Rand: Introduction to Objectivism: Politics & Capitalism -- misc. notes
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/free_the_federal_lands_for_sta.html (May, 2011)
Federal
ownership and control, as a percentage of each state's land area (see next
page):
East of that north/south line only Michigan, North Carolina, and New Hampshire exceed 10%. The rest are well below 10%, and most are below 5%. Major oil producing states are free to develop their resources: Texas, 1.9; North Dakota, 2.7; Oklahoma, 3.6; Louisiana, 5.1.
With 84.5% of its lands controlled by the Federal Government, what else can Nevada do but focus on casinos and tourism or become a repository for nuclear waste? The same applies to Utah.
The vast territory the Federal Government controls in California is larger than many countries. Combine that with the fact that left-wing special interest groups control the overwhelming Democrat majority in Sacramento and you have the answer as to why businesses are fleeing to business-friendly Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and, especially, Texas.
The truth is that the people of Alaska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and the other states, have vested interests to preserve the environment and develop their natural resources in the best interests of all. Consider what Alaskans, Texans, Oklahomans, North Dakotans, and Louisianans have done thus far. If during the past twenty years of fruitless chatter and federal bureaucratic bungling they had been allowed to explore and drill, by now we could have been almost independent of unfriendly fossil fuel sources on a cost basis that would not have emasculated our economy as oil and gasoline prices are presently doing
. . . The last comprehensive federal land ownership report I have been able to track is that of December 3, 2007.
In light of this report four observations seem appropriate:
First, at its inception the federal government did not own any land in the
original states of the Union. Second, since 1976 there appears to be an
assumption that federal control of remaining fed lands is a done deal.
Third, no legislation for disposition of federal lands has been introduced for
over a decade. Fourth, ownership and control of federal lands is an
enduring policy question.
http://propertyrightsalliance.org/obama-administration-makes-attempt-seize-millions-a2892 March 3, 2010
Much of the land targeted for government takeover holds great oil and natural gas resources which could provide jobs in the energy industry and a flow of resources from our own American supply. Once those lands become “monuments”, access to those natural resources is limited and in the hands of the federal government. The Senator emphasizes the severity of the government land takeover, saying “This is a nationwide problem. The government currently owns 650 million acres, or 29 percent of the nation's total land.”
What’s worse, the government made two attempts to snatch property in 2009 through two separate bills: The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 and The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). The Omnibus bill included over 100 different land grab bills. Though the Property Rights Alliance and 111 other organizations banded together to send a letter to the House of Representatives expressing extreme displeasure with the Omnibus, the bill was passed in May, 2009. The NREPA had every intention of seizing nearly 24 million acres of land in the American west and northwest, however, NREPA never made it out of the House subcommittee.
The government offers little explanation for the land-grab frenzy, but there are plenty of reasons to oppose it. First and foremost, it is unconstitutional for the government to simply take land from states without compensation. Second, government-controlled land takes away opportunities for development, particularly when it comes to accessing much needed resources. The land designated as “monument” space could have created dozens of employment opportunities – opportunities which will go wasted under the thumb of the federal government.
Senator DeMint sponsored an amendment to stop President Obama from turning the designated lands into “monuments”, but it was shot down in the Senate 58-38.
The
ability of the White House to simply snatch land from under the feet of the
American people comes from the Antiquities Act of 1906. The Act was
initially intended to set aside small portions of land for monuments and
national parks, but has since been abused by lawmakers to control large
quantities of property.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/free_the_federal_lands_for_sta.html (May, 2011)
federal
ownership and control, as a percentage of each state's land area:
|
Nevada |
84.5 |
|
Alaska |
69.1 |
|
Utah |
57.4 |
|
Oregon |
53.1 |
|
Idaho |
50.2 |
|
Arizona |
48.1 |
|
California |
45.3 |
|
Wyoming |
42.3 |
|
New Mexico |
41.8 |
|
Colorado |
36.6 |
|
Washington |
30.3 |
|
Hawaii |
19.4 |
(wikipedia) John
Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes,[1]
CB FBA (
/ˈkeɪnz/ KAYNZ; 5 June 1883–21 April 1946) was a British
economist
whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics,
as well as the economic policies of governments. He greatly refined earlier
work on the causes of business cycles, and advocated the use of fiscal
and monetary
measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions
and depressions. Keynes is widely considered
to be one of the founders of modern macroeconomics, and to be the most
influential economist of the 20th century.[2][3][4][5]
His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various
offshoots.
Keynes's
influence waned in the 1970s, partly as a result of problems that began to
afflict the Anglo-American economies from the start of the
decade, and partly because of critiques from Milton
Friedman and other economists who were pessimistic about the ability
of governments to regulate the business cycle with fiscal policy.[6]
However, the advent of the global financial crisis in 2007 caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought.
Keynesian economics provided the theoretical underpinning for economic policies
undertaken in response to the crisis by Presidents George W.
