Puzzled

We have a severe problem. A puzzle to solve. You see, everything was just fine before, when we all ate what grew on trees and drank what flowed in streams. You know, we got by alright, trading what we harvested or made for things that other people harvested or made. But now, look at all the things made! They want computers and cars and all sorts of stuff. And, well, people will make whatever anyone could possibly dream of. They sky is really the limit. All that is required is a lot of money, and someone will think of a way to create it...eventually. Flying cars, nitrogen widgets, whatever. That's the whole problem!

We need people to stop wanting all these things. It truly causes a large amount of effort on our part. As one puzzle is solved, we move on to the next one, and the next, just solving one puzzle after another until we have jet packs and restorative nano bots and really good coffee filters. I truly fear there is no end to this cycle, as I ponder this other puzzle before me...the one of disintegrating all the others...of telling the world we don't really all need, hm, let's say cars with navigation systems...

All those thousands of people out there solved this great big puzzle. They made it impossible to get lost by creating a device that yells at us every time we need to make a turn...screaming over any conversation we might be having...as if the puzzle that was solved is so much more important than the puzzle being solved by the riding conversationalists. But remember that there was a time when humans remembered how to get places. It could be done, and the brain power required was not that prohibitive. Now, instead of being able to delight in the puzzle that always allowed us that welcome distraction of finding out how to get where we're going, we have a substitute distraction of trying to find some way to coexist peacefully while a computerized voice interrupts us every few minutes (after the novelty of trying different voices fades away into that dull, complacent dependency...eventually drooling over ourselves, trying to remember which way was right and which way was left).

Isn't it ironic that, in a time on unprecedented abundance, we also have unprecedented want? I forget the definition of irony, having delighted in a lifetime of lax education and intellectual laziness required to succeed in our times. Maybe now is an appropriate time to snub intellect and civilization altogether, pointing to our great prosperity as evidence that such things are not required in the modern world, much less education. Education?! You are living in the dark ages, my friend. We don't need no education. What we need is a facade of education that relies on commercial-style appeals to human weakness...like smiling children holding books! Yes, LOTS OF SMILING CHILDREN HOLDING BOOKS is excellent promotional material. This way, children will think that books will bring them happiness and affection...just the act of reading a book, whatever book, and completely regardless of any comprehension. And, while they hold books that remind them that they are perfect whatever they do, their parents will think their kids are actually learning something. All the while, generations come to believe that everybody is okay no matter what they do or say, and that all we need for a successful society is to encourage the laziness of ourselves and others through low expectations. All the while, as cartoon characters advocate weakness to pleasure, vanity, and laziness, we plant profitable seeds in these young minds...seeds that ease the commercial mandate of persuasion necessary to turn a "citizen" into a "consumer."

They are the loving, tolerant, politically correct, compassionate, friendly, well-intentioned, harmless tools that require a hefty expense for 18 years, but subsequent decades of low hanging fruit for the esteemed corporate partners. But it gets better, as these precious cogs assure each other with every breath that all that glitters is indeed gold...and that it is gold worth every puzzle ever assembled and all that will be...and that this is to continue until the last person on earth has died without needing to lift one finger in search of a map...until all suffer nothing but the arduous puzzle of identifying every slightest whim to relieve, then to have it satisfied instantly for the duration of his 100 years plugged into his pleasure machine.

It is his throne, where he rules a universe of his own mindless altruist minions. It is a population he, himself, has cleverly learned to control in every way, carving them out in the way that relieves his slightest dissatisfaction, like scratching a subtle itch, first with the property of one population, then with the freedom of another, until they claw over each other's backs to delight his will, all to impress one another with the tokens he tosses them...all to become this laughing, proud, delirious master themselves. Surely no puzzle could be more honorable, more desirous that this one, as I resume my tiny part toward this universal goal...one small contributor to the balancing of life down to a flat line of perpetual self-gratification that is to define our species. Back to the puzzle.

The Treatment

"So doc, if you had to give me a number, what would it be? I mean, one in a hundred, a thousand?"

"Sir, you are terminally ill. There is no hope. Zero. I'm sorry."

"But, well, what about some anomaly? I mean, hasn't one person in my condition recovered?"

"Sir, you have a condition known as life. No one has ever made it out alive."

"Oh, well, hm. So, they probably just haven't figured it out, right? Maybe they just need to try something different...like a natural medicine?"

"No, I'm afraid no herbs can help you any more than anyone else."

"How about lots of vitamins?"

"Afraid not."

"What about yoga, meditation, juicing?"

