Bruce W. Morlan Thinks Out Loud

The Scottish economist Alexander Tyler framed the end of democracies in the starkest of terms …

The Republican party understands this at the deepest levels.  It is part of our creed.  It is sometimes expressed simplistically as “no new taxes” but it is operationalized by our Senators and Congressmen who stand firm between the mob and the treasury.

Last week we watched as the guardians stood firm briefly, and we hoped we were watching the Battle of the Bulge, which looked very bad for the Allies but eventually was turned into a defeat for the forces of Nationalist Socialism (Nazis).  Unfortunately, we instead saw the Battle of Thermopylae, as the forces stood briefly Monday, but by Friday had been betrayed and routed.

Monday we stood firm on principles of the free market, but in what has become standard behavior in these sorts of emergencies, we attached enough earmarks to hide the wolf underneath, and the bill was passed.

Some of the earmarks masqueraded as reduced taxes, but in a byzantine twist of logic, these are not seen as earmarks. Basically this confuses “earmarks” with giveaways.  It is not the giveaway that makes earmarks insidious.  It is the granting of special dispensations to one group at the expense of the rest.  It could be argued that tax relief is really more of a “not taking away”.  This is a subtle point, but since the real crime is the use of tax codes to reward selected sectors by not taxing them the re-labeling is a semantic argument that only a lawyer could love.  There is no free market in that strategy.

I would argue that socialism is nothing more than the intermediate transition between freedom and serfdom. In 2000 we had a mere 1.46% taxation stood between us and the tipping point predicted by Dr. Tyler (admittedly an ad hoc measure, but instructive none the less). I fear that in the short time between Monday and Friday we may have actually seen the beginning of the final end to our economic freedoms and, by study of history, of our prosperity. Mark the tape, we should at least know when we have crossed this Rubicon. Alae iacta est.

For years we have been taught that the Continental Divide is the ridge along the Rockies that separates Atlantic-bound waters like the Missouri from Pacific-bound waters like the Columbia.  Now a new divide is emerging, one that makes the Red-Blue distinction look like children fighting at the annual family reunion.

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An article in the NYTimes, “The Food Chain - Mideast Facing Choice Between Crops and Water” should serve as a lesson to us that we cannot always count on market forces to reach the best solutions.  I have argued for many years now that the cities of Northfield and Dundas need to pay attention to the good farmland that borders their growing population, with an eye on building a sustainable community (one that can feed itself if shipping costs and climate change change the market dynamics for food, water, shelter.  Consider Egypt …

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A headline “Food is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming” raises alarm flags in my sustainability brain.  We already believe that BigAg is much more bottom line oriented than farmers, where I define farming as a calling, not a profession. Given that, my old advice that if you would control something you’d better own it (because governments are only as principled as their polls will let them be) is very much on my mind today.

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The Japanese are having trouble finding enough engineers and scientists … what a surprise. In the 80’s we (the USA) got worried about the choices our youth were making (more arts, less math and science). Now that trend has gone overseas.

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While reading about ICE I  was reminded that some wag once said “the only thing worse than an inefficient government is an efficient government. That’s why we like our Congress to be ruled by one mob while the President is from the Opposition.”

Consider the government’s own “Expect More” program. An interesting diversion if you don’t like the weather outside. Is this graph a sign of hope or a cause for despair?

A recent story in ScienceNews suggests that committees (those oft denigrated collections of people) are actually decision-impaired if they are too large. The US, with its mid-sized cabinet, is an example of a society approaching the “tipping point” of 20 members. Another argument for smaller government?

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NPR, in a break from it’s usual coverage, spent 10 minutes or so interviewing Anh Duong, a women who escaped from Vietnam before the North Vietnamese took over. Her stand on freedom and her desire to ensure that freedom continues to expand was a touching and warm story that left me itching to defend once again, at the top of my e-lungs, why we (the West) need to win this war. It reminded me of the importance of helping people realize the subtle difference between simple colonialism or empire (the old evils) and the world we are trying to build, where enclaves of peaceful idealists can try out their pet schemes without having to build large armies to keep out other idealists with different ideas. Oil may be the proximate reason we fight, but we do, as a civilization, have ideals that we have been fighting for ever since the West led the way in moving humans from capital to freedom at a level almost unseen in modern times.

