eisenhower feared the rise and dominance of the military and industrial might that had driven fascism and imperialism to the fore in the 1930’s. he saw it in germany, in italy, and in japan. he saw it ongoing in the united states and in the soviet union and the cold war that was ripe to be waged and to come to dominate public perception and geopolitics as a result. largely, he was correct. for this reason, his farewell address is well remembered for its warnings against the “military industrial complex.”
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together
this is a wise and principled man who had seen enough of war and of war mongers to wish to see no more.
his stark warnings about industry and government riding around in the same car resulting in the driving over of we the people and the need for an informed, alert public protective of its liberty and agency that it might thrive and prosper in freedom rings as true to today as it did then.
oracular as this was, even more prescient was this less remembered but, to my mind, far more presently important admonition:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
because unlike many generals who are mired in the past and determined to fight the last war, ike saw the shape of the war to come for this, not the arms races of great powers, is the threat to the lives and livelihoods of today and it is further reaching and holds the potential to be FAR more terrible.
this is the “tyranny of experts” and the utter dominance of discourse and the foundational freedoms and order of society that it can attain.
such technocratic domination comes to pass because of a feedback loop that establishes the framework, both political and scientific, to create a “rule by experts.”
the problem is that by the time this loop has run, there are not experts, merely commissars, chosen and promoted for fealty, not foresight or accuracy. science becomes a guild of medieval bards singing the false praises of feckless leaders because more so now that ever, science runs on money and just as in the courts of kings, he who pays the piper shall call the tune.
the government picks scientists who tell it what it wants to hear. these are elevated. others are starved. soon, anyone entering a field knows that “if you want have a career, you need to study X and your conclusions must look like Y.” this is not exploration, it’s justification. this, in turn, supports the “right sort of government,” a technocratic government, not one pushing choice or a small state. that’s no use to the grant grabbers and subsidy snufflers. so “the science” always comes down on the side of fascist systems because that’s where the gravy train is.
and this is a bad, bad cycle for those in search of personal rights and agency, for the whole point of a technocratic state is to tell you what to do for your own good and get rich and powerful while doing so.
so it all comes down to money and who gets to hand it out.
the grant and subsidy system for american science has become VAST and this vastness poses several problems:
it crowds out private science. you cannot compete against those getting free money with money you have to raise, pay back, and provide return upon. this is especially true in basic science whose time to return is longer and outcomes less certain. this pushes the private sector out of entire fields.
it allocates funding based on non-market considerations. there is no valid system to compare alternative uses of scarce capital. it is instead allocated using patronage and the preferences of bureaucrats aspiring to be princes. this becomes both self serving and self supporting. it results in deep and enduring regulatory and public choice capture.
this concentrates the power of the purse and thereby the power to literally direct and shape the sweep of scientific endeavor into the hands of a small, unaccountable aristocracy who in turn, feed a set of select universities, ideologies, and organizations drawing them into their financial and dogmatic orbits. and the gravity of such systems comes to dominate everything.
the establishment of such systems is always done for what sound like the best of reasons. “the government should fund studies in tropical diseases!” this sounds great. who is not favor of more tropical disease solutions? let’s cure it! huzzah!
but this is a trap.
it’s easy to pass this off to the citizenry as “the good kind of government” and the “solving of real problems to the benefit of the general welfare.” but it’s not. generally, it’s a huge waste, a carnival of cronyism, and the setup for the ideological domination of science by a few unaccountable agents so that that science can, in turn, be used to justify and dominate government opposing anything remotely libertarian in favor of central planning.
consider the above points:
so we fund research into tropical disease with government grants and projects. this crowds out the private projects. but it also prevents unrelated projects. it takes scarce capital and research talent and allocates it to studying, say, zika. even if they find a cure, was this a good outcome? how can you even know? what else might we have done with the same resources?
this is one of the great governmental sleights of hand.
they point to a benefit and ignore not just the cost, but also the opportunity cost. what else might we have done with that money? sure, we cured zika, but what if we could have reduced heart disease by 25% using the same inputs? that would be a FAR greater benefit and central allocators have no way to weigh such things or even get a real look at the universe of options.
should we fund work on prions or stem cells? should we pursue vaccines or means of treatment or possibly ways to make people more innately healthy? these are questions you need a market to answer. government will never get them right. it does not even have incentive to try to get it right.
so you get a program that sounded good, but is almost certainly a huge net loser relative to what you could have had and you lose unpredictable advances because they are starved of funding and staffing.
this then concentrates the power in the hands of a very few people.
you get things like the fauci fiefdom. he’s the highest paid federal employee. he’s paid more than the president. and he’s not even the head of his agency.
but he is the top gold giver, the funder at the center of the spider web who has half the universities in the US on payroll and who knows how many non-profit and corporate collaborations ongoing. this makes him untouchable. he can color WAY outside the lines on gain of function and nothing happens even when the evidence surfaces that the NIH probably paid peter daszak and co at EHA to design covid-19 in wuhan. (and yes, despite what many claim, the evidence on this is extremely compelling. the systematic suppression of that evidence stands testament to just how much power and fealty one can amass in 40 years of scientific patronage.)
these fiefdoms exist at the sufferance of and therefore must be of benefit to the governmental powers that be.
modern government has been veering dangerously into technocracy. they claim “this is too important to be left to markets” or “markets cannot account for X.”
