Month: November 2011

Hell, my experience in life is that everything is harder and takes longer than you think it will. You can normally count on this by figuring how long you think something will take, then add a third. That third will often save your ass.

As far as market readjustments following a universal revaluation, the more realistic timeline is six months to a year. This is something like a preventive surgery to eradicate a tumor, and it takes time to recover.

Still, I think my logic is sound. We let the actual people do what the banks do for themselves all the time.

In its essence, it is LARGE inflation, followed immediately by LARGE deflation. It is treating money as the marker it is, but making sure all the coins fall in the right slots.

Now, the best way to do this would be just to do it. Don’t announce it: just do it. That won’t happen here, of course, so we need to think through some details. It literally does not matter if we even change how the physical dollar looks. Most money is 1’s and 0’s anyway, and that is where the inflation and deflation happens.

Let’s think this through, though. The day is announced, and comes. For simplicity a national holiday is declared. All debts are paid in full. All banks are fully capitalized (in fairness, all the major Federal Reserve banks should probably have their collective assets seized; for pragmatic purposes, though, I am willing to let their ill gotten wealth stand, provided the system they used to get it is ended). Your credit card bill is gone. Your mortgage is gone. Our national debt is gone. Nobody owes anybody anything. The banks are full of money, and you now have more available cash.

What happens? What happens to that $500 you have in the bank in savings? We just quadrupled the amount of money in circulation. Now, the money the banks loaned was by and large created ex nihilo. When you get a loan, you pay it out. To build a house you pay carpenters and plumbers, who spend that money. When you pay the bank back, though, you take an equivalent amount of money, plus interest, OUT of circulation, negating its inflationary effect. [note, stuff like this is why it is so hard to measure “inflation”, which is a very slippery concept]. I just paid the bank back for you, without taking it out of circulation. This means the inflationary effect remains.

In concept I have Dollar One, and Dollar Two. Dollar Two is worth, say, 10 of Dollar One, after our money printing is done. What seems to make the most sense is that by a feat of accounting magic, your $500 is simply converted from Dollar One to Dollar Two. We get professional, actually competent, economists to estimate how this should work.

The day comes, and there will be uncertainty. Coffee might be priced anywhere from $1/cup to $50/cut, because people just don’t know. Your home might have been worth $250,000 of Dollar One, but with Dollar Two you just can’t be sure, until people start buying and selling again.

This is, however, the beauty of free markets: even when disrupted, they are self stabilizing. Within a week or so, I would expect most of the uncertainty to be gone. It may be that the price of your home falls to $125,000, but this will also mean that the buying power of the dollar has doubled, meaning the price means nothing at all. All of this can be sorted out in countless individual transactions, unhindered by the government.

I think some small country can make this work. Do you suffer through decades of failure, only to fail more, or try something bold and untried?

I would suggest this for the Greeks, but they don’t have a central bank, and are in any event too irresponsible not to wind up in the same place 10 years down the road.

What would it take to get something like my proposal passed?

We could elect Ron Paul, but I don’t think even that would do it. He hasn’t proposed anything like what I have, to my knowledge, and many people think he’s nuts for even opposing the Fed. He would get it audited, for sure, which would be a very good thing. They have made many people very rich, and many of them not even Americans (as if it really matters; they are a class of their own), at the expense of the rest of us.

Here is what I would like to see: some country, say Brazil or Jamaica or someone else, should just use their central bank to write checks to all their creditors, declare themselves debt-free, then revalue their currency. This is all Weimar Germany did (although they didn’t get their war reparations paid: since they were printing literal paper money, they could not write checks).

You get long term inflation in places like Zimbabwe for the simple reason that the leaders spend more than they make constantly. If you pay off your bills, you cannot immediately go back to doing the same things. You must pay them off, then have a government that is the right size for the tax base. What I am proposing is a get rich slow scheme. Those are the sustainable ones.

