Down With Democracy

Peter Thiel responds to a Patri Friedman essay:

Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been going the wrong way for a long time. To return to finance, the last economic depression in the United States that did not result in massive government intervention was the collapse of 1920–21. It was sharp but short, and entailed the sort of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that could lead to a real boom. The decade that followed — the roaring 1920s — was so strong that historians have forgotten the depression that started it. The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”

The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom

Politics is not the answer, but I might allow a solution. Once freedom loving people understand that we need to move beyond politics and into action, the possibility opens up that the political system will be forced to compromise. Politics may still be a dead end, but by abandoning politics, one makes it possible for politics to solve the problem.

Hat tip to Scarecrow 2012.

You Represent Power and Greed

Senator Specter

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the state, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

Obama is a little bit Special Olympics

Shortage of Doctors Proves Obstacle to Obama Goals

Technically, reality is an obstacle to Obama's goals. But hey, it's the NYTimes. Why attack them when they could be bankrupt in a month?

Scarecrow For President

Stewart Browne, who wrote the article on national collapse at Strike the Root, has a blog that exposes the failure of reform from within and proposes to run an actual Scarecrow in 2012. Check out this recent post:

As crises often do, the current maelstrom is creating some political realignment.

Here's 50 years of history condensed into into 15 steps.

1. FDR creates The New Deal coalition, the most powerful political coalition in American history.
2. Those who believe in smaller government are funneled into the Republican party in response to FDR's coalition.
3. The Republican party gives small government types their chance with the Goldwater campaign. Goldwater suffers a monumental, epic loss, giving us an early lesson of how democracy responds to attempts to reform it from within.
4. The Republican party tinkers with the formula and moderates the message to appeal to a broader group, including those in the south who are displeased with the Civil Rights Act. Nixon wins.
5. Nixon wants to dismantle much of what Kennedy and Johnson did, but ends up just continuing and expanding on their legacies.
6. In the aftermath of Watergate, a former movie star with superb political charisma rises to prominence in the Republican party.
7. Reagan wins, and a failed assassination attempt gives him enough political clout to get a tax cut passed.
8. Even though government and total taxation greatly expanded under Reagan, his one legislative success deludes a generation of Republicans into thinking they can shrink Washington.
9. The 1994 elections bring about a strong Republican majority in both houses of Congress, and Republicans crush in state and local races. Republicans ran that year on a small government message.
10. Republicans fail miserably to shrink the government at any level. Clinton and Congressional Democrats politically outfox them on every initiative. If ever there was evidence of how difficult it is to try and shrink government from within, the '94 class is it.
11. Republicans moderate the message. Under Karl Rove's tutelage, Republicans adopt a strategy of speaking to the center, thinking that once elected they can then govern from the right.
12. Republicans win the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and a majority of state and local governments.
13. Under Republican watch, the US government undergoes its greatest expansion in history. The national debt skyrockets. Future obligations under Medicare explode in a new entitlement program. The economy tanks.
14. Republicans suffer a crushing defeat at all levels in 2008, and hand over to Obama and a Democratic Congress a system perfectly staged for a giant government power grab.

Votes reflect where the society and culture are, they do not shape society and culture——unless you are in favor of expanding government. It is possible to use the vote to expand government and change the culture to accept larger government, but it is impossible to vote for less government. It is a one-way street.

I'm a believer in living reform. Reform will come from outside the system. Until conservatives and libertarians are willing to make personal sacrifices for freedom, nothing will change. If you want to change things, the thing to do right now is not to think of how to elect more Republicans, it's how to stop supporting the system.

A few possibilities:
1. Reduce your tax burden. This can range from moving overseas, reducing your work load, consuming less, etc.

2. Homeschool. Private schools are fine, but many are just better run versions of the public schools. Children use the same textbooks and get the same left-wing indoctrination.

3. Sell your dollars. The U.S. government prints dollars to fund it's deficit spending. If you have little faith in the government, why do you have faith in its money?

Decline and Fall of the American Republic?

American's were concerned about nuclear annihilation and Soviet world domination and then the USSR up and disappeared. Could the American Republic face a similar path?
Please check out this post at Strike the Root: It Can Happen Here. It Might Be Happening Now.

Between the communists parachuting onto the high school in Red Dawn and the neighborhood getting vaporized in The Day After, my elementary school classmates and I were convinced the Soviets would invade and kill us all before we made it to our next summer vacation. Before we got out of middle school, Gorbachev had resigned and the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.

It can happen that fast.

