Saturday, March 15, 2014

Obama's Anti-Market Passion

By, Chris Rossini

In the marketplace, you become successful and profitable by supplying consumers with what they most urgently desire. The profits that you receive are a signal that you're allocating a portion of the world's scarce resources (i.e., land, labor & capital) properly. The resources are not being wasted in the creation of things that people don't desire.

Your position is not solidified. Consumers are a fickle bunch, with constantly changing desires. As soon as a better and/or cheaper offering arrives on the scene, you become yesterday's news.

Many people hate the facts of the marketplace with a burning passion. In his weekly address, Obama shows (yet again) that he is one of those people:
"Whenever I can make sure that our economy rewards hard work & responsibility, that’s what I’m going to do."
That's totally different than the facts that I laid out above. I said nothing about "hard work" and "responsibility". Profits flow to those who allocate resources efficiently, irrespective of how much "hard work" was exerted.

There are tons of people who are working hard on things that people do not want. There's no doubt that a lot of "hard work" went into the creation of the Microsoft Zune. Yet consumers didn't want it, and now it's gone. Lot's of "responsible" people worked at Blockbuster Video. They weren't a bunch of lazy bums. Now? Gone.

The marketplace shows no mercy, and that's why the Zune and Blockbuster are gone. The market is the most efficient and toughest regulator.

Government is always at war with the realities of the marketplace. Obama apparently wants to "make sure" that rewards go to "hard work" and "responsibility," which are both arbitrary terms. And that's why everything that happens in Washington D.C. turns into a sewer of waste.

Having problems with consumers, or your competition? Head over to the Washington sewer and gain protection. Are you an intellectual who hates free markets and capitalism? Head over to the sewer, and you will be showered with favors; and maybe even get a medal around your neck.

Naturally, if the free marketplace ensures the efficient allocation of the world's scarce resources, government force ensures the misallocation and waste of those resources. 

The U.S. government has been at it for quite some time now, and they've piled up a monumental heap of garbage. Obama is going to keep adding to the refuse.


Chris Rossini is on Twitter

4 comments:

  1. Obama is an empty suit. He does not know anything about anything. He MAY have good intentions but he is totally ignorant of how the world works. It is difficult to imagine, but he was elected by people who are A LOT more ignorant than he is. A significant percentage of those who voted for him are racists and voted for him solely because of the color of his skin. He has done a lot of damage to our nation and he isn't done. He is by far the worst president in US history - no one else is even close. US citizens will suffer greatly for a long time because of Obama.

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  2. You described America of 50 - 100 years prior. Blame decades of Fed printing, which was insane during Greenspan reign, but has been surpassed with the Bernanke dictatorship. Income, and especially wealth via stock, stock options, real estate, and inflation of all asset classes by the Fed, assisted by Tax policy, has replaced hard work and serving the consumer. It's pathetic, but increased minimum wage, and higher taxes on wealthy might be the only way to prevent a full-scale class war, even in U.S.

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    1. increasing the minimum wage and higher taxes are class war. it's just the lower class using the power of government to attack and steal from the upper class. Government is just a weapon. To prevent class war, you have to decrease govt protectionism and general involvement in the economy.

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  3. I always enjoy your articles, Chris, but this one may qualify as my favorite for the week.

    A lot of hard work (and money) went into the creation of healthcare.gov, but this didn't prevent it from being a miserable failure upon delivery. Microsoft is forced to cut its losses or risk going the way of Blockbuster. USG has no such market constraints, however, so it just keeps pouring money--and hard work--into this losing proposition.

    As a manager I don't reward hard work, I reward smart work. If one of my employees completes a project in less time than their co-worker while at the same time producing similar results, that's who I'm targeting for advancement. Is it fair? Perhaps not from the less productive's point of view. But aside from the benefits to my company, the less productive--if they stay around--end up finding ways to work smarter, by learning from those whom I reward.

    I can think of no better system for improving the human condition than this. Naturally, any politician who hasn't needed to earn a living in the marketplace will not understand this, particularly one who subscribes to the thoroughly discredited and antique labor theory of value.

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