The Cassandra Syndrome

The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy
by Domenico Tiepolo (1773)

A comment by an economist with apparent Austrian School leanings, has prompted this posting.That economist was frustrated because he says he can explain the current economic malaise/crisis in Austrian terms, but no one either believes or listens to what he is saying. He likens his plight to that of Cassandra, of Greek mythology.
Cassandra of course foresaw the destruction of Troy and the death of Agamemnon, commander of the Greek army, but no one believed her. In the current context it's a situation that many of us can sympathize with and it has been named the Cassandra Syndrome. The Urban Dictionary defines Cassandra Syndrome as:
1) The condition of speaking the truth and having no one believe you.
2) The condition of being able to predict the future, be it the outcome of a particular event, or the reactions of others to the same event, and having no one believe your prophecy until it transpires.
3) Being able to see or understand things long before others, often resulting in them coming to the same conclusions long after your own initial analysis.
This morning, CBC Radio News reported on the FOX sponsored Iowa Republican Party nominees debate. In that report, Michelle Bachmann was mentioned, Mitt Romney was mentioned, and so on, not a word about candidate Ron Paul of course. To be fair most of the other candidates were not mentioned, but Ron Paul exemplifies the meaning of Cassandra Syndrome exactly. He is the only candidate that calls for peace, liberty, and limiting the power of government. He needs to be heard, to be listened to, and to be supported. Watch and listen to his answers, a Cassandra if ever there was one.

   

Freckles on the sun

Astronomy was one of my first loves. The wonder of it is how much we don't know and are still finding out. There are far, far, more planets around distant suns than you or I can imagine..........watch.

Crash....and reboot!

Disturbing..........

Your life after death.....digitally.

So what happens to our digital life after we are gone? Adam Ostrow, a journalist, argues that we all have one thing in common, we will all die. Then what? Will our blogs be erased? Will our status updates on Facebook indicate the moment of death? Will we live on as part of the ever growing "cloud?" All good questions, a bit morbid maybe, but interesting.

What should be cut?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about "The curse of the spendthrift legislators." Governments everywhere in the 'first world' have racked up huge debts, primarily because they have ventured into areas they do not belong. Governments at all levels have some legitimate functions in libertarian philosophy. Most of these proper functions can be classified broadly as protecting our rights without impinging on our liberties, including economic freedoms.
So now that the government spending pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction everywhere, how can it be reversed?  As an example on a smaller scale, the link above mentions that the City of Toronto has a budget shortfall for next year of three quarters of a billion dollars. So city councillors are faced with cutting costs or raising taxes....a lot. What to do? One of the many suggestions in a report produced by KPMG for the city was to cut library services. You might imagine the hue and cry and that was elicited from the statist community for that one.
Realistically there is no way city government (or any government) will revert to the libertarian ideal in the near future. Our only hope is that government makes moves in the direction of more liberty. Two articles by Larry Solomon of the National Post suggest how this may be done. The first here, deals with the KPMG report and its effect on services. The second here, addresses the library questions and the perception that the cuts will somehow encourage widespread ignorance. Both articles offer interesting alternatives.   

Triple-A reality check

Today stock markets around the world resembled that ship over there, and that was after last week, a bad week. Standard and Poor's downgraded US credit on Friday after the markets closed, and all weekend media types were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, it's dropping, but maybe not yet completely dropped.
The media are portraying this as a debt crisis, POTUS Obama calls it a crisis in political will. No matter, things won't start improving until and unless everyone agrees that this is actually a spending crisis. It didn't start with Obama, or Bush 2, the problem  is chronic and widespread across the planet at all levels of government. Spending at a greater rate than income creates debt, its very simple, any household is aware of this reality. Why governments have the right to spend more than they have, is a great question, maybe for another time.
Canada lost its Aaa rating in 1992, and it was not reinstated until years later, after the Chretien-Martin Liberals actually downsized the Canadian Federal government. This downsize, that began about 15 years ago, is the reason most commentators say that Canada is doing so much better than the US and the other G7 economies at the moment.
So the reality is that a country functions better when it's spending is under control, and when its government shrinks giving the population more of its own discretionary income. Job creation is better, the monetary system is better and the future is brighter. That is the reality. 

Hyperinflation by fiat

Fiat currency or money, is money that has value only because of government regulation or law. That means there is no tangible commodity that the money can exchanged for, except its equivalent value in other denominations. So, one American dollar will get you four quarters made of some base metal combination, which at least has some heft to it. That is the law in the U. S., but once an American dollar was worth a pre-determined amount of gold, and then things changed.
The bill pictured is 1 x 10 to the 14th Zimbabwean dollars - one hundred trillion Zim dollars. Today, that bill is worth about $5.00 Canadian/US, as a collectors item. In 2008 that amount would purchase a cart of groceries, while 700 Billion Zim Dollars bought a loaf of bread. That's what happens when a currency collapses and hyperinflation ensues.
As posted here, the average life expectancy of a fiat currency is 27 years and as Stefan Molyneux explains in a recent posting below, the world's current reserve currency, the U. S. dollar, may be nearing the end of its life expectancy.

"Our genes talking"

Humans are successful because we have developed "social learning" and have used language to impart that learning to others.
Language is used to unite us, and divide us, and it has transformed humanity more than anything we possess.

Your government = your mommy

Don't touch those potato chips! Put down that can of soda pop! The government KNOWS whats best for you, trust them.
Seems to me, with all the things government is expected to do, chastising people for bad habits is one less thing it should be doing. Come to think of it, with the huge debts being accumulated by all levels of government on our behalf, there are too many things governments are doing. People should be responsible for themselves as much as possible, don't you think?

