Caught In A Net

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There is a comment in moderation I haven’t yet decided to liberate. It’s from a new commenter and I don’t think he’s a troll.

Or at least trolls rarely write wiffy-waffing walls of text that start by accusing me of either lying or being wrong (about an obvious point at that) and then proceeds to do the appeasing two-step ending in how he thinks we should have a social safety net. It reads in fact completely and bizarrely idiotic, in the way only a very smart person fed on disingenuous pap his entire life can sound stupid.

But the person self-identifies as a socialist and my assistant strenuously objects to freeing his comment, since she says no one practices the arcane art of the flounce, anymore, and we’ll end up having to block him. And because I am exhausted, I’ll defer to her. (Exhausted: turns out not just the last step on the marbelizing but the one before were a mistake. You see, having done the marbelizing proper (I’m good at painting marble-like substances) I found myself leery of doing the final step in epoxy, so I chose “layers of polyurethane instead” (Lacquer not indicated, since it’s a bedside table, CPAPs leak, and I occasionally slap my water glass instead of grabbing it.) Apparently high humidity and temperatures in the nineties mean that the polyurethane, being a plastic, remains soft. Since the intermediate steps involve sanding, and removing the mistaken coat definitely needs sanding, what happened is that I tried to sand and the whole turned into a gummed mess. I had to bring out the hot gun. In this weather! It’s now been scraped, sanded bare, and I made interim arrangements, so I can do both bedside tables at the same time since I’ll have to mix epoxy for the final step, and I only want to do it once. (I HATE working with epoxy. I can’t tell you how much.) Anyway, extensive sanding and heat gun left me beat.)

The mistake/lie he thinks I made is that “Socialists don’t want things to get worse.” Right. Lenin saying “The worse the better” was just a bleep. And by the way, don’t try to tell me communism isn’t socialism. The USSR called itself socialist, so did the DDR and so does every other tinpot communist dictatorship in the world. BUT if someone is stupid enough to claim Lenin wasn’t socialist, then they must think socialists are the word’s dumbest life forms, outsmarted by a paramecium because wanting to open the borders and bring in the third world, (I’m not saying people from the third world are bad. But they come from dysfunctional cultures and have no skills we need in our present society.) wanting to incentivize crime (not punishing crime is incentivizing it, unless you believe every criminal is secretly an angel. Also, for the love of Bob, this experience has been run again and again and again. The way to combat serious crime is to disproportionately punish trivial crimes, not the other way around) wanting to strangle energy and wanting to turn us into a command economy (again proven over and over again not to work) is to want to create disorder and destroy everything. I don’t care what pretty lies one tells to cover it up. That’s what socialists want.

But it was his soft landing of “We need a social net” that kept me awake last night. (And I really can’t afford to be kept awake just now.) It’s what people say when they want to appease the socialists. Hell, the mess we’re in, the whole welfare state and the bizarre “mixed economy” bullshit was an attempt to appease the socialists/communists so they wouldn’t destroy everything. It’s why the Victorians went soppy on “helping the poor and educating the benighted” and it’s why country after country has tied itself with velvet ropes, in the attempt to keep the commies from killing everyone and destroying everything.

It doesn’t work. Communists and socialists can’t be appeased. What they want is not what they say they want. What they claim worries them is not what worries them. Creating a social net is admitting that they’re right and the poor need the government to steal from those who have and give to them. Once you concede that, you’re like the prostitute who will only put out for a million dollars. You’ve already admitted what you are. You’re just quibbling on the price.

Quickly, what really — passionately — concerns socialists is that other people have more than THEY THEMSELVES do. Yes, they say they’re concerned about the poor. But talk to any one of them long enough, and the spittle-flecked rant comes out where they will scream that Elon is so rich, why isn’t he feeding all of Africa. Since only a fool or a knave will claim that someone can feed a continent indefinitely, it soon becomes obvious they just hate the fact someone is that wealthy. It bothers them. They’ll rant about inequality, etc. but what bothers them is that others have more than they do. And this is because the very wealthy can ignore them and evade their killing commands. And since at the heart of every statist is a dirty greed for power, this will not be tolerated. The rich must be brought down and they and the poor all made uniformly wretched and in need for the dole dispensed by government, which will, of course, be dispensed by our socialists. (In their dreams. In fact the most ruthless of them end up in power, and everyone else ends up in mass graves. But the dear socialists never see that. They’re blinded by their dreams of unlimited power over the lumpen masses.) Note the commenter that left the wall of text is going to object strenuously to it, and by doing so prove himself either disingenuous or deluded. Either a knave or a useful idiot. (I’m going to be on useful idiot, but I could be wrong.)

Now let’s tackle the whole idea of social net. I’m against.

Note this doesn’t mean I’m against “helping the poor.” Except at our most strapped, where $5 meant I didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, we alot money from our income for helping those who need it. Some of it we even do through extremely well researched charitable organizations. (Few. Look, organizations fall to organizational blinkeredness. Not only do they tend to be taken over by dear blinkered socialists, but they also don’t seem to understand the concept of different cultures. Look up the many misfires and stupidities of the Heifer project for elucidation.) Most of the help we give is personal, close-up and involves … well…. sometimes very strange things. Like, in the nineties Dan and I bought an average of a serviceable computer once every three months. No, our computers weren’t that bad. It was that when we heard of a friend who was a writer and either doing it long hand because they couldn’t afford a computer or whose computer had just died, we got him/her on. Sometimes we even gave it to them (when Dan knew he’d need to be tech support) instead of ding dong ditching by putting it on the door step, ringing the doorbell and driving away like some sort of deranged tech fairies. In the same vein, Dan would buy and repair computers, then put them in the classifieds (later craigslist) for a ridiculously low price, like $20. In that way, we furnished computers to single mothers whose kids needed them for school, to young couples who needed one for accounting or something, etc. (Why not put them for free? Because that attracted people wanting to get them to sell. We tried and found that out.)

We also of course offer more conventional help, like money for a month’s rent or moving expenses. When we can. Or a bag of groceries. Or whatever.

Look, when we needed help — we never went official channels because we suck at bureaucracy and also because I HATE government handouts, as they’re a trap — various friends gave us baby clothes, or a bag of groceries, or such. And that got us on our feet again.

I don’t say any of this to be thought a good person. I’m not in fact a good person. But I aspire to be someone Heinlein would consider a human being. And he said to pay it forward, so I do. Including, yes, making covers for friends, protegees and total strangers. And also when I can (the last few years haven’t been great) dispensing mentoring. Because in my head that’s just what a decent, not terrible human being does. As is all of the above.

But then, you’ll ask, why don’t I want the government to take the burden? Surely I know that I can’t help everyone, or even hear about most of the needs.

I concede the later, particularly since some people are like us and you’ll only find when the noose is tightening around our necks if you’re our close friend or we are in such trouble we let it slip.

And yet, even conceding the fact we can’t help everyone (but we’re not the only people doing this) I oppose the welfare state and utterly reject it and all its empty promises and all its false glamour.

But Sarah, why?

Well, first because the “safety net” is immoral.

How is it immoral? Because it is theft. The government creates no wealth. The government has no money of its own. Any money being used for “a safety net” was taken from someone with threats of violence. And kindly, don’t tell me it’s not with threats of violence. Look up what happens if you refuse to pay your taxes, or even the part of your taxes that you can infer go to “safety net.”

It is immoral, it will always be immoral, to tax an elderly lady who worked and saved her entire life in order to give the money to a young person who can’t find a job. (And note I have spoken sympathetically of young people who can’t find jobs. It’s not their fault. But neither is it their right to be supported by others by the use of armed robbery.)

Second, because the so called “safety net” is mostly a cage.

Look, most of the people on Welfare who stay on Welfare have problems that can’t be solved by handing them money. That is not a safety net. That’s a safety prison, through the bars of which we regularly pass money. Even in the cases when the people on welfare didn’t bring about their own problems — being insane or handicapped is usually not something one brings on oneself, absent some of the crazier new age theories — what they need is what we can’t provide by handing them money: either psychiatric help or a concerted effort to find something they can do to support themselves or, for extreme cases, a way to live with dignity while being unable to provide for themselves.

There is no dignity in Welfare. It enables the state to poke its nose into your business, and also to make decisions for you. (And the end result of the welfare state is always the metaphorical gas chambers. ALWAYS. Look up what’s happening with assisted suicide in the “compassionate” states of the west. Because ultimately the way to help those who won’t otherwise be made whole is to kill them, which does solve the problem. Permanently.)

Third, because all government social spending ends up misapplied.

It starts as money for widows and orphans, but because widows and orphans are few in our present age, and the genuine widows find ways to provide for themselves, it ends up as paying people divorce and have multiple kids out of wedlock. It ends up being paying people not to see work. It ends up, in its ultimate international application as paying for trans operas for peruvians because someone sold it as resolving institutional problems or something.

The money, stolen at gun point from working people, creates such a massive fund (particularly in a country the size of a continent like ours) that it ends up attracting the kind of people who see it for what it is: a concentrated source of power. Those people, in turn, search out not those who can be helped and move on, but for those who will remain clients and give them that power. Which creates a need for the money they dispense, by regulation, by bureaucracy, by design, ultimately.

