Econ Lesson from the South Seas

Today’s post is a combination book review and economics lesson. I just finished reading The Ambassador’s Son, by Homer Hickam. Hickam is the author of Rocket Boys, which became the movie October Sky, about a boy who grew up to be a rocket scientist, which was all I had known him for. The Ambassador’s Son is the second in a series, coming after The Keeper’s Son, following main character Josh Thurlow and his friends from home, off the coast of North Carolina.

In this story, Josh Thurlow is a Coast Guard Captain stationed in the Solomon Islands during World War II. The timeline covers a couple of weeks shortly after the well-documented event of John F. Kennedy losing his PT boat, which was run over by a Japanese destroyer. When we meet him, Kennedy is waiting for court martial, frustrated and disillusioned with leadership who left him and his men without rescue but are fully ready to place blame.

Josh gets the assignment to hunt for a man who has disappeared and may have deserted. Thurlow has a Catalina, an amphibious plane, but he needs a ship to help with the mission. The injured and downtrodden Kennedy is the only option. And the ragtag crew ends up swiping a PT boat, since they can’t get one requisitioned or loaned to them. They alter it, get rid of the torpedo tubes, making it faster, and load it up with guns, turning it into a makeshift gunboat.

So, Kennedy is one of the main characters. Hickam adds a historical note at the end, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that the future president’s story following the night of the PT-109 was previously unknown: “I am proud to reveal here for the first time the adventure that saw him north to Noa-Noa. I suspect it was very nearly the last time John F. Kennedy was truly a happy man.”

JFK is not the only historic person in the book. There’s a poker game, during the quest to obtain a boat, in which Kennedy plays against author James Michener (who gets his book ideas, offhandedly, from one of Thurlow’s crewmen), and Richard Nixon, called Nick, a wheeler-dealer requisitions officer of the Sergeant Bilko type.

Normally this sort of coincidence would doom a book, but Hickam gets away with it, and somehow makes us willing to just go with it to see what happens.

Josh gets left on an island to interrogate the man who claims the possible deserter has run off with his wife. The Japanese control parts of the island, and an island girl appears to help rescue Josh. Many of the story’s surprises relate to this girl, and I don’t want to spoil. But her sister, appearing on another island, at a plantation where Kennedy is recovering from a head injury, says,

“My sister is very beautiful and knows how to kill a man, if she has to.” Kennedy thought that was a comment one would not hear too often in Massachusetts regarding one’s sister (p. 283).

Eventually Josh is led to meet a chief named Joe Gimmee—who is the father of the girls, and a big power on the islands. Joe Gimmee is the source of our economics lessons. When they finally meet, Joe Gimmee asks Josh some puzzling questions. (I’m quoting a few pages from the novel, which makes this post long, but it’s easy reading):

How do you get your treasure?”

“What do you mean? Josh asked, taking his cap off and placing it on the blanket beside him.

“Your boat, the food you eat, the clothes you wear. How do you get those things?”

Josh scratched his head. “Well, it’s all government issue.”

“Explain government issue, please.”

“That means the government gave it to me.”

“Did you pray for it first?”

Josh stared at the old man, trying to figure him out. But then he remembered that Joe Gimmee was Penelope’s father, and the likelihood of figuring anyone out in that particular family was probably going to be remote. “Praying ain’t required, Joe,” Josh finally answered. “Paperwork, that’s the ticket if you want the government to issue you anything.”

“Do you think I could get this paperwork?” he asked.

“I suppose you could, but it wouldn’t do you any good. You have to be authorized to make a requisition from the government.”

“How do I get authorized?”

“Well, you’d have to be in one of the armed services of the United States.”

“May I join one of those services?”

Josh rubbed the old polar bear scar on his chin. “I doubt it. With all due respect, you’ve got a few too many years on you.”

“How about Ogomo? He is young and healthy.”

Josh shrugged. “I don’t think we’re recruiting Solomon Islanders just yet.”

“He’s Australian. His mother was a white woman who entered my life for a brief time.”

“Sorry, Joe. It don’t matter. He can’t join.”

Joe Gimmee chuckled, then looked slyly at Josh. “I knew you would not allow him, for he might discover the great secret if he did. For many years, the people of the Solomons have watched the English received many treasures, and we have asked them again and again how this occurs. They always lie. For instance, when I asked Minister Clarence where his tins of food and his metal cooking pots and his Bibles came from, he said he prayed and God provided. But I knew that was false. The people of the Solomons have prayed for many years, but the gods have never provided anything for us, save the hot sun and rain. Or perhaps those things that were meant for us were intercepted by the English. I stole a cooking pot from Minister Clarence, just to see if that was true. I knew the gods had meant for me to have it as soon as one of my wives used it for cooking.”

“That’s crazy talk, Joe,” Josh said.

“Is it? I traveled to Australis to see for myself. I took a job on the docks moving cargo here and there. Sometimes, it was stacked in warehouses. Other times, on trucks or ships. It went here, it went there. I asked the English blokes and Aussie mates where did all these things come from, and how do you know where it goes, and who gets it? They showed me paper, or simply waved their arms and talked very fast. Once, a crate was dropped and from it spilled many very fine dishes and cups, all with wonderful designs on them. I asked those blokes how these dishes and cups were made, and how the designs were put on them that could not be rubbed off no matter how hard I tried. But they could not tell me. I knew then that the gods must have made these dishes and cups. How do I know for certain? Because the men who are given them do not know how they are made. For instance, do you know how the uniform you wear is made? How did it get that color and that tight, perfect weave, impossible for even the most talented woman to sew? Tell me exactly, please.”