Bush and Barack Obama of the United States, Prime
Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, and other
heads of governments.
In 1999, Time
magazine included Keynes in their list of the 100 most
important and influential people of the 20th century, commenting
that: "His radical idea that governments should spend money they don't
have may have saved capitalism.”
Keynes's magnum opus,
The General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was published in 1936.
It was researched and indexed by one of Keynes's favourite students, later the
economist David Bensusan-Butt.[29]
The work served as a theoretical justification for the interventionist policies
Keynes favoured for tackling a recession. The General Theory challenged
the earlier neo-classical economic paradigm, which had
held that provided it was unfettered by government interference, the market
would naturally establish full employment equilibrium.
The General
Theory argues that demand, not supply, is the key variable governing the
overall level of economic activity. Aggregate
demand, which equals total un-hoarded income in a society, is
defined by the sum of consumption and investment. In a state of unemployment
and unused production capacity, one can only enhance employment and
total income by first increasing expenditures for either consumption or
investment. Without government intervention to increase expenditure, an economy
can remain trapped in a low employment equilibrium – the demonstration of this
possibility has been described as the revolutionary formal achievement of the
work.[30]
The book advocated activist economic policy by government to stimulate demand
in times of high unemployment, for example by spending on public works.
"Let us be up and doing, using our idle resources to increase our
wealth," he wrote in 1928. "With men and plants unemployed, it is
ridiculous to say that we cannot afford these new developments. It is precisely
with these plants and these men that we shall afford them."
Just before his
death in 1946, Keynes told Henry Clay, a professor of Social Economics and
Advisor to the Bank of England [42]
of his hopes that Adam Smith's 'invisible
hand' can help Britain out of the economic hole it is in: "I
find myself more and more relying for a solution of our problems on the
invisible hand which I tried to eject from economic thinking twenty years
ago."
it was only after the outbreak of World
War II that governments started to borrow money for spending on a scale
sufficient to eliminate unemployment. According to economist John Kenneth Galbraith (then a US
government official charged with controlling inflation), in the rebound of the
economy from wartime spending, "one could not have had a better
demonstration of the Keynesian ideas."
The Keynesian Revolution was associated
with the rise of modern liberalism in the West during the
post-war period.[45]
Keynesian ideas became so popular that some scholars point to Keynes as
representing the ideals of modern liberalism, as Adam Smith
represented the ideals of classical liberalism.
In the late 1930s and 1940s, economists
(notably John Hicks,
Franco Modigliani, and Paul
Samuelson) attempted to interpret and formalise Keynes's writings in
terms of formal mathematical models. In a process termed "the neoclassical synthesis", they
combined Keynesian analysis with neo-classical economics to produce Neo-Keynesian economics, which came to
dominate mainstream macroeconomic thought for the
next 40 years.
By the 1950s, Keynesian policies were
adopted by almost the entire developed world and similar measures for a mixed
economy were used by many developing nations. By then, Keynes's views on the
economy had become mainstream in the world's universities. Throughout the 1950s
and 1960s, the developed and emerging free capitalist economies enjoyed
exceptionally high growth and low unemployment.[47]
[48]
Professor Gordon Fletcher has written that the 1950s and 1960s, when Keynes's
influence was at its peak, appear in retrospect as a Golden Age of Capitalism.[34]
In late 1965 Time magazine ran a
cover article with the title inspired by a possibly tongue-in-cheek comment
from Milton Friedman, a comment later echoed by U.S.
President Richard Nixon, that "We are all Keynesians now". The
article described the exceptionally favourable economic conditions then
prevailing, and reported that "Washington's economic managers scaled these
heights by their adherence to Keynes's central theme: the modern capitalist economy
does not automatically work at top efficiency, but can be raised to that level
by the intervention and influence of the government." The article also
states that Keynes was one of the three most important economists who ever
lived, and that his General Theory was more influential than the magna
opera of other famous economists, like Smith's
The Wealth of Nations.
Keynesian economics were officially
discarded by the British Government in 1979, but forces had begun to gather
against Keynes's ideas over 30 years earlier. Friedrich
Hayek had formed the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, with the
explicit intention of nurturing intellectual currents to one day displace
Keynesianism and other similar influences. Its members included Austrian
School economist Ludwig von Mises
along with the then young Milton Friedman. Initially the society had
little impact on the wider world – Hayek was to say it was as if Keynes had
been raised to sainthood after his death and that people refused to allow his
work to be questioned.[50][51]
Friedman however began to emerge as a formidable critic of Keynesian economics
from the mid-1950s, and especially after his 1963 publication of A Monetary History of the United
States.
Criticisms of Keynes's ideas had begun to
gain significant acceptance by the early 1970s as they were able to make a
credible case that Keynesian models no longer reflected economic reality.
