Thoughts and insights courtesy of Reason.tv.
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Great points, right? Just basic math here, folks. The federal government is not solvent and current health care reform bills will only exacerbate the problem.
Of course, when the Republicans not too long ago held the commanding heights in Washington, what did they do about health care reform? Nothing. In fact, in cahoots with Democrats, they expanded the health care welfare state with the prescription drug benefit plan.
Foolish! Reckless! Destructive!
I’m sure there are some Democrats and Republicans who have always understood what Ryan is talking about now. They haven’t had enough pull to change the death spiral of deficit fueled government expansion, but every once in a while they have a chance to be heard and their plain common sense is a striking contrast to the deceptive soothsaying of typical politicians.
I’d like to believe that professional politicians in both parties are capable of learning from their mistakes. That said, for all of my life I’ve heard them talk about lowering taxes and decreasing government spending, and for all of my life the government has increased people’s overall tax burden and grown the national debt astronomically. Unsustainable debt sounds like an abstract condition that couldn’t possibly affect people’s lives. I wonder how many people living in Greece felt that way until recently.
After how much more time, after how many more examples of the blithering idiocy of central planning and the dismal effects of coercive interventionism, will people finally reject the absurdity of granting more control and power to Government in the name of “problem solving?”
Perhaps not much longer.
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The LOST writers are juggling twenty pies right now, but I trust them to resolve the questions that matter most to me without making too much of a mess. That said, I’m fine with LOST wrapping up with dashes of clarity here and puddles of muddle there. Would any fan of this show be happy with a “man-behind-the-curtain” series of revelations? It seems apparent to me from the premiere (well, even before that, but the premiere confirms this I think) that we’re headed for a complex conclusion and one in which few if any of the characters emerge unscathed and the suspense of it all is gripping.
With all of the big picture issues that surround the LOST characters, despite how fascinating many of those are in and of themselves, the primary draw of this show is the realism of the main characters. The storytelling structure of this show has given us more insight into its main characters than any other television show has ever attempted. What I admire and appreciate most about LOST is the plausibility of the characters’ responses to their chaotic situations, their frustrating lapses and heroic choices, their meaningful emotional connections to each other and dysfunctional emotional behavior, too. So far, I believe the characters. They make sense to me. I like most of them. And I find myself rooting for them.
I’ve come to terms with and now appreciate the show’s blend of magical realism and science-fiction and humanism and (sometimes soapy) operatic romance. Clearly, things happen on this show that seem arbitrary and strange and for which no explanations will ever be forthcoming. Some people are upset by this. I used to be one of them, but I’m not any more. Maybe I’m at peace with the show’s absurdities because I was recently blindsided with an incredibly freaky injury that has fundamentally altered my lifestyle. I’ve also just been hit with a creepy, new, totally unjustifiable tax. Where did that come from? But then I’ve also had innumerable, unexpected positive experiences in my life that I would never have predicted and for which rational explanations would be somewhat forced. For example, the LOST-like chain of improbable but actual events that led to my parents falling in love and creating me and then to me and my wife meeting and falling in love and making our lives together.
So, as the final season of my favorite show launches, I am not preoccupied with the idea that the writers need to tie up every loose end or explain away every bizarre moment. I’d rather some things remain mysteries than have the writers contort the characters and plot in order to achieve a story that has no open questions.
Mysterious stuff happens in our lives all the time. I don’t believe in mystical stuff, and yet I marvel at the effects of freedom’s “invisible hand,” the splendid and surprising diversity of results produced by spontaneous, purposeful human action. There is a persuasive empirical basis for the theory of free markets, but that doesn’t make the design accomplishments of unplanned human behavior any less marvelous and unpredictable.
When I pause and think about what makes it possible for you and I to cook a meal in our homes using ingredients and tools and materials and energy sources and technologies from all over the country and even the planet that were developed over the course of centuries…. every single day of our lives we choose, for the most part, not to contemplate the wonders just under the surface of the ordinary. We have the luxury of not needing to know the answers to questions about how our televisions work, how natural gas flow to our stoves is safely maintained, how fresh blueberries from Chile are made available to me in the dead of Winter here in New York. We live in a magical world.
