Energy Independence Is a Myth:

14 MARCH 2012

Because Oil Is a Commodity, its price reflects the world markets. Thus, high gas prices have little to do with how much oil we drill, drill, drill here at home.

If American companies drill more oil here at home, does anyone really believe that they will sell their product here at home for a lower price?
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The Greatest Limitation on our American “capitalist” system is that hardly any of us really know how capitalism really works. Adam Smith wrote the book: you probably haven’t read it.

“Free markets” means that we all seek the lowest costs (e.g., Chinese labor) and we all sell to the highest bidder.

The only energy that cannot be exported to the highest bidder is the kind of alternative energy that the Greens dream of.
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“Green” Energy is nowhere close to viable, as far as current technologies and costs are concerned.

But once established—whether as solar or wind power or some other form—its product won’t be exportable to the highest bidder abroad.
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When it Comes to New Technologies—such as the Intercontinental Railroad or the Internet or the NASA space program—government provides the powerful seeds that give private industry the opportunity to grow America forward.
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To Lower Our Energy Costs, we need energy forms that can’t be exported. Anything else—such as “energy independence”—is a myth.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

When Did “Tax” Become Another Word for “Punishment”?

Our Current Distortion of Capitalism isolates management from the real ramifications faced by consumers/taxpayers on one side of the equation and shareholders/taxpayers on the other—one or both of whom will pay the “ax.” A defender of taxes on banks, as punishment, recently wrote, “Banks will pass those taxes onto consumers only if consumers let them. We have a free enterprise system enshrining competition. If Bank A raises fees, then we can go to Bank B.” That’s how capitalism should work, but clearly it doesn’t. Why not?

We Believe that “Tax” Equals “Punishment.” We believe that “Bank A” can be made to operate differently than “Bank B.” We believe (on the Left) that “greed” is inherent in capitalism or (on the Right) that “yes, but it’s a necessary component.”

Neither Side Knows What Adam Smith Had to Say About It. We need to learn the value of taxes. We need to learn the price that each line employee at the bottom pays so that each CEO makes the eight-digit salaries—and bonuses—at the top.

If We Continue to Think of Corporations as the Enemy, then we are sunk. But if we continue to think of corporations as equal to citizens under the law (absent the vote, but free of the risk of incarceration), we will continue to feel enslaved by these very entities that are required, by charter, to serve public need.

If We Continue to Think of Government—We, the People—as somehow doing other than what we send it to do, we will continue racing through the rapids with just one oar in the water. We reward elected officials for limiting the amount that they displease us. We continue to act is if our elected officials operate in a vacuum, like dictators or kings, when in truth, their job is to keep the voters as happy as possible, while keeping the ship of state afloat.

It’s Really All a Failure of Education.

We Don’t Know What We Have Here.

We Don’t Know How It Works.

And We Keep Turning to Expressive Communicators—politicians, pundits, commentators—who don’t really know enough more about it than we do.

Before Any of Us Really Do Anything Else, we ought to get out our Wealth of Nations and see if a better title might not be Well-Being of Nations. Adam Smith’s work is predicated on his first volume, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, which sets the foundation for the civic good that capitalism and corporations serve best.

Says Smith, We Humans Are Motivated to Do Good. Capitalism provides the best engine. But no engine runs itself, and it behooves all of us to read the operating manuals.


Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!

What Healthcare “Reform” Is Really About.....

Sometimes It’s Hard to Know Who’s Really Smarter: The leaders or the followers. Take the biggest current political issue, for example:

It’s Not About Healthcare Reform at all. It’s about reforming healthcare insurance.

The Whole Purpose of the Debate is to find a way to remove the rationing, the bureaucratic rationing that stands between us and our doctors. At the same time, we don’t want to put the tens of thousands of insurance company employees out of work.

The Last Thing America Needs Right Now is to kill off another industry—or to make taxpayers foot the bill for another bailout. And so Congress and the White House are working  to see if we can’t find a middle way.

The Thing Is, We No Longer Have a “Middle” Way in America. It’s right or left, blue or red, “my way or the highway,” with not much agreement on anything between.

Meanwhile, the “Tea-Bag” Party-Goers are out there, complaining that our government can’t seem to get much of anything right. On the one hand, it’s hard to argue with the evidence of congressional and presidential failure. On the other hand, this business of government is clearly a lot harder than it looks....

We’d All Like Somebody to Take Charge—like a CEO, a dictator, or a king. If only we could do it without giving up our “inalienable rights.” Such as the right to more services and entitlements, with lower and lower taxes.

But When Government Tries to Transition from the inefficient insurance mess that we have now, to something that puts capitalism’s “profit motive” back in the medical industry where it belongs, and people throw tantrums about it all—

What Can We Expect?

Do Any of Us Really Want Our Insurance Company deciding that our doctors’ care costs too much? Do we really believe that insurance companies should decide when to pull the plug on the medical care that’s keeping our loved ones alive?

But What’s the Alternative? How many of us have any real idea about the universal coverage programs that the rest of the developed world has? All I hear about is Canadians crossing the border to get cosmetic surgery without having to wait three months. And how good Japan's healthcare is, and how bad England's is. And how they all cost too much.

Thinking in terms that Adam Smith, the founder of capitalism through The Wealth of Nations might use:

• Doctors provide the labor, in exchange for wages.
  
• Investors provide the capital stock, for the development of new drugs and equipment, as well as for hospitals and clinics.
  
• Patients provide the profit through their self-interest in purchasing the medical-care products.
• Insurance companies provide.......What?

Call Me an Old-Fashioned Capitalist Without His Tea Bag. But I don’t see what insurance companies add to the mix. I do see the profit that they remove from our ability to pay for needed medical care. And I see the government insuring our costliest, least-profitable patients—through Medicare and the VA and the prison systems—and doing a fine job.

So Go Ahead and Have the Tea Parties. Go ahead and protest to defend the current rationing of medical care that is killing millions of Americans, with stress and with denied coverage, because you can’t tell the difference between the world’s finest “healthcare system,” and the worst “healthcare delivery-system” currently dysfunctioning in the developed world.

Pride in America Ought to Be Based on Something besides the belief that my ability to be angry makes me better and more-right than you.

It’s Time to Reform Health Insurance. After that, we can wave signs and complain about government in Washington all we want. Maybe we’ll shake up Congress a little bit after all. Lord knows they can use it.

But Come On, Citizens!

At Least Let’s Try Not to Be Too-Stupid about It....

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!