Keynes himself had included few formulæ and no explicit mathematical models in
his General Theory. For commentators such as economist Hyman Minsky,
Keynes's limited use of mathematics was partly the result of his scepticism
about whether phenomena as inherently uncertain as economic activity could ever
be adequately captured by mathematical models. Nevertheless, many models were
developed by Keynesian economists, with a famous example being the Phillips
curve which predicted an inverse relationship between unemployment
and inflation. It implied that unemployment could be reduced by government
stimulus with a calculable cost to inflation. In 1968 Milton Friedman published
a paper arguing that the fixed relationship implied by the Philips curve did
not exist.[53]
Friedman suggested that sustained Keynesian policies could lead to both
unemployment and inflation rising at once – a phenomenon that soon became known
as stagflation.
In the early 1970s stagflation appeared in both the US and Britain just as
Friedman had predicted, with economic conditions deteriorating further after
the 1973 oil crisis. Aided by the prestige gained
from his successful forecast, Friedman led increasingly successful criticisms
against the Keynesian consensus, convincing not only academics and politicians
but also much of the general public with his radio and television broadcasts.
The academic credibility of Keynesian economics was further undermined by
additional criticism from other Monetarists
trained in the Chicago school of economics, by the Lucas
Critique and by criticisms from Hayek's Austrian
School.
The 2007–2012 global financial crisis
led to public skepticism about the free market consensus even from some on the
economic right. In March 2008, Martin Wolf,
chief economics commentator at the Financial
Times, announced the death of the dream of global free-market
capitalism.[59]
In the same month macroeconomist James K. Galbraith used the 25th Annual Milton
Friedman Distinguished Lecture to launch a sweeping attack against the
consensus for monetarist economics and argued that Keynesian economics were far
more relevant for tackling the emerging crises.[60]
Economist Robert Shiller had begun advocating robust
government intervention to tackle the financial crises, specifically citing
Keynes.[61][62][63]
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman also actively argued the case for
vigorous Keynesian intervention in the economy in his columns for the New
York Times.
While the need for stimulus measures has
been broadly accepted among policy makers, there has been much debate over how
to fund the spending. Some leaders and institutions such as Angela Merkel[87]
and the European Central Bank[88]
have expressed concern over the potential impact on inflation, national debt
and the risk that a too large stimulus will create an unsustainable recovery.
over 300 economists signed a petition
stating that they do not believe higher government spending will help the
United States economy recover from the late-2000s recession. Some economists,
such as Robert Lucas, questioned the theoretical basis
for stimulus packages.[89]
Others, like Robert Barro and Gary Becker,
say that the empirical evidence for beneficial effects from Keynesian stimulus
does not exist
For his part, Keynes praised Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom, writing to the
Austrian economist that, "Morally and philosophically I find myself in
agreement with virtually the whole of it."
Friedrich August Hayek CH (8 May 1899 – 23
March 1992), born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von
Hayek, was an economist and philosopher
best known for his defense of classical liberalism. In 1974, Hayek
shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences (with his political rival, Gunnar Myrdal)
for his "pioneering work in the theory of
money and economic fluctuations and... penetrating
analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional
phenomena." He considered the efficient allocation of capital to be the
most important factor leading to sustainable and optimal GDP growth, and warned
of harms from monetary authority manipulation of interest rates. Interest
rates, he wrote, should be set naturally by equilibrium between consumption of
goods or capital stock.
Hayek is considered to be a major
economist and political philosopher of the twentieth century.[2][3]
Along with his mentor Ludwig von Mises, he was an important
contributor to the Austrian school of economic thought. Hayek's
account of how changing prices communicate information which
enables individuals to coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an
important achievement in economics.[4]
He also contributed to the fields of systems
thinking, jurisprudence, neuroscience
and the history of ideas
In
1932, Hayek suggested that private investment in the public markets was a
better road to wealth and economic coordination in Britain than government
spending programs, as argued in a letter he co-signed with Lionel Robbins and
others in an exchange of letters with John Maynard Keynes in The Times. The global Great
Depression formed a crucial backdrop against which Hayek formulated
his positions, especially in opposition to the views of Keynes.
Hayek was concerned about the general view
in Britain's academia that fascism was a capitalist reaction to socialism and The Road to Serfdom
arose from those concerns. It was written between 1940 and 1943. The title was
inspired by the French classical liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville's writings on the
"road to servitude".
The economist Walter Block
observed critically that while The Road to Serfdom is "a war cry
against central planning," it does show some
reservations with a free market system and laissez-faire
capitalism,[30]
with Hayek even going so far as to say that "probably nothing has done so
much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on
certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire."[31]
In the book, Hayek writes that the government has a role to play in the economy
through the monetary system, work-hours regulation,
institutions for the flow of proper information, and other principles on which
most members of a free society will tend to agree. These are contentions
associated with the point of view of ordoliberalism.