Rent Control, Race, and Sowell

Uncommon Knowledge is a video series produced by the Hoover Institution. Need your preconceived ideas shaken up? Then give a listen to Thomas Sowell (pictured), and hear what is meant by uncommon knowledge.

  

Warning, this posting is not politically correct and there is swearing too....

How many recycling containers do you use in your home? Here in my corner of the Great White North we have just a couple that we put out, and think we are doing our bit. But are we?
On garbage day a man on a bike, laden with bags and carriers, cycles through my neighbourhood in suburbia, rain or shine, summer or winter, and picks through the recycling "blue boxes" looking for anything of value. What could there be of value? Well, I can watch this guy through my office window as he picks out beer, wine and liquor bottles because the Provincial government beer store, returns a deposit on them and the man also picks up aluminium cans. Why aluminum? Good question, I'll leave that explanation for Penn Jillette and his colleague Teller. Enjoy, but be warned, there is swearing and it might shake your belief in recycling.

A libertarian tangles with statists on TV

Bill Maher frequently makes me angry and almost as frequently makes me laugh so I watch his weekly Real Time show on HBO. Last week he had as a guest Nick Gillespie of Reason TV, who was hawking his new book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America. 
Opposite Nick were, Bill Maher, and several traditional political types - all statists. The fireworks that ensued exposed the weakness of the statist arguments that support the status quo.....or should I say statist quo? Anyway, its interesting to hear all sides in the lively debate:

The curse of the spendthrift legislators

"Democracy at its finest," those were the words used by one City of Toronto councillor yesterday in a deputation marathon that lasted 22 hours. The City of Toronto needs to find $775 Million in savings in next years budget (2012), or it will need to raise taxes or cut services or both. Yesterday 334 people had registered to speak in front of City council to plead their case for saving their particular pet service (see picture) or support the cuts. In the end just under 200 got to speak (many just left during the night) and only one of those spoke in favour of cuts to spending. That is a sobering statistic.

This outbreak of parsimony is now wide spread in Western Democracies. In Europe, nations are teetering toward default on their financial obligations. Our American neighbours are in danger of defaulting by next week. At the Provincial and State and municipal levels across North America, governments of all stripes are coming to grips with massive debt, all of this in the midst of a weak recovery from a severe recession. Recession part two could be a result. The chickens are coming home to roost, the curse of the spendthrift legislators threatens everyone.

But look at Toronto, mobs of rent-seekers stepping up to ensure that they are cared for in the way they have become accustomed. "We want our services, and we want someone else to pay for them," that is the message of the debate.

Last October the new Mayor was elected to "stop the gravy train," to stop what he presented as the excessive fluff that citizens were forced to subsidize. He also promised not to cut services, perhaps naively. Certainly there was some fluff, and maybe the Mayor was aware that his promise was just that. The Mayor and council hired independent auditors KPMG, to suss out the "core-services," things that are required (by their definition) in a big city so that the $775 million shortfall could be eliminated without much pain. Right.

So here we are, for me the lesson is clear, despite all the evidence that you might think favours our cause, we are still at the bottom of a mountain. For those that hope that the libertarian utopia is just around the corner, give your head a shake, then take a deep breath, and prepare for a generational fight. 

Disastrous Debt - America plays chicken with the world

My letter-to-editor in the National Post July 28, 2011

Imagine using your credit card to purchase an item in a store, and having it refused because you have exceeded your credit limit. Essentially that is what is about to happen to the U. S. government. I doubt it will happen, but having it come so close, less than one week, has already had a negative impact on the American credit rating.
The lesson from this is that no person and no country, should rack up a debt so large that payback is jeopardized. How could this happen to a sovereign nation?
Well, probably not that differently from the debt accumulated by an individual, I would imagine. When spending is greater than income, when wishes are confused with needs, and when the future seems so far off, anyone can get into debt problems.
But countries are managed by intelligent people (we hope), elected to represent the best interests of the population. That of course is an assumption that is debatable.
Americans have long considered themselves the world's policemen. America claims it is defending liberty and its own interests in the many, many military adventures it has launched since the Second World War. In how many countries has the American military deployed troops? Would you believe 150 countries! More than 10% of America's Armed Forces personnel are in other countries, far more than at any time since the WWII. Imagine the expense. Most often war or military occupation is a choice and it invariably causes debt, American legislators and Presidents have chosen war and occupation, many times. Spending is a choice as well, so is borrowing. Just as households can live within their means, so to nations. The problem is not debt, it's spending. Instead of living within one's means, an individual chooses to buy now and pay later, putting off payment to the future.
But nations are different from individuals. An individual can only blame him/herself, presumably no individual was physically forced to accept debt or repay it. Nations of course use force as in almost all aspects of their operations. Legislators are often elected with a plurality of votes, not a majority. Even a majority seems inadequate morally, when so many are forced to pay for government actions that they would not support. Yet that is the morality of gang action, of democracy! Worse, the burden of debt is shared by everyone in the nation at some level whether they supported the government action or not, young, old, the newborn and the aged. The original need for the debt is often dubious. The economic pain to the nation is frequently unequally distributed. But the coercion required to repay the debt is always huge and widely spread.
This debt problem won't be "fixed" by raising the debt ceiling (which will happen). What is required is not going to happen, that is, a full assessment of what the U. S. government should and should not be doing. The Democrats and Republicans are on the same side, and that is not on the side of the American people. People will realize that at some point, but when?

The most hated group in America, Atheists!

Atheists watch this. In America you are the most vilified minority around, even though as a group you are probably the least violent, most tolerant, most thoughtful and intelligent.
From Stefan Molyneux: