I was working on another post, but this video came to my attention and I had to discuss it right now, it was just too good to miss. If you have read some of my previous post, especially on health care, one of my themes is that we really do not have a true free market in this country. We do have a market that is freer then most in the world, but it can not be classified as a true free market because of the involvement of government in business.
Well imagine my surprise when I found out that Micheal Moore actually agrees with me.
Now I will say that me and the Chad Swarthout agree to the solution, which is less government. Mr. Moore in his own words remains optimistic that a government of the people by the people can fix the problem. I think he is going to have to wait for a long time for that to occur, because when you use government to control business. Business will use their money and influence to control government, that is just the way it is. And in that process we the people are the losers.
If instead we keep government from being able to control business, then business will have no reason to influence government. That will remove them from the picture and give us more power over government, by default. And if you allow business to function without government involvement, then business will have to deal with us fairly in order to get our business. They will not be able to use government to eliminate competition anymore, which is what they do now. This will give us more power over how businesses do business, via the democratic rules of the free market.
One other thing that Moore does not understand is that a true free market is very democratic. If a business does not treat me well or makes a crummy product I can vote against that businesses continuing to exist by going elsewhere. Is that not a democratic process? But when one business gets advantages over another from government, my vote is diluted. Progressives believe in government involving themselves in business, which leads to them picking winners and losers. Usually the winners are those that provide the most money to the campaigns of the politicians.
He also mentioned the high pay of executives. This problem has two roots. First it is the very large business that got that way because of government interference. But the other problem is the changes that the progressives made in this country. Before the 1950 to become an executive in a business you normally started in the mail room and worked your way up. That did two things, first it taught you the business and second it gave you feeling of owner ship in the business. I realized the truth about the ownership part because of my work history. As is not very typical in the computer business I have worked at the same company for 18 years. Most people in the computer field change jobs about every 2 years or so. One day it hit me that I felt ownership of our product and business because of the years I had put in there. That is missing in today’s society when people switch jobs every few years.
Now what you have is people go to college for degrees that were not needed before the 1950 and businesses were convinced by executives with degrees that only people with degrees would make good executives. This led to a mindset that each company had to get the best executive out there by paying them more and more, instead of promoting the mail room clerk up the corporate ladder. Now executives demand higher pay and more staff which feeds into the whole cycle, as condition for them taking a job. Why do we have this, because the idea that a college degree was necessary was created by the progressives. They then got the government to step in and provide a means to get that degree. This then leads into the other problem Moore mentioned, student loans and debt when leaving college.
See Moore is correct, colleges used to work their butts off to get students to apply. They were all in competition for a small body of students that had the necessary resources and learning to attend college. When the progressives promoted the idea that college was necessary and give people the means to pay for it, more students were available for the colleges to admit. As any economics professor will tell you if the demand goes up and the supply stays the same the price will go up. To make matters worst, since most students were not paying for college, instead the government was through student loan programs, there was no desire from the students to drive the price down. This pushed the prices up even faster the normal.
So every problem Moore mentions in this clip, I believe can be traced back to one thing. The very progressive polices that he so lovingly believes in.
Independence Caucus
