Food Inc.

Recently, I watched the new documentary, Food Inc. to check out the buzz. It was exactly as I expected it to be: full of shocking images of cattle stock houses, slaughterhouses, shocking facts. It made me think about the groceries I was putting away yesterday in a new light: where did this steak come from? On the whole it was an almost balanced treatment of the subject with different solutions offered to solve the effects, but missing the mark on the cause. Many interviewees expressed their view of the evils of big corporations trampling down the little man. No doubt that happens and it is infuriating. However, the answer to the problem some say is that more government regulation is in order, or the Holy Word: Reform. I say Reduce. The bigger the government gets, the more power big business will have. Politicians respond to incentives like anyone else on the planet and the more government grows, the more it is able to respond to incentives offered to politicians to "look the other way." I think the FDA is a useless organization that does more harm than good, just by way of the beureacratization that approval for new drugs and oversight of food stuffs has become. If big food companies (about 4 own 80%+ of the food market in the US, if I remember from the doc) have only the FDA to answer to, rather than the consumer, the FDA -or the people in the FDA-will respond to insentives offered by business. I'm not saying that Big Food Corp is handing officials $100 dollar bills all the time, but they are able to affect change through lobbying, threats of making certain knowledge known, and other means of leverage that would affect election results and appointments.

Also, an important fact to remember in all of this is that our food industry is not free market. There are huge subsidies given to commodity crop sellers, like corn and wheat and many others I am not aware, I'm sure. Subsidies-your tax dollars-keep prices artificially low, allowing corn based products to be cheap compared to other food stuffs. It also drives out other developing economies and their chance to sell agricultural products to the US further inhibiting their growth.

Through the malaise though, Food Inc. offered the example of Wal Mart responding to consumer demand for more organic products, demonstrating the consumer does still have a voice. There is immense prosperity and productivity in American farming, unlike the world has ever seen. While most countries are worrying about starving, we are worrying about being too fat. Creating a true free market and dismantling regulatory agencies that are not accountable to anyone would be a near impossible task with the powers as they are, but it is the way to ensure prosperity and health for the most people.

A Few Thoughts

I heard today that the government is buying more gold. Interesting. Also, gold surpassed $1200 an ounce yesterday. Interesting. The government pruchases a valuable commodity with invaluable money it can print at will. Interesting.

Why is it the government's "job" to oversee medical care? Why is it the government's job to do anything? Do we ever ask the question, Is this a realm of life the government should have a say in? Are they qualified? Not only that, is it capable of performing well and if not, why do we not repeal it when it fails to do its proposed purpose?

There is no such thing as "free healthcare," "free bus system," "free gift." Period. They do not exist, never have and never will. Someone, somewhere is paying for them. And inevitably, we all will pay some price in time or money, however large or small.

Israel and Egypt

Hello friends and family. It's been a long time since last posting, but many exciting things have happened in the meantime.

For instance, I went to Israel, Egypt with my dad. It was a two week trip associated with Search Ministries, the organization he works with and he helped lead it. I basically tagged along. Highlights in Israel include the Garden Tomb (where Jesus may very well have been buried for the short time He was dead), the Temple Mount, Hezekiah's Tunnel, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, vendors offering everything for $1, plush hotels, calls to prayer, the Dead Sea, Masada and so much more. Each day began around 8AM and went until at 5PM or so. We got on our bus each morning and let the guides do the rest. It's the way to see the Holy Land, if you ever ask me. Before I went, I expected the trip to be an earth shattering experience for my personal faith. You know, being in the places the Scriptures talk about, where Jesus walked, one would expect a sense of spiritual speechlessness. However, it wasn't as earth shattering as I thought it would be, but it was still significant and I would encourage every believer to go. They are just places after all and the significance of Christianity does not lie in locations but in the Person of Christ and what He did. After seeing, smelling and hearing the places talked about in Scripture with my own eyes, I feel I can read the Bible in color now. It is no longer in black and white and it's an incredible new aspect of my relationship with God.

In Egypt, the highlights included the Pyramids, Sphinx, tombs, the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in, the Egyptian Museum, and the Algerian soccer team we ran into at the airport in Cairo. Cairo itself was sprawling with over 22 million people. The traffic was remarkable.
This Egypt leg contrasted with Israel in that it was not as heavily focused on Biblical stories as Israel was (at every site in Israel there would be a Bible reading), but it was still beneficial in that it provided a focus on the General Revelation of God rather the Special Revelation of God emphasized in Israel. In Egypt we focused a lot on the ancient culture there, which we know so much about because they had a worldview that knew this life was only temporary and preparation for the next life was of the utmost importance. They emphasized resurrection of the body, reflecting the truth that humans are body and soul (spirit). They knew there was a greater power than they and got pretty close to the truth on observations they made from General Revelation.