Josh looked at Joe Gimmee and considered telling him a lie, but the old man’s eyes, deep and luminous and intelligent, were unsettling. He was certain that he’d be caught in any fib he tried. “Joe, I don’t know much about cloth,” he confessed. “There are sewing machines, but I’m not sure how they work. That don’t mean the gods made my uniform.”

Joe Gimmee laughed good-naturedly. “White people are all excellent liars. But I don’t blame you. If I knew the great secret, I would keep it to myself, too. Yet when I was in Australia, I began to divine the truth, and then one day it came to me. First, special places must be constructed to receive treasure. The proper ceremonies must be performed. All this is done, of course, to please the gods. Then, and only then, will the treasure be delivered.” Joe Gimmee leaned forward and inspected Josh’s expression. “I am very close to the great secret, aren’t I?”

“Joe, you’re not even in the ballpark,” Josh said, shaking his head. “You want cooking pots, or even a truck? Get yourself some money and you can buy anything you want. That’s all it takes.”

“How do I get money?”

“For money, you have to work.”

“I wondered when you would mention money and work in the same breath. The English always got to that, eventually. It was their way of making the Solomon Islanders do their bidding. But you have already admitted you get your treasure without money or work.”

“Joe, I work for the federal government, don’t you see? It’s like this big man gives me stuff, and working ain’t always required.” Josh thought about what he’d said, then added, “Forget that last part.”

“How can I forget it when you nearly told me the truth? By the way, I saw many times treasure delivered to the plantations without ever seeing any money handed over.”

“They’d likely paid in advance,” Josh muttered. He was glad he’d taken his cap off, though he was ready to throw it across the hut. Joe Gimmee had him all tied up in knots (pp. 278-280).

Joe Gimmee was part of a cargo cult, which was a real thing. They believed the gods would bring them goods (cargo), if they just did the right things to please the gods. So Joe Gimmee creates an airstrip by cutting down a coconut palm plantation on the island of Noa-Noa, sets the date and time for the ceremony, has his people all wear some tiny bit of US military gear they have scavenged, put up a homemade US flag (sort of), and look up in the sky.

It turns out a plane arrives. It is Nick (Richard Nixon), who has arranged to be there to trade whatever the islanders have made for various goods. He sells the souvenirs to the servicemen back on the island of Melagi.

After the exchange—which to Joe Gimmee looks like the gods did exactly what he prayed for—the chief asks for economics truth from Nixon, and gets a pretty good answer:

“It was good to do business with you, Joe,” Nixon said.

Joe replied “When I heard of you, I knew you were especially loved by the gods.”

“Oh, yes, indeed. They love me like a son.”

“I did as you asked,” Joe said. “I brought the people together with all the things they make.”

“Yes. Well, thank you.”

“And now I would ask you to do something for me.”

“Anything, Joe. You just name it.”

“You brought us treasure from the gods because we built this airfield. But others of my people have built airfields and nothing has come. And they have built docks with the same result. And they have built warehouses, yet they were not filled. What is the great secret? What do you do to get your treasure? Tell me, so that we may have treasure, too.”

Nixon gave it all a good think, then wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief produced from his hip pocket. “I think I see where you’re coming from, Joe. You just want a piece of the pie. Can’t blame you for that. If I were in your situation, here’s what I’d do. First thing, I’d study up. Education, that’s the ticket. Science, the arts, and economics. Lots on economics, Joe, you savvy? Then, I guess the next step would be to get control of your own affairs. Can’t do much when somebody else is running the show, now can you? My own country used to be owned and operated by the English, too, but we finally wised up and threw them out. Didn’t take us long after that before we were fat and happy. Lots of education and kick out the Johnny Bulls. That’s my advice.”

“Splendid!” Joe exclaimed. Then he faltered. “But how do we do that?”

Nixon gave it some more thought. “Education’s easy enough,” he concluded, patting his damp brow with his handkerchief. “To teach yourself, just start reading every book you can get your hands on. For the kids, start setting up schools, but make sure you hire the teachers and have them teach the importance of being free. Then you ought to form a political party and get ready to declare the Solomon Islands independent as soon as this war’s over.”

“Nick!” Kennedy blanched. “You’re talking about a revolution!”

Nixon shrugged. “Well, we did it back in 1776. Why can’t Joe and his folks?”

Joe grinned. “I should have known the great secret would be complex, but I promise to follow your advice” (pp. 314-315).

Joe Gimmee seems to miss the obvious: you make something, or offer a service, someone else wants and trade it for something you want. A lot else comes into it—figuring out what you can do that people value, figuring out supply and demand, getting resources, using time efficiently.

But wealth doesn’t just come down from the sky—or from the government. As we say at the Spherical Model,

Wealth is not some mystical entity endowed by either government or birthright. Nor is it something that the haves enjoy by depriving the have nots of their fair share. Wealth, simply, represents the accumulation of the results of labor.

What struck me as humorous is that economics lessons often use simple societies, like Robinson Crusoe’s island, to teach the basics. (See here, and here.) But in this story the islander hasn’t yet grasped the basics.

Maybe we could extrapolate, and notice that there are people in our own society that think about wealth in superstitious rather than truthful terms. Education—that’s the ticket. Lots of economics. And teachers that them the importance of being free. If it will work on an island, maybe it will work in America.

