Posted on 06/27/2005 2:50:14 AM PDT by jeffers
The government of New London, Connecticut, isn't evil, or corrupt, or even greedy, they are simply wrong. They think they are doing the right thing, but their actions will produce the precise opposite of the very goal they seek.
To understand why requires a short bit of background.
In college, one of the subjects we studied in Economics class was the concept of utility. It is not a difficult concept, it is simply a method by which one can compare the expected benefits of one choice over another. Being the inquisitive soul I have always been, I took the equations home and played around with them, moving the variables from one side of the equal sign to the other, in accordance with the rules of algebra, seeing what happened. In very short order, I managed to "prove" that Communism was a much more efficient way to run an economy than democracy. You get a much higher utility out of your apples and oranges when a central authority decides how many of each should be produced. If you rely on a free market instead, you almost always end up with either too many apples and not enough oranges, or vice versa, and the extra quantity goes to waste, benefiting no-one.
The first Professor I should my work to dismissed me quickly and angrily. He did not like the implications of the formula I showed him, and he basically ordered me out of his office as soon as he understood the point I was making.
The second Professor I showed my work to agreed with me immediately. He further said that it was well known in Economic circles that a totalitarian society always able to manage production more efficiently that a society where production is "controlled" by a free market. He also told me that I hadn't proved that Communism was better, that I was missing an important element. He refused to tell me what I was missing, instead telling me to figure it out for myself.
I thought about it a lot, and was able to work out a very vague answer that satisfied me at the time and then forgot the whole episode.
Until now.
The answer I arrived at then, was that Communism didn't take into account human nature. People don't like being told what to do, they don't work as hard, and eventually, the whole system fails.
The events in New London have forced me to look at my previous answer and improve it. Yes, the Utility equations show that a dictatorship or other totalitarian government can indeed plan more efficiently, but there are more equations that come into play than just production planning. Right off the bat, you have to look at the equation which determines how MANY apples and oranges the people produce, not just how many of each you ideally need.
If you force a man to work picking apples, he will hate it, solely because he didn't get to choose.
If you left him alone to decide for himself, he might choose to pick apples all by himself, and think he had the best job on earth, but as soon as you take away his freedom to choose, he immediately realizes you don't care at all what he wants, and the very next thing he realizes is that HE no longer cares what YOU want. He no longer trusts you. He thinks you are screwing him, and immediately sets out to screw you.
He piles up his apples so that a few look like a lot. He comes in to work late and leaves early. He takes longer and longer lunches and invents illnesses so he can stay home for days on end, and he reports more hours than he actually worked on his time card. Instead of taking care of company equipment, he takes pleasure in ruining it.
He treats you the same way you treated him. He tries to nullify any benefit you receive from the work you force him to do.
The fact that Communism is mathematically efficient doesn't tell the whole story because you can't get the whole story from one equation. A lot of equations come into play, and this is precisely what New London has forgotten.
They want their city to grow. They know a city can't grow unless there are jobs available for new people to fill.
They are correct.
No one will move to a city that has too many people and not enough jobs.
But that is only one equation.
You cannot improve a bad situation by only looking at one equation any more than you can prove Communism is better than Democracy by one equation. You have to see the bigger picture.
There is not one person in the entire United States now that reads the newspaper who would move to a city who takes people's house away and gives them to rich companies.
New London is not going to grow. New London, in only looking at a single equation, and implementing it, has committed economic suicide.
Any person now living there knows that the largest single investment of his life is now at risk of being taken from him, and not only will no new people move to New London, the people living there now are going to try to escape just as fast as they possibly can.
Their entire life's work is in emminent (get it?) danger.
It is common knowlege that a person can make up to $1000.00 per day providing convoy security in Iraq, but most human beings run AWAY from danger, no matter how high the paycheck is.
So too, they will run from New London.
Eventually, when Pfizer has to increase salaries to ridiculously high levels just to hire one new employee to sweep the floors, they too will realize that something is wrong, that they aren't making any money at that plant, and they will close down that facility and transfer the work to some other place. They probably won't even know why things didn't work out, some bean counters wil simply say the facility is unprofitable and the new CEO, whoever he is when the red ink starts spilling from the ledgers, will order it shut down.
At that point, the long lingering suicide of New London, Connecticut will accelerate into high gear. The new hotel will pay zero taxes because no one will have reason to stay there. The new shops will close because with the main employer long gone, no one will have any money to buy anything. The city won't even have the tax money they collect from the homeowners because they ran away from the emminent danger.
