Presidential candidates who visit Iowa may be unaware that a major activity they engage in on the campaign trail requires a license in Iowa.
Staffers and concerned supporters are urged to ensure their candidates are in compliance with this particular statute.
http://iwin.iwd.state.ia.us/iowa/OIC?action=license&licid=0000000291
and
http://www.agronext.iastate.edu/immag/maccsa.html
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Defining Terms in Economics
To talk about economic matters, it is imperative to first define terms. So many people in the blogosphere and elsewhere are confused as to what certain words mean, and debate is thereby derailed and otherwise confused.
First, there are four main types of economic systems in the world: free market capitalism, mercantilism, fascism, and socialism. The first three are subtypes of capitalism, which itself is largely misunderstood.
Capitalism is the process whereby labor, resources, and monetary capital are combined to produce products and/or services, and render a profit.
Profit is created wealth, that is, wealth most commonly in the form of money which did not exist prior to the production of goods or services.
Labor is rather self-defining, the application of human time and energy that creates something hitherto non-existent.
Resources are material things on which labor is exerted to produce a good or service. Resources may be naturally occurring, such as iron ore - labor is applied to it to produce steel. Manufactured goods may be resources as well, such as computers; labor applied at a keyboard produces a writer's book, for instance.
Monetary capital is money which is used to fund the purchase of resources and labor to produce a good that is then sold or traded.
Free market capitalism is a system wherein individuals and corporations voluntarily produce goods and services without interference by a government other than the enforcement of law to prohibit theft and fraud. A free market depends on a strict application of the rule of law, so that property is safeguarded, and no one is coerced to buy or sell any good or service. Ownership of one's person, property, and ideas is primary to a free market, and if that ownership is compromised, then the whole system fails.
A free market is based on the voluntary exchange of labor, goods, services or money between interested parties, and is by nature equitable, as each party sees an advantage to himself in conducting the transaction.
Mercantilism is a capitalist system where certain goods and services are encouraged or discouraged by governments at the behest of producers who are influential in government. They lobby to promote their own products, and discourage competitors. The government may see particular producers and their products as beneficial to the country, its people, or to the government itself, and for that reason accedes to the demands of the producers. The government's actions may take the form of tariffs on competitive foreign goods, taxes on competitors, abolition of certain goods and services, licensing of particular services, subsidies to certain producers, and regulations defining or controlling the quality of goods.
Fascism is the government control and regulation of privately owned and operated industry and services. This differs from mercantilism in that control and regulation is applied equally to all industry, without favoritism to particular producers, though historically, there have always been certain producers who had more influence in fascist governments with the result of differentially promoting themselves.
Socialism is the system where government owns the labor, resources, and capital, and theoretically does not derive a profit from the production process. People are assigned jobs according to the government's estimation of the best use of their particular talents and abilities, without consideration of their aspirations. The lack of a profit means that no new wealth is created, thereby precluding expansion of production facilities. In addition, with no profit motive, individuals are in effect discouraged from invention and innovation, though the government may encourage said invention and innovation by appealing to national pride and other moral inducements. In practice, there may be rewards such as better housing, opportunities for the individual to change jobs, and other material inducements, though these are seen, rightly so, as capitalist distortions of true socialism. Furthermore, if profits are made, the government frequently siphons them off to be used for non-productive ends; this has the result of impoverishing the country.
First, there are four main types of economic systems in the world: free market capitalism, mercantilism, fascism, and socialism. The first three are subtypes of capitalism, which itself is largely misunderstood.
Capitalism is the process whereby labor, resources, and monetary capital are combined to produce products and/or services, and render a profit.
Profit is created wealth, that is, wealth most commonly in the form of money which did not exist prior to the production of goods or services.
Labor is rather self-defining, the application of human time and energy that creates something hitherto non-existent.
Resources are material things on which labor is exerted to produce a good or service. Resources may be naturally occurring, such as iron ore - labor is applied to it to produce steel. Manufactured goods may be resources as well, such as computers; labor applied at a keyboard produces a writer's book, for instance.
Monetary capital is money which is used to fund the purchase of resources and labor to produce a good that is then sold or traded.
Free market capitalism is a system wherein individuals and corporations voluntarily produce goods and services without interference by a government other than the enforcement of law to prohibit theft and fraud. A free market depends on a strict application of the rule of law, so that property is safeguarded, and no one is coerced to buy or sell any good or service. Ownership of one's person, property, and ideas is primary to a free market, and if that ownership is compromised, then the whole system fails.
A free market is based on the voluntary exchange of labor, goods, services or money between interested parties, and is by nature equitable, as each party sees an advantage to himself in conducting the transaction.
Mercantilism is a capitalist system where certain goods and services are encouraged or discouraged by governments at the behest of producers who are influential in government. They lobby to promote their own products, and discourage competitors. The government may see particular producers and their products as beneficial to the country, its people, or to the government itself, and for that reason accedes to the demands of the producers. The government's actions may take the form of tariffs on competitive foreign goods, taxes on competitors, abolition of certain goods and services, licensing of particular services, subsidies to certain producers, and regulations defining or controlling the quality of goods.
Fascism is the government control and regulation of privately owned and operated industry and services. This differs from mercantilism in that control and regulation is applied equally to all industry, without favoritism to particular producers, though historically, there have always been certain producers who had more influence in fascist governments with the result of differentially promoting themselves.
Socialism is the system where government owns the labor, resources, and capital, and theoretically does not derive a profit from the production process. People are assigned jobs according to the government's estimation of the best use of their particular talents and abilities, without consideration of their aspirations. The lack of a profit means that no new wealth is created, thereby precluding expansion of production facilities. In addition, with no profit motive, individuals are in effect discouraged from invention and innovation, though the government may encourage said invention and innovation by appealing to national pride and other moral inducements. In practice, there may be rewards such as better housing, opportunities for the individual to change jobs, and other material inducements, though these are seen, rightly so, as capitalist distortions of true socialism. Furthermore, if profits are made, the government frequently siphons them off to be used for non-productive ends; this has the result of impoverishing the country.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Bra straps and Burkas
A Councilman of Atlanta, Georgia has proposed an ordinance, punishable by fine, to ban the exposure of thongs, underwear, bra straps, and sports bras.
I guess he and his wife get undressed once they're in the shower, and have sex with only the vital parts exposed, with the lights completely turned out.
Come on, C.T. Martin, don't do it just halfway, you should make it a law, punishable by stoning, that all women wear head-to-toe burkas. That way, no one would be offended.
I guess he and his wife get undressed once they're in the shower, and have sex with only the vital parts exposed, with the lights completely turned out.
Come on, C.T. Martin, don't do it just halfway, you should make it a law, punishable by stoning, that all women wear head-to-toe burkas. That way, no one would be offended.
Mad dogs and Englishmen
I'm reminded of the phrase "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun" in this warm weather we've been having.
Though the English who colonized the tropic regions did suffer a bit at first, they soon learned a practice to keep cool "in the mid-day sun".
To put this in an engineering paradigm, suppose your house has an automatic central heating/cooling system whereby the heating turns on when the thermostat registers 60 or below; and the airconditioner kicks on when the temperature in the house reaches 80 or above.
Now suppose further that on a hot day, let's say 85 degrees out, you bring a huge block of ice into your house, nearby the thermostat. What happens? Well the ice block cools the air in the room, and if it's large enough, the temperature will drop to say 59 degrees; the furnace kicks on, driving up the temperature in the other parts of the house.
Suppose you put a small wood stove in that same room, and fire it up. What happens? The temperature in the room is now perhaps 90 degrees, and the air conditioner kicks into high gear, cooling the whole house even more than it would had you not fired up the stove.
So it is with your body; your body has an automatic heating/cooling system, responding to the temperature inside it. Given the response to a large influx of a cold substance in the previous example, what do you suppose happens when you drink a lot of ice cold beverages on a hot day? Your heating system kicks on, raising your internal temperature even more.
What happens if you drink something hot, such as tea? Your cooling system kicks into high gear, cooling you more than it had been.
The Englishmen learned from the natives to drink hot tea in the mid-day sun, and survived to extend their realm to where the sun never set on the British Empire.
Though the English who colonized the tropic regions did suffer a bit at first, they soon learned a practice to keep cool "in the mid-day sun".
To put this in an engineering paradigm, suppose your house has an automatic central heating/cooling system whereby the heating turns on when the thermostat registers 60 or below; and the airconditioner kicks on when the temperature in the house reaches 80 or above.
Now suppose further that on a hot day, let's say 85 degrees out, you bring a huge block of ice into your house, nearby the thermostat. What happens? Well the ice block cools the air in the room, and if it's large enough, the temperature will drop to say 59 degrees; the furnace kicks on, driving up the temperature in the other parts of the house.
Suppose you put a small wood stove in that same room, and fire it up. What happens? The temperature in the room is now perhaps 90 degrees, and the air conditioner kicks into high gear, cooling the whole house even more than it would had you not fired up the stove.
So it is with your body; your body has an automatic heating/cooling system, responding to the temperature inside it. Given the response to a large influx of a cold substance in the previous example, what do you suppose happens when you drink a lot of ice cold beverages on a hot day? Your heating system kicks on, raising your internal temperature even more.
What happens if you drink something hot, such as tea? Your cooling system kicks into high gear, cooling you more than it had been.
