What would you do?
The dreaded question I get from my poor Mom after she has been staying with me a while and enduring all of my ranting diatribes (I try to hold back, but can't really help myself).
Like most people she is familiar with most of the issues and has heard most of the facts and data, but also like most people she wants to conclude that things are going to be more or less the same in the future with some fine tuning.
For my part I first explain that the vaunted political system is not the answer, it's the problem. Voting for one of two (or three) political parties that serve the same special interest groups is the fundamental problem with the system. This is why, unlike most Libertarians, I am not a stark raving Ron Paul fanatic, because he has deluded himself into thinking that once he becomes President he can change the system from within i.e. change the Washington and Wall Street "Machine". Yeah right. Unfortunately old Ron would be eaten alive by the Borg, if not neutered and lobotomized. His ideas would be stillborn. Even in the best case scenario, if he took over with a Republican majority in both chambers, Ron Paul has absolutely no plan for getting us from Point A where we are, on the edge of the cliff, to Point B, where we need to get to on the other side of the valley. Between those two points is the beckoning economic abyss that will put to lie any notion that a 76 year-old codger can lead us through this mess. The fact that he is willing to stand on that stage campaigning with a pack of sociopathic lying buffoons is another huge problem. All of these politicians are campaigning v.s. doing, which is at the heart of the problem with the current political system. Campaigning is rent seeking and a dead weight loss to society and a zero sum game. So while I would gladly like to jump on the Ron Paul train, I can't buy that fantasy.
As you can tell by from this blog, my party is the Anarchy Party, not by choice, but by lack of alternative. The Anarchy Party, has no leader, no campaign, and no funding. It doesn't need any of that bullshit. It has only one constituent - a constituent which is far more powerful than anyone on this planet: aka. Reality. If reality has its way (and it always does, it's just a matter of time), then the Anarchy Party will be duly elected in the foreseeable future.
However, upon taking control, the Anarchy Party will be quickly challenged by the neo-Fascist Party that does not exist yet, but that will rise up out of the Tea Party base with the goal to eliminate the Anarchy as quickly as possible. And via various police-state measures, the Fascist Party will eventually win out, although it's not going to be pretty, I can assure you that. Recent efforts by Occupy Wall Street to recruit returning Iraqi war veterans to their cause were duly successful and forebode poorly for the future. Go figure - young people who have been sitting around at home for the last 3 years Facebooking with their friends/family in Iraq, still have a lot in common with their brothers, sisters, cousins and high school buddies who are just getting out of the service only to find they too have no job. So, the first thing the neo-Fascist party will do is look to re-employ as many returned veterans as possible in the nascent police state. After all, you can't have too many well trained machine gunners running loose in Militia-Land. This sets up an Arab Spring scenario in which armed forces are essentially turned on their own populace. Will they fight and do the bidding of the establishment or will they join the rebellion? Too early to know...
So let's say all that plays out and by some grace of God some of us survive the next 5-10 years, ok now I can answer my Mom's question "then, what would you do?". Most of what I would do at that juncture does derive from the Ron Paul Libertarian guide book, but with my own twist:
1) Elevate the constitution and make it inviolable by any branch of government
2) Reform campaign finance
- Limited donations from all donors
- Complete transparency on "soft" donations
3) Implement a hard money currency w/a 3rd currency for trading w/other nations
- One currency for domestic transactions and savings
- A "3rd" currency for trading with other nations that trades independently of the domestic currency
4) Balance of trade policy with all trading partners
5) Balanced budget policy
- Budget needs to be balanced in year of election when averaged over previous 4 years or budget cap is automatically applied
6) Greatly reduced level of regulation and laws
- This would be the hardest to implement given the decades of accumulated junk legislation
- Ideally we would move to a system of regulation by exception not by rule
7) Flat tax w/reverse flat tax for working poor
- All tax code changes need to be approved by the electorate via referendum
8) Make it a lot harder to go to war
In other words apply common sense and most importantly, keep the self-nominated "elites" out of the cookie jar.
The above list would be a good start and take us 95% of the way towards fixing the underlying problems that got us into this situation; however, like I said before, it's all pure fantasy until the Special Interest Groups are obliterated. Neither Ron Paul nor Abraham Lincoln can fix the system as long as the SIGs are still fully in charge and empowered. They represent the status quo and will do everything in their considerable powers to retain control over the political and economic system so that they can continue to ass rape the general public and otherwise reach into the register whenever they feel like it.
So, apart from being inevitable, the only benefit I see from turmoil and anarchy is that the SIGs and their 1% sponsor will be in for one hell of a ground and pound that hopefully will dislodge them for good.
Unfortunately, we will all be in the ring at the same time.