On the show, LOST, everything that is ordinary is also extraordinary. Nothing in LOST can be taken for granted. LOST’s exaggerations clarify the extraordinary nature of the experience of being human.
LOST also appeals to me by spotlighting the significance of circumstance and choice, by emphasizing the inextricability of context and individuality. In LOST, choices always matter, but reality cannot be outflanked. And given the exotic nature of “reality” on this show, the tension between what people choose to do and what the rules of the world in which they operate will permit to happen produces thrilling, heroic, and tragic results.
My overall impression of the Season 6 premiere is quite positive. I think they’re setting us up for a heartbreaking season. I would speculate that our favorite characters are going to pay a steep price in order to make it possible for them to lead “normal” lives in which they lose the knowledge or memory of the island and of one another. There may be serendipitous paths-crossings, which the audience will enjoy, like the scenes involving Locke and Jack and then Kate and Sawyer at the airport. Almost certainly, there will also be tragic outcomes, unintended consequences. The parallel storytelling that they’ve set up in this first episode is, I speculate, a way of showing us that the main characters’ heroic and misguided and successful and futile attempts to “do the right thing” and/or to escape one or more frying pans won’t render them immune to fire.
Or, I may be wrong. But I’m hooked. I love it. There are so very many ways to appreciate this show. Here is the first page of a lengthy thread about one possible grand unification theory that would explain what is happening on LOST, a theory originated by one bright and passionately devoted fan. It’s a tremendous creative accomplishment in and of itself, only one example of why it’s a thrill to be part of the community that is watching and thinking about LOST. Another example would be the friends with whom I laughed and exchanged mind-boggling notions during the premiere last night.
And though I can’t wait for next week, there’s something bittersweet about each episode bringing us closer to the end of this brilliant, televised novel.
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The last week has been exciting for me.
It’s been almost two months since the second surgery on my right leg. Though my stamina is still low and there are lingering pain issues, I’m once again walking around without a cane. To be perfectly honest with you, the experience has been intoxicating.
This will probably wear off. I will grow accustomed to walking, and eventually, I’ll take it for granted. Never again quite as much as those of you do who have never lost the capacity to run, but, without a doubt, walking around will once again feel ordinary to me. So I’m enjoying this feeling while it lasts. I’m grateful for and loving every step I take these days.
My process of re-entering the world as a walking person has been largely about the humanizing and uplifting experience of trading.
Four days ago, I reactivated my gym membership and have visited twice. I’m sore everywhere, which has the unintended consequence of decreasing my sensitivity to issues specific to my right leg. It’s a tremendous relief to ache everywhere and, for moments, to imagine my whole body improving as opposed to my knee holding me back.
Three days ago, I went for a walk to Safeguard Storage where my wife and I keep books and seasonal clothes. After picking up my warmest winter coat, I went to the front office and paid up for the next month. As I left, the facility’s supervisor wished me well: “Have a great day, Mr. Cohen.” I walked over to my gym, a New York Sports Club, the one where I got into shape for my wedding in 2004 and where I rebuilt my right leg in 2009, and was greeted by a friendly young guy: “Have a great workout!” As I was leaving, a trainer nodded in my direction, smiled, and said, “Come back soon.” I paid a visit to Marino’s, my favorite local fishmonger: “Happy New Year! How’s your leg coming along. What can I get for you? Check out this magazine we were featured in. Have a great day!” And finally I stopped by a local grocer to pick up some oranges: “Thank you. Have a nice day.”
In the course of my days since, I’ve had the following experiences. The vendor through whom this site is hosted contacted me to make me aware of the fact that by migrating to a similar product, I could cut my monthly costs in half. In response to competition from Verizon, AT&T has reduced the cost of its iPhone Family Plan by at least $30 per month, without requiring me to sign a contract extension.
Two nights ago, I listed a camera lens for sale on craigslist. I sold it yesterday. Here is a dialogue snippet from my meeting with the stranger who bought my lens.
Buyer: “I’m thrilled that you kept this lens in such excellent condition. It looks brand new. Did you use it much?”
Me: “Yes, I used it quite a bit. But I know that eventually I’m going to want to buy new gear. I think of the condition of my current tools in terms of helping me offset future business costs. Being a good steward of my lenses is obviously in my best interests.”
