This Ripe Moment, Continued...

[Encephalon]

This Ripe Moment

By James Howard Kunstler

on January 9, 2012 9:21 AM

http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/01/this-ripe-moment.html

People like to rip Kunstler because things never seem to get as bad as he says they are. I believe he's just a few months ahead of schedule. He's my favorite social/urban theorist and a popular source for urban geographers/planners.

 

 

The narcolepsy of the long Yuletide draws to a close and the world reawakens to its self-spun web of mutually reinforcing fiascos. Just before the holiday, a sense of futility darkened the European banking landscape as cascading sovereign default looked more and more inevitable. It was halted by a bazooka-caliber currency swap Ponzi that allowed the European Central Bank to pretend it had a $700-billion bag of sugar-plums to hand out to more than 200 banks there. That gambit will only keep up the appearance of normality for a couple of months, until the late winter bond rollover provokes a new crisis stage.

Likewise, in the USA, some pressure-cooked December employment statistics gave the false impression of a brightening jobs picture, but no major news network dared to glance behind the curtain at the short-term holiday hires, the uncounted long-term jobless, the ones who don't show up at the government offices anymore, the ones who stopped getting checks, the legions of the hopeless. A nation that can't call 'bullshit' on its own lies deserves all the suffering that might rain down upon it, and that's exactly where we are heading as things economic morph into things political.

How quaint the current Republican jousting tournament will seem in a few months when real violence rides in on the zephyrs of springtime. Each new primary is like the unloading of a Ringling Brothers clown car. There is an inverse relationship between the seriousness of these times and the laughable personalities vying for a place in history. Are they running for high office or auditioning for the role of Parson Weems in a new Lifetime Network TV mini-series? Are you charmed by their absurd casual clothing? Comforted by their know-nothing jabber about the "game-changer" of shale oil and their sincere doubts about the climate change "story?" Is it morally satisfying to know that one or another of these candidates won't drink a beer? (They'd make good Ayatollahs.) In what sort of Creationist parthenogenetic incubator are such pietistic idiots hatched? What these sanctimonious pricks don't realize they are doing is destroying the very legitimacy of the idea that we're capable of governing ourselves per se.

This is the long-term direction of life in North America, by the way - a breakup into small autonomous governing units. It's just that the current cast of characters brings an aura of low comedy to the process. By the time they're through with Washington, the credibility of Federalism will sound like a knock-knock joke.

As for the other side, the "folks" now occupying the White House and its folkster-in-chief, Mr. Obama - the time has come to abandon them. Their failure is complete with the new national security act that allows for suspension of due process of law. The cheek of Mr. Obama in offering a "signing statement" to the effect that his administration would not enforce the law! - as he signed it! For one thing, Obama tacitly invited his own impeachment by declaring he had no intention of enforcing federal law, since enforcement is the chief duty of his office. If John Boehner were not himself such a fraud, he would have started a motion for impeachment before sundown that day.

Occupy Wall Street will seem like a mere harvest dance when we look back from the uproars later in 2012. Both organized parties have managed to banish the rule of law in America. Both parties need to be driven into the wilderness of history and the rule of law has to be rescued from the oblivion they sent it to. What group of clear-thinking adults can get behind that simple project? What voices will resolve out of the phenomenal noise of gadget America, with its deafening tweets, incessant advertising, instant messaging, idiotic robo-calling, and ever-present flat-screen assault on the senses?

I discern the distant sound of rebellion, a spirit that won't be appeased by bytes of Disney-babble from the pandering snouts of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul or Obama. They are interested only in keeping a set of suicidal rackets going. All the yammer about "freedom" and "liberty" is hollow when the rule of law is AWOL. This ripe time is the natural moment for a true opposition to rise. A few months from now neither major party will have a credible candidate or a plausible platform of ideas. This will be painfully obvious. What angels and demons will rush into that awful vacuum?

Edited January 10, 2012 by Encephalon

[Chang]

And yet there were such high hopes for Mr Obama,dancing in the streets and people singing "Change a gonna come".

