The current candidates and their alignments

I will be using the break-out of factions within the Republican Party that I posted here to do some analysis of the current crop of Presidential aspirants within that party.  As this is the party that has been targeted for take-over by the Tea Party post-2010, any instant analysis gives only a snapshot on a much longer series of events that have been ongoing since that election cycle.  Do note that the elections at the State level in many States (WI, VA, NJ, FL as examples but this is a much larger phenomena than in just a few States) are trendline indicators on this analysis, which is to say they serve as reference points in 2009 and 2011 which cannot be ignored to show power shifts within the Republican Party.  What is happening is going beyond just the fiscal conservatism of the Tea Party as that is finding its historical and intellectual roots in not just fiscal reality but a form of morality that is now beginning to take hold elsewhere within the party and the Nation.

To give a thumbnail sketch of the factions is, of course, a very glossy over-view as there are numerous individuals who can fit between factions at this point, with the Tea Party members becoming one of the major parts of this concept.  Yet the basic breakout will help to give a lay of the current and future political landscape, thus a snapshot of candidates is a window into the factional movements going on.  Thus the brief sketch of the factions and major portions of them are necessary.

1) SecCons - Security Conservatives - This is the traditional anti-Communist, Cold War group that have supported a robust military build-up post-WWII to confront the USSR.  They put the confrontation of Communism at an international level as a high priority and put FiCons and SoCons off to the side and often had Progressive internal policies while having anti-Communist external ones.  These were added to post-1999 by outcasts from the Democratic Party in the way of NeoCons who had an aggressive agenda for military use post-Cold War but would often overlook things like border security.  SecCons should be at the forefront of border security and immigration issues as well as anti-terrorism issues, but they have yet to fuse the public morality of a strong defense with strong Nation State boundaries as a quintessential element of being a SecCon.  Many do, yes, and that is a plus and in the future expect to see SecCons take a Fusionist page and begin to incorporate public morality into SecCon ideals.  To date that has not happened and the NeoCons are finding that they cannot make a case for external confrontation of terrorism or a 'freedom agenda' and have any credibility without addressing the closer to home border issues.  The NeoCons (socially Progressive, fiscally blind and Security moderates) are an odd fit with the changing nature of the Republican Party as they cannot seem to grasp the necessary social and fiscal elements to become Fusionist.  Many NeoCons have been Libertarians because of the expansive agenda of the NeoCons for human liberty, but cannot reconcile themselves to the actual means to achieve this.  Thus the NeoCons are foundering on the basis for their agenda, and without that they cannot make a lasting statement on the affairs of the party or the Nation.  In fact they may start to die out as a faction as members must search for a deeper set of foundations for their beliefs.

2) FiCons break out into two sub-factions.

a) Rockefeller Republicans - The home of the 'Establishment Republicans' is squarely here, with some of the older cohorts in the SecCon Cold War group having added to them up until 2010.  Money, power and longevity of having been in the top spots in the party infrastructure allowed the RR FiCons to mould the party to something they liked to the point of creating an alliance with the MSM that would favor candidates backed by the party hierarchy through the RNC and the two Congressional PACs that would send money not just to incumbents but to favored candidates in Primaries.  This system has allowed a lower level of feedback from the party base into the infrastructure of the party and it is the target of the Tea Partiers to start changing this system from the precinct level through the State level all the way to the National level.  If the RR FiCons lose planks at the National Convention to Tea Party backed State level groups, then the turn-over point will have been reached as the ability to gain a voting say to guide the party will begin to marginalize this group.  This group used to be Fiscally Conservative back when it started but are now Fiscally Moderate to Progressive and Socially Moderate to Progressive.  As the party changes beneath their feet and old line establishment figures are replaced by the other sub-faction members, this group will start to face the problem of the NeoCons.  An adjunct to this sub-faction are the Libertarians who have somewhat Moderate fiscal backgrounds but who are Libertines in the social realm.  This form of Libertarianism is joining the RR FiCons in being marginalized and slowly dying out.

b) Tea Party Republicans - Here is where the Tea Party first makes its mark and is still the home to the largest organization of Tea Party members.  TP Republicans are not just in the FiCon realms and are making arguments about fiscal concerns and Nation State solvency that cross both SoCon and SecCon lines and these are the Fusionists.  To concentrate on the TP FiCons for a moment, these are the people with the simple message of  being taxed enough already and stop the spending.  Any Nation should be able to run on a $2 trillion budget at the National level and not go over-budget.  That the US federal government cannot do that demonstrates that it is not being run well, wisely or competently and that it is promising more than it can deliver.  This means that, at some point, the promises will stop or the Nation will implode and the TP FiCons are for stopping the spending and living within the means that the economy can deliver via taxation without going over budget.  It is a fiscal 'back to basics' movement of spending no more than you take in and not promising what you cannot deliver without going into debt.  This set of simple, limited government ideals resonate deeply with any family or anyone living on a budget and seeing thrift as a way to have a better life.  As this is the majority of the Nation and a Nation of Paupers and Moochers are ones that will lose all their liberty, the moral foundations for this form of fiscal conservatism runs deep and outside the industrial RR FiCon comfort zone.  Libertarians who are fiscally conservative in the way of the TP FiCons join up to it but have problems understanding the Fusionist nature of the TP FiCon movment.  Being socially Moderate to Progressive or Libertine means that the categorization of financial freedom and liberty is not founded in the deeper understanding of human nature and the requirement that fiscal conservatism have roots greater than the liberty of man as individual alone.  Still they help to cement this faction in place even when they cannot or will not join in the larger social system that the TP FiCons are bringing to the table.  This sub-faction is now ascendant  in the Republican Party.

3) SoCons also break down into two sub-factions.

a) Christian Conservatives - This faction has held the line on abortion and has been fighting back on the encroaching of government on religious faith.  While holding to those moral beliefs they have also been courted by those wanting to make government the purveyor of those beliefs via social policy, which should be an anathema to this sub-faction, but has had numerous candidates over the years touting just this line.  Thus while socially conservative this sub-faction has elements of Progressive views in it and tends to not see the financial cost of providing a social 'good', which adds to a fiscally Moderate to Progressive basis for it.  Security concerns tend to divide this faction as well, between a Progressive view of 'open borders' and the slow dissolving of the Nation State and those that hold closer to the Traditionalist view of the Nation State being the guardian of our positive liberties and rights (not the granter of them).  The last decade has seen a slow reconciliation on social concerns within this group, although those with less than conservative views on finances and security can still play well in many areas of the Nation.  On the whole these are the people who drew a line in the sand based on the sanctity of life and did not realize that this must be true across the board, not just at conception but for the entire life of the individual which includes Security and Financial realms, as well.  As this sub-faction comes together across theological lines it will be attractive to more members of all faiths to stand up to the encroachment of government becoming a religious doctrine tyrant.

b) Traditionalist Conservatives - This faction runs a gamut of names from Federalists to Constitutional Conservative to Old School Liberal.  If the CC SoCons are the faction of faiths at the church or synagogue, the Traditionalists are the faith of the hearth and home where the basics of everyday life resonate deepest and most clearly.  These are the Settlers in US parlance, not necessarily the trailblazers and openers (the Jacksonians) but those that followed on to hew the rough shape of the land to make it fit for human habitation.  The Old Democratic Jacksonian contingent has the most affiliation with this sub-faction but tends to be Independent of persuasion, and when they do join the Republican Party they fit most closely into the Traditionalist sub-faction.  By teaching traditional budgeting and self-defense as the necessary guarantors of self-government and liberty, this sub-faction is one that will quickly join the Tea Partiers and become part of the Fusionists.  In this sub-faction practical budgeting is seen as a way of life and they haven't been too happy with their spendthrift compatriots in the party across other factions for decades.  Basic Federalist and Constitutional principles have, by the light of those living the closest to home and traditional ways, been trampled upon through the last century and instead of marching they have done the practical thing of leading good and solvent lives and not taking part in the slow erosion of the culture of the US by Progressivism.  It is not 'survivalism' but endurance and steadfastness that this sub-faction adheres to and the motto that 'God helps them who help themselves' means not taking a hand out but making your own way forward with your own work.  It is this sub-faction that Teddy Roosevelt railed against in the 1890's through the 1910's and it has endured no matter what the enticement, the scorn or derision has been that has been cast their way.  Libertarians who are not Libertines find themselves drawn to Traditionalism but have problems with the foundations of it in the basis of God granting liberty, individuals having granted liberty and exercising it, and then putting that into the social framework of the necessary evil of government to safeguard moral good, not promulgate it.

4) Fusionists - In brief these are the TP FiCons that are looking to dissolve and absorb those parts of the SecCons that still see National Sovereignty as a prime mover in human affairs and also understand that being fiscally insolvent is a danger to the Nation, and to the SoCons who understand that the basis for limited government is that it is our negative powers we grant it to protect us so we may use our positive liberties to build a strong culture and Nation.  It is very likely that the Third Great Awakening of America will allow the SoCons (all of them) to come to this conclusion and give the deep historical and theological background to the TP FiCon argument that will cement it in place.  This is the most overlooked, hardest to define and yet definite mover within the Republican Party as the TP FiCons continue to argue the basics and find that they come from traditional moral and ethical tenets that are deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian theology and philosophy.  This faction only started after 2010, properly, and is now growing as seen through the prism of the candidates.

