The Paradox of Competition

     It may seem that sports should be the domain of pure
competition.  Yet, professional sports leagues and even colleges
stifle competition in pursuit of mediocre teams.  Professional
sports limit competition for players with drafts and salary caps.
Colleges severely limit the rewards paid to athletes.  Also, the
colleges limit the number of players that may be rewarded with
scholarships.

     The goal is to force all teams into the realm of
mediocrity.  The ideal is believed to be to have all teams as
equal as possible.  This goal is often stated as being parity.
When all teams are equal, all are mediocre.  None excel.

     Consider what would happen with full competition.  The
more successful teams could attract the best players, managers
and coaches.   They would become even more successful.  The
weaker teams would grow even weaker.  In professional sports
the weaker teams would fail.  Soon the excellent teams would be
running out of opponents.  It would be a hollow victory to have
the greatest team on Earth if it was also the only team on Earth.

     Reducing all teams to mediocrity allows all teams to
entertain their fans with some victories.  Every team has a
chance to win a championship occasionally.   For professional
sports, full competition can be a disaster.  For practical purposes
major college sports are professional except in name.  The goal
of the schools is to collect the most dollars possible.

     What would happen if we sought the same parity for
businesses?  Imagine that there are 100 widget manufactures.
Some make better widgets than others.  Some make widgets
more efficiently than others.  With free competition the better
widget makers will sell more and more widgets while the weaker
widget makers will sell fewer widgets.

     The weaker widget makers will fall by the wayside
leaving only a few of the best to make all of the widgets.
Suppose that someone decides that this is a bad result.  They
want to achieve parity among all widget makers so that all can
stay in business.

     The parity seekers pass laws limiting the quality of
widgets to a level all can achieve.  They take earnings from the
best widget makers and give them to the worst.  What happens if
the program succeeds?  All the widget makers and their
employees continue doing what they did.  No one loses his job
or business.  The parity seekers were completely successful.  A
byproduct of that success is institutionalized mediocrity and
inefficiency in widget making.

     Part of the price of that mediocrity is widget consumers
must settle for inferior and more costly widgets.  The extra
money they spend on inferior widgets limits their purchase and
use of other things.  Everyone is poorer because of the
mediocrity created to save the weak widget makers.

     The consumers may not complain.  With no one making
better and less costly widgets, the consumers may not realize
that they are being ripped off to benefit inferior widget makers.
It is vital to the sustaining of mediocrity that all excellence be
wiped out.  Good examples are dangerous to the health of
mediocrity.

     Unlike in the sports world, the excellent widget makers
don't need the weak ones.  Neither do the consumers.   The
excellent widget makers can expand production to efficiently
supply all of the needed widgets.

     Laws and subsidies that keep weak producers going
always push us deeper into the world of mediocrity and waste.
Instead of pursuing universal mediocrity, we should encourage
and reward excellence.  This the only way to sustain and
increase our standard of living.

     Nowhere is mediocrity more institutionalized than in
government schools.  The government school system has
perfected the rewarding and sustaining of the weak and
inefficient.  Until we encourage and reward excellence while
letting the inefficient and poor producers fall by the wayside,
schools will continue to wallow in the abyss of mediocrity, or
worse.

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

Using Other People

     Many people have a rather quaint view of human
relationships.  In that view kind and considerate individuals
engage in self sacrifice to help others.  The most sacrificial get
the most stars after their names.  How does this measure up to
reality?

     Real people seek to increase their satisfaction.  Facing a
choice they always choose the option they believe will yield the
most satisfaction.  They may willingly choose to sacrifice wealth
and time.  They don't voluntarily sacrifice satisfaction.

     Everyone is greedy about satisfaction.  Thus, it is
pointless to brand some as greedy and others as not.  So, how
will this all work out?  In pursuit of satisfaction everyone needs
many things from others.  We all use others to get those things.

     Employers need workers.  The employer would prefer
that those workers work for nothing.  The workers need some
wealth.  Most employees would prefer to get that wealth without
working.  Neither is likely to achieve the ideal.

     When everyone enjoys the liberty to freely choose or
reject offers by others, the workers and employers compromise.
The worker consents to being used by the employer.  The
employer consents to being used by the workers.

     As long as each believes that the compensation for being
used is worth more than the detriment from being used, the
arrangement works well for both.  Many may miss the point that
the worker and the employer are each using the other in pursuit
of satisfaction.  Both are greedy.

