US Postal Service Subsidizes Chinese Package Delivery

Edward Hudgins, Ph.D., Research Director of the Heartland Institute, has written a very interesting article on how the Universal Postal Union (UPU) agreement forces the US Postal Service to subsidize the delivery of small packages sent from China to American addresses.  The USPS lost about $75 million in 2014 due to it having to deliver small packages from China.  It costs less for a Chinese business to send a package thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean to most American addresses than it costs an American business to send a similar package 600 miles to an American address.  This is an unfair trade practice.  The Trump administration tried to get the UPU to change its archaic rules, but the US gets only one vote among 192 nations in the UPU.  The UPU basically shrugged the US off.  The Trump administration has responded with a termination of our membership in one year if the problem is not corrected.

Ed Hudgins -- Producers vs. Expropriators: America's Coming Civil War?

I like this essay by Edward Hudgins of The Atlas Society entitled Producers vs. Expropriators: America's Coming Civil War?  Please go and read it.

But, I also want to urge upon all of you the need to enlarge our argument with socialism even beyond the important Producers vs. Expropriators conflict.  Socialism does not recognize our right to be individuals who think for ourselves, choose our own values, and then act to live our lives in accordance with our own values and goals.  Socialists are not just expropriators of wealth and income, they are also dictators who force us to ignore our own minds and values and harness all of our actions to their dictated ideas, values, and goals.  There are many Americans of modest productivity, who may appear to be net beneficiaries of the expropriation of wealth and income, but who are very upset by the idea that someone else, such as a socialist elite, will force them to live their lives by values they have not chosen for themselves.  Many of the Tea Party protesters are people of modest productivity, but they simply want badly to have the right to manage their own lives according to their own values.  The guy who wants to work less and have lots of time for his family and for fishing is still an individual who often does not want Obama telling him he must buy health insurance acceptable to the government or send his daughter to a college the government finds acceptable for attendance by students with government student loans.

More broadly, the basic conflict is between individualist self-managers and brutal collectivist dictators, with most wealth producers on the individualist self-managers side, but many are also on the brutal collectivist dictators side.  The producers on the collectivist and value-imposing side are sometimes there due to guilt, sometimes to simply being prey to indoctrination, and sometimes because they see that as the way to protect the wealth against the socialists that they worked hard to build up.  Nonetheless, they have joined the enemy and we need to realize that some of our allies are not necessarily people who are highly productive of wealth and income.  They are simply self-managing individualists.

Postscript [15 April 2010, Southbury, CT]:  I first skimmed through Ed Hudgins essay when rushing to finish a ton of work including tax returns for business and personal purposes before heading to Connecticut to provide expert witness testimony in a court case.  I missed the fact that Ed has a short paragraph discussing some of the points I am making here.  Still, I believe these points need to be strongly emphasized.

Edward Hudgins: Paternalists Want Power and Bank on Envy

In an article called Banking on Envy, Edward Hudgins, of the Atlas Society, says that the defeat of ObamaCare has caused Obama to invoke envy to attack the banks.  He says envy is the chief weapon, and frequent motivation, of the paternalist.  Obama claimed that the banks were responsible for the current recession and that the government had had to bail them out because the banks had made risky loans in pursuit of profit and bonuses.  He failed to note that the government forced the banks to take the money and they rapidly paid it back with interest.  And, of course, he failed to note that the banks had been pushed hard by the government over a couple of decades to make more and more risky loans to home buyers so that home ownership would increase, especially among the poor and lower middle class.

Hudgins says,

With chutzpah pouring out of his every pore, Obama announced support for restrictions on what he defines as risky bank activities “that are central to the legislation that has passed the House under the leadership of Chairman Barney Frank, and that we’re working to pass in the Senate under the leadership of Chairman Chris Dodd.”  Here he named the two members of Congress who most of all laid the groundwork for the current economic crisis. Both worked for years to force banks to make risky home loans to individuals who couldn’t afford them and both took campaign funds from the government-chartered Fannie Mae, which was making money packaging and marketing those bad loans. They sold the crack, and now they want to be deputized as drug-busting police.

