Economic Justice

"What does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?"

Thomas Sowell

Wow, that sounds like gubment taking taxes!  But I digress...

Economic justice.  It just sounds good.  It really sounds good!

What is it?

My Oxford dictionary defines "justice" as:  treat or represent someone or something with due fairness.

Again, the question may be asked, what is "due?"

Interestingly, the Center for Economic Justice and Equality defines economic justice as:

"Economic justice, which touches the individual person as well as the social order, encompasses the moral principles which guide us in the design of our economic institutions.  These institutions determine how each person earns a living, enters into contracts, exchanges goods and services with others and otherwise produces an independent material foundation for his or her economic sustenance.  The ultimate purpose of economic justice is to free each person to engage creatively in the unlimited work beyond economics, that of the mind and the spirit."

They call economic justice "The Third Way," beyond, as it were, capitalism and socialism.

This organization sees Economic Harmony as a balance between Participative Justice (input from capital and labor) and Distributive Justice (profits for owners, wages for employees).

What they have defined is FREE ENTERPRISE!  I don't know if that is intentional or not, but FREE ENTERPRISE is thus defined!

We already have determined that FREE ENTERPRISE is moral!  It has to be!  It is the only system that does what this definition states!

And it would do that except...

Except for what?  What Dr. Sowell suggests!  He suggests that the new Doublespeak changes words and concepts from what they are to what sound good!  Economic justice has been changed, especially in the last couple of years, into belonging to a group very, very worthy of gimmes!  An ethereal group very, very worthy of somebody else's production!

Why?  Because keeping what you produce is "rich" and the "rich" have stolen it all anyway.  It is bad to steal!  So why not just turn it over to those who "deserve" it?

I have said for years that the debate now is not between conservative and liberal, or even left and right.  Continuing with Dr. Sowell's suggestion, the debate is now between the producers and non-producers, and the achievers and the non-achievers.  The debate is now over REDISTRIBUTION of one group's "stuff" to another group that more deserves it!

The proverbial, and non existent, free lunch.

Going back to the Oxford definition, giving huge percentages of production to the non producers, simply because the gubment decides they "deserve" it is NOT JUSTICE.  Neither group is treated with, as Oxford defines, due fairness.  Read the definition again!

And, according to the Center above, such transference (should we say redistribution?) of production is not a moral principle, or otherwise produces an independent material foundation for economic sustenance.  And such transference (should we say redistribution?) is not Economic Harmony as defined above, for such harmony balances input and distribution!

What then is Economic Harmony? 

FREE ENTERPRISE!  FREE ENTERPRISE IS NOT A THIRD WAY.  IT IS THE WAY.

The key word is FREE...

The Bad With The Good

"With our present knowledge, no definition can be given of the latent force, which, possessing all the conditions of attraction and repulsion associated with it, is free of magnetism.  If it is a condition of electricity, robbed of all electrical phenomena, or magnetic force, repellent to the phenomena associated with magnetic development, the only philosophical conclusion that I can arrive at is that this undefinable element is the soul of matter."

John Worrell Keely (1837 - 1898)

In 1872 a carpenter and mechanic in Philadelphia announced that he had discovered a new form of energy.  He got the idea from a tuning fork!  His idea gave him the means to tap this energy - ETHERIC FORCE.

He had other cool words to describe his invention - "vibratory engine," "hydro-pneumatic pulsating vacuo-engine," and "latent force."

Selling tickets to his dramatic demonstrations, and using his considerable musical talents, he would start the machine up with any of many musical instruments.  Then, using his similarly considerable eloquent language, he would go about explaining his invention and how it worked.

Note:  Many physicists of this era believed that the universe itself was full of an elusive fluid they called "lumineferous ether."  They went about with many experiments to find and measure this ether, with disappointing results.  They finally gave up, realizing that the theory lacked foundation.  "Lumineferous ether" is seldom even mentioned in science textbooks today.

At his demonstrations, Keely played on that belief in this all-encompassing ether!  And his demonstrations to scientists and non scientists alike began earning him financial backing.

After a musical interlude, Keely would blow air into a nozzle for 30 seconds.  Then he would pour water into that same nozzle.  With some whirls and flair, he would get a pressure gage to register 10,000 pounds per square inch!  This pressure, said he, demonstrated that the water had disappeared and this mysteriously liberated a magical vapor which could power machinery!  Why, with just a few gallons of tap water street cars, trains, even boats, could be powered forever!

He said, "A bucket of water has enough of this vapor to produce power sufficient to move the world out of its course!"

Well, the money poured in.  It was said that in a few years Keely Motor Company was worth $5 million dollars!

And Keely was living the good life!

Many branded him a fraud.  Scientists, and Scientific American, said that his "experiments" could be produced with compressed air.  It was odd that nothing could ever be duplicated when Keely was not around.  But he still found backers, including some scientists.

AND HE CONTINUED THAT MONEY FLOW FOR 26 YEARS!

The waterfall of money eventually dried up to a trickle.

Long story short - he was exposed, he did have a compressed air source, and the whole affair was his form of SNAKE OIL.  But his charade lasted a long time!  He was not absolutely exposed until after his death and the suspicious public looked over his shop!  They figured out how he did it, with pulleys and weights and, yes, compressed air!

He himself said his epitaph should read, "Keely, the greatest humbug of the 19th century."

Yes, free enterprise has its faults!  The key is the word FREE!  Our society is full, full, full of scammers!  And that's everything from world leaders, to doctors to canned handymen!

What, you've never bought something from a TV commercial, or Billy Jays, that did NOT later perform, um, exactly to your expectations?  C'mon, we all have!

BUT IN THE LONG RUN THE MARKET ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS WEEDS THAT CRAP OUT!

Just like it did with Mr. Keely!

If it doesn't stultify innovation and production, gubment regulation can be helpful, even good.  But not when it collapses markets and depresses the inventors!

Keeping the free market as free as possible lifts whole societies, and FREE ENTERPRISE has demonstrated that ability for millenia.

But, CAVEAT OMNIA!  Beware of everything!

MAY THE LATENT, ETHERIC, HYDRO-PNEUMATIC PULSATING FORCE BE WITH YOU.

The Morality Of Free Enterprise?

"The Founders knew that the role of a moral government is to create the conditions of liberty and opportunity so that each of us can define success as we see fit and then work with all our might to attain it. Their visionary insight was that allowing us to earn our success is precisely what gives each of us the best chance at achieving real happiness."

Arthur C. Brooks
President, American Enterprise Institute

The Founding Fathers knew this because they were scholars and circumspect as to the prevailing cases for free enterprise.

If you are going to establish a nation based on individual freedom, voluntary exchange, limited gubment, and what they called a novus ordo seclorum, or "new order for the ages," there is no point in also serving up an economic system that stifles and stultifies those very things!

Dr. Brooks is making that point!  And makes it very well and over and over again in his book The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

It has been said that our nation's founding, its unique form of democracy, was an "experiment."  NONSENSE!

The Founding Fathers knew that it would fall apart if immorality, irreligiosity, and corrupt bureaucracy took over!  OUR SYSTEM DEPENDS ON MORALITY!  Understanding that they set up a political and economic system based on correct principles and let it fly!

But wait!  Free enterprise is a MORAL system?  Free enterprise gives us, as Dr. Brooks says above, "the best chance at achieving real happiness"?

The utter MORALITY of free enterprise, and America's form of capitalism, has been made over and over again for centuries by economists in FREE societies!

Dr. Brooks makes the case as well, in various publications and in the book titled above.  His thesis (contention?) is that the MORALITY of free enterprise is demonstrated in three ways:

• Earned success
• True fairness
• Helping those in need

Can any gubment not organized to promote liberty and freedom encourage conditions that promote any of those three criterion?

If we are not free to perform to our best abilities and exchange in voluntary labor to provide goods and services, how can we earn success?

Can anything but a system of true fairness bring out our best such that we can develop those abilities, and thus, over time, improve our goods and services offered for exchange?

