Martian Money and Morality

I've been intrigued by the recent excitement generated by the successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars.  Very cool images and an amazing engineering feat obviously capture the attention of this physicist.

I've also been amazed at some of the comments I see out in cyberspace whenever folks comment on the news stories.  Here's one comment from an LA Times reader of an opinion piece entitled "Hey, Curiosity, don't forget to look for a rusted-out Martian Beetle"

nockamixon at 5:17 PM August 07, 2012The real waste -- the travesty -- is the amount the US spends on military.  Imagine what kind of progress and breakthroughs we could accomplish if we diverted even a fraction of the money we put into war toward more humane pursuits?

This is an easy statement to make and makes one feel as though moral high ground is taken.  At the bottom of this house of cards is the faulty assumption that the money has to be spent.  Whose money is it?  From where did it come?

When it's not your money, morality and accountability soon vanish, as evidenced by the recent GSA, Secret Service, and NOAA scandals.

The founding fathers realized this, but along the way we've unlearned the notion that no one can be trusted to spend someone else's money.

Morality is preserved when individuals are allowed to spend money at their choosing.  Local community efforts are better served if individuals are allowed to spend their earnings on charities that are near to them, instead of sending the money to Washington and have the money "trickle down" to the charities and programs picked by government bureaucrats.

Allowing the government to choose winners and losers--be it charities, corporate bailouts, loan programs, or science programs is immoral, and always leads to ultimate corruption, as properly warned by the founding fathers.  Regulation is not the answer, because the enormity of the regulatory bureaucracies overwhelms the good intentions after they take over.

We have over 200,000 pages of US Code.  How much more do we need?  How much more can we afford?

I'm Roy Obadiah and these are my rants.

Government Bureaucracy--It's the right thing to do

It seems as though I hear more and more politicians justifying government programs (especially federal government) with the phrase "because it's the right thing to do."

This is equivalent to saying "it is what it is."

In other words, it is a non-statement.  Would you ever catch a politician justifying a government program "because it's the wrong thing to do?"

The founding fathers knew this.  Their vision was for the federal government to exist in a severely limited fashion, specifically so that it would NOT become a bloated powerful bureaucracy.  If it is NOT explicitly written in the constitution, then the federal government has no power.  It is instead up to the states.  This is what the 10th amendment is all about:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Bureaucracies have the unfortunate habit of taking on a life of their own to justify their existence.  It's like marketing where a business wants to become "sticky" to its customers.  

Or as the book "Government Beers" points out, a federal program NEVER gives unspent monies back to the treasury, it's always spent in a mad dash at the end of the fiscal year so that no one can accuse them of needing less money.  "Government Beers" is a funny read that teaches the intent of the Constitution, and brings awareness of "unintended consequences" that come about with large, top-down driven programs.

I wish that the states had the courage to demand that the federal government obey the constitution.  Only then will problems get solved at the intended level.

Unfortunately, any focus on the 10th amendment is met today with arguments that suggest that slavery would have never been abolished if its intended meaning were followed.

I wonder what would have happened if the Confederate States would have had the courage to declare the emancipation proclamation before Lincoln, and truly turn the war into a strict constitutional challenge instead of a human rights battle.  Then the 10th amendment might not be so politically charged as it has been of late.

That would have been "the right thing to do."

I'm Roy Obadiah, and these are my rants.

Running Injuries and the Law of Unintended Consequences

In the late '80's, I was a decent runner, able to run 10K in 32 minutes.  Not world class, but capable of winning local races if the stars lined up.

I had plans to increase my mileage, and as an ambitious runner in his late twenties, had goals of moving to a higher level of competition.  I was convinced that good running shoes were paramount to withstand the increased stress that speed work and higher mileage would impart on my joints.  I was particularly influenced by sports medics, who at the time urged me to find ways to stabilize my foot during impact.

I remember the Nike Pegasus feeling good and fitting well.

Unfortunately, as I ran "harder", my knees and hips could not tolerate the aggressive pounding that the stability of the shoes allowed.  As I've recently learned from studying the benefits of barefoot running, the unintended consequences of localizing stability to the foot results in more aggressive striding.  The result of this stride is that knees and hips are the absorbers of the shock, instead of the natural leaf spring of the foot, and my pains worsened.

Now in my late forties, I've been gently running every other day for years, never able to handle recovering from daily runs, until now.  Barefoot running, triggered by my frustration after spraining an ankle, has revealed to me that the forced stride changes required to run on barefeet is actually sustainable.  My knees and hips don't hurt after 7-8 mile runs.  I don't run barefooted, but I've switched from super supportive, orthotic-laden shoes to minimal, flexible trainers.