Mugged by Reality, the Eternal Recurrence
Just in time for Groundhog Day: In 1994, George McGovern made a shocking discovery:
What would happen, if, heaven forfend, Obama actually went into business himself? Since his far left administration is basically an extension of George McGovern’s Pyrrhic 1972 campaign, perhaps this anecdote fits as well. It’s from 1994, after McGovern retired from politics and attempted to open, Bob Newhart style, a New England inn:
George McGovern laments that after his experience in the bed-and-breakfast business he realizes that laws and regulations pertaining to small business are actually hurting the lower-wage workers whom he had tried to help during his entire political career. With his Stratford Inn in bankruptcy, McGovern now says:
In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business…. I wish that during the years I was in public office I had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better Senator and a more understanding presidential contender… To create job opportunities, we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.
— “There’s a Reason Why it’s called the Forgotten Man,” Ed Driscoll.com, May 27th, 2011.
MATT YGLESIAS MAKES A SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Starting a Business Is a Huge Pain: I’ve been to three offices, filed five forms, spent $200, lost a day of work—and I’m not even close to getting the simple license I need.
As reader Darrin Moore emails, “America’s economy isn’t failing because there are too many people trying hard to make a profit, it’s failing because the government makes it too hard for people to make a profit.”
UPDATE: IowaHawk: “Perhaps instead of starting a small business, young Matt should have taken the time-honored liberal approach and started a BIG business. Those rules are simpler: (1) come up with idiotic idea, (2) give large wads of cash to a politician, (3) reap ginormormous government contract. Bob Menendez is waiting to take your call, Matt.”
Twitchy rounds up the reaction: “Obama lapdog Matt Yglesias has epiphany: Gee, it’s hard to start a small business in D.C.!”
The mockery on Twitter of the Washington Post Company employee and member of the JournoList, which described itself as the “non-official campaign” staffers of Obama in 2008 is intense, leading up to this moment:
Click to enlarge.
I want to believe, but this one of those moments where past performance is an indicator of future results:
Click to enlarge.
And for another flashback, here are Matt’s thoughts last year during Obama’s “You didn’t build that moment.” As Twitchy noted at the time:
In Matt’s universe, your business? Your life? You didn’t build that. Your property? You didn’t own that. Ever. Matt’s credibility as a “real journalist”? He didn’t earn that.
And speaking of the Eternal Recurrence, as John Hayward writes at Breitbart.com’s Conversation in response to Yglesias’ epiphany:
What a beautiful, heartwarming story for us to contemplate on this 100th anniversary of the income tax! It used to be said that a conservative was a liberal who got mugged by reality. We can add the socialists who got mugged by the government, after they tried to do something other than worship it or suckle at its breast.
Irving Kristol is associated with the phrase that a conservative is a liberal who is mugged by reality. But when your worldview is one that makes reality an infinitely pliable medium, why would you bother to actually change?
Related: “Many Unhappy Returns—Millions of Them: It’s the 100th anniversary of the 16th Amendment. Don’t forget to file your taxes.” Plus this answer to the question, “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” “Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.”
Yglesias’ world view is also, within the D.C. orbit he wishes to inhabit, the only thing that makes him marketable. His ‘skills’ as an annalist are a dime a dozen, and while he may not be connected enough to get through all the soul-killing paperwork of trying to start a business in Blue
StateFederal District-land, he is connected enough to keep getting jobs inside the Beltway penning commentary because of his ideology.McGovern learned a little from his Inn experience, but it never altered his overall view of government, because of who he was and the position he held in part because he wouldn’t alter his believe that government was the answer. Matt’s the same way — if he truly learned something about the red tape government creates and incorporated it into his world view, most of the people willing to sign his paychecks for punditry right now could easily go out and find someone else who would parrot the approved talking points. So it’s worth his while to believe there’s some sort of disconnect between local government incompetency he’s dealt with first-hand and the same problems being present at the big government level.
