Let’s talk turkey about legalizing marijuana

There are trade-offs in most decisions in life, but some tradeoffs are “padded ” when governments make decisions on our behalf.  Legalizing marijuana is a case in point and has much in common with other risky behaviours.

Smoking marijuana has risks to life and limb, as does cigarette smoking and drinking alcohol excessively. Yet, our provincial government provides to those who indulge in these risky behaviors  “free” health care safety nets. What’s worse is that these risky behaviours also serve as a source of government funding in the form of “sin taxes”. They also spawn a hearty brood of new regulations that serve as cheap chum for nourishing the growth of new and larger regulations-enforcing bureaucracies.

Who wins?  The politicians and bureaucrats benefit directly by wining elections and building government careers on failed promises to “win the war on drugs”.

Who loses? The taxpayers ( is anyone surprised?) in two ways: first, by paying higher taxes and second; by enduring longer waiting lines for health care services.

Why do we continue to reward citizens for their risky choices when those who avoid such risks must shoulder the same, or greater, loads? Is it not time for tough love – to tell those who are tested with nicotine and THC in their tissues that they will forfeit 50% of their OHIP coverage for incurring such risks at public expense?   Is this the only way that our citizens will ever come to acknowledge and take responsibility for their unhealthy lifestyle choices - like marijuana smoking - which carry consequences for not just themselves but for every innocent citizen?

The truth about careers and education.

As proof of my bona fides to address this topic, please allow me to state for the record that I have been in the staffing industry since 1981 and the Information Technology industry since 1977. During this period, I have observed first hand how jobs have become increasingly specialized.  There are two very obvious factors that have been responsible for this ongoing trend:

•  As computer and communications technologies have advanced in speed, capacity and power, they have been applied to every facet of our lives and every domain of knowledge known to man. The sheer volume and usefulness of the information that has been unleashed by these technological advances have generated the need and accelerated the emergence of many new professions and job types – often replacing older, outmoded ones in the process.
•  The human brain has a relatively limited and fixed capacity for absorbing, managing and applying information. As a result, these limitations have necessitated that the primary focus of most jobs has been to become densely specialized and increasingly granular when considered within the contexts of the overall operational and information management processes that are employed by all modern businesses to achieve their targeted objectives.   It is not uncommon, therefore, to find organizations that are staffed by many professionals possessing a wide range of needed, specialized expertise. When combined within the larger team context, these professionals and highly trained front line workers collectively possess all the skills, knowledge and abilities to tackle and succeed in addressing complex challenges and/or delivery mandates successfully.

Changing the topic to the value of academic Education in the workplace, I contend that governments of all stripes generally place a great deal of emphasis on academic learning and state-granted degrees/ diplomas as a means of stimulating job growth – in particular, for high paying jobs.  In my view, this targeted academic Education emphasis is both short-sighted and naiive.

After spending nearly all of my professional working career as a “head hunter” who earns  a “finders fee” when successful in assisting a client employer to find and hire persons with rare qualifications, I know the truth about the value of academic Education in the workplace. I can summarize this truth as follows – first  for entry level positions and then for subsequent career advancement.

Entry level positions (generally applies to new graduates or job seekers competing for their first job).

• Some professions require highly specialized training and knowledge - such as a Pharmacist, Accountant, plumber, electrician, etc. For these professions, there is no substitute for having the right academic credentials to enter these professions as determined by the governing bodies who are part of a specific level of government or who are non-government bodies that  have been granted this legislated authority. Without the prescribed credentials, the barriers to entry in these types of regulated employment are insurmountable.
• Other professions (“blue collar” or “white collar”) also require specific academic credentials but for a different, less restrictive purpose – as proof of one’s ability to learn.  These often take the form of degrees, diplomas or certificates.  Sales Professionals in the IT industry, for example,  may be better able to sell products or solutions to customers if they are able to absorb and communicate the features and benefits of a sophisticated product line. Someone who has earned a subject-related university degree or college diploma will give potential employers greater assurance that the potential employee possesses the necessary learning capacity for this line of work.

Career advancement (generally applies to workers who have progressed beyond the “entry level “ stage of employment successfully and possesses the work history and  references and to prove it.  

• Acquiring a “track record of achievements” becomes the most significant factor in achieving career advancement in enterprises that reward staff on merit rather than seniority. In the private, ‘for profit’ business sector,  employee achievements must relate to specific contributions that an employee has effected towards helping the employer to attain specific business goals such as identifying opportunities for increases in workplace efficiency & cost savings or,  attaining a new major customer for the company.   In contrast, public sector enterprises, instead of seeking profits, are focused on maintaining or improving “public perception”. Their leaders hope that this focus will protect or improve the reputations of politicians and their parties. Consequently, individual employee achievements are hard to identify or measure within public service workplaces. This explains the focus on seniority for career advancement over achievements.
• Professional jealousy is common in performance-oriented, merit-based work places because promotions are often earned on the basis of many factors that can sometimes appear arbitrary or subjective. To be passed over for promotion is sometimes a subtle (or not so subtle as the case may be) sign that one’s career prospects may be brighter in  another organization  OR that one may best try to reflect on the reasons (possibly legitimate) that he/she may not be ready for the next level of responsibility, and then work constructively to enhance one’s preparedness. In a merit-based work culture, these options can bring out the best in people who can actually achieve results from their efforts to improve performance. The seniority system lacks the advancement incentives to encourage increases in work performance.

 Recommendations

All levels of government must focus their efforts to reduce all the various forms of labour legislation that continues to destroy the prospects of healthy careers for our citizens. Specific recommendations follow:

• Eliminate Minimum Wage Laws.  This will help foster workplace conditions where entry level workers can attain the first rung on a long term career ladder and enable these workers to acquire that track record that will enable them to advance to higher levels of responsibility, performance and  merit compensation.
• Reduce or eliminate Payroll Taxes. Employers will be more inclined to hire experienced workers on salary and provide the career advancement and merit incentives for each one to be the best that they can be in their chosen professions.
• Dramatically reduce Income Taxes. If  private companies can reward performance, shouldn’t the government do the same by allowing steadily rising success to be met with progressively lower income taxes? What better way for a government to  provide greater incentives for our citizens to excel and simultaneously curing our laggard provincial productivity record.   
• Shrink the government work force and simultaneously dismantle the gargantuan scaffolding of government legislation that prevents Ontario’s Citizen Entrepreneurs from competing on an equal footing with existing government services in all domains of government operation. These steps will open up huge work opportunities and create the kind of merit-based employment opportunities that will generate a much more innovative, productive and prosperous workforce in Ontario. It is the only way that Ontario will every regain its once proud reputation as Canada’s engine of wealth generation and shuck the embarrassing current position of needing a handout from other more prosperous provinces within Canada’s federation.   
• Last, but not least, eliminate all existing legislation that grant labour union leaders  the power to enslave (versus the right to work) workers and impose their exorbitant ATM (Anti-labour Taxation Mandate) fees (aka union dues). This will remove the “Us vs Them” gang mentality that divides business owners and organized labour.  All too often, these perennial adversaries spend enormous amounts of unproductive time, legal expenses and foot-dragging tactics that ultimately work at cross-purposes to one another . Its time to “play nice” in the work sand boxes of Ontario and share a common focus of winning increasing opportunities to expand prosperity for everyone rather than fighting over scraps like mongrels in the ally.

In summary, any political leader that promotes public Education institutions and their delivery programs while ignoring the most valuable strategies for greater personal and  professional  prosperity attainment  - career advancement – are failing to serve the public adequately.   Economic prosperity in Ontario is too important to be left in the hands of such short-sighted and naiive political hacks.

The truth about political job creation promises.

I hate to "burst the bubble" of the Blue, Orange, Red and Green parties, but all citizens need to understand what governments CAN and CANNOT DO when it comes to job creation.  

1. Governments DO NOT create jobs. Jobs are only created when a legitimate demand exists for them AND when the economic and regulatory conditions exist to make them viable.
2. Governments can create demand by spending taxpayer dollars on publicly-funded projects such as subway building, but there is nothing written in stone that says infrastructure projects must be funded publicly.
3. Governments can also create demand by spending taxpayer dollars on politically –motivated initiatives that could not otherwise be justified in economic terms. Many of these jobs fit the category of “make work jobs”  which provide little of no benefits to taxpayers but exist in the thousands as a way to pad the “fiefdoms” of senior public administrators who use this ‘padding” to leverage ever-increasing budgetary responsibility each year. 

Let’s dissect the job creation plans of politicians such as Cindy Hackleberg of the NDP.  Cindy claims to have a job creation plan which involves subsidizing businesses who hire new staff.

Consider the mechanics of this promise carefully. For example:

• Where is the money going to come from in order for the NDP to make these job subsidy “investments” ( This is the popular term uses by the Social Engineering type of politician found in all of the major parties) . There are only 3 possible money sources – taxes, debt-financing (aka deferred taxation + interest), and cost-cutting in other public spending areas (aka  these are still tax dollars but shuffled from one spending target to another).
• Why is it necessary for an NDP government to collect and shuffle your tax dollars in order to make these job subsidy “investments”?  One obvious motive is to create more work for their unionized public administration  work forces because, with increased workload, they can justify hiring more public administration “tax dollar shufflers”  who  will generate more Union Taxes (aka “union dues”) for the NDP’s heavily favoured political supporters  - union leaders.

Now consider the Libertarian plan for jobs.