To quote Robert Burns "The man of independant mind he looks and laughs at all that".

Edited January 9, 2012 by Chang

[Encephalon]

Here's another forecast by one of my other favorite researchers, Richard Heinberg. I know this subject matter has little to do with Taoism, if we exclude the pertinence of ascendency and descendency of empires...Change, in other words. Call me a hopeless romantic but I still see the pertinence of Taoist/anarchist communities springing up to take the place of unsustainable, spiritually impoverished, fossil-fuel dependent suburban consumer asylums. Not everyone will be ready for the adaptations ahead, but I like to think that Bums can get a valuable "Heads Up!"

 

"Empire in Decline"

 

Geopolitical Implications of Peak Everything

From Solutions Journal, January

Richard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow-in-Residence of Post Carbon Institute and a member of the Editorial Board of Solutions. He is the author of ten books including The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. Portions of this article are adapted from The End of Growth.

 

 

From competition among hunter-gatherers for wild game to imperialist wars over precious minerals, resource wars have been fought throughout history; today, however, the competition appears set to enter a newand perhaps unprecedentedphase. As natural resources deplete, and as the Earths climate becomes less stable, the worlds nations will likely compete ever more desperately for access to fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water.

 

Nations need increasing amounts of energy and raw materials to produce economic growth, but the costs of supplying new increments of energy and materials are burgeoning. In many cases, lower-quality resources with high extraction costs are all that remain. Securing access to these resources often requires military expenditures as well. Meanwhile the struggle for the control of resources is re-aligning political power balances throughout the world.

 

This game of resource musical chairs could well bring about conflict and privation on a scale never seen before in world history. Only a decisive policy shift toward resource conservation, climate change mitigation, and economic cooperation seems likely to produce a different outcome.

 

Americas Resource Geopolitics

The United Statesthe worlds current economic and military superpower entered the industrial era with a nearly unparalleled endowment of natural resources that included an abundance not only of forests, water, topsoil, and minerals, but also of oil, coal, and natural gas. Like all other nations, the U.S. has approached resource extraction using the low-hanging fruit principle. Today its giant onshore reservoirs of conventional oil are largely depleted, and the nations total oil production is down by over 40 percent from its peak in 1970despite huge discoveries in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Its total coal resources are vast, but rates of extraction probably cannot be increased significantly and will likely begin to decline within the next decade or two. Unconventional hydrocarbon resources (such as natural gas liberated by the hydrofracking of shale deposits) are beginning to be commercialized, but come with high investment costs and worrisome environmental risks. U.S. extraction rates for many minerals have been declining for years or decades, and currently the nation imports 93 percent of its antimony, 100 percent of its bauxite (for aluminum), 31 percent of its copper, 99 percent of its gallium, 100 percent of its indium, over half its lithium, and 100 percent of its rare earth minerals.[1]

 

America has much to lose from any substantial reshuffling of global alliances and resource flows. The nations leaders continue to play the game of geopolitics by 20th century rules: they are still obsessed with the Carter Doctrine and focused on petroleum as the worlds foremost resource prize (a situation largely necessitated by the countrys continuing overwhelming dependence on oil imports, due in turn to a series of short-sighted political decisions stretching back at least to the 1970s). The ongoing war in Afghanistan exemplifies U.S. inertia: most geostrategic experts agree that there is little to be gained from the conflict, but withdrawal of forces is politically unfeasible.

 

The United States maintains a globe-spanning network of over 750 military bases[2] that formerly represented tokens of security to regimes throughout the worldbut that now increasingly provoke resentment among the locals. This enormous military machine requires a vast supply system originating with American weapons manufacturers that in turn depend on a prodigious and ever-expanding torrent of funds from the Treasury. Indeed, the nations yawning budget deficit largely stems from its trillion-dollar-per-year, first-priority commitment to maintain its military-industrial complex.