     All voluntary interactions, including social relationships,
work the same way.  Consider a date.  Each party seeks to use
the other to gain some satisfaction.  Each hopes that the benefit
from using the other will be more than the burden of being used
by the other.

     In complete liberty no one can use another without the
consent of the one used.  Everyone can say "No" and make it
stick.  Thus, individuals generally pay rent for the use of other
people.  Every individual is free to refuse to accept rent he
considers inadequate compensation for the use.

     The rent may be money, a back rub, or anything else that
the recipient considers to be of value.  All interactions are
voluntary.  Each person seeks to increase his rental value to
others so that in return he can collect higher rent.

     A big problem rears its ugly head if some individuals can
use others without the consent of the ones being used.  First, the
one used is denied the option of refusing.  Second, the one used
isn't compensated for the use.  Such one-sided use can be
accomplished only through stealth, deceit and threats of force.

     The user either tricks the one used, or threatens "Do it
my way, or I will hurt you."  The results are exploitation, strife
and instability.  Any society where a substantial percent of the
members use others without their consent, and without
compensation, is headed for big trouble.  When everyone tries to
live from the forced, uncompensated use of others, the society
faces collapse.

     In our society only government can legally force the
uncompensated use of others.  Those who want to use others
must hitch a ride on the government bus.  They are doing it big
time.  Welfare payments, business subsidies, government paid
medical expenses, and government funded subsidies of any other
kind all are based on the recipient using others without their
voluntary consent.

     The users and their enablers in government are no less
greedy than anyone else.  It isn't their greed that makes them a
threat to our survival.  Their ability to make use of threats and
force to use others is the foundation of the problem.

     We can't fix the unfixable.  The only hope is to
substantially reduce the power of those in government to forcibly
use others.  No one should be subject to being used by others
without his consent.  Government can't help anyone without
using others.

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

How About Home-Restauranting?

     Once upon a time long, long ago most people cooked and
ate at home.  Then someone invented restaurants.  Cooks
prepared food and people ate at the restaurant.   Still "home
cooking" set the standard restaurants tried to achieve.

     Home cooks didn't measure their success by how well
they measured up to restaurant standards.  Those cooks didn't
claim to be engaged in home restauranting.  Like it or not,
restaurant cooks must compete with home cooking.  They
haven't been able to stigmatize "home cooking" as second rate or
evil.  Neither have they managed to make home cooking illegal.

     We are a long way from calling eating at home "home
restauranting."  Restaurant eating isn't mandatory even for
children.  Parents don't go to jail for their children not attending
restaurant.

     Also, once upon a time, long, long ago home teaching
was the standard.  Then both adults and children ventured out to
meet with teachers and learn outside the home.  That learning
place came to be called a school.

     Schools obviously had better public relation flacks than
did restaurants.  Instead of being willing to supplement home
teaching and learning, schools sold the idea that learning outside
the school was impossible.  Anyone who didn't feed their mind
at schools would mentally starve to death.

     The word "school" that described a place, grew to be
synonymous with teaching and learning.  "School" evolved into
a verb.  What used to be teaching and learning became
schooling.  Children were schooled.

     Home teaching and learning were demeaned rather than
praised as the standard of excellence.  In Michigan the Amish of
decades ago fought a long battle to save the right to teach their
children at home.  They won.  In doing so they kept open the
door for all parents who wanted to practice home teaching.  How
many home teachers realize how much they owe those Amish?

     By the time of the rebirth of home teaching, people were
so indoctrinated by the almighty school that they accepted the
idea that teaching and learning at home were schooling.  The
home teachers accepted second fiddle to their detractors and
adversaries.  This is the equivalent of Post Cereal calling eating
breakfast "Kelloging."

      Educating children is a parental responsibility with which
schools may assist.  Today it is commonly believed that
educating children is a government responsibility with which
parents may interfere.

     The evidence strongly suggests that "home teaching," like
"home cooking," is the superior brand.  At a minimum home
teaching isn't inferior.  I'm sure that if you search long enough
and hard enough you will find some parents who do a terrible
job of teaching their children.

     You need not search long to find government schools that
do horrible jobs of teaching students.  Merely look about and
follow the news.  If we should throw away a whole barrel
because of some bad apples, the government school barrel, not
the home teaching barrel, should be the first one dumped.

     Imagine the reaction if restaurant cooks asserted that only
they know how to feed children.  The professional cooks
demand that you drop your children off at the restaurant.  The
cooks claim you should butt out because you couldn't even
understand the magic the professional cooks will work.  Imagine
if MacDonalds was mandatory.

