Brain on idle

VICTOR REPPERT SAID:

The Church, for example, doesn't have the means and resources to solve the mortgage crisis today. It would be great if they did, but they don't. And it's the conservative George W. Bush administration who is saddled with the task of engaging in a little socialism to restore our economy.

Since I’m not an economist, I’m not going to venture an option on how to solve the current financial crisis. But I will make a couple of general observations:

i) Freddie and Fannie are quasi-gov’t agencies to begin with. That’s one of the problems. They don’t have to be efficient since they know they can always fall back on Uncle Sam if they fail. So it comes as no surprise when they fail.

ii) Now, when gov’t fails, the liberal solution is more gov’t. If an oversight agency fails, the liberal solution is to create a new oversight agency to oversee the old oversight agency. If the new oversight agency fails, the liberal solution is to create a newer oversight agency to oversee the old oversight agency to oversee the older oversight agency. When bureaucracy fails, the liberal solution is to add another layer of bureaucracy.

Liberals are constitutionally incapable of ever learning from experience. They have the same answer to every problem: more gov’t. And when gov’t is the problem, the answer is...more gov’t.

iii) This brings me to a final point: most folks, including most voters and most politicians, are crisis-oriented.

Many crises are foreseeable and preventable. Indeed, many crises have been predicted, and preventive measures proposed.

But because most folks are crisis-oriented, this falls on deaf ears. It’s just an abstraction.

So when the predictable crisis predictably occurs, most people then act shocked and irate. “How could this happen?”

They then create a new oversight agency so that “This will never happen again.”

But, of course, bureaucracies are no better than bureaucrats. The oversight officials are crisis-oriented. They, too, disregard the warning signs.

Hence, every 10 or 15 years or so, give or take, the cycle repeats itself.

There is no accountability in gov’t since most voters reward bureaucratic bungling, year after year after year.

Surely you aren't suggesting that Social Security and Medicare were bad ideas.

Only a pseudo-philosopher would respond with this incredulous exclamation. For Reppert, it’s beyond question that Social Security and Medicare are good ideas.

Now, a real philosopher questions assumptions. But not Reppert.

Hasn’t Reppert ever bothered to notice that our entitlement programs are terminally insolvent? There are not enough workers to support the retirees. So it becomes a classic pyramid scheme.

No, I don’t think it’s a good idea for gov’t to own our retirement portfolio. At that point, it’s not our money. It belongs to Uncle Sam. The account is in the name of Uncle Sam.

So politicians simply divert the money nominally appropriated to Social Security to their pet projects. The gov’t writes itself IOUs to be redeemed by...the gov’t. But we keep financing the present off of the diminishing returns of the future. Anyone with half a brain can see where this is headed. Same thing with Medicare.

Republicans, nowadays, typically tell us we should elect them so that these institutions can be saved.

To begin with, I’m a conservative first and a Republican second. My ideological identity is primary, not my partisan identity. My ideology selects for my party, not vice versa.

Since so many voters are addicted to the welfare state, it’s almost impossible for Republicans to get elected or reelected without, in some measure, pandering to voters who demand welfare statism.

And such "welfare" often requires work, as in Obama's plan to pay for college education in exchange for government service.

Once again, if Reppert were a real philosopher rather than a pseudo-philosopher, he’d stop and question the underlying assumption: why does college tuition annually rise faster than the inflation rate? Why should it be necessary to become an indentured public servant to afford a college education?