The Fake Promise of Adult Day Care

The sun always shines brightest in the northern hemisphere during summer’s dog days.  Here in America, from sea to shining sea, the nation burns hot.  But, all the while, cold dark clouds have descended over the land of the free.

For example, Senator Mark Warner – an absolute goober – is currently running interference for the Democrats on a proposal to silence political criticism.  Yet for Warner, and his cohorts, all political criticism is not created equal.  Criticism of President Trump is allowed and encouraged.  Criticism of Washington insiders, like Warner, is what they want to prohibit.

The guise of Warner’s would-be regulation is to prevent the bugaboo of Russian spread disinformation.  Hence, Warner wants to destroy free speech to save it.  Zero Hedge, via Martin Armstrong, offers the particulars…

“The Democrats want full disclosure regarding any online political speech.  They even want the Federal Trade Commission to have unbelievable power and require all companies’ algorithms to be audited by the feds as if they even have qualified staff to conduct such audits.

“On top of that, they have proposed tech platforms above a certain size must turn over internal data and processes to ‘independent public interest researchers’ so they can identify potential ‘public health/addiction effects, anticompetitive behavior, radicalization,’ scams, ‘user propagated misinformation,’ and harassment—data that could be used to ‘inform actions by regulators or Congress.”’

Unfree Speech

Free speech, under this proposal, would only be free if it’s considered acceptable by ‘public interest researchers.’  In other words, free speech wouldn’t be free.  It would be unfree.

Remember, it’s free speech that grants us the right, without fear of fine or imprisonment, to say President Trump’s an orange faced blowhard with whacky hair.  Similarly, because of free speech, we can say Hillary Clinton’s a political loser with the flare-up durability of ring worm jock itch.  Would ‘public interest researchers’ find this speech to be unacceptable?

What’s more, a vast segment of the population seems to have wet their pants with glee over Warner’s war on free speech.  They no longer have the sense or sensibility to hear or consider opinions that differ from what’s deemed progressively acceptable.

This, no doubt, is the same segment of the population that fancies policies of forced philanthropy.  These are the people who believes the nation’s ails can be solved by redistributing wealth from those who earn it to those who burn it.

We’ll have some additional thoughts on this in just a moment.  But first, to put things in proper context, we offer some empirical reflections on the natural and physical world in which we roam…

Adventures in Character Building

Readers who’ve experienced the stress and frustration of a large project gone sideways know that professional life’s rarely neat and almost never tidy.  One person’s good intentions can divert a task’s objectives far off course.  An obscure regulation or a supply chain breakdown can wreak havoc on the schedule and budget.

There are, however, plenty of benefits garnered when taking a run through the proverbial meat grinder.  For one, there are countless opportunities to build character, regardless of if one has a hankering for a slice of humble pie.

For example, about a decade ago, a client held a report we’d prepared up to the sky, flailed it around, and shouted, “this is crap on paper!”  After that, to help better clarify his thoughts, he flailed it around and shouted some more.

Another time, immediately following our presentation of a table we’d created to track and manage a project’s progress, a client looked us squarely in the eyes and said, “tables are for idiots.”

We’ve had a client tell us, between bites of a chicken salad sandwich, that we have “the significance of a gnat on an elephants ass.”  Ironically, this message was delivered to us immediately after being accused of big jobbing his project.

We’ve had schedules escalated on us for no real reason, and then been hammered on for a late submittal.  We’ve been squeezed for additional scope without the addition of commensurate budget so many times we’re in a permanent state of compression.

We’ve worked for months on end to create the perfect product, only to have the marketplace greet it with the frosty demeanor that a congregation greets a Sunday morning sermon on tithing.  The result, if you’ve never experienced it, is precisely the same result that comes from dousing a big fat wad of cash in gasoline, and then setting it on fire.  Poof! – just like that – the money’s gone…and there’s nothing to show for it.

The Fake Promise of Adult Day Care

Yes, we’ve had epic failures galore.  We’ve had so many of them we’ve lost count.  Still, we grit our teeth and take our setbacks with a grin and a smirk.  Quite frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

The simple fact is, the world doesn’t owe us a doggone thing.  This obvious insight, however, is not shared by the likes of Warner or the burgeoning Democratic Socialist movement centered on Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Rather than live and let live, they want to concentrate power in the hand of the state, where they can control and coerce what you believe, think, and say.  They promise a world without failure in return.

Moreover, they promise a fake economy with fake jobs and pretend work.  They promise adult day care where you’re paid a living wage for showing up and carrying out meaningless minutiae.  They even have a plan for those who don’t want show up, but still want to get paid.  It’s real simple, they want you to pay them.

But that’s not all they want you to pay for.  They want you to pay for free housing, free medical care, free food, and free education.  They even want you to pay for your neighbor’s rooftop solar panels, so they can have free electricity at your expense.

The result, unfortunately, is the result of the Soviet Union in 1989.  It’s the result of Cuba in 1995.  Or Venezuela or North Korea in 2018.

Fake economies, where individual failures and individual thoughts and expressions are not permitted, are doomed to fail.  If you don’t believe us, just wait and see.

Sincerely,

MN Gordon
for Economic Prism

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