A cure for cancer would disrupt a very lucrative industry. I always struggle with this because I want to believe in the Atlas Shrugged story as I've seen so many ways in which it has grains of truth, but I just see predatory industry rolling over the planet for centuries. How do we address that? Have we ever had executives that embody the golden rule?
Love this, I’ve never read a more accurate, compelling and yet succinct explanation of how best to help the poor, drive progress, and reward correct behaviors. Thank you!
Milei, not sure I trust this spokes person, for many reasons, may be a distraction speaker to make different factions look like they care. On the other hand spend a night on YouTube studying the scholarly work of Thomas Sowell, from the time he was a young man to now as a 90 year old cherished elder we are lucky to have. He speaks fluently as a young man til now from about how the quality of the Americans of African families and individuals were faring much much better before the welfare state come into being.
“ they squander what they were given because they have only ever known plenty and fail to understand that it is an achievement, a remarkable outcome of a finely wrought machine instead of the base state to which all are inevitably entitled. they see it as normal, not exceptional and thus seek to efface and eliminate exceptionalism itself as an idea.”
This substack was a brilliant examination.
In North America we are blind to the amazing plenty and efficient infrastructure we still enjoy around us. It works. For how long, we don’t know. Its days may be numbered.
Great Canadian columnist Rex Murphy (echoed by Jordan Peterson) both have remarked that we suffer from a deplorable lack of gratitude.
And a good knowledge of the history and heritage of our North America.
Very well put. There are people who argue that the poor are poor because they are lazy, but many poor people work two and even three jobs just to survive. Yet they never seem to get ahead, no matter how much labor energy they put into working. So something is clearly wrong with the idea that hard work alone will lift you out of poverty. When you look at this picture, it actually makes MORE sense to stop working and live off the dole, especially when the welfare system puts caps on what you can earn/save.
I’ve worked in Uganda’s largest slum for over 15 years. Occasionally I’ve taken people with me, and in Jan had a small group plus one Ugandan nurse from a poor community in Northern Uganda. After her first time in the slum, she texted friends and family and said that, despite their poverty, they had nothing to complain about. People here in the States have NO idea what true, grinding, sell-yourself-for-a-meal-at-13 poverty looks like, smells like, and especially feels like. This slum is actually up next to one of Kampala’s wealthiest neighborhoods, which to us would be very middle class. All their goods come from China and are crap - a brand new laptop (even a brand name like Dell) will have a battery life of less than an hour. Fuel was about $1.40/liter in Jan (liter, not gallon) and that was down from over $2/liter in 2022. You are wealthy if you own a car; everyone walks or takes a boda. Most people even in the nice houses cook on charcoal versus using power, which is unreliable and expensive. In the rich neighborhoods. One of the best things I ever did was take my kids with me from the start (combined 16 trips for them) - they are well aware of the consequences of what’s going on here and what poverty really looks like.
I've tried for the thirty years I've been in business to get people to see that increased productivity/ less man hours means more money for everybody. They have a "by the hour" frame of mind and see the reverse-- "If the job takes more time, I make more money."
Paying more doesn't help, and I've learned you can pay someone too much. If a guy is used to blowing his check on a six pack, ten bucks of lottery tickets, and a couple packs of cigs, when you double his pay he blows it on a twelve pack, twenty bucks on the lottery, and a carton of cigs. Or he works half as many hours. I've tried incentives like profit sharing, raises, bonuses, nothing breaks through the by the hour frame of mind.
Excellently written piece. As Eric Weinstein often says - free market capitalism is the best system but the current system is rigged. I guess as systems mature this is an inevitability of greed and power.
Another aspect to consider - wasted tax dollars given to companies to distract from the goal of innovating will hinder progress. Rather, the funds are usually not sustainable and the project keeps going back for more government $ and ignores the potential of using their talent for exponential market growth.
Take, for example, cloud seeding. This program was denied for many years among psyop planners and is finally being marketed as an innovative way to “boost water supply/ increase hydro electric production.” However, the program needs a lot of handouts - tax dollars, liability exemptions, permit exemptions… Water resources departments are usually approached by someone in academia to sell them on a cloud seeding plan - often based on gamed computer algorithms! So the education $ starts the ball rolling on a program that is not innovative, not sustainable. The idea is pitched to the water resources agency where they find tax dollars to fund the program (cigarette tax in Idaho bc I’m sure that’s what the tax was intended for!). Enter the power company who is handed the contract and runs the program (a way to add additional layers of difficulty to obtaining information bc you can’t FOIA the power company). Enter companies to make the CS generators and measurement devices. Then the players think the program is too risky and go before the state legislature to ask for no liability and no permits. And then the experimentation gets riskier and there is no opt-out, no notification. All while the tax dollars keep pouring into the program. Tax dollars that could be going to reservoirs and better water management programs, but the snake oil salesmen sold everyone on the meager 5% potential, computer modeled water increase. And you’re probably wondering what happens after they received liability exemptions? Well, that’s when the real open-air experiment begins in cloud seeding with liquid propane and methanol. Nothing about this scheme is progress, but a sad demonstration of why tax dollars going to unsustainable, scientifically questionable programs is bad for citizens, innovation, and our environment.
