March 12, 2003

Nothing to Fear

Terror is meant to change policy. Fear is meant to support policy. This is the Old World idea of balance. Guns change votes and that is why democracy is found nowhere. Nor would we want democracy if we had a choice, because we know the majority is more often wrong than right. In fact, the majority loves to be deceived and chooses deceivers to lead them down the road to glory. Europe has had so much of this last Century, it balks at the idea of supporting any potential 21st Century Hitler, on either side of the Atlantic.

Is it because the fearful are so much easier to control and manipulate that fear is the major product of world governments? Everywhere I look surely fear is the preferred tool. It is cheap and very easy to generate.

Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center attacks had a common goal and lesson. If your government cannot protect its own, how can it protect anyone else? Look at what your government does in the world, in your name. Do you approve? If you don’t, what will you “free” people do about it? We will pay for it, of course, because we are free to pay for it.

We all would love to believe we are safer now that government is half awake. Instead, we sense the truth that our vulnerability increases every day. As long as we can stay alert to strange activity around us we can survive terror from without. We won’t even look at the threats to and in the Capitol. The game is called look over here so you don’t see what we are doing over there. We look where they point and fix our attention on their message. Why don’t we look elsewhere for some other point of view? See if there is a big picture.

In November, 2001, Commander Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld assisted the escape of some 8000 members of al Qaeda from Afghanistan to Pakistan. As Pakistani transport planes airlifted thousands through an official no fire corridor, those on the ground had enough time to hike to the Pakistani border, about 120 miles away. This was fully reported on the PBS program, Now, with Bill Moyers. It aired 21 February, 2003. You can read an archived transcript @ PBS.Org.

We can imagine that cellular organization and skillful recruiting can double the number of cells in a year or less. 8,000 al Qaeda set free in November 2001, could easily be 20,000 today. We might ask how this can be called homeland security. Al Qaeda is not just bodies, but minds united by a worthy cause. Change U.S. policies.

Another lesson of September 11 is that a very determined enemy has the will to find a way. It took two attempts to destroy their priority target and the first attempt on the new priority target, the U.S. Capitol, is fair warning. If I lived or worked within 50 miles of the Capitol, I would not sleep well without self medicating and I assume most in that area do medicate.

So why would the President want to assist in a future attack on the very place he lives and works? The whole story is not to be found in the Now report, or with me. The advantage the terrorists have over America is a rich, fertile, collective imagination. Americans have little or none. So why don’t we start reclaiming some imagination for ourselves? It could save a life or millions. It may be too late and not worth bothering about.

Let’s imagine that al Qaeda and Pakistan are friendly allies. As a reward for 9/11, Pakistan presents al Qaeda with three or four nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles, supplied by North Korea. Or imagine three or four portable nukes flown in with the regular drug supply and turned over to American right wing extremists to place, under supervision. They are detonated by telephone when the time is right, or the ballistic missiles are loaded on some innocuous ship like an oil tanker, which cruises into striking distance and launches the entire payload at one or two targets.

For the love of symbolism al Qaeda has demonstrated, the strike comes when the U.S. invades Iraq, where much of our Homeland Security is at the moment. Washington D.C. is vaporized. The administration, with some advance warning, retires to its survival bunkers. When the dust clears, they are all that is left of national government and call the troops home to enforce the martial law demanded by the people. We intensify our war on terror by arresting you and your neighbor for lack of cooperation with the new rules. This is as hard for us to imagine as Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City or 9/11. If we can imagine it, we can start making decisions now about how we will allow such an event to affect us. I was hoping to warn Congress but they are so swamped with protest communications, my message is unlikely to reach them. They could be sacrificed before they fully realize the threat. I heard 9/11 was the result of communication failure. All successful attacks will be for this same reason.

Treason is a Capital crime. Providing aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is the definition of treason or high treason. So why is the Capitol trusting their lives to the friends of al Qaeda in the White House? Is it possible not one of them knows what I have told you?

We are told that America does not distinguish between terrorists and those who support them. Assisting the escape of 8,000 al Qaeda supports terrorism as surely as money or training, which Congress also provides through Pakistan and other friends of the President. Should the people distinguish between traitors and those who support them? Is the entire military and Congress as guilty as the President and Secretary? How about taxpayers who make it all possible? Who is not guilty and due no punishment? Maybe America is overdue for a good whipping. Who will prevent it?

On the other hand, this is a new age. An age of brotherhood and science. I can see that aiding the escape of al Qaeda is a Christian and loving thing to do, not unlike allowing Saddam to leave Iraq with whatever entourage he chooses, before he is hunted down and eliminated. Who knows how we are loving Iran and North Korea? Though we might not see love as a result of the world’s most powerful military’s care and attention, who am I to question the men leading us into WWIII, the great love war?

For more Ed thoughts see Bedinghamstudio.Com.

Respond to Ed at Edhowes @ Hotmail.com

About the Author

Freelance writer published on websites and in newspapers.
justanotherview.com
edhowes@hotmail.com

Here we go again! Without fail after each major natural disaster the unprepared and those sympathetic to them see prices increase because of shortages and shortly after begin telling tall tales of a mythical beast so terrifying that it strikes fear in all. That beasts name? “Price Gouging”. Uh oh. Did I really dare say that price gouging was a fiction? A mythical beast that doesn’t exist? Yep. And you’re going to either deal with it and read on OR bury your head in the sand and try to drown out the truth screaming “La la la … I’m not listening!”