Fourth because anything administered by an institution as large as the government will change much too slowly and will perpetuate problems it’s trying to solve.

Even when trying not to, (and that is rare) the institutional solutions for the problems are the kind that perpetuate the problem. For instance, kids who can’t find a job will be told to apply and apply and apply, and capture the applications as proof they have done so. They might be put in training for conventional jobs, etc.

More good could be done in our day and age by providing them with a small stake to start their own small business, and having courses that teach them to do so.

But that is impossible because we’re in an area of catastrophic change and government regulations and understanding move very very slowly.

Even the best provisions to make Welfare useful and temporary are perfectly adapted to the early twentieth century and useless to us now.

Fifth because welfare in general and in the end will impoverish everyone is society.

When socialists spit-fleck their rants on making Elon pay for everyone in Africa, or in taking the money from all billionaires to feed “every hungry child in America” (A trick as there are almost no hungry children in America, barring those who are actively being trafficked and those on a diet. The surveys are nonsense.) they are, besides screaming at the top of their voices “I am an envious asshole who can’t stand the thought that people have more than I do” declaring their utter and complete lack of understanding of economics. (If their declaring Marx a genius economist wasn’t enough to tell you that.)

You see, they will also tell you “no one needs” x amount of money. And declare themselves capable of telling you what money people have in excess of needs.

(Sighs. Massages the bridge of her nose, to ward off a headache.)

G-d forgive me, but I’m about to invoke their satanic gospel against them. What they’re ignoring is “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Because of course, they think the government can see into those, and also that they’re competent to determine what each needs and can do.

And that’s the veriest, frothiest bullshit confection. They have visibility into exactly one set of abilities: their poor scrap of can-do. And into one set of needs: their own bottomless, gargantuan wish for more, more, more.

When they envision being “rich” or even someone like Elon their limited and blinkered imagination (No? Look at what Hollywood became as they ran off anyone even suspected of bad think) they imagine having money for everything they would like to buy and for the lifestyle they’d like to have. And above that they stutter.

I have yet to meet a single socialist who in their most secret of hearts doesn’t imagine “Millionaires and billionaires” as keeping their excess funds in a room or fortress. Whether they also imagine people swimming in the bills and coins like Uncle Scrooge is optional. (I suspect if they read comics as kids they do.)

What they don’t understand is that someone like Elon (and others, in a smaller way, but he’s such a glaring example) NEED that excess money. They need it to invest, to create new companies, to pay for research and innovation that will make all of us much richer.

If they can’t have that because they’re being taxed to their toenails, this impoverishes everyone.

Look, the very wealthy of the Victorian age contributed more to our world of extreme wealth and minimal true need than all the playwrights and novelists nattering on about the plight of the poor and downtrodden.

The reasons are too many to list, but some are for instance that people funding research into a process or idea that they want to use for their company or their ambitious undertaking tend to fund real science, not make believe.

Everyone with a brain should admit part of the problem in science right now is that the government pays for most of it, which means that they pay for the results they want. If you don’t see a problem with that, you might have other issues. What we need is for people who want to make more money by making better widgets or sending widgets to Mars. They don’t want faked results but real ones.

But also that people who know what to do and have the capacity for work can’t streamline processes, create better ways to increase crops (or lose less to pests) or ANYTHING ELSE if all their ‘excess money’ is being confiscated by government and mostly getting eaten by bureaucracy or misapplied to things that maybe might have helped someone in 1930.

And that’s where “their abilities” come in. I am — I flatter myself — a mildly decent futurist. I can see what’s coming down the pike when it’s written in letters of fire six feet high. Which makes me amazing compared to most “experts” and most governments.

So if I have that, why ain’t I rich?

Well, because the best I can do with my abilities is put it out here, on this blog or instapundit, and hope someone with more ability takes it on.

What I lack is not the intellectual ability (though I lack knowledge in some technical fields) but the risk tolerance. I couldn’t do what Elon does for half the time and twice the money. I’d be such a nervous wreck if I tried to start a company that I’d never start.

I also lack the capacity for work. I can work 20 hours a day for a while but I’m old and the body gives after a while. Some of the “millionaires and billionaires” are people who cheerfully work for 20 hours a day into their eighties. (Our president might be one of them.)

But what about the millionaires and billionaires that “simply” invest? Well, as Dan has taken control of our retirement funds and works at it, I can tell you that’s still an additional full time job, on top of his full time job. But beyond that, even if it’s “all” people do, because it’s their money and they’re interested in not losing it, they are more likely to invest it in things that grow and improve.

And the miracle of free trade is that what does well (absent governmental distortion, of course. BUT that’s not free trade) are things people want, things that improve their lives. Which in turn, by degrees, no matter how small, makes the world richer and better.

Still, given all that, you’ll ask what we’d do with all the genuinely needy. The halting, the lame, the congenitally incapable of striving for themselves shall always be with us. Beyond that, even those of us who are strivers and always on the go do at times hit a patch where we need help. And at any rate, all of us at some point will hit a place where we permanently need help. As I’m finding after making like I was twenty yesterday, your body changes and won’t let you go go go like the energizer bunny anymore.

I propose that we foster a culture of private charity. To be fair, this already exists and always has throughout the history of mankind. From people like us who help those within our reach, to people who are much, much better off and start schools or create programs, or HELP people we’d never event think of helping.

And there’s always churches as every major religion has a requirement for charity.

To let government usurp the rightful function of what is the basic requirement of being human is bizarre, and is made more so by the government’s war on religious charity (like the nuns who look after the dying in NYC or the Little Sisters of the Poor.)

You can’t say “But what if people don’t help?” Because people have helped throughout all of the centuries of mankind’s existence. Sure, often not lavish, but as we’ve established, from our perspective they were ALL POOR. And still doing what they COULD.

That is an a-historical piece of nonsense that is designed to incentivize armed theft administered by statists.

I can only conclude that socialists are either egregiously indoctrinated into a-historical nonsense, or judging everyone by the size of their minuscule souls and capacity for disinterested kindness.

I’ll leave it to their consciences to determine which.

131 thoughts on “Caught In A Net”

  1. Was it here that I learned the Prime Directive was actually a good thing?

    Unsophisticated people in 3rd World countries were given mosquito netting to protect the m as they slept. Instead, as the mosquitos didn’t bother them, they used the much finer nets for fishing and killed off all the baby fish.

    We should just stay the heck away from people who have not asked us for help.

    Yes, we can send medical missionaries to teach them, maybe drill wells and provide simple things (a few goats, shoes and toys for the children, etc); but we need to tailor the gifts to the recipients.

    Otherwise they use the technology to kill themselves, like with the fish.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. You have to be careful with aid to the 3rd world. A guy went with his own money to drill wellsn so an African country to provide clean water. He was derided by ‘progressives’ for white supremacy and In a couple of years the wells failed because the locals would not maintain them. Apparently maintenance in some parts of the 3rd world is a foreign concept.

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      1. Periodically some town in the Middle East dries up and blows away when their wells get silted up and there’s no more water. Most of those wells were dug by hand, sometimes without metal tools, 1500 years ago or more.

        The inheritors of those wells can’t be bothered to maintain them. In’shallah, what can be done? No man worthy of the name would do such menial work. So they pack their belongings and go somewhere that still has wells that work.

        Liked by 3 people

          1. We could be looking at 20-40 million dead in a week if that one big dam fails.

            As they will have done it to themselves, it gives new spin on “They have made a desert and called it ‘Peace'”.

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            1. And that many in a month or two if the drinking water runs out. There’s not a lot of water behind the dam.

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              1. If they weren’t a bunch of homicidal fanatics, between us and the Israelis they could have been supplied with desalinization plants, but they are.

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    2. And, like a song popular in the late 1770s, “…the tribute we give will be prisons and graves…”

      The social net America offers is the chance, like a former young man from Ghana who arrived in America with $800 and a dream of hard work and success to go from working in a tire shop to owning five and having 100 or more employees.

      We have already proven people don’t value gifts they didn’t earn. Let’s stop playing that game.

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  2. Yes, yes! Private charity is the only charity. Government subsidies, however justified, are NOT charity. I go so far as to advocate eliminating the charitable deduction because I believe it eventually distorts “charitable” organizations into government minions even if they try to fight it. Commies always try to trick people by changing names or the meaning of words. See my little essay What is Justice?

    Thanks to you and Dan for your real charity. I try to do my feeble part in my own way.

    Liked by 5 people

      1. Most of our charity doesn’t qualify for deductions….

        Exactly! Especially with the large standard deduction and the difficulties put in place by government meddling, young people can’t afford a house, and without a mortgage, the likelihood of you spending enough money on deductible charity is almost nil. I believe it’s just a tax dodge for the wealthy.

        Christians have always been about charity. The public schools only became a reality in response to the Catholics building and running their own schools with no help from the government. That scared the WASPish, who insisted that the government must do something about those mongrel Irish and Italians trying to raise the social status of their rabble progeny.

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        1. We already talked about the 1787 Northwest Ordinance mandating schools and universities supported by school sections of land.

          We have also talked about all the school boards that were just local farmers deciding they needed to hire a teacher and build a schoolhouse, as well as all kinds of religious groups hiring young ministers as teachers during the winter to fund their own schooling.

