The U.S. Post Office is not a private company.  It was established by the U.S. Government and remains controlled by the U.S. Government.  Why is that an important distinction?  For the answer, let’s explore the budget problem the Post Office is facing and how they characterize it.

First, if I am a private company, I exist to serve the customer.  However, I must serve the customer in an efficient, cost-effective manner, so that the customer pays me enough for my services that I cover my costs and have money left over (profit).  If that is not the case, I go out of business.

If, as a private business, I am losing money, I must define my problem.  The service I am providing costs more than the customer is paying for.  I can increase my prices, cut my costs, or change the way I am delivering services.  Since this is now a competitive industry, raising prices is difficult.  That has been tried repeatedly in the past, and revenues go down; not up.

The Post Office solution of cutting services by one day will reduce costs somewhat, but will also reduce services to the customer, encouraging that customer to choose competitive services, such as Fed Ex, UPS, e-mail, etc.  It is likely to result in greater losses; not less.

If I were running the Post Office as a private company, I would perceive my challenge as providing maximum service at minimum cost.  The Post Office solution of cutting services by one day per week does little to address the cost issue.  The Post Office operates out of buildings in every little town across the nation.  In each of those little towns, it has a “Postmaster” - someone paid an executive salary to spend half his time socializing with all of his small-town neighbors who stop in to the post office each day to chat.

No, I would not reduce services if I were running the Post Office as a private company.  I would find a way to deliver services more efficiently.  Unfortunately, small-town post offices deliver friendly service with an emphasis on “friendly.”  Clearly, facility costs and labor costs are out of line with revenues and need to be reduced.  But, in a government-controlled entity, the political costs associated with cost reductions are too great to pay, so the Post Office reduces services to the customer, keeps its overhead costs high, and continues to lose money.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  If the government runs the Post Office that way, won’t it also run health care that way once it completes its takeover?

You are a clever one.

Some are appalled by this ruling, believing this opens the door to political domination by large corporations.  They advocate restrictions on corporations during elections so that they do not gain undue influence.

Are their concerns legitimate?  I believe they are.  However, I don’t believe the answer is to place restrictions on corporate activity.  I believe the answer is to place restrictions on government.

The problem is that government has become involved in all aspects of our lives.  It picks winners and losers in the economy.  It attempts to overrule free markets.  It dictates politically correct behavior.

If government were restricted to those functions legitimately granted it by the Constitution, why would any entity have an incentive to unduly influence what government does?

If government focused on protecting our freedom, rather than restricting it, influencing government would be a non-issue.

It’s easy to solve problems if we first properly define them.

I see the Massachusetts vote as a lack of confidence in government.  I see the vote as a rejection of policies that don’t make sense to the American public.  I see the vote as a rejection of the attitudes of those in positions of power.  I see the vote as a recognition that government is out of control and serving the interests of those with political power at the expense of the country as a whole.

I see the following objectionable behavior:

1)  Massive government spending, most of it on things that have nothing to do with helping the economy, but only serve entrenched special interests.

2)  Exponential growth of government debt.  This debt cannot be serviced and will not be serviced.  This will not indebt our children and grandchildren.  It will bankrupt this generation.

3)  Excessive intervention in the economy, creating uncertainty and stagnation, as economic participants no longer know the rules or believe we are a nation of laws.

4)  Manipulation of markets.  During the last 3/4 of 2009, the stock market increased by 60% while $23 billion was being withdrawn from that market, something hard to imagine in a free market.  Treasury auctions appear to be fully subscribed, while the government, itself, is buying almost half of the new issues behind the scenes.  Precious metals markets are kept artificially low through short-selling by entities that have no product to cover their shorts.  USDA reports bumper grain crops in contradiction of private economists’ estimates and in contradiction of common sense, endangering future food shortages by giving false signals to “free” markets.

5)  Obvious lies.  Government health care to be provided free to millions of Americans won’t cost the government, or taxpayers, anything.  Fanatic Islamic terrorists, including those governing Iran, can be reasoned with if we just treat them nice.  Government can keep on printing money and everyone around the world will accept it in exchange for real goods and services.  The U.S. can act as the world’s policeman, maintaining military bases around the globe, while building new nations in the Middle East.  Government can provide for your health, your education, your retirement, your safety, your entertainment, and your standard of living, while not impacting your freedom in any way.

The people of the United States need to decide what is important and what government is for.  The people of the United States need to accept responsibility for how we got to where we are and what elected officials are doing on their behalf.