Nothing brings out the socialist in people like tragedy. Normally staunch capitalists change their tunes almost overnight when the free market reacts normally to supply shortages and demand increases that effect their own personal finances. But in a nation where redistributing wealth from workers to retirees is seen as just I suppose this is what happens when as a society we are not educated in economics.

So to justify this ignorance of why things happen many create a scapegoat. They’ll claim that heartless businesses are just out to make a quick buck off of people who have little or nothing left. OH THE HUMANITY! After all the easiest thing to do is to blame a building or a faceless corporation even though that “corporation” has thousands of real faces including employees and stock holders.

The cry goes out from the mountain tops “This is unfair! We are being gouged! Please daddy government save us!”

So it is time again for a lesson in Economics 101. And I’ll be generous and give this lesson to you absolutely free.

However you have to do two simple things to get this free lesson. First commit these words to memory: “Price Gouging does not exist.” Ok? Now you have to get up and walk around saying this memorized phrase out loud for 10 minutes. I don’t care if you are at home and think your family will call the men in white coats or if you are work and will get nasty stares from your boss and co-workers. You have to do this. It is part of the deprogramming you must go through to understand what comes next.

Go ahead and do it. I’ll still be here when you get back.

*whistles*

Finished? Good. Now let’s begin.

There are two components to how much a product can be sold for. One is how much of this product is available. The other is how much the consumer wants of said product. These are often referred to as “supply” and “demand”. And where supply meets demand is the selling price.

Now if this price a good or service can be sold for is not at least slightly above the cost to produce that product then that product doesn’t get made - but that is another lesson.

Supply and demand can be represented graphically as follows:
http://www.thelandofthefree.net/conservativepoliticalopinion/sdchart.gif

Moving anywhere away from this price point means either you have excess supply to demand or you have excess demand for the supply. And if you have either of those two situations the price moves towards this equilibrium where supply equals demand because no one wants stock they cannot sell and no one wants less stock than they can sell. Why? Because it means that they are not being efficient. Supplies that sit on the showroom floor cost money and prevent new items from coming in. Empty showroom floors means that there is no money being made.

Now as you can see if supply decreases (curve “S” moves to the left) price increases result.
http://www.thelandofthefree.net/conservativepoliticalopinion/sdchartsdec.gif

Or if demand increases (curve “D” moves to the right) price increases also result.
http://www.thelandofthefree.net/conservativepoliticalopinion/sdchartdinc.gif

Its so simple. Now once again I want you to get up and walk around proclaiming “Price Gouging does not exist.” for another 10 minutes then come back and click on the link to page 2.

*hums*

Now what happens if say a hurricane blows through and destroys everything? Why demand increases AND supply decreases! Gee no wonder prices go up since both price increasing factors occur at the same time!
http://www.thelandofthefree.net/conservativepoliticalopinion/sdchartdisaster.gif

Ok let’s continue.

Now that you understand the basics let’s look at the side effect of rising prices because of lower supply and higher demand shall we?

“Demand” has two components: need and want. Before a hurricane some people do need generators but few people want a generator so demand is low. After a hurricane generators cost $300 instead of $100 because now EVERYONE wants one (i.e. demand is higher). There are either no new generators coming in to the area or at best the resupply of this resource is greatly inhibited (i.e. supply decreases). This means that only people that actually need the generator will buy them. Homeowners looking to run their AC for comfort and luxury (i.e. want) will not buy them and will complain loudly about how expensive generators are. But business owners who have stores full of perishable goods will buy them gladly. To them $300 for a generator is nothing compared to $150,000 worth of goods that are about to spoil.

Higher prices lead to the most effective use of resources. Instead of only a couple people using the limited supply of generators and benefiting for convenience, many more benefit because necessities are preserved. Gee, and they tell us capitalism is bad?

There is also another reason why the supply and demand curves act the way they do. When supplies dwindle and shelves become empty, businesses make less money than they normally do. Its simple to understand. Without product to sell they cannot make money (at least not legally).

But yet they still have many of the same expenses to pay. That gas station owner 50 miles north of the flooding caused by a hurricane being told she will not be getting any new gas for three weeks because the refinery is under water has got to pay her taxes, utilities and her employees for those weeks. So she marks her remaining gas at $5.00/gallon and hopes that the higher margin pays the bills until life returns to some semblance of normality.

Understand that? Higher prices, and perceived higher “margins” do not automatically translate into higher “profits” which is the complaint levied against “price gougers”. And let’s face it, if people are buying the gas at $5.00/gallon then apparently it does have that value to some. You may have to do without or deal with using less until prices return to normal but then again that simply means that you do not need as much of that resource as you might think.

But to some that is “gouging”. And when those people are people that have never run a business, met a pay roll or studied the basics of economics maybe it is understandable. But now that you have read this article you don’t have an excuse. So it is up to you to educate your family and friends.

“Gouging” is nothing more than the excuse of people who failed to prepare being hit with the reality that they did not prepare.
About the Author

A web commentator J.J. Jackson is a Constitutional Originalist and a staunch conservative. J.J. Jackson is the owner of American Conservative Politics - The Land of the Free (www.thelandofthefree.net), American Conservative Daily (www.americanconservativedaily.com), Right Thing (www.cafepress.com/rightthings) and American Infidel T-shirts (www.americaninfideltshirts.com)