Utopia

It’s been said that “One man’s Utopia is another man’s Dystopia.” Well I’ll go a little further than that: There is no such thing as Utopia. It just looks like Utopia until you experience it. We’re going to explore this a little bit today, so pull up a chair. Dinner is beef and mushroom ravioli with cheese, you know where the liquids are, grab something. Please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

Thanks to the folks that have chipped in to keep the place running.

Take for example, California (dear Gods, would someone PLEASE take California?) California is working hard to be a better socialist utopia than NYC. Let’s see how that’s working.

Cali claims to be the defender of safety for the world, to the point where “known by the state of California to cause cancer” is a running joke. Safety rules created in California bog down the works everywhere they’re adopted. You would think that would make Cali the safest place in the world, right? Well… not so much.

They do have the fifth best Life Expectancy in the US, but it’s worth noting that the numbers vary by less than eight full years between the worst, at 73.89 years (Mississippi) and the best, 81.11 (Hawaii). Further, when we look at “safest” California comes in at 38^th in the nation, based on 52 key indicators from natural disaster occurrences, through the chance of getting hurt on the job, to the likelihood of catching a bullet.

They just added what seems to me to be another chance to get dead, or at least sick as a dog; California Assembly bill 660 completely bans “Sell-by” dates. It seems that in the view of the California assembly, people are throwing away perfectly good food because it’s passed the “sell-by,” which is causing folks to fill up the landfill, and adding to the lack of nutrition.

First off, that’s going to really complicate the life of companies that sell in multiple states, because with the exception of California, “Sell-by” is compulsory, while IN Cali, it’s now verbottin.

Second, it further complicates everything by mandating two other labels, either “BEST if used by” for food that will not taste as good (IE STALE) but is safe to eat (they think) and “USE by” for things that have strict expiration dates. So if you’re a food producer you have to re-tool to print one of those two on your label, and remove the “Sell-by” on the stuff going to California, and still print the old labels for the rest of the nation.

Then there’s the merchant in CA who has to figure out when he’s going to pull things that are either close to, or past one of those two dates… DO I sell stuff passed the “best by” date? It’s legal, but is it ethical or will it lose me customers?

How far before the “use by” date do I pull things? A week? a month? If it’s fresh foods, then a week seems resonable. if it’s cans, or frozen, theres a reasonable expectation that I can buy it and sit it on the pantry or in the freezer for a month without killing my family. If I then pitch the stuff not yet expired, is the state going to have an issue?

If you read between the lines, at what the legislators that passed this are saying, this isn’t about food safety, it’s about “we don’t have room in our landfills, so we want to discourage the throwing away of food.”

For people that actually understand food safety, this is all a waste of time, we know that “sell by” does not mean “Use by” and is at best a guideline telling you what is older, and what’s more likely to be sketchy… and even that’s of only slight use; after all, we put, by law, expiration dates on SALT for pity’s sake! “Yeah bubba, this pink Himalayan salt, it’s been in that mountain for ten thousand years, but thank gods we got it out now, because it expires next year!”

The next step will be “if we catch you throwing away food that has not passed the USE-BY date, we will fine you. You will eat that food and like it Tovarich, the mold adds character. The swollen can is just an inconvenience. You don’t want to be seen as adding to the hunger problem, do you? That would make you an oppressor, and you know what we do to those, right?”

No, this is just another opportunity to stick their nose in, and mess with people’s business.

Another example is new state law AB 732, and if you thought “you can’t have a sell by date” was stupid, check this: This law, passed unanimously, allows “agricultural commissioners” to fine a landowner up to $1,000 per acre for “neglected” land!

Yeah, you read that right, if some county ag officer decides that your land is “neglected” they can fine you, possibly to the point of taking away your land. Suffering from drought? Have your citrus crop fail?

Well, now, along with having the bank dogging you because your crop failed, which means you don’t have the money to pay back the “Operations loan” that keeps you running up until the harvest, you now get some Comisar showing up to fine you for “neglect” of your land. The theory expressed was that “Pests” grow in “neglected” land and then spread to production land.

Now I can almost see this, after all, Mexico is “neglected” and “pests” have been migrating from there to the once productive land of the Southwest, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, lost opportunities, crime, medical care, social services and so on… (Note, I’m not saying that hispanics are by definition “pests” but I am saying that a lot of the ones that are coming across the border illegally are.) But the theory that “neglected land causes pests” is like the old medieval “Scientist” theory that the sun breeds baby mice in hay.

This is a land grab by another name. It’s an opportunity for some appointed apparatchik who may or may not have a fucking clue, depending on how crooked the local government is, to decide that “Your land is “neglected” comrade, the state must ensure that farmland is properly utilized, so we must fine you until you use it as we see fit. What, you can’t pay that fine? Well then comrade, the state will take your land. Maybe we’ll let you farm it, under a state manager.”

This is the face of socialism.

It’s not the utopia that your teacher promised. It’s not safety and security for all, by the benevolent hand of a caring government. It’s centralized planning deciding what is best for all (themselves) and who must do what or be fined and imprisoned, for failure to follow the “five-year plan.”

(For those of you too young to remember the old Soviet Union, they were big on “five-year plans”, and perfection was always one “five-year plan” and just a few more regulations away from happening. “Trust us, government will fade away, and all will be great for the working man, it’s just one more centralized plan, and a few hundred-thousand more counter revolutionary deaths away!”)

