Socialism and not deodorant starves the poor

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Will this deodorant aisle be history when Bernie Sanders is president?

What this country needs, says Bernie Sanders, is less deodorant.

The 73-year-old senator from Vermont, now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, told CNBC's John Harwood in an interview on Tuesday that because American consumers can choose from so many brands of personal-care products, kids are going to bed with empty bellies.

"You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country," Sanders lamented. He didn't explain exactly how the profusion of toiletries and athletic footwear leads to childhood hunger, but for the only self-described socialist in Congress, it is no doubt a matter of faith that the abundance of capitalism must generate poverty and undernourishment.

In the real world, the opposite is true: Hunger and deprivation are rarest where markets and trade are freest. Food in America couldn't possibly be more plentiful; no one starves because too many economic resources are being channeled into marketing Old Spice instead of oatmeal. But in the socialist delusion, centralized control is always preferable to voluntary enterprise.

Better that government czars should decide what is produced, and impose their plan from above. After all, when buyers and sellers are left free to choose for themselves, grocery and department store aisles fill up with "too many" goods that consumers desire to buy. And that's not the worst of it: In the process of fulfilling those desires, some capitalists may be getting wealthy.

Sanders's suggestion that more kids would eat if only deodorant came in fewer varieties was roundly mocked. Wherever his collectivist ideology has been enforced, however, the consequences — shortages, rationing, bare shelves, long lines, grinding austerity — are anything but funny.

Unlike John F. Kennedy, who argued that a rising tide lifts all boats, socialist true believers care far less about growing the economy than about decreasing the gap between rich and poor. "If the changes that you envision ... were to result in a more equitable distribution of income but less economic growth," Sanders was asked in the CNBC interview, "is that trade-off worth making?" Yes, he said at once.

"The whole size of the economy and the GDP doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages.... You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems."

How easy it is to pooh-pooh "growth for the sake of growth" when you're an American politician who makes a good salary and never has to worry about where his next meal will come from. But for the world's destitute — for those who struggle daily just to hold body and soul together — economic growth spells salvation.

Sanders has spent decades railing against the rich and bewailing the plight of the poor. Yet for lifting hungry and needy people out of poverty, no force on earth comes close to the growth fueled by free markets and trade.

On Wednesday, one day after Sanders kicked off his White House campaign, the United Nations reported that hunger still afflicts about 795 million people around the globe, or about one out of every nine human beings. As great a challenge as that is, it represents an amazing decrease in the number of undernourished people over the past 25 years.

Even though the world's population has grown by 1.9 billion since 1990, there are 216 million fewer men, women, and children threatened by hunger today than there were then. For the first time, we can realistically envision the end of starvation as a global scourge.

Thanks to advances in agricultural science — especially the famous "Green Revolution" for which the American biologist Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — it is possible to grow enough food to feed a world with 7 billion people. But it takes the dynamism and productivity of markets, and the prosperity ignited by trade, to make that food available and affordable to the great majority of the human family.

Perhaps Sanders doesn't grasp that, but the UN agency most concerned with feeding the hungry does.

Socialism empties food shelves. Free markets and trade fills them.
Above: A shopper in Venezuela finds little to choose from.

"Economic growth is necessary for alleviating poverty and reducing hunger and malnutrition," emphasizes the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the new hunger report. "Countries that become richer are less susceptible to food insecurity."

Blasting greedy billionaires and sneering at the multiplicity of deodorant brands "when children are hungry" appeals to a slice of the electorate. But populist rhetoric from a "humorless aging hippie peacenik Socialist" (as Sanders was once described in a New York Times Magazine profile) doesn't fill empty food bowls. Market economies do.

"Markets that function well are important for promoting food security and nutrition," the UN report says. "Markets ... ensure food availability."

From China to Tanzania, from North Korea to the Soviet Union, socialism over the past century condemned countless children — and their parents — to hunger, malnutrition, and famine. Deodorant never hurt a soul.

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Strawberry field hands forever?

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Immigration restrictionists often claim that there are no "jobs Americans won't do," if only US borders would be secured against economic migrants who are willing to work hard for low pay and few benefits. If the fruit-and-vegetable industry couldn't rely on seasonal farmhands from Mexico and Central America, for example, growers would perforce offer the higher wages necessary to attract American citizens to pick the country's fresh produce. What alternative would they have? Let crops rot in the field?

In reality, agriculture is no more of a zero-sum industry than any other, and there is no fixed number of people it must employ.

That point is strikingly made by recent stories on the development of new technology poised to transform the nation's $2.5 billion strawberry business.

While most grain crops in the United States have long been cut and gathered by giant combine harvesters, growers of strawberries have continued to employ human workers to pick a crop too delicate to be left to mechanized equipment. That was "partly to avoid maladroit machines marring the blemish-free appearance of items that consumers see on store shelves," as The Wall Street Journal noted last Friday. No less important was the "trained discernment" needed to select only the ripe strawberries from plants that also have immature fruit not yet ready for picking.

Traditionally a large pool of farmworkers, mainly foreign-born, was available to supply that "discernment," along with the backbreaking effort involved in gathering crops by hand. But the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States peaked in 2007 and has fallen markedly since. The wave of immigration from Mexico in particular has reversed: For the first time in four decades, the Pew Hispanic Center reported in 2012, more Mexicans were leaving the United States than entering.

From the standpoint of strawberry farmers, it doesn't much matter whether the dwindling of migrant labor is due to tougher border enforcement in the United States, better economic prospects in Mexico, or some other factor. The farmers' overriding concern is that the fruit must be harvested, and they can no longer rely on immigration flows to get the job done.

Nothing to do, then, but boost the pay and perks for strawberry-pickers until they're high enough to induce more US citizens to work in the fields?

Far from it: With human workers harder to find, strawberry growers have become increasingly committed to finding a technological solution. The Journal story describes the Agrobot — a prototype of a 14-arm automated harvester that couples vision sensors and advanced software in a device capable of "pluck[ing] ripe strawberries from below deep-green leaves, while mostly ignoring unripe fruit nearby." When migrant labor was plentiful, the Agrobot's $100,000 price tag would have seemed exorbitant. Now it increasingly looks like a sound capital investment.