Now with all that, it is time to look at the candidates with this prism in place.  I'm going last name, alphabetically.

Newt Gingrich - Speaker Gingrich falls into two sub-factions and one faction.  The main faction he came from are the SecCons, the anti-Communist wing of the Republican Party, although he was brought up with RR FiCon foundations and a limited set of CC SoCon outlooks.  Put together Newt Gingrich's political life has been one of a Progressive on the concept of government being used to push a social agenda of CC SoCons while spending money to confront Communism.  His attack on welfare in the 1990's didn't end the concept of government welfare, but removed a few programs that were running harshly in the red and allowed for a temporary balancing of the budget based on the dot Com bubble and TeleCom bubble.  He did nothing to roll back government power in the social arena and 'welfare' has been rebuilt, bit by bit, by George W. Bush and Barack Obama plus both Republican and Democratic led Congresses.  It is because of his RR FiCon roots that Speaker Gingrich gets dubbed an Establishment Republican and to a large degree this is true, although he has led a career that makes him uncomfortable to the Establishment in that his affiliations, positions and income, post-government, points out the corruptness in the Establishment position.  As an individual he is gifted in oratory and immediate wit while he ascends but has a grating and petulant tone while in downturns.  His historical knowledge allows him to argue both sides of any argument passionately and then dismiss his prior passion when changing sides on an argument, thus making him a good tactical politician but one with a low trust factor to him.  With his conversion to Roman Catholicism comes the recognition within himself of being a flawed individual and that he seeks reconciliation with his Creator for that.  This must be recognized and his sins of the past remembered, even when forgiven, so that his new path can be compared to the one he had before his conversion.  If most politicians have a few skeletons in their closet, Speaker Gingrich has a vast army of skeletons which is a two-fold condition: they can be used to show up his problems but he can skillfully turn them back on those who bring up the dead, as well.  It must be remembered that it is he who put those skeletons in place and he appears to be very good at dealing with undead issues.

Ron Paul - Rep. Paul is a double edged sword when it comes to the factions in the Republican Party.  He is an 'open borders' and free travel SecCon which goes against the rationale for a Nation State put forward not just by the Founders but since Westphalia.  He also has a strong small government streak and small military outlook which should put him in favor with the TP FiCons but the recognition of George Washington's understanding that a strong military is necessary to safeguard a Nation is one that puts many TP FiCons ill at ease.  His hatred but signing off on earmarks, even when he doesn't put them in a bill is troubling for TP FiCons as well.  Amongst SoCons his religious background is a plus, his identification with the Framers and early Presidents also a strong point, both of which make him appealing.  With that said not having a thorough grounding in those early Presidents and what they did and why they did them makes Rep. Paul a difficult man to understand as such things as confronting Islamic radicals didn't start in the 20th century but dates back to Colonials and early citizens being taken by Barbary Pirates all the way back to the 18th century.  'Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute' should be something that Rep. Paul understands and yet just the opposite is the case.  He makes a weak case for Privateering which should be a strong case if he understood Law of Nations or the works of Grotius, both of which the Framers and early Presidents well understood.  For SoCons he cannot explain his newsletters which is part of the 'moral responsibility' for having them published under one's name.  If you cannot explain your executive position in publishing questionable parts in lucrative newsletters, then how can one be trusted at higher executive authority?  Being an executive means understanding process and procedures, and that means not only 'moral responsibility' but an analysis of how such things get to publication and what was done to remedy a process that was out of whack. In personal tone and tenor in relaxed settings he can do well but in ones in which he is unprepared for answers he tends to wander in his approach which is off-putting to many.  Rep. Paul's lack of traction outside of his delimited base of supporters is due, in part, to the incoherence of his message and inability  to trace amongst the beliefs that are presented to show how they are internally self-consistent and have a high functional capability with the external world.  If one supports a Hayekian interpretation of Wealth of Nations just say so and then be willing to back that up with other works to show how they go together.  Similarly the Austrian School of Economics is rather esoteric to most individuals and needs grounding in Foundational concepts and a better  and broader backing to its implementation to a republic via Law of Nations.  It is not enough to claim internal consistency and point to years of newsletters that do not distill down to anything quickly.  It is not necessary to be glib but it is necessary to pull out key ideas and relate them quickly to other concepts that resonate with the American experience.  In these things Ron Paul lacks and has lacked for years.

Willard 'Mitt' Romney - Gov. Romney sits firmly in the RR FiCon world of the Northeastern US both fiscally and socially as the Northeastern US is where RR FiCons came from, by and large.  The region of NY-NJ up to ME is the locus of the Old Establishment Republicans and one does not need to be in DC to be part of that Establishment, but in the proper class and group of individuals who have a nodding understanding amongst them about wealth and its purposes within the party.  Thus the concepts of being socially Moderate to Progressive is acceptable within those confines and that regional affiliation is used to make a somewhat weak case that Gov. Romney ran and governed like a Northeastern RR FiCon, which he did, but being a Northeastern FiCon is not, necessarily, a thoroughgoing form of conservatism.  He continues to stand by Romneycare even when the criticisms are that no government, at any level, should mandate purchase or penalties for lack of purchase of a good or service.  That includes local government, State government or the National government, and yet he stands by the State level argument which, in this form, is neither Federalist nor conservative as no government should be granted such power over a free people.  The duty of a Governor is not to make bad legislation tolerable, but to safeguard the rights and liberties of those they govern and if another level of government has placed an inordinate burden that is bankrupting the State, then the proper redress is against the larger institution for doing something it doesn't have the power to do and breaking its faith as a body made by these lower levels of government.  And as the fiscal power of a State government should be limited to the State, then accepting federal monies for a State program should be seen as not only contrary to the separation of powers amongst the States and federal government, but an outright attempt to render States into vassals of the federal government and no longer as the holders of the charter of that government.  Gov. Romney's abiding faith in a Christian variant is one that should be relatively appealing to SoCons and, to a degree, it is.  Practicing a peaceful faith that upholds human liberty as coming from God should be a key to Gov. Romney's appeal and yet it hits some residual bigotry against the variant (Mormonism) due to the history of that religion until recent times.  Provisioning of a social 'good' should be appealing, much in the way Newt Gingrich is appealing, and yet that falls flat with SoCons when it is coming from Gov. Romney.  A background and pioneering appeal to at least the T SoCons should be an obvious tactic and overarching theme given the Federalist argument and Mormon background, but this is not the case due to the ways that State government was run by Gov. Romney so that even in the NE US his views are not acceptable to the T SoCons.  He does get some limited traction on hearth and home religious concepts, but that has been the greatest extent of his inroads with SoCons.  With SecCons there is limited appeal by Gov. Romney both on anti-terrorism and secure borders advocacy, due to his time as Governor of MA.  Because MA is seen as socially Moderate to Liberal if not by and large Progressive (outside of some western venues) the ability of Romney as Governor to actually put himself into the security spotlight were delimited and that now limits appeals to SecCons.  Outside of that Gov. Romney has a moderate likeability factor that is tempered by his rather slick political approach.  His campaign style is reminiscent of the 1960's to late 1970's in style and while the packaging is late 1990's that is reflective of the candidate himself.  Gov. Romney fits in the late 20th century very well, but the early 21st is changing very rapidly and looking for something that a Governor of a Northeastern State just can't bring to the table unless they brought major and substantial rollbacks in government power and spending with them... which hasn't happened anywhere in the NE US.  If he had this background in 2000, say, he would have been a very strong contender, but by 2012 the last century is now being seen as antiquated in views, policy and process and Gov. Romney is not stepping up to the modern plate of conservatism or even of where moderates stand.  He has great appeal to a somewhat older demographic based on packaging and styling which goes with the RR FiCon demographic.  To date he has no break-out past the limited base he has come with to this process and that is proving a major stumbling block to him as the very establishment he appeals from is being undercut and slowly liquidated.

Rick Santorum - Sen. Santorum has a deep SoCon affiliation that is amongst the CC SoCons and only somewhat to T SoCons.  He has signed on to bills that expand government programs and utilized the somewhat Progressive view of pushing social values via government programs to do so.  His loss in PA was part of a general sweep against Republicans and took place before the redistricting of the State and major changes that happened there in 2011 at the State level.  Coming from PA he has a natural affinity to both the old Rust Belt and Midwestern US, which are favorable to him and his SoCon views.  While he may not be palatable to all the Bible Belt, he has backing that should allow him to do well inside that region, as well.  Beyond that Sen. Santorum has problems appealing to FiCons due to his spending record in the Senate.  He has worked hard to ameliorate this with TP FiCons, and speaks a somewhat different language post 2010 than he did prior to it, about tying fiscal concerns with social values.  In this he is a proto-Fusionist Republican, not fully founded in TP FiCon or their Fusionist outreach within the party, he is the first to really represent that outreach group even if his record and background are stumbling blocks for it.  Being a virtual unknown and from the Senate, he has had problems talking about the ties between small government conservatism and social values of the SoCons.  This does not mean that his views follow those of the TP FiCons and his lack of policy directives (actually they all lack policy directives but it is telling on outreach to TP FiCons) for the size, scope and power of the federal government means that he has limited ability to expound upon them.  For SecCons he is a bit of an enigma, as well, although upholding traditional alliances and needing to repair them post-Obama is a major selling point.  His message on National Sovereignty issues based on border security and debt have not been highlighted, and that limits his comfort zone with SecCons as well.  Taken together Sen. Santorum is not sitting exactly where he was expected to sit within the CC SoCon confines, which makes him a tough nut to understand amongst the other factions within the Republican Party.  He has an amiable outreach, if a bit shrill at times, but also has a likeability factor that reaches not just to CC SoCons but to other factions as well.  If there is a candidate with a doormat out saying WELCOME on it, it is Sen. Santorum and while he is willing to listen he is also willing to hold a dialogue with both critics and supporters which is a very, very hard thing to find amongst the other candidates.  What Sen. Santorum lacks in clarity (as in Ron Paul) he makes up for in willingness to hear others out and uphold his traditional beliefs and talk about how they work in the modern world.  If he is the first of the Fusionists then he is putting down a few major marker points on openness and willingness to listen, not just talk and expound, which makes for an interesting dynamic for future Fusionists to examine.  He is not right on all issues and has problems of appeal outside of his origination point within the CC SoCons and still has not found the necessary expansive underpinnings for a wide-ranging set of policies and conversation points amongst the American people.  With that said, if he does these things he will find himself amongst a growing set of the Republican Party that crosses all prior factional boundaries that is fully within the 21st century of US politics.  He isn't there at this point but the possibilities to be at that point of confluence are indicated.

That is my personal view of the candidates within the Republican field vying for the nomination.

YMMV.

Natural and Unnatural law

Between the Moral Law of God and the Civil Law of Man that is guided by Moral Law there is the other realm of law, which is Natural Law.  This thing known as Natural Law are the boundaries that Nature places upon us, and in this I do not speak of the philosophical 'nature' (that is what are the characteristics of a thing or person) but the Universal Nature, which is the physical realm of the universe.  This physical realm has two aspects to it: chaos and order. 

Chaos is represented by the randomness of nature from the lowest levels, upwards.  Brownian motion is bounded but chaotic in that it can have limitations upon it (based on volume, media type and temperature) but that what results in the way of motion is unpredictable at any given moment.  Chaos creates randomness in events so that there is a factor of indeterminacy involved.  This fact is part of Quantum Mechanics and comes from examining how Nature works.

Order is the sudden appearance of direction or higher order stability that resists chaos.  The association of atoms in the form of molecules then has a larger scale set of predictable factors to them in the form of physical properties and structure.  The capability for an underlying chaotic system to have structure appear is described by the concept known as emergence.  When a number of unrelated factors then fall together into a new and unpredictable form of orderly behavior, then you have an emergent behavior that is unpredictable based on its component parts.  All of this plays out in a framework within space and time, and these parts of the framework give rise to the effects we see.  Part of that framework is chaos at the lowest most level and, from that, the framework will have chaotic things happen within it.  Everything must cope abide by that at all other levels that coincide and derive from it.

Nature is, from that, chaotic and emergent to forms of order.

From this order is not the same as law, which makes law a separate realm from chaos, emergent behavior and order.

In Moral Law there is the requirement to acknowledge that we get it from something outside of ourselves and is a requirement for the Order of Man.  Can Moral Law be described as an emergent phenomena?  This would require answering the question: what is the source of the emergent phenomena?  In the Universal sense this is God, that thing that all can know and yet none can fully define.  Moral Law, recorded in scripture, also appears (in part) in other cultures as well that do not have scriptural basis for their Moral Law.  What parts of this are Universal to Man?  And why ask that question at all?

The reason for asking the question is that Man is a rational being (that is able to discern cause and effect, remember them and think about them dispassionately) and seeks to find those patterns that exist across different areas of knowledge to see if they are related.  A positive relationship (that is an equivalence of pattern) then points to underlying structure with possible variations that can be examined as to their true universality.  A truly Universal conclusion is true across all domains that are encompassed by the hypothesis, while a localized one is that which is true only for a locality.  Thus for those things that Man finds across cultures that are equivalent, there can be some examination as to what the source of those qualities are.

The most Universal quality of man is this thing we do known as 'marriage' or the bonding of man and woman to create a family via intimate relationships.  Marriage is seen across all cultures in some formulation and across all eras of mankind that we have records for.  From that we can put the hypothesis down that marriage is a Universal quality for those beings that are capable of recognizing the need for such a bond and being able to assent to it in a voluntary fashion.  Traditions of 'arranged marriages' through matchmakers or other venues is a cultural phenomena on top of the underlying structure of marriage and is created to turn a voluntary and yet wholly necessary need into a stable system of society that is involuntary.  Those systems, then, are phenomena based on the underlying premise, not the underlying premise itself as, absent those social structures, the quality of Man to seek marriage would still exist.

