TO CATCH THE FEW

One of the basic contentions we've spent a lot of time talking and writing about over the years is how governments seem to love punishing the many to catch the few.

You see it just about everywhere. Too big to fail is just another variation. 

They're more examples than we could possibly go into here. But gun control is an obvious one. Another is punishing the prudent to rescue the irresponsible. Taxing the productive to prop up the slothful is still another.

A recruiter, no not a military but academic one, strolls into a high school senior class in early May and says he would like all the students who have gotten straight As for four years to raise their hands. Five do and he directs them to a corner in the back of the room.

He then does the same thing with all the students who earned straight Bs for four years. They are told to join the straight A students. Then all the ones who did the same with straight Cs for four years.

Nine students remain, six who have earned straight Ds for four years and three who managed only Ds and Fs for four years.

At this point the recruiter smiles, rubs his hands together and announces to the nine: "This is the day you've been working so hard for these last four years. We're going to reward you nine with free four-year scholarships to the Ivy League college of your choice. "

Now we didn't see the study ourselves, but an acquaintance we're told who follows such things closely informed us he did. Eight of the nine selected Harvard.

A lot of folks when talking First Amendment politics think its greatest feature is the guaranteed rights of freedom of speech, assemblage and religion. Sorry, but that's just wrong. Dumb wrong.

The greatest thing about the First Amendment is it guarantees one the right to do stupid stuff. Period. Think here of folks in New York City who choose to spend their own money gulping down extra-large sodas.

Judging from what history we've been able to study, people have been doing dumb and stupid stuff for centuries. Outlawing that right is akin to debasing a language or a currency.

Consider for a minute electing Joe Biden Vice President for two terms and Jimmy Carter president for one.  Or George W. and Ulysses S. Grant. Or in California where those folks elected The Terminator twice and followed that with some warmed-up Brown hash.

Some folks would no doubt toss in Herbert Hoover and we'd have to somewhat agree. A lot of folks who don't know their history don't know he was the original originator of The New Deal, a pretty dumb idea in itself.

"There is no reason to assume that...the risks anticipated by each must be deemed equal in value, " as Daniel Bernouilli, a Swiss mathematician and physicist noted in the 18th Century.

That's a to-each-his own statement. The other half of that equation, utility, is intuitive and individual, a fact that punishing the many to catch a few clearly violates.