Wake Forest University held a conference this weekend entitled "The Federal Reserve was a Bad Idea".  The keynote speaker was nobel laureate Thomas Sargent (and one of the real nobels, not like Obama’s or Krugman’s!).  The conference was a balanced look at what good the fed has done, and what harms it has caused.  It’s conclusion was that its harms (uncontrollable inflation, politicization of monetary policy, encouraging profligate tax/spend liberal government, government takeover of or checking accounts) outweighed its positives (you got me, but I think something to do with employing thousands of otherwise unemployable PhD economists).

Now, I’m no Ron Paul fan.  I cheered when redstate banned his ever-annoying minions  in 2007.  And so it always gives me pause to possibly be on the same side of the issue as Ron Paul.  But I don’t think I am here.  Paul wants to gain oversight privileges for his committee over the fed, and ultimately use government power to dissolve it and return to a saner, sounder currency.    But I think a more proper approach to fixing the fed is to follow free-market principles.

Suppose a bank such as BB&T were to offer notes backed by some asset, such as gold or silver.  While these would not be legal tender in the sense that anyone would take them, I would certainly prefer to hold my money in these new notes, and I would be willing to explain to puzzled merchants why paying them in $20 Reagan dollars (or whoever they want to put on the front, Coolidge, Harding, whatever) would be doing them a favor, as they’d know they could exchange it for gold at any time.  Within no time, business would be accepting or even preferring Reagan dollars to actual money.  Soon, I an others like me would refuse to patronize any business that did not accept Reagan dollars, and the remaining holdouts would adapt or go out of business.  Marketed correctly, I think such a currency could become as widely accepted as greebacks within one year.  And banks will compete amongst each other for who can make their money the easiest to use.  I think the result would be a handful of new currencies, all very stable, and the marginalization of the dollar.

Naturally, Dear Leader Obama would start demanding tribute (i.e. tax on non-organic foods) in Reagan dollars, and once that happened, one or more private currencies would be the de facto coin of the realm.  The important difference from right now, is that with privately-administered money, the government really would have to spend what it takes in, rather than printing now-useless dollars.  I’m actually surprised this hasn’t happened already.  Perhaps some activist judge has found some constitutional prohibition to private money already?

I’m torn up about what happened at UT-Austin today; but the real tragedy today is that it’s going to put wind in the sails of the PC thugs in the media who are going to tell us that, somehow, preventing Auntie Edna from protecting herself with a Glock is going to keep a psychopath from attempting a murderous rampage on a college campus.  You know, I WISH I were so nihilistic as to believe there was some magic link there, that if I just hoped and changed hard enough, I could see the connection between stomping on the freedom of lawful citizens and deterring murderers.

What REALLY gets me going, though, is that John Lott, one of the most reasonable and well-respected economists in the world, was forced to cancel his seminar tonight at the UT law school on his seminal work, “More Guns, Less Crime”.  Explain this one to me, because I’m apparently not as bright as the geniuses running UT.  Here is someone with a SOLUTION to the problem that JUST reared its head hours ago, and we’re turning him away out of fear of offending the feminazimetrosexual hippies in Austin.

Prof. Lott’s research shows, in a way that is not open to debate by intelligent people without an agenda, that locations in which a higher fraction of citizens carry guns have less crime.  Less violence.  Lott uses game theory to explain why.  Imagine you’re considering committing a gun crime; there are two locations in which you can do so, one which allows concealed carry, one which does not.  You know there are no law-abiding armed citizens in the latter location; there may be in the former.  Where do you go?

College campus are in dire need of good conservative voices.  Dr. Lott is as good as they come, and they turn him away out of PC fear.  When the message he had for the UT campus is EXACTLY what they needed to hear tonight.  If I were a UT student or faculty member (and thank God I’m not!) I would take my business elsewhere, to a place that respects my freedom to defend myself.  ONE armed citizen near this idiot this morning, and this all could have been prevented.

Last week, the New York Times chortled that Gov. Parnell is continuing former Gov. Palin’s efforts to remove polar bears from the “endangered” species list, after they were illegally put there in 2008 by an overzealous and undersmart Federal Fish and Wildlife Service.  Leaving aside the fact that this policy 1-is illegal, 2-is likely to be disastrous for Alaska’s already fragile economy, and 3-has no discernible benefit (even liberal scientists like Bjorn Lomborg and John Cristy have said that most polar bear populations are thriving), I have a more fundamental question: if 1-3 apply to polar bears, why should they not apply, in one form or another, to any “endangered” species?

Do you believe in evolution?  I don’t, but unlike our latte-sipping Prius-driving friends, I don’t assume myself to be so smart that I can know exactly how God effected Creation.

Look, one of two things is true.  One, Darwin was right (unlikely), and we are all mutants.  Two, Darwin was wrong (more likely).  Let’s start with Two.

If Two is right, then there is certainly no need to worry about “endangered” species; species will come and go exactly as they were meant to do, and even if we tried we couldn’t affect their place or purpose on this Earth.  If One is right, I believe we have a far more serious problem on our hands.

Let’s suppose for the moment that Darwinism is correct.  Then, just as Americans were selected to dominate the world’s economy and diplomacy, species are selected to die or thrive based on their competence.  Keeping species that were unable to survive alive then subverts evolution, and amounts to a “bailout” of species that would never be able to make it on their own.  What we end up with are zombie species, capable only of surviving in zoos.  OK, no problem, you say, my daughter loves looking at the polar bears in the zoo.  However, more dangerous still, is that by propping up old species, we are preventing new, more evolutionarily efficient species from popping up.  Indeed, by insisting on a static world and shutting down evolution, we may even be holding ourselves as Humans back, as without the interaction with new, innovative species, we have no evolutionary incentive to evolve ourselves.

“Endangered” species are thus lose/lose.  Occasionally, it is harmless fun.  More often, however, in the case of the “endangered” Alaskan polar bears, liberals are willing to absorb virtually any amount of lost economic growth in order to protect even one more precious animal.  Yet another instance of Al Gore and his ilk solving a problem that no one was aware of but them.