this is, of course, exactly wrong. only free markets and well designed rights structures can assess trade-offs in any meaningful sense and generate the pareto-optimal outcomes that do not strip from high value projects to fund those of low worth.
the state is not seeking to fix this, they are seeking to break it because they have projects that suit their desire for power, ideologies, and the financial weal of themselves and their conies and collaborators.
fascism is foremost a corporatist system of organization. it creates a connected aristocracy where the government dominates the companies and the companies dominate the government as one filthy hand rubs another and the dirt winds up all over we the people, for everywhere and always will gato’s first law of political economy pertain:
“as soon as you allow politicians to determine that which is bought or sold, the first thing to be bought and sold will always be politicians.”
this is what politicians and big business alike want. politicians need the money to run their campaigns and seek to dominate business focus as a means to express and consolidate power. big business wants to be bigger business and as such is no fan of competition or free markets. they want regulation, subsidy, preferencing, and means to exclude others from their spheres.
and the solution to both of these sets of desires is the same:
technocracy.
if you have government by experts telling us what to do, where to allocate resources, dictating regulation, taxation, and social mores for “the common good” then government gets to bend you to its vision, and big business gets to do the bending and profit handsomely from it.
this inherently pits special interest against the public interest.
but the public is notoriously sensitive to such and so pretext and justification is needed.
and this is why federal funding of science is so unspeakably dangerous.
once federal funding comes to dominate scientific endeavor, it leads to rapid and inevitable corruption of science. it ceases to be an adversarial field of challenge and contest and becomes a form of techno-clerisy, a priesthood protecting its doctrine.
the feedback loop rapidly reduces whole fields into dogmatic dross of purified fealty highly suited to political purpose but anathema to any sort of endeavor that the likes of sir francis bacon would have recognized as science.
governmental money is the alkahest of scientific method. it dissolves it into politics and strips it of its vital nature.
we’ve seen this in 100 fields. climate science was ravaged and reduced to a one note flute of backbench hacks elevated to prominence like so many soviet commissars who had never even seen a farm placed in charge of agriculture to ensure the ideological purity of turnips.
and so we get vast subsidies for renewables and electric vehicles that could not compete in a market unaided and likely make little or no overall environmental sense. other options (like nuclear) are discarded out of hand not because they are dangerous, but because they work and the cronies cannot compete against them. power grids become more expensive and less reliable. the RTO policies purported to bring market forces to electricity instead brought double the rules and even more cronyism.
the system is fully captured.
it justifies its crony corporatism by waving around “the science” that it bought bespoke for just that purpose under the auspices of the state. it fudges figures, adulterates data, and uses models with no proven predictive power as basis for world shaping policy and punditry.
it suppresses alternatives and ideas like adaptation.
the covid response has been little different. the testing industrial complex that fed the terrible and over inclusive definitions of cases and hospitalizations and deaths became something akin to a perpetual motion machine for each new round of testing begat more “covid” and thus demanding more testing to support counterproductive metrics, inflate threat, and, of course, to produce “more covid” to start the cycle again.
we ran 2 million tests a day in the US at some points. overall, we spent on the order of $1.5 billion dollars a week on it, probably $80 billion last year alone. we ran more tests for covid than flu tests in my whole lifetime and maybe ever in our history as a nation.
and it bought us nothing.
we went all in on vaccines that do not stop spread.
it was not “warp speed” it was “warped science.”
because that is how it ALWAYS works.
the “science” was so captured that health agencies literally changed the definition of herd immunityto pretend that natural immunity was not a contributor despite overwhelming data not only that it was (as it always has been) but that it was far more effective than vaccines. the failure of vaccines to stop spread has been total. they almost certainly made it worse. it’s not at all clear they even help with severity. it does not look that way in the societal data and the studies are so riddled with methodological slanting to shift outcomes that their output is literal bayseian datacrime.
and yet every regulator, health agency, and government is signing off (though a few are waking up).
regulatory capture breaks cost benefit analysis.
and it is the inevitable outcome of technocracy which is, in turn, the inevitable and deeply corrupt outcome of government finding science.
you won’t get better experts next time. all the good ones get sublimated off in the ideological rarefication process that concentrates science into “the science.”
they wont seek truth. they will then, as now, seek power.
and it will always come in the guise of “this is a useful thing that you cannot oppose” like “saving the earth, vaccines, or curing cancer.
and this is why you need to oppose it.
these are the same people who just pushed a broken, leaky vaccine, lockdowns, and 100’s of billions in useless testing.
these are the same people who attacked the very idea of treatment and lied about dangers of drugs that worked to push for vaccines that didn’t. they presided over a $1 trillion in biopharma and medical gravy and quite possibly twice that if you add up all the hospital subsidy and managed to actually decrease hospital capacity while so doing.
we could have had better outcomes for 5% the cost by pushing known treatment regimens. instead they did not even develop them, run real trials on them, and used outright threats and bans to stop medical professionals from doing so.
we could have had better outcomes by doing nothing.
these people did not suddenly get better at achieving their stated goals or prioritizing and allocating resources.
this is just the next power grab, the next gravy train, and the next sector of science to be destroyed by patronage system.
it will not cure cancer. it will impede the best search for such a solution.
it will not fund the best ideas, it will jam capital into the pet projects of a few pharma companies and force us all toward a couple of modalities owned by cronies who know how to play ball and provide ideological cover.
