Year: 2019

That wasn’t real socialism

12/28/2019

Excerpts from: Hugo Newman

… I’m willing to grant, for the sake of argument, that all historical cases of in-name-only socialist or communist states—among them, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, East Germany, North Korea, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Cambodia, and Ethiopia, to name just a few—were not, in substance, socialist states. At best, they were flawed and failed attempts to implement socialism.  …

… Now consider the following list of countries: the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Australia, Ireland, Chile, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands. …

… All of these countries certainly manifest their own internal flaws and failures which socialists are only too happy to publicize and criticize and then lay at the feet of capitalism. …

… none of these countries is really capitalist in the ideal sense. In fact, they’re all some admixture of state intervention and imperfectly liberal markets. … capitalism is no more “debunked” by these in-name-only cases than socialism is by its own list of in-name-only cases.

Don’t Bother Me Fee

The political process has been unable or unwilling to prevent robo-calls, email spam, and junk mail. Time for the state to define property rights for phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses.

For this discussion lets just talk about phone numbers. Parallel comments for email and junk mail apply.

With clear property rights to your phone number, you could have a service that would charge anyone who uses your phone number to call you a fee. At your discretion, the fee could be refunded. The only impact would be on those making unwanted calls. You would set the fee rate to a level that would either discourage robo-callers, or make you happy to have the fee.

Wise Sayings

  • Politics is the method that is used to force others to pay for what those in control want. 
  • Run between the rain drops.
  • All progress needs change, but not all change is progress.

Privatize Estero Park Land

The Banner article by Brittany Carloni published in the August 19, 2019 edition, “What will Estero do with 100-year old house?” brings to the surface some issues caused by the Village of Estero purchasing 62 acres of land along the Estero River in January 2019.

The article focuses on the some dilapidated houses at the southern end of Highlands Avenue, but calls into question what Estero should do with the complete parcel of land.

Regarding at least one of the houses, Stephanie Miller, vice president of the Estero Historical Society said “We would like to see it saved”. The article outlines some of the cost to do that.

Village Manager, Steve Sarkozy indicated the village has made no decision on what it would do with the house and that Estero is still figuring out how to use the largely undeveloped land.

The bigger question is why should Village of Estero officials and staff be involved in the detail planning for 62 acres of land.  As a government, the costs of any mistakes they make will be forced on Estero residents. Did Estero citizens realize the liabilities they were incurring when they voted to make Estero a local government?

The Village of Estero should encourage the formation of a non-governmental organization to become the owners of the land.  With the proper deed restrictions, the land can be preserved and developed to meet general guidelines established by the Village.  If there is not enough support from the public to create such a park owner, than Estero should put the land up for sale without restrictions.