The Problem with Capitalism
As I see it the problem isn't really capitalism but human nature. Capitalism is a known quantity, it's all about greed and greed only. It always devolves to the lowest possible level and recognizes no rules whatsoever. Its structure is pure feudalism and the end result of every transaction is dog-eat-dog and every 'deal' is governed by how much power the parties each have.
Our problem is that we try to smear on morals and ethics to a system that doesn't have any idea what those are. You can have all the 'economic engineering' you want and your lovely scheme will always instantly rot at the seams.
The one and only thing you can do (if you're trying to control the beast) is to set out some ironclad rules for the crazy people - think of them as a bunch of Charles Mansons. Create bonecrushing punishments for transgressing those rules (be sure to make the punishments personal) rigorously enforce those cruel rules... and wait for the inevitable rot that will nibble away at and crumble said rules and enforcement... until you have to start over with new and even more onerous rules and enforcement.
That's the awful truth as the man said. The rest of economic theory is just a bunch of crap based on fairytales about how humans operate.
Sunday, June 02, 2019
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Gun Control Redux - Part 2
Well this conversation has gone on and I think I'm obliged to post the follow up.
I think I may have lost a friend and I'm very sorry about that. He's a good guy and means well, he's just stuck in a loop imo and can't get out... on the other hand I could just be maligning him unnecessarily.
Y’know I don’t think you guys have thought this through, any of you.
I think I may have lost a friend and I'm very sorry about that. He's a good guy and means well, he's just stuck in a loop imo and can't get out... on the other hand I could just be maligning him unnecessarily.
K:
I don't particularly
care about Trump or the Democratic party.
They seem all
equally corrupt to me.
But you are totally
wrong about gun control.
It is dead.
Ignorant kids can
fall for it for awhile, but kids don't vote.
Nor do I think the
police or military would actually try to implement the kind of gun
control the democrats are pushing.
It is suicide for
the whole party, once you go down that road.
Unions, labor, poor
people, etc., none of them are going to support gun control to that
level.
I lived through 2
students being killed in my senior year, and I can tell you that all
the students were very happy there were armed teachers and
janitors.
If modern students
don't get it, then they are insane and part of the problem.
You can't possibly
make any one safer by disarming the honest people.
Me:
We do disagree a
lot but that's OK, I think because we are both looking for the larger
truth.
Nobody in this
country really cares about the ME or the people in it. If they did we
would have been out of there a long time ago as you suggest.
But they DO care
about their children and now you are siding with the people who
killed their children. Times are changing my friend, the kind of
libertarian individualism you espouse is beginning to have the odor
of dead fish about it. People who once might have railed against
Ruby Ridge and Janet Reno are pretty much over that now and you have
Mr Trump to thank for that. You and other old people may see him as a
beneficial disruptor but the kids are very much aware that he's
pathological liar who cares for no one but himself. He made a Yuuuuge
mistake when he started to go after the FBI. He lost the youth (and
rightly so). He may well survive on the backs of the white racists he
has courted so avidly but the future belongs to the Florida high
school kids. I believe the tide has turned. If you want to keep your
guns better find a good deep hole to bury them.
Me, again: Y’know I don’t think you guys have thought this through, any of you.
What do you imagine
would happen if your plans for resisting the government actually came
to the top of the soup?
I’ll tell you what
would happen:
There are
approximately 17,985 state and local police offices in the US
employing 765,000 sworn police officers, about 100,000 part time
officers and 44, 000 deputies. This doesn’t count the 120,000 full
time federal officers (US Marshalls and such).
This is about 1
million police officers… how many people who would willingly pick
up their firearms and fire upon the police have you got?
And of course this
doesn’t even count the National Guard (remember them? The guardians
of the constitution within our borders? Armed with military grade
weapons)
Currently the
National Guard has about 210,000 active members on duty. You should
really have a look at this document in regards to the national guard
in case you had any fantasies of various governors rising up to
support your insurrection.
And if that was not
enough there is the US armed forces which is authorized, on the
President’s command, to suppress insurrection and or revolution in
the United States and Posse Comitatus be damned.
Btw the US Armed
force has about 2,280,000 soldiers
That's about
3,476,000 trained crowd control officers and professional warriors to
face your...? What? 100,000 do or die guys? 10,000? Or do think
Captain Moroder will save you?
They have howitzers
and Bradley fighting vehicles. They have Abrams tanks and LAWS
rockets and .50 caliber machine guns and flamethrowers, They have
bunker buster bombs and nuclear weapons ferchrisakes.
And what do you
have? A bunch of AR-15s and a lot of handguns… are you kidding me?
Use the tools that
are available without the patently false bullshit like Scalias
twisted interpretation of the 2nd. Stop with the NRA, they
don’t give a shit about you and your individual rights, they are
there to promote gun sales. Run as far away from them as you can.
Get together in a
real gun rights organization and hire really good lawyers to preserve
as much of your rights as you can.
Disabuse yourselves
of the notion that you can ‘win’ this fight. The children are
really pissed at you, it’s too late. Get used to a lot more strict
oversight and monitoring of your gun privileges, if you’re very
very smart or have very very smart lawyers, it might be as easy as
having a driving license. If you’re intransigent (ie, stupid) it’ll
be a lot more like getting an FBI high level security pass… with
full body cavity search.
There may be perks
with this. I can easily see a Presidential National Emergency
directive ordering any criminal and/or gang member/and or ‘raping’
mexicans shot on sight. Trump really likes Duterte… this may be his
chance...
Monday, February 19, 2018
Gun Control Redux
I and some friends have had an ongoing - over several years - discussion about guns and gun control.
At one point I even bought a gun to see how I felt about owning one. I didn't feel any increase in godlike power nor did I feel like the world was now my oyster. I didn't feel safer for me or my family nor did I feel any increase in hostility for my fellow man.
I should say that I'm a fair shot with a bow - I can consistently hit a man-sized bale of hay at a distance of 100 yards. I own a couple of knives and I know how to use them. So absent a team of dedicated assassins, I am fairly confident about surviving for the next few years or so.
I have also had a very fast car: E39 M5, supercharged. So I've gotten that out of my system and I have every expectation of continued longevity (my Dad just turned 94 and seems to be in good health).
That all being said, the discussion has continued.
At first it was a bit hot and heavy, then I came to understand that it wasn't a condition that was amenable to discussion or persuasion. Gun owners acted like members of a cult. No amount of logic or reason would ever sway their opinions. Well, I said to myself: "So be it."
The other part of this is... [painful truth ahead, you won't like it but...] there are some 350 million people in this country and some 370 million guns. This means two awful things:
1) You'll never get the guns away from people, there are simply too many of them.
2) It doesn't really matter anyway because: statistically speaking gun deaths are insignificant - too small to matter on the great scales of history.
I know it seems horrible to think that but the numbers don't lie. Gun deaths, whether by cop or suicide or massacre just don't raise a blip compared to how many people there are in this country.
They don't matter.
So why am I raising the matter yet again?
I had another exchange with my group - and I should say that these guys are very open to discussion and are willing to talk and explain and even consider change (sometimes).
I got a statement from one of them and gave him my response:
At one point I even bought a gun to see how I felt about owning one. I didn't feel any increase in godlike power nor did I feel like the world was now my oyster. I didn't feel safer for me or my family nor did I feel any increase in hostility for my fellow man.
I should say that I'm a fair shot with a bow - I can consistently hit a man-sized bale of hay at a distance of 100 yards. I own a couple of knives and I know how to use them. So absent a team of dedicated assassins, I am fairly confident about surviving for the next few years or so.
I have also had a very fast car: E39 M5, supercharged. So I've gotten that out of my system and I have every expectation of continued longevity (my Dad just turned 94 and seems to be in good health).
That all being said, the discussion has continued.
At first it was a bit hot and heavy, then I came to understand that it wasn't a condition that was amenable to discussion or persuasion. Gun owners acted like members of a cult. No amount of logic or reason would ever sway their opinions. Well, I said to myself: "So be it."
The other part of this is... [painful truth ahead, you won't like it but...] there are some 350 million people in this country and some 370 million guns. This means two awful things:
1) You'll never get the guns away from people, there are simply too many of them.
2) It doesn't really matter anyway because: statistically speaking gun deaths are insignificant - too small to matter on the great scales of history.
I know it seems horrible to think that but the numbers don't lie. Gun deaths, whether by cop or suicide or massacre just don't raise a blip compared to how many people there are in this country.
