Daily Archives: 4 June 2015

Jokes, Again

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It’s that time….

I don’t even get respect in my favorite bar. Last night I told the bartender to bring me the usual. He brought over a woman to reject me.

Two factory workers talking:

Woman: “I can make the boss give me the day off.”
Man: “And how would you do that?”
Woman: “Just wait and see.” She then hangs upside-down from the ceiling.

Boss comes in: “What are you doing?”
Woman: “I’m a light bulb.”
Boss: “You’ve been working so much that you’ve gone crazy. I think you need to take the day off.”

The man starts to follow her and the boss says: “Where are you going?”
The man says: “I’m going home, too. I can’t work in the dark.”

A man talking to God:

The man: “God, how long is a million years?”
God: “To me, it’s about a minute.”
The man: “God, how much is a million dollars?”
God: “To me it’s a penny.”
The man: “God, may I have a penny?”
God: “Wait a minute.”

A couple of things not to put on your resume:

Note: Please don’t misconstrue my 14 jobs as ‘job-hopping’. I have never quit a job.
Marital Status: Often. Children: Various.

And a couple of oldies:

Through the pitch-black night, the captain sees a light dead ahead on a collision course with his ship. He sends a signal: “Change your course 10 degree east.”
The light signals back: “Change yours, 10 degrees west.”
Angry, the captain sends: “I’m a navy captain! Change your course, sir!”
“I’m a seaman, second class,” comes the reply. “Change your course, sir.”
Now the captain is furious. “I’m a battleship! I’m not changing course!”
There is one last reply. “I’m a lighthouse. Your call.”

Q. How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. They can’t do it, it’s a hardware problem.

Artificial Markets

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The Car Battery and battery car industries are two, and the situation hasn’t gotten any better in the three years since Mike Ramsey’s piece in The Wall Street Journal.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has awarded more than $1 billion to American companies to make advanced batteries for electric vehicles. Halfway to a six-year goal of producing one million electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, auto makers are barely at 50,000 cars.

Two of those companies, in fact, have since gone bankrupt: Fisker Automotive and A123 Systems now are wholly owned by People’s Republic of China’s Wanxiang Group Corporation. Without repaying us American taxpayers.

The underlying problem isn’t unique to the Obama administration; his has just been the most recent and most egregious. The plain fact is that government stinks at creating industries and at creating markets. Only free markets—only people acting voluntarily and freely in accordance with their own wishes and needs—can do that. Free markets won’t always succeed at that, either, but in that case, the only ones who suffer losses are those who (voluntarily) made the bet. On the other hand, if they succeed, everyone gains to some degree.

When governments fail at this, though, everyone loses to some degree. Worse, while the same universal gain results from a government success, even neglecting greater friction losses from government involvement, there will have been no choice in the matter.

If the thing can’t survive without government intervention, it’s not ready for market. If it’s not ready for market, it’s…inappropriate…for taxpayers to be forced to prop it up with their tax money.