Reflecting on my life and what I know of history I note my what is important. Several years ago if you asked me to describe our time I would have told you that at no time in the history of man have we ever had so many exciting prospects. We stand on the brink of genetic medicine, eliminating disease, ending aging and integrating technology into our bodies that could enable any person to have the wealth of human knowledge and perfect recall connected to their brain in a fraction of a second. By the middle of this century we have in our grasp not only amazing things like neural interfaces but nano machines that have the potential to obsolete virtually everything in our economy by virtualizing physical technology into information and making cell phones and food out of dirt. The technology to reach any destination on earth in a few hours using magneto hydrodynamic drive on utrasonic aircraft and travel to the planets are real. The implications are too difficult to imagine. That was then.
Today I consider that the free and enjoyable civilization that we know could possibly collapse in my lifetime. Bold statement? If you’re not concerned you’re simply not paying attention. Today I see that at no time in my life our future is as it never has been. Not only is the US government budget unsustainable but I don’t recall ever seeing such a naked grab for power for the sake of power in my lifetime. I have never seen such a huge industry of consuming the production of others and spreading insanity for the sake of irrationality. Central to my assertion regarding civilization is the governments of the world over recent centuries. Great Briton was a monarchy that had become more free than others and thus was able to grow empire most effectively. Not being free enough the American colonies broke away and on their second try formed the federal government we have today. It proved to be such a work of genius I have believed that it changed the world as country after country adopted some form of self government and free enterprise. Over the last 100 years the US has been the deciding factor in restoring peace in the world, quashing dictatorships and largely ending the type of war that had gone on for centuries. Just as the Romans felt it was their birthright to rule and dominate the continent the US is now risking not only decline but collapse. Now many intellectuals are looking at China as the new superstar and thinking that their economic success means that governments should consider their model of rule. Nothing could be more disasterous.
China does emulate some aspects of how the US traditionally operated free markets their leaders seem more familiar with US history than a great many of ours. However China has brutal solutions. They mandate the number of children, protesters mysteriously die and censorship is rampant. Due process? Consider that the Chinese prefer to arrest certain religious sects and sentence them to death because their clean lifestyle is considered beneficial when harvesting their organs and selling them on the world market, a lucrative business in China. You could argue that removing organs requires consent there but if a body is not claimed… families seem to always find out late. During the early years of Mao they had the “cultural revolution” which is a nice way of saying book burning and making sure your only access to information and history was government approved. At this time as Mao socialized the farms it is estimated 70,000,000 Chinese died of starvation over a three year period. Mao believed they had population to spare.
Without the US say goodbye to Asia and Australia. It’s an easy conquest and if you believe power comes from the barrel of a gun why not take it? Right now our government spending is exploding. What is our leadership doing? Considering social security is in the red years before expected at with a $15 trillion dollar economy we have a $60 trillion medicare liability why not add the biggest entitlement program yet. Don’t forget actual medicare costs over a decade turned out to be nine times what was initially projected. Of course it may not matter. Soon Iran or some other power could launch a nuclear weapon at the US. Instead of blowing up a city they can explode it five miles up over the center of the US and destroy every unshielded electronic device and power transformer in the US. The irony is our main transformers that could be protected for a few million dollars would take 10 years to replace. In three months we will be ripe for any banana republic to invade and take over. Of course investing in protection from high altitude EMP is less of a priority than pork barrel spending.
So why is our country in such danger? Some argue our leaders are trying to invoke the Cloward Piven strategy of bringing about a collapse so a new system can be built. Some are so intent on intellectual theories that they want to create a grand human experiment. Some have so perverted the disproven Malthusian imperative they actually want billions of people to die so the earth won’t be too crowded. Do you feel too crowded? I would say there is another major consideration. Quite simply There has been a major shift in our world from producing something useful to simply leaching off those who produce. This has empowered an insane mechanism of government and crony capitalism that threatens our very way of life.
