Posts Tagged ‘education’

End of Socialism?

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that the time of the progressives, socialists and communists is coming to a close. With the wide dissemination of the internet and the dramatically enhanced access to information it offers people will increasingly be lifted from the ignorance enforced by the progressives, socialists and communists. Light will shine on their philosophy.

Today the power of that faction appears to be at it’s apex. The US is controlled almost exclusively by progressives. The President and both houses of Congress have sizable majorities of progressives. Most are democrat but some are republican. The Supreme Court is at the tipping point. A few more hard leftists and the job will be done there too.

But the power of progressives, socialists and communists lays in ignorance. Not of reading writing or arithmetic but in history, economics and current events. These are the ideas that undermine progressivism. People who have not been steeped in the tea of communism and the “benefits” to mankind that it offers see the world differently.

We have our eyes open. We are pragmatic not dogmatic. Progressives, socialists and communists are dogmatic. Even as they point the finger of dogmatism at every one who disagrees with them. But they fail to see their own dogmatism.

To follow a political philosophy that has at it’s core the fact that when it gains control millions of people will have to be murdered to “protect” the revolution requires quite a bit of faith. Those egoists, people who refuse to follow the tenets of social justice and communal salvation, will have to go. They have all done it. From Vladimir Ulanoff to Pol Pot. Moreover they will always to do it when ever they get power. It is ignorance of this fact that feeds the left. Ignorance of the atrocities that they have done and pledge to do if they ever get power.

But the ignorance that feeds progressivism, communism and socialism doesn’t stop there. Every modern event must be couched in just the right terms and in the right way. Until recently the progressives have controlled the unbiased media. The have controlled the horizontal, the vertical, they have controlled what we have seen. Welcome to the outer reaches of the progressive limits. (There are none).

US collages have a plurality of progressive, socialist and communist professors. They aim at convincing every student to follow their pernicious philosophy. The fact that most don’t is a testament to common sense. But it is also a testament to the power of knowledge. Those who know the history of progressivism in the US and it’s ties to Fascist socialism will recognize the parallels today. People who understand the difference between rhetoric and truth will see through the veil of half truths the unbiased media place in front of us. Folks that have access to the information to dull the blade of ignorance are less liable to be misled. Too many of us will refuse to sit in the cave and watch pretty shadows dance on the wall.

That is why it is imperative the progressive, communists and socialists control the internet. They must keep us ignorant, angry and dependent. Their power depend on it. The Elite that run the show on the left know this. If people knew the truth they would loose their power in a heart beat.

Fortunately people are waking up. The actions of the progressives are enlightening the people to the reality of who they are. The mask has been lifted a little. It should be totally removed. Then the people would recoil in horror at who they have voted for and supported in the past.

When that happens the progressives will have breathed their last breath, The socialists will have disheartened the last soul and the tyranny of communism will evaporate from the Earth. All this good from one thing… Light shining on reality.

Didn’t someone else say that evil grows in darkness and withers in the light?

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Posted in Group Politics, International Power, media, philosophy | No Comments »

Get the Economy Growing Again

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that if the US government really wanted to get the economy moving again there is a well charted course. The problem is, the government does not like that course. It believes that if only it goes the way it wants, eventually it will prevail, regardless of the cost.

Cut taxes, rescind the health care law, stop all pending legislation to cap carbon, Lower regulation, cut spending, resume drilling, streamline the permitting process and sponsor public service messages promoting starting a business.

Cutting taxes should be a no brainier. The economy responds every time it has ever been done. In all of history there is no example where lowering taxes did not positively effect the macro economy.

If the government announced tomorrow that the health care law was abolished… the S&P 500 would gain 500 points in a week. The giant specter of uncertainty in the markets about how this legislation will effect the cost of labor will be lifted. Uncertainty in markets cool those markets. Raising volatility and lowering expectations.

Everyone who owns a business (if they are sane) know that if the cost of energy goes up dramatically their imbedded cost of doing business will also rise. They will have to raise their prices. The rise in energy prices causing the rise in consumer cost. They are inextricably entwined. If the government intentionally drives up the cost of energy through some power grab legislation the macro economy will suffer. Overnight inflation in the cost of energy will shock the economy. The reverberations will echo throughout the world economy. The impact will be spread out over a long time span. (So the people can better enjoy it).

Regulation is nothing but friction to an economy. It is selectively enforced and written with an eye to benefit the politically connected at the cost to the politically naïve. Regulation has become the epitome of Bastiat’s perversion of Law. Moreover regulation is seldom well written. This round of regulation was written by lobbyists outside the Capital grounds, (So the comings and goings could be kept secret). It is massive and fraught with carve outs for the Elite’s friends. (Wait and see).