The Englishmen learned from the natives to drink hot tea in the mid-day sun, and survived to extend their realm to where the sun never set on the British Empire.
Sending Messages
The nouveau chic phrase for the past ten years or so is "Send a Message".
In common parlance, it seems to mean to communicate your thoughts or emotions through actions.
Today, the mother of the 15 year old girl from Juneau, Alaska who took a trip on an airplane without her parents' permission said in an interview on Foxnews, "I wanted to send her a message that stealing is wrong."
The girl had stolen money for the airplane ticket from her mother, then took a flight to Seattle.
The girl is now in custody at a juvenile center under 5 charges of theft, filed by her mother.
Now I can see a parent at wits end turning her child over to the police if the child had been constantly in trouble since she was old enough to walk, but apparently this wasn't the case. It was the first time she had run away from home, as kids are wont to do from time to time.
If the mother wanted to "send a message" to her daughter that stealing is wrong, why not just tell it to her face: "I thought I taught you better, Makenna, you know that stealing is wrong. I'm very hurt and disappointed that you took that money from me." rather than committing her to a juvenile center, and giving her a criminal record for the rest of her life?
In common parlance, it seems to mean to communicate your thoughts or emotions through actions.
Today, the mother of the 15 year old girl from Juneau, Alaska who took a trip on an airplane without her parents' permission said in an interview on Foxnews, "I wanted to send her a message that stealing is wrong."
The girl had stolen money for the airplane ticket from her mother, then took a flight to Seattle.
The girl is now in custody at a juvenile center under 5 charges of theft, filed by her mother.
Now I can see a parent at wits end turning her child over to the police if the child had been constantly in trouble since she was old enough to walk, but apparently this wasn't the case. It was the first time she had run away from home, as kids are wont to do from time to time.
If the mother wanted to "send a message" to her daughter that stealing is wrong, why not just tell it to her face: "I thought I taught you better, Makenna, you know that stealing is wrong. I'm very hurt and disappointed that you took that money from me." rather than committing her to a juvenile center, and giving her a criminal record for the rest of her life?
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
What I Think
Like many people I come across, you can't put me in a neat category, though I do have some solid convictions and ways of thinking that may seem stubborn and gelled.
I am an atheist, but not a ranting, antireligionist. People like the late Madeline Murray O'Hair got under my skin just as much as I imagine she affected religionists.
I see great value in religion for most people, both as a source of social stability and a moral compass. I just don't buy the supernatural belief aspect, but I do attend a Lutheran church weekly. An atheist attending church? What's up with that?
Well, my community is small and integrated, and if you want to get along and keep in contact with others, church is a great place to do so.
Second, I enjoy the Sunday School discussions; though they don't know I'm an atheist, I do a good job as a devil's advocate in discussions of morality, behavior, history, sociology, and philosophy in general.
Third, though my immediate family does not attend this church, there are many distant cousins of mine there, and people I've known all my life, so it imparts a sense of being at home to me.
My ancestors and theirs came to this spot more than 200 years ago; ten of my direct ancestors fought in the Revolution, so my roots are here.
I take pride in my ancestors helping create this great nation, and those who followed to protect it. My great-grandfather's brother was killed at Spotsylvania in the Civil War, my grandfather fought in the trenches in WWI, both my parents were in WWII (my mother an airplane mechanic in the Marines, my father in the Army on Enewitok and Okinawa ), and I served 6 years in the Army as well.
The people who settled in these parts, and those who came later, were strongly individualistic, both in their religion and the way they lived; that ethos was passed down to me.
In my college days, I was a Yippie, an anarchist you could say. I read and reread Ayn Rand, and absorbed the individualist, rational anarchism of her writings. Later, as I went out in the real world, I gravitated back to the Republican Party like my parents, recognizing that some modicum of government was necessary. At that time, Reagan had just been elected, and I thought I saw a bright new future for our nation with his ideals and ideas seeming to come into focus.
Since the 94 Congress, however, I became disillusioned with the GOP, seeing them devolve into little more than a moderate branch of the Democrats.
It was then, when talk radio came to the fore, that I discovered Jim Quinn and Neal Boortz, and realized that there was a whole world out there of libertarians hitherto unknown to me. And of course the Internet, where ideas that were not allowed in the driveby media could flourish.
You can't pigeonhole me into paleolibertarian or neolibertarian, or any other, though I could say that I am a social conservative in some matters, and a strong foreign defense hawk.
As I said earlier, religion is of great value to a lot of people, and to go about denouncing all religionists as crazy or ignorant is just stupid. Most people will always believe in some supernatural entities, and as long as those entities don't tell them to go out and terrorize others, I'm comfortable with their beliefs.