When early human society moved from bartering to trading in currency an abstract idea led to enormous opportunities. Trading what you produce no longer required you to trade with the person who had what you needed, but merely with someone who needed what you had. It was essential. Eventually we enabled larger companies by offering stock where you could buy part of the enterprise. This enabled more wealth by making it possible for people to trade currency to facilitate the creation of wealth. Wealth being created by tangible goods, infrastructure and social benefits. Eventually we came to trade derivatives, which almost nobody understands, which are speculations on currency conversion or something of that nature. The US debt clock shows us owing something over $600 trillion there. Note that the worth of everything and everyone in the country doesn’t add up to $50 trillion. People like George Soros make money trashing currencies like the British pound and the Euro. Why? Because the mechanisms are there to speculate on losses and you can legally contribute to those losses causing misery to entire populations for your own profit. Of course the ultimate boondoggle is carbon trading where you are buying and selling permission to emit a gas vital to life on this planet and producing nothing. It’s like mandating commissions to the climate exchange.
Another form of leaching is leaching through legislation. Simply put, if you want to dominate a marketplace and get rich then buy some political power and execute your plan. Say for instance you wanted to make a lot of money with huge wind turbines. Just a side note, small turbines are vastly more cost effective but they fail to be centralized and difficult to compete in. GE is close to the president and looking for laws to be passed to change energy in this country making them a de facto victor as they pretty much own the technology.
Of course the biggest example of leaching ever is the government, federal and state. Here we have people who can levee taxes, set their pay, raise taxes, grant themselves perks and then use the money to buy another term in office. Then they expand the bureaucracy and get their friends much higher paying jobs.
The big question is if the people creating the problem even see it. I don’t have an answer. What I do know is that there is a safe and sane course of action. I was taught how to handle a gun as a child because my parents believed that if you shot and killed someone by accident instead of on purpose they were just as dead. When you take office in the leadership of the good ship United States you ought to assume responsibility for the results of your decisions. “I didn’t realize I was destroying the country” will not be acceptable, but as our founders never considered our leaders would set about destroying our country I can’t point to much more than treason and some arcane laws regarding execution of duties in conflict with constitutional law. Those remedies are rarely used and are for removal from office without any criminal consequences. I think some things done by congress that would result in criminal prosecution if done by a company ought to be criminalized, like “borrowing” from social security for the general fund.
What I have realized recently is that if I were to label myself I would have to be a libertarian. I find John Stossel refreshing as he debunks big brother. I like the quote I read recently, I forget from who. “Take any three letters, arrange them in any order. There’s another government agency we can do without.” Should we be a nation of winers or a nation of winners. Winning requires the possibility of losing. The way to defeat the leaches dragging down our society is to first stop gorging government with so damn much money. Next we need to restore a balance of power to the individual by making government accountable. There is one more thing though…
Whenever anyone comes to you telling you there is this disaster or that disaster keep a cool head. Ask for definite proof they are not lying and look for who is opposing them. Look if it is an appeal to emotion or logic and if it fails the logic test it is almost certainly a manipulation. In order to enslave a world you must first have their trust. I have simple rules regarding trust. Never trust anyone to tell you who to distrust. Never trust anyone unless they are willing to prove their trust in the battleground of open debate. When someone says “trust me”… don’t! Look for the person who says instead “test me” if you want to see if someone can be trusted.
You need to look around and realize something you may never have before. You may need to lead the people you know to realize that this is a crucial time in history. We are facing a choice between an amazing life, a life where even the sting of death might fade, and a horrible world where at worst billions could die to satisfy the misguided acolytes of some stupid English professor proven horribly wrong a century and a half ago and still followed by intellectual morons today. The revolutionary war was fought and won by no more than a quarter to a third of the population and today that fraction thinks what Mao did was A OK. Are you going to be the loyal opposition?
I close with a little wisdom from life. Years ago I took a job at a portrait company where I could get cash daily. I hated how they ran it and quit after a few weeks. To my surprise I was top producer in the country my second week. This company had been around for years and was bought by some of the top sales people. I later read a book warning of what they did next. They stopped teaching what they did to become successful and started teaching and running things they way they thought they should have been. A few years later I saw the company had failed. What made this country successful was the framework laid out by our founders. I also learned in sales that the definition of a problem was a deviation from an established standard and to model the success of others. Marxism has failed! Socialism has failed. We need to realize that experimenting with what we think might work better than what made us the greatest country on earth is certain fro fail, especially if it involves socialism.
Leadership means learning what made America great, telling your friends about it and getting them involved in restoring our greatness. Leaching means getting a government job, putting your fingers in your ears and singing as Rome burns around you.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 6:15 PM and is filed under social commentary.
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Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Clarion Call - Lead Don’t Leach
Reflecting on my life and what I know of history I note my what is important. Several years ago if you asked me to describe our time I would have told you that at no time in the history of man have we ever had so many exciting prospects. We stand on the brink of genetic medicine, eliminating disease, ending aging and integrating technology into our bodies that could enable any person to have the wealth of human knowledge and perfect recall connected to their brain in a fraction of a second. By the middle of this century we have in our grasp not only amazing things like neural interfaces but nano machines that have the potential to obsolete virtually everything in our economy by virtualizing physical technology into information and making cell phones and food out of dirt. The technology to reach any destination on earth in a few hours using magneto hydrodynamic drive on utrasonic aircraft and travel to the planets are real. The implications are too difficult to imagine. That was then.
Today I consider that the free and enjoyable civilization that we know could possibly collapse in my lifetime. Bold statement? If you’re not concerned you’re simply not paying attention. Today I see that at no time in my life our future is as it never has been. Not only is the US government budget unsustainable but I don’t recall ever seeing such a naked grab for power for the sake of power in my lifetime. I have never seen such a huge industry of consuming the production of others and spreading insanity for the sake of irrationality. Central to my assertion regarding civilization is the governments of the world over recent centuries. Great Briton was a monarchy that had become more free than others and thus was able to grow empire most effectively. Not being free enough the American colonies broke away and on their second try formed the federal government we have today. It proved to be such a work of genius I have believed that it changed the world as country after country adopted some form of self government and free enterprise. Over the last 100 years the US has been the deciding factor in restoring peace in the world, quashing dictatorships and largely ending the type of war that had gone on for centuries. Just as the Romans felt it was their birthright to rule and dominate the continent the US is now risking not only decline but collapse. Now many intellectuals are looking at China as the new superstar and thinking that their economic success means that governments should consider their model of rule. Nothing could be more disasterous.
China does emulate some aspects of how the US traditionally operated free markets their leaders seem more familiar with US history than a great many of ours. However China has brutal solutions. They mandate the number of children, protesters mysteriously die and censorship is rampant. Due process? Consider that the Chinese prefer to arrest certain religious sects and sentence them to death because their clean lifestyle is considered beneficial when harvesting their organs and selling them on the world market, a lucrative business in China. You could argue that removing organs requires consent there but if a body is not claimed… families seem to always find out late. During the early years of Mao they had the “cultural revolution” which is a nice way of saying book burning and making sure your only access to information and history was government approved. At this time as Mao socialized the farms it is estimated 70,000,000 Chinese died of starvation over a three year period. Mao believed they had population to spare.
Without the US say goodbye to Asia and Australia. It’s an easy conquest and if you believe power comes from the barrel of a gun why not take it? Right now our government spending is exploding. What is our leadership doing? Considering social security is in the red years before expected at with a $15 trillion dollar economy we have a $60 trillion medicare liability why not add the biggest entitlement program yet. Don’t forget actual medicare costs over a decade turned out to be nine times what was initially projected. Of course it may not matter. Soon Iran or some other power could launch a nuclear weapon at the US. Instead of blowing up a city they can explode it five miles up over the center of the US and destroy every unshielded electronic device and power transformer in the US. The irony is our main transformers that could be protected for a few million dollars would take 10 years to replace. In three months we will be ripe for any banana republic to invade and take over. Of course investing in protection from high altitude EMP is less of a priority than pork barrel spending.
So why is our country in such danger? Some argue our leaders are trying to invoke the Cloward Piven strategy of bringing about a collapse so a new system can be built. Some are so intent on intellectual theories that they want to create a grand human experiment. Some have so perverted the disproven Malthusian imperative they actually want billions of people to die so the earth won’t be too crowded. Do you feel too crowded? I would say there is another major consideration. Quite simply There has been a major shift in our world from producing something useful to simply leaching off those who produce. This has empowered an insane mechanism of government and crony capitalism that threatens our very way of life.