As they say in the tea parties, we need to take this country back.  And that means we need to step up, take personal responsibility and take authority to run our lives back from Washington.  In a democracy, we are ultimately responsible.  It does no good to rail at elected officials for overstepping their bounds.  We let them get away with it.  Don’t vote for liers or those making obviously false promises.

It doesn’t matter what party is in power in Washington.  What does matter is what they do with that power.  This is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing.  This is a survival thing.  We need leaders who respect and serve those who elected them.  We need to return to the constitutional principles of limited government. Without confidence in government, we face chaos.

Translation: You can’t expect the Fed to prioritize price stability as long as you also make the nation’s central bank responsible for full employment, a goal that will always have political priority over price stability.  Full employment will always be at the forefront of media and congressional attention.  Price stability always functions with a time lag of at least several months, so given a trade-off, let’s flood the banking system with dollars now in hopes of cranking up the economy.  We will deal with resulting inflation when the time comes.

This is not only hazardous to the long-term health of the U.S. currency, it makes no economic sense to make a central bank responsible for employment.  Employment is the responsibility of employers.  Central bankers are supposed to be responsible for money.

Mr. Bernanke repeatedly makes reference to these dual and conflicting responsibilities conferred on the Fed by the Congress, yet no one seems to take the bait and pick up on it.  What he is really saying is that if you really expect the Fed to maintain price stability, then give it the necessary mandate.  The mandate they have will inevitably result in runaway inflation.

It has, and it will.

What is seldom discussed in conjunction with “freedom” are the contradictions that have arisen over recent decades.

Can freedom coexist with the Nanny State?  Can government provide for your health care, your retirement and your education without taking away your freedom in exchange?  Can huge national bureaucracies formed to control agriculture, education, energy, etc. coexist with freedom?  Can the government rescue favored businesses from failure, while allowing others to vanish, without trampling on the freedom of its citizens?  Can regulations, laws, and even tax policies be used to dictate desired behavior with respect to drug use, pornography, automobile mileage, abortion, smoking, etc., in a “free” society?

The citizens of the United States need to consciously address priorities.  What is government for?  Is it to take care of its citizens from cradle to grave?  Is it to support the special interests of those with political power?

The U.S. Constitution says the purpose of government is to protect the freedom of the people, not to be the greatest threat to that freedom.

Why is it that those who seem to use the term “freedom” the most are the same ones who are most actively denying freedom to others?  Why is it that so few in the media frame the political debate in terms of freedom - the basis on which this country was founded?

Let’s at least be honest about the laws and policies that are being proposed.  Health care costs are high.  Some cannot afford health care.  Carbon dioxide emissions may be contributing to climate change.  U.S. education is of poor quality.  Every time a problem is identified, the solution is always the same.  We have too much freedom.  Choices must be removed from individuals and transferred to government.  Too much freedom means too many bad decisions. Government officials look out for the public good (and never seek their self-interest).  The private sector only seeks self-interest.

Everything from the housing bubble to imaginary global warming is blamed on the private sector making bad decisions.  Free markets cannot be trusted.  They must be replaced with government central planning.  Only government can make correct decisions.  So government advances, while freedom retreats.

So let’s not continue to delude ourselves.  Government, at all levels and under all administrations, systematically takes away personal freedom - takes away the authority of individuals to make decisions for themselves - and transfers power to government.

We are not “fighting for freedom” in this country.  We are retreating from it as fast as we can.

Now this seems like a trivial reason.  There was plenty of money in the account.  The wire instructions were complete and routine.  The bank teller had seen the driver’s license, she had just failed to copy it, per bank policy.

What would you do in this instance?  I would send the wire as instructed and ask the customer to come in so I could complete my file later.  After all, who am I serving, the customer, or the file?

Well in this instance, the bank was clearly not giving priority to serving the customer.  Why?  When I pointed out to the branch manager that his bank had been faced with a clear decision to either serve the interests of the customer or comply with a government requirement, he admitted he had chosen government compliance over customer service.

Now, in this case, just money was involved.  Banks deal in money.  The Federal Government has all but nationalized the banks.  Banks are afraid of the government bureaucrats - more afraid of offending a bank regulator than of losing a customer.

But what if more than money was involved?  What if my life were at stake?  What if I was not dealing with a bank, but with a hospital or a doctor?  Would it really make any difference in that choice to serve the customer or the government?  I don’t think so.  The employee defers to the boss.  The bank manager defers to the government bank regulator.  With nationalized health care, the doctor defers to Big Brother in Washington.  He gets paid by the government.  He is licensed by the government.  He is controlled by the government.

I was amazed the other day to watch a debate on TV regarding health care.  One speaker was pointing out the danger of government takeover of health care.  The other was asking, “What’s wrong with that?”