     So-called professional educators have been making that
claim for as long as I can remember.  The claim doesn't even
pass the smell test.  For one thing, millions of parents are
smarter and better educated than the average professional
educator.  Even most of the rest of parents aren't stupid.

     Anyone who spends 13 or more years in supervised learning
and knows nothing about teaching and education shouldn't get a
diploma.  My father taught school to earn money to go to
teachers college and get a teacher's certificate.  I wonder how
much he learned in college about teaching.

     Home educators should stand tall and proud.  And, they
should call themselves what they are, educators, learning
coaches, even teachers, anything but "home schoolers."

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

Can We Export Our Way to Prosperity?

     Imagine a farmer destroying 10 percent of his crops after
harvest.  We produce to consume.  The farmer gets nothing to
consume from the crops he destroys.  He wastes effort
destroying the crops.  This costs even more of his leisure time
and other resources.

     The farmer would be better off if he planted 10 percent
less.  He wouldn't have wasted his time and other resources
producing the extra crops.

     If the farmer gave away 10 percent of his crops, he
would be in the same boat. The recipients of the gifts would be
better off.  The farmer's loss would be their gain.

     Consider another farmer.  His neighbors give him goods
equivalent to 10 percent of his harvest.  He has goods to
consume that cost him nothing.   It doesn't require advanced
math to figure out which farmer is better off and has the higher
standard of living.  The farmer who imported and didn't export
was far better off than the one who only exported.

     For some reason common sense tends to vanish when we
substitute the word "nation" for "farmer."  Keep in mind, nations
don't export and import.  All actions are by individuals.
Individuals in one country may import from or export to
individuals in another nation.  We can add up all of the imports
or exports to calculate the net imports or exports by people of a
nation.

     The individual or nation whose exports exceed its imports
ends up poorer.   From the point of view of the exporter, exports
are a waste.  Imports are beneficial.  We can't export our way to
prosperity.

     If exports are a waste, Why are many people so fond of
them?  Some individuals do benefit from exports.  Suppose we
make automobiles, load them on ships and dump the autos in the
ocean.  To the exporter those dumped autos are no more of a
waste than they would be if we exported them to someone who
gave us nothing in return.

     The workers who make the autos gain paychecks.  Their
efforts are wasted.  No one gets to consume anything they
produced.  Those workers might better have dug holes and filled
them up.  At least this wouldn't have wasted the materials and
equipment used to make the autos.

     Why would anyone pay workers to make something and
destroy it, or to make nothing?  Making autos and destroying
them is no different from other make work jobs.  Union
featherbedding, government subsidies, banning of efficient ways
to produce, all make work and paychecks without adding to
consumable production.  This wasteful work continues mainly
because many people fail to recognize the waste.

     If exports are a total waste, Should we end all exports?
Exports are a total waste only if we get nothing in return.  The
only gains from exports are the things we get in exchange for
the exports.  The reason we call exports and imports trade is
because we are trading.

     Why trade one thing for another?  Trade happens because
each party to the trade values what he gets more than he values
what he gives up.

     Why doesn't each party produce for himself and skip the
trade?  Another way to state this question is, Why don't you
produce everything you consume?  The answer is obvious.  How
much would you have if you had to produce everything you
consumed?

     Consider an example.  Individuals in Michigan may grow
apples and trade them to people in Indiana for eggs.  If egg
production in Indiana is more efficient than in Michigan, and if
the opposite is true of apple production, both parties gain.  If
they don't both gain, the trade will end.

     Neither state exports jobs.  Jobs making one product
replace jobs making the other product.  Some workers have to
change jobs.  Those job changes are the price we pay for
increasing our standard of living.  If we keep all of the old,
inefficient jobs, our standard of living will never increase.  It
isn't coincidence that along our road to prosperity workers have
endlessly lost jobs and found new ones.

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

What Should Government Do?

     Whenever people see, or imagine, an unsolved problem
the cry goes out for government to solve it.  Is government the
only problem solver on Earth?  Can government even solve any
problem without creating at least two more?

     If government is the only problem solver we are stuck in
a world where only force and violence can solve problems.
Force and threat of force are the only things government adds to
any situation.  Government's only special tool it "Do it my way,
or I will hurt you."  If this is the only way to solve problems,
we live in a bleak world that can only grow bleaker.

     Don't despair.  A quick look around reveals there is
another way to solve problems.  Look at what free people
voluntarily cooperating with each other have done.  They
produce food, provide education, provide medical services, build
parks, aid the poor, clean up messes, provide protection to
themselves and others, and an endless array of other things.
They even produce arms and fight wars.

