I’ve written before about government’s regulations. Just as pernicious, though, are government’s laws—and this is even more our own fault, because unlike regulations, which are created by nameless Executive Branch bureaucrats through delegation from Congress, laws are passed by that Congress—the very folks we elect to represent us, and then re-elect, even when they overstep or ignore our instructions to them.
I want to spend a little time talking about the relationship between free markets and democracy and about how closely connected the two are to each other.
A free market in this context is a market in which the participants—buyers and sellers, producers and buyers, businesses and customers, i.e., any pairing you’d care to think of involving people exchanging items of value—are free to determine for themselves both what it is that’s of value and the terms, if any, by which they’re willing to exchange those things. Moreover, since the participants are free to bargain among each other, their collective choices, summarized into a general supply of and demand for goods and services and money determine general—and since voluntary, constantly fluctuating—terms of exchange: what can generally be expected to be available for buying and selling, and at what prices.
The principles statement of our social compact acknowledges that all humans are endowed with certain inalienable, natural rights, and the entirety of our social compact seeks to apply those natural rights in a concrete way to the members of our compact, us American citizens. Our Declaration of Independence says of this:
…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed[.]
Here is some action on the free speech front, particularly involving the Internet and piracy and government efforts to impose control on both.
These offerings from our government are pertinent: the Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the House of Representatives’ parallel effort, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Unfortunately, they’re not tightly written to address actual piracy, or theft of copyrighted material. With their too-broad reach, each of these bills can also achieve the following (whether this potential use is deliberate or simply the result of routine political pandering and/or incompetence, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader).
The European Union agreed, last Friday, to the outlines of an arrangement that might leader to greater unity for the economies of the 17 nations of the euro zone plus six to nine additional members of the EU that are not part of the euro zone. Only Great Britain has, for certain, demurred. Leaving aside the question of the legality of the new terms (which arise because Great Britain has refused to go along, preventing the unanimity required by the EU’s governing treaties), what has actually been accomplished?
The price of our burgeoning national debt is this. As our debt grows, more of our national income must be taken out of our economy and spent: at minimum, on the interest payments due; if we’re to actually pay off the loans, even more on principle payments. But as we make the payments, if we borrow still more, still more money must be taken out of our economy for the additional payments.
Here are some odds and ends from President Obama’s New Nationalism speech yesterday. In my post yesterday, I looked at the parallels between Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Government intentions and Obama’s Big Government intentions. In the present post, I’ll look at other remarks that Obama made, and what they indicate about his plans.
Let’s begin with this one.
So [Roosevelt] busted up monopolies.
As we look at President Obama’s New Nationalism speech, delivered today at Osawatomie, KS, while cloaking himself in Theodore Roosevelt’s mantle, it’s useful to review Roosevelt’s own New Nationalism speech, which was so seminal for the Progressive movement. I’ll skip over the boilerplate rah-rah that both speeches have and stay with some highlights.
By way of background, this is what Roosevelt and Herb Croly, one of the most articulate Progressives, had to say, presaging Roosevelt’s 1910 speech.
In his 1904 address to Congress, Roosevelt said:
The Government must in increasing degree supervise and regulate the workings of the railways engaged in interstate commerce…
The administration has come out with an updated Home Affordable Refinance Program, what The Wall Street Journal‘s Smart Money calls HARP 2.0. With this improvement, underwater homeowners can refinance their mortgages at a lower rate if they have Freddie Mac- or Fannie Mae-backed mortgages, they’re current on their existing mortgages, and they’ve not missed a mortgage payment in the last six months and not more than one payment in the last twelve.
I’ve been posting about the European debacle for some time; here’s another. I stay on this subject because there are lessons here for us, lessons that are especially urgent given that our political class sees Europe as a valuable model for governance.
Here are the current moves, just completed or in progress. Six central banks have gotten together to make acquisition of dollars for Europe, paid for with euros, a whole lot easier. This move just buys some time, maybe, but it doesn’t address the underlying problem of too much government spending and too much unserviceable sovereign debt. And it ignores the risks to us should sovereign default in the euro zone become widespread.