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If it had been a scene in “Atlas Shrugged,” the guy would have disappeared into the secrecy of Colorado with a shadowy figure who we would later learn to be John Galt. In real life, the story will probably be more complex. But I wonder how long it’s going to be before businesspeople really do start walking away and deciding it’s not worth doing business in America today. Or is it already happening and we just don’t know it?

The man you see in the picture is Ronnie Bryant. He operates coal mines in Alabama. I’d never heard of him until this morning, but after what I saw and heard from him, I’d say he’s a bit like a southern version of Ellis Wyatt from Ayn Rand’s novel. What I saw made an impression on me.

I was at a public hearing in an inner-city Birmingham neighborhood for various government officials to get public input on some local environmental issues. There are several hot topics, but one of the highest-profile disputes is over a proposal for a coal mine near a river that serves as a source of drinking water for parts of the Birmingham metro area. Mine operators and state environmental officials say the mine can be operated without threatening the water supply. Environmentalists claim it will be a threat.

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A city council in a small Arkansas town has decreed that no group is allowed to meet without council approval to discuss the city. Further, it bans the city’s mayor from meeting with people to discuss city business and it purports to disband a private citizens group.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I couldn’t decide whether the story was a better example of arrogance or stupidity. Either way, there’s ignorance all around. Watch the video for yourself.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with First Amendment law knows that the move is unconstitutional, so I’m not going to dwell on the legal points. If it were just a legal matter, I’d laugh at the ignorance and stupidity of people making rules that they don’t have the authority to make.

But I see it as indicative of something much more sinister. I see it as the heart of what the coercive state is all about. At its core, the state is about the majority seizing power and deciding what everyone else is allowed to do — and that’s wrong, whether you’re telling people they can’t express their opinions or telling them what kind of toilets they must install or what kind of light bulbs they’re allowed to buy.

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At the beginning of the primary election season last year, a friend here in Alabama asked me what I thought of an obscure Republican gubernatorial candidate. The guy was a state legislator and physician who I’d never heard of before he announced he was running for governor.

“Robert Bentley?” I asked. “Who’s he? He has no real campaign experience. He’s never done anything that anybody’s heard of. He has less chance of getting elected governor than my dog Lucy does.”

Six months later, this obscure guy was elected governor in a landslide. Lucy still hasn’t announced her candidacy for anything.

I spent most of two decades working in Alabama politics among Republican campaigns. I was just as qualified as anybody to be considered an expert about who had a shot. But I was absolutely, positively, 100 percent wrong.

The iPhone is pretty darned ubiquitous these days — including the iPhone 4 that’s with me pretty much 24 hours a day — but many experts predicted its failure when it was announced early in 2007. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer certainly hoped Apple’s new phone would flop, but he sounded as though he was absolutely confident in April 2007 when he said the following:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.”

So why do so-called experts get things so wrong so frequently. Was I less informed about state politics than I thought I was? Was I just an idiot who was falsely sure of his opinions? And what about Ballmer? He’s a very successful head of one of the world’s largest companies. How could he have been so wrong about the iPhone, as compared to his own failing Windows Mobile platform?

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