One of the first "media debate" dares occurred when Dr.
Rex Curry publicly issued a standing challenge to newspaper columnist Daniel
Ruth, and members of other political groups or media outlets, to debate Ruth's
column in which Ruth condemned economic freedom (what Ruth calls "price gouging").
http://rexcurry.net/ruth.html
The response against Ruth from the general public was so great that
Ruth said he was labeled a "Dork, anti-free market statist $#@%!&@, Dummkopf,
liberal, daffy, dolt, stupid, dunce and, oh by the way, socialist." In a second
column Ruth, humiliated by Curry's debate dare, wouldn’t debate and issued
a public apology to Curry regarding Ruth's earlier column. A pic of Rex's
debate shirt is at http://rexcurry.net/ruthgouge.jpg
Below is the famous parody/rebuttal of Daniel
Ruth's loopy attack against a free market economy.
If you read newspapers for as long as I have then
all manner of ditzoid craziness slops its way over the journalistic gunwales
-claims of UFO abductions, the conspiracy theorists, Nazis cabals, deranged
threatening environmentalists and people who believe monkeys are taking over
the world.
And those are just some of the serious news stories
I've read over the years. There have been some newspaper columnists, too,
who have been really weird.
But for all the black helicopter sightings and arguments Shecky Green
and the Jewish lobby control the government and Y2K means the end of the
world, this had to be not only the most certifiably insane, but perhaps the
most twistedly entertaining.
Daniel Ruth - a newspaper columnist - weighed in with one long sputtering
bluster against free market economics (what Ruth calls “price gouging” -
a term Ruth never defines). Ruth wanted to comment on disaster conditions
such as those after Hurricane Andrew devastated the city of Homestead in south
Florida.
You have to wonder what schools Ruth went to. Government schools?
The government taught him everything it knows and he is still stupid.
But that is statist quo.
Ruth is also one of the most visible local disciples of the Tampa Tribune,
which ought to have his embarrassed fellow travelers donning Groucho Marx
disguises around the office and about town.
Responding to a recent criticism of the filing of
more than 500 price-gouging complaints to Florida law enforcement after Hurricane
Floyd, Ruth asked a supporter of free market economics the following question:
“If Tampa had been devastated by a hurricane and you
had to stand in line for three hours to buy ice for $50-a-bag, or sit in line
for four hours to buy gas at $5-a-gallon, I wonder just how devotedly Libertarian
you would be.”
Ruth demonstrated by his question his utter lack of
comprehension of the issue. Thereafter, Ruth fell into his ruthless
mental silence when the free marketeer attempted to show Ruth the stupidity
of Ruth's question by asking Ruth: “If Tampa had been devastated by a hurricane
and you had to stand in line for 6 hours (instead of 3) to buy ice for its
government imposed price, or sit in line for 8 hours (instead of 4) to buy
gas at its government controlled price, or if you actually had to go without
the above, and building materials, bread, etc, because there wasn't any to
buy at government imposed prices, I wonder just how devotedly socialistic/statist
(or however you describe yourself) you would be.”
By the way, Ruth also seems to believe that people
who hoard goods in advance of a disaster should be arrested. Why? It's just
too ... too ... loopy. Reached by phone, Loopy Ruth did his mental
blank out when asked whether his support of arresting price gougers also translated
into his support for arresting hoarders. Of course, Ruth's reasoning
against his perpetually undefined “price gouging” does justify (and has justified)
prohibiting hoarding, arresting consumers who hoard, confiscating their goods,
and imposing rationing and general economic socialism, with any disaster
as the pretense. Ruth's brain doesn't travel that far, though.
Indeed, it doesn't even travel far enough to suspect that some people who
hoard before a disaster are the people who are gouging after a disaster.
This space was curious. Since Ruth, the lazy statist
from hell, thinks laws against price gouging are so swell, how would he feel
if he had to wait longer hours to buy a bag of ice for a government-controlled
price, or discover that there was no gas at the government-controlled price?
The Karl Marx of the Twilight Zone responded with
a bunch of journalistic babble about injustice in modern America and an attack
on free market economics, concluding by accusing this space of being libertarian.
I assume that's bad.
Still the Felliniesque Fidel Castro had never answered
the original question.
Ruth pondered another simple query: How would he feel
if he personally knew of people taking goods into a disaster area to sell
them at prices that were higher than before the disaster? He'd be happy
to see them arrested, or to see them personally suffer violence at the hands
of statist vigilantes (or maybe both?).
Indeed, it was evident that it had never entered
Ruth's mind, after Hurricane Andrew, to load up a truck with a bunch of
necessities, rush into a disaster area and sell people whatever they needed
and wanted for whatever they would gladly pay.
This proves three things. A) Statists are greedy,
lazy %$#!@?$!#+ who won't help others, and who will take property from others,
and they are nasty people who will use government to get their way. And B)
For all his economic claptrap, Daniel Ruth is completely clueless if he thinks
no one can go into a disaster area to charge people extra for goods for which
they would gladly pay; and C) There is a reason why it never occurs to people
like Ruth to load up a truck and drive into any disaster area --but
Ruth will never figure out what that reason is, or how it is related to his
naive, statist keister and his willingness to kick others around while he
whines for more government, in the safety of his cubicle, far from any disaster
area.
As well, irrespective of inane statist economic theories
or statutes, all laws against price gouging are simply morally wrong because
they worsen the circumstances of people when they are at their lowest emotional
and financial ebb, forcing them to go without or to endure longer lines and
bigger shortages.
It is an essential cornerstone of statists to promote
and defend the role of government in virtually all aspects of life. That sounds
fine until the socialist bureaucrats arrive to pick away at human pride with
their economic disasters before, during and after a natural disaster.
The irony, of course, is that one of the reasons we
have so much prosperity and abundance, even with Ruth's perpetually undefined
“price-gouging”, is because a free market protects the public against the
likes of the Daniel Ruth's of the world.
For not only is Ruth a writer with a big public forum,
his reasoning is that of half-baked socialism/statism. Terrifying.
