On the Candidates’ Disastrous Price Policies—and Harris’s Moral Obscenity

I don’t think any economic fallacy has undergone more scrutiny, for so long, and been so universally condemned by non-partisan economists, as government price controls. Yet price controls keep resurfacing in political campaigns, especially in times of inflation. 

This presidential campaign of 2024 is no exception. Donald Trump is going crazy with tariff proposals, and recently proposed capping credit card interest rates at 10%.

Kamala Harris proposes Federal anti-price gouging laws against the food industry. I touched on the price gouging absurdity in a short post on Quora. She follows from her boss Joe Biden on this issue. 

The damaging economic effects of price controls are covered nicely in an article By Ryan Bourne and Sophia Bagley [published by CATO, titled  Economists’ Damning Verdict on Both Presidential Candidates’ Pricing Policies. So I won’t repeat them here. My focus is on the horrible moral aspects, which are not covered in the article. On the moral aspect, of the two candidates, I think Harris is the most dangerous and unjust.

Here is my Facebook post on this article:

The article rightly focuses on the economic arguments against price controls, which are well known. But of the 2 candidates, Harris is by far the worst because her policies are not just bad economics. They are MORALLY OBSCENE. And she is not original. She is just the latest in a long line of politicians who blame private enterprise for the inflation disasters that their own policies cause. In the 1970s inflation disaster, Nixon, Ford, and Carter all blamed, in their own way, private enterprise. Using useful idiot terms like “greedflation” and “shrinkflation,” (Biden’s favorite terms) and “price gouging” (Harris’s favorite), the Biden/Harris axis blames American business for inflation. This is the moral equivalent of blaming the rape victim rather than the rapist.

Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It is the creation of excess money to finance excess government spending. This causes excess demand, which triggers GENERAL price rises (Prices can rise for other reasons, such as supply shocks. But that is NOT inflation). Since the Federal Government nationalized money over 100 years ago, ONLY THE GOVERNMENT can excessively inflate the money supply, which the Federal Reserve did in spades to fund the massive Trump and Biden “covid relief” spending. 

The recent “price spiral” was not caused by, and COULD NOT HAVE BEEN CAUSED by, American business, as Harris claims. It was caused by Trump/Biden spending (with the most blame going to Biden, in my view). All economic groups, business, workers, consumers et al, are trying to cope with the resulting cost pressures, as best they can, that 2 administrations set in motion. Harris’s campaign ploy of blaming “price gouging” by business for inflation should be rejected as the moral obscenity that it is. So much for HER character.

Related Reading:

How Anti-"Price-Gouging" Laws Really Work

‘Greedflation’: Biden’s Scandalous Blame Shifting

Joe Biden’s Despicable ,Unjust Blame Game

Memo to Jersey City Mayor Fulop: The Federal Reserve, Not Supermarkets, is to Blame for 'Hidden Food Inflation'

Economics in One Lesson—Henry Hazlitt

Did the New York Times Just Vindicate Reaganomics?

In NJ, the Crusade Against "Price-gouging" Could Be Hindering Recovery

New Jersey’s Political Attack on Takeout Food Delivery Service Providers

Memo to Harris: Corporations are not destroying America: The way the Harris campaign is marshaling economic data paints a misleading picture. By Eduardo Porter for The Washington Post

Harris's Unchanged anti-American Values

Kamala Harris held an August 2024 interview on CNN in which she sought to clarify her “flip-flops” on key issues. But what really stood out for me are two key deeper points: her values haven’t changed, which will define the policies she will actually advance regardless of her “tack to the middle” flip-flops on controversial issues. And her most reactionary—and dangerous—core value, which she hasn’t “flipped,” is her belief that voting is our most important right.

America was Founded on natural rights theory, which holds that man’s individual rights derive from his nature as a sovereign, self-owning, self-governing being. Starting with the most fundamental right, the individual’s right to life, all of the fundamental rights of man, including liberty and property, precede government, and cannot be taken or granted by any governing authority. In the words of America’s Founding legal document, the Declaration of Independence,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . [my emphasis]

Note the hierarchy. Governments don’t create rights. They secure our rights, which are thus unalienable. Note that the right to vote comes into view, implicitly, only after the institution of government, as implied in “the consent of the governed.” James Madison explained the Founders’ revolutionary new orientation between the government and the people’s liberties, reaffirming the principles laid out in the Declaration:

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . .  of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history . . .

[My emphasis]

The Democratic Party holds the opposite principle—that rights come from the government—charters of liberty granted by power—thus canceling America.

When England began violating the colonists’ rights with a coercive series of liberty-infringing Acts, the colonists realized that their “rights of Englishmen,” which were charters of liberty granted by the power of the government, were not as secure as they thought and that the British government could as easily rescind them as protect them. Thus, the colonists—who around this time began identifying as Americans, rather than Englishmen—turned to natural rights theory, especially as espoused by John Locke. In classic reactionary fashion, the Democratic Party rejects Locke and natural rights theory. It reverts back to the pre-Revolutionary totalitarian concept of rights as grants of governmental privilege, being only as secure as the next rights-violating legislation. Out go unalienable individual rights, and thus the fundamental principle of America.

This is not hyperbolic. The Democrats, as always, are very explicit about this. In the interview, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said, explaining her concept of “freedom”:

“The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities and places of worship,” Harris said Thursday. “The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.” 

Thus, Harris reaffirmed her allegiance to the Democratic Party’s fundamentally anti-American orientation.

The emphasized principle conforms perfectly with Biden’s assertion that “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” Biden didn’t misspeak. The U.S. Justice Department based it’s lawsuit against Georgia’s election law on the same premise. Attorney General Merrick Garland declared that "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” 

Think about what this means. The Democratic Party was founded on this principle in 1828, led by the pro-slavery platform position that if the majority votes to enslave a minority, the minority gets enslaved. This means the right to life is dependent on election outcomes, and can be taken away, along with all other rights, if the voters, or the voters’ elected representatives, say so. Hence, the Democratic Party.

To this day, the Democrats have not changed their ideological stripes. They have always had, and still have, totalitarian designs on America. Only the details have changed. The Party that once stood for plantation slavery now stands for socialist slavery—which, as Confederate intellectual George Fitzhugh explains in his seminal defense of slavery, Sociology for the South: Or the Failure of Free Society, are fundamentally the same. 

Harris is dead wrong. Freedom is not the right to vote. Freedom is the right to live one’s life by one’s own choices and values, regardless of anyone else’s vote or of the outcome of any election. Any government, including an elected government, that has the power to grant and rescind rights at will is a totalitarian state. The Founders sought to protect individual rights from tyrannical government, whether autocratic, aristocratic, or democratic—or as James Madison put it, from "the one, the few, or the many." Harris seeks to obliterate that ironclad protection. The Founders' miraculous achievement—"the most triumphant epoch in [the world's] history"—gets thrown under the bus. And it’s a premise that dates back to the founding of her party. So much for Harris’s vaunted value of “freedom.” Her values indeed have not changed. She was never, and is not now, a champion of freedom, properly understood. Without inalienable individual rights, no freedom—and no United States of America—would have been possible. Remember that in the United States of America, we’re not free because we vote. We vote because we are free.

It's as if Harris and the Democratic Party don't understand that their policies and values would destroy America as we know it, and what the Founders intended—or as if they do, and intend just that. I have long believed the latter. So, once again, my commitment to never vote Democrat is reinforced. 

Related Reading:

Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right. 

The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

Biden Cancels America

QUORA: Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic?

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Why I Will Never Vote for a Democrat

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson

Transgender vs. Transgender Impersonator

Washington Post: Transgender Texans blocked from changing sex on driver’s licenses

Needless to say, this is controversial. Anumita Kaur reports:

Transgender Texans can no longer change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses to match their gender identity, according to a state policy rolled out this week. Advocacy groups say the new rule further harms a vulnerable community already targeted by anti-trans efforts in the state and around the country.

Previously, Texans could present the agency with a certified court order or an amended birth certificate to change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses. 

"Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, said the new policy denies dignity to the state’s 92,900 transgender adults."

Leaving aside the pros and cons of accurately listing a person’s gender on a state-issued ID, or even whether a person’s gender should be listed, the issue begs the question—What is a “transgender adult?”

Now, according to the economist and historian Dierdre McCloskey, who as a man actually went through the agonizing medical process of becoming a woman, a true transgender is a person who actually “crossed over,” not simply identified as such. In her book, Crossing, a Transgender Memoir—which I have read—McCloskey documents the years-long, grueling process of "Donald" becoming Dierdre that she endured in the 1990s. Being not only a person who has actually crossed over, she is also a leading living public intellectual—and one of my favorites. This in my view gives her tremendous credibility. 

As I understand her, "crossing" is synonymous with transgender. If Pritchett’s statistics are correct, transgender adults account for about 1 in 322 Texas adults. But in her book, McCloskey also cites statistics, one of which is that the number of people who ACTUALLY CROSSED OVER to the other gender is 3 in 10,000—or about 1 in 3,333. This means that the figure cited by Pritchett in the article actually grossly overstates the number of transgender adults in Texas by more than 10 times. In reality, then, there are statistically about 9300 transgender adults in Texas, not 92,900. But what about the other approximately 83,600? McCloskey characterizes them—people who "identify" as the other gender, and live as such, but have not crossed over, as impersonators. McCloskey defends gender impersonation as an individual right. She herself, as Donald, before crossing over, referred to herself as a female impersonator. But should female impersonators be able to change their legal gender status, simply because he decides "I am a woman" while factually still being a man? Reality doesn't bend to personal choice, wishful thinking, or whim.

Mischaracterizing and exaggerating transgenderism, as the activists and their media enablers do, does no favors for actual transgender adults. It trivializes what they go through and went through to actually get to real transgenderism. To be fair to them, we need to get our facts straight. My study of the issue leads me to this: In Texas there are 83,600 gender impersonators, and 9300 transgenders. only the 9300, it seems to me, should be able to update their licenses. That the Texas policy won't allow it may be largely the fault of the transgender activists. What is the state to do? There is a clear difference between being transgender (crossing the gender line surgically and emotionally) and identifying as what we might call a transgender impersonator. By whitewashing that distinction, it is primarily Brad Pritchett and his Equality Texas ilk, not just the Texas policy, that "denies dignity to the state’s transgender adults." *

* [Texas doesn’t allow any change from the original birth certificate. Perhaps if people were more honest about their personal condition, the state will allow it for the 9300. In any event, it should.]

Related Reading:

Crossing, a Transgender Memoir by Dierdre McCloskey

On the ‘Transgender’ Phenomenon

Why elite women’s sports need to be based on sex, not gender Doriane Lambelet Coleman

The Problem With Saying ‘Sex Assigned at Birth’ by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven

The Courage to Follow the Evidence on Transgender Care by David Brooks

My Lonely Place on the American Political Spectrum

 More Than Half of Americans Think the First Amendment Provides Too Many Rights, screamed a recent headline in a Reason article. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) conducted the survey. Emma Camp Reports:

"Evidently, one out of every two Americans wishes they had fewer civil liberties," Sean Stevens, FIRE's chief research adviser, said on Thursday. "Many of them reject the right to assemble, to have a free press, and to petition the government. This is a dictator's fantasy."

This is scary. But the survey also indicates that many people don’t fully understand the First Amendment.

This latest survey indicates that many Americans are concerned about the security of free speech rights, yet also eager to censor speech they personally find distasteful.

I expressed my sentiments about my place on the American political spectrum in My FB Post

"This is a dictator's fantasy." -- Sean Stevens, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

I have always thought of myself as an American—not in the shallow sense of having won the "birth lottery," but in the deep, universal philosophical sense—a Founding American, a man of The Enlightenment; of the Declaration of Independence; of the U.S. Constitution. I have also suspected that I am in the minority in this country. This poll confirms how right I am. Today, I am in the political wilderness, not Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, Left or Right. Looking at the political landscape today, I see what's missing from the American political spectrum, however it is measured—a place for AMERICANISM. (If you think I’m exaggerating, consider how the question is worded. The Constitution doesn’t “provide” our rights. It recognizes and protects them.)

Yet, that's my place. I am in a shrinking minority. My only question is, Am I among the last of a dying breed, or one of the first of their return? Let's hope for the latter. If not—well, I'm an atheist, but I'll say it anyway—May God Help Us!

Related Reading:

Contra Mark Levin, Americanism Rests on Reason, Not Faith

A New Textbook of Americanism — edited by Jonathan Hoenig

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson.

