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Guest Post: July 4, 2011: The Cycle Of Dependency And The Atrophy Of Self-Reliance
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
July 4, 2011: The Cycle of Dependency and the Atrophy of Self-Reliance
The 4th of July marks the birth of the nation, and as such is a good time to distinguish between the nation and its Central government, the Savior State.
The 4th of July is a fitting day to ponder the reality that we are at Peak Government, and the Savior State is unsustainable. This is a matter of accounting: no nation can spend more than it generates in surplus real output forever. What goes unremarked is the intrinsically destructive nature of our rising dependence on a Savior State.
In his book Collapse of Complex Societies, anthropologist Joseph Tainter identified two causes of economic collapse: investments in social complexity yield diminishing marginal returns, and energy subsidies, i.e. cheap, abundant energy, decline. In my terminology, the dynamic he describes is one in which the cost structure of a society continues rising due to “the ratchet effect” but the gains from the added expenses are increasingly marginal.
At some point the additional costs, usually justified as the “solution” to the marginal returns problem, become counterproductive and actually drain the system of resilience as dissent and adaptability (“variation is information”) are suppressed. This feeds systemic instability: on the surface, all seems stable, but beneath the surface, the potential for a stick/slip destabilization grows unnoticed.
Cheap, abundant energy offers a surplus of value that can be invested in social complexity and consumption. Once the cost and availability of energy declines, then that surplus shrinks and can no longer be used to support the high cost structure.
The U.S. economy has clearly been driven to the cliff edge of instability by both dynamics: the cheap, abundant energy which enabled fast growth of consumption and high cost social complexity is vanishing, and the cost structure of the economy has ballooned far beyond sustainability.
To recount two previously mentioned examples: the “best of the best” fighter aircraft that cost $56 million per plane only a few years ago is being replaced by a new aircraft that costs $300 million each. Medicare/Medicaid and other healthcare costs are growing at two to three times faster than the underlying economy, and now consume twice as much per capita as any other developed nation. The "solution" offered by the Status Quo is a horrendously costly layer of additional complexity which doesn't even address the key issue that we spend twice as much as other developed nations for arguably poorer care.
Put another way, the institutions that were intended to solve society’s big problems slip into self-preservation, and thus end up adding to costs and problems alike.
Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed argues persuasively that environmental mismanagement plays a key role in social instability and collapse. Some of the key factors include the relative fragility of the ecosystem, the human population’s demands on the carrying capacity of the environment, and the ability of social institutions to effectively problem-solve ecological overshoot.
In my analysis, there is a third dynamic that causes societies to cycle through growth, stasis and decline: an unremarked cycle of rising dependency on the Central State for direction, distraction and the essentials of life.
One example of this is the Roman Empire, which experienced an atrophying of enterprise and innovation as the Empire increased taxation on its remaining productive enterprises to fund the Empire’s high cost structure. To quell dissent, the Empire pursued a dual strategy of increased political oppression and placating the increasingly dependent lower classes with "bread and circuses," literally distributing free bread and free entertainment to roughly 40% of the population of Rome. Both of these strategies required additional expenditures of treasure, even as they suppressed the dissent and adaptation (i.e. the information in variation) that might have led to a successful “ratchet down” transition to a much less costly and sustainable decentralized structure.
This "Savior State" also creates a third pernicious dynamic: as dependence on the Central State rises, self-confidence and self-reliance both decline, sapping the populace of the confidence and drive needed to meet the challenges of diminishing returns and higher energy costs.
We can visualize rising dependence on the Savior State and declining self-reliance on a see-saw: as dependence rises, self-confidence and self-reliance must fall.
What ensues is a classic destructive dynamic of co-dependence in which the supplicants demand ever more “bread and circuses” even as their resentment over their dependent status rises unabated. The Central State eventually taxes the productive citizenry into penury, as the poor are now completely dependent on the Savior State and the wealthy escape taxation via bribes and favoritism.
It seems clear to me that the U.S. is in the final stages of just such a dependency cycle that will end in the implosion of the Central Savior State as its obligations far exceed the economy's ability to generate surpluses on that gigantic scale. Though the Central State can always print money, this artifice doesn’t “fool Mother Nature” for long; it doesn’t matter how many zeros are printed on the paper, the product will still cost the same in terms of energy consumed and hours of labor.