There is little difference between what I am proposing and a default, except that my proposal is much cleaner. No one can say you failed to pay your bills. But for this to work, the follow up responsibility has to be there. Bankrupt nations like Greece can default. They can not pay their bills, but the cost will be that nobody will lend them money again. They have to be able to live with this outcome, and plainly they are not. They want their cake and to eat it too. Everyone recognizes this, so it is foolish to assume that the debacle will end prior to Greece being expelled from the EU.

The fundamental problem with my idea, for much of the developing world, is that the rulers rule by appealing to the greed of ordinary people. They say they can take from the rich, and share, but of course this never works. Hugo Chavez has caused tremendous amounts of wealth–and the talents it represented–to leave the country, and ordinary Venezuelans are in fact much worse off for it.

As I have said a number of times, salt water can slake anyone’s thirst, for a time. But those who drink it do not live long.

Still, I hope there is a nation out there led well enough, and populated by sufficiently mature and sober people that they can and will pull this off. In its essence, this is a very simple idea. It takes the logic of the system and applies it to the problem of creating generalized wealth, rather than wealth shared among a very few.

As I think about it, I think Cain should play the race card,which I am here going to define as speaking directly to matters of race for political benefit. Specifically, He should write a speech directed at black people. In it, he should ask them: what has any Democrat ever done for you? Is this Hope thing working for you? Many people thought Obama was going to pay their mortgages, and even buy their gas for them. He of course did nothing to discourage them from this misconception.

These people are bitterly disappointed. They know they were used and lied to. Expectations were set higher than was remotely possible. Always, every year, every election, Democrats portray themselves as the champions of African Americans, but their effects are horrible. Is Philadelphia a kind and gentle city because of all the social services, and “non-racist” policies of the Demorats? Of course not.

He needs to point that the people working at the Equal Opportunity Administration, or whatever it is called, make $70,000 a year and up, with great benefits. How much of that flows to the people supposedly protected by them? None.

Black people don’t need rhetoric: they need good paying jobs. And Cain could attack this directly. What about federal tax CREDITS for corporations that create jobs in zip codes designated by their poverty rate?

He needs to tell them: look, you’ve been misled and lied to for 45 years. What do you have to show for voting Democrat? You need a job, don’t you? What has Obama done to make that happen?

Strategically, I am beginning to think that we should nominate Cain for the simple reason that most black people have quite literally never heard any rationale for voting Republican, and will give him a listen. This is why the Democrats are crapping in their pants right now. He is WAY more “black” than Obama. He grew up in a black home; Obama didn’t. He went to school with black people; Obama didn’t. He experienced real racism first hand; Obama didn’t. He has two black parents; Obama doesn’t. Cain want to Morehouse College (MLK’s Alma Mater), his wife Morris Brown College, both traditionally black colleges; Obama went to Columbia and his wife Princeton, both traditionally the destinations of pampered rich white people.

Further, Cain has not only had real, outcome oriented jobs, but has excelled at them. Obama literally has NO business experience; Cain has done little else.

This case is strong. Cain should make it. Do what the Democrats do and run it through some focus groups to work out the kinks, but I say go on the attack. That is normally my first impulse, but that is because if you are dictating the terms of the engagement, you are usually in control, and in control is a good place to be in any agonistic engagement.

I was in the liquor store last night, and talking with the cashier. The guy in front of me told her “there’s always hope” in relation to some problem she was having. She said “that’s just a cliche”, then to me “hope has never done anything but cause me pain. I’m a black woman and that is just how it is.”

I told her she could trust in persistence. She asked me if that was a cliche too, and I told that was the truth. Another black woman (I reference black since she did) in the store agreed. I told her you can’t quit, and that is something you can rely on.

Hope is a happiness you feel, thinking something good is going to happen. When it doesn’t happen, you feel worse. It is, therefore, a bad guide to the future for many people, except the lucky.

Yet, persistence IS a good guide for everyone. It is a form of what psychologists term “precommittment” (I read about this in the book “Willpower”, and had not heard the term before), in that you make the decision in advance that NO MATTER WHAT happens, you will keep going. You will keep moving until God takes the breath from your body and you go to whatever is next.

