The Election of 2012
Lincoln argued in the Gettysburg Address that the central issue of the Civil War was whether a society which regarded men as political equals could survive. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Janet Daley, writing in the Telegraph believes that the American presidential election of 2012 is about something equally momentous. It is about whether people are still equals or are now permanently divided into two camps: the taxpayers and the recipients. As Daley rather dramatically frames it, about whether an unbounded welfare state can still coexist with a market economy or whether ‘that nation, or any nation’ dedicated to the primacy of entitlements can long endure without ending in fascism. She writes:
Whatever the outcome of the American presidential election, one thing is certain: the fighting of it will be the most significant political event of the decade …
What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.
Or else democratically elected governments can be replaced by puppet austerity regimes which are free to ignore the protests of the populace when they are deprived of their promised entitlements. You can, in other words, decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy.
Daley writes from a European perspective in which whole nations, Greece and Italy being notable examples, are actually being told to give up sovereign control to Brussels appointed bureaucrats in exchange for an uninterrupted supply of government cheese. For Daley the question is no longer academic; it is actual.
But she adds that nowhere except in the United States is the matter central to political debate. In Europe it has been politely decided not to speak of it. In her view the question of what kind of government one should have is at the core of the current American presidential contest. Not surprisingly James DeLong has been saying the same thing but from an American standpoint. DeLong argues that the Grand Bargain on which America was founded has been progressively eroded to the point where it may now be permanently destabilized by a “breakout” in government size limits.
Across many decades, my mind’s eye sees Professor Samuel Beer pacing the lecture hall stage at Harvard, talking about the accession of Henry II to the throne of England in 1154 and the end of 20 years of anarchy …
Throughout the year, the class time travels to societies in crisis over legitimacy: From the England of Henry II to its long revolution of 1640 to 1688 to the American Revolution in 1776, the French and Russian Revolutions of 1789 and 1917, and Weimar Germany as Hitler comes to power in 1933.
In each instance, a government has forfeited its claim to obedience and loyalty—at least in the view of a significant portion of its subjects—and has broken down. The questions are: Why? And what comes next?…
It has taken some time, but the result has been predictable. Once the overall principle was broken, the system turned into a chaotic war in which interests fight for pieces of power and control. … The political culture has evolved to the point where anyone who declines to push for special favors is regarded as a fool, and systemic corruption is accepted as the normal and inevitable way of doing political business …
All the talk of the government needing power to solve national problems or to fix the healthcare system, the housing market, the financial world, or anything else is only blather to obscure the determination of the special interests to gain and defend their turf. Yet still they come, fighting their way to the trough, arguing that more than 60 percent of GDP is not enough and that the “welfare state” requires still more if it is to achieve cosmic justice.
Gallup and Rasmussen are telling us that the Founders were right to posit that a breakdown of the limits of government would cause a breakdown of consent. In response to the question of whether the current government has the consent of the governed, only 22 percent of likely voters say “yes.” The partisan divide is marked; Democrats split evenly, but only 8 percent of Republicans say yes. These are scary numbers, particularly when one considers that many of the “no consent” Democrats are probably on the left, denying the legitimacy of a government that does not do more for them. Also scary is that the political establishments of both parties seem oblivious.
So Beer’s time-traveling students would have little trouble deciding that the United States has a legitimacy crisis. They could produce competent term papers on how it arose. The big question, of course, is what happens next. That is indeterminable. Unstable political arrangements often continue for a long time, until some crisis pushes them over the edge. France faced severe fiscal problems in 1789, and Russia’s tsars might still be with us if they had avoided the strains of World War I. So the United States might be pushed into full-blown chaos only by serious fiscal dysfunction or some national security disaster. Unfortunately, neither of these possibilities appears remote.
In other words DeLong believes America is now reaching the point where it can have either its original Grand Bargain or government without bounds to provide unlimited ‘free’ cheese. It cannot have both. It’s an extraordinary assertion by a serious scholar. Condensed to its essence, DeLong’s argument is very similar to Daley’s. He too argues that the price of an unlimited commitment redistribution must in the end be authoritarianism.
But it’s not just the academics who are making the argument. To those who were listening the idea has been advanced in mainstream politics on network television. Marco Rubio came very close to making the same assertion at the Republican National Convention. Rubio argued that President Obama was restoring the very ideas that “people come to America to get away from”.
The new slogan for the president’s campaign is “Forward.”
A government that spends $1 trillion more than it takes in.
An $800 billion stimulus that created more debt than jobs.
A government intervention into health care paid for with higher taxes and cuts to Medicare.
Scores of new rules and regulations.
These ideas don’t move us “Forward,” they take us “Backwards.”
These are tired and old big government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from …
No matter how you feel about President Obama, this election is about your future, not his. And it’s not simply a choice between a Democrat and a Republican.
It’s a choice about what kind of country we want America to be.
As we prepare to make this choice, we should remember what made us special. For most of history almost everyone was poor. Power and wealth belonged to only a few.
Your rights were whatever your rulers allowed you to have. Your future was determined by your past.
If your parents were poor, so would you be. If you were born without opportunities, so were your children.
But America was founded on the principle that every person has God-given rights. That power belongs to the people. That government exists to protect our rights and serve our interests.That we shouldn’t be trapped in the circumstances of our birth. That we should be free to go as far as our talents and work can take us.
And there it lay, perfectly clear yet hiding in plain sight, the press pretending not to notice, as if just as in Europe there was a tacit agreement not to notice the elephant in the living room. Even those who would not go so far as to put 2012 on par with the Civil War would concede that a “specter has been haunting” a seemingly triumphant Western neo-Marxism. It is the specter of the American Idea. The ghostly metaphor may be all the more accurate because for the last 25 years the American Idea has been considered buried. But it has not yet even been exorcised even though as Daley put it no one in the elite wanted to look at where it stood, refusing to go away.
And now it’s back, booing the silent consensus that there existed a “magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it”. This disquiet is challenging the central doctrine of the “advanced West”, which is broke and it ain’t so advanced any more.
"Ideas that people came to America to get away from."
What happened? It all went swimmingly until the economic crisis showed the magic formula didn’t work any more. The almost innumerable crisis meetings among European leaders and the crazy gyrations of the American cultural elites have revealed a deep doubt. Now the world –like America — like Europe may have to make a hard choice: unlimited government cheese with very limited liberty or a greater liberty with limited government cheese. Which will it be?
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Wretchard, I can deal hunger & pain; pity the one who gets in my way!
Wretchard: “Which will it be?”
I wish I could be optimistic, but I suspect the balanced has dipped already in the direction of more cheese and less liberty.
And even then the government won’t deliver the cheese on time.
Wretchard, one of the many joys of the Internet is to read your keen analysis of the current American political and economic situation, while you’re halfway across the globe… if only our domestic analysts were so thorough.
The system is near the threshold of instability. One choice: a plurality of the College of Electors supports the candidate who is ideologically committed to shovel more largesse from the treasury, with the ruse that compelling the wealthy to pay more will suffice.
The other choice: well everyone has an opinion, but at least, he is not the former.
Instability because once the hoi polloi are promised more free stuff, who can win an election promising to take it away?
Certainly a sorry condition for a nation with such promise. Unfortunately, the consequence of our willful distortion of the proper role of the College.
The fIrst choice, debouching the currency or deouching democracy gets it wrong. wretchard gets it right at the end.
The only way forward is to disenfranchise the tax eaters. No votes for net recipients of government cheese.* Apportionment based on the number of resident citizens eligible to vote.
*Excepting enlisted members of the Armed Forces and officers called to e active duty during time of war or declared conflict.
“Which will it be?”.
And yet in this time of crisis, we have a choice between a “medium government” RINO or a big government disaster. Rubio said it more plainly than anyone in power has yet dared, but not just the elites and major parties are oblivious. Those who voted for Romney in the primaries because he was more “centrist” and wasn’t so “extreme” as some of the other choices are also clueless. The majority of Americans, and not just those on the Left, still don’t get it. Even if Obama looses, we still won’t have a mandate to return to basic principles and the intent of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The majority aren’t choosing that; it’s too extreme.
Daley and DeLong “get it”, but the multitude of fools don’t. As in many crises in history we are adrift and at the mercy of chance events. Whatever happens will come as a great shock to the multitude. “Who knew?”
A pity. These really are “the best of times and the worst of times”. If the Polywell fusion project succeeds the energy crisis will be solved and real space travel will be within our grasp. Continuing advances in medicine promise longer life and better health for all. A return to basic principles of US government would restore freedom to our citizens and give hope to the rest of the world. We are on the verge of throwing everything away and returning to the dark ages.
WE STILL HAVE A CHANCE
I spoke to my grampop at close of the day
He looked just as good as when he went away
So many long years since we all saw him last
It sure is real funny how years go so fast
He said he was sorry to see how things stood
The country, he said, that was once oh so good
Has fallen upon harsher times than it seemed
Could possibly happen or even been dreamed
He said he came here though it hurt him to leave
He loved the old country but had to believe
That life would be better for him and his kids
And now this great country is flat on the skids
And heading for cliffs with big rocks far below
That started with lefties now running the show
The money, he said, isn’t worth much today
He worked seven days for a workingman’s pay
No honest man thought of a government check
And government governed not stacking the deck
I’m glad that I lived when this country was great
He said a goodbye and I asked him to wait
We still have a chance I said, taking his hand
We still have a chance to recover our land
We still have a chance to get rid of the Left
We still have a chance but we have to be deft
We still have a chance if we do the thing right
We still have a chance come this election night
Get grammom and tell her that we’re gonna dance
Go get her and tell her we still have a chance
It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect.
Nonsense.
It all went swimmingly until the economic crisis showed the magic formula didn’t work any more.
Balderdash.
Bernie Madoff didn’t disprove capitalism because he was a thief. The 2008 debacle, as widespread as it was, is no more than Madoff writ large.
wretchard, and ye bloggers assembled, I could not disagree more with these gloomy thesisesisesii.
We are a terrifically rich society and world, MUCH richer today than twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago. So what has changed?
We have too many houses and can’t pay for them? Well, something has broken down with the distribution system, but it’s not a lack of wealth. We have too many iPods, we have too much fracked oil and gas, too many Americans are obese?
The supply side seems just fine. What about the demand side? If everyone wants ten free yachts and are willing to vote only for the candidates who promise to provide them – it is hardly an indictment of capitalism. It’s mass insanity of some kind, it’s a failure of gatekeepers, it’s a failure of the masses to vote for anything other than bread and circuses, but it says NOTHING AT ALL about socialism versus capitalism.
Europe’s problem that may be dawning on the US is a failure of markets alrighty but if so it’s a failure due to too many thieves in the marketplace and not enough enforcement. The same kind of thing that causes populations to turn eventually to the Taliban, any kind of order instead of utter chaos.
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So all that reductionism sorted out, is that the election of 2012? I don’t think so. Obambus is willing to play the bread and circuses ticket, but I still find Mitt too diffuse a candidate to be standing for anything at all.
