Lost on far to many among us is the fact that the most treacherous, the most vile, the most egregious acts perpetrated in the name of progress, are perpetrated outside the view of most political observers. In the case of any controversy, we humans are inclined to align with one side or another according or our personal biases, values, thoughts, and emotions. Labels are applied to us, further fueling our need to identify with a particular set of perceived values. Conservatives are bound to a misguided view of patriotism, correctly realizing that anti-American sentiment is widespread for all of the wrong reasons, yet incorrectly concluding that, as a corollary, all of America’s bureaucracy inspired actions abroad are honorable because of our virtuous military and our country’s traditional principles. Liberals are bound to kindheartedness, blind to the fact that liberty is not bestowed on individuals by fiat law, but is natural, that one is not virtuous because he robs his neighbor with intentions of distributing the loot to those most in need. Indeed, we could all be more generous. We could all stand up more strongly for our values. Yet, the increasingly divisive conflict between the conservative and the liberal is also increasingly an argument over how loot should be squandered, what natural rights should be trampled upon, and what methods the state should use to usurp individual liberty as opposed to whether the usurpation of liberty is a valid concept to begin with.
In modern times, debate between conservatives and liberals in America seems more fierce than ever before. Indeed, Obama ran on a platform of ending the old and divisive ways of Washington, and bringing about some sort of a new tone. The trouble is, the divisive tone is essential to both parties, and to both ideologies. Without it, people may take notice of the real dangers that we face.
First, Americans and those in countries subsidized by America for half a century now should realize that socialist, fascist, and communist regimes have been propped up by the prosperity of the United States. Any state funded assistance to foreign nations necessarily goes to the rulers of those nations, and is therefore used in the way that those rulers see fit. Just imagine America, land of the free and home of the brave. Here, votes for an awful healthcare reform are literally being bought with taxpayer dollars, as they can be gained in no other way. Corruption is rampant in this sweet land of liberty. What happens to the dollars that are robbed from us and sent to countries run by thug dictators, countries bridled by coercive socialist regimes? Those systems are propped up for a time, they ride on the backs of hardworking Americans, and systems that nonetheless fail every time they are tried seem a bit more practical.
Second, the American military presence around the world is draining our country of resources at an alarming rate. The United States currently has over 700 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. Patriotism fuels the fire of our interventionist policies, yet what are we still occupying every country that we have ever had (or not had) military business in before? If it is the conservative’s claim that we should be fiscally responsible, that we should watch every dollar we spend, why are we blowing money sustaining military bases in Germany, Italy, and Japan, half a century after the end of WWII? If it is the liberal’s claim that America is overbearing and arrogant in its preemptive and interventionist militarism around the world, why do we not hear outrage from the left over this abhorrent waste of resources?
A final point, though not the final point, is that of our central planners. We Americans are taxed to death. Our “progressive” system punishes the accumulation of wealth, discouraging production, thus discouraging the creation of real, sustainable jobs. It also encourages idleness, or near idleness, as those who work menial jobs and pop out children actually make money for laziness and fornication. Yet, as complicated and ridiculous as our tax system is, it is all irrelevant in the end, as we have no control over our money supply. Literally, our government has empowered a cadre of bankers (the Federal Reserve) to control our money, thus empowering that cadre to destroy our money at the pace they choose. As we print and borrow as a country, the dollar’s demise becomes more imminent. Many countries before us have embarked on the path of fiat monies, and many countries before us have seen their currency turned to fire fuel. Think of the Weimar Republic. It is called hyperinflation.
We must stop arguing over the color we will paint the walls when the house is burning down. Only through dedication to individual liberty can a populace be truly prosperous, generous, and able to aid those in need. America became the most prosperous country on earth for a reason; because it was founded on a unique set of ideals that asserted man’s liberty to be natural, not a privilege granted by the state. It is no coincidence that America’s prosperity and dominance has so far surpassed all other countries for so long. Nor is it coincidence that America’s decline has been coupled with the ascendancy of socialist ideology, the idea that central planners can steer an economy so large and complex as ours, and the notion that there is an achievable utopia to be found if only we can manage to coerce enough of our populace the right way.
