Category Archives: Capitalism

Do Not Fear

The most often repeated command in Scripture is, “Do not fear.” I admit that sometimes it is hard to be optimistic, but the future belongs to Christians (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). Christianity is the only true worldview; all other worldviews lead to death. Therefore, it is the only successful worldview.

It has been shown that those who are optimistic are more likely to succeed. Things change constantly. Things we used to do may not work like they used to, but we can find new things to do that work better.

I think that is the problem that conservatives/Republicans are having now. People are scared to death of Muslims. They’re scared of free trade. It’s really lame. America benefits from free trade. America benefits from Muslims who come here and often convert to Christianity. Christianity is better than Islam; Muslims should be afraid of all the converts they lose to us.

So, conservatives are afraid, and they run to the government to get rid of free trade. They run to the government to keep Muslims out. There is much more to fear from the government than from freedom. And God won’t bless disobedience to His law as even conservatives move to greater socialism.

Do not fear!

Comment on Executive Pay

You often hear of the CEO of a company making millions of dollars a year, and it’s tempting to think they’re getting overpaid. But here’s what Mr. T has to say about that.

Gents, I run an investment management firm and we’ve looked quite a bit into the whole topic of senior executives and their compensation. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I can tell you that the general public has it backwards. They thought that CEO pay was so obscenely high, that if it the numbers were publicly known, they would go down. So they passed a law and now every public company needs to make public the pay of its top 5 executives. And what happened as a result? The executives’ pay went up quite substantially. [In fact, one can argue that it’s as high as it is today because the government made it mandatory to publish that information. 🙂]

The fact is that the person at the top has tremendous influence on how the company is doing. Just look at the story of Apple and Steve Jobs. He founded the firm in the 70’s, and it became a top brand and a darling of the investment world in a few short years. Then the board of the company got rid of him around 1985 and by 1997 the company was on its deathbed. Then Apple hired him back, and in 14 years he made them the most valuable company in the whole world. This isn’t luck. It’s not that he was born in the right place at the right time. It wasn’t the connections of his dad (a Syrian immigrant, by the way). The guy was so good that when they announced the iPhone in 2007, Google’s team working on their own smart phone had to scrap the whole project and start all over again, copying most of Jobs’ ideas.

The fact is that even highly compensated CEOs get paid to the tune of 0.1% of the company’s value per year, but their work makes a difference much greater than 0.1%. The cold, hard truth is that the CEOs are actually underpaid. So when the numbers became public, the guys in the lower half basically said “wait a minute, not only are you paying me much less than I’m making you, but you’re also paying me less than my peers”, and so the boards (the shareholder representatives) had to always make sure they’re paying their CEOs at or above the average level for the CEO’s level of competence, industry, the size of the firm, etc. and overall executive pay started creeping up, up, up…

But again, we’re talking about small sums of money in the grand scheme of things. They make for juicy headlines for the mass media, but their economic effect is minimal. Frankly, it’s a societal breach of the tenth commandment. People should be focused on their own work and their own contributions. And if they see somebody making (in a free-market transaction) a hundred times more money than them, they should be inspired that such success is possible, rather than wish for that person to go down. And remember, even if you’re middle class in the U.S., you’re actually making a hundred times more money than quite a few people walking on this Earth. Not only that, but unlike the top CEOs, you’re probably not that much more talented than those making 1% of what you’re making. You’re actually the one who’s been born in the right place at the right time.

Union Thugs

Did you know that you can’t run an electric cable or a water line in Colorado without getting a permit? I can maybe see if they were truly concerned with safety how some people might think that’s a good idea. But safety isn’t their main concern. Their main concern is pleasing the trade unions.

Whether you’re an amateur or a professional, they inspector looks at every little bit of the project. You have to leave the drywall off the walls for them to inspect, and every bit of it has to be accessible. So, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re working on your own home, your business or investment property, or getting paid to work on someone else’s property. They can and do inspect the entire project. If you make a mistake, they will find it.

But unless you are a licensed plumber or electrician, you can only get a permit as a homeowner for your personal residence. Furthermore, with a homeowner’s permit, you have to personally do all the work. You can’t hire a laborer to help you. Why is that? Because the unions have lobbied the state to make laws to benefit themselves. This is nothing but job security for tradesmen. It makes the state inspectors nothing more than union thugs.

One of the most famous rackets of the mafia is to force people to use union labor. They do this by applying force (or threats of force). “Mr. Majestyk” is a great movie with Charles Bronson (filmed partially in Canon City) where a bunch of mobsters tried to force Charles Bronson to use their laborers to harvest his melon crop.

The state inspectors have the guns and threats of violence of the state backing up their whims. They are free to act like the mafia with thinly-veiled threats. Their job isn’t to do the right thing to serve the people of Colorado, but to protect the unions. What the mafia did illegally has been legalized and placed in the hands of a wicked government. The state saw what the mafia was doing and became jealous.

