What is wrong with these Libertarians?

They are the oddest of fellows - these libertarians, and the anarchists, the minarchists. Has something gone wrong with their mental biochemistry, that makes them embrace such odd perspectives? Aren't these the sort of radical whackadoodles that Mother warned about?

One can easily forget, now that the public is offered uninterrupted strains of normative and abnormal behavior, all but with subtitles on how to behave - that how people think is exactly that and no more - how people think. We seem to allow whoever wishes to assert authority, the prerogative of confrontation - to demand a person demonstrate that their beliefs are conformist, benign, permissible.  Queer beliefs, literally and figuratively, are permitted. but one must accept one's queerness - the ultimate arrogance shown in the Stonewall Riots, when Americans stood up and said - I am who I am, what of it to you?

I swipe several quotes from an essay Personal Choices Under Corporate-State Rule, written by a nutcase who renounced his US citizenship out of free will and sound mind - if that, by definition, is not a paradox:

• The State can only survive as long as a majority [of the citizenry] is mentally programmed to believe that theft is not wrong if it is called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping is not wrong if it is called arrest, that mass murder is not wrong if it is called war. ~ Bill St. Clair
• It is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting honest man cannot and must not take part, and the advantages of which he cannot and should not enjoy. ~ Leo Tolstoy
• He or she who supports a State organized in a military way – whether directly or indirectly – participates in sin. Each man takes part in the sin by contributing to the maintenance of the State by paying taxes. ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

What is wrong with these people?

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Wicked, wicked reality & the Guru.

And wicked, wicked Mogambo Guru for harshing my buzz horribly, with his column, Nixon and Exchanging Dollars for Gold.  He's gone and crapped up my average-American moonbuzz that "I'm doing just fine," when actually, the government is pouring the same stuff into the economy as it pours into trade-in clunkers to make them never run again.
He quotes the equally-wicked Bill Downey, who offered the following comparison, of "How Much things cost on Aug 15th, 1971" to what they cost today:

• Dow Jones Industrial Average 890 or 25 oz. gold in 1971, versus 9,000 or 10 oz. gold today.  40%
  
• Average Cost of new house $25,250 or 721 oz. gold in 1971, versus 250,000 or 277 oz. gold today. 40%
  
• Average Income per year $10,600 or 302 oz. gold in 1971, versus $70,000 or 77 oz. gold today. 25%
  
• Average Monthly Rent $150 or 4.3 oz. of gold in 1971, versus $824 or 1 oz. of gold today. 23%
  
• Datsun 1200 Sports Coupe $1,866 or 53 oz. gold in 1971, versus $28,400 or 31 oz. gold today. 60%
  

There's a bunch of reasons why these things can change. Stuff such as houses can be made relatively cheaper per-unit, either by technological improvements in construction (allowing them to be performed by drunk illegals rather than union carpenters,) and also decreasing the quality of the stuff used. Ditto rental units.

The reason that Detroit took the Final Suck, IMHO, is that wages decreased faster than the cost-per-auto. The 'bama's would agree with this, but shooting one's self in the foot is not the solution.

The major reason that the Washington Whorehouse hasn't gone off the rails before - say, during Cap Weinberger's FuckAmerica policy when we deceided that Military Keynesianism was the way to go - was the silent boom in certain areas, including computers and information technology.  Were Washington not leeching away the value as fast as technology could improve it, we'd be sitting on a pretty high place, indeed.  The Dow might actually be 9,000 but with real money!

Back around 1980, Americans realized that the jig was up on pooled capital investment, and bailed out of bank savings accounts.  They were persuaded that Equity Rocks!  which it does, when you want to put money at higher risk.  Even with thirty years of Government policy of driving capital out of the long-term investment market - like dull old corporate bonds - IT managed to accrue enough capital - by playing with IPO's and such things - to blast into the stratosphere.  (If you don't believe me, whip out your old Atari from 1990 and play with your grand-son.)

But we got deluded into thinking that the IPO shenanigans CREATED wealth, not just shuffled it into productivity.  The "dot-com-bust" showed that capital could be mal-invested even when the streets were paved with gold.  Note that the "dot-com-bust" didn't stop computer technology, did it?

