September 27, 2017

Mayor Frank Ortiz

601 City Centre Way

Pembroke Pines. FL 33025

RE: Is it always an ill wind… - Some comments on your radio interview this morning about Irma and “fairness”.

Mr. Mayor,

I heard you bloviate this morning on picking up the detritus – Thank God it’s mostly organic – from Irma.

I heard you say that the $7.50 fixed price [per ton, per yard, per truck was not made clear] was not attracting any bidders. [As is oft-times said in Milan, “If no profit is possible, the risk is obvious.”] Further, there is anecdotal evidence of “price gouging” with such “price gouging” leading for calls to the Attorney General to reinstitute public floggings.

I presume $7.50 is the “fair price’, a price set by mind-numbed administrators, droids who couldn’t find their asses using both their hands, led by a guide dog equipped 

with a NASA GPS.

, 

All of which leads me back to Diocletian.

He was not one of the 5 great emperors, the ones who Gibbon praised so highly 16 centuries later. I say that because he governed with the best of intentions, such as setting a “fair price” for everything.

Bread was a problem.

The “fair price”, the price that 4^th century administrators, in their wisdom, decided was fair had some problems. Yikes, but even then, the law of unintended consequences would rise up and bite you on the gluteus.

Alas, neither my Uncle Adam nor George Orwell had yet appeared on the scene. Gravity is one of things, inter alia, that is immune to the machinations of modern American Liberal planners.

The Eye-Tie bakers could not pay for the materials to make bread and sell it at the posted “fair price”. Pretty soon there was no bread at the “fair price”. But right behind the curtain, offered at an “unfair price”, was as much bread as you could carry out. I know, I know, that’s not “fair” but it’s also not “fair” that Brady and Belicheck win all those Super Bowls either. I used to be able to play basketball as hard as Michael Jordan, just not as well. Let me tell you that that ticked me off. 

But I digress.

Diocletian’s solution, one still envied by wage & price control fascists, the ones that Jefferson warned us about in the Declaration of Independence, was simple. toe. No bread today, no bread next year. He arrested the bakers and cut their hands off. Maybe it’s time to try it again.

There is an important lesson to be learned here. [Since I mentioned Gibbon I’ll now mention Edmund Burke. He said, “Unfortunately, experience is the only school where some people can learn.” Except when they don’t.]

#1 – When the price of a commodity, any commodity, be it bread, trash removal, Amazon stock, Granny’ silver tea set, successful high school football coaches, por ejemplo, spikes, 2 things happen.

A – The marginal user is shaken out.

B – New supplies are attracted to the marketplace.

Put the word out that the fair price is negotiable. $7.50 is now $15.00. It is now $25.00. It is now whatever it takes to get the crap off your streets. I have been a guest in several magnificent homes in Pembroke Pines. Charge the owners. They won’t mind. Since I don’t see any Social Justice Warriors, Black Lives Matters legions, or Antifa thugs volunteering to clean your streets why not try it? If anyone hectors you on “fairness” Baker Act his ohmadanish sad sacked sorry ass into the pokey for a few days. By the way, were any looters shot in Pembroke Pines

The worst thing that happens is that your streets are still dirty but you will have bent your knee obeisantly at the Altar of Fairness.

Kevin Smith

PS – I mentioned Adam Smith and George Orwell. My Uncle Adam said, “If you are looking for a meal and a bed for a night look not to the inn-keeper’s charitable instincts; he may not have any. Look rather to his rational self-interest.” Orwell said, “Stones are hard; water is wet. Objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center…If that is granted all else follows.” Let it sink in. Here are 2 factoids that may prove useful at your next press conference: A – the Declaration of Independence and The Wealth of Nations were published on the same day and B – Orwell was detested by modern American Liberals and their European forebears from 1938 until he died