John, did you mean to say analyst or anal-ist?
And let’s stop calling it “red tape”, let’s call it “blue tape”.
These people cannot learn their lesson past a certain point, because that would mean abandoning their entire world view and identity.
I note that Mr. Yglesias approached, but did not reach, consciousness in the article. After his complaints about the over-regulation he has to deal with, his solution is to “webify” the process rather than to wonder whether any of this intrusive regulation has any merit.
RE: “What would happen, if, heaven forfend, Obama actually went into business himself?”
This is totally hilarious from the first line! First you’re making an assumption that Obama is willing to put in a full days worth of WORK. There are several other points to consider – but this will never happen. Obama owns a reality completely divorced from the American worldview.
Yglesias will learn nothing from this. Or, more specifically, he will permit himself to learn nothing from this, because ideology and tribal self identification will trump his experience and any possible cognitive processing of the implications of his discoveries. It will be interesting to see, as his “small business” of renting out his condo proceeds, how he likes being automatically classified under the law as a bad guy (landlord,) and how his tenants will be given the benefit of the doubt, no matter what their behavior. But that won’t change his mind on national policy either. And he will tell himself that is called integrity.
Or, more specifically, he will permit himself to learn nothing from this, because ideology and tribal self identification will trump his experience and any possible cognitive processing of the implications of his discoveries.
Nailed it, Victor. Exactly how it works.
“Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?”
Why would anyone who opposed capitalism ever be described as an intellectual?
Anyone opposed to capitalism is either a fool, a liar, or insane; any one of which should disqualify someone from being considered an intellectual. Mere cleverness is not enough. Respect for the truth and the ability to recognize it are critical. Without these traits, an “intellectual” is merely a sophist.
The Unabomber, an undoubtedly clever man, wrote a lengthy screed in which he attempted to justify and rationalize his own internal dysfunction.
Any “intellectual” who attacks capitalism is no different and should be treated no differently.
For many like Yglesia loyalty to the Dem’s despite personal experience is less a matter of policy than tribal loyalty. For example, the presence of racialism and ethnicity as a binding agent has been a constant for Democrats since the party’s first incarnation as the Democrat-Republicans up until the present day: favored tribal subunits may vary with time, but the principle has remained.
“Fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing for advocates to do, yes,” said Yglesias.
Typical ethics of the Left – they pretend their opponent does x to justify doing x themselves.
Its a useful tell. When they start pretending that conservatives are shooting political opponents in the streets, it means they are about to do the “same” thing.
Voting Republican in local elections for me; not for thee.
Classic.
Government only fails because the wrong people are running it – The Progressives!
I look forward to Matt Yglesias running for local office as a Republican.
That should happen any election cycle now…. waiting…
Here’s how to start a business:
Go to your mayor’s office and tell them your new business somehow ties in with diversity and minorities, even if it’s selling t-shirts. Tell them you want a city-owned abandoned building for free you’ll make green. Maybe hire a black guy, or better yet, a black woman, or better yet, a gay, Islamic black woman, and buy them a suit to do all this while you sit in your web.
Make sure these plans tie-in with Federal funds the mayor’s office can reap, and can share with you.
After that ignore everyone and keep all the money for yourself. That’s the liberal way. Otherwise you’re on your own. The collective rules and also is good for shearing, like sheep.
Don’t forget to return your shill to the Salvation Army food line and get a refund for the suit.
In Hong Kong and Singapore I can set up a business (in all but a few proscribed, clearly defined business areas) in 24 hours, all online and automated (and in Hong Kong this was true even when it was all shuffling papers and standing in line). I can establish a name and address of the business, get a tax number, and be pointed at what, if any, regulations apply to my new business.
What we have here is a (government) jobs program – and at times I suspect a mechanism for taxing “working for yourself” (vice paying an existing business – which pays taxes on those transactions.)
Umm, McGovern didn’t win in 1972, so his campaign couldn’t have been “Pyrrhic”.