It’s some punk named Rohit Khanna who grew up in Pennsylvania, got a law degree specializing in I P law, clerked for a federal judge for a couple years, did two years in private practice, then joined the federal government gravy train. He did two years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary to the Department of Commerce (OK lets stop right here, this guy has two years as a lawyer and a few years as the clerk for a district apellate judge, and he’s somehow capable of being an SES for the Department of Commerce? Of course this was under Obama, who he had stumped for as a college student, so…)

Then he got elected as the US Representative for California’s 17^th district (Silicon Valley) Democrat, of course.

He worked on Bernie Sanders presidential Campaign like a good little socialist… Oh, he wrote a book, “Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America’s Future.”

This “expert” on Commerce, that has never made a thing, or worked in a manufacturing field in his fucking life, feels justified to lecture Elon Musk on how horrible he is, and why he should have his fortune confiscated and redistributed to “those in need.”

Well, how much is a good little socialist who has spent most of his working years in college or in the public sector worth? After all, the biggest paycheck he ever saw was probably that House of Representatives job, at $174K a year, and a book doesn’t make that much money, unless you’re Roling, King, Correa, or someone at that level. If he’s lecturing Elon and demanding that Elon’s money be taken away, he’s probably giving all his excess money to charity, like he wants Elon to do, right?

Right?

Yeah, how about; this little bitch is worth 232.7 million dollars?

Said little bitch is, it seems, also thinking that he can get on the ticket as the Presidential nominee for the Democratic party. Now I’ll admit that they’ve got an awful shallow field to draw from, but this guy?

OK, I can see where he’s coming from, he was a ward healer while in college in Chicago, for Obama’s campaign.

Then he worked as a Bernie Bro.

He probably figures that based on not having done anything stupid, he can pull an Obama and get the nomination by “I’m a minority, and have the least baggage.”

The scary thing is, he might be right. The even more frightening thing is that there are people who would vote for him, based on his promises of “taking care of all the folks that have been screwed by the capitalists.”

He talks a great game, promising to take all the money from this rich guy, and spread it around to all the poor guys. It’s a great game if you can’t do math, but then most socialists can’t do even the simple math that is economics.

But, did you ever notice that the guys that want to take the rich cat’s money and spread it around, never spread their own around?

Oh and funny thing, you don’t make that sort of money if you can’t do math, so he’s got to know what he’s saying is bullshit. Musk’s money wouldn’t run the US Government for more than a couple months. Spread evenly over everyone not Musk, it’s only a couple thousand per person. Shit, my mother made more than that off a drawing at the Eagles. It’s nice, but it’s not “life changing money.” And it would kill every business that Musk owns, putting hundreds of thousands out of work, and stoping all the stuff that his companies are doing for the nation.

Ro Khanna is worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Money made, somehow, while doing a job that doesn’t pay that much more than what I was making when I worked at the shipyard. (yes I had other sources of income, but still… with all sources combined, we were up around that 175K figure. There’s no way I could have made that into a quarter of a billion.) OK, he inherited a good-sized chunk (no one is saying how much) but if he were a good socialist shouldn’t that have been spread around to some charities?

Instead, that time working for that judge, and that time working for Sec. Commerce seems to have provided him with some sort of special insight (I’m not saying insider trading, but he, like Nancy P, seem to have awfully good guesses on who’s going to make money in the market, and the ability to buy in at just the right time.)

Bernie is worth approximately 2.6 million after never having worked outside of an elected office in his life.

Shifty Shiff is at around the same number, he’s another guy that wants to take all Musk’s money.

Nasty Pelosi? Yeah, she’s around Ro’s money, a quarter billion. Both of them seem to have an awful lot of money in healthcare companies…

There’s a really great blog that discussed the lure of Socialism and the lies embedded there in, this week:

Why Young Americans Still Believe in Socialism

you should go read it.

The truth is that people, as a whole, are interested in their own best interest. That may include “This is best for my (fill in group, from family to nation) so it’s in my long term best interest.” Hell, if the person is exceptionally brilliant, they may be able to see and support “This doesn’t directly help me, but the people that it helps are people that will help others that will help me.”(Third order thinking.)

Capitalism understands this, and says “prices send a message, either ‘there’s too many people making this, so you can’t help yourself by making it too’ or ‘the price is extremely high for this thing, there’s money to be made here, which will help you and your family.’” Capitalism encourages you to do well by doing good. It discourages you from ripping people off, because once word gets around, no one will buy from you.

Yes, that means someone is going to get hurt in the process while people learn you’re a crook. That’s what I’m going through right now with my house. Yes, it sucks. This is also why we have courts and laws, so that when you are a crook I can seek the reimbursement I am due and recover from being ripped off.

The difference is I have recourse. If it was the government in a socialist country, unless I had contacts in government that owed me favors, I would have no recourse.

Nothing is perfect, there is no “utopia” this side of the grave. The best you can do, is design a system that checks and calibrates, that makes everyone answerable to laws, not people, and then makes those laws wisely, and minimizes the number of them. We aren’t there yet, but we’re closer than any other place on earth. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.

QOTD: “That is where the socialist romance begins. A generation was handed real grievances and a fake villain. They were pushed through expensive universities, buried under loans, priced out of housing, mocked by inflation, managed by apps, lectured by HR departments, and then told the problem was capitalism. Not the universities feeding on federal loan money. Not the politicians choking housing supply while pretending to care about affordability. Not the regulators who make small businesses harder to start and giant corporations harder to kill. Not the central bankers who punished savers and rewarded people who already owned assets. Not the bureaucratic class that makes everything slower, uglier, and more expensive, then calls itself public service.”

“Lady Liberty” a blogger who just goes by Ivana.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman