“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”
This also speaks to the "stimulus checks" issue was alive and well during the pandemic. "Well, if you are against the stimulus checks, why not refuse them?"
It seems humans have cycles and those cycles have timeframes. Ours may be ending so it might be time to prepare for a different future for our kids and grandkids.
The inability of people enjoying capitalism to not understand that capitalism is what they are enjoying is amazing to behold. (I routinely behold it in my own family, seemingly!) Twitter is a garbage dump of such flawed "thinking" if one uses that term loosely.
How much of this is intentional from a much higher level? Like WEF level? Create chaos which creates crisis which creates a population begging for fixes kind of thing?
I was thinking that myself. Let private enterprise fix it. They are more able to come up with contingency plans and implement them. If we leave it to government, we will sink.
Private enterprises are the ones who constructed the the sorcery known as Just In Time logistics and manufacturing. JIT works perfectly in theory and practice until a Black Swan event, as 2008 most recently taught us, most models don’t account for black Swans because they are so rare.
2008 and 2020 are not "black swans" they are failures of government.
the mortgage crisis was caused by federal lending requirements and risk shifting though federal guarantees as freddy and fannie ran amok with uncle sam's credit rating.
2020 would have been fine if lockdowns and restrictions had not been imposed. all cause deaths in the US look like 2008.
this is 99% government causing failure than blaming free markets.
free market disruptions are short lived and rapidly self correcting.
it is only when you interfere with them that you get outcomes like this.
Fair point on them being govt intervention failures. 2008 was a Black Swan because outside of minor market corrections the conventional wisdom was real estate always goes up.
2020 was an epic cluster fuck that you could point to any number of weird ass reasons for why choices were made and be not wrong.
Agreed, that was no black swan. The mortgage bubble created by a financial instrument that everyone involved knew should have been illegal was visible from space, even for those of us for whom economics is just a hobby.
It was just a question of WHAT blunder was going to set the cards falling. But they were going to fall.
Like a 90-year old with a compromised immune system getting COVID, it wasn't that COVID killed you, it was that COVID was the first thing to show up when anything would have killed you.
I actually look forward to China getting its just desserts. I'm mean and like seeing bad guys pay hard.
I am not looking forward to what that will make immigration look like, though.
Also agree it was not a black swan. Brian Wesbury attributes it to the housing bubble created by the government-created housing bubble, followed by a government-mandated change to "mark to market" valuations that destroyed otherwise sound financial institutions. His book: It's Not as Bad as You Think
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
People talk about a civil war. Do they really think it’s easier to take up arms than it is to literally move your family to high ground? Get to the states that are free. NOW.
I just wonder, really wonder, if there was nothing left but to fight and storm DC, would we all have the guts to do it...if that really was the only option left.....
To take up arms against a fellow American or send the younger generation to war against other Americans seems a steep hill to climb especially when you compare it to selling your property and moving to a red state and realizing an immediate 30% decrease in taxes and a refreshing lifestyle.
CA farmers can't move their land; and OC homeowners aren't going to give up the beach. Unless that changes, the time will come when red CA acts to break with the illegitimate (and toothless, but for an armada of loyal judges) state gov.
It's an interesting insight, Brian. You might be right. But then again, what makes us think that there are any leaders, either in CA or TX or any state that will have the courage to openly defy federal authorities or even state authorities? Oh sure, Abbott and Desantis can make press conferences and issue nice executive orders but until we see federal offices being chained shut and their employees given 24 hours to leave the state, it's so much talk. At the end of the day, Newsome will send the thugs to arrest those farmers and beach lovers who dare resist. And the feds will threaten to pull all fed funding from any state that dares resist. We all still have too much to lose and so we hang back and keep quiet and let the tyranny roll on.
There are no "thugs" for Newsom to send to quell resistance. CA doesn't have enough police to become a police state. The only power the government has is over access to the (legal) economy - and since CA is tanking its own economy, there's nothing the rural portion needs from it anymore (and half the money is still in illegal pot in NorCal anyway).
Are you sure about that? Who do you think BLM and Antifa will serve? How difficult would it be for a one party state like CA to appeal for federal help or activate the National Guard if farmers or other freedom minded people got too uppity? Do you think CA wouldn't resort to a Chavez like property confiscation? The state has alot mire tools at its disposal than you let on. The only question is how far will people go to resist.
First, unless you live in CA, I am not sure you can grasp how under-policed it is. It is nothing like the east coast out here. Plenty of sites can provide relevant police-per-cap rates, but this doesn't even capture the whole picture since our cities are more suburban. BLM doesn't have a large foot presence here. Blacks are more conservative than urban whites, always. Gangs will probably be an issue, but not for the rural areas - the East Bay is the main locus and they have gotten used to parasitizing tourism in SF and LA for the last several years; in the case of a split they would probably turn to preying on the peninsula (SM county).