One again a good article right on point! The fact that work ethic, like all ethics, has to be learned is foreign to many folks. It disappears in one generation if not passed on.
That is all well said. The "welfare state" is a charity at gunpoint, an impossible contradiction. It is state violence masking as benevolence, and too many fall for it.
I used to have a plating company, we did lots of work for automotive here in the US. and yes I can be pretty dense. But geez! Ford had a goal back in 90’s to outsource x billions of JIT parts to China. It always bugged the crap out of me. I’d say how can we keep the work here! Then the JIT thing. Well we saw it crumble with the chip thing in past couple years. All the costs of a system so tight it’s wrought with catastrophic failure and cost. Anyway, the pendulum is returning. Duh! But following what’s popular isn’t usually what’s best in long run. Now what’s popular is tearing everything down a few generations ago they worked their fannies off to build. And demonize the guy with the house on the hill.
When the pendulum finally swings back, I hope we still have opportunities. Not me but the poor. Soon I’m going somewhere else and actually help the real poor. (Yep, one of those very lower economies) The guys that can barely buy shoes. Maybe by the time I’m done here and God takes me home, I might make a difference in the life of a few people and maybe even one or two of them help their friends buy some shoes.
Go back to “You didn’t build that”. A slap to entrepreneurs everywhere. Risk, investment, and executing on an idea seem novel to but a few these days. Too many without creativity sapping it (and outright stealing it) from those that do. Hard work “usually” means your grit is worth it, though infinitely more challenging today.
Surely another 'basic pillar upon which the emergence of plenty rests' is cheap energy
A cure for cancer would disrupt a very lucrative industry. I always struggle with this because I want to believe in the Atlas Shrugged story as I've seen so many ways in which it has grains of truth, but I just see predatory industry rolling over the planet for centuries. How do we address that? Have we ever had executives that embody the golden rule?
Get your ass out of bed every day before the sun rises and you'd be surprised at how easy it is to outperform the field.
Love this, I’ve never read a more accurate, compelling and yet succinct explanation of how best to help the poor, drive progress, and reward correct behaviors. Thank you!
Milei, not sure I trust this spokes person, for many reasons, may be a distraction speaker to make different factions look like they care. On the other hand spend a night on YouTube studying the scholarly work of Thomas Sowell, from the time he was a young man to now as a 90 year old cherished elder we are lucky to have. He speaks fluently as a young man til now from about how the quality of the Americans of African families and individuals were faring much much better before the welfare state come into being.
“ they squander what they were given because they have only ever known plenty and fail to understand that it is an achievement, a remarkable outcome of a finely wrought machine instead of the base state to which all are inevitably entitled. they see it as normal, not exceptional and thus seek to efface and eliminate exceptionalism itself as an idea.”
This substack was a brilliant examination.
In North America we are blind to the amazing plenty and efficient infrastructure we still enjoy around us. It works. For how long, we don’t know. Its days may be numbered.
Great Canadian columnist Rex Murphy (echoed by Jordan Peterson) both have remarked that we suffer from a deplorable lack of gratitude.
And a good knowledge of the history and heritage of our North America.
Very well put. There are people who argue that the poor are poor because they are lazy, but many poor people work two and even three jobs just to survive. Yet they never seem to get ahead, no matter how much labor energy they put into working. So something is clearly wrong with the idea that hard work alone will lift you out of poverty. When you look at this picture, it actually makes MORE sense to stop working and live off the dole, especially when the welfare system puts caps on what you can earn/save.