Economic theory aside, will democracy fail because the people will always vote themselves unlimited benefits, and the productive elements will then shut down in protest? THAT may happen. But that would be a failure in democracy (mathematics and common sense), not even socialism. Socialism may be a way to manage the decline, short of the Taliban. Maybe. But it’s not a cause of the fall.
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Since Obambus has declined to act, I wish the Republicans would promise to shut down AIG, Citibank, and as much of Merrill Lynch as they can find, claw back a couple of hundred billion from the Wall Street banksters and imprison about a thousand of them for life.
Then implement some neo-protectionist legislation bringing back 10,000,000 jobs from China.
And of course, get out of the way of fracking, and stop wasting money on absurd solar and wind projects. Let them pay their own way, if they’re so good. Even preserve some moderate tax advantages for them. But no taxpayer dollars. Zip zero nada.
And what else? Audit the public sector salaries and retirements that are absurd and unfunded, under the excuse of fraud and incompetence of those who said they could ever work, plus force majeur of the economy.
There can be nothing wrong with a car, that some fool drives off a cliff, that’s more like today’s USA.
My lying eyes tell me that a government that procures a billion and a half rounds of ammunition, that its military cannot [morally] use, is probably not much concerned with old-fashioned notions of Liberty.
No matter what excuses are proffered up to explain the why’s thereof. There are none that can overcome the gravity of the thing.
The words “domestic security” mean something far different to a serf than they do a king…Or a citizen.
I like to think that a fever is at its worst just before it breaks.
Not sure I should comment since I am heavily dialogued in both referenced articles.
Last time that happened somebody (RWE?) caught me talking to myself, sorta.
So what I will do is put a dollar in the jukebox. Here is an hour of pop music redone as Gregorian Chants, sorta. What Gregorian chant would be if the monks had Synthesizers and drum machines and English. Enjoy;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu8KnQwwmE4&feature=related
I would rather shower at Penn State then vote Democratic.
#5 Blast from the Past: I am in full agreement except that I would add a few more people to that list. (And subtract some.)
Subtract: Pentagon swivel-chair hussars (and for the UK similar people in Whitehall offices – why do we have a dozen more flag-rank naval officers than ships?).
Add: Firefighters and front-line cops. Both groups of people risk their lives in the defence of others – regularly. And sometimes lose.
There is a quote that’s been making the rounds on the internet for several years now. The quote is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, though apparently Jefferson himself never said or wrote it. It goes something like:
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49“.
Whether or not Jefferson actually originated the comment, I think it provides a pretty accurate description of the situation we’re in at the moment.
It also goes a long way towards explaining why America was envisioned by her founders as a republic rather than a “democracy”.
Again, whether or not he actually said it, I’d like to think Jefferson would agree with it.
jms @10
I’d like to think so too…But alas, it depends upon the sickness.
In principle, what I produce is mine: from each according to his inclination; to each according to his productivity.
Neoclassical economics upsets this arrangement by creating an artificial distinction between production and distribution. This results in the most productive elements in society being plundered through economic redistributionism.
Enough! We, the productive have grown weary of our unwelcome burden.
For the economy to recover, government spending on welfare and warfare must be dramatically curtailed. Absent radical spending cuts, the economy will simply move underground, where the tax man cannot seize it.
The formula is simple: we win; they lose.
Josh, we share no kind opinions of the evil folks who saw great opportunity in the distorted markets. But, let’s agree that the distorting was largely interference aimed at advancing social causes.
And let us agree, further, that there seems to be a dirth of attempts to prosecute the malefactors.
On the other hand, you must certainly see the steady march of progressives to divert resources from productives to non-productives by way of wonderful programs such a social security and so forth.
You reach a point where the overhead is too high to compete. We are there. We are the highest bidder on every contract, so the deal goes to someone offshore. There’s no magic here. As you observe, jobs need to come back. Plus, Plus, Plus you have to get overhead expense down, get “people off of the rope” as the old mountain climbers say.
Assistance from the government needs to always come with incentives to get off of the rope. It must be painful enough to be effective. It should be limited in duration and amount. Moreover, there must be limited funding to such programs, not guarantees. No one who is able-bodied and able-minded should be supported by those who are laboring and trying to pay for their own families.
We simply cannot sustain a sky-high standard of living compared to the world, and throw open the gates of the city to competition from all comers.
We are at a threshold of instability. Significantly increase the cost of food, fuel, health-care, taxes, and this system will collapse. The only thing saving us at this point, is that the rest of the world is in deeper trouble.
#8 There are too many crooks, it’s true, but the question is why. Since human nature hasn’t changed much since Adam’s day that can’t be it. We are inherently just as crooked as ever. What could it be then? How about “there are too many opportunities to steal”.
Real or primary work is by definition stealing from nature. But it is also productive. It when you multiply the agents, go-betweens and middlemen that the opportunities for thievery among people increases exponentially.
One counterintuitive solution to the curbing thievery is not to increase the number of regulators, but to decrease regulations. The qualitative difference between thievery in the state of nature and thievery under central governments is that in the latter it is the guardians that you have to watch out for.
I don’t believe that shennanigans can ever be reduced to zero. There will always be injustice, always be someone riding like a monkey on someone else’s back. The trick is to reduce that load to the minimum feasible.
Ultimately it is matter of percentages. Some amount of money has to be transferred from the prosperous to the poor as the price of social peace. But how much without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It’s all percentages, as in my percent and your percent.
#5.
The only way forward is to disenfranchise the tax eaters. No votes for net recipients of government cheese. – Blast From the Past
If I recall my U.S. history lessons, there was some argument during the drafting of the U.S. Constitution which would have limited suffrage to property owners, which is essentially your point here. That may have seemed like a privileged position put forth by the “rich, landed gentry” back in my ignorant school days, certainly as framed by my Marxist professors. However, that position makes quite a bit of sense now in view of what this “post-modern” country has come to, i.e. one person on some sort of government distribution for every person working to pay for the luxury.
“It all went swimmingly until the economic crisis showed the magic formula didn’t work any more.”
And as we have said here before, in reality the Design Margin was being eroded at both ends for decades – production was going down while consumption was going up.
A chicken in every pot.
And a Panzer in every village.
If Obama wins again we are going to have to wage economic civil warfare.
Unlimited government cheese just isn’t an option.
So the choice is limited government cheese with or without murderous tyranny. Either the unhappy cheese-less will violently overthrow the government that attempts to limit the cheese- or the cheese-providers will tire of providing free cheese to the ungrateful swarm of worthless leeches who demand much and produce little- and the government will have to violently crack down upon the rioters. Either way violence is coming.
As a believer in the Strauss/Howe theory as described in their book “The Fourth Turning” I figure this sort of choice has happened before. Previously the Anglosphere choice has always been for freedom- even if only part of the Anglosphere went for it, and the rest caught up later.
So perhaps now Texas and a few nearby states will tell the cheese-grifting regime on the Potomac to go to Blazes- and the rest of the Anglosphere will catch up later.
Or not. But that’s why we play the game, and how history happens.
Percentages are useful, but is there a point of stability? As long as there is opportunity to win power by promising to shovel greater largesse, the system will not have a steady-state operating region.
A federal government that can print fiat currency has no business in the entitlement business, else there will always be opportunity for out-of-control spending (positive feedback in the system).
Better to transfer all responsibility, including the revenue generation, to the states, which are inherently limited in expenditure.
Blast #5 and Fletcher #12:
Note that the original idea behind the comparatively generous pensions for “public servants” was that they would neither try to take over the government nor be corrupt and beholden to special interests – they would have enough money to live comfortably in retirement without having to sell their influence while they were on active duty or retired.
From my perspective, it appears that the military are the only ones who still accept this concept. So many of the others have figured out how to game the system via the political process; we have Feral Government.
I often wonder if Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government Initiative” which called for a 30% reduction in the Federal civilian workforce, had this as a secret objective: threaten the civilian workforce and therefore politicize it.
My only addition is that I think it goes deeper than money.
Sure, let’s say all those banksters stole billions. Did they? Or are they playing the game by the rules as they really exist, or just as we think the rules exist? Sarbanes-Oxley combined with Dodd-Frank is a whole set of new rules regarding financial disclosures, record keeping, reporting and on and on. But the PURPOSE of those is really to limit competition at the table of large finance. The players at the table are all now limited in number, and while some can win, and some can lose, nobody can now win too big, or lose too big to leave the table.
But what about the social breakdown? The number of children born out of wedlock? The number of live births versus abortions every year? The failure of public schools. Condi Rice intimiated as much in her speech about the destiny of children being fixed by the zip code they are born into and go to school in.
Money is only money. The end of the Gettysburg address is “….that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The subject was slavery in 1860′s. At the beginning of the Civil War , the value of the slaves was more than that of all the banks and railroads in America, combined. The end of slavery destroyed a lot of that wealth in the South and impoverished millions, not counting the cost of the war in terms of the hundreds of thousands slaughtered and the millions spent to wage war. Somehow, we managed to outgrow the collapse of Confederate dollars, fiat “greenbacks”, and a whole lot more. It was hard, but somehow our ancestors worked to build our future.
The subject today is whether government still serves the people, or whether we serve those who wield the levers of power in the government, the new American Nomeklatura, the corporatist allies of the so-called leaders of both of the political parties. The scale of wealth is orders of magnitude greater, but in the end, money is just a tool, and not an end in itself.
e @ 16: Josh, we share no kind opinions of the evil folks who saw great opportunity in the distorted markets. But, let’s agree that the distorting was largely interference aimed at advancing social causes.
And let us agree, further, that there seems to be a dirth of attempts to prosecute the malefactors.
On the other hand, you must certainly see the steady march of progressives to divert resources from productives to non-productives by way of wonderful programs such a social security and so forth.
If there is anything we SHOULD have learned from 2008 (if not the previous centuries or millenia) it’s that living markets need regulation, otherwise thieves, rent-seekers, and parasites of a thousand varieties kill it. The human genome is about 1/3 phylogeny, 1/3 reproduction, and 1/3 immune system. Our markets lacked sufficient immune defenses. And who stole from it, grandma and the welfare queens? Maybe a little. Bawney Fwank? Some, in his high-minded yet incompetent manner. Chad Whiteshoe Moneybags? Mostly. Why? Because they thought they were so clever, they’d beaten entropy and were entitled to the difference. And when it turned out otherwise? Oh, blame it on Bawney Fwank and let the taxpayer pick up the tab, via Bernankecare. And, oh, btw, keep on keeping on with the self-righteous rent-seeking on the entire economy, even after the fact, like today and tomorrow, too. What about the twenty million mortgage holders now foreclosed or underwater, are they innocent or guilty? Some of each, I think. The evil that Sauron does cannot be made as if it never were.
Social security is by definition a transfer to non-productives, you are absolutely right. And from the start it has been unsound financially, and many fresh outrages have been perpetrated in its name. However, I do not see it as unjust or unaffordable. A little fiddling at the edges and it’s good for the next 50 years, ceteris paribus. Beyond that the eyes of this dwarf cannot see.