However, when central planning reaches into areas on which people will probably
not agree, the tendency is created for dictatorship
and totalitarianism (i.e. "serfdom"), as
a means of coercing implementation of one's plan. . . the book is still widely
popular and is prominent among works advocating individualism
and classical liberalism.
In February 1975, Margaret Thatcher was
elected leader of the British Conservative Party. . . During Thatcher's only
visit to the Conservative Research Department
in the summer of 1975, a speaker had prepared a paper on why the "middle
way" was the pragmatic path the Conservative Party should take, avoiding
the extremes of left and right. Before he had finished, Thatcher "reached
into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Hayek's The Constitution of
Liberty. Interrupting our pragmatist, she held the book up for all of us to
see. 'This', she said sternly, 'is what we believe', and banged Hayek down on
the table.”
Writing to The Times, Hayek said,
"May one who has devoted a large part of his life to the study of the
history and the principles of liberalism point out that a party that keeps a
socialist government in power has lost all title to the name 'Liberal.’ . . .
US President Ronald Reagan at his time listed Hayek as among
the two or three people who most influenced his philosophy, and welcomed Hayek
to the White House as a special guest.[51]
In the 1970s and 1980s, the writings of Hayek were also a major influence on
many of the leaders of the "velvet" revolution in Central
Europe during the collapse of the old Soviet Empire.
. . . “There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of
an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek.
His books were translated and published by the underground and black market
editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that
ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union (M. Friedman)”.
In his Prices and Production
(1931), Hayek argued that the business cycle resulted from the central bank's
inflationary
credit
expansion and its transmission over time, leading to a capital
misallocation caused by the artificially low interest
rates. Hayek claimed that "the past instability of the market
economy is the consequence of the exclusion of the most important regulator of
the market mechanism, money, from itself being regulated by the market
process." . . . In accordance with the reasoning later outlined in his
essay The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945), Hayek argued that a
monopolistic governmental agency like a central bank can neither possess the
relevant information which should govern supply of money, nor have the ability
to use it correctly. . . . Also in 1931, Hayek critiqued Keynes's Treatise on Money (1930) in his
"Reflections on the pure theory of Mr. J. M. Keynes"[62]
and published his lectures at the LSE in book form as Prices and Production.[63]
Unemployment and idle resources are, for Keynes, caused by a lack of effective
demand; for Hayek, they stem from a previous, unsustainable episode of easy
money and artificially low interest rates.
Hayek was one of the leading academic
critics of collectivism in the 20th century. Hayek argued that all forms of
collectivism (even those theoretically based on voluntary cooperation) could
only be maintained by a central authority of some kind. In Hayek's view, the
central role of the state should be to maintain the rule of law,
with as little arbitrary intervention as possible. In his popular book, The Road to Serfdom (1944) and in
subsequent academic works, Hayek argued that socialism required central
economic planning and that such planning in turn leads towards totalitarianism.
Hayek posited that a central planning authority would have to be endowed with
powers that would impact and ultimately control social life, because the
knowledge required for centrally planning an economy is inherently
decentralized, and would need to be brought under control.
Building on the earlier work of Ludwig von
Mises and others, Hayek also argued that while in centrally planned economies
an individual or a select group of individuals must determine the distribution
of resources, these planners will never have enough information to carry out
this allocation reliably. This argument, first proposed by Max Weber,
says that the efficient exchange and use of resources can be maintained only
through the price
mechanism in free markets (see economic calculation problem).
In The Use of Knowledge in Society
(1945), Hayek argued that the price mechanism serves to share and synchronize
local and personal knowledge, allowing society's members to achieve diverse,
complicated ends through a principle of spontaneous self-organization.
He used the term catallaxy to describe a "self-organizing system of
voluntary co-operation." Hayek's research into this argument was
specifically cited by the Nobel Committee in its press release awarding Hayek
the Nobel prize.
Hayek also wrote that the state has a role
to play in the economy, and specifically, in creating a "safety net".
He wrote, "There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the
general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be
guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of
food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any
reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social
insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can
make adequate provision." [my
thoughts: and thus, comes the ‘rub.’ --- how much of a safety net – how far and wide does it spread?]
