Category Archives: Free Markets

UPDATED (3/4): NEW COLUMN: Systemic, Institutional Rot: From Big Freeze In Texas To Fires In California

Affirmative Action, Egalitarianism, Energy, Feminism, Free Markets, Gender, Government, Race, Regulation, The State

2 Replies

NEW COLUMN: “Systemic, Institutional Rot: From Big Freeze In Texas To Fires In Cali,” is on WND, The Unz Review, on Townhall.com.

And a feature on American Greatness:

“… our country is suffering a blackout of intelligence”

Excerpt:

Some blame a quasi, free-market in electricity for the collapse of the electrical grid in Texas, during a winter snow storm, mid-February, with temperatures averaging zero. The same people finger deregulation and isolation from the national and neighboring grids.

The other side has it that an excessive reliance on renewable energy sources, like wind turbines, was the culprit in a grid collapse that saw 40 percent of the power supply fail within hours of the storm, indirectly causing the death of about 60 Texans.

All agree that the oil-and-gas state enjoys both cheap natural gas and abundant wind power, and that its natural resources could have stood Texas in good stead.

The Lone Star State’s human resources are another matter entirely.

Be they wind turbines or gas pipelines; the electrical grid has to be properly maintained. Texas, however, lacked “leadership.” It transpires that the grid had not been weatherized nor winterized in anticipation of a harsh winter—pipelines had not been insulated and wind turbines never deiced.

Leadership is a euphemism for intelligence. Texas in the winter of 2021 will likely be looked upon as a case of systemic stupidity; systemic rot.

Things start to fall apart when the best-person-for-the-job ethos gives way to racial and gender window-dressing and to the enforcement of politically pleasing perspectives.

Likewise has the emergency personnel managing the blackouts for the nation’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, joined California’s political leadership to deliver Third World quality service to Californians.

When it is reported that, “Among the hundreds of people who handled the blackouts from Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s emergency operations center, only a handful had any training in the disaster response playbook that California has used for a generation”—that is a fancy way of saying “affirmative action.”

It doesn’t help that the American Idiocracy is moving at breakneck speed to equate merit-based institutions with “institutionalized racism.”

... READ THE REST.  NEW COLUMN: “Systemic, Institutional Rot: From Big Freeze In Texas To Fires In Cali,” is on WND, The Unz Review, on Townhall.com.

And a feature on American Greatness.

Related post: “East Asian Countries Believe In, OMG, Ability (IQ, Too), Not Equity.”

*Image courtesy here (size matters, wouldn’t you say?)

UPDATE (3/4): Via Unz Review:

What happens when there is an accident in a tunnel in South Korea. (It’s called a sense of community.)

UPDATE II (11/5): California Collapsing Under The Weight Of Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action, America, COVID-19, Energy, Free Markets, Intelligence

1 Reply

When it is reported that “among the hundreds of people who handled the blackouts from Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s emergency operations center, only a handful had any training in the disaster response playbook that California has used for a generation”—you know this is a nice way of saying:

Affirmative action.

The Associated Press found that, “The utility entered 2019 planning to ‘de-energize’ its aging electric grid during autumn windstorms, so that downed lines couldn’t spark a blaze. Yet among the hundreds of people who handled the blackouts from PG&E’s emergency operations center, only a handful had any training in the disaster response playbook that California has used for a generation, The Associated Press found.”

The emergency personnel managing the blackouts for the nation’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company,  delivers  third-world quality service to California.

From “When Merit-Based Hiring Is Deemed Racist, Bridges Fall Down”:

When the best-person-for-the-job ethos gives way to racial and gender window-dressing and to the enforcement of politically pleasing perspectives; things start to fall apart.
A spanking new bridge collapses, new trains on maiden trips derail, Navy ships keep colliding, police and FBI failure and bad faith become endemic, and the protocols put in place by a government ‘for the people’ protect offending public servants who’ve acted against the people.

You can be sure that the same fate awaits the task of contact tracing vis-a-vis COVID. It is a highly skilled endeavor, detective work, if you will. The South Koreans, for example, to it to perfection.

Contact-tracing, however, will be used as a job-creation opportunity for the government. Instead of merit-based appointments, state and federal authorities will make politically advantageous appointments .

AP News Wild Fire Hub.

UPDATE I (11/1):
Exactly. Even Tucker, commiserating with fleeing Californians, failed to mention that they pollute every other locality at which they arrive. Idaho, apparently, is getting toxic. How low IQ can you get? Escape a place due to x, y, z; replicate x, y, z in new home.