Worse than We Imagined, Part II

Sometimes it’s prudent to fact-check the fact checkers.

This Snopes headline came to my attention:

Reading, Writing, and RuPaul

Reports of revised curriculum standards for Washington state led to false rumors claiming that schools there will be teaching "transgenderism" to Kindergarteners.

That relates to what I wrote in my last post, “Worse than We Imagined.” So I began to read, wondering if I had missed something and would need to write a retraction.

But Snopes is…not fully accurate.

They claim that the Daily Caller article on Washington State Board of Education changes to standards to include teaching transgenderism to kindergarteners is “mostly false.”

Image from here

The original Daily Caller article actually begins with this: 

By fall 2017 Washington state public schools will begin teaching gender expression to kindergarteners under newly-approved health education learning standards that designate sexual health a “core idea” of public K-12 education.

Here is what Snopes says is actually true:

Washington State has released updated curriculum guidelines in 2016 that include directives regarding gender and gender expression.

So, Snopes agrees with the Daily Caller so far.

What they don’t seem to like is the conclusion drawn by the Daily Caller opinion piece, that teaching “gender expression” to kindergarteners can easily be construed to mean teaching “transgenderism” to kindergarteners. Snopes says the guidelines don’t actually use the word “transgender” except in the glossary section.

But why would they include transgenderism in the glossary (on page 53 of the .pdf file) of their standards if they did not assume it would come up? The word itself may or may not be used in kindergarten. The state standards writers seem less concerned about the teaching of the word transgenderism than they are about the teaching of the various ways gender can be expressed— which, of course, to them, must include transgenderism, else why change the standards?

The Daily Caller article included the link to the .pdf file (which I also linked in Monday's post and above), and Snopes shows page 29, which is at issue—below.

Snopes uses this to show how overblown the Daily Caller claims are. But I look at the chart and see that the Daily Caller point of view is totally justified.

One point the Snopes piece makes is that the standards are not curriculum; curriculum and lesson plans decisions are made at the local school board level. But, to fact-check Snopes, that’s not entirely accurate.

It has been a long time since I worked as a curriculum writer. I worked in California, writing hi-low textbooks; that is, high interest level (middle school to high school) but low reading level (around second grade). I didn’t write for kindergarten, or even for elementary school. But I think some practices translate across grades.

I wrote mostly government and civics related books and workbooks. But one big project was a biology text (which I did not complete at that job). A publisher looks at who is most likely to buy. The biggest markets then, and probably still, were California and Texas. As a writer I referred to the California and Texas standards; they were different in significant ways. For a biology text, human reproduction had to be handled very differently for the two markets. A publisher might decide to aim for a California market or a Texas market, or might do separate versions, with different chapters for materials for which the standards were disparate.

It was unlikely that a publisher would do a special version of a text just to fit Washington State standards, or Utah standards, or Mississippi standards. The other states would look at what was available and choose from among the variety of available materials—which had been aimed mainly at the California or Texas markets. On the topic of transgenderism, Washington State would probably choose materials aimed at the California market.

Smaller niche marketers, often coming from interest groups, might provide supplemental materials on certain subject matters, and try to sell those to individual states or school districts. (We’ll talk about one of these below.)

In Texas the SBOE does not write curriculum; it reads it and deems it acceptable or not. Then local school districts can adopt what they choose. Local school board members, who are unpaid for their school board work and probably make a living elsewhere, are unlikely to read every text. They might have committees set up to do that. The committees might include community members and parents—or, more likely, they include only teachers and administrators. (I have known parents who volunteered for this work in Texas, because Texans are proactive that way.)

Parents who disapprove typically get involved after they see the chosen materials and then must work to get something inappropriate removed from their schools by going through a long and challenging process.

So, when the Daily Caller says that the standards changes, which clearly include talking about “gender expression” to kindergarteners, might be a way of teaching the LGBTQ agenda on transgenderism, that isn’t alarmism. It isn’t making things up. That is likely to happen across the state—unless parents become aware and speak loudly their disapproval.

The Daily Caller article was originally written in June 2016, shortly after the standards changes were announced and approved. The hope is to get enough attention so that parents can prevent implementation of things they do not want their children to be taught, so those materials will not be forced on them by fall 2017, which is now upon us.

By the way, who might be one of the special interest groups offering materials they hope the schools will teach? Planned Parenthood might be one. In my last post I mentioned obscene materials they were trying to force on teens.

Two days ago I came across a story about Planned Parenthood’s new guidelines for talking to

Image from here

preschoolers about sex. These include, "Boy, girl, man, and woman are words that describe gender identity, and some people with the gender identities “boy” or “man” have vulvas, and some with the gender identity “girl” or “woman” have penises/testicles. Your genitals don’t make you a boy or a girl.”

This differs from their previous guidelines (which also include vocabulary not normally used by preschoolers): "I’m a woman—a girl who is all grown up—so I have a vulva instead of a penis. And you’re a boy, so you have a penis instead of a vulva."

Body parts don’t tell you anything anymore, they say. Because of new science? Of course not. Because they’re pushing an agenda. And they’re aiming it at our children. We can also assume they’re using taxpayer dollars to produce the indoctrination.

Will this new Planned Parenthood preschool material make its way into elementary schools in Washington State? I have no idea. But they meet the new state standards.

