government.

The only sincere appreciation discovered by this administration is the sincere appreciation of how deep in the doo-doo they are with fed-up voters.  Every runner that makes it across from Mexico is one more Democrat vote when the President creates 12 million more of them by Executive Order of amnesty before the November elections.  That’s what this is all about, and you know it.

So now we have come down to this: citizens suing themselves to prevent the prosecution of non-citizens who break the law.  

This is an idea that would need a lot of work to be upgraded to stupid.  But apparently it made sense to people at the White House, and once again I am compelled to rethink my principled opposition to mandatory workplace drug testing.  What’s next – should we sue Louisiana for cleaning the oil off their beaches? 

Our immigration laws are a mess, and our border security is pathetic; people are dying and our border States are going bankrupt providing mandated services to people here illegally - $113 billion according to a recent study.  All of these are manifestations of too much government and we don't need more.

Pandering lawsuits and grandstanding boycott resolutions just add more unproductive government busywork and a dose of race-baiting to the recipe unnecessarily.

He was supposed to move us beyond this, remember?

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.