The end result of money-printing that is unsupported by actual surplus generated by the economy is the government sends out checks for $1,000 every month in accordance with its obligations but that sum only buys a single loaf of bread. You cannot fool Mother Nature by printing bits of paper and claiming they are a future claim on real goods and services unless the extra money is based on additional surplus being added to the system.
This dynamic leads to an environment in which citizens expect jobs, healthcare, housing, education, etc. from a Central State whose cost has already exceeded the carrying capacity of the economy. As cheap, abundant energy disappears, then the Central State loses a key subsidy of its bloated complexity. As the State’s fiefdoms devote their remaining energy to self-preservation at the expense of taxpayers or other government fiefdoms, the problem-solving potential of these institutions drops below zero: not only can they not solve any pressing problems, their “ratchet effect” efforts at self-preservation actively create new layers of problems and costs which push the State closer to insolvency.
Rather than wait for the Savior State to renege on its impossible promises, this site suggests pushing the see-saw in the other direction: boost self-reliance and self-confidence and lower dependence on a Savior State doomed by unfavorable demographics, high cost structure, failed institutions and rising energy costs.
Rome offers us a plausible model for the devolution of the Savior State. While a sudden collapse similar to the Soviet Union is always possible, I suspect the U.S. Central State will devolve in parallel with the ancient Roman Empire: as the Empire's costs exceeded the surplus generated by its remaining taxpayers, it issued flurries of edicts to the far-flung provinces, demanding more treasure and imposing ever more regulations.
The edicts from Rome were simply ignored. In Yeats' phrase, the falcon no longer heard the falconer. Enforcement is expensive, and if the gains reaped by costly enforcement are marginal or negative, then soon the issuers of the edicts ignore them, too.
On this 4th of July, the idea that the Savior State could slip into irrelevancy is far-fetched indeed, as the Central State is currently at Peak Government: intrusive, invasive, all-controlling, even as it plays the role of benign Sugar Daddy issuing trillion-dollar bailouts to banks, trillion-dollar props to the stock market, food stamps and Section 8 to the poor, Medicare and Medicaid to the sickcare cartels, Social Security to tens of millions of retirees, unlimited funding to the National Security State and its Global Empire, and all the other programs funded with its $4 trillion budget ($3.8 trillion officially, but don't forget the hundreds of billions in off-budget "supplemental appropriations") and its $1.6 trillion annual deficit, fully 11% of the nation's GDP.
Perhaps it is time to think of the government not as our Savior but as the guarantor of the Constitution. Peak Government is like Peak Oil: most will deny it is even possible until it's happening. We are probably a few years away from a true scarcity of oil and also a few years away from the realization that the Savior State's $100 trillion in promises cannot be met by "fooling Mother Nature" with paper and promises. But that day is coming, and perhaps we will be more cognizant of this reality on July 4, 2015.
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Keynesian monetary stimulus = $878,000,000,000.
$278,000 per job = priceless.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/cea_7th_arra_report.pdf
The Fact that "We the People" paid for every fucking penny! even more priceless!
http://www.banktech.com/articles/229700093?cid=nl_bnk_daily
Top U.S. Lobbying Banks Got Biggest Bailouts
1. [PDF]
A Fistful of Dollars:Lobbying and the Financial Crisis; Financial ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisisby. Deniz Igan ...
www.imf.org/external/np/res/seminars/2009/arc/pdf/Mishra1.
Top 10 corporations which paid no taxes
Here is Sen. Sanders’ list of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. (Source: Exxon Mobil’s 2009 shareholder report filed with the SEC here.)
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. (Source: Forbes.com here, ProPublica here and Treasury here.)
3) General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States over the past five years and, thanks to clever use of loopholes, paid no taxes.(Source: Citizens for Tax Justice here and The New York Times here. Note: despite rumors to the contrary, the Times has stood by its story.)
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009. (Source: See 2009 Chevron annual report here. Note 15 on page FS-46 of this report shows a U.S. federal income tax liability of $128 million, but that it was able to defer $147 million for a U.S. federal income tax liability of negative $19 million.)