An offhand comment by Ms. Duong reminded me how we tend to hear lots from artists about how creative they are, precisely because that is what they do, create art. Ms. Duong’s comment that she had to give up her dream of being a writer to become an engineer is saddening to me, as it is my experience that being an engineer (or an imaginary engineer (IE) if full disclosure) allows me to also be a writer, poet and artist. I hope Ms. Duong finds the time to express her creativity in other more accepted modalities.

Reference: 

The Story, Monday, May 5th edition, first story:

You would think that the victims of war would be the last ones to get into the business of inventing new arms.
Ahn Duong was a teenage girl in Saigon when she fled from the invasion of Communist forces. She stuffed everything she owned into a little duffle bag and, along with her family, made her way to the US.
Ahn is now a weapons designer in Washington. She is responsible for engineering America’s first “thermobaric bomb”. This bomb is designed to be extra deadly when it is dropped into caves. Ahn talks with Dick Gordon about what it is like to have seen war from both sides, and her strong connection to freedom.

The creative mathematician. One of my poems,  The Street Singer. Another, more mathematical and philosophical, Soul of Chaos.

Freedom! Peace! Justice! You can’t have just two.

Dave Hvistendahl, in announcing his run for mayor of Northfield, stated:

We do not have an orderly annexation agreement with Waterford Township, so we should annex the township to give us industrial and commercial sites on Highway 3, Dakota Co. 47, and Highway 19.

Whoa! That’s the sort of thinking that made Crazy Horse crazy. Townships are fed up with urban planners thinking that just because land is open and not crammed with shopping malls, industry and houses, it must be of no value and just needs the loving ministrations of the city to make it valuable again. Dundas and Bridgewater have led the way in local cooperative ventures, with both showing great respect for each other’s goals and vision as they forge a new way of doing business. I certainly hope the next mayor of Northfield is a little more sensitive to the needs of the city, which include having a healthy ring of townships that retain their rural character so the city can continue to be contented. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of years ago the movie “Children of Men” showed a world gone mad. Although the madness was caused by despair over the inability to procreate (no child had been born for almost 20 years). Today we are seeing despair around the globe as food is suddenly becoming scarce. From riots to blocks on exporting food, the world is suddenly all too aware of food and the fact that the supply is limited.

“That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.”
Ref: NYTimes (free registration required)

The causes are many, including the usual suspects: Western greed, avarice and gluttony; Western use of food to produce fuel; and Western farming practices (yup, it all the West’s fault).

Not much talk about overpopulation, not much talk about what happens when you pillage the soil without regard to sustainability for a few thousand years. At least there is a little tip of the hat to the concept of the Malthusian catastrophe.

A Malthusian catastrophe is a situation in which a society returns to a subsistence level of existence as a result of overtaxing its available agricultural resources.
Ref: The WiseGeek.

As it happens, we covered this in some detail at a Politics and a Pint (Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed (24 Feb 2008)) at the Contented Cow.

There is some talk that we have neutered the Western male in the name of taming his violent side. Upon hearing that men in one third world country were sitting around with a sense of helplessness I could only think that that emasculation had been exported. But then, I am just a simple country boy who knows how to grow a crop, how to hunt and clean game and so I perhaps have an inflated sense of self-sufficiency.

In the meantime, world leaders are rushing to Cancún to meet to solve these problems …

“This is a perfect storm,” President Elías Antonio Saca of El Salvador said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancún, Mexico. [emphasis added]
Ref: NYTimes (free registration required)

Gee, maybe if they met in Mexico City instead of Cancún they’d feel closer to the problem and perhaps save enough to actually be helpful. Or maybe they’re into trickle down economics (which works, but not without angst when the consumption is so over-the-top elitist).

References:

• Science Friday story, Economics for a Crowded Planet