I Already Googled It

In response to this:

Bonuses received by people in positions of authority within Crown Corporations are nothing more than a distraction.  The bonuses are not a problem; the concept of Crown Corporations is the problem.

If ICBC, BC Hydro, et cetera, were market run you could choose between competitors, and you could do so independently.  Choosing power company A wouldn’t bind you to choose insurance company A.  This competition would force these companies to minimize costs and prices — bonuses would have to be deserved.

Government monopolies — Crown Corporations — bundle choices together.  You can’t vote liberal for ICBC, but conservative for BC Hydro, or conservative for Crown Corporations, but NDP for law making.  It’s all or nothing — always the lesser of two evils, never something good.

The problem is that people believe the government can do things better than the market.  These bonuses — this “crony capitalism” — demonstrate that people in government are plagued by the same ills as people elsewhere.  However — unlike the market — the government can use the law to legitimize their actions, remove consequences, collect the money it needs (i.e. tax), and remove competition.

The choice is thus: A vote every 4 years for a monolithic party platform, or “voting” with your money on each issue — independently — every day?

We’ve heard “power to the people”, but what is “power”?  It’s the ability to choose.  Markets give that, governments only take it away.

In response to this:

Justine Semmens – writing about income inequality — seems to miss a fundament of statistical analysis: That correlation does not imply causation.  That is to say, that just because two things correlate with one another in an analysis of relevant statistics, does not mean that those two things are related or that one causes the other.

Just because income inequality is high in certain (or most/all) third world nations, and not in select first world nations, does not mean that income inequality is the herald of a third world nation.  Justine “cherry picks” two highly socialist first world nations (and economic analysis shows that Scandanavia’s shift towards socialism in the 70s and 80s caused economic stagnation) and a very highly indebted first world nation (Japan’s debt-to-GDP exceeds 200% according to the IMF) for the comparison-in-question.  We can see that the U.S. — for example — has — both historically and presently — had high income inequality, and yet it is definitely not a third world nation.

 Income inequality is an irrelevant measure.  We should not be concerned with how many people have how much money as compared to others, but rather how they got that money.

 The trend increasingly is crony capitalism: Surviving off the taxpayer and political connections.  This is what must end.

 We must not be distracted/misled into replacing the free exchange of goods and wealth with state coercion and redistribution.  That’s been tried before.  It ends in disaster, suffering, and misery.