New London, Connecticut, will become Gary, Indiana.
And if that was all there is to this equation, I wouldn't spend five minutes worrying about it. Ignorant people screw themselves, in the long run, that's the way the world works. That's what happened to Russia, because they weren't smart enough to look at any more than the one equation that gave them the answer they wanted to hear. Russia deserved exactly what happened to them, just as New londoin deserves exactly what is going to happen to them.
But New London, and the consequences of New London's ignorance are the least of my concerns.
In the process of instigating their ignorance into concrete reality, they co-opted the Supreme Court of the United States.
Now, every house in the whole country, from alaska to Florida, from Hawaii to Maine, is in emminent danger.
Now, the largest single purchase the average person makes can be taken and given to someone else.
Now every American's entire life's work is in emminent danger and they will respond exactly as the Russian workers did.
None of us trust our government now.
All of us recognize that those we trust to lead us are trying to screw us out of our hard work.
It's not just New London that's in emminent danger, the very foundation of the public's trust in the United States government, that covenant which welded 13 separate Colonies into a Nation, strong enough to defeat the world's greatest power, has been broken.
The Constitution of the United States is a guarantee. It guarantees the right to Life, the right to Liberty, and the right to the pursuit of Happiness.
But the guarantee is only as strong as the people who back it up, and five members of the Supreme Court, in looking at one narrow equation, have declared the guarantee null and void.
If the Constitution is all that guaranteed our right to property which we paid for in sweat and tears and pain is no longer the highest law in the land, then none of the other guarantees are worth a fiddler's damn.
If our government now says it's ok to take our property away, then our freedom of speech is at risk, our freedoms from illegal search and seizure is now at risk, our very lives are now at risk.
Now, it becomes a race.
With no guarantees, only the swiftest and shrewdest and greediest and most ruthless will have anything at all that's worth having.
And even they won't have it for long.
It's not just a land grab now.
It's a grab for anything and everything.
There is no longer a guarantee.
There no longer is a Constitution.
The Covenant has been broken.
Now the Law of the Jungle will rule until only the jungle remains.
"Good piece. Not many people realize it, but the Second American Civil War has just begun. No shots will be fired, but everything else will look like war, not politics.
Congressman Billybob"
Yup.
Listen guy, I'm going to say this cat's out of the bag.
He might not be out on the street yet, but it's only a matter of days, even hours.
Folks who understand what's coming might be able to ....hold the carnage to come down a tiny bit, you know, be the calm and steady anchors in the middle of the storm?
I think we can do that without....burying the tellers..., though it would have helped if I understood a few hours ago what I understand now.
To borrow a phrase, you watch your six, and do what you can. I'll do what I can on this end.
Ride the wave, steer the board but don't try to fight it, and we'll come through this somehow.
And from the DC a$$clowns what do we hear? Deafening SILENCE! Blackbird.
You were told to go figure it out for yourself. Well, that's an excellent job you did! I am self-taught too, and I can't think when I've done such splendid figuring.
I am going to read this to my kid over breakfast. She gets the prime cut of FR every morning.
Why would anybody invest a dime in property in New London knowing that the government is willing to confiscate that property on a whim?
New London may think they are setting the stage for economic growth but what they have actually done is given people a very strong reason to invest their capital elsewhere.
Private property rights have always been one of the cornerstones of our (the world's strongest) economy. Now that cornerstone has started to crumble.
However, when I read this to the kid, I will have to omit the part about Russians getting what they deserved, since some of her ancestors..."left skin on the sidewalk" there. Bodies in the river would be more nearly accurate. For the crime of having a higher education. The Russian people did not deserve Communist oppression. Most were in no position to fight it. Most, indeed, took it in the back.
Boycotting New London won't help. That'll just hurt other citizens in that town who had nothing to do with the problem.
The only real solution is to get states to pass legislation or even constitutional amendments to prevent eminent domain from being used in private development.
Sadly, a member of my family is one of those "greedy developers" who gets cities to use e/d for taking land for development. We've had many screaming matches over the years about it. His response? "Hey, it's legal."
And THAT is what we have to change. As long as it's legal, it'll keep happening and nothing else we do will stop it.
Exactly so. His spelling stinks, but he sure has a feel for using quotation marks. Economics majors and natural-born bean counters shouldn't even read what he wrote, it probably sounds garbled, like Chaucer. :)
I am older than Barbara Frietchie, can't join you in the front lines, but if the day comes that any of you need to hide in my barn, I'd be honored. :)
Companies will invest in New London BECAUSE of eminent domain abuse. A city that is willing to take property for development is a beacon to companies looking for places to expand. It's been that way for years.
As more new businesses build in New London, people outside of New London looking for work will flock there seeking employment. As they rumble in like a herd of cattle, MORE existing homes will be razed to build apartments and condos for them.
I believe that it's time for a massive phone/e-mail/snail mail effort to every empty suit on Captitol Hill. Every day, nights, weekends, and holidays. Our legislators need to know that the people who actually cast the votes, not the ones who make the gazillion-dollar donations, are who puts and KEEPS them in office.
Can we take a few minutes each day to send a few e-mails? We're talking about 5 or 10 minutes out of 24 hours.
Maybe we were lucky, Graymatter, in that England oppressed us somewhat less than the Communists oppressed the Russian people. Enough less that we were able to mount a revolution.
And maybe it wasn't luck. Maybe we just wanted freedom more than the Russian people did.
I don't know.
Because I don't know, I will modify the original statement to make the point that those who believed that Communism would work, received exactly what the laws of nature mathematically impose on anyone who fails, for any reason what-so-ever, to recognize them.
There is quite a bit of that original post that would have been edited to better reflect my true thoughts, but I wasn't given that opportunity. I hit Post, with the box unchecked, and instead of seeing a preview, it posted. It wouldn't have changed the intent one iota, but it would have been better worded so as to refine it.
What you read was a first draft, and whether the wording, as is, causes unnecessary pain or not, I have no way now to fix it.
People will forget about this in exactly 7 days at which point someone will accidentally show a boob on TV, which will dominate our national discussions.
Civil Way? Please. If a 50% inclusive tax rate doesn't get people motivated (1% helped start the revolutionary war), this sure as #*$% aint gonna do it.
We got SUV's and soccer practice now. No time for that other nonesense.
"His spelling stinks..."
Hey now...my spelling is impeccable.
If the extra "m" doesn't give it away, "get it?" certainly should.
;-)
I just got off the phone with the Pfizer help line. Here are 2 emails that may be useful.
auditchair@pfizer.com
corpgovchair@pfizer.com
I own some stock in pfizer and I plan on emailing them my concerns about the marketing problems of ''stealing private property'' by using eminant domain.
You said,
"You get a much higher utility out of your apples and oranges when a central authority decides how many of each should be produced. If you rely on a free market instead, you almost always end up with either too many apples and not enough oranges, or vice versa, and the extra quantity goes to waste, benefiting no-one."
But that "conclusion" is based on the ASSUMPTION that the "...central authority..." actually KNOWS -- in advance -- the exact numbers of apples and oranges that WILL be needed.
In the real world, the naive belief that such "fortune-telling" might "really" work is generally attributed to gullible, wish-prone children.
And to "liberals"...
The first Professor I should my work to
a totalitarian society always able to manage production more efficiently that a society where production is "controlled"
a city who takes
And if that was all
just as New londoin deserves
In the process of instigating
from alaska to Florida
TIA, Grammar-ninny---er, nanny! :)
"But that "conclusion" is based on the ASSUMPTION that the "...central authority..." actually KNOWS
-- in advance -- the exact numbers of apples and oranges that WILL be needed. "
Well, yes and no.
The utility equation can't work if you don't know how many of these you need to make a certain number of those work most efficiently.
So, yes, they have to know that in advance, but if they don't, then there is no utility equation, and at that point, no decision can be better than any other decision on the basis of utility, because there isn't a utility equation to compare options with.
You can argue that once you have these and those, you can easily see if you have too many or too few, but by then, it's too late to make planning decisions that will do you any good. If you can't plan ahead, then there's no point in comparing different systems on the basis of how efficiently each is able to plan ahead, because neither one can....plan ahead.
It's sort of a chicken and egg thing.
Much more importantly, it is at best a satellite issue, meant to show the perils of making decisions on the basis of a single variable.
Whether you agree with the utility equation, or the conclusions I drew from it, or not, makes absolutely no difference as to the advisability of making choices from a narrow point of view.
And no, I'm not a liberal, though I do enjoy making meals of them from time to time. They taste like crap, (must be all that tofu they feed on) but they can't run very fast, and don't know how to fight, so it's an easy dinner.
I don't know if I agree with that. True they are wrong and unlikely to be evil but, I see no reason to assume they are not corrupt or greedy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.