January 17th, 2010 in
Core Values |
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Time constraints have it difficult to write lately. In such times I will continue to share useful information and commentary when I come across it. Here is one with some good info in it.
The most important content of this piece is in an external PDF, which I will link to here for convenience. It is The Skeptic’s Handbook. While I have linked to and discussed more detailed science relating to anthropogenic global warming theory in the past, this is a succinct and useful reference tool. It primarily distinguishes evidence from non-evidence.
A Handbook for Deniers
by Per Bylund
Since the esteemed climatologist Al Gore declared that “the debate is over,” it seems the number of scientists denying both this fact and the accuracy of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis has continuously increased. Perhaps the “skeptics” have found the courage to speak out at this point when AGW has become universal religion and the movement’s leaders are calling for “global governance.” The threat from this movement is much clearer now and the ultimate goal of the AGW prophets is finally spelled out, which of course has nothing to do with environment or climate.
The “global warming” movement is now calling for enormous “investments” in certain public policies and new political institutions to supervise people’s and firms’ emissions of CO2. To most scientists in climatology this change in the movement’s agenda is most likely unexpected; if you are not used to the political game you are not prepared when your opponent makes his politically obvious (in normal situations denoted “irrational”) move.
Of course, the debate is not primarily between scientists even though such debates do exist. The literature in peer-reviewed journals in the relevant scientific disciplines have since long disproved the politicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios. It has even been established that the global warming according to reliable data sources ended in 2001, despite the fact that CO2 emissions are greater than ever and continue to increase.
The AGW hypothesis with man-made climate change through emissions of CO2 and other “greenhouse” gasses lives on, however, as politicians and the media find in it an extremely powerful thesis that makes people feel both vulnerable and defenseless and desperate for “help.” Politicians need a threat to increase their realm of power and make the masses cling to their belief in government, and the media needs disasters to attract readers and viewers (selling real news is a long-gone idea in mainstream media). To be honest, climate change is the perfect issue for the fascist state – it is a win-win game for powerful politicians, their buddies in the media, and big business.
Yet more people seem to realize that things don’t add up and that there is another side to the story, which is not generally allowed to be told. Even though most people still believe “we” are to blame, a thesis we are fed from cradle to grave by our all-too-mighty government through public schooling and media outlets, the number of people doubting the truthfulness of the theory is growing. This is why the mainstream posse needed to increase the level of blame in the overall blame game; people doubting man-made global warming were compared with holocaust deniers. People with no connection whatsoever with the study of weather and climate did not hesitate to join their fellow state worshipers, like the ignorant-of-economics-economist Professor Krugman.
Most of us laymen AGW skeptics have been dismissed with the proclaimed truth that “scientists all agree” (which really means “talking heads all agree”), but a lot of people are nevertheless beginning to doubt. We may be approaching a tipping point, at which politicians will be desperate to find another made-up disaster to rally support for their destructive policies. In other words, this may be an opportunity to not only get rid of the climate change scare – but also force the “noble” savages back to their Platonic caves.
One way of doing so is to be ready for and engage in the discussion – and do so wisely. This is the purpose, I believe, of Joanne Nova’s comic-book-style The Skeptic’s Handbook (PDF), in which she describes how to “[r]ise above the mud-slinging of the Global Warming debate.” The book shows how to use the existing and scientific facts properly and how not to accept non-answers such as referring to authority or cheap ad hominems. It also supplies the facts and the only points that matter. It is a short manual for constructively pursuing debates with AGWers and in that sense it is truly a “skeptic’s handbook.”
Perhaps Newton was right in that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” and that this is applicable to public political discourse. There is just a slight delay between the action and the reaction, just like there is a proven time lapse between increase in temperature to increase in CO2.
July 13, 2009
Per Bylund is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website at PerBylund.com, or his blog, where he comments on this article and more.