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year. (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here and Citizens for Tax Justice here.)
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year, received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction. (Source: the company’s 2009 annual report, pg. 112, here.)
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department. (Source: Bloomberg News here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2006 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction. (Sources: Profits can be found here. The deduction can be found on the company’s 2010 SEC 10-K report to shareholders on 2009 finances, pg. 127, here.)
10) Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits over the past five years, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent. (Source: The New York Times here.)
http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2011/04/30/top-10-corporations-who-paid-no-taxes/
Just sharing the .gov document dump on Friday before the long holiday weekend...it is done this way for a reason.
If a dead tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it still make a sound?
The answer is yes.
we hear it! we give a fuck! but the sheep dont give a fuck as re-runs of Jerry Springer are on!
Sound? That depends upon how "sound" is defined. If the definition requires perception by a human ear then, no sound. If sound is simply the compression/rarefaction of air molecules, then yes, there is a sound.
The chicken/egg controversy has been long settled. The egg came first. If an egg contains what can be physiologically defined as a "chicken", and not a previously described pre-chicken animal, then it would be the egg as coming first.
That's why arguments are so futile. Terms are not defined and agreed upon beforehand.
This is no better exemplified than in the debates about inflation/deflation. The terms are rarely agreed upon by the combatants, but they flail away nonetheless.
A tape recorder or microphone will confirm the sound that we know must have happened (without us present there) did indeed happen.
Yes, your broader point is well taken.
The definitions have to be laid out and agreed on beforehand or we will talk past each other forever, never reaching a consensus.
I ain't touchin the chicken/egg or deflation/inflation riddles...for today ;-)
Interesting list JW, and it highlights an interesting fact about citizens and companies: It's mighty difficult to enslave them (for the purposes of looting them) these days when they can transfer large sums of money instantaneously beyond borders.
This will accelerate the collapse of Peak Government. Let the Free Shit Army run roughshod over productive members of society and watch them slink towards the exits with their wealth and labor. The FSA can then turn on themselves in the arena of grievance politics which is the endgame for the US I'd guess.
There's a reason why we're seeing a lot of articles recently on Americans renouncing their citizenship:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/20/more-rich-americans-renounce-u-s-...
I Live in Palm Beach (5 generations of my Family have lived here).. I can say that if you want tax advise that no where in the World is better than here.. the saying is.. New York works for Palm Beach.
But as far as people leaving or a mass exodus? naaa.. some will go who are not earning and have one time wind falls.. because they can no duplicate the earnings, ever again.. but for people who earn money in America.. they are not going any where.. Yet.
Then you know all too damn well that none of the taxes you often appear to support will significantly harm the incomes of the very kleptocrats who earn money in America... which is precisely why THEY are not going anywhere.. Yet. Happy Hang the Fuckers Day.
You miss understand me..
1. I want Washington DC and Corporate America Prosecuted for Treason.
2. I want a flat Tax with NO! Loopholes that ALL! Pay, with the caveat that anyone earning less than $30k or $60k (married couple soul provider) will have a reduced rate.
I dont want one or the other, I demand BOTH! now where is my fucking rope, tar and feathers.. bullets! you get my meaning I am sure!
Happy Re-Instate the Constitution Day Brother!!
Sorry- I over estimated the complexity of what you were proposing.
The State-sanctioned-P.C.-text-book-propagandists make tarring and feathering seem so quaint- yet routinely neglect to mention that tar isn't really liquid at room temperature, and the act can actually be fatal. Anyway, in honor of Jefferson's writings and spirit of Shay's rebellion- the fatter the tyrant or robber baron hanging from the Tree of Liberty, the more refreshing the workout for its limbs.
UAW & SEIU & AFLCIO& CWA, etc paid $0.0 in taxes yet made $10's millions in donations to politicians.
I never read into this stuff too much. If corporations are able to pay little to no income taxes, then that's a good thing. The shareholders are already taxed, each at their individual tax rate. When both the corporation and the shareholders are taxed, it's double-taxation.
