Are Friedman and Stone Late Night Fraternal Brothers?

Milton Friedman - Do-Gooders And Special Interest



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Adam Smith wrote:
By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. [Par. IV.2.9]

From An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chap. 2 by Adam Smith.  https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/invisiblehand.html

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sophomoric  adjective. Chiefly N. Amer. e19.

Of, befitting, or characteristic of a sophomore; pretentious; immature, juvenile; crude, superficial.
National Observer (US) The sophomoric skepticism of the man who has read one book…only.
(Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2007).

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For those who think sophomorically, the brain buzzes with juvenile infatuation and excitement at the notion that real philanthropy rests principally in unleashing thoroughgoing personal selfishness.  They feel liberated from the notion that the Golden Rule entails any personal sacrifice whatever for the sake of others—to the contrary, going full bore for the jugular is the only truly humane thing to do.

An added benefit to this monumental insight is that as one of the truly enlightened, you now find yourself way more morally and ethically superior to those misguided drudges putting others before themselves.  Many Trumpian Republicans come to mind.  But when you visualize a late night huddle of gleeful sophomores, does any one of the following visages appear? 



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Finally I suggest you speculate whether or not Sam Walton knowingly considered the public good when liberating remote rural areas with his Walmart stores.  Call me a naive fool, but I strongly feel this was probably one of his major motives.  Let me repeat a quote cited in a recent blog: Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion toward men and toward objective things (Albert Einstein). [A question  for Adam Smith: How would you deal with this?]


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Donald Trump as Exalted Father of the American State

Below I include videos of Milton Friedman—an economist with absolute certainty that pursuit of self-interest on an individualistic level is good and that do-gooders who presume to know what’s best for others are satanic.   (I would not want to run for President if I considered fact a dangerous  hindrance to anything truly worthwhile.)  Friedman considers any wavering whatever from the free-choice doctrine tantamount to treason.   Friedman insists he is not an anarchist.  But I ask you, if each and every one is always fed the notion that free individualistic choice even of facts is an absolute and uncompromisable value, how is a society ever to attain a workable and efficacious unity about anything.  Certainly the pollutants roiling this society are perfectly fashioned for a Might Makes Right Leader—a Führer that knows how to leverage bare-knuckled power. For as a country without boarders is no country, so too a scatter-brained country without a unified embodiment of strength will soon be a dead-duck.

As I have described before, I am an adamant supporter of capitalism—much more than the greedy and profoundly unprincipled shark pretending to be a "capitalistic" President ever could.  It is nauseating to see the likes of such men parading around in the fake attire of pirate capitalism.  I would call Mr. President a hypocrite, but I honestly don’t believe he can understand the true social, psychological, and spiritual underpinnings of capitalism. "It's just business" is for such phonies an open-season license to denigrate then eviscerate others before summarily tossing them into a permanent hell-pit of LOSERS with no recourse to second chances.  This very damnable and self-revealing curse should duly warn one of the spiritual underpinnings of Trumpian "capitalism."

Now we have an anarchist President at heart who believes the only facts that matter are those agreed to by his loyal ideological acolytes.  What could possibly go wrong?   

Soon I will be discussing the horrendous impact of alcohol and seek to expose its searing facts though the fog of fantasy land propaganda enshrouding a reality we MUST NO LONGER ignore.  Of course, the incoming smears will certainly include the put-down DO-GOODER.  I will discuss the very human repulsion we feel towards an authority/representative figure—or government itself—who claim they know what's best for us.....against our most certain and passionate conviction otherwise.


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I very much wish I could include a miraculous Adam Smith video critique of his self-proclaimed 20th Century Apostle.

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That's What Friends Are For

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Let me state again my heart’s desire—that every employee and employer have a credible 3rd party resource to adjudicate and/or decide serious disputes as they may arise among them. Such a stance should not suggest I think “right” is always on the side of one party—be it employee or employer.  But I know without question that true friends of both parties will favor third party review.  The employer if he is right will have his judgment about the matter objectively confirmed so that he and others will gain confidence in his discernment and fairness in judgment.  The employee if he is right will understand that he too has a reliable sense of fairness—in any case, he will know that he lives in a country in which fair treatment is taken seriously even on the ground level of  livelihood provision. And whether one or the other is successful or not, both parties will understand that in America fairness in the workplace is a core value taken seriously and falls within the umbrella of humane public policy.

Now how will a goal of credible 3rd party review be promulgated?  Here is where many points of view and suggestions will prove to be valuable.  My own experience was with the City of Saint Petersburg, Fl.  In this case, the Human Resources Department was a credible objective 3rd party due to a professionalism that was jealous of its independence in such matters—not unlike how the US Justice Department is jealous of its independence from executive political influence.  Larger companies may decide to make employee representation a feature of boardroom composition and from there decide on a mutually agreeable method to ensure a fair and objective 3rd party review.  Smaller companies by their very nature will need outside access to 3rd party review.  My own view is this will probably involve a public (or governmental) review process.  In all cases, professional standards for a fair and objective review will need to be enunciated and followed.  It is my hope that the review process will become mutually helpful and highly efficient and effective. As Joe Friday use to say,—"just the facts, mam."  

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The Way of All Flesh

Aristotle once postulated “horror vacui” (Nature Abhors a Vacuum). http://factmyth.com/factoids/nature-abhors-a-vacuum/

Certainly it can be said that human behavior (indeed, animal behavior for most all species) tends to overcompensate the drive to sustain a sense of survivability in the face of vulnerability by open-ended accumulation.  Connie and I once had a pet mouse that had the run of the house.  The mouse has long-since passed on. But the other day we moved a piece of furniture with a significant storage space gap of several inches created by stubby furniture legs and the floor.  (The space was too narrow to be reached or seen during routine vacuuming, etc..)  When we moved the furniture, we uncovered what must have been 15 pounds of stashed snacks for some “rainy day” that sadly subliminally haunted our little pet mouse.

Corporations are very reflective of human animal behavior.  In “pure capitalism” we have depended upon supply and demand to moderate control over mankind’s (in this case corporate) open-ended drive for accumulation.  When the market proves ineffective in exercising a dampening effect, typically government seeks to buttress the commonweal through introducing moderating mechanisms of accountability and review.  A heavily populated area of Florida (including Saint Petersburg) obtains electrical energy through Duke Power.  There is simply no practical way for most of us to find another source of reliable electrical energy except through Duke Power’s electric grids—or at least to use those grids for emergency backup.  Since the source of power supply is significantly limited, a public (government) review board verifies the reasonableness of Duke’s insatiable desire to raise rates.

Connie and I live at Westminster Suncoast.  We had to submit an entrance fee to live here—together well over $100,000.  This fee is refundable by a sliding scale downwards.  After several years, however, the refundable amount becomes minuscule compared to the original amount required.  Thus, we run again into the fanciful fiction of American's abiding delusion of unhindered choice: “If you don’t want to live here” this myth intones “why just move to the apartments the next block over."  As is so often the case, plain facts do not in any way support this mythology.  After handing over a huge part of our life savings, our position after a few years becomes impervious to other options. Connie and I have no more freedom to move from Westminster than to connect to a power grid other than Duke Power.

Westminster thus faces an inflexible demand while being the sole feasible supplier.  Its corporate (and very human behavior) is quite predictable—it like clockwork raises rates annually. And of course these increases compound every year NO MATTER WHAT THE GENERAL ECONOMY IS DOING OR THE COLA’S OF LARGELY FIXED RESIDENT INCOMES (SOCIAL SECRITY/PENSION). This year the Westminster increase is 4%--about $160 per month for Connie and me together.

Thus, the instinctual animal behavioral drive to amass an unassailable supply of resources can take on the shadow of rapacious greed and callus indifference to the largely fixed financial resources of Westminster residents.  One can’t help but conjecture that the Westminster Corporate Financial Conclave of Inner Sanctum High Priests is composed in toto of cum laude genius graduates from the Renown Poison Ivy League Institute of Spaced-Out and Exalted Learning--Trump University.

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Drifting Off the Earnest Habit of Truth

Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion toward men and toward objective things (Albert Einstein).
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In several of my blogs I have insisted that our Senior Partner and Great Creator requires us to be earnest players.  There may be reasons on an elemental physical layer that make this a requirement—we just don’t know.  What we do have the capacity to do now is to map out behaviorally in layman’s terms why this could be true. 

Humility characterized effort leads us to truth and reinforces the habit of truth.  “The dog ate my homework.” In a thousand more sophisticated ways this excuse can poison the whole enterprise and research needed to fulfill the human obligation to discern facts.  Sometimes an official of a company can be asked to answer what his customer sees as a “simple question” but which the official knows would take a huge outlay of resources to answer with any measure of accuracy. He knows that many people equate” I don’t know” with downright incompetence.

