'The Land of Opportunity'

America is often called ‘the land of opportunity.’ But, what exactly does it mean to say that America is the ‘land of opportunity?’ That saying is a colloquialism summarizing that each individual has the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ But, of course, that itself needs to be examined. (This will be outside due process in criminal investigations).

What is the right to life? Simply, the right to life is not to be murdered. This is different from being killed, for killed may include accident, sickness and age and there is no such right or possibility to protect one from each of those situations; only certain types of accidents may be criminal. Murder brings with it, its own context through a willful, intentional and unlawful killing of another.

What is the right to liberty? Simply, the right to not have undue restrictions placed upon one.

What is the pursuit of happiness? Simply, in following one’s right to life, and with the liberty to act, one chooses the path that is seen best in life to each individual. There may be nature and nurture influences, and those may be embraced or rebelled against, but the emphasis is the choice in/on that pursuit.

Who has rights?-a collective of any size (family, community, corporation, State) or the individual? The options here are mutually exclusive, for if the individual has rights then the collective may not impose upon or sacrifice the individual; if the collective has rights over the individual, then regardless of individual desires, they may be positioned or used for collective ends.

Regardless of the type of collective, and regardless of any size of a collective, it is nothing more than a collection of individuals. Individuals who have something categorizing them together, regardless whether it is meaningful or superficial, inherited or willfully joined in to, make up a collective: e.g. blondes, family a religious/political group.

Any grouping by its increased number doesn’t gain extra rights. Just because one may be in a larger group doesn’t negate the rights of the smallest group, or most importantly the individual. If 99% decide they don’t like the 1%, they don’t have any more authority, with their numbers, to murder, enslave or steal from the 1%.

So the individual has rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If the individual has the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, what does the State, or collective have to give the individual?

We must first make one more distinction, and that is between collectives, for not all collectives are equal. There are two types of collectives: the State, that has the force of law behind it: all others that do not have the force of law behind them. This is the difference between someone (or group) legally being able to force another to obey or punish according to any law that they may enact, contrasted with any group where though in a collective, the punishments (outside of voluntarily entered into legal contracts) are not punishable by law. One may leave the dictates of a private collective while one cannot walk away from the dictates of the State.

Returning to the question of what the collective is to give the individual; the aforementioned difference must be examined. Is it up to the collective to assist the individual with their respective rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? As private collectives are willfully joined, they may assist their members, but the State as a public collective cannot assist people with those rights. The State is to protect through enforcing the laws the individual pursing their rights, but not to assist them in achieving those rights. If the State did assist one in pursuing rights, what would it look like and why would it be wrong for the State to act as such?

A couple examples are needed to show why the State collective is not to assist. The first amendment right to free speech is a specified form of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as speech is an extension of thought, speaking one’s mind is an act of liberty and pursuant to one’s goals. Each individual has the right to speak. What is it to assist an individual with their right to speak? A private collective, being willfully belonging to, may through those voluntary actions as a whole assist anyone. FOX, CBS, Discovery, OWN or any other television channel may offer someone an audience through giving time, or selling time on their broadcast. The State is funded by taxes, which are taken by force, and it doesn’t own these networks. To assist people in speaking, to say as broadcasting their speech, the State could only force those who can broadcast to give access to their networks. That violates the rights of those broadcasters on who they choose to allow to assist in broadcasting their speech.

On a more general level, there is no way to assist in the right to life. There are ways of assisting various facets to preserve one’s life, such as with food, housing and healthcare. Private collectives may offer one assistance in these various facets, which are implemented voluntarily. The State giving any of these is by force. The State doesn’t grow food, build a house or offer any health services outside of what it has taken away by force from someone else.

In order to ‘give’ away anything, the State must first violate the rights of another. This isn’t equivalent to where each member of society contributes to that which enables the State to work in areas that it should be active in: e.g. military, judicial system. The giving away of goods is through the act of legal plunder, the taking away from those who made wealth, in order to give it to another; the one who produced the wealth receives no benefit from having the wealth taken.

There is no such thing as free wealth; it may be free to the receiver, but that is because someone else already paid the cost. Whether it is food, health care or some other thing that was produced, it was done by one who vested their own wealth (financial and labor) into the production of that good. As they live their life, through their liberty to act as they pursue their happiness, they create. As they created, it is up to them how to sell, or give away their creation. Private collectives, being voluntary may receive donations or discounts (or not) that may be offered to their individual members. The State doesn’t ask; it mandates. The State through legal force takes the wealth, depriving the liberty and pursuit of happiness of the producer.

Some will state: what about the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of those who receive the ‘free’ goods? We must see the common link in those rights: they are from the individual to act on their own in society; they are not guarantees that are to be given, that is first stolen from another to be given to a second. There is no right to violate the rights of another. No one comes into existence holding a claim as a master over another’s life; the State cannot offer someone a whip in order to take something from another.

This is the land of opportunity. The land of opportunity is of the individual to pursue his own life, liberty and happiness. This includes those who work to create a better good, or help those who are not able to help themselves through voluntary interactions. The land of opportunity is that where the individual may make a life as big as he can with what he can create, but not by forcing another to be the tool to assist him. There are other restrictions in life and they are inevitable; one may not be as strong, smart, be born in the wrong area, among various other factors that may hinder attaining one’s goal. But, these hindrances have a possibility to be overcome; the State’s hindrances are legal restrictions upon the individual who may be fined or imprisoned for violations. Not everyone will succeed, or can succeed. The opportunity is not freedom from the restrictions life and nature create, but from undue restrictions man may create. The land of opportunity is where anyone may have the chance, that is the opportunity, to try.

Book edit addendum

Confirmed with my publisher: the electronic format has already been updated, and the hardcopy format will be finalized next week. Orders afterward will have the corrections.

Barak Obama’s ‘faith’

A concise definition of faith: 1: confidence in the value or truth of a thing, idea or person; 2: belief that doesn’t rest on logical proof or empirical evidence; 3: loyalty to a thing, idea or person; 4: body of a religion or set of beliefs.

When one is speaking off-the-cuff, their values come to the fore as they advance those values without a conscious filter. However, there are two sides to the value ‘coin’ as there is the side that one sees – the explicitly declared values – and there are the implied values that show one’s base value system that the conscious and explicit values are based upon. To say that any given thing is ‘good,’ that good is based upon something.

Most politicians speak of goods, but leave them undefined: what exactly ‘affordable housing, health care’ or what is ‘fair’? Those ideas are the seen side of the coin; the manners by which those goals are to be achieved constitute the hidden side of the coin. What methods are to be implemented to achieve the undefined affordable whatever, or fairness?

Obama’s faith can be seen in two key exchanges, both widely televised, but not much connected. The two exchanges involve when he was campaigning and he spoke with Samuel ‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher, and in a debate moderated in part by Charlie Gibson.

With Joe the Plumber, after Obama talks [rambles] about justifying progressive taxes, he then makes the (in)famous ‘spread the wealth around’ comment. That comment was important, but more relevant and showing was in the democratic debate when he was asked about the capital gains tax (when rates decreased, revenues increased; when rates increased, revenue decreased), Obama’s response was that “I’d look at raising the capital gains tax, for purposes of fairness…” Two separate comments about the goal of fairness; two separate comments implying his real value of fairness was redistribution through force – by legal plunder.

Fairness is never defined, it is just left floating around so that any politician may come along and try and blow it in the direction they desire for the time. But the hidden values of legal plunder comes through. Even with the premises that revenue goes down when the taxes were raised, and revenue rose when taxes were decreased, Obama still wanted to increase taxes for fairness, that is plunder the wealth from some to give to the others, and that is to punish the more successful for their success.

This is Obama’s faith. It has nothing to do with religion, outside of the religion of the State to rule as a god, with the arrogance and false belief that they can command the laws of nature and economics. There may be some religious base to how he forms his ideas, but in action Obama’s faith calls for the sacrifice of value of the wealthy (notice how wealthy isn’t clearly defined so it can be changed), to be given to others. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t even financially pragmatic, for he didn’t contest the premises of the negative relation of taxes and revenue; for the purposes of his faith, value must be plundered from those who worked for it, and handed out to those who didn’t work for it. This doesn’t mean that people don’t work, for many do. But hard work isn’t enough. Obama’s faith doesn’t care about that, though. It calls for others to sacrifice their value.

On Prices… and the ‘battlefield’ of the marketplace

The marketplace is the field where people ‘battle’ to have their product stand above and compete with others’ product. Prices reflect hotspots where flags are to be raised so resources can be relocated and bolster the specific good; the higher a price, the higher the flag is raised. With the flag going higher, more in the field can see that there is an area needing support – customers are spending/buying. Seeing an area that needs more support, those in the field may move their resources from their current location to where it is needed more – is more activity. Whether it is a new innovation in a type of phone, or a hurricane-ravaged area needing (re)building supplies, rising prices signal to the rest of the marketplace that help is needed and more resources will be relocated to assist. Those who relocate their resources take part in those higher prices because it is profitable to them to move, and it is beneficial to those who would otherwise be out-of-stock are able to get supplies.

