Category Archives: Private Property

Obama’s Parasite Economy

Economy, Government, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Natural Law, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Private Property, The State

The Free Dictionary teaches that a host is “an animal or plant on which or in which another organism lives.” This is precisely the nature of the relationship between the private, productive sector, and the public, unproductive sector. The last lives at the pleasure of the first; or lives off the first.

In the brouhaha over Barack Obama’s “The Private Sector is Doing Fine” comment, nobody is asking, Who’s property is it anyway? And why would a system (“The Economy”) do better when the number of parasites (people whose spending is financed as a result of coercive transfers of wealth from the private sector) it carries continues to grow (or to stagnate)?

The public sector consumes wealth—it doesn’t produce it.

Reason Magazine, representing as it does a variant of what I call “Libertarianism Lite,” focuses elsewhere.

Based on charts he generated at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ website, Reason’s Nick Gillespie notes that, “As it stands, the number of private-sector employees is about equal to what it was in 2005. And in 2000, which is really appalling. … The current number of government workers is about what it was in 2006.”

In the rest of the post, Gillespie does his utmost to clarify what BHO really meant when he said that,

The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

Microsoft Previews Windows 8 OS

Free Markets, Internet, Outsourcing, Private Property, Science, Technology

News comes that “Microsoft has launched the most complete preview yet of its forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.” Is that good or bad? I live with a Microsofty who tries to defend the Machine as best he can. Yet, I dread each and every improvement in this indispensable technology.

I’m just a simple user; not a designer. And each and every “improvement” seems to come with added complexity.

To me, a technological “improvement” means ease of operation. I long to go back several revisions of Microsoft Word and Outlook. I swear; each and every function I once achieved with one or two clicks of the mouse, now takes nine. I’ve even documented a bug or two, which, when challenged on, my better half smiles and walks away.

This weekend we were forced to replace the home’s telephones. (The free market is fabulous. Most Americans can afford a few “telephones.”) The lines kept crackling. It turns out the noise was not the fault of the old, trusted telephones, answering and fax machines.

The upshot of the improved technology: Whereas I was once able to press a single button, and by so doing activate the answering message; I now must click through a whole process to get the same result.

I am told that this added complexity and inconvenience is due to cheap innards. Extant hardware must be made to carry as much programming as possible. Designing for customer comfort is secondary to the price of the components.

Ultimately, each time I accidentally click to update my browser or any other of the things I use to function online, I dread the complexity that will ensue.

Some things are best kept simple. Technology is one such thing.

UPDATED: Arrested for Being a Tomboy (& Talking too Much)

Crime, Fascism, GUNS, Individual Rights, Law, Private Property

They’re getting closer! Those of us who, like young Celia Alchemy Savage, “distrust government,” and, like the 23-year-old Georgia tomboy, believe that “everybody ought to be able to set on their property and do whatever the heck they want to”: Watch out.

Celia Savage, who likes to blow things up on her property or in the forest clearing, was arrested for telling an agent of Police State USA that she liked to “Blow things up. …” especially “toilets in the woods.”

She did nothing wrong, other than blow her mouth off to an officer of the police state. She was not caught in any criminal act, as far as I can tell. There was no plausible cause to search her home. But they did. Based on what they found during that raid, Savage is being “held on federal weapons, explosives and drug charges, and has been denied bond.”

Savage’s Facebook profile, which is also still on the web, lists “explosives” as an interest, her political orientation as “anarchist” and her status as “Push to test. Release to detonate.”
“I despise all law enforcement and any governing authority,” she says in her “about Celia” section.

Had the Georgia resident offered her skills to Uncle Sam’s fighting force, she’d be in the clear, especially if she blew off some “toweled” heads, or peed on them.

What next? Question her likely many Facebook Friends? Perhaps Savage is my friend and I don’t know it?

UPDATE (June 2): “Beware Of People Like … Mercer”:

A secret Missouri State police report, “entitled ‘The Modern Militia Movement,’ and dated February 20, 2009,” is warning about subversives like … me [and YOU].

One of the incriminating telltale signs the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) is on the look out for are Ron Paul stickers.
I have one on my car. It reads: “Don’t blame me, I supported Ron Paul.”
The MIAC has cultivated an ensnaring network of snitches and spies”—consisting of local, state and federal agencies, as well as the public sector and private entities”—all instructed to keep their eyes peeled for “paraphernalia” associated with the patriot movement. Flags, for example. Guilty again. A magisterial “Don’t Tread On Me” flag snakes across the front page of this website, where my seditious work is stored. The Gadsden flag appears on every other page too. I can’t get enough of “that funky snake,” as my website developer calls the critter.
Indeed, this early American symbol represents some of the values I cherish and champion. The Stars and Stripes stands in stark contrast to the “modest motto” the rattler embodies. Beloved of Republicans, especially, the American flag has ceased to symbolize the ideals of individual and national sovereignty, but stands, rather, for arrogance and imperialism, at home and abroad. …


READ MORE about what could incriminate us in Police State USA.

One Giant Step For SpaceX

Barack Obama, Private Property, Science, Technology, The State

Oh the contradictions of being a Republican! Republicans, the ostensible party for market forces, were furious when Barack Obama and his posse privatized aspects in the operation of NASA, the National Aeronautic Space Administration, perhaps the only good move BHO has ever made as president (although he should have privatized the whole thing).

Hungry to sustain the National Greatness Agenda in whatever statist way possible, conservatives slammed BHO on the NASA front.

Now, a private company based in California, called SpaceX, has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Stationbuilt. This via BBCNews:

The head of Nasa has hailed a “new era” in exploration after the launch of the first cargo delivery to the space station by a private company.
The Falcon rocket, topped by an unmanned Dragon freight capsule, lifted clear of its Florida pad at 03:44 EDT (07:44 GMT; 08:44 BST).
The launch system has been built by California-based firm SpaceX.
The initial climb to an altitude some 340km above the Earth lasted a little under 10 minutes.
Within moments of being ejected, Dragon opened its solar panels.
It also unpacked its navigation equipment.
Nasa’s administrator Charles Bolden said: “Today marks the beginning of a new era in exploration… The significance of this day cannot be overstated …