In the latter half of his career Hayek
made a number of contributions to social
and political philosophy, which he based on
his views on the limits of human knowledge,[66]
and the idea of spontaneous order in social institutions. He argues in
favor of a society organized around a market order, in which the apparatus of
state is employed almost (though not entirely) exclusively to enforce the legal
order (consisting of abstract rules, and not particular commands) necessary for
a market of free individuals to function. These ideas were informed by a moral
philosophy derived from epistemological concerns regarding the inherent
limits of human knowledge. Hayek argued that his ideal individualistic, free-market
polity would be self-regulating to such a degree that it would be 'a society
which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running
it'.[67]
Hayek disapproved strongly of the notion
of 'social
justice'. He compared the market to a game in which 'there is no
point in calling the outcome just or unjust'[68]
and argued that 'social justice is an empty phrase with no determinable
content';[69]
likewise 'the results of the individual's efforts are necessarily
unpredictable, and the question as to whether the resulting distribution of
incomes is just has no meaning.'[70]
He regarded any attempt by government to redistribute income or capital as an
unacceptable intrusion upon individual freedom: 'the principle of distributive
justice, once introduced, would not be fulfilled until the whole of society was
organized in accordance with it. This would produce a kind of society which in
all essential respects would be the opposite of a free society.[69]
With regard to a safety net, Hayek's
statements may be surprising to some of his followers today. He was prepared to
tolerate "some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence
or starvation, be it only in the interest of those who require protection
against acts of desperation on the part of the needy."[71]
As referenced above in the section on "The economic calculation
problem", Hayek wrote that "there is no reason why... the state
should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance."
Summarizing on this topic, Wapshott[72]
writes "[Hayek] advocated mandatory universal health care and unemployment
insurance, enforced, if not directly provided, by the state...".
". Milton
Friedman declared himself "an enormous admirer of Hayek, but
not for his economics. I think Prices and Production is a very flawed
book. I think his [Pure Theory of Capital] is unreadable. On the other
hand, The Road to Serfdom is one of the great books of our time." .
. . The "informal" economics presented in Milton Friedman's massively
influential popular work Free to
Choose (1980), is explicitly Hayekian in its account of the
price system as a system for transmitting and coordinating knowledge. This can
be explained by the fact that Friedman taught Hayek's famous paper "The
Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945) in his graduate seminars. . . .
"My interest in public policy and political philosophy . . . Hayek attracted an exceptionally able group
of students who were dedicated to a libertarian ideology. They started a
student publication, The New Individualist Review, which was the outstanding
libertarian journal of opinion for some years. I served as an adviser to the
journal and published a number of articles in it...."
Hayek: Although he noted that modern day
conservatism shares many opinions on economics with classic liberals,
particularly a belief in the free market, he believed it's because conservatism
wants to "stand still," whereas liberalism embraces the free market
because it "wants to go somewhere". Hayek identified himself as a
classical liberal but noted that in the United States it had become almost
impossible to use "liberal" in its original definition, and the term
"libertarian" has been used instead. . . .
In Why F A Hayek is a Conservative,[102]
British policy analyst Madsen Pirie believes Hayek mistakes the nature
of the conservative outlook. Conservatives, he says, are not averse to change –
but like Hayek, they are highly averse to change being imposed on the social
order by people in authority who think they know how to run things better. They
wish to allow the market to function smoothly and give it the freedom to change
and develop. It is an outlook, says Pirie, that Hayek and conservatives both
share.
Federal Register:
"There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor who has also tried counting the number of new federal crimes created in recent years. "That is not an exaggeration."
The Code of Laws of the United States
of America[1]
(variously abbreviated to Code of Laws of the United States, United
States Code, U.S. Code, or U.S.C.) is a compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal laws of the United States. It
contains 51 titles[2]
(along with a further 4 proposed titles[3]).
The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel
of the House of Representatives,
and cumulative supplements are published annually.[4][5]
The current edition of the code was published in 2006, and according to the US Government Printing Office, is
over 200,000 pages long.
Since 1976, the number of pages of environmental regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations has increased 25 fold, from around 1,000 pages to 25,000 pages. (Info-Graphic: EPA Outlier in Federal Regulations, William O’Keefe, Fuel Fix, January 26, 2011.)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has more than 330 regulations under consideration today impacting everything from farm and construction dust to CO2 emissions from schools and hospitals. (Office of Management and Budget, Current Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, pick drop down option-EPA)
Heritage Foundation: More than 50 agencies have a hand in federal regulatory policy, ranging from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Together, these agencies enforce more than 150,000 pages of rules, with purposes and impacts as varied as the agencies themselves. Many of these regulations provide needed benefits. Most Americans would agree on the need for security regulations to protect citizens from terrorist attacks, although the extent and scope of those rules may be subject to debate. But each regulation comes at a cost--a "regulatory tax" imposed on all Americans. Of course, Americans do not file regulatory tax forms on April 15; the price paid for regulation is largely hidden. It is nevertheless enormous: According to a 2005 study commissioned by the Small Business Administration, the cost of all rules on the books was some $1.1 trillion per year,[1] more than Americans paid in federal income taxes in 2009.
Even this staggeringly large number may underestimate the true cost of regulation, since many costs are, by nature, unknowable. In the case of many economic regulations, the primary cost may not be any direct burden placed on consumers or businesses, but constraints on innovation. Assessing such losses is impossible because inventions that never existed cannot be measured. For instance, for decades, strict Federal Communications Commission rules on radio frequency usage hindered the development of wireless services. Not until after the rules were eased--and the wireless revolution began--did the costs imposed by the rules became apparent.