"Nope, nope, and nope. Sorry, your condition is permanent."

"Why are you doing this? Can't you give me any hope? Aren't you the least bit sympathetic?"

"Very. I have a bad case myself."

"Of what?"

"The same disease you have. Life."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be."

"Are you treating it?"

"Well, yes, I am. Self-medicating you might say. It's very experimental. It is my own design."

"Oooh! Tell me how! Tell me tell me!"

"No."

"Come on doc, why not?"

"Because the treatment is very specific. It is different for each individual."

"Oh, but I'm just like you! I want a treatment too!"

"You may be just like me in some ways, but very different in others. The side effects could be disastrous."

"I don't care about side effects. I need the cure."

"It's not a cure, it only deals with the symptoms. To have any chance at helping I would need to run a bunch of tests. I would need to ask questions and we would need to consider everything from genetics to your psychological profile. I'm sorry, but life is a disease that manifests itself in very different ways. It spiders its tendrils all over you. You are the host of a parasite that cannot be stopped. It has taken me a decades to learn how to treat myself, and sometimes it does more harm than good."

"Do you administer treatments yourself?"

"Oh, all the time. Every day I administer at least some kind of treatment."

"Oooh, ooh, tell me tell me! I need to hear."

"No, I would be responsible for the damages. It's not professional. I can't do it."

"PLEEEEAAASE!"

"Alright, damnit, sign this waver. It means that nothing I say is medical advice, alright?"

"Oh yes. Okay, here I sign. Now, tell me how you treat yourself."

"You are not going to believe me."

"Tell me."

"Alright, here goes. Every day I do one thing that I have never done before, you see? That's it."

"That's it?"

"Yes, that's it. I think of something unique and interesting...sometimes boring, sometimes as outrageous as possible...and then I do it. That's all. Are you happy?"

"That's not very specific. That could be anything. Not fair."

"You got that right."

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes."

"Well then, tell me more. What sort of therapy do you have in mind for today?"

"Well, you're my last appointment, so I need to figure that out."

"I have an idea. You could tell me all the things that you have ever done so I could get a bunch of ideas. I'll bet you've never done that before!"

"Nope, not therapeutic. I was thinking a stroll to some hidden spot to enjoy the air, woods, water, think about life."

"How do you cure a disease by thinking about the disease itself? What kind of treatment is that!?"

"It's a pesky one, and requires thought. You see, I'm still discovering my own particular manifestation of the disease. I cannot treat what I cannot diagnose."

"By why do you need woods and water for that?"

"I don't know why. Sometimes I just know. I know, not very scientific. But, that may be my best advice. In order to manage this disease, you need to learn to diagnose your own manifestation and then you may be able to discover the treatment."

"But this is a terrible, deadly disease? You want to go for a walk? Why not go hot air ballooning? Why don't you go scuba diving or something? While your playing, this disease is winning. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Maybe. Well, like I said, your treatment will probably differ, and results do vary. I can't know if hot air ballooning is best for you. Maybe you already know what you require. Sir, it's after 3:30. I'm afraid I have done all I can for you. In fact I believe I have offered more than any doctor could be expected to prescribe, and my last patient is waiting?"

"But I thought I was your last patient."

"Not quite."

Public Service Announcement

Whenever you consider the possibility that the god you are expected to worship is a fictional tool of emotional extortion contrived to swindle you out of your money while relieving you of moral responsibility, remember what happens to heretics. Have a nice day :)

Quote of the Day

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -C.S. Lewis

I torment you with the sincere approval of my conscience.

Why is common sense so damn uncommon. No one spearheads the ruthless extermination of human populations without the incessant, shrieking obligation of their conscience. With every body burned some psychotic ideologue offers a toast of goodwill for all. This is a fact so consistent...so reinforced by historical experience, that we can be quite certain that the amount of moral zeal behind any public policy is directly proportional to its destructive power...the well-intentioned exploited by the puppeteers, used to perpetuate the opposite of their intention.

If passion and virtue belongs in the public sphere...if our conscience must drive us to engage in behavior of a scope beyond that which we know and love directly...apart from true knowledge and understanding that can only exist between friends, lovers, family...I believe there is one appropriate place for it: dedicated to the dissolution of all tyrannies through which an individual can secretly hijack the fruits of another's conscience for their own purposes. Impossible, you say, that such cold monsters really exist? Then ask what savage, if an adequately organized tyranny existed, would secretly starve an unseen contenent to feed her hungry, screaming child? Does this monster approve of such a tyranny? Enhance it and utilize it to the extent of her power? Exploit it until billions of imaciated bodies have piled up overseas and her own child is no longer suffering? In defense of this tyranny I expect cries of compassion for the dead...her empathy to be broadcast at whatever volume required to expand the tyranny until generations have been secured at the expense of whatever unthinkable atrocities are necessary to maintain it. So long as the front of the tyranny prevents her identification, there is no end to her brutality.

