A Stitch in Haste

A reminder that you can easily submit any blogpost here to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us, as well as to your MySpace or Facebook page, via the “Bookmark” button at the bottom of each post, courtesy of AddThis.com.

You can also follow me on Twitter, or via the various other (less active) links — YouTube, Flickr or Netflix — in the left sidebar.

I know I’ve screwed this up twice before, but the issues have now been fixed: Those of you on Facebook can also link to me by sending the standard Facebook invite to kipesquire@yahoo.com

Stay connected…

Can you spot the Best Dog in the World™ in this sea of fur?

Carnivalized at Modulator’s Friday Ark.

–What advice are Zimbabwe’s physicians giving their patients?

–What were gay students at four New Zealand colleges required to do before they could attend school balls?

–A Special Guest Question: Who scrubbed Wikipedia’s entry for Sarah Palin just before nom announcement?

–When, where and in what context are “chairs” counted as “beds”?

–Do Aboriginal leaders have the right to demand the cancellation of a planned book for girls on how to play the (historically male-only) didgeridoo?

Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle:

You can fit more than 250 states the size of Delaware within Alaska’s border.

As I noted previously:

Alaska had 626,932 residents as of the 2000 Census; Obama’s state senate district had 653,647.

Lingle’s statement was so stupid that she could only have said it to people she thought were stupid herself.

Was she saying it to you?

—

Incidentally, the federal government owns and controls 98% of Alaska’s acreage. How much of Delaware does it own and control?

Stupid is as stupid says.

Yesterday the incomparable Ian Richardson played a character best described as a British John McCain. So in the interests of fairness, today’s Clip has him playing a character best described as a British Barack Obama:

I was only semi-seriously skimming a blogpost about the purported “costs” of privatization when I stumbled upon this tidbit:

The privatization process also laid waste to jobs that, while low paid, provided good benefits, civil service protection, union representation, and self-respect. Those lost jobs represent costs, personal and public, tangible and intangible.

This gobbledygook mirrors the one I debunked in my government-financed (which is to say, politically controlled) scientific research post earlier today: It is simply not a legitimate function of government to provide jobs for the sake of jobs. Even if the Broken Window Fallacy somehow did not apply (i.e., how many jobs were destroyed by the unnecessarily high taxes that once funded these now-laid-waste jobs?), the purpose of government jobs ought to be to provide those services that are legitimate functions of government in their own right.

The purpose of a police force is not to employ auto mechanics, but to provide police protection. The purpose of a courtroom is not to employ janitors, but to provide justice. The purpose of a government job is not to foster “self-respect,” but to perform a needed function for the taxpayers who fund that government job.

(Incidentally, how much “self-respect” actually comes from having a job that you know is only there to, um, give you a job?)

To summarize the thesis: The government should, in classic Broken Window Fallacy style, destroy private sector jobs in order to create (”low paid”) bureaucracy positions that, while not necessarily legitimate functions of government — indeed, not necessarily “necessary” one way or the other — that might foster someone, somewhere, with some sense of (cognitively dissonant) “self-respect.”

Splendid.

Kip’s Law: Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.

Sarah Palin, last night:

I might add that, in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they’re listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening. No, we tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

Me, October 6, 2004:

—

Alaska Representative Don Young:

“I am extremely pleased that the amendment to separate Alaska out of the Ninth Circuit Court passed the first time. I previously introduced similar legislation and now it has an opportunity to become law. This is good for the State of Alaska because we will no longer be governed by adverse court decisions made for San Francisco and that way of life,” said Congressman Young.

Now I couldn’t care less about splitting the Ninth Circuit — if the demographics warrant it, then by all means go ahead. If you want someone who cares, try George Will.

But just what might Representative Young mean when he chastises the “San Francisco” way of life?

Inquiring minds want to know…

—

Fast forward four years, and it is not the Ninth Circuit, but rather Alaska Republicans who have (supposedly) been split. Go figure.

To review: The Broken Window Fallacy reminds us that an event must be evaluated not only by its visible effects but also by its hidden effects. Whether it’s an exogenous shock (e.g., an errant ball smashing a shopkeeper’s window) or a government policy (e.g., subsidizing scientific research), you must consider not only what is seen, but also what is unseen.

Someone please tell this retired professor:

If it is true that higher government taxation depresses job creation and that the government can’t create wealth (only the free market can), it becomes rational for struggling workers to vote Republican on economic grounds. They don’t need cultural issues to get them to vote that way[.]

Huh? “Struggling workers” are not neutral economic observers and should not be expected to vote as such. They are a faction. And like all factions, they will vote based on their own factional interests. So in a regime, like America today, dedicated to the principle that the majoritarian faction can extract ransom from the minority factions, the only rational political goal is to be the majoritarian faction. “Economic wisdom” is simply not part of the equation.

While minimalist government may be necessary for a free market, that doesn’t necessarily mean minimalist government is good for the growth of the economy, or for job creation, or even for generating private wealth.

Consider the kinds of industries usually associated with the modern economy: jet aviation, semiconductors, computers, the Internet, global positioning systems, laser technology, MRI technologies, high-strength steel alloys, fiber-reinforced plastics, nanotechnologies. Tens of millions of new jobs — well-paying jobs with good benefits — were created through these innovative industries.

Each of them arose out of government-funded research, initial development by government, requirements established by regulation, large-scale governmental demand and purchasing to provide initial markets, or some combination of these. Every one of them.

Not exactly. First, the fact that government contributed to the funding of any of these industries hardly means that government proximately created those industries (i.e., that those industries would not have exited but for economic interventionism by government). It’s cute when your spouse brings out your birthday cake and your child says, “I put the candles on!” But that doesn’t mean the child really baked the cake.

Second, how many of those “thanks be to government” developments were really “thanks be to the Cold War” developments? As I’ve noted repeatedly (one example here), the Space Race was a legitimate function of government only to the extent that it was military, not because it generated patriotic warm fuzzy feelings watching rockets go up or capsules come down. Today, with the possible exceptions of atmospheric and climate research, or perhaps asteroid detection, NASA is nothing more than a giant, and expensive, “national greatness” boondoggle (the kind that supposed earmark slayer John McCain would no doubt embrace unhesitatingly).

In any event, the purpose of defense spending is not to invent new technologies (i.e., the Tang-Teflon-Velcro fraud, now apparently repackaged as the “Jet-MRI-Internet” fraud); that is strictly incidental. The purpose of defense spending is defense, and nothing more. Not new technologies, not putting people to work, not propping up dying industries. (And besides, since when do liberal neo-Keynesians actually like the military-industrial complex? Whatever rationalization it takes, I guess.)

Third, and most important, is the simple, insolent disregard this academic shows for the Broken Window Fallacy. Yes, we indeed have “jet aviation, semiconductors, computers, the Internet, global positioning systems, laser technology, MRI technologies, high-strength steel alloys, fiber-reinforced plastics, nanotechnologies.” But what don’t we have — thanks to higher-than-necessary taxes, appropriations and deficits? What breakthroughs were thwarted because of petty partisan factionalism, rent-seeking and the Politics of Pull? How much more cheaply, or quickly, could those technologies have been developed if government had gotten out of the way and out of our wallets?

Blank-out. Nothing but blank-outs.

One last quote:

A pivotal role for government is to offset lapses of the free market that confine the market’s ability to generate basic, large-scale innovation on its own.

“Pivotal”? To whom? By what standard? “Lapses”? Defined how?

The answer is, as always: To someone else, by their standards and defined by them.

You only get to thank the central planners, pick up the tab and drink some Tang.

As the Republican convention proceeds to its culmination, the nomination of John McCain, I thought I’d repost one of my favorite Kip Clips. One about a certain other “maverick” politician:

Someone’s in trouble all right. Whether she will get it in the neck remains to be seen.

Tomorrow’s Kip Clip will feature the incomparable Ian Richardson portraying a member of the other side of the aisle.

Hint: I suppose “Where in the country is Kip?” would also be technically correct.

Sorry for the poor quality; recall that I lost my camera at SeaWorld back in July. So I’m stuck with a disposable and my camera phone.