David McElroy

I decided pretty early in life that I was going to be very different from my parents. It seemed easy at the time to just watch their mistakes and avoid them. So why have I spent so much time over the years hating things about myself that seem to have come straight from them?

Some psychologists would argue that it’s because I learned their habits as I was growing up, so it’s all about the environment. Others might argue that the ways in which I’m like them are simply in my genes (and thus hard to overcome), so it’s all about nature.

I think it’s some of both, as I suspect most people believe today. I think most of us would like to believe we were born as blank slates and that whatever we have is just an accumulation of the “programming” that we got from our parents and whoever else raised us, but I don’t think that’s the case. Economist Bryan Caplan looked at all the studies he could find on the subject and concluded the opposite.

In his recent book, “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think,” he argues that most of what kids are going to become is encoded in their genes. He says that the studies he looked at prove that most of the things parents do to change their kids have little effect. (Here’s an EconTalk podcast in which Caplan discusses the research and his conclusions. I highly recommend it.)

But whatever it is, why have I so often in the past heard things coming out of my mouth — or seen myself acting in certain ways — that seemed to be the ghost of my (still living) father within me?

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For a country that allegedly values free speech, there certainly are a lot of conflicting rules about what member of the U.S. House can say to their constituents in franked mail.

If you’re a member of the Senate, you can say “Merry Christmas” in your constituent mail. If you’re in the House, the rules are different.

A franking commission spokesman confirmed to The Washington Examiner that Members of Congress indeed cannot wish constituents “Merry Christmas” in any official mailing.

“Currently, incidental use of the phrase Happy Holidays is permissible but Merry Christmas is not,” said Salley Wood.

Even if we’re going to keep the current coercive state around, I’d be happy to get rid of the franking privilege. That’s the perk that allows members of Congress to send out pretty much any mail they want without paying for it. Have you ever gotten something from your congressman and noticed his signature instead of a stamp? That’s what that’s all about.

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I have an idea. Instead of letting everyone make his own choices about which products to buy, I think we should extend voting to consumer products. We’ll call it Consumer Democracy.

Since it’s obviously inefficient and confusing to let greedy companies produce different brands and different models of phones, computers, televisions and so forth, we’ll let the companies stage a campaign for their products. Then we’ll vote — and everyone will have to buy that product for the next four years. It will be the only product of its kind allowed on the market. Wouldn’t that be a great idea?

If you don’t think this is a good idea, why would you believe in a system that does exactly the same thing for what are supposed to be the most important decisions in our lives?

Governments generally control our protection against crime and fire. They control where our roads are going to go. Many of them control the water we drink and other utilities that come to our homes. They decide which companies and people are going to be given the money they take out of our pockets.

And they get to decide how much money to take out of our pockets. Not only that, they can send people with guns to our homes to throw us into jail if we don’t co-operate with their theft.

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