Whenever Government Becomes Bigger It Crowds Out And Weakens Civilization

Trigger

Here is a very readable, concise article about this subject regarding British society and government in the 20^th century by Alastair Paynter published on 2/13/2013 in the Freeman Magazine. It also contains some interesting links to more literature on the subject.

A Basic Definition Of Civilization

Civilization is very simply defined here as free and responsible individuals voluntarily cooperating with one another and assisting each other to their mutual benefit in a myriad of ways especially in the absence of a powerful, coercive government. The moral code governing these individuals can be as simple as a commitment to adhere to the, e.g. Ten Commandments.

Excerpts From The Article

A few quotes from this article:

1.       “When the State seeks to perform the duties that ordinarily would be carried out through people’s voluntary social bonds, it damages these bonds and weakens civilization.”

2.       “One prominent—but by no means solitary—example of this diminution of society is the replacement of private charity with the welfare state. … This unnatural intervention weakens the sense of duty, custom, and manners which animate an organic system of civil society. State intervention has not only debased the very concept of charity, but reduced individual responsibility to others …”

3.       “Proponents of the welfare state tend to ignore the plain evidence that wherever State interference hasn't cramped or enervated them, voluntary assistance and mutual aid have been the norm. Before the advent of the welfare state, this assistance came in the form of charity and mutual associations called friendly societies [Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 article about these societies]. In 1911, the year the Liberal government introduced compulsory national insurance, around 9 million people (of the 12 million covered by the scheme) were already members of such mutual aid associations. That’s 75 percent. During the nineteenth century, there had been a vast proliferation of friendly societies, which sought to provide social security and sometimes medical assistance to their members.”

4.       “It is remarkable how a once-liberal (i.e., liberty-loving) country [Great Britain] could be so steadily inculcated with social democratic ideals. What was once considered healthy and good has come to be seen as aberrant and alien. Thankfully, a persistent germ of the individualist spirit still remains in Britain.”

Big Government Suffocates The Human Spirit

One may add that once big government takes over, e.g. charity human innovation and human spirit suffer.

The Study And Teaching Of History - Banned And Undervalued

A Tragedy In Western Societies

It appears in Western societies history is not really taught anymore to our children. Teaching of history was too often abused by those in power. To avoid indoctrination in nationalism, anti-Semitism, or rote memorization of historical events or other purposely selective historical topics the study and teaching of history appears to have been broadly banned for decades.

Alternatively, history is too often taught by too few examples e.g. Hitler & Nationalsozialismus (Nazis) in Germany or slavery in the US.

In a global world it becomes more and more outdated to teach or study history almost exclusively in the context of Western civilization plus Egypt while the history of civilizations in India or Asian is largely ignored.

Popular History

We all know the famous citation attributed to George Santayana that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” How many people, who know this quote, actually understand this quote? How do we actually interpret it? I am afraid, I do not even know the context of this quote and what Mr. Santayana was trying to describe or explain. Pardon, my ignorance.

History is written by the victors. Another famous quote whose attribution is not quite certain it seems. Does this mean we can ignore history? Or we should rewrite history purportedly from the looser perspective or some kind of balanced approach?

Some of us may also be familiar with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four where he wrote among other things "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.".

You Do Not Understand The Present Without History

Human societies are usually rather slow moving, dynamic organisms. Only violent revolutions or wars etc. can sometimes hasten the pace of history that is why e.g. dictators like Stalin, Hitler, or Mao prefer this route to impose their will on the people.

If more people would have a better knowledge of the history of science they would be much more skeptical as to the claims of global warming alarmists and their enablers especially among politicians and businesses. The history of science is littered with superstition and false pretense of knowledge.

The emergence of big central governments over the past 150 or so years in most Western countries cannot be understood without looking at the beginnings and progress over time. The Soviet Union disappeared in the dust bin of history, but Western Democracies have imitated its central planning and its command economy to a large extent. The Arms Race between so called capitalist and communist systems was only part of the race to more centralized, all invasive, interventionist governments at the expense of individual freedom.

Who Benefits From History Illiterates

As they say follow the money trail you might also say follow the trail of who benefits of a majority of citizens who are largely history illiterates.

In a democracy like ours, it is the elected politicians who get away with ideology, propaganda, falsehoods etc., because they know their constituents are not educated enough to know better.

There are clearly vested interests to keep the majority of citizens in the dark about history. Proponents of big government, which most politicians are, e.g., do not want us to know more about how big government gets bigger and bigger over time, decade after decade, and how we individuals loose more and more freedoms.