A relative few questions regarding physics can take millions if not billions to answer:  The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider

In other words folks, the motivations to cut corners regarding truth can be considerable and can lead us to rationalize double-talk that entirely avoids us having to admit: “I just don’t know.”

I am persuaded that as much as we may detest the constant barrage of falsehoods coming from Donald Trump, many top executives know that one of the key qualifications for their career advancement was to demonstrate extensive competence in skilled diversion and plausible prevarication.  Sometimes on seeing a top executive before a congressional committee, one wonders if they have much ability to do anything else.

Marketing is often falsehood-based persuasion.  Like a young guy on his first date with a certain coveted girl, he can seek to capture her into his orbit by going to any lengths to impress her with a razor-thin suave coolness he knows full-well is anything but who he really is.

A word to some of my most conservative of evangelical friends: You insist that creation must align perfectly with Creationism.  I must caution you and the rest of our brothers and sisters that if mankind is fully willing to accept Creationism as the final word on the matter, then that will require no further iterations of human effort over generations using increasingly precise and effective research tools to discern patterns of life development.  Thus, Creationism could be the way of faith…or it could be a broad road leading to double-down fanaticism and ignorance finding itself most at home with *Pharisaical tyrants.  If you support Donald Trump, consider his strong double-down stances when compared to the arduous road of objective inquiry--highly structured and disciplined, humble, and subjected to collegial review.  [*Pharisaic: Strict in doctrine and ritual without the spirit of piety; laying great stress upon the external observances of religion and outward show of morality, and assuming superiority on that account; hypocritical; self-righteous. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2007)]


Finally, consider a conceivable conversation sometimes experienced with new acquaintances.  There was present in the room a palpable stiffness and guardedness in the conversation.  Then you said silently to yourself, “To hell with it”, and you shared a bone-head blunder you made during the week.  The atmosphere miraculously changed and in the flash-of-an-eye people became open with defenses down and began sharing blunders of their own.  “Chicken or Egg Question” Is sharing vulnerabilities the result of friendship or the path to it? 

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The Real American Passion - The True American Idea

Recently I have insisted with dogged determination that our American future as the hope of humanity depends upon reconciling man’s need for dignity and freedom (which will never be excised from the human heart) with the need for capitalism—the only economic approach that unites the psychological needs for motivation and purpose with the existential need for creativity.  I don’t know why, but it is my conviction that our Great Creator flat-out insists on earnest players.  Humanoid drones are completely useless for a vivacious generation of creative abundance.  Further, a sense of authentic discipline and exertion meld perfectly with abundance, purpose, and shared happiness.

Thus, we must totally honor capitalism and democratic freedom forever anchored in a nursery of hopeful optimism.  Earnest players—not drones, parasites, or arrogant Atlas assholes--warm the heart of Providence our faithful Senior Partner.

Now I don’t have the time-of-day for phony "capitalistic" parasites—those who grind fellow humans like sausage so long as they themselves get all the gold.  True capitalists will be identified by their compassion—who know that abundance is a quilt work of human inter-dependency in concert with the unearned blessings of God.  We highly regard both winners and losers—for in a real sense both rode the chariot of motivational competition that underwrites graceful and generous winners--winners that remain open to the need for endless second chances for themselves and everyone.  The scope of the game is always many leagues wider than a particular sandlot game.

Government as a general rule should regard hands-on production the function of the entrepreneurial sector.  But limited government should NEVER FOR A SINGLE MILLISECOND let wolves rip to shreds the most humble employee.  This requires more than thoughts and prayers by shameless, morally bankrupt Republicans.  We need a virile system of third party review so that the most humble employee is assured deep within that they really matter not only to God, but to the country in which they live.

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Let America in our time lead the way in conquering Death  

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********* Chill You Guys **********

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New Meaning of "Sunshine Soldiers"--- We Need Sunshine...And We Need Soldiers !!!

We have no other choice---committed individuals will be our heroes.