I contend that one cannot refuse to be the mother any more than we might be expected to disregard a loved one in need. One can only refuse to be the child of this scenario, lest the throat become horse and raspy from a lifetime of labored shrieking at the expense of many. But those many are also to blame. They did not attack the tyranny while they watched it grow to the size necessary to deprive this child in the first place. They also exploited and enhanced it for whatever gain they could derrive from it. Now, they depend on it, and will not take lightly to its exposure and deconstruction. And now, at the approval of my conscience, I will stop tormenting you for your own good.

What is a Liberal?

I never characterize myself as a conservative economist. As I understand the English language, conservative means conserving, keeping things as they are. I don't want to keep things as they are. The true conservatives today are the people who are in favor of ever bigger government. The people who call themselves liberals today -- the New Dealers -- they are the true conservatives, because they want to keep going on the same path we're going on. I would like to dismantle that. I call myself a liberal in the true sense of liberal, in the sense in which it means of and pertaining to freedom. -Milton Friedman

The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial--that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions. -Ludwig von Mises

Does a liberal adopt the philosophy of shared responsibility propagandized by both political parties? Does a liberal encourage the word "liberal" to be redefined as "the philosophy of yielding liberties so that political power may be concentrated into the hands of a few at the expense of many?" I thought a "liberal" insisted upon breaking the chains of enslavement. Is every member of the electorate apathetic and materialistic enough to nudge the winds of politics in whatever way required to blow money in their direction by way of a vote? Is every member of society engaged in this game whereby one half conspires to steal from the other through political will at the urging of their constituents? If this is the case, how can we expect anything short of mob rule orchestrated by those few individuals most adept at thievery? Reviewing the events that sparked the current (and coming) economic collapse, is there any doubt that this, in fact, has happened?

I find it interesting that globalism, the collective mentality that insists we must depend upon distant institutions and governments for our prosperity, was the exact mentality that caused our current economic crisis...the pooling of loans to distribute risk over borders and oceans. This artificial distribution of risk dilutes accountability in economics as much as it does in morality, as participants find themselves surrounded by a community of individuals who have all passed the buck to somebody else. They couldn't imagine the possibility that everyone around them could also be morally bankrupt, and that their environment is one of collective corruption and deceit. And, that their actions are robbing the innocent (guilty of nothing but their ignorance) of their prosperity. After all these are good, esteemed, respected members of American society. If they are corrupt, America itself must have been corrupted? Is this the case? How could they have imagined the correct answer to that question?

Now, the regulators who want to place strict limits on the panicked globalist's economic agenda are held up as heroes even as those same globalists are shouting for more economic stimulus...stimulus that requires more dependency on foreign governments, subservience of our children to a mountain of debt, perpetuating the original corruption in the most extreme order possible. If a little shared responsibility allowed the conditions for global tragedy to occur, how does a whole lot of shared responsibility prevent an expansion of those conditions?

If we couldn't trust them before, why are we trusting them now?

The same populist demagogues that encouraged the deregulation that caused the problem now pass judgment on those who prospered as a result of those policies. Let's explore Barney Frank's endorsement of the policies of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac...

September 2003
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping make housing more affordable, both in general through leveraging the mortgage market, and in particular, they have a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing, and that is what I am concerned about here. I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals. I worry frankly that there is a tension here.

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

He was wrong. Giving unqualified borrowers money turned out to be a bad idea. Then, it created the predictable monopoly conditions as investors believed the government would not let Fanny and Freddie fail. As a result a speculative bubble appeared, then popped, then Barney decided to do what he formerly promised he wouldn't...bail them out...

September 2008
The Treasury Department intends to use the powers that Congress provided it to ensure the continued and stable functioning of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...I am pleased by the secretary's strong reaffirmation that the vital roles these institutions play in our nation's housing markets must continue.

In other words, he takes our money and uses it to save the companies that would have otherwise failed...the companies that got into trouble in the first place because of the easy-credit policies he encouraged.

Then, the company that insures these mortgages and engages in related investments, AIG, also asks for money. He takes our money and gives it to them too, although he would have taken more from us if he could have...

March 2009
I think the terrible economic situation Obama has inherited was so bad that it [economic stimulus package] could have been 20 percent bigger.

