Saturday, April 2, 2022

Caritas

Chet Richards, "America is suffering from a gigantic loss of trust

"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation." So said the Scottish economist, Adam Smith. When Adam Smith talks about a "great deal of ruin," he is saying a successful nation has a large margin, or cushion, between its current condition and its destruction.

America, spanning a continent as it does, is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. In practice, those natural margins exist only because people have the skills needed to exploit those resources and trust in one another. That said, America's resources make it possible for our nation to be independent of the rest of the world should that become necessary.

There is an old joke that food comes from the supermarket. There must be some magician in the back room who waves his wand and creates all the wonders we find on the shelves.

The reality is even more fantastic. There is an astoundingly complex web of human skills and interactions that lie behind each of the products offered by the market. It is a network of trust.

Consider a loaf of bread. Farmers plant and grow wheat using tools, water, and fertilizer. Those tools, in turn, require the skills of heavy industry to fabricate, and they require energy to run. The energy mainly comes from petroleum products. This requires more skills, tools, and industrial support. Wheat must be delivered to bakeries and then to the markets. This, too, requires energy. Finally, sophisticated organizing and financing make all this possible. Some magic wand, don't you think?

And all this is for just one product. Our highly complex civilization now depends equally on the fantastic web of information technology as well as hands-on skills and trust. This makes civilization increasingly fragile. Break the complex web, and there is no recovery.

Some people just don't get it. Many political types believe that our margins are infinite, that nothing can destroy our network of trust: The nation will always survive, no matter what they do. This is false. Mismanagement can dissipate a nation's margin. Nations fall, empires fall, entire cultures are swept into oblivion. It can happen to us as well.

The common man and his skills, not the politician, is the one who really counts. Unfortunately, these skills are now mostly lacking among today's wealth-sheltered political and corporate leaders. Few of these leaders understand the nature of the society they are managing. Effective leadership happens when the leaders have worked their way up through the ranks and have mastered each part of the enterprise. What we need, and rarely have, are leaders who have actually gotten their hands dirty. How about someone who knows how to drive a bulldozer and work a backhoe? How about someone who has taken great risks and has built a successful business from scratch? Anyone we know?

Democracy can function only in an environment of trust. Trust is the glue of society. Sadly, in recent years, trust has been deliberately frayed almost to the breaking point by those clueless leaders.

In a healthy society, most of us trust our family. We trust that those we meet in passing intend no harm. As students, we trust our teachers. As employees, we trust our bosses and value our colleagues. As citizens, we trust our elected leaders. We trust that government is our servant. We trust that elections are fair. We trust that businesses exist to serve us. We trust that the value of the dollar is secure. We trust that justice is impartial. We trust that we will remain free.

How much of this do we still trust?

Loss of trust is induced mainly by Progressives. They beset us with a litany of destructive fantasies: climate catastrophy, Critical Race Theory, cancel culture, wokeness, transgenderism, Defund the Police. All these are intended to control us. It is no surprise that these cultish ideologies originated in the academic social sciences. Just glance at their turgid technical literature to understand why.

Naturally, all these utopian ideas are a magnet for the neurotic left. These notions posit an ideal world. But such a world, having reached supposed perfection, is static, despotic, and unstable. Civilization cannot survive stasis. Modern society is, by nature, dynamic. Stability, as opposed to stasis, requires constant adaptation to a rapidly changing environment.

In any competent army, it is the sergeants who win the battle, not the generals. In a complex society, only at the lowest levels is the needed information available, and the reactions are quick enough to maintain dynamic stability. Key decisions are made at the bottom of society, not at the top. This is the dynamism of the free market.

At government and corporate policy levels, the information and speed of response are simply not there. A stable modern society must be free and democratic — not authoritarian. The political class must be servants, not masters.

Freedom is the antithesis of Utopia. After all, if people are free to do what they please, then the result is certain to be chaotic. So believe the progressive utopians. An ordered, static society cannot tolerate chaotic freedom. Actually, the supposed chaos of a free society is self-organization in action. Free people make a multitude of decisions, which, collectively, keep things going.

So why does this work? There is collective wisdom in crowds. People have a myriad of life experiences. But there are some underlying factors that shape us all and influence our judgments. Democracy, together with the free market, distills those hidden factors. It keeps society on a relatively stable and successful foundation.

