Do you want real equality?

Recently I posted some thoughts about Democrats leveraging the failing education system to maintain their power base in the African-American and Hispanic communities. It triggered a notion that I've posted on before but wanted to reiterate with some more emphasis, and that is what does equality mean in America?  There are two opposing views to this fundamental question, which has hijacked the national political debate from the issue of liberty.  Freedom, or liberty in the Declaration of Independence is second only to life in terms of inalienable rights.  The issue of equality (all men are created equal) while important, is not paramount to the national discussion.  Yet there it is, on the front burner.

But let's take as a given that all citizens are free, despite the best efforts of the Democrats to implement health care reform, and card check and...you get the picture.  If all people in the United States are free, then the country can start to grapple with other issues like equality.  But here's the conundrum on equality - it all comes down to how you define it.  The President's definition is what is driving his agenda. The problem with that is that he seems to have a skewed definition of the word.

Milton Friedman postulated that there are two ways to define freedom - equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.  Where the Declaration of Independence states "all men are created equal", he notes that the interpretation of that phrase is with respect to their rights.  It does not mean their abilities.  I cannot dunk a basketball like LeBron James.  Similarly he cannot sing like Etta James.  But what we all have in common in terms of equality is our inalienable rights. 

The discussion turns then to what rights are we granted by our Creator?  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Notice that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution have ever granted happiness - only the pursuit of it?  That is because no one - the government, a business - not even yourself can ensure you achieve happiness.  It very well could be unattainable for an entire lifetime.  And that's BIG.  Obama and many liberal Democrats, and socialists view equality as equality of outcome.  presumably, they believe that equality of outcome will result in equality of happiness.

What is equality of outcome?

Does that mean equal pay regardless of occupation? Should a doctor and a garbageman make the same amount, or even what they need?  If so why become a doctor?  Studying to be a garbageman is much less taxing.

Does it mean equal skills training for anyone in need, or even desire of a skill?  What if someone without the right abilities to do so, wants to learn piano? Who pays for that training? And why?

Does it mean equal grades on test scores for students?  Does it mean everyone gets a turn on the school football team?  Or an equal turn as CEO at Mobile Oil?

Equality of outcome, even theoretically, is a silly notion.

What does make sense is equality of opportunity.  Everyone should not be impeded by systems (especially governmental), or attitudes (such as racism) or anything else from trying to achieve their goals.  The single biggest impediment to that type of equality, is equality of education.  Equal education means equal rights.

Pumping money into bad schools and ineffective teachers is not the answer.  The Invisible Hand is the answer.  Open up education to the marketplace and see how much better students start doing. 

That does not mean charging people to attend school.  Come on, you already pay taxes for it!  It does not mean bussing students across town either.  It means giving every family school vouchers that they can use to select where their children attend school.  A voucher should be good for any school in the country.  The choice of families to send their children to better schools will weed out ones no one wants to attend.  Open up school districts and allow different public and private schools to compete for the children in the area (and thus a share of the voucher revenue, as the government pays out based on voucher volume).

As consumers, parents actively pursuing the best schools will be the first to enrol their children and those who miss out on #1 because they were late starting the hunt process can start looking at number #2.  But school #4, only half filled because students all went to the other three first, is now, out of survival, incented to improve it's rating.  In a free market it has to improve or close.

Watch how well the private schools do.  The remaining public schools will become a school of last resort when the better private schools unexpectedly fail or get filled beyond capacity.  The government would be free to mandate core cirriculum (math, English, science etc.) and require standard testing if it wished.  But the private schools could pad their cirriculum as they saw fit, rather than being forced to teach sex education, gender studies or anything specific.  If there's a demand for sex education, the private schools will end up teaching it, and fast.  And if there isn't an appetite for it, they will drop it just as quickly.

The only impediment to this approach would be to figure out a way to ensure a fair system of equal access by all. They could be impeded by poor planning, or racism or some other factors. But that's a minor problem - figuring out a mechanism to prevent fraud and unequal access is small compared to figuring out a way to solve everything.  Just leave the solution to the 50 Experiments Theorum.  What the free market system promotes here is an environment where those with talents will be able to avoid having them languish due to an inadequate school enviroment.  Skills will be developed.  Everyone will be better off.  The government will stop throwing money down an education sink hole.  In essence it will be outsourcing education to the private sector, where countless success stories exist, unlike government, which has to it's credit a great military, a moon landing, and the Hoover Dam.  Those things combined don't offset the inefficiency of the DMV.

Try this at home - your political compass

If you've ever wanted to plot your political leanings, there's a website that allows you to answer a few questions in under 10 minutes and it will plot your political leaning between liberal and conservative, and between authoritarian and libertarian.

