The Tragedy of Blog

The Tragedy of Labor Laws

2004-08-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

So I was listening to this awful radio "discussion" about the Department of Labor's new "Fairpay" system of overtime regulations. As this DOL representative sat there and droned on and on about how much we "need" this and "need" that, the mindless host could only sit there and ask questions about certain details. Never was the question asked, "who decides what is 'fair'? Shouldn't that be a subjective term, defined by an agreement between employer and employee?"

The official DOL site says, "It's designed to help you understand the Department's new FairPay rules that strengthen overtime protections. Under the new FairPay rules, workers earning less than $23,660 per year or $455 per week are guaranteed overtime protection. This will strengthen overtime rights for 6.7 million American workers, including 1.3 million low-wage workers who were denied overtime under the old rules"

Guaranteed overtime "protection"? And what happens when this drives up the cost of your employment, and your employer instead decides to let you go? That's not "protection". It's yet another act of aggression, wherein the government attempts to distort the free market with regulations that are meant to help the lowest-income-earners; instead, it hurts them, just like the minimum wage.

For example, if I'm getting paid $455/week with no overtime, then, that is what I am worth to the company. This is what we have agreed upon. I am willing to exchange my services for $455/week. If I don't feel that this is "fair", then I can quit and get a job elsewhere. However, if the government steps in and demands that the "cost" of my services be artificially inflated, then, what happens if the company is unable to meet those cost requirements? The people with the lowest incomes and least responsibility are let go. This in turn frees up more capital with which to meet the "Fairpay" requirements for the other workers. Who loses?

The site also says that this will "strengthen overtime rights..." What rights? Since when does anyone have a "right" to overtime? Oddly enough, while employers no longer have the right to pay their employers what they agree upon, they do have the right to fire them. Is this not contradictory? If I am making $455 per week, then, that's $455 that I would not have had if the employer did not exist. OT is not a right. It's a privilege that is earned or demanded.

The Tragedy of Nutritional Facts

2004-08-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

This morning, Radley Balko notes that the wealthy elite in India are whining about how obese they are, while hundreds of millions of lower-income folks don't get more than one square meal a day.

Related to that was another "yelling at the radio" bout on NPR this morning about Ruby Tuesday's voluntary listing of nutritional facts. They first interviewed restaurant owners and folks actually patronizing Ruby Tuesday's. The owners made all the good points about the market being able to adapt and give the customers what they desire. Then, they talked to the Grand Emporer of Food Nannies, CSPI's Michael Jacobsen. He pushed the same tired old line about how people have no clue what they're eating, and how he is urging Congress to require chain restaurants to list nutritional facts. He references a study which supposedly showed that even nutritionists underestimate the calorie and fat contents of restaurant food. He also asserts that it's too "difficult" for many people to read the nutritional facts at chains like McDonalds, and he wants them to list calorie content right next to the item on the menu board.

His main point, throughout, is that, since people don't know exactly what they're eating, they make bad choices. Yet, when the Ruby Tuesday's customers were interviewed, they said that having the nutritional information made no impact on their menu choices. Jacobsen embodies the elitist foodnanny position, wherein a gaggle of alarmists with agendas know better than you do what you should be eating. Regardless of whether folks can adequately guess the number of cals in a hamburger, it is patronizing and insulting to assume that people cannot make sound decisions based on generalized information.

For example, if I'm at Outback Steakhouse, and I have the choice between a lean tenderloin and a salad, or a hamburger and bloomin' onion, there is a real expectation that cognizant people know which, in general, is a healthier option. Is it the responsibility of the restaurant to give folks a nutrition lesson? Whether I have specific nutritional facts or general knowledge, I know which choice is better for me. On the same token, most people, I venture, don't go into McDonalds and order a hamburger expecting health food. The fact remains, the consumer knows how to spend his money better than Jacobsen does. It is their wealth, and they are the ultimate arbiters of value when it comes to exchanging that wealth for consumer goods. If enough of the consumer base demands nutritional facts at chain restaurants, then this collective valuation will become a market in and of itself. It's already happening, and Ruby Tuesday's is evidence of that. Whether it draws more customers will probably tell whether other chains adopt the same strategy.

Jacobsen's patronizing position rests on the assumption that we are all bumbling idiots, incapable of making decisions without having specific facts in our hands. It still amazes me that he and his ilk at CSPI are taken seriously. In closing, Jacobsen noted that, while his legislation would not require non-chain mom-n-pop restaurants to list facts, he still thinks they should. He claims, "they must know what they're putting in their food". Yes, they know general nutritional ideas (like a lean steak has less fat than a juicy burger), just as we do, but the specificity of nutritional facts cannot be obtained by simple calculation. The chef of a mom-n-pop diner may know how much a steak weighs, but put a homemade sauce on top, slap a couple sides on there, and then ask them to list how many grams of soluble fiber is in it. Not likely. It requires costly lab testing, something that would be prohibitively expensive for small non-chain restaurants who frequently change their menu at the chef's whim.

But none of this matters to the Nannies. They push their patronizing agenda blindly, consistently operating under the assumption that they know what you should be eating better than you...and that, if only you had specific factoids about fat, carb and fiber content, then you too would choose to eat what CSPI says you should eat. Oh, how glorious it will be to see folks make no changes in their diets, even with nutritional facts at their disposal. What will Jacobsen have to say then?

