Wealth redistribution

Wealth redistribution is evil and is happening today. My proof:

If you look at the graph, you'll notice that the top 5% of the population holds 72% of the financial wealth of the nation. This despite the fact that even if they were twice as productive as the rest of the population (a laughable assumption -- Paris Hilton, anybody? -- but one that I'm sure they'll pretend is true), they only produce 10% of the nation's real wealth -- the goods and services that make up the nation's economy. So where did the other 62% of their financial wealth come from? Redistribution, my friends. They redistributed it using the "invisible hand" that extracts wealth from your pocket and mine and puts it into *their* pockets, which they pretend is all fine and dandy because this "invisible hand" (called market power) is private force, not government force, and thus isn't evil.

But of course force is force. If some goon shoves a gun in my face in the park and demands all my money, I don't care whether he's got a badge showing he's a government employee or not, either way it's still force being used to extract money from me at gunpoint. If some goon tells me to grovel and lick his feet and give all my productive output to him or he will make sure that I get black marks on my official record that will guarantee that I live the rest of my scant days as a starving homeless hobo, that is just as much force as if the government seized the contents of my bank account and told me that every dime I made above simple subsistence was going to them from now on, but for some reason the former (what the Fortune 500 tells every single one of their employees and every single one of the small businessmen who are dependent on Fortune 500 suppliers) is considered "ok" by the top 5%, while the latter sends shivers of horror up their spine -- yet from the perspective of the bottom 95%, they are one and the same -- application of force to redistribute their wealth for the benefit of a few! Sprinkling magic free market fairy dust over it doesn't make it anything other than what it is: redistribution of wealth. All that sprinkling free market fairy dust over this extraction of wealth does is change who gets the wealth -- a small percent (the top 5%), vs. the 95%. Hmm, now I wonder why so many of the top 5% embrace free market ideology? Gosh darn gee willickers, Batman!

-- Badtux the Redistribution Penguin

The free market solves all problems

Left: The Free Market Fairy, preparing to solve your problems with extreme prejudice, yo.

So the Free Market Fairy solves all problems, it seems. Including, apparently, the problem of firemen getting old and retiring and drawing their pensions, since the new digital trunking systems foisted onto firefighters in the aftermath of 9/11/2001 often reject mayday calls due to overcrowding, resulting in dead firemen. A problem which doesn't occur with non-trunked analog systems, where you know before you press the mike whether the air is busy or not.

But according to the free market advocates, this can't be, because the magic free market fairy would just wave her magic wand and sprinkle magic free market fairy dust all over and presto, everything would be fine. Err... yeah right. That free market fairy? S/he is a grumpy tranny who'd sooner kneecap you if there's more profit in it. Which is the case here, I know the technology that Motorola and ICOM are selling firefighters (similar radios are sold to ham radio operators, e.g. ICOM's D-STAR system), and I'll tell you this, I wouldn't want to rely on it in an emergency -- there's just too much that can go wrong. Analog may be old-school tin can and strings technology, but it's also bullet-proof.

So what's behind the push for digital? 1) Police departments that want to keep their crime calls secret so that crooks can't listen in and be warned that the coppers are coming (hmm, y'now, there's this thing nowadays called CELL PHONES, why not just give your guy a call on the phone?), and 2) profit, profit, PROFIT. I have to admit that digital gives better use of the bandwidth and generally sounds better *if* you're not in a noisy environment, but if I'm a firefighter down in a basement with a radio and I need to yell for help? I don't want a cell phone. I don't want a digital radio. I want a good old fashioned waterproofed shockproofed analog radio, the kind that's pretty much bullet-proof as long as it's got battery power left.

- Badtux the Radio Penguin

Next talking point: "Gulf oil spill caused by government!"

Because if we'd let the magic free market fairy (left) wave her (his?) magic wand and sprinkle free market magic fairy dust on the oil well, then BP would have run the platform more safely, so there!

What, you haven't heard about this? Well, you will, I'm sure. Because that's what believers in the free market fairy always do -- any failure of the free market isn't really caused by the fact that the free market, sans government intervention, rewards fraud and cutting corners on safety. Instead, they'll insist until their face is blue that it wasn't really the lack of government regulation that led to the fraud and to the cutting corners on safety, but, rather, too much regulation that led to the fraud and lack of safety! It's as if they live in some bizarro world planet where the sky is green, unicorns are pink, and cotton candy grows on trees... because the universe they describe certainly doesn't describe this world, where we have instance after instance where a lack of government regulation leads to unsafe meat, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities, oil well blowouts, etc. But then, reality has a liberal bias, so we can't bring reality into the discussion, right? Right?!

Folks, fairies aren't real. Well, except for the kind that march in gay pride parades, but they're not magical, and their magic wands do not sprinkle magic free market fairy dust when they wave their wands. They sprinkle something else entirely, something which George Alan Rekers is undoubtedly familiar with intimately, if ya get my drift...

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Markets, rules, and the Free Market Fairy

Left: The Free Market Fairy prepares to bash a few people over the head with her (his?) magic wand.

I will first state a clear and obvious truth: Capitalism is the best way thus far that mankind has developed for creating a good life for the most people, and markets are an important component of the way in which capitalism operates.

That should answer the question of whether markets are useful or not. The question is not whether markets are useful or not, but, rather, the rules under which they are set up. If they are rules which punish fraud and reward fair dealing, what you will get is a market which accomplishes its purpose, which is to maximize the match between supply and demand of commodities and services and thereby maximize the efficiency and prosperity of the economy. If you attempt to create a "free market", one with *no* rules, what you are actually doing is creating rules which REWARD fraud and PUNISH fair dealing. This is because anarchy inherently rewards those who are most vicious, venal, and violent, which is why no society -- anywhere -- which adopts anarchy as its system of (non)-government functions in any reasonable manner.

It is the difference between realistic thinking and magical thinking. The believers in the Free Market Fairy apparently think the rules of the market simply appear out of nowhere, like magic. They don't. If you don't set rules, the rules of the jungle happen -- fraud and violence (financial or otherwise) become the predominant themes. There is a *REASON* why this nation's period of greatest economic growth was the decades between 1945 and 1980, when our markets were highly regulated to make sure they were fair and fraud-free, and that reason is that markets do not regulate themselves, despite the wishful belief in a Free Market Fairy that, via waving her (his?) magic wand, somehow via the Magic of the Market makes fraud, violence, and unfair dealing go away. So why, then, are our young people being ripped off by these unregulated trade schools? Why did Lehman manage to rip off so many billions of dollars with fraudulent transactions? It seems to me that this Free Market Fairy isn't doing so hot there, eh? But what do you expect from a grumpy tranny whose day job is as a kneecapper for the Mafia, anyhow? The Free Market Fairy has a pretty dress and sparkly wand, but look past those, and you realize that she (he?) is pretty darn scuzzy and hairy.

- Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin