How is it, exactly, that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg could possibly rise up from modest, even humble beginnings and up through the free market system achieve great wealth and build global institutions, yet somehow come to believe that government knows best?
Are his mandates – to control, even worse ban, the over-large sizes of soft drinks offered by competitive businesses in the free-market system to freely choosing people or to walk into the nursing rooms of new mothers and declare they are to breast feed their babies, regardless of what they may wish to do – encroachments on our Constitutional rights? Invasions of our privacy?
Well, to speak of consumption of Coke and Mountain Dew and A&W root beer in the same breath as a reference to the Constitution of the United States seems a little off, a bit melodramatic.
But we’re not the ones who started this conversation.
So how could he do it?
Would he, of all people who strive for the freedom to go and do and achieve and persevere and fight for the American Dream, be the very one (who might understand it better than most, having actually done it in spades) bail on the whole idea?
You’d think…
You’d think Bloomberg would know better than just about anyone the value and importance of freedom. The freedom to choose, to compete, to offer what consumers want, to do one better than the other guy, to offer a better deal; a more attractive deal, to rise to the top; even crush the competition with a product offering that no one else can or will, that attracts the most business. You’d think.
After all, that’s how he made his billions.
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So what happened?
Is he sorry? Does he feel guilty? Did he change his mind? Has he had second thoughts about the whole free to choose thing?
And by the way, if he is a social liberal as he has been described on occasion, where’s the liberality in all this? Liberal-schmiberal. And a Republican? Ha! Republican-schmublican.
If we hadn’t already written him off as a nut – a farcical anomaly of a mayor; of anything really; perhaps he’s become crazed in his latter, tired days – we might think him funny, even cute and harmless in his wacked totteriness. But it’s not funny. We’re talking about our rights to – or not to – breast feed and drink pop, and lots of it, all at the same time, by God, if we want.
And we do want.
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He spent his growing up and entrepreneurial boom years going like mad, eventually making money hand over fist, and building his capital. He achieved, in the business world, great success, and financially achieved absolute independence. And all arguably by offering what his customers wanted.
He was able to do this because of a few important factors:
One, he was smart.
Two, he was ambitious, willing to work hard and tirelessly.
Three, he was able to understand the market and the marketplace, and took advantage of his opportunities and so could give consumers what they wanted.
Here’s our theory:
After he arrived – at the top – he was done.
He pretty much said, “I have spent my entire adult life being brilliant and rational. Now I am old and I have achieved everything I really can, so I am done, I quit.”
Well done, Business World’s Good and Faith Servant, come into your reward. Bliss. Ignorant, irrational, and intrusive I’m-gonna save you from yourselves-bliss.
“I no longer have any desire to be rational. Been-there-done-that. Now I am tired. Tired of thinking and remembering. Remembering how I got here. In fact, where am I?
I just spent the last 60-odd years being an entirely rational and sentient animal, and I have done it, so now I quit.”
And that was the end of Michael Bloomberg as a rational being.
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Here’s our simple interpretation, translation, really, of the Rules:
Without actually hurting or placing others in imminent danger, we are free to be as stupid as we want to be, free to be as fat as we want to be, free to be as unhealthy as we want to be, free to be as irresponsible or dumb or as poor decision-makers, or foolish or reckless or selfish or mistaken or obnoxious or rot-gutted-decayed-toothed as we want to be.
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Can the courts or corporate lawyers or citizen’s grassroots pop-drinkers –formula mixer-feeders-32 ounce-obesity rebels and fast food anarchists turn his intrusive Big Brother craziness around? Will they try? I think probably not. We’re all too content lying flat on our couches to get up and give a damn.
And that was the end of the rest of us as rational beings.
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Photo credit Politico.com
Hear, hear!
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely!
I think your article is a joke “Michael Bloomberg Quits.” You may get a lot of cheap traffic because of this bogus/claim post but it won’t last for long.