          Liked by 2 people

      2. My beloved had clients who refused to tell him anything about their charitable activities because they didn’t want tax credit for them. But he knew they were very active, indeed.

        He has told me that on the whole, he’s seen people making relatively little be very generous in their charities, and also “wealthy,” people who never even donated their underwear (as one Democratic candidate was alleged to do). Also noted the “wealthy,” also tended to be less happy….

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I don’t even track our chartiable donations anymore. Even with mortgage interest we do not come anywhere close to 7% excess.

          With the mortgage interest, our ability to deduct one vehicle (percentage of) for hubby’s work, and all the scouter costs (our costs as volunteers), we were over the threshold. Did not even get receipts for items taken to St Vicent. Quicken TurboTax even has a “fair market item”, “calculator”, that can be used (or did, haven’t paid attention).

          We do track medical, even though our medical is under the federal percentage of income. But state does deduct medical expenses for those who turn 66 of the tax year. I remember the disappointment for my 65 year. “Yay! Turned 65, 2021!” to “What? I have to be 65 on Jan 1, at the beginning of the year? Rip off!” Pout.

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        2. Important to keep as much from the Leviathan as possible. So it doesn’t go to enable fraud.

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  3. America is the most charitable nation in the world, and…I want to say the first time I ran into that was in Laura Ingraham’s first (?) book, but I am not sure. I forget which George Washington biography it was that I read it in, but at both Valley Forges (I think) he put out a call for donations for the soldiers. They were SWAMPED by the response which came from everyone in the nearby area who could get enough material together the local churches could pack it up and ship it to the Continental Army.

    For heaven’s sake, I still have a picture of a post where a modern day Army veteran shows off a clownfish stuffed toy sent to him by a child to protect him while he was in Iraq (he never, ever, went on patrol without it). The child included it in the care package pure gratis. It was his favorite stuffed animal to keep monsters away and he sent it to the soldier in hopes it would protect him.

    Let America off the leash already. We’ll be on Mars in a generation and have a moon base in half the time – and probably be better about sending mosquito nets to people who don’t want them, to riff off setnaffa’s comment.

    Liked by 9 people

    1. A little kid sending his favorite stuffed toy, the one that keeps the monsters away, to a soldier whose calling is to fight the monsters…poetic. Also the most American thing ever. That kid saw somebody who, in his view, desperately needed the exact kind of help he could provide. And he freely gave it. “I’m scared, but I’ll be okay; your monsters are worse than mine.” Literally brought tears to my eyes just now.

      My parents taught me to be helpful and to show charity; it was part of our religious upbringing, and also just part of how to be a decent human being. In a lot of ways, it didn’t take very well…I’m a selfish person, somewhat lacking in empathy…but it’s an ideal that does exist and that I do try to follow in my own way (usually by directly helping people I know personally). I suspect that for most people, it exists in some form. What if *real* charity wasn’t officially discouraged at every turn but actively encouraged?

      Liked by 3 people

      1. I looked it up, and apparently it was a girl who sent the fish (named Chester). My mistook. He was also deployed to Afghanistan, not Iraq. But yes, my eyes get damp if I think about it too hard. There’s a reason I saved the snapshot.

        We all tend toward being selfish. Working on that is part of why we are here. If real charity rather than the performative kind were to be encouraged…. I would like to see that. I would very much like to see that. The final product would be something spectacular, I think.

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        1. I will freely admit I can barely type this due to tears in my eyes. Wow.

          …..

          God -blessed- America, with Americans.

          …..

          The packages/cookies/whatever for troops is so overwhelming that the logistics people get annoyed. Moving all that donated stuff forward to the recipients takes major truck cubage.

          Ponder -that- for a bit.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. In 1940 Britain was desperately trying to re-arm when faced with German invasion “Real Soon Now.” It turned out that their stockpile of small arms and artillery had been sold off for scrap after WWI through a series of shady back-door deals, and the regular Army was using a mish-mash of whatever was available, and the Territorial Guard were literally carrying sticks.

        The British government paid for ads in American magazines and newspapers, begging for private donations of firearms and ammunition. And some unknown number of thousands (official records seem to be nonexistent) of Americans packaged up their guns and dropped them off at the Post Office, where they eventually wound up in the hands of the Territorial Guard.

        After the war the guns were collected and, not returned, not warehoused for future use, not sent overseas to support British foreign policy, not sold, not even melted for scrap.

        They were loaded on barges and dumped out at sea like trash. Which is about as big of an “up yours” as they could manage, I guess.

        Next war, the Brits can start learning German as far as I’m concerned.

        Liked by 2 people

        2. Family is lucky a certain 1894 Winchester .35-.25 (rebored to a .30-30) wasn’t one of them. OTOH great-uncle was probably still using it for year-round hunting (deer in Oregon).

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    2. Long ago, I lived near a horrendous wildfire. North of Spokane, with thousands of acres burning/ burnt and every agency they could beg for aid. Hot and dry, Spokane in the summer, and once the fire crowned there was no stopping it. The winds picked it up and carried it across the rivers.

      The firefighters were SWAMPED with donations. Bottled water, shelf-stable foods, monetary contributions. They actually put out a plea for people to STOP bringing material goods because they were stacking up.

      People who lived dozens of miles away and were in no danger. People who lived HUNDREDS of miles away and had to send money.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. If you look up Patera on YouTube, she lives in northeastern Tennessee and was in the area where Helene hit. She and her farm were spared but she was running all over the place volunteering to help others in the aftermath, and people sent her so many donations she had to ask them to stop (1) because she was running out of room and (2) because the cash donations would have landed her in hot water if she kept getting them. By the time winter rolled around she was asking people to buy portable Buddy Heaters for those without home or power, but I don’t think she was collecting those specifically. She had the link and/or phone number for people to buy and donate those beneath her videos, I think.

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      2. Do not know of a fire or natural disaster this does not happen, from Americans; out of their own pocketbooks. Not just at home (US) but anywhere in the world.

        Look at the floods in N. Carolina and W. Virginia recently. Not only supplies, but people poured in with their own equipment on their own dime. Helecopters for where smaller helecopters could land but the national guard larger helecopters couldn’t and rescue would be faster. Roads being rebuilt where government and aid agencies were saying “can’t be done”. Working around government obstruction, and sometimes out-right theft.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. It brought some welcome illumination to a dark period of my life when I found out about the Cajun Navy and their rescue work in Houston. And it was even brighter when I found out some of them had simply ignored and driven around the checkpoints set up by the police and FEMA goons.

          There was one video of a chain of men standing in waist-deep water at a nursing home, passing an old lady in a wheelchair overhead like she was crowd-surfing, and into someone’s bass boat. Yes. That is the way.

          Liked by 2 people

  4. An excellent post! Private charity is the only sensible way to deal with those who actually need help. Taxing those who work and then giving it away is NOT charity and it never was. It’s just socialist income redistribution (and the bureaucrats and other leeches always get their share first). I believe it was Churchill who said the only thing socialism is good at is the equal sharing of misery. Though there are always those who manage to place themselves higher on the scale.

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          1. Word is, there’s not much of the original Lenin left in the glass box in Moscow.

            One man’s near-worship of their ideological primo is another man’s PT Barnum style freak exhibit.

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            1. What makes you think that Lenin left a body to be in that glass box? [Evil Grin]

              Note, I read a short story where the Main Character had a conversation with the Undead Lenin. For some reason, I think the story was written by our Hostess. [Wink]

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  5. Let’s also note “the system,” is chock-full of perverse incentives: rules that encourage people not to do better, but to work right up to the limit of their benefits, lest they lose the help. Which, at that point, they may still need until they rise farther, but don’t qualify for any longer.

    Of course, this works both ways, such as when employers make sure to only give employees hours right up to the limit which would require them to provide health insurance (spits in the general direction of the Lightbringer. Not on him – I’ve been spat on and I don’t want to do it – but in his direction).

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    1. “Got a clutch of 7 lightly sandblasted bears coming over the ridge toward the enemy camp now.”

      “How can you tell they’re ones we sandblasted?”

      “It’s the half-bare patches in their fur, those show up even brighter in the thermal IR.”

      “Okay, tell me again why you think they’re moving in to attack.”

      “You know that weird offworld spice these merc companies seem to put in every single pot?”

      “The one that smells a bit like rancid soap, even from a mile away?”

      “Yeah, that’s the one.”

      “Okay, and..?”

      “We put a half percent of it in the screened river sand we loaded our aerial blaster-bots with.”

      “Oh.” (pause) “Too bad for the bears, though.”

      “Maybe not. Doctrine is to keep most ammo at a central location during routine encampment.”

      (thoughful) “Bet that’s gonna change.”

      “Not fast enough.”

      Liked by 1 person

      1. “At least they’re not the ones that air hit with epoxy.”

        Master Chief slaps the front of his helmet. “Oh, you had to say that….”

        The comms beeped, then a voice sounded on the speakers in the command tent, fuzzy with the encryption and the multiple relay hops. “Scout One to Eagle Six, new contact behind the sanded bears – it’s a wave of more bears, but these have some type of composite armor…”

        Liked by 1 person

      1. <giggles>

        Now that the “trial enhanced” spell and grammar check is done my spelling is headed into the readers of my comments into the “huh?” territory. My spelling, based on my perceived pronunciations is atrocious. (Basic spell check still works. That is good. I do not allow auto corrupt.)