The Tragedy of...Tragedy

2004-08-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

As the President is declaring various states of emergency and promising millions upon millions of federal taxpayer dollars to the "victims" of Charley, I can't help but note that it is this very type of handout that encourages people to keep building their dream homes (or dream trailers) in the path of recurrent destruction.

As John Stossel notes in "Confessions of a Welfare Queen",

"In 1980 I built a wonderful beach house. Four bedrooms -- every room with a view of the Atlantic Ocean. It was an absurd place to build, right on the edge of the ocean. All that stood between my house and ruin was a hundred feet of sand. My father told me: "Don’t do it; it’s too risky. No one should build so close to an ocean." But I built anyway. Why? As my eager-for-the-business architect said, "Why not? If the ocean destroys your house, the government will pay for a new one." What? Why would the government do that? Why would it encourage people to build in such risky places? That would be insane. But the architect was right. If the ocean took my house, Uncle Sam would pay to replace it under the National Flood Insurance Program. Since private insurers weren’t dumb enough to sell cheap insurance to people who built on the edges of oceans or rivers, Congress decided the government should step in and do it. So if the ocean ate what I built, I could rebuild and rebuild again and again -- there was no limit to the number of claims on the same property in the same location -- up to a maximum of $250,000 per house per flood. And you taxpayers would pay for it."

Government aggression tempted Stossel to build his house on shaky ground. Likewise, FEMA and the handouts involved whenever "states of emergency" are declared, encourage people to build their unstable abodes in hurricane alley. Without this intervention, this would be a risk like any other. If a major hurricane causes massive destruction in a certain area every 10 years, then perhaps it's not worth the risk to build an expensive home there, right? But if the government is going to clean up after it, then, what does it matter. This is called "stunting evolutionary growth". And all the other American taxpayers, who know better than to build their houses in a path of recurrent destruction, get to foot the bill for those who don't. Thank the State for encouraging stupidity at your expense.

The Tragedy of Olympic Clothiers

2004-08-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

Speaking of outsourcing, the ultraprotectionists at American Joblog are complaining that the clothes for Olympic athletes are manufactured by a Canadian-based company:

"Couldn’t our Olympic team find a clothing manufacturer in the United States to make the official Olympic team clothing?"

I'm assuming that the clothing for the Olympic athletes is paid for, in part, by the American taxpayer. I wonder how many taxpayers would be willing to pay twice as much for Olympic clothing just so that an American could do the sewing rather than someone a few hundred miles north.

The Tragedy of John Kerry

2004-08-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

I grew up ensconced in Democrat-leftism, my mother being a cheerleader for the Dems and their incessant cries for fairness. Since then, I've survived the typical evolution to libertarianism, revelation after revelation. I have found that this is probably easier than coming from the GOP-right; my reasoning being that there is such a vivid contrast in principles between what the Dems say/do and what I believe, versus what the GOP says (but doesn't do), and what I believe. There is never any fear of regression, in other words. Though, I still tend to give the Dem a bigger benefit of the doubt than the Republican candidate, until I catch myself. Has it ever happened, after you move out of a longtime residence, and you're driving past your old exit, you almost turn without thinking?

Now that we've got that out of the way, I must say, John Kerry is digging himself in a rather large hole. This morning, I saw a Kerry ad that decried outsourcing and promised to give special breaks to companies that "create" jobs at home. Couple that with his pathetic regurgitation of the "promise to raise the minimum wage so that misinformed poor folks will give me their vote", and his incessant pandering to various voting blocs (not that Bush is innocent in that arena), and you get the sense that he's trying desperately to ward off the votes from all the true conservatives who have abandoned the current Socialist in Chief.

NPR then reported on Bangladore, India, one of the largest tech concentrations in the world, with 65% of its foreign jobs coming from the United States. Due to all this foreign outsourcing business, Bangladore has become a wealthy city, with expensive cars clogging the streets and high-rises towering over the landscape. Yes, horrible indeed. For all Kerry's outsourcing-bashing, the Bangladorans claim that it's just free advertising. Since outsourcing has become a campaign issue, they have seen an upsurge in business (isn't irony ironic?). However, they are worried about what might happen if Kerry is elected.

Once upon a time, before Kerry, I was in the mindset of "punish Bush, no matter what". His foreign an domestic policies were so terrible, I could imagine "Hail to the Chimp" as a suitable alternative. Then Kerry came along, and I thought, "fine, just to stop this nonsense". I even went through the whole "gridlock is better than Bush's unabated spending spree" phase. However, at every turn, Kerry has shown himself to be a panderer, a protectionist, a coward. Stand up to Bush on the war? Of course not. In a country where millions of people are upset with Bush primarily because of his march to war based on lies, Kerry can't even bring himself to stand up to him on that. Instead, he claims that he still would have given Bush the illegal power to wage war, even knowing what we know today.

John Kerry could have shut his mouth, and gotten the "notbush" vote. However, instead, he keeps dreaming up new ways to pander to the socialist far left, while alienating the principled voters who have abandoned the unprincipled Bush. Now, he's even figured out a way to alienate the antiwar crowd. Who's next? I still wish for gridlock, but I can't bring myself to cast a vote for...this.

Welcome!

2004-08-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

Seeing as how this is my first post, and nobody knows about this joint but me (for now, at least), I'll just say, welcome!