There’s always something to howl about.

Earth to NAR: Drop dead — and try not to stink up the place while you’re doing it

I haven’t paid any attention to this MIBOR business, and I’m grateful to John Rowles for keeping us up to date. Anyone who is dismayed at the way things worked out should be sure to sit at my table when we have a BloodhoundBlog poker tournament: You’re my kind of sucker.

The fact that the NAR is composed of clueless morons should come as a surprise to no one. The fact that they think they can buy off their intellectual superiors by kissing their asses should astonish no one who reads here: I’ve been telling you for years that the dinosaurs pretend to take you seriously in the hopes of compromising you in their corruption. Of course, no one will learn a thing from this experience, which suggests that the dinosaur strategy might well be sound, even though it is absurd on its face. They reason that a grand pageant of being lied to and pandered to makes people feel important, and the evidence suggests they’ve got a good bead on their designated spokesmannequins.

But none of this has anything to do with anything. Whatever combination of cluelessness and collusion motivated this MIBOR clusterfrolick, it’s just a side effect. The NAR is a criminal cartel. Its purpose is to deploy legislation at the federal, state and local levels in behalf of real estate brokers and to the detriment of consumers (and, secondarily, real estate sales people). If you despise the NAR because it is technologically inept, you’re hating it for the wrong reasons. The right reason to detest the NAR, and to seek its extinction, is because it makes war upon the free market in order to expropriate unearned wealth for brokers.

Who pays for the tax deductibility of mortgages? The 70% or more of us who don’t qualify for the deduction. Who will pay for the $8,000 first-time home buyer’s tax credit? Your grandchildren — and it will cost them quite a bit more than $8,000 in interest costs. Thus do the vampires in the NAR make make vampires of us all.

If you want to grouse or joke about how stupid the NAR mandarins are, you will achieve nothing. If you insist that you can reform a crime syndicate by making yourself a part of it, may god have mercy on your soul. But you will not rid the world of cannibals by eating them. In the short run, we can obviate the NAR by supplanting it. But in the long run it must go the way of all dinosaurs. Whatever inane thrashing about it does in its death throes is entirely meaningless.