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Since I spell by ear, dialect turns up in my writing. Usually I change “e” into an “a”, because that’s the regional dialect around here (blend of Midwestern and Southern, tending toward nasal/bright vowel pronunciation.)

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  7. One problem with Charity is that “leeches” always exist.

    Governmental “charities” often ignore the “leeches”.

    Private charities (in the past) were on the lookout for the “leeches” but often failed to identify them.

    Of course, individual charity has the advantage that individuals often could realize that a given person is a “leech”.

    Note, my parents encountered a “leech” in that the person that they were trying to help was only interested in getting money from them and never did anything to improve herself.

    Oh, I’ve gotten phone calls from companies attempting to contact a person that my parents allowed to use their phone number as a “contact number”.

    Liked by 4 people

      1. The leeches are the actual purpose of the programs. Employing the overeducated dimwits who reliably support the correct causes to administer the program is far more important than the stated program purpose.

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    2. “Verily, I say unto you, the leeches shall be with you always.”

      My sister is one. Seventy-eight years old and has never been self-supporting. Raised six worthless kids by two fathers on welfare plus endless sponging from grandparents, parents. and siblings. Converted to Islam, is on abusive scumball husband number 7, and is currently hiding in The Gambia awaiting the Last Day.

      I finally cut her loose when she (unironically) invoked the poor “working people” who were being “taxed to the teeth”.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Governmental “charities” often ignore the “leeches”.

      “That’s a feature, not a bug.”

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  8. Socialism/Communism demands personal liberty is thrown away, and what is an out of control committee decides is best. Their best includes their luxury, and the best of everyone else demands they suffer to satisfy the best for the committee. If it was coffee and donuts at work, the bosses always get coffee and donuts, while those that work may, or may not. It depends on the mood of the bosses, and how many friends, or family members, like donuts with their coffee. Of course, if the employees do have donuts and coffee, it’s because the bosses made them make both, and dole it out if they think it’s necessary.

    It’s all simple to understand when you realize those promoting Socialism/Communism foolishly believe their participation will make things better for everyone. The past shows that never happens, and avoiding that reality only shows a greed for something they have no right to have. After they give up their ability to prevent thievery of their own resources, they find they don’t have any, and their starvation depends on whether they’re considered important. There are mass graves filled with those type of people. Their death was more convenient than allowing them liberty.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Private charity is something that the collectivist mind just can’t grasp. The very idea of taking action without direction from a central authority?

    I can’t remember the disaster, it might have the Christmas Tsunami, but some dimwit reporter (BIRM) published a story showing how much more the Euros were giving in aid to the victims, said story counting only Government and NGO aid, including the cost of the cozy HQs in Europe, while ignoring the (substantially much more) aid that was donated by private citizens and charities in the US. And the majority of that was actually in the form of something useful, not in the salaries and travel costs of government administrator types.

    Oh, and the same article, I think, also ignored the impact of the Aircraft Carrier Groups that deployed to the area (You know, the ships with massive drinking water production capabilities, aircraft for medevac, logistics transport, and damage survey capabilities, medical facilities, and thousands of personnel that know how to get things done.)

    Liked by 5 people

  10. a) social safety nets are how the bureaucrats and the policy minded convinced themselves to murder the disabled. Central ledgers that pay a fixed amount per person inevitably have people who do not have the ability to cover the cost plus in taxes. This is one thing if the amounts are very small and the socialism has not destroyed the economy, but as the socialism destroys the economy tax receipts decrease.

    b) welfare is personally damaging, because it disorients one from skill and action. Humans are meant to strive. It is a terrible thing to have nothing that one is accomplishing.

    c) If given a choice of options for explaining whatever, the ones that are emotionally resonant are resonant. It is someone inclined to murder that is most likely to invent the raising of magical power by human sacrifice when they have a flooding problem, and no other information. It is not exactly the same correlation between socialists and murderous wackjob ‘facists’. Given current information, one would expect the murderously insane to most self select into the communists who empirically turn out to be fascist. The people today who self select into communism are the murderous and power seeking, or the ignorant. A gram of observation, and a gram of empirical thought, are sufficient to understand how the communist recipe produces what has resulted so far.

    d) The minds that like socialism are so offensively useless that in a just totalitarianism (1), they would be slain (2).

    (1) justice precludes totalitarianism, and totalitarianism precludes justice

    (2) justice likewise precludes this sort of murderous wackjobbery of aesthetics.

    (3) Yeah maybe I do need to calm down. (4)

    (4) But still, those that say we need a social safety net can go frustrate themselves.

    Liked by 4 people

  11. We already have a (failed) social net. It’s been around since either 1935 (Social [in]Security) or 1965 (the [not-]Great Society).

    G-d help us, we don’t need more of that, we need less of it, and we need to kill what we have of it now before it eats us all alive.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. The problem is that stupid is the default state for all of us. It takes years of hard work and a functional culture to change that. Don’t believe it? Try waiting for a child to learn to change its own diapers. (And yes, I include myself – I’ve been a recovering Democrat for 27 years.)

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  13. Living in a climate that is somewhat warmer than yours, I have learned that the only months I can reliably mess around with polyurethane are January and February. (Most years. Fortunately, I didn’t have any projects involving it this last so-called “Winter.”)

    Oh, and please don’t sand the bears. They do not like it, and tend to get rather cranky with the person doing it.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Here I’m going to go (far) out on a limb and say that a true, genuinely-functional and realized “social safety net” would be a most wonderful, impressive, gloriously useful thing.

    Though I’d also have to say we (humanity) will likely have a useful, reliable faster-than-light drive that works over interstellar distances first. And I mean both of those quite sincerely.

    Both ideas involve a lot of “we don’t even know how to properly imagine how that would work, or could, in any detail yet” — but the second is “only” physics and engineering, crossed with only a bit of industrial (and resource?) economics. While the first involves not only a sort of cultural and social “engineering” that we barely begin to know how to do, but also would need to function at a level we’ve barely ever touched except at the small-group (tribal or sub-tribal) level (think the kind of cooperation needed for a dozens-plus-minus “band” of collaborative hunters in the Ice Age).

    Though do see the Original Post for a set of ideas that begin to be a beginning, at that.

    The (arguably) most quality-uneven SF TV show ever (“Seaquest DSV”) once featured an episode (“Photon Bullet”) with the quote (more or less, it’s been decades):

    “You can’t help somone until you know who they are.”

    And this is where that whole apparatus of “social-ism” falls apart the worst. Informationally, the idea of a government bureaucracy achieving that level of “knowing” is about like aiming to use a ship’s hawser to thread a sewing needle, in the dark by feel. (Mathematicians might use words like “incommensurable” here.) Throwing other people’s money at someone is not identical to helping, see the mosquito fish nets above (“robbing collective Peter to pay for selected Paul” said Mr. K.).

    That word “social” refers to “society” which is everyone in it and how they relate. It’s even bigger than culture, which is (here, and a few other places, quite famously) known as a “hard problem.” The conceit (both poetical and egotistic, to start with) that “social” equals “government” can only be even approached in the “degenerate” case (again, mathematically and morally) where all of society has been subsumed by government — “totalitarianism.” And still it can’t work. Finished threading that needle, yet?

    And this is how you get Mr. Great Wall-o-Text and his maximum magnum opus. The reason I never understood Marxism, until I read an explanation by a non-Marxist, is that it’s full of “things that are not so” — and just enumerating all the mistakes (often of category, not just fact) in all the “social safety nets are easy, all you have to do is pay for them” stuff would take many pages and lots of careful thinking to trip over all the well-hidden traps of thought, clearly enough to defuse them.

    Meanwhile, its exponents are forced to circle vaguely around all the things they can’t explain. Or simply must not ever say or think.

    Compare General Relativity as, “Spacetime tells matter how to move, matter tells spacetime how to curve.” If you really understand something, expressing its essence simply is generally easy.

    Someday, we might actually invent and evolve the kind of culture that has (and is) a “social safety net” — but, until then, we can at least not mistake fumbling confusion for adequate solution.

    [[set rant mode = off]]

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The U.S. economy is an unfathomably complex network with 320 million interacting parts, and the parts are people. The most brilliant thinkers in all of history had a hard time understanding those individual parts in isolation.

      In order for socialism to work, Somebody (or a great many Somebodies) would have to understand all of the parts, AND all of their interactions. Running aground on the rocks of that problem, the Devout Socialists’ solution is to simplify the interactions by force. Free people with individual rights are too hard to predict, so freedom and rights are the first sacrifices on the altar of Holy Socialism. Eventually they wind up with something they can at least partially understand. We call them gulags and mass graves.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Yes. And yet, we’re still coasting along on those early to mid Twentieth Century mental tropes on how “computerized central planning will make the economy so much more efficient.” (See lots of early writings about computers, in places like George Dyson’s Turing’s Cathedral. For bonus extra credit points, compare the similar hype now — and also then — about “cybernetics” or “artificial intelligence” or even a “superintelligence explosion” and its, um, benefits.)

