I wasn't planning on voting yesterday. Besides the fact that you are far more likely to die on the way to the polls than to cast a vote that affects the outcome in any race, I really hate the idea of seeming like I'm lending legitimacy to the system. In the words of the great H.L. Mencken, elections are like a futures market in stolen property. So it seems that voting is useless at best and downright immoral at its worst. Pretty cut and dry for a guy like me who accepts these premises. No reason to vote.
But then I found out that we in Indiana would have the opportunity to vote against the retention of Indiana Supreme Court Justice Steven H. David. This bait proved irresistible.
In his affirmation of the lower court ruling in the case of Barnes v. The State of Indiana, David opined, "We hold that there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers." I had to agree with my grandfather when he lamented, "Indiana is a police state now".
Fortunately, since then, the legislature has made it clear that Hoosiers do have the right to resist the unlawful entry of anybody. Even cops.
Unfortunately, the people of Indiana voted to retain Justice David. I doubt most of the people who checked "YES" knew anything about him. This is likely also true of a number of people who checked "NO". Aren't we blessed that so many people exercise their patriotic duty to show up uninformed at the polls and vote for people they aren't familiar with?
I did enjoy my evening of flipping back and forth between listening to the election results on WBAT and watching the results on NBC while sipping a glass of bourbon. I found it amusing that several races were able to be called before any of the voting machines here in Grant County had even been checked. It ruins the illusion that your vote matters when people are giving acceptance speeches before your vote has been counted.
It makes me smile.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Do Hurricanes Bring Wealth to the Shore?
Yesterday afternoon I was watching the Bloomberg Network when I heard the anchor express an extremely ignorant sentiment. She offhandedly mentioned that there seemed to be a silver lining to the dark cloud that is Sandy. People would be forced to spend huge sums of money in repairing damages caused by the brutal storm. This increase in "aggregate spending" will be a godsend to the economy.
This idea, that destruction causes wealth, is as almost as old as it is stupid. We have all heard how the massive boost in spending for the second World War pulled us out of the Depression. Some have even posited that the devastation wreaked by the atomic bombs in Japan led to their economic renaissance because it forced them to build newer and better factories. But the idea thrived long before that. It was this same silly explanation for wealth creation that was prevalent in 19th century France when Frederic Bastiat exposed it as The Broken Window Fallacy in his brilliant essay, That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen.
Bastiat related the parable of the shopkeeper who finds that a local boy has shattered his window with a brick. As he is cleaning up the mess, a neighbor encourages him to see this not as a loss, but as a gain. The shopkeeper will have to purchase a new window from the glazier, true enough. But now the glazier will have more money for bread. This enriches the baker who now has more money to buy from the shopkeeper. The prosperity flows in beautiful circle. How unfortunate it would be for glaziers, and the economy as a whole, if windows were never broken.
This is what is seen. What is unseen is how the shopkeeper would have spent that money had he not had to replace the window. Perhaps he would have purchased a suit. That would mean that the wealth gained by the glazier would only be at the expense of the tailor. Obviously, this is not an increase in general prosperity. And when we consider the plight of the shopkeeper further, we find that is actually a decrease in general prosperity. If it had not been for the young troublemaker with the brick, the shopkeeper would have had both a suit and a window when now he has only the window.
Hurricanes and wars are the breaking of windows on a massive scale. Wealth is increased when goods and services increase; Not when they are destroyed. It takes a very convoluted system of thought to obscure these simple facts. But the light of logic easily exposes these fallacies. Let's make sure to keep the light on.
This idea, that destruction causes wealth, is as almost as old as it is stupid. We have all heard how the massive boost in spending for the second World War pulled us out of the Depression. Some have even posited that the devastation wreaked by the atomic bombs in Japan led to their economic renaissance because it forced them to build newer and better factories. But the idea thrived long before that. It was this same silly explanation for wealth creation that was prevalent in 19th century France when Frederic Bastiat exposed it as The Broken Window Fallacy in his brilliant essay, That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen.
Bastiat related the parable of the shopkeeper who finds that a local boy has shattered his window with a brick. As he is cleaning up the mess, a neighbor encourages him to see this not as a loss, but as a gain. The shopkeeper will have to purchase a new window from the glazier, true enough. But now the glazier will have more money for bread. This enriches the baker who now has more money to buy from the shopkeeper. The prosperity flows in beautiful circle. How unfortunate it would be for glaziers, and the economy as a whole, if windows were never broken.
This is what is seen. What is unseen is how the shopkeeper would have spent that money had he not had to replace the window. Perhaps he would have purchased a suit. That would mean that the wealth gained by the glazier would only be at the expense of the tailor. Obviously, this is not an increase in general prosperity. And when we consider the plight of the shopkeeper further, we find that is actually a decrease in general prosperity. If it had not been for the young troublemaker with the brick, the shopkeeper would have had both a suit and a window when now he has only the window.
Hurricanes and wars are the breaking of windows on a massive scale. Wealth is increased when goods and services increase; Not when they are destroyed. It takes a very convoluted system of thought to obscure these simple facts. But the light of logic easily exposes these fallacies. Let's make sure to keep the light on.
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