Try this one on the end of self-reliance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAJHp89BInE&feature=feedu
W/in 2 minutes the narrator says, "Americans have hit rock bottom."
Ha! Good laugh. Not only is this not rock bottom, it's more like squishy middling area.
on Mon, 07/04/2011 - 08:57
#1423925
Try this one on the end of self-reliance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAJHp89BInE&feature=feedu
***************************************************************
Plus for the Video!!++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The part that people refuse to comprehend is..
The Poor have been Robbed Blind by the Lobby Whores and Their Owners!
The Middle is now being Robbed Blind by the Lobby Whores and Their Owners!
as well the less reported.. absolute return group took a HUGE hit and are being reigned in by the use of tax code..
Basically the Government has Robbed from EVERYONE this go around except Wall Street!
This is right on.
I KNOW ALL ABOUT THAT!!
I grew up in a upper middle class white family in the suburbs...
I never had a real chance...
and I had to do it all by myself...
I never got a Visa Platinum...
I only got the Visa gold...
I had a rough time growing up...
they give away Visa Platinums. Visa and MC Platinum was a shameless attempt to pirate the goodwill associated with the American Express Platinum card, which actually was/is hard to get. AMEX sued the two of them for trademark infringement and achieved some success in the case in that the Visa/MC cards can no longer use the colors associated with Amex, though they can still use the descriptive terms.
Barron's on Friday forecast a new all-time record for crude within the next 3-4 months. Peak oil may be closer than we think!
Calamity is certainty. The only true solution is self-reliance! Well said, Charles!
Peak is getting further away because it already happened.
Well you can't really blame some of the entitlements imo, less and less opportunity, it's just survivalist mode to not want to go from a house and a job to a tent and picking up pop cans. Basically looks to me like they'll now go after the rich and of course their instincts are to not give away anything either so tugawar. Of course the trickle down theory has been completely proven wrong by now, the rich just want more and more and throw out a couple peanuts here and there.
I mean I guess you could just end all of the payments and try to remain in control of a bunch of pissed off people with guns and the country would soon smell like Mexico.
I already have my own ideas where things are going, I live in the country, I am almost complete with fencing in my property around the residence and adding guard dogs. While if things got really out of hand this could be a futile effort in the meantime it will help a great deal. I can speak from experience as I was recruited into a crime ring at age 15 nearly 30 years ago that was involved in illegal activities. I know from past exp if your scoping places out that fences, drive gates, signs, dogs, lights, radios etc are a huge obstacle to overcome the physcology of being intimidated. Generally it takes someone pretty special(depending on how you look at it) to look past this type of stuff. Since most other people out here don't have the same set up my residence will be passed up 99% of the time for an easier target. Fortunately for me after being involved in that kind of crap for about 2 years my elder friends all got arrested and thrown in prison and never ratted me out and I haven't done anything remotely close to that since then and never will. I will say I did acquire the level of craziness that it takes to do something that would seem completely out of someone elses thought process but that's nothing out of the ordinary.....just ask the CIA.
BTW, so much for your precious metals, well at least until the vacuums show up in the Pacific and this will surely be a huge boost of Japans GDP and save their entire economy as will be reported on yahoofinance headlines shortly:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14009910
In this article CHS demonstrators why he is "the buffoon of the dark side", that is a shill for Peter Peterson Institute and self-employed real estate agents and similar such others who never contributed a dime towards Social Security. It's their wet dream to see others get also nothing: misery loves company.
I doubt that he is qualified or sufficiently educated to preach about energy! On the issue of $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities: Social Security payments are NOT liabilities nor are they unfounded- there is no such a "thing" as unfounded liability anyway, it's an invention of "double speaking charlatans.
Money backed by debt does not disappear. The problem in US is that the corporate-owned government does not want to allocate sufficient resources from accumulated wealth towards energy self-sufficiency and social safety programs and unlike Rome , US does not fund "bread and circuses": the poor foot the bill and pay for elities yachts and jets.
I am sick of those who continue to advocate that US stiff those who contributed portion of their wages towards their own retirement over the last 30-50 years and preach "economics" without understanding how it works.