The ONLY thing that vaguely resembled the accumulation of wealth through innovation in manufacture - the computer industry - hasn't shown up its true effect, which was a forty-year boom equivalent to the post-Civil War Industrial Revolution.  That's because we've pissed away the productivity into Governmental crap, including military bases on any place that shows up on a satellite map.  We burn off 50% of today's crude oil imports in the Department of Defense.  What's that do to the price?

Anyhow.  When the IT boom matures, we're in for the rolloff-bust of a lifetime.  It may nbe a short lifetime.  This explains why many societies become comfortable - and then abruptly collapse.  They come across some innovations which are cash-cows for financing an increasingly nonproductive society.  When the cash cow suddenly expires (or matures), there isn't any money tree any more.  Kabam.

You don't believe me?  Here's DEPRESSING.  The world lost the recipe for making Concrete, for God's sake, between the end of the Roman Empire, and about 1600.  Feeble, eh?
PS:  The Guru's such a mean grump, I've decided to send him a picture that will turn him into a foolish optimist.  Just wait....ah, here it is.

military Keynesianism

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More Fountains of Gibberish from the Journal

Lord, Lord, that human blowsack Karl Rove weighs in at the Wall Street Journal

Americans are now seeing the damage that polls and focus groups can inflict on White House decision-making. President Barack Obama is no longer shaping the public dialogue on health-care reform. Instead, he is losing control of his agenda and resorting to rhetorical tricks and evasions.

What in hell's that supposed to mean? Obama is turning healthcare reform into nonsense by listening to Americans, and Americans should do something about it? In the first paragraph, his own argument bit itself in the ass, and died.

Tax-and-spend liberalism doesn’t work, no matter how pretty its package.

When it's wrapped up like the Bush Administration, even the dog won't play with it, either.

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The WSJ also offers the following gloomy graph, shown at the right. It describes the future gap from 2014 until 2029, as though it were are real as "borrowing from our children and grandchildren!"
Don't worry, folks. We'll be mighty well into the Euthanasia Bandwagon by the time 2020 comes around, if that's the picture of "healthcare" after the next few years.
We seem to have a bit of the "second train" paradox. You're tied to the railroad tracks, it's 9:55, and a train comes every hour, on the hour. You absolutely don't need to be concerned about the 11:00 train, nor the noontime express; by then, there is nothing worse that can happen to you.
Assumpsit global warming. By then, what are the chances that our economy, now in ballistic free-fall, will even be able to sustain carbon emissions? Don't worry about it.

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Arthur Laffer writes some interesting commentary:

The health-care wedge is an economic term that reflects the difference between what health-care costs the specific provider and what the patient actually pays. When health care is subsidized, no one should be surprised that people demand more of it and that the costs to produce it increase. Mr. Obama’s health-care plan does nothing to address the gap between the price paid and the price received. Instead, it’s like a negative tax: Costs rise and people demand more than they need....
Thus, health-care reform should be based on policies that diminish the health-care wedge rather than increase it. Mr. Obama’s reform principles—a public health-insurance option, mandated minimum coverage, mandated coverage of pre-existing conditions, and required purchase of health insurance—only increase the size of the wedge and thus health-care costs.

What he has to say is regrettably true. Healthcare will follow the path that college loans have taken over the last twenty years - driving college "costs" through the roof.

Rupert's Rag seems to dwell on everything BUT the coming crisis. Most folks - except Laffer - are worrying about the Second Train.

By this fall, nobody will care - the first train's a comin'

Kristos, or Kronos?

The longer I live, the more that the Little Rabbi amazes me, and that his words have persisted untouched throughout what we consider to be Western Civilization. If the Apocalypse comes, like Jefferson, I fear for my country. For about all we have done is pray to God that he punish and destroy his other children, which makes us no more honorable than Cain, nor virtuous than Kronos, Saturn in the pantheon of evil, painted below left in Goya's bleakest days of painting..
The little Rabbi over and over reminded us that there is nobody, there is nothing too small for His God. In fact, they are the ones most in need of Him, and precious to him.
I show a close-up of the American Girl who suffered. photographed by Dorothea Lange, and shown in the last post. If there is indeed a God, then He knows her name. Does he know the rest of us?
And who is our God - Christ, or Chronos?

