The obligations of business

I got into way too much trouble on Facebook just before Christmas. But the one bit I’m going to discuss here concerns a friend who was highly offended at Hallmark because she was looking for a Christmas card for her son and his partner, and the only gay Christmas card they had was lame. I expressed the opinion that “[identity group] Christmas cards” were a silly idea, and she got offended, and all of her girlfriends with her, and I decided it was best to bow out. But I really need to finish the issue somewhere where I don’t feel I’m trampling somebody’s feelings.

First: she found one gay Christmas card. Would we have seen such a thing in the small town we grew up in, in the ’70s? You’ve come a long way, baby.

Second: what constitutes a gay Christmas card?  A card with a picture of two guys on it, or two women? Do the cards that say “To the both of you” have specifically heterosexual imagery? Most of the ones I’ve seen are pretty lame. Do they say “Horny holidays to you and your partner?” For that matter, where are the heterosexual Christmas cards, and what do they say? Yeah, they’re out there, where they keep all the edgy cards. And they’re generally borderline offensive. And I suspect I’ve seen gay cards with them…but not by Hallmark. Indeed, a Web search confirms that there are a bunch of people doing gay cards.

She was looking for something special, and they had cards for all these other relationships, so why not this one? Well, everyone has parents, and more often than not alive. Most people have children, grandchildren, inlaws and bosses (though fewer of all of them, these days). Indeed, this was for an adult child and his mate. But only about 3% of the population is gay. And how many people would get a member of that 3% a card that celebrates or even acknowledges their gayness?  While yes, families are important at Christmas, what we’re celebrating is the birth of Jesus, not somebody’s sexual orientation.

Let’s look at this from the point of view of Hallmark. The gay market is a niche market. Now, yes, there’s money there. But the bigger the company, the more conservatively they’d have to play. What they could make from the gay market could be dwarfed by a concerted protest against gay cards. And a lot of stores wouldn’t stock them. I’m cool with the idea of buyers having cards that look like them, or the people they’re sending to. Hallmark has the Mahogany collection, but that’s a much bigger market. A search at the Hallmark site under “homosexual, Christmas” got 859 hits, but I wouldn’t call any of them “a gay Christmas card”. (I did several similar searches, with “gay” and “holiday”, with similar results).

What bothers me about this discussion was the implication that a company was somehow obligated to serve a particular market, because members of that market thought it was the right thing to do.  Hallmark is obligated to do nothing except make its stockholders happy, no more than I am obligated to send my gay friends gay Christmas cards…because, you know, they are so much more to me than a positive-ground DNA interface.

Jesus and Facebook agitprop

The text for today’s rant is here:

 

 

This has been floating around Facebook (“The second most popular word beginning with F and ending with K”). The first time I saw it, I was annoyed by its stupidity. Now, by the third time or so, I’m in full-bore pissed. Bumper-sticker-style non-arguments are bad enough; such arguments involving my Lord are beyond the pale. You should be glad I’m not a Muslim.

Some of the people posting this are Christians, or at least claimed they were the last time I checked in. And using the image of Christ to sell something (like socialism) is a pretty clear 2nd Commandment violation. In this case, it’s literally “taking the Name in vain”, because nobody is going to be persuaded. Really, if you want to sin that flagrantly in public, why don’t you just put up nekkid pictures of yourselves? They’d be more fun, and you wouldn’t embarrass yourself any less.

Now, I don’t necessarily have a problem with using the teaching of Jesus in defense of socialism. I know some people of good conscience who make Biblical arguments. They’re wrong, but they’re working from the proper source; we should all be asking “What would Jesus do?” in regard to all human action, which emphatically includes governance. The only problem with that is that it’s theocracy…at least that’s what it’s called when the Right does it. Apparently there’s a difference between enforced charity and enforced chastity that transcends r,s, and t. You don’t get to pick which things are sins; that’s what got us here originally. So if you’re going to argue for wealth redistribution on the basis of Jesus feeding the multitudes, you have to argue for Sunday store closings on the basis of Jesus keeping the Sabbath, if you’re intellectually honest, and not just using Jesus as your personal Ron Popeil.

