to utopia and beyond!
i heard, to my dismay, our dear lord and master, emperor obama, speaking on a CNBC news feed about the new CAFE standards for american automobiles. he mentioned that the new standard would be something like 35 MPG by the year 2016.
i find this unacceptable. why 35? does his majesty have something against good gas mileage? why would he choose a number so low and a date so far away? if all you have to do to get good mileage is write a regulation or law, why not go for 100,000 miles per mouthful of gas by tomorrow? it's just like the minimum wage laws. why don't they just mandate the minimum wage to be $100 million an hour? then we'd all be rich!
thomas reed said, "one of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." now, don't get me wrong, it's not as if i think that there are any good intentions for the general population behind the emperor's actions. i know that he's simply taking care of special interest groups that got him elected by steering resources toward the preferred market sectors like a good little fascist should. i know that he's beholden to various anti-human "environmental" groups that he wants to pacify. that doesn't change the fact that the marketing he uses to convince the booboisie is effective. does anyone out there really think that these actions have no economic consequences? does anyone believe that the political distribution of resources is better than rational distribution? it's as if people think that belief in economics is as optional as belief in religion - that there are no consequences for those who don't believe. well, i hate to tell you folks, but economics is real - and there's no way around it. the state can do everything in its power to overcome scarcity and the issues associated with it, but in the end they will be utterly unsuccessful, as they always have been in every single instance.
the measures taken by the administration will increase the costs of these cars and mandate the production of vehicles that may or may not be what consumers want. of course, the massive investment required to increase gas mileage in this way will have to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is, you guessed it, your pockets. consumers will always be willing to pay for the things they value, but the emperor is, of course, far superior to you and i and far better able to determine what our values should be, so, instead of letting us do what we deem best for us, he will determine from on high what we will and won't pay for and use the guns of the state to make sure we do as we're told.
this totalitarian mindset rushes toward the goal of an assimilated society, forced together under a regime of artificial preference. society is a collection of individuals with very diverse and subjective values and preferences. forcing arbitrary and artificial values upon a population such as the new CAFE standards distorts and disrupts the natural harmonies of the markets and lowers the quality of life for individuals by limiting their choices in whatever is left of the marketplace.
let's not forget that this scary "dependence on foreign oil" (i get so sick of listening to that bullshit) is propagated by the same government supposedly attempting to end it. if roads were not subsidized - monopolized, really - by the state, there's nothing saying that we would even be using roads or cars or oil at all anymore. if oil weren't subsidized by the state in the endless middle eastern wars and the propping up of oil friendly regimes across the globe, who's to say that we wouldn't have already moved on to the next alternative - an alternative determined by the rational allocation of the markets - not the political means of the state?
(with all of the measures this administration has taken to prop up the uber-wealthy coporatists, policies that drive up prices and monetary expansion that will decimate those having the least wealth, i have to wonder why obama hates the poor so much? or is it just that he doesn't care about the poor and does things to further enrich the politically connected wealthy regardless of the expense to the politically useless poor?)
if people could only get a handle on the idea that the state is not a magical wishing well, but a bunch of criminal misfits, uneducated, philosophically backward and ethically challenged - basically the worst society has to offer, the sooner we can get on with the business of civilization. yes, it would be sweet if we could simply make up laws and crap and the world would be a utopia, but we can't. all of you believers in the state: just give up already!
i find this unacceptable. why 35? does his majesty have something against good gas mileage? why would he choose a number so low and a date so far away? if all you have to do to get good mileage is write a regulation or law, why not go for 100,000 miles per mouthful of gas by tomorrow? it's just like the minimum wage laws. why don't they just mandate the minimum wage to be $100 million an hour? then we'd all be rich!
thomas reed said, "one of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." now, don't get me wrong, it's not as if i think that there are any good intentions for the general population behind the emperor's actions. i know that he's simply taking care of special interest groups that got him elected by steering resources toward the preferred market sectors like a good little fascist should. i know that he's beholden to various anti-human "environmental" groups that he wants to pacify. that doesn't change the fact that the marketing he uses to convince the booboisie is effective. does anyone out there really think that these actions have no economic consequences? does anyone believe that the political distribution of resources is better than rational distribution? it's as if people think that belief in economics is as optional as belief in religion - that there are no consequences for those who don't believe. well, i hate to tell you folks, but economics is real - and there's no way around it. the state can do everything in its power to overcome scarcity and the issues associated with it, but in the end they will be utterly unsuccessful, as they always have been in every single instance.
the measures taken by the administration will increase the costs of these cars and mandate the production of vehicles that may or may not be what consumers want. of course, the massive investment required to increase gas mileage in this way will have to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is, you guessed it, your pockets. consumers will always be willing to pay for the things they value, but the emperor is, of course, far superior to you and i and far better able to determine what our values should be, so, instead of letting us do what we deem best for us, he will determine from on high what we will and won't pay for and use the guns of the state to make sure we do as we're told.
this totalitarian mindset rushes toward the goal of an assimilated society, forced together under a regime of artificial preference. society is a collection of individuals with very diverse and subjective values and preferences. forcing arbitrary and artificial values upon a population such as the new CAFE standards distorts and disrupts the natural harmonies of the markets and lowers the quality of life for individuals by limiting their choices in whatever is left of the marketplace.
let's not forget that this scary "dependence on foreign oil" (i get so sick of listening to that bullshit) is propagated by the same government supposedly attempting to end it. if roads were not subsidized - monopolized, really - by the state, there's nothing saying that we would even be using roads or cars or oil at all anymore. if oil weren't subsidized by the state in the endless middle eastern wars and the propping up of oil friendly regimes across the globe, who's to say that we wouldn't have already moved on to the next alternative - an alternative determined by the rational allocation of the markets - not the political means of the state?
(with all of the measures this administration has taken to prop up the uber-wealthy coporatists, policies that drive up prices and monetary expansion that will decimate those having the least wealth, i have to wonder why obama hates the poor so much? or is it just that he doesn't care about the poor and does things to further enrich the politically connected wealthy regardless of the expense to the politically useless poor?)
if people could only get a handle on the idea that the state is not a magical wishing well, but a bunch of criminal misfits, uneducated, philosophically backward and ethically challenged - basically the worst society has to offer, the sooner we can get on with the business of civilization. yes, it would be sweet if we could simply make up laws and crap and the world would be a utopia, but we can't. all of you believers in the state: just give up already!
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