Photo of the Day

A friend sent a small collection of spectacular images to me by email. These have been circulating on various lists, none of which seem to provide attribution. That's a shame, because whoever this photographer is deserves some recognition…

I'll post the rest of the collection over the next week or so. Click on the small picture to see a full-sized version.

Free Lunch

My mother sent me this little parable:

Free Lunch

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student Told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country, who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a Strange question: "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.

The young man said this was no joke. "You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms - a little at a time.

One should always remember "There is no such thing as a free lunch!"
Also, "You can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself."

Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government "help" is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!

Most politically-aware people in America reading this would immediately associate the fence-building with the Democratic party, and not without reason. However, in point of fact the Republican party is also guilty of much fence-building, especially in the regulatory sphere. In more recent years, it's sometimes been hard to distinguish between the two parties on the basis of their fence-building (think Medicare drug supplements and tax policies).

The only serious political party that has consistently positioned themselves against this sort of fence-building is the Libertarian party – but unfortunately it seems to be infested with lunatics and fractured by multiple agendas so disjoint they make the Democrats look unified. The probability of the Libertarians winning any real political power is close to zero.

So the only real hope any of us who would like to see fewer fences have is to reform one of the two major parties, to get them on board with the fence-demolition project. If your only practical choice is between the Republicans and the Democrats, clearly it is much more likely that we could move Republicans in that direction.

But, sadly, I think the real problem is nearly intractable. It is this: each metaphorical fence that is built represents more power for the political class. Conversely, to pull down a section of the metaphorical fence requires some elements of the political class to relinquish power – something that most humans are not inclined to do. Here's a concrete example: one of the biggest metaphorical fences we have right now is the federal income tax. Its regulations, hulking size, and mind-boggling complexity warp our behavior and reduce our free choices in many ways. The “flat tax” is a credible alternative, with the attractive virtue of utter simplicity. If any business faced a similar opportunity to dump the current tax code and adopt the flat tax, it would be an absolute no-brainer: the flat tax would be implemented immediately.

But consider this: switching to the flat tax would mean that a veritable army of bureaucrats at the IRS would have no job, that one of Congress' cherished tools for controlling our behavior (tax exemptions and credits) would be removed, and another army of tax accountants (who are big contributors to political campaigns) would be out of a job. From a politician's jaded perspective, there's nothing good about switching to a flat tax. Aside from a very few elected officials with genuine beliefs of their own, just about the only politicians who support the flat tax are those who are struggling to win their first election, or those who are threatened in their incumbency and need some way to attract voters. All the other politicians see the flat tax as a threat (to themselves, of course) or a reduction in their power – and they will resist its implementation with all their might, no matter what their public posturing is (much like the recent move to expose earmarking to public scrutiny has been successfully resisted, despite public statements to the contrary).

The little parable has an important message. I believe those fences are being built, and they threaten our freedoms far more than the Patriot Act or its ilk ever did. The only way I can think of (with any real chance of success) to demolish those fences is to reform the Republican party. I really hate to say this, but I'm not very optimistic about the chances of that reform – too many people in this country are attracted by that free corn, and are comfortable with it. And so far, their consistent history is to vote for the politicians who promise the most free corn…