Where to start... of course money backed by debt disappears - pay off the debt, the money vanishes. That's the nature of fractional reserve banking. Why do you think we have M0, M1, M2, etc measures of money? Why do you think the Fed has pumped so much QE? What do you think deflation is?
And of course there are 'unfunded liabilities' - when someone is contractually obligated to pay an amount they can't raise, that satisfies the definition of both 'unfunded' and 'liability'. Hence the expression 'unfunded liability'.
hearing you condemn people who
preach "economics" without understanding how it works
is pretty fucking rich, moron.
"of course money backed by debt disappears - pay off the debt, the money vanishes"
What? If you pay off all the debts, you are left with what M0. Idiot?
Let suppose that everyone defaults. Does that mean money disappears? How did US finance its armament industry during WWII during the Depression? It borrowed it from peons who were broke?
Social Security receipts are not liabilities to those that receive them. They are assets.
Get a life and find out how economy works, moron. GDP is also "unfounded liability" if you use your logic: yes, moron, the other side of GDP is debt.
I take back my accusation of your being a moron. You're just wrong, but too arrogant to research your claims before throwing out accusations that other people are 'buffoons' or 'idiots'. So you're not a moron. You're a twat.
I've got some news for you, wrongboy. Read this:
http://blog.mises.org/13586/is-our-money-based-on-debt-2/
Here's the concluding paragraph:
Hemphill's horror at the "tragic absurdity" of our current financial system was understandable. The government and powerful bankers established a system in 1913 that typically works like this: Every dollar of the monetary base (or "narrow money" or "high-powered money") comes into existence with a one-to-one increase in the public debt, collectively owed by the taxpayers. Then, private banks use that base to create more dollars (in "broad money") that come into existence with a one-to-one increase in private debt.
Going the other way, if people in the private sector ever paid off all of their debts, and the federal government paid off all of its bondholders, then the supply of US dollars would be virtually extinguished.
And yes, that includes virtually all of M0.
Now be a man and apologise.
I am more than willing to retract what I said about you because I retaliated. However, the comments I made about CHS are entirely different. I stand behind what I said.
In your example, private and public can't be repaid over the long run: that is a consequence of wealth accumulation. When debt is paid back in excess of new debt, that causes de-leveraging, which causes reduction in GDP. In order for GDP to increase, Debt has to increase at a faster rate than GDP. Can such a system be stable and allow bankers, capitalists and workers to make money? Steve Keen says yes, but, I guess they all share equitably in profits.
In your example, private and public can't be repaid over the long run: that is a consequence of wealth accumulation.
It has nothing to do with 'wealth accumulation'. It is a feature to our monetary system, whether real 'wealth' is being accumulated, dispersed, created, or destroyed.
You are correct that for GDP to increase, debt has to increase, but this is because of the nature of money in our current system.
It seems to me you are falling for the conflation that a positive change in GDP necessarily equals a positive change in actual wealth.
So the small government/Tea Party crowd might not be all that bad after all:)
Happy 4th of July!
Rome was founded in 750 BC and the final incarnation (Roman Empire) ended in 478 AD. That's what? 1200+ years? Looks like we are struggling to get to 250 years. Yet many brag how we are the greatest country in the history of the world.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
Make that 100 years.... you where poor hillbilly farmers before that.
so much for those historical Disney movies he?
I thought the current meme was that our country was started by the assorted subjects of european kings & queens whose sole goal was to create a country for the future domination of the entire planet.
Or sumpin.
Ah well, carry on, you'll figger us out eventually ;-)
it was a excuse we used to get rid of the bums.
AND IT WORKED!!!
but indeed, once the Mexicans become the majority in the US, the TORTILLA EMPIRE will RULE US ALL!!
At least I used my foresight to my advantage!!!
I SPEAK MEXICAN!!!!!
watch this: DOS CERVESAS POR FAVOR!!
and this: tráigame sus vírgenes usted idiota
It's all about survival my friend. Darwins law. I win.
"it was a excuse we used to get rid of the bums."
Thats the same way we looked at it...a win win ;-)
:)
Good point.
Perhaps the Roman empire lasted 4 times as long because bankers didn't control it. The Roman empire didn't have a central bank and paper currency.