Please read carefully the following letter to me from Jeff Boreman.  Today, I find myself agreeing more and more with Jeff.  We have a lawless pirate as US President who ceaselessly receives worshipful accolades from millions of Americans.  The philosophy clearly is based on Trump’s raw cynicism and unquenchable greed.  If he led a conquering army, there is no doubt whatever that the modus operandi would be rape and plunder in accord with the Great Leader’s normative chaotic habits of predator thievery, sexual assault, and ruthless self-righteousness made by use impervious to any felt need for forgiveness. The democrats for their part too often seem to have bought into a dangerous mix of myopic ambition co-joined with self-centered promotion and offensive sycophancy. An unfortunate “Holier than Thou” attitude leads to a pervasive “My Shit Don’t Stink” ambiance unbecoming those seeking to earnestly serve. 

Will God chose to honor my own intimations of a personal role?  He’s the boss and I accept His disposition should that be a catbird seat or a tree-shade patch of southern anonymity.


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Following from blog of 12/2/10

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Thoughts after Election Day

The day after November’s election I wrote my friend Jeff Boreman to congratulate him on the Republican victories.  I was surprised by what he wrote back.  Following is our correspondence.  (Jeff recently gave me permission to include his comments on this blog.)

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Jeff

Election aftermath.  Just wanted to let you know that I'm as Democratic than ever.
However, "I told you so" from a certain Republican is certainly in order.

(Just wait till next year.)

Wayne

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Wayne,

I would love to tell you, "I told you so!" But, I am not very happy with Dems or Republicans. I can honestly say, I really did not feel like voting this year. I was really turned off by the campaigning from all parties. I believe that most of the candidates were in it for the game and power. None of them really talked about real issues or real solutions. There was a lot of smearing, lies, or flat out distortion from all.

All great societies eventually come to end. Ours is heading that direction and there is no turning it around. Socialism, Capitalism, Communism, and all others forms of societies sound great. Eventually though they all collapse. Each one is flawed with the same problem. That problem is man's greed. We have reached a level in our society where the greed is out of control from the rich, middle class, and the poor.

Look at the real issues that has caused our current situation. Some want to blame it on Bush. Others will blame it on Clinton, Obama, Reagan or who know who else. The fact is we all played a part. Housing pricing were out of control. The government did not set the prices on the homes. Man's greed did this. We want to blame the banks since they gave out the loans. Which they did due to their greed. People were spending more money than they could afford. Eventually this will catch up with you. Another problem is everyone is looking for more hand me outs from the government.

Jeff W. Boreman
Network Systems Analyst
City of St. Petersburg
Information and Communication Services

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High Seas Disenfranchisement

(Extended view of scene .. click here)
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When it is pointed out that a hefty third of Americans are only too glad to worship a lawless pirate as President of the United States, it is clear that the days ahead will be turbulent. For even though many goodhearted souls can be cajoled and humored to exercise a justice already filling their hearts, flat-out Biblical wolves from time immemorial have an unquenchable thirst for ascendancy and supremacy.  They say “In God We Trust.” You should translate this: “Only My Unchallenged Pirate Ego Matters A Whit.” 

When we insist that employees receive equal honor as do their employers, lawless  pirates masquerading as Capitalists projectile vomit more vociferously than even while tasting a smorgasbord of ideological “isms”. For them, a practice of straight capitalism is sacrilegious as it would curb their intoxicated notion of personal power.

It is my opinion that the most urgent matter that confronts us is a mindset issue, not a pocketbook issue.  When even the most humble employee is given the respect offered by third party review of perhaps ill-considered decisions from those within business governance, a sociological process will begin that steers larger society towards justice and comity.

Lawless pirates are the first to tout phony capitalism. Be warned—they care nothing for productive capitalism that understands the profound interdependency of human endeavors.  The purpose of capitalism is NOT to slake an unending thirst for lust and greed. (Lord knows, no one need remind us of the widespread market collapse such sins eventually bring.)  The purpose of capitalism is to accomplish abundance and wealth, creativity, and a deeply shared sense of worthwhile accomplishments (thus, happiness).  It never for a greased-lighting-split-second need imply a gratuitous lawless perfidy against humanity.

As most citizens feel no great encumbrance by criminal laws prohibiting anti-social behavior (their hearts don’t go there in the first place), just so employers of goodwill will view steps to provide a sense of persistent fairness for their employees as something fully in harmony with what they have personally prayed for, sought and worked towards for years. 

It is, rather, the lawless pirate parasites who hide within “capitalist” camouflage and squeal that “freedom” will surely die if one dare intercedes within his proprietary stock of cannon fodder employees—DON'T BE FOOLED!… This “freedom” is all about screwing the hell out of others upon the privacy of high seas disenfranchisement.

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