Category: Uncategorized

It is easy for aspiring Luddites like me (note where you are reading this: I’m am teaching you irony) to downplay the value of all the things we have created: our roads, cars, airplanes, factories, ships, air conditioning, etc. If the important part of life is between your ears, then what is the value of such superfluity (is that a word? Well, now it is)?

Most of us, in the developed world, grow up in comfort and safety. There are car accidents, and cancer, and some crime, but basically we know we will be fed at the end of the day, and nothing too bad is likely to happen to us.

Ensconced in this world view, we forget how valuable a trait cruelty can be in the struggle for survival. In a dog eat dog world, is it not the fiercest, meanest person who rises to the top? Now, you can’t be safe alone, normally, so you cluster, but if you look at history, is it not one story after another of one group treating another horribly?

The value of material progress is that it reduces and even eliminates the value of cruelty. I won’t say cruelty was ever NEEDED, but it is an almost invariant feature of societies that lived in anything like difficult condition. Hell, even the inhabitants of the South Pacific were often cannibals, and those conditions can scarcely be called difficult.

What our social order–based as it is on free enterprise, and self government–is the ability to get along with others. Yes, it rewards (for now) initiative and aggression, but within confined bounds.

We need to remember, too, that just 50 short years ago black people could not vote in some States, and had their own bathrooms, pools, and part of the bus. Those who broke the rules stood a decent chance of being beaten.

We have become a soft society, no doubt–we have forgotten that pain is as necessary in its own way to growth as water and air–but we do still need to point to the benefits of that softness, which is a congenital revulsion towards “mean people.” That many of the meanest people are the ones who use that slogan does not negate that fact.

I am for the moment focusing on speed. I have had over 40 voicemails for several months. I keep adding to them, so it revolves a bit, but I want to get them off. For that reason, I am confining myself to shorter, less explanatory notes to myself.

In the event that someone somewhere wants more to read while I am slowing down, you can read a bunch here. Frankly, I don’t think you exist, but who knows? You are my Snipe reader.

I will add that website in general has a lot of content.

For what it is worth, I ordered two books on money, so I can hopefully figure it out. One thought I will pass along (possibly, if I have a reader) is that as a general rule, the speed of money dictates the wealth created, where wealth is defined as the purchasing power of one unit of money. This only applies if the money supply is constant, I think.

In communism, money is eliminated, in effect, since the State directly allocates resources from Point A to Point B. This slows the speed of money, and reduces wealth. This is over and above resentments felt towards Communist regimes in general, and of course the necessary declines in productivity brought about by centralization, as described well by Hayek and others.

If you look at barter, you may go to market and not see what you want. So you don’t sell what you had. If money is an option, you can sell it, then buy what you want later. This facilitates the speedier movement of money.

These are general thoughts. As mentioned, I am going to read more.

It seems to me we all want to climb, we all want to be viewed as successes, by ourselves, and others. Yet, in a meritocracy, very few are finally “successes”. If everyone were a success, then the word would be diluted, wouldn’t it?

We need a book on how to be average. Yes, I know we’re all supposed to desire excellence in all we do, but isn’t good enough sometimes good enough? Now, I have seen pictures of some interesting wiring schemes in Mexico; that isn’t what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about rest from the relentless striving. We push and push and push. Some of us get to the top, most of us get somewhere, some of us, in the end, are forced in large measure to consider ourselves failures.

In all this, though, we need to figure out what matters. So many people want to fly away from being suburban wives and husbands, stuck in a career that is unsatisfying. We want to be LION TAMERS, until we figure out the true cost. But sometimes that is after something that was, is broken.

In my view, the relentless torrent of images we see in magazines and movies do little but torment us. Who are these people? Are they not themselves constantly trying to trade up? Are even they satisfied? Who is happy? Is it not that person who refuses to play the game, and who does their duty without complaint, while taking every opportunity that opens to express and experience happiness?

Suffice it to say, that doesn’t look–according to our normal criteria–like winning. This needs to change. Most of us are half mad with greed and lust, and don’t even know it.

So if I posit one dollar and one teacup on a table, is it not the case that when the Federal Government “prints” money–by “loaning” it to private banks at low interest rates–that two dollars are now on the table, and one of them belongs to a bank? True, not true? Cash enters the system, creates inflation, with the result that cash based buying power goes down. The same amount of goods are in existence, so logically if the banks add the money, they control the portion of the wealth that was “taken” by inflation? True, not true? It seems true, but I need to read the two books on this that I ordered, and think a bit more carefully.

Additionally, we should add that much of the lending to the Federal Government was historically done by investors in this country. The Fed adds money, it goes out, and much of it comes back to the Federal Government. We could with justice, I think, view the New Deal and the constant tinkering that followed it–especially the Great Society of Johnson that did so much to destroy Detroit–as a massive transfer of wealth from the private sector.

