Conversation with a Child

My wife and I took my sister to lunch yesterday. My sister brought her youngest daughter, aged 14, with her. We had a conversation about economics. It started because my niece made the statement that people should get things that are necessary for free, because we all have a right to the necessities of life. She used feminine hygiene products as an example. I don’t hold it against her- she is a child and has no idea how life works.

So I told her that I wasn’t picking on her, but pointed out to her that, since no one was paying for tampons, there would be no money to pay the people who worked in the tampon factory, so why would anyone work there for free?

Her first reply was, “Wait! There is a tampon factory?” (Again, a child)

I said, “Well just where do you think tampons come from? Is there a tampon tree somewhere?”

She replied, “Well, in that case, I suppose you could get women to work there and pay them with free tampons.”

I said, “What would that be worth? Everyone gets tampons for free in this scenario, so how is this woman going to eat, buy gas, or buy a house?”

She said, “That’s my point. Money is stupid. Why can’t everyone just trade and barter for stuff? Why should we all have to go to work just to be able to afford the things we need to live? The government can just print all of the money we need.”

Sigh. That began my attempted explanation of how money works. She tuned me out after the first couple of minutes. The thing is, this is the exact same attitude that her 21 year old sister has.

Her older sister is 21 years old, still lives at home with mommy but is saying that she is an adult and doesn’t have to follow rules. She doesn’t have a drivers license and depends on her mother for rides to work, shopping, etc. She went to college for a year, but decided that was not what she wanted, so now works as a waitress and refuses to help with rent, food, or any other expenses or chores around the house. She expects mommy to cook, clean, and do her laundry for her. No surprise: she is a hard core left wing Democrat and dresses like a walking freak show. A lot like her mother was when she was younger.

My sister finally gave her daughter an ultimatum: she has to move out by October 1. My patience would have run out about 2 years ago.

This is a large portion of the youth of today. They want socialism because they don’t want to do anything but party. I don’t know how we can reach them. It seems to be a lost cause. Instead of working for a living, they are voting for a living. It’s been going on for a decade.

I sound like an old man bitching about “these kids today.”

The Only Winning Move

The left is using the shooting in New York and is going to come at us with every gun control move that they have. There is nothing that they love as much as pools of blood that they can joyously dance in while they call for more control that everyone knows will not work.

  • You could counter their arguments by pointing out that the US, despite having more guns in private hands than the rest of the world combined, still has fewer homicides than half of the nations in the world.
  • You could argue that, even in nations where guns are banned, suicide rates are much higher than the US. The US has a combined suicide/homicide rate of 16.6 per 100,000 while South Korea, where firearms are virtually illegal, has a rate of 29.8. Canada, where there is severe gun control and handguns are virtually illegal: 18.3 per 100,000.
  • You could argue that the US counts all deaths where one person kills another as homicides, while some countries like Australia only counts a death as a homicide if someone is arrested and charged for the killing. Unsolved murders don’t count. Murders where the killer is already dead don’t count. This skews the statistics.
  • You could also argue that population density has a larger correlation to homicide and suicide rates than does gun ownership.

At one point or another, we have all made each of these arguments in gun control debates. They are based upon logic and facts, and backed with scores of studies and mountains of statistical evidence.

And they are always ignored.

The left bases its arguments on emotion and catchphrases. The don’t care about science, don’t care about evidence, unless it is convenient to do so in support of their position. All other facts are ignored. Arguing something like this is a waste of time. I know, because I have wasted my time like this for decades.

As they say in War Games, the only winning move is not to play. So don’t.

I will not turn in my guns. Just in case you feel that confiscating them is the answer and you send the cops over to take them, there are two outcomes of that plan.

  1. You will lose a lot of cops. Eventually, the cops will stop taking the chance.
  2. You won’t get anywhere near all of the guns

So my answer to gun laws is this: No.

Your move.

Shut Out Opposing Opinions

There is a local media story about the New York mass shooter. One of the comments on the story was “Why didn’t a good guy with a gun neutralize him before he killed?”

I typed a great answer: “Because NY has made sure that very few good guys can carry guns. Especially not in black neighborhoods. It is a difficult and expensive process that requires a visit to a judge and must be repeated every 5 years. Despite having similar populations, Florida has ten times as many concealed weapons permit holders than New York.
On top of that, New York doesn’t allow anyone to own magazines that hold more than ten rounds. The bad guy in this case ignored that law.”

That comment lasted less than 20 minutes before it was “deactivated” because it violated the community standards. Since the left can’t defend their ideas with logic and facts, they resort to all they know how to do- shut down the debate.

On Arson

On last week’s post about the use of force to prevent arson, there were some commenters who pointed out that all arson doesn’t justify the use of deadly force. That is correct, especially in one person’s example of someone burning your garden shed. Burning a garden shed or a backyard doghouse usually wouldn’t be a forcible felony. (Although it could be) Still, it is more complicated than that. Of course it is, because any time lawyers get involved, it always is.

Even armed robbery is not always a justification for the use of deadly force. For example, if the other side’s attorney can prove that, for some reason, you knew that the assailant’s firearm wasn’t functional, then you can’t use deadly force. Let’s say that you knew that the pistol in the robber’s hand was either unloaded or that the firing pin was missing. Even if some critter is pointing a gun at you, you can’t just blow his ass away, no matter how much you want to.

Some argued that, if a structure isn’t occupied, arson isn’t a forcible felony. The courts in Florida don’t see it that way. In fact, this particular legal argument has been made numerous times, and Florida courts have struck it down each and every time. See Woody v. State, 847 So.2d 566 (Fla. 3d DCA 2003)Perez v. State, 840 So.2d 1125 (Fla. 3d DCA 2003)Rodriguez v. State, 826 So.2d 464 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002), rehearing denied with opinion, 837 So.2d 1177 (Fla. 3d DCA), review denied, No. SC03-444, 848 So,2d 1155 (Fla. 2003); Diaz v. State, 837 So.2d 436 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002)Delsol v. State, 837 So.2d 428 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002).

Early laws in Florida (before 1979) stated that setting a building on fire was only arson if the building was occupied. That definition was changed in 1979 because many people were finding and using loopholes.

So my thought here, and I can’t find any case law to the contrary, is that an occupiable building (like a church, a house, a business, etc) is presumed to be occupied and this makes it arson. Going back to the “reasonable” belief standard that all gun owners are familiar with means that if you KNOW that no one is inside the building, shooting someone to prevent the arson would be seen as not reasonable.

However, seeing someone beginning to toss a “destructive device” at an occupiable structure would, absent other mitigating factors, be legal, IMO.

Venezuela as a Map

The Fed is asking businesses to enact a hiring freeze to help fight inflation. The thought here is to cut off the demand for labor, which will prevent wages from increasing. This will in turn lower the amount of money available to chase goods, which will reduce demand and thereby control inflation. In other words, they want to make everyone poorer by keeping you from being able to get a job or run your business.

This is a common scenario for socialism/communism:

  • They enact policies of free stuff, which causes runaway inflation.
  • To combat that inflation, they begin wage and price controls.
  • This causes shortages of goods and labor.

How long will it be before we are eating our pets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdld7SqnIxE

Inflation won’t be controlled by keeping people poor on purpose. It will be controlled by stopping leftist idiots in the government from doing things like mailing out checks so people can have free Internet.