it’s just another “sounds great but will break the entirety of an endeavor for a generation” TVA style plan.
they choose targets like this to make it hard to oppose. it sounds awful to say “no, you should not fund cancer research!” it makes a terrible protest sign and it takes 30 minutes to lay out the reasons to say no and 3 seconds to say “save grandma!”
and this is EAXCTLY why we need to rip this out, root and stem and why we need to do it right now while the object lesson of how “the science” can run roughshod over us and pervert, twist, and corrupt everything it touches remains fresh.
stop all government funding of science. stop all corporate subsidy, preferencing, and collaboration.
this is NOT a vampire you want to invite into the house and giving it money is just how that happens. once you do, the cycle starts, the feedback loops of crowding out and ideological rarefication commence, and you wind up here.
again.
the state will once more buy the experts it needs to justify its own ends, mire you in lysenkoism and crony corporatism, and rob you of rights and welfare while arriving at severely sub optimal if not outright pernicious outcomes.
it will happen every time until we stop this hurricane convection of technocratic domination and that ALL starts with money.
this cancer project is a truly terrible idea because all such projects, no matter how noble their aims are truly terrible ideas.
these are not people you want steering anything.
if they announced a turkey moonshot, we’d all be eating bugs for thanksgiving within 5 years…
The same occurs in climate studies. I once saw a government of Canada grant seeking a researcher to study “adverse effects of human induced climate change on Arctic wildlife“. Can anyone predict the conclusions from this “open” question?
Ike was certainly a visionary leader. But who are the private players funding medical research? Bill Gates, Chan-Zuckerberg, etc. The problem is larger than big government. I would call it groupthink of the global elites.
Unlike a lot of other moonshots, at least this cancer one has a plausible mechanism to work, in a "three wishes from a monkey's paw" sort of way. Just increase the number of cardiovascular deaths by X and you reduce the number of cancer deaths by ~ 0.6X. Competing risks, yadda yadda. A cynic might think it was chosen with more in mind than just reducing society's cancer burden.
Scientists get money by shoe horning into popular topics. While doing my PhD in chemistry in the 1980s, cancer was the big money. No matter how remote or tenuous, all grant applications had to be related to synthesis of a cancer drug.
Damn straight gato. I am thrilled you found your way to substack where long form rants like this are possible. That said, twitter is where I happened upon you when I realized at the very beginning of this covid horror show that we are being fed nonsense from "the science".
Incidentally, I never got to thank you/give you a shout out on twitter for one of my few outbursts (link below) that got attention because they had kicked you off by then but you inspire. I do not have data analytical skills like you and the several other gatopals but I can sniff out BS which is what we were getting from "the science" from the start and it continues to this day.
Keep typing. Keeping inspiring. It is making a difference.
I just paid you $50 for the privilege of commenting on this post. I suppose I should convert my Substack to paid as well. I don't need the money, but everyone else seems to be doing it... It's aggravating to pay to add value... At least you don't make cringeworthy mistakes like Bret Weinstein, whose posts I no longer subscribe to, or Alex Berenson, who kowtowed to the Powers That Be. I hope I don't see similar here. If I do, I assume that's another $50 shot to hell - but at the present rate, that's about three dinners at the Mexican restaurant down the street.
In any case, Eisenhower was 14 years too late, there's nothing he could have done about it, the National Security Act of 1947, which created a National Security State, was passed in the Truman Administration. This created a double government, an unelected permanent government which actually ran the country, and reduced the elected government to a clown show - actually a Punch-and-Judy puppet show - to distract and divide the electorate. For details, see this essay by Professor Michael Glennon, of the Fletcher School at Tufts University: https://fletcher.tufts.edu/sites/default/files/pubs_glennon-michael-national-security-double-government.pdf. Of course, his suggestion that the unelected government can be got rid of by elections is nonsense, the Unelected Government controls the Elected Government, and not the other way around. And, for what it's worth, the Unelected Government is comprised almost entirely of registered Democrats. So if you wonder why throwing out one set of scoundrels in Congress and replacing them with another set results in absolutely no change in actual enacted policy, that's the reason - Congress is not in charge. The Constitution and Bill of Rights might as well not exist - they aren't the basis for any sort of *actual* government we have here, and haven't been for 75 years. Presidents like JFK who go off the reservation come to bad ends, replaced by more compliant people who are on the same page. And, of course, the National Security State is not only unconstitutional, it's a total betrayal of the principles set out in the Declaration of Independence. It's fundamentally anti-American. And there is no remedy either than a very unlikely popular revolt, or a Soviet Union-style collapse - my bet is on the latter. That's my two cents, I have $49.98 to go...
I agree with almost everything except for the idea implied by statements like this: “ you won’t get better experts next time. all the good ones get sublimated off in the ideological rarefication process that concentrates science into “the science.”
The problem with technocracy is not that we pick the wrong experts, the problem is the trust in experts itself. There is no way to choose the right expert for any given situation. Problems are solved by allowing experts and non experts alike an attempt at creating a solution. The market will decide the best solution. People are not nearly as smart as they think they are, and the most dangerous are the people who are convinced they are right. I’m not even a believer in free markets and I am still convinced that a market economy will produce better solutions than a technocracy.
I have thought for some time that the only way this juggernaut of grift can be stopped is to starve the beast.
