There will be a partially completed money pit on the US-Mexican Border for ever more. No POTUS nor COTUS nor SCOTUS will ever finish it, because 1) the political budgeting process never finishes anything, and 2) no one who could possibly take the blame for the failure and unintended consequences of a completed wall will allow the wall to be completed.
Tag: blame
22 of the Most Important Things I’ve Learned in 22 Years
I’ve received and experienced a lot of good advice in 22 years of life. This isn’t everything, but it’s a good look at some of the lessons that have been important for me in getting to where I am today.
This is Why Young People Go to College
Most people don’t realize just how much pressure young people feel to be mediocre, monotonous, dull, dependent, unproductive, and unhappy.
Two Modest Proposals for Choosing Better Presidents
America’s fifty governors and 535 members of Congress seem to constitute the worst possible pool from which to select a president. Their collective record of corruption, incompetence, scandal, etc. is probably an order of magnitude worse than the record of any 585 randomly selected regular Americans.
Stock Exchange
Congress blamed insider market abuses and inadequate disclosure of financial data for the Great Depression, and reacted by creating the SEC. In truth, the Great Depression had more to do with tariffs and poor Federal Reserve policies. I feel like I’ve heard this story before: the government causes a problem, and uses the problem as a reason to take more power.
Only the Rich
The government gives an excludable good away for free: roads, parks, education, medicine, whatever. Then some economist advocates privatization of one of these freebies. Technocrats may offer some technical objections to privatization. Normal people, however, will respond with a disgusted rhetorical question: “So only the rich should have roads / parks / education / medicine / whatever?”
Anatomy of a Tax Cut
I’ve watched the debate over the vanilla Republican tax bill closely during these many months. It’s been fascinating at many levels, not least sociologically. People reveal much about themselves — and their views of personal autonomy — in how they discuss taxes.
Let’s Take a Time Out
Think the following question to yourselves: How come with all of the hundreds of thousands of laws that have been passed since the inception of America, our social structure is collapsing to the point where hateful class warfare has developed? Our infrastructure, our education system, our justice system, our healthcare system, our welfare system and our defense system are all in a deplorable state. Why is it that way?
Perpetual Youth
I have written recently that my father, who lived nearly to 94, said that he never stopped feeling like a boy — in effect a second-class citizen. I felt that way too up until about 15 years ago, when I began to study voluntaryism.
Fifty-Fifty
The paradigm has to be changed. But we must avoid the old siren song of central planning. We have had enough of trying to control from where maturity and brightness come. We only know that it doesn’t automatically come from old white guys with too much schooling and/or too much money.