Diseconomies of socialism

A few weeks ago I was having lunch with the some of the Tampa Libertarian folks, and the topic came up of the USPS as a prime example of the diseconomies of socialism. Now I've got to tell you that I've had several bad experiences with the USPS and I make it a point to never use them for anything important, so I do have a clear bias against them.

Now that we've got that out of the way here's the facts. To begin with lets get a definition of what exactly the usps is, from wikipedia we find that the USPS is is "an independent agency of the States government (see 39 U.S.C. § 201) responsible for providing postal service in the United States".

Now here's where it gets ugly, as of March 31 the USPS had lost 1.9 billion in the first quarter of 2009. And this was not unique according to Thomas L. Gallagher at the Journal of commerce http://www.joc.com/node/411196 this is the 10 of 11 straight quarters of increasing losses. In fact while the six month period ending March 31 2009 showed a loss of 2.3 billion the sixth month period of the same time for 2008 was only a loss of 35 million. Only 35 million? Only 35 million???

.......And here's the Kafkaesque rub of it all.

I don't even know anybody that even uses the USPS. We all pay our bills on line. If something is really urgent we pick up a phone. For casual communication we send emails or use internet messaging. If we need to send an important package we use UPS or Fedex. So what do we get from the USPS?

......Hmmmmmmmm ........Oh yes now I remember, about four times a week I find all that junk mail that I immediately throw in the garbage.

So let me get this straight. The U.S. government is taking my hard earned money in the form of various taxes to run a remarkably inefficient business who's primary effect is that they jam my mailbox with stuff not only that I don't want, but also that I now need to take the time to remove from my mailbox so they can refill it with more junk that I still won't want to read. And they are doing it all at a cost of about 400 million a month.

Yeah, I feel much better now, and this thing with G.M. is sure to work out just fine.

I think Mr. Friedman sums this up best.

"Many people want the government to protect the consumer.
A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government. "

-Milton Friedman

Presidential election spending in 2008

I was speaking with a friend recently regarding how much typically gets spent on presidential elections and decided to do a little research. Here's what I found
Courtesy of opensecrets.org:

Barrack Obama .....raised 745,000,000 and spent 730,000,000
John McCain .....raised 368,000,000 and spent 333,000,000
Ralph Nader .....raised 4,000,000 and spent 4,000,000
Bob Barr .....raised 1,000,000 and spent 1,000,000
Chuck Baldwin .....raised 258,000 and spent 208,000
Cynthia McKinney .....raised 199,000 and spent 145,000

While I was digging into this info out I started to wonder what the final vote tallies were. Here's what I found regarding that, Courtesy of cnn.com

Barrack Obama .....got 69,492,376 votes
John McCain .....got 59,946,378 votes
Ralph Nader .....got 729,733 votes
Bob Barr .....got 523,439 votes
Chuck Baldwin .....got 184,502 votes
Cynthia McKinney .....got 160,015 votes

So this left me with some questions, specifically I was wondering which of the candidates got the most votes relative to dollars spent, ie: who got the most votes per dollars spent. Here's what we get for that one.

Barrack Obama .....spent $10.50 for each vote
John McCain .....spent $ 6.13 for each vote
Ralph Nader .....spent $ 5.46 for each vote
Bob Barr .....spent $ 1.91 for each vote
Chuck Baldwin .....spent $ 1.39 for each vote
Cynthia McKinney .....spent $ .62 for each vote

You can all make your own decision regarding this info, I just thought it was some interesting info.



"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for" -Will Rogers

A little rebellion now and then.......

I had the opportunity last weekend to have a most enjoyable lunch with the Tampa Area Libertarians. Before I go any further it's important to point that this group is in no way associated with the Libertarian party of Hillsborough county where they meet. Rather this group is a loose collection of genuinely open minded free thinkers with a strong bent regarding issues of personal liberties, small government, and laissez faire economics.

Several interesting topics were discussed during this lunch, but one in particular stuck with me and I just couldn't get it out of my head. This group is organized by a gentlemen whom I'll refer to as B.G. in a pale attempt to preserve his anonymity in case the boys from Langley come looking for him. At some point B.G. made the statement that "the constitution is really crap". Now this was quite an attention getter coming from someone who is clearly committed to libertarian values. His point was a socio-political statement that he then clarified by stating that if the founding fathers had the right to create their own constitution for themselves why did they presume that they then had the right to impose their constitution on their progeny? From a purely philosophical approach this is an entirely valid question.
I thought about this for a few days and I came up with at least one possible answer.

As I've grown older I've acquired a small collection of very nice guitars, and more and more I wonder what will happen to those guitars after I've passed away. My plan of course is to give those guitars to people whom I believe will take good care of these instruments and treat them as I have. However, I have to wonder how many generations removed will those guitars go and still be cared for as I have cared for them. Then I came to the realization that the reason I scrimped and saved and worked to buy those guitars were purely for my own selfish reasons. I wanted them for myself so that I could play them and enjoy them. The best that I can hope for is that whomever I give them to after I'm gone will cherish them as I have and they might last a few generations down.

Given my recent revelations I have to believe that our founding fathers acted with similar motivations and I suspect that altruism regarding their progeny 20 generations removed was probably a somewhat distant concern. The reason the founding fathers risked THEIR lives, THEIR families, and THEIR fortunes in a war with the greatest world power of the time, Great Britain was to secure THEIR freedom. The reason Jefferson wrote the constitution was to lay out a plan for THEIR OWN self governance. Certainly they were also concerned with their children and maybe even their grand children. But as with my guitars these guys must have recognized that there is a limit to how far down the road any person or persons can reasonably expect those things that they cherish to be cared for and taken care of.

Ultimately the founding fathers, acting like a collection of characters from an Ayn Rand book fought overwhelming and seemingly unsurmountable odds and risked everything to gain their freedom from an oppressive tyrannical government. The fact that we in modern America are the distant beneficiaries of their actions is just our dumb good luck. If we aren't happy with the hands we've been dealt then it would be a disservice to them to act with any less zeal than they did regarding their freedoms.




"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." Thomas Jefferson Jan 30 1787.