It seems that this can only happen in two ways:
1. Abolish the Federal Reserve and income tax.
These are truly the two roots of this evil. They represent the greatest engines of mass theft in the history of mankind. None of this evil, and much besides, would be possible without these two infernal institutions.
2. Currency collapse.
Every single fiat currency in history has collapsed, driven by the unlimited and insatiable government desire for other people's money. Nixon cut the last ties to the gold standard, the only thing that can constrain government spending, in 1971, and the USG has been printing and spending like mad since then.
Since the FED was created in 1913, the USD has lost close to 99% of its value. What cost one or two cents in 1913 now costs a dollar.
Official government debt just surpassed 30T. Of course, like nearly all government figures, it is a lie. If unfunded liabilities are taken into account, it is in the many hundreds of trillions.
This is unsustainable, and therefore it will end. The only questions are when, and how bad it will be, and how many people the government will murder until it does.
The alarm siren starting screaming when Biden stated the "supercharged cancer eradication program" is going to utilize "mRNA" technologies. Jeez.....here we go again.
I recall reading (but can't remember where) that originally Eisenhower's speech was supposed to refer to the "military-industrial-congressional complex" but "congressional" was dropped.
Peer Review has similar problems in the scientific community, overlapping or inconclusive conclusions depending on scale and scope, and seems to lean towards confirmation bias.
Take a close look at the NSF and it's charter: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense..." 25% of all science funding comes through the NSF. It's all driven by National Defense. That might not sound like much, but it is. I've heard that figure is closer to 85%, but I can't find a reference for that. 25% is what you'll find on the NSF homepage. Science projects that don't have a use applicable to national defense has a much tougher time getting approved. It's almost surely more than 25% in real life. Much, much more.
The hubris of launching a "bold, 25 year plan" when literally everything else these idiots have done has been a cataclysmic failure, usually ruled illegal by SCOTUS.
I don't even expect these jokers to last another year in office (ballot printer goes brrr excepted, or GOP incompetence/corruption), never mind conduct lofty plans that'll take a quarter century.
Hey Joe, how about you see about getting a grip on inflation first eh? Maybe then you can play with the big boy toys.
Pink washing cancer paints victims as heroes as a distraction from horrifying reality that it eliminates any question of causes. When EPA was created it was to manage toxic Superfund sites in USA w overwhelming global volume from PCBs. Susan B Komen is Former Neiman Marcus marketing wiz who turned the death of her sister and high end friends into global grift & cover op. https://www.bcaction.org/about-think-before-you-pink/
Primary responsibility assigned to General Electric now GE Healthcare empire & Monsanto who turned Rockefeller petro-chemical waste into profitable chemicals & myth of Green Revolution.
Billy Gates political heir to David Rockefeller sits atop NGO empire w high tech solutions that compound the problems.
Under Dubbya Bush in 2002 EPA Libraries were closed and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data collection was halted. Oddly enough this happened just as questions arose about Ground Zero illness & EPA Dir Whitman assurances the air was "perfectly safe" experts were monitoring carefully.
Collection never resumed. Until 2020 UC Davis maintained Scorecard database, the recognized global authority for chemical safety. It was yanked in its entirety & replaced w note "This was the work of a small group and was helpful to many but support is discontinued. Poof, it's gone w only trace a domain registration to Underwriters Laboratory.
Don't look- don't find is what "The Science" demands. Big bucks in seeking cures, not so much in Superfund cleanup. Nothing to see after 9-11.. trust the experts in DC to have our backs and prioritize human health & safety..
"Over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by industry into the nation's environment each year, including 72 million pounds of recognized carcinogens.
Scorecard can give you a detailed report on chemicals being released from any of 20,000 industrial facilities, or a summary report for any area in the country. Scorecard spotlights the top polluters in the U.S., and ranks states and counties by pollutant releases. "
Scorecard - "If an industrial chemical is allowed by law to be released into the environment, most people assume that it must have been tested and evaluated for its potential risks. Unfortunately, this is simply not true.
"For most of the important industrial chemicals in U.S. commerce, government lacks the information to draw any scientifically based conclusion about the degree of risk--or lack of risk--that a chemical may pose when used. For every chemical in the database, Scorecard tells you whether or not the information needed to assess chemical risk is available. If it isn't, no one can accurately claim the chemical is "safe."
Equally tragic is 90% Fed employees at these agencies have their hearts in the core mission. Like the ethical refugees of the medical tyrants who have shown their fangs in the scamdemic, it's top tier, Agency leadership who steer the ship. Credit Clinton era (SES) Senior Executive Service. It facilitates top tier, revolving door for corp appointees & displacing career service as a requirement.
"All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of Court Intellectuals, whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public.
The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimize, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public."
Very insightful comments. Here are some of my thoughts, but I give no warranty on their worth. Please pardon the prolixity. Gato's article itself is quite lengthy. I wish my abundance of words were equally worthy, but perhaps not.
1. Government, though powerful, cannot overrule market forces, any more than it can repeal laws of Nature.
From one point of view, a market ALWAYS exists. This is even true in what I would call a false distinction: that the government has some magical power "over" the market, or that it is apart from it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Government does in fact (usually) have superior legal powers, since it can pass, modify, repeal or ignore regulations at will. But in no way can the government escape the fact that it is a market participant, even if the most influential.
