George Handlery about the week that was. Is “avoid America?” the intended message? The pursuit of happiness: at whose expense? Who needs good government? Do government jobs make one wiser and nicer? Is all violence “bad?”
 
1. It has been argued here that the sensation-seeking and scandal-propelled pursuit of often non-existent tax cheats and fat cats (anyone better off than you are), will result in less tax revenue and more economic dislocation. Cross border business, especially international financing and investment, will suffer. The campaign is led by the US’ IRS. It is loudly seconded by stumbling Germany followed by statist France.
Let this “anecdotal” story illustrate the point regarding negative consequences. Remember, the big picture is but a conglomerate of diminutive cases. A friend, a citizen and US resident, has been here. Needing to travel globally for professional reasons, he had an account at a local bank since 1980. Oddly, the US taxes global income regardless of residency and the income’s origins. Therefore, the funds, resulting from earlier global employment, were, while cursing the resulting double taxation, duly reported to the IRS. On the day after his arrival that ended a cruise-vacation, my friend, with whom I share neither language nor ethnicity, went to his bank to pick up some petty cash. There he was told that within a month his funds must be removed. The bank, a major global player, does not wish to have anything to do with Americans that are worth less than 10 millions. (Understandably, as the bank’s engagement in the US has been used to apply /extortionary?/ pressure. Disengagement is, therefore, a defensive response to having been taken hostage.) Once it recovered from the shock, the couple “rebelled”. They decided to warm up an old plan. They will make use of their double citizenships and resettle in the EU. The arrangement of the details in a third country ruined their vacation. Nevertheless, now they return to liquidate their West Coast home with a good feeling.
 
2. US economic policy’s tax aspects are in danger of creating a damaging image. Dealing with the country will be viewed as laden with costly risks derived from abrupt third-world-type policy changes. Compute into your equation that America needs to sell abroad and is highly dependent on foreign investment. Much of the last boom was driven by cheap foreign credit and investment. Lashing out against everything that involves suspect cross-border transactions, might be good PR for posturing legislators conducting hearings. However, the suspicions stemming from insular thinking and the equation of suspicion with guilt, once translated into regulations has consequences. The gamut of such factors increase, through creating elevated risks, the costs of doing business in the US. The result will be a reduced volume of capital. The response to that leads to the need to offer higher premiums for what remains available. Therefore, count on a toxic dollar, less venture capital leading to reduced competitiveness. The conclusion: a “bute” of a case of self-induced strangulation. Just in case that you care to know: the writer, overcoming his economic patriotism, has considerably reduced his holdings in dollars.
 
3. Regardless of the original sin implanted in state-led economic policies, the shallow surface-based analysis of the crisis has restored government intervention to fashion status. Regardless of the fad-of-the-moment, attempts to replace the market with politically inspired rulings bring dangers. It is that it opens the door not only to inefficiency but also to an inadequacy that finds a constituency in the class that administers it. That will make corrections, because of the lobby power of those running such programs, difficult to implement. Furthermore, regardless of good intentions, the replacement of the market by planning bureaucracies not only results in inefficiency and corruption but also in a major threat to liberty. The control of the economy creates an instrument. Through it, those controlling the political process gain access to all aspects of life. As this scenario becomes imaginable, the major threat to freedom comes from the ones that are unimpressed by this possibility.
 
4. Who will challenge the concept that there is a right to the “pursuit of happiness”? However, what if the concept is used to support actors that pursue their happiness in ways that deprive some from what they could achieve in their unencumbered pursuit of their happiness? The issue is reminiscent of the one that was formulated when someone observed that freedom now could be used to abolish the future liberty.
 
5. Good government rules are not needed for cherubs that are guided by demigods. Much rather, good government is a contrivance. It is to work for individuals with blemishes that are under the governance of persons that are, being fallible, not paragons of virtue endowed by unusual amounts of wisdom.
 
6. The ripples of the current economic crisis – arguably caused by political interference (the Clintons) disrupting market driven processes – is exploited. It is used to advocate and implement old, tested and failed, policies with an equalitarian intent. The proven misuse of freedom is used in the economic realm to support arguments that are posited by the losers in free economic an intellectual exchange. Their proposed measures are designed to cater to envy. They do so in that they assure supporters of something they like to hear. Man-made forces had prevented their deserved rise above their less deserving but more conniving fellows.
 
7. Our ongoing crisis has validated lessons that should not need reaffirmation. One is that any freedom allotted beyond maximal security jail-rules will give the criminally inclined a chance to abuse freedom by violating laws, trusts and interests. The Madoffs are no proof that most of us are, at all times, dim-witted, and short-term-calculating predators. Nor should our renewed experience with fallibility be used to support the conclusion that those who staff state bureaucracies are any better/wiser than the crooks that have the contributed to our current predicament.
 
8. While “Kim the Lesser” improves and extends his long-range rocket mounted nuclear arsenal, the US, but also Russia and China, demonstrate a stiff upper lip in lieu of consistent policy. The idea behind the comportment, which does not fit the offense, is simple. A commensurate reaction might radicalize Kim. If provoked by the response to his provocations, he might resort to radical means. (Are fish in the water in danger of getting wetter?) Therefore, giving time a chance to let grass grow over troubles is the “policy”. The problem is that, in time, the arsenal will grow and that it will be deployed. Once this happens, even without aggravating Pyongyang, the weapons could be put to use by a regime inclined to invent causes. Here we should remember that, in the first place, there had been no rational need to develop the offensive technology now displayed.
 
9. “War is horrible, illegitimate and senseless”. Some of this is always true, other parts fit frequently. What does not hold water is an implication. It is a virus in the mind of those who think in slogans and like to chant them. What it amounts to is that, once attacked, defending ourselves is somehow a “wrong”.
 
10. In the traditionalist churches operated by relativists, in the empty pews a disturbing echo rises. Those absent search for something to believe in. Perhaps not surprisingly, what seems to “sell” is teaching made attractive to the extent that it is outlandish and dogmatic.
 
11. The support of some tenets that are related to Islamic fundamentalism might have, in the case of some contemporaries, and unintended attraction. It makes what secular movements have compromised, such anti-Semitism, fit to be discussed in proper society.
 
12. Polite silence in response to systematic rights-infractions is indulged in to avoid unpleasantness. It is wrapped in the hope that if the whistle is not blown loudly, ultimately the perpetrator will desist. Those implementing persecution as a policy tend to see the world as hostile. Even so, such “tolerant” non reaction fails to convince “Leaders” that they are not surrounded by enemies abroad whose internal representatives must be eliminated. Much rather, silence is taken as approval of the timid to liquidate the vermin in the cross hairs of repression. Through this process, patient hush does not induce moderation but encourages extremism. The same rule applies to other kinds of misbehavior. Let us get concrete: under-reaction to chronic saber rattling works according to the same mechanism.