• Drastically reduce or eliminate the existing regulations that support government services monopolies and their monopoly labour hegemonies. This will remove the barriers to entry that all Citizen Entrepreneurs currently face who wish to offer innovative, competitive and cost-effective service alternatives in the service domains currently monopolized by governments at every level.
• Libertarians are not central planners and, as such, do not recognize the public administration “tax dollar shufflers” job category as one that provides value to taxpayers.  In stead, we believe that the public administration “tax dollar shufflers” that will be needed in the government bureaucracies of the Orange, Red and Green parties will enjoy much more rewarding and productive employment as employees of Citizen Entrepreneur enterprises or as their owners. After all, who best to employ in these enterprises than the same employees who know first hand about the mind-numbing, inefficient and politically manipulated jobs within public administration?

·      Money is very fluid - it will always find its own way to the most promising work-related investments without the unneeded cost and red tape overhead imposed by meddling public administrators whose role is to essentially control the flow of public money to politically–expedient recipients. Free market investments are much more pragmatic, purposeful and dynamic than any “investments” made by government, and the occur thousands of times every day within private enterprises without public fanfare such as Premier Wynne’s recent announcement of a $400 million subsidy to the horse-racing sector in the Niagara region.

There is only one real choice in this election. Vote for yourself and the wisdom that you all possess to manage your own affairs without the cost or interference of a public babysitter provided by the Blue, Orange, Red or Green parties.

Vote Libertarian.

Less is more when it comes to government

For as long as I can remember, Ontario and Canada have been described by numerous publications as perennial laggards in measures of business productivity improvement when compared to the USA, our most important trading partner.

How much business productivity, and its resulting gains in jobs and prosperity,  have been lost due to government-imposed tax and regulatory burdens is anybody’s guess.

How do our political leaders, tax authorities and regulators justify imposing these overheads?

Clearly, huge levels of taxation, both direct and deferred, are needed to fund our unwieldy public bureaucracies and their payment obligations. With respect to regulations, who are their trying to protect but ourselves from ….. ourselves  (go figure)?

How can Ontario ever expect to host successful businesses, with their attending growth in jobs and overall prosperity, when our governments insist upon restraining our Citizen Entrepreneurs with the state-mandated,  command & control equivalent of a choke chain?

While I doubt that it is possible to accurately measure how much this “choke chain” is restraining the creativity, energy and investing within Ontario’s businesses, a quick “gut check” will surely lead most of us to the conclusion: “Too much” !

Who is a “Citizen Entrepreneur” and why should we trust him/her?

The Citizen Entrepreneur is any citizen who is employed in a ‘for profit’ business enterprise that faces competitive pressures every day in order to survive and thrive.

Unlike non-competitive public service providers, all entrepreneurs face competitive pressures that force them to:  be creative and seek new value propositions in order to attract customers; to control costs in order to find the right balance between profit & loss as well as growth or loss of market share; to genuinely serve customers’ needs & interests which translates into superior customer service; to hire, train and mentor staff to achieve high levels of work performance; to expand the wealth of society in ways that will continue to support a rising standard of living for everyone.

In other words, the Citizen Entrepreneurs can be found among our friends, family members, personal communities and ourselves. 

Those who oppose the Citizen Entrepreneur are generally our citizens who directly or indirectly benefit from Big Government – these include public service employees; public sector labour union leaders; those persons whose income is predominantly derived from government sources such as public subsidies to politically favoured enterprises as well as those that have been granted monopoly powers to ensure competitive advantage.

A fair society is one in which power and money is not centralized in the hands of the government but decentralized in the hands of individual citizens either in their role as Citizen Entrepreneur or as consumer.  

This is the libertarian vision. We wish to share it with every voter who is willing to “think outside of the box” and consider this highly attractive alternative as a means of attaining true democracy rather than the Totalitarian Statism that we currently refer to as “democracy”.

Why trust the Citizen Entrepreneur ?  

A wise man I met in 1981, who had worked several years in the Ontario government before leaving for a private sector job in Alberta, taught me that "the currency of government is votes".   He went on to explain that the constant pressure to win votes felt by all politicians guides their public  decisions - whether its spending the public purse to "buy votes" with "investment" promises or its creating regulations that favour the party's largest supporting voter bases.  

Citizen Entrepreneurs strive for a different kind of "vote"- the kind that tells them that the products and/or services they sell are the kind that pleases so many customers that they continue to produce sales, obtain repeat business and generate consistent profits. 

Profits are the reward of any successful business that generates many sales whereby  every sale is a unique and voluntary exchange between customer and vendor. 

Votes are the reward for successful politicians who succeed in convincing enough special interest groups that they will selectively benefit from their political support of said politicians at that coerced expense of everyone else.

Given the choice, who would you rather trust?