What is too easily forgotten is that government has no supernatural powers. By this I mean it cannot do anything beyond what reality allows. To borrow the old joke: A man says "I can summon demons from the deep." A skeptic retorts: "Yes, but do any demons come when summoned?" Many similar bits of wisdom can be found, like the tale of King Canute commanding the tide.
Returning to our topic, my point is merely that government is not some awe-inspiring God-like figure, able to do anything that it wishes. Yes, it is usually if not always the most powerful agent, but it is still constrained by laws which no power on Earth can repeal.
2. There is probably no structure created by man that will not be subject to capture by those who run it. This is simply an aspect of human nature. Individuals and groups tend to act in their own self-interest, even at expense of out-groups. Those entrusted with government power -- or those who seize it -- are not immune to this law. Surely there are ways to guard against, to limit these negative effects, but they are not perfect, and the countermeasures themselves are subject to being dismantled.
3. Perhaps the best answer would be less government? If there were no government funding of research, there might be less research. But what research occurred would be paid for by (presumably) private funds, not taken by coercion (taxes). Discoveries would be patentable, the property of their discoverers. People should be free to decide for themselves, or use any authority they wish, to obtain their medical care. Government should not be in the business of licensing, forcing, prohibiting, or otherwise restricting the invention, production, sale or use of any good or service for such treatments. Clearly there are many risks to such a laissez-faire system: lack of quality control, frauds, addictions, and so on. But on the upside, it would eliminate all the risks that Gato enumerates in his article. And why could there still not be government endorsed services? The government could even test, approve and guarantee the quality of drugs, perhaps. Perhaps legal recourse would be limited: People should be free to try untested or unapproved things, but perhaps they lose the right to sue if things go awry. But in no case should it have the power to forbid or mandate their uses. Those choices should be the right of individual States, or (ideally I'd argue) private physicians and their patients.
Note that not all is wine and roses: if you want to reduce government, you have to toss out a lot of "benefits" for the common citizen. Goodbye Medicare and other forms of socialized medicine. These can't exist without some degree of Government meddling in the private sphere.
Is Covid-19 better treated early with commonly available, inexpensive repurposed drugs? Quite possibly. But even if it isn't, it shouldn't be the government's business to tell me or my doctor that I can't buy ivermectin, HCQ or some other drug to use as I see fit. If I damage or kill myself, so what? It's my life and (in the world I paint) I would not become a wad of the State in any case.
I'm not denying that government provides some benefits. Personally, I like having (relatively) sound money (yet another government franchise captured early on!), a legal system (ditto), common defense (ditto) and other generally positive services the government provides. What government's role should be is an eternal debate. I did not mean for this post to become a libertarian treatise. Perhaps coercion (government power) is sometimes necessary. But in closing, allow me to point out that most successful systems man has created work because participation is voluntary and (optimally) the average member receives net benefit.
In the first draft of Eisenhower’s speech he referred to ‘Military Industrial Congressional Complex’, acknowledging the rôle of Congress is facilitating the military industry… factories/jobs/votes in the Congressional districts plus of course the usual bribing that goes with lobbying. The reference to Congress was dropped fir political reasons to avoid antagonising its members.
It is worth noting that the incestuous relationship big business has with Government - corporate capture - is only possible with the willing participation, even initiated by, those in Government ever ready to dispense corporate welfare out of taxpayers’ money in return for graces and favours.
Only now, long after 1961, do we truly understand the dire consequences of ignoring Pres Eisenhower's warning. Yes, we've been well aware of the unconscionable maneuverings of the MIC, but it took until this covid hoax to demonstrate the folly of ignoring his other, perhaps more important warning, about government control of scientific research funding. Now we know that, through Faucimengele, such funding can be dolled out to research that enriches those in power and imperils the health and welfare of the rest of us. Would that we had heeded his warnings.
(Paywalled, but I listened to more of the article using the audio player.)
Some observations: I don't doubt that mRNA has promise. Credit where due: Unlike much of the media, the WSJ perchance retains a few scraps of respectability. The article even allows for a few lingering doubts, noting mRNA is "new and relatively untried technology", and at least in passing, gives glimpses that not all is well with the tech: "vaccines were available many months and possibly even years ahead of when health experts expected safe and effective traditional vaccines to arrive." (Note the author skillfully leaves hanging the question of whether the mRNA jabs are actually safe and effective; perhaps his deliberate intent.) Finally the audio program says: "The technology has been known for decades, but it was long relegated to the outskirts of medical research. Skeptics said it was too unstable to work as a prescription drug." Finally, it notes the Covid-19 products were the first ever cleared for use.
Now skepticism speaks: If this technology was known for decades, why was it not widely used? Were the skeptics right, that it was too unstable? Why was it suddenly approved against Covid-19? Were all the bugs fixed? Why not mention of proofs of long term safety or efficacy?" Etc. Credit to the author, for at least giving an alert reader the ability to read between the lines.
I'm just riffing here, but I'll bet you a pair of comfy boots that Cancer Moonshot will involve mandating a bunch of experimental medicines going into everyone's body and anyone who refuses is a murderer who loves cancer.
As long as we are raking through our heroes of the fifties let’s not forget Ayn Rand. her ’solutions’ in Atlas Shrugged are certainly debatable, but boy, she had the villains down to a tee! They all sound like Blue Checks!
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The same occurs in climate studies. I once saw a government of Canada grant seeking a researcher to study “adverse effects of human induced climate change on Arctic wildlife“. Can anyone predict the conclusions from this “open” question?
