Congress declined to force the American people to patronize an inefficient automobile industry, so the President has stepped in and done so all by himself. It's comforting to know that the executive branch will usurp the power of the purse in Article I of the Constitution whenever expedient. Centralization of power in one man's hands hasn't received a fair shake historically, and we can't let petty constraints such as separation of powers get in the way of preserving jobs (that is, preserving jobs for a visible few, while sacrificing jobs and prosperity for the invisible many -- please read this book for greater understanding).
Come to think of it, I have the perfect jobs proposal for the incoming Obama administration: all laborers on "public-works" projects should dig and chisel with spoons, rather than take advantage of labor-saving devices such as bulldozers and jackhammers. Just imagine all the work this will engender! Where's my Nobel Prize?
4 comments:
Full employment: farm with rocks. Half of us will starve, but we'll be employed.
Thanks for this -- I've used variants of it since you brought the idea to mind.
Jim O'Connor
Thanks for the friendly comment, and it's good to know that more people recognize that the emperor has no clothes. The feds have moved beyond the realm of unconstitutionality and are lapsing into sheer insanity, or perhaps just plain evil. Central planning is a proven failure that produces misery and death; however, even if we ignored the historical record and pretended that central planning works on a macroeconomic scale, it nevertheless assaults our dignity and our inalienable right to pursue happiness as we see fit, and it is therefore unacceptable no matter the outcome.
Just watched "Serenity". In the beginning the teacher asks the focus of the story why the rebels don't want to be part of the perfectly managed world the empire/alliance provides. "You meddle," said the girl a second after I did (dramatic pause). Overall, worth the time.
There are some who want to be plants in their own lives, apparently never having to decide anything that directly affects them harder than what color shirt to wear on a given day and who to have a one night stand with but they are happy to run other people's lives, where there are no direct and immediate costs to them.
Jim
What a coincidence! My wife and I recently discovered Serenity, along with the accompanying television series Firefly. I got the same impression you did when viewing that opening scene in the movie -- the "soft" totalitarianism exuding from the very pores of the schoolteacher made me sneer. The show setup follows the post-bellum situation in America after the Civil War (a misnomer if there ever was one), and it's a welcome change to see the "losers" treated as the real heroes.
It's true that most people shirk their duty to take responsibility for their own lives. Although technology is helping to liberate us from the mainstream media, I also believe that technology has led more people than ever to put their lives and their minds on cruise control. With luck, people will begin learning that you cannot afford to pluck your ideas about life from a media superstore -- you must practice a little of your own "agriculture" to grow fresh ideas on what's really happening.
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