"... the true genius of the plan was THE FEAR... FEAR became the ultimate tool of this government." -- V, V for Vendetta
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Under the Republicans, petty tyrants used 9/11/01 and the threat of "terrorism" -- a real thing that existed but that the government-sponsored fear campaign and its lackeys in the media leaned on far too heavily to grease the skids to justify new, increasing power grabs.
Under the Democrats, for the past year-and-a-half up to today, 09/11/21, and likely into the near future, petty tyrants are using "covid" -- a real thing that exists but that the government-sponsored fear campaign and its lackeys in the media lean on far too heavily to grease the skids to justify new, increasing power grabs.
While not all the details are the same, how unfortunately prescient the movie "V for Vendetta" was... It takes place in 2020, after an infection was made in a lab, leading to a pandemic, that a national political party generated increasing FEAR around in order to win a divisive election, and upon winning continued to lean more heavily into in order to maintain and enhance control over the population, imposing upon the populace a remedy that resulted in record profits for a pharmaceutical company, while still instituting lockdowns and other increasingly draconian policies based on FEAR in the name of "UNITY".
And while we in the US might not be at the level of tyranny as seen in the movie, add in another similar factor of British-sounding accents, curfews, family members being taken from homes, concentration camps, and more -- and Australia is just about there, revisiting its history and ancestry as a continent-sized prison colony.
So maybe it's not as far off as we'd like to believe, considering how rapidly Australians made their transition.
The parallels are a little too close for comfort.
Petty tyrants, at any level of government, whether they claim to be so-called "conservatives" or "liberals" (whatever these terms even mean, anymore) should be allowed nary an inch. It's the same old story that repeats itself. The generation and propagation of FEAR is, has been, and will always be, the greatest tool the government can use to get the people to willingly grant them, due to inflated or even outright false pretenses, increasing and permanent control over their choices, their livelihoods -- and their very lives.
As the slip slopes, the dominoes will continue to fall...
A thousand cuts. The ubiquity of it all numbing us, dumbing us down. They grow increasingly numerous, sharper, and deeper -- all for a virus with up to a 99.99% infection recovery rate, where the vast majority of the infected have a mild to asymptomatic response, where those with sever reactions have an average of four comorbidities, and where the average death age is higher than the average life expectancy.
In spite of this, the narrative of FEAR and impending chaos and looming ubiquitous death must be reinforced, regardless -- note the constantly shifting goal posts and the focus on "cases" as opposed to considering the actual virulence of the infection.
Your "jab" is less and less consequential. Enjoy your forever-jabs!
Covid, now endemic as so many of us always expected it to be, is never going away. If the ongoing narrative regurgitated by the usual suspects in the government, media, and useful idiots in the rank-and-file embeds itself over the long-haul, then these and other power grabs along with the campaign of FEAR continuing into perpetuity is a very real prospect.
The beatings will continue until morale improves
I don't know about everyone else -- but I know what I'm watching, tonight, on this September 11th.
The concept of "immigration" is fundamentally absurd, and the
contradictions such terminology brings about due to the existence of
States makes it a contentious issue for libertarians.
The
libertarian position, as I see it, entails no possible position on
"immigration," because immigration is a state-based concept. If there is
no state, there can be no immigration, only traveling people. In a
world with states, this traps the libertarian into taking a position on a
fundamentally statist idea. Open borders, managed borders, and closed
borders are all statist concepts.
The question ought not be
whether the borders should be open, and I think no libertarian should
take a position on whether they ought. Rather, the libertarian should
recognize that if all property were private, then immigration policy
would not exist as a concept at all.
The go-to talking point for 'progressives', socialists (or do I repeat myself), and SJWs is that Nazism was only nominally socialist for the purposes of the Nazi propaganda machine -- that it was actually a kind of 'capitalism run amok', or 'radical capitalism merged with the State', and that the socialist nomenclature was nothing more than a superficial cover to gain appeal from the masses. While the Nazis and Dr. Joseph Goebbels, notorious as the Minister of Propaganda (and widely recognized as an ardent leftist) were, unfortunately, indeed masters, if not forerunners of modern propaganda -- the reality of Nazi economics reflected much of what their propaganda claimed.
Old Nazi pastimes like institutionalized book burnings, mass-censorship (public and private), and other such forms of information control of anything that wasn't in absolute lock-step with propagating National Socialism, 'German purity' or other such concepts are historically well-favored and effective tools in socialist regimes. Even Nazi extermination camps actually used the Soviet model as a template. Nazi SS Official Rudolf Höss, the architect behind the infamous Auschwitz concentration Camp, found himself inspired:
The Reich Security Head Office issued to the commandants a full collection of reports concerning the Russian concentration camps. These described in great detail the conditions in, and organization of, the Russian camps, as supplied by former prisoners who had managed to escape. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Russians, by their massive employment of forced labor, had destroyed whole peoples.[1]
You simply don't find this kind of stuff in capitalist systems. Of course, if you call these out as some examples of the socialist personality of Nazi Germany on social media, you need only wait mere moments before some rando Defender of Socialism rears his or her or xer head to jump on the opportunity to claim that the Nazis and Nazi Germany weren't actually socialist.
Personally, I'm entertained by the bouts of mental gymnastics that these authoritarian 'leftists' engage in when they try to rationalize their cognitive dissonance the first time they hear about Hitler's and the NSDAP's '25-point Plan'. Interestingly enough, most of these 'true believers' in socialism seem unfamiliar with the actual policies and economic systems underlying the Nazi economy.
Note... I have highlighted socialist policies in red, particularly socialist ones in emboldened red, and the most egregious, arbitrary and murderous socialist polices in underlined and emboldened red. The rest range from more general to nationalist to radical nationalist policies. The '25-point Plan' and Platform of the NSDAP
We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination.
We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.
Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.
Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.
The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore, we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.
We demand that the State be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.
All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently, we demand:
Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
The State is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbürgerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that:
a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race;
b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language;
c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the State so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: The common good before the individual good. (Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz). Has also been translated as "The good of the State before the good of the individual."
For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. The forming of state and profession chambers for the execution of the laws made by the Reich within the various states of the confederation. The leaders of the Party promise, if necessary by sacrificing their own lives, to support by the execution of the points set forth above without consideration.
It's extraordinarily clear that there is not a single capitalist policy in their platform -- quite the opposite, actually. I count 13 to 15 policies out of the total 25, making more than half of the total platform of the NSDAP anywhere on the spectrum from 'socialist' to "holy shit, that's murderously socialist". Sans the nationalist and racist flavor added in to these policies, avowed socialists and, ironically, 'Antifas' the world over would absolutely cheer at such proposals. They would see such a rising, popular platform as a harbinger of incoming 'Social Justice'.
The "right" to vote? What is that, exactly? Does this mean that I can insinuate my voting right into any other person's life? If this person refuses to listen to me, can I sue for damages? How is this right violated? How is it maintained? How is it asserted?
