The Youth Are Anti Capitalist

Are You Ready To Consider That Capitalism Is The Real Problem?:

In February, college sophomore Trevor Hill stood up during a televised town hall meeting in New York and posed a simple question to Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. He cited a study by Harvard University showing that 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 no longer support the system of capitalism, and asked whether the Democrats could embrace this fast-changing reality and stake out a clearer contrast to right-wing economics.

I can only guess that Trevor and even the author of the column do the "breathing thing", and I further assume that their feet were on the ground .... however it seems questionable if their "heads are there to move them around" -- although I'm sure Trevor has a higher IQ than me, "measures vary".

So what does Trevor conclude?

What might a better world look like? There are a million ideas out there. We can start by changing how we understand and measure progress. As Robert Kennedy famously said, GDP “does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play . . . it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

"Understanding and measuring progress" begs many ancient metaphysical questions of "the good". For large majorities up to say "1950", "the good" was "God, Family, Vocation, Community, National Identity / Culture ..." or similar in some sort of similar order. "Vocation / money" were there, but "vocation" did not equal pure income/consumption ... it included elements of service/purpose/meaning. Books like "The Sane Society" at least give some insight into how difficult that might be.


Assuming this, they are also subject to the effects of markets -- and government, which they conveniently fail to talk about. The US economy was definitely "mixed", the BOistan economy is about as "capitalist" as a casino in Vegas. It is rigged to allow DC which our founders would have thought would be full of "servants" to be the wealthiest area in the country to win, just like "the house" in Vegas. It can't be otherwise -- if you don't MAKE, you have to TAKE -- in Vegas from your gambling patrons, in the case of government from the citizens and future citizens.

There are a set of things in the universe that "just are" -- they aren't "good or bad", they ARE! Accepting the reality of what IS can be hugely helpful, both personally and societally -- it is like having basic clue on reality. (a REALLY high bar for 18-29 year olds!)

Therefore, "Government" is IN the market system as well, as everything/everyone is, and obviously has to be. The government takes resources from some parts of the economy, takes a portion for themselves,  and gives to others to protect and expand their interests through buying/selling goods, votes, benefits, taxes, just as all of us do. The big difference between government and the rest of the market is that it never produces anything -- it only moves resources around. It is a bit like the financial sector with no profit motive.

Before BOistan, there was a nation called the United Sates. That nation had a magical thing called LIMITED government. There were checks and balances as well as Constitutional restrictions  (that nation actually followed a written constitution) on how powerful the government could become.

These restrictions were modelled after markets. When there is a huge need for a product, the price goes up and more providers start to provide that product causing the price to go down until there is a "balance" where price provides a constant indicator to the market as to how much to provide. If there were really big needs, the government could get things like "2/3 majorities" or "Constitutional Amendments", but otherwise it had to live with it's limits.

Government got rid of the limits, so it is now like the Mob entering a market. The market is  STILL "a market", it is just "black / corrupt / criminal" -- like the market for drugs in prison. Let's take healthcare as an example -- first The Mob (government) decides who can play in the market through licensing, regulation, fees, taxes, etc. Then they execute "pay-offs" -- certain groups, say unions, elderly people, the poor, doctors, etc are "paid off" ... provided "protection", or "deals", with at least the tacit assumption that they will support the Mob (government). Some are provided lucrative deals -- like the Doctors. Think of them as highly paid hit men.

Sometimes other "protection rackets" rise up -- to provide "insurance" for a price. In the medical crime area we call it "insurance" (wink, wink). There is usually an uneasy peace with the various insurance providers -- the Mob (gov) would like to have ALL the action, but given proper kick-backs, cover, etc, they see it as beneficial for the "insurers" to have a piece of the action.

Mobs (gov) tend to be greedy. Where individuals formerly went to a doctor who dealt with their problem one on one with minimal mob/gov oversight, good doctors that provided good service at a good price were successful, and bad doctors found other employment.

As gov/mob increasingly entered the picture, certifications, costs of entering the profession, limits on how many doctors there could be, regulations, taxes, fees, records, kickbacks, requirements for increasingly expensive "insurance" (mobs breed mobs), etc grew without bound -- more and more players desire a piece of the action, and since the gov/mob is getting pay-offs from all of them, they encourage that generally non-productive "growth".

"The Real Problem" always comes down to human nature -- we tend to fall into believing that "someone else will solve our problems" -- and the "someone else" always becomes corrupt and creates greater problems than what they were supposedly solving. Eventually economic collapse, violence, poverty, hopelessness, etc result because the "Real Problem" is **US**!!!!!

If that wasn't bad enough, look at the people who the article is listening to -- Americans 18-29! The eternal fount of a lot of things -- wisdom definitely not being one of them!!

You will always see the "mob/government" trying to increase the set of people who support them, which will always mean things like surveying younger people, lowering voting ages and reducing any sort of restriction on voting (citizenship, ID, etc), because while there is indeed a "sucker born every day", as the suckers age, some of them learn by experience and become aware adults -- no matter how much the gov/mob works to prevent that!

The 5,000 Year Government Debt Bubble

The 5,000-Year Government Debt Bubble - WSJ:

When the international financial house of cards finally comes tumbling down it should be a surprise to no one. Governments have worked very hard to dig this hole, and anyone that cared to look realizes that "voting themselves benefits they can't pay for" is the normal end of "democracy". Even NPR sees this hole.

Mr. Sylla sums it up: “There were no negative bond yields in 5,000 years of recorded history.” 

Put another way, government bonds have never been so expensive.Paul Singer, founder of hedge fund Elliott Management, isn’t expecting a happy ending. He believes that because of massive entitlement promises plus huge debt, “the entire developed world is insolvent.” He says that a negative rate on a government bond is “crazier than zero, and zero was crazy enough.”

Thus we live at a time with slowing or slowed economies, but people largely still living a lifestyle that could only be afforded by rapidly growing economies.

It’s not as if the bond bubble is fun while it lasts. It’s painful for savers and corrosive for society to have governments systematically punishing thrift. It also encourages reckless governments to spend further beyond their means when they are rewarded for borrowing in this way. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the government-engineered bond bubble hasn’t delivered the promised economic growth. Who can confidently invest when the official price of credit appears to be so dishonest?

Corrosive, corrupt, clandestine, coercive,  catatonic,  criminal ... CLINTON!
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Suicide And Bloodletting

There's Been A Startling Rise In Suicide Rates In The U.S.:

Around the time of the American Revolution, "Bloodletting" was considered pretty much a universal cure -- it is fairly commonly accepted that it killed President Washington. The theory was that your "humors" got out of balance, so everyone needed to let out a few pints from time to time. When you got sick, it needed to be done early. If you got sicker, you needed to let more blood. More was better and starting the process early was critical. If the patient died, clearly you didn't start early enough or let enough. More aggressive action was called for on the next case!

If you need any more proof that mental health disorders are a public health issue, look no further than rising suicide rates over the last decade and a half. 

Deaths from suicide have increased 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to an analysis of Americans aged 5 and up conducted by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Any of the rest of you notice a huge decline in government intervention in all aspects of health and mental care from 1999 to 2014? No? Anybody see the OPPOSITE? Anyone hear that drugs for depression and other mental illness are being prescribed at record levels?

As the article points out, suicide rates among high school educated whites are rising rapidly, but interestingly ...

Black men were the only racial and gender group to lower their rate of suicide; it declined 8 percent between 1999 and 2014.

Anyone want to bet that when you have something between 4-6K young black men murdering each other every year it cuts down on the suicide rate for the survivors? THERE might be the poster for "More Government" -- see, the largest government intervention in family lives in the nation is in the black inner city, and their suicide rate is lower!". Wonderful -- born to be shot you will never be hung. Dying by murder is a guarantee you won't commit suicide!

We have more and more government, but LESS people gainfully employed, LESS intact families, and LESS community coherence. For the common person, American life is meaningless and empty -- and suicide rates are rising rapidly.

Government is the modern equivalent of bloodletting -- no matter the condition, the assumed answer is to get it more involved quicker. If things don't seem to be improving, apply even MORE government to the problem!

Bloodletting still kills!

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Mille Lacs, Government In Action

Mille Lacs walleye season catch-and-release only in 2016 - Story | KMSP:

Mille Lacs, once the "Walleye Factory" will be catch and release only in 2016 with the use of live bait disallowed.

