Yesterday, the Massachusetts Senate approved an act that takes away the MA citizens’ right to select our nation’s president.  I find that very troubling.  From my understanding, our nation was set up as a republic that gave more power to the states versus the federal government.  The reason for this was to ensure as much individual freedom as possible by making government as large as desired locally, and the smallest to still be functional, nationally.

That is changing now.  And not for the better, in my opinion.  Massachusetts will become the sixth (as stated in the article below) state to give up the right for their citizens to vote for president.  They have decided that no matter how your state votes, they will vote for the presidential candidate that the nation chooses.  That’s called diluting one’s vote.  It’s also called populism.

If the desire, as stated by those that vote for this type of legislation, is that it will be more fair and get people to think their vote matters more.  They are wrong and illogical.  Though the intent is nice, the path leads in the opposite direction.  I, for one, will feel disenfranchised by this.  I live in a state where the vast majority voted for Kerry in 2004, yet it’s electoral votes would have been given to George Bush.  How is that empowering for the voters of this state?  (Clue:  It’s not).

If the intent was to ensure more weight for the individual, why not allow proportional voting where the states electoral votes mimic the outcome fo the state’s popular vote rather than the all-or-nothing method currently employed by the majority of states?  In that way, you leverage your local community rather than being diluted by those in distant parts of the nation.

To win future elections, candidates will spend all the time in the most densely populated areas as that will be where the return on investment will be greatest.  Is that fair?  Our candidates platform will be  built on the needs/desires of a select few that reside within the major cities, never finding it valuable to go to Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana,  the Dakotas, Montana, or Colorado.  They, as recognized states within this republic, will go unheard.

WBEZ Interview with then Senator B. Obama, 2001.

OBAMA: If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay.

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.

“… but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.”

Feel Better?

I just don’t understand this need to prop up the media organizations with federal assistance.  Some fear that we will see the industry drop in numbers and that this will, in some way, limit our freedom of speech.  So, their answer?  Let’s get the government involved!  Yup, that will cure our ills and make speech even more free and opinions much more diverse.

The WSJ has an opinion piece on why we should protect these large dinosaurs.  I have some questions.  First,  aren’t we there already? AP, NewsCorp, ABC, …  Last time I checked, most news articles that are in print or on air are produced by a select few global news organizations.  So, any government involvement will not be to prevent the pool from getting smaller, it will be in protecting the small number we already have.  And, if you are going to be one of the select few chosen to survive with the assistance of federal monies, it is only logical that the federal government get to make up some of the rules on fairness and accuracy, no?  They want that in Healthcare, Auto Bailout, and in the Financial Reform Act, so why not here,also?  Oh, but the feds will need to lean on the expertise of the industry (those select few that have the ability to spend on lobbyists) to craft the new rules.  And the cycle goes until federal help turns into a federally-endorsed oligopoly on news outlets.  Step by step, inch by inch…

So, more questions;

I would like to highlight a post from American Majority that does a great job of describing the difference that I, too,  see between the progressive movement and those that favor the route chosen by our founding fathers.

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”  – James Madison.

I like this quote as it succinctly describes the difference between those that want central government and those that want limited government.  We can argue if the federal government should get involved in healthcare, roads, energy policy, etc, but the practical problem that we are attempting to solve as a society should not neglect the wisdom of our founding fathers.

(Thank you to American Majority for highlighting this quote).

From Wikipedia,

A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part of a system which, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working. They are undesirable in any system whose goal is high availability, be it a network, software application or other industrial system.

The assessment of a potentially single location of failure identifies the critical components of a complex system that would provoke a total systems failure in case of malfunction. Highly reliable systems may not rely on any such individual component.

Though CIRCLE’s main ‘beef’ with large, centralized governments is the high risk (and historical precedence) that they turn against individual freedom and towards tyranny, another issue high on our list is the very idea that the centralization of action produces the most efficient results.  It’s  illogical at its core, at least to us engineers.  That idea of centralization leads to a design flaw called a single point of failure.  As defined above, SPOF’s are bad for any high reliability system.  They are to be avoided at all costs.

To design a large system that is to 1) run under all conditions, 2) be stable no matter the input, and 3) react in deterministic ways, with a single point of failure is ludicrous.  Just think about this hypothetical,

Imagine if we had a communication company that built their business around one cable that went between New York and San Francisco.  Let’s say they expanded their presence up and down the coasts but had all calls routed from one coast to the other over that one cable.  Would that be smart?  What would happen if a ditch digger in the Midwest hit and cut it by accident?  It wouldn’t be good.  The company’s repair crews, of course, would be on the East and West Coast as that is where the customers are, but the cut in the line would be in a small town in Indiana, or a rural stretch of Route 66 in North Texas.  Days would be required to get there and then more time needed to repair it.  No communication between the left and right sides of the country until it got repaired.  The media outlets would scream about how the company was unprepared for such a catastrophic event.

The media would be right but for the wrong reason.  It wasn’t the response that was the issue, it was the design.  They set themselves up for a relatively minor accident (incorrect placement of hole) to result in a complete outage.  Poor design trumps the poor response.

Yet, that is the path our elected officials in the federal government, and many in society, continue to follow.  Every issue is met with the need to centralize the solution.  It’s why the downturn in house prices resulted in a global financial crisis (don’t believe me?  Read The Big Short, The Devil’s Casino, and On The Brink, then get back to me).  Our federal government endorsed 3 ratings agencies, implicitly guaranteed over 50% of mortgages, and instituted policies within the banking system that resulted in a system with a single point of failure.  Nationwide decline in real estate prices?  Kaboom!

It’s the desired route by many when it comes to healthcare.  Instead of reducing the barriers of entry, allowing more to offer healthcare services (state certificates of need for new hospitals and clinics, high compliance costs, etc), the proposed solution is a single payer system.  One group, making decisions on what is allowable, determining treatment prices, providing best practices.  How sturdy do you think that system would be?  Not very, if you ask me.

Reaction to the gulf oil spill?  One central command that approves all offers of international assistance and course of action.  Yet, he doesn’t have the ability to communicate with everyone.  He doesn’t own the resources needed to collect the oil.  But hasn’t he (Thad Allen) been anointed by our president as “in charge”?  SPOF.  We have 4 governors waiting for various federal government agencies to approve things.  We have companies around the world capable of helping but sitting on the sidelines until EPA, Coast Guard, White House officials give the a-okay to act.  This actually isn’t one SPOF, it’s many.  And they are all connected to one basic assumption that central planning and centralized action can solve complex problems. [Don't get me wrong, coordination is needed and useful but that is absent in this instance.  It's the difference between an orchestra conductor and a puppet master.  We need a conductor, we have a puppet master.]

Want another example?  How about the water main that ruptured in Boston a few months ago?  We wrote about it here.  In the infinite wisdom of someone that appears to have very little to spare, it was decided that one mother of a pipe should handle all the water for 2 million people north of Boston.  SPOF.

And just last night, NPR reported on the ongoing issues with school lunches in the Boston Public Schools.  They want one provider for all schools within the system.  They spent much time writing the request for proposal only to get one response.  The problem is so complex that only one company felt willing to take on the challenge.  SPOF.  [ To make this even more entertaining, it turns out that the biggest issue is with 60% of the schools and that a nice solution exists for that segment, but the COO of BPS wants only one provider for all the schools.]

Either by luck or skill, our founding fathers appeared to be quite smart design engineers.  Understanding the risks of single points of failure, they came up with a great idea that respected the complexity of life, handing the responsibility to act in the hands of the individual, leaving the federal government in charge of defending borders and individual freedom.

Today, the federal government finalized the finance reform bill.  From all that I have spoken to that have read through it, it does little to actually correct the isses we experienced over the past 10 years.  Hooray!  One more large monster federal bill that has little benefit but lots of impact.

Two quotes in the attached article unnerved me.  The first was from Mr.  Dodd (senator of CT) where he said;

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”

And the other was from Mr. Frank (representative of MA) where he is quoted;

“We’ve put in the hands of the president a very powerful set of tools for him to reassert American leadership in the world”

Why would any sane person want these quotes attributable to themselves?  Let’s see, the first one says that we just made 2,000 pages of laws and have no clue what the impact will be for the one industry that touches every single citizen.  Or, the 2,000 pages of laws that we all just passed are so general and vague that one can assume that they will be deployed in ways that are completely arbitrary, ways that we can never fully grasp.

The second quote jives with it perfectly.  Mr. Frank essentially celebrates the fact that our representatives, those that we rely on to check and balance the president, have given enormous power to one person.  And to make it all the more exhilarating, a president that has no economic background and has demonstrated a complete lack of respect for free markets.  Oh joy!

And one more thing, please read towards the bottom where they mention that 18,000 auto dealers (actually, the number is closer to 16,000 after the government forced some to close down)(also, at least 20% of them are selling government made cars) are exempt from the consumer protection portion of the law.  Keep in mind, the second largest expense for most citizens is an automobile with the majority of them financed.

Corrupt and stupid make for a very bad combination.  Worse, when it’s mixed with power.

Every once in awhile I troll around the internet for a discussion on economics or politics.  One way I do it is by having alerts set up in Twitter that highlight whenever words/phrases such as ‘Ayn Rand’ or ‘free markets’ are used.  Just a few days ago, I came across one that was too ripe to pass up.  Low hanging fruit. Why do I do this?  I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m tired of listening to ignorance.  In the past, I would walk away.  Now, with the level of ignorance and group think so high, more people need to enter the discussion and elevate it.  Headline discussions need to stop and emotionally driven ideas need to be challenged.

