The Greigh Area

22 October 2004

I’m not super excited about Michael Badnarik, but I’ll be voting for him. Sure, he’s no Harry Browne or (former New Mexico governor) Gary Johnson, but he’s still a fur sight better than Dubya or Kerry.

“But Gene,” you bleat, “he can’t win. You’re just wasting your vote!”

Am I? How can you be qualified to tell me how much I value an action?

In order to make sense of the assertion, I need to understand what “waste” is. I will stipulate that “waste” constitutes expenditure without purpose. If I’m running the faucet into the sink am I wasting water or am I flushing the drain? If I leave my computer on am I wasting electricity or am I saving boot-up time? An evaluation of waste demands a metric. When it comes to voting, there are many. Most of us get at least an emotional rush out of it. Whether it’s that warm fuzzy from civic engagement, or the sober satisfaction of prudent strategory. As in: “I know Burry is awful, but Kesh is worse!” or “Vote YES 4 Kidz!” I get it. Emotionalism matters. Whether you’re voting for Dubya in order to keep the blood of President Kerry’s crimes off your hands, or just taking pride in NOT robbing your neighbors (Vote NO 4 Kids!), your vote is never wasted if it pleases you.

But enough of “rank sentimentalism” (Merci, M Renault!) Other than palliating the proletariat, what does voting actually DO? Practically? Really? Well, arguably it elects a president or a dog catcher. And it can qualify a political party for future ballots. Or does it? One of the best ways of revealing the value of something is to remove it from the equation and see what changes. If you hadn’t voted for Dubya in 2000, he still would have lost Hawaii and won the Union. That vote then, was wasted. It made no difference. By THAT metric, anyway. Of course, there is a chance, a very small chance, that your next vote is gonna put Geohn Burry over the top and defeat Jorge Kesh. There is a less small chance that my next vote for the Libertarian candidate will be the one that puts our party over the top and qualifies us for automatic ballot status next time.

So I’ll make you a bet! The same wager I’ve been offering around the last couple of months. I’ll put up an ounce of gold and you put up an ounce of silver. If the Presidential election comes down to your State, and your State comes down to your vote, you win! Otherwise you owe me an ounce of silver (or about eight bucks federal paper.)

I’ve been offering about fifty to one odds, and so far I have no takers, not even from the big noises who still scold us for “wasting” our votes.

update 180421: Bad Example #1 —
Kerry and Bush are both war criminals,
and therefore equally bad. I had preferred, and predicted, a Kerry win. I’d hoped that a Democrat in the White House might remind Republicans to feign free market allegiance again. Faced with a monolithic Demoblican OR Repucrat government, I’ll take division over union.
Give me Liberty, or Give me Gridlock!

Bad Example #2: Voting YES 4 Kidz never works,
as the beneficiaries of such regular larcenies continue to be
pampered educrats and union thugs.

I’m less excited about Gary Johnson now, having voted for him twice, than I was in ‘04, and continue to despair of seeing a candidate of the calibre of Harry Browne or Ron Paul any time soon (despite their respective “flaws.”) Nevertheless, I salute him, and his back to back record breaking runs.  update 210228:  I still salute him, even though Jo Jorgensen has just eclipsed his first record in her 2020 run.  The Iron Man now occupies the first and third places in the LP’s Presidential Derby, with Dr JoJo now shoehorned in at second.  It’s a pity that neither Mr Browne nor Dr Paul (in their own respective runs) enjoyed the general level of notoriety that libertarians do today.
America might have saved itself a lot of trouble! (frowny face emotji)

25 March 2018

If necessary, I will use my gun to protect my kid (and maybe yours, too.)

Your house and your car and your savings account are all probably worth more than my gun, too. So what? I expect you also think your kid is worth more than your house, your car, and your back account combined. You blather on about how no price is too high if it saves just one child. Really? No price? What about two children? “Marching for Life,” passionate grief, earnest resolve, and sincere expression all make for entertaining video, but they are poor substitutes for sober discourse.

Let’s dial back the histrionics a bit and agree that nobody (except for twisted nihilist punks and John Bolton) want to see more dead children. The question is, how best to secure their safety? Responsible grownups assess the dangers, and try to make rational choices, often balancing countervailing factors. You love your kid, and to protect him from rogue truckers crashing through the house you’re going to build a concrete wall around your property. Right?

“Are you kidding me? No way! Who could afford such a thing? And it would be an eyesore blight on the neighborhood, too! What’s that going to do to my property value?”