 

The U.S. currently engages in special operations in 120 countries[3], using elite commando units skilled in assassination, counterterrorist raids, foreign troop training, and intelligence gathering. These teams can be deployed to support U.S. geopolitical interests in a variety of ways, including influencing elections or supporting factions within revolutions. The U.S. also maintains the worlds most lavishly funded ($80 billion in 2010) intelligence bureaus, the CIA and NSA, which conduct electronic and human information gathering activities in virtually every country on the planet.[4]

 

Yet despite Americas gargantuan expenditures on intelligence gathering and high-tech weaponry, and its globe-spanning ability to project power and to influence events, its armed forces appear to be stretched to their limits having continuously fielded around 200,000 troops and even larger numbers of support personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade, where supply chains are both vulnerable and expensive to maintain.

 

In short, the United States remains an enormously powerful nation militarily, with thousands of nuclear weapons in addition to its unparalleled conventional forces, yet it suffers from declining strategic flexibility. The nation still retains an abundance of natural resources, but its consumption rates of many of those resources have grown to nearly insatiable levels, necessitating growing flows of resource imports from other nations. Meanwhile, its ability to pay for those imports is increasingly in question as its domestic economy shrinks due to financial system volatility, government spending cutbacks, high unemployment, an aging workforce, and shrinking average household net worth. For all of these reasons, the U.S. is widely characterized as an empire in decline.

 

The Global Geopolitical Resource Landscape

China is the rising power of the 21st century, according to many geopolitical pundits, with a surging military and plentiful cash with which to buy access to resources (oil, coal, minerals, and farmland) around the planet. Yet while it is building an imperial-class navy that could eventually threaten Americas, Beijing suffers from domestic political and economic weaknesses that could make its turn at the center of the world stage a brief one. These include limits to available coal resources, a domestic real estate bubble, weakness in its banking sector, falling demand for Chinese exports in the U.S. and Europe, and widespread local political corruption.

 

Even as countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua reject American foreign policy, the U.S. continues to exert enormous influence on resource-rich Latin America via North American-based corporations, which in some cases wield overwhelming influence over entire national economies. However, China is now actively contracting for access to energy and mineral resources throughout this region, which is resulting in a gradual shift in economic spheres of interest.

 

Africa is a site of fast-growing U.S. investment in oil and other mineral extraction projects (as evidenced by the establishment in 2009 of Africom, a military strategic command center on par with Centcom, Eucom, Northcom, Pacom, and Southcom), but the continent also a target of Chinese (and European) resource acquisition efforts. Proxy conflicts there between and among these powers may intensify in the years aheadin most instances, to the sad detriment of African peoples.[5]

 

The US still maintains a dominant position in the Middle East, but the region is is characterized by extreme economic inequality, high population growth rates, political instability, and the need for importation of non-energy resources (including food and water). The revolutions and protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen in early 2011 can be interpreted as showing the inability of young, growing, and largely unemployed populations to tolerate sharply rising food, water, and energy prices in the context of autocratic political regimes.[6] As economic conditions worsen, many more countriesincluding democratic nations outside the Middle East, the U.S includedcould become destabilized in much the same way.

 

Americas best shot at expanding its oil interests lie in the deep oceans and the Arctic.[7] However, both military maneuvering and engineering-mining efforts will see diminishing returns as costs rise and payoffs diminish.

 

Climate change is likely to exacerbate geopolitical rivalry with China, although it's important to recognize that climate risks will not be evenly apportioned. Unstable states will become more unstable, poor nations poorer. Many of the areas of greatest geopolitical risk are also most at risk for impacts from climate change. Equatorial regions are most likely to suffer from extreme drought and occasional catastrophic flooding, while some northern temperate regions may see some transitory benefit from warmingthough unpredictable weather will plague nearly every region. With the melting of Arctic ice, new mineral and energy resources in the northernmost portions of the planet will become accessible, as will new trade routes; this may lead to a Cold Rush of economic and military exploitation and open a new theater for international conflict.[8]

 

Which raises the question: Can such consequences be averted, and how? The answer may hinge on whether, and in what ways, humanity chooses to compete or cooperate in response.

