Flight from Trantor

If Obama wants his economic plan to fail...

...and Rush Limbaugh wants Obama to fail, can't they all just be friends?

Capitalists of the World, Unite?

What if they had a bailout, and nobody came?

We expect our politicians in Washington to be opportunistic slugs, but we are still not quite used to the idea that the CEO's of our largest corporate enterprises are handing the politicians the very opportunities for which they hunger.  The current slide towards socialistic policies is as much a test of our business class as it is our political class (and the vigilance and willpower of the electorate of course). 

As our captains of industry march hat-in-hand to Washington to rake in tax-payer dollars to relieve the consequences of their own mis-steps, we see that there are a lot of Orren Boyles out there and not enough Hank Reardens.  It is almost funny to refer to these guys as "capitalists".

The symbiosis between big business and big government is the most dangerous problem we face.  It makes all things socialist and fascist possible.  If they quit showing up at the trough, Washington would quickly loose not only its relevance, but much of its its power to corrupt the underpinnings of liberty.

It's as though someone is daring an Army of (Small Capitalist) Davids to rush in and fill the business leadership void.

More failure talk

"The most rational explanation for Obama’s puzzling conduct — sabotaging his own program by way of his own rhetoric — is that he truly wants to be forced to nationalize the banks in pursuit of his ultimate goal of a socialist economy."

and...

"Obama has to oppose nationalization today in order to achieve it tomorrow. He has to show the country and the world that he is doing all he can to help the private sector to sort things out with government help. He must ostentatiously invite the hated demons of Wall Street to join him in rescuing the banks in order, later, to say that he did his best to avoid having to take over the banks. Only then will nationalization be an acceptable alternative — when he has run out of other options."

Haven't we seen this before?

h/t Instapundit and RedState

Intention or Incompetence, II

"Is it conceivable that a president would want matters to get worse?"

And Republicans wonder why they can't get traction?

Maybe they should start by following the Constitution.

Roll call vote breakdown: The 85 House Republicans who supported Rangel’s 90 percent bonus tax.

Intention or Incompetence?

I attended a luncheon at the Union League of Philadelphia this week which featured Bill Bennett as speaker.  Half of his presentation consisted of Q&A.  One of the questions presented was whether Dr. Bennett believed Obama was deliberately trying to sabotage the American economy.  His answer was, "Well, I don't know yet."  He went on to explain that his analysis of the circus that has been made out of the AIG bonuses and resultant intra-party finger pointing is that no one of competence could have engineered such a thing.  So for that day, he was leaning towards "incompetence".

This is a question that will occupy many minds in the weeks and months ahead.  One thing seems certain already, though:  Obama doesn't care if the American economy tanks, so long as it doesn't cost him any votes.  He embodies every left-wing nostrum and critique about this country, and I suspect that if he isn't engineering crises of confidence in free markets and free minds, he must be pinching himself in giddy disbelief at the opportunities for government overreach that the crises afford him.

He doesn't have to do much now to stoke uncertainty and caution in the financial markets.  And he certainly won't do anything to stem it.  If events of the last few months are not what he planned, he sees them as greasing the skid to where Commandante Obama wants to go anyway.

I have to say that William F. Buckley's "Standing Athwart History Yelling Stop!" always seemed a bit of self-important hyperbole to me.  No longer.

How high are the stakes?

Powerline:  "If the Pelosi bill is actually enacted into law (which I still think is doubtful) and upheld by the courts, there is no limit to the arbitrary power of Congress. In that event, we have no property rights and there is no Constitution--no equal protection clause, no due process clause, no impairment of contracts clause, no bill of attainder/ex post facto law clause. Instead, we are living in a majoritarian tyranny."

Goodbye, America.

"The biggest Traitors among you hold elective office...."

More of this, please:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA&feature=channel_page

John Galt as a process

There was a link on Instapundit this past weekend to a post by Megan McCardle.  Glenn Reynolds titled his link "The unfortunate relevance of Atlas Shrugged".  Reynolds and the instawife, Helen Smith, have been following the professed intention by more than a few business owners of an intention to "go John Galt" for several months now, and one such post last Fall led me to buy and read Atlas Shrugged.  This topic is becoming almost old hat now, although it seems to maintain a decent level of energy; sales of Atlas Shrugged are reportedly "flying off the shelves", so it is no wonder.

And that is not my interest in this weekend's posts.  The interesting bit to me is in the comments to McCardle's post.  There is a high level of antipathy and vitriol directed against Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and "John Galt-ers".  It was interesting to follow links to negative commenters' web sites/facebook pages, etc, where they were available.  They had in common a level of un- and under- employment.  No evidence of business ownership or entrepreneurship.  All dependents of risk-takers and business owners in one way or another, if not government workers or academics.