     The only thing free and peaceful people can't do it
initiate force against peaceful people.  The only solutions denied
to free and peaceful people are those solutions that require the
use of aggression.  Governments demand and attempt to enforce
a monopoly on the use of aggressive force.  If we want to
legally take a peaceful person's wealth or force him to change
his lifestyle, we must turn to government.

     The defining characteristic of libertarians is the rejection
of the initiation of force against peaceful people.  The perfect
libertarian will never initiate force against peaceful people, or
support such use of force.  Most libertarians fall short of that
mark.  Some come close.

     We don't need to look to the libertarian philosophy to
find severe limits on what government should do, or attempt to
do.  Pragmatism also offers limits.

     We all seek to maximize our satisfaction.  A problem is
anything that interferes  with our satisfaction.  Solving a problem
involves altering conditions so that we will be more satisfied.

     Of course, one person can gain satisfaction by imposing
dissatisfaction on others.  Civilized people reject this option, at
least to some extent.  The extent to which we reject the
exploitation of others to gain our own satisfaction measures how
civilized we are.

     Unless we substantially refrain from exploiting others for
our own advantage, we will decline into a dog eat dog world of
strife and poverty.  If we are to have peace and prosperity, we
must severely limit the resort to "Do it my way, or I will hurt
you."

     With these points in mind, What should government do?
We should not turn first to "Do it my way, or I will hurt you."
At most this nuclear option should be reserved for serious
problems that defy peaceful solutions.

     Next we should consider, Might peaceful people acting in
voluntary cooperation be able to solve the problem?  Unless we
find that the private, voluntary option won't work, we shouldn't
even consider turning to "Do it my way, or I will hurt you."

     As an example, we have never shown that private,
peaceful education doesn't work.  Experience screams that it
works better than "Do it my way, or I will hurt you" government
schools.  We turned to government for education without good
reason.  Look what that choice brought us.

     The  final test should be,  Is there significant reason to
believe the government option will work?  It is pointless and
destructive to pursue a "solution" that won't work, no matter
how serious the problem.  The war on drugs is a classic
illustration of this principle.  It has failed miserably, created
more serious problems, and wasted billions of dollars of
resources.

     In summary: Don't turn to government; 1) Unless the
problem is serious, 2) Peaceful solutions don't exist, and 3)
There is a reasonable chance the government solution will work.
How many of our laws can pass this test?

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

Good Jobs, Bad Jobs

     Presidents and other politicians love to promise jobs.
Most people love to hear those promises.  How many recognize
that there are two kinds of jobs -- good jobs and bad jobs.  How
can we know the difference?  Why is it important to know the
difference?

     Consider a gardener growing tomatoes.  He buys a
rototiller, fuel, seed, fertilizer, etc.  He grows and sells tomatoes.
Does the gardener have a good job?

     There is only one way to find out.  Are the tomatoes he
grew worth more than the resources he consumed growing them?
If they are, the gardener produced value.  If the tomatoes are
worth less than the resources consumed, he destroyed value.
Good jobs produce value.  Bad jobs destroy value.

     The gardener who consumed value may have worked
very hard.  The value and quality of a job isn't determined by
how hard the worker works, or by how much education and skill
he has.  It is determined by the net value he produces.  The
wealth of the nation is the net value produced by all jobs.  Jobs
that don't produce value reduce wealth rather than creating
wealth.

     Consider filling a tank.  Hook hoses to the tank.  Some
of the hoses put water in the tank, others take water out.  Only
the hoses that put water in the tank contribute to filling the tank.
There would be more water in the tank is we disconnected the
hoses draining water.

     Nonproductive jobs are hoses draining wealth from our
nation.  Increasing wealth is how we sustain and raise our
standard of living.  Decreasing wealth lowers our standard of
living.  Nonproductive jobs drain wealth and lower our standard
of living.

     It is very important that we distinguish between good and
bad jobs.  Bad, nonproductive jobs, drag us toward poverty.  The
so-called pay checks for those bad jobs are in reality welfare
payments.  They pay the workers to destroy rather than to
produce.

     The immune system of a free market private sector
detects and destroys bad jobs similar to the way our bodies'
immune systems detect and destroy bad viruses.  Nonproductive
jobs yield losses.  Losses kill the businesses that create the bad
jobs.  The nonproductive jobs are eliminated in favor of good,
productive ones.  Profits and losses are the core of the immune
system.