Tracking year-to-year changes in regulatory burdens is no easy task. Unlike on-budget expenditures, there is no single bottom-line figure to report for regulations. Yet, there are a number of yardsticks that can provide a fair picture of what is happening in the regulatory world.[5] Among these are the number of pages in the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, the annual budgets of regulatory agencies, the number of major regulations, and the estimated costs of major regulations.
Regulatory page counts. One of the most commonly used yardsticks of regulatory activity is the size of the daily Federal Register, which reports regulatory changes. Before any new federal rule can be finalized, the agency proposing the rule must have it published in the register. In 2008, the Federal Register hit a record 79,435 pages for the year.[6] In 2009, the number dropped to 68,598. Such a decrease is not unusual in presidential transition years.
The size of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) provides a second yardstick of regulatory activity. Unlike the Federal Register, which is a catalog of regulatory changes, the CFR is a compendium of all existing regulations. In 2008, the CFR weighed in at 157,974 pages, having increased by 16,693 pages since the start of the George W. Bush Administration.[7] In 2009, the page count hit a record high of 163,333
http://obamacarewatcher.org/articles/350 Obamacare: 2700 pages in Bill; (2/29/2012) With the publication of two new regulations in the Federal Register on February 27, 2012, we calculate Obamacare regulations to contain 2,163,744 words2 compared to 425,116 words in the Obamacare statutes. That’s a million words longer than the last time we wrote about the length of Obamacare regulations last April.
So, some have calculated Obamacare to be
over 2,000 pages long. This was true when it was in bill form. But now that it
has been signed into law, its statute form is just 961 pages. But because
Obamacare has the same number of words no matter how you format it, word count
is a more accurate way of calculating its length. Obamacare is made up of two
statutes: Public
Law 111-148 and Public
Law 111-152.
Just how long is
2,163,744 words? Atlas Shrugged
weighs in at 645,000
words. By our count the King James Version of the Bible contains 830,314
words.4 That makes Obamacare regulations two and a half times as
long as the Bible! If you add the text of the Obamacare statutes to its
regulations, they are together three times as long as the Bible!
Sherman
Act & Clayton Antitrust Act (discuss
with “Laws must be objective . . .” segment)
The Sherman Act (signed into law in 1890) is divided into three sections. Section 1 delineates and prohibits specific means of anticompetitive conduct, while Section 2 deals with end results that are anticompetitive in nature. Thus, these sections supplement each other in an effort to prevent businesses from violating the spirit of the Act, while technically remaining within the letter of the law. Section 3 simply extends the provisions of Section 1 to U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
Section 1: "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal."
Section 2: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"
Subsequent legislation expanding its scope.
Despite its name the Act has fairly little to do with "trusts". Around the world, what U.S. lawmakers and attorneys call "antitrust" is more commonly known as "competition law." The purpose of the Act was, to quote Sherman: "To protect the consumers by preventing arrangements designed, or which tend, to advance the cost of goods to the consumer".[3] It has since, more broadly, been used to oppose the combination of entities that could potentially harm competition, such as monopolies or cartels.
It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by the United States federal government. However, for the most part, politicians were unwilling to refer to the law until Theodore Roosevelt's presidency (1901–1909). One of the earliest invocations of the Act was in 1894, against the American Railway Union led by Eugene V. Debs, with the intent to settle the Pullman Strike.[9] Several years would pass before the first use of the Act against its intended perpetrator, corporate monopolies. President Theodore Roosevelt used the Act extensively in his antitrust campaign, including to divide the Northern Securities Company."[citation needed] President William Howard Taft used the Act to split the American Tobacco Company.[citation needed]
Congress claimed power to pass the Sherman Act through its constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. Therefore, Federal courts only have jurisdiction to apply the Act to conduct that restrains or substantially affects either interstate commerce or trade within the District of Columbia. This requires that the plaintiff must show that the conduct occurred during the flow of interstate commerce or had an appreciable effect on some activity that occurs during interstate commerce.
Violations
"per se" and violations of the "rule of reason": Violations of the
Sherman Act fall (loosely[19])
into two categories:
· Violations "per se": these are violations that meet the strict characterization of Section 1 ("agreements, conspiracies or trusts in restraint of trade"). A per se violation requires no further inquiry into the practice's actual effect on the market or the intentions of those individuals who engaged in the practice. Conduct characterized as per se unlawful is that which has been found to have a "'pernicious effect on competition' or 'lack[s] . . . any redeeming virtue'"[20] Such conduct "would always or almost always tend to restrict competition and decrease output."[21] When a per se rule is applied, a civil violation of the antitrust laws is found merely by proving that the conduct occurred and that it fell within a per se category.[22] (This must be contrasted with rule of reason analysis.) Conduct considered per se unlawful includes horizontal price-fixing,[23] and horizontal market division.[24]
· Violations of the "rule of reason": A totality of the circumstances test, asking whether the challenged practice promotes or suppresses market competition. Unlike with per se violations, intent and motive are relevant when predicting future consequences. The rule of reason is said to be the "traditional framework of analysis" to determine whether Section 1 is violated.[25] The court analyzes "facts peculiar to the business, the history of the restraining, and the reasons why it was imposed,"[26] to determine the effect on competition in the relevant product market.[27] A restraint violates Section 1 if it unreasonably restrains trade.[28]
Quick-look: A "quick look" analysis under the rule of reason may be used when "an observer with even a rudimentary understanding of economics could conclude that the arrangements in question would have an anticompetitive effect on customers and markets," yet the violation is also not one considered illegal per se.[29] Taking a "quick look," economic harm is presumed from the questionable nature of the conduct, and the burden is shifted to the defendant to prove harmlessness or justification. The quick-look became a popular way of disposing of cases where the conduct was in a grey area between illegality "per se" and demonstrable harmfulness under the "rule of reason".
