An English proverb holds that a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. It also appears to be the case that a government can be shot through with corruption before the ink is dried on its Constitution.
Tag: money
Roving Bandit, Stationary Bandit, and Income Tax
When a mugger or a home invader accosts you, he points a gun at you or waves a knife in your face and demands your wallet or some other property. In most cases, if you surrender your property to him as he demands, he takes it and flees, and you will most likely never see him again. He is, in the classic phrase, the roving bandit. In contrast, the state is, in Mancur Olson’s classic term, the stationary bandit.
The Value Someone Else Sees in You
I think it is a horrible idea for anyone to maintain a relationship that they aren’t extracting extra value for. If a friend takes more work than he offers value, drop him. If you have romantic interest in a girl, but she doesn’t share it … don’t be her friend. If parents are a pain in the ass and don’t bring anything of value to the table, stop associating with them. If you don’t do this, you end up attracting people who desire to extract resources from people without offering value.
“Shoot for the Moon…” Fuck That!
We live in a culture that thinks building people up and giving them self-esteem is what leads them to greatness and happiness. I am much more inclined to think that it sets them up for failure, delusions, and cynicism. I think joy in life comes from acceptance of who we are while pushing for something just a little better than what we have … and this isn’t a lesson that is taught in school.
Raining on the Parade
Some people have proposed that Trump’s parade be postponed until all the wars the U.S. government is waging are finished and the troops are back home. That would indeed be an indefinite postponement, and I wouldn’t want to see a parade even then. But if that’s the price for ending those imperial wars, I’ll take it.
Corruption
I heard a radio program, this morning addressing the issue of politicians accused of dirty politics in our justice system. In the particular cases, the alleged corruption-mongers skated based on narrow technical interpretations of laws under which the prosecution had, perhaps unwisely, chosen to proceed. The short-term lesson seemed to be that the laws were not sufficient to stop the corrupt behavior.
Partitions VIII — The Mexican Border Wall
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.
No One Stole Your Job
People who have chosen to trade with you in the past can decide to trade with someone else instead. While this may be inconvenient for you, this is not an act of aggression against you. It doesn’t make you a victim of anything. You have no right to a “job,” any more than the local convenience store has some right to have you buy lunch from them.
“Treatment We Associate With Regimes We Revile as Unjust…”
Where, I wonder, was Forrest’s devotion to the Constitution when she sentenced Ross Ulbricht to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015?
Unsung Heroes of the Market
Now, you may be thinking: why are you going on and on about such utterly mundane transactions? Why are you celebrating this Lucio guy, who after all is pretty much the same as countless millions of other merchants around the world? But that mundaneness, mis amigos, is precisely the point.