Socialism in its many disguises: ARISE
I went to a meeting of a group called ARISE the other day. The name stands for A Regional Initiative Supporting Empowerment. It's a very pleasant group of people, made up of member organizations that are mostly churches in the Albany area.
Underlying ARISE is a philosophy that is so well hidden I suspect most of its members, and even some leaders, don't even realize it's there. It is plainly a socialist organization. I do not mean this in the sense some have of socialism as a consciously evil intent to take over the government for the purpose of controlling the economy. It is rather the consciously do-gooding but inherently misguided and dangerous intent to influence the government for the purpose of controlling the economy. Most of their current issue positions are not socialist in nature, but when you hear their leaders talk, you can hear the socialism.
One of the symptoms of socialism is when you see statements that demonstrate a complete lack of sanity. I heard one of these at the ARISE meeting. The President (and again, I'm sure he's really a nice fellow despite this) said that "we" don't want the Albany area to become like Austin (Texas) or Silicon Valley (the corridor between San Jose and San Francisco in California). I haven't been to Austin in about 20 years, but I got a Master's degree at Stanford in 1991, and have been back a couple of times since. Silicon Valley is one of the most wonderful places on Earth. I was reading the Wall Street Journal just now. They have an article (10/5/2006) about how high-tech companies continue to move to Silicon Valley. In the article they mention that 28% of San Jose is high-tech workers and the average high-tech worker in San Jose makes over $120K/year where the average high-tech worker in the US makes "only" $75K. Maybe it's just me, but I think that would be good for the Capital Region.
Many of today's quasi-socialists express concern about the dangers of growth, especially when that growth is unrestrained by their do-gooding wishes for society. Sprawl is an example of this concern, as is "inequity" - when some people gain more from growth than others.
When it comes to dealing with sprawl, Silicon Valley is doing quite well in my opinion. For one, there is a fairly good mass transit system in the Bay Area, including a train from San Jose to San Francisco, a bus system, and the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system which mainly serves San Francisco but reaches the northern end of Silicon Valley. But there's another key detail about Silicon Valley. It is true that some workers who can't afford housing there have to live in fairly distant suburbs. But that is a consequence of geography. There isn't that much usable land. It happens to be on a peninsula, squeezed in between the San Mateo mountains and the San Francisco Bay. San Francisco is less than 50 miles from San Jose, and most of the valley is only about 5 miles wide, for a total of maybe 250 square miles, though there's quite a bit more if you include all of Santa Clara County. In our area, by contrast, there is essentially unlimited space. It's 90 miles from Queensbury to Catskill, and another 90 from Canajoharie to the Massachusetts border. That's roughly 8100 square miles, well over 8 times the area of Silicon Valley, and we have a lot less people here.
By the way, I also remember Austin to be a nice, fun place, and Wikipedia puts the household income in Travis County to be nearly $60K, or about $15K higher than the national average. Texas is also known for relatively low cost of living (a trait Silicon Valley does not share). Austin is also known as the "Live Music Capital of the World".
So whenever you hear someone tell you that they don't want Albany's Tech Valley initiative to turn this area into another Austin or Silicon Valley, please realize that you're staring socialism in the face.
While I'm on this topic, I do have to mention one other nonsense notion from the left. I often hear people characterize Bill Gates as being somehow evil. I'm not particularly fond of Microsoft myself (I prefer Apple), but Bill Gates has to be the single greatest employer in history. Anyone who worked at the company early on who stayed for any length of time became a millionaire. Many employees went on to net worths exceeding $10 million and I'd guess roughly 50 of them, perhaps more, went into the $100 million club. At least three are billionaires (Gates, Allen and Ballmer), and I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few others.
Capitalism has led to a vast improvement in the human condition. The history of the 20th century has demonstrated how the greater economic freedom inherent in capitalism in countries like the US allowed economic growth that has made all of our lives dramatically better. Today's poorest Americans live better than 90% of the rest of the world. By contrast, countries like Russia and China suffered very badly from socialist policies. Now that they are embracing capitalism and free markets, their economies are growing dramatically, lifting hundreds of millions of their citizens out of poverty. Try telling someone from China that their country should go back to socialism and see the look on their face.
Socialists see a static world. There's a pie out there and everyone should get an equal piece of the pie. Supporters of capitalism see a dynamic world, where the opportunity to get more pie leads people to work harder, innovate, and take risks. The result is not that the successful get more of the pie. It is rather that they make the pie larger and while the successful do get a larger percentage, the average person ends up getting more pie as well.
Recently I've been seeing articles that the average American is not sharing in the current growth because wages are not rising much. This ignores at least two things: 1 - many employees own stock and they benefit when the stock market does better; and 2 - everyone benefits from falling effective prices. Today's cars are safer, more powerful and even more fuel-efficient than cars from 20 years ago. Computers continue to become better, faster and cheaper. You can buy a TV today for $1000 that Bill Gates could not have bought 10 years ago. Yesterday's $500 televisions are so cheap people throw them away after a few years.
And that reminds me of another icon the left hates - Walmart. Again, I personally do not shop at Walmart much. I find the shopping experience unpleasant. I'm doing fairly well and so the low prices are not a big deal to me. But for the "average Joe", Walmart is great. Walmart generally pays higher wages than competing local businesses, and has lower prices too. People who work at Walmart can afford to shop there.
