Capitalism and the Right to Rise

[4est_4est_Gump]

In freedom lies the risk of failure. But in statism lies the certainty of stagnation.
By JEB BUSH
Wall Street Journal

Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: "The right to rise."

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn't seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing. People understand this. Freedom of speech, for example, means that we put up with a lot of verbal and visual garbage in order to make sure that individuals have the right to say what needs to be said, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. We forgive the sacrifices of free speech because we value its blessings.

But when it comes to economic freedom, we are less forgiving of the cycles of growth and loss, of trial and error, and of failure and success that are part of the realities of the marketplace and life itself.

Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand "Do something . . . anything."

As Florida's governor for eight years, I was asked to "do something" almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn't alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market. But cumulatively, they do, and we have now imperiled the right to rise.

Woe to the elected leader who fails to deliver a multipoint plan for economic success, driven by specific government action. "Trust in the dynamism of the market" is not a phrase in today's political lexicon.

Have we lost faith in the free-market system of entrepreneurial capitalism? Are we no longer willing to place our trust in the creative chaos unleashed by millions of people pursuing their own best economic interests?

The right to rise does not require a libertarian utopia to exist. Rather, it requires fewer, simpler and more outcome-oriented rules. Rules for which an honest cost-benefit analysis is done before their imposition. Rules that sunset so they can be eliminated or adjusted as conditions change. Rules that have disputes resolved faster and less expensively through arbitration than litigation.

In Washington, D.C., rules are going in the opposite direction. They are exploding in reach and complexity. They are created under a cloud of uncertainty, and years after their passage nobody really knows how they will work.

We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

Well said.

Running for President?

Sarah Palin says it's not too late...

 

[trysail]

A smart fellow said:

...if [society doesn't] ...invest enough, then sooner or later, [society]... can’t consume. And if [society] overinvest, [society] creates inert and useless capital incapable of producing the “correct” consumption goods. Hence the need to find a balance consistent with the “psychological rate of time preference” of the population.


One thing’s for damn sure, based on a reading of history: Expecting government policy and bureaucrats to find that proper knife edge balance is only slightly more probable than Smith finding buried golden tablets in upstate NY in the early 19th century...

and Adam Davidson wrote [emphasis mine]:

...Americans now have so many seductive things they can buy that there are ample consumer options no matter what we feel. Partly as a result, savings — known in economics as deferred consumption — have fallen steadily for more than 30 years, from a high of nearly 12 percent of income. It kissed zero before a tiny uptick in the past couple years.

The decline of the savings rate is particularly troubling because it is consistent through busts and booms. During the fast growth of the late 1990s and mid-2000s, and the dark times that followed, people have been choosing to spend more and save less than ever before. Paradoxically, this happened just as pensions have been disappearing and life spans have been increasing. It suggests that Americans are so caught up in every short-term enthusiasm or agony that they haven’t thought enough about long-term fiscal health.

When the dust clears from the current crisis in a year or 2 or 10, it will probably become obvious that the recent decades were a giddy consumption mirage fueled, in part, by free-flowing foreign debt. The world won’t lend the United States money for nothing forever (though, downgrade aside, nobody has told the world that yet), and the country can’t keep buying a lot more from everyone else than it is able to sell them...

 

[RobDownSouth]

I wondered how long it would take for Jebbie's focus-group tested 2016 mantra ("right to rise") to make it to this board.

As it turns out,not long.

 

[RightField]

I wondered how long it would take for Jebbie's focus-group tested 2016 mantra ("right to rise") to make it to this board.

As it turns out,not long.

It makes sense though....

....you can have misdirected government control (often ends up in crony capitalism) with low or no growth and increasing competition for the ever-shrinking meager resources

...or you can have free and dynamic markets that have a history of creating prosperity and growth but necessarily leads to higher-than-average income inequality.

I vote for growth and prosperity....Obama and people like you vote for poverty and privation for all.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

What I see coming is a rejuvenation of America thru its root-stock Scotch-Irish. The Scottish invented the modern world, and will do it again.

 

[bronzeage]

In freedom lies the risk of failure. But in statism lies the certainty of stagnation.
By JEB BUSH
Wall Street Journal



Well said.

Running for President?

Sarah Palin says it's not too late...

If elected, he will be just in time to invade Iraq, again.

It's a family tradition.

 

[sufisaint]

Unfortunately the more accurate statement is the right to stay on top...with enough capital anything is possible...but building a living from the ground up is almost impossible from zoning laws to double social security payments they make almost impossible...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Unfortunately the more accurate statement is the right to stay on top...with enough capital anything is possible...but building a living from the ground up is almost impossible from zoning laws to double social security payments they make almost impossible...

Real Americans cant care less about fucking laws. Real Americans take the attitude: FUCK THE POLS AND FUCK THE BUREAUCRATS AND FUCK THE PO LEECE!

 

[NeverEndingMe]

business is evil, people must and only work for the collective. love thy obama

one doesn't have the right to partake in Capitalism, we need more socialism. just look at what the obama has done for you!

In freedom lies the risk of failure. But in statism lies the certainty of stagnation.
By JEB BUSH
Wall Street Journal



Well said.

Running for President?

Sarah Palin says it's not too late...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

What I see coming is a rejuvenation of America thru its root-stock Scotch-Irish. The Scottish invented the modern world, and will do it again.

http://mises.org/daily/5659/Roman-Law-From-LaissezFaire-to-Statism

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Unfortunately the more accurate statement is the right to stay on top...with enough capital anything is possible...but building a living from the ground up is almost impossible from zoning laws to double social security payments they make almost impossible...

The top quintile is not a stagnant set of people.

We move in and out of it all the time.



Yes, the price of the government's desire to just do something about every complaint and every imagined injustice and victim.

I think Jeb said something about that.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Now, what the rich can do in an era of interventionist government is to make sure they get so many regulations and fees passed that only the biggest corporations can carry the overhead required to do business.

 

[Sean]

The top quintile is not a stagnant set of people.

We move in and out of it all the time.

Bullshit. Western society now has less social mobility than any time since the fucking renaissance.

 

[koalabear]

Bullshit. Western society now has less social mobility than any time since the fucking renaissance.

Learn to traverse the gutters faster.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Now, what the rich can do in an era of interventionist government is to make sure they get so many regulations and fees passed that only the biggest corporations can carry the overhead required to do business.

You got it, Toyota. And its exactly whats going on today.

 

[Wrong Element]

I wondered how long it would take for Jebbie's focus-group tested 2016 mantra ("right to rise") to make it to this board.

As it turns out,not long.

And what better spokesman could there be for the notion that America is all about merit than a member of the Bush family?

I've said in here numerous times that one reason the GOP field is so hideous is that the guy who should have been the main man, Jeb, wasn't running for reasons I shouldn't have to spell out. Maybe he's figured that things are so bad that what the hell, he might as well give it a shot?

Gore beat Dubya in the popular vote even though he wasn't an especially good campaigner, and even before we had further evidence that this family shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House. I can't imagine Jeb could beat Obama, but if it happened, America can't say it wasn't warned. Twice.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Good takedown:

http://agonyin8fits.blogspot.com/2011/12/gods-and-monsters.html

 

[VaticanAssassin]

Bullshit. Western society now has less social mobility than any time since the fucking renaissance.

Ha! Do you belive that? Wow....you sir, are a old idiot!

 

[RobDownSouth]

Good takedown:

http://agonyin8fits.blogspot.com/2011/12/gods-and-monsters.html

That was an excellent analysis. Thanks for sharing.

Of course, people like Ish will still think the "right to rise" is gummit provided viagara.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Bullshit. Western society now has less social mobility than any time since the fucking renaissance.

That would be because most of it has adopted its precious "Social Democracy."

It has little to do with Capitalism and everything to do with government intervention.

It is popular today to blame capitalism for everything that displeases. Indeed, who is still aware of what he would have to forego if there were no "capitalism?" When great dreams do not come true, capitalism is charged immediately. This may be a proper procedure for party politics, but in Scientific discussion, it should be avoided.
Ludwig von Mises
A Critique of Interventionalism (1929)

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Good takedown:

http://agonyin8fits.blogspot.com/2011/12/gods-and-monsters.html

Hope and Change!

Not a single economic argument in that entire article and nary a mention of the growth of government, that growth with which we were assured would make the playing field more level.

When Government gets so powerful that its purchase price is cost effective, even imperative, to business, then business will purchase government indulgences.
A_J, the Stupid

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Face it, most people don't pack the gear to kill enough Comancheros to rise above their "station". A good product and good service and some cash management, and you can rise and oppress . . . yourself.



And enough Comanchero carcasses.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

NO mo' buzzard and worm pies?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Look at the bounty killers - the self-motivated independent contractors.


Where Life has no value, Death sometimes has its price . . . .

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Dying ain't much of a livin' boy...