Rick Kelo asks Does Democracy Guarantee Freedom?

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Rick kelo

Rick Kelo is an influential political philosopher in the Classic Liberal tradition.  In addition to engaging in various public debates on capitalism vs. socialism with socialist university professors Rick also routinely addresses some of the hard questions out there.  Rick Kelo has earned a reputation for dissecting even obscure and complicated topics in plain English.

Recently Rick Kelo asked us to consider whether having a democracy means the people in that country will have freedom?  “One of the Classic Liberal philosophers whose reading I’ve always enjoyed was Joseph Priestly,” Kelo notes.   Priestly looked at this exact topic:

IT is a matter of the greatest importance, that we carefully distinguish between the form and the extent of power in a government… If the power of government be very extensive, and the subjects of it have, consequently, little power over their own actions, that government is tyrannical, and oppressive; whether, with respect to its form, it be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or even a republic. For the government of the temporary magistrates of a democracy, or even the laws themselves may be as tyrannical as the maxims of the most despotic monarchy.

Joseph Priestley, An Essay on the First Principles of Government

Priestly makes a very important distinction: a government may have any form, the real question is how wide reaching its authority is.  Classic Liberals like Richard Kelo teach that people should be left free from coercion to decide how to live their own lives.  This teaching is also at the root of Pacifism.  If someone isn’t harming another person, or another person’s property, then it is seldom – if ever – morally legitimate to interfere with how they’re living their life.

 

Rick Kelo speaks on Consumer Shaming

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In 1899 a shaming campaign against the common, working man began.  It started with a progressive & socialist named Velben who wrote berating the common man for engaging in consumerism & “growth of wasteful expenditures.”  This at a time when people were reading by candlelight and living in totally Spartan cottages.  That campaign has continued into the 21st century.  President Obama, then Senator Obama, provides us with just one example here:

Progressivism has always objected to the common man peacefully exercising his preferences in his role as the sovereign consumer.  However, as Classic Liberals like Rick Kelo point out the consumer decides exactly what product will be produced, in what quantity, and to what level of quality.

rick kelo

“I don’t eat fast food & I don’t understand why there are so many overweight Americans who do eat it every day. We might say its ‘low quality’ food”, says Rick Kelo.  He continues, “But I know why it exists on every corner of every town in America. Because the common man wants that exact product. People have a fundamental human right to peacefully trade with their fellow man, whether they buy something we personally approve of or buy something we personally consider a poor choice.”

As Richard Kelo shows us, we must be very careful in criticizing people’s rational choices for our own arbitrary reasons.

Rick Kelo asks a question about Wall Street salaries

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Rick A Kelo

When Steve Jobs passed away there was a worldwide outpouring of grief.  The IPhone he created is adored by millions of loyal fans who would never consider switching to a different type of phone.  And never along the way did the mainstream media question whether Steve Jobs “deserved” the fortune he made creating Apple.

Every election cycle though political discourse is filled with challenges that investment bankers and other workers on Wall Street earn an undeserved wage.  That Wall Street bonuses are some how proof of theft or money laundering, whereas the bonus Steve Jobs paid himself each year was never questioned.  Rick Kelo points out this is an easy phenomenon to understand.

“We humans have a natural prejudice to favor things we understand. Since we tinker with our IPhone and understand its tangible value we’re sad when Steve Jobs passes away. The value we receive from financial instruments that we don’t understand is intangible and not something we interact with daily. So there does tend to, rightly or wrongly, be a predisposition to consider the products of these industries as less important than tangible goods.”
~ Rick A Kelo

This also implies that we should be very suspicious of politicians like Senators Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders when they build entire campaigns around criticizing the pay of Wall Street bankers.  As Rick Kelo points out favoring what we know more than what we don’t know is a natural human prejudice.  Politicians know this, and someone who intentionally exploits populist prejudice should be viewed with caution.

