Tag: Milton Friedman

Amazon – Baltimore – Caracas – AOC – More

George Noga

Last year’s Caracas blackout provided a real life glimpse of an EMP attack.

 

Amazon – Baltimore – Caracas – AOC – More

By: George Noga – March 22, 2020

       It has been over a year since we did a microtopics posting wherein we combine several topics that are blogworthy, but too short for an entire posting.

Amazon pays no income tax: I have heard this trope so often it has become a cliche. Progressive savants castigate Amazon for not paying income tax. Consider this syllogism: An income tax taxes income; Amazon has no (cumulative) income; therefore, Amazon pays no income tax. Amazon had such humongous losses in prior years that it still has federal carryforwards of $625 million of operating losses, $1.7 billion of tax credits and $260 million of capital losses. However, Amazon pays billions each year in payroll, state, local and foreign taxes. Progressives know all this, but choose to demagogue and to pander to Americans’ ignorance and fears.

My night in Baltimore: The murder rate in Baltimore is double Mexico’s and closing in on that of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. I once had a business meeting in downtown Baltimore that ran late and I found myself unexpectedly on the streets at night. I have been to third world countries but never experienced anything scarier than that night in Baltimore. I would have preferred Mogadishu. Most murders aren’t even prosecuted; only 15% result in prison and many convicted killers receive probation.

Milton Friedman: “The state exists to protect us from coercion by other individuals and groups and to widen the range within which we can exercise our freedom. It is purely instrumental and has no significance in and of itself. Society is a collection of individuals and the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts. The ultimate values are the values of individuals who form the society; there are no other values or ends.”

 

Venezuela and EMP attack: I blogged about an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack on the USA on 7/23/17; it is on our website: www.mllg.us. Thanks to Chavez, Maduro and socialism, we got a foretaste of an EMP attack. Last year’s power outage in Caracas produced chaos and despair. Hospitals could not function and dialysis patients died. Gas and water could not be pumped and food ran out prompting, widespread looting. And this tragedy was from just a five-day blackout and with aid available in nearby areas. If the power outage had lasted for months and been more widespread, like in a real EMP attack, the ultimate death toll could have approached 90%.

Robespierre, Madame Defarge and AOC: I have compared a popular vote election to the French Revolution because it instantly actualizes the will of the majority. There are no guardrails, restraints or checks and balances. It is only a slight leap to compare wannabe Jacobin AOC to Robespierre and Madame Defarge. It is easy to envision AOC presiding over the Committee of Public Safety to enforce progressive dogma and political correctness. Her enemies would be lucky to escape with their heads.

National Popular Vote (“NPV”): Our post of 2/2/20 (on our website) mentioned the NPV movement, whereby states pledge to cast their electoral votes for whoever wins the national popular vote. I neglected to point out that the NPV movement faces another big hurdle in the Constitution; Article I, Section 10 states in part: “No state shall, without the consent on Congress, enter into any agreement or compact with another state”. It’s amazing what you can learn by reading the Constitution!

Next, we begin our month-long observance of the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.
More Liberty Less Government  –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us

Why Government is Inherently Evil

George Noga
By: George Noga – May 24, 2014
       James Madison in Federalist 51 famously wrote: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”  More recently Milton Friedman put it thusly: “How can we keep the government we created (primarily to protect our freedom) from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we established it to protect?” Very few realize how rare, delicate and fragile are liberty and freedom in the entire history of human experience. Of the estimated 110 billion humans who have ever lived, fewer than 1% have enjoyed liberty.
“Over 99% of humanity has lived only in tyranny and repression.”
       The first step in protecting liberty is awareness of just how venal are all forms of power even the lowest. Let’s begin by looking at fraternities, homeowners associations and country clubs. In my college fraternity, elections for officers were corrupted; once elected few voluntarily relinquished power; elections for fraternity sweetheart were fixed; and those in power stole money – all this from a group of brothers.
       Homeowners associations are a microcosm of government. Generally, the wrong people run for office and, once elected, abuse their power and transmogrify into power-hungry wannabe dictators. Even a small group of neighbors in the same socio-economic group cannot govern collegially. I once belonged to a club that had a committee for selecting the wines to be served in its restaurants. The committee became as permanent as the Soviet Politburo; new members were precluded from joining; and they instituted frequent parties for themselves to taste new wines. They, of course, needed food to go along with the wine tasting and they expected all this extravagance to be paid by the club. Bottom line: all power corrupts; it is endemic in all organizations beginning with the most basic. It is endemic because it is an inextricable and immutable part of the human condition.
“A government’s maleficence increases exponentially with its size and power.”
       The bigger a government, the more corrupt. Local governments in my area have raised corruption to an art form. They find myriad ways to benefit from the public weal, albeit likely without technically violating the law. The schools are abysmal and dominated by (also corrupt) public employee unions. My state government is incapable of fixing a long running property insurance fiasco that threatens to bankrupt it. Our federal government (Amtrak) sells hamburgers for $9.50 to a captive audience and incredibly loses $6.50 each. Not to worry: they will make it up in volume. As to be expected, international organizations are the worst. The UN engages in child rape in Africa and the Nobel Committee admittedly awarded peace prizes solely for vindictiveness to punish Reagan and Bush.
Four Keys to Better Government

        Some level of government has proven to be necessary to protect us from outside threats, domestic violence and to enforce contracts and property rights. We face the same dilemma as Madison and Friedman: how do we cede government a legal monoply on the use of force while simultaneously controlling it and making sure it protects (rather than destroys) our liberty?  Following are universal truths constant throughout time and space and applicable to all governments:

  1. The first step is understanding and internalizing the truth that power corrupts. Understand that government is inherently evil and requires eternal vigilance to keep it inside its constitutional box.
  2. Because the evil in government is inherent (embedded in human nature), it can’t be eliminated or reformed. Part of the evil manifests itself in widespread waste, fraud and abuse – which also never can be exterminated.
  3. Government maleficence cannot be eliminated, but it can be reduced. The only way is to shrink government, ipso facto creating less evil along with less of its miscegenistic stepchildren: waste, fraud and abuse.
  4. The only way to make government smaller is to take away its money; the less money it has, the less harm it can perpetrate. Nothing else will ever work.
       Upon accepting the Nobel Prize in economics, Friedrich Hayek said: “To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power to shape the processes of society to our liking is likely to make us do much harm. . . The recognition of the insuperable limits of (man’s) knowledge ought indeed teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization. “