Only “one of these things is not like the other”; the feeding of the 5000 is not like socialism. Let’s take a look at John 6. In verse 2 we see that “a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.” Now, if these guys actually were the diseased, they wouldn’t have been able to follow him that far, so these guys didn’t start out being there for the bennies; they saw the miracles, and believed, and were there seeking enlightenment. Passover was near (this is of symbolic more than practical import, I think; folks are soon going to have the ultimate Passover sacrifice explained to them). These folks need to eat. And money is not going to solve the problem; it’s way too big for the available funds (sort of like now). There’s a kid with some barley bread and a couple of small fish. His mom probably said, “you aren’t going to go wandering off to check out this prophet guy without packing a lunch.” Now, the passage is unclear about why we know that. Maybe the disciples polled the crowd. Or maybe the kid just came up and said, “My mom always overpacks; I could share this stuff.” Kids do that, a lot more easily than adults sometimes. There’s nothing to suggest they took the kid’s food by force. And surely somebody else must have had some pita or goat jerky or something. But if they did, Jesus wasn’t working with it, which further suggests that this was a voluntary offering, and the others were holding out.

So Jesus multiplies the food thousands of times, so much that there are more leftovers than what He started with. He is producing what He is distributing; it is His, because He is the source of all supply. When people see this, they want to make Him king. Vote for the guy who will give us free food. Now we have something which actually resembles socialism. And Jesus isn’t having it; he heads for the hills. When the crowd finally finds Him, He points out that they’re following Him because He’s a meal ticket, rather for the right reason, which is that He is the Son of God. They’re starting to feel entitled, as the followers of Christ, the folks involved with “the next big thing.” And Jesus proceeds to stop them from thinking with their stomachs, by turning their stomachs, by literally telling them to “eat Me”. And they leave, because the dude is just too weird.

Now, how would this have played out were this actual socialism? They would have collected everyone’s food, even the hidden stash of pita and goat jerky; Rocky and the boys might have to rough people up a little, but they’d get it done. They’d have distributed it “equitably”, meaning that the disciples would get more, since they were the ones doing the actual work of getting food to the people. And even if the Keynesian multiplier effect exists, it doesn’t multiply thousandfold. So everyone would get one bite, and still be hungry. And there wouldn’t be leftovers for the next day, so they’d still be starving.

Now, it’s clear that the 5000 weren’t necessarily grateful or worthy proletarians. They just want the free cheese. Jesus reminds them of the manna (which Israel grumbled about too), and wants them to go to the next level for spiritual nourishment. That’s OK though. We all want the free food, because we sense there was a time when it was always free, and when man did not have to earn bread by the sweat of his brow.  That time will come again, under King Jesus. The folks arguing for socialism now won’t want to participate, because that would be a literal theocracy. That’s fine; God doesn’t force you to go to Heaven, or anywhere else, and you’ll finally be able to escape God’s Grace. But you can’t make Heaven be here, under your terms, because you aren’t God, you can’t repeal the laws of economics, and you can’t produce food by praying… even monks have to work. If you do feel the need to play God, leave my God out of it, ‘mkay?

“nobody in this country who got rich unless he owns”

There’s been a bit of a stir about the Elizabeth Warren remarks. I’m not particularly excited, because of course you stand on the shoulders of others; we all do, rich or poor. I don’t think that means that there is a moral obligation to pay whatever “we” think is necessary to establish the society “we” would like (esp. when “we” is not us). And there are some distinct problems in the statement made. “But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” The “social contract” we’ve actually made is to fleece the next kid to come along, to the tune of $1.6 trillion this year alone. And shaking down the rich man (who can at least vote against it, for all the good that would do) will only reduce the fleecing; it won’t stop it.

And this is poignant:

You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Tell that to Henry Juszkiewicz. Who can’t pay what it would take to face certain death protecting his factory from “marauding bands.”

Moneybunk

Mike Soja explodes the notion that compound interest can eventually give you the ability to buy the world.
This quote is poignant:

[Holden had] concluded that the earth had achieved “a stage of civilization when vested property rights will be unmolested even in the case of conquest.”

We’ve clearly moved away from that state of civilization. Now we’re so civilized that nobody needs to suffer. Except, somehow, they still do. From the same source, in the comments:

From this account, we can see the conceptual problem with trusts: they allow the dead to continue to live. And control wealth. That’s stupid (and potentially mindbogglingly mischievous in effect).

Why is it stupid to “allow the dead to continue to live”? Hasn’t that been the goal of civilization and religion forever? If that’s a problem, why not legislate “70 and out”….where you check into the hospital on your birthday and never check back out? Why should the almost-dead control wealth? Buffet and Soros can go first.