When the need has been met, the flag will lower because it will no longer be such a hotspot; resources will be relocated to another area. This is the way it should work. With the flag being the marker showing a hotspot where resources are needed, if the flag isn’t allowed to be raised or lowered accordingly, whatever prevents the flag’s movement will make it so the resources aren’t diverted properly. What are the ways that it will not work?

Preventing prices to rise: though the flagpole allows the flag to be raised higher, a bracket has been placed somewhere blocking the flag being raised. Though there is more need, without the flag being raised those in the marketplace do not see the demand, or do not see it as needed enough to relocate their resources to assist that spot.

Picture Steve Jobs being told he cannot sell the iPhone for more than $50. He might still produce it with a long-term agreement that whoever bought one had to pay a monthly service fee to offset the cost of production. Now picture a cap being set on that monthly service so the cost of production cannot be recouped. Apple wouldn’t be producing the iPhone; others in the field wouldn’t be putting their resources into producing like models. Or, for hurricane-ravaged areas, if there was a limit placed on canned goods, then those goods would quickly consumed. Without seeing the demand needed with the raised flag, others who also sell the canned goods won’t see the flag and won’t relocate their resources to assist the area.

Preventing prices from falling: though the flag needs to be lowered so resources can go to other areas, there is a bracket blocking the lowering of the flag so the resources keep coming. Other areas need the backing, but they are not getting the resources while the original area doesn’t need or want it, and even needs to purge the excess; resources flood the area as the flag is not being lowered. More and more resources will pile up, saturate the base and inevitably will overtake the flagpole leading to it collapse under the pressure of the piled-up resources – the prices, following the flag, will be down on the ground – a crash, or bust.

Recently, this can be seen in the housing market. This is tied to something good: home ownership. But just because something is linked to something good, doesn’t mean that all parts of it are good for everyone, especially at any time. Sellers want to make the most they can from their product, but the market will state that any given thing is only worth so much. When the flag is kept higher than the marketplace says it should be is by giving the product an artificially high value and paying for the difference through infusing a value difference. Not everyone needs to buy a home. For those who do want a home, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the right time for them; they may not be able to make monthly payments. But with making home ownership easier with guarantees or assistance, the flag isn’t lowered to where it should be to allow the marketplace to find the true value. Non-market infusions mean that along with an artificially high price to be paid, there will be a debt created that will also siphon value, helping that flagpole, when it does fall, fall that much quicker.

Picture a city with an average house cost of $100k. At first, the prices will reflect the proper market value. With so many people being able to purchase a home with assistance (non-market value credit) – not having to take on the normal market purchasing process, the home ownership rate will rise. The housing market will become saturated because the purchases will continue because all of those who couldn’t normally afford a house, buy one. With all the purchasing of houses, the price will rise, and continue to rise as long as the demand is being met; the price may increase to $120k. Multiple factors will force the decline in the housing market, among them are the limitations that any given area can support at any given time, those who normally wouldn’t have been able to afford their house have the reality that they can’t afford the house and foreclose, and like any trend even in optimal circumstances, it will slow on its own. It will come to a point when the prices need to fall because the area has been otherwise saturated. Those who bought, or got a loan for a house in this city during the boom may have paid $120k, though when the market settled and corrected itself, the value of that purchase is only worth $80k. Those who didn’t buy, but already owned their house also lost some value.

Nothing in the marketplace is static. There will always be some degree of fluctuation. With the market being left to correct itself, the fluctuations will be smaller and more quickly corrected. If the market isn’t allowed to correct itself (of which it cannot actually be stopped, just delayed), the market will build and bring forth a collapse forcing the correction.

There is only one who can actually ‘force’ the brackets into place, and that is the government. The government is the non-market factor that sabotages the marketplace, through guaranteed loans, subsidies, licensing fees and regulations. All these things are enacted with the goal of helping people, under the guise of equality, but a scorched-earth policy’s form equality is in the shared destruction. Any individual in the system who tried the same manipulation would be pointed out and lose their market share as the marketplace would correct itself from such acts – sometimes the correction is quick, sometimes slow. But the marketplace would correct itself, and expunge such manipulators who would be unable to have their affect any longer. There isn’t getting away from the government.

Book edit addendum

Just got an update from my publisher: the updated print copies will be available in 10-14 days; the updated ebook/kindle will be available in 3-4 weeks.