Buyer: “Well, I thought your price was great based on the pictures of the lens you posted. But I was afraid that it wasn’t going to be as good in person. Thanks for being honest about it.”
Me: “I’m glad we’ve both won here.”
Buyer: “Contact me if you want to sell any of your other equipment before you list it.”
Me: “Sure. Have fun with your new lens.”
Today, after an early morning workout at the gym, I visited an Asian grocer, bought baby bok choy for $1.29 per pound, packages of dried kumquats and bean thread noodles and shitake mushrooms imported from Taiwan, and a spiny winter melon. Then, I had brunch with my wife and a good friend at a new neighborhood restaurant/bar that makes an incredible hamburger and serves a bottomless cup of rich, smooth coffee. Our waitress was attentive and friendly. We ate and laughed for a couple of hours, paid our bill gladly, and returned to our homes. Not before stopping at a Meditteranean Deli and picking up an amazing variety of olives.
I’m struck by the fact that all of the trading experiences I’ve described here are normal. Normal and, of course, taken for granted.
Of course, food from halfway around the world is available to me for a few dollars at a grocer down the street from me. Of course, the restaurant will coordinate the logistics of securing ingredients and preparing them in a manner I’ll consider delicious at a price affordable to me and profitable to them. Of course.
Trading activities and opportunities are unremarkable to the vast majority of people who live in America, but they are also exemplary of the experiences without which our lives would be impoverished and miserable. And therefore they are far from being “nothing special.” In fact, underlying all of my recent experiences, each of which are trades of one sort or another, is something vitally special. Something we’re all relying upon every day of our lives, which far too many of us recklessly treat as automatic, like walking, but which (it is clear from history books and today’s newspaper headlines) people neglect at their own peril.
I’m referring to the operating principle that makes peace possible and is responsible for actual measurable progress in human longevity and prosperity.
This special something is the idea that all human relationships (not including parent/adult-child relationships, which I’m going to have to address separately at some point) should only consist of voluntary exchanges of value based on mutual consent.
If a relationship between two people features only the consent of one of them, then it is not peaceful. Whatever benefits might flow to the person (or group or government) who imposes the relationship are produced by holding hostage the other participant’s life and freedom or by enslaving him outright or by degrading his humanity (ie, using him as if he is a resource instead of a person).
If a relationship between two people involves a one-way transfer of values as opposed to a voluntary exchange of values, then it is not peaceful and there is no hope for actual, measurable progress. There can be no progress in a society of parasites, only a race toward the consumption of all available resources before reaching some kind of cannibalistic apocalypse. There is no impetus to create value in such a context. A parasite has no incentive to trade, to engage in an exchange of values.
Wealth is created only when people reasonably expect to experience profitable (ie, mutually beneficial) relationships, that is, when they are free to enter into trades of their own choosing (trading our labor and expertise and knowledge and property according to our own preferences and priorities), responsible for offering persuasive value propositions to those who have what they want (as I did when I sold my lens), free to make mistakes and adapt (we do this every day, some better than others), free to learn and experiment (as I did when I bought Taiwanese kumquats… so many… possibilities!).
A whole world of traders is bound to be peaceful and destined to achieve advances in every imaginable peaceful endeavor.
Measurable human progress is produced by the drive to innovate and reduce costs and maximize profits that the opportunity to trade unleashes. Measurable human misery is produced by the behavior of those driven to control and restrict and prohibit peaceful human actions, who seek to institutionalize violations of mutual consent, who work to establish legal exceptions to voluntary behavior.
Not a day goes by when you and I are not beneficiaries of living in a society in which mutual consent and voluntary trade are fundamentally accepted rules. But too many of us appear to be blinded by the extraordinary range of advantages, conveniences, and pleasantnesses these moral rules generate, blinded to the lethal risks posed by permitting governments to tamper with such basic moral premises. Too many of us are blinded, as well, by the glorious and heart-rending appeal of the impossible, the alluring political promises of free lunches.
