The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Didn’t A Horse Pull The Cart With The Stones That Built The Appian Way?

Posted on | July 27, 2012 | 12 Comments

by Smitty


So much of our current political challenge seems to be overcoming the cart-horse reversal that is Progressivism:
People aren’t necessarily that stupid; we’ve just been giving the benefit of the doubt to these self-proclaimed ‘experts’ for too long.

Category: Uncategorized

Comments

12 Responses to “Didn’t A Horse Pull The Cart With The Stones That Built The Appian Way?”

  1. richard mcenroe
    July 27th, 2012 @ 10:52 am

    Why is that poor sucker staring at a horse’s ass?

  2. crosspatch
    July 27th, 2012 @ 2:23 pm

    The fundamental problem with political campaign memes such as this one is the lack of understanding of economics by the vast majority of Americans.  I suggest everyone in the country watch this series that aired on PBS in 1980 and there are some updates from 1990.  They apply just as well today as they did then.  There’s a particular lesson in the first part at around 15 minutes where Milton Friedman uses a simple pencil as an example.  Watch it.  Watch it and discuss it with a kid.  This is a college level education in economics delivered at about an 8th grade language level.

     http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/

  3. Adjoran
    July 27th, 2012 @ 2:29 pm

     Excellent series, which is why you never see it anymore.

    But the pencil schtick was lifted directly from Leonard Read’s essay, “I, Pencil” which elaborated on the theme.

    There is another great essay about wealth creation which tells the tale of three men on an island with different skills and materials and the incentives they give each other to build a better place.  Can’t remember the name or author, though.

    Obviously, if Obama ever saw or read any of them, it didn’t stick.

  4. JenniferInLove
    July 27th, 2012 @ 3:17 pm

    Like I said earlier, “The internet was developed with government money and support. Yes, the
    money came from taxpayers. That’s how government works. Governments
    generally pay private contractors for roads. Again, that’s how
    government works. I won’t waste the time to go through all of your
    rather nonsensical arguments, but I wish Romney would try to make such
    arguments. Even if some of these can be done without government, it does
    not change the fact that most have been developed with the use of
    government. Those of us who created businesses did not create these
    things which we benefit from in the every day operation of our
    businesses.”

    As for bloated government and Obama, the growth of government has dropped dramatically under Obama. The real growth in government came under Reagan and Bush.

  5. richard mcenroe
    July 27th, 2012 @ 3:37 pm

     I’ll pass that on to those 16,000 new IRS drones.  BTW, since 48-51% of the population don’t pay federal taxes, THEY didn’t make bupkis.

  6. JeffS
    July 27th, 2012 @ 3:46 pm

    You went from “JenniferInChrist” to “JenniferInLove”.  Was the association too distasteful for you, concern troll?

  7. JeffS
    July 27th, 2012 @ 3:46 pm

    Don’t forget the 20 new Federal agencies authorized under ObamaTax. 

  8. Adobe_Walls
    July 27th, 2012 @ 4:07 pm

    In 1980 the Federal Register was over 87,000 pages dropping to 47,000 in 86 under Reagan. Last year alone an additional 82,000 plus pages was added, in Comrade Presidents first three years he’s boosted regulatory cost by an additional 46 billion annually. Bob refuted the government created the internet meme a day or two ago but like a good little cog you spit it out again, quite pathetic really.

  9. crosspatch
    July 27th, 2012 @ 4:15 pm

     “”The internet was developed with government money and support.”

    For use by the government and its contractors and researchers.  It was never intended to be used by the general public.  And frankly, none of that government developed Internet exists anymore.  The various protocols and communications gear used on the Internet were all developed by commercial entities.  What government “developed” was the IDEA of connecting places and sharing data electronically.  The network was implemented by private industry.

  10. McGehee
    July 27th, 2012 @ 5:50 pm

    if you think the road built your business, and not the other way around

    A lot of enviro-nuts must be idiots, then (big surprise). For years road-building in metro Atlanta was held hostage to the notion that building roads led to more sprawl and more polluted air.

    Nobody on the enviro fringe ever seemed to notice that the sprawl was still going on anyway, and without more and better roads you wound up with millions of drivers idling in gridlock instead of using the gas they were burning in the most efficient possible way: moving their vehicles from place to place.

    Of course, the “cleaner air” part of their proclaimed mission was just a rhetorical cudgel to use against sensible decisionmaking, rather than something that really mattered to them. What they really wanted was for all those millions of people who’d moved out to the suburbs to be rounded up and forced to live in half-mile-high towers in Atlanta proper — where they’d be subject to the crime and corrupt politics the urban enviro-nuts were putting up with because they thought it was hip.

    And when living in the rotting core was too mainstream to be hip anymore, they’d buy vast, rolling farmland miles away and create their enclaves.

    The joke was on them, we already have fascist enclaves in the suburbs — they’re called HOA communities.

  11. Bob Belvedere
    July 27th, 2012 @ 8:35 pm

    I, Pencil mat be found here:
    http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

  12. smitty
    July 27th, 2012 @ 9:17 pm

    The zampolit gave new instructions, man. Take it easy.