And the reason I buy malts is...(or The Republic morphs into a democracy)
I've mentioned Dr. Walter E. Williams many times before (The E. being quite important). He is an economics professor at George Mason University. He has a talent to take complex economic principles and make them fairly simple and understandable.
In his recent article (The consumer rip-off ) he started me thinking about a conversation I had with my deeply committed socialist buddy (his answer to the disaster and economic tsunami called Social Security? An estate tax at 100%. He hasn't come up with a solution to its dwarfing counterpart Medicare...and now its bastard brother the Prescription Drug Act). Anyhow, Dr. Williams talks about the economic concept of large but narrowly defined benefits vs. small but largely dispersed costs. He uses sugar and dairy interests to show that a few people (sugar beet growers and dairy farmers) get huge benefits from price controls and tariffs but we, the consumers, pay more for the products, but not enough for us to organize and change the law. But read the article. He does a much better job.
So, here we have two special interest groups. Groups that work against the interests of you and me. We have to counter with a group that will look out for our interests that will counter these specific assemblages.Which brings me back to my socialist friend.
Painting the walls in his garage a few years ago, we started talking about the Constitution. His take, of course,is that the Constitution is a living document. That the Founders could never have predicted or seen an economy like this, or whatever. I said that the Constitution was never about economics but was about the hearts of men. It was meant to counter the evil tendency of men to accumulate and concentrate power.
We talked about the most infamous tyrants of history (He was shocked when I told him that Stalin killed more people than Hitler. And that 8,000,000 Ukrainians starved to death thanks to the failure of central planning (read concentrated power) under Stalin. And Mao Tse Tung killed more then Stalin and Hitler together, including starving to death 20,000,000 Chinese in the fail
I then ask
I said no, that's not the reason. The reason that these people and groups were trying to buy influence was that there was influence to be bought. That the 10th Amendment was there to make sure that there was NO influence to be bought. That a Congressman could only say to a potential influence buyer "Well, I'll take your campaign contribution, but of course you know that my Oath of Office ONLY allows me to do what's outlin
And so, we now have competing interests that reflect the will of the majority, a democracy, with no Constitutional control. Where the 2nd Amendment is quite clear, I ne
So, why do I buy malts? Because there are malts to buy because there is a free market for malt suppliers and buyers. And I like them.
However, I buy these malts legally...at least for now.
posted by Amendment X at 11:28 AM permalink
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