The negative comments invariably goad the "Galt-ers" to go ahead and disappear ("Who will miss you anyway"), and belittle the effect of a "mom and pop" shop or two disappearing off the economic grid.  They also discount the level of expertise that "Galt-ers" will take with them, pointing out that the industrialists who disappeared in the novel actually produced integral commodities or services.

It is an 'all or nothing' approach to both the novel and Ayn Rand which makes for some easy pot-shots but misses the point of the "Galt-ers".  Even Megan McCardle opines in her brief post that "Her philosophy does not work, at least if by work we mean generate a framework by which a person or society can order itself."  Ok, so what?  There were a lot of things that I didn't care for in the novel; the way in which Rand discounts religion for example was eerily Soviet.  But anyone with half a brain recognizes that the book is a polemic first and foremost.  And it is nonetheless filled with sharp insights that are all the more remarkable given that the novel was written more than 50 years ago.  Such as:

1. The way in which the elites constantly slandered productive people who worked for profit as greedy, unprincipled, uncaring, unethical, etc., yet depended on those same people to produce the wealth that the elites were so eager to appropriate.  Not much has changed on that score.  Consider just the case of Sen. Chris Dodd and how he has played both sides of the field for personal enrichment.
2. The way in which the appropriators, the 'looters' in the parlance of the novel (an apt name, I think), were not content to just grab whatever they could from productive entities.  They wanted to secure the consent of the 'loot-ees' in the endeavor.  In effect, they wanted, and often received, the willing participation of the robbed in the act of theft.  It fed the looters sense of moral conceit and entitlement and gave the producers an excuse to not take a hard look at what was happening to them; and kept them around long enough for another round of looting.  Rand spent a consideration amount of text on this phenomenon  Sadly, this hasn't changed much in the last 50 years either.
3. It wasn't just the 'captains of industry' that withdrew:  For every Midas Mulligan, Ellis Wyatt, Hank Reardon, or John Galt, there are scores of mid-level plant managers, even whole train crews, who just walked away. (at this point  I couldn't help but wonder if the negative commenters really read the novel - I think not).

I say that "going John Galt" isn't so much an event, in real life anyway, as it is a process.  It has a name now that Atlas Shrugged is on so many people's lips these days, but even without a conscious concept it goes on all the time.  The truth is that there is a tipping point for people of personal industriousness, beyond which they don't proceed.  One of the most common areas I see it in is in the employment decisions that business owners make.  Many small companies do without employees altogether, and rely instead on contract workers.  It saves a boatload of paperwork and avoids exposure to intrusive goverment meddlers.  Both sides are losers in this, but the laborers lose bigger. 

Every day, business owners make decisions about how much activity they are willing to undertake in terms of how much additional aggravation the nth customer or order will create in terms of added administrative headaches, and pull back.

The degree to which the actual tipping point moves back and forth along a continuum will depend, at any given point in time, on what the government is doing in terms of regulation and taxation.  As government intrusions increase, the tipping point is lowered. What can this mean to the complainers in the comments section of Megain McCardle's post?  That it will be harder for them to keep and obtain employment (at least until government starts imposing Tony the Wet Nurse on businesses).  Business owners are always trying to avoid the moochers, although may be more tolerant if economic conditions are good and demand is high, and/or government doesn't give the moochers as many tools to cause trouble. 

So if I were one of the negative commenters I would be scared, belligerent and contemptuous too, realizing that I had been found out, and realizing I had no power over someone who opted out of the scheme that kept me employed.  They either do not know any successful people, or do not understand them.  And what they don't understand is scaring them.

With redistribution and poverty for all....

Roger Kimball:

The crucial thing to understand about that attack on achievement is that it is a histrionic, not an economic, gesture. Raising taxes on (while simultaneously cutting deductions for) top earners will not do much to improve the Treasury’s balance sheet. But it will cause pain among the affluent. It will also cause delight among the more than 43 percent of tax filers who pay no income tax. (Is that fair?) So the President scores two points: he punishes those whom he resents, and he panders to the crowd whose approbation he craves.

The punishment is the thing, you see.  Don't you remember Obama's infamous scold during the campaign about greedy Americans driving SUV's and keeping thermostats at 72 degrees? (Incidentally, I can't afford to keep my thermostat at that level, although he can).  If he succeeds in making America a poorer country, he succeeds in making America a country that consumes less.  It is his moral vision.  It is his plan.

"Heat for me, but not for thee."