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
by Glenn Jacobs
In 1992, Christina Romer published an article titled “What Ended the Great Depression?” in The Journal of Economic History. In her introduction, Roper explains how America recovered from the Great Depression:
This paper examines the role of aggregate-demand stimulus in ending the Great Depression. Plausible estimates of the effects of fiscal and monetary changes indicate that nearly all the observed recovery of the U.S. economy prior to 1942 was due to monetary expansion [emphasis mine]. A huge gold inflow in the mid- and late 1930s swelled the money stock and stimulated the economy by lowering real interest rates and encouraging investment spending and purchases of durable goods. That monetary developments were crucial to the recovery implies that self-correction played little role in the growth of real output between 1933 and 1942.
Mrs. Romer is now the chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors and was the co-author the administration’s economic recovery plan.
In Romer, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has a willing accomplice in his quest to print money, errr…I mean engage in quantitative easing. Like Romer, Bernanke is an expert on the Great Depression. Like Romer, Bernanke believes that the solution to our current economic ills lies in devaluing the dollar through monetary expansion. After all, Bernanke promised Milton Friedman that the Fed would never again refrain from providing liquidity during a downturn like it did during the Great Depression.
It seems as if Romer, Bernanke, et al. are proposing something new and revolutionary – inflate the money supply and devalue the currency. Genius! But there is a big problem. This solution is neither new nor revolutionary. Although it has never before had as fancy a euphemism as “quantitative easing,” the practice of monetary devaluation is ancient and is standard government operating procedure. Unfortunately, it has also proven a disaster everywhere it has been implemented.
The Romans tried it. The result was the implosion of Western civilization; a hole out of which it took a millennium for Europe to climb.
The French tried it. Twice, in fact. The first time, in the early 18th century, resulted in a classic speculative bubble. Fortunes were made and then lost in the blink of an eye. The second time, after their revolution, was even worse. In order to combat price inflation – which was causing rioting and civil unrest – the government imposed price controls. Shortages ensued causing more rioting and civil unrest. The French finally gave up and instituted a gold standard.
The Germans tried it after World War One. Their experience was much worse than the French experience but the outcome wasn’t quite as bad as the Romans – the Weimar inflation contributed to the rise of National Socialism and the subsequent deaths of over 72 million people. Okay, maybe it was a bad as the Romans.
The Russians have also tried it. As have the Poles, the Hungarians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Argentineans, the Brazilians, the Chileans, and the Yugoslavians. Oh, and the Zimbabweans are trying it right now.
All of these episodes ended in catastrophe. Of course, the American experience will be different, right? After all, folks like Romer and Bernanke are experts.
German Finance Minister Karl Helfferich was an expert on money, too, and even he could not resist the temptation to crank up the printing press:
To follow the good counsel of stopping the printing of notes would mean refusing to economic life the circulating medium necessary for transactions, payments of salaries and wages, etc. It would mean that in a very short time the entire public, and above all the Reich, could no longer pay merchants, employees, or workers. In a few weeks, besides the printing of notes, factories, mines, railways, and post offices, national and local government, in short, all national and economic life would be stopped.
As it turned out, it was the continued printing of money – and not the cessation – that caused all of these things to occur. But we know better now, right?
No matter what the epoch, the laws of economics remain constant. Prices are information. They relay to entrepreneurs where to best allocate resources in order to satisfy consumer demand. Because it is a society’s medium of exchange, money has a universal price; generally, everything is priced in terms of money. Distort the price of money and you throw the entire system into disarray causing what Austrian economists call malinvestment. Resources flow into areas that they should not and away from areas where they should, not because entrepreneurs have lost the ability to make sound decisions, but because the information upon which they rely to make those decisions is corrupted.
Romer and Bernanke are playing a dangerous game. They are also operating under false premises. First of all, the Great Depression was not caused by a “lack of aggregate demand” but by the malinvestment brought on by the Fed’s monetary inflation of the 1920s. The reason the depression lasted so long was that the government refused to allow the malinvestment to liquidate.
As for the asset and price deflation of the Great Depression, this was not the result of the Fed’s failure expand the money supply but a result of a drop in the velocity of money – the rate at which money exchanges hands. As Murray Rothbard has illustrated in America’s Great Depression, bank reserves actually increased throughout the Great Depression. However, banks were leery of lending, fearing bank runs and failure. The demand for money was high as people sought safety by holding onto cash; saving and not spending. All of this meant that the price of commodities other than money dropped as people would rather hold onto their money than spend it.
