Pencils And Politics

It???s strange that Will chooses to extol the glories of the free market just as the mortgage market is collapsing all around us. We are now bailing out one financial institution after another - all bastions of the free market system and all pushing to be first in line for federal handouts. Ironically, the current loan meltdown was the result of Reaganomics. Reagan believed in the magic of the market place. Therefore, we needed to get rid of all those pesky regulations that kept the housing market in line and created APR???s with no regulation whatsoever. People bought houses thinking they could flip their way into millions, jacking up the prices of homes so that the only way you can buy property is through an APR. Now people are losing their homes, the government is paying billions of dollars in subsidies to financial corporations who got us into this mess, and speculators and gamblers are laughing their way to the bank The is really what capitalism represents.

Be careful what you wish for. goig into this Hillary had very high negatives. Obama may have made her look good. Put her next to Sarah and she may look like a shrill old shrew with no real experience.

Emergence and complexity are not limited to economics. This precise mechanism is what is meant by the general notion of evolution. Purpose is interpretable only in retrospect (what turned out to be fit is what survived; one couldn't predict in advance what that would be). What passes for "God" in religious circles is this unseen complex interaction, whose consequences we all see but whose cause is invisible. The left is arrogant for thinking that reason, based on limited knowledge, can trump The Market. The right is arrogant for thinking that religion, based on ancient myth, can trump The Market.

Pencils are six sided. Five sided pencils would not stack neatly stack in a box.

GEORGE, YOU KNOW THIS, BUT


WHEN THE LIBERAL ELITE "MAIN STREAM MEDIA" INJECTS ITSELF INTO A NATIONAL US ELECTION, IT LEADS TO THE "LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES"

IF THERE'S WAS NO "MSM" BIAS AGAINST HILLARY, HILLARY WOULD BE THE US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE AND OBAMA WOULD BE THE VP CANDIDATE

IF THE TICKET IS CLINTON/OBAMA.....THERE IS NO SARAH PALIN EFFECT

IF THERE IS NO SARAH PALIN, THERE IS MCCAIN/ROMNEY REPUB TICKET

THEREFORE, THERE WOULD BE 8 YEARS OF CLINTON/OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

THEREFORE, THERE WOULD BE 8 YEARS OF OBAMA/KEANE ADMINSTRATION


BY US LIBERAL ELITE MEDIA BACKING OBAMA AND TRASHING HILLARY, THEY LOSE A POSSIBLE 16 YEARS IN POWER AND WILL PROBABLY NOW LOSE 8 OUT OF THE LAST 11 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

THE MSM DESERVES WHAT IT GETS

George, we need you writing about the election to TRY and offset the fact that the rest of NEWSWEEK is utterly in the tank for Obama.

One of the greatest conceptual frameworks of thought to come out of recent times is that of emergence. The very idea is woefully threatening to all of those who worship at the altar of Central Control. An understanding of this concept is critical in any attempt to understand markets and economics. have been a reader of George Will's columns for more years than either of us would wish to admit, and this is one of those beautiful moments where something very important comes to light.

We humans seem to have an innate need to feel ???in control???, and we do control much more than we realize, but not always the way we think. Individuals make decisions based on our own interests, and when we make good ones, the collective effect (yes, sorry about that word, but it is meant with no political implications, as you will see) is to create order from chaos. The very essence of emergence is just that. Any attempt to control or modify this system with artificial controls will always have unexpected, and often problematic, results.

Government, especially our federal government, certainly has its place. This place is spelled out clearly in an all too often disregarded piece of parchment known as the United States Constitution. Had our nation chosen to pay heed to this document more closely, much mischief could have been avoided. My great concern of late has more to do with the insistent ???messing around??? by local governments under the guise of police powers, such as deciding that a local bar can no longer allow smoking ??? but that is another story than this.

This incessant intrusion into the natural order is, of course, the result of an unenlightened voting population, which unfortunately, both political parties work constantly to encourage, each in their own way. To paraphrase the words of a wise person many years ago, it is easy to have a good monarchy, all you need is one wise king. In a democracy, all must be wise kings. Perhaps a bit of thought is called for, not from our leaders, but from ourselves. Unfortunately, this is an effort which I see all too few ordinary citizens interested in making.

Mlton Friedman used the pencil example nearly 30 years ago in his series, "Free to Choose".

Natasha: Obama's tax plan will cut taxes for the middle class more than McCain's. That's just fact. Obama will be the one to "unleash the energies of the private sector." All the "maverick" rhetoric aside, McCain's tax policy is basically identical to Bush's. It has been failing for 8 years. The lesson we need to learn from the free market is to fire people who fail, and to use what WORKS instead of what is consistent with our ideaology.

What that neat little story leaves out is... that you couldn't make a pencil without government. Think about it. In that story of the pencil, there are hundreds of places where government plays a role (to facilitate trade between nations, to regulate logging to keep wood supplies sustainable, to make sure the pencils don't contain chemicals that kill people who try to write with them, to build the roads the materials are shipped on, etc etc)

UUuummm... okay... but what that neat little story leaves out is... that you couldn't make a pencil without government. Think about it. In that story of the pencil, there are hundreds of places where government is needed (to facilitate trade between nations, to regulate logging to keep wood supplies sustainable, to make sure the pencils don't contain chemicals that kill people who try to write with them, etc etc etc).

Leonard Read of the Foundation for Economic Education authored "I, Pencil" and Roberts' story is based on Read's essay. I hope he acknowledges that somewhere in print.

How does this article account for what happened to the housing market and the amount of financial institutions that are on the verge of collapse? We are NOT talking about pencils, in this regard. How does ???unabated greed??? and fraud play into the free market equation? What about depleted natural resources and the consequences that this poses for the future? Will nations become more aggressive towards each other as resources become scarce? I am all for a free market, but I also seem to remember that we replaced the indigenous society (Native Americans) that was more in-tune with the natural world and seemed to be doing just fine without a BIG-BOX store and a FREE-MARKET.

No need to worry. When Obama is President, Obama/Reid/Pelosi will appoint a Pencil Czar. And they will give all the pencils away to the poor and middle class. And they will go to sleep at night with smiles and happy hearts, because they will know that they are so very smart and wonderful. Maybe one of them will write George Will a note, thanking him for bringing this terrible Pencil injustice to their attention.