So let’s remove all worries of bias by stating that I’ve also worked on a lot of Flash projects–just check my portfolio. I love what Flash has enabled for games in the web browser. As a developer, I’m not fond of some of the seemingly voodoo-ness and slowness of Flash. On the flip side, I am not enamored by Apple’s App Store development tools–I’m a PC.

This is the rare time that I get to integrate marketer, game developer, and libertarian into a single discussion. I honestly do not want to have to do this often as it would mean the government is increasingly inserting its unwanted tentacles into my beloved video game industry–stay out please.

I’ve been following the Apple/Adobe debate ever since Apple announced iPhone OS 4.0 and the change in developer agreement that disallowed Flash cross-compiling–allowing developers to build apps using Flash tools for sale on the App Store. Then there were rumblings of FTC involvement–apparently, they weren’t happy with just annoying Google in their AdMob purchase.

First off, I would the FTC to show me where the trust is that Apple creates by disallowing the use of Flash on their mobile devices. The FTC can’t show the trust because there is no trust. They have to rephrase the issue to “anti-competitiveness”. What does that mean? Is it when the government grants Con Edision or National Grid or Verizon the monopoly (trust) to offer electric, gas, or telephone service in certain territories? That seems quite anti-competitive to me, I can only pick one provider for each of those services based on where I live. Strange how the FTC doesn’t bother those guys.

Apple owns the App Store. Apple owns the iPhone OS. If Apple discontinues the iPhone and the App Store tomorrow, all of this is moot. Flash won’t die if this happens. Adobe will be just fine. So what’s the problem? Why is it that Apple should be obligated to allow anyone to use their property as they like? There is no such obligation. This debate is completely ridiculous.

It is Apple’s responsibility to regulate their App Store. Not the FTC. Apple disallows porn on their App Store because they don’t want it there. By the FTC’s ideals, porn SHOULD be allowed on the App Store because its unfair to the porn industry. The porn industry is missing out on the millions of iPhone users who could have access to their content. Ludacris.

But, that’s the argument for Apple allowing Flash on their platform. It doesn’t make sense. Apple created the App Store and is largely responsible for making it as successful as it is. Apple is not obligated to give Adobe any share of that pie. In a free society, private people or groups are allowed to freely choose to work together or not.

If the market decides that they want Flash content on their mobile device, Apple will lose market share to the plethora of other mobile phones out there. Developers will move to other platforms and Apple’s revenue will fall. They’ll have no choice but to support Flash when that time comes. But that’s up to the market to decide. The market is you and me. We make decisions every day that regulate all actors of the market. No one needs the FTC to pretend as if they have a crystal ball and can see into the future and know what is best for us.

So not only is any FTC involvement completely unnecessary but, it is not congruent with a free society to force private groups to work together.

So FTC, GTFO.

Knowing what we know, do we really want to get involved in this conflict? I’m saying that we should not put a base in Poland and send aid to Georgia.

You can read an in-depth look at what is really going on here. The main point is that Georgia invaded the “breakaway” province of South Ossetia where a lot of Russian citizens happen to reside. Russia used their military might in response to Georgia’s actions. It is hard to put the fault on Russia in this scenario as Russia is protecting its own citizens. We would expect our government to protected American citizens living in Mexico if certain danger were to arise–there is little difference in this case.

The media will try to make this out to be an aggressive action by Russia because that will sell the news. The only prudent move we can make is to stay out of the affairs of that area. We’ve already got our hands full with the Middle East and a weak economy at home. And besides, do our politicians really have the moral high ground to condemn Russia when we’ve invaded a country that did no harm to us?

I have not been supportive of the protests against China in way of boycotting the Olympic Games or because of the Tibet issue. That cartoon above makes a great point as well as this piece from LewRockwell.com. I’m not saying China is doing the right things but, those living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I recommend you read the article I linked to. :)

I found that pretty funny. I would love to see Paris debate McCain and Obama.

I didn’t know about this movie until after I wrote about our almost $10 trillion national debt. Now that I do, I will be sure to watch it this August. Check out the trailer above.

So, if you and I were in $1,000,000 of debt that was accruing interest on a daily basis, would extending how much more debt we are willing to take on going to solve our problem? Is it a good idea? Of course not! The kicker here is that this $10 trillion of debt is OURS! We are even making monthly payments on it–the government steals money from us every paycheck. Unfortunately, the money that is being taken from us is also being spent instead of paying down debt.

Our national debt in 2001 was in the $5 trillions. We will have almost doubled that by the time Bush leaves office. Neither the Republicans or the Democrats in Congress are fiscally responsible. They are like teenagers with their daddy’s credit card. Paulson has also recently said that we are turning the corner in this housing crisis. Even if that were true, we have just added to another problem: the $10 trillion problem.

I certainly added my own two cents:

You need to work on the Stephen Colbert imitation; it’s not very good. Unless, you weren’t doing a Stephen Colbert, in that case, you must be writing such ridiculousness to get people to read and comment–like I just did and the other folks above, including the ever-intelligent Tom Woods.

I am very interested in Paul’s autobiography which is only tentatively titled, Revolution: A Memoir.

And do you really think taxpayers should be paying for medals for Rosa Parks or Mother Theresa? Paul did suggest that the representatives who supported it could shell out their own money–they didn’t. Using other people’s money to give gifts is ridiculous.

Not too long after that, more pro-Ron Paul comments piled on. The lesson here: bash Ron Paul, get web traffic!

Barack Obama recently visited Iraq and reports are saying that the Iraqi Prime Minister shares his view of withdrawing troops by 2010. But, there is fine print: any withdrawal plan is subject to the level of violence. As much as I care about what the Iraqi Prime Minister thinks, I care more about what Americans think. 70% of Americans are not in favor the war in Iraq. We wanted to leave in 2006; we want to leave right now.

A timetable for withdrawal based on the level of violence in an area as unstable–and made more unstable by our presence–as that region is as good as having no timetable. We need to leave now. Protect our troops from harm that can be avoided and bring them home. Obama’s withdrawal plan should be to start the day he steps foot into the White House; not in 2010 based on violence levels of a violent area.

Can it be?

I’ve been watching Don Harrold’s videos on YouTube for quite a while now. He makes a lot of good videos about the markets, CNBC, Mad Money with Jim Cramer, etc. I didn’t see this particular 4th of July video until now and felt compelled to share. Check it out!

Found this video at The Freetarian blog, you might know him better as Val Venis of wrestling fame. Does a great job explaining the real reason behind why the price of gas is so high today. I’ve wrote about it but, this is a quick two minute explanation; perfect for those who don’t like to read. :)

As a student of Austrian Economics, the recent increase in prices of everything did not come as a surprise. Austrian economists have been talking about the problem of inflation and bad monetary policy for years. Most people hate economics. It probably has something to do with schools generally teaching Keynesian Economics. Did you know how to pronounce that? Probably not. The Keynesian teachings are generally flooded with lots of charts, graphs, and math. I’d imagine most people get turned off by that–I certainly do. Austrian writings are a lot easier to understand and don’t turn economics into physics with a multitude of formulas, equations, and symbols.

The simple reason for the high price of gas is inflation. Gas prices are not the cause of inflation but a result of inflation. News reports on the major news networks and syndicated across the Associated Press define inflation as an increase in prices and then go on to blame the high price of oil for inflation. This is a misunderstanding of the monetary system and the concept of inflation. Inflation is the increase in the supply of money which in turn drives up the price of goods and services.

Most people have a good understanding of supply and demand. If you had ever collected anything, you know that the more rare an item is, the more money it will be worth. In the case of money, it is the reverse. The more rare dollars are, the lower the price of goods; the less rare dollars are, the higher the price of goods. What we have today is an enormous amount of dollars in the economy thanks to the Federal Reserve and big government.

Inflation has been with us for a long time now. Alan Greenspan had inflated furiously after the Tech Bubble. The result of his inflation was the increase in the price of homes. This made everyone who owned a home feel richer and led to a boom in housing like we have never seen before. All that is currently imploding on itself with things like the sub-prime crisis and “credit-crunch”.

The only way to truly reverse this trend in oil prices is to stop the Federal Reserve from inflating and reduce the size of government. Drilling for more oil will help but, a low supply oil is not the major factor. The near future is going to hurt the wallets of a lot of Americans. I have no immediate solutions as to how one can get gas for significantly cheaper–I will likely just drive less as I can afford to do so. What we need to do is to educate ourselves and the people around us to the root cause of our current economic problems: Federal Reserve and big government. Until that happens, we will continue to be victims of these cyclic economic disasters.

We often forget what it means to be Americans and usually that means we forgot the American history that we were taught in school. Every reputable textbook on American history has a copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in it. If you were anything like me, you never bothered to read them–even though it was assigned. The schools probably could have done a better job making it more engaging and helped us better understand the older English but, they didn’t. Those documents didn’t really mean much to me as I never really understood them. There has always been an unconscious idea of American principles that I’ve carried around. Only recently have I been able to consciously express them. I place a much higher value on the Constitution and Declaration of Independence today because of its ideas and its message–also known as the American Way.

It is hard to know how those who lived through World Wars or economic collapses felt. The biggest history book event that I have experienced was 9/11. The events of the day and the preceding wars and public policies have likely affected my views on politics in ways I’ll never know. Without a doubt, the world would be a very different place today if that never happened. For one, I would not be looking at a hole in the ground when I go into Manhattan and I would still have a chance to view the city from atop the World Trade Towers–one of the side-effects of living in New York is that you don’t go to the “tourist” attractions.

On September 11th, 2001, I was a sophomore in high school. I know everyone says they’ll never forget that day and of all the days in the last 7 years, I do remember that day most vividly. There are some details that I have forgotten but, I remember the “highlights”–as horrible a word to use as it is. I remember the classes I had that day and the closed off part of the cafeteria. One could actually see the World Trade Towers from my high school in Brooklyn. My Dad–at the time, he worked in downtown Manhattan fairly near what is now Ground Zero–had picked me up from school that day and the trains weren’t working so there was quite some walking. Some trains did come back online which was of great help as I lived on the other side of Brooklyn. The cable news networks kept showing the collapse of the two towers that day and everyone wanted to know what the hell happened. I was basically glued to the TV, I’m sure, most other Americans were as well.

I was in total support of going after Osama bin Laden and his friends in Afghanistan. Who wasn’t? How can any American just do nothing after such an attack? The invasion of Afghanistan in search of bin Laden was as justified a mission as any could have been. It was unfortunate that we switched gears, stopped looking for bin Laden, and invaded Iraq. At first, I was sold on the Iraq War. I was also not even old enough to vote yet so what did I really know? My allegiance to any political party could have easily been had and as the Iraq War quickly turned sour, the Democratic Party had me.

My political-awareness has shot to the sky ever since I was able to vote. I guess it didn’t really make much of a difference to me whether I understood the political system or not if I had no say. My parents weren’t bringing up politics at the dinner table–in fact, they would be in the populous who abstains from voting or caring–and how many teenagers sit around and talk about politics? College probably made a difference and stereotypically–considering I’m from a very liberal New York–I considered myself a Democrat. I do remember my Dad always being in favor of Republicans because he didn’t like the welfare state–ironically, he works for the United States Post Office now. Checking “Democratic Party” on my voter registration form didn’t take much thought and I proceeded to vote for the Democratic candidate in 2004–my first election year. I didn’t even really know John Kerry’s message and if I were to read his platform today, I would probably be sick to my stomach excluding the part about leaving Iraq.

I was pretty brainwashed by the Democratic Party’s propaganda and the general leftist liberal messages. Some of it did make sense. I believe that people should be free, civil rights should be protected, and all the other liberal positions on natural liberties. Liberty is one issue that I have a very firm and immovable stance on. Patrick Henry summarizes it perfectly, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” I believe there is no point in living under a tyranny of any sort be it by a small group or a majority.

I would likely still be affiliating myself with the Democratic Party if I wasn’t so interested in money. I don’t mean just having it; we all want to have money. It is only natural to want to be well off. That is why we go to college. My interest in money extends deeper than riches in the form of fast cars, gold teeth, spinning rims, or big houses–I’m probably not that into gold teeth or spinning rims anyway. It is my curiosity of how money works that led me to learn as much as I could about economics and to some degree finance.

Once I had a pretty solid understanding of economics, it was no longer possible to support the liberal agenda. It had become illogical. From that point I had considered myself a “Moderate”–not that I knew what that meant. Aligning with some sort of group just seemed important–it was all peer pressure! Since I couldn’t support the Democratic welfare agenda or the Republican warfare agenda, I took the middle ground. I knew I couldn’t support either major party but, was not savvy enough to look for third parties.

