Posts Tagged ‘unbiased’

Capitalism

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that there has always been capitalism. The market system may be a relatively new invention but capitalism is as old as humanity. From the first time Ug traded Grug a spear head for a dear head there has been capitalism.

The market system has it’s roots in the time just before Adam Smith. It was the invention of the factory and the division of labor factories brought about that made production cheap and of higher quality. These innovations along with a capitalistic ethos have made our modern society so prosperous.

Imagine if the Romans had discovered the market system. Today Humanity would be striding among the stars. But they didn’t. It was after the last gasp of Roman Civilization (about a century after the fall of Constantinople) that the market system was being born in Denmark. The market system has evolved and devolved in steps since then.

But capitalism is a consequence of mankind’s social nature. It is a fact of our sociability that we mingle and trade. Each getting a need met in the trade. The one a plow and the other funds to build another plow and to feed his family for the day. Each getting more than he had before in the trade. No matter if the product or service is a spear head or fiber optic service the result is the same. It is a win-win.

That is the driving force of capitalism. That we all win when we engage in it. The buyer gets a good or service that in some way enhances his life and the seller gets to make a livelihood. Both have a positive outcome from the transaction. The small personal gains translate to huge societal gains in the aggregate.

Taxation lowers the good for each person. Some profit is diverted from new production or personal wealth to government use. Or some good or service costs more than it otherwise would, The good is lessened by taxation. Regardless of the societal good gained by the service paid for by the tax. There is a cost to a tax.

It is a valid role of government to protect the persons and property of it’s citizens. To that end taxation is a necessary evil. But it is never stopped at that end. Taxes are like an unstoppable tide. They rise and rise until they have drowned economic progress. Then the lawmakers responsible lament the lack of economic progress. But more importantly… the Elite lament the lack of tax revenues. So they raise taxes more…

This is because; if taxation lowers the good to the point that it is equal to or greater than the positive effects from all transactions, transactions will only go on, “under the table.” Off balance sheet transactions become more and more prevalent, when government taxation or other interference in markets are too onerous, erasing the benefit of a free exchange transaction.

If, a country want’s to measure how much it’s interference in the markets effect their markets, they need only compare the size of the black market to the legal market. If there is almost no black market the government is doing a good job not interfering in the markets. If there is a large black market then the government must look into it’s policies else it will face poverty and hunger in the future.

Capitalism is like air. The level of economic activity being like the pressure… The positive outcome is like the oxygen in the air. You can have plenty of air pressure but if there is no oxygen, (Because of government interference) then you cannot breathe. But if there is plenty of oxygen but little pressure you can breathe… If labored.

In other words… Business can go on in a poor country if the government doesn’t, tax too much, impose unnecessary rules, licenses, or other ways governments cause friction in their markets. The profit motive is still there. Even though business conditions are poor. But when government makes doing business too expensive to make a profit…

The point being that government policies have a direct bearing on the state of their economies. To blame capitalism for poor performance is like knowingly depleting the oxygen in a closed room then blaming the inanimate oxygen itself for our shortness of breath…

… if you use rhetoric, like “capitalism is dead.” no one points out the idiocy of the statement, and I believe it…who‘s the fool?

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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 »

Ideas and Their Free Flow

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Dear Friends,

It seems to me the that, when someone has an idea and wills it forth, it can benefit Mankind or injure Mankind. The act of creation being crucial in the development of humanity. We advance and learn from the accumulated knowledge and inventions of those who have lived before us. The aggregate of their invention has raised our lot. There have been a few that have dramatically lowered the lot of Man but most have raised it.

Ideas and their offspring can be utile. Like a piece of furniture. A woodworker comes up with an idea for a new piece of furniture that will fill a need. Then he decides what wood to use, how it should be constructed and finished. (The utility f the item was decided when the person saw the need and answered it in his idea). Then he or she builds the piece. It may be effective at filling the need it was built for, it may be ineffective at filling the need it was built for or it may be found to be effective at filling some other need that was never envisioned. The idea is utile in that it fills a need that can be filled with a piece of furniture.

The utility of an idea may be in it’s entertainment value. Many people have become wealthy by filling people’s need for distraction. The need for distraction grows as free time grows. Movies, television, and any of a host of things fill this need.

Ideas may be utile only in their luster. Creating a new type or style of jewelry for example. Inventing a new setting for stones that is cheaper, stronger or better in some way than existing means of setting stones in jewelry.

Other utilities can be supposed. But in order to be beneficial to Mankind an idea and it’s outcome should be utile. If it is not utile market forces will quickly make it extinct. The market can be reliably counted on to be pragmatic. Let people assign a value to a creation and vie for market share. The market will deturmine it’s utility.

Unfortunately this is not the case. Market forces are not always used. In fact Government often undermines or warps outcomes to achieve some political end. (Some politically powerful group is benefited). Ideas are subject to increasing scrutiny as the person having it is lower on the societal scale.