Obama argued that the banks get cheap money from the Federal Reserve and use this "privilege" to trade for profit.  His implication is that profit is evil.  Now it is true that the banks get cheap money and that they try to use it to make a profit, but the government set this system up itself.  Hudgins says that the Obama paternalist's tactics are revealed by his effort to gain more effective control of the already highly regulated banking industry.  He goes on a great rampage next against paternalists and their lust for power.

His proposed restrictions on banks will further constrain capital investment in the American economy and reduce so-called “risky” lending. These constraints will certainly slow economic growth. They will especially make it tough for entrepreneurs to create whole new industries that are by their nature risky ventures, for which they bear the costs of the risk, and by which they hope to make huge, well-deserved profits. But it really isn’t economic growth and prosperity that paternalists seek.

Obama is shameless to suggest that his government, which is overseeing the most irresponsible and wasteful spending spree with taxpayer money in American history, should be imposing discipline on private bank responsibility. But it’s not responsible, efficient, and honest government that paternalists seek.

Paternalists want power. They are obsessed by the need to control every aspect of our lives. That’s why Leftists reacted as they did to the Supreme Court’s ruling—released on the same day as Obama’s anti-bank press conference—that corporations have free speech rights to make their thoughts about candidates known during elections. Obama is vowing to find ways to stamp out these First Amendment freedoms. The freedom of others to criticize is a grave danger to control-freak paternalists.

One of the principal tactics that paternalists use to induce individuals to surrender their freedom is to stoke their envy, resentment, and hate against some scapegoat and to promise that they, the paternalists, are the only ones who can punish the villains. “Look, that one is richer than you! Let’s get ‘em!”

Envy, of course, is an essentially nihilistic sentiment that revels in tearing down. It is a form of social relativism that teaches that one’s worth or status is always in comparison to others. And the easiest way to raise one’s own pseudo-sense of worth and status is to tear down others, to judge one’s self as better off only if others are worse off. Envy is a path to individual and social destruction.

 It is so good to have company that shares my sense of outrage at the elitist paternalists using low envy to satisfy their lust for power while not caring what harm is done to free markets and the rights of the individual.

Hudgins - Postal Service Style Health Care

Ed Hudgins, Director of Advocacy at the Atlas Society, has written an excellent commentary on Obama's denial that his health care plan will create a government-only health care industry. Obama said that just as Fed Ex and UPS manage to compete with the U.S. Postal Service, so will private insurers compete with the government insurance "option." Obama ran on to mention that it is the USPS that has problems. Hudgins points out that this should worry us. Do we really want a health care industry run as badly as the U.S. postal service? He also notes that the postal service did not have a monopoly on first-class mail until 1845 and that private companies could pick up mail at the post office for subscribers and deliver it to their homes and businesses until 1872. Similarly, it is likely that the government will move over time to restrict competition to their health insurance.

Edward Hudgins: Uncharitable Attack on Charity

Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society wrote an interesting article on a group called the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy (NCRP) which is the kind of organization Ellsworth Toohey would have encouraged. While in general Ayn Rand's novels are dramatizations of the conflicts between an individualistic, rational, life-centered morality and philosophy and collectivist, irrational, and anti-life moralities, the real world really does have evil-doers who are perfectly capable of replicating a stark dramatization of evil and irrationality from an Ayn Rand novel.

This charitable watchdog group is headed up by a former ACORN organizer. This group issued a report saying

Philanthropy at its Best must serve the public good by contributing to strong, participatory democracy that engages all communities.

It adds that a well-managed charity must:

Provide at least 50 percent of its grant dollars to benefit low-income communities, communities of color and other marginal groups…
Provide at least 25 percent of its dollars for advocacy, organizing and civic engagement to promote equality, opportunity and justice in our society.

Ed Hudgins points out that this is nonsense, which it most certainly is. Charity at its best serves the purposes of the voluntary contributor and does so in a manner which does not use force to impede others in living their lives. Period. There is nothing wrong with giving to a charity that supports the Classical Music station of WBJC in Baltimore even though few people living in the often rich poverty of today in America choose to listen to it. In fact, doing so may help to preserve a rich heritage in intelligent music and be a very decent thing to do. Or, one might choose to give money to The Atlas Society, which directs its programs and education efforts at everyone about equally. There is no reason why they should target their message to groups defined by race or income. And, of course, as Ed points out, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for epilepsy should probably give as much of its money as possible to medical researchers without regard to the 50% and 25% rules produced by NCRP.