Is there any other economic system, where we are free to develop ourselves and employ others in our creative pursuits, that better helps those in need?

I highly recommend this very fun video clip:   http://youtu.be/7NfLUCBZ1is

It is Dr. Brooks's explanation of how MORALITY fits into the economic mix.  And it does!

Is it moral to act for oneself and not be acted upon (except by a free market)?

Or is it moral to be acted upon by a gubment that directs your existence and tells you where and how you fit into its conception of an "economic mix?"

Watch the fun video!  It is only 8 minutes and you will be engrossed.  This production was made by a TEACHER who is TEACHING.  Notice that those who's system, economic or gubmental, does not include the freedom to choose cannot make any MORAL case for their system?  Watch this and decide for yourself where MORALITY lies!

MORALITY ALWAYS LIES IN FREEDOM - THE FREEDOM TO ACT, THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE, THE FREEDOM TO BE AND BECOME.

You STATISTS can argue with me on that last statement, but you will not get very far, even in your own mind.

A True One Percenter

"My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know, but because of their exceptional need to know more."

Milton Hershey (1857-1945)

In his late teens and early twenties Milton Hershey traveled with his salesman father on lengthy trips.

Paying attention and learning, but knowing he did not want to be a salesman, at 27 he established the Lancaster Caramel Company utilizing a recipe he had picked up during his sales travels.

Impressed with the machinery to make German chocolate at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, he bought it!

He felt chocolate, not caramel, to be the future, and was enamored of the newfangled Swiss milk chocolate produced as a luxury item.  Having access to fresh milk he determined to come up with a formula to produce affordable and delicious milk chocolate to sell to the American public.

After three years of trial and error he began construction on his own chocolate manufacturing plant, in the center of dairy farmland in central Pennsylvania.  Surrounded with milk producers, and using his knowledge of how to infuse milk with caramel, he transferred that knowledge into the production of his own brand of milk chocolate.  His formula was perfected and he was ready to take off in business.

THE REST IS HISTORY!

With Hershey's financial support, a community of houses, businesses, churches and public transportation sprang up around his production plant.  He saw even more.  And he went about developing that vision.

He saw a complete town filled with single and double-family brick homes, with streets lined with beautiful trees and garden-filled, grassy lawns.  Avoiding the row-house communities so popular in towns of the era, he went about creating something more.

What did he do?  He used his company PROFITS to benefit his employees, their families and their community.

• He built a model town complete with the comfortable homes he envisioned for his employees.
• His community included schools, churches and public transportation.
• In 1907 he built Hershey Park, complete with amusement rides, a swimming pool with water slides and a ballroom.
• Creating a train depot, trolley cars and trains could bring visitors to his town and recreational park.
• Establishing a sugar factory in Cuba, he established a similar town for employees there, that included homes, schools, churches and a railroad traveling between his town of Matanzas and Havana.  That train traveled the 60 miles back and forth, carrying sugar and people in electric cars.
• In 1909 a Deed of Trust founded the Hershey Industrial School.  This was a K-12 private boarding school which educated impoverished orphans.
• In 1918 he transferred a majority of his assets to benefit the Industrial School.
• In 1935 he established the private, charitable M.S. Hershey Foundation to fund The Hershey Museum, The Hershey Gardens, The Hershey Theater and The Hershey Community Archives.
• The Milton Hershey School Trust gifted the people of Pennsylvania with the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA.  His initial $50 million endowment went toward establishing that as a teaching hospital. 
• During WWII he supplied the US armed forces with Ration D Bars and Tropical Chocolate Bars.  They were designed not to melt in tropical weather!  During the war he supplied over 3 billion of these bars.

What else has Hershey done since his death in 1945?

• He has trained thousands of businessmen and women.
• He has employed hundreds of thousands of people, improving their lives and the lives of their families.
• He has provided enjoyment, relaxation and pleasure to, again, millions of people with his ever-expanding amusement park.
• He established the Hershey Hotel, a beautiful facility up on the hill overlooking his park.  FROM THERE AS GUESTS OF THE HOTEL, WE WATCHED THE FABULOUS FIREWORKS THIS PAST 4TH OF JULY!