 

Competition versus cooperation

The worlds governments engage continually in both cooperative and competitive behavior, though sometimes extremes of these tendencies come to the forewith all-out conflict exemplifying unbridled competition. Geopolitics typically involves both cooperative and competitive strategies, with its long-term goal centering on the furtherance of national interest (including increased control of territory and access to resources). Recent decades have generally seen increasing international cooperation, showing up in the expansion of trade, the proliferation of treaties and conventions, and the development of international institutions for justice and conflict resolution. The UN, WTO, World Bank, International Criminal Court, as well as regional economic (e.g., Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO) and military (e.g., NATO) cooperation groups exemplify this trend. While some of these efforts appear to be geopolitically motivated, others seem to be genuine attempts to reduce both international tensions and global environmental problems while advancing human rights.

 

This trend toward increasing international cooperation could see a reversal in coming years and decades. As noted above, history is replete with instances of resource scarcity fomenting conflict.[9] In such cases, competitive advantage typically resides either with nations that have domestic resources and the ability to defend them; or with nations that develop a vigorous, flexible, and motivated military force able to take advantage of other nations weaknesses in order to seize control of their resources.

 

In addition to international conflict, a failure of human cooperation in the face of resource scarcity may also manifest as increasing conflict within nations. Since 1945, three-quarters of all wars have occurred within nations rather than between them, with most occurring in the worlds poorest countries.[10] About as many people may have died as a result of civil strife since 1980 as were killed in the First World War. Civil conflicts devastate poor nations by destroying essential infrastructure, driving human and capital flight, diverting scarce financial resources toward military spending, undermining social trust, aggravating existing food shortages, and spreading disease.

 

If the path toward increasing competition leads to both internal and external conflict, then the resultfor winners and losers alike, in a full world seeing rapid resource depletionwill most probably be economic and ecological ruin accompanied by political chaos.

 

Yet this is not the only outcome available to world leaders and civil society. A cooperative strategy is at least theoretically feasibleand its foundations already exist in institutions and practices developed during recent decades.

 

The world has seen successful efforts to rein in commercial whaling, to ban the use of CFCs, and to respond to natural disasters. If we are to avert deadly resource competition in the future, further agreements on climate change mitigation and non-renewable resource conservation will be needed, along with cooperative efforts to stabilize population and engineer a comprehensive global energy transition. Some of these agreements are already under discussion.

 

For many years, the UN has led cooperative scientific efforts to understand climate change (via the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC) and governmental efforts to combat it (via the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC). In international meetings beginning with the Kyoto Climate Change Conference of 1997, nations have discussed politically acceptable ways to cap global carbon emissions.

 

A potential international mechanism for conserving non-renewable resources is outlined in the present authors book The Oil Depletion Protocol. An agreement along these lines would require nations each year to reduce oil production and imports by the annual global depletion rate (about 2.5 percent). [11] Cooperatively capping and diminishing both petroleum production and consumption in this way would reduce oil price volatility, promote energy conservation and conversion to alternative energy sources, and head off geopolitical struggle over dwindling petroleum supplies. Such a plan would likely work best in combination with national quota rationing programs for individuals and businesses; if annually shrinking quotas were tradable, energy misers would benefit financially while energy gluttons would have to pay extra.[12] The Oil Depletion Protocol has been endorsed by several city councils in the U.S. and by the Portuguese Parliament. Similar protocols could be applied to other internationally traded non-renewable resources.

 

The protocol in itself is not likely to be enough. Measures are also needed to limit population growth, and to convert existing infrastructure to a low carbon future, especially in developing countries, where efforts can be made to bypass fossil fuel-dependent transport and food system altogether.

 

All of the required effort need not come from governments. Grassroots conservation and cooperation efforts have already sprung up in the form of groups like Transition Initiatives, which have sprung up in hundreds of towns and cities around the world. Transition Initiatives got their start in 2005 in Britain through the work of a Permaculture teacher named Rob Hopkins. In his Transition Companion, Hopkins tells how he came up with the strategy, and sets forth a range of useful guidelines for groups.[13] Nearly all of Robs prose is saturated with irrepressible optimism:

Transition Initiatives are not the only response to peak oil and climate change; any coherent national response will also need government and business responses at all levels. However, unless we can create this sense of anticipation, elation and a collective call to adventure on a wider scale, any government responses will be doomed to failure, or will need to battle proactively against the will of the people. . . . Rebuilding local agriculture and food production, localizing energy production, rethinking healthcare, rediscovering local building materials in the context of zero energy building, rethinking how we manage waste, all build resilience and offer the potential of an extraordinary renaissanceeconomic, cultural and spiritual.[14]

Taken together, current cooperative efforts toward resource conservation, climate mitigation, and population stabilization are woefully insufficientas exemplified by failed climate talks, continued global population growth, and ever-heightening international competition for access to dwindling fossil fuels supplies. There are plenty of justifications for pessimism: after all, wont the first nations to engage in resource conservation lose economic advantage to those that engage in conquest and consumption maximization? Wouldnt even one major national holdout undermine a worldwide cooperative effort at climate protection?

 

Dramatically expanding international and domestic cooperation at this worrisome moment in history may seem like a tall order. The only advantage to doing so is that it is the only path going forward that doesnt end in a global tragedy in which the fate of the winners is hardly preferable to that of the losers.

 

 

References

[1] U.S. Geological Survey, 2011, Mineral commodity summaries 2011: U.S. Geological Survey, 198 p.

 

[2] Department of Defense, Base Structure Report Fiscal Year 2010 Baseline (A Summary of DoDs Real Property Inventory), 206p.

 

[3] Tara McKelvey, The Age of Special Warfare: An in-depth look at U.S. special operations around the world (copyright 2010-2011).

 

[4] Nick Turse, August 3,2011 (6:21 PM), Tomgram: Nick Turse, Uncovering the Militarys Secret Military, TomDistpatch.com.

 

[5] Michael Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), chapter 6.

 

[6] Vicken Cheterian, The Arab Crisis: Food, Energy, Water, Justice, Energy Bulletin, Posted January 26, 2011.

 

[7] Brice Pedroletti, China Seeks to Mine Deep Sea Riches, The Guardian, December 7, 2010.

 

[8] Naval Postgraduate School, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom, publication announcement for the second volume in the Arctic Security Project .

 

[9] Philippe Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts." Political Geography 20 (2001), 561584.

 

[10] Colin H. Kahl, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton University Press, 2006), accessed online August 8, 2011.

 

[11] Richard Heinberg, The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (Canada: New Society Publishers, 2006).

 

[12] A proposal for tradable energy was proposed in the UK by the late economist David Fleming, and has drawn significant interest from government. See TEQs.

 

[13] Rob Hopkins, Transition Companion (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2011).

 

[14] Hopkins, Transition Handbook, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2008), p.15.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Encephalon

[idquest]

There is an evil joke in Russia, that it would be benefitial for a ruling group of people if all Russia would die out except for Moscow Region. The rationale is that virtually all Russian revenue comes from natural resources which results in redundancy of almost all Russian population in generating profit for rulers. I see the same tendency in the USA. More and more of american profit is generated offshore plus a few high-tech clusters like Seattle. That is majority of the USA population is becoming redundant for its rulers.

[Desert Eagle]

That is majority of the USA population is becoming redundant for its rulers.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inuo5rfYAHs

Edited January 11, 2012 by Desert Eagle

[Chang]

Very interesting. Very disturbing.

[joeblast]

[Encephalon]

Even absent the amounts of money spent on the military, our domestic promises to ourselves position us to look like Greece.

 

What idiot would list government spending cutbacks as an issue in the ability to pay for these imports? Government spending and spending mandates are what is causing these other problems listed - financial system instability, high unemployment, aging workforce, average household net worth. Cart, horse, doesnt matter which came first

 

Your specious argument doesn't convince me of Heinberg's idiocy. If pressed to put his point in context I'd say he was referring to the ripple effect that public sector jobs have on local economies. The state of Colorado, where I was stationed and lived as a civilian, has dozens of military bases and governmental facilities and the state has enjoyed greater economic stability than states with a smaller federal payroll. This is not to suggest that public sector jobs pay for themselves but their effect on unemployment is significant.

 

Addressing why we choose to maintain a consumer culture and global military presence seems to be a more pertinent issue than squabbling about how to afford it. It makes little sense to characterize the nature of our entitlements in the absence of military expenditures, because consumer culture requires a global military presence to maintain shipping lanes, access to resources, lexploitation of labor markets by host governments, etc. We're a culture that cannot function without enormous inputs of energy and raw materials; like the feeble attempts to coax Los Angeles drivers into public transportation, our country is one giant experiment in unsustainability that's just too big to let go of.

[joeblast]

Well, the noting of an idiotic statement doesnt necessarily mean the one who said it is a total idiot. But what I bolded was indeed idiotic, it doesnt logically follow at all, not if you're truly concerned with how things actually work and dont merely want to present a certain point of view. Colorado may have fared better than places like CA, NY, IL, CT but given its trajectory...let the public sector unions have more power there and it'll accelerate, sorry to inform you.

 

Being dishonest and framing shipping lanes as the US keeping military presence just for our own consumers benefit and completely ignoring the rest of the world's need for relatively safe shipping lanes merely shows the keyhole focus on "the US is bad, mmkay?" Yup, everything the US has accomplished is illegitimate and is veritable theft from the rest of the world, especially third world nations.

 

I never knew how apt that bumper sticker was when I read it: KILL YOUR TELEVISION!

[Encephalon]

Well, the noting of an idiotic statement doesnt necessarily mean the one who said it is a total idiot. But what I bolded was indeed idiotic, it doesnt logically follow at all, not if you're truly concerned with how things actually work and dont merely want to present a certain point of view. Colorado may have fared better than places like CA, NY, IL, CT but given its trajectory...let the public sector unions have more power there and it'll accelerate, sorry to inform you.

 

Being dishonest and framing shipping lanes as the US keeping military presence just for our own consumers benefit and completely ignoring the rest of the world's need for relatively safe shipping lanes merely shows the keyhole focus on "the US is bad, mmkay?" Yup, everything the US has accomplished is illegitimate and is veritable theft from the rest of the world, especially third world nations.

 

I never knew how apt that bumper sticker was when I read it: KILL YOUR TELEVISION!

 

Right, the power of the evil unions are what established all the military bases and governmental facilities in colorado. Right, Joe.

 

As for my 2nd paragraph, I'm up to speed on the connection between maintaining consumer culture and the need for enhanced military presence, keeping shipping lanes open just being one of the necessities. You know perfectly well the context, amongst access to cheap labor and raw materials, that I was creating. And, yes, I do hold consumer cultures, not just US but throughout the world, as complicit in international strife due to their bingeing. Being the resident cheerleader for the Establishment, I'm sure you're going to label me as another guilt-ridden Trotskyite for saying so. So be it. We harvest our data from different sources.

[joeblast]

hah, I should understand your context and respond accordingly, yet it is perfectly acceptable for you to ignore mine and overlay your military-industrial-complex interpretation? I love the debate double standard.

[realfastcat]

Still, worries about blaming the victim persist. ...

The "culture of wealth" that led to the financial crisis, whining about taxes, foreclosure mills, and the like might be worth examining as well. The "common perception" and "understanding of how the world works" that produced the financial crisis turned out to be quite damaging to the economy, and the poor were hit particularly hard. The "culture of wealth" that then led many to blame the poor for the crisis as a means of shedding responsibility for it, financial and otherwise -- the same culture that led them to believe that unlike somone on unemployment compensation, they earned every cent of the government bailout they got -- might also be worth a look.

 

Or, as Lord Voldemort said "That Which Must Not Be Named."

[joeblast]

Wait, are we talking TARP, most of which was paid back, when some entities didnt want nor need but were forced to take loans to keep up the air of everyone needing it - or are we talking omnibus & stimulus packages, which were ostensible union payoffs?

 

None of which would be "paid back," unless of course campaign contributions count.

 

(And how could we classify cash for clunkers, that simply shifted some existing sales and a few got off easy on the backs of everyone?)

 

The point is, if the long standing actuarial rules were followed, there wouldnt have been anything like the bubble that happened. I wouldnt have bought my home with no money down, "because it simply wasnt required."

 

Deviations from proper action were what derailed the financial institutions - and it would have helped if the law hadnt created and enabled it. Bad loans do not make sense and they are not profitable - unless somebody is backing the whole charade - and we all know that backer was the US government; ultimately the US taxpayer.

 

Its the same addage of once you start lying, you wind up weaving an endless web of them just to cover the first one or few up. Before you know it you're neck deep in it and you need to keep track of all the lies you've told. Eventually you slip up and forget a sequence. It is no different with all of these rules and regulations - carve up too many of them, make too many of them unfair or needlessly punitive, make too many exemptions and loopholes, and you wind up with a big web of bullshit - like the US tax code that costs how many billions to simply perform a return for everyone?

 

I can see where "Anarchists" get this love for the idea - but really, its the sort of thing that simple rules and laws evenly enforced for all entities, government in its necessary place of "not even felt" and people making decisions that result in something better for everyone - part of the core of entrepreneurship, filling that need somebody has. It should be easy for people to do so if they feel so inclined and not have to pay ridiculous tithes that hinder competition and entrench big businesses that have the resources to piss away at such things.

 

I read all that before, and I settled where things work, and work best for everyone. Such a damned pragmatist

[zerostao]

And yet there were such high hopes for Mr Obama,dancing in the streets and people singing "Change a gonna come".

To quote Robert Burns "The man of independant mind he looks and laughs at all that".

 

 

not to mention the promised transparency as well?

anyways i said i would stay away from political threads, this one is economics?

even if it is getting harder to distinguish between those 2 things anymore.

i watched a movie once once (this thing of ours) where some older/wise gentleman

said that finance is a gun, politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.

 

"one in the same" from an economics guy i reckon

also adresses the sopa issue

 

Edited January 13, 2012 by zerostao

[ralis]

 

I read all that before, and I settled where things work, and work best for everyone. Such a damned pragmatist

 

You believe that you know what is best for all? How do you intend to implement your new "best for everyone" utopia? Have you considered the complexity of problems that your new scenario might create? Have you studied any of the historical accounts of rulers who share your ideology? If so, have any succeeded in implementing a political and economic state such that you are proposing?

 

Probably the best libertarian state for your study at this time is Somalia! No government regulations, free market enterprise and lots of guns and warlords. Not to mention, plenty of ocean front property for development along with toxic waste being dumped just off the coast. Sounds like the perfect market! :lol:

[zerostao]

You believe that you know what is best for all? How do you intend to implement your new "best for everyone" utopia? Have you considered the complexity of problems that your new scenario might create? Have you studied any of the historical accounts of rulers who share your ideology? If so, have any succeeded in implementing a political and economic state such that you are proposing?

 

Probably the best libertarian state for your study at this time is Somalia! No government regulations, free market enterprise and lots of guns and warlords. Not to mention, plenty of ocean front property for development along with toxic waste being dumped just off the coast. Sounds like the perfect market!

 

pirates too. arrrr

[ralis]

pirates too. arrrr

 

Pirates are free market libertarians!

[joeblast]

You believe that you know what is best for all? How do you intend to implement your new "best for everyone" utopia? Have you considered the complexity of problems that your new scenario might create? Have you studied any of the historical accounts of rulers who share your ideology? If so, have any succeeded in implementing a political and economic state such that you are proposing?

 

Probably the best libertarian state for your study at this time is Somalia! No government regulations, free market enterprise and lots of guns and warlords. Not to mention, plenty of ocean front property for development along with toxic waste being dumped just off the coast. Sounds like the perfect market! :lol:

I've said many a time that it starts at the local level, people need to demand integrity of their representatives and punish/root out corruption, walk back the tons of political favors, start treating entities in a similar fashion - many of the things agreed upon by many a differing philosophy.