As for the Feds, that's a lottery. They might be sent west, but since that would cut them off from their center of power it would probably be the last thing they want to do - they might as well hand the rural west an army. Federal power will likely be tied up in far more vulnerable and easier to reach rural southeast.
Yes there is sense in this as a first step. But don't be fooled. Even if it were possible (and desirable) for every patriot to move to a Red state overnight, do you think that would be the end of it? No authoritarian government can ever allow a free republic to peacefully coexist on its borders for long. Eventually and always, one of two things happen: the "Berlin Wall" comes down and the formerly imprisoned citizens are free again, or the T34 tanks roll in with the Commissars.
Let me tell you how this will roll. The Regime will eventually do something that will cross that magical red line and the military will get involved to settle things. Study Spain of the 1930s. The military will split and it will be a vicious and ugly scramble by each side, assisted by partisans, to secure all the most valuable resources and strategic points. Whether foreign forces intervene is a huge question mark.
So, yes, move to a state that isn't likely to be in the Blue or on the border but dont think that moving will be enough. Stock up. Bad times are coming soon.
"U.S. supply chain too snarled for Biden Christmas fix, experts say"
These media and government goons are already trying to soften the blow of shortages by implying that our Xmas baubles might be late, ignoring that the problem that has been created by government interference won't stop at a shortage of plastic trinkets, but cause people to freeze and starve to death in the USA, all due to man-made emergencies.
No, silly, it's the unvaccinated! Actually to some extent, perhaps true: there probably are truckers and others in the transportation industry that refuse the jab and have been fired/denied contracts/etc. In a way, that is the free market responding to government regulations. I'm not saying it's this way yet, but imagine CA mandating that only "fully vaccinated" workers unload the ships at Long Beach and that similarly truckers (who must be "employees," not "independent contractors") drive the goods through the State.
Fair enough, but AB5 was not an attempt to "fix" capitalism. It was a deliberate economic coup, authored by former AFL-CIO leader Lorena Gonzalez, to starve the non-union CA workforce out of existence so that whatever is left could be turned into a party-patronage feudal state. The Long Beach backlog is just a mark of success.
As a lifelong California, quite often I get the distinct feeling that I am witnessing a population of barbarians living in the ruins of a once-great civilization.
Rome, Athens and other places once had great accomplishments, sometimes being the seat of a government that ruled the known world. Western civilization is still based on many tenets they discovered. Now goats graze among the ruins of once majestic buildings. Or at least they did for many centuries. Point: these city-states and their nations have never regained the peaks of achievement they had centuries or millennia ago.
No, that's what I mean about living in the ruins. It's still stunningly beautiful here, and the builders of this place did a fantastic job setting up the infrastructure to make it possible for so many people to live in such an amazing place. But for the last half century, it's just been a gradual deterioration.
It was a wonderful place to grow up. So much freedom, bike riding everywhere, walking to the beach, dune buggies in the desert, idyllic childhood. The politicians started “smart growth” planning when 95% had been built out. The elite started moving in, in droves. It went from a hippy/surfer vibe to an “I got mine, too bad for you” attitude, epitomized in the early 2000s during an energy shortage when a new resident to a very upscale area said she would never hang clothes on the line, to save energy, that was too Beverly Hillbillies.
As a surfer born to hippy parents, believe me I'm right there with you. California from the 1950's to 1980's truly has to be one of the high points of human civilization period. But since then . . .
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”
-Ayn Rand
Wisdom from the grave. She was brilliant.
Also in this essay by Sir John Glubb, THE FATE OF EMPIRES and SEARCH FOR SURVIVAL. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
Jesus, and people are showering praise on Ayn Rand, who died penniless and ON WELFARE, the very system she would have denied everyone else.
Here you go Joe. Took about 10 seconds to find. https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/The-Myth-about-Ayn-Rand-and-Social-Security/
This also speaks to the "stimulus checks" issue was alive and well during the pandemic. "Well, if you are against the stimulus checks, why not refuse them?"
Something must change...soon.
Or not. See http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
It seems humans have cycles and those cycles have timeframes. Ours may be ending so it might be time to prepare for a different future for our kids and grandkids.
Just give me about 20 more years. I feel for our younger generations.
There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation.
The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
― Will Rogers
The inability of people enjoying capitalism to not understand that capitalism is what they are enjoying is amazing to behold. (I routinely behold it in my own family, seemingly!) Twitter is a garbage dump of such flawed "thinking" if one uses that term loosely.
How much of this is intentional from a much higher level? Like WEF level? Create chaos which creates crisis which creates a population begging for fixes kind of thing?
I was thinking that myself. Let private enterprise fix it. They are more able to come up with contingency plans and implement them. If we leave it to government, we will sink.