Ed also quotes Xavier Becerra (CA Democrat) as saying

“Taxpayers have rewarded [foundations] for being there for America.” But, he added: “At the same time, those of us at Congress have an obligation as the representatives of the people to make sure that their money—taxpayer money—is being well invested.”

Ah....so Congress has the right to redirect the money that individuals give to charities to see to it that Congress believes the money is being well-used. In fact, he twists the individual into being a taxpayer, uses that to say the money given to charity is taxpayer money, and then claims the usual power to spend taxpayer money that he would have for government revenue from taxes. One would think anyone would see through this extremely faulty argument, but surprisingly many do not.

Ed also noted that there was a move afoot in the Obama despotism to tax the charity gifts of the so-called wealthy, before many howls forced them to back down. Clearly they wanted to remove capable and wealthy people from the boards of charitable organizations and keep them from having a role in directing the purpose of those organizations. This would also make charities more dependent upon government grants, which would let the government re-direct their purposes.

It is clear that the so-called Progressives want total government control over charity in America and want it used for their agenda only. Of course, if you recognize that the Progressives have an agenda of mixed fascist and communist goals, control of all charity is readily recognized as being essential for the purposes of their total control of the American people. Individual choices even in charitable giving will not be allowed. This is the Totalitarian Dream, that Obama oulined in his acceptance speech before the Democrat Convention in Denver, CO.

Hudgins - Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism

I am not pulling my punches in my evaluation of Obama and the Democrat Congress. I believe that they are taking the United States down an insanely destructive path. I would like to point out a very good article taking a similar stance by Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society. It is called "Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism."

I have heard and seen several references lately in which generally freedom-loving commentators are claiming that fascism is not socialism because socialism takes over the ownership of the means of production and other property. I think this is wrong. Socialism takes over control, sometimes ownership, of the means of production and of property. The Marxist forms of socialism, such as communism, take ownership, while fascism leaves nominal ownership in the hands of individuals or groups, but applies incentives, pressures, and force as desired to make those individuals or groups do the government's bidding. Both Marxism and fascism offer the people status as dependents by bribing them with health care and other state-provided or mandated benefits. It is the last coupled with the control of property and business that makes both fascism and Marxism socialism.

Mussolini and Hitler were of the socialist mindset. After being drummed out of the Italian Socialist Party for favoring Italy's participation in WWI, Mussolini started the Fascist Party with much of his viewpoint already set by his long allegience to the Socialist Party. Hitler gave his party the name National Socialist Party and even admired Joe Stalin, despite fighting the communists for power in Germany.

The United States has long been a mixed economy. The freedom of the individual to offer his services in employment, to hire others, to produce, to trade, to transport, and to control his property has long been interfered with by our governments. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson began controlling private property and business in heavy-handed ways long ago. The aspect of socialism in which the government heavily began bribing the people into dependency began with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was tinged with fascism and Woodrow Wilson was very substantially fascist. Woodrow even had the fasces applied to the dime in 1916 and was an admirer of Mussolini.

Many claimed failures in the economy have come about due to government intervention.
The recession under Hoover, which Roosevelt turned into the Great Depression is one such example. Politicians and governments of the modern era love socialism as a means to control and power. For most, it is irresistible. So, the Federal, state, and local governments of the United States have all heavily applied socialism, sometimes in the form of government ownership of property (public schools, roads, parks, national forests, mass transit) and sometimes by the control of property and businesses through mandates, subsidies, tax deductions, tax credits, safety and pollution regulations, zoning, licensing, tariffs, banking regulations, accounting requirements, and much more. These controls can be gauged by the very high rate of expansion of the Federal Register and other government publications of regulations and contracts.

The public ownership of property is very considerable (consider the western states with huge portions, often the majority of the land, owned by the federal government, see my entry of 8 November 2008). But, the principle means used by government in the United States to control the lives of the people has clearly become the fascist model, with a number of features adopted more to the American character, primarily as misleading deceptions. It is entirely reasonable to call this socialism American Fascism. The core of Obama's goal is to turn the United States into a subordinate cog in an international fascist socialist regime. Of course, he avoids using the honest terms fascism and socialism like the plague, which is exactly what they are.