Zehn Wöchen davor.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit-and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation.

John Steinbeck

And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

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By God, say I, we have forgotten it, all of it, and that which Santayana always prophesied came true. I feel like a fox gone to lair with the danger, ten weeks now until the great depression, die Zauberflaute comes off the horizon like a wrathful God. We cannot run, and neither can we hide. It is terrible, what is to come. I think I have put the basics together, apart from being a survivalist. But it comes.

I feel oddly like die Fastenzeit kommt, times two - forty days in the desert, and then forty more. The second of what may be as many as fourteen economic earthquakes is on the way; we have only seen the first. WE will be serious, only for a little while, on the next crash. In 78 days, 2,106 hours, 126,360 minutes, then we will be a different people.

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One lesson learned is that oranges must not be destroyed, nor pigs slaughtered, in front of the hungry. We now, much more clever in such things, hide it nicely in such things as the "Cash for Clunkers" CAR Allowance Rebate System (CARS)

• Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
• Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify
• Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
• The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle, and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, however minimal, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

That last part, that's where the pigs are slaughtered. The purpose is to raise the price of vehicles, along with sales, by creating an artificial shortage of used cars.
My friend's car, which burns a quart of oil every 100 miles because the rings are shot, does NOT qualify.
A one-year-old HUMVEE which someone can't make the payments on, DOES.

The goal is to kill all the rolling stock of used vehicles - but quietly slaughtered, must less messily than horses. I pay to relieve the lessee of a car which he cannot afford, the cost of unsaleable pigs, which in modern terms is a Hummer or F-350. I watch the slaughter, which I have paid for.

Zehn Wöchenen davor. My people came here out of the Dust Bowl, suffering. They stayed, and did what they thought they could do, to prevent another great depression, but it came back. It is coming.

They knock at this door. This time?

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Land of the Famous, Home of the Handsome.

One of the reason that this country's on the Express train to hell, driven by the mass of the citizenry, Cons and Libs alike, is the worship of the Nobility. Here in America, it's not Charles and Di, but Brangelina.

A Republic simply flourishes without a pecking order, a social rank. If the President is merely "Mr. President," as that low-brow radical Washington started off the tradition with, and if public servants are, well, public servants, then the Republic is in good stead.

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I offer the following from correspondence. The following is in response to an opinion piece on the evils of Socialized Medicine.

You offer a powerful MORAL article about socialism. Consider also the one that makes it more attractive to Americans - the esthetic argument.

We propose to give to the beautiful, by means of theft from the ugly. America is a celebrity-based society, and we worship the beautiful people. This even extends to beautiful things, such as the polar bear, which is in danger of extinction, and the dolphin and the tiger - all aesthetically-selected creatures, not the horsetail and whipworm and sea cucumber, which may well be in the same danger, but are ugly-ass suckers.

The sixteen-hour operation to separate the Siamese Twins, that's one of the greatest mediamedicine shows, costing - somebody? - hundreds of thousands of dollars. If we pool our money, we can pay for these blockbuster shows, at the expense of the rural Alabama kid with Down's Syndrome, and HER need for surgery on an annular pancreas.

The paradox of Socialism is that the "somebody" who pays for it, is usually the powerless. Not the Park Avenue tobacco heiress in her endangered-species furs; no, that's the bait. The switch is to the "citizen." Socialism depends on there being a lowest-rank called "citizen." It's society's loser. In the Soviet Union, you were called "citizen" when you were convicted of a felony - no more "comrade" for you!

It means the sacrifice for the Visible by the Invisible, the Named by the Nameless, the Party Member by the prole. The nobility, in what ever form that society creates it, has a RIGHT to be free of need; and it is the prole who fills that need. Some folks like Jefferson and Madison found that sort of thinking revolting - literally.

And it is always uncouth and Philistine to say - screw the famous! F-off and die, you powerful! Why is it my duty, to care for the rich and famous - why is Katie Couric's brother or Oprah's postman's son more important than my alcoholic brother who lives in the trailer, whom I support?

That's an aesthetic approach to socialism.

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All we ever do is change the measure of ranking. Gay men who smoke, in San Francisco, have not changed in their social loathesomness from 1950 to today. Think of that!

We are always proud of our "changes in tolerance," i.e. our shifting of the social order. But few even question the fundamentals of social order itself.

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

I can never pass by Jefferson with simply one quote. We now live in tyranny, the Golem our own creation; with the blame upon our selves, and no excuse that we are unwarned.

• I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
• If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
• Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

TweakAmerica! The Miracle of the Recovery of 2009

Hey tweakers! This recovery's for YOU!

Methamphetamine is a slam-dunk beauty of analogy for this here economic recovery.

Let's run through a few facts on both, which are damn useful.
Methamphetamine is a stimulant drug. The body has some natural regulation on its functions and states, and alertness is one of these systems, coordinated by the RAS (reticular activating system) of the brainstem. When your body sends out signals of fatigue at the end of heavy use, you get snoozy, and will go to sleep, no matter what.

The Frontal Lobes, the site of rational analysis, gets pissed-off sometimes at the rest of the brain for bringing out compelling signals which make the frontal lobes feel like they're being bossed around. Even the focus of will cannot shut out the demands of the rest of the brain - ask anyone who's fallen asleep driving, and survived.

The frontal lobes takes on an idea similar to Socialism regarding the rest of the neurons, and figures that it ought to be boss - that there is an entirely RATIONAL approach to body management, which should preponderate over the largely-irrational other parts of the brain, which work mainly on urges.

Thus, the miracle of meth. Just about anyone in good health can work a 16-hour shift, stay up and party all night, and stay awake a good part of the next day, with or without meth. But the tweaker can do some meth along the way, work ANOTHER 16-hour shift AND party the next night, AND wake up again..... for a long god-damn time.

The Reticular Activating system is all fuddy-duddy and conservative about this stuff, and calls for a snooze FAR before the body's run completely out of fuel. It's like topping off the tank every time it reaches 3/4 full, and the frontals luxuriate over their new-found power.

Unfortunately, the Lockeans are just as right on brain chemistry as on politics - power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

What about the overwhelming exhaustion? Later, deal with it later. Methamphetamine is simply life on brain credit. Every day of tweakin' is a day without "depression," the slow-down when nothing much happens. And what you don't maintain, you burn out. The "meth system" of excessive activity was designed as a temporary override during emergencies; meth just locks it on, full-time.

What we're doing to the economy, is actually identical to what the tweaker's brain does with meth.

We pretend that we're smart enough to jam it into overdrive for a while, using credit the same as crystal. When we had our "credit crisis" recently, it was simply the same as the tweaker's going "over the top" into the slide and crash which accompanies the meth binge after a week or two of non-stop power use. The edict "don't save money, spend it!" is just the same as "don't sleep when you can tweak!"

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The actual Meth Economy itself is pretty similar to the stimulus, too. On classical terms, meth boosts the economy. People working relatively unwanted jobs - those with crappy pay and low skills, which shows that they are marginal jobs barely adding any product for commercial transaction - create a flurry of activity in the economy, which allows them to work long shifts at the meat plant, at the price of their physical well-being, but f**k it, it's money. The dollars spin around inside or out of the USA, for meth manufacture, rolling hundreds of thousands of dollars through hands which have formerly worked at twice minimum wage. In classical Keynesian terms, the meth economy IS RECOVERY writ large.

However, when one looks at commerce as the bringing of a useful product to market, it sucks. Nothing about meth manufacture, distribution, sales or use puts a warm blanket on a kid, or a hot meal, or a better roof over their heads. That's the measure of "useful" in an economy. Meth simply drains what could have been gainful production, and rolls it into the shitter.

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So, what's the fate of the green shoots we're seeing? They're just the product of increased productivity as a result of continued spending of investment capital into malinvestments, caused by an overly optimistic assessment of the economic future. In other words, we just lit off another chunk of meth, and we're READY TO ROCK AGAIN! for the second show. But as for sustainable economic recovery?


Smile when you ask that question, bubba....