Oh, I can only use it in terms of elections organized by the state? Can I use my voting right to help pass legislation? No? I have to be an elected official first? I thought you said this was a right? Why would I need the state to define when and how I could use it? If the state determines when and how I use it, is it really a "right"?
Can I use it in any election? No? I have to be registered first? It needs to be on the ballot in my voting district? If I have been incarcerated, does the state guarantee that I am available and able to vote in my district's elections? No? So, it has been revoked? Can I vote down martial law if it is imposed? No? Revoked again, I assume.
I'm sorry, but this sounds less like a "right" and more like a state-granted entitlement and an extremely weak, tightly controlled power to influence the state and impose its will on others, assuming those in office magnanimously grant it.
How has this ruse not been seen for what it is, sooner? The vote is not "majority rule," it is not "Two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner," it is hardly even political power, in any meaningful sense of the word. It is a fragment of a bone, offered as a bribe to the population at large, to convince them not to revolt, or to interfere with the day-to-day operation of the State. It is a cheap pacifier for the all-but-powerless.
It's definitely hard being a true-scotsman 'libertarian' in this world and I wanted to share something I read that really struck a chord with me and motivated me to slam around a bit on my keyboard...
"... I have no sympathy for weeping democrats. We libertarians live every day, every election, seeing horrible people get elected, and good ideas shot down. We are always the minority, we always lose, our rights are always trod upon. The democrats who are weeping crocodile tears because they have to live under Trump's Presidency for 4-8 years -- suck it up -- that's how it feels to be a libertarian all the time." -- N. Stephan Kinsella, author of 'Against Intellectual Property' and contributor to C4SIF
Of course, it's one thing to 'have no sympathy for weeping democrats' and another entirely to engage in a thorough bout of Schadenfreude, but I think it's well-deserved. Progressives have been, hands-down, one of the greatest threats to advancing and protecting liberty for as far back as libertarians can remember. During the past 8 years, SJW culture (the abominable love-child of Progressivism and political correctness), has relentlessly tried to shame and silence any and all dissent into this madness, using every social and economic tool at their disposal at both an individual and collective level. One might try to argue that they're just using social pressures to try to get their way, and 'at least they're not using the state' -- but it would be a trip into self-delusion to think that institutionalizing their ideas into the state and imposing them by the force and consequence of law is not the end-game, here.
The 'Referendum Creep' on Progressivism
Luckily, the election of Donald J. Trump as the President of the United States (no, that still hasn't quite sunk in, yet), along with the continued majorities in the House and Senate and safeguarding the SCOTUS likely for generations (along with the implications this has on past, present, and future law), has been an unbelievably devastating upset of a defeat that they may never recover from. Particularly so, when you consider the 'decimation' noted by The Washington Post regarding not just the presidency and congress, but of state legislatures and governorships throughout the country:
"We tend to focus on the loss of the presidency as the example of Democratic failure. That's blinkered. Since 2008, by our estimates, the party has shed 870 legislators and leaders at the state and federal levels -- and that estimate may be on the low side. As Donald Trump might put it, that's decimation times 50."
Stated differently, there has been an ongoing kind of 'referendum creep' on the Democratic Party for the past 8 years and it just recently culminated in the election of Donald Trump. Progressivism hasn't been in such a weakened position in many, many decades, but we can't let ourselves get too complacent and comfortable about all of this. This was a grave mistake they made and one of many reasons why they lost -- they were so easily duped by bullshit, skewed polling, smug talking heads and other political hacks, that it resulted in a thick fog over a vast rift between political reality and their delusional perspective of it.
A Black Hole of Identity Politics
Identity politics, despite its vacuousness of actual ideas, has been a mainstay of Progressive, SJW, and Democrat strategy for a long while, now, with Hillary and her surrogates doubling-down on this, thinking it would secure the presidency. Identity politics obviously didn't secure her a win, so maybe it can excuse her loss? Van Jones, et al, want to paint an early narrative that this all was some kind of racist 'whitelash'. Ah, of course -- this is the great revenge of the slave-owning white man! Isn't thatright?
"Or maybe not. The exit polls are remarkable. Would you believe that Mitt Romney won a greater percentage of the white vote than Donald Trump? Mitt took 59 percent while Trump won 58 percent. Would you believe that Trump improved the GOP’s position with black and Hispanic voters? Obama won 93 percent of the black vote. Hillary won 88 percent. Obama won 71 percent of the Latino vote. Hillary won 65 percent. Critically, millions of minority voters apparently stayed home. Trump’s total vote is likely to land somewhere between John McCain’s and Romney’s (and well short of George W. Bush’s 2004 total), while the Democrats have lost almost 10 million voters since 2008."
Okay, well... men are obviously threatened by a woman leading the country. Even though women did the right thing of voting with their vaginas, men did the wrong thing of voting with their penises, right? In the articulate words of Donald Trump, "Wrong".
"In fact, Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent, with white women without college degrees going for [Trump] two to one."
Fine, so it wasn't the 'white male patriarchy', but what about those nefarious third parties? If not for their election spoiling and the irresponsible, short-sighted, liberal non-Hillary-voters voting for them, Hillary would have dominated, correct? Nope -- Wrongagain.
"CBS News' exit poll posed the hypothetical question of who third party voters would support if the race were only Clinton and Trump, and both Johnson and Stein supporters appeared to support Clinton over Trump by about 25 percent to 15 percent. But 55 percent of Johnson's supporters would have just sat out the election, as would 61 percent of Jill Stein supporters. According to New York Times exit polling, a whopping 63 percent of voters who declined to cast their ballot for the two major party candidates said they would have not voted at all in a two candidate race."
Conclusively, simply not enough people were willing to turn out to vote for Hillary and her Democratic Party, and that fact cuts across sex, race, and class. The 'referendum creep' struck in her loss and it struck again in all of the contrived excuses for her loss. Identity politics is an abject failure in every meaningful way and the people have come to recognize that -- so much so that they have handed the Republican party almost complete free reign to do as they please (remember, they still don't have a super-majority).
In light of recognizing the political reality of this 'new normal', some Progressives in the fourth and fifth estates have taken this all better than others. Some have engaged in a well-deserved deep reflection of their journalistic failures (see here, here, here, here, and here) whereas others think they should retreat further into their anti-intellectual swamp of delusion and dishonesty (here, here, here, here, and here). Even the November 11th episode of 'Real Time With Bill Maher' shows Bill actually starting to understand and articulate a part of 'what happened' and their inability or unwillingness to see it. Unfortunately, his entire panel regularly drowns him out, retreating back into their swamp, dragging him along with them. Sad!
Yet, while I'm sure there may be some genuine feeling from these kinds of folks regardless of how they're rationalizing the news, I do believe that both approaches of self-reflection and self-delusion serve different tactics of self-preservation (likely depending on the political environments they work in) and, thus, should be taken with a giant heaping of salt.
That salt, of course, should be harvested from their tears.
So Where Do We go From Here?
It's important to note that while Progressivism as an ideology may be much more 'hardy' and take a couple more knock-out hits before going down for the count, SJW culture has still been in its infancy. As such, we need to turn the tables and do what we can to strangle it in its crib while it's in such a weakened state and while we still can. It's not a serious threat (and even less so after the election), now, but if and when such a movement were to mature and place its hands on the levers of state power? The consequences and slippery slopes for protecting, let alone advancing liberty, will be dire.
As Sun Tzu said, 'opportunities arise as you seize them'. So how do we do this? How do we 'turn the tables' on SJWs and Progressives to maximize this opportunity? Apart from actually going out and voting (and getting as many others to vote as possible), one thing I've found that they always used much more consistently and effectively than anyone else has been shaming, ostracism, and boycotting. This has been their primary social tactic and it, all too often, has shut down debate and silenced the opposition of good ideas and counter-arguments. It's high time we put an end to it. No more having to go on the defensive from dishonest charges of 'racism', 'sexism', 'hate', and other such nonsense. It's all an intellectual retreat, and they know it. We're smarter, more knowledgeable, wittier, and we have reality on our side. We've allowed them to be shameless with their dishonest tactics for too long, having overplayed their hand and rendered toothless and virtually meaningless some very important concepts to signal legitimately bad people in society. So while we must continue to intellectually destroy their arguments, we should especially focus on helping them rediscover their shame and turn their charges around on them at any and every opportunity we find. We should take a page from their own playbook and they should be mocked, shamed, and boycotted back into that brain-dead and dishonest swamp they crawled out of.
As democratic governments continue to try to stretch the bounds of human depravity, we take this moment to point out some of the absurdities of today's social order.
According to the OECD the United States' government spending was 38.1% of GDP. What this means, of course, is that the United States government was responsible for 38.1% of the consumption in the economy. Whether the money was being either shuffled around at gun point or simply created from nothing, it doesn't matter. The money was being spent by people who did not have to do anything to obtain it. Think about that for a minute: at least 38.1% of spending was performed by people who didn't earn the power to dispose of that purchasing power by creating something of value.
Of course, GDP equations are nonsense. Just assuming government spending adds to economic output at a 1:1 ratio along with all other spending is an assumption we just can not accept. We would not accept the idea that spending necessarily adds to social welfare. If that spending does not come along with its naturally associated cause, production and savings, then it is pure consumption with no productive value. Not all decisions are created equal, and not all resource expenditures are desirable from a long run perspective. Only decisions which are sound and not wasteful in the long run are those which actually qualify as wealth producing decisions.
We don't really understand how governments and central banks think these kinds of conditions are sustainable. We are pretty sure they don't believe this: they simply must continue the charade as long as possible.
One thing we are certain of, is that until humans are willing to allow the social order to evolve as it naturally must, the discovery process of trial and error inherent to economic calculation can not function. We are optimistic that some day this will happen, but right now the belief in authority is consolidating its position.
The UK has just changed its copyright-and-patent monopoly law to extend copyright to furniture and to extend the term of that copyright on furniture with about a century. This follows a decision in the European Union, where member states are required to adhere to such an order. This change means that people will be prohibited from using 3D printing and other maker technologies to manufacture such objects, and that for a full century.
...
The people selling these copies are not necessarily “scam merchants”. Everybody knows they’re copies and not Vitra or Herman Miller originals. […] But – is there really £6800+ worth of value in the Vitra product? Or are they just charging that because they can? Who’s the scam merchant?
A relevant question indeed. Where’s the real scam when something designed 50 years ago is suddenly off limits to 3D printing and home manufacturing, requiring people to buy it at a 2000% markup instead?
Read the full article by the good folks over at Private Internet Access (a great and important kind of company) covering this issue, here.
Looks like yet another reason to finally abolish copyright and intellectual property, if you ask me. The only ones who will really win out in the grand scheme of things with laws in place for IP and copyright are the state, lawyers, and special interests.
The concept of private property was created and evolved to more easily minimize, manage and settle disputes regarding who had just control over some resource(s) -- be it land, real estate, raw materials, capital -- or any other kind of actually economically scarce resource. Desperately needed information systems regarding the supply, demand, their meeting place of 'price', profit and loss (which reward or punish you for management or mismanagement of these valuable, scarce resources according to the demand of society) evolved further out of that concept.
Intellectual property and copyright create artificial economic scarcity by fiat when there is no natural scarcity. It's a bastardization of the concept of private property, and is actually anti private property, since it gives individuals more power over your privately owned scarce resources than you, simply because of a claim on artificial scarcity given to an individual(s) by the State.
Imagine what society could be like if economically scarce resources were no longer scarce and could be copied like ideas, recipes, arrangements and blueprints? Imagine if we all had star trek replicators, how much better off society could be -- if food, clothing, medicine, and so many luxuries could be replicated on demand at no or virtually no cost and how high the resulting standards of living would be for everyone? We would no longer have any, or at the most very minimal need for the concept of private property (other than to establish self ownership, or for some kind of currency still needed to pay for specialized labor, collectibles, 'time', and that's really mostly it).
Unfortunately, we don't have replicators for economically scarce resources, and we probably won't for quite some time, if ever. We may, in some distant future, achieve economic superabundance (which would make these scarce resources relatively unbelievably cheap) -- but this still doesn't eliminate economic scarcity and the need for currency. However, we do have 'star trek replicators' for ideas, blueprints, arrangements and recipes -- your mind and your will. By supporting intellectual property and copyright, you are supporting the state abolish the natural start trek replicator that is our right by birth and by the fact of existing.
I definitely don't support Trump. With that being said -- I most certainly prefer him over Clinton.
Why? Well, for the most part, I actually find both of their politics to ultimately be mere inches apart -- a trend of recent presidencies that show Republican and Democrat nominees for federal office (less so at the state level) have been moving closer to 'the center' from either side, with constituencies and the hoi polloi moving increasingly to the margins of progressivism and libertarianism. I actually think this recent phenomenon is due to the distillation of ideas due to the (sometimes crude, but still effective) purification process from the internet -- but that's a discussion for another time.
However, we do have some important differences between these two that are factors in my preference...
The SCOTUS, Obviously
A big one and definitely a contender for the most important issue, is that of the next Supreme Court Justice to be appointed for life due to the recent passing of Antonin Scalia. There are a fewother SCJ's getting a bit longer in the tooth, and with likely two full terms for the next president (which has been another trend for decades, now), we're looking at more than enough time for another SCJ or two to leave empty seats. SCJ's have not, in the history of the United States, broken more than 90 years of age, leaving fairly high chances for some more to be replaced within the span of the next eight years.
Plumb-line, true-scotsmen, small-l libertarian SCJs are of course most preferable, but the least likely. That leaves us with 'liberals' (which at this level and in this day and age seem to be more Progressive leaning as opposed to 'liberal', anyways) and Conservatives -- which really just means that leaves us with conservatives, since 'liberals' and especially Progressives are much more likely to centralize increased power to the federal government.
