Who Owns the Children?

     MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry kicked a hornet's nest
with the following comments:
"We have never invested as much in public education as we
should have, because we always had kind of a private notion of
children.  Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility.  We
haven't had a very collective notion of 'These are our children.'  
So part of it is, we have to break through our kind of private
idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their
families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.
Once it's everybody's responsibility, and not just the household's,
then we start making better investments."

     I only have space to cover one of the absurdities included
in that statement.  Perhaps Harris-Perry recently crawled out
from under a rock.  Maybe she spent the last 150 years snoozing
with Rip van Winkle.  Apparently she missed out on the trend of
frowning upon owning humans.

     Ownership means control.  To own is to control.  The
person who owns you has the right to control you.  As far back
as John Lock, civilized people recognized that only one form of
owning humans is consistent with liberty and dignity.  That is
self ownership.

     Any free person owns himself.  To be owned by another
would be bondage, sometimes called slavery.  Only under self
ownership are individuals free.  The individual controls himself. 
To achieve liberty each self owned individual must respect the
self ownership of all other individuals.

     In other words, for liberty to prevail everyone must
refrain from aggression against all others.  No one may say to
another peaceful person, "Do it my way, or I will hurt you."  To
live in liberty such threats must be reserved for use only against
those who commit aggression.

     When John Lock stated "All men are created equal" he
made it clear that he meant all men were created with the equal
liberty of self ownership.  The drafters of the Declaration of
Independence relied heavily on the writings of John Lock.  Thus,
it is reasonable to assume that to them "all men are created
equal" also meant that all men were created with the equal
liberty of self ownership.

     Obviously children are incapable of full self control. 
Does this mean that they must be someone's slaves?  Are
children's only options to be owned by their parents, or owned
by the community?

     Under liberty no one can own the children.  Parents are
the natural guardians of their children.  It is the parents' duties as
guardians to protect the interests of their children.  When parents
fail, sometimes other adults intervene to provide other guardians
for the children.  Neither the parents nor the replacement
guardians own the children.

     It would be possible to strip guardianship from parents
and grant it to the community.  How would the community
exercise its power of guardianship?

     It is ridiculous to even suggest that the entire community
would participate in the guardianship.  If they did, the results
would be disaster for the children.  The children would be ruled
by the whims of a giant committee.

     In the real world a few individuals would take over. 
Children would still be controlled by a few individuals.  Would
the children be better off being controlled by strangers rather
than by parents?  This question has already been asked and
answered, in a slightly different form.  Are children better off
being raised in an orphanage than by their parents?  The answer
to this question is yes, only if the children have very
incompetent parents.

     Parents understand their children better, and care more
about them, than do the rest of the community.  The community
can assist parents.  The final decisions of guardianship must be
left to the  parents.  To do otherwise is the formula for disaster. 
Subject to guardianship, the children own themselves.  Hopefully
Ms. Harris-Perry will crawl back under her rock, take her advice
with her, and stay there for at least another 150 years.

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Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum

Too Much Education?

 

     A study found that half of US workers are over qualified
for their jobs.  Should we be concerned about over qualification? 
Is too much training and knowledge possible?

     On the flip side, millions don't have enough training for
jobs that produce much of anything.  We definitely have an
imbalance in training.  Obviously, resources have been
misallocated.

     The misallocation extends well beyond education.  One
reason workers are over trained is we don't have enough savings
to invest in equipment and facilities for the trained workers to
use.

     It is pointless to train research scientists if we don't have
the savings to build research facilities for them.  Investment is
indispensable to production and prosperity.  It is also
indispensable that savings and investment be put to the proper
uses.  We must invest in the right amounts of everything.

     The most productive investments are the most profitable
ones.  Free people guided by free market prices seek out those
profitable, productive investments, while shunning nonproductive
investments.

     Free people guide savings to their most productive uses. 
People make mistakes.  Mistaken investments are costly.  Thus,
free people seek to identify mistaken investments and quickly
liquidate them.

     Why then are we investing in the wrong kinds of
education, and probably investing too much in education?  We
aren't free to invest as we choose.  Government manipulates and
distorts investment.  Student loans and other government
manipulations have created massive educational waste.  The
students, or taxpayers, are stuck with the still unpaid bills for
much of that education.

