Once upon a time, a young man thought I was playing politics when I claimed centralization of health care was evil, that it simply wasn’t the way I personally would prefer the world to work. My reply:
“Suppose you were in charge of national health care. Some guy in Wisconsin needs heart surgery. Your son this morning has the flu. Which person would you care about more? Your son, of course, because you care more about the people you know and see than Claim Filer #2014-123456 in Podunk. You’re not evil. You’re normal.
“When the Russians centralized their economy, they created a department to set fair prices… for over five million products from stucco to submarines. It took up a giant office building. Those guys were very sincere and truly wanted to do right for society… but they didn’t give themselves a chance. You could have filled that building with the smartest, most trustworthy people on the planet and they wouldn’t know how to set those prices. They don’t have the info. They don’t know the business. They have no context. They can’t predict the future that precisely. And there were only 24 hours in a day. It just couldn’t be done.
“Now here’s the question: what kind of person would INTENTIONALLY structure society in a way that could not possibly work even in theory? A good man or an evil man?”
Credit to him, he was convinced.
Trey Glenn: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Trey Glenn: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Trey Glenn was appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On November 13, he was indicted by an Alabama grand jury for violating ethics laws while he served as the state’s Environmental Management Commissioner, AL.com reported. Glenn has denied any wrongdoing.
He’s too young to be a Baby Boomer but is otherwise cut from the same Statist mold. My only comment is his left eye is more guarded than the right, suggesting he’s as dirty as… well, as his professional history suggests.
We can ignore Fast Facts 1-4.
#5 Glenn’s indictment comes after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was forced out amid mounting ethics violation complaints, The New York Times reported. Pruitt was under at least 14 separate investigations over his spending of taxpayer dollars, conflicts of interest, and management of the agency. Among the violations was a condo he rented from a lobbyist at a highly discounted rate and large raises he gave to his aides against the orders of the White House.
Pruitt.s replacement Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, is already under fire for meeting with his former clients at least three times after he was sworn in as Pruitt’s deputy, which Democrats said violated Trump’s ethics pledge and Wheeler’s own promise to avoid conflicts of interest related to his previous job, HuffPost reported.
Honestly, I don’t hate these guys for being dirty. They are the inevitable product, not even by-product, of the EPA’s design. What’s going to happen when a government bureau is created specifically to micromanage the larger part of a continent’s environment? It’s not going to do a good job. It can’t. Is the delta smeltfish of Central California a valuable species? Is it actually endangered? Should a thousand small farms be condemned to protect it? Whatever the best answer is, how are the occupants of a D.C. office building going to find out?
Answer, by getting personally involved. If they have time. In the process of involving themselves, they’ll be in the position of picking winners and losers. It’s their job, not their personal agenda. Sometimes the right thing to do comes with a free vacation to the Bahamas. Half the time, they don’t know what the right thing to do is anyway because they can’t predict the future and lack detailed knowledge of specific geographies.
Not knowing what’s best for America, they fall into the trap of doing what’s best for themselves. Therefore, I don’t care if Trey took a bribe. I care (at the micro level) if his decisions are defensible. That’s the best any human is going to do.
Neither do I fault Trump for picking these scoundrels. Anybody who gets fed into the hopper will come out like this, from Trey Glenn to Jeff Sessions. Trump has got to realize that until the machinery of the centralized, authoritarian civil service is dismantled forever, none of his reforms or reformers are going to endure.
At the macro, policy level, the EPA must die. It is not capable of performing its mission because a centralized, distant organization is the wrong tool for the job. Big Government making local decisions is like a sculptor carving a statue with a hundred-pound sledgehammer. The sculptor may be very talented, he may try very hard to succeed but he’s going to end up with rubble every time.
At some point, he’s going to start a gravel company on the side. Corruption? Yeah, I guess so. Out he goes and let’s pretend his replacement will be different.
Meanwhile, the people who WANT this kind of centralization are evil because they don’t want it for the betterment of mankind. They want it in order to either feed their lust for power or to make government their hope and dream for a better future. Which is the same thing, really. The king want to be worshiped by the pawns and the pawns want to worship the king. The one will create the other. This is the false religion of atheism and Christianity is its greatest enemy.