Americans have become so accustomed to stability that, even as the future shouts at us with crystal clarity, we refuse to listen. Our government has assumed more debt in the past seven months than can possibly be repaid, and that is before accounting for its existing Social Security and Medicare obligations. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans can't fathom how we might be unearthed from this massive debt, and they are taking their concerns to the street. Thirty-two states have passed "sovereignty statements" in their legislatures. The governor of Texas is speaking openly of secession.

How has the media responded? Mockery, ridicule, an adolescent meme about "tea bagging."

And Washington ?

"The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties and will hold his own event today," said Dan Harris of ABC News on April 15.

One senses that the existing power structure knows something is up, but intends to go on with life in confidence that this will all sort itself out.

A piece missing from this article is the destruction of the dollar. I've heard Ron Paul mention it recently, and it's worth considering. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury are literally destroying the U.S. dollar right now. There is still deflation because this money cannot escape the banking system, but as John Mauldin discussed in this week's newsletter, the Fed will keep printing and printing until it gets inflation. It's going to print money and give it to Obama to spend on massive deficits. Essentially, the U.S. government is printing money to pay its bills. Your wealth will be stolen through the silent inflation tax. On top of the 35-40% average tax rate Americans now pay (federal, state & local taxes), there will be an inflation tax of between 5 and 10%, if we're lucky, but possibly much higher.

The federal government will be directing more than 50% of the economy and the results will be total disaster. People will begin to lose confidence in America itself, and hyperinflation is a real concern. This is why DHS put out the report on right-wing "radicals". Right-wingers are a threat because they have an answer to the problem—-cut the size of government. Anyone who works at DHS or any other federal agency, or wants to use government to further their personal agenda or bank account, is threatened by people who have an answer for the disaster they may be about to unleash.

I don't think the above is likely. I don't think we will have hyperinflation. I think things will be worse than the 1970s, but the country will pull out of it. Nonetheless, if things do go badly, then the above scenario is not unrealistic.

RIP UK

Govt hikes top income tax rate to 50%

The government will increase its top rate of income tax to a higher than expected 50 percent from next year, Chancellor Alistair Darling said on Wednesday as he delivered the government's annual budget.
The tax band had originally been due to rise to 45 percent from 40 percent in April 2011 as Britain seeks to claw back lost tax revenue caused by a deep recession.

The 50-percent rate will apply to any income above 150,000 pounds.

China wants to make Shanghai the financial capital of the world and they're offering tax breaks galore to entice businesses. Meanwhile, the vampires of London and New York seek to drain their blood.

Advantage: Shanghai.

Stupid is as stupid does...

If this is true, then there's simply no hope for the Republican Party. The Congressional Oversight Committee headed by Elizabeth Warren found that the government rescue programs are a recipe for disaster and they even drew parallels with Depression era policies enacted under Hoover and FDR! Amazing!

For conservatives to attack her commission because she personally is a liberal and her preferred solutions to the problem are left-wing is beyond stupid. She would inevitably be replaced by some 'yes woman' who has no problem signing off on government insanity programs.

Everyday we have more evidence that politicians are mostly a single group of filthy scum whose chief concern is to maintain power, and they do a wonderful job of it with the proles of America. At least we may see McCain go down in flames. What a delightful turn of events if the GOP standard bearer is kicked out of office.

Receiving nothing is better than spit in your eye

Obama's deficit, that is deficit, not spending, will be more than:
$2,000,000,000,000. And he wants to cut:
...........$100,000,000.

For every $20,000 plus in debt, he's willing to cut $1.

Consider that there are 300,000,000 million Americans. The deficit for this year will be more than $6,667 per person (!), and Obama is willing to cut your bill by $0.33.

$6,667 in debt.
$0.33 savings.

There's your change.

UPDATE: Even the AP and ABC reporters thought it was a joke, which is saying something.

Spengler to be Revealed!

SPENGLER REVEALED

Asia Times Online's essayist Spengler is the subject of one of the Internet's favorite guessing games: who is this acerbic writer whose interests range from the banking crisis to Biblical exegesis? For the past 10 years, ATol has guarded this secret zealously. In our Friday edition, Spengler will step out of the shadows with an autobiographical essay revealing who he is, why he writes, and why he chose his pseudonym.

Done with the MSM?

First, CNN's reporter argues with the protesters. Now, NBC's executives are hammering their CNBC anchors for talking too tough about Obama! This is just pathetic:

"It was an intensive, three-hour dinner at 30 Rock which Zucker himself was behind," a source familiar with the powwow told us. "There was a long discussion about whether CNBC has become too conservative and is beating up on Obama too much. There's great concern that CNBC is now the anti-Obama network. The whole meeting was really kind of creepy."