I’m all for safety and doing things right. But the Bible defines the job of the state. It’s only job is punishing evil–not protecting wildlife, issuing currency, building roads, or inspecting buildings. The free market and God’s law offer better solutions than the coercion of the state.

Good Information

This doesn’t fit my normal theme, but it’s so good I have to post it. I hate buying a car, but here are some good tips on car buying from a car salesman:

1. The best time to go is at the end of the day (about 2 hours from closing time) on a rainy or cold day. First the dealership will be empty so no wait going into finance. Second they likely have not sold many cars that day and are more ready to make a deal. The times we have discounted cars the most are those times.

2. You don’t get a better deal from paying cash or having a check ready from your bank. When you do this they don’t make any money from you financing with them. If you tell them up front is a cash deal, they know they have to make all their money on the price of a car. They will be more willing to discount the car if they know they will make money from you financing.

3. They are not always giving you as much as they say from the trade in. If they are not discounting the sticker price or if it is barely discounted, but giving you a lot on your car, they are really taking the discount and applying it to your trade in. My dealership doesn’t do this so people come in expecting an unrealistic trade in price and they don’t get it because we already discounted the price on the new car.

4. Save yourself time haggling by working the deal out online. You know when you are on their website and it pops up that you can chat with someone? Go ahead and do this because they will give you a great deal to get you in the dealership. Go ahead and work your trade in numbers then to so you aren’t surprised when you get there. When you do this, you simply have to walk in, test drive the car and the haggling is over with.

5. Some of the add ons they offer in financing are worth it and some are not. If you aren’t putting money down, GAP insurance can be great. If you are putting money down it might not be worth it. Do some research ahead of time to know what kinds of things will be offered.

We Need New Tactics

I’m glad these people are doing something to stand against the lies that have been told about them. But, the problem isn’t the New York Times. They only started the problem. Their real problem is the state. The auditors are coming. The auditors probably don’t carry guns, but men with guns, employed by the state are just a phone call away.

  1. What is the biblical penalty for paying a worker less than minimum wage, assuming the worker agreed to work for that? There is no biblical penalty.
  2. What is the biblical penalty for paying a worker with cash, and not keeping adequate records? There is no biblical penalty.
  3. If a Christian government employee tries to impose a penalty for a “crime” that the Bible says is no crime, they should be placed under church discipline.

That is new tactic number 1. Churches need to place Christian government agents imposing unjust laws on people under church discipline.

New Tactic number 2: Refuse to purchase the bonds the state is requiring. We must obey God rather than men.

New Tactic number 3: These nail salon people have at least dozens of people willing to protest. The next step is for each nail salon to refuse to be audited, and to call on these protesters to block the doors if necessary. Hopefully other citizens who care about liberty will join them.

We no longer live in a capitalist or free country. The tactics we’ve employed thus far have not worked. Suing the government in government courts with tyrannical judges doesn’t work. We need new tactics. We need to sweat the small stuff. I care about the liberty of Chinese immigrants in New York who don’t speak a lick of English. I want liberty for them, and I will stand with them given the opportunity.

No More Rule of Law

In order for people to invest and build businesses in a certain place, the laws have to be stable. African countries where a dictator can come along and steal everything you have discourages investment. In such a place, there is no rule of law, where even the king is subject to the law.

America is becoming such a place. The businesses in this video are legal businesses, but some bureaucrat has come along and decided that they can be shut down without consulting the legislature. It is wrong.

Of course, when you leave God’s law and make government your god, this is the kind of thing that will happen.

Fascist Ohio

It’s hard to even pretend anymore that this is a free country. The fascists are in control of Bowling Green, Ohio.

If this was a free market, you wouldn’t need to talk to any government loser to see if you can give taxi rides. You would just do it. You wouldn’t need permits. You wouldn’t need to pay any fees. You’d be free to advertise and start giving rides.

What would happen if they just disobeyed? They could just start giving rides without government permission. I don’t know exactly what would happen, but it would involve armed police officers threatening you with violence or actually carrying out the violence. These “peace” officers for the most part probably claim to be Christian, and some of them may not be Christian just because they like Christmas, but because they have actually been born again.

Those Christian cops care more about man’s law than God’s law, and their church actually thinks they’re doing an admirable job. All of the evils in our land take place with the permission of the Christians, because we have abandoned God’s law or a surface-level interpretation of Romans 13.

Churches need to go back to God’s law, and start teaching it to people. Then, when a Christian officer enforces a preposterous law, he can be placed under church discipline.

Of course, police would be largely scaled back under God’s law and hopefully abolished. There were no police in early America or in ancient Israel.