It will do nothing to stop another fiasco but will drive up the costs to the financial sector. Remember, while the banking system was melting down, the regulators at the SEC were looking at porn. Porn that cannot be blocked from their computers due to their civil rights… or something. So this regulation will result in more government regulators. Who, I assume, will continue the great tradition of looking at porn instead of doing their jobs. Win win. If we suffer another melt down the government will simply create more friction for the economy and hire on some more people to look at porn.

Cutting spending, seems at first blush, to be counter intuitive. After all didn’t John Maynard Keynes claim that government spending drives up aggregate demand and thus keeps the economy going while private sector spending is at a nadir. He did but he was wrong.

Government demand is fundamentally different from private sector demand. In many ways. In marketing, in payment and where the money comes from. I have written many blogs on the subject. To go into it here would be redundant.

The drilling ban is a knee jerk response to a catastrophe. This catastrophe is a very rare occurrence and will drive a deeper understanding of how to deal with future catastrophes like this in the future. But in the meantime to stop all Gulf drilling is foolish. It will serve no purpose except as propaganda for the Administration. The economy of the Gulf region is negatively impacted. At a time when the US macro economy is in peril and the region’s economy is already damaged by the spill’s impact to the fishing and tourist economy. In this light this drilling moratorium is utterly stupid.

A good metric to use to determine if the legal costs have gotten out of control in a society is to compare the legal cost of a road project to it’s engineering costs. If the legal cost outweighs the engineering cost the legal system is set up for the benefit of the legal system not for the benefit of society. In this case regulation should be streamlined to lower the legal costs of doing business.

Today we are bombarded with public service messages. Keep off drugs, feed the pig, save a life don’t drink and drive, etc… The list is endless. What about public service messages that espouse the benefits of starting a business. Holding business owners as heroes in society.

Is it possible that these ideas could have a positive impact on economic growth?

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Posted in Law, Societal Myth, economy, media | No Comments »

Thousands of Years of History… Have we Learned Anything?

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that when a nation pretends a crime was not committed by a leader because it would have to act… puts that nation in great peril.

If a powerful political leader was to commit a crime. Clearly and obviously… Like bribing another politician with a position in government for some favor. This is obviously not in the public good. Clearly it is (or should be) a violation of law. And it undermines the concept of meritocracy in government. Then that politician should be treated as the law requires.

To let that politician get away with some lame excuse like they are ignorant of the law or everyone does it is to guarantee that laws will be broken in the future with greater harm to the body politic.

To argue that the politician is ignorant of the law and thus cannot be held to it makes a mockery of law. If the person who writes the law and enacts the law cannot know it. And therefore cannot be held to it. How much more unfair is it to hold the average citizen to it? If the law is so complex and arcane that a lawgiver cannot know it then it is impossible for a citizen to know it. How then do you hold citizens to law they cannot know? Try playing a game where your opponent knows the rules but you don’t. Now don’t even hold them to the rules you know… how would that turn out?

To argue that everyone does it is to argue that everyone is corrupt. If that is the case society has profound problems. But no one who uses this argument, in government, ever gives examples. If they did then the other politicians would be prosecuted. Like a gang of drug dealers. If one is caught… would he get away with saying… “everyone does it.” If he did give examples, the drug enforcement unit will swoop down, and arrest them. But the first would still face prosecution. Why is it that we expect more from drug dealers than we do our leaders?

Some argue, “well, you have the vote.” Assuming the people in question actually have suffrage and it is fairly counted. So using an analogy, if a baseball player has a contract that expires every three years. He commits some crime in his first year. The team has the option, in three years, to fire him? Does that make sense to you? Again, in this case, we hold our leaders to a lower standard that we do someone who chases a ball around a field for a living.

When people in power misuse their power. We all suffer. But how much more egregious when a politician abuses his power in public? With no negative consequences?

So, given the profound negative impact of not holding our leaders to the law. Law that we are held to. Why do we withhold consequences from the actions of our leaders? Because we personally know our leaders. We may not actually have met them but we know them personally. We voted for them. We might have pounded pavement for them. We have sunk cost in them. So we have empathy for them…. Empathy that is not shared. For every act of mercy visited on a leader ten million acts of injustice are visited on the people.

Look at Tarquinius Superbus. Despite his arbitrary evils he was exiled not executed. In fact even in exile he visited evil on Rome. But still lived. The pattern has been repeated through history.