Check out the link for another bit about how the White House reacted to the Tea Parties.

If I was on-air talent at NBC, I'd have my agent on the phone with Fox Business and Bloomberg, ASAP.

I Hope Paul Ryan Gets Egged

Or at least heavily booed. He's exhibit A of the kind of Republicans in Washington. They support heavy spending and high taxes (which are the result of deficits and spending), until people start complaining. Now he's trying to hijack the Tea Party movement and act as though he's "one of us". He isn't. On Michelle Malkin's blog, an email from one of her readers:

So now all of a sudden, picking winners and losers in the market is bad policy? But a couple month ago, when Paul Ryan was arguing to give funds to the failing auto companies, that somehow wasn’t “neo-industrial policy” and wasn’t “picking winners and losers”? We weren’t taxing Toyota to save GM then? And now Paul is suddenly concerned about executive control over funding, when he said not one word after President Bush unilaterally, and illegally used TARP funds to bail out the auto industry? He’s concerned about keeping the Fed focused on the financial industry, but he had no problem with the car czar that he proposed in his earlier legislation?

Look, I’m all for cutting off these funds, and perhaps I’m being stupid to continue to go after Paul Ryan like this. But when reading these releases, you’d think that he was against these things the entire time! But only now that a Democratic President is in office, is he all of a sudden for a more reasonable fiscal policy that didn’t bailout industrial concerns.

Well you know what, that’s what a straight partisan hack does. He ought to be apologizing for his previous votes, not pretending he was being responsible the entire time, but I don’t see one bit of regret for what he did previously. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him get away with it.

Malkin sounds the right note with her own comments:

Now is not the time to sing kumbaya with the GOP or indulge in celebrity worship. This is the chance to hold your politicians accountable for engaging in legislation without deliberation, for “sacrificing the free market to save it” to paraphrase George the pre-socializer Bush, and for abandoning their fiscal conservative principles in the mad rush to “Do something.” (Quoting Rep. Ryan from last fall: “Doing nothing is the worst thing we could do!”)

I hope someone in Madison will ask why Tea Party activists should trust him not to crumble the next time the big government juggernaut yells “emergency!”

Promoting his tea party appearance, Ryan told a local radio station:

“I think the message is people are fed up with this notion of chasing ever-higher spending with ever-higher taxes. There’s a limit to how much you can soak the taxpayer.”
Message to GOP opportunists hitching their wagons to the Tea Party movement:

Practice what you preach when it matters. Not after the fact.

Right on. These guys should walk away from these events wondering if they'll still have a job in 2010.

About Time...

Texas tells Feds to stick it.

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry joined state Rep. Brandon Creighton and sponsors of House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 50 in support of states’ rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state,” Gov. Perry said. “That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”

Perry continued: "Millions of Texans are tired of Washington, DC trying to come down here to tell us how to run Texas."

A number of recent federal proposals are not within the scope of the federal government’s constitutionally designated powers and impede the states’ right to govern themselves. HCR 50 affirms that Texas claims sovereignty under the 10th Amendment over all powers not otherwise granted to the federal government.

It also designates that all compulsory federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties, or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding, be prohibited or repealed.

Link.

Benedict on the Triduum

On a different note from today's other posts, Pope Benedict XVI's address to the faithful at the general audience on Wednesday, April 8, 2009:

How marvelous, and at the same time amazing, is this mystery! We can never meditate this reality sufficiently. Jesus, though being God, did not want to make of his divine prerogatives an exclusive possession; he did not want to use his being God, his glorious dignity and power, as an instrument of triumph and sign of distance from us. On the contrary, "he emptied himself" assuming our miserable and weak human condition -- in this regard, Paul uses a quite meaningful Greek verb to indicate the "kenosis", this descent of Jesus. The divine form (morphe) is hidden in Christ under the human form, namely, under our reality marked by suffering, poverty, human limitations and death. The radical and true sharing of our nature, a sharing in everything except sin, leads him to that frontier that is the sign of our finiteness -- death. But all this was not the fruit of a dark mechanism or a blind fatality: It was instead his free choice, by his generous adherence to the salvific plan of the Father. And the death which he went out to meet -- adds Paul -- was that of the cross, the most humiliating and degrading that one can imagine. The Lord of the universe did all this out of love for us: out of love he willed to "empty himself" and make himself our brother; out of love he shared our condition, that of every man and every woman. In this connection, Theodoret of Cyrus, a great witness of the Eastern tradition, writes: "Being God and God by nature and having equality with God, he did not retain this as something great, as do those who have received some honor beyond their merits, but concealing his merits, he chose the most profound humility and took the form of a human being" (Commentary on the Letter to the Philippians, 2:6-7).