The Collectivist Left Appropriates an Inhumane Christian Doctrine to Obliterate Americanism

KOSA Negates the Government’s Law Enforcement Responsibility

A bill known as the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, passed the U.S. Senate by a 91 - 3 margin. It now [8/3/24] goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

The bill is not what the title implies. It is much more . . . and much worse.

Reason’s Elizabeth Brown observes: 

The Kids Online Safety Act would have cataclysmic effects on free speech and privacy online.

"Bills like KOSA cynically hide censorship behind the mantle of child protection. Tell Sen. Schumer and other lawmakers to reject KOSA," urged the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

In a New York Times article, Senate Passes Child Online Safety Bill, Sending It to an Uncertain House Fate, Maya Miller reports

The centerpiece of the legislation would create a “duty of care” for social networking platforms that mandates they protect minors against mental health disorders and from abuse, sexual exploitation and other harms. Companies could be held liable for failing to filter out content or limit features that could lead to those adverse impacts. [My emphasis]

What content can anyone say does not fit with "could lead to adverse impacts? What would not  be included is such a vague mandate as “duty of care?”

A second measure included in the package would strengthen privacy protections for anyone under 17 and ban targeted advertising to children and teens. It would create an “eraser button” for parents and children, requiring companies to permit users to delete personal information.

Despite the lop-sided vote margin, the bill has notable critics.

The bill faces strong pushback from technology companies, who argue it would place unacceptable burdens on them to moderate content and verify users’ ages, and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union that contend it would restrict free speech. In the Senate, the measure generated narrow but intense opposition despite several rounds of redrafting to address such concerns.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, recently called the bill “the Pandora’s box of unintended consequences,” arguing it would stifle First Amendment-protected speech. Other critics, such as Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said they were worried that limiting children’s access to certain content on social media could further isolate vulnerable youths, including L.G.B.T.Q. young people who often rely on online communities for a sense of belonging and acceptance.

Count me among the opponents.

The Washington Post also reported on the passage of the bill (Senate passes landmark bills to protect kids online, raising pressure on House).

I posted this WAPO Comment:

Note what the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) does NOT do—hold the people who actually create and post the harmful content accountable. Instead of doing their duty to identify and prosecute the guilty, the politicians are going after the social media companies. If a crime is planned around a dinner in a restaurant; or committed using the Verizon phone network; or committed using the public roads, would it be right to charge that restaurant owner, Verizon, or the government for the wrong-doing? Yet that is the position that the social media companies, which are no different IN KIND, are being forced into with this horrifically misleading bill. 

Yes, KOSA is a threat to free speech and privacy, as the opponents argue. But it is also a massive abnegation by the political class in its primary function to identify criminal activity, make the necessary laws, and enforce the laws against the guilty while protecting the innocent.* In effect, the bill shifts that function from government, where it belongs, to private enterprise. Under the smokescreen of “kids safety,” KOSA is a massive inversion of the purpose of law and of justice: It evades the guilty and targets innocent third parties.

We should demand that the politicians do their jobs; go after the guilty, rather than take the easy, politically expedient course of making technology companies the scapegoats. 

* [I am indebted to Jon Hersey for pointing out this little-discussed aspect of this and similar laws targeting social media companies. Hersey wrote “Many of the bureaucrats and commentators behind these laws and initiatives against social-media companies share essentially the same tactic. They blame social-media companies for not doing what governments are supposed to do—protect individual rights—and then rationalize that this supposed failure is grounds for doing what governments are not supposed to do—violate individual rights.”]

Related Reading:

Social Media and the Future of Civil Society by Jon Hersey for The Objective Standard

Senate To Vote on Web Censorship Bill Disguised as Kids Safety by Elizabeth Brown for Reason

Linda Stamato’s Broad Attack on Our Intellectual Freedom

Censorship-By-Proxy is Real, and it's Here

The End of the Free Internet Is Near: The idea that the internet should enjoy minimal government oversight precisely because it was a technology that enabled open and free speech for everyone has been turned on its head. -- DECLAN MCCULLAGH for Reason

HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen

Review of Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media by Michael Dahlen for The Objective Standard

A Lesson From 1930s Germany: Beware State Control of Social Media By Heidi Tworek for The Atlantic

Trump Joins Biden in War on the Average Person’s Newfound Power to be Heard