So imagine a Clinton Presidency, likely for the next two terms, and potentially two or three of her picks (likely during an inevitable flip of control of the legislative branch to the Democrats) bringing about an easy Progressive majority in the SCOTUS. Consider for a moment that this will thrust the SCOTUS to consistent Progressive interpretations of the Constitution and other laws for the next 30-or-so years and the long-lasting effects that will have on legislation in the past, present, and future and the entire structure of the US Government. Really, just let that sink in for a moment.
Right, I thought so. It is what it is.
Critical Mass
The other big difference is one of paramount importance and is, for me at least, a great silver lining in a Trump Presidency, unique to Trump vs the other possibilities throughout the primary season. Progressive heads will explode the world over when he wins. Actually, they've already lost. It's done. It's been done for weeks, if not months, now, and the writing is on the wall. Their ideology is completely unworkable, unrealizable, and incoherent. They're so out-of-touch with the American people that they're still nowhere near realizing it. A Trump presidency will not be a surprise to anyone but them. Their sad, washed-up vanguard is pushing a failed, desperate narrative -- and they keep pushing it and failing, regardless, even with the media above-and-beyond mostly on their side. The incessant hammering of politically correct social pressures has created some thick hides and rendered many immune to it. So many people are over the politically correct, third-wave feminist, SJW, whiny, entitled bullshit and they're not afraid, anymore -- they can't be shamed, and the shaming has completely switched directions. Progressives and their vanguard have overplayed their hand for far too long, and the final rejection of this bastardization of liberalism has finally reached critical mass with the campaign of Donald Trump.
Desperation
Again -- Progressives are a bit slow on the uptake for a lot of this. Naturally, they'll be the last to know, and all this flailing about we've seen from recently is to be expected. The unbelievable arrogance of trying to spin the recent DNC email leak and make themselves (and supposedly, the American people, by extension) out to be the victims of Russian agents and hackers to control the election in favor of a Manchurian candidate? Well, okay, then. Don't at all pay attention to the fact that they were the ones blatantly exposed for lies, corruption, and hypocrisy to their own donors, activists, and constituents -- whether it was even done by the Russians or the Chinese or a DNC leaker or martians is completely besides the point .
They're really starting to reach at straws, though. The sad new spin attempt today was actually quite an impressive coordination of "Quick, run to the phones!"-style, shameless, false propaganda. Following Donald Trump's recent Press Conference on Hillary Clinton, the shilling for ole Hillary reached great heights. Within the span of minutes, I suddenly saw dozens of extremely click-baity articles (a short list of examples here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) of center to left news pages (and even many supposedly non-political technology pages!) jump on claims that he essentially engaged in treason by explicitly and publicly asking the Russian Government and Putin to hack the US to get emails on Hillary. Of course, this was taken completely out of context, words were twisted to mean something completely different, and they tried (and failed) to blow it up into a much bigger deal than it was. All he said was that if the Russians do in fact have Hillary Clinton's missing 33,000 e-mails (and he didn't know if they did, and doubted they did), then he hopes they give them to the press. He never said he wants them to hack the US or a major party. He actually stated on Twitter (hours before the statements in the conference in question) that whoever has the e-mails, if they do, that they "should share them with the FBI." It's all right in the video, embedded below.
The fact that they're now using such weak and pathetic claims to try to control the narrative so cheaply, despite how easily debunked it all is -- shows how weak and tenuous they know their position has become. They're flailing and lashing about, like a small child who hopelessly knows he is not about to get his way.
And really, you gotta hand it to the guy... The sheer cojones to take unfiltered questions from a very hostile press, who are all or mostly very clearly trying to prop up Hillary -- and happily stump them... Just totally epic.
He truly is 'a nimble navigator' (hat-tip, the_Donald Subreddit). I suggest watching the whole thing -- he's very good at dealing with the press on his own, he doesn't hold back much, and it's really quite entertaining, to boot.
When reality finally hits them -- it will all be absolutely delectable. And it couldn't come soon enough.
Also, this creates a positive feedback loop -- subsidies create artificial demand, increasing prices, and after prices increase, you need ever higher subsidies to feed the now-higher tuition prices. Naturally, the prices have been rising by insane levels over time. On top of this, loose government subsidies for college incentivize loose college considerations -- people go to college who should not be going to college, and with so many young people not even finishing the degree they started, or just as bad, if not worse -- finishing degrees they don't end up using for their career. This also creates utterly bizarre and/or useless degrees and studies that contribute little to nothing more to society and economy than the 'Triggly Puffs' of the world and their sad, intellectually dishonest, unproductive, destructive ilk.
This is all while saddling so many with absolutely crushing and lifestyle-debilitating amounts of debt. Debt that you cannot avoid, by the way -- if unsecured private debt isn't paid, it goes on your credit report. If unsecured government debt isn't paid, it still goes on your credit report, but they can also garnish your wages and/or put a levy on your bank account.
It's all a very, very miserable cycle that that hampers society and is primarily there to help wealthy colleges, universities, and academia in general to keep prices and wages at massively artificially inflated levels -- all at the expense of our youth, all while being a massive propaganda mill. The government-subsidized student loan system is a giant racket and should be abolished.
With all factors present, net tuition increases from $6,100 to $12,559. As column 4 demonstrates, the demand shocks — which consist mostly of changes in financial aid — account for the lion’s share of the higher tuition.
Specifically, with demand shocks alone, equilibrium tuition rises by 102%, almost fully matching the 106% from the benchmark. By contrast, with all factors present except the demand shocks (column 7), net tuition only rises by 16%.
These results accord strongly with the Bennett hypothesis, which asserts that colleges respond to expansions of financial aid by increasing tuition.
The 'Bennett Hypothesis' goes back almost three decades (by William J. Bennett, Secretary of Education in 1987) and is the theory that as long as the government ensures the bills will get paid, colleges will raise tuition. The idea that this would happen is, of course, nothing special nor original to libertarians and Austrian School economists -- but pro-regressives and special interests in academia have naturally contended it ever since by playing with the statistics, despite the data and logic showing the contrary again and again. Color me surprised.
It's good to see them eat crow on this, yet again. Let private loans manage it and all of these problems will fix themselves.
The British people tipped the first domino this week as, in a nominally shocking outcome, they have voted in favor of leaving the EU in a public vote.
Image courtesy of www.frenchentree.com
This is of course a purely "advisory" vote from the public, and carries no particular legal consequences for the oligarchy whom rules over them. Parliament has the power to ignore the vote if they please. With that being said, at least one of them must see the writing on the wall. Britsh Prime Minister David Cameron resigned after learning the consequences of the vote.
Image courtesy of www.economist.com
We don't pretend that Brussels and its counterpart oligarchs in Britain will just roll over and die just because the majority of British people expressed an opinion contrary to what their masters recommended. This is just the beginning of a long political process, a catalyst of events to come. This vote will have far-reaching influence in the EU. There are already movements underway in six other European countries for a similar referendum. The winds of change are blowing, and Europe is once again front and center stage.
The people are stirring. They are beginning to sense there is something wrong. Their friends and neighbors are suffering, and they wonder what happened to the Brave New World which was to come by means of social and economic engineering. Britain is just a symbol of the failure to accomplish this goal. Indeed, it is a symbol of the impossibility of attaining such a naive vision of utopia.