The Agrobot is only one entrant in the race to revolutionize the strawberry industry. Another competitor is Harvest CROO Robotics. The Florida-based engineering team is at work on a high-tech harvester able not only to pick ripe fruit at the rate of one per second per mechanized arm, but also to run continuously for an entire day.

Secure-the-border hardliners regularly claim that immigrants "steal" jobs that would otherwise go to US citizens. But if migrant workers reduce employment opportunities for Americans, don't robotic harvesters and every other labor-saving technological improvement? Shouldn't immigration restrictionists, so intent on protecting US workers from the competition of foreign immigration, seek just as intently to protect them from new technology?

Such an argument seems manifestly crazy today, when all around us is evidence of the myriad ways in which technology multiplies wealth and increases employment. Yet there was a time when Luddites smashed machines to prevent them from putting laborers out of work. We understand now that for every job technology makes obsolete, a dozen — a hundred, a thousand — new jobs are created, often in fields that until then never even existed.

Any society that cuts itself off from labor-saving technology needlessly harms itself. The same is true of a society that cuts itself off from an influx of willing and peaceful workers. Free minds and free markets constantly come up with innovative ways of accomplishing old tasks — even a task as old as picking fruit. Our best bet isn't to stifle those minds and markets, but to liberate them.

Strawberries and strawberry fields may be forever. But the strawberry industry, like every industry, changes. If those changes make it more productive, the whole economy stands to gain.

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Politicians - Profiteers - Public health

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Naloxone isn't magic, but its power to rescue a heroin user from the brink of death can certainly seem miraculous. The anti-overdose drug, also known by the brand name Narcan, is easy to administer and has saved thousands of lives. First responders are often awestruck at how swiftly it can revive a dying addict.

"It's just incredible," the deputy fire chief of Revere, Mass., marveled in a public-radio interview last year. "There's somebody who's on the ground who's literally dead. They have no pulse. Sometimes they're blue, sometimes they're black. And you administer this stuff and sometimes in a minute or two or three, they're actually up and talking to you."

Free markets aren't magic either. Yet their ability to generate a life-saving drug like Naloxone, supplying quantities sufficient to make it widely available even when the need is great, can seem even more miraculous. That miracle is not enhanced when politicians rebuke the entrepreneurs who manufacture or distribute such wonder drugs for charging a price that the market will bear.

Politicians, for instance, like Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. She lists opiate abuse among her most urgent public concerns, yet is going out of her way to pick a fight with vendors who actually help make things better.

In recent years, drug overdoses have surpassed automobile accidents as the leading cause of death from injury in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, opiate painkillers alone account for 16,000 fatalities annually; deaths involving heroin have increased fivefold since 2001.

Amid this grim crisis of opioid overdoses, Naloxone has been a godsend. While public-health experts debate the causes of the epidemic, officials nationwide have been moving rapidly to expand access to the drug. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 30 states and the District of Columbia have adopted a variety of measures to facilitate the use of Naloxone.

Among those measures: allowing it to be administered by non-medical personnel, paying for police and firefighters to carry supplies of the drug, and permitting pharmacies to dispense Naloxone without a prescription.

Of course, with demand for the medication skyrocketing, the price has climbed as well. The workings of economics apply to pharmaceuticals just as they apply to housing, bourbon, iPhones, or tickets to NFL playoff games. When demand for a product or service rises, the price of that product or service can't help but rise in response. That is especially true when the growth in demand has come about quickly or in unexpectedly short order.

Heroin overdose rates have increased markedly since 2010, and only in the last year or two has there has been such a strong push by state and local authorities to equip first responders — police officers, sheriffs, firefighters, and even civilian bystanders — with Naloxone kits.

So it stands to reason that in Massachusetts, as in most other states, the price of Naloxone is up sharply. A 2-milliliter dose that used to cost the state $19.56 has more than doubled to $41.43. That's a sizeable increase, and it is putting a strain on public-safety and drug-treatment budgets.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey

The price spike may be unwelcome — no one likes to pay more for vital supplies — but it is hard to see anything unfair or unethical, let alone unlawful, about it.

That hasn't stopped Healey from demanding that companies selling Naloxone in Massachusetts provide detailed explanations for the higher costs of the drug, and account for "any changes in prices over time" since the opioid crisis was declared a public emergency. Healey's spokesman insists the attorney general "isn't suggesting anything nefarious," and is simply conducting "a fact-finding mission." But the innuendo is all too obvious.

Healey has said she is just being "aggressive" and wants to be sure "that nobody is out there unnecessarily profiteering from a public health crisis." Yet who is the real "profiteer" here? The drug maker who responds to an unprecedented surge in demand for a critical medication by raising prices to ensure that inventories of the drugs aren't immediately depleted?

Or the ambitious politician, who sees a chance to score political points by posing as a defender of the public against the very suppliers who are making available what the public needs?

Demand for Naloxone is way up; consequently the price of Naloxone is up. Eventually the price will fall, as new supplies come on line. In the meantime, thanks to the workings of the market, more lives are being saved.

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We are number two

We're Number Two from Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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The U.S. was the world’s number one economy prior to World War II, but it took off bigtime after the war and there has not been a day of my long life in which we were not number one—until now.

The International Monetary Fund recently released its calculations regarding the world’s economy and concluded that China is the number one economy, producing $17.6 trillion in terms of goods and services, as compared with the U.S. producing $17.4 trillion. It’s not an overwhelming gap, but it is a warning that our economy is going in the wrong direction and has been before and since the financial crisis of 2008.

Writing in Market Watch, Brett Arends, put it succinctly. “As recently as 2000, we produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese.”

As discomforting as the IMF news is, the worst news has been significantly under-reported in the nation’s media. The U.S. is now $18 TRILLION in debt.

In February of 2014, CNS News reported that “The debt of the U.S. government has increased $6,666 trillion since President Barack Obama took office on January 20, 2009, according to the latest numbers released by the Treasury Department.”

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President Obama has been responsible for more debt over the course of his two terms to date than all previous U.S. Presidents in the first 227 years combined.

Writing in the Daily Caller, Tracy Miller, an associate professor at Grove City College, noted that “Over the first five years of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. economy grew more slowly than during any five-year period since just after the end of World War II, averaging less than 1.3 percent per year. If we leave out the sharp recession of 1945-46 following World War II, Obama looks even worse, ranking dead last among all Presidents since 1932.”

