A Golden Age Of Philanthropy - Forbes

Will cooperation work better than coercion?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2013/11/17/a-golden-age-of-philanthropy/

Organize Via Guns or Cooperation?

To do so would have been naive, because history — and common sense, along with a large catalog of economic theory — tells us that central planning has not and cannot work.

What works and always has is voluntary cooperation among free people. Consumers and producers don't need functionaries in Washington managing their transactions. Groceries, wrist watches, cheeseburgers, bowling balls, aspirin and any number of other goods and services are bought and sold just fine without government involvement. These markets organize themselves.

Buyers and sellers speak clearly to each other through price signals. Government planners would only wreck what has developed efficiently on its own.

It's foolish to believe a group of planners in Washington, D.C., or anywhere else, could organize a market as large and complex as health care.

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Force Dressed Up in Sheep's Skin

• Says an FB poster:

  In a democracy, voting isn't a matter of force. We agree as citizens to accept the vote of the majority, unless it contravenes constitutional rights. When we are on the losing side, we accept the law (albeit grudgingly), because that was the implicit contract before we voted. When we are on the winning side, we expect our opponents to accept, too. The "force' is the voice of the people.

  16 hours ago · Like · 1
• 

  Paul Eich rick, I couldn't disagree more. When the guy comes up to you with the gun and says pay up, that's force. Pretending it isn't is delusional. You can say force is ok with you, but denial that it is force is ... unclear thinking. FWIW, we do not have a democracy. We have a representative republic, because the track record for democracy is poor. The republican form was chosen to limit the amount of force the government could legitimately utilize against individuals. Those limits have only been reduced since the signing of the constitution - almost no examples of limiting the govt's force, numerous examples of how the govt can use more force against you or me. I'm for laws that reduce the way the govt can legitimately use force to make you do what I want, or that me do what you want. Putting a cloak of "might makes right" on force doesn't make it anything other than one group (in our case the political class) making us do what they think is good.

Live and Let Comply with Our Demands

Uh, sorry to tell you, but you are "they." Outside of a Law and Order script - or an equally implausible MSNBC diatribe about who ruined Detroit - conservatives have as much influence on big-city liberalism as the Knights of Malta do.

Seriously, who else do people think are behind efforts to ban big sodas or sue hairdressers for charging women more than men? Who harasses little kids for making toy guns out of sticks, Pop Tarts, or their own fingers? Who wants to regulate the air you breathe, the food you eat, and the beverages you drink? Who wants to control your thermostat? Take your guns? Your cigarettes? Heck, your candy cigarettes? Who's in favor of speech codes on campuses and "hate crime" laws everywhere? Who's in favor of free speech when it comes to taxpayer-subsidized "art" and pornography (so long as you use a condom, if liberals get their way) but then bang their spoons on their high chairs for strict regulations when it comes to political speech? Who loves meddling, finger-wagging billionaires like Michael Bloomberg when they use state power and taxpayer money to herd, bully, and nudge people but thinks billionaires like the Koch brothers who want to shrink government are the root of all tyranny?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358147/myth-live-and-let-live-liberalism-jonah-goldberg

I like to remind my "liberal (really progressive)" friends they are believers in coercion - they think if they can get enough people like themselves into office to make up enough rules they can force us all to dance to their tune .... for our own good. Most are surprised to confront that conclusion.

The author's conclusion:
Social liberalism - better understood as progressivism - is a worldview that seeks to use the state to support its preferred values and culture. That isn't libertarianism. Support for abortion rights does not make you a libertarian; it makes you someone who wants very lax regulations on abortion for ideological reasons. Which is why socially liberal bureaucrats in D.C. want to make you wait 24 hours to get a tattoo of a baby on your arm, but there's no waiting to have an abortion.

Tyranny Begets Tyranny

"The young woman was reacting to a New York City regulation, to take effect on March 12, limiting to 16 ounces the size of sugar-sweetened soft drinks available for purchase at restaurants, street carts, movie theaters and sporting events. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the new home of the Nets, has already imposed this limit. Convenience stores, vending machines and some newsstands are exempted from the regulation.  Several new studies underscore the public health potential of the restriction. If it succeeds in curbing the consumption of sweet liquid calories, it is likely to be copied elsewhere, because the nation's love affair with super-size sugary soft drinks is costing cities and states billions of dollars annually in medical care."   

Uh, how about having the government stop advocating low fat, high carb diets?  Notice the author's disclaimer paragraph which allows her to skirt the larger question of the health impact of carbs generally: 

"Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Laboratory at Cornell University, explained that beverages aren't as filling as solid food because they lack texture and "mouth feel," and we "tend to consume them so fast they don't register."  

I have mixed feelings - wrong to limit human choice, wrong to mis-educate based on bad science, wrong to give the sugar beverage industry a pass while pounding the meat and whole fat dairy folks. It's government gone wrong. 

And yet, there's virtually no doubt that doses of sugary drinks above 12 ounces a day become problematic very rapidly. And sports drinks are just as much to blame as coca cola and its competitors.  It's also wrong to limit smokers, but I sure like being able to dine without the smokefest around.  The truth is, the whole "public health" and "environmental protection" concepts are another means to justify tyranny and get people used to the idea that wise and well informed superiors know more about how to take care of us than we do of ourselves, and more about our self interest than we do.  

And nit-wits like Jane Brody are more than willing to strap on their lemming suits and march on.

Coercion Doesn't Work - Even for Fertility!

"Fertility rates are falling everywhere. The median age in many countries is already over 40, well above the prime childbearing years.
"In some places, plummeting fertility can be attributed to dictatorial coercion: To enforce its "one-child" policy, China has employed methods ranging from steep fines and loss of employment to compulsory sterilization and abortions. The results have been brutal: Hundreds of millions of births have been prevented, China's median age is at 36 and rising, and the Chinese fertility rate is now 1.54 - well below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population.
"But, as Last points out, the fertility rate for white, college-educated American women - a proxy for the US middle class - is 1.6. "In other words, America has created its very own 'one-child' policy. It's soft and unintentional, the result of accidents of history and thousands of little choices. But it has been just as effective.""
http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/12/16/more-single-more-childless-ame
rica/yQr34P1AlxcqzegScpWEwJ/story.html

Irrational Fears Indeed

It's fascinating - this author writes about others and seems not to realize it applies to herself.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/in-the-us-chances-are-mommys-g
ot-a-gun/article6496972/

"Irrational fears are hard to dislodge with facts. Crime rates are way down."

Later: "The US is the most heavily armed nation in the world. Fortunately, it is by no means the most trigger happy" since it is beaten out for that dubious honor by Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, South Africa, and a bunch of Caribbean countries, which boast murder rates from 10-20 times higher.

She misses the obvious conclusion - drug war anyone?

She then concludes the only problem is the US is incidents like Newton - completely horrifying but accounting for under 200 deaths from 1980 through 2010. Lightning strikes are more risky.

Unfathomable determination to ignore the facts.