Tag: future

Rediscovering ourselves

Watching movies like ‘Interstellar’, ‘the right stuff’ and ‘space cowboys’ have only highlighted the failings of government to me. NASA was born of bureaucracy, and it has died of bureaucracy. In fifty years, they never perfected space travel. They piggy backed off the designs of Nazi Germany’s scientists and never got away from rocket launching from the ground in order to get men into space. To this day, only several hundred people have ever traveled to the stars.

In just ten years, Virgin Galactic has revolutionized space travel. Burt Rutan’s revolutionary new designs have made space tourism a viable option in the not too distant future. Now, there have been casualties in pushing this envelope, as there always is. Many of progressive mindset have bashed Virgin Galactic in the last couple of weeks for the death of one of their test pilots, while saying that this sort of thing should be left to government experts. Are they referring to the same government experts who spent billions blowing up rockets trying to get them into space, and the many planes that went down trying to break the sound barrier? Lets not forget, that dozens of test pilots died trying to break the sound barrier, and that even with the space shuttle program, which was far from perfect, shuttles still exploded on the way up, and disintegrated on the way down, killing many of the few astronauts to go into space.

Burt Rutan, with a private enterprise backing, has done far more for space travel in the last decade, than any government agency has in the last half a century. This is a good thing, because America in particular as a nation is just now beginning to rediscover itself. The progressive mantra is slowly being pried away. We can see from the November 2014 elections that the heart of America fully and utterly rejects the democrats big government policies, headed by imperial president Barack Obama.

2014 map

While the nation has now almost completely gone red, the real battles are just now coming. Dinosaurs such as Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner have no right to be at the helm of the senate and house, their paid and patented antiquated back room deal ideology belongs on the scrap heap of history. America is beginning to rediscover Capitalism, and its place in our lives. It is Capitalism, the free market system, which spurs growth, which creates opportunities, which pushes us further than we’ve been before. It is capitalism which will take us to the stars, not soviet style big government

Americans, which the help of movies from Christopher Nolan, with constitutionalist tea party groups, and with alternative media, are rediscovering capitalism, and the fruits it bears. The republicans have swept the house and senate in such a way that has not been seen in nearly one hundred years. We now stand upon the precipice of an abyss or a great awakening. The abyss is in believing that the republicans will do what needs to be done on their own to scale back government. The great awakening is in keeping the pressure on them to roll back the reaches of government, and to allow free enterprise to once again blow the fires of industry throughout the land. We are standing on the edge of an abyss or a new renaissance. I know which one I choose. How about you?

We determine the culture each and every day, we decide which direction the country turns. We decide weather to squabble about our place in the dirt, or to reach for the stars. Each and every one of us is responsible for our own futures. In rediscovering ourselves, we reignite ourselves, we blaze a path for others to follow. The future is out there, lets go and create it!

An Orwellian America

The following post is a good example of where this country is heading. I do not bash both the left and the right for no reason. I want freedom for everyone, individual liberty is my ultimate goal. Please take time to read through the following material and study the graphs.

An Orwellian America

Zero Hedge – by Gordon T. Long

As a young man, I voraciously read George Orwell’s “1984”,  Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Alvin Toffler’s trilogy which included “Future Shock”‘, “The Third Wave” and “Power Shift”. During the era of the Vietnam War, I wondered seriously about the future and how it was destined to unfold. Now being considerably older, I have the vantage point to reflect back on my early ruminations and expectations. Unfortunately, I am too old to alter the lessons that are now so painfully obvious. Instead, I pass the gauntlet to those who can understand and take action on what I have unavoidably come to expect for America.

A FRAMEWORK OF UNDERSTANDING

THE ‘HUXLEY-ORWELL’ TRANSITION

I recently read a perceptive paper by Chris Hedges that would have made any English Professor envious, powerfully philosophical but not something an Economics department would pay much attention to. I found it both intriguing and enlightening.

I have borrowed so heavily from it, that I am unsure where the lines diverge. Therefore, below I give full credit to Chris Hedges and take full credit for all the bad ideas.

Chris Hedges of TruthDig.com wrote 2011: A Brave New Dystopia, from which the following evolved.

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through:

•    Sensual gratification,
•    Cheap mass-produced goods,
•    Boundless credit,
•    Political theater and
•    Amusement.

While we were entertained,

•    The regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled,
•    The laws that once protected us were rewritten and
•    We were impoverished.

Now that:

•    Credit is drying up,
•    Good jobs for the working class are gone forever and
•    Mass-produced goods are unaffordable,

…. we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.”

The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is clearly sliding toward unavoidable bankruptcy.

It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy.

We are transitioning from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.

Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell.

Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew:

Unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

UNSOUND MONEY LEADS TO STATISM

With this as a backdrop let’s explore how Unsound Money in concert with the Huxley-Orwell Transition leads to Statism, the path which I believe we are presently on.

THE CATALYSTS BEHIND THE “TRANSITION”

1- UNSOUND MONEY

•    Removal from Gold Standard and adoption of Fiat Currency regime (in August 1971 during the winding down of the Vietnam War; the first War ever fought without tax increases to pay for it; the beginning of endless ‘conflicts’ and the War on “Terror”).
•    Creation and Fostering of a $67 Trillion Shadow Banking Credit Growth,
•    Massive Securitization & Off Balance Sheet Contingent Liability Debt Growth.

2- POLICY FAILURES

•    Failed Monetary Policy & Monetary Malpractice,
•    Moral Malady,
•    Failed Fiscal Policy,
•    Failed Public Policy,
•    Growth of Political Polarization,
•    Entrenched ‘Left-Right’ Factions,
•    An Un-Governable Democracy.

3- CRISIS OF TRUST

•    Lost Respect & Confidence
•    A Doomed Middle Class
•    A Broken Social Contract

4- AUTHORITARIAN ACCEPTANCE

•    Central Planning
•    Growth in Regulations & Control
•    Crony Capitalism & Corporatocracy
•    Big Government
•    The Huxley – Orwell Transition

CRUMBLING BARRIERS

•    The Great Huxley-Orwell Transition
•    From Manipulative to Repressive

ROADBLOCKS
•    Financial Security through Sound Money            REMOVED
•    Reduced Personal Freedoms through a Crisis         PENDING
•    Reduced Personal Security through a Constitutional Crisis    FUTURE

DRIVERS
•    Globalization & Complexity
o    Fragile versus Robust Systems
o    Interconnectivity and Counter Party Dependency

•    The Productivity Paradox
o    Creative Destruction & Job Creation

Let’s shift gears and consider what “greases the skids” in enabling this transition in our society to occur.

COLLECTIVISM

In The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek showed how governments, supported by a collectivist mindset, always tend towards totalitarianism. Even the most libertarian government thus far created, the government of the United States, has slipped incrementally towards totalitarianism over the past two centuries. This is because it is an inherent trait of a government.

The degree of socialism in the United States increased substantially after the establishment of the Federal Reserve System (1913) and the measures taken during the Great Depression (1929-46) which it created. Ever since the early 1900′s the United States has had a two-party system dominated by ‘socialists’. The Republican Party has always advocated conservative socialism. The Democratic Party, which in the 19th century favored libertarianism, advocates social-democratic socialism. So long as people are divided by Left and Right, Democratic and Republican, the US is prone to being influenced by factions who transcend party politics and from behind the scenes could possible exert strong control over the United States. They could do this by maintaining power over public opinion and hence over the course of government. Steadily, the United States has been travelling down the road to totalitarianism, and many people have not noticed, possibly because they are only looking at the position on the Left-Right paradigm.

Upon further analysis, it is clear that Left, Right and Centre, are all forms of socialism. In particular, we may call them “social-democratic socialism” (the Left) and “conservative socialism” (the Right). They are both socialism because they both share the principle that the government should “run” and “mold” society, by using legal force and intervention to transfer property and personal wealth as part of the political scientists’ process of ‘redistribution of wealth’.

The differences are only in the particular ways the government should run society – the methods it should use, and who, exactly, should be the recipients of government wealth transfers and who should pay. In particular:
•    Social democrats tend to prefer heavy taxation, large wealth transfers to the poor, and nationalized industries, and oppose price controls, regulations and behavioral controls.
•    Conservatives tend to prefer lower taxation, a smaller welfare state, regulated (cartelized) industries, price controls, product  and behavioral controls.

Nolan Charts: Personal Freedom versus Economic Freedom

The modern Republican Party is Center-Right on the Left-Right paradigm. As with the Democratic Party, this obscures the huge range of views Republicans hold on how powerful and how much control the State should be allowed. Their 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, like Barack Obama, strongly favored socialism, though with a Right-wing flavor. Barack Obama (blue circle) and John McCain (red circle) are positioned in the accompanying graphic. Thus, the two main candidates at the 2008 Presidential election represented a false choice – really no choice at all. One candidate, Ron Paul (yellow circle), stood in stark contrast to the candidates, favored by the mainstream media and political establishment. As would be expected, he was neutralized by the mainstream media outlets as a zealot with an unsound political view of America.

THE POLITICAL CONTINUUM

THE EMERGING ROADMAP TO STATISM

Let me now develop and explore the roadmap that outlines the path leading from Policy Failures and Monetary Malpractice, stemming from Unsound Money, to STATISM.
First we will build the outline for the basis of a roadmap on a number of observable continuums.

The more complex that issues become, the more collectivism will dominate and individual needs will be repressed. In turn governments will be forced to be more repressive to maintain control over increasing polarization and diverse views and opinions.

EVOLVING STAGES
When we arrange our various continuums we arrive at the representative grid model shown below.

We will quickly acknowledge it is not ideal, but it allows many concepts currently at play to be shown in relationship to others.

This grid is best described as the social forces at play within Globalization – Financial, Economic and Political.

DRIVER$ – VISIBLE & INVISIBLE
There are both visible and less visible forces at play that are forcing ‘greasing’ the skids in the movement towards Statism.

The roadmap integrates well into our roadmap from our THESIS 2011: Beggar-Thy-Neighbor / Currency Wars and2012 Thesis: Financial Repression papers. ()

ORWELL’S 1984 IS HAPPENING

We are one crisis away from a police state. All the powers are in place. Someone will flip the switch. Whether a Cyber Attack, escalating Currency War tensions or a ‘terrorist’ attack by indebted college youth, it is only a matter of time and circumstance.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-15/orwellian-america

How to win the next election

It does not surprise me that the republicans lost the race for the white house. You get what you pay for. A rich out of touch guy with a vague (at best) plan to fix the economy and a base which ignores a large portion of its supporters running against an incumbent who passes himself off as being cool. This only leads to disaster.

The funny thing is, the youth voted for Reagan (the oldest ever president) thinking that he was cool and they loved his message. The youthful conservatives of today voted and supported Ron Paul during the primaries (a man who would have been the oldest ever president) because they thought he was cool and they loved his message.

The republicans of today are not the conservatives of Ronald Reagan. It is no surprise that after George Bush Sr a large portion broke away for Ross Perot, and since then they have lost two races to Clinton, barely scraped by against Gore and Kerry, and lost consecutively to Obama, the second time to a man who had a worse economy than Carter. Unfortunately Romney is no Reagan, so even with Obama being similar to Carter, he still won. If you wanted a Reagan revolution you had it laid out on a plate for you in the form of Ron Paul.

Many people forget or do not know that Reagan was never supposed to be president to begin with, it was supposed to be Bush Sr all along. The republicans learned their mistake from last time and did everything to shut out Ron Paul, so that they could get one of their groomed candidates to run again. It is no surprise that Reagan and Ron Paul broke the mold and did so well, because they offered real ‘hope and change’ a message which Obama adopted, even if it was only empty rhetoric on his part.

The way to win an election is to energize your base and appeal to other groups. That is why the democrats have been successful. Though their economic handling has been disastrous, they still pass themselves off as being cool and being tolerant. People like to vote for their hopes, not their fears.

The republican party has become the party of fear and hate. Conservatives hate Obama, and bash his supporters without mercy, they fear him, and even say so openly. This does not make them look good, but worse is their shunning of the youthful voters.

I am a capitalist and my views are very libertarian. Most of the people I know would be happy to vote conservative, if they would just stick to free market and civil liberty principles. Though we may be ‘pure’ by nature, we’d be happy if the conservatives just stuck to their own free market principles, which are supposed to run parallel to ours.

Had the conservatives looked at what the youth in the party was doing, what they were saying, and who they were following. If they had paid the slightest bit of attention, they would have flocked to Ron Paul and carried him to victory. Instead they for a second time went with someone ‘electable’ and then shot themselves in the foot by silencing the youth in a despicable manner. If you want anyone to blame for the loss of the 2012 elections, you must first look at the Obama supporters and then look at yourselves in a mirror. Your hatred, you intolerance, your fear has caused this to happen. You only have yourselves to blame. We did everything we could to get you to see reason, to get ourselves heard, to stick to true conservative principles, to elect a man who would have made a real difference in this country. And yet this man was shunned and set to the side by the media, the party, and the ‘loyal supporters’. Had we been given at the very least a fair hearing at the RNC, things would have turned out very differently.

But now we have a second Obama term, and we must reunite forces if we are to stop his atrocious agendas.

The Tea Party of 2010 must reignite itself, and push to take over the senate. It is a tragedy that we lost seats in this election, when we surely should have won them. This is what happens when a movement loses its way, ignores its own principles, shuns a large part of its supporters, and go’s with the party line. Too much time was spent trying to push an unpopular candidate on those who were not interested in him, and not enough effort was put on safeguarding ourselves through the senate. The arrogance of the republican party about getting Romney elected because ‘Obama sucks’ really turned potential voters away. There was absolutely no net increase in voters for the party between 2008 and 2012, in one of the worse economies and worse loss of civil liberties in a life time, that is truly a crying shame, and sticks out like a sore thumb about how far off track the party really is.

If we want to win the next election, if we want to stop the deficit, if we want to regain our civil liberties, the Ron Paul libertarian conservatives (mostly young people) must be embraced with open arms.

This cannot be the party of ‘no’. It must be the party of (dare I say it) ‘yes we can’. Yes we can restore this nation, yes we can rebuild the economy, yes we can defeat the democrats, but only if we get our edge back, only if we gain more voting blocks. And do you know what the easiest voting block is to take over? Youth. Even the college kids who currently worship Obama would vote republican if we put a cool guy like Ron Paul in, someone with a strong message, strong convictions, and a background to prove it. If thousands of people show up to see this old man talk at a college campus in the primaries, how many people do you think will show up for his son at a presidential event?

Forget abortion, forget gay marriage, forget drug enforcement; these issues make us look like we’re from the stone age and they pale in comparison to the economy and civil liberties, issues which are vital to our survival. Wake up, get hip, promote freedom, make it cool, and embrace the youth. It’s our future that’s at stake, so there’s plenty to talk about. If you want to regrow the party, that’s where to start.

The young conservatives of today will be the core of the republican party tomorrow, so you want to nurture that, not turn it away. The new generation of conservatives are more libertarian in nature than the previous generation. We are more tolerant of others beliefs and practices, but we’re more firm in our convictions on economics and civil liberties. Oh, and we already have a new candidate in mind, one that even the older conservatives can like.

Let’s get the ball rolling, let’s get to work on calling our representatives and putting their feet to the fire. Let’s gear up for the senate races in 2014 and let’s start the campaign for Rand Paul 2016!

Thoughts on the meaning of life

“life is without meaning, you bring the meaning to it” – Joseph Campbell

Well it’s been a hectic past couple of weeks. I wrote about the previous week in my last article, and this past week has been busy too, with end of quarter at work, and with a wedding on Saturday.

I got a chance to relax on Sunday and sit in the hot-tub at my in-laws house. While I was allowing the warm water to relax my muscles and the jets to massage the stress away, I was thinking about the past few weeks and about the future.

The reason I get into politics, is because I can see an erosion of freedom and responsibility in daily life. It is because of this that I argue my points across and try to make sense of it all.

When I take part in life, particularly when I take pictures of families at weddings, I’m not thinking about all the silly politics that goes on. I’m thinking of the meaning of life, and all the family and friends who are supporting the new couple. I’m thinking about how happy everyone is, and how to capture their smiles in the most natural way possible without them even realizing it.

I found out this morning that the father of the bride of one of our previous weddings, died on Saturday, around the same time that we were taking pictures of a newly wed couple and their families dancing and having fun. It is with bitter irony that you realize how fragile life is, and that while one family is singing and dancing, another is going through the terrible pain of loss.

This is the second time this year that a close relative of a newly wed couple has died shortly after us taking the last pictures of them. Its a haunting feeling to know that you took the last ever picture of them alive. The comforting aspect is that you know that you captured a memory of them for the family to treasure even long after they are gone.

With the birth of my second nephew, and the thoughts of starting a family of my own, I return to the political spectrum and wonder how much of a future there will be in the world without peace.

If the death of one person can upset so many people, how would a huge war make you feel? When you realize that many thousands of people die in conflict each year.

If we cannot balance a budget or restrict government growth, if we cannot stop the lobbyists and the corrupt politicians from sending our young men out to war, and continue to restrict growth through legislation. Then how much of a future will there be, not just for us, but for the world?

A friend sent me an email this morning of the space shuttle discovery. It shows the cockpit, and all the instruments. After many conversations with him about Star Trek and space travel, it seems as if we are going backwards as a civilization. Why are we not out there traveling the solar system? Why are we constantly bombing each other and starting wars? Why do we have a ‘war on drugs’? Why can’t we just leave each other alone, and only punish those who actually literally harm others?