Then he expresses outrage when folks associated to his meddling are prospering as a result of his response to the AIG bailout. (When asked, he claims Bernanke strong-armed congress to push the $85 billion through using Section 13 (3) of the Federal Reserve Act, passed in 1932 by a philosophical interventionalist predecessor, Hoover). Now the public is watching, so he needs to be sure people know how outraged he is at a tiny minority who had almost nothing to do with it...

March 2009
These bonuses are going to people who screwed this thing up enormously ... Since the federal government ... now essentially owns that company, maybe it's time to fire some people.

Who is rewarding incompetence?

We are.

Barney has no choice but to be outraged if he wants to keep his job. He has basically deflated the tires on the firetruck, blamed the fire station for starting the fire, then threw a bucket of gasoline on the flames. This has been the case since the Federal Reserve Act, and persists through the likes of Mr. Frank. He does not expect the public to understand that he shares responsibility. Besides, if he can share it, why admit any at all? We'll never recognize the truth...that he caused this scenario in the first place. No, all of us are way too stupid for that...

I am sure he will express outrage the next time his policies fail as well, blaming whoever and whatever he needs to in order to pass accountability elsewhere. How could he or anyone in Washington expect to keep their jobs otherwise?

Last I checked there was not a single person in Washington or Wall Street inherently accountable for any part of this economic crisis, nor have any accepted responsibility. The moral fabric has been shredded so thoroughly by this dizzying, sickening circle of blame that it seeks to wrap ever fiber of society in its turbulent wrath. Without a place for the buck to stop these bastards want their incompetence to be diluted by the failure of not just a city, not a country, nor just a measly hemisphere...but THE WHOLE GLOBE.

There are systems of government superior to the kleptocracy ours has devolved to...

In a monarchy, there is some semblance of accountability...the monarch. And, if the king is not to blame, it is nonetheless the throne who should have been paying more attention. When their heads eventually roll (as difficult as that may be), it becomes a lesson to the next king. He might be persuaded to check on his Royal Hedge Fund managers from time to time to make sure they aren't ripping away the prosperity of his loyal subjects, lest they assemble their pitchforks.

Is Barney Frank today's knight in shining armor? This seems to be so. Maybe anyone who's intentions sound compassionate and reasonable should be rewarded for their errors until they are actually spilling loaves of bread into rivers at the end of bread lines. Their small-government "conservative" counterparts haven't done any better.

A real liberal is an individual conscious of our current condition, outraged at the shameful behavior of its beneficiaries, and disgusted at the participation/incompetence of our elected representatives. But, so is a real conservative. So, I believe a true liberal can identify the actual cause of this mess...the philosophy of shared responsibility who's thin altruistic blanket shrouds a deft minority willing and able to silently relieve the liberty and prosperity of the general population. To conquer this historic foe is and always has been the plight of the liberal. But wait, the same goes for the true conservative.

The reality is, neither conservatives nor liberals exist in our federal government. There is one common interest among almost all of our representatives, and that seems to be loyalty to the state and their own corporate sponsors. No one has the balls to stand up and say "I'll risk my job to speak the truth, expose fraud, and represent my constituents." Until we have that, we have no liberals or conservatives in government, but professional hypocrites who mock both terms.

Where does the buck really stop? I suspect there is a reasonable answer to that, although my suspicion is inappropriate to venture here.

Toast

To all who might listen to a small and insignificant voice tarnished by the precedence of youthful ignorance, suspect from the influence of want, and bemired by the weight of sincerity...if such a voice could ever be heard or if one could ever believe it to exist, having penetrated the engine of distraction that surrounds us. If such words could be believed, I might venture to hope that they would be these, as small as that chance might be. And, if pressed to say something worthy of being believed, I would expect my reader to have, at one time or another, also believed to have known something worthy of being said...and have missed the chance to say it, or to have been denied the opportunity to have been listened to or believed. We know that appeals to emotion, while effective to persuade, do not make words more or less true, but that such words have a tendency to be in error due to the zeal or distress of the speaker. And, as such, I might try to limit the number of words I decide to use in this communication, as I might, in my current state, be afflicted by such influences...

So, to friends and family, and to all willing the yield their heart and surrender this moment in time, I make a toast: To life, to happiness, to love, and to success in all that you do. May your kindness and spirit be an example to all, and may you continue to be an inspiration to those who know you for the duration of your long and healthy life. Cheers to you! You have my most sincere and humble blessings. Of course, I will continue accept your monetary donations as always, to assure the skeptics I have some skin in the game.