Governments around the world are approaching the limits of their abilities to influence outcomes. Their subjects are, for the most part, still too uneducated (by design, of course) to recognize why they are discontent, but they just know they are. Nature has its own way of sorting out extremes and other imbalances, and human nature is no different. Everything changes when the average person realizes their expectations for the future are false, and that's when things get unpredictable.
Soon people will be faced with a choice: liberty or totalitarianism. Only one of these is compatible with increasing social welfare. We only hope the people recognize which one.
Just a moment ago I prepared, once again, to masochistically tease myself too close to the event horizon of the super-massive black hole of the ideology of yet another pro-regressive on the internet. Why I continue to do this to myself -- I couldn't tell you. I'm apparently a glutton for mental anguish, punishment and frustration.
As it goes.
Anyhoo, this zealous ideologue spouted a quote from an article about how "[McDonald's] chief executive, Steve Easterbrook, brought home a whopping $7.91 million last year — a 368% raise over his 2014 salary of $1.69 million —while low-wage McDonald’s workers are striking around the country for a livable income." and naturally followed up with a predictably inane, "Sure, they obviously can't afford to pay people better." Of course, in the bizarro world of a pro-regressive ideologue where basic math and common sense don't apply, this means that McDonald's can afford to pay their line-level workers $15/hr. Obviously.
Of course, Steve Easterbrook didn't merely get some kind of merit pay-raise just for being a good chap. He actually got a massive promotion from 'Chief Brand Manager' to Chief Executive Officer -- an important tidbit of information the ideologue conveniently ignored that was found within his own citation. Additionally, this doesn't tell the whole story, as it turns out that the vast majority of that $7.91 million is in stock options -- which is usually how a CEO's pay is structured for large, publicly-traded corporations. It's done this way to tie the CEO's pay very closely with the performance of the company. His base rate in 2015 was actually $1.1 million, and he received an 18% pay raise in March, 2016 to $1.3 million. If the performance under McDonald's tanked by the end of 2015, quality dropped, customers stopped coming and employees lost their jobs as a result of said tanked performance -- then he would have made far less along with probably having to step down in abject shame.
McDonald's is a company that took in $25.41 billion dollars in revenue last year. CEO Steve Easterbrook has taken on one of the most important jobs in a modern economy. This means taking on the ultimate responsibility of managing a massive entity consisting of '1.9 million employees and around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries across 36,535 outlets'. His mere words, actions, and inactions could anywhere from destroy to sustain to improve the jobs of its employees and the customers who enjoy their food -- very much so including myself. And while I'm more of a Wendy's man, I'm actually a solid fan of their 'Number 6' Crispy Chicken Club sandwich meal (hold the mayo!), add bacon, add ranch dressing, with large fries, a large Diet Coke (gotta watch my girly figure), and always add in the 4-piece chicken McNuggets... but I digress, and no I'm not a paid shill. I'm just here, calling out the bullshit.
As noted, executive pay is often tied directly to stock performance in large, publicly traded companies -- so while pro-regressive ideologues will naturally point out the increased income CEOs get, you'll never find them point out a CEO's massive drop in income for when their company doesn't perform. It's the same old story with 'speculators'. Pro-regressives absolutely love -- love, love -- to pounce on faceless 'speculators' when prices go up. But of course, you'll find them suspiciously, shamefully silent when speculators push prices down.
Now, on to the fast-food meat of the matter. Of the 1.9 million total employees, let's play super nice and give a very conservative estimate that only 1.5 million of them are primarily line-level employees making under $15/hr, whereas the remaining 400,000 could be corporate employees and managers. McDonald's ended 2015 with $4.53 billion in net profits, so let's say we were to try to make pro-regressive ideologues happy (it's impossible, btw, there's always something they feel entitled to) and eliminate all profits and turn it directly into a raise for all line-level employees -- since this is the 'extra fat' or 'surplus value' that the company has nefariously, unjustly 'stolen' from them and 'should not have' and 'should go back to the workers'. Since line-level McDonald's workers typically make anywhere from $8/hr to $10/hr, let's say they make $9/hr. Now, let's take the $4.53 billion in oppressive profits, cut it up intointo 1.5 million cute, little, socially-just slices, and hand them right out so very equitably (!) to all of the line level employees.
So what have we effectively accomplished by wiping out the profits of one of the largest companies in the world and handed it over to the 1.5 million line-level employees? What we've done is signed its death warrant.
Here's the simple math. $4.53 billion into 1.5 million employees means that we've only given these people an additional $3,020 into their gross (that means pre-tax for you entitled folk) yearly earnings. Since the pro-regressive argument goes that it 'should be' a 'livable wage' (we'll get to the consequences of a raise to $15/hr soon enough, trust me) -- they should consider this their full-time job to live decently off of. Full-time means 40 hours per week for 52 weeks, which brings us to a massive raise of -- drum-roll, please...
... an additional $1.45/hr, bringing their new wage to $10.45/hr! Social justice secured!
Understand -- when a company makes profits, those profits don't suddenly all go into the pockets of executives. Most of that money is either,
a) tucked away into savings for a rainy day of bad performance so they can still pay their bills and continue employing 1.9 million people,
b) to expand the scope of their operations by opening more locations to bring more jobs to more workers and more food to more consumers at low prices,
c) to invest in existing infrastructure to improve working conditions and/or quality of the food and/or the experience for the customer,
d) pay out into shareholders of various ages and classes (oftentimes including the employees themselves if they opt for 401k plans, IRA accounts for retirees, et al), or
e) some combination of these.
In the end, these profits are needed to sustain and/or expand the company -- not for some nefarious, oppressive, exploitative purpose, whatever pro-regressives dogmatically believe is considered so by attaining profits.
So what does this all ultimately mean? What about the demand for a so-called 'livable wage' of $15/hr if wiping out their current profits only means achieving an average wage of $10.45/hr?
If, let's say, McDonald's ever caved into these destructive, economically ignorant demands (hint: they won't) and gave these employees a raise from $9/hr to $15/hr -- for a conservatively estimated 1.5 million 'line level' employees, they would need to absorb $18.72 BILLION in additional costs. We're talking a necessary revenue increase of 73.7% -- revenues they've never achieved and likely won't for many, many years into the future where other costs will continue to grow as well. If they had to suddenly absorb these costs, without a change to their prices, and with last years' performance, they would be operating at a yearly loss of OVER $14 BILLION. Not only does that mean that they would not be able to expand and add more locations and thus hire more employees around the world, but they would absolutely go out of business. To shore up revenues an additional $18.72 billion to both maintain $15/hr line-level workers as well as achieve $4.53 billion in profit to continue business as usual, they would have to raise prices significantly and somehow manage, with said prices, in the face of serious competition,to achieve the same amount of demand for their food. No one in their right mind would put up with the massive price hikes necessary to generate $18.72 billion in additional revenue for their existing setup, and I'm even less convinced that $15/hr 'just because' workers are suddenly 67% more productive than their $9/hr former selves (which still assumes their locations would get the requisite over 67% uptick in demand).