I forget what philosopher said this, but, one of them said that; Appearances are more important than facts. Take a person giving a speech. Lets give him a lisp. Further lets make him very homely. A nice hump on his back and a nasally tone to his voice. Though he is a fountain of wisdom he will be ridiculed a fool. Derided as too stupid to walk among men. But take another person hansom and articulate. A tone to his voice that gives one shivers up his leg. And no matter the drivel he vomits he will be idolized and deemed a genius.

This explains why many great ideas have fallen by the wayside, While others that lower the lot of Man have been elevated. If an idea or invention helps the people but in some way damages the interests of the Elite it will be vilified and reviled by beautiful people. The person who can get just the right quiver in his voice will sway the masses… to their own injury. The unbiased media is complicit. They studiously avoid telling the whole story… About anything.

I am given hope by the rise of new media. New media has already caught unbiased reporters fabricating from whole cloth hit stories about politicians they dislike. There is nothing more destructive of liberty than a biased media that claims to be unbiased.

With “new” media creating supply (of content), demand has shown itself to follow Say’s Law… and grows. “Supply drives demand.” the old classical economist maxim. This new content (like you are reading now) opens the ocean of ideas to the valley of demand for them. Filling this valley will raise everyone’s boat. Even if it is a life vest.

Unfortunately the US and other government’s are looking to clamp down on the free flow of ideas that the internet represents. They see people being empowered as a threat. Rightly so. Tyrants that world over quiver at the thought of an informed populace. Look at the lengths China has gone to. I would bet if you typed in “International Capitalist Party” (without quotation marks) in a Chinese search engine you wouldn’t get a single link to this sight. (Like Bing).

As government puts the brakes on the flow of information through the internet the economies of the world will inevitably suffer. GDP will be lowered for generations. But really, isn’t that a small price to pay, so that the Elite can keep oppressing people?

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

Unbiased Journalists

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that the modern definition of media bias depends on your perspective.

What is media bias? There seem to be several definitions. Everyone who finds a media story that portrays them in a negative light believes it is slanted. Some people believe that media stories that include certain information to be slanted. Others believe that media stories that allow certain points of view to see the light of day are slanted.

Every definition depends mostly on the point of perspective of the opiner’s. The merits of this or that argument is superfluous. The perspective of the viewer is paramount. An example is the Chris Mathews Show today.

Chris Mathews emphasizes he is a journalist and had three other journalists on his show today. They all had the exact point of view regarding Obama’s attack on Fox News. They all agreed that it was Fox News that is being unfair to the President. They also chortled at the unbiased journalist Chris Mathews calling everyone on his right and those at Fox News “wing nuts.” Chris was also incensed that Palin would use a teleprompter! (Apparently no other presidential candidate has ever used one before). Chris’s unbiased reporting went on, when Palin’s book was brought up as a best seller, he mentioned that it was ghost written. Apparently from his demeanor Chris Mathews finds ghost writing a book extremely distasteful.

Andrew Sullivan (who claimed to be a conservative… but has absolutely no conservative viewpoints) claimed Mitt Romney will say anything… To what end? He didn‘t elaborate. Andrews the conservative also claimed that McCain picking Sara Palin was wrong, because it was caving to the right wing. (of which he claims to be part of). But Mostly he purports that Obama’s best forte is his ability to let the right wing destroy themselves. By giving them enough rope.

Kathleen Parker said that, in the republican party, publicly, the belief is that Sara Palin could win the Whitehouse, But privately…(Read Elite), the belief is, she cannot.

The most interesting point was by Helena, (they didn’t put her name or credentials on the screen), when she said that right wing media makes republicans look more centrist. I wonder if she even gets a whiff of the irony in what she was saying as an unbiased journalist?

Unfortunately Dan Rather was incoherent. He came out with sophist statements like “The megaphone of right wing media outweighs them.” Of course he is the only one on the panel who has been caught fabricating evidence, then reported it as fact, just before an election… So he can be certified an unbiased journalist.

So… if this is the case, how can we ever rectify the term media bias?

Like a carpenter uses a chalk line to find a straight line we need to use, find or develop tools to find the straight in “news” as well. Many tools exist now but are only selectively used. Ad Homonym attacks like wing nuts show a perspective that is not in keeping with actually being unbiased.

Rhetoric is effective at moving a crowd but appeals to emotion… not to logic. Political philosophers have made the determination that government must run on logic not emotion. To do otherwise is folly. Every mischief will follow. So empty rhetoric is not a fair tool to use to make a point. Phrases like “The megaphone of right wing media outweighs them.” are good examples of this sophistry.

Changing the subject is another sophist means of redirecting a discussion away from a loosing point. Things like when a book is on the best seller list the author is denigrated instead of pointing out some flaw in the logic of the book.

Many other rules exist regarding just discussion of a subject… Regrettably the unbiased media demonstrates knowledge of none of them.

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Posted in media | 1 Comment »