But this dual foundation is abhorrent to the dark-age utopians. How can there be the desired static tranquility with all this democratic froth? Whatever they may say, progressives loathe democracy. And they will do their utmost to destroy it. Their behavior in the 2020 election, and since, proves the point.

I don't know who won the 2020 presidential election. But I have a pretty good idea who did. Progressives tell me who really did by their behavior: they adamantly refuse to allow fair audits of the election. You oppose an audit only if you know you have cheated enough to win. And we know from overwhelming testimony that cheating was rampant.

And for the past two years, we have been the victims of a totalitarian experiment: the COVID emergency. If, three years ago, someone had predicted that a two-week emergency declaration to "flatten the curve" would stretch into two full years of tyrannical government oppression, he would have been laughed out of town. Yet it happened.

The mechanism used to gain obedience was to induce fear. Fear works: many people still wander around wearing placebo masks.

People have been jailed, businesses ruined, careers destroyed, life savings obliterated, children abused, and many lives lost from drug addiction, suicides and compulsory inoculation with an experimental "vaccine." Our human skill margins have been depleted; our trust has been eroded. All this because some unethical bureaucrats in the government gave unscrupulous politicians the excuse to impose flat-out tyranny in response to a medical emergency. Progressives applaud. Let's make this situation permanent, they say.

Almost as bad as government malfeasance, Big Tech delights in its power of censorship. They used it to distort information about the COVID pandemic. That worked, so why not go whole hog and forbid all discussion of disagreeable ideas? Power and control — it feels wonderful! There is no freedom in a society with effective censorship.

COVID hit the country's trust in other ways. Profligate spending to cover for government shutting down the economy during these two years has driven the debt to an unsustainable level. Inflation is higher than the 1970s. Most people are being unconstitutionally robbed by this inflation (Fifth Amendment). At the same time, with government sponsored illegal immigration, our Constitution's protection against foreign invasion (Article 4, Section 4) has been subverted.

For the majority of our citizens, trust in this administration and its politicized agencies has been broken. Polls predict an electoral bloodbath in the next two elections. Let us hope so. That will be part of the correction necessary to regain the health of society and rebuild our devastated margins. May these elections put us on track to restore our free nation, regain our individual freedom, and rene
w our trust.

61 comments:

  1. Ignoring the "Trump really won" nonsense to address the other Stupids...

    We're never going to run out of oil. 60% of oil we pump out of the ground currently isn't even "fossil" fuel formed from the remains of vegetation and animals, but rather methane compounds from the Earth's mantle compressed by tectonic forces into hydrocarbons that become oil. Almost every oil field we've thought had been tapped dry has begun refilling as oil seeps from the Earth's mantle through porous rock and back into the allegedly empty oil basins.

    Scientists have even wrung oil out of solid granite. It's freaking everywhere if the tech is developed to drill deep enough to extract in right from the tap. The Earth's mantle is an abiotic oil ocean under every surface of the Earth, basically.

    What happens when oil production becomes endless? Nobody makes as much money as they do now with the golden goose supply choke.

    Get the long straws out and get that milkshake.

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  2. Loss of trust is induced mainly by republiturds who try and divide us by continually inducing moral panic. If republiturds win based on this stupidity our free nation and individual freedoms will be destroyed.

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  3. Moral panic? We just want to as free to keep and bear arms, oppose radical feminism, and mistrust the government as black people are. Do we need a drum machine?

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  4. I wouldn't read too much into articles about NASA moon oil published on 4/1, beamish.

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  5. Dervish think's that the solution to the "trust" problem is to simply censor a few more conservatives.

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  6. LOL April Fool's.

    But, abiotic petroleum is a real thing, and the only real explanation for oil that wasn't made by dead organisms is that the Earth's mantle is making it. And if the Earth's mantle is making it, then there's more under our feet than we will ever use in centuries.

    I think it's worth paying people to dig holes and other people to fill them to find out lol

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

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  7. Derpy's answer to all issues is to blame Big Other.

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  8. Building trust involves lying constantly? Who knew?

    "Can you define a woman" is an effort to create moral panic. We should be afraid of trans people. btw, the horrible Marsha Blackburn asked her loaded question. She wasn't censored. The magaturd media is running with the false narrative. Falsely asserting that KJB is stupid. Also lenient when it comes to sentencing pedophiles. Another moral panic (one you embrace).

    Lies, hate and moral panics are all republiturds have to offer. Also, censorship of that which you hate. "Don't say gay" is clearly censorship.

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  9. Should pedophiles be given a pass if they're just NAMBLA activists coming to a school to teach six year old boys how to be catamites?

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  10. They would be barred from school property and the police would be called.

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  11. Why would they be banned from school property and police called on them? Even the alleged "Don't Say Gay" law doesn't go that far, much less ban saying "gay."

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  12. Why would they be banned from school property and police called on them? Even the alleged "Don't Say Gay" law doesn't go that far, much less ban saying "gay."

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  13. Because of age of consent laws. You've never heard of statutory rape? Beamish = derp. He keeps proving it over and over.

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  14. Children need to consent to their curriculum? Who knew?

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  15. ...and all this time, I thought that children were incapable of granting consent.

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  16. Plato, "Protagoras"

    Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful: neither do their customers know, with the exception of any trainer or physician who may happen to buy of them. In like manner those who carry about the wares of knowledge, and make the round of the cities, and sell or retail them to any customer who is in want of them, praise them all alike; though I should not wonder, O my friend, if many of them were really ignorant of their effect upon the soul; and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If, therefore, you have understanding of what is good and evil, you may safely buy knowledge of Protagoras or of any one; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and do not hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For there is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when; and then the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them away in another vessel; when you have paid for them you must receive them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited; and therefore we should deliberate and take counsel with our elders; for we are still young—too young to determine such a matter. And now let us go, as we were intending, and hear Protagoras; and when we have heard what he has to say, we may take counsel of others; for not only is Protagoras at the house of Callias, but there is Hippias of Elis, and, if I am not mistaken, Prodicus of Ceos, and several other wise men.

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  17. Children need to consent to their curriculum? Who knew?

    Absolutely nobody. My comment was about the fact that only adults can consent to sexual activity. The dishonest tactic of haters like you is to conflate sexual activity with sexual and gender identity. Because it serves your agenda of creating moral panic.

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  18. No panic here, moral or otherwise. But I'm pretty sure there's more to the "gay identity" than owning Maroon 5 CDs.

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  19. The dishonest tactic of haters like you is to conflate sexual activity with sexual and gender identity.

    Hikers hike. Singers sing. Gay men like to churn another man's fecal matter with their genitalia.

    Homosexuality is a primary disease vector of several exotic illnesses. People who engage in gay sex are advised not to donate blood or organs.

    Transgenders have a higher suicide rate than combat veterans.

    Lesbians have a exponentially higher risk of ovarian and uterus cancer.

    Hepatitis C is rampant due to homosexuals in the food service industry.

    No dishonesty, no hate.

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  20. Bigly hate. Sex between straight people spreads disease as well. btw, this concern with public health is also a concern Minus has. Re the threads where it is only the two of you conversing, is that Minus just talking to myself? Libertarians are supposed to not care about the sex lives of others, Minus. It is a LOT more obvious that Mystere is pretending to be multiple people, but you slipped up. Your hate for gay and trans people is so great that you can't quite pull off a libertarian persona.

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  21. fyi, gay people, just like straights, can be abstinent or monogamous, and not spread disease. Or use protection. Your fixation on promiscuous gays having oodles of unprotected sex is disturbing, Minus/Beamism.

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  22. Libertarian personae? I'm not a Libertarian. I'm a Classical Liberal (aka Paleo-Conservative). There is a difference.

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  23. Want o know my ideological stance on a topic? Consult the writings of Isaiah Berlin of All Souls College, Oxford.

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  24. ps - Berlin was also an advocate for the Homosexual Law Reform Society. And for the record, I have no problem at all with Maryland's homosexual marriage law, as it was one of the few laws regarding homosexuality that were actually passed by the State Legislature and voted upon.

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  25. John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" the law ought not concern itself with "private immorality"

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  26. Laws can change as "customs" change. And so long as they re changed with the consent of the governed, and not soley upon the changing tastes of the ascendant class (like a judge's ruling), I have no quarrel.