Shouldn’t we finally put a stop to it?

Or have we remained motionless in three thousand years… and are happy to remain?

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Posted in Law, Mercy, philosophy, polictics of class envy | No Comments »

Progressivism and Education

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that the way our children are taught has a great influence on them in their adult lives. Education is a means to not only teach children to read, write and do arithmetic but is a means to civilize them.

American schools today have taken a new path. They have eschewed teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and logic and have replaced them with progressive propaganda. Anti American adjectives like imperialism are often used to describe the USA. These are definitions taken directly from the Manifesto of the Communist Party and anti American Soviet handbooks. The schools teach homosexuality and the mechanics of it. They teach that God is dead. One of their favorite lessons today is that the American Constitution is a living breathing document. What do all these new evil societal myths have in common?

They serve to demean the children. They all serve to make children believe that simply the color of their skin determines if they are good or evil. This is not a very inclusive philosophy. But it has always been the philosophy of the progressives. Propaganda to the contrary aside…

I watched a show on PBS today, Need To Know. The show had a long segment about the Texas school board’s revue of new textbooks. The thrust of the piece was that a few members are wrong and bad by trying to force their conservative view of society on the whole country. Because Texas buys so many textbooks that the whole industry caters to their needs and wants. The news story never mentioned if California or New York have a similar effect on the textbook industry… At least that angle was never explored. I wonder… Would California drag the industry further to the right or the radical left… And if that had any bearing on the coverage of California’s effect on textbook slant.

Of course a hit piece on a conservative in the unbiased media is proof of their lack of bias. The show, Need To Know, also talked about the Texas Freedom Network, an organization that monitors the right’s effect on school curriculum. Amazingly this progressive organization agrees with the unbiased PBS and thinks America should be characterized as imperialist. PBS didn’t mention if there are any organizations that monitor the left… Why would there be?

The unbiased media today use evolution as a straw man argument. They constantly hammer that people of faith are bad because they deny evolution. They equate evolution deniers to holocaust deniers. The argument is used to as a means to disqualify any argument made by the right whether or not evolution is brought up. If I argue that The United States has liberated almost as many people in the twentieth century as the communists have murdered… The left argues that I deny evolution. The unbiased media agree. And the argument is changed to whether or not I believe in evolution. It has become a tool of the progressives to change the argument.

Changing the subject is a underhanded way to keep an opponent in a debate off his feet. It is the job of a good moderator to keep arguers on point. But unfortunately with the media being so unbiased only the right is kept on point the left is given free reign to move the debate as they see fit.

What is the inevitable outcome of this? The lowering of debate. Which leads to keeping the people in the dark. Which leads to the lowering of the quality of decisions made by the American people. (Exemplified in the last election). Which leads to the lowering of the lot of the American people. Which leads to the lowering of the lot of all Mankind. Because, in this World, we are all economically connected .

As long as the progressives control, the media, education and both political parties, our fortunes will continue to go down. Only until we have a media that is actually unbiased instead of pretending to be unbiased will the cancer that is progressivism be exposed by the light…

Only foul things grow in the dark… Progressivism withers in the light…

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Posted in Group Politics, Societal Myth, media, philosophy | No Comments »

Education

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that we should introduce our children to the capitalist system as soon as possible. Tying effort to earnings. The quickest and most easy way to do this is to pay for grades.

The cost is not as much as you might think. If the state paid children one dollar for every grade and for every “A” then a child in tenth grade who scored an A in every class would get forty dollars a week and one thousand six hundred dollars in a forty week school year.

This is not a great expense as far as school goes. The extra cost can easily be made up by increasing class size. As students get used to the idea that they will be tested weekly. A good test result will give immediate gratification in the form of money. Think about how this incentive will work.

Younger students, in the first grade, would be paid a dollar for every A. They could earn four dollars a week if they score all A’s. The cost would be far lower and the reduction in class size to make up the funding would be equally small.

Lower grades would get lower amounts. In First grade for example a B would get the student eighty cents and a C would garner fifty cents. A D or lower wouldn’t get rewarded. Students would try harder for the money alone. The result will be better educated children. With the added benefit that they have tied work and effort to earnings.

Tying effort to earnings makes a nation’s workforce much more efficient. That efficiency (productivity) translates into better pay. (Relative to the global economy). A nation’s people can have many attitudes to work. A negative attitude to work is corrosive to economies. A positive one makes a people wealthy.