        We’re a quarter of the way to being past the 21st century already; and yet how many of those old 20th century bloopers are still running around like bats in a belfry (or “rats in their heads”)? Mostly unexamined, often largely or totally false… like that Ronald Reagan quote I alluded to above, “it’s not so much the things you don’t know, it’s the things you know that just aren’t so.”

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Like so many things socialists want and pretend to be able to do, the perfect safety net cannot exist on earth, only in heaven, because it would require omniscience and omnipotence to achieve.

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  15. More good could be done in our day and age by providing them with a small stake to start their own small business, and having courses that teach them to do so

    No. As things stand today, the government makes it nearly impossible to start and operate a small business. First, you’d have to take a chainsaw to the government. (which iso also a good idea on general principles)

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Yeah. When we moved to Flyover County, we looked into doing craft-based businesses (me ceramics, her weaving and/or other fabric crafts). Looking at the regulatory startup costs (plus the grim fact that much of the market for Very Southern Oregon goods is really in California), we decided we had better things to do. OTOH, we had just enough resources on hand to make it until we could tap retirement.

      On the gripping hand, my construction skills saved us a bunch of money, or allowed us to have amenities otherwise out of reach.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Literally or metaphorically? I mean, the latter will suffice but a part of me really wants the former.

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  16. Here’s the thing: We used to have a legit “safety net”. It wasn’t government. It was the combination of family, friends, civic and fraternal groups, faith communities, and other, wholly voluntary organizations.

    You will note those have been dismantled bit by bit. By the same crowd that insists on the government “safety net”.

    I doubt I need to explain the why here.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. Yes, and they are the biggest fraud magnets devised by man. 35 years ago, there were literal lists of the symptoms that kids could be taught to qualify for “learning disability”. The mamas called it “crazy money”. Of course, if you were a white teacher like my mom, you couldn’t say anything because rayciss.

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  18. I have run a small computer business for 35 years, I quit selling used cheap computers 10 years ago after my 3rd run at it. I inherit a handful of old computers from clients every year. When they replace stuff they most often go “hey do you want it, other wise just throw it in the trash” These are older 6 to 8 year old computers but when they were purchased the were top end. i5’s i7’s. Still very usable for basic school or office functions. I would format them, either put windows back on or linux and then list them for 25 to 50 dollars on craigslist or facebook. Monitor, keyboard, computer. no one wanted them with a few exceptions. The exceptions made me stop trying. I would sell one, they would break it 3 months later and then blame me and want me to come fix it for free. Now, I’m not adverse to helping out and doing that. However when the first thing I hear 3 months later is an attack about how the computer I sold them is shit and they are going to sue me for the 25 dollars, well it just affects something in me that turns that “fuck off” switch on. Now, I’m politer than that. My response usually is “If you bring it by I will take a look at it and see if I can fix it. However if it is just a software issue I will charge a service fee for fixing it. If it’s hard ware and I have a used part sitting around I will fix it for free. This was a used unit that was working when you got it. there was no warranty, it was priced at 25 dollars to hopefully give a incentive to get someone to come and get it so I didn’t have to throw away a perfectly good computer. Sometimes I gave them away and had the same thing happen” Not once did anyone every bring it in. I finally just got to where I threw them away other than for the nicest of them and those I gave to family or the proverbial single mom’s that someone in my family personally knew. It has always bothered me how ungrateful? no, sorta, no.. ffffing rude a lot of people are?

    I also tried to give some of the nicer ones to the private schools my daughters went to. And they needed them. After about the 3rd time they ghosted me after offering, I got the hint. What got me is that they were buying budget computers that were slower than the used ones that were 5 to 6 years old for free. Sigh… On the positive side, as a family and business I don’t think I have purchased but 2 new computers in the last 25 years. One laptop for my wife when she went back to college and one for me for my desktop for a special application about 15 years ago. I just retired that one a month or two ago. We all have nice desktops with multiple monitors, and laptops. I use the slowest laptop with an i5 in it. It’s always an advantage when you know how to repair and upgrade used equipment yourself.

    My youngest daughter qualified for the states tuition rebate for private school students that passed a year or two ago and after her tuition there was a bunch of money in her account that they notified us was going back to the state if we didn’t use it by this summer and that it qualified for computer equipment for the student for home study and school. i9 4k screen laptop, 32 inch monitor for home desk, hp tank printer, mouse, case, samsung tablet later and she now has the nicest equipment in the home. :) Well sorta. Nicest new stuff.

    Welfare is a trap! I grew up on it. My mom raised three of us on her own, divorced my dad who decided alcohol and anger were a good mix and taking it out on her a good idea, then one day he raised a hand to one of us children and then next morning we were in the volkswagon van on a 2000 mile trip as far as she could get us from him. He passed away 3 or 4 years later, we never saw him again (he called and talked to us kid’s maybe 10 times in those years for an awkward couple of minutes. He also never sent money.) Our mom was in a wreck where a drunk ran a red light and her neck was broken a couple years before he died. Luckily she survived and walked out of the hospital 6 weeks later with a cane and neck brace (we lucked out as the kids in that my moms family is the gold star of families that help. Her sister flew across the country to come get us before we got put in the system. I was the oldest and maybe 8 or 9 when that happened. Mom never fully recovered but still worked and tried to support us. She never got any disability for herself. Dad was ex military and finally she applied for death benefits for us children against his service. It amounted to a few thousand a year till we were 18. (that was a long time ago and the amounts were not high) Social security admin was who it went through and it was income dependent. I don’t know the number of times I saw her crying because someone offered her a promotion from the minimum wage she was earning and she couldn’t take it because more money would be taken away from the benefits than the raise covered and we wouldn’t be able to make rent. We survived on family help and the kindness of the people we went to church with or friends helping out with one thing or another over the years. Car repair, food, stuff for us children do do some activity we didn’t have the money to do etc.. The death benefits from his military service kept us alive and then trapped us in amber stuck there till us children got old enough to start working. 14 to 17 depending on which one. Once we started making a little money we would give some to her to help. After we got out of school and started working full time we were able to do a lot more than help. The memory of being stuck in amber so to say still stays with me. They give enough to make you stick in place and if you start to do better they take the help away faster than your doing better allows.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Why daycare assistance fails. Income level dependent. Go above the maximum, lose daycare subsidy. Lose daycare subsidy, can’t afford daycare, can’t work. Repeat.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. When our children were small after 2 or 3 years old my wife wanted to work again. For the jobs she could get then it would basically be her working to pay gas to go to work and day care costs. She tried applying to a bunch of places and finding a day care we could trust and afford but in the end I walked her through the finances of it and said that for the 200 dollars a month she would clear after taxes, gas and daycare it just wasn’t worth her working 40 hours a week and she just stayed home with the kids for another 5 years while working on her getting her degree, lot of evening courses :) and when our youngest was in 3rd grade she got her degree and started as a teacher at the kids school.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. If I had stayed in timber, that would have been one of us (same job, he had slightly higher senority because he started one month before I did). By switching to software, my 1990 full-time income paid for daycare, both of our IRA and 401(k), kid’s college fund, and still had extra to save for his annual lack of work weeks from both salaries. If I hadn’t gone back to work then I’d had *lost any gains I had built, again.

          Trust me, I considered staying home. Hard. As it is, I got the first 9 months at home (not maturity leave, and not unemployment). We then got the ability to limit the time spent in daycare (essentially daily playdates for an only child) by planning work hours appropriately.

          (*) Ask anyone in tech if a resume that looked like a computer science graduate graduated then took off 6 years before looking for work. Even with another degree, and work experience related to both degrees before graduation from the second degree. I’ve seen what happens. The people it happened to were looking for work during those missed years. They probably were even working. Just not tech. Not tech, whether working at home (being a home parent), or any-non-tech job, counts as “no job”, in tech.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. at the time my wife didn’t have a degree and the jobs here were offering 10 to 12 dollars an hour on the high end. With a 1.5 hr round trip in the car to any of them. Most only wanted to hire for 30 ish hours a week. it’s a trap… I was making decent money at the time and didn’t see any value in her working for someone else, being tired and cranky and having kids in a daycare that we didn’t trust and was using all the after tax income that she was making.

            Her job after getting her degree was still low but at 33000 a year way better than 10 to 12 dollars an hour part time. Now she makes more than at about 10000 more than she started at. With my health going down im not making as much any more but its still been a more prosperous time for us comparatively with both incomes. We have repaired the leech field for the septic system and put new roof on the house in the last 18 months and were able to pay cash. We are debt free and have been since we got married 17 years ago..

            we own a small house 1100 sq ft and just under an acre of land in the country 10 to 40 miles from anywhere. all the work is at the 40 mile distance.

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            1. My working was the difference between hubby working overtime or not. Coaching and Scouts, or not.

              His job was salary not exempt. Paid 40 hours/week unless lack of work or act-of-god (fire season) layoffs. My working meant he could tell district manager he’d take the non-overtime assignments. Even those jobs started as early as 7 AM. Straight 8 hour day (no lunch unpaid time) meant he was picking up the kid by 3:30 PM at the latest. Started working the overtime when up north (not home anyway), even when he could have left after 8 hours on a Friday (why? Getting off at 2 PM meant he caught Friday traffic worst possible time in Olympia through Vancouver Washington, through Portland to Albany Oregon. I-5 is better south of Salem. For degrees of better.)

