The Only Way Forward

I just read this Der Spiegel article saying that Total Capitalism Destroyed America.  Exactly.  "Total Capitalism" aka. Supply Side Economics destroyed America.  That said, Total Socialism has likewise destroyed much of Europe.  I am not going to pen a long winded article defending that statement, when all we need to do is turn to the front page of any newspaper to see in real-time the clusterfuck that has become Europe.  And of course, total Communism killed Communism.  It turns out that people don't want to work for free - go figure.  Meanwhile in China, total Fascism is killing Fascism, as anarchy is on deck for the Middle Kingdom...

What all of these "systems" had in common and the overwhelming contributing factor in their demise, were special interest groups, special interest group politics, and the accompanying notion that politics and economics is a zero sum game.  Indeed, the idea that politics itself is a game.  Watching the election last night and flipping through various channels one couldn't help but get a sense that these political pundits were just harking back to their high school cheerleading days.  Yay, we won, they lost.  To the victor go the spoils.

But you will never get any of those people to admit that politics is just a zero sum game that sucks the lifeblood out of the real economy - each side taking turns feasting at the public trough until it's sucked dry.  That's because politics like everything else is just another business.  It's their business and they will defend it at all costs.

What we have now therefore is an ideological vacuum.  A bunch of failed systems and no clear path forward.  The only true way forward is via a strong constitution and a strong judiciary.  Working in tandem, the Constitution and the Judiciary must impose discipline upon these middle-man politicians to keep the Special Interest Groups out of the public cookie jar.

Unfortunately, to state the obvious, neither the American Constitution nor the American judiciary appears to be up to the task.  I realize that it's heresy to question the U.S. Constitution - and I am not questioning it's inherent values.  I am merely questioning whether it's specific enough to be used as a legal document, to guide practical decisions.  To date, the American Constitution has been viewed as a guideline, suitably vague to allow a legislative freight train to run through it wholly unhindered, especially around economic decisions (raising taxes etc.) and state's rights where most of the abuses have occurred.  Given that marginal tax rates have oscillated between 0% and 90% over the past 200 years, one would say that some amount of Constitutional "tightening" of definition or interpretation is in order.  At minimum there needs to be a balanced budget amendment.

Endless Laws are A Comfort Seeker's Paradise

Comfort seekers look out at a complex world and envision an unending set of complex laws to govern every aspect of societal behaviour.  Inevitably, as we are now, society gets quagmired in an incomprehensibly dense set of conflicting laws and regulations that no one understands.  It's a legal paradise.  Judges and politicians who are lawyers, create the laws.  Lawyers benefit.  Do you see a conflict of interest there?  As they say, never ask a barber if you need a haircut.  Likewise, never ask a lawyer if you need a new law.  Regulation should be  exception-based, as in trust people to go about their business in a generally honest manner but pursue the egregious offenders swiftly and strictly.  As Ron Paul says, freedom is not easy and it's not always perfect.  Yet the alternative is the quagmired society we live in now which gives merely the illusion of control, at the expense of overwhelming stagnation.

And lest one assume that I am some Ayn Randist addled Libertarian who doesn't give a damn about his fellow citizen, guess again and or read the other 200+ posts on this blog.  That said, the social safety net needs to be there for the people at the bottom who truly need it - to pick them up, dust them off and get them restarted again.  This idea that everyone can get a piece of the public pie from top to bottom and everyone in between, is a mathematical delusion.