With children motivated to learn, (or make money), class sizes will naturally be larger. A teacher will be better able to control a group of students that self control. Problems will be solved on the playground. Remember children are human beings. When there is money at stake human beings self regulate. Immediate positive motivators are most efficient to children.

The argument that children should “want to learn. After all they are the ones who will benefit.” Is totally sophist. Children have no concept of reality. They only just got here. There is no way they can deduce what will be in their best interest ten or twenty years from now. That is why God gave children parents. Society takes them (parents and morals) away.

Poor children will have the most inducement to excel. To a poor teenager forty dollars a week is a fair bit of money. Especially if all they have to do to get it is score well on tests. Every teenager wants money to blow on foolishness. Even if they use it to buy food at least they will have extra food. And the money to buy it.

There was an economic study done a few years ago comparing teacher productivity in 1971 to teacher productivity in 2002. During that timeframe American worker productivity rose much faster than the rest of the world. But American teacher productivity as measured in dollars spent per test score went down. The study figured a seventy one percent drop in teacher productivity. Measured in inflation adjusted dollars from 1971 to 2002. Clearly something is wrong.

The first time I heard of this idea I scoffed. ‘Paying for grades… another way someone else can spend my money.‘ Then I thought about it. Put into the context of incentives, perverse and efficient, the idea has real merit. The political forces that have reduced our schools efficiency are too heavy to move. So if we can convince some schools to enact this program as a pilot the results will speak for themselves. Costs will go down. Because teacher productivity will go up.

Student achievement will go up because students will will it. At a faster rate than before, a new rate, that will reset the curve…

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Posted in Societal Myth, economy, philosophy | No Comments »

Distributive Justice at Universities

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that since colleges and universities are the biggest proponents of distributive justice, it is only fair that they get to take part in the grand experiment, that they want the rest of us to participate in. Using the distributive justice model, we can clearly see, that the way college endowments are distributed is unjust. So the best means of rectifying this injustice, (according to these very institutions), is for government to seize from the rich colleges and universities then redistribute the money to poorer colleges and universities.

There are over fifteen intuitions of higher learning in the US that have more than a Billion dollars in their endowments. These happen to be the universities that have the biggest turn down rates and highest tuition. These huge endowments distort the ability of people to get quality college educations.

When a very few elite and select universities have far more money than they need, while others have far less than they need to run a quality curriculum, then we have a system set up to discriminate. Let’s look at the difference between the haves and the have nots in collages. Harvard University has over a billion dollars in it’s endowment. Some State collages have no endowments at all. So we can say the gap between the rich and the poor collages is a billion to one. When you have a gap between rich and poor collages that big it sets up a fundamentally discriminatory educational system.

Tuitions in American collages have been rising at over double the rate of inflation. The reason is that collages and universities are inelastic at increasing supply. But the demand rises every year. Despite the government’s increasing taxes and subsidies to collages and universities, the tuition rate, as measured in today’s dollars, is far less affordable than it was ten years ago. That affordability gap has been increasing every year due to the inelasticity of supply to meet increasing demand.

Redistributing these endowments would give colleges and universities incentives to increase supply. Poorer colleges, (that provide most of the growth in enrollment), would get the most benefit. This redistribution of funds would allow poor universities and colleges to expand their curriculums and enrolments. If this causes the supply of openings to go up the rate of growth in tuitions would be slowed or even reversed.

The endowments would be taxed on a progressive scale. The richest universities and colleges would have the most money taken from their endowments and the poorest colleges and universities would get most redistributed wealth. Like the income tax system this would level the playing field for colleges and universities.

The gap between the rich and the poor universities and colleges screams for a more equitable cutting up of the endowment pie. Lets let some of the little guys get a piece of the pie. Lets not let some fat cat universities and colleges suck up all the money. These greedy fat cats should give up some of what they don’t need or use. So that others may simply live.

Most college and university professors are big proponents of distributive justice. They argue that people with more should be taxed more and the money redistributed to make up for systematic and structural deficiencies. These manifest themselves as racism, sexism and all the other ism’s that appear in society. They also manifest themselves as unequal access to goods and services as well as unequal access to education. The educational piece of the puzzle can be solved by applying distributive justice, (as those that run our universities and collages argue should be applied to us).

As I would be happy to have my proscriptions applied to me, (life, liberty, right to property and to be recognized by government as a end in and of myself) I am certain that Colleges and universities would like to be treated as they propose others be treated. (To believe otherwise is to be a hypocrite). They will all be glad to have their proscriptions used on them, and see first hand… the results.

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Posted in Group Politics, Mercy, polictics of class envy | No Comments »