Category Archives: Private Property

Privatize Aviation Sector And Say Goodbye To State Sequester

Business, Debt, Private Property, Regulation, The State

If all aspects of the airline industry, “curb-to-curb,” were truly private, as they ought to be, we wouldn’t chafe about whether pilots should carry guns or not, whether granny and grandpa from the prairie ought to endure patdowns, or whether air traffic controllers should be furloughed because central planners have run out of other people’s money, to paraphrase the late Mrs. Thatcher.

Meanwhile, back on terra firma, it’s hell for the faithful who believe Big Brother will deliver them from want—and from A to B. Via The Guardian:

Republican and Democratic leaders are working on draft legislation that would protect aviation from the estimated $87bn across-the-board spending cuts.
Furloughs forced on air traffic control staff have seen flights cancelled and many others delayed. FlightStats reported that on Thursday alone, up to mid-afternoon, 107 flights had been cancelled and 3,387 delayed. The sequester cuts are being implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration, after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a budget plan. Although the sequester began on 1 March, the cuts have been slow to take effect; the flight disruption is now highly visible and it is set to become worse from 15 June, when dozens of control towers are set to close.

UPDATED: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Recognize No Evil (But Rationalize It)

America, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, Private Property, Reason, Terrorism, The State

The specter of residents of the suburb of Watertown, in the Greater Boston area, being forcibly turned out of their homes and stared down by SWAT teams is not likely to disturb your average American. Said the great Roman statesman Cicero: “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.”

Perpetual children, Americas don’t know squat about their constitution, its philosophical origins, and why the framers, who were sophisticated thinkers, put certain provisions in place.

Of those Americans who vaguely compute something about a Fourth Amendment—“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects”—most still believe that blatant violations of these sacred protections are probably justified, and visited only on “terrorists.”

In other words, if an authority figure violates the Fourth Amendment—you average, pliant American will simply surmise that it’s likely OK.

In addition, liberty as it was codified by the founding generation demands a rational mind. Being both childish and sentimental in the extreme, Americans shun rational thought. It thus becomes impossible to think clearly about liberty.

This isn’t it:

MORE.

UPDATE (4/26): Locked-down Bostonians rationalize tyranny:

Where is the outrage that the Powers That Are in Boston essentially made prisoners of an entire city? On what grounds and by what authority does any municipal government presume to place every citizen of a major United States city on house arrest? In the afterglow of the successful capture of the remaining Boston Marathon bombing suspect, alleged Islamist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the people celebrating in the streets that Tsarnaev was taken alive (ironically, only because the “lockdown” was lifted and the property owner in whose boat Tsarnaev was hiding could finally go outside and check his yard) ought to be asking themselves what they have to be happy about. They are beta testers of the New Freedom, which looks a lot like the Old Oppression. At whim, your government may order you to remain in your home, and if you dare disobey, they will point guns at you, essentially threatening to murder you.

UPDATE II: Living in Police State USA And … Loving It (Economic Inefficiencies)

Constitution, Crime, Fascism, Homeland Security, Law, Military, Private Property

“Not only did the militarized domestic law enforcement complex put the City of Boston under martial law, but nobody seems to have found it out of the ordinary, much less outrageous,” writes fellow libertarian Thomas Mullen.

“Yes, a few journalists … raised a finger. But, for the most part, nobody seemed to mind that the entire city was under military siege, complete with paramilitary units in full battle gear, battlefield ordinance and tanks. Tanks!”

“How did we get here? 238 years ago to the day, the inhabitants of the very same city started a war and seceded from their union over a mere infantry brigade attempting to disarm them. Now they cheer those who violate their rights much worse than the British ever did.”

“When Lee Harvey Oswald was similarly suspected of killing a police officer after assassinating the President of the United States, Dallas was not put under martial law. No tanks rolled through the streets. Oswald was armed at the time of his arrest and attempted to shoot the arresting officer, whose thumb stopped the hammer of Oswald’s pistol from discharging the weapon at point blank range.”

“It is noteworthy that the military siege was called off several hours before Tsarnaev was captured. In the end, he was found and taken into custody by the same methods that any other criminal has been for most of U.S. history.”

“So, there was no cause and effect relationship between the state show of power and the apprehension of the suspect. …”

MORE FROM MULLEN @ The Washington Times Community Pages.