Kinsella buys more of the tripe, but with details:

To try to make his plan conform with legal requirements, Holdeen had named the Unitarian Universalist Church as a beneficiary of charitable trusts, with the understanding that the church would get a tiny portion of the yearly trust income.

While Holdeen was alive, church officials consented to the arrangement. After his death, the church filed suit in Orphans Court seeking all the income. Its lawyers contended that piling up money for 500 or 1,000 years was unreasonable and potentially dangerous.

Given that the U-Us believe in no morality that can’t be rationally argued, or argued out of, that was his first mistake. The second was in thinking that his trusts could replace taxes. Given that the national debt now exceeds the total wealth of the wealthy, there is no limit to government avarice.

The folks at Mises aren’t buying Kinsella much either.

“Tea Party downgrade”

OK, Dems, we’ll accept responsibility: something you’ll never do. Yes, the downgrade was “our” fault. Now, I speak of a sort of Platonic ideal Tea Party that existed long before the organized Tea Party movement. But here’s what we were responsible for:
We allowed the imposition of an income tax, and worse, accepted automatic withholding (screw you, Milton Friedman).
We allowed the establishment of a Federal Reserve system.
We permitted the various socialist acts of FDR and LBJ, including Social Security and Medicare, which are the primary drivers of our debt.
We didn’t hold Reagan’s feet to the fire on spending.
We allowed the Bushes to play war.
We allowed the socialist acts of the “compassionate conservative”
We allowed the Republican party to nominate the doddering old RINO McCain.

If the Tea Party had always done its job, John Kerry would never have been elected, and David Axelrod would be selling insurance instead of candidates.

So yes, it’s our fault that the Democrat party exists, and it’s the Democrat’s fault that the debt exists.

The Endarkenment gets physical

Our dishwasher gave out a fairly long time ago, and we put off the service call, as Rusty was keeping up with the dishes. But then it started leaking backed-up wastewater on the floor (which turned out to have been a result of Rusty mucking with the hoses under the sink) so we felt we had to. We got a terminal diagnosis. I contemplated a replacement, looked on line, finally went into Sears to see what they had, and for how much. And I decided to forget about it. Now, my parents always had a dishwasher. I’ve had one when I could.It seemed like one of the essential accessories of middle-class life. But I have an issue with spending $400 or so on something that will last only 6 years. The salesman at Sears told me they’re only getting 7-10 out of them, because they’re made more cheaply now. And the new green dishwasher detergent doesn’t work worth crap. So why should I eat $7/mo. plus operating costs, for something that doesn’t operate? This is, I think, the first time I’ve abandoned a technology because politics and politically-distorted market forces have made it useless to me. It’s not an issue of scale, like avoiding a haybine in favor of a scythe, or a bulk milk tank in favor of gallon jugs and mason jars. We dirty enough dishes to make it worthwhile and desirable…if it worked and would last.

And there’s Japan. Practically the first thing I said to Rusty about it was, “Watch the electronic supply chain get screwed.”  It wasn’t quite that, but the Tee Vee this morning was all about Japanese cars and their availability or lack thereof. Most of the plants are here, and as long as they can get parts, they’re OK. But the Prius is made over there, and over there is shut down. Now I’m not going to cry about some liberal douche in Madison WI not being able to get the car he wants. But it’s clear evidence of the fragility of our most advanced technologies. Rusty said she heard that American auto companies were helping their Japanese counterparts, and she said, “Screw that; they should overtake them.” That’s what American companies used to do, you know; somebody would stumble, maybe through no fault of their own, and they’d grab their market share.

Regardless of how the nuclear issue turns out, when the techno-monks of 2100 write the history of the collapse of civilization, the market crash of 2008 and the earthquake of 2011 will be the defining moments. You haven’t seen the last of this disaster, boys and girls, not by a long shot.

PS: This guy gets it.

All over but the Sumter

I’ve been depressed the last several days. It seems like the social fabric is falling apart already…and times are still good. I’m the alien on Facebook. 60 Tea Partiers vs. 1000 union members in Canton. Mitch Daniels showing himself as a punk coward. Talk of a general strike, to toy with the lives of the poor and unfortunate. Talk of >$200 oil. Talk of the Pres__ent training mob leaders this summer.

It’s not about wages. That’s Team Blue’s game. Who am I to say that somebody makes “too much money”? Teachers are well-paid everywhere, union or no. It’s been claimed that if they were paid babysitter wages for each of those kids, they’d be making more. But I don’t begrudge them. I understand why the state can’t pay though; I suspect that STRS hasn’t been any better managed than Social Security. And we can’t talk about “fair wages” in an area where they can’t be ascertained because market forces are not at work, because of access restriction through licensure, and because public employees elect their own management. That’s the real issue here. The kids have Dad’s wallet, and not only are they going to set their own allowance, but they’ve got an allowance for all their friends too.

And what about this “right” to collectively bargain? Where’d that come from? If a “collective” imposes itself on a deal between two people in a state of nature, that collective is a MOB. Now, if homie wants to play that, OK, but there are a lot more workers in the private sector…and these days they have a lot less to lose. Sure, in a state of nature, a bunch of guys could see the boss and say, “We’ll all only work for this much”. And the boss could say, “No sale”, and hire others, and they’d go elsewhere, assuming they aren’t a mob.  Or are they discussing a legal “right” (privilege) that didn’t exist until the 1960s? If rights are so crucial, why is it that the same political party that the unions have designated as their bargaining agent is so cavalier about other rights, like the rights to private property, self defense, religion, travel, search and seizure, among others? At the very least, they’ve been around longer, and one can make a better case for them being intrinsic to the nature of man.

And they’re complaining about old books and computers. OK, the textbook industry is a huge scam, especially at the collegiate level. The canon of Western art music doesn’t change every three years, so why should the Norton Anthology? But at the lower level, there are so many approval hoops to jump through. Whey can’t we have open source textbooks? They could have alternative chapters to choose from, and could either be read online, or printed through Lulu, and they would still be cheaper than what the big publishers peddle…and probably more interesting. And if in fact teachers don’t have the supplies to properly do their jobs, why isn’t that a matter for collective bargaining? Or is it one of the things they throw in as a chip, to be discarded the first day?

The  Pres__ent is sending in Organizing for American goods to stir the pot. And everyone has to take a side, it seems. Civil War II is here, and it’s not state against state or even race against race, but neighbor against neighbor. And when the shooting starts, as it will, they’ll drive the conservatives out of Cleveland Heights just as liberals will suddenly feel unwelcome in Windham. Then the invasions begin.

Ohio HB 30 and stampeding moms

I got into a little discussion on Facebook, prompted by the following status report:

Oh, look, now they want to charge tuition for kids to attend state school. Yaknow what? Y’all have lost your minds.

It is buried in the proposed Ohio House Bill 30 focused on repealing all-day kindergarten. I haven’t read the full text for implications, but you can BET YOUR SWEET ASS that I will.

So there was a certain amount of “Kasich and the rich” and “This can’t possibly be legal under the state constitution”  (it probably is, under Article VI, sec. 2-3). So I decided to post a link to the bill, and discuss the relevant section:

(E) The scheduling of times for kindergarten classes and length of the school day for kindergarten shall be determined by the board of education of a city, exempted village, or local school district, subject to section 3321.05 of the Revised Code.

(F) Any kindergarten class offered by a day-care provider or school described by division (B)(1) or (B)(2)(a) of this section shall be developmentally appropriate.

(G) Upon written request of a day-care provider described by division (B)(2)(a) of this section, the department of education shall determine whether certification held by a teacher employed by the provider meets the requirement of division (B)(2)(b)(iii) of this section and, if so, shall furnish the provider a statement to that effect.

(H) As used in this division, “all-day kindergarten” has the same meaning as in section 3321.05 of the Revised Code.

(1) Any school district that did not receive for fiscal year 2009 poverty-based assistance for all-day kindergarten under division (D) of section 3317.029 of the Revised Code may charge fees or tuition for students enrolled in all-day kindergarten. If a district charges fees or tuition for all-day kindergarten under this division, the district shall develop a sliding fee scale based on family incomes.

(2) The department of education shall conduct an annual survey of each school district described in division (H)(1) of this sectionto determine the following:

(1)(a) Whether the district charges fees or tuition for students enrolled in all-day kindergarten;

(b) The amount of the fees or tuition charged;

(c) How many of the students for whom tuition is charged are eligible for free lunches under the “National School Lunch Act,” 60 Stat. 230 (1946), 42 U.S.C. 1751, as amended, and the “Child Nutrition Act of 1966,” 80 Stat. 885, 42 U.S.C. 1771, as amended, and how many of the students for whom tuition is charged are eligible for reduced price lunches under those acts;

(2)(d) How many students are enrolled in traditional half-day kindergarten and how many students are enrolled in rather thanall-day kindergarten, as defined in section 3321.05 of the Revised Code.