The rest of the address is at Chiesa.

More Moldbuggery

The law of bankruptcy, as handed down by sages of old, abhors the zombie. If the obligations of a zombie can be restructured, handing its bondholders a haircut but converting the result into a profitable operation, the majesty of the law is there with its machete. If the zombie is an inherently unprofitable institution, the majesty brings its axe instead, and has a grave handy.

If you've seen Dead Alive, or Braindead, the Peter Jackson horror flick, or Evil Dead II, then you understand the analogy. Once the body becomes infected, one must chop off the infected part, lest the entire body succumb to the disease. Replacing your chopped off arm with a chainsaw to do battle with other undead creature is just pure awesomeness. Not that the government will announce a new AIG, with chainsaw arms and a vulture investing beak.

Bruce Campbell's character in Army of Darkness is truly a hero for our age. His investing advice was sound as well, "Gimme some sugar baby."

Eight Decades of Free Thinking & the Zombie Threat

Anne Cleveland doesn't like the sounds emanating from the G20.

If here in the United States, the centralized government takes over and Nationalizes Banks, and IF at the G-20 group meeting of heads of State from 20 countries agreed to turn over the handling of money to the IMF, then the sovereignty of this nation has been compromised, we’ve lost the farm.

I’M saying IF. IF, if, this government has forked over the money or the power to create it to a foreign entity, that’s as crazy as Caligula appointing his horse a Counsel.

There's always gold.

Now, what could be worse than Caligula appointing his horse a Counsel? How about a zombie Caligula appoints his zombie horse a Counsel!

For example, everyone knows what a zombie bank is these days. They have also heard of the shadow banking system, which the Obama administration is doing its best to resurrect. And speaking of the Obama administration, UR readers will recall that our dear President got his start as an acolyte of a philosopher who dedicated his most famous book to Lucifer, Prince of Night - which by my calculations gives us two degrees of separation between Barack Hussein Obama and Satan himself. Not that any of this bothers anyone, of course. Why should it?

If I can boil Moldbug's long post into an analogy: brains are to zombies as debt is to America.

Aim for the head.

Life discovered at Harvard

Some background at Real Clear Politics.

What the hell is this?!

April 7 UPDATE: Nobody else knows what the hell this is either. Here's Powerline:

What the Minneapolis Star Tribune is to Keith Ellison, the New York Times is to Barack Obama. Michael Goldfarb explores the irony of the Times deep-sixing the story of Obama's bow to the King of Saudi Arabia last week. Goldfarb aptly titles his post "The NYTimes bows before Obama." We still don't know why Obama bowed to the King. At least we know why the Times is bowing!

Democracy: The Enemy of Freedom

Moldbug's latest is out. Good, and long, as always.

Bryan Caplan highlights relevant passages from Lee Kuan Yew's story of Singapore.

People in Hong Kong depended not on the government but on themselves and their families... The drive to succeed was intense; family and extended family ties were strong. Long before Milton Friedman held up Hong Kong as a model of a free-enterprise economy, I had seen the advantage of having little or no safety net. It spurred Hong Kong's people to strive to succeed. There was no social contract between the colonial government and them. Unlike Singaporeans, they could not and did not defend themselves or their collective interests. They were not a nation - indeed, were not allowed to become a nation...

Caplan: During the 50s and early 60s, Lee basically saw himself as a nationalist. So you'd think that he'd see Hong Kong's unnationhood as a big handicap. Wrong!

We had to become a nation or we would cease to exist. We had to subsidize education, health, and housing even though I tried to avoid the debilitating effects of welfarism. But the Singaporean cannot match the Hong Konger in drive and motivation. In Hong Kong when people fail, they blame themselves or their bad luck, pick themselves up, and try again... Singaporeans have different attitudes to government and to life. They prefer job security and freedom from worry. When they do not succeed they blame the government since they assume its duty is to ensure that their lives get better... Singaporeans vote for their MPs and ministers and expect them to distribute whatever prizes their are. (emphasis mine)

Read it all.

Was AIG a total fraud?

This is amazing, insane, and everything else wrapped up in an enigma of fraud. There is now the claim that AIG's CDS contracts, the supposed things worth trillions of dollars that would bankrupt the whole world economy, were, in fact...fake. And the government just sent trillions of dollars to financial companies to pay for...nothing.