The situation is much similar to what we face today. Unfortunately, because Bernanke believes that the Great Depression could have been avoided if the Fed had inflated aggressively, he has readied an inflationary tsunami. The only thing holding this tidal wave of dollars back is that much of it is still sitting in bank reserves and the velocity of money is still low. Count on Romer and the government to do everything and anything necessary to change that.
Bernanke believes that once the economy takes off again, he will be able to remove the “excess liquidity” from the system by selling the Fed’s assets. Unfortunately, he faces a big problem. Much of the increase in the Fed’s balance sheet is the result of the Fed removing toxic assets from the banking system. Ummm, they are called toxic for a reason; no one wants them. To whom then is Bernanke going to sell them?
In addition, the Obama administration, following Romer’s advice, is going to have to fund its profligate spending somehow. U.S. treasuries – government debt – were once considered the safest investment in the world. Now, because of the massive debt the federal government is accruing, no one is buying. According to the Treasury International Capital System, capital is now flowing out of the U.S. That leaves one buyer for trillions of dollars of new debt – the Fed. In other words, not only will Bernanke not be able to sell the government debt the Fed already owns, he is going to have to buy oodles and gobs more.
Perhaps Romer and Bernanke are right. Perhaps printing money is the solution. Perhaps this one time the laws of economics will prove malleable. And perhaps donkeys will fly.
If history is any guide, I’m betting on the donkeys.
Glenn Jacobs is the actor and wrestler Kane. Visit his blog.
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
I took a personality test for school at Similarminds.com, supposedly one of the better ones on the web.
Thought I would share the site and results in case any of you are interested.
Ron Paul’s bill that would require an audit of the Federal Reserve now has a total of 124 cosponsors (there were 112 at the time the below story was written); at least 13 of them are democrats. I can think of no reason why anyone would oppose auditing this powerful bank, which creates and disburses money without regulation or transparency.
Click here to read the article- Ron Paul’s Economic Theories Winning GOP Converts
Today president Obama unveiled his strategy to simplify the tax code. Simplification of the tax code is a great idea. In 2006, the bloated code reached well over 67,000 pages as lobbyists and so called special interests piled on. Compliance costs for individuals are expected to reach around $483 billion a year by 2015, and the conglomerate time spent by the populace trying to make sense of the politicians’ crafty work in 2005 was estimated at 6 billion hours. All of this information and more is available in PDF form here.
Yet Obama’s effort at simplification does not address the size or compliance costs of the tax code to individuals and businesses. Instead, his plan seeks to close “loopholes” and make business as costly for American companies to conduct overseas as it has been made for them to do business in these United States. This fits the statist motif perfectly. Domestically, the solution to income inequality is not to encourage production and prosperity, but rather to punish those who produce and provide jobs. Similarly, the solution to companies that choose to do business overseas is not to make business in America more attractive, but to punish overseas operations that are currently subject to lesser tax consequences.
Any rational individual who sees that businesses are fleeing the United States in favor of less punitive circumstances under which to conduct business would first look at making business opportunities more attractive here at home. Yet the leviathan Obama seeks to create as he borrows, prints, and spends the country into prosperity requires additional funds. Ignorant of human nature, his administration and the congress that backs him will punish the producers and reward the looters at every turn.
As insensitive as this may sound, I suspect that the vast majority of Obama voters are either to ignorant or too stupid to understand that no ruler or group of rulers can change human nature or its inevitable consequences. The situation reminds me of congress’s efforts to save energy by tinkering with daylight savings time. The fools figured that more daylight would lead to reduced use of lights. It did, but people drove far more, canceling out the expected reduction in energy use.