They don't matter.
So why am I raising the matter yet again?
I had another exchange with my group - and I should say that these guys are very open to discussion and are willing to talk and explain and even consider change (sometimes).
I got a statement from one of them and gave him my response:
Me:K:You miss the point about gun control.Sure other there are other countries with much stricter gun control, but they are not committing mass murder like our government did in Iraq, Waco, etc., and they were always somewhat draconian to start withThe US is committing mass murder, torture, and lots of other war crimes.The US is the most dangerous country in the world right now, and it is attempting to stifle any and all resistance.So gun control in the US is a far bigger issue than anywhere else in the world.And yes it is worth killing and dying over I think.
Ah,
but you miss the point. What has been shown time and time again is just
how easy it is to commit mass murder with guns... even a child can do
it. No one is worried about a G..... or a K... (my friends) going out and mowing down
swathes of immigrants or children.
We are all a bit
worried about so-called hunters getting plastered during hunting season
and shooting anything or anyone who makes the underbrush twitch.
We're
a little more worried about some dipshit teenager who doesn't have a
clue to how his brain works and only has to decide whether to go to
Syria and join ISIS or stay here and be a 'lone wolf' and mow down some
defenseless teenagers or better yet some completely innocent children or
settle for a few hundred country music fans. Funny I never notice them
attacking a gun club or a police station.
I'm kinda
surprised that gun people haven't formed some kind of vigilante society
to detect, monitor and stop these idiots. It must have occurred to some
people at least that this can't go on. Maybe you've shut down the
outrage for this season or this generation but the anger against you is
getting louder and louder. Do you thinks those kids in Florida are going
to forgive or forget? The longer you guys cling to your guns the more
certain will come the day when people have had it. And when that day
comes they really will take your guns, all of them - no matter what it
takes to do it. You are in the process of becoming pariahs and soon no
one will care about your precious individual rights because they will
see you as threatening theirs.
You guys really need to wake up and smell the cordite.
So that's where I'm at these days about guns, I'd be interested in your thoughts...
Monday, July 17, 2017
A friend asked me...
A friend asked me about politics and said he was meeting another conservative friend and would return loaded for bear
By now I’ve had a lot of experience talking with people who
have other opinions (gasp). These talks have not, for the most part, gone well.
They all tend to unravel into each person talking over the other or into
agreements to disagree. Nothing seems to get resolved.
I myself try to apply critical thinking to politicians,
especially presidential ones. This means that I do research on them whether I
like them or don’t. When I’ve finished I usually have a good idea of what they
really stand for and who they really are, at least sufficient knowledge for me
to support or reject them.
My criteria are:
Is this person out for power or for service?
Do they understand the importance of the Rule of Law?
Have they read and understood the Constitution and it’s time
and context?
Do they understand justice and compassion?
There are more of course but these are a start.
If I don’t want to get into arguments about bullet lists,
what do I want?
I want to say to people: Here these are some of the books I
read and some of the people I spent time with, trying to figure things out. I
had to absorb this knowledge to get to a place where I could place things in
their proper perspective, identify the real players and understand their
agendas. These are the tools you need to get real about things.
It took me thirty years to get to this point so don’t
despair. I also don’t expect everyone to have these experiences – frankly – if you
just read all of Shakespeare you could throw about 95% of this stuff out. In fact you’ll
learn more about human nature than all of the other books combined.
Economics
Adam Smith
Frederic von Hayak
Milton Friedman
Joseph Steiglitz
John Galbraith (Older and younger)
Paul Krugman
Karl Marx
Thomas Piketty
Politics
Sun Tzu – Art of War
Musashi – A Book of Five Rings
Von Clausewitz
Julius Ceasar – The conquest of Gaul
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
Thucydides
Modern Times
William Schreiber – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Bruce Catton – The Civil War
The Federalist Papers
The Anti-Federalist Papers
People Whose Work You
Should Know About
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Roger Taney
Benjamin Cardozo
Thurgood Marshall
William O. Douglas
Howard Zinn
People and
Organizations You Should Know About So You Can Run From them in Terror
Charles Koch
Davis Koch
Fred Koch – yes, their father and the founder of the John
Birch Society
Peter G. Peterson
James M. Buchanan (not the president, the economist)
The Heritage Foundation
The Cato Institute
The Fellowship – Doug Coe
The Ku Klux Klan – doing quite well thank you very much
David Duke
Jeff Sessions – remember him? He’s now US AG
A.L.E.C. – look it up
Alex Jones
Michael Savage
Rush Limbaugh (still)
Know your enemy. All war is a crime.