When early human society moved from bartering to trading in currency an abstract idea led to enormous opportunities. Trading what you produce no longer required you to trade with the person who had what you needed, but merely with someone who needed what you had. It was essential. Eventually we enabled larger companies by offering stock where you could buy part of the enterprise. This enabled more wealth by making it possible for people to trade currency to facilitate the creation of wealth. Wealth being created by tangible goods, infrastructure and social benefits. Eventually we came to trade derivatives, which almost nobody understands, which are speculations on currency conversion or something of that nature. The US debt clock shows us owing something over $600 trillion there. Note that the worth of everything and everyone in the country doesn’t add up to $50 trillion. People like George Soros make money trashing currencies like the British pound and the Euro. Why? Because the mechanisms are there to speculate on losses and you can legally contribute to those losses causing misery to entire populations for your own profit. Of course the ultimate boondoggle is carbon trading where you are buying and selling permission to emit a gas vital to life on this planet and producing nothing. It’s like mandating commissions to the climate exchange.
Another form of leaching is leaching through legislation. Simply put, if you want to dominate a marketplace and get rich then buy some political power and execute your plan. Say for instance you wanted to make a lot of money with huge wind turbines. Just a side note, small turbines are vastly more cost effective but they fail to be centralized and difficult to compete in. GE is close to the president and looking for laws to be passed to change energy in this country making them a de facto victor as they pretty much own the technology.
Of course the biggest example of leaching ever is the government, federal and state. Here we have people who can levee taxes, set their pay, raise taxes, grant themselves perks and then use the money to buy another term in office. Then they expand the bureaucracy and get their friends much higher paying jobs.
The big question is if the people creating the problem even see it. I don’t have an answer. What I do know is that there is a safe and sane course of action. I was taught how to handle a gun as a child because my parents believed that if you shot and killed someone by accident instead of on purpose they were just as dead. When you take office in the leadership of the good ship United States you ought to assume responsibility for the results of your decisions. “I didn’t realize I was destroying the country” will not be acceptable, but as our founders never considered our leaders would set about destroying our country I can’t point to much more than treason and some arcane laws regarding execution of duties in conflict with constitutional law. Those remedies are rarely used and are for removal from office without any criminal consequences. I think some things done by congress that would result in criminal prosecution if done by a company ought to be criminalized, like “borrowing” from social security for the general fund.
What I have realized recently is that if I were to label myself I would have to be a libertarian. I find John Stossel refreshing as he debunks big brother. I like the quote I read recently, I forget from who. “Take any three letters, arrange them in any order. There’s another government agency we can do without.” Should we be a nation of winers or a nation of winners. Winning requires the possibility of losing. The way to defeat the leaches dragging down our society is to first stop gorging government with so damn much money. Next we need to restore a balance of power to the individual by making government accountable. There is one more thing though…
Whenever anyone comes to you telling you there is this disaster or that disaster keep a cool head. Ask for definite proof they are not lying and look for who is opposing them. Look if it is an appeal to emotion or logic and if it fails the logic test it is almost certainly a manipulation. In order to enslave a world you must first have their trust. I have simple rules regarding trust. Never trust anyone to tell you who to distrust. Never trust anyone unless they are willing to prove their trust in the battleground of open debate. When someone says “trust me”… don’t! Look for the person who says instead “test me” if you want to see if someone can be trusted.
You need to look around and realize something you may never have before. You may need to lead the people you know to realize that this is a crucial time in history. We are facing a choice between an amazing life, a life where even the sting of death might fade, and a horrible world where at worst billions could die to satisfy the misguided acolytes of some stupid English professor proven horribly wrong a century and a half ago and still followed by intellectual morons today. The revolutionary war was fought and won by no more than a quarter to a third of the population and today that fraction thinks what Mao did was A OK. Are you going to be the loyal opposition?
I close with a little wisdom from life. Years ago I took a job at a portrait company where I could get cash daily. I hated how they ran it and quit after a few weeks. To my surprise I was top producer in the country my second week. This company had been around for years and was bought by some of the top sales people. I later read a book warning of what they did next. They stopped teaching what they did to become successful and started teaching and running things they way they thought they should have been. A few years later I saw the company had failed. What made this country successful was the framework laid out by our founders. I also learned in sales that the definition of a problem was a deviation from an established standard and to model the success of others. Marxism has failed! Socialism has failed. We need to realize that experimenting with what we think might work better than what made us the greatest country on earth is certain fro fail, especially if it involves socialism.
Leadership means learning what made America great, telling your friends about it and getting them involved in restoring our greatness. Leaching means getting a government job, putting your fingers in your ears and singing as Rome burns around you.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 6:15 PM and is filed under social commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.