Our formerly free and prosperous country is falling under the weight of leaders who were originally intended to be our servants, not the other way around. We are now owned by Washington bureaucrats, and should be grateful to be allowed to keep the products of our labors that they decide we need and deserve. I, for one, am grateful that Obama has decided to crack down on those who audaciously attempted to escape the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world and reduce their costs of doing business. Here in the People’s Republic of Amerika, it is clearly our responsibility to help our benevolent ruler as he grows the leviathan in an effort to save us from our stupid selves!
It is commonly repeated that insanity is defined as doing the same thing, again and again, expecting different results. I cannot find this definition in any dictionary; nonetheless the invented definition is useful. I speak specifically of the Obama administration’s incessant references to the recession it inherited, as well as the self-absorbed tone it takes in explaining how difficult it will be for the “changes” to be implemented. Things will get worse before they get better. The recession wasn’t created in a day, it can’t be fixed in a day. Insert additional nauseatingly predictable rhetoric here.
You see, there is a colossal contradiction in Obama’s rhetoric that is not only staring, but glaring, at any honest and thinking observer. That is to say, we cannot solve the economic problems that were perpetuated and even amplified by the Bush administration by intensifying those policies.
The superstitious masses somehow tie the current recession to a lack of regulation. Programmed to approach every problem that touches the entire nation as a failure of governance, people obediently ponder what missing laws or regulations led to misfortune in question. In The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater posed a simple question of any potential policy decision: Are we maximizing freedom? We have allowed the political class to abandon this question, replacing it with the question, “What new dictum shall we enforce to prevent this misfortune from happening?
Returning to the revolutionary changes supposedly brought about by the Obama administration, the most important point is that they are not really changes at all. Sean Hannity’s radio show begins each day with the phrase, “The radicals have taken over.” Yet in the political landscape of the past several decades, this could not be less true. There is nothing radical about what Obama is doing, the actions of this administration fall right in line with those of his precursor. A general dissatisfaction with government sways the public one way or the other with each election year, yet the dissatisfaction never seems to dissipate when either party is ousted in favor of the other. Why is this?
Obama’s solution to every problem is an expansion of the scope of government power, as well as increase in government spending. This is nothing new. We saw the same thing throughout the eight years of the previous administration. In fact, Bush grew the almighty state like no president before him. He oversaw and smiled upon the continued devaluation of the dollar through inflation of the money supply. He not only encouraged but happily implemented the beginnings of “stimulus” bills and bailouts of companies that should have failed. Greenspan’s policies were based on easy money, Bush facilitated a shift to free money. The fed prints, the state borrows, and we are fed a curious line that tells us we should do the same as individuals. “The credit markets are frozen, but we are working to thaw them…” Ground control to major Tom, loans can realistically be made to person A only when capital has been saved by person B. Savings make lending possible. There is no magic or mysticism involved here.
As Frederic Bastiat wrote, “Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” Yet such and endeavor is hallmark of our magnificent new ruler, and was the policy of his precursor. Obama is doing nothing different (economically) than what George Bush did, yet claims to be fixing problems that Bush created. The crazy situation is like a plumber fixing a clogged pipe by filling it with concrete. To make matters worse, no one seems to understand plumbing and all seem to believe this is a great idea!
Every administration blames the problems it faces on the previous administration. This is predictable enough. The trouble with the Obama administration is its claim that it is fixing the economy through expanding and amplifying Bush policy. It was W who declared, “The markets are not working.” Obama entered office predisposed to this notion and ready to make them work. The joke is on them. Markets always work and there is nothing that Bush, Obama, or Chelsea’s Momma can do about it. The market is the pure reality that the do-gooders will always be at war against.
by Floy Lilley, adjunct faculty member at the Mises Institute.
May 2, 2009
Britain buckles down to real energy. The UK will change out an established wind farm for a new nuclear power plant. This rational move will boost an anemic average of 1.3 MW of zero emissions wind generated power to a robust average of 1300 GW of zero emissions nuclear power. The manufacturer of wind turbines will be cutting jobs, blaming the government for failing to support the sector.
Britain has learned the hard way that their headlong green rush into medieval technology has been wasteful and foolish. They spent time and money trying to force a technology to do what it simply can’t do. Despite what Boone Pickens says, wind’s optimum use is only as backup and it can’t supply more than twenty percent of required loads. Pickens is a subsidy hunter, promising a 25% return on a 4,000 MW windmill farm in Texas, based entirely on federal tax credits. Have you ever seen how much land wind power requires? Pickens’ project will need 1,200 square miles. But, none in his backyard, please. He thinks the wind towers are too ugly to be on his large ranch.
Real, productive people need real, industrial-sized power. And, don’t even mention conservation. Conservation is no energy policy. Conservation is no more an energy plan than fasting is a food supply. Sure, greater efficiencies save energy, but we immediately have more uses for it. Only when the economy tanks do we use less energy. Nonetheless, I don’t consider that to be our current depression’s silver lining.
So, lead us Britannia. Let us, too, seize the day, the sense, and the cents. Let us, too, use peaceful-atom energy technology, which can do all that we need it to do. Why aren’t we doing just that? Why do we fear the best, most natural power provided on earth by earth?
Is nuclear really saddled in the U.S.A. with insurmountable risks?
I grant that things didn’t get off to a smooth start with nuclear power. Think about it. Would there be any electricity today at all if the first electrical product had been an electric chair? Electricity would have been dead on arrival after such a market launch. So, what can you do when your initial product is an atomic bomb? That pretty much set the stage for nuclear energy’s dismal reception.
The curtain fell on that stage before stardom was attained. At the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1979, a hanging tag obscured a warning light. This human error consequently led to the damage of 70 percent of the core and 100 percent of the forward momentum of the nuclear power industry. There was, after close inspection during nine years, no unusual incidence of ill health in the public found, but the utilities experienced cardiac arrest. Public abuse, skyrocketing financial risks, draconian commission demands and required government-led evacuation plans sounded the death knell for the truly grand promises of nuclear energy. The response was a rational and complete upgrade to nuclear training, led by the Institute for Nuclear Power Operation and inspired by Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy.
Still, nuclear’s potential went unrealized. By 1998 a company called Entergy stepped up and began buying unpopular nuclear reactors and began making immense improvements. All 104 nuclear reactors in the country were upgraded and beginning to perform to potential by the millennium. Since 1990, nearly one-third of our country’s electrical growth has been met by this upgraded performance. Nuclear now is the source for 19.8 percent of total electricity provided, while it makes up only 9 percent of our generating capacity. Our nuclear reactors achieve an all-time low in production cost of 1.68 cents per kWh. The reactors operate 24/7 for close to two years without interruption. The new fuel rods that are required about every eighteen months can be handled with gloves. The U-235 content of reactor-grade fuel is only 3 percent and cannot explode under any circumstances. Have these sound safety facts reassured our unscientific culture? Not much.
Public fears about radiation have persisted while there have been few fears about that other transmission of energy – electricity. Like I said, expect marketing challenges when your introductory product is a bomb.
But how well founded is hysteria over radioactivity? Did we really not notice that our blue home planet is a natural atomic energy reactor itself? We might not know that every second of our lives we are struck by 15,000 particles of radiation. We even might not be aware that own bodies are naturally radioactive. But, did we really not notice that the sun’s radiation is the source of our life? Have we really not noticed that it is always the dose that makes the poison, rather than the mere presence of a single photon or atom? We certainly are arbitrary about what we choose to be frightened of.
I was representing the American Nuclear Society in Manchester, England, in 1991 when I first realized that the very rules written to regulate against risks were, themselves, creating much of the hysteria over radiation with which the general public was infected. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was saddled with a supposition that said that if a large amount of something could cause you harm, then a single molecule of it could and would cause harm. That concept is called LNT – the linear no-threshold hypothesis. LNT disregards thresholds and proclaims that there is no safe dose. It is not scientific. It is false. But this false LNT is the reason workers around nuclear materials are suited up in spacesuits. That’s much more than a waste of money; it’s a truly scary signal. And, it’s unwarranted.
Low doses of radiation have exhibited positively beneficial effects upon health. That foreign concept is called hormesis. Another foreign concept could go a long way to putting the energy back into the nuclear energy industry. It is “use 95 percent of the fuel rod rather than just 5 percent.” The French do it, along with Canadians, Russians, English, Japanese and others. We even did it until 1970.
