The one place where you can really make a difference

Jordan Peterson's sixth "Rule of Life" is "Set your own house in perfect order before you criticize the world."

You determine your life primarily by the choices you make. Some choices are "meta-choices," the ones that impact numerous other choices.

One of the meta-choices is what share of your time you devote to your micro realm versus your macro realm.

The micro realm of your life includes your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors — those with whom you directly interact, as well as your job and other personal uses of your time.

The macro part of your life includes society at large, the economy, climate change, politics, people distant from you, and people you don't know.

In which of those two realms, micro or macro, do you want to live? You have a limited amount of time and energy. Whichever realm you choose has what economists call an "opportunity cost." (The MIT Dictionary of Modern Economics defines "opportunity cost" as follows: "Perhaps the most fundamental concept in economics, the opportunity cost of an action is the value of the forgone alternative.")

There is an enormous difference regarding the level of control you have in the two spheres. Obviously, you have the most influence and impact on those closest to you. Influence is like gravitational force, inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Also, consider the relative populations. You are a significant part of your micro world. Like it or not, you are a tiny and insignificant part of your macro world.

There is also a big difference in your relative knowledge about the two realms. Your macro realm is vastly more complex than your micro realm, and the choices you make there are more prone to error. We all know people who have strong opinions concerning issues they know almost nothing about.

Virtually all your power resides in your micro realm. The person closest to you is yourself. Focusing on a small sphere of influence is an aspect of individual responsibility. It is a way of thinking and behaving that shows the difference between progressives and conservatives. Conservatives love being personally responsible. It's part of the price of freedom.

Unfortunately, individual responsibility is just too big a burden for some people. Personal problems are often too difficult and painful to face. To focus instead on an "urgent" macro issue is a favorite self-deluding tactic of progressives. Their selected macro issue is typically one dire enough to blind them to the cost of hiding from themselves. It enables them to deny the high opportunity cost to themselves of neglecting their own unsolved personal problems.

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◼ The one place where you can really make a difference April 7, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The left hates competition

Competition makes numerous areas of our lives more efficient, from the economy to education to the search for truth.

In the economy, competition is the single most powerful force for progress and innovation. A good way to entice customers away from your rivals is to make a superior product. "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."

The Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler called competition "the patron saint of the consumer." Competition pushes producers to provide consumers the most for their money — a combination of keeping prices as low as possible and keeping quality as high as possible. It pushes them to be efficient. Producers who fail to be efficient don't survive. Competition means survival of the efficient.

The degree of competition determines the crucial balance of power between consumers and producers. Vigorous competition puts power in the hands of consumers. Its absence puts producers in control.

A good way to appreciate the value of competition is to look at its polar opposite: monopoly. Monopoly means consumers have only one producer to choose from. One choice amounts to no choice. Under communism, all producers are monopolists. The state has a monopoly on every aspect of life.

Because it lacks competition, a communist economy is extremely inefficient and always becomes dysfunctional. Cuba and Venezuela, for example, can barely feed their populations.

No economy is automatically or organically efficient. Efficiency requires incentives. Those don't exist under communism. A free-market, voluntary-exchange economy provides an abundance of incentives. The profit motive is one example. The more efficiently the owners of a private business operate, the more profit they will take home at the end of the year. It's similar to the way a fantail keeps a windmill pointed into the wind.

In an otherwise efficient economy like ours, public schools are as dysfunctional as they would be under communism. That's because the public-school establishment has been so effective in blocking competition in education.

Public schools fit most of the characteristics of monopolies. Teachers and their unions have power, while students and their parents have almost none. If more competition were introduced, the power imbalance would be reversed. The increased interest in "school choice" — vouchers and charter schools, for example — are reasons for optimism.

Competition among ideas is what makes free speech and robust debate so vital. Debate is, in fact, competition in search of the truth. The left's cancel culture is about destroying competition and establishing a monopoly of ideas. Leftists think they've already discovered the truth, so there's no reason to continue the search.

Conservatives love a society that rewards the efficiency of competition. Leftists hate it. They love communism instead.
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◼ The left hates competition March 24, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Is the Democrat Party terminal?

The Democrat Party is on the wrong side of every single issue — borders, law enforcement, parents vs. teachers, inflation, Critical Race Theory, school choice, cancel culture, lockdowns, masks, individual freedom, gasoline prices, pipelines, wokism, unrestricted abortions, and a president who has dementia, just to name a few.