The Roman empire lasted 1200 years more or less. America will be lucky to make it 300 years. That's the destructive power of paper currency and central banks.
The Euro is ...what... 30 years old more or less? And already collapsing ...or soon will be.
...but how long did the "good, fun, and prosperous part" of the Roman Empire last? That narrows it down a bit. Faster communication and more efficient ways of killing people will surely speed up this more modern process!
No... the Roman Empire dived right after they sold their XOM.
kind of funny to think the elite socialist globalist's created their own mousetrap for consolidating power and plans of grabbing control of world order. the ruse idea of peak energy and a phony green revolution has teeth and is biting the hand that created it, it's just too funny. they can't satisfy the tummy, and the circus isn't funny, cause their ain't no more money, too funny! har har dee harr harr
Enforcement is expensive, and if the gains reaped by costly enforcement are marginal or negative, then soon the issuers of the edicts ignore them, too.
This is my favorite line in the piece. I pray it is so, because then maybe my kids can live a little freer. They will be ready. At mimimum, maybe they will be able to go fishing without a permission slip from the state, or drive without being stopped at a checkpoint so thier mommy government can be sure they have a seat belt on.
“no nation can spend more than it generates in surplus real output forever.”
Less than “forever” nonetheless can still mean what seems to be a long time.
That is particularly true when the present-day longevity of the USA should be evaluated as an empire, not in isolation as a “nation”. By means of global enterprises, the fiat petrodollar, client states, and military dominance, the rest of the world helps to economically prop up the “USA“. But what do we mean by the “USA”? Surely, any economic rewards are not distributed the same to everyone and every organization located or based in the “nation“.
The accounting of “production” by global corporations can be tricky, and attributing portions of it to particular nations (or even any nation) trickier still. Moreover, what is often counted as “production” can be open to dispute. How much of the financial gimmickry is merely wealth transfer, hardly production in any meaningful sense? The cost-value of jet fighters and exotic weaponry is high because they are “valuable” to who exactly? Similarly, the depleting of natural resources is counted as “production” with no deductions of natural “inventory”. In fact, the most profitable production often results (at least in the short run) by employing the most destructive and wasteful methods, whether fisheries, fauna, forests, or mineral deposits. Saudi Arabia may thus become wealthy, and the “USA” takes its share.
Privatizing profits, and socializing costs is not done just within a nation. The global costs of global empire will be passed to whoever can be made to pay. The residents of no “nation” are exempt. As the costs of militarization, oligarchic rule, plutocratic rewards, environmental destruction, and mal-directed resources in general pile up, there will be more and more thrashing about as those costs of dependency are paid.
++
Seems to me that the problem isn't complexity, which is a product of spontaneous order, but complication, which is a product of regimented order. Or to put it another way, it's "the economic means" being trumped by "the political means" -- http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/state1.htm
Free Radical wrote about it here -- http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-law-and-state -- saying,
"Thus do we arrive at the vital distinction between the rule of law and its ruin: Society, being ruled by law that is common to it, is inherently complex and accordingly unlimited in the amount of order it can generate, while the state, being law unto itself, is inherently complicated and accordingly unlimited in the amount of disorder it can generate."
US world order.
Nice distinction. ++
hope for JR is a government full time job.
keeps kicking the ol Repubs and big oil ad nauseum.
Government is the software and people are the hardware. Society’s that harvest the best yield out of this mix triumph. This is clearly observable to any player of civilization, or any observer that has watched China turn on given access to Western software. Singapore is another classic example of a country using Government effectively. The challenge is to keep the software updates solving problems rather than creating ones. That is why small government is the easy route to effectiveness, much less code to corrupt. Nevertheless complex systems well engineered are always going to defeat simple ones that are stagnant, inflexible or easy to game.
The reasons northern European states can work to live, and IMHO live better than people anywhere (I lived in Austria 7 years) is great hardware. There are few freeloaders and competence is everywhere. This is accomplished by smart educations systems and strong belief systems. In North America living has always been easy. Dig a hole cut a tree and voila money rolls in. The two world wars gave Canada and the US half a century of development without destruction. Government expenditure as a % of GDP is 43.7 for Germany and 38.9 for the USA. The lifestyle of the statistical mean German is by any measure far superior to the same American, they make great utility of the 5% expenditure. This is a very recent development, and the cause is clearly a software failure. Far too much of the GDP is operating on cheat mode, and the hardware instead of continuously upgraded has fallen to levels not seen since the 19th century. Societies were cops and teachers are making double the average income are not going to thrive. Societies were working for the government is the goal of most are doomed.