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w @ 17: There are too many crooks, it’s true, but the question is why.
I dunno, sometimes I think it’s just entropy. Every 17 billion years or so you get a big bang eventually producing planets and galaxies, and then outside of the echoes it’s all downhill. Plato expected democracies to self-destruct, so did most of our Founding Fathers. We’ve had a good run. Maybe the rest is just Seldon’s psycho-history.
And yet, I remain more optimistic. The crisis comes in a tide of rising expectations. It’s not the hopeless who revolt, it’s the hopeful. Entropy be damned, I’m turning on the tv. It’s when we’re fat and happy that we can do a lot of dumb stuff, like elect an Obambus.
Maybe what has changed is technology. Nobody even expects to understand stuff anymore. Some guy somewhere makes it work, so what could possibly go wrong? Obambus displays this attitude all day long, it’s what is behind his obvious personal love and faith in green energy. He does believe in fairies, he does, he does, it’s the light socket that is magical, who knows or cares exactly what lies behind? Since it’s all hypothetical (to him), he hypothesizes green. Why not?
And what then? Oh, we may just stumble along. A fair amount may ride on this November. I sort of shrugged and accepted a New Dark Ages about 1998, and where they stop, nobody knows.
What’s this new TV series coming along (“Revolution”) about where electricity stops working, isn’t that a perfect metaphor for what we’re talking about? Suddenly the major assumptions are proved false. Ooops. I’m curious what rational they give, and what turns out to be the fix, which is apparently going to be the Maguffin.
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d @ 23: Sure, let’s say all those banksters stole billions. Did they?
Yes.
There’s really just no two ways about it.
They got behind their “rocket scientist” theory that conveniently justified their theft, every bit as re-distributionist as anything Obambus has ever dreamed about. It was always far, far, FAR too good to be true.
The the Left will always push to reduce personal freedom, and for the time being they will strenghten their Collectivist citadel by gifting their special interest groups with the ransomed cheese they receive from their productive cowpersons.
Surprisingly this means the Left has actually progressed in the last 100 years or so. They no longer wish to destroy capitalism and the middle classes, they merely wish to enslave their enemies, and turn them into cash cows for the benefit of the political/social Elite.
But the West is clearly approaching the end of some era. Nations and States incur debts for their grandchildren to repay, and spend the money on current entitlement programs to buy votes in a 3-5 year electoral cycle. Whether they reform or not is irrelevant, rational investors are going to stop lending money because it is becoming clear that there is no intention or ability to ever repay the debt.
The Elites running these Nations that can’t tax or borrow money any more will be frustrated with the productive classes, and frightened by the welfare classes, and their response to both will be to reduce liberty and increase authoritarianism. And so the ‘soft’ Left morphs into the common hard Left variety, and the supply of cheese dwindles as the productive cowpeople go elsewhere. But who needs cheese when you are the only guys with guns and access to the media?
Its not clear that we are going to be allowed a choice at all, and I think you’re calling it slightly wrong Wretchard. As the State reduces personal liberty, the total amount of cheese reduces, including the Government cheese, though the amount of cheese available to the Elites only may increase in line with their power. This suits the Elites because with their increase in authority, they no longer need a surplus of cheese to buy support.
Bear in mind the underlying misanthropic meme that cheeseeaters are the enemy of the planet, and it’s all this cheese that’s causing the global warming anyways.
So it looks like we will be getting less Liberty and less cheese, and more of the opposite, whatever that is.
Hey maybe the Opposite IS fascism?
What about grandparents wandering the globe while grandchildren wander the day care center? Neither finds what they are looking for. So close, yet so far apart.
Unfortunately, Wretchard, the Rubicon has already been crossed. Well over 40% of the population are now net beneficiaries of government largess of one sort or another, and the number grows every day. Food stamps, subsidized housing, social security disability, medicare, medicaid, affirmative action in education, employment – the list is a very long one. Suffice to say it is very unlikely anyone now getting government cheese is going to vote for less of it. Add to that the fact that Obama has effectively created over 2 million brand new voters with de facto amnesty the lack of voter ID laws; the promise of more subsidized student loans and other government goodies, and I think you can say Obamas reelection is assured.
After that, there will be more debasment of the currency (ie, QE 3, 4, 5…etc); more programs like Obamacare; more government spending and more government control. By the time 2016 rolls around, so many people will benefit from or be dependent on government that elections will be effectively meaningless. And then, in about 15 years time from today; the economy will collapse and fascism of some kind will take over. If there is a period of social and government instability as well as a military defeat or two, the fascism may even be welcomed.
“You can, in other words, decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy.” – These possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Both can (and I think, will) come to pass. I have spoken at length about the basic problem of democracy, Wretchard, and that problem is still with us: Once people get the idea of free cheese at others expense, they will always vote for more cheese – until the system collapses around them. We see that now in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal – and there is no reason why we will not see it here.
Intrade: 57.7 Obama vs. 42.3 Romney.
The choice between authoritarian cheese and liberty is a false choice because in any of its’ manifestations, whether it is called Authoritarianism/Statism/Totalitarianism etc., it has proven unable to deliver the cheese. This is no longer a question subject to the subtle manipulations of a Chris Matthews or a Bill Clinton massaging the definitions of terms until the data set coughs up the correct answer. It is as the Old Left used to say an Objective Condition, or as the New Left calls things that are not, it is Settled Science. It is Reality.
Fletcher Christian 12 & RWE 22,
Thank you for your comments.
In the Good Old Days a professional officer considered it improper to speak of politics. The subject was forbidden in the wardroom, like religion or money or ladies not of easy virtue or the War Between the States. Many declined to vote, although they would scrupulously encourage their troops to. My scheme specifically withdraws the franchise to vote for a federal office, that is Congress, from Regular but not Reserve or Guard officers, as well as from the federal civil service. That should cover the Admirals, including the one in charge of keeping the soda fountains stocked in the Pentagon. Senior officers are paid with respect but not with the vote. We thank them for their service and expect them to remain silent during elections. My scheme does not withdraw the right to vote for a state or municipal office from any federal employee. Note that the way it is worded would cover not just employees but anyone who gets the majority of their income from the treasury, including contractors and transfer benefit recipients.
In America most police and fire fighters are employed at the state or municipal level. Legally they are the same in our federal system. While I would withdraw the right to vote in a local election from the First Responders, as I would from the teachers, I would not touch their right to vote in a federal election. Unless that is their salaries were over 50% paid from funds that had been drawn from the federal treasury. While I regret the cost this imposes on the police and fire fighters there is no way to carve out an exemption for them without the entire structure being laid open to abuse. Hopefully this would rapidly lead to a shedding of the parasites and rent seekers who have been living off of the public treasury. This should allow the compensation of the First Responders to rise commensurate with their sacrifices. As with the military officers of old they may wear their standing aloof from elections as a badge of honor.
Property qualifications for voting were common when the Republic was founded. They are probably unconstitutional under the XIVth amendment but I am unaware if that has been adjudicated. While my plan does not directly violate the XXIVth Amendment given the wording of the XIVth it would face a challenge under the equal protection clause and would probably require a constitutional amendment. Given that it would extremely hard to achieve but it may be necessary to save the Republic. It is unlikely that a property restriction could survive a challenge based on the XXIVth Amendment.
The XIVth amendment did intend to restrict apportionment based on the registration of qualified citizens to vote.
That clause has never been enforced, except to disenfranchise convicted felons. The XIVth amendment is frankly a mess, written by a committee as a compromise during Reconstruction, and is subject to the kind of manipulation that lawyers love. It needs to be rewritten.
My idea is to simply state three clauses.
1. No person, excepting enlisted members of the Armed Forces and officers called to extended duty in time of declared war or conflict as authorized by Congress shall vote in any election either federal or state if they derived the majority of their income from the treasury at that level.
2. The census shall enumerate each person noting how many are citizens and how many are eligible to vote in either federal or state elections. Reapportionment shall be on the basis of the number of citizens eligible to vote.
3. No person who derives over a third of their income from foreign sources shall vote in any United States election.
States that depend heavily on transfer payments from the federal treasury would lose seats in Congress.
epignosis – “Better to transfer all responsibility, including the revenue generation, to the states, which are inherently limited in expenditure.”
States used to be separate entities. Today, instant communication and interstate highways have made them very close to each other — just like central planning governments. There is no point dispersing and distributing power when you simply connect to your pals via email and road tripping.
Also consider that the population in some states has grown to exceed many nations, so there is no inherently limited expenditure in those places. Perhaps they could be divided into more units though: smaller than a state but larger than a county. Then laws should be made to prevent and forbid communication between these new “stounty” governments. Non-interference would be made the prime directive for all federal agencies under very harsh penalties (except death).
I have always believed in small, limited Communism. It is a better system than the one presently killing us, which is Big Soviet Cronyism.
Something should also be done to prevent states and stounties from growing too big. Not by means of unpopular birth control, but through gentle persuasion and the use of clubs as a last resort.
I’m not young, but I’m too young to remember the days when memorizing the Gettysburg Address was standard elementary school fare. How much better off would we be if we all remembered that address and what it stood for less than 100 years after this nation’s founding?
bftp @ 29: 3. No person who derives over a third of their income from foreign sources shall vote in any United States election.
What? Why not? As long as it’s taxed here.
Oh, on the topic of the election of 2012, greatamundo article today:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/obama-delusion-explained_651376.html?nopager=1
I have to honestly admit that I struggle to see a popup ad on PJ Media from The Sierra Club smacking the Kochspeak around for “Corporate Pollution”. Can I get a ruling here on what line PJ should responsibly draw here, recognizing that I am doing the equivalent of shouting Open Fire from down range.
6. John Work
from what I’ve seen dense plasma focus has a better chance then the Polywell fusion project of turning fusion reactions directly into electricity. Which ever is successful would collapse the cost of electricity to 1/10th current cheapest electricity. agree that that kind of productivity leap would pay for everyone’s pensions for three or four generations.
will it happen? part of the excitement of the 1950′s & 60′s was that soon men would land on the moon and there would be cheap unlimited nuclear power. Men did land on the moon but dirt cheap nuclear power kept fading into the distant future.
the proliferation of 4th generation nuclear reactor designs including the thorium work– is making me think the big breakthrough is under a decade away.
Combine the nuclear work with the possibilities of the green river formation where 40% of the cost of oil extraction is the cost of electricity and you get an idea of what’s coming.
“unlimited government cheese with very limited liberty or a greater liberty with limited government cheese. Which will it be?”
So sorry, I must disagree. Once the powers-that-be have pocketed your rights and liberties, they don’t have to give you ANYTHING after that.
Ah– the paradox of the welfare state. In order to keep them in power, the rulers must have a sufficient percentage of the population who are dependant upon them, a group whose votes will keep them in power. But the producers, they who lay the golden eggs, must be kept in a delicate balance. Should you bleed them too much there will be nothing to redistribute. Should you let them prosper too much they might provide jobs that provide more income than government benefits for the unemployed.
“Poverty” is not the enemy of the welfare state, those who run it would cease to exist without it. The very existence of the welfare statists is predicated upon it. Without it many bureaucrat’s six and seven figure jobs would be eliminated. It is not in their interest to make it ever go away–ever. They do not wish to have a vibrant economy. That would undermine the very reason for their existence and “moral authority.” Without “poverty,” real or contrived, they would be nothing.
And as long as they can continue to go upon their way “poverty” won’t ever be cured–ever. But that again is the paradox. Obama’s wrecking of the economy is to him a feature rather than a bug–he and his ilk are just confused about how to do that and keep enough golden geese alive to provide the promised goodies to the poor and their cronies. But at the same time they have not figured how to make this look good compared to societies in which such practices are not done.
It seems beyond their ability to fathom that livestock which is abused and not fed might desert the communal farm or even die (“unexpectedly” of course).
Right now, this election a large number of voters believe there is a vast well of wealth in the hands of a few plutocrats that if tapped could supply not just all our needs but all our wants. They think they can have freedom and cheese. Another large group thinks the government is after a disproportionate amount of their hard earned cheese and is hell bent on creating a system where it is harder and harder to make cheese. Then there are the rent seekers who may be rich, poor, or middle class. I do not think that it has much dawned on the general public that the system is breaking down though our leaders both liberals and conservatives must know it. I mean nobody can look at California’s books or what is going on with the Euro and not be aware that the financial is headed for a certain train wreck.
Still people do sense that something is amiss even if they are loathe to admit it and politics is becoming nastier and nastier. One thing that has struck me, and maybe it is because the conventions are not over but I am not seeing bumper stickers and I do not take that to mean that folks are unmotivated. I think it means that they increasingly cannot discuss politics civilly even with friends and family. America is dividing up into camps and as in any civil war those camps divide brother against brother and father against son and I am not sure how we back out of it at this time. Whoever wins the next election this great dividing is only beginning.
We have inherited two failures from the Reagan years.
One failure – the idea of ‘starving the beast’ let the fed grow and not raise takes to pay for the growth and it would stop growing. it did not stop growing.
Another failure – bravely running away from Lebanon after the attack on the Marine barracks. We could not run far enough to get away from the terrorists. GW took the fight to them instead.
We need to learn from failures as well as successes. Even of failures of heroes.
Regarding fusion and the route to it: Quite right, fusion power will make a lot of difference. IMHO tokamak fusion (barring some huge scientific/technological advance) is a blind alley and undesirable even if it can be made to work – for two reasons; one is that any feasible tokamak fusor is going to create more nuclear waste than a fission plant, the other is that plants will be huge – thus continuing the trend towards centralisation of power that is, in part, causing the problems of the West.
Polywell or dense plasma focus? I prefer the idea of the latter, again for two reasons. One is the radioactivity problem already mentioned; a fairly small Polywell reactor would need feet of water or paraffin wax or something like that to stop the neutrons, and more feet of something heavy to stop the gamma rays from all the radioactive waste.
On the other hand, for some arcane reason I don’t pretend to understand, plasma focus holds out the possibility of aneutronic fusion – meaning small units with much less shielding required, and also more efficient ones because most of the reaction energy could be recovered by a process not involving heat. Why? Because all the products of the proton/B11 reaction are charged.
Also, with a bit of tweaking this setup might well give us a working fusion reaction engine – and that gives us the Solar System.
Either Polywell or plasma focus gives at least the hope of small units (suitable for perhaps a really large vehicle, ship, building or small number of dwellings) being available – decentralisation of power again, which is why all this is relevant to a political thread.
Not too long from now, decentralisation might well be achievable. House-sized power supplies, decentralised manufacturing (by 3D printing or even nano-manufacturing) and so on all point this way. Of course Washington, Whitehall, Wall Street, the City of London and other current centres of power are going to fight this tooth and nail.
But we have to get there from here. Keeping the strangling hands of big government, corporatism and Luddite unions off our throats for just long enough – that’s the trick.
I think that both Janet Daley and James Delong are right in their assessments. Another way to describe what has happened is an incremental loss of liberty. But liberty has two flavours and both have to be baked into the national bread. Here are a few thoughts on liberty in Canada and America, based on an 1816 essay by Benjamin Constant entitled “The liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns”.
Liberty requires a balance between direct self government and representative government. The first emphasises the collective freedom that comes from direct citizen control over many functions of government. If carried too far, direct self government means the individual is nearly always in charge of public affairs but not of his own private affairs. This free choice of the whole, of which the individual is a part, can strip the individual of his private rights. True liberty requires a tenuous balance between individual sovereignty ove public affairs and private independence from the self governing collective.
Representative government means that the individual is sovereign in the public world only by appearance but he is independent in his private life. The individual is not directly sovereign over affairs of the public collective but he is free because government leaves him alone to conduct his private affairs.
I think that the U.S. founding fathers and the Canadian founding fathers, were equally concerned with liberty. Both types of liberty were recognized and sought after in both countries. A case can be made that at the beginning, Americans were more concerned with the collective liberty of direct self government and that Canadians were more concerned with the private individual liberty that comes from representative government.
As America grew bigger and more complicated, political machines like Tammany Hall were able to seize and corrupt the liberty of self government. As Canada grew and became more complicated, citizens were happy to keep government distant from their own private affairs but lost individual sovereignty over public affairs.
Nowadays, the pervasive influence of the regulatory state and its unelected agents of coercion in both countries has had the twin effects of reducing both kinds of liberty in both countries. This has made Canada and America become more like each other than they were in the past.
In North America as a whole, we need to restore both kinds of liberty. In the U.S. this means more than a simple return to the Constitution because attempts at the self government that was possible while Americans clung to a narrow strip of land along the Atlantic shore, now produces endemic corruption in modern America. In Canada where once government was a distant echo that could be largely ignored by the individual because it left him alone, now has too much coercive power over the private individual and his affairs. Our representatives in government no longer represent us. Instead they represent special interests.
This coming Presidential election in the U.S. will have consequences for Canada and the U.S.
The comment black hole has returned to devour its victims. What gives?
I think that both Janet Daley and James Delong are right in their assessments. Another way to describe what has happened is an incremental loss of liberty. But liberty has two flavours and both have to be baked into the national bread. Here are a few thoughts on liberty in Canada and America, based on an 1816 essay by Benjamin Constant entitled “The liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns”.
Liberty requires a balance between direct self government and representative government. The first emphasises the collective freedom that comes from direct citizen control over many functions of government. If carried too far, direct self government means the individual is nearly always in charge of public affairs but not of his own private affairs. This free choice of the whole, of which the individual is a part, can strip the individual of his private rights. True liberty requires a tenuous balance between individual sovereignty ove public affairs and private independence from the self governing collective. Representative government means that the individual is sovereign in the public world only by appearance but he is independent in his private life. The individual is not directly sovereign over affairs of the public collective but he is free because government leaves him alone to conduct his private affairs.
I think that the U.S. founding fathers and the Canadian founding fathers, were equally concerned with liberty. Both types of liberty were recognized and sought after in both countries. A case can be made that at the beginning, Americans were more concerned with the collective liberty of direct self government and that Canadians were more concerned with the private individual liberty that comes from representative government.
As America grew bigger and more complicated, political machines like Tammany Hall were able to seize and corrupt the liberty of self government. As Canada grew and became more complicated, citizens were happy to keep government distant from their own private affairs but lost individual sovereignty over public affairs.
Nowadays, the pervasive influence of the regulatory state and its unelected agents of coercion in both countries has had the twin effects of reducing both kinds of liberty in both countries. This has made Canada and America become more like each other than they were in the past.
In North America as a whole, we need to restore both kinds of liberty. In the U.S. this means more than a simple return to the Constitution because attempts at the self government that was possible while Americans clung to a narrow strip of land along the Atlantic shore, now produces endemic corruption in modern America. In Canada where once government was a distant echo that could be largely ignored by the individual because it left him alone, now has too much coercive power over the private individual and his affairs. Our representatives in government no longer represent us. Instead they represent special interests. This coming Presidential election in the U.S. will have consequences for Canada and the U.S. More of “we want this debate, we need this debate and we can win this debate” please.
Maybe a comment that is too long or too many paragraphs arouses the comment monster? The comment monster stopped eating when I combined some paragraphs. If there are rules of behaviour for the comment monster it would be good to know them.
FC …
You’ve got Polywell confused — it’s not a neutron emitter.
Thanks.
Blert – I’ve looked into this. Likely reactions for use in Polywell would be D/D or D/T both of which emit neutrons. Aneutronic is potentially possible but would be more difficult than in a focus fusion reactor – again, the reasons are so much Greek to me.
In any case, however it’s managed, aneutronic fusion is IMHO the goal to aim for. I just had a look at the ITER website, and it’s quite amusing to see them handwaving away the induced radioactivity in the reactor and just assuming that the twin problems of needing tritium and large numbers of fast neutrons can be solved by surrounding the whole assembly with a lithium blanket. They are assuming ongoing extraction of tritium from the lithium, so that probably means tons of liquid lithium being involved. There are some rather obvious problems with that.
I can’t really blame the people running ITER. Their jobs are on the line, after all; if they ever either succeed or have to admit it isn’t ever going to work, then they are unemployed. A similar situation to that of wind or ground solar.
Interesting that Rykehaven‘s comments are arriving in my inbox but not on the thread. In 2008 we had Paulbot-Larouchite trolls. Some were obvious agents sent by the Donks and others were just sincere but misguided tools. They did succeed in depressing the vote for McCain, possibly by just enough to make the difference in key locations. Unhappy as any of us would have been if McCain had won who can argue that we are better off now under Obama? I am happy to debate the extreme Libertarian position of some regular commentators here. It should give them pause that they provide cover for those who are openly enabling the advancement of real Collectivism. The proof is in the pudding. They did it before and will attempt to do it again. This is not theoretical speculation, it happened. Please prioritize.
Also basing arguments on assertions that some forms of labor, i.e. what you do for a living, are genuine and others, i.e. banking, are fraudulent not only lack analytical rigor but open the thin wedge to hate filled divisiveness. The frauds of Bernanke and the Goldman Sachs crew should be identified and dealt with as such. Creating a category called “banksters” opens the door for terms like “Cosmopolites” or “International Finance.” Much of that poison was generated over the last century by either the KGB or in Der Sturmer. If the structure of the Federal Reserve or the stock exchanges are really the causes of the instability then propose a workable solution but do not demonize large groups of people who perform tasks that keep markets functioning.
We should be able to draw a distinction between activities that are only compensated for by politically generated activity and other wealth generation. The former, such as government mandated Diversity Counselors or Green and Minority set asides or regulators that only exist to protect their own nests and sponsors, are illegitimate and the latter, including the military and public safety, are legitimate.
In one episode, Ren and Stimpy got jobs as tour guides in Washington. One of the perks was “all the government cheese we can stomach.” That phrase has been rattling around in my head ever since.