Try it out for fun. The link is HERE.

However, a word of caution. You are your own best political thermometer. I wouldn't take their results too seriously because the underlying weighting and result interpretation seems to be somewhat subjective. The reason I suspect that can be explained in the following two graphs.

Here's one for some Historical figures;

While Stalin and Hitler look about right, I'm quite sure they never actually took this quiz. Therefore, someone has mapped their positions via an analysis of their results. It might be good for comparative purposes for people, but to portray them as accurate mappings is not exactly reasonable. Furthermore, I'd like to see the scoring that put Margaret Thatcher where she is on that graph. It seems a bit heavy towards the authoritarian side.

The reason I question these is not to quibble with specific results but rather to question the political bent of the creator(s) and the methodologies of interpreting the results.

Here's an even better example;



According to the graph every Republican is to the right of every Democrat (Mike Gravel, being an odd outlier). There's no surprise there. But here's where I take issue with this scoring;

1. Every conservative seems to score as more authoritarian than their liberal counterparts. That's VERY odd considering conservatives argue for smaller government, more individual liberty and more personal responsibility. Further, looking at the politics of President Obama since coming into office, he certainly has run an interventionist, and heavy handed government. Yet by this graph we are supposed to believe not only that all Democrats are less authoritarian than all Republicans but that Obama was one of the least authoritarian-minded of the Democrats. Not credible.

2. Every Democrat candidate was to the right of center except for Kucinich? Also not credible. . Sure, they are less left than Stalin, but to the right of center? It just doesn't compute. Liberals are sure to look to something like this for validation that they really are centrist, but it doesn't work if the tool they are using has an inherent bias built into it. Which brings me back to the question of how Stalin was scored and how different is that from the Obama score.

You might be thinking I scored badly and am upset with my personal result. To the contrary, I'm almost okay with it and here it is for your consideration;

According to this I'm on par with Fred Thompson in terms of the left-right scale. I find that assessment somewhat plausible, but out of that list of candidates I would have chosen Newt Gingrich to represent me. As for the libertarian leaning, I'm sure I was on the right side of the line there, but I'd definitely have expected to be a little bit further towards the bottom of the chart. Still, it was fun to try.

Auto Industry bailout saga continues

This is such basic stuff!

An enterprise system, is a profit and loss system, and the loss part may
be even more important than the profit part. The crucial difference is in what
ventures are continued and which are abandoned. The crucial requirement for
maintaining growth and progress is that successful experiments be continued and
unsuccessful experiments be terminated.

--Milton Freidman

So if GM, Ford and Chrysler are failed experiments, should they not be discontinued? At least in their current form. It could be argued that at a $45/hour all in labor cost, the variables of the experiment have changed and the experiment can be retried. With the permission of the almighty UAW, and their puppetry in the Democratic party, I'd like to suggest that the experiment has indeed failed. If it hasn't yet, wait a few weeks and call me.

Luckily, there is the Chapter 11 mechanism that allows for a restructuring. Yes details would have to be worked out. But no, confidence would not be lost. The airline industry offers examples of restructuring without a commensurate loss of consumer confidence. And the red herring of subsidiary jobs being lost doesn't fly either. People will still drive. People will still need tires, oil filters, windshield, wiper blades, etc. The market is going to contract and people will need less cars and less parts and services if there are less cars on the road. But there won't be. There may be less American made cars (temporarily). But people will still have to use and buy cars. And if a smaller percentage of those parts come from American suppliers (again, temporarily during the restructuring) then so be it.

The pain is coming no matter what. But propping up a failed experiment so that you can do the same thing again in 7 years is the epitome of foolish action. The only thing worse is giving Barney Frank oversight of the whole mess. Alternatively, we can bite the bullet, pay the piper, whatever you want to call it. But what it means, what it requires is that real change be forced on those who have caused and ignored the problem. I'm not without sympathy. I'd hate to see Chevy or Ford disappear forever. I'd hate for millions to lose their jobs permanently. But that's not how it would turn out.

All that said, people opposed to the bailout have lost site of the scope of the issue. The automotive industry cost is a mere pittance. My last tally puts the automotive bailout at $34 billion. That's about $113 per American. The banking bailout passed by Congress is $700 billion, or about $2,333 per American. And the total commitment has risen to over $7 trillion, or 23,333 per man, woman and child in the country (legally). Perspective is everything. Crap sandwich does not do the whole rotting mess justice.

But just because the cost of a Big 3 bailout is a drop in the bucket, doesn't mean we shouldn't still try to do the right thing - let it be fixed rather than be kept on life support without the chance of healing itself.