Through some process, socialism has apparently increased the discount rate to the point where the future is consumed for the sake of the present.
Gee I like the sound of that, cuz I think that’s just what the banksters have been doing to the US for fifty years. But that’s simply short-sighted greed, IMHO, they do it because they can, and eating the seed corn always seems like a party to some. OK there’s a bit more to it, but that will do for a summary.
But after all, I’m not going to go all simple-minded on this like a LuapNor-bot, but that means I have to try to squeeze a complex argument into this little text box. Society is a specialization of function, and we have to trust the system and other members. I don’t have any seed corn in my home. That all happens – elsewhere. I don’t even choose politicans much on their farm policies, and I sure hope the farmers are not eating all the seed corn, or selling it all to China. But when socialism concentrates power, some pinhead official may decide we don’t need any corn, sell the whole lot to China to make room for a solar yeast farm, and then when that fails, we’re ALL in trouble. Market systems depend on that kind of destructive concentration never happening, but it does happen in unregulated markets, it has happened in our unregulated financial markets, too much power in too few hands. And no simple solutions in sight. Eliminating centralization and power is not the answer, I don’t want to grow my own corn. The answers are in that complex middle.
What we have now is a Democratic party that wants big answers, trillion dollar this, Obamacare that. Big answers go awry. Political parties don’t grow corn or build solar cells. It’s cheaper and easier to sell the farm equipment to the Chinese and redevelop the land into a golf course. And ten years from now when the Chinese sell you corn for three times what it costs to grow it yourself, will you tear down the golf course and buy a tractor? But you’ve been in the red for ten years and don’t have the capital, and have forgotten how, anyway, and the local city council won’t approve because the caddy’s union has filed suit.
Power corrupts, there is no doubt. And a cutback in power is what we need, but moreso a management of the power we have, and that’s just difficult. So electing simpletons who simply want to shut it all down, is maybe the one thing we could do worse than what we are already doing.
Actually – a cutback in power is not quite correct, Machievelli will tell you that, or King Lear, it is a matter of holding that power in check, if you abjure it, someone else will pick it up and smash you with it.
(yes, it seems the simpleton has the good idea of reducing power, and may attract followers who think he may succeed in moving us a little in the proper direction thereby, but throwing a wrench into the machinery is just what is worse than the problem, you don’t want to stop the car by ramming a tree at 60mph)
What do we want then, what do we need? Someone smart like Newt, who hopefully for some dogmatic reasons knows enough to doubt his own knowledge. A competent bureaucrat, that Mitt likes to represent himself as. Someone who won’t break more than he builds, and if he can even build a little extra, better yet. Someone who is a leader and consensus builder, because we’re not electing a god-king, just a chief administrator who still needs hundreds of sub-chiefs to detail the plan and carry it out by engaging the entire country – not to mention the Congress that has the actual power to do anything at all, and that is supposed to comprise our more direct, localized connections to the whole. And we need to be skeptical of someone who claims they have a magic wand or 10% dividends forever or fix it all without our needing to participate. It’s always going to be hard work, but that’s OK, we’re good at it, amazingly good at it given world history, so let’s get to it.