We must view the government as just another large corporation, that is in it for the “profit” of increased power, and more “stuff”. Look at all the buildings in Washington: do you really own them? Phrased another way: do you have the slightest direct voice in their disposition? Every building the government builds detracts from our net wealth. Every employee on the payroll of Federal, State or local government detracts from our wealth.

Now, from this it does not follow that we need no government. If we needed no government, then the Constitution would likewise not be needed. As John Madison put it, roughly: “If we were ruled by angels, there would be no need for checks; and if we were angels ourselves, no need for government.”

We need a military, border patrol, customs, and legal apparatus to preside over inter-State disputes, among other things. We need local police, firemen, judges and courts, roads, and laws protecting property rights and against fraud.

Having said this, it is both proper to ask which duties should reside with the sundry States, and which with the Federal government; and as importantly which functions should be done by government, and which left to charity and the private sector. So often, as in the so-called War on Poverty, programs that are meant to help do the job of making leftists feel good about themselves, but due to unforeseen (but scarcely unforseeable) effects, do active harm to those who were meant to benefit.

The War on Poverty, for instance, encouraged an attitude of dependency, resentment when promised help was not forthcoming, and the breakdown of the nuclear family. It is a virtual certainty that the riots in Watts and Detroit and elsewhere that did so much to form permanent black ghettoes were the result of Democrats overpromising and underdelivering, strictly for partisan political purposes. They set expectations high, which led to profound resentment and anger when the moon did not appear over their local corner, for their private disposition. This caused the flight of most of those who paid taxes, with urban blight the inevitable result.

Making a short story long, the Federal payroll is enormous. If we think of it as a corporation, it is no doubt one of the largest employers in the nation, and likely THE largest. It’s “income” continues to rise, and it continues to borrow money for future “expansion”. Problem is, every dollar they take out, is a reduction in our wealth.

China is doing the same thing, but much more aggressively. Their net tax rate is something like 66% (I’m pulling the number out of a hat, but the principle is sound), so that despite the huge amount of wealth their industries are generating, very little of it is going to workers, or poverty reduction. They are getting more money than they did 30 years ago, clearly, but the system is still corrupt. And what they are doing with that money is build more government, and loan the rest to us. If we defaulted on even a part of our debt, it would be catastrophic for them. We seem to fear them, but they have cause to fear us, too, and ask for reassurances their money is safe at every high level conference.

I’m still trying to figure this money thing out. It seems to me it facilitates chasing “goods”–understood generally–in a mutable way. Your money can be used to buy a car, a TV, a vacation, psychotherapy, healthcare, or a menagerie of dogs. All are possible.

I wonder–and as usual I am thinking out loud–what would happen if marriage certificates were hard to come by, and expensive. Would marriages be valued more?

One idea Edward de Bono submitted was: what if marriages lasted five years, and were renewable? That is an interesting idea too.

We hear that “if you gain the world, but lose your soul, you have profited nothing”. This seems clear enough in greed, but what about other pursuits? For example, art? Or even morality? What if your pursuit of being the most moral person on the planet makes you into a nasty, intolerant person? For example, the Taliban, or Iranian mullahs, who inflict pain with pleasure, in the pursuit of a perverted virtue?

As I see it, our task is to recreate ourselves daily. In so doing, you create the possibility of new awarenesses. Morality is not that hard. It is not peforming heroics, normally, so much as asking from yourself common decency and the expression of the better parts of human nature.

And the question I asked myself this morning was this: is it worth commiting some small, real “sin”, in order to create, say, a great work of art? As an example, is it acceptable to neglect your kids or wife–to the point where it hurts them–to create something? Tolstoy, to take a concrete case, was quite cruel to his family, while praising the virtues of love. This is a not uncommon case.

In my own view, the answer is no. You always have a choice of moving towards the light, and away from it. “War and Peace” is a marvelous novel–I am told–but we have the Bible and other sources of inspiration already. Always, you are moving towards or away from light and goodness, and no half step in the direction of darkness is ever warranted. Better to do nothing, and profit by silence.

In a larger sense, could one not view the contents of his awareness as his or her greatest creation? What do we WANT from accomplishment? We want a feeling, do we not? Does it not follow, therefore, that the creation of that feeling of deep satisfaction, connection, and pleasure is the PRIMARY goal, and its cultivation directly, where possible, the most intelligent means of proceeding?

Could we not view our greatest religious teachers as in some way great artists, whose medium was perception?

That phrase popped in my head this morning, listening to a thunderstorm, and pondering the frequent points at which my rhetoric and reality part company. “When all is said and done, more is said than done” certainly applies to me. It’s not that I am base in any fundamental way, so much that I don’t always keep my word when I commit myself to things, and that contravenes my principle of never quitting. It is hypocrisy, in a sense, and only a relatively clear conscience enables me to put it that bluntly.

