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Master Thespian John Morse, Colorado Senate Majority Leader, goes off on a rant over Amazon.com’s small act of defiance against his tax increase and privacy invasion. This is so laughable it has to be seen to be believed/appreciated:

For those who don’t know, the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature two weeks ago passed what have come to be called the “Dirty Dozen” tax increases – blatantly ignoring the Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment to the state constitution by raising taxes without a vote of the citizens. Among the items subjected to new or increased taxes, including soda and (some, weirdly-defined) candy, doggie bags, software downloads, and bull semen (!), are all online sales.

In the case of the latter, the tax increase mandated onerous and privacy-invading reporting requirements onto online retailers. Amazon announced early on that they would suspend all affiliate accounts for Colorado residents if the measure passed, and over the weekend made good on that promise, sending cancellation letters to all of its Amazon Affiliates in the state.

In other words, a company had the guts to stand up in a small, symbolic way to the anti-constitutional taxation policy and invasive reporting requirements of the state of Colorado – and Senator Morse won’t stand for it. How dare Amazon not meekly accept the dictates of Senator Morse and his pals in the Colorado legislature? Who does Amazon think it is?

Me? I say “Hooray for Amazon!”

What amuses me is that he is now going to ditch his Kindle, boycott Amazon, and take his custom to more statism-friendly Apple. While I applaud Amazon’s actions, I firmly believe that they will lose far more business from people like me, who will no longer purchase anything online, from any retailer, so long as this taxation and reporting law is in effect. Indeed, even though I am a shareholder and the move would cost the company money, I would have preferred to see Amazon go all the way, and refuse to accept any orders for delivery to or with a billing address in Colorado (or at the very least the addresses of the governor and every legislator who voted for the bill).

What’s not funny about Senator Morse’s dramatic soliloquy, though, is the unquestioned assumptions that lie behind it. The notion that Amazon being a $900 million “corporate customer [sic]” is something shameful, a sin that requires the redistribution of their profits to assuage. Or the assumption that the targets of an objectionable piece of legislation ought to know their place, and accept the imposition humbly without uttering a word of protest. Or the apallingly ignorant assumption that he and his equally-economically-ignorant colleagues can blithely pass tax increases without altering economic behavior in the private sector whatsoever.

What’s even worse is Morse’s astonishing and hypocritical attack on Amazon as being a “bully” and engaging in “egregiousness” and ”tyranny”. Senator John Morse, Democrat of Colorado Springs, may want to look in the mirror – after all, it isn’t Amazon who is pitching an over-the-top emotional fit, it isn’t Amazon who is throwing its weight around to take something it shouldn’t have or forcing people to do business with it, and it isn’t Amazon who is acting in blatant violation of the state constitution and against the loudly expressed wishes of the citizens of Colorado.

[via WhoSaidYouSaid]

ADDED: Senator Morse is getting called out on his BS in the comments at YouTube, and is (not at all surprisingly) responding with snippy and condescending remarks. How dare we proles question him! He’s a senator!

Posted on March 9th, 2010 under Economics, PPC. Tags: amazon, Amazon.com, bully, capitalism, clear the bench, Colorado Springs, Dirty Dozen, Economics, egregiousness, iPad, John Morse, kindle, online retailer, Senator, statism, TABOR, tax, twinkie tax, tyranny. Comments Off

Here’s a golden oldie, from back in the day when industry associations stood up for capitalism and the positive social by-products of productive enterprises, instead of apologizing for their existence and bending over backwards to appease environmentalist bullies, corrupt incumbents, and union thugs.

While it veers into the de rigeur hip-deep patriotic cheese near the end (around 9:50, when Gramps Robinson stands up), the rest of the film is surprisingly good and refreshingly accurate. As I’m in the middle of reading Atlas Shrugged, I was struck by how the town in question is the mirror image of Starnesville: a place where the “motive power” of local industry was recognized, respected, and celebrated.

Another interesting element of this film is how toned-down the utilitarian justifications for capitalism are. Sure enough, capitalism is defended to some degree on the basis of its public benefits, but the public benefits are more overtly presented as the natural, emergent effects of the spontaneous organization sparked by Mr. Manson’s initial investment. Gramps Robinson even gets in a dig at the now all-too-familiar “Progressive” mindset which evades the real sources of prosperity, thinking it can tear down industry and still have the prosperity of which productive enterprise is the root.

Pretty sophisticated for an educational film aimed at young teenagers.

[cross-posted at People's Press Collective]

More here: “We needed Mr. Brown’s weenies! That’s the incentive that makes capitalism work!”

Posted on April 24th, 2009 under Economics. Tags: Atlas Shrugged, capitalism, Economics, emergence, free markets, industry, moonbats, progressives. Comments Off

Rand links to this interesting post at Cato Unbound on colonizing space and the “future of freedom”:

The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom…

(2) Outer space. Because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics. But the final frontier still has a barrier to entry: Rocket technologies have seen only modest advances since the 1960s, so that outer space still remains almost impossibly far away. We must redouble the efforts to commercialize space, but we also must be realistic about the time horizons involved. The libertarian future of classic science fiction, a la Heinlein, will not happen before the second half of the 21st century…

The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we must resist the temptation of technological utopianism — the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the political in our world.

A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology. The future will be much better or much worse, but the question of the future remains very open indeed. We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism. 

But then there’s this downer on one of the companies that might eventually get us past the “rocket problem”:

Due for lift-off on April 21, Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry secretary-general Datuk Abdul Hanan Alang Endut said the delay was because of problems with the launching vehicle.