              Would have working more overtime made college savings (for kid) easier. Well, yes. But, coaching and Scouts, priceless.

              Note, as I’ve stated in the blog before, my 2004 salary started at less than 1990 starting wages; a drop of $38k/year from 2002. It was another 12 years before my salary matched what I was making in 2002. OTOH better than nonexistent salary it was replacing. I was lucky. I was competing not only with former co-workers, but out of work gaming programmers, more recent (read current tech) graduates and a few professors (at least one), but I was in the 45 – 50 age and 20+ years experience category, for an entry level programming position. Should have bought a lottery ticket being that lucky.

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  19. There is always a chance that such a person is either afraid of being the “pink monkey” (as it is often termed here) to be killed or ostracized by the other monkeys, or even may be at Step 0.1 of questioning the entire system of how things work. The real trick is realizing that it is the liberals / socialists that are “The Man” “The System” “The Establishment” in this day and age.

    It did take me from the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, through Occupy Wall Street in 2011, through disenchantment with Obama and flirting with thinking that the Democrat Party could be reformed from within, so supported Bernie as a kind of challenge to the DNC in 2016, up until 2018 when I dropped out of the Democrat Party officially.

    The real realization came when Trump came in the first time, The more the media attacked him, and he pulled his judo moves on them, the more I actually looked for facts and decided he was right about the “Fake News” and I could never unsee that.

    Of course it also possible that such a person is just Useful Idiot # 2803485 who will end up against a wall if The Revolution ever succeeds.

    (Underpants Gnomes: Step 1: Destroy Existing Social Order; Step 2: ???; Step 3: Utopia and New Soviet Man.)

    Liked by 3 people

  20. The “NGO” and government safety net has become a hammock for far too many people, supporting them forever when it should be a temporary stop on the way to standing up again.

    I give to a very few, mostly very local charities, a few Give-Send-Go calls when someone I know is involved or vouches for the person in need, and to people I know directly. I’m done with the big international groups.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. I will routinely give to Samaritan’s Purse and St Jude’s Hospital.

      There are also a couple of local animal rescues, Second Chance SPCA and Cody’s Friend’s. Cody’s is where we got our current dog, Sugar.

      I loathed the “Donate to the United Way —- or else!” campaigns.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Shriner’s Hospitals

        There are funds Shriner hospitals need outside the medical, that are either underfunded or not funded at all. A couple are:

        1. Transitioning (from Shriner hospital child based care at 18, to adult care, whatever that looks like)
        2. Medical travel for personnel where the doctors travel wide areas for care (Hawaii, Alaska, for example).

        March of Dimes (for Lisa, Arizona Child of the Year, 197?)

        I quit giving to the United Way work programs when we no longer could designate our money and direct company matching to specific charities. “We’ve already directed this year donations.” Do not know why this changed. At this point, don’t care.

        Liked by 1 person

  21. As the government took over charity they either criminalized or disincentivized all forms of private charity, resulting in most of the legitimate (non governmental) charity disappearing. Everything from providing a meal to a neighbor to paying someone’s electric bill must be done under gov’t control and by their rules. (Do you really think that itemizing charitable deductions is for your benefit?)

    As the government took the first moves to take over healthcare, they either criminalized or disincentivized any healthcare outside of their umbrella. Anyone who makes a recommendation or diagnosis without government permission is subject to a loss of licensure, or jail if they don’t have a license.

    Ad nauseum.

    Power hates competition. It’s that simple.

    Liked by 3 people

  22. > wanting to turn us into a command economy (again proven over and over again not to work)

    But Sarah, it will totally work next time! The previous attempts didn’t implement Scientific Marxist Economics properly! Next time will work for sure. $cience is on our side!

    Liked by 3 people

  23. cheerfully work for 20 hours a day into their eighties. (Our president might be one of them.)

    —

    Working *more* doesn’t always mean working *better*, though.

    The media excoriated Reagan for his 40-hour work week, when previous Presidents often worked 60 or more. And then Reagan was at his home in California when a US Navy ship was attacked, and a frantic White House aide phoned him at oh-dark-thirty California time to tell him about it. Reagan said the Navy should have procedures to deal with that sort of thing, and he would look at their report some time the next day.

    The media lost their minds when the aide blabbed about it, but I imagine the Navy guys were walking tall after that. Not like the poor SEAL(?) later, who had to wait on the radio for Obama to tell him when he could pull the trigger on a terrorist.

    Reagan understood time management and delegation. Trump is also good about giving people orders and authority, and letting them solve their problems without micromanagement. And, frankly, he’s getting a whole lot more done than Reagan did. He might need to be putting in extra time to take things as far as he can before his terms out.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I was in the service when Regan was president. I really liked him then. In retrospect I don’t like him a lot now because of some of the trade deals and shit he did that helped reduce US sovereignty. However he was in some ways one of the better presidents of the 1900’s. Trump is an insane man for how much he works in his 80’s and how much he gets done. Wether you like him or it, he gets a lot done. Both Trump 1.0 and 2.0 he has done more to keep campaign promises than any president in history. You might not like him or what he has done but he has done a lot he promised to. Not sure it’s going to fix stuff as so much of it is executive orders like the last time and we all know how easy that is to roll back.

      I love the the going after criminals, gangs, and corruption in government programs. I don’t love the throwing out of every one of the anti trust cases against companies like Activision, eBay, Hewlett Packard, Meta, Microsoft, PayPal, Rocket Mortgage, SpaceX, Telsa, amazon, plus more. He has bolstered major companies to the detriment of smaller businesses and consumers rather than leveling the playing field by not giving them competitive advantages over other companies.

      I knew when I voted for him that he was a big business mindset guy. He things the huge companies will bring the best bang for the buck to making the economy move forward faster. However it’s building an unstable base and creating more too big to fail economic hotspots. While creating barriers to entry to smaller competitors, also while allowing price fixing, and other consumer facing illegal behaviors to continue.

      Though space x is in the list im not sure it should be. A lot of space x was a hit job on musk by the Dem’s. At this point in reality space x is a bit of a monopoly on space lift but it’s not like anyone else is out there that can do what they are doing. Their are other companies but they look more like hobbyists compared to space x’s full commercial operation getting the job done. Now if there is stuff going on in regulatory space and such that is keeping them from competing, then that is a problem. I really don’t know enough details to really be commenting on it.

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      1. The Usual Suspects moved in baby steps, depending primarily on grant money, recapitulating the work done by Rocketdyne and Thiokol back in the 1960s. They’re building job security, not rockets.

        SpaceX instrumented their hell out of their hardware and ran it to destruction, iterating through designs faster than their competition, because hardware was cheaper than labor, and actual instrumented data is worth far more than computer models.

        Their competition never quite seemed to catch on how much money SpaceX was saving with their earth-shattering kabooms. If anything, they became even slower and more conservative. And while most of those companies are still operating in “research” mode, SpaceX has been selling commercial lifts for years now.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I have seen a lot of multi hour rambling conversations/interviews with musk and like him based on what I saw. I can see where he would be a bitch to work for if you don’t produce though. I’m not sure where are the hate comes from. He seems to be able to get shit done. Not perfect but better than a lot I see.

          Like

          1. Recent Elon story, I think mostly from X but that recent stuff matches up with local rumor mill from the Fremont Tesla factory when he was out here more: Elon likes to wander around the factory and talk to people. He doesn’t just ask nothing C-suite questions about baseball teams and family, he asks about details of that section or that station on the line, more concentrating on line managers but also talking to line workers. Line workers he’s collecting Intel on friction points, but supervisors and line managers he expects detailed knowledge and solid ideas to fix problems and improve things. The ideas don’t have to be perfect, just thought through, and if the supervisors and managers don’t know the details, he gets new people who do. Very hands on and hierarchy-bypass management style. Some of the floor managers really hate those wander-throughs because they are the very definition of creative disruption, but reportedly the line workers like the fact that the top boss is interested and not disconnected from the floor, living completely in spreadsheet and PowerPoint world.

            Liked by 1 person

      2. “executive orders like the last time and we all know how easy that is to roll back.“

        –

        True.

        What the EO’s do is prove what is legal, where the holes are. Trump 2.0 is at least trying to legislate his EO’s, making it much more difficult to rollback by a future president (Trump 1.0 probably was too, we just did not hear about it). Obviously, future presidents can ignore laws passed based on the EO’s, we have seen that in real-time too.

        In addition if we get another 8 years of President’s Vance and Rubio, in 18 years, it’ll be a lot harder to reverse the EO’s. We’re seeing this from older EO’s from the Clinton, Bush Sr & Jr, and even Obama, years. These EO’s are “legally established”. Reversal through current president EO’s insufficent. Will take legislative action to reverse.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. republicans are the problem, or at least the rhinos.

          This time the dismantling of the actual agencies and firing of the people running them is probably the greatest benefit.

          I have no idea what happens in November but losing one of the houses is on the table. The crazy reporting even has a lot of trump voters unhappy with the admin. Shit, not paying attention to the reporting but there is stuff I’m unhappy with, but he is doing what I voted for which is bull in the china shop so I’m over all happier than i have been with any president in my life.

          Sigh… i still don’t see a good outcome down the road. I really hope they can keep doing what they have the last 18 months and then that vance gets elected and we continue to turf out the rhinos.