As my bank experience illustrates to me, there is a lot wrong with that.  In the private sector, you are a customer or a patient.  You are to be served by the institution you are visiting.  In the public sector, you are not important.  You have lost control.  The institution will either properly serve the government, or it will go out of existence.  It is institutional suicide to give priority to serving the customer or patient.

It is appalling to me to observe the compliant attitude toward this massive government power grab.  I can’t believe this trend would have been possible a generation or two ago.  The government education system has changed a lot since I was in school.  Compliance is in.  Independent thinking is out.

Freedom is no longer valued.  Government advances.  Freedom retreats.

So, what’s the difference?

In a capitalistic economic system, “investors” are those who allocate capital so that it is most productively utilized.  Capital is “put to work” so that it might produce a return to the investor.

Now, when you buy land in the path of progress, then wait for circumstances to make your land more valuable, are you putting your capital to work?  No!  Your capital is waiting idly on the sidelines.  It is unemployed!

If you buy gold, are you investing?  No.  Gold is not an investment.  It may be an insurance policy against hyper-inflation and, as such, may be a wise move.  But make no mistake about it, that is not an investment.  Your capital is waiting idly on the sidelines, producing nothing.

If you purchase a home to live in, are you investing?  No.  The home you live in is an expense, not an investment.  Your capital is not only not producing anything, it is depreciating, as the home depreciates.  I know some still believe a home can be an investment, even after our recently popped housing bubble.  This was an example of speculators chasing the latest asset that is increasing in price.  The speculators are seeking a quick buck.  But if nothing of value is being produced, this is a zero-sum game.  You may have some winners and some losers, just like you do in a casino, but your capital is not working for you.  Your capital is being gambled instead of being put to work.

Many people have believed their home to be an investment because they believed they sold it for more than they paid for it.  In many cases, however, that “gain” represented a decline in the value of the dollar, not an increase in the value of the home.

If you buy stock in a company, are you investing?  Hopefully, yes.  Why?  Because you are allocating your capital (either directly or indirectly) to the management of a viable enterprise - one that creates wealth through the production of a good or service that the public values and will voluntarily purchase, generating profits for the company and its investors.

This is not to say that no one speculates in the stock market.  Many do.  Traders, for example, are doing nothing more than betting on the price direction of a stock.  They are not allocating capital to a productive enterprise.  Many of the “products” that Wall Street creates are not legitimate investments.  There has been an explosion of new derivatives recently.  Most benefit their creators at the expense of their purchasers.

Warren Buffett is a well-known stock investor.  He allocates capital to deserving enterprises that, in turn, generate profits for Warren.  That homeless guy you just saw sitting under the expressway overpass?  He was a speculator.

You see, to be invested, the capital must be employed along with labor to produce something of value - it must be put to work.

In my book, Investing in Vacant Land, I make the clear distinction between investing and speculating.  I advocate investing.  I advocate “working your land” after you own it - doing something to add value to that land.  Otherwise you are just speculating and, as I state in my book, investors make money because they deserve to make money and speculators lose money because they deserve to lose money.

Know the difference between investing and speculating.  Then only invest.

The objective of the Obama Administration is to enact new health care legislation, bringing “free” health care to everyone, while not increasing costs or negatively impacting the economy.

You have heard that most of the cost of health care is incurred in the last couple of years of life.  So if we could just lop off a couple of years from everyone’s life, just think of the savings!

So, how do we accomplish that?  Well, we just need a little incentive.  If we could pay $4,500 to retire cars early, why not $4,500 to retire people early?  Turn Granny into a clunker, so to speak.

I know what you’re going to say.  When Government death panels were proposed before, people balked.  But the problem, as I see it, is that the program was not properly sold.

So here’s the sales pitch:  Granny’s getting long in the tooth.  She’s not going to last much longer.  And while she keeps going, she’s not just costing the government for her health care, she’s spending my inheritance!  The alternative - I turn her over to the government “End of Life Planning Committee” or whatever they are going to call it, the government sends me a “Cash-for-Cadavers” check, a funeral home gets a stimulus payment, the economy gets a boost, and I get to keep my inheritance!  And Granny?  She’s old.  She’ll never know what hit her.  Everyone wins!

So write your congressman today.  Demand that he support “Cash-for-Cadavers” legislation.  Your inheritance may depend on it.

What was so extraordinary about Ted Kennedy?  What did he do in his 77 years to deserve such an outpouring?  Well, he served 47 years in the U.S. Senate.  And he had to overcome enormous obstacles throughout his life.  What obstacles, you ask?  Here are a few:

1)  His background.  Ted was terribly handicapped by being born a Kennedy.  His father was an amoral and ruthlessly ambitious person who used political connections to amass fame and fortune.  Ted grew up in a family of users; not producers.  Joe Kennedy exhibited a contempt for those who earned their way, a contempt he passed on to his heirs.  In the Kennedy world, you get ahead by stepping on the heads of others.  Those poor saps who work for a living need to be cared for by the elite, political class.  Teddy never had a chance.  He didn’t understand capitalism.

2)  His morality.  Being from the political class, Ted was above morality.  Morality is for suckers - you know, the working class.  Ted was kicked out of Harvard for cheating.  In 1969 he left a party after a few drinks with a sexy babe, drove into a lake, then left the young lady in the car to drown while he figured out how to avoid prison time for manslaughter while driving drunk.  Being from the political class, Ted was able to avoid reporting the incident until he sobered up, and was only charged with leaving the scene of an accident.  A moral person would have thought about the victim, reported the accident immediately, been given a blood alcohol test, and spent several years in prison.

3)  His slovenly personal life.  Ted spent a good share of his life with his belly to the bar, one hand on a drink, and the other hand up someone’s skirt, his puffy red face perched atop his marshmallow body.  His athletic build melted inside his enormous girth.  Most people living this life style would have ended up homeless.  Ted, however, was cursed with trust accounts left to him by his greedy father, and was never forced to come to grips with reality.

4)  His isolation from reality.  Ted believed in fairy tales.  Ted envisioned a kingdom ruled by a jolly old soul with a puffy red face and an enormous girth.  This jolly old soul was superior to ordinary human beings.  He planned their lives for them, as they were too stupid to care for themselves.  He granted them “rights”, like the right to food, clothing, homes, and free medical care.  In Ted’s world, the jolly old soul would just wave his magic wand and all goods and services would appear - they didn’t have to be earned by the people.  And even if they did, people who worked and earned things were held in contempt by Ted and his political cronies, so it wouldn’t matter if they were exploited.

Yes, Teddy was terribly handicapped.  Can you imagine anyone with so many strikes against him becoming, not only a U.S. Senator, but the “lion” of the Senate?  A presidential candidate?  A man respected and honored by millions?

Truly extraordinary.

I see your bureaucrats recently detained one of your own citizens in Africa for several months.  Maybe you should examine some of your bureaucratic policies and recognize the damage your bureaucrats are capable of.

You see, I, too, was detained recently by your bureaucrats.  I was denied entry to your country and accused of violating Canadian law.  Am I a terrorist?  No, I was accused of being a thief!

I was entering Canada from the United States to inspect some of my Canadian land.  I was taking a couple of “for sale” signs with me to place on the land.  When Canadian Customs learned of my egregious crime, I was referred to Canadian Immigration, where I was detained for over an hour and accused of theft.  What kind of theft?  I was stealing Canadian jobs!

How so, you might ask?  Well, if I was taking “for sale” signs into Canada to sell real estate, I was denying Canadians the opportunity to sell that real estate.

I was asked if I had sold Canadian real estate before.  I said I had.  I was told I had committed a crime by doing so.

I can’t sell my own property in Canada?  Yes, you can.  But you can’t sell land for others, and you are working for a company.

“Working”?  A company?  The property I sold previously was in my name.

Oh.  OK.  That was legal.  But now you are selling land for a company.

Yes, the real estate is in the name of a Michigan limited liability company.  That company was established by me for the sole purpose of owning this particular parcel of Canadian real estate.  I am going to the property to place “for sale” signs on it.  So, by your definition I am “working”.

Am I being paid for this “work”?  No!  If Canadians want to work for nothing, they can have my job!

Well, finally, Immigration realized how ludicrous their assertions were, and let me enter the country.  But, here is what I didn’t tell them: I purchased that land with American dollars.  I improved that land with American dollars, paid to Canadian citizens.  I was not stealing Canadian jobs; I was creating them.  But if my efforts are going to be treated like this by you, Canada, I will stay out of your country.

Now, I’m not picking on Canada.  The U.S. has its share of bureaucrats, as does the rest of world.  But there is a lesson to be learned here.  If you want to create and protect Canadian jobs, GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!  Your harassment deters me from wanting to do business in Canada.  And, if I, and others, don’t do business in Canada, Canadians have fewer jobs.

Just another example of bureaucratic policies having the opposite effect of their intended purpose.

Canada, you, like the United States, need to learn to appreciate capitalism.  You need to listen to your own national anthem: …glorious and FREE…

Freedom creates jobs.  Not bureaucrats.