OBVIOUSLY A 1 PERCENTER, I THINK HE SHOULD BE FORCED TO "GIVE BACK."*


* For sure I say that tongue in cheek.  Would this man not be derided today as the "filthy" rich, stealing his ill-gotten gains from off the backs of those around him, keeping profits and money to himself at the expense of those who have not, because of a simple lack of luck, won life's lottery?

Who should GIVE BACK?  Thieves, robbers, scammers and murderers; those who would harm children and women for their own "pleasure" or gain; people illegally arriving here, from all over the world, under the guise of a false "immigration," taught by agencies how to mooch off of gimmes while they try to turn our society into the same kind of hell hole they fled; embezzlers and cheats; brilliant computer minds who find sport in harming others or stealing their identities and money.  That can't be a complete list, but it's a great start!

THESE SHOULD BE FORCED, AND I MEAN FORCED, TO GIVE BACK, AND GIVE BACK AND GIVE BACK UNTIL THEY HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE.  AND THEN THEY SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM SOCIETY SO THEY CAN'T TAKE AGAIN.  THESE ARE TAKERS, NOT GIVERS.  WE NEED MORE GIVERS IN OUR WORLD. 

WE NEED A SOCIETY, AND GUBMENT, THAT PROMOTES OUR GIVERS AND MAKES IT EASIER FOR THEM TO DO WHAT THEY DO BEST SO THEY CAN GIVE MORE.


WE NEED MORE MILTON S. HERSHEYS.

Redistribution Of ... Minutes And Seconds

"We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves. The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, 'You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.' The human spirit is indomitable." 

Sir Roger Bannister
The first man to break a 4-minute mile

How many of us have done something previously thought to be impossible?

It was thought to be physically impossible for a human being to run the mile faster than 4 minutes.

IMPOSSIBLE!

How did he do it?  With his brain!  He employed mental capital!

Setting a British record in the 1952 Olympics in the 1500 meter race, he still came in fourth place.  No medal!  It left him feeling "blown and unhappy," his words.

The experience spurred him to work harder.  He set a new goal - to run the mile in less than four minutes.

How did he do it?  By changing his regimen - his diet, and his physiology.  He trained by running INTENSIVE INTERVALS.  What is interval training?  It involves training with a series of low then high-intensity workouts, followed by rest and relief periods.  The high-intensity periods bring the body to or close to anaerobic exercise, and the rest periods of complete rest or lower-intensity exercise.

He thought out a way to better results!  And worked to make it happen.  Later becoming a neurologist, Dr. Bannister has been further involved with sports, even studying the effects of anaerobic steroids on the human body.  He is still a thinker.

Less than two years after his "failed" Olympics, he broke the 4 minute mile by clocking a 3:59.4 minute race!

IMPOSSIBLE!

The world changed!  Suddenly it was POSSIBLE!  And with that new mental paradigm out there, the sport changed forever, 46 days later his record was broken by one second!  And the record has been routinely broken ever since.

But wait! 

What if the "thinking" of the era said that it was unfair of him to take so much advantage on his own behalf.
What if the "thinking" of the era said that he had made all the other runners feel badly by such an accomplishment?
What if the "thinking" of the era said that the playing field needed to be leveled?
What if the "thinking" of the era said that Roger Bannister's stolen wealth, having won life's lottery, should be redistributed to the other runners? 
What if the "thinking" of the era said that Roger Bannister needed to "GIVE BACK?"

And so the "thinking" of the era decided to take the minutes of the fastest runners in that race, and award them (redistribution of wealth) to the slower runners in that race.  AND EVERYONE ENDED UP WITH THE EXACT SAME RESULT!

Explain to me, and I am serious, EXPLAIN TO ME, how this would benefit anybody?  ESPECIALLY the slower runners!  How are they benefited in any way?

And what would have been Roger Bannister's incentive to continue?
And how would that mental paradigm had shifted for all to understand that something was NOT, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE?

EXPLAIN THAT TO ME, PLEASE.