"If you put the government in charge of the desert, within 5 years there would be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman
Ike was certainly a visionary leader. But who are the private players funding medical research? Bill Gates, Chan-Zuckerberg, etc. The problem is larger than big government. I would call it groupthink of the global elites.
Unlike a lot of other moonshots, at least this cancer one has a plausible mechanism to work, in a "three wishes from a monkey's paw" sort of way. Just increase the number of cardiovascular deaths by X and you reduce the number of cancer deaths by ~ 0.6X. Competing risks, yadda yadda. A cynic might think it was chosen with more in mind than just reducing society's cancer burden.
Scientists get money by shoe horning into popular topics. While doing my PhD in chemistry in the 1980s, cancer was the big money. No matter how remote or tenuous, all grant applications had to be related to synthesis of a cancer drug.
Damn straight gato. I am thrilled you found your way to substack where long form rants like this are possible. That said, twitter is where I happened upon you when I realized at the very beginning of this covid horror show that we are being fed nonsense from "the science".
Incidentally, I never got to thank you/give you a shout out on twitter for one of my few outbursts (link below) that got attention because they had kicked you off by then but you inspire. I do not have data analytical skills like you and the several other gatopals but I can sniff out BS which is what we were getting from "the science" from the start and it continues to this day.
Keep typing. Keeping inspiring. It is making a difference.
https://twitter.com/giannmi/status/1407672476906176512?s=20&t=Hx61BnTyWFSkmTMMorvpqA
Watch this video starting from the 2:12:00 mark to the 2:46:00 mark.
https://youtu.be/c_L7ATD3Q0A
I just paid you $50 for the privilege of commenting on this post. I suppose I should convert my Substack to paid as well. I don't need the money, but everyone else seems to be doing it... It's aggravating to pay to add value... At least you don't make cringeworthy mistakes like Bret Weinstein, whose posts I no longer subscribe to, or Alex Berenson, who kowtowed to the Powers That Be. I hope I don't see similar here. If I do, I assume that's another $50 shot to hell - but at the present rate, that's about three dinners at the Mexican restaurant down the street.
In any case, Eisenhower was 14 years too late, there's nothing he could have done about it, the National Security Act of 1947, which created a National Security State, was passed in the Truman Administration. This created a double government, an unelected permanent government which actually ran the country, and reduced the elected government to a clown show - actually a Punch-and-Judy puppet show - to distract and divide the electorate. For details, see this essay by Professor Michael Glennon, of the Fletcher School at Tufts University: https://fletcher.tufts.edu/sites/default/files/pubs_glennon-michael-national-security-double-government.pdf. Of course, his suggestion that the unelected government can be got rid of by elections is nonsense, the Unelected Government controls the Elected Government, and not the other way around. And, for what it's worth, the Unelected Government is comprised almost entirely of registered Democrats. So if you wonder why throwing out one set of scoundrels in Congress and replacing them with another set results in absolutely no change in actual enacted policy, that's the reason - Congress is not in charge. The Constitution and Bill of Rights might as well not exist - they aren't the basis for any sort of *actual* government we have here, and haven't been for 75 years. Presidents like JFK who go off the reservation come to bad ends, replaced by more compliant people who are on the same page. And, of course, the National Security State is not only unconstitutional, it's a total betrayal of the principles set out in the Declaration of Independence. It's fundamentally anti-American. And there is no remedy either than a very unlikely popular revolt, or a Soviet Union-style collapse - my bet is on the latter. That's my two cents, I have $49.98 to go...
I agree with almost everything except for the idea implied by statements like this: “ you won’t get better experts next time. all the good ones get sublimated off in the ideological rarefication process that concentrates science into “the science.”
The problem with technocracy is not that we pick the wrong experts, the problem is the trust in experts itself. There is no way to choose the right expert for any given situation. Problems are solved by allowing experts and non experts alike an attempt at creating a solution. The market will decide the best solution. People are not nearly as smart as they think they are, and the most dangerous are the people who are convinced they are right. I’m not even a believer in free markets and I am still convinced that a market economy will produce better solutions than a technocracy.
I have thought for some time that the only way this juggernaut of grift can be stopped is to starve the beast.
It seems that this can only happen in two ways:
1. Abolish the Federal Reserve and income tax.
These are truly the two roots of this evil. They represent the greatest engines of mass theft in the history of mankind. None of this evil, and much besides, would be possible without these two infernal institutions.
2. Currency collapse.
Every single fiat currency in history has collapsed, driven by the unlimited and insatiable government desire for other people's money. Nixon cut the last ties to the gold standard, the only thing that can constrain government spending, in 1971, and the USG has been printing and spending like mad since then.
Since the FED was created in 1913, the USD has lost close to 99% of its value. What cost one or two cents in 1913 now costs a dollar.
Official government debt just surpassed 30T. Of course, like nearly all government figures, it is a lie. If unfunded liabilities are taken into account, it is in the many hundreds of trillions.
This is unsustainable, and therefore it will end. The only questions are when, and how bad it will be, and how many people the government will murder until it does.
Gracias gato. Ive always thought this about the grants for climate science.
Also, I’m reading that the jabs are going to cause a surge in new and latent cancers. This will further feed the Pharma beast.
I am thoroughly depressed by this. 😔
The alarm siren starting screaming when Biden stated the "supercharged cancer eradication program" is going to utilize "mRNA" technologies. Jeez.....here we go again.
I recall reading (but can't remember where) that originally Eisenhower's speech was supposed to refer to the "military-industrial-congressional complex" but "congressional" was dropped.
"central allocators." brilliant. And I think you did this entire piece without using the word "stakeholder."
Peer Review has similar problems in the scientific community, overlapping or inconclusive conclusions depending on scale and scope, and seems to lean towards confirmation bias.
Take a close look at the NSF and it's charter: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense..." 25% of all science funding comes through the NSF. It's all driven by National Defense. That might not sound like much, but it is. I've heard that figure is closer to 85%, but I can't find a reference for that. 25% is what you'll find on the NSF homepage. Science projects that don't have a use applicable to national defense has a much tougher time getting approved. It's almost surely more than 25% in real life. Much, much more.
Having just finished RFK Jr book on Fauci this is exactly where things have been for decades.
The hubris of launching a "bold, 25 year plan" when literally everything else these idiots have done has been a cataclysmic failure, usually ruled illegal by SCOTUS.
I don't even expect these jokers to last another year in office (ballot printer goes brrr excepted, or GOP incompetence/corruption), never mind conduct lofty plans that'll take a quarter century.
Hey Joe, how about you see about getting a grip on inflation first eh? Maybe then you can play with the big boy toys.
Pink washing cancer paints victims as heroes as a distraction from horrifying reality that it eliminates any question of causes. When EPA was created it was to manage toxic Superfund sites in USA w overwhelming global volume from PCBs. Susan B Komen is Former Neiman Marcus marketing wiz who turned the death of her sister and high end friends into global grift & cover op. https://www.bcaction.org/about-think-before-you-pink/
Primary responsibility assigned to General Electric now GE Healthcare empire & Monsanto who turned Rockefeller petro-chemical waste into profitable chemicals & myth of Green Revolution.
Billy Gates political heir to David Rockefeller sits atop NGO empire w high tech solutions that compound the problems.
Under Dubbya Bush in 2002 EPA Libraries were closed and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data collection was halted. Oddly enough this happened just as questions arose about Ground Zero illness & EPA Dir Whitman assurances the air was "perfectly safe" experts were monitoring carefully.
Collection never resumed. Until 2020 UC Davis maintained Scorecard database, the recognized global authority for chemical safety. It was yanked in its entirety & replaced w note "This was the work of a small group and was helpful to many but support is discontinued. Poof, it's gone w only trace a domain registration to Underwriters Laboratory.
https://www.whois.com/whois/scorecard.org
Don't look- don't find is what "The Science" demands. Big bucks in seeking cures, not so much in Superfund cleanup. Nothing to see after 9-11.. trust the experts in DC to have our backs and prioritize human health & safety..
"Over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by industry into the nation's environment each year, including 72 million pounds of recognized carcinogens.
Scorecard can give you a detailed report on chemicals being released from any of 20,000 industrial facilities, or a summary report for any area in the country. Scorecard spotlights the top polluters in the U.S., and ranks states and counties by pollutant releases. "
https://web.archive.org/web/20120213000438/http://scorecard.goodguide.com/env-releases/us-map.tcl
Scorecard - "If an industrial chemical is allowed by law to be released into the environment, most people assume that it must have been tested and evaluated for its potential risks. Unfortunately, this is simply not true.
"For most of the important industrial chemicals in U.S. commerce, government lacks the information to draw any scientifically based conclusion about the degree of risk--or lack of risk--that a chemical may pose when used. For every chemical in the database, Scorecard tells you whether or not the information needed to assess chemical risk is available. If it isn't, no one can accurately claim the chemical is "safe."
https://web.archive.org/web/20120917041002/http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-profiles/chems-profile-descriptions.tcl#basic_testing
Equally tragic is 90% Fed employees at these agencies have their hearts in the core mission. Like the ethical refugees of the medical tyrants who have shown their fangs in the scamdemic, it's top tier, Agency leadership who steer the ship. Credit Clinton era (SES) Senior Executive Service. It facilitates top tier, revolving door for corp appointees & displacing career service as a requirement.
Gatito Revisionista.
"All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of Court Intellectuals, whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public.
The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimize, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public."
~ Murray Rothbard
Very insightful comments. Here are some of my thoughts, but I give no warranty on their worth. Please pardon the prolixity. Gato's article itself is quite lengthy. I wish my abundance of words were equally worthy, but perhaps not.
1. Government, though powerful, cannot overrule market forces, any more than it can repeal laws of Nature.
From one point of view, a market ALWAYS exists. This is even true in what I would call a false distinction: that the government has some magical power "over" the market, or that it is apart from it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Government does in fact (usually) have superior legal powers, since it can pass, modify, repeal or ignore regulations at will. But in no way can the government escape the fact that it is a market participant, even if the most influential.
What is too easily forgotten is that government has no supernatural powers. By this I mean it cannot do anything beyond what reality allows. To borrow the old joke: A man says "I can summon demons from the deep." A skeptic retorts: "Yes, but do any demons come when summoned?" Many similar bits of wisdom can be found, like the tale of King Canute commanding the tide.
Returning to our topic, my point is merely that government is not some awe-inspiring God-like figure, able to do anything that it wishes. Yes, it is usually if not always the most powerful agent, but it is still constrained by laws which no power on Earth can repeal.