Underlying ARISE is a philosophy that is so well hidden I suspect most of its members, and even some leaders, don't even realize it's there. It is plainly a socialist organization. I do not mean this in the sense some have of socialism as a consciously evil intent to take over the government for the purpose of controlling the economy. It is rather the consciously do-gooding but inherently misguided and dangerous intent to influence the government for the purpose of controlling the economy. Most of their current issue positions are not socialist in nature, but when you hear their leaders talk, you can hear the socialism.
One of the symptoms of socialism is when you see statements that demonstrate a complete lack of sanity. I heard one of these at the ARISE meeting. The President (and again, I'm sure he's really a nice fellow despite this) said that "we" don't want the Albany area to become like Austin (Texas) or Silicon Valley (the corridor between San Jose and San Francisco in California). I haven't been to Austin in about 20 years, but I got a Master's degree at Stanford in 1991, and have been back a couple of times since. Silicon Valley is one of the most wonderful places on Earth. I was reading the Wall Street Journal just now. They have an article (10/5/2006) about how high-tech companies continue to move to Silicon Valley. In the article they mention that 28% of San Jose is high-tech workers and the average high-tech worker in San Jose makes over $120K/year where the average high-tech worker in the US makes "only" $75K. Maybe it's just me, but I think that would be good for the Capital Region.
Many of today's quasi-socialists express concern about the dangers of growth, especially when that growth is unrestrained by their do-gooding wishes for society. Sprawl is an example of this concern, as is "inequity" - when some people gain more from growth than others.
When it comes to dealing with sprawl, Silicon Valley is doing quite well in my opinion. For one, there is a fairly good mass transit system in the Bay Area, including a train from San Jose to San Francisco, a bus system, and the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system which mainly serves San Francisco but reaches the northern end of Silicon Valley. But there's another key detail about Silicon Valley. It is true that some workers who can't afford housing there have to live in fairly distant suburbs. But that is a consequence of geography. There isn't that much usable land. It happens to be on a peninsula, squeezed in between the San Mateo mountains and the San Francisco Bay. San Francisco is less than 50 miles from San Jose, and most of the valley is only about 5 miles wide, for a total of maybe 250 square miles, though there's quite a bit more if you include all of Santa Clara County. In our area, by contrast, there is essentially unlimited space. It's 90 miles from Queensbury to Catskill, and another 90 from Canajoharie to the Massachusetts border. That's roughly 8100 square miles, well over 8 times the area of Silicon Valley, and we have a lot less people here.
By the way, I also remember Austin to be a nice, fun place, and Wikipedia puts the household income in Travis County to be nearly $60K, or about $15K higher than the national average. Texas is also known for relatively low cost of living (a trait Silicon Valley does not share). Austin is also known as the "Live Music Capital of the World".
So whenever you hear someone tell you that they don't want Albany's Tech Valley initiative to turn this area into another Austin or Silicon Valley, please realize that you're staring socialism in the face.
While I'm on this topic, I do have to mention one other nonsense notion from the left. I often hear people characterize Bill Gates as being somehow evil. I'm not particularly fond of Microsoft myself (I prefer Apple), but Bill Gates has to be the single greatest employer in history. Anyone who worked at the company early on who stayed for any length of time became a millionaire. Many employees went on to net worths exceeding $10 million and I'd guess roughly 50 of them, perhaps more, went into the $100 million club. At least three are billionaires (Gates, Allen and Ballmer), and I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few others.
Capitalism has led to a vast improvement in the human condition. The history of the 20th century has demonstrated how the greater economic freedom inherent in capitalism in countries like the US allowed economic growth that has made all of our lives dramatically better. Today's poorest Americans live better than 90% of the rest of the world. By contrast, countries like Russia and China suffered very badly from socialist policies. Now that they are embracing capitalism and free markets, their economies are growing dramatically, lifting hundreds of millions of their citizens out of poverty. Try telling someone from China that their country should go back to socialism and see the look on their face.
Socialists see a static world. There's a pie out there and everyone should get an equal piece of the pie. Supporters of capitalism see a dynamic world, where the opportunity to get more pie leads people to work harder, innovate, and take risks. The result is not that the successful get more of the pie. It is rather that they make the pie larger and while the successful do get a larger percentage, the average person ends up getting more pie as well.
Recently I've been seeing articles that the average American is not sharing in the current growth because wages are not rising much. This ignores at least two things: 1 - many employees own stock and they benefit when the stock market does better; and 2 - everyone benefits from falling effective prices. Today's cars are safer, more powerful and even more fuel-efficient than cars from 20 years ago. Computers continue to become better, faster and cheaper. You can buy a TV today for $1000 that Bill Gates could not have bought 10 years ago. Yesterday's $500 televisions are so cheap people throw them away after a few years.
And that reminds me of another icon the left hates - Walmart. Again, I personally do not shop at Walmart much. I find the shopping experience unpleasant. I'm doing fairly well and so the low prices are not a big deal to me. But for the "average Joe", Walmart is great. Walmart generally pays higher wages than competing local businesses, and has lower prices too. People who work at Walmart can afford to shop there.
posted by Albany Lawyer at 3:37 AM
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