Let’s do it again. Let’s use 95 percent of the fuel rods by reprocessing and use the remaining 5 percent in radioactive isotope applications for health medicine and industrial applications. Let’s have excess energy to sell, as the French do. Let’s gear up for nuclear plants so we, too, can have them produce 80 percent of our electricity, as the French do.
What do we do? We Americans use only 5 percent of our fuel rods, then fight like crazy to prevent the 95 percent “wasted” rod from being buried in Yucca Mountain.
Nuclear energy power isn’t just tilting at windmills. There are good reasons for it to be replacing them.
Copyright 2009 by LewRockwell.com
I listened to a guy opine recently about the cancer that is taking over the nation. He had some worthwhile thoughts on fighting the collectivist onslaught we face. He described the situation as being analogous with a medical affair: we can focus on treatment of symptoms, or on prevention through eliminating the causes (or risk factors) for the disease. In his opinion, our education system is the fundamental problem. Indeed, children are indoctrinated from a very young age to not only accept the fallacies promoted by government and media, but to actively promote the lies themselves. Kids who set out to conquer the world come out of our nation’s universities mind numbed and mumbling incoherently about fairness, greenness, and saving capitalism from its excesses.
The idea of fighting back the statist influence of our educational institutions is attractive because the concepts kids come out of school with are the concepts that will rule future generations. In other words, education is a fundamental problem, one that unaddressed will certainly speed up the coming crash. Unfortunately, it is impossible to pick out a single such fundamental to fix and turn the tide.
Consider last week’s tax day tea parties. I participated myself, who in his right mind wouldn’t go for an opportunity to protest the state’s tyrannical print, borrow, tax and spend policies? Yet, I can’t help but wonder (it’s really not even a question) how many of the protesters were actually excited about the McCain-Palin ticket only a few months prior. Have we been so dumbed down by the left-right paradigm that those who now profess fear over the “coming socialism” believe that they were advocating anything else in the elections of ‘08, ‘04, ‘00, ‘96, ‘92, ‘88…..??
Politicians and mediabots create public spectacles and the sheeple eat them up. For instance, as Obama was engaged in negotiations to create a world regulatory body with the power to cap wages of U.S. executives (among other powers that will only expand with time), folks on a local talk show here were in a heated discussion about a police officer who pulled over a football player on his way to visit a dying relative. In another case, “Joe the plumber” became a hero during the last presidential campaign for getting Obama to utter the words “spread the wealth.” In reality, we were talking about a difference in tax rates that would amount to only a few percentage points difference. The tax system is already perversely progressive; a highly successful individual in New York pays well over 50% of his earnings in taxes. All the while, over 40% of the populace pays no taxes at all. And we’re worried about the coming socialism?
The point is, we’re distracted by the trivial while the fundamentals go largely unnoticed. It was, in fact, under a republican administration and 6 years of a republican congress that we saw the one of the greatest expansions of government in the country’s history. It was the second Bush administration that foolishly began implementing long ago discredited Keynesian economic policies. Bush began the bailouts. Bush preached the necessity of deficit spending in order to “stimulate” the economy.
Misinformation via education is a fundamental problem indeed. Greater individual choice through private sector initiatives could fix that problem. The ridiculous tax code is another fundamental problem. Without the ability to manipulate that code, politicians and lobbyists would essentially be standing naked and embarrassed out in the rain. But again, I must return to the Federal Reserve as the enabler of government’s wild experiments. As Americans argued over wallpaper patterns, the Fed decreased the value of the dollar by 95% since 1913. As media worldwide praised Alan Greenspan as the greatest financial genius of all time, he presided over 60% of the dollar’s decline. And now, as an $11 trillion deficit finally begins to turn some heads, the Fed’s presses are overheating in an effort to sustain the facade of American wealth it has perpetuated for decades.
The moral of this story? If you must take in any news, take it with a grain of salt. Whether it be the networks, your favorite cable channel, or your favorite radio program, you will rarely see the fundamental problems facing our (former) republic addressed.