     The government sector isn't governed by profits and
losses.  Thus, it doesn't have an immune system.  Government
can continue bad, nonproductive jobs until it can't beg, borrow,
print or steal the money to pay for the losses.

     Government doesn't sell most of what it produces.  Thus,
we have no yard stick to measure the productivity of government
jobs.  We can only estimate and guess whether a government job
is good or bad.  What is the value of the education provided by
government schools?  No one knows.  It is a good guess that it
is worth less than it costs.  No one knows how much less.   The
only way we could find out is to sell the government produced
education to willing customers in free markets.

     The government system can't sort out and eliminate bad
jobs because it can't identify them.  Government employees don't
lose their jobs for being nonproductive.  They lose them only
when the government revenue dries up.

     The worst part is that government deliberately suppresses
the immune system of the private sector.  By paying subsidies
and mandating the use of the products of wasteful, bad jobs,
government blocks the private sector from identifying and
eliminating those bad jobs.

     A job isn't a valuable productive one merely because it
produces something.  To be a valuable job it must produce more
than it consumes.  The gardener doesn't have a productive job
merely because he produces one tomato.

     Subsidized jobs, such as making windmills, solar panels,
ethanol, and building high-speed rail, are all nonproductive jobs
that consume more wealth than they produce.  They are hoses
draining our wealth tank.  These government created jobs don't
lift us to prosperity.  They drag us into poverty.

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

Is There Only One Way to Learn?

     Schools are a tradition.  No one remembers when
learning wasn't linked to schools.  Those schools are a bunch of
buildings.  The school building I visited for nine years still
stands.  It now has dual identities.  It serves as a house.  Many
still know it as the "old Harrisburg school."  Today a person
could easily learn more in that house-school than any of us ever
learned in it during its school days.

     People seeking entertainment used to travel to the theater
or the band shell.  Few could afford a command performance in
their own home.  Some still venture out for entertainment.
Mostly entertainment comes to us by radio, television, Internet,
DVD, etc.

     In today's entertainment a few exceptionally talented, and
often highly paid, performers entertain millions.  In the old days
thousands of much lower paid, and often less talented,
performers each entertained far fewer people.

     The technology that made the change possible
revolutionized the entertainment industry.  As a result we all can
have far more entertainment, for far lower cost, and with far
greater convenience.

     We no longer equate entertainment with going to the
theater.  New technology is also beating on the schoolhouse
door.  Millions still head to the schoolhouse to learn.  Many of
them come away cheated and disappointed.

     There is no more reason why we should continue
venturing out for education than there is to venture out for
entertainment.  We have the means to bring quality education to
every home.  That home education can be better than anything
ever provided in board and nails, or brick and mortar schools.

     Education can, and will, follow the road of entertainment.
A few exceptionally talented people will provide education to
millions.  Like the successful entertainers today, those talented
individuals will often earn millions of dollars by serving millions
of people.  Not only that, the cost of education will decline.

     What holds us back?  Most people resist change.  They
cling to the familiar.  This is especially true for people who gain
their living from the old and familiar.  You can be sure that
Vaudeville and touring theater groups weren't the force behind
the innovations in entertainment that wiped out Vaudeville and
touring theater groups.

     Likewise the people who work at existing schools won't
be the moving force that will eliminate and replace existing
schools.  School administrators, teachers and their unions, and all
others with vested interests in the status quo, aren't going to be
the movers and shakers that bring down the school houses that
we know.  It will take revolution from the outside, not a palace
coup, to overthrow our archaic, obsolete school system.

     No one in 1912 could have predicted the nature and
shape of entertainment today.  Those who saw the beginnings of
radio and movies could have anticipated great change and
improvement.  Some will argue that today's entertainment isn't
an improvement.  They swim against the current.

     We could go back to Vaudeville and touring theater
groups, if significant numbers preferred them.  Technology
doesn't make the old ways impossible.  It only makes them
unneeded and unwanted.

     No one can predict the shape and nature of the
replacement for today's obsolete school system.  We can be
certain that it will be more efficient and better.  It will also
constantly change.

     We can expect that everyone will learn more at home.
We can also expect that some will gather in groups to learn.
Spending four years at an education ranch will all but disappear.
Large schools will disappear, or at least become curiosities.

     Most learning will be close to home, perhaps in small
groups monitored by learning assistants.  Most content will be
provided by the talented few far away.  The last school buses
will set in parks beside the last steam locomotives, or, perhaps in
the yards of schools turned into museums.

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284