Tucker Carlson was just on Fox News with an interesting little bit of research.
Before he became a senator, Obama sued Citibank on behalf of a large number of black people, charging that they were denied loans because of the undesirable areas in which they lived. He won the lawsuit and those people got home loans.
But today, of the nearly 200 people involved in that lawsuit, fewer than 10% now own their own homes with unblemished credit records. The lawsuit was a disaster for those people.
46. Blast From the Past
Interesting that Rykehaven‘s comments are arriving in my inbox but not on the thread. In 2008 we had Paulbot-Larouchite trolls. Some were obvious agents sent by the Donks and others were just sincere but misguided tools. They did succeed in depressing the vote for McCain, possibly by just enough to make the difference in key locations.
If you were confident in your positions, it would be unnecessary to use the tired “false conscience” rationale so common in fascist/liberal circles.
You would be able to argue your points [and mine] on the merits.
Thank you though for conceding pre-emptively that you cannot argue on the merits. You may think you’ve “headed me off” (especially having intercepted my posts without letting anyone read the original) but such displays simply advertise the inherent weakness of your position.
I find it unfortunate that my posts aren’t showing up (and possibly this one won’t be here long either).
Originally posted approximately 3AM Sep 3 2012 Pacific Time:
September 2, 2012 – 2:51 pm – by Richard Fernandez
Janet Daley, writing in the Telegraph believes that the American presidential election of 2012 is about something equally momentous. It is about whether people are still equals or are now permanently divided into two camps: the taxpayers and the recipients. As Daley rather dramatically frames it, about whether an unbounded welfare state can still coexist with a market economy or whether ‘that nation, or any nation’ dedicated to the primacy of entitlements can long endure without ending in fascism.
[snip]
In other words DeLong believes America is now reaching the point where it can have either its original Grand Bargain or government without bounds to provide unlimited ‘free’ cheese.
The fatal flaw in these arguments is that the 2012 Presidential election is not a choice between the Grand Bargain or “government without bounds”.
Both Romney and Obama are creatures of fascism. An honest appraisal of Romney’s governing record will prove that beyond dispute. He successfully moved his constituency and his state farther left into authoritarianism than Obama ever dreamed of accomplishing in Chicago or America at large as President.
That is a profound fact when you think about it, considering Romney is the Republican candidate (it shouldn’t be profound, but for some people it is).
Hence, there is no such choice between a Grand Bargain on one side and a “government without bounds” on the other. There is only “Fascist Government by Executive authority” in the 2012 election where the competing campaigns are run on optics, fakery, shiny objects, and empty bravado.
A lot of people on both sides are just beginning to realize this I think, albeit belatedly.
Our community, however, has known it for a long time. We realize Obama isn’t running on his governing record because it is atrocious. But we also realize that Romney isn’t running on his governing record either because he knows his record is even more fascist than Obama’s. Banning guns, redefining traditional marriage by fiat, redistributionist economics by financial manipulation, universal social services of which Romneycare was only a small part if you can imagine that.
Not even Obama could dream of accomplishing what Romney has accomplished so far in his political career. Moreso, because Romney’s form of fascism in places like Massachussettes and Bain is self-sustaining – he is a COMPETENT fascist who is at ease in that kind of system – whereas Obama’s fascist policies have been undermined by his lack of political intelligence, skill and – dare it be said – his Afrocentrism. It’s an open secret that the guy is abbrassive and stand-offish when it comes to conversing with non-black progressives. Romney won’t be hindered by that kind of baggage.
For this reason, the worst case scenario is for Romney to win the Presidency while the Democrats retain the Senate. Romney will use the same fascist agendas and liberal bromides he’s used his entire career, gamefully avoiding any accountability for the results. When they fail, he’ll blame conservatives (real conservatives, not the phony, limp-wristed, mealy-mouthed libertarians).
The best case scenario is for Obama to win by the thinnest of margins and for a protracted fight over the succession similar to the 2000 election. He can claim he has a “mandate” all he wants, it won’t make it so. Of UTMOST importance is for the Democrats to lose the Senate and for the Republicans to expand their influence in the House, the State legislatures and and the Governorships.
If a divided government can be obtained, we might be able to force a weakened President/Executive into a lame-duck session sooner rather than later, where his only freedom of authority will be in foreign affairs (as it should be). I have no problem with either of these clowns having to prove their political bonafides by raising the severed heads of foreign adversaries and supposed “allies” abroad. At the very least, that would be far more preferable than having empowered fascists like a President Romney or President Obama directing their assault on the American way of life at home.
The 2012 Presidency is a lost cause.
Come to think of it, if Wretchard excludes the candidates as “choices” in the 2012 Presidential election, then his overall thesis that the election cycle is a referendum on the welfare state would indeed be on solid ground.
Conservatives can only mitigate the damage of the eventual fascist Presidency, Democrat or Republican. The key is to paralyze the Federal Government so it has little power domestically. Then allow local governments to fill in the power vacuum with local populations taking on their roles in smaller self-government (as it always should have been).
Fill out the rest of the ballot for Governor, Senator, comptroller, Assemblymen and the like.
But leave the Presidential box empty.
The awful truth may be that democracy as a political system fails beyond the bounds of a population that shares a worldview which values most highly, above all, the inherent dignity of each and every human being.
Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott (1857) and Roe v. Wade (1973), although separated by 116 years, use eerily similar contorted logic and even some of the same language to establish as the Law of the Land that some human beings are not deserving of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Both decisions were controversial but neither was unpopular in the usual sense of the word.
The ultimate issue underlying each case is overshadowed by the bare assertion that a majority of the population of a democracy, or even a vocal and skilled minority, is as willing and capable of exploiting or terminating the less worthy lives of their neighbors as any other political scheme. Neither does it matter which branch of government makes the law or whether the law is made for the advancement of the pursuit of wealth or pleasure. Maybe court made law is even more insidious in a democracy because it keeps individual conscience twice removed from the responsibility of the consequences.
How silly is that? Dred Scott was a long time ago. Nobody today thinks slavery was the right thing to do. True as it goes but the air we breathe today is just as infected with the same foreboding “we can find no right in the Constitution” to stop the majority from making a misery of the lives of a powerless minority.
Take your pick. Wealth and pleasure, or pleasure and wealth. They each make an enemy of the good and an impenetrable barrier to the Good Life.
Jefferson’s ‘all men are created equal’ is matched by Lincoln’s ‘last full measure of devotion’. The mighty Soviet Union collapsed because no one, not the state police or the military, was willing to die for such a corrupt inept system anymore.
The link between social engineering and tyranny is increasingly apparent to America (can’t say the same for Europe and England, although maybe Fletch can correct me). There can be no such thing as a little socialism or a little communism and, really, everyone should have recognized that by now.
That case is closed. The idea that more or better regulation or prosecution at the top will somehow help ignores history and human nature. It didn’t work in the first place, so more of the same approach can only lead to more failure. Giving a higher dose of the wrong medicine can’t possibly help.
The problem we’re faced with is moral, not technical. New laws about who can vote or efforts to regulate the thieves throughout the system won’t matter that much in the long run.
But a change in awareness will make all the difference in the world.
The so-called Tea Party movement — and this should be a pleasant surprise to everybody — is turning out to be an organic force that will, by hook or crook, soon overtake the social engineers, who are losing their grip.
If we’re lucky, it will happen by election. If we’re lucky, the rising Republican stars, led by Mitt for a bit, will be who they say they are and we will find a new version of the Reagan Revolution upon us. Only this time it might take, because liberalism has been so weakened by its own failure and its link to tyranny so apparent.
If Mitt gets elected and uses DOJ to prosecute a few of the top banksters under existing law, that should straighten out the thinking of most at the top.
If he/they reduce the relationship between the central government and business, letting the latter sink or swim on its own merit, that will allow the mitigating effects that the marketplace has on corruption to do its thing.
The poor will remain just that. Some of them will prey on others because it is their nature. Others will stand around waiting to be saved, like with Katrina. Still others, probably more than we think, will begin to realize that the game is over and, maybe happily, leave their old ways behind and start trying to make something of themselves and a better world for their children.
I would expect unrest but not hordes with pitchforks pillaging the countryside. Not here.
But freedom and marketplace economics can’t do all the work. We’re going to need to become more comfortable with objective morality as we know it to exist. That will include helping the poorest and weakest among us (and that will necessarily have to include the unborn) and speaking up to help keep our baser impulses in check, whether we’re pocketing the ill-gained profits from derivatives or trying to speculate on housing we can’t afford.
What they say is true. We really can do this.
#8 There are too many crooks, it’s true, but the question is why. Since human nature hasn’t changed much since Adam’s day that can’t be it. We are inherently just as crooked as ever. What could it be then? How about “there are too many opportunities to steal”.
My vocabulary for economic issues is limited, and the rest is flawed. But, the problem with the market is government interference in the form of guarantees. Specifically FDIC. Some years ago, the coverage was expanded enormously. Certain voices predicted looming disaster. Then the barrier between gambling and investing was removed.
The town sheriff has a responsibility to police the market. Those selling vegetables and raising capital for churches, schools, and businesses must be separated from gamblers. In fact, the sheriff should insist that the gambling be removed from the market street and relocated to some private tent for drinking, gambling and various activities with entertaining ladies.
The exchange of valuables in the market can only be proper if buyer and seller have some understanding of what is being exchanged. Don’t buy a pig in a poke, so to speak. In the case of instruments of risk, that understanding must necessarily be some concept of the measure of risk.
In the case of the meltdown, no entity was able to fathom the measure of risk in the instruments, CDSs & CDOs being examples. Since the government perceived an obligation to send the posse to rescue the “common man’s” investments and savings accounts, disaster ensued.
The gamblers need to be thrown out of the marketplace. It’s OK to gamble, but that activity must be separated. If your banker uses part of the investor capital to gamble, his risk rating should rise accordingly. Then savers and investors have appropriate information to consider in market transactions.
The problem was government interference, when government was ill-informed and ill-advised to undertake the task of regulating the market and the gamblers under the same tent.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.” – Thomas Jefferson
Well, we actually resorted to that ca. 1860. Since then it has been a little less bloody, but it seems to be a part of the American soul. A casual perusal of our history reveals that, battered and tossed by the storms of circumstance, we change course every generation or so. In the 20th century this happened in 1900, 1932, 1952, 1980, 1994 and of course, today.
It has been a bit turbulent of late but not as bad as when I had to walk 5 miles to school – barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways.
We are in the midst of another great awakening. It’s a bit easier to see sun peeking through the clouds when you’ve seen a few storms, and have the arrows in your back to remind you. It’s happening folks. Deliberately and ponderously as is our won’t, but it’s happening.
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. The Shining City is renewing itself. All it needs is a little elbow grease.
Not quite, Ms Daley. This election is the most significant political event in most lifetimes, not just the last decade. In her world, the cost of a lifetime of European dependency and denial is unfolding right now, and she has few options. In theory, we’re in much better shape.
The state share of EU GDP is now a fraction under 50 per cent. In some places (e.g., Scotland, it’s pushing 55 per cent and rising). We’re still somewhere in the mid-30s after adding in all the state and local stuff. Europe’s escalating nightmare should be enough to energize even the dimmest, most disengaged couch potato among us — except many now struggle to find Europe on the map.
The best we can hope for from Romney is that he stabilizes the economy (possible, despite insipid leadership skills) and that he then begins the make-or-break work to heal society. He simply ain’t up to the task, but at least he can, in theory, avoid further damage. With luck, some in his administration will have the courage, ability and authority to make healthy progress. At minimum, we need a clear road forward and a future for our grandchildren that doesn’t end in long lines in the rain, outside the Dear Leader’s soup kitchens, monitored by overhead drones and the 60-plus security agencies on heavily armed display at Romney’s coronation.
Many troughers and smug old R and D farts need to be disappointed along the road. Seriously doubt Romney has any inclination or ability to rock that boat. Others do, so it won’t be smooth or pretty sailing. As Clint said, ‘Sometimes you just have to let them go’. He might have added, ‘Kick ‘em hard on the way down, as they fall past your window’.
Victory is uncertain, as always, but failure leads to dire outcomes: civil war, partition, the end of the republic. The sooner we get started on salvage operations the better. Meanwhile, Job 1 is still to get Romney over the hill and into the WH.
maineman – I tend to agree, although a certain amount of government regulation is probably also necessary. Reasons include some version of the tragedy of the commons – in this case, the relevant matter is external costs. In a completely unregulated capitalist system, taking any action that costs anything at all to reduce the environmental effects of your industry just means you’ll go bust. There are enough examples of dead and/or burning rivers, land poisoned by industrial wastes and quite literally lethal smogs to indicate that some regulation is a good idea.
Also, the idea of “caveat emptor” presupposes that the buyer can tell whatever he is buying is any good or not. This does apply, perhaps, to something like an axe; it’s far from clear that it applies to anything more complex such as financial “products” and complex machinery – such as a car for example. When the average buyer can’t tell good from bad, there is a powerful incentive to sell shoddy and/or dangerous junk.
When regulation strays from that sort of thing to restricting, for example, the sale of military-themed toys – that’s when regulation starts becoming tyranny.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”. Can’t remember who said that.
And now I think I’ve hit my comment limit, so bye-bye to this thread.
Josh #24-
“living markets need regulation, otherwise thieves, rent-seekers, and parasites of a thousand varieties kill it”
Um, Josh…you do know that rent seekers cannot exist without regulations, right?
You do know that?
Yeah, how about that Rubio? And Christie and Martinez and Love and so on. I think the electorate wanted Obama to take our problems seriously but he let the congress do business as usual. The voters spiked his guns in 2010 and I think the voters are going to wake up that there is little point in keeping Obama in office if they don’t approve his policies. Jay Cost’s analysis of the 10% of the electorate that will decide the election is that they like Obama personally and dislike his policies. I think Romney has shown he is less an establishment Republican and more serious than we thought by his pick of Ryan and the way he ran the convention. If he makes his case to the people well, he could win.
I think our Anglo culture has a hidden strength in that as it muddles through it is porous enough to allow these rising Republican stars to emerge to prominence. So they seem to emerge from nowhere when we need them. Wretchard is an example too. God Bless America.
Lincoln’s second inaugural address: “…wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces,…”
Lincoln in Lewistown, August 17, 1858: “…Now, if slavery had been a good thing, would the Fathers of the Republic have taken a step calculated to diminish its beneficent influences among themselves, and snatch the boon wholly from their posterity? These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. [Applause.] Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began—so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built. [Loud cheers.]
And now irony has twisted, who are those today who are attempting to wring the bread from the sweat of other men’s faces? Through the power of the state, by the power of the socialist dream, we as a nation are about to enslave rich white men for the sake of the fantasy that others can live in a utopia happily ever after. Who is richer than those who are exclusively protected by the power of the state? This is Hobbes with a twist, this is the hidden face of Marx/Engels. What Douglas was attempting to do was to diminish the central argument of the constitution. What Lincoln did was to reinforce that central argument, that freedom was the lynch pin. Any argument that attempts to pull the pin must be fought to the death. What the Left of today and what Obama represents is a mirror of what Douglas attempted to do. Even the rich were made in the image of the creator, and as we ever so slowly approach the upper asymptotic reaches of modern well-being when everyone could possibly/probably live in the future as “rich white men” live today, to step on their faces today also steps on the face of the way of life that delivers the wealth that “rich white men” now enjoy and that we all could later enjoy all together.
Listen to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and ask yourself if the terms and conditions of that argument can’t be mapped over the debate today, mapped with certain damning ironic inversions.
Actually Richard your phrasing of the choice is incomplete as’unlimited govt cheese’ always turns into unlimited govt and even less cheese due to economic reality.
Blast”The choice between authoritarian cheese and liberty is a false choice because in any of its’ manifestations, whether it is called Authoritarianism/Statism/Totalitarianism etc., it has proven unable to deliver the cheese.”
Stole my thunder. The choice is not between liberty and unlimited free cheese, but between liberty and the PROMISE of unlimited free cheese. The promise of unlimited free cheese can never be fulfilled, and the pursuit of that promise will only cause there to be a lot less cheese for everyone in the end.
The logical conclusion of the unlimited free cheeesehead line of thinking is North Korea.
The reality of a Panzer in every village and the distant long forgotten promise of a chicken in every pot.
As David @23 implies the Unlimited Free Cheese Promise is just a ruse by the Clerisy and their Rulers to gain greater control of the people and the government. Nothing more.
Where Josh, in his many posts goes wrong, is that yes the Banksters are a bunch out of control criminal traitors that need to be put down, but one needs to understand that situation came about because the Free Cheeseheads and the Banksters came to have a symbiotic mutually beneficial relationship to push forward their similar big extend and pretend cons.
The Cheeseheads need the TBTF Banksters to finance their staggering deficits to continue the illusion that all is well, and in return the Banksters get unlimited rights to pilfer their countries Treasuries, and to defraud the populace. We need to fight both of those double whammys, not just one.
And Josh, if you notice, in not one of the Socialist/Fascist governments, from Obama’s to any of those in Europe, are those in power seriously considering curtailing the power of the TBTF. It just ain’t happening in nary a one. That should be the tell tale sign right there.
And yes, there can be a fair amount of free cheese that a free market economy can support without horrible pain and also, that free market needs a minimum amount of regulation to prevent the free market from descending into a Robber Baron controlled anything goes Wild West tyranny. But we are so far from those bare bones Libertarian Utopias that those arguments aren’t really germane in our present situation and discussions.
Dennis @ 60 – turns out, you’re not as dumb as you look. Well stated! Where else are these things written?
Fletcher, what you say makes sense but only in a different universe.
We now know, without a doubt, that even small regulations will grow and grow until they are destructive monsters. Some of that is because the bureaucrats who administer them are insulated from their impact on profitability, some because the bureaucracy is so much more readily corrupted than the marketplace, and some because of the hand-in-glove relationship that inevitably develops between business and government.
Fortunately, there already is a system of regulation in place that is efficient and always does what’s needed: call it natural law if you want.
If enough of us recognize that and eject the liberal fantasy that we make all the rules, then things will start to get better.
It will never be Heaven, but it doesn’t have to be Hell either.
d @ 60: Through the power of the state, by the power of the socialist dream, we as a nation are about to enslave rich white men for the sake of the fantasy that others can live in a utopia happily ever after.
And yet Lincoln could already have seen that at work, in the French Revolution. I guess US history had not yet progressed to the point of the robber barons. Das Kapital was still ten years in the future, but Rousseau was already known. Hmm … Googling around, I gather that most of the speech at that time has not been preserved, and anyway Lincoln was concerned with Douglas and slavery and the election and the Declaration of Independence, and not with social theory as such.
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nmu @ 58: You do know that?
Know what? I pay a rent-seeker for my apartment every month and it goes OK, but it would be unfortunate if I had to pay Guido an extra $500/month so that nothing happens to it. That’s my point, what’s yours?
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u @ 62: And Josh, if you notice, in not one of the Socialist/Fascist governments, from Obama’s to any of those in Europe, are those in power seriously considering curtailing the power of the TBTF. It just ain’t happening in nary a one. That should be the tell tale sign right there.
It is indeed. As a matter of fact, we repealed Glass-Steagall twenty years ago just so we could be more like the big, fat Euros – and the Japanese banks who were doing so well at the time, and like immediately thereafter fell into the same stagnation and deflation that, lo and behold, now has us also in thrall.
but one needs to understand that situation came about because the Free Cheeseheads and the Banksters came to have a symbiotic mutually beneficial relationship to push forward their similar big extend and pretend cons.
Symbiotic, but let’s get the causality straight. The history of economics and finance shows bubbles occur in tulip bulbs and south sea islands, it was the free cheeseheads who rode the back of the banksters more than the other way around. The banksters could after all shrug and say, “See, the devil made us do it!”, but the banksters also said to both the cheeseheads and the bankster’s own customers, “We have rocket science and we can make this work.” No cheesehead made them say that. I sincerely doubt the cheeseheads ever had the power to coerce the banksters against their will. Do you really think it took a lot of coercion to make the banksters handle trillions of dollars and take their meager one percent, risk-free fees?
Josh” I sincerely doubt the cheeseheads ever had the power to coerce the banksters against their will.”
To get the causality straight, I believe the Boston Fed was forcing the Community Redevelopment Act down the Banks throats, in the early 90′s before the repeal of Glass Steagall. But that may be nitpicking. With the Goldman Sachs crowd running the show during the Clinton Administration, it’s kinda hard to tell looking back who were the guys wearing the white hats.
One could easily make the case that there were many in the investment banking community who were all too willing to “capitalize the profits- socialize the losses” from the gitgo. And on the other, there were untold Lefty politicians who for decades wanted to make the mortgage industry a welfare state free for all and they largely succeeded beyond their wildest dreams . In retrospect, the question of who seduced who and when is so blurred its almost impossible to determine at this point and because since we have gone so deep down that rat hole, with the wholesale sellout of both bankers and politicians,- it’s now besides the point.
Direct parallels do not apply but if you want to see the cultural consequences of the Left’s vision of a proper democracy and the proper social order then read about the Spanish Civil War. A caution. Anything published from 1980 onward by an English speaking academic will be the equivalent of getting all your news from MSNBC.
The topic is enormously complicated. I’ve just barely scratched the surface myself. Enough to realize that democracy by itself as the paen of Liberty is a delusion or a lie. The Left, of the kind we see happening now, destroys everything it touches. It’s unsettling to kick the embers of the 20th Century and find a heat that still sears flesh.
Here is an URL to Fergenson @weekly standard doing a Clint to Fallows (Atlantic). It’s a hoot;
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-delusion-explained_651376.html
Josh, what is really needed is a way to lift the cheese from the cheese makers without getting them upset. Anybody who has ever pulled an egg out from under a hen knows that finesse is important.