Why was this man reelected in 2012? One is inclined to find common ground with ObamaCare “architect”, Jonathan Gruber, who called voters “stupid.”

I prefer to believe, however, that the voters have been subjected to a non-stop campaign in the national media to get the first black American elected President and then to ignore some truly horrible facts about his two terms in office thus far.

The voters are not stupid, but they have been deliberately misled by the careful exclusion of news about the actual state of the economy.

Reality caught up with Obama in the two midterm elections of 2012 and 2014. The voters shifted power in Congress to the Republican Party. In the most recent midterms thirteen of the Senators who had voted for ObamaCare were defeated.

As December began, CNS News reported that “The labor force participation rate remained at a 36-year low of 62.8 percent in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

The BLS measures the percentage of “non-institutional population” in the labor force, those 16 years or older who were not in the military or working in a governmental job, i.e. the private sector. In September, the rate was the lowest since February 1978!

To put this in perspective, by November, the number of beneficiaries on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—food stamps—had topped 46,000,000 for 36 straight months according to data released by the Department of Agriculture. The Census Bureau reports that there are 115,048,000 households in the nation as of August 2014. That means the number of households on food stamps equaled 19.75% of all the households in the nation; one out of five. Those on this program outnumber the entire populations of nations such as Poland or Argentina.

It doesn’t stop there. On December 3 CNS News reported “The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,982,920 in November, up from the previous record set in May, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.”

How bad is the U.S. economy? In August, CNS News’ Terence P. Jeffrey reported that “109,631,000 Americans lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded ‘means-tested programs’—also known as welfare—as of the fourth quarter of 2012.” The data came from the Census Bureau. That was the same year Obama was reelected and it represented 35.4% of the entire U.S. population at the time. By the end of 2012, it had increased to 49.5%!

Means-tested government programs include Social Security, Medicare, railroad retirement, unemployed compensation, worker’s compensation, Veteran’s compensation and Veteran’s educational assistance. The largest of these programs are Social Security and Medicare.

Why does the U.S. have an $18 TRILLION dollar debt?

Consider that, in fiscal year 2013, the federal government paid out more than $2 TRILLION in benefits and entitlements according to data from the Bureau of the Fiscal Services’ Monthly Treasury Statement. You don’t have to be a mathematician to conclude that, if more Americans were working, there would be less need for many of the benefits programs and the largest among them would be more financially sound.

News of new jobs is always welcome, but it hides the deeper problem of too many unemployed and while Congress continues to debate what to do about Obama’s effort to give work permits to illegal aliens and protect them from deportation, the Center for Immigration Studies announced in June that “Since the year 2000 all of the net increase in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal).”

Should the U.S. make five million or more illegal aliens eligible to compete for jobs with its native-born and naturalized population?

The U.S. must pay billions in interest on its debt. The failure of Congress to address the need to reform the tax code, reduce the deluge of regulations negatively affecting the business and industrial sector, and get control over spending has dug the nation a very deep and dangerous hole.

Statistics can be daunting, but we all can feel that something is terribly wrong with the economy despite the news about a vigorous Wall Street. The fact remains that Main Street is in trouble. The nation requires an economy in which new businesses are created and existing ones can afford to expand. That is not happening.

That is why we are Number Two.

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Who cares if China's economy was number one?

China's economy isn't No. 1 — but if it were, so what? from the file of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

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Have you been lying awake at night, fretting over the news that China has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest economy? If so, let me offer some reassuring advice: Turn over and go back to sleep.

The International Monetary Fund's most recent compilation of global economic data isn't exactly a page-turner, but buried among its eye-glazing statistical appendices was a detail that had some financial writers hyperventilating.

In 2014, the IMF estimates, China's economic output will total $17.6 trillion, putting it slightly ahead of the United States, where GDP this year is valued at $17.4 trillion. That means China now exercises 16.5 percent of the world's economic clout, outranking the United State, with 16.3 percent.

Assuming the IMF's calculations are right, the flustered headlines aren't surprising. "It's official: America is now No. 2," announced MarketWatch. "China just overtook the US as the world's largest economy," a Business Insider story was titled. Vanity Fair's forthcoming issue proclaims this "The Chinese Century" — and illustrates it with an image of a panda crushing an eagle.

But what if those IMF calculations aren't right? Or to be more precise, aren't all that meaningful?

The standard yardstick for measuring and comparing different economies is to convert each country's data into a common currency (typically the US dollar), using prevailing foreign-exchange rates. By that benchmark, China's economy still lags well behind America's, by roughly $7 trillion as of 2014.

It is only by expressing each country's GDP in terms of what analysts call "purchasing-power parity," or PPP, that China can be portrayed as the foremost economic power on Earth. This is a way of adjusting the value of national currencies to account for different costs of living in different countries.

The intention is to yield a value that makes comparisons more realistic, at least in terms of buying power — "so a Starbucks venti Frappucino served in Beijing," as MarketWatch's Brett Arends puts it, "counts the same as a venti Frappucino served in Minneapolis, regardless of what happens to be going on among foreign-exchange traders."

But while purchasing-power parity is a useful theoretical concept, it isn't money in the bank. Theoretical concepts can't be spent. The Chinese can't use PPP currency to pay for airplanes and oil and computers. They have to pay, like everyone else, in real currency at prevailing exchange rates. And by that measure, the United States remains the most potent economic force on the planet.

More to the point, China is nowhere near outstripping America in per-capita terms, the most important gauge of a nation's economic strength.

With a population nearing 1.4 billion, China has a vast distance to cover before its economic output per person begins to resemble America's. According to the IMF, China's economic output this year — after adjusting for purchasing power — will amount to $12,893 per person.

The comparable value for the United States is more than four times as much: $54,678. Even a booming Chinese economy will need time to close such a yawning gap. It took Americans almost 75 years to pull it off. China's per-capita GDP stands today where America's stood in 1940.

In reality, China's per-capita economic output lags far
behind America's. Even a surging Chinese economy
will need many years to close that yawning gap.

In reality, China's per-capita economic output lags far behind America's. Even a surging Chinese economy will need many years to close that yawning gap. And China faces a daunting challenge. Its fertility rate has fallen sharply, and its population is aging. In 1980, its median age was 22; today it is 35; by 2050 it is likely to reach 49. With fewer children being born today, China's workforce will shrink tomorrow, even as its population of nonworking elderly swells. As the Economist observes, "China will grow old before it gets rich."