Manipulation of market
Second, courts have employed more sophisticated and principled definitions of markets. Market definition is necessary, in rule of reason cases, for the plaintiff to prove a conspiracy is harmful. It is also necessary for the plaintiff to establish the market relationship between conspirators to prove their conduct is within the per se rule.
In early cases, it was easier for plaintiffs to show market relationship, or dominance, by tailoring market definition, even if it ignored fundamental principles of economics. In U.S. v. Grinnell, 384 U.S. 563 (1966), the trial judge, Charles Wyzanski, composed the market only of alarm companies with services in every state, tailoring out any local competitors; the defendant stood alone in this market, but had the court added up the entire national market, it would have had a much smaller share of the national market for alarm services that the court purportedly used. The appellate courts affirmed this finding; however, today, an appellate court would likely find this definition to be flawed. Modern courts use a more sophisticated market definition that does not permit as manipulative a definition.[citation needed]
Monopoly
Section 2 of the Act forbade monopoly. In Section 2 cases, the court has, again on its own initiative, drawn a distinction between coercive and innocent monopoly. The act is not meant to punish businesses that come to dominate their market passively or on their own merit, only those that intentionally dominate the market through misconduct, which generally consists of conspiratorial conduct of the kind forbidden by Section 1 of the Sherman Act, or Section 3 of the Association
Application
of the act outside of pure commerce
The Act was aimed at regulating businesses. However, its application was not limited to the commercial side of business. Its prohibition of the cartel was also interpreted to make illegal many labor union activities. This is because unions were characterized as cartels as well (cartels of laborers).[30] This persisted until 1914, when the Clayton Act created exceptions for certain union activities.
The Clayton Antitrust Act, passed in 1914, proscribes certain additional activities that had been discovered to fall outside the scope of the Sherman Antitrust Act. For example, the Clayton Act added certain practices to the list of impermissible activities:
· price discrimination between different purchasers, if such discrimination tends to create a monopoly
· exclusive dealing agreements
· tying arrangements
· mergers and acquisitions that substantially reduce market competition.
The Sherman Act has been a magnet for controversy. In winter 1891–'92, railroad financier Henry Villard led a strong effort to repeal the act, which failed, according to his memoirs, by a few votes.[31]
One branch of the criticism focuses on whether the Act improves competition and benefits consumers, or merely aids inefficient businesses at the expense of more innovative ones. Alan Greenspan, in his essay entitled Antitrust[32] condemns the Sherman Act as stifling innovation and harming society. "No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible."[33]
Another aspect of the debate over antitrust policy is normative. That is, assuming that some kind of competition law is inevitable, critics will argue as to what its central policy should be, and whether it is accomplishing its goal. A common tactic is to choose a goal, and then cite evidence that it supports the opposite. For example, during a debate over the act in 1890, Representative William Mason said "trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprise."[34] Consequently, if the primary goal of the act is to protect consumers, and consumers are protected by lower prices, the act may be harmful if it reduces economy of scale, a price-lowering mechanism, by breaking up big businesses.
The converse argument is that if lowering prices alone is not the goal, and instead protecting competitions and markets as well as consumers is the goal, the law again arguably has the opposite effect — it could be protectionist. Economist Thomas DiLorenzo notes that Senator Sherman sponsored the 1890 William McKinley tariff just three months after the Sherman Act, and agrees with The New York Times which wrote on October 1, 1890: "That so-called Anti-Trust law was passed to deceive the people and to clear the way for the enactment of this Pro-Trust law relating to the tariff." The Times goes on to assert that Sherman merely supported this "humbug" of a law "in order that party organs might say...'Behold! We have attacked the trusts. The Republican Party is the enemy of all such rings.' "[35]
Dilorenzo writes: "Protectionists did not want prices paid by consumers to fall. But they also understood that to gain political support for high tariffs they would have to assure the public that industries would not combine to increase prices to politically prohibitive levels. Support for both an antitrust law and tariff hikes would maintain high prices while avoiding the more obvious bilking of consumers."[36]
The criticism of antitrust law is often associated with conservative politics. For example, conservative legal scholar, judge, and failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork is well known for his outspoken criticism of the antitrust regime. Another conservative legal scholar and judge, Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit does not condemn the entire regime, but expresses concern with the potential that it could be applied to create inefficiency, rather than to avoid inefficiency.[37] Posner further believes, along with a number of others, including Bork, that genuinely inefficient cartels and coercive monopolies, the target of the act, would be self-corrected by market forces, making the strict penalties of antitrust legislation unnecessary.[38]
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or
otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several
States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who
shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby
declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction
thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation,
or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three
years…"
—Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
http://rebeccaluellamiller.wordpress.com/tag/sherman-antitrust-act/
Those
who decry government regulation criticize such measures as the Sherman
Anti-trust Act.