          Like

          1. Do not believe -anything- stated by the presstitutes. Most folks I know that are Trump supporters may , or may not, be annoyed with something, but would crawl over concertina wire dipped in tabasco sauce and patrolled by fire ants to vote Trump/MAGA again.

            quote: “Yes, I would vote that sumbeech a 3rd term. He is -our- sumbeech.”

            When I voted for him the second and third times, i felt like I was turning a missile launch key.

            Liked by 2 people

          2. Aren’t we due another political miracle (keep the house and senate)?

            I don’t know of any true republican who is unhappy with DJT because we are getting what we voted for. Plus exposure of a lot of things we didn’t vote for, but would have had we known (fraud). At this rate the know waste problem is actually mostly fraud. Who knew? Rather who could have looked.

            Liked by 2 people

        2. What the EO’s do is prove what is legal, where the holes are. 

          Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. The Alien & Sedition Acts were legal. The Indian Removal Act was legal. Sachsenhausen and Dachau were legal, which is why the Nuremberg trials were largely ineffective.

          At one time the Common Law and Juris Civilis were the roots of Western civilization. Now “the law” is just the biggest gang’s whimsy that they force on those who listen to them.

          Like

          1. “something is legal doesn’t make it right“

            –

            Agree.

            Are there any EO’s that Trump is issuing and wants legislative to pass that is along the lines of the “Indian Removal Act”, “Alien & Sedition Acts”, or “Sachsenhausen and Dachau”?

            I know the Dimocrats think so. But, Dumocrats.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. Agree.

      Trump is working the hours he works because he has always worked these hours from the time he was allowed to work. That is who he is. That is why he has accomplished what he has.

      This “time-management” isn’t because he is mircro managing. He would not get anything done if he was. His success is putting the correct people in the correct jobs at the correct time, giving them the rules, direction, and boundaries (which at presidential executive level is legislated), then letting them off leash to do their jobs.

      The news, even Fox News, only reports a small public portions of what Trump is actually doing. They can’t report everything public. They do not have enough time. This is not counting the executive privilage, or secret stuff (military or political).

      And, the guy still has time to golf and take time with family.

      Frankly, Trump is exhausting to watch. (Okay, that might be my heart, but still.)

      The minute Trump stops, is the day he drops dead. Pretty sure his last words are “But I am not done!” (long after he has hands the reins over to his successor Vance and Vance hands over reins to Rubio in 10 years), unless he peacefully passes during the few hours he sleeps.

      Reagan worked 8 hours, delegating authority (again, right people, in legal defined roles), because he always worked 8 hours, before and after his presidency (until alztimers).

      Liked by 1 person

    3. When I heard the story, Reagan’s response was that it sounded like the Navy had it under control, what was so urgent?

      Like

      1. Same thing, basically. He was willing to let the Navy deal with it according to their Standard Operating Procedures instead of calling a press conference and distracting the guys in the hot seats by demanding complete reports every few minutes.

        Like

  25. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
    There is no charity, by force or mandate.
    There is no morality in taxes.

    Like

  26. “You can’t say “But what if people don’t help?””

    The person you’ve described sounds like the typical university educated liberal. They bought into the Liberalism scam and live in a little cloud of virtue, looking down on all the plebs who grub away for mere money their whole lives, never considering the finer, greater things in life.

    Also, it’s a good thing to remember that while in America the times when something bad happens and people don’t help are few and far between, in other places in the world that is not the case. Something bad happens, that is seen as a golden opportunity for looting, settling old scores and thinning out the opposing gangs.

    Such people as your commenter are not worth responding to. They live in a fantasy and not only demand that the rest of us pay for it, we must listen to their scolding too.

    Um, no.

    Liked by 3 people

  27. Sarah, your polyurethane adventure reminds me of my mom. She made the most.amazing coconut cake with seven minute frosting (egg whites beaten into stiff peaks, mmmmm). This dessert needs VERY low humidity to work, and in the southeast, well, for six months of the year it’s impossible.

    For the other six months it’s pretty danged iffy.

    I mind the Christmas when mom defied the persistent rain and just damned the torpedoes. The frosting never set; it just poured down the sides of the cake. 😬 That year was definitely suboptimal.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
        All the sweet green icing flowing down
        Someone left the cake out in the rain
        I don’t think that I can take it
        ‘Cause it took so long to bake it
        And I’ll never have that recipe again
        Agaaaainnnn…

        Liked by 2 people

  28. Unrelated…

    Huh.

    Boy George as King Herod.

    That would be different…

    George was apparently set to play King Herod in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar (yes, I know…). But he’s caused a bit of a commotion with his pro-Israel attitude lately, and he seems to have decided that this would have hurt the production and everyone else involved in it. So he has voluntarily quit the cast (according to his manager). While I wouldn’t see it myself (or likely any production of JCS, for that matter), the idea of the singer as King Herod does amuse me. And it’s a shame that so many people are so twisted up about Israel these days to the point where they’d boycott a show because a popular individual dared to voice support for the country.

    Liked by 3 people

  29. Some time ago I read about a 19th century thinker (it might have been Herbert Spencer) who taught that private charities were better than government charity, and personal help was better than working through private charities. I think that’s the complement to thinking about the “deserving poor.” (I learned about the deserving and undeserving poor from Shaw’s Pygmalion, where Liza Doolittle’s father explains to Henry Higgins that as one of the undeserving poor, he has even more needs than the deserving poor.) I found the point convincing; I’m much more likely to give money to help people I know than to support any nonprofit organization.

    One of the benefits of the Internet is that we now have the ability to raise funds online, which can be for much more specific purposes, such as helping someone we know with medical expenses or the like. I think it’s a big step toward making the welfare state obsolete.

    Liked by 1 person

  30. The thing is, there are programs that could be put in place that would actually help people out of dependency and into employment. There are a lot of people trapped in “job deserts”—see the novel or movie Winter’s Bone for one example—and there are other places, like a lot of the Appalachian region, or small towns in the Midwest, where getting out to where the jobs are is an impossibly high bar, due to lack of funds for relocation and lack of data about where to apply.

    Letting SRO hotels, like the Y used to run, operate again would be one helpful idea. That way, people could come into the metros from out of town and have a relatively cheap place to stay while they looked for work. The two times I visited San Francisco (if you’ll pardon my mentioning that place) I stayed at the Chinatown YMCA, and it was just fine.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Or why, when hubby was transferred to Randle Washington, we did not move the household. He went, came home Friday night, left at OMG -30, Monday morning.

      No choice. He had to go, or quit. Since I wasn’t working, quitting was not an option. Given his age and his industry, quitting was not an option. (Think 50+ crowd has problems with the tech industry looking for work? Try timber.)

      Moving not an option. Housing, rentals or not, tied to short-term (winter skiing, summer two national parks/monuments) rental charges or OMG NO conditions (we took up our small RV travel trailer for him to live in, and he was one of 6, from same company, who did the same). Finding a job for me? Laughable. Now, 20+ years later, work from home might be an option, with Starlink.

      This discounts the impact on our just starting HS and scouting eagle project, teen.

      The least of the problem was the company was not paying for forced relocations anymore.

      Repeat. We did not move the household.

      It was a long 17 months before he wrangled a transfer back home (at worst it was 38 months until he qualified for retirement). I did start a new job 3 months later. Enough additional income to stop the savings bleed of the prior year, and start rebuilding, not enough to replace his base salary.

      His, and our teen’s, surprise for me was the Saturday they took the truck for a Father/Son something (forget what excuse was used). That night they pulled in with the trailer in tow.

      Like

  31.  And he said to pay it forward, so I do. Including, yes, making covers for friends, protegees and total strangers. 

    And I, for one, am durn grateful for it!

    Liked by 1 person

  34. If socialists do not want things worse, then their mental filtering makes them delulu.

    One of the divides in modern academic theory is of human behavior, and whether the best models are most individual, or most aggregate.

    Socialist and others within the purely academic theorists are on the aggregate side of the modeling debate.

    One of the more clear cut (because physical) examples of an academic theory debate between ‘good enough’ models is in the somewhat more individual statistical models of statistical mechanics, and the deterministic wholly aggregated models of continuum mechanics.

    Mechanical engineers are mostly using continuum mechanics, and they reason about purely aggregated numbers, variables, or metrics like stress, strain, and viscosity. (Okay, stress and strain are defined point wise over a volume, but for liquids and for gases that is still very aggregated compared to statistical mechanics. Average stress and average strain over the volume are a more platonic example of a purely aggregated number.)

    Statistical mechanics is needed for certain edge cases and unusual circumstances which are mostly what physicists study with it.

    Statistical mechanics works and is tractable to the degree that it does because of the assumption of ergodicity. Which is that we can ignore the memory of a little gas particle, so that we can assume that we might find it going any directly evenly, and that there is some distributions of speeds it is traveling.

    Ergodicity is a very different statistical modeling choice from individually with memory.

    Since we as humans do incorporate our memories into some of our choices going forward, and since it is mildly self evident that we do so as individuals, it would be natural to suspect that we might need individual with memory sorts of statistical apparatuses. These are maybe available, but are definitely more annoying. I understand that, for example, the economists have their statistical scholarship rooted in the earlier scholarship of pure statistics, and thus they do not have the foundations to tell ergoditic from non-ergoditic statistics. Economic and financial gambles are precisely ones where outcomes of the last ten gambles might be used by an intelligent person to change their betting strategies.

