Free markets and individual rights

Free markets will not exist without personal freedom. The Asian Tigers thought they could do it, but failed.

Ultimately your free markets will succumb to fascist control without broad based personal freedoms.

200K for the new RUSD Superintendent

It's a good deal if you can get it:  200K for a job for which you have no track record or other indication of competence. 

Why is the RUSD board doing this?  My guess is desperation.  They need someone there fast.  Further delay exhibits their incompetence.

The fact of the matter is that Unified's problems are structural.  Unified is organized to to fail.  The new superintendent won't be doing anything about that situation and will also fail.

Rent-to-own may return

Deregulation in Wisconsin? That is pretty high up on the freedom scale. But that is what the Republicans in the state legislature are considering: exempting Rent-to-own from the Consumer Protection Act.

Deregulation is a libertarian concept. Libertarians assert that people should take responsibility for their own actions, including the purchase of goods and services. "Buyer beware" is a libertarian concept.

It sound good to have rules and regulations to protect consumers against fraudulent providers. But that is really the job of the free market. And it is why, in a free society, entrepreneurs must work their way up the economic ladder, starting with small transactions and building up to bigger deals. The market has to test that entrepreneur on a small scale. And if the entrepreneur shows he or she can do the job right and be trusted, then it is on the bigger things.

That is why, in the free market businesses live and die off their reputations.

It all gets back to responsibility. If people don't want to take responsibility for their services as well as their purchases, then they get what they are getting now: a highly regulated, poorly performing market place, in want of opportunity, business and jobs.

Let’s see if the Wisconsin legislature, executive and judicial branches can actually manage this step towards a freer market place. For this group, such an attempt is highly unusual.