Many Founding Fathers Understood The Importance Of History Very Well

They and the founding mothers would be unpleasantly surprised if they were to return to our society today.

The Unknown Common Fruit Fly

One Of The Most Studied Organisms In Science

The common fruit fly is one of the most scientifically studied model organisms in the world since the early 20^th century, a.k.a. Drosophila melanogaster. It still surprises us.

We Still Know So Little About The Common Fruit Fly

When I read this scientific news article titled “Fruit Flies Force Their Young to Drink Alcohol for Their Own Good” today (2/22/2013), I was stunned to read how much we still do not know about this so intensely studied object of science.

The article informs us that:

1.       “Adult fruit flies detect the [parasitic] wasps [“who are major killers of fruit flies”] by sight, and appear to have much better vision than previously realized Our data indicate that the flies can visually distinguish the relatively small morphological differences between male and female wasps, and between different species of wasps."”

2.       “The fly strains used in the experiments have been bred in the lab for decades. "The flies that we work with have not seen wasps in their lives before, and neither have their ancestors going back hundreds of generations," … "And yet, the flies still recognize these wasps as a danger when they are put in a cage with them."”

3.       “Further experiments showed that the flies are extremely discerning about differences in the wasps. They preferred to lay their eggs in alcohol when female wasps were present, but not if only male wasps were in the cage.”

4.       “Further experimentation showed that the fruit flies can distinguish different species of wasps, and will only choose the alcohol food in response to wasp species that infect larvae, not fly pupae.”

Wow! How do these until now considered to be stupid flies do all that?

Pretense Of Knowledge

Since Socrates we have to be keenly aware of the false pretenses by too many scientists. Global Warming alarmism by scientists who claim they can predict average global temperatures, sea levels etc. over a period of one hundred years from now should be laughed out of their tenured jobs financed by tax payers’ money.

Bike Helmet Laws In The USA

Bicycle Helmet Laws

In the Review section of the Wall Street Journal of 2/16/2013, I read to my surprise that “more than 20 states have laws requiring bike helmets, with various age limits, as do localities.” On the webpage of the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety (IIHS) website we read “No state has a universal bicycle helmet law. Only 21 states and the District of Columbia have statewide bicycle helmet laws, and they apply only to young riders (often riders younger than 16). Local ordinances in a few other states require bicycle helmets for some or all riders.”

This is typical Big Government paternalism. As a teenager, I was a speed demon on my bike and I never had any serious accidents. Such paternalism only reinforces timidity and fear of life in people. Remember, only Big Government can protect you! It should be left to parents and teenagers to decide whether to wear or not to wear.

Motor Bike Helmet Laws

On the webpage of the IIHS we read “The history of motorcycle helmet laws in the United States is characterized by change. In 1967, to increase motorcycle helmet use, the federal government required the states to enact helmet use laws in order to qualify for certain federal safety programs and highway construction funds. … Laws requiring all motorcyclists to wear a helmet are in place in 19 states and the District of Columbia”(emphasis added).

That is how Big Federal Government does it all the time to bribe state governments to comply. Very nice!

Seat Belts

From a Governors Highway Safety Association’s webpage we learn: “Seat belts are the oldest form of occupant protection, with Volvo patenting the first rudimentary seat belt in 1889. However, it wasn't until 1968 that the federal government required seat belts to be installed in all new passenger cars. …New York enacted the first state seat belt law in 1985 [actually 1984].” Here: “32 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have primary seat belt laws for front seat occupants. … 17 states have secondary laws. In many of these states, the law is primary for younger drivers and/or passengers. Rear Seats: In 7 of these states, rear seats are also included. The remaining 10 have no belt requirements for adults in rear seats.”

First for the Federal Government to force automobile manufactures to install seat belts in all new cars is a dictate, then for individual states to mandate the use of such seat belts is more big government intervention. Why not e.g. allow insurance companies to adjust their rates or damage compensation according to seat belt use?

As usual our busybody, know better legislators are too impatient to wait for the common man/woman to adjust and choose for themselves.

Consequences

Once big government gets the taste of or gets away with interfering with the life choices of their citizens, a vicious spiral usually evolves.

Just look at Mayor Bloomberg and his zeal to eliminate certain fats from restaurant menus or certain sizes of soft drinks.

What is next?

Genetics Of Genius

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article titled “A Genetic Code for Genius?” by Gautam Naik in the Review section on 2/16/2013.

