Po

Edward de Bono coined the term “Po”, which is partly a nonsense word, but which he rationalized as “Provocative Operation”.  It is the ideas of putting crazy ideas out, to see where they lead.  In the initial days of the debates on the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton proposed electing the President for life, like a king–which was rejected quickly and thoroughly–but prior to that proposal everyone was thinking very short terms, like a year or so.  His idea, by stretching minds, enabled the four year Presidency.  Think how clever, by the way, it is that we have 2 year terms in the House, 4 for the President, and 6 for the Senate, which was to be the home of the “grays”, the senior statesmen, the wisest among us, collected en masse.

Po: What if governments had to compete for our tax business?

This leads then to the following obvious question: how much of what governments do could be privatized?  There is competition among trash collectors.  Competition for mail service developed.  What about police?  What about environmental regulation and enforcement, something like a stronger Underwriters Laboratories?  It does seem obvious we should get rid of the FDA.

What if we had not A military, but militaries?  If you go to any Civil War battlefield, you will see that the soldiers on both sides fought as States, and units within those States.  A professional soldier is already inherently a mercenary–even if ideally a highly motivated and patriotic one–so could we have private militaries?  Or what if we returned the locus of the military to the States, under a central Federal command?  Obviously, there are upsides and potential downsides to that idea, but I am simply talking out loud.

What if traffic enforcement were made a completely separate item from ordinary policing?  What if you had multiple options for 911 when you had an emergency, all of which you paid for as as service, and if you did not pay the fee, nobody came?  Adults are capable of making rational decisions and accepting even negative consequences they bring on themselves.  Same with fire fighting.

What if “government” were broken down into a long series of a la carte service, with people paying for what they want?

If you look at Social Security, as I have, it is abundantly obvious that it really only benefits the government, and politicians who use to get elected despite having otherwise idiotic ideas about everything.  Well, them, and those who got into the Ponzi scheme early enough that they got paid out a LOT more than they put in.

As a rational investment, though, as a means of saving for retirement, it is asinine.  It is a negative return investment.  If you put your FICA into gold coins and buried them you would have a better return than sending money to the government which is immediately paid back out to support current recipients.

Chile privatized retirement accounts, and it worked very well.  This is one of the reasons Communists still hate Chile, and Pinochet, who merely did what the Communists would have done in creating their dictatorship, and after he did it, held the elections the Communists never would have held, and stepped aside voluntarily to watch Chile jump ahead of the rest of Latin America.

Few thoughts.  So many people benefit from the groveling before government which its current size and power make necessary for the mass of people for whose benefit it supposedly exists.

“Progress” does not and never has consisted in increasing the size and power of those who seek to control us.  True progress can ONLY come in moral and spiritual elevation.  There is no other kind.  “Progressivism” is a lie, inherently, and all the way to its core.  It conceals this lie by making society the measure of morality, which inherently is reifying an abstraction, and once the words of abstractions have replaced concrete experience and individual judgement, no true benchmark remains.  This is how societies and nations are destroyed in the names of “Justice” and “Compassion”.