Why do we celebrate the idea of people receiving something for nothing? What is a politician’s free lunch promise if not a way of pretending that the person (or group of people) who has labored to provide for, prepare, and serve that “lunch” should be treated as a slave and compensated accordingly. What are the people who cheer and endorse such promises thinking? Are they preoccupied with charitable intentions? What a delusion! If charity isn’t freely exercised, then it’s not charity at all, and pretending it is, and then legally enforcing that pretense, amounts to nothing more than mimicking the worst rationalizations of criminals.
Why aren’t more of us more keenly aware of and insistent upon extending the benefits of trade to as many aspects of life as possible? Why do we insist on mutual consent and voluntary trading in our personal experiences but vote to empower the government to violate those rules?
It’s never too late to think about and appreciate the things we take for granted— walking and trading.
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What do our global positioning system (GPS) coordinates have to do with our freedom to think and act uninterfered with by government?
In the early 21st century, life on Earth requires humans to comply with rules (or deal with the consequences of not complying with them), rules that vary substantively based on the laws enforced by the multitude of governments that preside over different parts of the planet. Where we live means that we will have to pay a certain percentage of our earnings to stay out of jail, that we will be allowed some forms of personal expression and recreational experience but denied others, that our peaceful choices may be regulated or restricted or prohibited. These are the conditions that we’re accustomed to. We are born into a world with established and powerful institutions authorized to scrutinize and interfere with our private and economic behavior. In some countries like China, filmmakers like Dhondup Wangchen, whose stories expose statism’s impact on people, are incarcerated for years. In other countries like the United States of America, people like Ronald Sekul, adults who grow and sell plants to other adults, are exposed to the risk of losing all of their property, paying steep fines, and serving jail time.
We’ve been conditioned to accept as normal and somewhat inevitable the legal artifices that do, in fact, make our GPS coordinates so significant. But, thinking about it, do you think it’s normal or disturbingly arbitrary how you and fellow human beings are treated by governments all over the world?
It’s actually creepy that the physical location of human beings should result in some being more or less free than others. When you look at this picture…
… do you see any clues that would lead you to believe that your freedom is more or less in jeopardy based on where you live? You can’t. Only a political map would remind you of that man-made mess. Most of us probably can’t avoid thinking of “nations” when we look at a photo-realistic depiction of the Earth. But political borders are not really there when you see the world as it is, not when you look at it as its pictured above and not when you think of your daily social experiences. After watching the Earth spin once in its rotation, it would be “insane” to think to yourself…
“If I were to land on this planet in one place as opposed to another, in addition to contending with location-specific climate- and geography-based challenges, it is apparent (!) that I would also be more or less free from being interfered with at one intersection of latitude and longitude.”
We’re accustomed to our political maps, the lines that indicate where one set of rules ends and another begins, where particular groups of enforcers dominate, where some styles of coercion and other degrees of freedom and control prevail.
And yet, even though this is all we’ve ever known, there’s something unnerving… genuinely counterintuitive… about the notion that a person’s particular location on the surface of the planet— that fact, all on its own— means that he or she is more or less free. Such a notion must discombobulate anyone who thinks about it at any length. How the heck does a person’s location on the planet relate in any way to his freedom? We all know that there is no GPS coordinate that has anything to do with a person’s right not to be interfered with. We have to remind ourselves of the convoluted legalistic schemes and bureaucratic regimes governments that make the world as it is, and we have to consider that simply because this has been the case for a long time does not mean that it is morally valid. It may be the case that we alter our behavior so that we can avoid fines and stay out of jail, but our compliance with coercive laws does not represent a form of agreement with them. There is no such thing as consent under duress, only life-preserving and freedom-retaining compliance.
GPS coordinates do make a difference, in some cases radical differences, to people’s ability to exercise their will. Should they? Is it a good thing that this is the case?
Does a person born in Beijing, as a demonstrable consequence of being born in that physical place, have less of a moral claim to a life uninterfered with by his State compared to a person born in New York? Of course not. That moral claim is available to all individuals regardless of what government they invoke it against, for it is itself the very moral foundation of government— protecting individuals from coercion. I have reached a point of profound skepticism about the feasibility of “limited government,” which has always sounded better in theories developed by classical liberals than it has worked out (can ever work out?) in practice. But I’ll say this. [... Read on...]
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