Each day brings news of new government plans to "fix the economy" in ways guaranteed to make matters far worse. The problem is convoluted... they are trying to fix THEIR system, which has failed; the people who befouled their own system are in charge of fixing it, and they truly have no idea what they are doing; the rule of law would solve the problem, but that is being suspended in the emergency; none of the politicians responsible will be, or can be, held accountable; Americans have agreed to be divided and conquered - although there is no particular difference between Obama or Bush, people carry signs saying "hooray for our side." Regardless of how things progress or turn out, those responsible for the mess or any complications will bear no burden. We are embracing fascism, which presents no particular problem to the vast majority who live under such a regime. History demonstrates life goes on. There are shortages and violence, but the battles are on the fringes.
Those aware of the problems and are concerned seem to respond in one of two ways: flight or fight. The flight people are seeking country living to escape the coming horrors of city life. Many are arranging to escape to overseas, even securing foreign passports (the problem with this plan is our economic problems are hurting people overseas even worse: move there, and you have no idea who has reason to hate you, but they know who you are.) Either way, you better have your own business.
Then there are those who propose to fight. Public traded arms companies in USA are seeing their stock shoot up, and there are waiting lists in USA for guns and ammo. What is available is expensive. Security services have taken note, and are well prepared to deal with anyone or any group that proposes to battle it out with the powers that be.
The problem with those who fight is violence only strengthens the bad guys, and should the "good guys" win, they always turn out to be worse than the old bad guys. A line from Star Wars is "Resistance is Futile." This is what Solzhenitsyn had to say:
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ........... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918–1956, Page 13, read the whole page.
I've occasionally reflected on how all those innocent people came to be in camps in Russia, and Solzhenstyn's view is they (he) deserved it, for lack of love of freedom. Yikes!
I've read the Gulag before, and I picked up this quote today from a fellow intimating we should learn from Solzhenitsyn and be prepared to resist violently. I think the fellow is making a mistake. Solzhenitsyn is only recounting what misery convicts stewed in once in the Gulag. In other places in the book Solzhenitsyn recounts how millions starved to death in the Ukraine where resistance was in fact offered. The problem is not the lack of violence, the problem is lack of love of freedom.
Read the whole quote, about how people applauded all the government trepidations. Then read 1 Samuel 8 where people demanded oppression. Violence serves the beast.
Divide and conquer is complete. All those on the right who blasphemously believe all honor and glory and power belong to the military and police got what they wanted under Geo Bush, and will get even more under Obama. All those on the left who blasphemously believe all charity flows from government got more than politically possible with Bush expanding welfare more than any president before him, and they will see their dreams completed under Obama. Both sides will cheer like liberated Soviets in the coming years, while blaming the other side for what problems do emerge. The powers that be have nothing to fear, no matter what happens.
I should do what any self-respecting Taoist would do in these circumstances: I should grab a jug of wine and flee to the mountains where I write poetry and watch the slow motion train wreck in progress from afar. But I enjoy being a merchant. And the powers that be have needs right now. While very small potatoes are being hounded for hiding assets in safe havens like Switzerland, the bad guys will need a safe place to keep their ill-gotten gains, get medical help when it will no longer be safe under the coming single payer system, and otherwise have a safe haven in a dangerous land, something like Hong Kong was to Communist China in the bad old days of that regime. If nothing else, just to spend some time where it is safe to speak freely. USA will need a Hong Kong.
Secession is out of the question, but USA might adopt a "one country, two systems" policy, with an autonomous region, and cross between the District of Columbia and a Foreign Trade Zone. I recommend Washington State. There need be nothing violent in achieving this, just a straight business transaction with the powers that be. A New Hong Kong (Xin Xiang Gang?) will provide what the powers that be need, and freedom loving people will get what they want. The left and right wing who adore big government can sell off their assets in this free land to those who prefer to move in and live free.