I’ve worked in Uganda’s largest slum for over 15 years. Occasionally I’ve taken people with me, and in Jan had a small group plus one Ugandan nurse from a poor community in Northern Uganda. After her first time in the slum, she texted friends and family and said that, despite their poverty, they had nothing to complain about. People here in the States have NO idea what true, grinding, sell-yourself-for-a-meal-at-13 poverty looks like, smells like, and especially feels like. This slum is actually up next to one of Kampala’s wealthiest neighborhoods, which to us would be very middle class. All their goods come from China and are crap - a brand new laptop (even a brand name like Dell) will have a battery life of less than an hour. Fuel was about $1.40/liter in Jan (liter, not gallon) and that was down from over $2/liter in 2022. You are wealthy if you own a car; everyone walks or takes a boda. Most people even in the nice houses cook on charcoal versus using power, which is unreliable and expensive. In the rich neighborhoods. One of the best things I ever did was take my kids with me from the start (combined 16 trips for them) - they are well aware of the consequences of what’s going on here and what poverty really looks like.
I've tried for the thirty years I've been in business to get people to see that increased productivity/ less man hours means more money for everybody. They have a "by the hour" frame of mind and see the reverse-- "If the job takes more time, I make more money."
Paying more doesn't help, and I've learned you can pay someone too much. If a guy is used to blowing his check on a six pack, ten bucks of lottery tickets, and a couple packs of cigs, when you double his pay he blows it on a twelve pack, twenty bucks on the lottery, and a carton of cigs. Or he works half as many hours. I've tried incentives like profit sharing, raises, bonuses, nothing breaks through the by the hour frame of mind.
Excellently written piece. As Eric Weinstein often says - free market capitalism is the best system but the current system is rigged. I guess as systems mature this is an inevitability of greed and power.
I think “poverty traps” are the goal as the country craters (by design)
Another aspect to consider - wasted tax dollars given to companies to distract from the goal of innovating will hinder progress. Rather, the funds are usually not sustainable and the project keeps going back for more government $ and ignores the potential of using their talent for exponential market growth.
Take, for example, cloud seeding. This program was denied for many years among psyop planners and is finally being marketed as an innovative way to “boost water supply/ increase hydro electric production.” However, the program needs a lot of handouts - tax dollars, liability exemptions, permit exemptions… Water resources departments are usually approached by someone in academia to sell them on a cloud seeding plan - often based on gamed computer algorithms! So the education $ starts the ball rolling on a program that is not innovative, not sustainable. The idea is pitched to the water resources agency where they find tax dollars to fund the program (cigarette tax in Idaho bc I’m sure that’s what the tax was intended for!). Enter the power company who is handed the contract and runs the program (a way to add additional layers of difficulty to obtaining information bc you can’t FOIA the power company). Enter companies to make the CS generators and measurement devices. Then the players think the program is too risky and go before the state legislature to ask for no liability and no permits. And then the experimentation gets riskier and there is no opt-out, no notification. All while the tax dollars keep pouring into the program. Tax dollars that could be going to reservoirs and better water management programs, but the snake oil salesmen sold everyone on the meager 5% potential, computer modeled water increase. And you’re probably wondering what happens after they received liability exemptions? Well, that’s when the real open-air experiment begins in cloud seeding with liquid propane and methanol. Nothing about this scheme is progress, but a sad demonstration of why tax dollars going to unsustainable, scientifically questionable programs is bad for citizens, innovation, and our environment.
https://eolson47.substack.com/p/cloud-seeding-experiment-in-idaho?triedRedirect=true
One again a good article right on point! The fact that work ethic, like all ethics, has to be learned is foreign to many folks. It disappears in one generation if not passed on.
That is all well said. The "welfare state" is a charity at gunpoint, an impossible contradiction. It is state violence masking as benevolence, and too many fall for it.
Wow big Kat,
You are so spot on with this.
I used to have a plating company, we did lots of work for automotive here in the US. and yes I can be pretty dense. But geez! Ford had a goal back in 90’s to outsource x billions of JIT parts to China. It always bugged the crap out of me. I’d say how can we keep the work here! Then the JIT thing. Well we saw it crumble with the chip thing in past couple years. All the costs of a system so tight it’s wrought with catastrophic failure and cost. Anyway, the pendulum is returning. Duh! But following what’s popular isn’t usually what’s best in long run. Now what’s popular is tearing everything down a few generations ago they worked their fannies off to build. And demonize the guy with the house on the hill.
When the pendulum finally swings back, I hope we still have opportunities. Not me but the poor. Soon I’m going somewhere else and actually help the real poor. (Yep, one of those very lower economies) The guys that can barely buy shoes. Maybe by the time I’m done here and God takes me home, I might make a difference in the life of a few people and maybe even one or two of them help their friends buy some shoes.
Go back to “You didn’t build that”. A slap to entrepreneurs everywhere. Risk, investment, and executing on an idea seem novel to but a few these days. Too many without creativity sapping it (and outright stealing it) from those that do. Hard work “usually” means your grit is worth it, though infinitely more challenging today.