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Friday, May 09, 2008
Government “Problem-Solving:” Two Cases
Your Curmudgeon is baffled by many things, including a few he's been pondering for many years. (Why do the British drink warm beer? Why didn't FOX pick up Firefly for a second season? Were bra hooks the invention of a genius, a sadist, or a sadistic genius?) But of one thing he's as certain as his skeptical nature will permit: only a fool believes that government solves problems on net balance.
Oh, once in a great while, a government will actually mitigate some condition private parties find troublesome. But it never occurs "at a profit" -- that is, without incurring ruinous costs and unintended consequences, and without germinating or worsening at least two other problems with which the body politic must cope. History is absolutely adamant on this point; there are no known counterexamples.
The logic of the matter is quite simple. A government, regardless of its organizing principles, is unaccountable to its subjects. Since it possesses a preponderance of coercive force and is deemed to have the privilege of using that force to get its way, it can extract the costs of whatever follies it indulges from its subjects' pockets, without their consent. But no matter what its spokesmen might promise will be done with the money, it will always wind up doing something else:
- Cronyism and nepotism will dominate all staffing decisions.
- Funds will be diverted to graft and unrelated uses.
- All schedules will be missed.
- Shortfalls in quality will be rampant.
- "Emergencies" will be used to justify delaying or reneging on the promised boon.
As the populace can neither enforce governmental fidelity to its promises nor extract a refund, the dynamic of government action is to become ever more intrusive, ever more costly, and ever more counterproductive -- not by the government's standards, but by the standards of those who must suffer for its defaults. So it should come as no surprise that the federal government of these United States, one of the most inept examples of its species, should have offered us only non-solutions for the two most pressing problems of our time: Islamic militancy and the skyrocketing price of fossil fuels. With 220 years of practice under its belt, Washington knows how to make mud pies from any materials and any starting point.
Despite Muslims being only a few percent of the population of the Old Continent, Islamic militancy is likely to swallow most of Europe within a generation or two. Muslims are too savage, too overtly aggressive, and far too violent for their "culture" to live in peace alongside traditional European ways. Therefore, one or the other must go. But Europeans have become so averse to any sort of confrontation that they automatically try to accommodate Muslims' demands for special treatment rather than stand up for their own laws, traditions, and prerogatives. Worse, Muslims are outbreeding indigenous Europeans by a rate of 2.5 to 1, which amounts to a guarantee that European indigenes will be a minority in their native lands within fifty years -- present trends continuing, of course.
Your Curmudgeon has been saying "Quarantine or genocide; there are no other options" for quite some time now. If anyone in Europe has been listening, there's no evidence of it. But far worse is this: our own governments, including the one in Washington, have set out on the path Europe has followed to its current miseries. State and local governments are steadily giving ground before Muslims' demands -- an exemption from noise ordinances here, foot baths in an airport there; a below-market sale of valuable real estate to a mosque over there. Even though we're actively engaged in a worldwide military, intelligence, and diplomatic campaign against Islamic terrorism and jihadism, our State Department has ruled any verbal association between Islam and violence forbidden.
Clearly, whatever we're being told, our governments are making the Islam problem worse, not better.
On the fossil-fuels front, we have the absurd federal ethanol subsidy: 51 cents per gallon for every gallon of ethanol produced from biomass (preponderantly corn). The rationale is the need for some alternative to increasingly expensive gasoline as a fuel for our cars and trucks. If ever there was a policy designed to wreak ruin on a nation, this is the one. Millions of acres of land previously given to the cultivation of food crops are now dedicated to ethanol-stock corn. In consequence, the price of basic foodstuffs has exploded, both here in America and on markets worldwide. Worse, ethanol is a far less energetic fuel than gasoline, and is much more difficult to transport, making the production of ethanol as a motor fuel a losing proposition. A truck built to the specifications required for ethanol transport would, in covering a distance of 1000 miles, consume more energy than is stored in the ethanol it could carry. In other words, if that truck were powered by an ethanol-burning engine, it would consume its entire payload before it had finished its trip.
Clearly, despite the political hype, ethanol is not the fuel for America's future.
If, like your Curmudgeon, you regard these as very serious problems, you ought to be troubled by the political charades dancing around them. They're soluble problems, but if they're to be solved in time to prevent America's economy from collapsing and its society from being Islamified, we must not look to government for the solutions.
Though there is one tantalizing possibility: the ethanol mandate might become a component of the solution to Islamic encroachment. Islam is hostile to the consumption of alcohol. Perhaps the vast quantities of ethanol being fermented could be used to render the American food supply one hundred percent haram! A small extra subsidy could be used to accelerate the production of pork products. With a little help from the Food and Drug Administration, we might soon see supermarkets and restaurants from coast to coast sporting signs that read:
ALL PRODUCTS SOLD HERE
CONTAIN BOTH PORK
AND ALCOHOL
Well, a Curmudgeon Emeritus can dream, can't he?
Comments
The British drink warm beer because ales and porters are better warm than cold. (I’ll spare you the chemistry of why.) Lagers, including the American light lagers (which aren’t actually beer, in most cases, because they are made from corn and rice instead of barley) taste better cold. Incidentally, why is American beer like sex in a canoe? Because both are effing close to water.
Fox didn’t pick up Firefly for a second season because someone high up at Fox is convinced that SciFi is a loser. Note that they also cancelled Space: Above and Beyond, which despite its terrible title was an excellent show, winning two Emmys in the one season it was on, and gathering a fan base despite being frequently rescheduled or even cancelled in favor of sporting events.
Bra hooks were invented by the same sadistic genius who invented chastity belts, but are easily circumvented by removing the whole bra over the head like a T-shirt.
People believe in the government helping because hope triumphs over cold realism any day of the week — forgivable in the young, but inexcusable in the old, and possible only because of the unprecedented wealth, health, and security our society enjoys. But don’t worry, government is on the job to fix our health, wealth and apparently our security as well.
Posted by Jeff Medcalf on 05/09/2008 at 03:54 PMCurmudgeon, excellent post. I agree with you on every point. What can be done about Washington and the politicians? Seems when we try to vote them out, the new ones are no better. Look at the present Presidential candidates as a perfect example.
We seem to be making the same mistakes that Europe has made when it comes to Muslims and Islam. Yes we don’t even want to call the enemy by name.
Posted by Debbie on 05/09/2008 at 10:12 PM