     We have seen how government manipulation of housing
and housing finance inflated the housing bubble that burst into
disaster.   Government decided it knew best the kind and
quantity of houses we needed.

     Government also decided that families should own homes
rather than rent them.  The irony of this is that we now have the
lowest level of home ownership in decades.  Thank you
government.

     Free people interacting in voluntary cooperation won't
archive perfect investment balance.  Those who demand
perfection can always point out the failures of freedom.  Those
failures don't look so bad when compared to the far greater
failures of investments manipulated by government.

     There is one thing our education system hasn't taught
many people.  That is, don't judge by comparing the results
achieved to a perfect world.  Everything will come up short. 
Only make comparisons to options that are possible.

     Interestingly, usually only the private sector is judged in
comparison to utopia.  Private sector failures are met with claims
we have to much private sector and too little government. 
Government failures are also met with the claim we have to
much private sector and too little government.  Am I the only
one who sees the absurdity in this?

     Government manipulation of investment in education
mirrors government manipulation of housing investment.  It has
kited the cost of education pushing investment into training for
jobs that don't exist.  Part of the reason those jobs don't exist is
government has diverted savings away from building tools and
equipment.  If government backs off from manipulating
investment in education, much of the education establishment
will collapse.  This will have serious economic consequences. 
Like all bubbles, sooner or later the education bubble will burst. 
The sooner the bubble pops, the less the damage.

     The malinvestment in education will be liquidated.  If
government stays out of the way we will build a new structure
for education that will reduce costs and direct our savings to
where they will be most productive.  The new investment
allocation will better allocate savings within education, and
between education and other investments.

     The greatest crimes of government against prosperity are
the miss allocation of investment and the destruction of savings
through tax, borrow and spend.  Only by eliminating this double
whammy can be save prosperity.

aldmccallum@gmail.com
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Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum

Is it the Green Fairy's Fault?

     Two recent articles about the European Union seemed
unrelated.  Then again, maybe not.  The first was about the EU
parliament considering revisions to the definition of Absinthe,
also known as the "green fairy."  For some on this side of the
puddle, Absinthe may not be a familiar beverage.

     Absinthe is an alcoholic beverage that, traditionally at
least, contained a touch of thujone that is described as a
wormwood plant toxin.  Doesn't that make you thirsty?  The
thujone gives the green fairy its color and its wings.  It
supposedly causes hallucinations that "inspire" poets and writers. 
I know what you are thinking, but, I never touched the stuff.

     After due deliberation the EU parliament decided to punt
and leave the definition alone.  The definition doesn't require
that the green fairy contain any thujone.  What is left of the
green fairy without any fairy?

     Whatever the results, Doesn't the EU have enough bigger
problems to occupy the parliament's time?  Considering what
usually comes out of the EU parliament, fiddling with frivolities
may well be the best use of its time.

     I was ready to ignore the green fairy controversy.  Then
Reuters posted an article reporting some musings of Martin
Schulz, president of the EU parliament whom the reporter
described as a socialist.  Is describing a member of the EU
parliament as a socialist redundant?

     Mr. Schulz offered, "We saved the banks but are running
the risk of losing a generation."  He is probably overly
optimistic in believing that the EU bailout saved the banks for
more than a brief spell.  His other point deserves more serious
consideration.  Young people in various southern European
countries face unemployment rates of 50 percent and above.  In
the US only teenagers face such levels of unemployment.

     Then I read Mr. Schulz's prescription for a cure.  That
was when my mind drifted back to the green fairy.  Perhaps
while considering the hallucinating green fairy Mr. Schulz tested
a few too many bottles.

     I won't repeat all of Mr. Schulz's plan.  The substance of
it was that the EU should spend billions of euros to provide jobs
or welfare for unemployed young people.

     Let's see.  The youth are unemployed because the people
of various European nations are too broke to invest in the
facilities to provide productive jobs for those who want to work. 
The governments are worse than broke.  They wallow in debt
and are at the end of their lines of credit.

     Where will the billions of euros come from?  Oh, I
almost forgot, the EU can print the euros.  Unfortunately the EU
can't print anything to buy with those euros.  More money
without more things to buy isn't much of a solution, except for
those who enjoy the taste of money.