My problem with Romney all along is how establishment he is. Changing faces on the scam does not stop it from being a scam. It will be interesting to see Mitt’s cabinet selections. That will tell us if Mitt is going for a cure or just making the crooks change ties from blue to red.
Meanwhile, here is a quarter in the jukebox. This should be the theme at the Donk’s convention;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HsgfQux-ho
If you like Maya, try ‘Sick Panda’.
I would rather shower @Penn State then vote Democratic.
RWE @ 22: “Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government Initiative” which called for a 30% reduction in the Federal civilian workforce”
You realize that the bulk of that work force reduction came out of DoD.
The Left’s reflex is to always reduce defense expenditures, even if suicidal, to free up money for “more worthy causes.” That’s why today’s fiscal crisis has a hidden benefit: half of the budget reduction must now magically come out of DOD. Double bonus!!
u @ 66: In retrospect, the question of who seduced who and when is so blurred its almost impossible to determine at this point and because since we have gone so deep down that rat hole, with the wholesale sellout of both bankers and politicians,- it’s now besides the point.
CRA had nothing to do with AIG selling trillions in unfulfillable CDS. CRA had nothing to do with Citibank putting billions in foreign SVIs. CRA had nothing to do with China buying hundreds of billions in MBO at a bogus rate so low that Paulson tried to blame the collapse on them! Everyone in finance saw a bubble appearing in the classic sense, and thought they were prepared for it. Nobody in finance saw the “market failure” that occurred which would have taken down ALL of the top 100 institutions, without TARP and Fed actions that would have been considered impossible and absurd six months – six DAYS – earlier. BUT THEY SHOULD HAVE. They were paying themselves billions for being such clever boys, and are still doing so. I’m sure some of their pet rocket scientists told them, “Don’t launch that shuttle!” but they had yacht payments to make or something, much better excuses than those NASA scientists ever had. Those particular rocket scientists mostly left the field. One or two of them – got filthy rich! But under the circumstances, that’s not much comfort to the millions and billions of citizens affected from the failures. And what of the malefactors? Bawney Fwank retires with his pension intact, OK, but a thousand or so Wall Street execs are home with their ill-gotten $100b.
And what ABOUT the finances of millions of Joe and Jane Americans who bought houses at ridiculous prices, because that’s where the market was, and they weren’t any kind of experts on the economy? Bankers gave them free lattes and told them they were not only doing the right thing but insuring their future. They did this UP AND DOWN the income range, the liar loans were given in the best and worst neighborhoods to the best and worst credit risks, maybe 10% of those had anything at all to do with CRA.
Go ahead, ask me what I think of it all.
/overposted
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s @ 68: Here is an URL to Fergenson @weekly standard doing a Clint to Fallows (Atlantic). It’s a hoot;
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-delusion-explained_651376.html
t’is indeed, which is why I also posted it with small fanfare up at #32.
Worth another mention.
Blast from the Past @29: “My scheme specifically withdraws the franchise to vote for a federal office, that is Congress, from Regular but not Reserve or Guard officers”
I politely disagree with exempting the Guard and Reserves. The Guard especially has become politicized of late. Ever try to cut Guard units commensurate with reductions in the Regular forces? If they smell the faintest whiff of a possible reduction, they go whining to their congresscritters, who then predictably get on their high horse and climb all DOD until any such proposal is scuttled. Have you been paying attention the the Air Force’s recent efforts to trim/redistribute Guard forces? The Air Force had its ass handed to it. It now looks like any more reductions will have to come out of the Regular forces; it’s just too hard to cut the Guard and Reserves.
Dealing with the Guard recently is like dealing with a union. Sorry, no special prerogatives for Guard and Reserve forces.
38. john:
> One failure – the idea of ‘starving the beast’ let the fed grow and not raise > takes to pay for the growth and it would stop growing. it did not stop growing.
Reagan failed to anticipate that you cannot starve the beast without first taking away the beast’s credit card.
39. Fletcher Christian:
> Polywell fusion
I used to be of the opinion that (virtually) free, limitless energy would be the solution to mankind’s problems. Now I think that possibly the worst thing that could happen to the human race would be for a Socialist government to acquire that free, limitless energy. It would make such governments so powerful that the human race might never know freedom again.
Polywell researchers have been very quiet during the Obama administration. Perhaps they are the real life equivalent of Rand’s “20th Century Motor Company.”
Regardless of various theories on how best to transmute hope into change; nature -be it of the mother or human variety- is terrible and cruel if not tamed:
You get what you pay for…Seldom more, and more often less.
Josh @ 8: “There can be nothing wrong with a car, that some fool drives off a cliff, that’s more like today’s USA.”
I’m shocked; shocked! Such blatant hate speech, and here at the Belmont Club of all places.
When someone slyly talks of cars driving off cliffs, that is of course code speech. What do we all immediately think of? That’s right — ‘Driving Miss Daisy’. Which makes us think that the driver, no matter how urbane & admirable he might be, would have African ancestry. And we would remember that he was a downtrodden wage slave, driving around a rich old woman of vile European ancestry. One could hardly ask for such a frightening mental image of racism.
And then to mention driving off a cliff! Obviously, only a really foolish person would drive a perfectly good car off of a cliff, even if he did have this whiny old white gasbag in the back who just would not shut up. That implies that the driver, who we must remember has already been established as having African ancestry, was either incompetent or self-destructive. Sir! There is not a professor anywhere in the wide reaches of American academia who would accept that either of those characteristics could ever be found in a person of African ancestry. For goodness sake, that is settled science! Consequently, this statement can only be the most blatant kind of overt racism.
Nay! Worse than that. Since the whole human race is in reality ‘Out of Africa’, that racist statement is not just hatred for ‘The Other’, it is self-hatred. And self-hatred is the only form of self-abuse that can no longer be accepted in our ever-so-tolerant public square.
Next time, make things easy and just go with the flow. It was the car’s fault it went over the cliff; certainly not the driver’s. Damn car was probably an SUV anyway. Good riddance to it!
Josh @ 8 – It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. Nonsense
Here is how your analysis fails. It’s the progression of programs which renders the destruction of the economy. The progressives could not be satisfied with SSA, they needed Medicare, then Medicaid. Next everybody gets a house, a minimum wage, then Obama-care, then free college.
Next thing you know, we’re deeply indebted, jobs are exported because of high overhead, and revenues fall precipitously. What to do? Well, for Pete’s sake, don’t trim any entitlements. Go after the wealthy instead, like a good little Marx brother.
The point is, once you put the foot in the door, SSA becomes the rationale for one welfare program after another. There is no stable endpoint in the minds of the progressive until all scarce assets are freely available to anyone who has need.
Having accepted government’s role in protecting retirement, how can you refuse their role in the other things? They seek to deliver socialism without calling it socialism, redistribution without calling it tyranny.
Doesn’t matter that the government does not hold title to the business, if they are able to dictate what the business must do or is able to do.
Your arguments would be correct, if SSA satiated the beast and it went away forever. But this beast is insatiable and will arise whenever it holds majority or can sway opinion of the hoi polloi to rob those who have more so that free stuff can be distributed.
We are fortunate that la crise unfolded as precipitously as it did. American exceptionalism is in part, that attitude that many still hold, that socialism is not the way for us. If that attitude prevails in November, then there is a way back. Otherwise it will be more difficult.
That’s why the analyses presented hold water.
16. epignosis: I am for both compassion and self-reliance. How to balance both? Give just enough to sustain, stop worrying about the needy’s ‘self-esteem,’- they can’t afford self-esteem and it is artificial anyway. Make the support so basic they want to get off it. And lastly, it has to be controlled at the closest, local level if you want to eliminate fraud. Instead of hiding it, make them get their handouts in the bright light. Soup lines worked this way and people actually felt shamed to be in them. They should. All of this is barring those who absolutely cannot work of course.
I think welfare should be an either or proposition. A certain (gross) amount, set by law. No means test or qualifying, just the requirement of giving up your right to vote.
The gross amount of the negative income tax is set by the voters, then divided among the participants. That way those getting the cheese don’t decide how much, those providing the cheese do.
Of course I think the whole one man one vote is overrated and abused.
Josh, sorry. I either;
A) Great minds think alike
B) I didn’t notice the URL
C) I did notice it but when I got around to posting, I had forgotten being old and not as sharp as I once was
D) Deep House has rotted my brain
E) All the above.
Grading is on a curve.
70. Josh
Thanks for mentioning dervatives, but CRA was done so the same actors could create said instruments
AND take over the financials.
Politicals first take over the means of force, then begin hostile control of sectors.
They have many means- most are arcane, hidden, or ignored.
“communists”, really, are just mafiosi.
Who has the guns?
Crime.gov takes over the rich targets- the target is only paying protection
“46. Blast From the Past
Interesting that Rykehaven‘s comments are arriving in my inbox but not on the thread. In 2008 we had Paulbot-Larouchite trolls. Some were obvious agents sent by the Donks and others were just sincere but misguided tools. They did succeed in depressing the vote for McCain, possibly by just enough to make the difference in key locations.”
Really? I thought McCain did a good enough job all of that on his own. I suppose if Romney loses you’ll blame the ‘Paulbots’ too now matter how good of a job your GOP hardline compatriots did in cutting off their mike at the RNC while high fiving, sending off duty cops to beat up elderly Paul supporters in Louisiana, and literally locking them out in Missouri and Oklahoma and ignoring whole county results in Maine and entire precincts in Iowa? In fact while the Ulsterman Report swallowed the disinfo put out in January attempting to link Paul with Soros White House Insider set him straight that the Obamanoids were actually rooting for the Republicans to pull Santorum out of their magic hat as the anti-Romney candidate, and lo and behold after months of campaigning in single digits in Iowa that state’s GOP made it happen and announced days in advance that under no certain terms would Paul be allowed to win that state.
I see plenty of aggression, and it’s all from the Establishment side against the hated Ronulans. Or do you really think the U.S. can sustain its current force structure and military bases in 120 countries borrowing (or printing, really) $1 trillion a year? All your aging/Cold War nostalgiac peers beating back the hated Paulbots for one cycle looks in vain to me.
It will either be Obamanoid government cheese, Romney Obama lite government cheese, or the Liberty movement. Mainline Reaganite Republicanism is as long gone as the 1980 and 84 electorates that elected him.
“CRA had nothing to do with AIG selling trillions in unfulfillable CDS. ”
You have got to be kidding. The FED used the CRA to club lending institutions to giving loans to unqualified buyers on a massive scale where loans to properties in low income areas got preferential rates and terms over more qualified applicants, almost insuring a high probability of default. That same guvmint then forced out Hank Greenburg out of AIG and ‘encouraged” AIG to get into insuring those so same faulty loans. One hand fed the other. There really is no separating this interconnected fraud into justifiable actions. It’s all criminal.