That isn't a prospect we should relish. There is no competition for the title of World's Largest Economy; with or without the "We're No. 1" bragging rights, Americans' quality of life will remain high.

We should welcome other people's progress up the economic ladder, just as we welcome their advances in democratic liberties and human rights. And we should regret any handicap that impedes their gains — whether that handicap is an authoritarian Communist government or a looming demographic collapse.

A world of burgeoning GDPs will be a happier, healthier, cleaner, and more educated world. Nearly one-fifth of the human race lives in China, and the better off those men, women and children are, the better off we're all likely to be. When other nations prosper, America isn't the poorer.

China ranks No. 1 in some things — population, exports, electricity, telephone use. By the most meaningful standard, however, its economy is still far from the world's most largest. Will it get there one day? Let's hope so.

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Buy your health insurance out of state

Buy your health insurance out of state from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

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The second open enrollment period for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is underway, and the law is more unpopular than ever. According to Gallup, a record-high 56 percent of Americans now disapprove of the 2010 law.

Reasons to dislike ObamaCare have abounded from the outset, and on Friday the administration unveiled a new one: In large swaths of the country, the price of insurance sold on the federal health exchange is going up.

That will force many of those who bought coverage last year to scramble to find a new policy or fork over as much as 20 percent in higher premiums. How's that "affordable" health care working out for you?

Republicans in Congress — less inclined than some deep thinkers to sneer at "the stupidity of the American people" — unanimously opposed the Affordable Care Act when it was enacted, and were rewarded in the 2010 midterms for their steadfastness.

In the ensuing four years, Republicans repeatedly called for replacing ObamaCare with alternatives expanding choice, competition, and market reforms — and the voters just rewarded them again.

Of course, even with their new majorities in Congress Republicans will have to contend with President Obama's veto pen. So a bill "repealing every last vestige of ObamaCare," as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky exuberantly proposed on Election Night, isn't in the cards anytime soon.

But that doesn't mean there is nothing to be done, particularly since the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new challenge to the law, one that could potentially cause ObamaCare to topple under its own weight.

One way or another, changes in the law are coming. Not all of them have to be bitterly controversial, or provoke cries of Republican overreaching. Here's a suggestion: Allow individuals to buy health insurance from out of state.

In an age when consumers can purchase almost anything from vendors almost anywhere, government policies protecting insurance companies from interstate competition are indefensible. Lawmakers would be laughed out of office, rightly, if they insisted that the only CDs, cellphones, or ceramics their constituents could buy were those manufactured in the state where they lived.

All sorts of financial products are routinely acquired without to state borders proving an impenetrable barrier: life insurance, service warranties, stocks and bonds, bank accounts, credit cards. Why should a medical plan be any different?

How America Views the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act

There is no good reason to deny freedom of choice to Americans when it comes to buying health insurance. Yet licensing rules in virtually every state effectively prevent individual residents from shopping for health plans in any other state.

Consequently, there is no national market for health insurance. There are only autonomous state markets, many dominated by near-monopolies that can get away with offering lower quality insurance at ever-higher premiums.

As Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute points out, it isn't only insurance companies that are sheltered from the rigors of competition. Insurance regulators are insulated too. State governments, inveigled by special interests, can burden health insurance policies with more and more mandatory benefits, driving up premiums to cover services that many consumers would never willingly choose.

In Massachusetts, for instance, health insurance policies must cover at least 49 specified treatments and types of providers, among them midwives, infertility treatments, hair prostheses, and chiropractors.

But what if all you want is a plain-vanilla health plan akin to those sold by insurers in New Hampshire (only 38 state-required health-care mandates) or, better yet, in Michigan (24) or Idaho (13)? Tough luck. That's what it means when interstate commerce in health insurance is blocked.

Polls show broad public support for the idea — as high as 77 percent in a recent Rasmussen poll. Legislation to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, currently being drafted by Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, will reportedly include interstate choice.

"We want … every American to be able to buy the kind of health insurance they want at a price that they are willing to buy and from any company in America that will sell it to you," Rubio said in a recent radio interview.

Which isn't to say change can only come from above. One can envision a moderate, pro-reform governor championing such market choice at the state level — a just-elected Republican, say, with a deep knowledge of the health insurance industry.

How about it, Charlie Baker? Why not use that new bully pulpit to advocate for legislation freeing Massachusetts residents to buy a health policy from any properly licensed insurance company in America willing to sell it to them?

It's a fix long overdue. With the distortions imposed first by RomneyCare and then ObamaCare, Massachusetts could use it more than ever. The rest of the country could too.

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China! China! China!

China! China! China! from the Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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For two days there was the usual news and analysis about President Obama’s summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. We are going to hear that China will bump the U.S. from first place among the great economies of the world, challenge us in Asia, and will be the next great global power.

Secretary of State John Kerry recently said that “the U.S.-China relationship is the most consequential in the world today and it will do much to determine the shape of the 21st century.” When a nation has 1.35 billion people it is going to get a fair amount of attention, but that does not mean the current predictions will come true. The reason? Those 1.35 billion people.

There is no denying that China’s rise to become the largest exporter over the past three decades has been impressive. It is expected to become the largest economy and militarily powerful as well, but Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical consultant and author of “The Accidental Superpower” (the U.S., not China) reminds us that the “China mythos is ingrained nowhere more deeply than in the American psyche—the same psyche that was recently convinced of the ‘obvious and inevitable’ rise of the Soviet Union and Japan.”

Both the former Soviet Union—now the Russian Federation—and Japan are in decline for a variety of reasons, but demography, the age of their population, plays a major role. When a nation’s population becomes top heavy with elderly people, but does not have an expanding younger generation, its economy begins to shrink for lack of a labor force.

The other factor that determines a nation’s success is its geography. Zeihan reminds us that “China is a land of failed empires and shattered hopes” and part of its problems stem from the fact that it is really three very distinct geographies in the north, the central region, and the south. They could be separate nations in themselves.

I have always thought that the supreme irony of China is that it adopted a capitalist economic system while remaining politically communist. Why? Because communism doesn’t work and the collapse of the former Soviet Union will be China’s fate as well.

As President Obama meets with President Jinping, both will be doing so with significant domestic problems. Obama’s include the midterm elections that returned power in the Senate, along with the House, to the Republican Party. It is widely interpreted as a massive rejection of the U.S. President, leaving him weakened in the eyes of the world.

As for President Jinping, Zeihan notes that “Even once a Chinese leader succeeds in rising to the top of his local heap—or even commanding the entirety of China—he then must begin the even longer and more painful slop of purging all those who have visions that clash with his own.”

A look at the map and a thought about its huge population would make anyone think it was an economic colossus immune to problems, but the numbers tell another story. “The real surprise of China is that the north, central and south account for just half of China’s 1.35 billion people. North, center, and south are China’s lowland and coastal regions; the rest of the Chinese actually live in the interior.”

Its two major rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow, though lengthy are only navigable for short stretches in terms of any ocean-going vessel. The result is that historically the Chinese have been “remarkably non-naval.”

As Zeihan describes it, “northern China is the stable-as-glass political core, central China (is) the nationally disinterested economic core, and southern China (is) the potentially secessionist territory and the interior being largely ignored—holds to the present day.”

“Even contemporary China’s political system reflects it: all of the critical military branches of government are headquartered in the north, the north and central regions trade off the premiership every decade in order to balance security and trade interests, while the south is not even represented on the Politburo.”

Compare that to the national unity of the United States whose economy not only serves all its population’s needs, but exports extensively to the world. As for that world, the U.S. is its financial center, the safest place in which to invest and safe-keep one’s funds. By contrast, China’s banking system is in under the control of its government and it limits what citizens can do with their savings. “Private savings are instead funneled to state goals.”

Since China’s goal is maximum possible employment its banks make “loans available for everything” and the “result is an ever-rising mountain of loans gone bad and ever less efficient firms, held together by nothing more than the system’s bottomless supply of cheap labor and cheap credit.” That’s a recipe for a financial disaster because “total financing (is) at around $5 trillion for an economy only worth about $8 trillion.”

And then there is demography. “China is aging far more quickly than it is getting rich.” Specifically, “simple aging has already reduced China’s pool of young, mobile workers by 40 million during the past decade. And because of the baby bust, that decline is about to accelerate greatly.”

As Zeihan points out, “The burden of having to financially support their elderly has a catastrophic impact on young workers’ professional and financial development, reducing educational opportunities, gutting consumption, and all but making savings impossible.”

Despite its efforts to intimidate its neighbor nations, China is at a military disadvantage to them. “They all have air forces and cruise missile assets that in many cases could destroy Chinese maritime assets that get too close.” In general, China’s behavior has created neighbors that are broadly hostile to it.

China is big, but its size and population are its biggest problem.

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Science of fear: Racket of war

The science of fear and the racket of war comes of age from the files of Ken LaRive at the Lafayette Examiner

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Read the LaRive Files at the Examiner

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.

Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." - Smedley D. Butler.

Without a doubt, money is the primary motivation for war, and it is fear that greases the wheels of that machine. An ideology is secondary to profit since World War 2, and the average solder has little or no understanding for the true reason of his participation, and that is the ultimate betrayal to our military men of honor.

The mindset of constant war is so cleverly promoted, most think the idea they hold is an original thought. It is indeed a science, and that science has come of age. And while we wave our flags, and risk our lives all around the world, a few men are getting very rich. Men who make profit on destruction and reconstruction, in an institution called the military industrial complex.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.- Plato

The study of fear as an acquirable motivating drive goes back to antiquity. In 1948, the science of fear took on a life all its own, and men like B.F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Neal E. Miller explored the possibility of manipulating fear in the minds of men to motivate an agenda. The paragraph below came from a study by Neal E. Miller.

It was called: “Fear as motivation and fear-reduction as reinforcement in the learning of new responses.” Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol 38(1), Feb 1948, 89-101.

“Albino rats were trained to go from a white compartment through an open door into a black compartment in order to escape from electric shock. "To demonstrate that an acquired drive (fear or anxiety) had been established, the animals were taught a new habit without further shocks. The door (previously always open) was closed. The only way that the door could be opened was by rotating a little wheel, which was above the door, a fraction of a turn.

Under these conditions, the animals exhibited trial-and-error behavior and gradually learned to escape from the white compartment by rotating the wheel. If conditions were changed so that only pressing a bar would open the door, wheel turning extinguished, and a second new habit (bar pressing) was learned. Control experiments demonstrated that the learning of the new habits was dependent upon having received moderately strong electric shocks during the first stages of training."

Do you see a bit of your own life reflected in this description? Seems simple enough to understand, a response to stimuli; but just fifty years later the study of this so called “fear-factor” had grown into a fine art, a new expanded science using its own set of terminology, and here is an excerpt:

From normal fear to pathological anxiety. Rosen, Jeffrey B.; Schulkin, Jay. Psychological Review, Vol 105(2), Apr 1998, 325-350.

“In this article the authors address how pathological anxiety may develop from adaptive fear states. Fear responses (e.g., freezing, startle, heart rate and blood pressure changes, and increased vigilance) are functionally adaptive behavioral and perceptual responses elicited during danger to facilitate appropriate defensive responses that can reduce danger or injury (e.g., escape and avoidance).

Fear is a central motive state of action tendencies subserved by fear circuits, with the amygdala playing a central role. Pathological anxiety is conceptualized as an exaggerated fear state in which hyperexcitability of fear circuits that include the amygdala and extended amygdala (i.e., bed nucleus of the strict terminalis) is expressed as hypervigilance and increased behavioral responsivity to fearful stimuli.

Reduced thresholds for activation and hyperexcitability in fear circuits develop through sensitization- or kindling-like processes that involve neuropeptides, hormones, and other proteins.

Hyperexcitability in fear circuits is expressed as pathological anxiety that is manifested in the various anxiety disorders.”

Seems that terminology has separated men from the understanding of a science that has grown so powerful... A science that controls and dominates us from cradle to grave... A science that is still expanding, with another twenty years of fine tuning under its belt...

Motivations we must all face to find solace in our lives, are now being used against us... If we are going to win this war being waged for our very minds, we must educate ourselves...

Motivations are not the same...