So are you telling me that your kid ISN’T worth more than your bank account or your house? Of course you aren’t. You’re just making a reasoned assessment of the risks and rewards, and settling on optimal solutions. Instead of bunkering down next to the Interstate, you live in a quieter neighborhood, and you teach your children traffic safety.

Well, it works the same way with guns. Multiple shooters who are stopped by armed civilians on the scene generally accomplish less carnage than those stopped by The Authorities. Of course, the leftie media won’t report THAT, because it doesn’t support their agenda. Besides, the greater the body count, the greater the ratings.

Final notes:
“My kid is worth more than your kid” is believed by every parent who is not a true communist or an insect. If you disagree you are not a parent. Or you are a liar. Or a fool.
In John Bolton’s defense, the only dead children he desires to see (so far), are Korean, Persian, and Syrian. Not directly of course, but (like Madeleine Albright) he accepts the collateral damage as “worth it” to his imperial designs.

18 March 2018

Which is more disastrous? Putting a “wise latina” on the Supreme Court, or putting an educated latina in charge of the engineering firm tasked with developing innovative pedestrian bridge designs?
Were six Floridian motorists just killed by affirmative action?
These are not conclusions, these are QUESTIONS.

If the latina in question is the most qualified ENGINEER available, then neither her genitalia nor her ethnic heritage are relevant considerations. But if she was merely the most qualified from an artificially reduced field of candidates, then that left potentially superior candidates passed over, and that ill serves engineering, safety, AND sanity. The optimist wishes to believe that she got the job based strictly on her technical qualifications, but the cynic suspects that the State of Florida is beholden to contemporaneous sensibilities and found her to be more demographically suitable than her paler, betesticled competitors. Do you want the girl who’s better than 95% of the guys, or do you want the engineer who’s better than ALL the others?

Unfortunately, MCM Project Exec Leonor Flores makes rather a big to do about bringing a woman’s “different perspective” into her trade, as if that makes the slightest bit of difference to compressive strength, wind loading, or material fatigue. If it turns out the cynic is more right than the optimist, perhaps Ms Flores might seek refuge from the insensitive math of engineering in the progressive protection of Google.

The racist* Walter Williams has often expressed his appreciation of the fact that he took his degrees before the institution of Affirmative Action called into question the accomplishments of all the boosted “beneficiaries.”

Gender norming, cultural norming, and affirmative action are all offenses to decency and responsibility, as they turn the focus from WHAT is accomplished to WHO is attempting it. If I’m overcome by smoke in a high rise fire, I don’t care what the firefighter is packing between his legs, as long as he can throw me over his shoulder and carry me down the six flights of stairs to safety. If my rescuer turns out to be Lady Brienne or Xena the Warrior Princess then I am singing her praises, but if Steve Buscemi or Paul Reubens show up instead, then I am kissing my ass goodbye.

So it’s possible that Ms Flores IS a decent engineer, and that she was betrayed by her contractors, or her suppliers, or who knows what yet. Disasters like these are the stuff of engineers’ nightmares, and I do not intend to diminish her concerns, nor too hastily impugn her integrity. However, engineers (and Supreme Court judges) handle matters of life and death, and no sane or humane person would want to put anyone into such a position solely to satisfy a quota.

(* Walter Williams would likely be denounced as a racist, were it not for his deep chestnut complexion, for stating such obvious facts as: the greatest danger to young black men in the inner city is other young black men, a child has a better chance of surviving to adulthood and staying out of jail if his parents are married, you are more likely to do well in life if you delay having children until AFTER you are employed, and big cities run by Negro Democrats go broke.)

26 March 2018

Based on Mr Trump’s nomination of John Bolton to be his nationalist insecurity advisor, there seems to be a bright future in government “service” ahead for MCM Project Executive Leonor Flores.

Of course, the deaths of six Floridian motorists due to the failure of her pedestrian bridge (designed to the specifications of a woman’s “different perspective”) pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of corpses piled up by Operation Iraqi Cakewalk. Still, she seems to be on the right track. There is very little that government loves more than failure — except perhaps “good intentions.”

She’ll have to follow Mr Bolton’s career path, I suppose. Perhaps a few years as Fox News’ “Engineering Safety Consultant” will prepare her for taking on Mr Trump’s Border Boondoggle. After all, that’s what the Berlin Wall was missing, right? The woman’s touch?