Rick Kelo considers the Exploited Worker

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Richard Kelo

In political discourse most people take it for granted that a worker can be exploited, or that workers in general ARE exploited by employers.  But is this really the case?  Rick Kelo is an employment expert who has more than a decade’s experience as an executive recruiter matching tax professionals with opportunities that will advance their careers.  However, Richard Kelo also has an education in economics and philosophy at some of the most prestigious universities in the world.  So today he addresses the “Exploited Worker” myth.

“Workers are paid for their labor far in advance of any revenue generated by the sale of what they produce,” Rick Kelo points out.  “It is the business owner who assumes the risk that he won’t be able to sell what the employee produces.  Also, we must consider that  the worker voluntarily enters into employment,” Kelo continues.  Any of us would laugh if we tried to picture the image of a company sending an HR employee to the street corner to put a gun to someone’s head and force them to work at their company.  In reality, only voluntarily agree to employment when workers feel the wage rate is high enough to benefit them, and they also get a guaranteed payment today unlike the business.

How about the case of the shy employee who doesn’t ask for a raise, and thus believes they are paid less than they deserve?

Rick Kelo spends most of his days as a tax recruiter assisting people in just such a lot, but is that circumstance enough to prove the worker is “exploited?”  Wouldn’t we say that if that less assertive employee chooses not to (ask for more money, look for a better job, whatever the superior condition is we’re considering) that is the same as him actively choosing to remain in his current employment?  Do any of us, as outsiders looking in on someone else’s situation, have a basis for criticizing their rational decision to do that even if our own choice under those conditions would be different?  Clearly that less assertive employee is maximizing their preferences even if that arrangement wouldn’t maximize our preferences in their shoes.

Rick Kelo speaks on EPA Super-Fund Sites

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This article lists the 10 worst EPA super-fund sites of all time.  When we consider the problem of pollution and other, what economists call, neighborhood effects most people only picture the polluter.  Maybe a big company pumping toxic fumes out of a smoke stack or dumping industrial waste into a river.  Rick Kelo points out though that we also need to look at why this pollution happened in the first place.

Rick keloRick Kelo noticed a trend hidden in the list of 10 worst super-fund list and asked why every single item on that list has to do with water or air pollution?  An aspect of pollution we almost never consider.  “In America where are the problematic instances of pollution? It is not mainly on land, where there are strict private property rights. The problematic issues of pollution occur predominantly (to the point of almost exclusively) in the air & water, which are government owned and where private property rights are outlawed,” says Kelo.  “The reason is what’s called Tragedy of the Commons,” he continues.

Under a regime of incredibly strict property rights pollution could not happen, and certainly not to tne extent of the sites we see here. The reason it happens, as Richard Kelo points out, is precisely because we have your system of regulations that shift the burden of acting as an owner onto the government.

Rick Kelo Dissects what Socialism Really Means

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Socialists are fond of claiming that they’re actually speaking for the worker without a voice.  However, Rick Kelo, a West Point graduate and Classic Liberal social thinker sees the matter differently.  To Kelo the actual issue at the heart of Socialism is who actually controls society.

“Socialism is always sold as altruism, but its not actually about helping anyone – it’s really about controlling them,” says Richard Kelo.

Kelo points out it necessarily must mean this because Socialism is the substitution of individual plans for government plans.  “Socialism deprives entrepreneurs and capitalists of the ability to decide how their resources will be employed,” Rick Kelo continues.  “In a Socialist economy small business owners are forced to unconditionally comply with the orders of State central planners.”

Rick Kelo Speaks About Evolution of Taxation

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A Tour of the Taxation World with Rick Kelo

 

Rick Kelo works as the Head Recruiter of TaxScout.  He caters to the figure out the lower future turn over, increase in the retention rate, compensation programs, challenging top performers and market evaluation of a particular company. The company specializes in career level searches and has top rated experience in searching for a hiring requirement. TaxScout specialize in Federal tax, state and local taxes and international taxes. It is a tax-only recruiting company. The company caters to the different hiring needs and ensures that a company gets a secure success quotient.