I mentioned several posts ago that we are clearly capable of splitting our awareness into parts. Each part remains aware, but of only a small part of reality. You cannot simultaneously be split and whole, which is obvious, but still worth stating.

Goodness, then, consists in no small measure of the pursuit of psychological wholeness. If you never fear anything, or avoid anything, within your mind–if you never contravene your own first principles, and if those principles are basically decent ones–then you never “split”.

In this regards, the myth of the Horcruxes from Joanne Rowling’s books is interesting. Voldemort splits himself into seven pieces, each through murder. It is a fundamental belief of mine that we all want the same things–connection, light, love–but that some of us retreat from the light. This can at first be an unwillingness to see parts of ourselves that are less than pleasant, and become, finally, an active rejection of everything that is good and wholesom (note that word), and a rage towards life and order, coupled with a desire to tear down and set fire to all that is.

We understand that. Love, conversely, is the desire to build up and strengthen what is worthwhile in this world. That is all. It is an equally activei energy, and one which goes on forever.

I may have already said this, but I think the simplest, most useful definition of propaganda is the substitution of labels for dialogue. If you call someone stupid, or a right winger (or left winger), and think that constitutes a full argument, then you are engaging in polemical rhetoric, which for my purposes is a type of propaganda.

The intent is to create two groups: one which is “in”, and by extension one which includes everyone who does not assent to the labels. Political correctness, as an example, is not a doctrine which permits argument. You either accept the “facts” that judging others is always wrong, that minorities cannot ever be disparaged, and that whatever your friends are angry about is something you MUST be angry about too. If you don’t do this, you are one of “them”.

The purpose of integration propaganda is to make you smug, and the purpose of agitation propaganda is to make you angry and/or resentful.

In the former case, you are told that within your group resides all the goodwill, generosity, intelligence, and every other desirable trait imaginable. Those outside your group are therefore the converse of all of this: they are hateful, selfish, stupid and all the bad stuff.

In the latter case (and obviously the two are connected, but sometimes you want people to sit down and shut up, and sometimes you want them terrorizing people in the street), your task is to portray the “good people” as under attack by the hated others, and to use the energies of anger, self defense, and resentment at the UNFAIRNESS of it all to mobilize people into whatever pathway best suits you politically.

Thinking out loud again. It seems to me the only way you can get deflation is through hoarding. Even money kept in banks is invested, since they have to invest to stay in business. Of course, if they loan the money, and it is lost, then it is gone, too. You have, say, a house that has been built, and the workers and suppliers paid. You lose, there, the excess the bank expected to make, resulting in the loss of the bank. Yet, the excess was retained by those who were paid, so the money is still there.

But if you put money in a mattress, it is out of circulation. This causes a decrease in money, which causes a decrease in prices, which over time causes a decrease in inventories, and an eventual loss of jobs.

In trying to figure out the Depression, you have to figure out where the money went. There may be a simple answer to this. One obvious answer is that the high tax rates Roosevelt charged on investment income, and on income for the rich in general, caused them to in effect put the money in mattresses.

If you have money, though, you also get good deals in deflationary times, so it would be worth finding out who, if anyone, benefited from the Depression, other than the Statist Democrats. What wealth transfer happened, if it did? Perhaps one could argue that wealth was transferred, permanently, from the private sector to the government.

Imagine a table. I put something–say a Chinese teacup–on one side. On the other I put a dollar bill. Now, I have five possible operations: I can add a teacup, I can add a dollar, I can add a teacup AND a dollar, I can take the dollar off the table, and I can take the teacup off the table.

The first case is deflation. I can now buy MORE with the same money. Provided everyone has money, this is a good thing. [Edit: actually, increases in productivity through innovation enable the same thing. This is how wealth is actually generated. You buy more with the same amount of money. This is a work in progress, where I am thinking out loud, and I don’t always think out loud “smartly”, but over time I calibrate]

The second case is inflation. I can now buy the same thing, but at higher cost, than I could before. This is bad.

The third case is called “growth”, so that we carry on as before, but at higher prices. Practically, this never happens in conditions of technical innovation, making scenario one slightly more relevant.

The fourth and fifth cases are related. In Communism, of course, profit is banned. Soviet Russia, for example, made selling things for any amount of money beyond what it cost to produce them illegal.

[Edit: This is perhaps where deflation goes, too, in that if there is no money to chase existing goods, the goods also disappear; this is the problem of liquidity that did so much to cause the Great Depression].

Thus, we now produce, without selling. The correllary is number five, in which we stop producing, and the table is now empty. This is, in effect, how the famines that beset substantially all Communist regimes happened.

(edit: could one call Communism “deflationary”? Money, obviously, is out of circulation. Is it the role of money to foster liquidity? Is the primary value of money over direct barter not the speed and ease of movement? I think this is getting close to the case)

This is, in my view, not a bad heuristic. Still, maybe I will improve on it tomorrow.