Private enterprises are the ones who constructed the the sorcery known as Just In Time logistics and manufacturing. JIT works perfectly in theory and practice until a Black Swan event, as 2008 most recently taught us, most models don’t account for black Swans because they are so rare.
2008 and 2020 are not "black swans" they are failures of government.
the mortgage crisis was caused by federal lending requirements and risk shifting though federal guarantees as freddy and fannie ran amok with uncle sam's credit rating.
2020 would have been fine if lockdowns and restrictions had not been imposed. all cause deaths in the US look like 2008.
this is 99% government causing failure than blaming free markets.
free market disruptions are short lived and rapidly self correcting.
it is only when you interfere with them that you get outcomes like this.
Fair point on them being govt intervention failures. 2008 was a Black Swan because outside of minor market corrections the conventional wisdom was real estate always goes up.
2020 was an epic cluster fuck that you could point to any number of weird ass reasons for why choices were made and be not wrong.
2008 was anything but a black swan. many of us predicted it well in advance.
it's what happens when you add too much leverage to a market and drive prices away from fundamentals.
housing prices in aggregate generally tracked the general price level.
for them to have a sudden 4 std dev excursion to the upside due to forced lending and manipulated rates could obviously only end one way.
china is next. that one's gonna be a doozie.
predicting exactly "when" is very, very hard.
but "if"? that one's pretty straightforward.
Agreed, that was no black swan. The mortgage bubble created by a financial instrument that everyone involved knew should have been illegal was visible from space, even for those of us for whom economics is just a hobby.
It was just a question of WHAT blunder was going to set the cards falling. But they were going to fall.
Like a 90-year old with a compromised immune system getting COVID, it wasn't that COVID killed you, it was that COVID was the first thing to show up when anything would have killed you.
I actually look forward to China getting its just desserts. I'm mean and like seeing bad guys pay hard.
I am not looking forward to what that will make immigration look like, though.
Also agree it was not a black swan. Brian Wesbury attributes it to the housing bubble created by the government-created housing bubble, followed by a government-mandated change to "mark to market" valuations that destroyed otherwise sound financial institutions. His book: It's Not as Bad as You Think
EPIC post. One for the ages. Thank you Gato.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
--Robert Heinlein
But Brawndo’s got what plants need. It’s got electrolytes!
"UPGRAYYYD!"
They're gonna get what they voted for, good and hard.
Collateral damage will be the “we” who didn’t vote for this calamity.
Yes, but they will never realize that this is what they voted for, nor will they ever admit they were wrong.
Sadly, in a democratic republic, the minority who did not vote for it, is gonna get it too, no matter how small that margin was.
Unfortunately, so are we.
People talk about a civil war. Do they really think it’s easier to take up arms than it is to literally move your family to high ground? Get to the states that are free. NOW.
I think a lot of people dont relish civil war or conflict, but recognize that it looks more and more probable. The madness is spreading everywhere.
just what I was thinking too.
I just wonder, really wonder, if there was nothing left but to fight and storm DC, would we all have the guts to do it...if that really was the only option left.....
To take up arms against a fellow American or send the younger generation to war against other Americans seems a steep hill to climb especially when you compare it to selling your property and moving to a red state and realizing an immediate 30% decrease in taxes and a refreshing lifestyle.
I concur. I was just pondering...in case the day came. Moving to a red state assures nothing in the long run.
Buy Bitcoin.
Healthy hesitancy on that too, need to investigate more!
CA farmers can't move their land; and OC homeowners aren't going to give up the beach. Unless that changes, the time will come when red CA acts to break with the illegitimate (and toothless, but for an armada of loyal judges) state gov.
It's an interesting insight, Brian. You might be right. But then again, what makes us think that there are any leaders, either in CA or TX or any state that will have the courage to openly defy federal authorities or even state authorities? Oh sure, Abbott and Desantis can make press conferences and issue nice executive orders but until we see federal offices being chained shut and their employees given 24 hours to leave the state, it's so much talk. At the end of the day, Newsome will send the thugs to arrest those farmers and beach lovers who dare resist. And the feds will threaten to pull all fed funding from any state that dares resist. We all still have too much to lose and so we hang back and keep quiet and let the tyranny roll on.
There are no "thugs" for Newsom to send to quell resistance. CA doesn't have enough police to become a police state. The only power the government has is over access to the (legal) economy - and since CA is tanking its own economy, there's nothing the rural portion needs from it anymore (and half the money is still in illegal pot in NorCal anyway).
Are you sure about that? Who do you think BLM and Antifa will serve? How difficult would it be for a one party state like CA to appeal for federal help or activate the National Guard if farmers or other freedom minded people got too uppity? Do you think CA wouldn't resort to a Chavez like property confiscation? The state has alot mire tools at its disposal than you let on. The only question is how far will people go to resist.