So, until the Washington State standards are changed back to something closer to sane reality, assume the standards changes likely means that confusing, biology-denying lies, along with immoral values, are going to be foisted upon your children—unless you stand up and refuse to let that happen to your children.

Worse than We Imagined

I have a good imagination. But imagining the ugly, savage, creepy, disgusting—I don’t spend a lot of time doing that.

So I didn’t imagine that things would get so bad so soon.

Washington SBOE seal
image found here

Let me share the easier bad news first. This is from schools in Washington State, where we lived when my kids started school. The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) has put out a new set of Health and Physical Education Standards. They begin their 126-page document with this reassurance:

The 2016 Health and Physical Education K-12 Learning Standards were developed collaboratively with teachers, administrators, subject matter experts, state and national association, and stakeholders in health and physical education. Teams of Washington state health and physical education teachers started working on drafts in September 2014 with the aim to develop the most comprehensive, relevant, medically-accurate, and inclusive set of health and physical education learning standards for our state.

That is to reassure you parents, who were NOT consulted and were excluded from the process, don’t worry; experts are in charge.

Here’s what the experts are planning for Washington children:

·         Beginning in Kindergarten, students will be taught about the many ways to express gender.  Gender expression education will include information about the manifestations of traits that are typically associated with one gender. Crossdressing is one form of gender expression.

·         Third graders will be introduced to the concept of gender identity.  These children will be taught that they can choose their own gender.

·         Fourth graders will be expected to “define sexual orientation,” which refers to whether a person identifies as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual; they’ll also be taught about HIV prevention.  Children in fourth grade will be told that they can choose their sexual orientation.

·         Fourth and fifth graders will learn about the relativity of gender roles and why such roles are social constructs that are not inherent to who we are as male or female human beings.

·         Seventh graders will be expected to “distinguish between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”

·         High school students will critically “evaluate how culture, media, society, and other people influence our perceptions of gender roles, sexuality, relationships, and sexual orientation.”

In case you, as a parent, are confused about terms, they provide a glossary. [The definitions below were reported by The Daily Caller, but the link to the glossary was no longer available.]

Gender: “A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex.”

Gender expression: “The way someone outwardly expresses their gender.”

Gender identity: “Someone’s inner sense of their gender.”

So, kindergarteners will be told they don’t know what “boys” and “girls” are, that it’s up in the air, and they ought to go ahead and try out being something they are not, or invent something that is neither boy nor girl and be that.

And fourth graders, who are still in the stage where the opposite sex has cooties, are being told that they might be homosexual if they do not feel attracted to the opposite sex.

Parents are, of course, outraged. Back when we had children in Washington schools, I met personally with the health teacher to go over the curriculum and verify that it met my standards, and that she shared my values. I could have opted out if I had not felt comfortable.

Parents worry that is no longer the case; the LGBTQ agenda is being incorporated fully into the entire health education curriculum. So it’s not a matter of sending a child to the library during the teaching of a particular lesson. It will be multiple days, in multiple ways, over multiple years from K-12.

School board member John Torre claimed parents will be able to opt out, “including the sexual orientation and gender identity lessons.” But Torre also told the Washington Times, the proposed curriculum changes (put out in March, approved in May) have nothing to do with the previous week’s vote to allow boys who identity as girls to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice. That’s just an unrelated coincidence.

Andrea Lafferty, president of Traditional Values Coalition, one of several opponent groups, said, “They are not being forthright with the information. They are not telling people the truth.  They are bullying parents. They are intimidating and they are threatening.”

Meanwhile Torre admits that he cannot provide either the science behind the curriculum changes, or examples of lessons; those things have not been written yet.

I might remind you that schools originally took on the role of informing children about sex for the purported purpose of preventing out-of-wedlock births. And I’ll repeat one of the Spherical Model maxims:

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

There’s another, related piece of news that goes beyond what I could imagine. It’s about Planned Parenthood, that bastion of savagery that exists because of taxpayer dollars. I am going to have to quote from an article, because I could not make this up, and I fail to be able to put it in my own words:

Pro-life advocacy group Live Action released a second investigative video on July 15 showing what Planned Parenthood “counselors” teach minors in the name of “sex-ed”: sexual bondage and sadomasochism, and steering them to sex stores to “get educated.” In the latest video, a Colorado counselor told the Live Action investigator (posing as a minor) that “sexual exploration is normal”—and went so far as to suggest defecating and urinating on men as an option. Really. Only conservative media found the film worth reporting….

According to the counselor, “sexual exploration” is “normal” and “can be really fun.” For ideas to imitate, she referenced 50 Shades of Grey as well as porn. She even offered some creative techniques of her own: “There are so many different fetishes out there,” she stressed. “Like, some guys like for women to urinate on them” or “pooping.”…

During a “Hannity” interview on July 15, [Live Action President Lila] Rose, elaborated on Planned Parenthood: “Their interest is not protecting these girls. Their interest is abortion and in pushing a sexual ideology—a sexology—that's very destructive and dangerous on our teenagers.”

Obamacare provided this particular Planned Parenthood with additional funding for educating teens. That means in schools. Rose encouraged parents to contact their principles and school superintendents to find out what their school’s relationship was with Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood Houston
image from here

That is a good first step wherever you are in the country. We think our schools are somewhat safe from such indoctrination here in Texas, because we are vigilant. And yet the huge Houston Planned Parenthood office is guilty of selling baby parts (another abomination I couldn’t have imagined until proof was placed before us), but they were temporarily successful in getting the reporters prosecuted, rather than the actual perpetrators. The reporters were eventually exonerated, but no real justice has been done yet.

I’ll say one more time, homeschooling is a lifestyle choice worth looking into. If there is any way you can do it, your family will benefit—both educationally and socially. If you are in an area where schools are already imposing this savage, anti-family doctrine, you must find a way out now.

Some More Political Philosophy

I was listening, last night, to the latest Uncommon Knowledge interview, with Sir Roger Scruton of Great Britain. He specializes in political philosophy, which is what we do here at the Spherical Model.

Sir Roger Scruton
photo from Uncommon Knowledge

Host Peter Robinson describes his way of thinking like this:

I take it that you decided that you intended to work in the tradition of Aristotle, philosophy as it bears on ordinary political life. Is that correct?

And Sir Roger Scruton answers,

Well, yes. I've always thought that philosophy has ordinary life as its subject matter. That's what it's about. But it's also a reflection on ordinary life and its meaning.

Philosophy in those terms, instead of, “I wonder if I can prove whether this tree really exists,” seems more likely to be fruitful.

He particularly got my attention when he was talking about former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:

Sir Roger Scruton: She came into our lives as a representative of our country at a time when the country looked particularly enfeebled by the trade unions, by the whole labor party attempt to rope society into a communal prison run by the state. All that was wonderful. We felt, we don't actually have to go along with all that crap. We can do our own thing. And we can revert to our natural condition as rebellious, eccentric Englishmen. But she felt that she had to embellish it with a complete doctrine, which she borrowed from the Institute of Economic Affairs, and about the need for market solutions to every social problem. Now, I'm all in favor of market solutions where they apply, but not every social problem does have a market solution. There is a need for the maintenance of traditions in education and in culture and in the law, which are not traditions of free enterprise.

They continue this conversation:

Peter Robinson: Again, [Scruton’s book] How to Be a Conservative. "Pressed for arguments," I'm quoting you, "Mrs. Thatcher leaned too readily on market economics, and ignored the deeper roots of conservatism in the theory and practice of civil society ... " You've just said this, but I want to tee it up again. " ... family, civil association, the Christian religion and the common law were all integrated into her ideal of freedom of the law. The pity was that she had no philosophy with which to articulate that idea." She felt it. She knew it. But she had not thought it through in a way that permitted her to articulate it. Here's Mrs. Thatcher.

Now, if I may go a step backward, and I am doing something very dangerous, because my knowledge of this history is tenuous. Yours will be deep. Winston Churchill had the capacity to articulate this deeper conservatism. Throughout the war he's talking about love of native land. He uses the phrase ... He actually uses the phrase, which would today have the man thrown in jail. He uses the phrase, "Christian civilization." Yet, in the 1945 election, in the face of the socialists, because he lacked a vocabulary to talk about free markets, he was naked before Attlee and this socialist impulse.

So what I'm getting at is, it almost seems to me as though there's a kind of ideological teeter totter. Conservatives in Britain either get to talk about free markets, or they get to talk Churchill, McMillan, Eden to the extent that he talked about anything. Heath later on. Or they get to try to talk about cultural conservatism. Somehow, the two don't seem to go together. Is there some reason for that, or is it mere happenstance?

Sir Roger Scruton: That's a very insightful observation. I think since Edmund Burke, we've had this tension between the adoption of the free market as the instrument of economic organization, the primary way in which a society should create and exchange goods, and the sense that some things should be withheld from the market, and that those things are just as important but much more difficult to defend.

Of course, Burke was talking about those things which should be withheld from the market: love, family and so on. All societies have recognized from the beginning of history that a market in sexual relations is the end of all social coherence. It's always very hard to say why. That's just one example. All the things that matter to us, as soon as we recognize how much must they matter, we want to withdraw them from the whole business of exchange and proliferation and, as it were, have them to ourselves. It's that aspect of humanity which is so difficult to articulate. But as you rightly say, Churchill did articulate it. And does it so much easier when it's under threat.

Hmm. So, we have free-market conservatism, and we have social conservatism. And we should mention that this is within the frame of thought that the people are choosing how they will be governed—which is what we call classical liberalism, but since the term liberal has been hijacked to mean its opposite, we mean freedom of limited government, as guaranteed in the US Constitution.

So there’s a political sphere, an economic sphere, and a social sphere. To be conservative, then, is to reach for political freedom, economic prosperity, and social civilization. The opposites, whatever words they use today—liberal, socialist, progressive—reach for political control over people, or tyranny: economic control over people, or poverty; and social decadence, or savagery.

The Spherical Model is a way of saying that these three spheres of conservatism interrelate. To be an economic conservative only is to be incomplete. To be a social conservative only is to be incomplete. To expect freedom without a free economy and a self-governing people is an impossibility.

Later in the conversation, they were talking about cultural issues, particularly concerning sex, marriage, and family:

Sir Roger Scruton: We all of us fall away from the standards that are required in this area. That is undoubtedly the case, because this is the biggest area of temptation. But it is also the biggest area in which examples are needed, and in which a culture of resistance is needed. That culture of resistance was absolutely vital to the protection of the working class family, and especially of children who need a father at home and have lost that protection.

It is undeniable that it's liberal propaganda which has made it almost impossible to say those things. It's not possible to say the things that are needed in this area, unless you're Charles Murray and don't care what's said about you anyway.