UPDATE II (11/05): Prop 16 in California may just fail, but, somehow, I think they’ll find a way to retain That Sinking Feeling.

Finally, PPE Domestic Production Capacity Predicted To Take Off

Business, Capitalism, COVID-19, Free Markets, Government

Thankfully, the domestic production of personal protective equipment (PPE) is predicted to vastly expand in the next five years.

Back on March 5, a full month before government’s “experts,” national and international, stopped fumbling, lying and dissembling about the effectiveness of masks, I foresaw what IBISWorld, an industry research company, now confirms. I wrote:

A rise in consumer demand for this product, reflected in empty shelves and relatively higher prices, will galvanize business to hire more workers and produce more of the coveted commodity.
Prices are crucial. They are the street signs of the economy. The thing the socialists will soon insist on controlling (“price-controls”) and suppressing are the vital signs of the economy. In particular, scarcity and high prices are vital signals. Mask these natural market indices, and you kill off the knowledge needed by manufacturers and entrepreneurs to decide whether to rush into the production of surgical face masks and N-95 respirators.
Masks and all others pandemic prophylactics are currently exorbitantly priced to reflect high demand and subsequent scarcity. These prices have already been taken by producers as a signal to accelerate productions.

IBISWorld now forecasts an “increased emphasis on domestic production capacity in the interest of national security.” It expects “the industry’s trade balance to shift from a deficit to a surplus over the five years to 2025.”

SEE: “Unmasking Statist, Socialist Propaganda About ‘Face Masks”’(March 5)

IBISWorld further reports that “the PPE manufacturing industry has seen an unprecedented surge in demand for N95 masks, respirators, face shields and gloves. The industry’s largest operators are operating at maximum capacity and are currently or intending to expand their domestic production capacity within the year.”

For this, we owe the profit motive, not American leaders. As a rule, the latter have no compunction about leaving their pliant people in the lurch during disasters.  The U.S. government knows its loyalists will do anything, including to deny COVID is real, to help their leaders save face.

 

Trust Republicans To Sabotage A Safe Return To Work

Business, COVID-19, Free Markets, Labor, Law, libertarianism, Private Property, Regulation, Republicans

“In the absence of clinical therapies or a vaccine for coronavirus, the successful return to work rests, very plainly, on the willingness of the citizenry to cover up, keep clean and keep a distance.” (“The Ethics of Social Distancing: A Libertarian Perspective.”)

If businesses want customers to resume consumption and workers to stay safe and productive on the job—they must, within reason, provide a safe working and shopping environment.

The market incentivizes business to protect customers and employees and thus to also reduce the spread of COVID. If business acts recklessly, customers will stay away. And if companies place workers in a precarious position, then the worker who gets sick on the job generally has recourse through litigation.

The free-market and the law—more so than government regulation—provide corrective mechanisms to ensure workers and customers are safe. Government regulations are generally agreements between industrial special interests and the state. Duly, they mostly benefit those interests alone.

By removing the incentives aforementioned,  so necessary in a society based on ordered liberty, the government sabotages a safe return to work, as it fails to allow corrective mechanisms to work.

Trust the Republicans, then, to strive to remove the incentives for business to fit the workplace for success in the age of coronavirus.

To hell with the desperate young worker, who toils in a crowded, unclean, meatpacking facility, currently a “serious vector for the pandemic.”

Or, the flight attendant who was told by the airline she’d be fired if she wore a mask. If they get sick on the job because their employers refused to set up and suit up for COVID—the worker will have no recourse, courtesy of the Republicans’ liability protection guarantees.

With half of all U.S. states forging ahead with strategies for easing restrictions on restaurants, retail and other businesses shuttered by the coronavirus crisis, business groups have been pushing for protection against COVID-19-related lawsuits …The Trump administration is also pushing for liability safeguards … [Reuters]

GOP lawmakers have warned that without additional protections they believe business owners will be too fearful of litigation to reopen.

McConnell, during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, called the extra protections his “red line.”

“Let me make it perfectly clear, the Senate is not interested in passing a bill that does not have liability protection. … What I’m saying is we have a red line on liability. It won’t pass the Senate without it,” he added.

Stripped of baffle-gab, this means that Republicans wish to shield business from the consequences of reckless disregards for the safety of shoppers and workers. For the courts will examine cases on their merit, and throw them out if they are frivolous.

Fail to allow corrective mechanisms like litigation to work—and you’ll increase illness, death and poverty and spread more devastation.

* Thanks, Scott Olson | Getty Images, for fair use.

@ Unz Review.