There are many kinds of motivations that can propel us to action. All of them, in one form or another, can drive us to work hard, to learn, and to try new things... but not all motivations are for our common good, nor do they all inspire us in a positive way. Those who want to control us, and manipulate our actions, know this very well...

One motivation is called incentive. It is a very common motivation that involves rewards, and on many diverse levels in our lives. It refers, in most all cases, to some form of goal, or a target to work for, like a business promotion, or a bonus for a monthly sales goal... or a simple inspiration by a good job performance, or pride in a job well done.

It is, for the most part, a benign form of motivation, and it originates inside as a dream or as plans stimulated by our own volition, and extends outward into the world with the hope to manifest itself into a positive future reality. It is this reality that drew people to America, and the motivation of what we once knew to be the American Dream.

Another motivation is called Achievement. It starts with the desire to be more competent in some way. One may attempt to become more educated, more sensitive and appreciative to art, to find-tune a talent (like piano), or a physical accomplishment (like running a marathon, or lifting weights.) Sometimes the motivation comes from the hope of some future recognition, positive feedback from a peer or a superior perhaps.

Again, this motivation originates inside and attempts to manifest itself outwardly. This feedback may be as simple as a pat on the back for a job well done, financial gain, and most rarely... for just the joy of the doing.

Growth is the overt need for self-improvement, and exists from birth to death in one form or another. It is a burning desire, most time singular in nature, where learning and experience comes together to produce growth and ability.

Most time a specific type of personality, thought to be hardwired from very early development, pushes to change us internally, like quitting smoking or to speak in front of a large audience. In its very nature it moves from internal to external, as we attempt to manipulate environment, with a new invention... or just hard work. Without this motivation, surely we would still be living in a cave...

The motivation of power usually takes an alpha form, where control of ourselves, others, and our environment is emphatically desired. Most often, along with the need to control environment, a need to control others by some form manipulation might give one the ability, to a degree, to manipulate the future.

Sometimes, the need for this power is so great, they will aspire to do just about anything to accomplish it. Considerations, both moral and ethical, push aside all possible consequence... but also... it may be illegal.

But this kind of motivation considers itself above all law as it moves to accomplish its task.... and if it prescribes to any moral compass at all, it will be designed by them... the code of a thief, or a mafia manifesto, and all of it can be suspended if need be. Rules are not designed to be moral, but to be used for the purpose of success...

Social motivation is a desire to belong, to be accepted into the fold of a particular peer group, such as a political party, a religion, or a race or creed. This is again internal, innate at times but mostly taught, and always with the need for acceptance and affiliation.

So strong are these social motivations, that questioning the validity or value of it is very difficult if not impossible, as most believe that what they are experiencing, their reality, is ultimate truth.

Most all positive contributions in our society come from those who are socially motivated, and good and bad, right and wrong, positive or negative outcomes manifest entirely by the method by which it is used... which brings us to the final, most destructive form of motivation... FEAR.

The motivation of fear involves consequences, and most often is manifest after the failure of an incentive form of motivation. This is important to note. To be clear, for instance, in a business style of motivation where one refers to the, “carrot and stick,” incentive is the carrot, and fear is the stick.

Punishment, or the possibility of a negative consequences, is a primary form of fear motivation, and this is used widely today, from advertising, politics, religion, to many forms of propaganda from news to current event fabrication... and all of it with an agenda for action.

As most all "fear motivation" is instilled, failure to achieve, guilt in may forms, the breaking of rules, and even social taboos inspire fear and in some way... a form of penalty. To find Liberty, to actually see truth, an understanding of fear is primary.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. - John F. Kennedy

Author's note: Finding your master is easy. Look to what, or who, you can not talk about. It will be found in the folds of social constraint, taboo, and well hidden in the doubts of your own inspiration. The hardest of all avenues to traverse is the concept of truth, where lies are intentional and reality manipulated from a forgotten or rewritten history. And yet, nothing has more intrinsic value for the health of a lucid mind, as truth is the illumination of sanity, and the bane of evil intent. 

Truth guards us from the claws of fear. with heavy hearts unburdened, and transforms our conscious minds with an ability to formulate a decision based on righteous principles. When truth is relinquished, fear becomes a cancer to each and every act, and propels us to sit on the precipice of confusion, and without knowing why, as no viable decision can be made. This is the mind of a slave, and the greatest of all tragedy in our humanity... slavery of the spirit. A tragedy that can only be stifled by a singular ideal, the need to find truth.

War is wrought by mighty men. Men who justify the blood of innocence for their own selfish concerns. It is, to a pragmatic mind, pure genius in both depth and scope. It destroys dreams, and innocent lives are extinguished to white ash. The cost of that endeavor is paid in full, with a 17.8 trillion in debt... a debt that can never be paid, and inherited by our children. And yet, as new money is printed out of thin air, new loans are issued to rebuild. And the hidden tax of inflation enslaves us all... forever. Until of course, when we foreclose.

I know this... a singular concept that is my redemption in a world of evil men: that any religion who promotes the killing of another, is suspect. And as I do not pretend to know the mind of God, as so many others exclaim to be inspired... no Loving God-Creator of my comprehension would sanction it under any circumstance... and so it must be man-made, war, inspired by men, and not from the mind of God... and so I propose to you that we are not obliged, in any way or fashion, to obey. And yes, there are things worthy to sacrifice our lives, and I count Liberty from Tyranny as a primary one...

I would die to regain Liberty, but never for international corporate profit, or central banking manipulations of our precious America.

A universal law, called cause and effect, seems to be scientifically valid and sound, as what we sow we will reap... and yet, the same bullies, the same universal money-hungry malcontents, the same malevolent shadow manipulators, seem so surprised when there is a reaction that attempts to curb their agenda. 

There is so much ego wrapped into their masterful deign, that they expect us all to die for them. I say, no thank you just the same... Do not, sir, tread on me. Give me Liberty, or give me your death. Yes, your death, as just one candle of truth in the great voids you create, will curse you. And we will hand this candle, the light of liberty and truth, for our children to cherish, because you are forever cursed to a darkness of your own design... We the people of the United States of America do not belong to you.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. - Sigmund Freud 

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence. - Sigmund Freud

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Predicting the next financial crisis

Making It Easy to Predict the Next Financial Crisis from Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know Caruba's Warning Signs

It is a cliché, but true, that history repeats itself. This is largely due to the failure of each new generation to learn anything from the past as well as the human tendency toward the bad habits of greed and power-seeking. Only the names and faces change.