There is a problem: even a relatively free market economy needs far more small business than we have now to provide all of the goods and services necessary in such a land. We lost a generation of entrepreneurs in the dotcom and real estate boom. I doubt there are enough people who know how to compete in business to support a free market. Just look at all shameful lines of the young, well educated, privileged people standing in lines looking for work. The trade shows in China are crowded with their peers from other countries who love freedom and will thrive. Rarely do I see a young American there, or any age for that matter.
Solzhenitsyn is gone. Get big or get out is the rule in USA. The most radical, positive, nonviolent act a person can make is to start a business. But one has to love freedom.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Flight or Fight
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Future of USA Health Care
Since the Dems and Repubs wish to imitate the British national Health Service, let's take a peak at what is in store for USA.
Home Depotizing The Police
Home Depot seems to be laying off their $20 an hour experienced workers and replacing them with $10 an hour "challenged" personnel. A big cost savings. When USA police are dismissed, who would replace them?
Quote:
"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded," Obama, who worked as a community organizer in Chicago early in his career, said during a Colorado Springs rally.
End quote.
Replace expensive government workers with inexpensive government workers. Corporatized police would be able to defend their turf from the govt by customer satisfaction. Not so when they are government workers.
US Customs Needs to Apologize
This mistake is just terrible... it is not in the customs mandate to decide what is an American job, or to "protect" American jobs (the accused is actually generating jobs in USA) ... the mandate of US Customs is to "protect the revenue" of the fed govt. Whether or not a job is "American" is decided by consumers.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Meiji Restoration In Vallejo
A court has ruled that the city of Vallejo California can cancel its union agreements with police and fire fighters. The cities played the unions during the boom years agreeing to every demand in return for union support. Think about all of the candidates over the years with "endorsed by the fire fighters..." on their campaign signs. The politicians come and go, but police and fire fighters nationwide will be facing cities reneging on retirement plans.
The samurai once ruled Japan, and one day in the late 19th century it was all over. Came the Meiji restoration and all bets were off. The heroic police and firefighters learned today their pensions are no safer than the rest of us, which means not at all.
If police were privately provided this would not happen, since private companies may not escape union obligations unilaterally like governments can. Police ought not strike, they should demand to be corporatized.
I dislike the term "privatized" for various reason, but like corporatized. How it works is the City of Vallejo, says, "we cannot honor our agreements, so we will deed to you all of the assets and liabilities of the Vallejo Police departments, and your monopoly on policing is ended, along with your public funding." the result is the Vallejo cops and police retirees own all of the real estate, rolling stock, equipment, etc of the Vallejo police, but compete with others to provide for-hire protection and service. i know there are many problems with this plan, but merely a series of chages that need to be made. It is eminently doable, and preferable to what we have now.
Welcome aboard the Titanic.
Seattle Newspaper Demise
For 10 years I subscribed to the local newspaper wherever I happened to live, but about 20 years ago, as they mutated from "keeping government honest" to "keeping government unquestioned" I left off for other news sources, long before the internet. I think Matt Drudge stepped into the role of newspaper editor with the coming of the internet, and given the media had become completely government controlled by 1995, no media was able to evolve and meet the challenges of changing technology. The Seattle PI was particularly bad. Les Bon Temps, Sont Finis.
Occasionally I'll pick up a newspaper at an airport waiting area and every time I realize that the newspapers are factually wrong and otherwise irrelevant. I rarely finish any article i start. Newspapers seem to be in the business of accepting incoming faxes from government agencies and slapping a by-line on it and calling it journalism.
People who do engage in investigative journalism get read far and wide, like Seymour Hersh and James Bovard and Andrew Bacevic. None works for a newspaper.
I got into a 3 way conversation with Mr. Blethen, the publisher of the Seattle Times, who noted the inheritance tax was killing his newspaper. How?
Want ads are labor intensive low margin affairs and under attack by craigslist anyway, and the national advertisers for commodity items are so savvy they get ad rates at rock bottom. The real money maker for the newspapers are THE SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES that buy full rate ads, to introduce their products (with the costs of course passed on to consumers, since we can charge more for our innovative items.)
Death taxes destroy small businesses when heirs are forced to come up with $2 million cash to pay the tax on the $4 million value of the business owned by the dead parent.
Of course, there are strategies to avoid this, but all roads lead to the death of the business in question (although, in some cases the owner has moved back to the old country, and any demise is not reported by the kids.) With the death of so many small and medium businesses in small business-unfriendly states like Colorado and Washington, even government supported newspapers fold.
Of course, rich people like Blethen can and do arrange to preserve their wealth no matter what. It is why they love the government. Everyone would love the government, if the government protected everyone.
Hybrid Auto Sales Die
A car dealer in one of my classes explained to me that the market for hybrid cars was people who had to put a few hundred miles a day on their car (say salespeople) and people wishing to take advantage of the sticker for hybrid cars that allows Single Occupant Vehicles to us the High Occupant Vehicle lanes on the freeway. Once that group of salespeople was covered and the stickers used up, the market died months ago. there is simply not enough people who believe the environment is in danger or care enough to buy one now.
The cars were never profitable for the auto makers, even with the subsidies doe "basic research," and they make no economic sense for those who buy the4m (outside of the mentioned groups above).
Nonetheless, after failing to meet cvonsumers demands, the government wants Detroit to make more of what is crazy. As the LA Times reports:
Yet automakers believe they have little choice but to make more hybrids. Though car buyers are losing interest, politicians are pushing them as key to reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil and limiting the global-warming gases that cars emit into the atmosphere.
In a free market, we'd no doubt move to Mag Lev.
Piling On Obama
Obama supported and defended the bailouts, but he can hardly be blamed for executives taking bonuses at AIG. Everyone knew the money was for bankers and that the bailout would do no good, so who cares if this banker takes it, or that. The whole thing is silly. the interesting things is, as this article says, politicians on both sides are blaming Obama. Of course, that is why he was elected... someone to blame for everyone's problems.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Get Big or Get Out, Example # 372631
In a neat trick, the Obama administration hopes to save money by reneging on government agreements to help disabled veterans. Since Obama is continuing the Bush policy of bailing out the bankers, and no one has objected to our grandchildren paying to bail out the Obama/Bush system, whose going to complain about reneging on the deal with veterans.
Bankers make political contributions, as yet unborn grandchildren do not. Vets are of now use once they are disabled so too bad for them.
Part of the plan is to make employer insurance pay for the veterans disabilities. This is a double header, because not only does it leave the veteran out of luck, it breaks small businesses too with new higher rates (I suppose they can just refuse to hire vets.)
I like this guys line... "the government ordered these people into war, not the insurance companies..."
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Obama to Make Bush Look Good
After failing to protect USA from the second and avowed World Trade Center attack on 9-11, and using it as an excuse for the widest expansion of federal government in the history of the USA, Dick Cheney is warning that Obama might use the crisis created by the Bush economic team to expand government. Sadly, the children advising Obama will make it all true and make us forget Geo. Bush.
Govt Plans For Small Business
The Obama Administration plan to "help" small business by raising loan guarantees in Small Business Adminstration loan programs from 75% to 90%. Show me a successful business based on an SBA loan and I will show you an example of bank fraud. To get an SBA loan you must fail to qualify for a regular loan, in other words, your business plan must be very bad idea. Since the taxpayer is on the hook for the very bad business idea (many of these approved loans go to politically connected people as rewards for supporting candidates) the loan covenants are stringent. Those businesses that in fact succeed normally have broken the loan covenants to in fact succeed.
The other obvious point is any worthwhile business needs no taxpayer support, it needs customer support. Further, one does not build a stable business on debt, one builds it on savings.
Dick Cheney is already blaming the economic mess on Obama, and Obama is foolishly taking actions that will make it seem so. The best thing the US Govt could do for small business is eliminate the Small Business Administration, and never let anyone working for that group ever take a government job again.