Incentive vs. Punishment

Greed is a flaw in the human character, not a function of any political or socioeconomic philosophy. No matter what form of governance operates in a particular country, there will always be people who try to take as much as they can from the available wealth. In autocratic societies like Socialism and Communism, those people are mostly concentrated in the ruling class, while the non-ruling population usually struggles in poverty from which they cannot free themselves, because the government controls what they can and cannot have.  In a free-market society, those who control the economic output are usually those who have the most wealth, and generally control only what their employees can and cannot have, at least financially. In a free-market society it is the Law of Supply and Demand that operates in business, such that if an employing entity does not provide its employees with sufficient reward for the work provided, those employees are free to seek employment elsewhere. A business without sufficient employees cannot survive for long.

In any economy, wealth is generated by the entities who provide products and/or services needed or wanted by the general population. Wealth is not finite. The more there are entities providing products or services, the more wealth is generated. Government does not generate wealth, it takes it from those producing it. In autocratic societies under Communism or Socialism, the government owns most of the means of production. History has yet to show that these systems are in any way beneficial to the population: universal poverty and chronic shortages of materials are the usual result. In an ideal society, there should be incentives to encourage more people to generate wealth (ie, create new businesses), not punishments in the form of stifling regulations that prevent this from happening. The objective is to make use of the natural tendency toward greed so that all people who want to rise economically can do so. The more people who are generating wealth, the more the government can take if it so chooses, but there, too, the government has to weigh the benefits of taking wealth from those generating it against taking too much, which will cause the wealth generators to stop producing. It is the free-market system that has resulted in the greatest expansion of upward mobility and wealth generation in the history of the world. We need to nurture it and protect it, not punish it.

Media Bias: Yes or No?

Here are two headlines, both of which appeared atop an above-the-fold article in our local newspaper:

"Trump Attacks Senator on Twitter" and "President Responds to Blumenthal's Criticism.."

Which one do you think was the big headline on top, and which one was the small sub-headline underneath it?

If you want to convey a headline that accurately summarizes the story, you would use the second one on top.  If, however, you want to convey a negative meme about our president, without regard to the truth, you would put the first one on top, and ignore the fact that the incident was a retaliation, not an instigation.  Given that many people never bother to read the actual story, what do you think happens when they only read the headline? If you guess that they would come away with an image of a combative, irrational leader, I think you would be right, even though this was not the case here. Oh, and by the way, Senator Blumenthal didn't just "criticize" Mr. Trump, he accused him repeatedly in print and on air of having spurious and nefarious motives for firing FBI Director Comey, without any evidence whatsoever.  Mr. Trump, in retaliation, brought up Mr. Blumenthal's repeated statements during his 2010 election campaign that he had "served in Viet Nam" when in fact he didn't, but the good people of Connecticut elected him anyway.  Seems they don't care if someone lies just to get votes, as long as he's a Democrat. Just so you know, the screaming headline was the first one, and the small sub-headline was the second one. And yet, the media insist that they are not biased.

 

Duplicity

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?” I responded.

What, exactly, are you sorry for?

For letting him into your life and letting him think that you loved him as much as he loved you, or for abruptly ending that love and evicting him from your life when you decided that you couldn’t “fix” him?

For betraying him to his ex-wife repeatedly via text after you kicked him out?  For sharing  personal information about him that was none of her business? For conspiring with her to keep the communications a secret from him?  For then lying about it to him when he asked you if you had communicated with her?

 Or for us finding out about it? You made a mistake trusting her to keep your conversations private: she forwarded all the texts that passed between the two of  you to him, not wanting to be called a liar. She really can't be trusted.  But then, apparently, neither can you.

Are you sorry for accepting his engagement ring as though you would love him forever, or for not having had the decency to hand it back to him two months later when that turned out not to be true?  You let him think that the separation was temporary, until he happened to find the ring a week after he had moved, neatly boxed up and buried in with his clothes that you had so quickly packed up while he was out at work one day.

Are you sorry for  the envelope that came to your mailbox from the Court that you refused to either deliver to him or let him pick up in a timely manner, opting instead to write a forwarding address that did not even include the town, thus delaying its delivery until after he was supposed to appear in court? He had no idea what it was about, and he narrowly avoided getting arrested for failing to report to a hearing thanks to your selfish negligence. Thank God he had the good sense to call the Court House to find out what it was for when the letter still hadn't come after more than a week of waiting. Are you sorry for that?

Are you sorry for often offering money to help out with his expenses, or for deciding that he owed you all of it back when you ended the engagement? I doubt that he asked you for money; he probably assumed that you were helping him out of love, and that once he could land a better-paying job all this would be resolved. After all, this was the love of a lifetime. Too bad that wasn’t true. Coincidentally, he did land a better job, but you had already made up your mind by then. Bad timing.

 

Your pursuit of a stress-free life has caused more emotional damage to him and to us than anything we have ever experienced. Our son, while flawed, is nevertheless a kind, sensitive, gentle and loving man who was a wonderful father figure for your son, especially given the boy's special needs. Very few men have the capacity to love children like he does, yet you discarded all of that when you literally erased him, and us, from your life. There is an expression that aptly describes what you did: throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Memorize this: you can’t fix people. Either accept them as they are, or leave them alone. Love is not a reward for good behavior. It is a gift freely given, something you apparently are incapable of doing.

Do I forgive you? No. I wish now that you and he had never met. Will I ever forgive you? That depends on whether and to what extent our son can recover from this explosion to his self-esteem and to his ability to trust another human being again. He really loved you, more than anything else besides his own son, and it will take a long time for that love to eventually die, in spite of what you have done to him. His heart is broken and so is mine. When his heart heals so will mine, and then I will think about forgiving you.

This Kind of Love I Do Not Understand

My youngest son has not had an easy life: he got involved with older kids at an early age, and also got involved with alcohol. By the time we learned the extent of his drinking problem, he was half-way through college. By the time he was in his thirties, he was an out-of-control alcoholic with a wife and son.  The wife hated him and divorced him when the son was about a year old, but not before condemning every action he tried to take to  gain sobriety, calling his first stint in rehab a "vacation", and slamming him with every demeaning label she could find, further tearing into his already-low self-respect. Since then she has continued to castigate him and refuses to believe that he is sober, continually forcing him to take a breathalyzer test every time he picks up his son for weekend visits - that is, when she lets him, which is almost never on the schedule that is supposed to be in place.  He is so afraid of her that he refuses to apply for a Court-Ordered visitation schedule, fearing that she will somehow be able to take visitation away from him altogether, especially now that he is living at home.  My husband and I have struggled to help him stand up to her for years, to no avail, for the sake of his son, now seven years old, who adores him and would benefit greatly from spending more  time with him.  Financially, although he has rarely been unemployed, he has never been able to fully support himself, and has always lived with roommates when he was not living at home.  Then last year he reconnected with a young lady from his childhood, and the two of them soon became inseparable.  She also had a son the same age as our grandson, and the two boys bonded instantly.  They moved in together unofficially last June, and officially (names together on the lease) last August.  They became engaged at Christmas, and she said this is exactly what she wanted.  It seemed like a union made in Heaven, and Ryan was finally getting some control over his situation, with a good deal of emotional support from his now-fiancee.  Then, out of the blue, three weeks ago she suddenly decided that they could no longer live together and the engagement was off. She cited money problems, inability to deal with the drama of the ex-wife, and an alleged diagnosis of "selective mutism" as the explanation of why her son had stopped talking in school.  She decided that the problem was stress, that it was caused by her living with Ryan (even though Ryan had always been nothing but the best role model for the boy), and he had a week to move out.  The timing could not have been worse, inasmuch as he was finally able to get a new job that would pay him enough to get out of debt, and was starting the next week. In the meantime, there was no choice but for him to move back home until he could get his bearings.  One week prior to this, she had introduced me as her mother-in-law, as though the marriage had already taken place. Then, within mere days after she evicted Ryan, she started posting daily Facebook comments on the joys of living stress-free, posting pictures of her son, also 7, "proposing" to her, drawing pictures for her, and miraculously being cured of the selective mutism. Ryan is still reeling from the turnaround, as are the rest of us, including me: I opened my heart to this boy, who has other psychological problems, and who had grown to accept me as one of his family, calling me Grandma O.  They live only a few minutes away, and it was always nice to have them come by. I keep recalling all the loving things she said about Ryan, and wonder now if any of it was true.  How can someone profess love one minute then just turn it off the next? She didn't even have the courage to give the ring back to Ryan, and until he found it buried in with his things, which she packed up while he was working, he thought that the separation was just temporary, until they could resolve their individual issues.  Finding the ring like that changed everything. Love - true love - is supposed to be kind, patient, slow to anger and quick to forgive, at least according to the Bible.  I wonder where the women are who still believe this.  Poor Ryan hasn't met anyone like that yet, although he really believed, as we all did, that this one was different. He let his guard down and trusted her completely. This is so much worse than the first time-for all of us. Meanwhile, he has started his new job, and so far it seems to be everything he hoped for. Only, now, the success feels hollow, as there is no one to be successful for. My heart breaks for my sweet boy.

Reflections on Fatherhood

It is a fact that every human on the planet is the creation of the joining of one male sperm and one female egg - or as the traditionalists maintain, one father and one mother.  It is also a fact that children who are raised by both their biological parents are far more likely to develop into a psychologically and emotionally healthy adult. It is my belief that every child should have the right to be raised by both his biological parents, regardless of whether they get along or not. Studies have shown over and over again that children who grow up with both parents do better at school, are far less likely to drop out of school, get into far less fights, are far less likely to join a gang or commit a violent crime. So why is it that fathers are practically ignored when it comes to custody arrangements?  My experience has led me to believe that Family Courts give much too much weight to the wants of the mother, and not enough to the needs of the child.  Fatherhood is a sacred responsibility, not a reward for good behavior. Unless the father presents an actual and verifiable physical danger to his child, he should be encouraged  and allowed to spend as much time as he can with his child, not denied because the mother doesn't like him. Mothers who restrict or prevent fathers from being with their children are hurting the child, and should not be allowed to do so. The trouble is, with good lawyers being so expensive, only the wealthy dads have the means to fight for their rights and those of their children. It disgusts me that this issue is such a difficult one to resolve. Mothers can make damning statements to a judge about fathers,  with or without evidence to support them, true or not, with no investigation into the veracity, and judges will still lean on the side of the mother. And we wonder why there are so many deranged people out there.

This is Not Supported by the Constitution

It is one thing to protest actions by the government, but it is quite another to label the fire and destruction of parts of the Berkley, California campus by its own students as  constitutionally protected protest.  The whole reason for this action was to prevent the conservative/libertarian  editor of Breitbart News from speaking on the campus. This is an assault on the rights of others to express ideas freely.  It  happened at Rutgers when students violently protested and prevented Condoleeza Rice from speaking at the2015 commencement, and it has happened at numerous other colleges around the country.  Why are these people so afraid to allow others to speak who don't share their views? All this violent destruction does nothing to advance their ideas,and makes reasonable people who actually know something about the Constitution cringe in horror at how little the Left respects free speech.  This is truly and deeply disturbing to me. These students should all be either arrested, expelled, or both. They should also have to take a real history course in the Constitution and its meaning.

On the Question of Immigration

To my Liberal friends and family members who are marching, stopping traffic, and signing petitions protesting President Trump's  action to delay entry into the country, I ask first that you forgive me for not thinking as you do. I would then suggest that you read the text of the Executive Order for yourself, so that your opinion, whatever it is, will be based on real information, and not just on the news media's interpretation of it which, in this instance, is in most cases biased and/or incomplete in my opinion. I feel I can say that because I did read the Executive Order; it's very easy to find on line. Beyond that, I would suggest that all the marching, shouting, and petition signing will do nothing to help the situation, and if you really believe that this country should take in thousands of refugees,  then you should be ready to help, not just use the situation as an opportunity to tear down the government.  Here's how you can help: offer to sponsor a refugee for a year, provide them with housing, and help them to find jobs. If only ten thousand people sponsored one refugee or one refugee family each, look how much of the problem would be solved.  I further believe that what Sanctuary Cities should really be doing is to work with the Federal government by making use of all their local resources, charitable organizations, religious communities and volunteers to take in however many refugees they  can handle, depending on their finances and other considerations, instead of working against the government to protect immigrants who are in this country illegally. It seems that t here is so much screaming from the opposition that it drowns out any semblance of civility.  When I was a child growing up and being schooled in the 40's and 50's the prevailing lesson was that if you didn't like a law then work to change it.  Today there are too many laws that have simply been ignored or outright violated with no consequence.  Patience has been replaced by demands for instant change. This is not a good lesson to be teaching our children. I hope that you will at least consider my suggestions, and work to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.  Thank you for reading to the bottom of this blog.