Back in 2006 I did a blog on how great a time it was fishing there, and recalling 2003 when I caught a 27", 28", 27" walleyes on consecutive days along with a good number of other walleyes over 20".

We used to fish over in NW WI before the indians started spearing and netting and those fisheries were destroyed. They started the same thing on Mille Lacs and of course ASSURED everyone that it was going to be "managed" and suitably maligned anyone who protested as "racists".

So Mille Lacs now has the same designation as Dallas-Fort Worth airport. DFW

Government is the fecal Midas -- what it touches turns to shit.

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Trust, Security, Apple

We cannot trust our government, so we must trust the technology | US news | The Guardian:

First of all, I don't believe that the NSA or other US government agency can't break the iPhone security. Interagency, they may have decided that they don't really care about these particular people so they are not going to break THIS ONE, but if the top security apparatus of the US can't break into an iPhone, the idiots at the top are even more incompetent than I thought. (and that is INCOMPETENT!)

I used to work with security stuff at IBM. We had a couple of guys that would "go missing" for a few weeks, "on business", but with nothing more official than that. The "over drinks / wink wink nod, nod, I really need to shoot you now was" ... NSA. It was VERY clear that they could break whatever was "secure", and were going to continue to do so.

Beyond that, consider this from John McAfee ...

With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami. They are all prodigies, with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75% are social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact. 

And why do the best hackers on the planet not work for the FBI? Because the FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working and won't work for less than a half-million dollars a year. But you bet your ass that the Chinese and Russians are hiring similar people with similar demands and have been for many years. It's why we are decades behind in the cyber race.

If you don't know what "social engineers" are relative to computer security, they are "con men, grifters, pickpockets". If you want to get a little humility on how good such can be, take a look at this.   McAfee is VERY different ... he is running for president on the libertarian party this year ...

The top linked article is quite sad, but maybe the saddest part is this:

Perhaps most importantly, we need to end the culture of impunity that protects people who run illegal programs and continue to thrive in their careers after they are exposed, but vindictively pursues the whistleblowers who expose that illegality. 

Only such a system, that offers transparently meaningful oversight and real consequences for those who violate our trust, has any chance of being trustworthy enough to remove the persistent global demand for platforms that preserve user privacy and security even at the expense of weakening the capabilities of their policing and national security agencies.

Seriously? With BO in the White House and Hillary Clinton running for president? With the guys that exposed Planned Parenthood's  selling of body parts under indictment?  Why just a few years ago the MSM had a cow over tracking who was calling the cells of known terrorists! Now they want "more trust"?

What part of THERE IS NO TRUST are these people missing?  In order to have such a thing as trust, one would need shared values, say Christianity. A written Constitution that was actually followed would be good. Perhaps after a few decades of return to such, some level of "trust" in organizations and governments might recover.

Those are gone ... learn to be as untrusting and independent as you possibly can be, and then learn some more!

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MNsure, "Free" Still Not Free

Some shocked by estate claims after signing up with MNsure | Duluth News Tribune:

Since we live under the rule of bureaucracy, reading the whole linked article is probably worth it, though it is longer than it needs to be.

Bottom line, in the machinations of BOcare, MNsure and Minnesota Care, the "asset test" for MNsure was taken away because there is none for BOcare and you are REQUIRED to purchase health insurance by law now.

But Minnesota failed to add a form to the tall stack of forms that lets you know that they are putting a lien on any assets you have for the cost of your "free insurance".

My Dad is in a nursing home for at least awhile -- got to sit through a discharge from one facility under Medicare and into another where a "supplemental" was involved. Stacks of papers, lots and lots of questions -- the wheels of government grind the lives and fortunes of us all, but they make sure they gather a lot of data while they do it.

Freedom has never been free -- and the cost of tyranny is still infinite.

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Inflation, NOT CPI !

If You Want To Know The Real Rate Of Inflation, Don't Bother With The CPI - Forbes:

The whole article is worth reading, but this part of it is so obvious it is worth a dope slap if you haven't realized it:

The CPI is tied to the incomes of about 80 million Americans, specifically: Social Security beneficiaries, food stamp recipients, military and federal Civil Service retirees and survivors, and children on school lunch programs. The higher the CPI, the more money the government needs to spend on these income payments to keep pace with the cost of living. However, this same government is about $17 trillion in debt. If the CPI is low, the less money the government needs to spend on cost of living adjustments, something seniors are astutely aware of.

Is it REALLY surprising that the largest debtor out there who ALSO has to pay a bunch of benefits and salaries that are supposed to be "inflation adjusted" would be interested in making the number artificially low?  They LOVE inflation (pay back debt with cheaper dollars), but why not have their cake and eat it too? If there was "inflation", they would have to pay a bunch of money on "inflation adjusted government bonds". When you leave the fox in charge of the henhouse, is it REALLY surprising that the chicken count is "suspect"?

Since retiring and paying more attention to SPENDING money than to MAKING money, it is become rather obvious to me that "real inflation" as in, "the cost of things you regularly buy" is and has been MUCH higher than what is being reported.

The more money that’s created and put into circulation, the less valuable it becomes. And the Fed has created a lot of money recently. The Fed’s unprecedented bond buying program, Quantitative Easing, created $116 million an hour for the entire year last year. It doesn’t make sense that the BLS’s measurement of inflation was only 1.5% last year, while at the same time, monetary inflation grew 4.9%.*

We are being told by the government that inflation is so low no COLA adjustments are needed. I know the MSM and D's have found the US government to be absolutely trustworthy the past 7 years, but let's see if there is an alternate view on these inflation numbers ...

Been out to eat lately? Pay for medical insurance, co-payments? Pay for your cell phone, internet, electricity, property taxes ... ??? I submit that blue line is MUCH closer to reality than the red one ... hmm, reality of "Red Lines"?

I think anyone with a moderate level of intelligence and common sense as been SURPRISED that things "seem to not be going as horribly as we would think" given the policies of the BO administration and the vast government bureaucracy that is a Democrat / Union hegemony.

The GDP numbers are fiction. It looks like the inflation numbers are fiction.

We know we have been had, but I'm beginning to think that the magnitude of the debacle is WAY beyond what we have been aware of!

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Trump Shooting, Hillary Top Secret, DC Snow Measurement

Washington, D.C., snowfall total called into question after improper measurement - The Washington Post:

I've been moving around a bit -- IA over the weekend, up to Eau Claire to day to see my Dad in the hospital, so not a lot of "news depth".

I did see that Trump made a claim that he could shoot someone on 5th ave and that would not affect his support with his "core supporters".

Do we not know that to be completely true? Have the Clintons not proven then phenomenon over the past 25 years to everyone's complete satisfaction? Certainly her "core supporters" could care less about e-mail servers, top secret documents or Benghazi. It is not clear if they believe that any charges against her are due to a "right wing conspiracy", or more likely, they simply believe that she is the leader of their Tribe/team and they will simply listen to her. No matter what.

If we DON'T know that to be true, consider that a significant majority are ready to accept the word of a government that Global Warming is the "greatest challenge facing our generation", yet that same government is not competent enough to measure snow depth correctly!

It has become apparent this afternoon and evening, through multiple conversations with the weather observers at Reagan National Airport, that the snowfall totals submitted to the National Weather Service for that location have not been measured properly.

I want to believe that my Dad will come out of this OK, Trump supporters are angry and want a LEADER, Hilary supporters similarly have decided to trust her, and the Global Warming industry has a monetary agenda, while most of the believers simply don't want to be ridiculed as "deniers'.

We all have quite a lot that we desperately want to believe -- that we will get up in the morning, that our loved ones will be safe, that our future will not be some hell ... the list is long.

Belief is fine -- the issue of sanity used to be how do our beliefs "measure up" to reality? It seems many of us no longer subscribe to that standard.



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Climate Change Expert Missing, Government in Action

Climate change expert sentenced to 32 months for fraud, says lying was a 'rush' - NBC News:

Well, he seemed to be OK for 15 years ...

But now he is going to jail -- I'm sure it will be nice jail. He ONLY failed to do any work by telling his supervisors that he was a CIA Spy for FIFTEEN YEARS! Those government jobs that pay $206K a year must REALLY have some awesome responsibilities considering he was shirking for 15 years and nobody was the wiser!

Supposedly though, he only defrauded the government of near $1 million ... but $200K X 15 is a lot closer to $3 million -- I suppose "close enough for government work".

I love what he did with his time ...

When Huvelle asked Beale what he was doing when he claimed he was working for the CIA, he said, "I spent time exercising. I spent a lot of time working on my house."
He also said he used the time "trying to find ways to fine tune the capitalist system" to discourage companies from damaging the environment. "I spent a lot of time reading on that," said Beale.

The article is worth a read -- your tax dollars at work. Two presidential administrations from opposing parties, both houses of congress switching parties (twice) ... no matter, the administrative incompetence and downright fraud rolls on ...

And those on the left will tell you that the answer is MORE GOVERNMENT!

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The Gas Can Explains It All

Five Years of Gas Can Hell! - Beautiful Anarchy:

The linked article is worth reading, but if you don't have the time, just think and understand. It is all very clear.

Gas cans used to work -- they were metal, often with a flexible spout that could go in anywhere. They had vent hole so that when you poured, gas came out.

You can't buy a gas can that works anymore. They have strange push valves that have to be precisely braced against "something" ... which often doesn't exist, because the tip has to push open some other little door to prevent ??  fumes I guess, but that is what the cap is for.

And they have no vents ... so they slowly blurp, often spilling on each blurp.

Filling the mower with gas has become a guaranteed spill. A spill used to be rare, now it is standard.

Why? Because the government decided that the old cans were "too prone to spill" -- so they created all sorts of new cans that are GUARANTEED to spill!

The government wanted to "fix" something and they destroyed it. This is what happens. If there was competition, nobody would ever buy one of the current gas cans, they would buy one that worked.

But we can't, the government has outlawed gas cans that hardly ever spill in favor of ones that always spill.

That is exactly and precisely how government works. You may THINK that you have a counter example, but what you are seeing is "lag" -- FICA hasn't blown up YET, but YET is what to focus on.

The ONLY hope for mankind is LIMITED government -- keep it small, keep it controlled, force it to be in competition with private solutions. Let it become the monster that we have allowed and it destroys all!

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Harvard Discovers BOcare -- Spending Money Like Trophy Wives

Whining Harvard Professors Discover Obamacare - Bloomberg View:

The Harvard Faculty is up in arms after discovering that BOcare applies to THEM! Oh the humanity!

One more reason the reflect on wisdom of the William F. Buckley quote: "I'd rather be governed by the first 2K names in the Boston Phonebook than the Harvard Faculty".

The quote has naturally received a lot of charges of "anti-intellectualism" and "know nothingism" relative to the Right, which yet again makes one wonder if those making the charge knew who Buckley was, or are just intent to prove his point.

The point of the quote is that being book smart has nothing to do with having any wisdom at all, or even common sense. The Harvard Faculty's  appreciation for the real world is very limited, and they are far more certain of their own superiority than anything else in their comprehension.

The Wisdom of PJ O'Rourke on how money is spent  is quoted in the article, but then a big hunk of the meaning of the quote is not understood:

1. You spend your money on yourself. You're motivated to get the thing you want most at the best price. This is the way middle-aged men haggle with Porsche dealers. 

2. You spend your money on other people. You still want a bargain, but you're less interested in pleasing the recipient of your largesse. This is why children get underwear at Christmas. 

3. You spend other people's money on yourself. You get what you want but price no longer matters. The second wives who ride around with the middle-aged men in the Porsches do this kind of spending at Neiman Marcus. 

4. You spend other people's money on other people. And in this case, who gives a damn?

The Harvard Faculty are indeed unhappy because they moved a tiny tiny bit from 3 to 1, which is actually FINE with those of us opposed to Government, and thus more in favor of reality.

The PROBLEM is that BOcare (and even Medicaid) is largely #4! The GOVERNMENT spends other people's money (ours) on other people, and how much they care about either those providing the money or those receiving the "benefit" is often very evident.

Worse yet,  due to the government aided monopoly aspects of health care, the insurance and the government,the whole unholy trinity  lives at 3 and 4 -- they do everything with other people's money, including paying themselves!  At least 2nd wives have some competition!

