Thanks to Captain Capitalism, here is more reason why you don’t want government running  your health care. Matter of fact, I don’t think I want the government running the government at this point. We are constantly hearing politicians talk about energy independence. Tell me if this sounds like we could achieve it.

The United States has largest energy reserves on Earth, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

As shown in the charts below, the U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves.

While Russia is a close second with 1,248 billion barrels, other energy producing nations are far behind. No. 3 is Saudi Arabia (543 billion barrels), followed by China (494 billion barrels), Iran (426 billion barrels) and Canada (221 billion barrels.)

“Our overwhelming coal, natural gas, and oil resources represent tens of trillions of dollars in wealth and millions of American jobs,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Ok.), who, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska), released the report last week. “Whether through decree or purposeful inaction, government policies that unnecessarily restrict or prevent our ability to responsibly produce these domestic resources are threatening, and could eventually undermine, our nation’s economic and national security. We should pursue an all-of-the-above strategy that advances new energy technologies but also prioritizes developing the resources we have today.”

The report also noted that the United States has 28% of all the world’s coal reserves, with Russia again coming in second with 19%.

In addition, the report stated that the United States has tapped into only 13% or 21 billion barrels of its oil reserves, with the other 87% still untouched.

via U.S. Tops in Energy Resources – HUMAN EVENTS.

Would someone tell me why we keep electing these idiots? Just the other day Joe Biden was making fun of Sarah Palin saying her energy plan was “Drill baby Drill”. Acting like she was just a stupid little girl, he said “It’s more complicated than that, Sarah” as the crowd laughed. I’m sure it is more complicated by the billions that the likes of Al Gore stand to make by forcing us to not use our resources, but for average shmoes like me, “DRILL BABY DRILL” sounds like a plan. How about “MINE BABY MINE”?

Finally, I finished Robert P. Murphy’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism“.  It’s a small book, but I read too many books at once. The book was great for those average Joes, like me, who love the free market and want to defend it but don’t have the time to get a Ph.D in economics.

Robert explains why capitalism works best, why the government doesn’t, and why most government regulations have the opposite effect it claims to have.

The last section provides the reader with a 12 step program to help them break their government addiction. They are as follows:

1. Admit that government “solutions” are a problem.
2. Have faith that human beings can interact peacefully, and that economic blessings are available to all.
3. Surrender to the fact that certain social ills cannot be eradicated by force or political “will”.
4. Ask yourself, “Do I want to advocate self-sufficiency and voluntary means, or do I want to look to politicians every time I don’t like something?”
5. Survey the past record of governments when it comes to economic “planning” or other alleged improvements.
6. Learn to look for hidden costs of government intervention, rather than the superficial benefits.
7. Understand the role of market prices (read my root causes of health care crisis blog), and why tampering with them interferes with the job they have to perform.
8. Study history. Examine whether governments that violated private property rights stayed out of their citizens’ other affairs.
9. Before condemning a market outcome as unjust, first understand why it occur (read my blog on mortgage crisis).
10. Study other “spontaneous” social institutions, such as language and science, where no one is “in charge” and yet the outcome is quite orderly.
11. When politicians propose a new program, remember how much they said it would cost at the outset. Compare that number to the actual amount spent.
12. Go through the newspaper and discover how government meddling causes or exacerbates the conflict in virtually every story.

As you can see, if you follow Robert’s 12 step program, you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that the free market handles our societal ills much better than government. These 12 steps are great, but you should read the book first. That way you’ll no why these 12 steps are right. It’s a quick read. Pick one up, and be prepared to defend free market capitalism.

Also, check out Robert’s blog Free Advice for more good info. This economist can even be funny sometimes.

**** Before the FTC cracks down on me. I just finished reading the book, and I paid for the book myself. Robert was nice enough to answer a couple questions I had. That doesn’t count as paid advertising does it? Guess it depends if Big O likes my blog.

Here’s is a great post about the moronic regulations that move through government, and how they user our lack of trust in others to take away freedoms.

We all want freedom for ourselves, but many people have doubts about the way others might use their own freedom. Under these conditions, the state is there to help. Get enough people to favor enough restriction, and the state is good to go, administering every aspect of life.

Every day presents more cases, but the most recent case is stunning. It turns out that 97% of people polled support a universal ban on texting while driving. Half of those surveyed say that the penalty should be as severe as that for drunk driving. Among these, how many do you suppose do text and drive but don’t want to admit it to a pollster? Probably plenty. And yet I couldn’t find a single online defense of the practice anywhere on the web.

The truth is that it is not necessarily unsafe to text behind the wheel. It all depends on the situation. If you are in a traffic jam, and are late to an appointment, the ability to text can be a lifesaver. Or if there are no cars around, you can do it. On the other hand, it would probably be a mistake to attempt it while doing 80mph around slower traffic.

How can we know the difference between when it is safe and when it is not? The principle applied on American roads is that the driver himself makes that decision. If this principle didn’t make sense, there would be no way that the roads themselves could work.

Think of this the next time you are in a big city, zooming around curves and between lanes along with thousands of others, doing top speeds. Here we have 4000-pound hunks of steel barreling down the road without aids other than a dotted yellow line. These are real-life death machines in which one wrong move could cause a 100-car pileup and mass carnage. We do it anyway.

What’s remarkable is not that there are so many wrecks. The miracle is that it works at all and that, for the most part, people can get to where they want to go. And consider too the demographic behind the car: old, young, abled, disabled, experienced, inexperienced. Some people have a facility for driving and others do not. Some people have spatial agility and others do not.

How does it all work? Don’t tell me that it is due to central planning and the police. The police aren’t driving every car and controlling every wheel (much as they might like to). Our human volition on the road, and the decisions we make that affect other drivers, are nearly 100% our own.

And yet it works, and why? The reason is that it is not in anyone’s interest to get in a crash. It is in everyone’s interest to get to where you are going in one piece, and to do it efficiently. Roll together tens of thousands of people with the same broad goal, and you get spontaneous cooperation. Something that people normally think could not work does in fact work. Looked at from that angle, the orderliness we see on the roads is a general expression of the capacity for human society to work in the context of self-interested individualism.

via The Freedom To Text by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr..

This is a great video from a post on HotAir that hits the nail on the head of why we have problems with our health care, THIRD PARTY PAYER.

In the Federalist Paper No. 12, Hamilton is arguing for the Constitution and the Union by discussing the benefits of the Union to raising revenue for the government. Quickly, Hamilton highlights something modern day socialists somehow forget, that through self interest, what they call greed, all members of society benefit.

Hamilton writes, “The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen,” except for modern day socialists, “to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.” What Hamilton is saying is all enlightened (educated) men of this time period recognize that commerce (free trade) is the best way to build national wealth. Because this is known to be true, enabling free trade has become the object of their policy.

He continues, “By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate all channels of industry and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness.” Here Hamilton is stating the government should encourage trade by “multiplying the means of gratification”. He talks about precious metals as “those darlings objects of human avarice and enterprise”. Basically, he is saying money and the want of more money (avarice or as socialist like to say, greed) drives people to work more and to produce more for society (enterprise).

“The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer – all orders of men look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils.” What? You mean all these men look forward to earning profits? Those bastards! Hamilton recognizes that it is the reward of profits that causes the merchant, the farmer (husbandman), the mechanic, and the manufacturer to be productive, and the more reward the more productive they will be. He uses words such as assiduous (unrelenting) merchant, laborious (extreme effort) husbandman, active (involving physical effort)  mechanic, and industrious (working energetically) manufacturer.  He uses these words to emphasize it’s the profit motive that creates these behaviors. With no profit motive, you do not have the productiveness of these men.

Next Hamilton discusses how everyone benefits from the free market, even those who think they don’t. “The often-agitated question between agriculture and commerce (basically labor and businessmen) has from indubitable experience received a decision which has silenced the rivalship that once subsisted between them, and has proved, to the entire satisfaction of their friends, that their interests are intimately blended and interwoven.” Notice that Hamilton basically says that the interest of both labor and businessmen are interwoven. Government cannot benefit the laborers by punishing the businessman. In doing so, he also punishes labor.  He continues, “It has been found in various countries that in proportion as commerce has flourished land has risen in value. And how could it have happened otherwise? Could that which procures a freer vent of products of the earth, which furnishes new incitements to the cultivators of land, which is most powerful instruments in increasing the quantity of money in a state – could that, in fine, which is faithful handmaid of labor and industry in every shape fail to augment the value of that article, which is the prolific parent of far the greatest part of the objects upon which they are exerted? It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary;” Apparently, it still has it’s adversary in modern day politicians, socialists, and labor unions, who believe that free markets don’t help everyone. But Hamilton explains, how could you increase the value of one without increasing the value of the other? You can’t increase the value of what labor produces without increasing the value of labor. Both parties benefit.

Lastly, “and it is one among a multitude of proofs how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstractions and refinement, is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.” Wow, Hamilton points out that jealousy leads men astray from reason and conviction. How true is this in modern society? While everyone truly knows that government produces nothing, many today still want the government to intervene in the free market because of jealousy. They are jealous of the rich. Because of their jealousy, they are blinded to reason which would highlight the errors of their ways. Does this remind you of the tax the rich argument? They need to pay their fair share! Who cares if they have benefited society more by creating jobs, services, products, etc. They don’t deserve that much more than the poor. Low and behold though, when government takes more of their money, they don’t create as many jobs, services, products, etc, and we are all worse off because of it. These are simple truths, but jealousy, as Hamilton points out, leads us astray from reason.

An article on CNNMoney.com highlights that for the $3 billion we spend on Cash for Clunkers, we only got an additional 125,000 additional car sales over what we would have got without C4C. That comes out to tax payers paying $24,000 per car.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.

via Cash for Clunkers costs taxpayers $24,000 per car – Oct. 28, 2009.

While this shows how stupid our government officials are in and of itself, it doesn’t even talk about what opportunity costs we bared. Everything has an opportunity cost. For example, if I have $25 to take my wife out on a date (I know she’s a lucky lady) and we decide to go to the movies, there is an opportunity cost to that. Those costs related to what we gave up in order to go to the movies. We could have went to eat, seen a play (maybe at the local high school), or stayed home. If the benefit of going to the movies was less than the benefit of the passed up opportunities, we made a bad decision. While my example is subjective, because going to the movies that night might have been what brought us the most happiness, C4C is not as subjective.

The $3 billion dollars had to be pulled out of our private sector in order to pay for this program. By taking it out of the private sector, what opportunities were passed up? The free market allocates resources, in this case capital, to its most efficient use. Most efficient use means benefits are maximized for the resources used. For example, I might have the resources of a lawn mower, gas, and labor. The most efficient use of those resources would be to get my lawn cut. It would not be to have the laborer hand pick the grass, so he could use the gas for something else. The lost time the laborer would incur would not justify the savings of the gas. Government on the other hand diverts capital away from what would other wise be the most efficient use of that capital. By definition, the opportunities that were passed up would have had higher benefits.

As you can see, we did not get a good deal on the increased sales at $24,000 per car. Also, this was a one time program that now has come and gone like all government stimulus. No one is hiring now for a program that is over.

Also, how are we better off as a society? We destroyed cars that were in most cases perfectly functioning vehicles. We replaced one automobile for another. This does not add to the wealth of society. If it did, we should just trash our cars once a month.  If that $3 billion was left to the private sector to create new products, it would have improved the wealth of our society. For example, it may have produced the next medical treatment, a faster computer or the next innovation that advances society in general.

What politicians don’t understand is they cannot guess centrally what is best for the economy. Only the fine tweaking of millions or private transactions can do that.

In an op-ed in the Washington Times, Senator Susan Collins calls into question the constitutionality of the czars. While I completely agree, I’d ask the senator where she has been all this time?

When it comes to accountability and transparency, who is actually in charge and making the policy decisions? Is it the secretary, whom the Senate confirmed, or is it the czar, whom the president unilaterally appointed? These czars operate outside the established structure of checks and balances.

As ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I also am concerned about the management dysfunction that so many czars create. They duplicate or dilute the statutory authority and responsibilities Congress has conferred on Cabinet officers and other senior officials.

Unfortunately, because czars can circumvent the constitutionally mandated process of “advice and consent” and because the president’s advisers have informed me that no White House czars will be allowed to testify before Congress, we cannot ask them for the answers.

Czars bypass the constitutional oversight authority of Congress, tipping the balance of power in favor of the executive branch.

via Reining in the czars – Washington Times.

The czars without a doubt undermine the constitution. If I was President and wanted to become a tyrant, one of the things I would do is put my select people in places and positions where they could seize control at the right time. While I am not saying this is Obama’s intent, although everyday I wonder, once the precedent is set,  it allows future Presidents to do the same thing. If one of those Presidents has the intention of becoming a tyrant, he’ll have precedent on his side.

While I agree with Collins on this issue, I would hope she’d be consistent in her concern for the constitution. The congress violates the constitution with almost every bill they write. Will we see an op-ed about the constitutionality of health care reform, cash for clunkers, bailouts, etc?

Ron Paul, who seems to be the only politician with a clue, writes in Forbes about how the Fed is the cause of our current crisis, and how they are doing the same thing now that they did to create this crisis. Many talk about our current crisis as the result of building the housing boom out of house of cards. What happens when you find out your entire currency and banking system is built out of the same cards?

Be Prepared for the Worst

Ron Paul, 10.29.09, 09:20 AM EDT

Forbes Magazine dated November 16, 2009

The large-scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly.

Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession.

A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset bubble.

via Be Prepared for the Worst – Forbes.com.

How can something that is immoral for us to do individually be moral when performed collectively as the government?

Here is more proof of the idiocy of the Federal government. Because the congress has to show how much they care, they are going to drive these small toy makers out of business.

By LESLIE WAYNE | New York Times

October 30, 2009

For 35 years, William John Woods has made wooden toys for children. Each one of the 2,000 or so he makes each year passes through his hands at his shop in Ogunquit, Maine, and no child, he said, has ever been hurt by one of his small boats, cars, helicopters or rattles.

But now he and others like him — makers of small toys and owners of toy resale shops and boutique stores — say their livelihood is being threatened by federal legislation enacted in the last year to protect children from toxic toys through more extensive testing. Big toymakers, including those whose tainted imports from China led to the recall of 45 million toys and spurred Congress to take action, have more resources and are able to comply with the new law’s requirements.

“This is absurd,” said Mr. Woods, whose toys are made of maple, walnut and cherry and finished with walnut oil and beeswax from a local apiary. He estimates it would cost him $30,000 — a figure he calculated from having to pay $400 in required tests for each of the 80 or so different items he produces — to show that they are not toxic.

“I use beeswax,” Mr. Woods said. “The law was targeted at large toymakers using lead. There was no exclusion for benign products.”

via Federal Government Putting Small Toymakers Out of Business | Ron Paul 2012 | Campaign for Liberty at the Daily Paul.

This is just more proof that so called government protection is not only not necessary, but they are harmful to the little guy and all Americans. Without government intervention, 45 million toys were recalled for having traces of lead. Private businesses, in order to protect their reputation and customers, acted without coercion to remove these toys from the market. This is proof that you do not need all these government regulators and protection agencies in order to protect the public.

If there was no government agency to interfere in the free market, you would still have private watch dogs such as Consumer Reports. When they discovered lead in a toy, the media would be alerted, and the problem would be blasted out to the public, as it was when these toys were discovered to have led. Once the news breaks, in order to protect their future business, businesses will react to rectify the problem. All of this takes place without the need for government coercion. This all works efficiently with the least amount of cost to all parties involved.

But of course, the government decides they need to show they are looking out for “the people” (read my post about what the Federalist Papers say about this). In doing so, they drive up the cost on each toy produced. They drive the little guy out of business, despite the fact he uses nothing that could even contain lead. They drive up the price of toys for everyday Americans. In general they make it harder for the “little guy”.