As IF Times

link Chefs Call Proposed New York Salt Ban Absurd.

I have written a piece about this earlier, (see I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter).  It was improbable at the time that NY would actually try to regulate salt on restaurant food, but now, there are plans to ban it altogether according to this article.  To this I say, GOOD!

Let’s hope that they continue to vote zealots into office to push compliance of the masses for all things correct and decent.  Society will be made better and to paraphrase Orwell, all this restriction will equal greater freedom.  Naturally, not all will be happy to comply with the growing roster of rules for everyday living.  In fact, what will happen is that an entirely new generation of scofflaws will emerge as rebels against a smothering society.  Like the cowboys of yesteryear or the romantic rebels portrayed by Dean and Brando in the 50’s, the new rebels will assume the status of society’s anti-heroes.

Except that in modern times, this new batch of societal rejects may not move the swashbuckling needle as much as their predecessors.  Whereas evocative nicknames such as Spike, Clint, Slim or Gunner were found in days of yore, the newer modern rogues are more likely to have such catchy names as Tyler, Andrew or Sarah.  Of course scofflaws and social misfits of all epochs tend to gather in gangs, formal or informal.  Modern cities will experience pockets of the new rebels shaking salt on their fries in full view of children, riding bicycles without helmets, talking on cell phones in cars and not separating recyclables from trash.  What dreaded scourges of society!

link Thomas Frank: The Rise of the Reactionary Right – WSJ.com.

Again, a simplistic summary of conservative, free market positions.  You would think by now, arguments against free markets would have some validity, some new revelation about why this economic model doesn’t work.  Instead we get the same old chestnut we’ve heard for years, which is, ” conservative policies have brought us to the brink of economic disaster”.

This argument is specious and your basic ideological drivel.  Whatever the shortcomings of economies, free market philosophies are not to blame.  In fact, it is exactly the opposite that’s true.  Whereas free market principles engender confidence among it’s citizens to go forth and be productive, the grafting of non free market policies on top of them is what makes things go horribly wrong.

With very few exceptions, when governments are charged with the oversight of any part of the economy, that sector is doomed for incompetence, waste and a one way descent into byzantine mazes of bureaucracy with departments often working at cross purposes to one another.  An apt analogy would be chewing gum in your hair.  It is such a mess that the only way to be rid of it is to cut off some hair.   Many government programs start off in  the same way that chewing gum gets on to the hair of kids;  someone thought it was a good idea at the time.

Conservative policies are not about every man for himself, this is the imagery that’s offered to convince people that progressivism and collectivism are more civilized philosophies.  The recent resurgence of conservative voices are about pushing back against cultures of entitlement and waste entrenched in governments and propagated by them.  At its core, conservatism is about not ceding to government control what you can do for yourself.  It is about being dependable and responsible rather than dependant and responsive.

I would invite anyone to point out any part of the economy that governments have control over which can be considered to be a success.  It’s amusing and maddening that politicians continue to propose large scale agendas which are for “the good of everyone” when there is no historical data for any efficacy of policies in the past.   When you purchase a mutual fund, there is printed in large letters on the prospectus, “Past performance are not an indicator of future returns”.  In the case of governments, there actually IS no history of past performance, certainly not for the good!  One more thing is worth mentioning from this article, an technique used which is common to all progressive pundits.  They obliquely compare conservatives to cavemen.  The GEICO guys are going to be annoyed.