A political clarification

Every so often I have to clarify that I'm not a member of any political party. I am pulling for the GOP to win this election for practical reasons only. I believe the system is too interventionist to allow big changes, so it's all proabaly a moot point, but I think one more major attempt has to be made to change the system now so it won't be such a major shock when the system collapses -- it will collapse if it's not changed.

There's a better chance that new Republicans will push through change than Democrats having a change of heart anytime soon. If anything, Democrats want to double down while interest rates are low, as if interest rates are our problem. The problem is our interventionist system which grows automatically with feifdoms galore protecting their turf. Government keepers has no idea how much is spent on defense. An audit would proabaly shock even experts in the Defense Department. No one knows how much fraud and abuse eats up dollars daily all throughout the entire welfare/warfare State.

Government is corrupt, and power players care only about expansion of power and control. Once limitations on power were removed, the State has used an interventionist government to expand power as much as it can get by with without causing widespread public backlash. Over decades Americans have been trained to accept gradual power expansion, with Obamacare and Dodd-Frank the last expansion efforts that Americans have mostly accepted. There's no huge, organized opposition anymore demanding the repeal of Obamacare, and no one even understands Dodd-Frank. Romney says he will repeal Obamacare, but he's already talking about keeping parts of it, so that even if Romney is elected the State will grow less in power, but there will be no rollbacks of power -- no departments eliminated, no major cuts in spending. The most fiscally responsible actors in government talk only about slowing  increases in spending, not really cutting spending.

So, no, I'm not a Republican, Democrat or Libertarian party member. I believe that the political realm is too powerful. I believe in economic freedom and private sector power of free choice. I believe in a minimal government that protects our rights and defends our nation against foreign attack and settles disputes in courts. No, I don't belong to a party, and I'm beginning to think that our system of government is in its last days. There are too many structural problems which have grown over the years and now block economic growth sufficient enough and sustainable enough to create widespread prosperity and new wealth.

We need major change, and we need it now.

Statism and special interests -- getting Big Things done

One of the aspects of government which has frustrated statists in recent years is the inability to get Big Things done. Early on, as our government became split into two parties, each party has attempted to maintain power by building power bases made up of a coalition of special interest groups. These groups who support one party or the other don't always have perfectly matching goals, although they have decided that they have enough in common to form coalitions for political power. On the Right, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives will both support the Republican Party, as will the Big Government Republicans, but within the party their differences create conflict. On the Left, unions and professional level liberals will support the Democrat Party, as will Blue Dog Democrats, but they don't all agree on policy. In reality there should be many more parties to support the different special interests, but at some point it seemed more advantageous to form coalitions under a Big Party umbrella.

As the State has become more powerful and our government more interventionist, these battling special interest groups have more at stake, so, winning political battles is more important to their survival. The result, however, is that with big pieces of legislation, like Obamacare, the original vision of the statists turns out as a mongrel creation designed to please everyone but failing to work for anyone. When a big infrastructure plan is designed, there are so many interests vying for a piece of the action the outcome is waste, cronyism and misdirected capital. Obama has tested the flaws in the modern State and we're seeing the results. An ambitious progressive agenda has turned into a series of failures. I'm not sure if this will lead to financial collapse as each administration tries to push through their Big Deals, or if this is simply nature's way of stopping statism from succeeding, thus we'll see the light and end statism. I have a feeling this is not the last statist attempt to get Big Things done.

The Road to Freedom -- Part II

The advent of special interest groups lobbying for government advantages at the expense of other groups became the new irony which replaces old concerns about individualism and atomism in a capitalist society. These groups are collectivist in nature, each group an atom, a self, which fight for their interests regardless of how the advantages they receive from government affect society as whole. Unions don't care about management -- environmentalists don't care about commerce -- minority groups don't care about other races -- corporations don't care about small businesses -- on and on as each group attempts to get a bigger and bigger share at the expense of others.

This is a societal war between groups using political means to win for their cause. Early in history, the creation of States began when political means were applied by some to dominate others. Franz Oppenheimer writes about this development in his book, The State. As political means are used for the ordering of society, economic means become more and more impotent. Special interest groups create alliances to support the political party they believe will use political means to attain power, each atom in the alliance fighting for limited interests. While Tocqueville, as did Hamilton, thought these disparate interests would prevent a rule of the majority, they have done the opposite, because the special interests are able to find affinities close enough to form an alliance which create a temporary majority. This creates not only divisions in society as a whole, but also divisions within the political party representing different special interests, but these divisions are misleading. As we will see, the rule of the majority is the combination of groups fighting one another within the government -- this creates a majority dependent on the State -- the State becomes the majority ruler over the private sector.

When one party can't hold their special interest alliances together, they lose power, temporarily, to the other political party which is representing the competing alliance of special interests. We see the two parties, which are both parts of the State, alternating control of government, and sometimes sharing control in a split government. In the process, the State becomes more and more powerful as the special interests are co-opted in suppor of overall State control of the economy.  As long as the majority of the people see the State as the route to happiness and financial security, the special interest groups represent the forces which can influence the State to further their goals, so people pick the groups and the alliances they believe empower them individually, but they all join one big group -- the State, the status quo political process which organizes society and favors the powerful whose interests trump all the others.

In reality, all the special interest groups are slowly losing because our resources are being drained through waste -- these battes within the State do not create new wealth, and industry in the private sector, where new wealth has to be created, is being hamstrung and exploited by the battles within the State for advantages, subsidies and favors. The conflicting special-interest battles create a hodge-podge of regulations and taxes, as poltical parties try to hold their alliances together, designed to favor this group or that, until the business environment becomes too confusing, onerous and complex for businesses to freely operate. Guarded market activity kills innovation and growth and increases unemployment which puts pressure on the State to spend more money on welfare until this vicious cycle bankrupts the nation and all the special interest groups lose.

Although this process has been going on since the beginning of America, it seriously advanced at the turn of the 20th century, and now we are at a critical point -- it has had an accumulative effect.

So, now we turn to the economic means, which in the beginning many chose as the best route to growth, equal opportunity under the law, peace and prosperity -- not a mixture of political and economic means, but a separation of State and economy. While it might appear that the competing interests battling in alliances split between two parties prevent majority rule, the con job is that the State uses these battles to gain complete control. As long as we're using political means to achieve our goals, we're doomed to being exploited.

More later.

Libertarian failure

As the battle for political power gets closer in the midterm elections, those who posed as libertarian are taking sides. The right-leaning libertarians are hunkering down in the Republican establishment, and those who leaned left are sounding like they wrote the Democrat Party playbook.

Few are standing above it all and yelling -- Stop! Hardly anyone is objectively assessing the damage done by statist policies or calling for an actual free market and strictly limited government. It was all a show. I'm watching them capitulate one at a time -- even Rand Paul is back-tracking and trying to repair his image to be acceptable for political power. Bloggers are calling for professional politicians who can win races and govern and legislate, dammit -- this is realpoliticks and the weak freedom birds need to understand reality. Yes, the weekend libertarians are running for comfort into the Big-Daddy Party arms. No one wants to be hung out to dry defending principles. A nation of dependents doesn't deserve freedom.

Toxic political environment

We're living in a toxic political environment, and both right and left share the blame. The right shares the blame for not articulating a clear alternative to statism, reacting to the left's diversionary tactics, and failing to focus on limited government, individual rights and a free market. Some have focused, but the rest seem to believe this whole conflict between statism and limited government is about political power, getting the Republican Party elected, or establishing control over the party by one faction or another.

The left shares the blame for using despicable tactics to maintain power. The left is using the cheapest, most cowardly tactic of all -- accusing their opponents of racism. I won't go into a tit for tat on the race issue, but in the 21st century, this tactic doesn't work, and anyone using it ought to be ashamed of themselves -- they have no credibility.

Anyone on the right using race as a scare tactic is just as despicable. There's no need to discuss race at all when debatng the conflict between statism and limited government. The right should not highlight the race of an opponent, and the left should not cry racism when the right is criticizing someone on the left who happens to be a member of a minority group, especially when the criticism has nothing to do with race but with political beliefs and unscrupulous actions -- such as the ACORN issue, and Van Jones' involvement in radical causes -- neither of these have anything to do with race and everything to do with ideas and actions.

I'm at a point where I'm moving away from both parties and the poltical jackals in between until one shows some sanity and integrity or a new, viable party emerges. What we need is a private sector revival, not a political war. Citizens of all races should be standing against government overreach and statist policies which are destroying the economy and bogging us down in two wars -- not to mention violating privacy rights and threatening to infiltrate the internet, even more than they have already.

Forget about all the political class buffoons who self-style themselves as "elite" - They're a joke. Hardly any of these clowns know anything about production and creating new wealth, living in peace or existing in diversity -- they want to divide the nation and weaken the people in order to maintain power. Washington DC has grown into a monstrosity which needs to be cut down to size, and all the parasites living off of it with their useless games and snarky superiorty need to support themselves with honest work -- we need to quit feeding the monster.