Each district shall report to the department, in the manner prescribed by the department, the information required by this division described in divisions (H)(2)(a) to (d) of this section.

The department shall issue an annual report on the results of the survey and shall post the report on its web site. The department shall issue the first report not later than April 30, 2008, and shall issue a report not later than the thirtieth day of April each year thereafter.

Sec. 3321.05. (A) As used in this section, “all-day kindergarten” means a kindergarten class that is in session five days per week for not less than the same number of clock hours each day as for students in grades one through six.

(B) Any school district may operate all-day kindergarten or extended kindergarten, but beginning in fiscal year 2011, each city, local, and exempted village school district shall provide all-day kindergarten to each student enrolled in kindergarten, except as specified in divisions (C) and (D) of this section.

(C) The board of education of a school district may apply to the superintendent of public instruction for a waiver of the requirement to provide all-day kindergarten for all kindergarten students. In making the determination to grant or deny the waiver, the state superintendent may consider space concerns or alternative delivery approaches used by the school district.

(D) No no district shall require any student to attend kindergarten for more than one-half of the number of clock hours required each day for grades one through six traditional kindergarten by the minimum standards adopted under division (D) of section 3301.07 of the Revised Code. Each school district that operates all-day or extended kindergarten shall accommodate kindergarten students whose parents or guardians elect to enroll them for one-half of the minimum number of hours required each day for grades one through six.

(E)(C) A school district may use space in child day-care centers licensed under Chapter 5104. of the Revised Code to provide all-day kindergarten under this section.

This removes the mandate for all-day kindergarten that was to start this year. It says that a district may not REQUIRE more than half-day K-garten attendence. And it says that IF it offers full-day K-garten, AND has NOT been getting special aid for poor districts, it MAY charge fees or tuition, but must do so on a sliding scale. Does anyone here really have a problem with that? If a parent wants the kid in full-day because it’s more convenient for them, basically using the school as day-care, they should pay a day-care fee, no?

I figured that maybe this would lead to some substantive debate, that somebody would thank me for posting the link, that somebody would say, “Oops, it doesn’t say that” or angrily maintain that it does in fact say that. But I should have saved my typing time.  The replies were along the lines of “all the data supporting how good all-day-K is for kids.” (without citing the data, which is apparently not all positive or conclusive) or wanting some certainty about what they’d get for their taxes. Let’s say that all-day-K is good for all kids, all the time. Is even earlier schooling good for them?  Should we grab the kids at birth and hand them to the experts?  Even if it’s good, can we afford it?  My generation did just fine on half-day-K…but we also didn’t grow up in a 2-wage-slave household, and had parents teaching us things before we started school. And who are the “we” that can or can’t afford it? Is this enough of a social benefit that, granting the premise that education is a social benefit, we should all pay for it whether we use it or not?

If people won’t call into question novel perks of being an Ohioan, how are they ever going to face down established things like public education, welfare, and food stamps?

Denninger is so on it

First, on why the FL Libertarian Party (and most other LPs) is FUBAR, and how they can’t afford to be.

Then he tears “Baghdad Bob” Gibbs (and by extension, his boss) a new one over his comments on Egypt. And the macroeconomics of the Middle East unrest here.

Good work, all of it.

Bloomberg needs a patent leather enema

If you look at the US, you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate — they can’t read,” he said.

“I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is.”

Ahem. That would be me, Mikey; I don’t have a passport. The 10th Amendment says I don’t need one, but your control-freak predecessors said otherwise. And maybe I’d be more likely to get one and See The World if air travel were not probable cause for a strip search. Anyway, apparently the main reason for foreign travel is to bash your country from a comfortable distance, and I’m not interested in that.

As for reading, you might want to compare those who got their information from the Internet to those who got it from the TV, and tell me how each bloc voted.

I’m assuming that you meant the voters here, rather than the elected officials. If you really think there are Congressmen who can’t read (as opposed to Congressment who don’t read, which is documented fact), you should name names; you can afford a libel suit or ten. I’ve got to be fair though, because you also said this:

“We’ve got to stop blaming the Chinese and blaming everybody else, and take a look at ourselves,” he said.

That’s true. But fixing the problem will look a whole lot like a trade war. If I’m used to eating out all the time, lose my job, and have to cook at home, am I boycotting restaurants? If we can’t afford to outsource all our production to China (and we never could afford that), and start doing it here, is that protectionist?