The Good Fight


Picture this. You are called in to a local court and asked by town officials about your earnings over the last year. It is revealed that you have had a really great year. Your pay went up and you were able to pay down your existing debt. You have a few skills that make your labor much in demand. Demand is so great that you will see a massive increase in pay this coming year.

Now, one of the idiot politicians asks, “Since you made so much money last year and since there is a shortage in alternatives to your work skills, why not work for less next year.” I’m willing to bet that you would probably want to ask the idiot politician what he or she was smoking and whether they were willing to share.

Let me make sure you understand what I am saying. You have a highly demanded skill, but there are alternatives for your customers. Unfortunately, all those alternatives are even more expensive than purchasing your skills. Your customers are hitting hard times and they need financial relief from your high prices.

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Barak Obama is touting a tax credit for college tuition. I can only hope that this is just a promise and will not come about. I read recently that a politicians job is to make promises. It’s not their job to fulfill their promises, just to make them. Why would I be against a tax credit?

One reason was given in a short interview on my local news station. The speaker said that students could go to bigger schools. In her opinion, the tax credit would allow students to spend more on education, but Obama wanted to help people save money on tuition.

Left only to the market, if the price of education was too high then colleges would have to reduce their prices. The reason we might need a tax credit to help people afford education is if we are already doing something which inhibits this market mechanism.

Instead of offering a tax credit to fix the regulation, why not just repeal that regulation which messes up the market in the first place? Why does “doing something” have to add more laws? Since the market works all by itself, why not make “doing something” mean getting out of the way of the market?

Sometimes it does it subtly and sometimes it does it obviously, but regulation always changes the market place in ways we may not understand. It seems to me that Consumer Law attempts to give power to consumers because some people are convinced that large firms have all the power. But do they?

In a free market every trade is voluntary. There is no legal method to initiate force. Not even government can initiate it. Free market advocates often complain that there is no need for anti-trust or consumer law.

Take, for example, the scenario of a dominant market player (like Intel) using its size to drive other players out of a particular market by lowering its prices so much that they are sometimes selling below cost.
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Daniel Botkin was featured on the EconTalk podcast for November 26, 2007. In the interview he says some really neat things about nature.

Most species have evolved and adapted to change and depend on change, so assuming steady state goes against their needs.

He’s referring to more than just climate change. In some forests the vegetation has adapted to fires. When we stop allowing fires to control wilderness, we actually destroy nature. Daniel illustrates that our perception of what nature should be often influences what we do to nature.
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I ran across this argument in a political thread about libertarians.

… the fact that your lap top just went up in flames and distorted a years work product is of little concern. You will get your check for $1000 to replace the Lap Top. You talk to a lawyer You are told it will cost at least $35,000 and maybe 5 years to make a claim for the work product you lost. a work product might have a worth in the Millions but do you have the time and the money to recover the loss …

In your scenario the idiot consumer placed millions of dollars worth of information on a single device with no backups. Even if the battery was well made, the potential for loss of the information is too great to warrant such a risk. I wouldn’t leave that kind of information on any single device.
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Perpetual:
1. Continuing forever,
2. Occurring continually. Indefinitely long-continued.

I found this argument on a political forum about energy and oil.

Don’t atoms, the solar system, and the galaxy itself perpetually move?

Yes. They move, but not perpetually. Anything that has a definite end is not perpetual. The motion of an electron, a planet or a star will end eventually. They are not perpetual.
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Aargh!

The worst traps are not those which opponents deliberately place in your path. No, the worse traps are those placed there by people who are unaware they are laying a trap. Can you spot the trap in the question blow? I was asked it on a forum while debating free markets with a mixed market enthusiast. My answer is also presented.

Please explain The actions of the robber barons and the dismal conditions of workers health standards not to mention child labor laws and more in the 19th century? Business had little regulation and did what they always do without outside regulation.

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I ran across this web site while researching Cholesterol. It’s a cruelty to animals site about the abuse of hens which provide eggs. If you have no clue how a farm works, you will probably like the web site. If you grew up on a farm you will be fascinated just how naive people can be about where their food comes from.

I grew up in the suburbs if New Orleans with over a million people and now live in a rural town of about 14,000. Having been exposed to both farming and the city life, I have found few city-dwellers understand how farmers think about animals. Conversely, few farmers grasp the perspective of city-dwellers.

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It is impossible to aid others by forcing them to believe as you do. Doing so always creates a society in which the free exchange of ideas is limited. A circumstance which will eventually destroy that society. Might does not make right, cooperation does.

Uh-oh! Look out. Those economists are at it again. This time, they are using statistics to show that the trade deficit is actually good for the U.S.

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