 

If you cant tell the difference between free market capitalism and a relatively lawless warlord fiefdom...well, I've already said I cant really help you - you could always try fully understanding the implications of things you champion, and then fully understanding the implications of the things that I champion, and then come to the realization that the Tao allows for both yin and yang and basing one's ideology on fear and jealousy and forcing equal outcomes just doesnt freakin work...but that would require a little intellectual honesty in admitting that the tradeoff from punishing rich people just doesnt lead to that socially wonderful uptopia championed by people who think a government program for any conceivable ill is a good path forward.

 

You still have a tough time figuring out what my words mean, especially when I say something along the lines of government's proper place "barely even being noticed."

 

...or, the case is that you do understand, and purposefully twist them into something they're not and posit the notion as my belief - either way, the approach is flawed.

Edited January 13, 2012 by joeblast

[zerostao]

so then joeblast you would prefer paul over romney?

i dont think the jealousy or envy factors in as much as some folks seem to think.

you couldnt pay me to be rich.

 

i am however thinking of starting up a small pirate crew with all baguazhang players on board

just for the adventure tho, not for the loot

not off the somalia coast either

[joeblast]

absolutely, you know how "conservative" a "republican from massachusetts" is at the core of course, look at where I am from, so perhaps there's hope after all hahahahaha. but paul wont get the nom, the establishment types figure he's probably a bigger threat to their wellbeing than obama of course the economy will perform better under anyone on the stage aside from obama - and if hilary winds up stealing the show from him and winning, I think people are going to find out that a progressive's a progressive - although I'm sure her admin wouldnt try to pin all of their failings on racism!

[zerostao]

absolutely, you know how "conservative" a "republican from massachusetts" is at the core of course, look at where I am from, so perhaps there's hope after all hahahahaha. but paul wont get the nom, the establishment types figure he's probably a bigger threat to their wellbeing than obama of course the economy will perform better under anyone on the stage aside from obama - and if hilary winds up stealing the show from him and winning, I think people are going to find out that a progressive's a progressive - although I'm sure her admin wouldnt try to pin all of their failings on racism!

 

so paul will run third party and it will be 1992 all over again , kinda. who cares

what i want to know is are you gonna join up with us swashbuckling baguazhang dudes

for random high seas adventures in the caribbean?

we could take cuba or sth

Edited January 13, 2012 by zerostao

[joeblast]

No I think Paul's smarter than that, he knows his going third party would only do the same thing that got clinton in office and hand it to obama - and he's got the country's interests more at heart, he knows Obama is still the worst possible president we can have win the 2012 election.

 

heh...high seas adventures - I love the water, but I dont think I'd dig on being a pirate although a nice beach somewhere and tons of bgz does sound pretty appealing!

[ralis]

I've said many a time that it starts at the local level, people need to demand integrity of their representatives and punish/root out corruption, walk back the tons of political favors, start treating entities in a similar fashion - many of the things agreed upon by many a differing philosophy.

 

If you cant tell the difference between free market capitalism and a relatively lawless warlord fiefdom...well, I've already said I cant really help you - you could always try fully understanding the implications of things you champion, and then fully understanding the implications of the things that I champion, and then come to the realization that the Tao allows for both yin and yang and basing one's ideology on fear and jealousy and forcing equal outcomes just doesnt freakin work...but that would require a little intellectual honesty in admitting that the tradeoff from punishing rich people just doesnt lead to that socially wonderful uptopia championed by people who think a government program for any conceivable ill is a good path forward.

 

You still have a tough time figuring out what my words mean, especially when I say something along the lines of government's proper place "barely even being noticed."

 

...or, the case is that you do understand, and purposefully twist them into something they're not and posit the notion as my belief - either way, the approach is flawed.

 

 

 

I didn't ask for your help and don't need it! If your ideology is so appealing, then why do your posts create disagreement and divisiveness?

Edited January 13, 2012 by ralis

[joeblast]

I didn't ask for your help and don't need it! If your ideology is so appealing, then why do your posts create disagreement and divisiveness?

Because quite frankly, people get offended when you speak plainly To whit, why the strong response? When one's foundation is firm, what perturbs him?

[zerostao]