What I hope you come away with from the discussion below, is the idea that many people that have strong opinions can not back them up with facts and reason.  And when tested, they walk away.  So start testing, and maybe they will rise to the challenge, helping to modify your philosophy, or they’ll stop being so free with spreading their opinions as truth.  Either way, you win.

JBH - Show me how Keynesian policies have not been dominant in the last 15 years, please. As I understand Keynes, it is central government induced spending to replace private sector spend (both consumption and investment).

You do not appear to understand Friedman at all if you think we have been following his suggested path. Refer to point #2 above. Government involvement in private enterprise has been increasing (shown by % of GDP, size of public employee base as well as other facts). For you to be credible in your assertion, you need to provide facts that back it up and reason. Outright statements of opinion presented as fact do not help the discussion.

{silence}

**I have not heard any more from BW or JS after the last comment I made.  When having these discussions, I find that the opposing opinion is filled with absolutes that can not be justified with the facts at hand.  Reality is ignored.  I would recommend all to be willing to enter into discussions with those that believe in socialistic policies and challenge them.  We need to challenge each sentence they make and separate opinion versus fact, making them substantiate their opinion with logic and reason.  From my limited experience doing this, it typically ends with them walking away, unable to justify their position with anything other than emotion.**

And we should expect something different?

I am copying below a blog post from Ron Wilson of EDN.  He nails it.  After you read, please click on his link to show your support for it.  Nothing other than going to his site, that’s all I ask.

Blowouts, elementary school, and the future of democracy

Congress, The White House, and The Media all seem to agree that the answer to the question, “What went wrong?” appears to be that we did not have enough regulation, that the system (whatever that is) was not protected successfully enough from the BAD ACTORS, i.e. bankers, Wall Street, borrowers, car manufacturing executives, derivative traders, hedge fund managers, insurance companies, etc. An apparent chorus of the elected and those wishing they were in power (journalists) all agree that we need more regulation of commerce to prevent another breakdown of the system (whatever that is).

Before going further, let me suggest that you can not sell securities, make loans, finance cars, offer insurance, or manage individuals’ money unless the federal government (or state in which you wish to do business) says you can, period. Anyone who does, has the federal government’s or respective state governments’ specific and acknowledged permission to do so.

I offer that one reason that the system (whatever that is) experienced a breakdown is not from too little regulation, but from the false sense of security created by too much.

I have asked myself many times, who (because the system is us) gives all of his or her net worth to some fellow with out anything more than his figurative hand-written receipt? Is it possible that investors trusted Bernie with the dough because he could claim that he was being regulated (watched) by FINRA, the Federal Government (SEC) and every state securities commissioner in the nation? I think that smart, rich people were lulled into a false sense of security knowing that someone else was looking after their best interest.

Likewise, what prospective homeowner (because the system is us) agrees to repay more money than he or she will make in a lifetime of working? Our banks and lenders are heavily regulated. If they are willing to lend (or purchase my mortgage), it must be ok. Where is the regulator when you have to show your bad credit to the system?

Perhaps the system would be more guarded and careful with its money and its credit if the system did not know deep in its hearts that the federal and state governments have everything under control and are there to keep us from harm. Does it ring true that more of the same is the solution?

These are well worth the read.

This past weekend, Boston was hit by a tragic, dare I say, life changing event.  No, it wasn’t a SARS epidemic, or the eruption of a volcano, or even a train derailment.  2 million people had to boil water over the course of 3 days.   eeekk!

I would be surprised if you didn’t read about it since it was considered a national event.  On Saturday evening, a big pipe that supplied water to Boston and many surrounding towns burst at a seam. (News article).  Now, before you get weepy eyed over the agony faced by those that fought for bottled water or that needed to boil water for one minute to protect themselves from drinking lake water, understand that the pipe was fixed (within 2 days) and it turned out that the water from the lake tested fine.

However nightmarish this event was, rest assured that our government pounced on this like a kitten on a ball of yarn.  Governor Patrick surveyed the hole created by the broken pipe (is he an engineer?) with rolled-up sleeves.  And thankfully, it didn’t stop there, he was able to convince our president to declare a state of emergency, calling on the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to aid in the rescue efforts (from what is still unclear to me).  And not to be out done, the state senate will hold hearings to “get to the bottom of this” and determine why a 7 year old 10 foot in diameter pipe that carried tens of millions of gallons of water daily could possibly fail.  They want to make sure they find those at fault and get their pound of flesh.

A number of questions have popped up in my mind.

• Who thought it a great idea to have such concentration in our water supply?
• Are we past the point where mechanical things break just because?
• Is it really so costly and drastic of an event that required national assistance?
• Why did our president react faster to this than to the Gulf oil spill?
• Shouldn’t the state senate be asking why we are so dependent on one system rather than asking how to make that one system more sophisticated?
• Why were store shelves depleted of bottled water yet were stocked with milk and fruit juices which cost less (on average)?

I’m not a big fan of foul language in public but was jail time really necessary?  What was the judge protecting law abiding citizens from?  A shirt?