To marry is to form a social unit called the family.  Doing this then has other requirements with it to safeguard the family.  The first of those is self-sacrifice on the part of parents for their children so that the children may survive to continue the lineage and social order of that family.  This is not just a mother or father dying to save a child, but goes much deeper into us as individuals to address our negative natural liberties and rights.  There is no such thing as a purely positive liberty or right: all liberties and rights are of two parts via Nature so that they are not biased and have no direction to them.  By having natural liberty and rights in equal parts (though not, of necessity, equal amounts) chaos is guaranteed expression via both venues.  To gain order from these natural rights and liberties requires an assertion of willpower over them when they are exercised.  Thus to put aside negative natural liberty of, say, offensive warfare without cause then requires an expression of will on a continual basis by individuals to not use this negative right to exercise this negative liberty to put the family in danger.

Because this is of primary importance as warfare is lethal, it must be agreed upon by all family members and that agreement made specific and stated for all involved.  From this we get this thing called Civil Law within the context of Law of Nations.  Civil Law is nothing more than the assertion of will over our negative liberties in a way agreed upon by our fellow man so as to not exercise the natural rights associated with them and this adhered to by all with consequences for not following those agreements.  The result of such Civil Law is emergent order from the society that is created by these agreements.  Because such agreements need to be remembered in their specifics an organ of society known as government is created to be the holder of these agreements about our negative natural liberties.  Although there is a Moral Law of 'Thou shall not kill', which is part of a formulation of creation of Civil Law, this is understood to be in the realm of Moral expression in the Civil arena.  There is no 'Thou shall not go to war on your lonesome' edict and, indeed, there are individuals that find themselves doing just that without moral or civil justification for their acts.  Such individuals have decided not to follow Civil Law under Law of Nations and reclaim their full natural liberty and rights for themselves and are now in opposition to those who follow Civil Law which is part of this thing known as Civilization.  This is a reversion to base savagery against civilization, a return to natural man who is full of chaos and unwilling to assert will to get a social order.

Law is the creation of order via the assertion of will and the restraint of use of negative natural rights and liberties.  This is true of Law of Nations, that law created by marriage, and for Civil Law, that law that comes from the creation of society for protection amongst families and for family members within the family unit.  Moral Law is a bias or direction to Natural Law which itself is without bias and equal in treatment to all within it.  Man cannot make Natural Law because we live within Nature and are natural beings.  Man can find or have revealed Moral Law as it is that which is outside the realm of Nature, outside the realm of thought and wholly within the realm of the Eternal but can be expressed within the Natural realm.

From these things we find the following Laws:

1) Moral Law can be discovered via revelation or via chance (such as social groups finding that the punishing of those killing within that social group requires a cost to that action to deter it).  As such the foundations for a moral outlook are Universally available, although the pathway to that understanding can be indirect as well as direct.  If you do not have revelation, then you have trial and error using rational observation to see what the results are for certain action and re-action pairings.

2) Natural Law acts upon all things in Nature and is universal within the realm of Nature.  Being within this domain of law means we do not set it, do not create it, and it exists wholly outside of our sphere of influence,  Nature provides us with our bodies, our lives, and the physical world which we can manipulate.  Nature is uncaring, neutral, and provides much in the way of the physical domain that we don't understand and may never be able to understand.

3) Law of Nations is the unwritten law that Man discovers via the application of Moral Law to oneself for the creation of family.  Law of Nations is universal to all thinking beings who have access to Moral Law, which is to say all rational beings that procreate and create families via a bond of marriage or other, similar, dedication.  This exists not just within the confines of Natural Law but as a concept separate from Natural Law, making Law of Nations Universal to all rational beings.

4) Civil Law is created by society which, itself, is made under Law of Nations, and is the expression of Moral Law within Law of Nations by a society which wishes to create a State for safeguarding the population against those who would express their negative natural rights and liberties against their fellow man.  Moral Law gives founding to direction and bias on those Natural liberties and rights that we have, and when we create a family we find that Moral Law almost immediately from being Natural Beings who must protect our offspring from Nature's creatures that do not so well discriminate their negative liberties and rights than do we.

When man has no ability to write, indeed has no alphabet but does have a spoken language or other means of communication, items from the realms of unwritten law become an integral part of the communication's tradition so that it may be passed on and preserved.  Moral Law can be revealed and passed down by word of mouth, Natural Law is always present to present questions and get results and those results are reflective of Nature, Law of Nations to protect family and create the Nation is universal upon first creating family and its form becomes apparent because of that.  Civil Law is the last law that is derived from the other laws and it, too, can exist in an unwritten form as a set of customs or practices that those within a given society live by.

