You reform the police by holding them accountable to a state licensing board just like contractors, dentists & other professionals
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Competing Service Providers
From time to time we all buy services from professionals.
If we don’t like the way the dentist or plumber or accountant treats us, we fire them and look for someone better. If enough people do that, the bad plumbers or dentists either change their ways or go out of business or lose their licenses.
Elected Monopoly Service Providers
But there are services that are monopolies, e.g. public schools, courts and the like. Even there we have some recourse to bad performance. We can vote out the members…
The government needs to do those things that, in the long term, are most directly and indirectly beneficial for the most people.
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Conservatives’ Fundamental Life Rule
The fundamental moral philosophy espoused by conservatives for governing their own lives and for running a country is:
“Everyone Should Look Out For Number One.”
A government run by this philosophy stands back and allows every individual and business to do anything and everything, short of violence and theft, that they think will make them more money.
Every person and company is allowed, actually encouraged, to be a predator and every citizen is told that it’s up to them, without any help or protection from the government…
Is an atheist, a homosexual, a transsexual or a carnivore automatically an immoral person who is barred from going to heaven?
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Who am I? For what it’s worth, I am a white, over-forty, heterosexual male who was raised on the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Fundamentalist Beliefs
This column is about fundamentalist beliefs, whether they’re ideas about God, morality, political or economic systems, diets or anything else.
Fundamentalist beliefs are based on claimed universal truths, but those so-called truths are not derived from observable facts or logical reasoning. At their base, they are nothing more than the fiercely-held opinions of the people who promote them.
They all come down to the pronouncements: “Doing…
Facebook’s mortal sin is using its recommendation engine to multiply & amplify the false, angry, toxic content published on its platform
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Facebook’s Toxic Conduct
Facebook’s crucial, fundamental crime is not its failure to curate/police the content published on its platform. That’s it secondary misdeed.
Facebook’s principle, toxic sin is using its recommendation engine to continuously multiply and redistribute hate and lies to thousands or millions of other users whom it thinks might want to see them.
What’s Causing Massive Anger & Belief In False Conspiracy Theories?
I’ve published two columns about the fundamental causes of the hostile divisions in this country
It’s The Same Old Minimum-Wage Lie — “The United States is such a poor country & the American economy is so weak that it’s impossible for American employers to pay full-time workers enough money so that they no longer qualify for food stamps without causing 15% permanent unemployment.”
If you believe that I have a bridge I’d love to sell you.
Southerners wanted slaves because slave labor was the most profitable business model for plantation agriculture
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Plantation owners and industrialists viewed manual laborers not as human beings but as disposable, biological tools to be acquired as cheaply as possible and, once used up, then thrown away. And they still do.
Slavery Was Adopted Because It Was The Most Profitable Business Model
Make no mistake: Racism in America was the unavoidable, inevitable result of slavery, and slavery was purely an economic choice by the Southern landowners to operate the most profitable business model for plantation agriculture — the use of slave labor.
It was always all and only…
Deficit spending that restores a catastrophically reduced money supply does not require an increase in the national debt
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Private Citizens Cannot Create Money
Because you cannot print your own money, if you want to spend more than you earn you have to borrow the extra money, pay interest and, absent bankruptcy, eventually pay it back.
But, if you can print your own money, that is, if you’re the federal government, you can spend more than you earn, and that’s called deficit spending.
The Balance Between The Money Supply And Wealth
At any given point in time there is a balance between the country’s money supply (currency, savings accounts, checking…
The universal principle of democracies is “one person, one vote” not “one square mile, one vote”
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
As a general rule, should minorities that are often outvoted by larger interest groups be allowed to cast extra ballots to balance things out?
Some rural people think it is unfair that they are regularly outvoted by urban residents, and they complain that each rural voter deserves to have more political power than each urban voter.
Expanding this “rural people deserve more political power per person than urban people” idea to other minorities:
- Should racial minorities be given greater political power to offset their smaller numbers?
- Should religious minorities, Muslims, fundamentalist…
GOP Senators intend to vote not guilty in the hope that Trump’s extremist followers will then become nicer & less angry.
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Lawyers Are Paid To Say Anything To Get Their Clients Off
When criminals get caught their lawyers will make any stupid, ridiculous argument they can think of to get their clients off because that’s what lawyers are paid to do; they are paid to come up with any lie that might work.
Usually, the lies are of the “It wasn’t him” or “She wasn’t raped. She wanted to have sex with my client” variety, but when the evidence of guilt is incontrovertible their excuses become more outrageous.
Remember the “affluenza” defense…
Do Any Republicans Care Even A Little Bit About The Graveyards That Trump’s COVID Lies Have Filled?
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Unswerving Loyalty To Your Tribe Excuses All Sins
You would think that people would care more about deceit, blunders and incompetence that cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives than they do about loyalty to a person, an organization or a political religion, but they don’t.
We humans are such horrible, terrible, tribal animals that no matter how massive the loss of lives and no matter how great the cost, we often refuse to reject, leastwise punish, our tribe’s malevolent leader for his transgressions.
Donald Trump, the Republican…
DavidGrace
Graduate of Stanford University & U.C. Berkeley Law School. Author of 17 novels and over 200 Medium columns on Economics, Politics, Law, Humor & Satire.
