Home | Notes
Contributors
Archives | Search
Links | About
contact:
editor@ExileStreet.com
..........

Julia Gorin

Clintonisms
by Julia Gorin

..........

Burt Prelutsky

The Secret of Their
Success
by Burt Prelutsky
..........

.........

Ralph Peters
Latest

Wars of Blood and Faith
Ralph Peters

..........

Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco
by Burt Prelutsky
..........

..........

FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Don't You Remember The Wish Broom:
Deja View Obomanomics
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 4/4/08

The gaggle of ragged boys looked carefully for the parents, and when the coast was clear, in they swooped: first one living room, then the next, and finally they'd scooped up the contraband from each boy's home, and collect quite a profit from the local store owners. And they spent their ill-gotten booty on bubble gum with "sample" razor blades, wrapped in heavy paper, printed with "give this to your dad" -- and so began this early American "outsourcing" drama. And it would be followed soon by dozens of subsequent chapters of classic economic fable.
 
Local stores despised the "invasion" of mail-order catalogues in the early 20th century, and cursed the day Congress authorized the U.S. Post Office to commence "Rural Free Delivery" to farms outside the normal city/town delivery zone.  Thus began an economic empire [of multiple, competing catalogue brand names], and a Hatfield-McCoy battle royale. Suddenly, folks could order the finest, and most fashionable, dresses and shirts and trousers, at a much lower cost, from the distant Sears and Ward's order centers, all without ‘patronizing’ the higher-priced local store. With the savings in their meager home budget, they could then afford a new contraption, perhaps the "thresher" that made their farm more efficient.
 

Thus, WEALTH was created, by way of the only pathway to wealth in human history: improved efficiency, via lower costs, new technology, better management, or a combination of all three.  Take note: the wealth was created not by government burrocrats, politicians or apparatchiks.
 
All over small-town American, merchants bribed small, boisterous boys to steal their parents mail-order catalogue, and burned or shredded the ill-gotten booty; all to "force" the parents to Buy Local, to support the higher-price, lower-selection paradigm in the local stores. Sounds like Deja View: the view of stupid people who resist change for their own selfish, recalcitrant reasons. Like stopping the ocean waves with a whisk broom, or a wish broom for that matter.
 
America also toyed with another stupid idea, which today would leave every American woman of working age indentured as a switchboard operator, if the ATT unions had their way when auto-dialing and electronic switching was being introduced. Oh, the squawking and whining, and demands for "guaranteed work" to every operator. To switch the daily load of calls placed within the U.S. alone by that old hand-method would require half the adult population: all those working-age women, necessary to make this communications-dependent society operate. And of course, Naomi Wolfe and Gloria Steinem would never stand for that.
 
Thus, dialing technology was a liberating instrument of feminism! Imagine women’s ‘role’ had the ‘progressive’ unions prevailed in protecting us from this nasty corporate evil of enforced efficiency!!!
 
Today, outsourcing and the global economy is fueling another leftwing, union-whining, Obama-exploiting explosion of blame and distraction. If the Barack Battalion had gotten their way, Back Then, what kind of society would be here today? Rotary dialing phones, tied to the wall with a "long cord" as the only flexibility offered? Everyone buying higher-priced goods, and thus subsidizing local stores at the cost of their own ability to purchase other items? How about a Commissar of Compassion, so that no one had to ever change jobs, change perspective, change residence? OH, what a wonderful world that would be.
 
All wealth comes from efficiency, improvements in methods, widening of selection, so the buying public rushes in to save money, improve quality, enhance their lives, and the ones venturing forth to become the creator of the new option formulate the new wealth class. Marx never understood this, and senators from Massachusetts, California, Chicago, Connecticut, Hawaii, Vermont and Neverland still do not. They point to "malefactors of great wealth" with the same glee as that phrase's original blatherer, Franklin Roosevelt – who never created any wealth on his own, but lived on a trust fund o' cash and of course on taxpayer-fueled treasury bills. The "malefactors" are the very ones whose risk-taking and creative genius made us all wealthier: cheaper clothes in the far reaches of Iowa, better shovels for farms in northern Vermont, cellphones with cameras, and video games being played in college dorms in Alaska.
 
And of course, some folks had to change jobs. Seen any buggy-whip makers these days at the WalMart? How many blacksmiths are walking their dog near the Big Box store? The transition is tough, and the question is HOW TO MANAGE THE TRANSITION; but to hear Barack’s Battalion of Boneheads [descendants of Kerry’s Krazy Kommandos], you'd think we must assure that everyone in a job today has that very same job forever and ever, with ever-rising wages and benefits, even as the employer is prohibited from undertaking the very means to increase his wealth, adding thusly to that of society at large, and thus opening the way for better jobs, at better wages, and those wages able to buy more for the family because better products are available in wider variety and at lower cost.
 
Robin Williams' frustration in the grocery supermarket aisle, as the Russian defector in "Moscow on the Hudson" is precious: he absolutely collapses while standing agog before the endless choices stretching before him in a modern capitalistic supermarket aisle, as he tries to simply "buy a can of coffee" at the behest of his American hosts. He came from a commissar-crazy society, a world of Kerry Kommissars doing the Kerry Krazy Kommand economy routine: we must protect the working man, and thus all decisions will emanate from government. Ergo, cheap coffee [thru government-decreed subsidy, not private-sector efficiencies], but only one choice! Come to America, and WOW, confusion at the choices makes a great Hollywood demonstration of what an amazing place this is. And that movie made three decades ago by a liberal Paul Mazursky directing, before WalMart had become the hate-focus of Obama and Kerry economic myopia.
 
But we didn't get here with economic ‘leadership’ from Kerry Kommands. Jobs change. Local stores adapt to the Sears catalog, and abandon the bribing of young boys into becoming thieves in their own homes. Telephone switchboard operators move on to other jobs, and we all can dial anywhere, any time, without waiting for that polite voice: "Operator, may I help you?"
 
Yes, you most certainly can help me: shut up, adapt, get new skills, and quit demanding intervention by Kerry's Kommandos, running the economy with restrictions which are as useless as bribing boys to steal catalogs. Grow up, Kerry Kids.... this is how we get wealthy. The other pathway gives us Moscow in Moscow: I prefer the one on the Hudson, courtesy of dynamic change, free economic decisions that are free of Kerry Kommand Kommissars, today’s likely replacement by Barack’s Bossy Battalion, and leading instead to an adaptive American citizen which, in historic terms at least, has been up to the task.
 
It's the same society from which we "always will find enough Marines to do the job" and should be able to adapt to changing job demands. After all, the new job ain't mining coal, or shoveling manure – usually, it's better duties, better skills, better conditions, better pay. But it ain't cost-free. THERE AIN'T NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH, nor a free, painless transition to cellphones from wired phones.
 
But, if you want hard-wired phones linked by landlines on telephone poles, in the metaphorical future, just be sure to support Barack’s Bonehead Battalions of economic emperors. You can live there, but I prefer dynamic economics, even if they are painful. We survived the mail-order catalogues, and big malls sucking business from center business sections in small towns; this transition too, shall pass. I just hope the fascination with Obama-nomics passes, like a bad meal, before the election. Or we could have economic flatulence for four, or eight, or twelve, or sixteen years.
 
Then the fall of the Wall will have been for naught – rescuing East Germany would be answered by creating an even bigger East Germany: the US of A, a product of time-delayed Obamanomics. ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

§