Cash for Clunkers

As a free market economist... I can point to a number of reasons that I would be skeptical of Cash for Clunkers. As an environmentalists I like the fact that old cars are getting off the road.

Here's my prediction, and I hope it sheds some light onto one of the many reasons why I think this pigovian regulation is bound to make us worse off in the long run.

Under Cash for Clunkers people are given monetary incentives towards a new car in exchange for their old cars. As a result more people are opting to buy new cars right now. Auto dealerships are making a killing. The business is good.

The questions that come to me are, how long do people usually hold on to cars once they buy them new? If The people who are trading in cars would naturally go an buy a new car in the next 5 years or so, but they're opting to do it now, than essentially, the auto dealers boom in business is just them cashing in on future customers right now.

Here's the scary part, and this is why I think auto dealers should be scared. If people all rush to buy a car now we can expect them not to buy next year, resulting in a predicted dip in business next year. It's kind of like the baby boomers. A ripple in commerce.

What are the auto dealers going to do next year when the few people who were going to buy a new car aren't going to be buying. Business already wasn't good with the recession. The auto dealers are walking into the desert and they drank all their water on the first day.

I'm scared for the auto dealers.

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why can't we be friends?

Cheat Neutral... cap and trade your boodie call.

Awkward family photos collected and posted for your entertainment online

and Mr T is so awesome he makes Bill O'Reilly look like a nice guy... holy hell. I never would have believed it possible.

love it.

freedom is not your freedom

the probability that freedom occurs in the first person, is 1 in 6,776,009,312 as of Aug. 7th 2009... and counting. Freedom is not you, it's usually someone else.

Get over it. If you believe in individual liberty, than let people do what they want when they want to do it.

It's better to give than receive...

you believe that? I don't.

There is a very positive force that you get from giving: that is one of humility. But at the same time some people could go for some receiving from time to time.

I think this is a nice point where reality meets a lousy linguistic moral compass phrase that erodes at the intelligence of our fair nation.

First off. Society cannot give more than it receives. In face, by the nature of it, because they are essentially the same thing from two different perspectives, the amount of giving in society is perfectly equal to the amount of receiving.

Second off: From time to time... keeping things for yourself is really a good thing. Correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe this is the primary source by which society functions. People collect things, sometimes people collect happiness and that's a very subjective thing that leads to people giving. But all in all people do do things for themselves quite a bit, and that's a really good thing. It's healthy. Actually, the whole concept behind the idea "healthy" is doing things for ones self.

Can you imagine a society where everyone thought it was better to give than to receive. What a weird society. I think it would be boring. People wouldn't be healthy.

Benchmarking my success.

and at this point in my career... I'm watching predator vs alien. yep.

How the hell is there a bottled water industry?

Seems like a steel. I mean all you really have to do is bottle it as it comes out of the ground. Sometimes you don't even have to pull it out yourself... it just bubbles up.

I'm not talking about oil, it's water and we need it. We need it so much that we've created massive amounts of regulation and really screwed up property rights schemes to make sure everyone who's thirsty gets their thirst quenched and every one who gets dirty gets to wash off their dirt. Yes, we (private individuals) pay a water bill but the water industry is anything but private: well sort of. To be fare, there really is two water industries. The water industry that delivers to your house in pipes, that we use to wash, flush, and sometimes drink, and the water industry that specializes in tasty sparkling mountain spring water or mineral water or anything else that sounds neat.

So my question is, and I can think of only one plausible answer, how does the bottled water industry exist when their competition is giving stuff away for free? I mean how can Fiji, Arrowhead Aquafina, or Evian compete with free stuff?

The only possable answer I can think of, is that public water sucks so much that even when they give away their product people are willing to pay for something different. Public water companies... you really suck.

Cops meeting a quota

I just witnessed four cars get ticketed by two cops standing on a corner.

Apparently, one side of the street in front of me is transit-only. Every private citizen who drives through it is breaking the law, and for good reason too, because they are thoroughly endangering our lives and the well-being of all the bus drivers... F this. People are being pulled over for nothing. They are hurting no one and they are putting no one in danger.

Nothing pisses me off like cops working to meet a quota.