Josh @ 8 – It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. Nonsense
Talk about nonsense. It’s simple math Josh. There is a limit to the government’s ability to tax and increase revenue. In many European countries, particularly Greece and Spain, the way over promised entitlement programs payment demand needs , right now, this minute, far overwhelm those countries ability to raise tax revenue to pay not only the entitlement programs themselves but the borrowing those programs have caused. These countries have fallen into the deadly “Debt Trap” where reasonable payments on the debt and other absolutely required payment demands far exceed their ability to pay. They must default once the bailouts stop. They are completely and thoroughly screwed.
If we allow our entitlement programs to continue on anything anywhere near their current path, we will be just as screwed in the not too distant future.
74. Kinuachdrach
When someone slyly talks of cars driving off cliffs, that is of course code speech. What do we all immediately think of?
Some of us think of Toonces, the driving cat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rdLOrOLJiA
(Of course, that’s a racist– or maybe speciesist– dog- or cat-whistle: we all know who President Toonces is: “Hey, relax. President Toonces is driving the car and all of us reluctant passengers can just scream and scream as it goes over the cliff in a ball of fire.” http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/07/obama-the-buck-stops-with-me/)
Toonces even has a campaign shirt: http://skreened.com/toobadtees/toonces-for-president
Wretched:
A socialist regime would be unconstitutional if adopted outright as such by Congress. The interesting question is whether socialism can be implemented incrementally, as seems to be the case. As long as private property is a protected right of all citizens, socialism has dim prospects.
On the other hand, taxation is the eroding factor, like water on an Alka Seltzer, that can dissolve property. As it is, most homeowners in the red states pay annual property tax equivalent to the transfer tax they paid when they bought their house and, in effect, continue to own it by government indulgence from year to year. The same situation applies to income. In this light, the Chief Justice’s odd rumination about the Obamacare imposition being a lawful tax and not a penalty becomes very interesting: He implicitly states that a tax can become a penalty and thus be illegal if it exceeds a certain (unstated) threshold.
That may be the straw that we must grasp in the battle to limit government, but, as he also stated, we can’t expect the Court to correct all our bad choices. We have as a nation generally picked the right leader at time of crisis, but there is no guarantee that will happen now. Congress is the weak point now. Few Congressmen or Senators have accomplished anything but get reelected for 40 years. Perhaps politics and government are like popular media—we get what the market finds that we want. Hence, President Kardasian dancing with the stars.
Josh wrote:
“nmu @ 58: You do know that?
Know what? I pay a rent-seeker for my apartment every month and it goes OK, but it would be unfortunate if I had to pay Guido an extra $500/month so that nothing happens to it. That’s my point, what’s yours?”
Testy today?
The landlord is not a “rent-seeker”. He is a businessman. He gets your money, you get a place to live. Simple transaction.
Do you in fact understand the term “rent-seeker”?
I don’t know if you’re confused here or just being a wiseass. If it’s the latter that’s unfortunate because you’re being disingenuous and detracting from the discussion.
The relationship between you and your landlord is a business transaction of free association. “Rent-seeking” is something else entirely. For a complete definition and explanation read the Wikipedia page, but in a nutshell, rent-seeking behavior is not a transaction into which one freely enters but is a coerced transaction brought about by goverment rules and regulations.
“Rent-seeking” is when I am forced to pay a “private” company to make my business OSHA compliant with lots of regs that don’t actually benefit the workers or my customers but cost me money. “Rent-seeking” is when I am obliged to comply with government regulators who come into my business to do “audits” for things that don’t necessarily benefit my workers or my customers but perpetuate their own perceived need and therefore income stream. “Rent-seeking” is when a regulatory apparatus forces banks to take losses lending to bad prospects to satisy someone’s envy pretending to be concern for fairness, and then the banks followed by the public take it in the shorts when that scenario fails.
Most of the people here at BC have either owned a business or have been posting here long enough to know what a devastating thing this behavior is to small businesses, and that it dies out almost instantly without the force of government regulation to prop it up. I would have thought the same for you.
I suspect you know this but tried to pull a red herring move with your little “example”. If I’m wrong, apologies, and I hope I’ve educated you.
The “point” is easy enough for any intelligent person to see. It’s not my point (I didn’t create the term or its application) or your point (you’re entitled to our own opinion but not your own reality). It’s THE point, that neither of us can change.
Regulation is the necessary condition for rent-seeking behavior, because in the absence of the regulatory big stick (fines etc.) businesses simply do not pay for the services of the rent-seekers and they go belly-up.
The corollary to this is that the more regulation you have, the more rent-seeking you have, and the negative effects of this are not linear due to negative multiplier effects (as other posters have pointed out).
Get it?
You may believe that a highly regulatory environment will take out the bad guy banksters and financial guys. What happens in reality is that it ALWAYS hurts small and medium businesses disproportionately. The past six years are an objective example of this. In my own business – which has nothing to do with banks or finance – I”ve had my regulatory costs skyrocket since ’06. Didn’t make my workers more safe. Didn’t help my customers. Didn’t reign in the banksters one bit. In your zeal to “get” the banksters (which I actually understand) you will settle for any businesman’s head on a platter, it seems – mine included. Like the crowd in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar who kills a poet who has the same name as one of the bad guys, simply because they share a name.
u @ 80: The point is, once you put the foot in the door, SSA becomes the rationale for one welfare program after another.
OK, a slippery slope argument, but you can apply those everywhere and then you end up a libertarian with nobody to pave the roads.
I could see something like that turning into a new hi-tech feudalism, I’ve read post-apocalyptic scifi along those lines. But it doesn’t tend to resemble a democracy very much.
… various other discussions, sorry, too overposted …
There’s a difference, though. Road paving, policing, all that stuff we don’t have to surrender our liberty to accomplish. With SSA we do. It’s not voluntary, and is already spent. The government just couldn’t help itself.
It’s not feudalistic or even libertarian to assert that federal government should not be the source of shelter, clothing, sustenance, health-care, or wages for the general public, except, of course, those in public service.
It should not be a guarantor of last resort for stuff that we should provide of our own endeavors. If SSA had been struck down, as it should have been, in 1935, people would have jobs. It would be essential to avoid poverty. The jobs now held by 20 million illegals would be held by 20 million citizens.
Read Andrew Ferguson’s other articles at the Weekly Standard too. He’s a riot.
#53 maineman
First, apologies as I accidentally hit submit before I was anywhere near ready. There may be a partial version of this posted, but I have requested deletion.
#53 maineman
#56 some of my best friends
These pretty much sum it up. There is an irrevocable choice of futures involved in this election. It will not be the final choice, because each path has further options down the road. But the choice in November, either way, forecloses the other option forever. The Statist choice of leaving Obama and his regime in power means Orwell’s boot will be in the face of the American people from now on.
If Romney is elected, and a Republican Senate, and if they actually ACT to try to stop or roll back the increasing power of the State; then we have a small chance. If they do not, then some of my best friends‘ last paragraph may be the ultimate end. Even if Romney & Co. fail to try to save the country, his election gives us that much more breathing space to try electoral politics before brute force is imposed on us.
For those in the Patriot Movement, there is a process of mental reset that seems to be in progress. A couple of days ago, there was a great uproar amongst an email group I am part of; concerning the change in the rules imposed at the Republican Convention that will make it all but impossible for dissenters to be represented by delegates.
I commented that it was a unwarranted concern. I asked how many there figured that if Romney failed to roll back what the regime is doing, that they would be part of the Republican Party in 2014 anyway? If Romney earns it, he will be supported. If he does not, whatever rules the Republican Party makes for itself will have not effect on us. I will vote for Romney, and whatever non-DIABLO’s that come in front of me in November. After that, I and we owe the Republicans no loyalty that they do not earn.
We are committed to battle on this line, at this time. What happens afterwards depends on the results. All futures are contingent. Most outcomes are not good. We each have to play our part, regardless of the setting.
Subotai Bahadur
Abbie Normal 71 and Unsk 62,
Thank you for your comments,
My plan only withdraws the franchise from those who derive over 50% of their income from a public treasury. That would cover Regular officers but not officers in the Guard or Reserve except during their initial period of training. G&R officers are part time government employees, except when mobilized in the event of a war. If we do mobilize them then they should not lose their right to vote.
Ideally more of the citizenry should be in the Guard or Reserve, that is the Organized Militia. I have also proposed having a short period of universal military service for Basic Training, followed by linking all government benefits including educational support to service in either the active or reserve forces.
Mr X 79 or whatever name you are using this week,
Thank you for confirming that objectively the Paulbots are functioning as agents of potentially hostile foreign powers. We certainly can afford a military far more robust than what the Democrats are determined to reduce us to. If we get a real Republican administration and unleash the energy sector as well as cutting back on regulations and rent seeking parasites then you will see an expansion of the American economy and power that will result in Pootie getting stuffed back in his poot. Obama and the Democrats have functioned in a way indistinguishable from agents of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, that is the Chinese Russians and Iranians. The Paulbot Isolationists are effectively as much agents of the SCO as are the radical Greens and Democrats.
My belief and fear is that the big story of 2013 will be economic implosion in China.
4/4
“It is about whether people are still equals or are now permanently divided into two camps: the taxpayers and the recipients.”
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“The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust.”
It is worse than that. The so-called ‘recipients’ are mere proxies to the true benefactors of the rising fascist state. The State itself is the benefactor of all and its toils are little more than the maneuvering of pawns on a rigged chess board that always favors the house. The state eternally seeks out the approval of minorities because having given them their tithe, there is more left for the public employee union “heroes” to purloin than had they served the greater good.
Therefore, everyone is genetically inferior and evil but them. At least, that is what they’d have you believe. They are either the sole deserved angels of history or they are a satanic minority who have high-jacked all that is good by institutionalizing lies and hatred under the umbrella of state. They say follow the money and in this case it flows directly into their pension accounts. They have stolen from the future to save themselves from the wretched destruction that they themselves have caused.
The whole idea of the state is to hide the face of the thief from individual culpability. No one is to blame and this can only be made true by the destruction of the individual through collective guilt and guilt can only be sustained through and an unwavering steady-state of institutional hatred.
Our host has it right. When ever more regulation is shown to cause even more catastrophic results, it’s time to rethink the definition of regulation and reformulate in ways that connects actions with consequences. Where we need to return to the American habit of celebrating not just business success, but its (quick) failure – honoring the public’s first democratic right – that to vote with their pocketbook – and have it mean something, vice be vetoed by others (special interests, elites, powerful, the government operating with less than 3/4s of the citizen’s support).
To bad we didn’t get to see this history play out (CITI and mortgage casinos put into receivership, the rest struggle through without government nationalization – we the people taking our haircuts in pension fund losses, etc.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2MV6CpGCwU
Note Kovacevich’s comment about regulators being unwilling to do their jobs, and Congress being unwilling to backstop them. No amount of new or old regulation can fix this save for letting the market destroy fools in business and their speculators, if not today, tomorrow. And it’s not like all we’ve done to date can prevent the butcher’s bill from being paid – GM is still going to die, and everyone is going to take a haircut. Canut understood.