Book edit

I found a couple editing errors. I already updated my publisher, and those errors have been corrected (anything ordered after 10/21 should be updated). Most are minor errors, but one big change was moving Parable of For your own Good from 183 to page 133, while being replaced on 183 with:

Parable of the Protection Room
A couple of parents wanted to shield
their child, from birth, from all the dangers
that may befall him. In order to
ensure full protection, they built a special
room. They went about and padded the
floor, the walls and all objects within the
room. Toys were all safe. Any friends who
were allowed to visit had to play, and
overall behave in certain ways approved
by the parents. The room was the only
world the child knew as it grew; the par-
ents treated the child the same as he developed,
and they educated.
Eventually, the child became old
enough to want to venture out, and the
parents realizing they had taught the
youth what they thought was appropriate,
let him go out into the world.
However, once the youth stepped outside
of the room, he was quickly overwhelmed;
the sun was so bright - he never
seen it before; there was so much variety
in sound, he was deafened by all the noise
and couldn’t concentrate. Perplexed, he
sought some help; a couple helped him,
but another robbed him. Lost and confused,
he eventually succumbed to sickness
for his body was weak from not
developing, matching his ignorance that
brought him to harm.

The Boom and the Bust

The boom and the bust of the market is like the ebb and flow of a stream.

Look at the flow of a stream as consumer demand. It is a constant in some degree, larger at some times, lesser at others; if it dries up, then all around it dies from no water. The mountains and valleys that form the tributaries, that are innovations, which contribute to the flow of the stream and are brought into consumer demand. These innovations, like the flow of water from the mountains out to the sea have their own birth, life and death as they form on their way to the stream, flow with the stream until the stream expels it out to the sea; e.g. the Model T being built, mass produced, and then phased out - replaced. There is one more part to consider, and that is the dam – the marketplace. The marketplace is where consumer demand builds, the various innovations are available for various consumers; it pools the innovations, yet also provides an outlet to expel that which is no longer desired in the market, such as the Model T being ousted from the marketplace when newer, better autos became available.

The marketplace, in conjunction with consumer demand and innovation regulates itself. When a new innovation is available, such as Ford replacing horse buggies, others seek to participate in the demand, and General Motors among other auto manufacturers add their own in their tributary to the stream of consumer demand. The level in the dam rises. Eventually, the dam rises too much, there is too much input and the release is increased flushing out the excess. The beginning is when prices are high with lesser supply but higher demand; the middle is where more supply is offered by those seeking to profit off the demand; the end is when there is more supply than demand and prices are at their lowest. There is no boom, no bust, just small fluctuations.

It’s an efficient system, and takes care of itself with its cycles, its ebbs and flows. However, there are ways of messing up the system, and the biggest way is through governmental influence introducing artifice into the marketplace; it is by an outside influence altering the cycles, and that only can bring problems for the marketplace and all those who are in it.

For example, the government may influence it in two main ways: trying to stimulate production, more of what comes from the tributaries; controlling the consumption, that is regulating the release of the dam.

Through stimulating production, the State is giving that which isn’t otherwise marketable a false place in the market, siphoning water from one route that produces more and routing it to a dead zone, such as re-routing a creek from an area of lush vegetation so that parched earth may get wet; the lush vegetation suffers, while the parched earth gets wet, and may eventually produce something, but not as much if the water went to grow that which was already growing. An example here is how much was lost across the planet for ‘green’ jobs. They may be marketable at some point, but now they’re not: see Solyndra.

Through controlling consumption, the State is blocking the release of the dam and not letting the prices change to how the stream dictates. This release control is done in two ways: stopping the release, or forcing the release to be too much. Keeping the release open beyond what the marketplace desires keeps the price too high, and as its too high to stay in the marketplace, it quickly goes out and the marketplace doesn’t built; consumers don’t consume as much and this can be seen in minimum wage laws, licensing fees and other regulations that increase the cost of business but do not actually contribute to the process of business.

This brings us to the most damaging part, and that is when the release of the dam has been jammed shut, and the marketplace just builds. This is the bubble that will burst. Without a release, the marketplace gets flooded with goods with higher prices than what the market says it should be. It wants to expel the excess, but it can’t because the State blocked the release. So, more builds in the marketplace, and it continues to build; the housing market is an example of this. The demand for houses was high, and the prices were rising so more got into the housing market. The more that enters the market, the more the prices should go down; the release should be triggered. However, with the blocking of the State, the marketplace couldn’t get rid of the excess so it only grew. Things can only grow for so long; if the dam doesn’t break altogether, it will overflow. That is the burst bubble. The market is correcting itself and trying to get the prices to where they should be. With the artificially high prices being what was invested in, those are the prices people agreed to, but after the correction began, and the real market value comes to the fore is when people lose their equity.

Those are the only things the state can do in the marketplace. Stimulate that which the market says isn’t ready to be marketed in one of three ways, or worse and compounding, blending the three. If the marketplace was left alone, the basic fluctuations of supply and demand would take care of it self; with the interference of the State, bubbles are created and great amounts of wealth are lost.

Let’s keep the government in its proper place: protecting individual rights. When it tries to get into the field of business outside of rights violations, it will only hamper the market.