As an individualist, I don't care what you do in your private life: smoke dope, drink yourself into oblivion, shack up with three women and call them your wives, drain a swamp on your own property, teach your children God is a deer who lives on Mt. Ararat, doesn't matter to me; as long as you do no harm to others in what you do.
Robert Heinlein said somewhere in his books that sin is inflicting harm on another without reason. That's a good definition. Lest that be misunderstood as meaning that you can't harm or kill someone in self-defense, read it again - "WITHOUT REASON". He doesn't mean without an excuse, or justification, but without rational thought. Harming someone in defense of yourself or others is entirely rational, therefore self-defense is not only permitted, it is prescribed.
Given that, it is entirely rational for our sovereign nation to wage war on Radical Islam, as their stated intent is to kill, convert, or enslave those who are not Muslim. As they will not be persuaded otherwise, so it is our duty, in protecting ourselves, to kill them before they kill us. Plain and simple.
I'll post more of my views and thoughts as time goes on, as events and popular topics of discussion arise.
I am an atheist, but not a ranting, antireligionist. People like the late Madeline Murray O'Hair got under my skin just as much as I imagine she affected religionists.
I see great value in religion for most people, both as a source of social stability and a moral compass. I just don't buy the supernatural belief aspect, but I do attend a Lutheran church weekly. An atheist attending church? What's up with that?
Well, my community is small and integrated, and if you want to get along and keep in contact with others, church is a great place to do so.
Second, I enjoy the Sunday School discussions; though they don't know I'm an atheist, I do a good job as a devil's advocate in discussions of morality, behavior, history, sociology, and philosophy in general.
Third, though my immediate family does not attend this church, there are many distant cousins of mine there, and people I've known all my life, so it imparts a sense of being at home to me.
My ancestors and theirs came to this spot more than 200 years ago; ten of my direct ancestors fought in the Revolution, so my roots are here.
I take pride in my ancestors helping create this great nation, and those who followed to protect it. My great-grandfather's brother was killed at Spotsylvania in the Civil War, my grandfather fought in the trenches in WWI, both my parents were in WWII (my mother an airplane mechanic in the Marines, my father in the Army on Enewitok and Okinawa ), and I served 6 years in the Army as well.
The people who settled in these parts, and those who came later, were strongly individualistic, both in their religion and the way they lived; that ethos was passed down to me.
In my college days, I was a Yippie, an anarchist you could say. I read and reread Ayn Rand, and absorbed the individualist, rational anarchism of her writings. Later, as I went out in the real world, I gravitated back to the Republican Party like my parents, recognizing that some modicum of government was necessary. At that time, Reagan had just been elected, and I thought I saw a bright new future for our nation with his ideals and ideas seeming to come into focus.
Since the 94 Congress, however, I became disillusioned with the GOP, seeing them devolve into little more than a moderate branch of the Democrats.
It was then, when talk radio came to the fore, that I discovered Jim Quinn and Neal Boortz, and realized that there was a whole world out there of libertarians hitherto unknown to me. And of course the Internet, where ideas that were not allowed in the driveby media could flourish.
You can't pigeonhole me into paleolibertarian or neolibertarian, or any other, though I could say that I am a social conservative in some matters, and a strong foreign defense hawk.
As I said earlier, religion is of great value to a lot of people, and to go about denouncing all religionists as crazy or ignorant is just stupid. Most people will always believe in some supernatural entities, and as long as those entities don't tell them to go out and terrorize others, I'm comfortable with their beliefs.
As an individualist, I don't care what you do in your private life: smoke dope, drink yourself into oblivion, shack up with three women and call them your wives, drain a swamp on your own property, teach your children God is a deer who lives on Mt. Ararat, doesn't matter to me; as long as you do no harm to others in what you do.
Robert Heinlein said somewhere in his books that sin is inflicting harm on another without reason. That's a good definition. Lest that be misunderstood as meaning that you can't harm or kill someone in self-defense, read it again - "WITHOUT REASON". He doesn't mean without an excuse, or justification, but without rational thought. Harming someone in defense of yourself or others is entirely rational, therefore self-defense is not only permitted, it is prescribed.
Given that, it is entirely rational for our sovereign nation to wage war on Radical Islam, as their stated intent is to kill, convert, or enslave those who are not Muslim. As they will not be persuaded otherwise, so it is our duty, in protecting ourselves, to kill them before they kill us. Plain and simple.
I'll post more of my views and thoughts as time goes on, as events and popular topics of discussion arise.
Just a Start
I have found a need to expand on some things I've posted in Townhall.com and other's blogs, so this will serve me well.
Feel free to comment, but beware I do review comments, so spam, unctuous tirades, and general unpleasantness will be deleted forthwith.
Tally Ho!
Feel free to comment, but beware I do review comments, so spam, unctuous tirades, and general unpleasantness will be deleted forthwith.
Tally Ho!
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