Does the party have a death wish? We have all known persons who are self-destructive. That behavior can afflict groups as well as individuals.

The Democrat Party and the left foster self-hatred. They believe that our country is irrevocably racist and is destroying the planet by using fossil fuels.

The Democrat establishment and most of its voters are racked by guilt. Unless they join a monastery, they have no choice but to participate in the system they believe is destroying our future.

The Democrats have lost their self-preservation instinct and their will to live. Just look at the party's lack of concern about its hemorrhaging loss of support among its traditional bases — blacks, Hispanics, Asians, mothers, and independents. The breadth of the damage is unprecedented. In all likelihood, the party is too far gone ever to regain its former status and influence.

The party's problems are deep-seated, rooted in the sick nature of what it has become. The United States has been a two-party country throughout its history. Will that be enough for the party to survive in some form?

The Democrat party is headed for election losses of monumental proportions this November. When that happens, what will be the party's response?

The Democrats are stuck. Most of the party leaders who got them into this mess will still be there after the election. Self-awareness and accountability are definitely not what the Democrats are known for. They will not get the message.

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◼ Is the Democrat Party terminal? - American Thinker March 4, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Biden and Harris are a cancer on the Democrat party

The Democrat Party has maneuvered itself into an insoluble problem. By whatever means necessary the party managed to get its candidates into the White House. However, it will turn out to be the costliest victory ever for a political party.

How did Joe Biden and Kamala Harris become the Democrat nominees? At the beginning of the 2020 Democrat primary season, there were 24 presidential hopefuls. As each was vetted, various kinds of disqualifying information surfaced and, one by one (starting with Harris), they fell by the wayside. It became obvious that none was presidential material.

The last two standing were Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Because Sanders is an unrepentant socialist, the Democrat party knew he had little chance against Donald Trump. That left the non compos mentis Joe Biden.

Once Biden nailed down the nomination, he had the chance to choose a running mate. Because of the priorities of the Democrat party, it was a relatively simple choice, based on a single consideration—identity politics.

Despite her empty list of career accomplishments, Kamala Harris satisfied two of the party’s victimhood categories—black and female. Her success in the Democrat party happened by way of who she “knew” rather than what she knew. Her sole “qualification” was the only one they cared about—identity, a la identity politics.

In selecting candidates, competence and achievement never crossed the minds of the party establishment. The Biden-Harris administration is what happens when a political party deems merit irrelevant.

You may recall that in 2008 Barack Obama retrieved Biden from the Democrats’ dumpster to be his running mate. Identity politics was not as important then, and Biden was ideal for another role always expected of a running mate—don’t outshine the person at the top of the ticket.

Biden and Harris are incompetent, bumbling, empty suits who haven’t the earthliest idea what they’re doing. They are a disgrace to the offices they hold. They have no beliefs and no vision. Joe Biden has never had good judgment, and now adding to that is his advancing dementia. Kamala Harris has never had a thought or utterance worth remembering. About the best that could be said about her is that she does not have dementia, not that it matters. She is a nitwit in service of the party’s monomaniacal identity obsession.

It’s impossible to imagine what the atmosphere in the White House must be like these days. The people there experience firsthand the man who isn’t there, the dead president walking. It would be fun to see the looks they give one another. Their “leader” is the proverbial crazy uncle in the basement, except this crazy uncle isn’t in the basement, he’s in the Oval Office.

To survive, the Democrat party must rid itself of Biden and Harris. If both remain in office, the party implodes, taking many of its cronies down with it. Numerous leftist institutions—mainstream media, teachers’ unions, Black Lives Matter, climate alarmists, and universities, have a symbiotic relationship with the party and they will all suffer.

The Biden-Harris administration is nothing short of a malignancy that will fester and spread for three more years. The party has no easy solutions. Amputating Biden and Harris may not even solve its deep-seated problems. Any moderate Democrat replacement such as Tulsi Gabbard wouldn’t have a prayer against the party’s uncompromising, far-left base. There is not a single alternative Democrat politician who is noticeably better than Biden or Harris, whether it be Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Debbi Wasserman Schultz, Bill de Blasio, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, or Al Sharpton. All on the Democrat bench are plagued with political comorbidities.

It will be interesting to watch the Democrat Party as it tries to extricate itself from this self-inflicted political nightmare.
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◼ Biden and Harris are a cancer on the Democrat party - American Thinker

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

American Thinker Archives

◼ Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings December 15, 2021

◼ Gratitude and the left November 23, 2021

◼ The left's intellectual chaos October 21, 2021

◼ Lockdown lessons August 4, 2021

◼ The education establishment self-destructs July 28, 2021

◼ Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy July 17, 2021

◼ The inscrutable left July 1, 2021

◼ The damage done by probability blindness June 17, 2021

◼ Remember when leftists were obsessed with self-esteem? May 22, 2021

◼ Righteous Recycling April 28, 2021

◼ It's time to revisit The Road to Serfdom March 9, 2021

◼ The big difference between Democrats and Republicans February 4, 2021

◼ The pandemic is history September 9, 2020

◼ Media Dereliction September 22, 2013

◼ The Larger Lessons of the IRS Scandal June 6, 2013

◼ 'We interrupt your vacation fun for this important announcement...' April 17, 2010

◼ President Incompetent February 18, 2010

Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings

Thanks to leftists, we are doing lasting harm to our children: we are making them into weaklings. It is an insidious form of child abuse, done in plain sight. We are denying them the most important trait necessary for living happy, successful, and meaningful lives: courage.

Life is difficult. It's impossible to sail through life on smooth seas. Loss, frustration, heartbreak, struggle, disappointment, and suffering happen to everyone.

We see widespread panic on college campuses these days about "micro-aggressions." Students openly admit they can't tolerate things that even they grant are micro.

At our local university (Humboldt State), students are provided therapy dogs to help them cope with the stress of finals week. I was born too soon.

We are teaching our children to report being "triggered." We are teaching our children that they're entitled to live lives free from hurt feelings. We are turning our children into crybabies ill equipped to deal with real life.

Jordan Peterson says, "If you over-coddle people, you make them dull and narcissistic."

Unfortunately, it's easier to make children spineless than to make them brave. "Tough love" is much harder to give than wimp love. Wimp love isn't love; it's cowardice.

The left's efforts to weaken our young people have been going on for decades. Why? Weak children become weak adults, who willingly obey vaccine and mask mandates and other senseless dictates meant to crush our freedoms.

A power struggle is raging between America's ruling class and individual Americans. There's only so much power to go around. It's a zero-sum game. For the left, power is what it's all about. It's a fight to the political death. It's a fight we must win and one we can win.

Thankfully, individual courage is the enemy of the ruling class, as are freedom, the family, religion, and truth. They are the keys to victory because they all empower the individual American at the expense of America's ruling class.
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◼ Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings - American Thinker December 15, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Gratitude and the left

Apart from lying about everything, leftists are insufferable ingrates.

Leftists spend their lives complaining. Their list of grievances is endless. They are never happy even when they get their way.

If you're an American citizen alive in the 21st century, you've won the lottery. You are so much more fortunate than your forebears that it's hard to list the ways.

Someone born in America in 1900 had a life expectancy of 47 years. Someone born today can expect to live to 80, an increase of 70 percent. In 1900, 30 percent of all deaths in the United States happened to children less than five years of age. Now only 1.4 percent of deaths happen to children five or younger.

In the 19th century and earlier, very few people had indoor plumbing. Think about that.

Physicians back then had few if any treatments to prolong life. Antibiotics were not developed until the early 1940s.

Commercial air travel, so common today, barely existed before 1950.

Until Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, ours was A World Lit Only by Fire.

How many on the left, how many young leftists especially, have any grasp of their blessings? Where is their gratitude?

Leftists never give the slightest thought to their incredibly good luck. They take it for granted.

The ungrateful mindset of the left is that of spoiled brats. There are few things as disgusting as someone who is quite fortunate but who disguises himself as a victim and whines about his lot in life.

Does anyone believe that leftists are sincere when they celebrate Thanksgiving?

Dennis Prager has argued the following:

The mother of happiness is gratitude, and the mother of goodness is gratitude. It is so powerful, gratitude, that it is not possible to be happy if you are not grateful, and it is not possible to be a good person if you are not grateful.

Leftists are devoid of gratitude. What else so clearly explains their dishonesty and wretchedness?

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◼ Gratitude and the left November 23, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.