BGI – An Acronym To Remember

Formerly known as the Beijing Genomics Institute located near Hong Kong founded in 1999 is reported to be the only developing world research institution that contributed to the famous Human Genome Project. It is a leading institute of its kind in China and one of the biggest genomic research centers in the world.

According to the article, BGI has endeavored on a study to analyze the genomes of humans with IQs of 160 or higher and to compare those to average IQ humans. Intelligence is probably a complex genetic issue requiring perhaps 1,000s if not 10,000s of individual genomes. It is expected that by this summer, BGI will publish the first results. Something to look out for.

Zhao Bowen – A High School Dropout

He is the director of the cognitive genomics unit at the BGI in charge of the research into the link between the genes and intelligence who “has been described as China’s Bill Gates”.

Mr. Bowen hits the bull’s eye when he points out that “People believe it’s a controversial topic [genetics of intelligence], especially in the West. That’s not the case in China.” From my own experience, I fully agree, the Chinese are not constraint in such a way, but in the West we have too many self-made taboos or Denkverbote (ban on thinking or more recently called politically correct). Why should we not strive hard to make everyone more intelligent one day?

Outlook

As I said before in an earlier blog post it is high time that the ancient civilizations of Asia (in particular China and India) compete with the West on science and technology to the great benefit of mankind. For too long these civilizations were lagging behind. The faster they catch up or even exceed the better for all of us.

Have You Ever Heard Of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act?

Today (2/18/2013), we celebrated Presidents’ Day! Which President? Any President? So why did Abraham Lincoln not get his own holiday?

The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971 is one of those Big Government monstrosities that replaced Washington’s Birthday with a third Monday of January holiday. The Soviet Union could not have done it any better.

What is wrong with Wind Energy? Storage

Wind Energy And Its Many Considerable Problems

Heavy government subsidies and preferential treatment (aka favoritism) sure is a big problem causing serious economic distortions and excessive costs of energy for consumers and businesses.

That you have to maintain large redundant supplies of conventional electricity generation for those days when there is not sufficient wind is another really big problem. This problem is compounded, because conventional electricity generation has to be run continuously to be ready for the event of lack of wind or they have to be stopped when winds are strong.

That wind energy turbines kill birds and bats etc. (including endangered species); that they generate sounds and are unsightly are problems neatly overlooked by environmentalists and global warming alarmists.

But To Put The Cart Before The Horse Is A Fundamental Problem

Reliable storage and retrieval of electricity is the first order problem to be resolved. Thus government should focus basic research in this area and leave the energy markets alone. If all these government subsidies were spent on this kind of basic research …

As long as we humans have not developed economical and efficient means to store large amounts of electricity that can be retrieved fast and over long periods of time, we should abandon wind energy as a pipe dream.

The Blue Box - One Of Steve Jobs First Products

The Two Steves

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs supposedly built and sold such a product in the early 1970s (See here & here). “Going door to door in Berkeley dorms, they managed to sell several dozen at $170 each. The "two Steves" savored this mix of clever engineering and entrepreneurial hustle: As Mr. Lapsley quotes Jobs saying: "If we hadn't made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple."”

The Blue Box

The Blue Box was a device used by phreaks (predecessors of hackers) and criminals to circumvent Ma Bell and wire tapping.

Wikipedia: “A blue box is an unauthorized electronic device that generates the same tones employed by a telephone operator's dialing console to switch long-distance calls. The most typical use of a blue box was to place free telephone calls. … Development and use of the blue box was largely enabled by Bell Telephone's policy of publishing all technical documentation regarding its equipment.”

A Blind Kid Whistling At The Perfect Pitch

The critical 2400 Hz telephone system control tone was discovered in approximately 1957, by Josef Carl Engressia, a blind seven-year old boy who became known as Joybubbles. Engressia was skilled with perfect pitch, and discovered that whistling the fourth E above middle C (a frequency of 2600 Hz) would stop a dialed phone recording. Unaware of what he had done, Engressia called the phone company and asked why the recordings had stopped.

As a five-year old, Engressia had already discovered he could dial phone numbers by clicking the hang-up switch (“tapping”).

In his book iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak mentions Joybubbles as an early inspiration during his college years.

The Moral Of The Story

Big Government created a monopoly called AT&T in 1913, which lasted until 1984 or more than 70 years effectively preventing progress in telecommunications and computers. Thus, the people had to put up with inferior technology and higher pricing for a very long time thanks to Big Government. It is an irony of history that the US federal government created this monopoly even before the Soviet Union came into existence.

Social Security Is Worse Than A Ponzi Scheme

Free To Choose

A Ponzi or Pyramid Scheme is committed by one or more criminals and victims were free to choose to participate. Once the criminal is caught, the criminal will be indicted and sentenced to jail terms.

No Choice

Social Security is a big government run scheme that coerces every worker to pay taxes for a promise that he or she will receive some arbitrary benefits in retirement. Thus, big government discourages responsible workers to set aside part of their earnings for retirement as they see fit. Social Security should never be applied to the whole population as a one size fits all big government solution.

Greed Of Big Government

From about 1987 until today the Social Security Trust Fund has generated considerable surpluses year after year (officially referred to as Net Asset Increase), which the US Congress has appropriated to pay for their pet projects. The proper thing to do for the US Congress was to lower the FICA taxes or refund workers. To skim these profits was too much temptation for each Administration and US Congress since 1987.

Year	Workers With Taxable Earnings	Net Asset Increase	Net Asset Increase Per Worker
2011	157,736,000	$     95,031,000,000	$             602
2005	158,511,000	$  162,415,000,000	$         1,025
2000	154,732,000	$  132,174,000,000	$             854
1995	141,000,000	$     45,041,000,000	$             319
1990	133,600,000	$     59,134,000,000	$             443
1987	125,600,000	$     23,068,000,000	$             184
1985	119,800,000	$       8,725,000,000	$               73
1980	113,000,000	$     (2,001,000,000)	$             (18)
1970	93,090,000	$       2,371,000,000	$               25
1960	72,530,000	$           184,000,000	$                  3
1950	48,280,000	$       1,905,000,000	$               39
1940	35,390,000	$           306,000,000	$                  9

Source: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2012/4b.html#table4.b1

& http://www.socialsecurity.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2012/4a.html

Totally Misguided Federal Antitrust Suit Against AB Inbev Takeover Of Grupo Modelo

On 1/31/2013 the Feds filed such a frivolous civil suit.

AB Inbev Already Controls Grupo Modelo

AB Inbev already has a 50.35% interest in Grupo Modelo and 43% of the voting shares, thus the question is what are the Feds actually trying to accomplish other than wasting tax payers money in a very competitive and open market?

Trust Busting Is A 19th Century Idea

Trust busting in a market where anyone can easily brew their own beer if they don’t like AB Inbev’s offering?

The federal government's responsibility is to keep the market for beer open to competition from domestic and overseas competitors not to put on these costly dog and pony shows.

Aiming At Mexico

Is it possible that AB Inbev actually targets more the Mexican market more than the US market with this acquisition?

Aliens Only 13 Light Years Away?

Science In The News

On of the biggest science news this week (ending 2/8/2013) that “in our galaxy, the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years away.” Once humans travel at or near the speed of light this is like a weekend trip. Details here and here (German language).

Life Much Older Than Ours?

Since this study focused only on red stars in our galaxy it concluded “… red dwarf stars live much longer than Sun-like stars, this discovery raises the interesting possibility that life on such a planet would be much older and more evolved than life on Earth.” How about that?

Do You Think Big Government Can Fix The Looming Liabilities Of State & Local Pension Funds?

A Libertarian Think Tank Calls For The Federal Government To Fix
The Excesses Of State & Local Governments

To my surprise Mr. Carl DeMaio of the Reason Foundation thinks the US Congress could just pass a few laws and $3 trillion of unfunded, very generous pension promises for state & local public sector employees go away. Mr. DeMaio cites as one example the San Diego librarian who will receive $234,000 annual pension. Don’t we all want to be librarians?

Mr. DeMaio explained his reform proposals in an op-ed titled “Revoking the Federal Free Pass on Pensions” published on 2/7/2013.

About The Reason Foundation

In their own words:

“Reason Foundation advances a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law. … Reason Foundation's nonpartisan public policy research promotes choice, competition, and a dynamic market economy as the foundation for human dignity and progress.”

I suppose this op-ed by one of their experts is nothing but an aberration.

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages

I am not sure what the editor, Mr. Paul Gigot, was thinking when he allowed this piece to be published on these pages.

Back To The Arguments Presented In The Op-ed

Mr. DeMaio thinks that the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which “exempted the pension systems of state and local governments.” was the big mistake. He does not seem to realize that this Act itself was a big government intervention into the private sector. The first question should be why employers ought to provide any kind of pensions and if they do it is their voluntary choice? Just the name of this Act “Income Security Act” should make every serious libertarian cringe and taking into account that this law was passed during high inflationary times.

He argues that “[federal] Lawmakers could begin by imposing tough financial-disclosure rules on state and local pension systems. Without tough Erisa standards for financial accounting and disclosure of costs, too many state and local pension boards have cooked their books.” Do we really want even more centralization at the federal level? Is it not better overextended public pension funds go into bankruptcy for their lies for all to see and to learn the lessons?

He speaks of federal opportunities: “Congress's opportunity, then, is to tweak the Internal Revenue Code to discourage the use of pension obligation bonds—for example, by eliminating tax exemptions for any state or locality that issues them.” Are there not already enough “tweaks” in the Internal Revenue Code? We need a fundamental tax reform (preferably a simple flat tax) not tweaks. He is right that there should have never been any such special tax exemptions for municipalities or other government or private entities. Such tax exemptions usually create distortions.

Why Are Stocks Not Traded 24 Hours Every Day?

There Is No Excuse

There is to my knowledge no compelling reason why it could not be done. Forex is traded 24 hours for about six days of the week.

Ordinary Active Traders

Round the clock trading would also allow ordinary people to become more active traders in cash stocks, because they could trade before going to or after coming back from work or on weekends.

Pricing Without Gaps

Round the clock trading would eliminate many oddities of equities trading like the daily opening gap or pre/post market trading or the Monday morning surprise or the after trading material announcements and so on. Thus pricing of stocks would be much smoother and less erratic.

Who Indicts Members Of The Federal Government And Congress?

The Feds Are Still Scapegoating Others By Indicting Standard & Poor’s

It is incredible, about five years after the financial crisis, the federal government and state attorneys are suing this company. As their evidence they are citing tweets of 2007 from individuals working for this company when most people knew the housing market was a bubble to pop etc.

Why Are The Feds Indicting An NSRO?

NSRO stands for Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization. Standard & Poor’s was one of only three such designated organizations before and during the financial crisis of 2007. This exclusive, lucrative, and powerful club was created by the federal Securities Exchange Commission in 1975. Thus, the federal government eliminated competition between credit rating agencies and practically forced financial market participants to use the services of the three big agencies.

According to Wikipedia: “The idea is that banks and other financial institutions should not need to keep in reserve the same amount of capital to protect the institution (against, for example, a run on the bank) if the financial institution is heavily invested in highly liquid and very "safe" securities, such as U.S. government bonds or commercial paper from very stable companies.”

Had the federal government continued to require banks to hold more reserves proportional to their risk taking instead of relying on an government created oligopoly to rate such risks for fees, we would have been spared of such a deep financial crisis.

Who Knows About The Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act

According to Wikipedia: “The Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act of 1984 (SMMEA) was an Act of Congress intended to improve the marketability of private label mortgage-backed security passthroughs.

It declared nationally recognized statistical rating organization (NRSRO) AA-rated mortgage-backed securities to be legal investments equivalent to Treasury securities and other federal government bonds for federally chartered banks (such as federal savings banks, federal savings associations, etc.), state-chartered financial institutions (such as depository banks and insurance companies) unless overridden by state law before October 1991 (of which 21 states did so), and Department of Labor-regulated pension funds.”

The sponsor of this Act of economic illiteracy was a Republican and it was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. 

This notion that mortgages are as save as Treasury securities and by implication that Treasury securities are safe has been a misconception since ancient times. There simply never was any secure government issued money or securities.  Big government ideas/propaganda leading up to the sovereign debt crisis of 2010.

Who Are The Real Culprits Of The Financial Crisis Of 2007?

There is no doubt that the federal government, the Federal Reserve Bank, and key members of the US Congress are the ones who need to be indicted not Standard & Poor’s. People like Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Franklin Raines, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and others of this ilk should be indicted. There is actually overwhelming evidence that a massive government failure is to blame for the occurrence and severity of this housing bust.

In their relentless pursuit of affordable housing for everyone no matter their financial situation; their utter disregard for reasonable and enforced lending standards; the dominance of government run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and fueled by basically zero interest rates, these government officials and legislators caused the financial crisis. Contributions by private businesses are pale compared to this.

Don’t believe democratic elections are a substitute for indicting the federal government, the Fed, and key members of the US Congress. These three culprits have brought to bear all their means at their disposal to scapegoat others and stirring up emotions against greedy businesses etc.

Kudos To McGraw Hill

Finally, executives of a US company have enough guts to stand up to these federal blackmailers and their state attorney racketeers who according to media reports tried to extort $1 billion from this company in an attempt to force a settlement. State attorneys are always on standby when large amounts of money can be squeezed out of a private business.