Peter Robinson: Or Sir Roger Scruton.

Sir Roger Scruton: Yeah.

Peter Robinson: That makes two of you.

Sir Roger Scruton: Yeah. Exactly. The point is, it's an area in which the truth has been made unsayable by the liberal censorship.

When pressed, he said that liberal censorship is a main reason Donald Trump was elected:

Sir Roger Scruton: People have been living under a regime of liberal censorship, which makes it very hard to say things without being accused of faults like racism, xenophobia. You yourself mentioned this, which nobody wants to be accused of, but which are very easy to—  These are accusations, which are very easy to make, because there's no criteria on the basis of which to make them, other than the feelings involved.

We do, as individuals, have non-mainstream-media outlets. Like this blog. I can say here what Charles Murray and Sir Roger Scruton say, but I am only safe from the accusations while I am obscure. Even so, the accusations sometimes come. I will nevertheless keep speaking truth as clearly as I can, because I love truth.

I just want to add one more of his comments—this one about immigration issues, particularly illegal immigration. He has a way of making the issue clear:

Sir Roger Scruton: You have a house, which you share with your wife and children, assuming you have them. You do recognize the right to keep out of that house people whom you've not invited in. Don't you?

Peter Robinson: I do.

Sir Roger Scruton: Having invited people in who start smashing things up, you recognize a right to exclude them?

Peter Robinson: I do.

Sir Roger Scruton: Yeah. Just multiply that by a few hundred thousand, and you'll recognize that people taken as a whole have that right. That is another part of democracy, that we live in a place. We have the right to exclude from that place those whom we think are not going to fit into it or to whom we don't want to extend a welcome. If we didn't have that right, we wouldn't feel secure in occupying the place that we claim as ours.

Political philosophy has the means to explore the ideas, and find the truths—aside from the push and pull of political waves. While we still have to function in a political world, at least we can have the depth of understanding that explains what it is we conservatives want to conserve.

War Counsel

I’m going to let Prager University do most of the teaching today. I watch their videos frequently—various ones on different days. But recently I happened upon a number of these, near enough together that I caught some connections. We could maybe call them the war collection.

Here’s a basic principle about the wars our nation participates in: We should be cautious and careful beforehand, and know for certain going to war is something we must do, to protect our sovereignty and civilization, or that of one of our allies asking for rescue. Once we’ve made the decision, the debate is over; we must never go back on that decision, because that wastes lives and destroys our honor.

We’ve had too much experience in the past several decades of going in with mostly agreement, and then giving in to ill-timed anti-war sentiment.

I could place blame at this point. Every time we have severe disapproval of our military actions while our soldiers are yet in the field, that is what Democrats do, and the mainstream media—but I repeat myself. They do it so thoroughly that Republicans, even those who were there to remember the truth, start giving in and saying, “Yeah, but…” There have been a number of unwise military actions taken by Democrats as well, but Republicans don’t try to thwart the military while they’re underway. I don’t know why this should be partisan, but history shows that it has been.

What we need is a reminder of what has really happened, especially where history has been rewritten. We can learn from truth, but we never seem to learn from the rewrites.

We’ll go through these war videos in chronological order, starting with the Korean War. Then comes the Vietnam War. And then the War in Iraq, which also covers, of necessity, the Gulf War.

The Korean War isn’t technically over; we have been at stalemate for half a century. But the separation of north from south that we finally came to saved—and helped thrive—the people in half of Korea. Enough time has passed that we just need this reminder.

Why Did America Fight the Korean War?              

A similar north/south separation could have prevented millions of deaths—after the Vietnam War. What happened instead was that the US, after winning the war, broke its word and abandoned the South Vietnamese. Millions were killed, caused to flee, or sent to reeducation camps to enforce communism on them. And here in America the generation of veterans who were shamed is unconscionable. Their misery is on the heads of every Vietnam War protester. Prager U has two short videos on this War.

The Truth about the Vietnam War           

Why Did America Fight the Vietnam War?           

The very idea that “Bush lied and people died” is absurd, if you have any clear memory of what actually happened after 9/11/2001. There was no lie. There was no need to lie, since there was worldwide agreement. So, delete what the media has been saying for the past decade, and recall what really went into the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Why America Invaded Iraq          

What a Minimum Wage Should Be

Yesterday, economist Walter Williams wrote about the minimum wage. As usual, he explains things very clearly.

Walter Williams
photo from here

This is how he describes the current situation for a cashier-job worker:

The average wage for a cashier is around $10 an hour, about $21,000 a year. That's no great shakes, but it's an honest job for full- or part-time workers and retirees wanting to earn some extra cash. In anticipation of a $15-an-hour wage becoming federal law, many firms are beginning the automation process to economize on their labor usage.

He didn’t mention, but he could have, that two $21,000/year jobs put a household well out of poverty.

What those who favor a $15/hour minimum wage picture is a single parent trying to rent a place for herself and a couple of kids in an urban area. That’s not going to happen at $15 an hour either.

One recent study reported this data point for San Francisco and a couple of other cities:

Average rent on a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $4,650, $1,000+ more than the number two city (New York) and $2,000 more than the rest of the biggest cities in the country.

If we do the math, then it takes $55,800 a year just for rent. Forget about food, clothing, entertainment, medical care (insurance for which, alone, is beyond what a $15/hour worker could pay, thanks to Obamacare). So, we still have to feel pretty sorry for any $15/hour worker.

The thing is, most minimum-wage workers are not mothers trying to manage an entire household on their income. In those few cases, we do have a safety net of social services to help out—and we can suppose that minimum wage is temporary, because with experience and hard work come raises, promotions, and better opportunities.

Williams points out the obvious:

Why would anybody work for $21,000 a year if he had a higher-paying alternative? Obviously, the $21,000-a-year job is his best known opportunity.

He does this in the context of what is really compassionate. Because raising the minimum wage has consequences. He names three likely outcomes for business owners forced to raise pay to a level above what the worker is worth to the business.

·         The business raises the pay without getting more output from the workers, so profit margins drop to below survival rates, and the business closes—including all the $15/hour workers.

·         The business invests capital in technology that can do the work of minimum-wage workers, such as self-serve kiosks in many fast food chains; the business might get enough return on the investment to stay in business, but those $15/hour jobs are permanently lost.

·         The business can raise its prices to compensate for the higher labor costs, which puts them in a losing position once shoppers compare prices to a business that kept prices low with technology; eventually the business closes, and all jobs are lost.

      

photo from here

Williams looked at San Francisco, which has been implementing its “compassionate” $15/hour policy for a while now. He quotes a study:

A recent study by Michael Luca of Harvard Business School and Dara Lee Luca of Mathematica Policy Research calculated that for every $1 hike in the minimum hourly wage, there is a 14 percent increase in the likelihood that a restaurant rated 3 1/2 stars on Yelp will go out of business.

This was looking at actual restaurants in the Bay Area that had closed between this past September and January. Even some of the better restaurants have fallen prey. A restaurant needs a 3-5% profit to keep going. The minimum wage hike dropped one example restaurant from 8.5% in 2012 to 1.5% in 2015.

So, is outlawing all jobs that bring in less than $15 of worth to a business actually compassionate to entry-level workers?

Let’s repeat this Spherical Model point:

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

The minimum wage issue is maybe a quintessential example. But, then, there are so many examples around these days.

I’ve written about the minimum wage a number of other times. So, let’s make this a “best of” on the minimum wage:

·         Beware Government with Good Intentions, May 11, 2011 

·         Outlawing Entry Level Jobs, July 27, 2015 

·         Unfair Egalitarianism, July 9, 2015 

·         Predictions, January 5, 2015 

As I’ve said before, employment is an agreement between two people: employer and worker. If the arrangement is agreeable to both, what business does government have inserting itself between them?

 

An unpaid internship, for example, is an agreement that looks economically disastrous for the worker—but if that worker gets some experience out of it that she values, both business and worker are benefitting. And government ought to just get out of the way.

Texas Special Session

Here in Texas, the legislature meets mid-January to early June every other year, so we finished up last month. But the Governor can call the legislature back any time for a limited time. Usually this happens shortly after the end of the regular session, when the governor wanted something to happen that didn’t happen during the session. That’s the case now.

Governor Abbott has scheduled the special session to begin July 18^th, and he has listed twenty items for the legislature to deal with. That’s a lot of items. Among them are some bigger priorities. (The full list can be found here.) 

There’s a main reason that these things didn’t get handled in the special session: Speaker of the House Joe Strauss is not on the same side as Governor Abbott. He’s the same party. But the way the speaker is chosen now is slanted toward the liberal side, at least when the Republicans are in power.

The speaker comes from the majority party, but the Democrats in the House will support whichever candidate is most aligned with them. So the speaker gets 100% of the Democrat vote. Then the speaker just needs a relatively small percentage of Republicans.

He can totally ignore the strong conservative masses that have elected Republicans to every statewide office, and a robust majority in the House; he can curry favor with the more “moderate,” i.e., less conservative, House members, offer them their choice of committees and chairmanships, and he locks up the vote. And he’ll get some of the conservative votes too, because anyone who opposes him gets relegated to committees where they can do the least good for their constituents.

So, until we figure out a way to have Republicans do the electing of the House Speaker (as in the US House, where a caucus of each party chooses a speaker, and the one chosen by the majority party wins—so the minority party doesn’t do the choosing), we’re stuck with this roadblock to important legislation.

This past Saturday at the local Tea Party meeting, we heard from State Senator Paul Bettencourt and State Representative Mike Schofield, to talk about the upcoming special session.

Senator Paul Bettencourt

Sen. Bettencourt says there are three possibilities for how the session will go:

1)      The legislature will pass the sunset legislation and go home.

2)      The legislature will pass sunset plus a few items, but leave the big ones undone.

3)      The legislature will handle pretty much the whole list.

The sunset bill is to keep some state agencies from shutting down; it’s assumed to be necessary.

Option 1 would start a House meltdown. There are risks to failing to do what they’re supposed to do. If they do the bare minimum and vote to go home, that will lead to a roll call vote. That puts everyone on record as going against the Governor or not. It won’t go well for them at re-election time if they claim to be conservative but flout the governor’s agenda. Option 2 would be minimal, but still might lead to yet another special session.

There are three main issues among those twenty items:

·         Property tax relief.

·         School choice.

·         Privacy protection.

Property Tax Relief

The bills are not always written the same as for the regular session; sometimes we’ll get something that considers what failed in the regular session, but sometimes we’ll get something better.

Senator Bettencourt has been working for property tax reform. During the session he was asking for a cap of 3% plus inflation; during the special session the cap is lowered to 1% plus inflation. And in the special session he’ll only need 16 or 30 senators to pass it, (50% plus 1) instead of 20 (2/3 of the Senate).

There’s a swath of the state from Dallas-Ft. Worth to San Antonio (not including Austin, this time) with ridiculous property tax hikes. The current cap has been a percentage of home value plus inflation plus economic growth. Since the term “economic growth” is unmeasurable and totally meaningless, caps have been meaningless.

Chip and Joanna Gaines, of HGTV's Fixer Upper
image from here

Senator Bettencourt gave an example of why a real cap is needed. You know the HGTV show Fixer-Upper, with Chip and Joanna Gaines, of Waco, Texas? They take the worst house in the best neighborhood, and they turn it into the buyers’ dream home, right? Well, bureaucrats who assess property values have been following the show and purposely reassessing the value of the fixed-up homes. Homes have had as high as 1000% increases in their property taxes.

People are being punished for using their resources to make their homes nicer to live in; they’re being taxed for creativity and hard work. Those obscene property tax increases can put the cost of living in a house beyond the budget of those buyers—who were making a positive contribution to their neighborhood. That’s not the Texas way.

School Choice

Neither Senator Bettencourt and Representative Schofield were optimistic about school choice—even though they both favor the Educational Savings Account idea. Rep. Schofield says, “There’s too much fear of competition.” That’s fear among teachers unions—which have much more interest in wages for their union members that in education for children. 

We don’t know yet how the bills will read exactly, but the likelihood is that the ESA bill will be aimed at special needs students. While I’d prefer more market forces in every aspect of education, it’s tough to argue against meeting the needs of special needs students at lower cost per student. [Among several PragerU videos on school choice, is "Why Special Needs Students Want School Choice."]

The way it is working in Arizona, the family of the student is given a sum that is something like 90% of the cost of educating that student. It can be used only for education purposes (sort of like how a health savings account is used only for healthcare purposes), but the parents get to decide what is best for their child.

This is different from a voucher, which is a ticket, essentially, that can be spent as a whole at one alternative education place, such as a private school. The ESA can be used in part for a chosen form of therapy, in part for a tutor, in part for a block of a school week at a public or private school, or in part for homeschool curriculum—or any combination.

As they start looking for options, the market responds. And the market always eventually responds with better quality and lower prices.

If the family gets their student’s needs met without spending all the money in a given year, that money stays in the account for use in a later year, when maybe a more expensive program might be needed. If the money doesn’t get spent by high school graduation, the student can use it toward higher education. 

The program is optional, so no students would be forced into it. Any family can choose to stay in public school.

So ESAs are a win-win for special ed students and their families, and for school districts, which have trouble meeting the needs of these students anyway. And that 10% that the family doesn’t get stays in the school budget.

But the public school monolith sees it as the camel’s nose under the tent. If that camel is competition, then it is just barely the nose, but wouldn’t it be great if we had that whole camel in the education tent?

They absolutely don’t want competition. They want a public school monopoly, subsidized by people so frustrated that they pay out of pocket to meet their children’s needs elsewhere.

Opponents are misnaming the ESA option, lumping it in with vouchers, a term that causes a knee-jerk reaction in educators who get their information mainly from their unions.

Anyone who really knows about ESAs would likely vote for this bill, but fear of the overbearing unions will probably block it this time, leaving the special ed students with their critical needs unmet.

Privacy

The third big issue, privacy, is what we sometimes refer to as the bathroom bill, and which the media mischaracterizes as transphobic.

As Rep. Schofield said, “We didn’t make an issue of it; Anise Parker did.” Transgendered people have been quietly using whatever restroom made them comfortable, from the invention of public restrooms up until 2015, when Houston’s mayor decided to make it an issue by forcing it on the city—including not just public city buildings, but private business properties. She tried to thwart the will of the people by throwing out their petitions, and she really stepped over the line when she tried to subpoena every speech or communication given by churches, so she could search through them for things she might find objectionable.

image found here

Once the courts slapped her down—several times—the people got their say, and this very urban, majority-liberal city, which had twice elected a lesbian mayor, soundly voted against her proposal.

Then Obama got on the bandwagon and decided, by fiat, to force a private space rule on the whole country. To be clear, he said high schools (and of course other facilities with locker rooms, bathrooms, or dressing rooms) must, because of his insistence only, allow any anatomical male who wants to say he is a female (for any purpose—can’t be questioned for actual intent; and note that a male claiming to be transgendered to female is still likely to be sexually attracted to females) to shower naked in front of and with female high school students. No regard for the discomfort this would cause high school girls or their parents would be considered. End of subject. Anyone who objects would be labeled a bigoted, transphobic troglodyte who should be publicly shamed, fired, and never allowed to work or function in society again.

Compromises, such as private showers or bathrooms for transgendered students, were dismissed as insensitive to the transgendered—meanwhile, overruled as not worth considering are the sensitivities of the 99.7% majority.

Obama’s overreaching executive order has been repealed, but many school districts and businesses around the country have kept the rule change to appear “tolerant.” That is why Texas is taking the step of protecting citizens by returning to separate gender private spaces as a rule of law.

I think the bill will pass, because this is Texas, and we don’t like fools telling us we have no right to privacy in our private places. If Strauss fails to bring it for a vote again, it will mean coming back for another special session.

During this special session, expect the media to do its thing against anything good for freedom, prosperity, and civilization. But, if the people send their support to their representatives in Austin, we might get the work done that should have already gotten done.