That's bad for everyone, all around. That means 1.9 million people out of work, and a more concentrated market share into the remaining big fast food companies. It also means less competition for both customers and employees, which translates into higher prices for customers and less negotiating power for employees at the remaining fast food companies. Less leverage for employees and less leverage for customers means everyone loses, everywhere.
Oh, and I'm not even done, yet. Believe it or not -- you thought $18.72 billion in additional costs is rough? That was actually another super-nice, extraordinarily conservative estimate, as it doesn't include significant additional costs needed for each and every employee due to the higher rate. I'm talking about Workers Compensation, Unemployment Benefits, and Tax Liabilities -- all of which are a heavy burden placed upon businesses both large and small that are charged as rates according total wages earned, risk of injury or unemployment, and other factors. These additional expenses would effectively grow by about 67%, putting another nail into the coffin of the $15/hr minimum wage.
They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I don't think this analogy is entirely accurate with pro-regressives. The pro-regressive road to hell is paved with a hack-job, fly-by-night, scummy operation built on willful economic ignorance and dogmatic ideology -- and it uses the livelihood and dreams of the poor as the asphalt.
Those who know me, know that moral hazard is, to me, the most important concept in economics, particularly because of its spillover into ethics and morality. My problem with the economics profession as a whole, is that its members tend to use an extremely narrow definition of the term, hobbling its significance and importance. I'd like to change that.
How do most people define the term? Let's look to Wikipedia first:
In economics, moral hazard occurs when one person takes more risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks. A moral hazard may occur where the actions of one party may change to the detriment of another after a financial transaction has taken place.
Moral hazard occurs under a type of information asymmetry where the risk-taking party to a transaction knows more about its intentions than the party paying the consequences of the risk. More broadly, moral hazard occurs when the party with more information about its actions or intentions has a tendency or incentive to behave inappropriately from the perspective of the party with less information.
Moral hazard also arises in a principal–agent problem, where one party, called an agent, acts on behalf of another party, called the principal. The agent usually has more information about his or her actions or intentions than the principal does, because the principal usually cannot completely monitor the agent. The agent may have an incentive to act inappropriately (from the viewpoint of the principal) if the interests of the agent and the principal are not aligned.
It might also help to know what "information asymmetry" is:
In contract theory and economics, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other.
The definition is thus limited to cases of "taking risks" you wouldn't otherwise take, because someone else is "bearing the costs." Somehow this seems incomplete to me. Why just this one behavior, and not any other actions you might have taken when you realize (or believe) you yourself are not fully bearing (or not bearing at all) the burdens involved, because of the particular structure of incentives? It turns out, every action you take entails unique risks. There is no distinction between incentives to take alternate actions and incentives to take alternate risks. Every incentive does both.
In the Milgram Experiment, everyday people were subjected to perverse incentives, and actively victimized others (or in this case, carried this illusion -- nobody was actually hurt; it was acted) as a result. An authority figure absolved them from any responsibility for their actions, so most of the test subjects complied, to one degree or another (Link to: Milgram experiment on Wikipedia). Is directly imposing burdens (pain, injury, impeding others, etc.) upon others a form of moral hazard (especially if someone is explicitly absolved from responsibility for the effects of these violent actions)? This seems to follow the form and spirit of the term, so I would say "yes."
Moving to "information asymmetry," we are talking about a situation where one person knows more than another person regarding the particulars of a mutual arrangement. What is it called when you don't know something, or don't fully understand something? Ah yes, ignorance! If your ignorance causes you to believe in a different set of incentives (and apparent burdens) than actually exist, this would encourage you to act differently than you might otherwise act, wouldn't it? If you are aware of someone else's ignorance, isn't that also an incentive to act in ways you might not otherwise act, in regards to that person? Doesn't this also fit the form of the term "moral hazard"? I think "yes" to this as well.
Getting to the conclusion, moral hazard describes any situation whereby the burdens of an action are either not fully borne by the person acting, or the person ignorantly believes this to be the case. Now, this has far-reaching implications in other fields of study, which I intend to touch upon in future blogs. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, think about it.
Imperialism is a fascinating social phenomenon. We see it arise in every nation which develops a comparative advantage relative to a significant proportion of other nations. It also seems to have the tendency of arising more quickly among relatively wealthy nations. The reason for this is obvious: the more wealthy the host the more healthy its parasitical instrument of large scale conquest can be. People are drawn to power and prestige, and in conquest and slaughter many of us find it.
We see imperialism not only among nation-states, but within them. Imperialism within a modern nation-state takes the form of the democratic process. Differing factions war among themselves by means of the ballot, sacrificing ever more of their own power over their own lives in exchange for power over the lives of others. But what they don't know is this is akin to a bargain with a devil, where they will be fed upon by those who appeal to them with their empty platitudes.
Where once relatively wise and free people became rich, all too quickly do their descendants become proud, self entitled, and eventually poor. The imperialism feeds upon itself. The spoils of conquest can never make any society rich in the long term, because destruction is not production. It's really that simple. Those who enrich themselves at the cost of others by means of the state do not create anything, they only cease from coming into being those things that would have been created by others.
All societies that succumb to imperialism consume themselves. But it seems as though prosperity breeds imperialism. Empire is thus its own demise.
If you follow New York State political news, then you know that corruption scandals have played a big role in both party politics and in election news. So-called "ethics reform" has been a big talking point over the past year or so, with people pointing fingers at the Dean Skelos and Sheldon Silver convictions. Both men took money for favors, and used their discretion in their respective positions, to force certain outcomes each man considered personally advantageous. "Get the money out of politics" has become an election year mantra once again, the underlying assumption being that commerce skews political power and undermines the noble intent of these otherwise noble people. I call bullshit on this.
The cycle has to start somewhere, and it seems pretty obvious to me that it starts in the edifice of state power. The rules are laid out: Bureaucrat position A is allowed to exercise specific duties (i.e. activities otherwise considered criminal, belligerent, manipulative, or simple bullying if they are performed privately) within a certain range of discretion. Relatively speaking, these rules are pretty rigid and unforgiving, and these duties and methods are fairly specific. The process becomes ossified and archaic, slowing down or halting entrepreneurial action, creating a well-lit roadblock to commerce. Enter the bribe.
In response to these rules, clever individuals figure out where the roadblocks are, and find ways to circumvent or bypass them, enlisting the aid of the gatekeeper bureaucrat to "look the other way," or "grease the wheels" to "get things done." In exchange, the bureaucrat is compensated commensurate with his ability to make the rules more binding or less binding to particular parties. Deals are made in secret, while the official line is "bribery is illegal and wrong!" Keeping such activities illegal creates barriers to entry for all but the most politically connected and wealthy, and the bureaucrat can tailor his services around a small list of particular clients, charging high margins for the privilege.