UPDATE I: ECONOMIC INEFFICIENCIES. And what about the economic inefficiencies of the public production of law, so to speak? The costs of this operation in proportion to the dangers posed?!!!! Imagine what a dozen or so private hires (SEALS in the employ of the private sector) would have accomplished by stealth, and while being held to the standards of a private company: “You do damage to innocents and property, you get sued.”

UPDATE II: Updated: As to efficiencies, in case you forgot, it took “100,000 U.S. Troops To Find Osama bin Laden.”

Fisker, Tesla: Fisting* The Paying Public

Bush, Business, Fascism, Government, Intelligence, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Regulation, Sex, Socialism, Taxation, Technology

Last night we dined at a local eatery in our Washington State town. Parked outside the restaurant was the electric commie car, the Tesla Roadster.

Well of course, the pinkos who proliferate and rule my state are as dumb as they are dastardly.

DUMB because they fail to understand that, “Whether a vehicle is propelled by hydrogen-powered fuel cells or electricity, both electricity and hydrogen don’t magically materialize in the vehicle. They must first be generated. Be it coal, natural gas, nuclear or a hydroelectric dam, these cars are only as clean as the original source of energy that generated the vim that powers them.”

Other than to increase the consumption of gas, because people drive more in them, state-sponsorship of so-called fuel-efficient cars is a grand exercise in compulsory misallocation and waste of capital. It proves that the development of technologies is best left to the market, not to environmental bureaucracies. The electric car is a marvelous metaphor for the legislator’s attempt to shackle the ‘wayward’ consumer. Purchase one, and your best bet is to avoid straying too far from the socket in your garage, or, alternatively, drive with a very long extension cord, lest your vehicle turn into something not nearly as useful as Cinderella’s pumpkin at midnight. The benefits to the consumer are few, much less to the environment, unless a steady discharge of lead, cadmium, and nickel—the byproducts of batteries—is a blessing in disguise.

[“Commie Cars”]

DASTARDLY because the immoral pinko has no qualms about forcefully taking from taxpaying Americans to give to favored state-sponsored interests, like Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive.

The first “received a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy.”

Here, Republicans deserve to be reminded to hang their heads in shame. “The Department of Energy loan program was created in 2007 during the George Bush administration,” for the purpose of manufacturing the equivalent of the USSR’s “People’s Car.”

The second “has received $193 million of a $529 million Energy Department loan … Fisker Automotive — the electric-car maker that was granted a half-billion-dollar federal loan and on Friday dismissed about 75 percent of its remaining workforce — is purportedly facing a lawsuit from the same firm that sued the government-funded Solyndra company …Fisker laid off 160 of its roughly 210 employees Friday morning from its Anaheim, Calif., location.” (Fox News April 06, 2013.)

Don’t look to GOOGLE to serve you news straight up either. News about the bankruptcy or lack of viability of these subsidiaries of the state does not pop up first in related searches.

Writing in the Mises Institute’s indispensable Free Market, PETER G. KLEIN partially explains the dynamics that underpin these examples of American fascism (state-corporate collaborations). “Partially,” because Dr. Klein omits the private-property variable and philosophical fulcrum. (And the editor of TFM does Dr.Klein a disservice by giving the essay a title that is unexplained in the text: What on earth is “Tang”? Writers/editors should never assume their readers know what they’re talking about.) Explains Klein:

Today, when we look at private companies like Google,
Apple, and Facebook and marvel at their innovations, we
should remember that these companies are constantly
subject to market tests, and that the goods and services
they innovate must be accepted by consumers to be profitable. When they succeed, we know that they are creating value for society because consumers have chosen their products and services over others.
The goods and services produced by the Rand Corporation and the Pentagon and the National Science Foundation do not face any kind of market test. The goods and services they produce are valuable to the directors, and
members of Congress, and to the researchers themselves
who are on the payroll, but the value of this research is
determined arbitrarily.

Tesla and Fisker “produce” for the dim-witted Hollywood and D.C. elites, whom YOU are forced to finance. That’s it.

Fisker and Tesla are fisting* the paying public.

***

* Disclaimer: The reason I know about this practice is because I used to volunteer as an HIV/AIDS counselor in South Africa. Filthy and perverted, it’s an appropriate metaphor for robbery by state and special-interests.