This is liberating, in that you can rule suicide, formal or virtual, out of your life and mind, and therefore confirm within your self the decision to grow in some way or other for the duration of your existence on Earth.

Yes, this is a drinking blog. I need to “freedomize” (software to keep yourself off the internet) myself when I pop the cap. Sorry about that.

As I reread it, actually, it is not fully hopeless/idiotic. All that happens when I drink is I get more honest, which is hard to do, since I am very honest.

I took a personality profile once, which measured adapted versus “real” personality. They were in precisely the same quadrant, with the difference that I tone down my real self slightly. This, because I am an enthusiast, and most people are not.

I check my posts, to some extent. As I see it, nothing threatens our shared survival more than those who simply cannot believe freedom, life, flexibility, decision are possible in large groups. Seemingly, some want US to die; to stop caring about the outside world; to stop validating perceptions consistent with long term viability.

We are so big. The United States of America is so large. Why do we so limit ourselves? Are there not sand pits, and small lakes, and unindulged Indian tribes to which to offer our affection and concern? Of course there are.
They know who they are.

My hope is that we all wind up under a grand banner declaring the greatness of the United States, and that we stand there, appreciating all the death and suffering and other sacrifice our comfortable lives mean.

My further hope is that we remember not just the designated “heroes”, but all the men who did their job under horrific circumstances and came home intact, nonetheless. God Bless them twice. Those who died, or were seriously hurt, thrice.

Oh, I see the world unsentimentally We all have our claims on the bastard of existence, the claim made on our lives, our pain, our sorrow. I see past this. Please tell me I am a son of a bitch granting your dead the respect of having died bravely, doing their job under arduous circumstances. I feel this, I hurt this. That is all I can do. The rest rests with you. It will fade with time. It will never disappear. It will never fully go away.

OI. I should move along, but I feel your pain. If you should move along, move along. If a shortsighted dumbass helps, then I am your guide.

How many, I wonder, will grasp this post? What I seem to be is what I am.

Edit: I will note that I was drunk and tired when I posted this, not necessarily in that order. I left it up, because it is not wholly useless, even though of course it does lapse into the sort of incoherence I normally like to think I am successful in avoiding.

Yes, I am capable of irony. I use it regularly.

Nothing is more pernicious in human life than unexamined assumption. Nothing works to the Good more than intelligence fortified with humility and goodwill.

Corrolary: No matter how clear you think you have been, someone has still misunderstood you. This effect cannot be fully erased, which means that all plans must have room to be amended. The people who do the amending are not normally the planners, but the doers. Such people are invaluable, even if commonly unnamed, unnoticed, unappreciated, and unrewarded. Upon them rests in large measure the future of the world.

Just kidding. That is my sense of humor that would resemble dust if it wasn’t so dry it’s already gone. It’s ether. Etheric humor.

I did want to make a point, though. This whole notion of thesis/antithesis/synthesis leads to some serious flaws of thought. The image conveyed is of two cars racing headlong against one another, colliding in a massive spasm of metal and gas fumes, tumbling up in the air and then apart, and something useful flowing from the wreckage. This is not even remotely the way the world works, yet it is the basic metaphor for revolutionaries, who think they must destroy what came before, so something new–a “synthesis”–can come of it. The OWS clowns think if they can just destroy Capitalism, something BETTER will come of it. They are assured by the “Marxists” (there can be no serious Marxist today, since his hypotheses have been fully falsified; they are necessarily Leninists, as I have defined the term) that “history”–which has all the empirical validity as the word “God” as it is commonly used–is on their side. This is patent nonsense.

The better metaphor is two rivers, coming from different places, flowing together in a wider place. Neither has taken from the other; on the contrary they have reinforced one another.

You cannot make the poor rich by destroying the rich. This has been tried: not once, but many times. It doesn’t work. But, and this is a big but, it DOES serve the role of expressing hatred and rage, and the innate propensity for indulging evil that both those sentiments imply.

First off, I just tried to donate $100 to his campaign, but the website was not secure. I tried to send them a message, but the software didn’t work. These are both serious problems. Could be hackers, could be incompetence, could be both. Plainly, this needs to be fixed. I also don’t like websites that I have to scroll across. This problem is easily and cheaply fixed. We will call this the “lacking Soros and Wall Street big bucks” problem.

(I will add: self evidently, George Soros has plenty of friends on Wall Street. His goal is not global freedom. He has done nothing to support that. His goal is the conversion of a de facto oligarchy into a de jure oligarchy, using the veneer of socialist “progress”. “Socialism” has shown itself to be a useful rhetorical ploy for power mongers over the last century.)

Back to Cain. This is go time. Figure out the money situation, then counterattack. Make a list of ALL the sexual harassment stories on Democrats that were buried by the mainstream press, then confront them with it. Choose say the last half century. Hell, start with the facts that Kennedy slept with a woman who was not his wife nearly daily, and that FDR had a long term girlfriend and that he didn’t even sleep in the same room as his wife. In Kennedy’s case, quite obviously there were many women who were propositioned, and who said no, and who in this day and age would have sued him. Clinton will yield plenty of material. Ted Kennedy and his houses of hookers, not to mention Mary Jo Kopechne. Make a list, a long list, and publish it. Ask: why does a powerful black man scare you so much?

Here is the actual answer. Blacks constitute about 12% or so of the population. They vote at lower rates, in my understanding, in most elections than the rest of the population does. But they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. For Obama, it was over 90%. Let us say that half of all eligible black voters vote in a typical election. This means that some 5-6% of the population will ALWAYS vote for the Democrat. In big cities, where blacks are disproportionately present, this number goes up substantially. In cities like Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Detroit, it is probably not overstating it to say that whoever gets the black vote wins the mayoral election and City Hall.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. He was a Republican because the Democrats have ALWAYS been the party of racism. They were the party of the secessionists and the segregationists. You will hear that the racists left the Democrats after the mid-60’s and joined the Republicans, but I see no evidence of this. Take Robert Byrd. This man actually JOINED the KKK, and in my understanding held a leadership position, and was LIONIZED when he died by the Democrats. Can you imagine a Republican KKK member being so treated? Of course not.

For the Democrats, the issue is not combating “racism”. It is protecting their power and privilege by making entirely insincere claims that they are protecting black people. Yet their policies consistently lead to high unemployment rates, out of control crime and hopelessness in inner cities.

Barack Obama is no more black than I am. He reminds me of Niles Crane, a prissy boy who always wants hand sanitizer near him, and drops his g’s only when he wants to be one of “them”, the real black people. Keep in mind he was hired as a community organizer in Chicago by two Jewish students of Saul Alinsky, who needed a black face to do their circus act, which amounted to a racist rounding up of the monkeys (I want to be clear: this is not how I view it, but how I visualize them as having viewed it, since organizing never was intended to help the people involved, but rather to exploit them to acquire power. Power is all that is of interest to an Alinskyan/Leninist). It was cynical and detached at its very heart.

Herman Cain grew up in a thoroughly typical black southern family. His parents both worked multiple jobs. He experienced real racism. And he raised himself by his bootstraps. The contrast of Cain and Obama would be very, very striking. Obama’s phoniness could not be hidden, if standing on the stage next to Cain. Every black viewer would see this, and if they hear from Cain’s mouth an actually credible defense of conservative ideals, many of them will PERMANENTLY change over. Self evidently, there is no distance to which Democrats will not go to prevent this. They have no moral compass. Nothing is off the table.

But my hope is that Cain survives this storm. I don’t know what the 9/9/9 plan will do, if enacted, but I like the idea of 10% cuts in all Federal departments quite well, which Cain has pledged to do when elected, and I know that freeing up both capital and confidence will work wonders for our economy. Putting a true businessman in the White House–as I have said, I count Romney as a CEO, not a businessman, with the difference being between political savvy, and the ability to grow a business–will work wonders for confidence.

How’s this for a campaign slogan: Sometimes it DOES take a rocket scientist: Cain 2012.