2. There is probably no structure created by man that will not be subject to capture by those who run it. This is simply an aspect of human nature. Individuals and groups tend to act in their own self-interest, even at expense of out-groups. Those entrusted with government power -- or those who seize it -- are not immune to this law. Surely there are ways to guard against, to limit these negative effects, but they are not perfect, and the countermeasures themselves are subject to being dismantled.
3. Perhaps the best answer would be less government? If there were no government funding of research, there might be less research. But what research occurred would be paid for by (presumably) private funds, not taken by coercion (taxes). Discoveries would be patentable, the property of their discoverers. People should be free to decide for themselves, or use any authority they wish, to obtain their medical care. Government should not be in the business of licensing, forcing, prohibiting, or otherwise restricting the invention, production, sale or use of any good or service for such treatments. Clearly there are many risks to such a laissez-faire system: lack of quality control, frauds, addictions, and so on. But on the upside, it would eliminate all the risks that Gato enumerates in his article. And why could there still not be government endorsed services? The government could even test, approve and guarantee the quality of drugs, perhaps. Perhaps legal recourse would be limited: People should be free to try untested or unapproved things, but perhaps they lose the right to sue if things go awry. But in no case should it have the power to forbid or mandate their uses. Those choices should be the right of individual States, or (ideally I'd argue) private physicians and their patients.
Note that not all is wine and roses: if you want to reduce government, you have to toss out a lot of "benefits" for the common citizen. Goodbye Medicare and other forms of socialized medicine. These can't exist without some degree of Government meddling in the private sphere.
Is Covid-19 better treated early with commonly available, inexpensive repurposed drugs? Quite possibly. But even if it isn't, it shouldn't be the government's business to tell me or my doctor that I can't buy ivermectin, HCQ or some other drug to use as I see fit. If I damage or kill myself, so what? It's my life and (in the world I paint) I would not become a wad of the State in any case.
I'm not denying that government provides some benefits. Personally, I like having (relatively) sound money (yet another government franchise captured early on!), a legal system (ditto), common defense (ditto) and other generally positive services the government provides. What government's role should be is an eternal debate. I did not mean for this post to become a libertarian treatise. Perhaps coercion (government power) is sometimes necessary. But in closing, allow me to point out that most successful systems man has created work because participation is voluntary and (optimally) the average member receives net benefit.
In the first draft of Eisenhower’s speech he referred to ‘Military Industrial Congressional Complex’, acknowledging the rôle of Congress is facilitating the military industry… factories/jobs/votes in the Congressional districts plus of course the usual bribing that goes with lobbying. The reference to Congress was dropped fir political reasons to avoid antagonising its members.
It is worth noting that the incestuous relationship big business has with Government - corporate capture - is only possible with the willing participation, even initiated by, those in Government ever ready to dispense corporate welfare out of taxpayers’ money in return for graces and favours.
Only now, long after 1961, do we truly understand the dire consequences of ignoring Pres Eisenhower's warning. Yes, we've been well aware of the unconscionable maneuverings of the MIC, but it took until this covid hoax to demonstrate the folly of ignoring his other, perhaps more important warning, about government control of scientific research funding. Now we know that, through Faucimengele, such funding can be dolled out to research that enriches those in power and imperils the health and welfare of the rest of us. Would that we had heeded his warnings.
Dreary, but true.
We're so many generations of "leadership" post-Eisenhower. To hear that come from any politician may as well be to hear a tale of fantasy.
I could not find a best fit for this web link, so here goes:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-the-technology-behind-covid-vaccines-cure-other-diseases-11643990913?mod=newsviewer_click&adobe_mc=MCMID%3D16728904400282160246398510297058897464%7CMCORGID%3DCB68E4BA55144CAA0A4C98A5%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1643993087
(Paywalled, but I listened to more of the article using the audio player.)
Some observations: I don't doubt that mRNA has promise. Credit where due: Unlike much of the media, the WSJ perchance retains a few scraps of respectability. The article even allows for a few lingering doubts, noting mRNA is "new and relatively untried technology", and at least in passing, gives glimpses that not all is well with the tech: "vaccines were available many months and possibly even years ahead of when health experts expected safe and effective traditional vaccines to arrive." (Note the author skillfully leaves hanging the question of whether the mRNA jabs are actually safe and effective; perhaps his deliberate intent.) Finally the audio program says: "The technology has been known for decades, but it was long relegated to the outskirts of medical research. Skeptics said it was too unstable to work as a prescription drug." Finally, it notes the Covid-19 products were the first ever cleared for use.
Now skepticism speaks: If this technology was known for decades, why was it not widely used? Were the skeptics right, that it was too unstable? Why was it suddenly approved against Covid-19? Were all the bugs fixed? Why not mention of proofs of long term safety or efficacy?" Etc. Credit to the author, for at least giving an alert reader the ability to read between the lines.
I'm just riffing here, but I'll bet you a pair of comfy boots that Cancer Moonshot will involve mandating a bunch of experimental medicines going into everyone's body and anyone who refuses is a murderer who loves cancer.
Fantastic insights. Have you thought about writing a book?
As long as we are raking through our heroes of the fifties let’s not forget Ayn Rand. her ’solutions’ in Atlas Shrugged are certainly debatable, but boy, she had the villains down to a tee! They all sound like Blue Checks!