There are interesting aspects of Moral Law in this arrangement, in that it is not (of necessity) written down but can be discovered by Man who utilizes both emotions and reason, together, to find answers to problems that arise in society.  Law of Nations is that which is about structure, duty, and ordering of power by society due to it being a society and interacting with other societies that hold different customs.  Before revelation man utilized chance, which is to say trying things differently until finding something that worked, to deal with problems created between men within society.  Law of Nations can only speak of this as a manifestation within society that is stable, it cannot say what Moral Law is but that it is a formulary necessary for Law of Nations to happen fully. 

By staying one's hand within a family, by not killing each other, by not stealing from each other, indeed, by not inflicting lasting harm upon the family the expression of Moral Law becomes visible: it is that which guides us on how to create a stable family and society.  This requires both reason (as understanding that harming a family member will rebound negatively on oneself) and emotion (to understand that forgiveness for the faults of family members is necessary to have a family, but that forgiving only comes with the atonement by that individual that did wrong by the family).  That same staying and continued withholding of it creates the family, as well.  When spouses are abusive to their mate, their children or themselves, there is a fundamental violation of Moral Law, and as it is destructive to Law of Nations it is a negative factor for having Nations and even civil society.  That is why we have Civil Law so as to penalize such activities and safeguard families from abusive parents: it is to transmit that the family order has a reason behind it, a rationale, that it is positive when upheld and negative to not just the family but the Nation when it is neglected or abused.  To not punish these actions by actors is to invite the decay of society and the downfall of it and the Nation that is sustained by the family.  Penalties in this realm have been severe on the Civil Law side and for Natural Law the ability to protect oneself and one's family invokes the positive liberty and right of warfare: defensive war for survival and self-protection.

From all of this there are interesting questions that can be posed in the context of Universal Laws, but they are more of interest to philosophers or theologians than to those surviving a daily life.  That we can even formulate such questions is a testament to the power of these Laws and that our holding to them can create a long lasting society and the concept of Nation even when Nation States rise and fall many times in the same region. 

The actual ability to even ask those questions has required that there be tolerance for asking them, and that has been a high powered, long fought after battle that has spanned nearly all of human history, was first given any written establishment for Nations in 1648, and is still NOT recognized by large swaths of mankind and is being actively fought against within those areas that have it.  Yet religious tolerance has become an instance of the highest order of civilization so long as a religion does not dictate to the State and only to the individual, and that society remains open to other religious beliefs that do not seek to impose themselves by negative natural rights and liberty.  That is an effect of how a fight for aspects of Moral Law that have the same basis has established a common space for those religions to exist in a secular realm.  The secular realm, itself, must be open to religious teachings of all religions that follow the same civil principles of respect and tolerance for believers of other faiths. 

To try and exclude Moral Law as garnered by religious faith from the secular space is destructive to that space as it undercuts its very existence: to find commonality across beliefs that can be upheld without imposition of any particular faith upon those who do not believe in it.  By holding commonalities to be common requires the robust and civil discussion of Moral Law within that secular space so that better Civil Laws can be found.  Do note that even atheists, agnostics or those who civilly practice relatively unusual religious rights are not the holder of this secular space, but participants in it.  Those who do not believe in religious basis for the underpinning of the secular space must recognize the origins of that space, their protection within it as a higher form of learning and that, in particular, if it is garnered via mere trial and error via faiths, then it is more precious than any single faith within that realm and therefore MUST be upheld as a neutral space for such civil discussions.

Secular space for government does not mean that such government does not recognize the foundation of the secular space or those things necessary to uphold it: indeed it was formed to protect those practices, not expunge them.

Secular space for society is a recognition and acceptance amongst all members of society as individuals that their practice of faith (or lack thereof) may not put the civil basis for society at risk without penalties and that their ability to practice a faith and even change faiths is upheld by having a neutral secular space that is common for all of society.  What you do with your life and within your household shall not undercut that common space that must be open to all arguments and that arguments on Moral Law must first be won by civil discourse, not by secular fiat or by gaming government practices.  Indeed when government becomes biased to exclude Moral Law and its teachings from the secular space, or to only allow a delimited set of discussions via civil means, it becomes destructive of the entire society that creates that secular space for religious freedom.  The worst of all tyrannies is government deciding which religion is and is not acceptable within the civil sphere and then using the power of government to enforce that.  When the State comes to mandate its presence upon the alter, you are then not far away from open warfare as this is a desecration of the advanced civilized understandings of tolerance for religious worship and practice within realm of civil society.

By utilizing the understandings of Laws Natural and those outside of Nature (although available within Nature) and then adding historical understanding of practice and conflict of many Nations, States and societies, the foundations of the framework for the modern world lay exposed and available to all willing to see them.  Even if you disagree with how they got there or deny the impetus to make them, the recognition of the self-evident presence of it must be admitted: argue about the source of the foundations as you will, we must accept that they exist, have instance and are there.