Alan
Greenspan, in his essay entitled Antitrust condemns the Sherman Act as
stifling innovation and harming society. “No one will ever know what new
products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into
existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever
compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less
effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would
otherwise have been possible.” (“Sherman Antitrust Act“)
So
where is greed in all this? I suggest that Mr. Greenspan’s position ignores one
important Biblical truth, in the same way that socialism ignores one important
Biblical command: Man is sinful. Left to our own devices, we
will act selfishly, we will take advantage of others, we will grab what we can
at the expense of others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8FTRZ__608 Greenspan’s essay (read by Rand?)
Text of Greenspan’s “Antitrust” essay
in Rand’s book: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
link to full text: http://atlasshruggedcelebrationday.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=14.0
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Matthew 5 (Sermon on the Mount) |
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38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An
eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: Ex. 21.24 · Lev. 24.20 · Deut. 19.21 |
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but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever
shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. |
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And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy
coat, let him have thy cloak also. |
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And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him
twain. |
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Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would
borrow of thee turn not thou away. |
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¶ Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love
thy neighbor, Lev. 19.18 and
hate thine enemy. |
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But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you; |
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that ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. |
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For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? |
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Matthew 6: |
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¶ Therefore I say unto you,
Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor
yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and
the body than raiment? |
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Behold the fowls of the air:
for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? |
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Which of you by taking thought
can add one cubit unto his stature? |
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And why take ye thought for
raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin: |
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and yet I say unto you, That
even Solomon in all his glory 1
Kgs. 10.4-7 · 2 Chr. 9.3-6 was
not arrayed like one of these. |
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Wherefore, if God so clothe
the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? |
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Therefore take no thought,
saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we
be clothed? |
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(For after all these things do
the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all
these things. |
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But seek ye first the |
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¶ Take therefore no thought
for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. |
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Matthew 7 |
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Judge not, that ye be not
judged. |
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For with what judgment ye
judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be
measured to you again. Mk.
4.24 |
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And why beholdest thou the
mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in
thine own eye? |
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Or how wilt thou say to thy
brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is
in thine own eye? |
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Thou hypocrite, first cast out
the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out
the mote out of thy brother's eye. |
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¶ Give not that which is holy
unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample
them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. |
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1 Corinthians 13 |
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1 |
Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. |
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2 |
And though I have the gift
of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though
I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, Mt.
17.20 ; 21.21 · Mk.
11.23 and have not charity, I
am nothing. |
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3 |
And though I bestow all my
goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and
have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. |
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4 |
¶ Charity suffereth long, and
is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, |
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5 |
doth not behave itself
unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; |
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6 |
rejoiceth not in iniquity, but
rejoiceth in the truth; |
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beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. |
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¶ Charity never faileth: but
whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be
tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish
away. |
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For we know in part, and we
prophesy in part. |
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But when that which is perfect
is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. |
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When I was a child, I spake as
a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a
man, I put away childish things. |
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For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face
to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. |
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And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but
the greatest of these is charity. |
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Pride: Proverbs
11 |
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2 |
When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom. |
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Catholicbible101.com: Pride is one of seven deadly sins: The capital virtue that overcomes Pride is Meekness 1 John 2:16: For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. In the above scripture, St. John talks about three basic types of sin - The lust of the flesh (gluttony, lust, sloth), the lust of the eyes (greed), and the pride of life (pride, envy, anger). Overcoming these things should be our life's work. Pride was the devil's great sin, as he wanted to be like God, and rebelled |
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1st John 2, 15-17: Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world-the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. |
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Proverbs 18:12 Before his downfall a man's heart is proud, but humility comes before honor |
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http://www.youthworker.com/youth-pastor-jobs-training/11554245/ Aquinas called it “the first sin, the source of all other sins, and the worst sin.” Augustine of Hippo wrote that it is “the commencement of sin because it was this that overthrew the devil, from whom arose the origin of sin.” The early church fathers agreed that of the seven soul-destroying sins, the most deadly was the sin of pride. |
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