House of Eratosthenes

Those of you trying to figure out if the Republican party has done anything for you lately, William Teach has something for you to read. Make of it what you will — but it’s interesting that he had to pull it in from across the Atlantic.

Funny how this news was lost in the shuffle Friday, and I had to go to a British newspaper to find out

Republicans claimed to have struck a blow for freedom on Friday when the House of Representatives voted to strip all funding from government programmes promoting energy-saving lightbulbs.

The measure, brought as an amendment to an energy spending bill by the Texas Republican Michael Burgess, bars the federal government from using any funds to enforce improved lighting efficiency standards.

In his remarks, Burgess cast the conservation of the old-fashioned 100 watt lightbulb as a burning issue of personal freedom.

“The federal government has no right to tell me or any other citizen what type of lightbulb to use at home. It is our right to choose,” he told the House.

Obama and Senate Democrats have already stated that they prefer to come down on the side of Big Government and reduced freedoms, and will not support the measure.

Friday was my birthday. <grin>

Thought exercise: Suppose there is another universe in which, for people to vote in governments that would regulate their technological advancements, violates the laws of physics. Somehow. It simply cannot be done and is therefore not even worth discussing, nevermind how people would feel about it. Just go with it, okay? It’s a thought exercise.

Obviously, libertarians and conservatives envision that such a thing would look like Jetsons, and liberals think it would look like Flintstones. That’s not the thought exercise. The thought exercise is — why? Why would this look like the Flintstones? Why would civilizations within such a universe, in which government is forced to allow technology to advance in whatever way it will, unmolested — be any less sophisticated or advanced than their counterparts in this universe, in which it butts in whenever the ballot box allows it to?

Spare me the anecdotes about “Al Gore voted to fund ARPANET which became the Internet.” I know, I know…progs will massage and twist the truth around, making it look like beltway politicians gave us everything we value, while the computer scientists and engineers who actually figured out how the ring and bus and star topologies work, I guess they just sat around waiting for the decisions to be made and carried pens around in their pockets. I mean, walk me through it. You have people who don’t have to work within a budget, ever — bossing around the people who do have to work within a budget. People who don’t produce, handing down hard-and-fast edicts and pronouncements upon people who do produce things. We’d miss that if it was gone, huh?

It’s time, right now — in the midst of these “debt ceiling talks” — for a sense of perspective. The private sector does have its share of scumbags…it’s got people working in it, and that’s the way people are. We are all flawed sons and daughters of Adam. But in business, everything is your fault, all the time. No, really. If you have a spiffy new business plan that calls for hiring people and you’ve checked your math and checked it again…then Obama passes a new monstrosity of a health care bill and it costs more to hire people and your plan is scuttled…that’s your fault. You should have foreseen the possibility and built in a contingency plan. If the customers choose not to buy your product, because they have another option that became available while your product was in development, that is also your fault. Everything is your fault when you’re in business.

In government, nothing is your fault. Ever. Ask yourself: How do we know if the big-government way is wrong? What events can we observe that would demonstrate to us that this fails? And the answer, as any fifth grader should be able to tell you, is not some big-government politician saying “Whoops, that wasn’t the right way to go, sorry about that.” That isn’t going to happen. President Obama cracking a lame joke about shovel-ready jobs, is about as close as you’re ever going to get.

No, the litmus test for failure is what we’re seeing right now. What we see now, is what we need to see to prove that people who are not forced to work within budgets…don’t work within budgets. They spend what they like to spend, and when they run out of money it’s the taxpayer’s fault for not partaking in the “shared sacrifice.” It’s the fault of those awful businesses for not paying “their fair share.”

It leads to these “sit-downs,” these “negotiations,” these “debt talks.” You and I would call it “bankruptcy court.” It means you fucked up, didn’t live within your means, got taken for a ride. Yeah, you have to wait awhile for someone to point out the obvious, when it comes to the federal government. It means the model that was implemented, doesn’t really work.

I think my “Freedomverse” would work just fine. Productive people already understand what needs to be done to get things produced. It’s their nature; they are adhering to a nature linked to the definition of their class. And people whose job it is to boss other people around, don’t care about production, they just care about bossing people around. They, too, are adhering to a certain nature that is linked to the definition of their class.

Government creates “standards” for our light bulbs? Pffft. Yeah, you can’t go straight back to the Founding Fathers and get their opinions about it; they didn’t know what light bulbs were. But get real, they were pretty bright. The concept isn’t that complicated. Thomas Jefferson, I think I could get it across to him in twenty seconds or less.

And then, “Oh by the way Messrs. Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Jay, Madison, one other little thing…our fed wants to tell us how to build the light bulbs.” They’d be cool with that? Seriously?

Yeah, this is the part where your foaming-at-the-mouth lefty starts screaming about how they all held slaves or something. Suddenly, the Founders don’t know shit. Good ol’ lefties, if it weren’t for double standards they’d have no standards at all.

It’s the rest of us who have to meet their standards, huh?

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De-Funding the Light Bulb BanSaturday, July 16th, 2011

De-Funding the Light Bulb Ban
Saturday, July 16th, 2011