 

Rick Kelo has commendable knowledge in the field of finance. He has obtained his graduation degree in General engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has completed his post-graduation in finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has worked as a corporate recruiter for many companies. He looks after the financial requirements of the various companies, and creates candidate databases to sync with OFFCCP. Rick Kelo has detailed knowledge about the history of taxation, since he has spent considerable time in the finance sector.

 

The British had levied many unjust taxes during their reign in the colonies. The Stamp act requires all legal documents, wills, permits, in the colonies to carry s tax stamp. The Stamp Tax was issued in 1785 and was withdrawn after severe protests. The Tea Act which led to the occurrence of the Boston Tea Party in 1773 was also an unjust act imposed by the British. The people were furious because of the extra taxes which were imposed on tea and they dropped several cartons of tea were dropped into the sea at Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party invited the outbreak of Revolutionary War in 1775.

 

Rick Kelo

The inhabitants of America were represented in the government by their congressmen and senators. The residents of Washington D.C were not represented in the government. The license plates of the residents of Washington D.C portrayed that they were paying taxes without being represented in the government. The war between north and South Congress broke out in 1861 and income taxes were levied to fund the war. The income tax was placed under the Revenue Act of 1861 and the Tariff Act was also given the status of income tax.

 

Rick Kelo has obtained a sound knowledge about the economic conditions of his country. He also has the knowledge about personal finances and is aware of the methods involved in managing the personal finances.

Rick Kelo’s Quick Thought on the Minimum Wage

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As someone who has vigorously advocated peaceful & voluntary economic cooperation as superior to coercive, State-mandates it comes as no surprise that Richard Kelo has an opinion on the minimum wage.

People think minimum wage will raise the living standards of the most vulnerable workers.  It will, slightly.  But, as Rick Kelo points out often on Twitter, only for those who don’t become unemployed by it.   In his formal education as an economist before becoming a tax recruiter, Rick discovered that minimum wages are not truly a wage increase at all.  They are actually a wage transfer.  Those workers who are forced out of work have their wage transferred to those minimum wage workers who are fortunate enough to keep their job under the new, higher, minimum wage.

If our real belief is that we want to help the most vulnerable, then we should oppose increasing these arbitrary wage laws by remembering how much harm they do to the living standards of the newly unemployed they create.

Rick Kelo & James Galbraith after sparring on economics

Richard Arthur Kelo – The Rise of the Bureaucrat and its Outcomes

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There is a class of people that has emerged since the in statement of rigidly structured governmental systems across the world. This is the class or bureaucrats; the organizers, movers and writers of documents that seem to have all the power to make change yet go nowhere. The bureaucrat has become something of an icon in the contemporary world and has risen in fame as a figure that is unreasonable yet everywhere. Literary icon Franz Kafka embraced the illustrious character of the bureaucrat and made it the central concern of his troubling novel, The Trial. His metaphor of the ‘door of justice’ in other works also alludes to this and has contributed to the difficult position that the bureaucrat now holds in society.

Commentator and blogger Richard Arthur Kelo has written widely on this issue and has interesting opinions regarding the meaning of the bureaucrat. On his blogs https://rickkelo.liberty.me and Rick Kelo Brand Yourself he puts the figure of the bureaucrat in line with the increase in paperwork that comes with over-governmentation. In his essay, Richard Arthur Kelo states that because of the number of processes that have to go through the bureaucratic regime they are gaining in enormous profits simply for overseeing things that do not necessarily need to be qualified. As a classic liberal thinker Richard Arthur Kelo argues that the bureaucrat is a particularly difficult figure because pay cannot be taken away from this position; as long as government on this level continues this money will go their way.

Richard Arthur Kelo also attributes over-governmentation as a cause of businessmen and entrepreneurs leaving certain areas and thus allowing for economic dead zones. This topic can also be read at his blog. Richard Arthur Kelo was educated at the University of Illinois and the Military Academy in West Point, New York. His expertise as a financial analyst and social skills expert have given him good insight into the workings of the business world and considerable knowledge on economic history. His writings are circulated by theorists and writers in the biosphere of economic interest.