     In the short term the people in countries that squandered
their investment capital on spending binges can't do much to
help themselves.  All they can do is work at low paying jobs,
scrimp and save to replenish the investment that will again allow
workers to be productive.

     The only other option is to attract investment capital from
other countries.  High taxes, regulations and government
spending doesn't create an environment that screams "INVEST
HERE!"  The EU and the European national governments need
to clean up their acts and be responsible.  They can spend their
way into bankruptcy and poverty.  They can't spend their way
out, no matter what the green fairy may have whispered in their
ears.

     Should we in the US care?  The green fairy seems also to
be whispering in the ears of some congress critters.  The US is
plunging toward where the worst of Europe is now.  By letting
Europe serve as our bad example perhaps we could avoid its
fate.  Then Europe's self destruction would not be a total waste.

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Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum

Which Spending Is Important?

      According to certain politicians in D.C. every nickel
government spends is vitally important.  Cutting any expenditure
will jeopardize the future of the nation and its citizens.  The
politicians claim that even a small cut in the rate of increase in
government spending will bring on disaster.

     The now famous, or infamous, sequester doesn't reduce
government spending by even one cent.  It only reduces the
spending increases that the big spenders claim are vital.  Even
the House Republicans' proposed "drastic" cuts will, by their
own admission, result in government spending increasing by
more than one trillion dollars a year by the end of a decade.

     Let us consider a multiple choice question.  Which of the
following expenditures are vital and untouchable: a) $277,000
for three White House calligraphers: b) $1,500,000 to study why
lesbians are fat (supposedly most of them are): c) $227,000 for
Michigan State University to study how "National Geographic"
depicted animals for 120 years;  d) an undetermined amount for
White House tours?

     According to the politicians and bureaucrats only (d) is
expendable.  The first three march on.  A TV station ran a
feature showing that an invitation crafted with inexpensive
software was indistinguishable from one crafted by the three
pricey White House calligraphers.

     I don't question that a bankrupt nation can't afford to
spend on White House tours.  How can this same nation afford
the first three expenditures?

     There is a simple solution to the White House tour
problem.  Contract with a business to conduct the tours. 
Charge the business for any government costs of the tours.  The
business would charge its customers to recover its cost and earn
a profit.  If the tourists don't consider the tours worth paying for,
then ending the tours is the right thing to do.

     The government is also planning to buy 400,000 tons of
sugar to raise sugar prices and help the sugar industry.  Through
quotas, etc. the government already enables US sugar producers
to sell sugar at twice the price of sugar in the rest of the world. 
Without government protection the US sugar industry would
likely all but vanish.  So what?  We could use the resources,
including labor, to produce something to trade for cheaper sugar.

     How vital is it that the government spends to make
consumers pay more for sugar?  How much sugar is produced in
Canada, Norway, Sweden and other cool climate countries? 
These countries do fine without sugar production.  And, the
consumers pay half as much for sugar as we do.  Also, how
many bananas are grown in the US?

     There is a bit more behind the proposed government
sugar purchase.  The government lent money to the sugar
industry.  Even with the inflated price of sugar, the sugar
producers are having problems paying off the loans.  Thus,
government proposes spending millions of dollars for sugar to
raise prices enough so the sugar produces can repay the
government.

     The phrase that keeps popping into my mind is
"Throwing good money after bad."  This is also a solid example
of how government tries to paper over one mistake with another.

     These few examples aren't even a big start on saving the
nation from bankruptcy.  I didn't do any searching to find them. 
They simply popped up in headlines over the past few weeks. 
Undoubtedly these examples are the tip of the iceberg that
serious research would find.  Some have done that research and
found hundreds of billions of dollars is wasteful and frivolous
spending.

     The problem is that even frivolous expenditures are
someone's income   The people who get the money consider it
important, even if they too believe their work is frivolous. 
These people vote and lobby.  They also circle the wagons and
defend each other's special privileges.  If government can't fire
at least one of three White House calligraphers, How will it ever
screw up the courage to eliminate the billions in ethanol
subsidies and other government boondoggles?

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Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum