The Virtue of Admitting Defeat

In an interesting development for energy war watchers, the great and powerful Google admitted today that it can't overturn the laws of economics, physics or thermodynamics, by abandoning grand plans to get into the renewable energy racket. Now if only "clean energy" gurus in Washington has enough humility to admit defeat and invest themselves in more worthwhile pursuits.

That won't happen, of course, and for a very revealing reason. Google, although amazingly profitable, remains a business, subject to the dictates of profit and loss. If it's wasting shareholder money on unprofitable and futile ventures, sooner or later the sinking bottom line will force a course correction, as it did in this case. But no such rules apply to the federal government, which is why it's so reckless, wasteful and dangerous to our pocketbooks. Unlike Google, it has a seemingly-endless supply of money and time to squander in pursuit of energy police panaceas and pipedreams, ala Solyndra. And nothing short of total bankruptcy will apparently change its ways.

Google is doing the smart thing by admitting defeat. But government never admits defeat -- all its failures, in fact, become excuses to spend even more on the fruitless, the forlorn and the phony. How much better off we taxpayers would be if the people in Washington had just a modicum of the smarts and humility Google just showed.

The Cain Scrutiny

Two factors may help Herman Cain weather the first major political storm of his candidacy.

The first is that many folks predisposed to support Cain also have serious doubts about the objectivity, credibility and honesty of the liberal media elite pushing the story. The "mainstream" media is widely perceived to have an agenda -- justifiably, in my opinion -- that's hostile to conservatives and libertarians. People on the right, if they haven't actively tuned-out the MSM, simply aren't going to allow a media cabal to drag their candidate down -- at least not without hard, damning evidence that the man is a genuine demon.

Second, Cain seems to be benefiting from what might be called The Clinton Effect.

The former president set the bar so low in terms of presidential behavior, personal mores and salacious sexual adventures that almost anyone can easily clear it, inoculating candidates like Cain against the damage that certain revelations might formerly have inflicted. Clinton's continuing popularity with certain Americans -- the fact that he still struts upon the national stage as a lecherous elder statesman -- tells politicians that a sexual scandal does not have to spell political ruin. On the contrary, you can sodomize an intern in the Oval Office coat closet and still live out your days as the political celebrity, with the media hanging on your every pronouncement.

But Republicans are different, some will say. "Values voters" don't tolerate such nonsense. They have higher standards. Such scandals still can damage candidates on the right, since Republicans still expect something more from their leaders than someone who can run the welfare state spoils system.

Yes, but maybe that's changing, as conservatives, libertarians and even RINO Republicans recognize that there's something far more dangerous to the Republic than a candidate with a loose tongue, wondering eye or history of divorce -- which is having a dangerous, left-wing ideologue like Barack Obama in the White House for 4 more years. When the survival of the Republic is at stake, winning becomes more important than nitpicking and moral preening. Certain character flaws can (and must) be overlooked in a candidate who can knock-off Obama and reverse this country's toboggan ride toward fiscal and economic ruin.

Maybe this time Republicans are so determined to win that they aren't going to allow rank hypocrites on the other side, and in elite media circles, torpedo viable candidates and turn their value voting tendencies against them. The stakes are much higher, and clearer, this time around. They fear Barack Obama and his radical policies more than they fret over minor alleged character flaws in their candidates.

Debt Be Not Owed

Finally, fitfully, belatedly, the real purpose of the OWS temper tantrum emerges from the mists. It's increasingly obvious that it's all about debt forgiveness -- or debt evasion, depending on one's perspective -- for those who've been living beyond their means and aren't willing to settle accounts. And the President obviously gets this, given his hasty efforts to bailout student debtors and re-launch a failed federal mortgage "rescue" program.

Flea Party protesters don't really object in principle to bank bailouts -- they're just pissed because they didn't get one! The terms "economic justice" and "economic equality" are just code for debt evasion and deadbeatory.

Taxpayers Were Victims Too

The Cobell lawsuit and case is worthy of a book-length treatment. I hope someone is working on one. But here's the takeaway for me. The $3.4 billion settlement was probably excessive, since most of it will be pocketed by the sharks, but the obscene mismanagement of Indian trust funds by Uncle Sam was an injustice that required redress.

Yes, American Indians were the primary victims. And Elouise Cobell is a hero for becoming the human face of the long fight for justice. But taxpayers were screwed, too -- since it's another price we all must pay for federal bureaucratic bumbling. These payments ought not to come from the general fund, but from the Department of Interior's budget, since that's where the responsibility for this sad episode lies.

It really wasn't so much the result of anti-Indian maliciousness, as it was bureaucratic indifference and incompetence. But it's also fair to wonder whether enough of the latter at some point amounts to the former.

Idiocy in Print

They obviously don't teach enough economics in journalism schools, or the right kind of economics, which is why stories like this one, touting storms as economic stimulus, get written with a straight face.

Most reporters are economic illiterates. Few understand the so-called broken windows fallacy, or the concept of "opportunity cost." They see only what is seen, having not read Bastiat, and seldom bother to look for the unseen. That's why we can find serious journalists seriously asking whether hurricanes are a benefit to the economy. Just imagine how good the U.S. economy would be if we got slammed by one every week!

I've come to conclude that the fight for America's survival is not between the Right and the Left, the black and the white, the secular and the religious, the haves and the have-nots. The real dividing line is between the economically literate and the economically illiterate: between those who can still connect the dots, and those who can't.

The latter have an edge over the former as long as our newswriters are of their ilk.

Burning Questions about Burning Man

The business side of Burning Man is explored in this New York Times piece, which is a subject worth studying for students of economics. It's nice to read that some Burners embrace capitalism, despite their counterculture attitudes -- perhaps because it's about voluntary, free, mutually-beneficial exchange, which is what makes the economy of Black Rock City tick. That economy may not involve cash, and it may shun overt displays of crass commercialism, but it is freedom-oriented and thus capitalist in the purest sense of the word.

The 10 Principles embraced by burners may on first glance appear anti-capitalist, since they diss commercialism and include a left-sounding slam on so-called "exploitation," but they in many ways mirror the image of a society built around libertarian, free-market principles.

Animal Cruelty

Those who've been trying to "re-wild" today's far more developed, densely-populated "new West" with large predators, based on the fantasy that we can magically return to the "old West" of 1855, should be indicted on charges of mass animal cruelty -- since it's the animals that pay the price for this nutty science fair project run amok.