The Forgotten Right of All Americans

We Americans are proud–and rightly so–of our success, our freedom, our innovation and of our form of government. We hold individual rights as inviolate and to be protected at all costs.

Yet, we seem to have forgotten one of our rights recently: The Right to FAIL.

Among all the clamor of the supposed market crisis, I keep seeing a common thread…the thread of people seeking to evade the responsibility of their actions (or lack thereof).

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are just the tip of the iceberg. With investment houses going sour and mega-insurance firms looking unstable, I’m left wondering: “Who hired these idiots?”

The Democrats are racing to every nearby soapbox to scream out their demands for more financial market regulations, more supposed oversight and tighter controls… all in the name of protecting investors. Protect them from what? Bad investments? Isn’t that the right and proper risk of investing– that you may lose EVERYTHING due to a bad choice or two? Those without the stomach for it should not get into volatile markets; they should go buy CDs and count their lucky stars.

Regulation is UNNECESSARY! Want regulation of the market? Here it is: BADLY RUN COMPANIES GO BANKRUPT and thus their incompetence is removed from the marketplace so no more investors will suffer their bad advice. What about the poor little investors who lost their money? Tough noogies! That’s the nature of a market: invest without proper research and oversight and risk losing everything.

Sure, we can all feel sympathy for the folks whose 401k managers made bad choices– but we should hold the managers accountable for bad choices or incompetence, not seek to evade the results. We should be CAREFUL when selecting financial advisors and look at experience, market knowledge… In short, we should take responsibility for our choices, investment and otherwise.

Americans have the right to succeed and prosper, but they also have the right to fail and go bankrupt if they make bad choices–and no political machine can stop the fallout, no matter how much they try. All the Democrats are seeking to do is to spread the pain to ALL of us– but that’s what we get for allowing leftist economic theory into our Congress.

Take responsbility for your investments (and those you hire to manage them for you) and take responsibility for who gets elected. Its NOT enough to say, “Well, I voted for ______, not this guy!”

Take responsibility for yourself–that’s only “change” we need.

Ron Paul: Half Hero, Half Ostrich

After watching yet another televised commentary by Ron Paul about the idiocy of the current bailouts and schemes to protect investors from bad decisions, I am yet again struck with the thought that Ron Paul is a hero for giving voice to sound domestic policy. But then, I remember the lack of effective foreign policy and I am left disappointed.

Ron Paul is often labeled a Libertarian–which may or may not be accurate. But, then again its appropriate for this commentary because I submit that Ron Paul suffers from the same affliction as many other Libertarians: the lack of a core, consistent and accurate philosophy. Despite the claims of many Libertarians, they do NOT hold a complete philosophy. “Political philosophy” is only one-fifth of a complete philosophy.

Complete philosophies consist of five parts:

1. Metaphysics — the nature of reality
2. Epistemology — the nature and validation of knowledge
3. Ethics — the nature of right and wrong (individual morality)
4. Politics — the nature of proper interpersonal ethics (government and culture)
5. Aesthetics — the nature of art

Anyway, back to Ron Paul… He gets his economics right the vast majority of the time. But he fails when it comes to foreign policy. My understanding of his foreign policy philosophy is that he wants to withdraw American troops from the entire world and somehow pretend that “if we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us”.

The cornerstone of my foreign policy is that America, as the freest country in the world, has the right, but NOT the obligation to invade any less free country for the purpose of making it more free.

This nonsense we have of holding diplomatic ties with authoritarian dictatorships is nonsense (Paul and I agree on this). For example, I believe in “one China” — but not the one chosen by Nixon. The Republic of China is legitimate, the “People’s Republic of China” is nothing but impotent little petty dictators who have been enabled and kept in power through the permission of the West. (IF you ask me how to solve this, eject the entire PRC mission in DC and invite Taiwan to take its place as the rightful representative government of ALL of China– Taiwan and the mainland.

Ron Paul thinks we should come home from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. The problem with this stance is that it ignores that if we do, we’ll create a giant and explosive power vacuum in the region– one that Iran is sure to exploit. The government of Iran is arguably the most dangerous to the United States. They sponsor terrorism and acts against Americans and the rest of the free world. (I’m still hoping that Israel will take action where the US will not in this area.)

I realize that I’m going all over the place with this entry, so I hope you’re keeping up.

My point is that Ron Paul has the potential of being one of the greatest statesmen in US history–if he’d pull his head out of the sand and help the US to LEAD the world to freedom.

The System Works

Funny how people are all over television moaning and screaming about the “failures of the American financial markets”. Um, what are these people talking about? They’re just flat wrong.

The very fact that investors are losing money and companies are going bankrupt is PROOF that the system WORKS. The Market does not reward bad decisions. Eventually, the “invisible hand” smacks down people who attempt to thwart the natural workings of the free marketplace.

All the calls for bailouts are just calls to be absolved of their responsibility for making bad decisions.

If those calls continue to be met, it will only hold off the inevitable market corrections for a little while– and make them worse and more painful in the future.

Good decisions = Profit

Bad decisions = Loss

How much more simple can it be?

Stop wishing to be “saved” from what you rightly deserve–either way. You made the choice, you will gain or lose according to the efficacy of those decisions.