First, unless you live in CA, I am not sure you can grasp how under-policed it is. It is nothing like the east coast out here. Plenty of sites can provide relevant police-per-cap rates, but this doesn't even capture the whole picture since our cities are more suburban. BLM doesn't have a large foot presence here. Blacks are more conservative than urban whites, always. Gangs will probably be an issue, but not for the rural areas - the East Bay is the main locus and they have gotten used to parasitizing tourism in SF and LA for the last several years; in the case of a split they would probably turn to preying on the peninsula (SM county).
As for the Feds, that's a lottery. They might be sent west, but since that would cut them off from their center of power it would probably be the last thing they want to do - they might as well hand the rural west an army. Federal power will likely be tied up in far more vulnerable and easier to reach rural southeast.
Well you make some good arguments, I'll admit.
Yes there is sense in this as a first step. But don't be fooled. Even if it were possible (and desirable) for every patriot to move to a Red state overnight, do you think that would be the end of it? No authoritarian government can ever allow a free republic to peacefully coexist on its borders for long. Eventually and always, one of two things happen: the "Berlin Wall" comes down and the formerly imprisoned citizens are free again, or the T34 tanks roll in with the Commissars.
Let me tell you how this will roll. The Regime will eventually do something that will cross that magical red line and the military will get involved to settle things. Study Spain of the 1930s. The military will split and it will be a vicious and ugly scramble by each side, assisted by partisans, to secure all the most valuable resources and strategic points. Whether foreign forces intervene is a huge question mark.
So, yes, move to a state that isn't likely to be in the Blue or on the border but dont think that moving will be enough. Stock up. Bad times are coming soon.
Assumes that the trend toward eliminating the ability of states to remain free is not underway and acclerating.
I am not American, but good luck getting Texas to bend the knee to this federal regime.
This is a Rueters headline from today:
"U.S. supply chain too snarled for Biden Christmas fix, experts say"
These media and government goons are already trying to soften the blow of shortages by implying that our Xmas baubles might be late, ignoring that the problem that has been created by government interference won't stop at a shortage of plastic trinkets, but cause people to freeze and starve to death in the USA, all due to man-made emergencies.
I'm sure Russia is to blame.
"experts say".
No, silly, it's the unvaccinated! Actually to some extent, perhaps true: there probably are truckers and others in the transportation industry that refuse the jab and have been fired/denied contracts/etc. In a way, that is the free market responding to government regulations. I'm not saying it's this way yet, but imagine CA mandating that only "fully vaccinated" workers unload the ships at Long Beach and that similarly truckers (who must be "employees," not "independent contractors") drive the goods through the State.
Oh indeed, it always Russia...MSM screaming that all day long. LOL!
Fair enough, but AB5 was not an attempt to "fix" capitalism. It was a deliberate economic coup, authored by former AFL-CIO leader Lorena Gonzalez, to starve the non-union CA workforce out of existence so that whatever is left could be turned into a party-patronage feudal state. The Long Beach backlog is just a mark of success.
As a lifelong California, quite often I get the distinct feeling that I am witnessing a population of barbarians living in the ruins of a once-great civilization.
As a native Californian who escaped years ago, California seems to be the best example of the frog in (now boiling) water. But the weather!
Rome, Athens and other places once had great accomplishments, sometimes being the seat of a government that ruled the known world. Western civilization is still based on many tenets they discovered. Now goats graze among the ruins of once majestic buildings. Or at least they did for many centuries. Point: these city-states and their nations have never regained the peaks of achievement they had centuries or millennia ago.
Exactly. California seems like it might have felt in the early post-peak periods of those kinds of places.
No, that's what I mean about living in the ruins. It's still stunningly beautiful here, and the builders of this place did a fantastic job setting up the infrastructure to make it possible for so many people to live in such an amazing place. But for the last half century, it's just been a gradual deterioration.
It was a wonderful place to grow up. So much freedom, bike riding everywhere, walking to the beach, dune buggies in the desert, idyllic childhood. The politicians started “smart growth” planning when 95% had been built out. The elite started moving in, in droves. It went from a hippy/surfer vibe to an “I got mine, too bad for you” attitude, epitomized in the early 2000s during an energy shortage when a new resident to a very upscale area said she would never hang clothes on the line, to save energy, that was too Beverly Hillbillies.
As a surfer born to hippy parents, believe me I'm right there with you. California from the 1950's to 1980's truly has to be one of the high points of human civilization period. But since then . . .
Wow! Eloquent and accurate. Also terrifying.
I prefer "free markets" to "capitalism", but that's a nit... Outstanding :-)
Great post!!! Who is John Galt?
maybe mass starvation is the plan