If You Are New To This Blog

I read this post over at Slope of Hope.  I thought I might enlighten any new readers to why this blog exists and what it is all about.  It’s my personal blog.  I don’t take guest posts as a rule, but I have let some other friends post here when I thought they had a good opinion and could say it better than I, or, had a different opinion than me and could enlighten people. I think I have done that two or three times since I started blogging so it’s super rare.

First off, I started blogging because I detested the Dodd-Frank legislation.  I had previously written some stuff for Pajamas Media and American Thinker but hated going through the process of posting.  Dodd-Frank was one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in US History and because people really don’t understand finance in America, they didn’t understand the legislation and its consequences for their lives.

I quit blogging regularly this summer.  I blogged about why but will not talk publicly about it other than that.  I also felt like the daily grind of blogging was becoming stale as I tossed out a blog and it might not have been very well thought out or very good.  I think if you are going to blog, be good.  Give a different perspective on things.  Enlighten people and make them think.  Don’t blog just to blog.

That led to a lot of other things.

As my life changed, I started blogging about other things.  For example, I started Hyde Park Angels in April of 2007 and now I am in the last year of being a co-founder of West Loop Ventures.  Blogging about innovation and startups happens here.  This isn’t simply another political blog of which there are many.

Personally, people ought to know from what perspective I blog from.

1.  I am an ardent free-market capitalist.  I have no patience for socialists and communists. Zero. This also extends to crony capitalism which is practiced regularly by both parties.
2.  I am an ardent fan of small and limited government.  Thomas Jefferson was correct.  Individuals empowered to make decisions for themselves given transparent choices are better than centralized authorities making those decisions.  We have gotten far away from that in the US going back to Woodrow Wilson, but especially starting in 1933 with FDR.  One of the largest problems I have with Democrats and GOPe is they are like moths to a lightbulb when it comes to government solutions to problems and installing centralized authority to administer them.  Hayak and Mises were correct.
3.  I have been self-employed since 1986.  That changes how you look at the world.  I have always taken a lot of risk, and I eat what I kill.  It kills me to see at least a third of any gain I make taking a risk to go to the government in taxes.
4. You will find I find very little in common with the solutions Democrats propose, but I do find that the problems they raise are solvable by free markets and empowerment of individuals.  At the same time, I sometimes find a lot of fault with Republicans here too.  Very often, their solutions are not unlike the Democratic ones.  Shades of grey.
5. I will cheerlead for startups that I am invested in here.  I will identify if I am invested.
6. I believe America is very different.  As I like to remind my European friends, there is a reason we left.  I want America to stay different and go back to the founding principles.  We have gotten far away from those, and unfortunately people really don’t understand them anymore so sometimes there is some “education” on this blog.
7. I love economics and statistics.  I try to use “positive analysis” to look at things but I am human and have my own biases.  Most of the time, people use “normative analysis” which imputes their own judgement into the numbers.  You see that with minimum wage when they say $15/hr is fair.  Is it?  Why not $100?  Why not $4?  Positive analysis says when you increase minimum wage there are large opportunity costs to be paid.  Most of the time it results in less people being employed and when you sift though who those people are it is generally teenagers, minorities and single women.  They are being hurt by bad policy and the bad policy was sold on their backs, except the politicians continuously sell them out.
8. I really appreciate it when people comment here on my blog.  I used to have Disqus but ditched it because I was having trouble moderating bad actors.  I believe strongly in the University of Chicago method of debate.  Two opposing sides, but keep it civil. In this day and age, and with the topics our society is wrestling with it is often really hard to keep it civil.  I lose my temper too.  But, do your best and try and cite original sources when you make a point.  I probably need to do a better job of that myself.
9. I don’t use this as a megaphone.  I interact in the comments.  I believe blogs and social media are a full contact sport.  I dislike when people who publish things use platforms as a soapbox.  They never interact.  They just publish and then the great unwashed are supposed to worship them.  I write this blog pretty quickly, so maybe what I wrote isn’t clear and sometimes in the comments I clarify.
10. Lastly, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. I lived there my whole life.  50% of my high school didn’t go to college.  Unlike a lot of my classmates at Chicago Booth, I know blue collar people and have an appreciation for them.  Unlike a lot of people in my position, I went to three colleges in four years.  I attended a community college.  I played basketball and was one of the few white guys.  Even though I have done pretty well in my life, I have a very middle class mentality.  I have seen corruption by mostly Democrats but Republicans too first hand.  I have seen how it destroys hope in people.  It also affects my language.  All malaprops are because I am from Chicago.  Even though I live in Las Vegas now, escaping the corruption, taxes and increasing violence of Chicago, I still am a Chicagoan.  I love Chicago pizza.  It’s better than NY.  I love hot dogs.  I love beef with giardinara.  I miss my Chicago haunts and the people I used to interact with.

So, if you are new I hope you use the email sign up on the right side of this page.  I hope you return and I hope you interact.  We learn from each other.  In this day and age with free markets, freedom, capitalism and originalism under attack, it’s important we stick together.

We can win but it won’t be easy.  As I said in another post, the best thing you can do is get really active on a local level.  You have a better chance of creating a coalition with your friends and neighbors and you can win some small battles which lead to larger and larger victories.  By the way, you will find that the existing infrastructure at the local level will resist change as much as the Feds do.  Power through.  Some friends of mine are working on changing things in the tony New Trier school district in Wilmette and you cannot imagine the amount of hate pointed their way.  One of these days maybe they will blog about it or put it in the comments.  But, they are winning small battles.

Freedom always wins.  The freedom to transact always wins.  Humans are hard wired that way.

The post If You Are New To This Blog first appeared on Points and Figures.