    Before modern medicine, it was a sensible law. Given the extreme costs to the public treasury to treat diseases like AIDS, it's still a pretty sensible law.

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  27. Record-High 70% in U.S. Support Same-Sex Marriage. 6/8/2022. Support for gay marriage at 70% for first time. A majority of Republicans now support same-sex marriage. Support among older adults has reached the 60% mark.

    btw, given the extreme costs to the public treasury to combat diseases like covid, it's pretty sensible to use mandates to get them under control.

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  28. Libertarians are supposed to not care about the sex lives of others

    Bzzt. Wrong.

    Libertarians are supposed to care about whatever they fucking choose to care about. Are you new here?

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  29. I'm not a Libertarian. I'm a Classical Liberal (aka Paleo-Conservative). There is a difference.

    At least you're willing to listen to an argument for putting machine gun vending machines in elementary schools. ;)

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  30. Last I checked Missouri held a vote on legalizing gay marriage and it went down in flames by a 71% hell no margin. Then the Supreme Court did its thing, as if it were ever legal for straight men to marry straight men and somehow the gays were denied it by an apartheid regime.

    The government and courts should just recognize polygamy and better yet, since corporations have personhood and fetuses don't, rule that we're all married to each other until we pay a divorce lawyer. I'd divorce Elon Musk in a heartbeat.

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  31. ...and then I'd divorce all the divorce lawyers ;)

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  32. given the extreme costs to the public treasury to combat diseases like covid, it's pretty sensible to use mandates to get them under control.

    Because nobody's being paid from the public treasury to enforce mandates ::eye roll::

    The war is over. The Mask Karens lost.

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  33. fyi, gay people, just like straights, can be abstinent or monogamous, and not spread disease.

    Which ones? The Catholic priest kiddie diddlers or the serial killers?

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  34. A majority of Republicans now support same-sex marriage.

    Your sultry lips to God's ear, queen. Let's have a parade to celebrate the end of Republicans being called homophobes and hatemongers by gerbil felchers.

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  35. He's talking Never-Trumpers like the ever amenable... Collins, Murkowski, and Romney and new fashioned RINO's like McConnell

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  36. If only the majority of Republicans were Never Trumpers...

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  37. I suppose corporations all need their welfare...

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  38. Can't build a railroad without someone else's land ;)

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  39. Sure you can. You just need to change trains when you cross state lines (different gauge tracks).

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  40. Our government has spent $0 combatting covid? Beamish proves he is the derp. Yet again.

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  41. Do you support the legalization of same sex marriage? Results from Libertarians: yes 91% vs no 9%. Data includes total votes submitted by visitors since 12/12/2011.

    The war is over. The Mask Karens lost.

    They did. LOL. Ha ha ha.

    ...celebrate the end of Republicans being called homophobes and hatemongers...

    It's 55%. I'm going to hold off celebrating when republicans stop electing politicians who keep trying to legislatively cancel gay people. Because a minority of their base has been whipped up with moral panics to get out and vote in the primaries.

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  42. Cut the tax deduction for married couples. Gays can still be dual-income no kids (Dinks)

    The government isn't going to stop churches from not marrying gay couples any more than it's going to stop people from dressing normal on Halloween.

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  43. Because a minority of their base has been whipped up with moral panics to get out and vote in the primaries.

    Obviously gays need to go door to door and stump for irritable bowel syndrome, Hepatitis C tainted Subway sandwiches, and picking blood and shit out of pubic hair.

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  44. How Many Same-Sex Couples in the US are Raising Children? Between 2014 and 2016, 16.2% of all same-sex couples, 8.1% of same-sex male couples and more than one in five same-sex female couples were raising children. Based on 2016 household counts, there were an estimated 114,000 same-sex couples raising children in 2016, including 28,000 male same-sex couples and 86,000 female same-sex couples.

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  45. Why? How do YOU spell p-e-d-e-r-a-s-t-y?

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  46. Minus = All in on moral panics.

    Why? Because the republican party has nothing to offer. All they can do is try and scare people into voting for them.

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  47. ...and all Democrats can do is create safe-spaces for perverts to groom kids in.

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  48. You lie. They don't. Democrats are strongly opposed to the sexual abuse of children. That's Qanon bullshit.

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