Friday, July 07, 2017
On the Subject of July 4th
As I often do on the 4th I reflect on our history
and, more specifically on those who have fallen in its honor. Some who think
they know me may be surprised but most of the others know of my deep respect
for true patriots and true honor, however earned.
Since the Vietnam War was the war of my time, I focus on
that conflict and try to understand the things I can’t. Perhaps the burning
flames of that conflagration concentrate my thoughts in a way nothing else
might.
Let me start (and end) by saying: “All War is a Crime”, by now
this must be obvious to everyone yet we go about our daily lives acting as if
this was not the case… I have no answer to this, it baffles me.
I was intimately aware of the Vietnam War insofar as I was
eligible for drafting to serve (having exhausted my student exemption)… I was reprieved
by a high draft number and escaped.
I did have to consider my options:
I could have claimed conscientious objector status, except that I would not have – I thought that fighting Hitler was justified, for example.
I could have gone to Canada, except that I couldn’t justify
that to my parents.
I knew that if I went to Vietnam, I would die… very hard to
reconcile with abject cowardice.
So I was ecstatic and grateful for the draft number that
spared me from that decision.
As a natural consequence I have been troubled by the
omnipresent moral monitor who always demands an answer: did you really do the
right thing? I usually buy her a drink and try to forget…
Literature abounds with books on war which constantly smack
me upside the head, sometimes they make movies…
In modern times there have been two movies, no, three, that
bring things to a crux for me.
Oliver Stone’s ‘Platoon’ of course, which posits they conflict
of Good and Evil sergeants to limn the way before us.
The masterful Terence Malick (James Jones) movie The Thin
Red Line that was buried by the usual sloppy, soppy Saving Private Ryan of schlockmeister
Steven Spielberg.
But there has also been another movie made more recently of “We
Were Soldiers Once and Young”. Taken from the book (memoir) of the first real
battle between the North Vietnam regulars and the US regular forces.
I need to stop here and say a few things:
First rant
I think Mel Gibson is a decent actor, not great, not
horrible but pretty good within his limited range. I don’t begrudge him the
money he has made Hollywood and good looks being what they are. But I do take
exception to his truly awful personal beliefs. I don’t mind that he’s some kind
of weird Christian fanatic but I do mind his faith-based opinions of others – I’m
sure you’ve heard them many times over. And actually I don’t even mind that he
has those beliefs: just shut the fuck up about them, please? Then we can all
get along quite nicely.
Second rant
I generally like war movies and action movies in a desultory
way. They while away the time and display manly men doing manly things in a
manly way… they go well with popcorn. But I do get annoyed by the laziness of
directors I guess. Almost always the battle scenes are just two groups of
soldiers screaming and running at each other, seemingly with no battle plan
thought out, no tactics or strategy. I realize that the 10,000 ft view can’t be
detailed and that no plan survives contact with the enemy but it annoys me that
there’s only chaos in view.
Rants over, thank you for listening.
We Were Soldiers… is a memoir by retired Lieutenant Colonel
Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway (the journalist at the battle). It is a remarkable retelling of that battle at
La Drang that went on for three days in November of 1965.
The movie is also remarkable, showing the tactics of both
LtColonel Moore and North Vietnamese commander Nguyen Huu An. Attack and
counterattack, backup plans and swift response to unexpected situations. And also
showing the gritty reality of the battle itself.
Technically speaking the Americans were outnumbered 4 to 1
but they had far superior cavalry and aircover and were able to beat back NVA
assaults. There is of course the irony of the ending when, having driven the
NVA out of La Drang valley, they leave only to have the NVA forces immediately
return.
As good a performance by Gibson as he could manage and Sam
Elliot’s turn as the crusty Sgt Major is epic.
In its own way it is an anti-war movie in that it shows the
senselessness and futility that all wars exhibit but it is also a showing of
respect and honor for those who fought and those who fell.