The government bureaucrat is not noble, but is most certainly human. Market activities find ways to close the doors on moral hazard, and create beacons as big as life, allowing people to scrutinize the otherwise opaque wall erected through legislation, between the political class and the private class. Without commerce (bribery), the bureaucrat is absolute in his domain of power and discretion; with commerce, there is at least some wiggle room for some of us, and the bureaucrat must cater to his customer base. Power corrupts commerce, not the other way around. If not for the well-lit roadblocks, individuals would be spending their money in other areas, rather than lining the pockets of the politicians.
If you really want to close the doors on corruption, you need more commerce, not less. Legalizing bribery forces a bureaucrat's margins down, and broadens the base of people he will need to cater to in order to continue to enjoy his earnings. Along the way, the roadblocks do not just become clearly visible, but they become invasive and palpable, naturally calling into question the legitimacy of the political power in question. Public outcry does the rest, the shackles come off, the bureaucracy becomes smaller, and life gets better. Think about it...
This is a great interview with Michael Burry, the actual market genius (played by actor Christian Bale) from the movie 'The Big Short' -- and yes, this guy is on-point. People need to stop trying to lay the blame at the feet 'unfettered free markets' while trying to absolve all of the actors in the shit-show that was the Great Recession. There's plenty of blame to go around -- but especially so for the US Government, the Federal Reserve, and GSE's like FME and FRC.
On to some snippets from the interview...
NYMAG: When I spoke to some of the other real-life characters from The Big Short, I was surprised to hear that they thought that financial reform was pretty effective and that the system was much safer. Michael Lewis disagreed. In your opinion, did the crash result in any positive changes?
Michael Burry: Unfortunately, not many that I can see. The biggest hope I had was that we would enter a new era of personal responsibility. Instead, we doubled down on blaming others, and this is long-term tragic. Too, the crisis, incredibly, made the biggest banks bigger. And it made the Federal Reserve, an unelected body, even more powerful and therefore more relevant. The major reform legislation, Dodd-Frank, was named after two guys bought and sold by special interests, and one of them should be shouldering a good amount of blame for the crisis. Banks were forced, by the government, to save some of the worst lenders in the housing bubble, then the government turned around and pilloried the banks for the crimes of the companies they were forced to acquire. The zero interest-rate policy broke the social contract for generations of hardworking Americans who saved for retirement, only to find their savings are not nearly enough. And the interest the Federal Reserve pays on the excess reserves of lending institutions broke the money multiplier and handcuffed lending to small and midsized enterprises, where the majority of job creation and upward mobility in wages occurs. Government policies and regulations in the postcrisis era have aided the hollowing-out of middle America far more than anything the private sector has done. These changes even expanded the wealth gap by making asset owners richer at the expense of renters. Maybe there are some positive changes in there, but it seems I fail to see beyond the absurdity.
NYM: How do you think all of this affected people's perception of the System, in general?
MB: The postcrisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it. And if I take it, I better understand all the terms, because there is no such thing as free money. That is just basic personal responsibility and common sense. The enablers for this crisis were varied, and it starts not with the bank but with decisions by individuals to borrow to finance a better life, and that is one very loaded decision. This crisis was such a bona fide 100-year flood that the entire world is still trying to dig out of the mud seven years later. Yet so few took responsibility for having any part in it, and the reason is simple: All these people found others to blame, and to that extent, an unhelpful narrative was created. Whether it’s the one percent or hedge funds or Wall Street, I do not think society is well served by failing to encourage every last American to look within. This crisis truly took a village, and most of the villagers themselves are not without some personal responsibility for the circumstances in which they found themselves. We should be teaching our kids to be better citizens through personal responsibility, not by the example of blame.
NYM: Where do we stand now, economically?
MB: Well, we are right back at it: trying to stimulate growth through easy money. It hasn’t worked, but it’s the only tool the Fed’s got. Meanwhile, the Fed’s policies widen the wealth gap, which feeds political extremism, forcing gridlock in Washington. It seems the world is headed toward negative real interest rates on a global scale. This is toxic. Interest rates are used to price risk, and so in the current environment, the risk-pricing mechanism is broken. That is not healthy for an economy. We are building up terrific stresses in the system, and any fault lines there will certainly harm the outlook.
NYM: What makes you most nervous about the future?
MB: Debt. The idea that growth will remedy our debts is so addictive for politicians, but the citizens end up paying the price. The public sector has really stepped up as a consumer of debt. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is leveraged 77:1. Like I said, the absurdity, it just befuddles me.
The absurdity is befuddling, indeed.
Also, let's get the details straight. The crisis pervaded almost 1,000 out of the United States' 6,900 banks, particularly the largest ones that got involved in the sub-prime market, mortgage-backed securities, and credit-default swaps. Not all US banks got mixed up in all of these toxic assets. Most banks stayed pretty conservative and smart with their lending and risk management and didn't need a bailout. I actually worked for one of these east-coast banks for three years immediately following the recession -- and they very much took advantage of the situation. Most of them weathered the financial crisis very well, considering.
Additionally, I continue to hear and read this utter nonsense that 'economic deregulation caused the crisis'. It's just complete and total silliness. This alleged 'economic deregulation' that all of these ignorant Pro-regressives like to refer to involved a 1999 repeal of two provisions (not the whole act, which is usually the first sign that the person you're talking to is regurgitating half-truths) of what was called the Glass-Steagall Act (also known as the 'U.S. Banking Act of 1933'). These two provisions separated commercial banking and investment banking activities so as to try to keep these industries isolated from eachother within the same company. However, the repeal of these provisions of this act had nothing to do with what caused the crisis. If it did, then Canada, which was definitely affected by the crisis, would have experienced many of the same problems. Well, it didn't, even though Canada didn't have anything like Glass-Steagall. Canada weathered the crisis pretty well, actually -- they certainly fared a lot better than the US, all while mixing commercial and investment banking since, well, forever in their banking history.
But, hey, don't just take my word for it -- take it from Former Deputy Governor Jean Boivin (2010-2012), himself, of the (Central) Bank of Canada. They had a sharp, deep recession, and immediately bounced right back -- faster, even, than the past couple recessions.
Hell, the entire claim of 'economic deregulation under Bush' is just absurd, even apart from all of this. Looking at the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), there has not been a single president, since at least Jimmy Carter (elected in 1976), and I'm pretty sure since even before FDR (obviously), who actually cut regulations on net. As a matter of fact, individual regulatory restrictions increased anywhere from a 57,000 minimum under Bill Clinton, to up to 105,000 under Barack Obama -- and Barry's numbers are based on stats only two years into his second term. At that rate, he'll hit 140,000 additional regulatory restrictions over the course of his presidency. The last I checked, the CFR currently stood at an approximated whopping 160,000 pages long. The whole idea or claim from pro-regressives, et al, that we have some vestige of a 'free market' -- is nothing short of complete and total willful delusion.
Back to the factors that played into the Great Recession. Yes, there's plenty of blame to go around -- but where does it start, really? Certain actors set the stage for this all to take place. It was all done with good intentions, of course. Home ownership for all -- regardless of income, savings, or credit-worthiness! Near-zero interest rates, always! Infinite economic growth and increasing home prices, forever and ever! Equities, through the roof, with no end in sight! Central planning and micro-managing has defeated the free market! Consume everything! Produce nothing! Finance debt with more debt! Dig holes and fill them back up again! Move water with a bucket from one end of the pool, with water splashing out everywhere, and dump it into the other end of the pool, to end up with more water! See? All of our contrived and/or broken measuring instruments say-so!
But you know what they say... the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And it's never paved as well as it is with the arrogance of government bureaucrats.
The US Government expanded the Community Reinvestment Act under Clinton, pushing more people towards home-ownership that often weren't ready for it. They pressed the issue further by mounting increasing regulations over the financial and banking industry, punishing banks if they didn't lend to riskier individuals and families, and rewarding them if they did. You've got all of the other major financial regulations -- one for every letter of the alphabet, and then some. Throw into this mix a Federal Reserve that sets absurdly artificially low interest rates for extended periods of time, within a highly materialistic culture that loves to live beyond its means and is all too eager to accept easy credit -- and you naturally have a bubbling cauldron ready to explode.
I am and have long been with people like Michael Burry on where we were and we're headed. The path we're marching towards is a minefield that could set off a global financial crisis the likes of which we've never seen, and we're trying to fix the same old problems with the same old tools that caused those problems in the first place. Now, the Federal Reserve is stuck between a rock and a hard place -- the US economy is addicted to low interest rates, like a heroin addict. If it doesn't get its fix, it goes into a ruthless withdrawal. Eventually, the same old dose doesn't work its magic and bring the same euphoric high, anymore, and so now there's talk of entertaining the possibility of negative interest rate territory to get the same effect. Near-zero rates aren't having the effect they used to, anymore. Even increasing the Federal Funds Rate a measly quarter of a point sent the markets reeling. Yes, a major factor in the equities drop was an 'oversupply' of oil, but the rate hike couldn't have come at a seemingly worse time.
In the end, the US Government and Federal reserve is just kicking a snowball further down the road that continues to get bigger and bigger. Eventually, that snowball will roll up on a hill, and roll right back down on each and every one of us in an avalanche.
Source on the regulatory restriction numbers, here.
So how do you pro-regressives and 'democratic socialists' like your precious democracy, now? How is that working out for you, exactly, what with Trump absolutely slaughtering his opponents in the debates and primaries, and the idea that he will most likely be your next President? This is democracy. This is the mob. This is how it works. Democracy is your 'God that Failed' (hat-tip, Hans-Hermann Hoppe). The idea that the 'sock in the wind' of 'public wisdom' can decide on good government representatives and policy decisions is one of the most absurd notions, ever, and history and this entire election reflect exactly that. The irony that 'democracy' ends up ushering in what seems like the antithesis incarnate of almost everything pro-regressives stand for is truly sublime.
But the vast majority of them don't seem to be getting it. Pro-regressives are so unbelievably out of touch and just not understanding why Trump is so popular -- with the Republican rank-and-file, with centrists, independents, and even some right-leaning Democrats. It has far less to with his 'policies' or how 'liberal' or 'conservative' he is (or isn't) than other factors, and attacking him over ignorant, incoherent, or flip-flopping statements that he constantly makes is actually counter-productive. A lot of it is an act, of course, and the guy is a social genius, whether you want to admit it or not.
In the end, the more people from 'the left' (whatever that even means, anymore), 'the right' (whatever that even means, anymore), 'big media', 'the establishment', et al attack him, the stronger his support gets and grows. His support is a referendum on big media, the establishment of both parties, the way politics is conducted, how support for presidential candidates is manufactured, and on political correctness in general. He says what a lot of these people are already thinking, and his support continues to grow because it only makes them feel empowered when they've felt so weak and so powerless for so long. It may all end up being short-sighted, but since when has the mob not been?
Yes, Donald Trump is the culmination of GOP policy and pandering and flame-fueling for years, now. They are greatly responsible for creating this monster. I won't bother getting into why, because that's already been widely established and talked about elsewhere, and it should be obvious in the first place.
But what further adds to all of the irony is that we can't just thank the GOP for this. We have to thank Pro-regressives in particular, and even some Democrats as well -- what with their ridiculous political correctness, elitism, condescension, fueling the flames of (arbitrarily-drawn lines of) 'racial' and 'class' tension, and constant, non-stop explicit and implicit personal attacks on those who have now become Trump supporters. These attacks have been the norm for a long time. They've felt manipulated and powerless and hopeless for so long, and he is tapping in to that -- which is exactly why attacks against them and him just make them that much stronger and rally and dig in their heels that much more fervently. Trump supporters are lashing out in the most angry and unified way, now, by supporting and voting for someone like Trump. They don't like the way the table is set (and has been set for a long time), and so they're flipping the table.
His supporters just don't care about 'the usual stuff' -- how liberal or conservative he is (or isn't), what his policies are, his 'substance' (or lack thereof), what he's said about people, who he's supported politically in the past or done in his life and how he got to where he is, et cetera. It's that he's a protest vote that can actually win -- and the outright disruption he and his supporters are causing among both parties really is quite a thing to behold. He can flip-flop on the issues all he wants, and it will barely hurt him -- if at all. It might even strengthen him by giving more people who hate Hillary some hope somewhere else. It's basically all a kind of political nihilism, which almost warms even my ice-cold, Vantablack void of a political heart.
Almost.
I think Trump is pretty damned horrible, policy-wise, but this is the reality we're facing. Barring any extremely ruthless (and short-sighted of their own) GOP shenanigans, he absolutely will be the GOP nominee, and he has a strong chance of becoming the next president, whether we like it or not. Dismiss and underestimate his chances at your own peril.
Basically, it comes down to this, as it always does. Democracy is the idea that the People know what they want. And they deserve to get it, too -- good and hard.
But enough of my rant. I don't entirely agree with him, but Louis C.K. seems to be one of the few Pro-regressives who (mostly) gets it. He recently gave a (mostly) good to maybe even great rant on Donald Trump, from his perspective -- as a kind of love letter to his supporters. It's one for the ages. You've got the typical overdramatic Hitler and Nazi comparisons going on (thank you for satisfying 'Godwin's Law', by the way, like every other head-exploding pro-regressive out there, recently), but hey, when are pro-regressives not overdramatic? Here's a snippet of this that I particularly enjoyed from him...
"And that voting for Trump is a way of saying “f--- it. F--- them all”. I really get it. It’s a version of national Suicide. Or it’s like a big hit off of a crack pipe. Somehow we can’t help it. Or we know that if we vote for Trump our phones will be a reliable source of dopamine for the next four years. I mean I can’t wait to read about Trump every day. It’s a rush. But you have to know this is not healthy.
If you are a true conservative. Don’t vote for Trump. He is not one of you. He is one of him. Everything you have heard him say that you liked, if you look hard enough you will see that he one day said the exact opposite. He is playing you."
Go read the whole thing, though. Seriously. Check it out, here.