    An example that is a bit suggestive is both spree shooters, and the leftists who on social media get very angry whenever someone mentions ‘thoughts and prayers’ after a spree shooting.

    One, the spree shooters are biased towards a high proportion of leftists, and to a very low portion of conservative Christians.

    Two, the people who dislike the ‘thoughts and prayers reaction’ understand the aftermath of a spree shooting event in terms of the public theater of aggregate thinking, and in terms of policy changes, and hold outs. ‘Thoughts and prayers’ is useless (empty) to harmful (opiate of the masses) in their view, precisely because of policy change hold outs.

    They think spree shooters are purely an aggregate matter of policy, because they are filtering out the evidence that argues against that.

    Prayer reminds Christians and Jews about evil or crazy choices by individuals, and also that humans are children of God. We sin against God by wantonly murdering humans, because the human in question, no matter his or her choices, is created in the image of God. It is blasphemous and disrespectful to God.

    Merely conservative persons, thinking about evil (destructive) acts of crime, reminds us of the futility of such behaviors. It is not a tool that manipulates the behavior of others in ways that we value. It does not yield net profits over the time scales that we value. It does not produce in ways that we value.

    The result is that thinking and prayer has removed many people of conservative inclination, or Christian/Jewish religious inclination, from the pools of disturbed people who remain committed to spree killing ideation long enough to carry it out.

    In conclusion point three is that the basic statistics of spree killing are strongly suggestive of incompatibilities of worldview between socialists and leftists on the one side, and conservatives and Christians on the other.

    Thoughts and prayers are the effective remedy, the policy changes are the useless part that basically is why we have the spree shooters in the first place.

    It is the left and the socialists and the blind unthinking ignorant intellectuals who are the crazy ones on such points.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. The thing that I realized about them, is the socialists, marxists, critical race theorists et al et al et al is, it is all just envy and justifications for envy. Which is why it doesn’t really matter where any particular branch came from; it’s the same fruit. Kind of the same way caffeine has independently evolved something like five separate times; every plant hates bugs and its the best quickest way to poison them.

    The unfortunate side effect is, like caffeine, it is a part of human nature, and so will continue to spring up, again and again, even after this particular infestation has been stomped out. And I fear getting rid of it for good would require us to, at least partly, stop being human.

    Not saying we should stop fighting it, nature, as Miss Sayer says, is what we were put on earth to rise above

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I recently finished a book about how medieval writers viewed the Big Seven Sins, and comparing their views to modern approaches. The differences were interesting. (Jones, Self Help from the Middle Ages, for those wondering).

      Envy (invidia) sought to destroy others’ happiness, as well as desiring what the other person had to the point of murder, theft, et al. Cain suffered invidia because of his brother’s favor with G-d, for example.

      Liked by 1 person

  36. I would -vastly- prefer an essay on refinishing furniture than yet another epic destruction of a socialist nincompoop.

    And if the Red Dorq is reading this, Dude, grow up! Neither Marx nor Santa will fill your heart nor wallet.

    Liked by 2 people

  37. The claim by socialists that, “we need a safety net” ignores the fact that in many, if not most, cases, a safety net, or many of them, existed for almost all conditions of destitution in this country. However, those safety nets were for the most part, privately run organizations, funded by entirely voluntary donations or philanthropy, often regional in nature, often restricted to certain demographics, frequently hard to find if you didn’t know somebody, and not beholding to any outside control. As with the right to use of force, the government doesn’t tolerate anyone setting up private safety nets anymore without their regulatory and financial controls, or being restricted to particular demographics in any way, shape or form.

    I’m a firm believer that the government needs to be utterly stripped of taxation for, and control of, anything to do with the charity industry. And plenty of people fall through the government safety nets today, simply because they don’t fit the regulatory requirements for aid, and that often due to political views as interpreted by the unethical and immoral parasites running those programs.

    Like

    1. Oregon is a PIA to any organization.

      I belong to a 503c(3) (not for *profit). Banks require a government EFN (I think it is called).

      It is a social club. Not raising funds. Not a business. Just to get together from across the state for lunch most months, and nationally, US & Canada, once a year.

      All that is wanted is a freaking bank account to group pay for lunch. Said bank account, at least for our group, is < $2k.

      Dang government wants $100 to file for said EFN, and $50/year to report on it.

      Right now what is being stopped, because group does not have a current EFN, is changing banks for the account (to prevent charges when balance drops below a relatively high amount). (To a credit union which would have no fees.) Cannot be done. Eventually existing accounts will get trapped in this problem and we will be using the old coffee can (like back when the dinosaurs roamed for Girl **Scouts).

      I get it. Banks are in league with government forces to stop drug money, and money laundering. Still it is a PIA.

      Run into similar for the family Historical Graveyard, only there is no “sponsor”. Aunt set this up with the EFN, etc., before she died. We still have to pay the freaking $50 for annual state filings.

      (*) Non-profit charity VS not for profit 503c accounts is who has to pay sales tax. Since we are in Oregon, there is no difference. But other groups in other states do. (Boy did that get some double takes when we mentioned that!)

      (**) Scouts, at least BSA troops, packs, crews, charters belong to the chartering organization. The charter organization provides their EFN. Which opens up a whole new problem. These organizations cannot have more than $50k in their accounts, all accounts. Which means the charter organization and the group they are chartering. Yet the two are not the same entity nor do they have the same reason for having the accounts. Churches and PTA’s aren’t quite affected the same way. But Granges, and smaller organizations, are.

      Like

    2. I’m a firm believer that the government needs to be utterly stripped of taxation—

      That is where that sentence should end. As we have seen over the past 110 years, the power to tax, once granted, will be expanded without limit. There is never an end to the government’s demands for “MORE!!!” In the end, taxes will devour the entire economy, and the country, and eventually it will all implode.
      ———————————
      It is only the abundance created by capitalism which allows socialists to indulge in their delusions. When they do, socialism destroys that abundance, leading to destitution, famine and mass graves. Which they blame on “Eeevul Capitalism!!”

      Like

      1. Repel the 16th Amendment.

        “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

        This is so flawed that the writers and voters who ratified it should have been stripped of their voting rights due to being mentally incompetent. It has absolutely zero limits, meaning the government has the right to take EVERYTHING you earn, and the people have zero say about it.

        Like

  38. A lot of important facets of the welfare / charity situation were well-covered here, by more than one commenter, so I will just add a few general points, in separate comments because of moderation limits on links.

    (1) In re the ability of churches to provide for emergency needs, as well as or better than government agencies, this is the most recent case-in-point I encountered this week. It can be multiplied many times over with different actors at work. The only role of government should be to remove barriers and obstructions to the operations of the private organizations (note that there are legitimate NGOs that actually perform as advertised rather than being money-laundering washeterias for politicians and elite grifters).

    https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/the-church-expands-venezuela-earthquake-relief-with-food-medical-and-emergency-assistance

    Like

    1. (2) Since Elon Musk entered the conversation, this was an interesting look at the SpaceX venture. Preface this with the Tube of You leader:

      /watch?v=DlXb3zSLdFY

      Why Elon Musk is Really Building Starship Maxinomics

      Like

  39. (3) @ Dep729 > “I don’t know of any true republican who is unhappy with DJT because we are getting what we voted for. Plus exposure of a lot of things we didn’t vote for, but would have had we known (fraud). At this rate the know waste problem is actually mostly fraud. Who knew? Rather who could have looked.”

    Oh, anyone COULD have looked. The problem is that those who should have, didn’t.

    Or chose not to act on what they saw (or knew) (or conspired in).

    Like

    1. Oh, anyone COULD have looked. The problem is that those who should have, didn’t.

      Or chose not to act on what they saw (or knew) (or conspired in).

      :shakes head:

      Objectively false.

      Worse, malignantly false– a lot of people looked, and took action; the problem is that, as can bee seen in Minnesota, the complaints reached a level where someone who was compromised stopped it.

      The reason that we were able to bust open the Minnesota fraud was because of literal decades of people going through the system, getting it up to a level where it was blocked, and then working around that block. A lot of little successes along the way– the “Learing Center” building had previously housed another fraud whose leader was charged and convicted– but nobody keeps track of when the system works, only when the corruption works.

      Again, and again, and again. Working through the system to identify where it is being broken.

      And that buildup was what Nick Shirley was able to take viral.

      Like

    2. A pattern I’ve noticed is that a chunk of the folks being loudest about how everyone is guilty– are the ones who were actively blocking the investigations.

      Go to one of the articles about the investigations on how nobody could know, it’s just the system not working, find a name, and start searching. You’ll find the same.

      Like

  40. We HAVE social safety nets. MULTIPLE nets. Every homeless I run into (my next door park is often full) has some form of support, and a lot of it is government cash. That safety net allows the high levels of homelessness this country has. Why work?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. IIRC in many cases, the homeless are “homeless” because their “drug of choice” alienated them from family (or others) who would have helped them to return to their original life.

      But the homeless preferred “living on the street” rather than “kicking their harmful habit”.

      Like

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