On the way back, my dad and I spent two days in New York City, seeing the sights and visiting a couple friends of mine, which was great. It was a nice transition back into the US.

That's a short summary of my travels and what I learned. I have over 800 pictures, which would be a whole post/website.

This is Cool

Real Time Debt Clock

Private Law Enforcement

I have heard stories about private law enforcement being a possibility, but a recent story in Time magazine brought it to light again. In the story, it told of neighborhoods in Detroit where the residents each pay a monthly $30 fee to hire a private company to patrol their streets. The reason they did this is because Detroit's metro police force was cut by 25% and hence couldn't as easily deploy personnel to the outskirts of the city. This local private law enforcement stepped into the gap and the officers ride around the neighborhood with digital cameras and bullet proof vests, checking out suspicious vehicles, people and focusing on empty homes that are especially prone to theft. For the city in general, private security is one of the few growing industries in Detroit, according to Time.

This also reminded me a friend who spent 6 months in South Africa and told me about some private security there. Apparently, theft is high in Cape Town, so parking your car on the street, locks or not, is risky. So there are these guys who walk around in orange vests who will watch your car for a fee while you run inside. From what I remember, she took advantage of that service a couple of times. Lately, I haven't checked up on the status of this industry, but she was by no means a private, limited government type, so I don't think she was making this up.

The worry is often that with the repeal of a government program people will be left floundering because that was the only thing that kept the world going around. However, thanks to self interest, there are people out there always looking for a way to create value and I think the above stories add some credit to the fact that government is only one way of doing things.

Joseph on Ancient Egyptian Coins

Gnarly gnar: archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the Biblical Joseph.

"The researcher identified coins from many different periods, including coins that bore special markings identifying them as being from the era of Joseph. Among these, there was one coin that had an inscription on it, and an image of a cow symbolizing Pharaoh's dream about the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, and the seven green stalks of grain and seven dry stalks of grain. It was found that the inscriptions of this early period were usually simple, since writing was still in its early stages, and consequently there was difficulty in deciphering the writing on these coins. But the research team [managed to] translate [the writing on the coin] by comparing it to the earliest known hieroglyphic texts…

"Joseph's name appears twice on this coin, written in hieroglyphs: once the original name, Joseph, and once his Egyptian name, Saba Sabani, which was given to him by Pharaoh when he became treasurer. There is also an image of Joseph, who was part of the Egyptian administration at the time."

Free Golf Cart, Anyone?

A thank you to Josiah for pointing out the Post Office. Yeah, they're the cheapest option right now, (that I know of) for sending letters to girlfriends or checks to missions organizations etc. If they disappeared, could not a UPS type organization pick up the slack? Would we get as much junk mail then? Keep pointing out beneficial government programs to me, I need encouragement.

Free golf cart thanks to the government.

Some excerpts:

"The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart."

"In South Carolina, sales of these carts have been soaring as dealerships alert customers to Uncle Sam's giveaway. 'The Golf Cart Man' in the Villages of Lady Lake, Florida is running a banner online ad that declares: 'GET A FREE GOLF CART. Or make $2,000 doing absolutely nothing!'"

Don't walk, run to your nearest cart dealer!

Positive Examples?

Are there any positive examples out there of a government program truly benefiting people as it was intended to? The kind of thing I am looking for is the sort of long term, without-it-we'd-be-complete-goners type of testimony. Do government programs like welfare, Medicaid, Medicare help people in the long run? I need some help on this because my own perspective on government's ability to actually help people is increasingly negative.

Discuss.

Of course, I have a blog post brewing about private enterprise doing government's job, but I'll save that one for tomorrow.

End the Federal Reserve?

I just finished Ron Paul's new book "End the Fed." It's short, sweet and to the point mostly. In it he presented a couple of compelling arguments to rid the US from control of a central bank. I am still uneducated on the issue, but plan to learn more about it. On principle I disagree with the existence of the Fed. Reasons being: every day the Fed exists and prints more money, the less our savings are worth due to inflation, it permits the government to print money in order to fund programs it should not be involved in or promote, it is hardly controlled and allowed far too much power without adequate oversight.

Ron Paul brought up the valid point that if we can't print money, why should the Fed be allowed to? If we do it, it's counterfeiting, but if they do it, it's legit.

Ever since its inception, it has failed to do what it was created for, namely, provide a foundation for a stable economy. There have been nearly two dozen recorded recessions since 1913 when it was founded.

It's an interested read.

My Man Hayek

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." F. A. Hayek from The Fatal Conceit.

Amen and amen.