When I first read about Google Friend Connect, an upcoming service that will allow website owners to easily add social network functionality to their own websites, I immediately thought of these lines from NBC’s “The Office”:

Dwight: Why am I being forced to come in tomorrow and pretend that a website made sales that I made?
Ryan: This is a temporary measure to increase the legitimacy of the site.
Stanley: I don’t like when my clients call me to help them use the website, I’m not seeing commissions on that.
Ryan: I hear you Stanley, that is a great observation. Problems like that will not happen when we launch Dunder Mifflin Infinity 2 point O.
Stanley: When will that be?
Ryan: TBD. Phyllis?
Phyllis: Did the police solve the problem with the…
Ryan: Yes, yes they did, yes they did.
Ryan: Yes, the social networking feature of the Dunder Mifflin Infinity website was infiltrated by sexual predators.
Dwight: I don’t understand why our website has to have social networking at all.
Jim: Yeah, I actually have to agree with Dwight on that one.
Ryan: It’s all about creating a one stop shop consumer experience, alright? You’re chatting with your friends, you’re talking about the latest music, about the election; all of it is happening in our virtual paper store.
Jim: And then an older gentleman asked you “Boxers or briefs?”
Creed: I don’t get the big fuss here, I like the site.
Kelly: If I’d have created a website with as many problems, I’d kill myself.
Ryan: Do you have a question Kelly?
Kelly: Yeah I have a lot of questions. Number one, how dare you?
Michael: [slow clapping] Ryan has done a very good job, and I am not applauding sarcastically. Think about it, a month ago nobody would go on this site because we were worried about getting molested, or losing our identity, having it stolen. But now, at a time TBD, all of the problems will be in the past. Ya done good kid, ya done good.
– Source: OfficeQuotes.net

I thought all this was pretty funny, but the ability to drop social features onto your website with little more than some pasting of JavaScript might just prove us all wrong.  :)

Example:

3 of your friends liked SemiGloss Oxford White Cardstock #80.  Click here to get new friends!

A family friend recently moved to Utah so his wife could attend BYU.  He’s looking for work and has experience coding in C and Python.  If you know of any opportunities, would you please let me know?

Allan Young plugged my last post in a piece he wrote about the potential of arson as a scapegoat of housing-bubble hardships.

His post reminds me of a similar report of arson, this time related to government rent control.  In Thomas Sowell’s excellent book, Basic Economics - A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy, he explains that in places where the government puts price ceilings on rent to make housing more affordable, rental properties often suffer major losses, and many owners end up torching their own properties to avoid suffer ongoing losses.  This trend is well-documented, by the way.  Introduce rent control in a city, and you can bet the level of arson in that city will increase.

So a socialistic program intended to make housing more available will actually make it less available; and because artificially low rents ensure that existing housing is filled while reducing profit incentive to build more housing, renters who might have a place to live under a free market system are forced to flee to another city without rent control, or become homeless.

Yes, it’s just another example of the way the perverse incentives of socialism love to backfire.

Anyway, the arson connection is interesting.  The Government should look at the real-world incentives of policies it creates, which often trigger results exactly opposite of those it intends.  The incentives leading to crash of the housing market demonstrate the exact same principle, but I’ll cover that tomorrow.

 I wish more people understood the substance of this recent article from Ron Paul:

Big Government Responsible for Housing Bubble

The House passed two bills attempting to rehabilitate the housing and mortgage market this week.  There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of criticism and blame for the bad decisions, and rightly so.  Lenders and banks do share much of the blame for the overheated market.  Lending standards were relaxed, or even abandoned altogether, creating an exaggerated pool of homebuyers that led to ballooning home prices that many, especially real estate investors, expected to continue forever.  Now that the bubble has burst, the losses are staggering.

However, many in Washington fail to realize it was government intervention that brought on the current economic malaise in the first place.  The Federal Reserve’s artificially low interest rates created the loose, easy credit that ignited a voracious appetite in the banks for borrowers.  People made these lending and buying decisions based on market conditions that were wildly manipulated by government.  But part of sound financial management should be recognizing untenable or falsified economic conditions and adjusting risk accordingly.  Many banks failed to do that and are now looking to taxpayers to pick up the pieces.  This is wrong-headed and unfair, but Congress is attempting to do it anyway.

These housing bills address the crisis in exactly the wrong way, by seeking to hide the problem with more disastrous government bail-outs and interventions.  One measure, HR 5830 the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Housing Stabilization and Homeowner Retention Act would allow the FHA to guarantee as much as $300 billion worth of refinanced home loans for those facing threat of foreclosure.  HR 5818 the Neighborhood Stabilization Act, would provide $15 billion in loans and grants to localities to purchase and renovate foreclosed homes with the object of then selling or renting out those homes.  Thankfully, President Bush has vowed to veto both of these bills.  It is neither morally right nor fiscally wise to socialize private losses in this way.

The solution is for government to stop micromanaging the economy and let the market adjust, as painful as that will be for some.  We should not force taxpayers, including renters and more frugal homeowners, to switch places with the speculators and take on those same risks that bankrupted them.  It is a terrible idea to spread the financial crisis any wider or deeper than it already is, and to prolong the agony years into the future.  Socializing the losses now will only create more unintended consequences that will give new excuses for further government interventions in the future. This is how government grows - by claiming to correct the mistakes it earlier created, all the while constantly shaking down the taxpayer.  The market needs a chance to correct itself, and Congress needs to avoid making the situation worse by pretending to ride to the rescue.

The only change I would make is to note that, despite its intentionally misleading name, the Federal Reserve is not a government entity; it’s a privately owned bank.

By the way, if everybody wants “change”, and everybody is worried about the economy, why does the Utah GOP (and the GOP in general) go out of their way to ensure that the only presidential candidate that is talking about meaningful change at the very root of our financial problems gets no serious consideration from the mainstream.  Ron Paul has been talking about sound monetary policy for years; and even thought the bubble has burst (making the validity of his tenets even more painfully obvious), he still gets no love from the powers that be at the Utah Republican Party Convention.

Be sure to follow Ron Paul’s weekly columns. They really are excellent.

I’m hoping to attend this series by Stephen Pratt, who wrote the forward to “The 5000 Year Leap”.

Are you familiar with the revolutionary ideas that produced the miracle of America? Do you understand the principles of liberty embodied in the Declaration and in the Constitution? Can you defend that “glorious standard?” Well, you are in for a real treat!

You are cordially invited to attend (no charge) a four-part lecture series entitled “Know Your Liberty,” taught by Stephen Pratt of Fillmore, Utah. He will present these classes in Orem, Utah. Here is the location:

Liahona Academy
280 South 400 East
(across from Orem High)
Orem, Utah

Please mark these dates and times on your calendar (notice that three of the lectures begin at 7:00 PM, and one begins at 9:30 AM):

#1, Friday, May 2, 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
#2, Saturday, May 3, 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM
#3, Friday, May 9, 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
#4, Saturday, May 10, 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM

Here are the lecture titles:

#1, The Standard: How to Measure a Candidate or Issue
#2, The Empire Has No Clothes & Becoming a Citizen-Statesman
#3, Government by Judiciary & Empire of Debt
#4, The Three Foundings of America

Stephen Pratt is a warm and engaging speaker who never seems to have enough time to cover the vast amount of material he has at his fingertips to share. He studied with W. Cleon Skousen for years, and worked for the National Center for Constitutional Studies. His experience in presenting this information spans decades and many states. You will love his wit and his delightful personality! Please join us for these marvelous opportunities. The content is geared toward adult thinking but it may be understandable for youth of about 14 years and older.

See http://www.turntotheconstitution. com/pratt_mar_apr_may.html and http://www.libertyandlearning. com/ for more information.

Please share this invitation with your liberty-loving friends and acquaintances.

– Source: Mailer from Lowell Nelson

I hope to see you there.