Why do we feel the need to use the government as a way to redistribute wealth? Why do we feel the need to use the government to create benefit programs, when charities are perfectly capable of taking care of those in need?

Life has no meaning unless you bring meaning to it. When you are born, you are an empty vessel. It is up to your parents to teach you how to walk and talk. After that, it is up to you to continue the learning process. It is up to you to advance yourself. It is up to you not to hold yourself back. You must do what you feel is right. You must hold yourself to your own highest moral standards.

Life moves forward when you cherish it, and advance yourself through productive means. When you embrace knowledge and creativity, when you learn all that you can, and work toward your goals. You can and will achieve anything.

When you reject the old, the useless, the warn out policies of the past, and embrace new ideas built upon the learning of successes throughout the world, then you will have achieved a bright new future in which anything is possible.

I reject the two party system in politics because it is broken and it does not work. From an outside perspective, and can say they are almost identical.

I reject war because it is a racket. I am perfectly capable of defending myself.

I embrace the US constitution, because it is the most well written document to protect and embrace freedoms that the world has ever seen.

I embrace liberty and free markets because they allow the individual to create whatever he or she desires, and then sell that product to others to enhance their own lives.

I embrace value, true value, because if you value your life, the lives of others, the value of the inventions created by men of the mind.

I embrace new technologies. These new technologies were invented, and without them, we would still live in caves and would not have  a civilization to begin with.

I embrace nature, because nature is abundant, and everything erupts forth from it.

I embrace respect. Because without it, fights ensue, and ideas get squashed. It is not the better idea that succeeds in battle, but the person with the largest hammer. Battles are necessary from time to time, but logic should always be supported by fact, and then brought forward as the successor.

Life has meaning when you bring meaning to it. What is the meaning of your life? What have you done today? What have you done to enhance and enrich your own life? And in turn, what have you done to enhance and enrich the lives of those around you?

Your hard work pays off when you keep going despite bumps in the road. Sometimes you have to stop and alter your course slightly, or even go off road, but if you stay on track you will get to your destination.

When was the last time you looked up at the stars? Can you imagine a better future?

What did you do to make your life happy today?

Are you living a happy life?

We live for our own happiness. If we are not happy, or able to find contentment, then our lives are wasted. You only get one shot at life. So make it a good one.

The future is built today

In the front office where I work, we have a large framed poster of a construction site. On the poster it reads ‘the future is built today’ and under the caption it says ‘we believe great results come from careful planning. That ambitious goals are powered by initiative and productivity. And the foundation of achievement lies in the will to be the best.’

Beside that poster is a laminated sheet of paper, that has many copies that can be seen throughout the warehouse. It is a document to inspire everyone to work together, and it reads ‘words to live by’: Teamwork, communication, planning, flexibility, accountability, long range view, flow, training, discipline, think out of the box.

These words are aimed to help mold the company toward a common goal of success.

Both the poster and the laminated message, are true in everything we do. Whether it be our work, our family, or our government. If we set our sights on tomorrow and work toward it, we will achieve it. But only if we stick to certain rules along the way.

It is obvious that the government does not have ‘long range view’ in mind. It is not ‘flexible’ when it comes to cutting budgets and limiting spending, it completely lacks ‘discipline’, it certainly does not ‘think out of the box’. Government does not ‘plan’, ‘communicate’ or work well as a ‘team’, the ‘flow’ is often horrible, and every person in government could really do with some better ‘training’.

These words from Ronald Reagan are as true today as they were in 1964:

Personally, I want to reign in government, to restore the Constitution, and be free to pursue my life in the way that I see fit.

I want to grow old and wise, I want to grow wealthy and be generous. I want to achieve anything that I can set my mind to. I do not want machine men with their ‘agendas’ getting in my way. I will help as many others as I can along the way, but I will never carry capable people on my back. Any form of collectivism, from Stalin’s communism to Hitler’s fascism, and all the socialism and social engineering in-between, must be destroyed. All the silly ideas and government programs must be eliminated, or else our lives will be eliminated by the truncheon of totalitarian government, with its ever growing fingers in all our pies.

I want to create my own happy future, free of the ever increasing burden of government. When societies are free, the world around them becomes a beautiful place, since they are able to work and create whatever their dreams desire.

The future is built today because we create it in each moment that we breathe. Whether we have government currently breathing down our neck or not, we can at least lay down the foundation of freedom, to help lift us up out of the clouds of collectivism tomorrow.

The future is in each individuals hands, and your future starts by building it brick by brick today.