The biggest failure of North American government was the response to the 1973 oil crisis. Europe declared war on oil; America bought bigger cars and duplicitous oil friends.
I have a simple hopelessly naïve plan to reboot the system, all it would take is the right programmer.
http://thinkingaboot.blogspot.com/2011/06/eating-opecs-cake.html
"The reasons northern European states can work to live, and IMHO live better than people anywhere (I lived in Austria 7 years) is great hardware. There are few freeloaders and competence is everywhere. This is accomplished by smart educations systems and strong belief systems."
The developed world operates on a system based on slavery. Who are the slaves? Mostly the Asians for now. As for your education comment, most millionaires that I know never finished grade school.
"The two world wars gave Canada and the US half a century of development without destruction."
This is exactly what I mean about a system based on slavery. Now you know why the US funded Hitler.
"Societies were cops and teachers are making double the average income are not going to thrive."
It will thrive, just not for the average citizen.
"The biggest failure of North American government was the response to the 1973 oil crisis. Europe declared war on oil; America bought bigger cars and duplicitous oil friends."
No failures in North America of any kind, whatsoever. Everything is working as planned.
Free America (Dr. Warren)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Q5ZwBgGaA
"Guard you rights" ... sound advice. As Obama prepares to raise the debt limit without congressional approval, trash the Constitution guarding our rights seems almost impossible. Remember Hitler had the full backing of 'the people' when he trashed the Weimar Constitution in 1933, in the midst of a financial crisis. We are now there.
Lets run 'The Numbers"
<<<<In yesterday's Times, Pradnya Joshi reported that "the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009." And that doesn't include stock options. Warren Buffett made $46 billion in stock holdings last year, up 16% from the previous year.
But guess what? According to Joshi, "The average American worker was taking home $752 a week in late 2010, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year earlier. After inflation, workers were actually making less.">>>>
It's not only the atrophy of self sufficiency has happened. In many cases self sufficiency has become illegal. If you don't go work for someone else, you have no money. Without money you can have no land even if you already owned the land. You need to constantly make money to keep it because of property taxes. In many places there are rules against using your land to feed yourself. You are forced to grow a beautiful lawn in the front yard instead of vegetables. In many places it is illegal to have small farm animals. If you do have land, but not enough money to put a permitted structure on it, it is in many cases illegal to live on that land. The laws are such that it makes it very hard to be self sufficient.
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On June 9, 2011, President Obama issued a sweeping executive order for a White House Rural Council that purports to exert broad municpal powers over the food, fiber, and energy production of Rural American. Where’s the Line, America to how much power the president can amass by executive order?
Read more
http://lonerangersilver.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/president-obama-executi...
What a dumbass. It was driven off by fraud. Plain and simple. Sophistry fueled ideology turning bullshit into dogma followed by billions.
As a result, our energy needs are now dependant on oil far more than it should be. We probably could of had fusion right around NOW, if we would have started a manhattan project for it in the 60's-70's.
It's the oil that has destroyed our economy? Sorry, no it's wall street, it's washington enablers, rooted on from london, based ideologically from Rome and Aristottle.
Following this idioicy all this time, leads to some bad outcomes, including overdependance on oil. Mankind needs energy, and instead of having a system that realized this, we went only with 'profit'. There's no profit in research, and with fusion, you don't have 'oil shocks' to line the coffers. Also harder to find a reason to invade anyone.
He even uses Rome as an example. Rome is a perfect example where he doesn't know the forest from the trees. Rome fell because it was full of corruption, based on sophistry as well. They were imperial, and went down the bullshit path.
This author needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Imperialism didn't work then, and it doesn't work now. But the author needs to reinvent the circle and say it's all about energy that is causing.....
No...it's the EFFECT of....
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Glass-Steagall