My affiliation with moderates lasted for a while. The votes I cast in 2006 was mainly a message to Congress saying, “leave Iraq.” Many other Americans appeared to have had the same message as well. The Congress has not gotten an inch closer in doing so. The inaction of Congress was extremely disappointing. Imagine that, just two years of the “democratic” process and it was able to suck out my enthusiasm. There is this idea of America that I read about, heard about, and learned about but, where is it?

The idea of America is still very much with us. It is in our history, our Constitution, and our Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, not many people from the two major parties are aware that the idea of America is not in the America that they are creating. I come across a lot of liberals in New York and sometimes a conservative here and there. The trend that I’ve noticed is that they are so caught up in party politics that they forget about the idea of America. One side argues for an increase in welfare programs like universal health care and the other side is all about fighting the terrorists by taking away our rights. Both sides don’t think twice before trampling over the Constitution.

The Constitution is a very short document. It outlines all the powers of the United States government and unless a power is stated, it is not a power of the federal government. If we were to ever doubt that, we can just read the 10th Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It tells us that any powers not mentioned are reserved for the States or the people. It isn’t the IRS Tax Code. It is not hard to make sure policies are in line with the supreme law of the land.

The American Way is fundamentally very simple with the Constitution at its core. We know that individual freedom and liberty leads to greater prosperity for everyone. It is in a free society where each individual’s right to life, liberty, and property is protected that everyone is better off. America has grown to become a great and strong nation in the span of less than two and a half centuries because of these core beliefs. We have brought incredible prosperity to our own people and to the people of the world. Where there are people living in unjust circumstances, our history is their hope. This idea of individual freedom and liberty is not the prevailing thought in human history and not many centuries ago, the majority of people lived under tyrannies; lived as slaves.

Modern America has veered off course under many Presidents from both parties. Regardless of the politicians, we are still a great nation of great people. The American Way is being and has slowly been phased out of public opinion. It is incredibly sad that so many Americans don’t understand their own system of government–for one, we are not a democracy but, a republic. History has shown that free people tend to become enslaved if they fail to understand what it means to be free. It is painfully clear that the majority of American citizens have forgotten what it means to be an American when the biggest debates in public policy is about how much government should do for these groups of people or to solve this problem instead of whether government should even be involved in these issues at all.

Our immediate future is littered with gloom and doom. It is going to be hard to avoid at least some backlash after decades of disregarding the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, et al. Our economy is being held together by duct tape and the majority of our citizens would be quicker to embrace socialism than take an understanding in free markets. The news is bad and is likely to get worse. It has taken a long time to deteriorate to where we are but luckily, it will take a lot less time to get back to real prosperity.

I hear a lot of people saying that things are still okay. We are still an economic powerhouse and things could be worse. I certainly agree that things are only okay and could still get worse. I was getting a haircut one day and at the shop was a recent immigrant from China. She was basically complaining about how things are not so great here compared to how it was back home. I don’t have much of the details as I can’t speak a lick of Chinese without sounding like an idiot so my understanding is going to be fairly elementary. The main thing I took away from having eavesdropped on that conversation is that we have fallen quite a bit if our standard of living can even be compared to those of a Communist nation. Are we now a people satisfied with mediocrity? I’ve heard many people speak ungratefully about America before but rarely are they able to say they would be better off had they not come here.

I am certainly not going to take her words as truth–I am biased towards my country. The Chinese middle class happens to eclipse our entire population so there is incredible potential there. However, we have roots in freedom that the Chinese just do not. American ingenuity cannot be duplicated by massive government control. We have a fundamental and almost innate understanding of freedom. We are open, kind, resilient, independent, creative, and forward thinking. Those are the qualities that our Constitution brings out in people that are part of the American Way.

232 years ago, in 1776, on the 4th of July, a people declared their independence from tyrannical monarchy rule. On that day, freedom took root in the Americas. Unbeknown to most of human kind would be the incredible prosperity that all man would be blessed with from that day forward. Thomas Paine noted that “the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” The cause of America is still ongoing. Throughout our 232 year history, there have been highs and lows. Times when freedoms and liberties were lost and people suffered and times when freedom and liberty provided us with enormous prosperity. Some of us may have become too complacent with the status-quo and forgotten the American Way but, today, freedom is a message whose time has come–again. There is an undercurrent of free minded Americans who remember the American cause and understand the American Way.

On this 4th of July, I urge you to read over the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson once said, “every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.” If we are to remain a nation of freedom and prosperity, it is up to we the people to keep government in check. And we can only do that if we understand the American Way.