Well done and a credit to all involved especially Moore and
Galloway, it’s one of those things we can invoke on fourths of July.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
An Open Letter to the Democratic Party
I’ve listening for months now to all the various
pundits/partisans/prophets and fools giving their weighty opinions about why the
Democrats lost the 2016 election.
It’s all self-deluded bullshit.
There are two main reasons the Democrats lost and until they
fix those reasons they will continue to lose.
1st: They didn’t do the work.
2nd: They forgot who their base was, and is.
When I (or any rational observer) look out over the last
forty years in the political arena, there is a glaring discrepancy. On the one
side you have the Republicans: marching in lockstep down their road to hell,
completely governed by their party leaders and speaking from an approved
script. They have assiduously gathered together to overwhelm school board
meetings, attack town councils, raise candidates for state legislatures – over
and over and over again – until they win and win and win again. Where has there
been opposition? Where are the Democratic candidates supported by ground
pounding cadres ceaselessly turning out the vote? Answer: [crickets]
And we’re surprised to find out that the south and the
middle of the country are solidly Republican?
Let’s face it: the Democrats blew it simply by being
disorganized and feckless. They blew it in 1968 when they let Jerry Rubin and
Abbie Hoffman run wild in the streets of Chicago. Anyone who saw that had an
instant reaction; “There’s no way I want those morons in charge of the
country.” And so we got Nixon. The original Mad King.
Notice that every so-called Democratic candidate thereafter
was deemed an irrelevant sideshow.
And they were because the Democrats never woke up to the
fact that they had to DO THE WORK of building a base that was respected and feared
in the political world, they needed to fight for every school board seat, every
town council member, every state legislator in order to prevent what happened:
Republican control of the state houses and therefor control of drawing the congressional
district maps after the census, i.e., gerrymandering, which gave them control
of the House.
Yes, the Republicans were aided by very smart people who
crafted and plotted this insurrection and developed the propaganda and
misinformation that guided the victory they achieved. It’s all true but it’s
irrelevant The Republicans only won because the Democrats didn’t enter the
field.
The crux of the situation is that the Republicans knew they
were in a war and the Democrats never figured it out… stupid.
Stupid, which is also an apt word for the second reason the
Democrats lost (and will continue to lose until they figure it out).
Who are (and were) the Democratic base?
Well nobody really knows do they? Let’s see: there are the
Blacks and the Hispanics and the Women and the Indians and the LGBTQ people and
the… whatever…
Notice anything odd about this list? No? Well I’ll tell you
this one time: there are no white people. Sounds racist doesn’t it? It does
sound racist until you go back and look at the history of the Democrats: from
its founding the bedrock of the Democratic party has always been the unions:
which have been almost exclusively poor blue collar white folks. The Democratic
party’s bulwark has been the cadres of union members who could be reliably
turned out for rallies, demonstrations… and voting.
But not after Chicago 1968, then the party was more and more
given over to interest groups and not to party unity. In part the Democrats
were victims: the Mafia had so completely taken over the unions that no
self-respecting pol wanted anything to do with them fearing, rightly, that they
would soon be compromised and used as tools for mob enrichment.
Nevertheless, unions continued to dwindle and the Democrats
continued to suffer the consequences.
So the Democratic party became, more and more, a collection
of special interest groups. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but special interest groups in
general have an agenda: the welfare and benefit of their particular group.
There’s nothing in their lexicon about ‘cooperation’. In the old days, the
democrats could fall back on the unions to be the organizing drivers for the
party and they would drag all the disparate factions along for the ride but
that doesn’t work anymore.
This time around we had the so-called ‘progressives’
(yet another faction) who, imo, knew they would lose and just did as much
damage as they could (turned out to be quite a bit). And of course there was
the hilariously boneheaded Black Lives Matter who apparently could only think
of one target for their ire and showed up to hijack one of their own
candidate’s rallies, instead of confronting a Republican rally - I guess that was too hard.
So every little splinter group had their own agenda and none
of them was prepared to even listen to any of the others… the results were
predictable.
If the Democrats ever want to have political power again
they need to remedy the two areas mentioned above. It won’t be quick and it
won’t be easy, indeed. It may already be too late. But going along the way they
doing now will only lead to more losing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)