Remember, the real purpose of BOcare is to move to "single payer", which means a total lock for government at 3 and 4 (where it always is, which is why it MUST be made SMALLER!), and getting rid of the insurance companies so government and health care can divide up the spoils, happily pay themselves whatever they want, and just not give a damn!

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Liberty, Mills, and Lying to Ourselves

Three Cheers for the Nanny State - NYTimes.com:

Reading this article reminded me of the old "Everything I say is a lie" ... "I'm lying". Wrestle with that for awhile if you choose, but the lady that wrote this ought to pay more attention. If everything I say is a lie, then me telling you "that was a lie"... but if that is a lie, then ...

"We have a vision of ourselves as free, rational beings who are totally capable of making all the decisions we need to in order to create a good life. Give us complete liberty, and, barring natural disasters, we’ll end up where we want to be. It’s a nice vision, one that makes us feel proud of ourselves. But it’s false."

"WE have a vision of ourselves" ... well, some of us do. Primarily the folks that are like the lady writing the article. True Christians certainly don't have that vision -- they believe that both their heart and their reason are extremely self oriented and deceitful.

But those cheering for the Nanny State certainly DO believe that THEY, and the "proper authorities" have that vision and it is CORRECT! John Stewart Mill, Augustine, Jesus, Moses, Buddha, etc were all wrong, but the Statists are RIGHT! It is amazing how "refined" the human species has become in just a few thousand years. It must be because ONLY the "liberals" have gotten smarter through "natural selection", and the poor folks that don't see their brilliance have been "left behind".

Mill was wrong about that, though. A lot of times we have a good idea of where we want to go, but a really terrible idea of how to get there. It’s well established by now that we often don’t think very clearly when it comes to choosing the best means to attain our ends. We make errors. This has been the object of an enormous amount of study over the past few decades, and what has been discovered is that we are all prone to identifiable and predictable miscalculations.

Yup, Mill was wrong ... err, actually, maybe MOST people have a terrible idea of "how to get there", but if you allow liberty, SOME will figure out ways that work, and they may well be REWARDED because MOST were wrong, but since ALL had liberty, SOME figured out things that worked! In biology it is called "evolution" ... make a lot of tries and the ones that work WIN! 

The crucial point is that in some situations it’s just difficult for us to take in the relevant information and choose accordingly. It’s not quite the simple ignorance Mill was talking about, but it turns out that our minds are more complicated than Mill imagined. Like the guy about to step through the hole in the bridge, we need help.

Yup, that is A "crucial point" ... in fact the STANDARD "progressive" problem in almost all situations is confusing ends with means and failing to get the means right, then not realizing it and running everything into the ditch. Eventually, they are so pissed and disgusted, they start killing people that disagree with them because they MUST be right!!!!

Of course, what people fear is that this is just the beginning: today it’s soda, tomorrow it’s the guy standing behind you making you eat your broccoli, floss your teeth, and watch “PBS NewsHour” every day. What this ignores is that successful paternalistic laws are done on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis: if it’s too painful, it’s not a good law.  Making these analyses is something the government has the resources to do, just as now it sets automobile construction standards while considering both the need for affordability and the desire for safety

See, "The Government" ... you know, the folks that brought us BOcare, the TSA, the NSA, the Vietnam war, 17 trillion in debt, etc, etc, ... THEY ... THOSE PEOPLE, they are the ones that "have the resources"! Why? Well maybe because money stolen from some people buys "real smarts" ... or maybe giving a lot of people cushy but insanely boring  bureaucratic jobs somehow makes them "more qualified" than normal humans. Mill was clearly an idiot to think that what we needed was "a lot of attempts", and some mechanism that gave us feedback as to what worked.

I'm  an idiot ... I have doubts. I actually did like the book by Daniel Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky, "Thinking Fast and Slow", but next to John Stuart Mill, they are about as profound as Reverend Moon next to Jesus. YES!!!! We have A LOT of "cognitive biases" ... and even WORSE problems ... we are mortal  human sinners!!!  The really sad part of it is that knowing that is like a guy whose parachute won't open in free fall -- he is totally understanding of his condition, but he is completely helpless to help himself. 

If he is in that situation because he and 100 other people fell out of a jet, the the author of the column would be the one proudly yelling, "Hey, you are all in free fall, and I have figured that out!!!!" 

Only since the real world lasts longer than free fall even from a jet, she wants to pass laws requiring that we all flap our arms!!



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Countervailing Sense

Countervailing power - The Boston Globe

Citizens need to act more vigorously to restore Galbraith’s countervailing power. Otherwise, private business acting in its short run self interest will ruin us twice — once when private markets pay no heed to the risks they are imposing, and a second time when they corrupt our regulatory institutions.

When your conclusion is "citizens need to act more vigorously", you don't say how, but you fairly clearly call out "private business" as the thing to "react to", your column is pretty questionable on value. Let's try to save it a bit.

First "short run self interest". What is a typical prudent investment horizon? Answer, 10 years+. What is the longest elected term in the US government? Answer: Senator, 6 years. Representatives are 2. It is THE GOVERNMENT, not business that has a short term view. Even beyond this, Government operates on a cash accounting basis, so long term obligations like Social Security, Medicare, now Health Care, etc are not evaluated in the yearly financial statements.

Business is required YEARLY to evaluate the present value of assets, income streams and obligations, as well as futures risks and potentials. Investors make those evaluations on a daily and even hourly basis. Government does NOT, and has a MUCH more short term "next election" view of the future that completely fails to keep contact with the big picture of a "going concern".

Does this mean that business doesn't "fail", "have disasters", etc? No, of course not -- just like Government, it is run by humans. The Challenger and the Columbia both failed very publicly and with great expense, loss of life and national prestige, yet both were under the control of NASA, an agency of the US Government.

Just as NASA had no intent of multi-billion dollar space shuttles being destroyed along with the astronauts on board, BP had absolutely no intent to lose a half billion dollar oil drilling rig, eleven people, and have to deal with the loss of millions of gallons of crude and the damages caused by it. To err is human -- especially when technology is being advanced and important tasks are being carried out. Failures, even catastrophic failures are part of human life in this universe. "We" have to deal with it, but "vigor" is about as useful as a direction as "hope".

So what can we do? Can we help salvage some value from a lost effort at a column here? I believe so:

• Government sets a STABLE, PREDICTABLE playing field by the rule of law. It IS NOT "activist" -- activism is unpredictable, and just like playing baseball, football, or anything else with unpredictable rules, activist government is like the officials deciding the game. It is to be avoided. There are enough unknowns ... weather, injury and illness, etc. Government needs to avoid being one more large unpredictable element.
• Business, including suppliers, customers, investors, competitors, interacts with the exceedingly broad unpredictable nature of any production -- especially things like oil, with the daily speed of markets rather than the months and years required for political action. Disasters create losses -- as they should. Losses are just as important as gains in making sure that the best businesses survive and those that fail to deal with the reality of the real world and the markets fail. There is no such thing as "too big to fail", and the government that claims there is has signed it's own likely death warrant in finding that even that government is not "too big to fail".
• Citizens. The US is expected to be a country where citizens realize that a government big enough to give you what you want is big enough to take everything you have. Mostly we have a responsibility to educate ourselves about the wonderful construction known as "The Constitution" and the government structures it specified, realize that the "progressive" monster that has mutated from the rape of our nation by the progressives must be exposed to radical surgery if we are to survive as anything that might be called "America". "Vote the bums out" would be an excellent start -- but learning what kind of bum to elect in the future so that our future is one of growth and improvement rather than rot and decline would be an even better second step.

Simple enough, but like many simple and needful things, very very difficult in execution. The "progressive" heresy has been insinuated deeply into our nation by socialists, communists, "liberals", academics, unions, the media and of course the politicians of BOTH PARTIES (Teddy Roosevelt was a huge "progressive", Bush very much so as well -- "No Child" and Drug Benefit). While many of their motives have been "good" at times at least from the limited view of "wishful thinking", we are now in the midst of reaping the grim effluent of their misplaced efforts ... the politicization of all parts of life, the loss of meaning, the debt, the sense of malaise and hopelessness and the vacuousness of their "leadership". "Hope and change" are not leadership, they are free of any content beyond instability which is "leadership" to chaos only.

Potentially there are some limited signs that a few of the leftward middle are beginning to wake up from the hypnotism of '08, if only to realize that there is a lot of pain going around. Pray that we survive the BO hangover.