The vehicle, Falcon 1, belonging to a company Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX), is to lift off the satellite from the launching pad at Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Island.

Abdul Hanan said SpaceX will be doing the repairs which will take at least six weeks.

Yes, these things take time to perfect - and in this case, a lot more time than those involved expected.  The problem is, as the Thiel article suggests, we don’t have a whole lot of time to waste.

Posted on April 17th, 2009 under Economics, Settlement, Space Commerce, Space Technology. Tags: capitalism, liberty, space settlement. Comments Off

Compare this:

A few houses still stood within the skeleton of what had once been an industrial town. Everything that could move, had moved away;  but some human beings had remained. The empty structures were vertical rubble; they had been eaten, not by time, but by men: boards torn out at random, missing patches of roofs, holes left in gutted cellars. It looked as if blind hands  had seized whatever fitted the need of the moment, with no concept of remaining in existence the next morning. The inhabited houses were scattered at random among the ruins; the smoke of their chimneys was the only movement visible in town.  — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957

With this description of the re-wilding of present day Detroit:

His little Cape Cod is an urban Appalachia of coon dogs and funny smells. The interior paint has the faded sepia tones of an old man’s teeth; the wallpaper is as flaky and dry as an old woman’s hand.

Beasley peers out his living room window. A sushi cooking show plays on the television. The neighborhood outside is a wreck of ruined houses and weedy lots…

“This city is going back to the wild,” he says. “That’s bad for people but that’s good for me. I can catch wild rabbit and pheasant and coon in my backyard.”

Detroit was once home to nearly 2 million people but has shrunk to a population of perhaps less than 900,000. It is estimated that a city the size of San Francisco could fit neatly within its empty lots. As nature abhors a vacuum, wildlife has moved in.

A beaver was spotted recently in the Detroit River. Wild fox skulk the 15th hole at the Palmer Park golf course. There is bald eagle, hawk and falcon that roam the city skies. Wild Turkeys roam the grasses. A coyote was snared two years ago roaming the Federal Court House downtown.

And throw in these photoessays from the ruins of the city’s once-thriving downtown for illustration – lots more links at BoingBoing. I disagree emphatically with the BoingBoing commenter who claims that this is the result of ‘hypercapitalism having its vampiric way’ – it was capitalism which built all of these now-ruined buildings and the now-decaying wastelands of Detroit. The ruination came in degrees as Detroit’s industrial giants were increasingly hamstrung by unions and Detroit’s government increasingly fell victim to corruption and identity politics – if there were any vampires preying on “The Twentieth-Century Motor City”, they were from the union hall and the city hall.

Posted on April 3rd, 2009 under Economics, Luddism, PPC. Tags: Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, capitalism, corruption, Detroit, re-wilding, Starnesville, urban decay. Comments Off

Along with this month’s power bill came an interesting letter from the utility…interesting in how politically incorrect it is:

How long we will be able to freeze our rate depends upon federal and state energy policies.  Many in Congress see a CO2 cap and trade scheme or carbon tax as a lucrative source of potential government revenues, payable by electricity consumers.  Special interests at the state and federal level are pushing to require subsidization of uneconomical and inefficient power sources.

During the first quarter of 2008, we conducted a survey seeking our members’ views on subsidies proposed by lawmakers.  A carbon tax – which would increase energy costs across the board – was opposed by 84% of the questionnaire respondents.  77% opposed a tax to fund energy conservation, and 65% of our members opposed paying for solar subsidies.  They agreed with the Board of Directors that consumers benefitting from lower electric bills after installing a solar array should pay for the system themselves rather than requiring their neighbors – many of whom are already having difficulty paying their bills – to pay for it.

This year, new legislation is being proposed that would promote tiered rate structures.  Such rates would cause the per kWh cost to increase as you use more energy… The purpose of the tiered rates is to impose energy conservation.  However, the effect is to reduce the revenues needed to run the business [ie: the utility company] with the end result being rate increases for everyone.

Our members’ comments clearly indicate they can’t afford higher taxes and they want IREA to keep rates low; also that “rebates” (in fact, subsidies) disproportionally affect the poor and those on fixed incomes.  Since these new proposals – cap and trade, tiered rates, or a carbon tax – would result in trillions of dollars of additional power costs nationwide, devastating our economy and quality of life whil yielding little or no practical benefits, we plan to actively oppose such proposals.

The letter goes on to rally members to help the co-op fight such measures.

Nice to see a company whose business is targeted by environmentalist do-gooders actually fighting back against the directives and non-value-adding costs said do-gooders are trying to impose on them — and us.

I see nothing wrong with “alternative” energy, but I do think it’s wrong to mandate the adoption of alternative energy when the technology is not yet (and may never be) capable of competing with existing sources through equivalent or better reliability, availability, and affordability.  If subsidies are required to make such technology even remotely economical, and if significant, economy-wrecking penalties need to be applied to existing sources of energy to “incentivize” the switch to alternatives, the alternatives are clearly not ready for widespread adoption.

Environmentalists who are sincerely concerned with CO2 emissions and environmental damage from the extraction and use of fossil fuels, and who want to actually make headway against those things, would be taken much more seriously if they endorsed nuclear power – the real alternative energy.  It’s a pity that our local co-op is too small to build a nuclear reactor of its own.

Posted on March 9th, 2009 under Economics, Luddism, PPC. Tags: cap and trade, capitalism, carbon dioxide, carbon tax, electricity, energy, environmentalism, global warming, green, nuclear, power, tiered rates. Comments: 5