That is why the next financial crisis is entirely predictable.

On October 23, The Wall Street Journal had an article, “Relaxed Mortgage-Lending Rules Clear Final Hurdle.” The financial crisis in 2008 was the direct result of relaxed mortgage-lending rules.

Indeed, it was the result of government pressure on banks to make “sub-prime” loans to people who any bank might sensibly conclude could not replay them. Those loans, in turn, were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, who then bundled and sold them as mortgage-backed assets.

As Wikipedia notes, the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was founded in 1938 during the Great Depression to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgages by issuing mortgage-backed securities, allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending.

In 1970 the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, whose nickname is Freddie Mac, was created for the same reason. Both are overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Authority. Neither issues mortgages. As noted, they buy them from banks, bundle them as securities, and resell them.

Getting the government involved in the housing market has been a supremely bad idea, much as getting the government involved in education and, as we are learning, involved in the nation’s healthcare insurance sector.

There are only a few things the Constitution authorizes the government to do and none of these are mentioned. That has never stopped politicians.

The Wall Street Journal article reported that “Three U.S. agencies signed off on relaxed mortgage-lending rules, helping complete a long-stalled provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law.”

Two commissioners of the Securities and Exchange Commission “warned the rules would do little to prevent a return to the kind of lax mortgage underwriting that fueled the financial crisis.”

The Economist also took note, saying “When politicians bashed Wall Street for its reckless mortgage lending in the wake of the subprime crisis, bankers retorted that it was the politicians’ enthusiasm for expanding home ownership, even if it meant small deposits and low credit standards, that had really fomented the disaster.”

Suffice to say there is plenty of blame to spread around, but the banks had to play by the rules the government had put in place.

In the wake of the financial crisis “many banks have stopped lending to riskier borrowers” but the new rules simply recreate the conditions that led to it, although “the rules only affect the tiny market for securities issued without federal backing, less than 2% of the $1.58 trillion in mortgage securities issue in 2013…”

The rule changes are being hailed as an example of the how great the “reform” implemented after the financial crisis was in the form of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and Orderly Liquidation Authority, otherwise known as the Dodd-Frank Act.

Suffice to say it is a regulatory nightmare of several thousand pages of rules, often quite vague, that are still being interpreted. That said, its purpose, to prevent predatory mortgage lending, improve the clarity of mortgage paperwork for consumers, and reduce incentives for mortgage brokers to push home buyers into more expensive loans was needed.

It also changed the way credit card companies and other consumer lenders had to disclose their terms to consumers.

As The Economist noted, the agreement regarding mortgage-lending rules “would permit banks to securitize and sell mortgages without retaining a 5% stake—leaving them little incentive to maintain high lending standards.”

That needs repeating: little incentive to maintain high lending standards, the very reason we had a financial crisis in 2008.

All this is largely due to the progressive notion that everyone, no matter how little they earn, should be able to purchase a home. In reality, those at the low end of the economic ladder should not be encouraged or seduced into taking on such debt.

When they do and the economy goes south, leaving them unemployed, they just walk away from the debt.

Why should the rest of us—taxpayers—bail out the mortgage sector as we did in 2008 with huge loans to the banks and insurance companies that had purchased mortgage-based securities?

The government had to step in with the complete government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We got stuck with the bill.

It also drove up our national debt, leading to the first reduction in the nation’s credit rating in its history.

There is already talk on Capitol Hill that, should Republicans take control of the Senate and retain it in the House, they are likely, as Reuters reported, “to target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and capital requirements on insurance companies.”

To put it another way, the Republicans are the adults in Congress while the Democrats, liberal to the core, will never admit we are being set up for another financial crisis.

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A chaotic world: Like father like son

A chaotic world: Like father like son from the files of Ken LaRive at the Examiner

Read the LaRive Files

Mix together threatened political power structures, economic instability and default, cultural experiments gone haywire, then pepper them with un-reasoned fear, selfish and self-centered concerns for evil intent, further salted by mandated and instilled standards without a sound moral compass... one that justifies without reason, motivates by blind faith and trust, and then... finally stirred together by a great and powerful elitist spoon creating an amniotic and chaotic vortex for the profit of a black bottom line... and this, you will find, is our world in the year 2014, and our future if we allow it.

There are so many problems, giant problems, and they are found not only in the power structures in competition with other mega power structures, but cultural changes too... so emphatic and seemingly without empathy, it is putting into question fundamental strings that have held us together since civilization's organization.

We are asking questions of morality and ethics, liberty from tyranny, God and religion, men and machine, and the most powerful of all, slavery and self worth.

In the U.S., workers are raging against the welfare state, international corporate war for profit, debt enslavement, the destruction of civil liberty and the shredding of our Constitution, Socialism and the coming Progressive Liberal Communism, Government spying and the militarization of local police, the threats of gun confiscation and marshal law, anti-social lawlessness and violence, an open border invitation to illegals from around the world with the promise of free services and the destruction of our sovereignty, and a president who laughs while teeing off. But this is a short list. The actual list is a mile long...

Around the world, and for many various reasons, people are incensed and outraged, and dying in the streets in protest. As Gaza shoots off fireworks and throws rocks in protest, Hamas, who Israel actually created and armed, has turned into a terrorist group, and for each one of them bombed into oblivion, about fifty innocent people are killed with them, and yet they do not give up.

Israel's Zionists Church/State government calls them collateral damage, and has told the world that they will do anything to stay in power, and their own terrorist organization called, The Mossad, are causing chaos all around the world, from infiltration into governments, to covert assassinations, to sabotage and torture.

Their influence is so powerful, their US lobby has to be consulted before any President can be hand-picked, as free elections are suspended, and they have intelligence so insightful, they not only knew beforehand that 9-11 was about to happen, but evidence suggests that it was their military expertise that actually brought down the twin towers and building 7 in free-fall.

It was an event that has never happened in the world before or since. The most immediate and telling evidence was the seven dancing Israelis who were arrested in New York, Mossad Agents, and in days they were whisked back to Israel, without charges. They, without any show of fear, admitted prior knowledge of the attack in interviews on their own televisions stations They stated: “We were only there to record the event.”

And only a few of us bloggers remember the 134.5 billion in U.S. Bearer Bonds found in a false bottom suitcase trying to make their way to Switzerland from Italy by Japanese Nationals, and the immediate media blackout... and we are not allowed an investigation into these profound matters, and life goes on as football season is upon us.

But it isn't just the lack of truth, the overwhelming deceit and outright lies from a media owned by international corporations, but we have respectable men, honorable men of virtue who are telling us that unless we stand up, as we the people, the next bubble will be the death of America, by foreclosure... The same kind of meltdown that happened to Russia, not so very long ago... And the scary thing is this: if we go down, the entire world will go down with us, culminating into WW3.

And all around the world people are pushing agendas, to manipulate, to confiscate, to overrule and over run, from the Egyptians, Syrians, and Yemenis as they rage against their rulers.

The Wukan uprising in China is changing the political landscape, slowly, and furious Russians are pounding at Putin's door, as he tries to withdraw from the European Jewish-owned banking systems, (as he put it) and bring to justice what he called the Jewish Mafia, at great monetary and cultural expense, and displace a religious void created during the cold war with fundamental Orthodox Christianity, who want nothing more than to save your soul and make a mandatory Church State there.

And Europe, no longer allowed to own a gun, is being overrun by Middle Easterners bent on taking over the EURO tapestry from the inside out, and without a shot, as they play the system... and it is a system designed by myopic leaders, or traitorous ones, mirror images of the ones controlling France, Australia, and America. And if it is intended or not, the outcome will be the same, unless, of course, some push back.

And yes, when the push will come, as it without a doubt will, there are some who will make unimaginable profit... The four forces that control us all... Yes, everything happening around the planet, overwhelming our very diverse and hapless citizens of Earth... are driven by the same four forces, and they are all corrosive, self-serving, and at times... overtly irresponsible:

(1) Un-reasoned, misdirected, unorganized, misinformed, and frustrated anger (rage) is our primary and universal reaction. Frustrated, because there is no way seen to organize, and no avenue to find real truth. This is the basic commonality, though all seemingly reason that our liberty is god-give, how to wrest it from a strong and far reaching power is not yet understood.

(2) Borrowing without the intent to pay it off is called debt slavery. Ponzi schemes utilizing, unchecked, both government and private debt, and it's violation of fundamental human rights, from a rigged presidential election, a military industrial complex owned by international conglomerate business and financed by international banking systems in league with an unaccountable Federal Reserve System who prints money our of thin air to pay for it all, and all of that is incorporated as future debt, American debt. We pay, with our future, for their profit. And the process creates the hidden tax of inflation, and a piece of your life and country is forfeited. War is a racket.

(3) What controls us is a competition without a moral standard, honor, or national alliance. In other words, an international corporation, bank, and the independent and unaccountable Federal Reserve System....has no allegiance to America. All of them are interested in one thing, their survival, and their profit. A bank who makes money on both sides of war, and arms dealers who supply both side of that coin, are enemies of humanity, and should be brought to justice by international law. So too, is any individual who holds office in our government who has duel citizenship. One can not serve both. On side is a traitor to the other.

(4) The last can only be described as a deadlock. This inability to formulate a way out of this fine mess by those in power is easily understood. Firstly, they do not want to be held accountable, or lose what they have acquired. Indeed, they know full well the problems at hand, and how to fix it, but will not change the institution that created this chaos... But take small steps, putting on little band aids, usually by more borrowing from a central bank to bolster their economy. Spending into further debt, is no solution... Instead they shore it up, to put off the inevitable, the unavoidable...

These so-called leaders are puppet members of a powerful and dominating structure, a shadow government, and as they dither, those who pull their strings have no fear at all... You see the greatest of all profit is made in chaos... Just like the put options just prior to 9-11 indicated that big banks and corporations knew that United and American airlines would be hijacked; they also knew that those stocks would take a dive.

They bet on this, called “put options,” and made fortunes... and just like the carpetbaggers that made their way into the south after our civil war, buying up at bankrupt prices anything not tied down, so too will these bankers not only survive a total world collapse, but afterwards, vie to own it all.

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Author's note: I love my country, and that comes not only from what I was propagandized to believe, but the love I have for what I consider my American people. And I do love the entire human race as well, and have pleaded my life to do no harm. I also try to practice the teachings of Jesus Christ, and have found that if respect and love is freely given, most always you will get it back.

With this said, I see what I consider real evil in this world too... and as a Libertarian, one idea that nails all four above on the wall of my very soul, is the thought that there is a force out there so powerful, individually and collectively, that I, and all of us, are being played the fool.

Nothing on this earth, except perhaps the killing of an innocent person for profit, and both war and abortion comes to mind, but the enslavement of the spirit, by lies and deceit, is the worst of all. Of all the kinds of enslavement that power has wrought on the powerless, and throughout history, what could be more evil?

The enslavement of the mind, by instilling weakness, is scientifically done. The creation of dependence, the installation of fear, the initiation of a selfish, myopic, and self-serving ego by media taboo that subverts a free thought or free speech to fearful silence, the creation of lustful, lurid, and base addictions where a war on drugs become lucrative.

And it is manufactured, from the protected poppy fields of Afghanistan by our own military, to our own open borders where gangs of mafia cross into my beloved America... and all of it, every element, every motivation, to the last moment before our final destruction, is all about money.

It is about people who justify what they are doing, because they work in a collective environment, a corporation, a bank, a government, who just want to ride that wave a few more moments... And they know, if they stand up and make themselves accountable, their lives will no longer be their own.

They see how other people of conscience are treated by the power elite... and they sit back waiting for the bubble to pop, prepping for that final transaction, caught up in a wheel.

Yes, I see hope, and what else but optimism do we have? But I can tell you this, nothing, nothing since the dawn of mankind has anything so threatened our humanity, our very existence, as what is happening right this minute. Look around.

We are being herded into a corner, fleeced, and instead of breaking free, we show them our soft underside, and kill for them without so much as a question why... is the kind we accept from our own complacency.

And our children's future will be assured, having to ask permission to polish their own chains, just as you do. We are indeed a product of our environment, like father, like son.