To not do so is to invite the decay and collapse of civilization as we know it and to seek savagery not only for oneself but for all of mankind.  No good will ever come of that.

The symptoms

On 22 DEC 2011, USA Today's Richard Wolf took a look at the demographics of people leaving both political parties.

WASHINGTON – More than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican parties since the 2008 elections, while the number of independent voters continues to grow.

A USA TODAY analysis of state voter registration statistics shows registered Democrats declined in 25 of the 28 states that register voters by party. Republicans dipped in 21 states, while independents increased in 18 states.

The trend is acute in states that are key to next year's presidential race. In the eight swing states that register voters by party, Democrats' registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans' by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.

First off, when people are fleeing both parties it can be said that they are not fleeing the parties but the two party system.  This vaunted concept touted for so long in the United States that a two party system will always find the best means to represent the population (and stifle third parties by undercutting them) is something that should gain allegiance, not lose it, if it worked.  A strong political system is one that individuals see as something they should invest time and energy with participation and understanding of issues local and national so as to be informed to get representation in government.  Yet just the opposite is happening.

I will repost my commentary from Hot Air on the topic with all the caveats of not doing any spell checking, syntax checking, etc.  I will, however, boldface a few key points:

If the two party system is such a hot thing, then why are people fleeing it?

At the lowest level, which is the precinct level, both parties have had problems getting any organization together due to lack of party members. Some precincts are no-shows in State party organizations, others are hollow core precincts with just enough members to get a representative and still others have enough members but not enough interested members to actually care about the lowest level of retail politics. This is how the Tea Party got so quickly into the Republican apparatus: if there had been more members at the precinct level, then the establishment could have held back State level changes. Instead a few States have slowly ousted the old Republican party elites (FL comes to mind, but NH, OH, NV and other State level organizations are also changing over).

This will not stem the tide, however, as the two party system isn’t delivering the necessary governance and meaningful interaction at the lowest level of the parties. Instead both parties have concentrated for decades at the highest level (federal offices) and began to use the State level as just a training area, not as a place to learn effective governance. By shifting more power into fewer hands over decades, the two parties are killing off their roots: people fleeing isn’t a cause of the problem, it is a symptom.

What this means is that the two major parties will become less stable as the number of viable precincts decline. At some point the elites will seek to agglomerate precincts to try and keep any viable structure going, but that will only make the problem worse, not better.

Representative democracy to run a republic requires participation by citizens who are knowledgeable about the issues of the day and willing to make informed choices not at the federal level, but the local level. By putting so much interference of the local level from the federal level via regulations, the two parties (each in the belief that they are addressing ‘national problems’) are destroying the representative democracy required to run a republic. Without strong local say in local affairs, citizens are becoming fed up with the two parties that are now causing the problems at the local level through cronyism, earmarks, favoritism and utilizing non-democratic means (ie. the bureaucracy) to impose power from the top down at the local level.

This system does not work and the rise of the independent charts the course of how badly the two parties are doing. So does turn-out for non-Presidential elections but even the Presidential elections are now suffering: Barack Obama got 52% of the vote, yes, but the voter participation rate hovers at 50%, making a plurality of those who can vote (and a tiny plurality) the deciders in the election. That means that Obama got about 26% of the voting age population to vote for him. How bad is that? Consider the NSDAP in Germany having over 80% turnout and getting about 40% of the vote, meaning it gets in with over 30% of the voting age population voting for it in MULTIPARTY ELECTIONS. That is how woebegone this lovely two party system is: it can’t generate up a plurality that the Nazi’s got in Weimar Germany.

If you want more participation at the local level, then it is at that level that small government conservatism must START and begin addressing the federal over-reach of the last century. Start arguing about every federal program, every federal intrusion, every form, and work with others to fight bureaucratic decisions and go to court over them. You won’t win every one, no, but even a small fraction for things like energy, transportation, and intellectual property can make a huge difference. Once the federal government is shown to be incompetent, officious, overly bureaucratic and incapable of doing ANY of its jobs, things will start to change. Not from the top, but the bottom. Unfortunately that will mean our beloved two parties will hit the shredder, too. They are made for the 19th century, not the 21st. Figure out how to form new, virtual parties that also give link-up and connectivity at the local level and create some brand, new form of politics no one has ever seen before.

Don’t leave it up to the parties: they are stuck on stupid.

Only you can do this. If you dare.

ajacksonian on December 23, 2011 at 3:38 PM

Now the fun part comes just a bit after this with the disqualification of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich in the VA Primaries.  It would be very easy to see this as the disease, itself, but it is only another symptom and it is related to the above.  It is very easy to see the shenanigans, infighting, word changing in laws, etc. as the disease, but it isn't that at all.  That stuff is a symptom, as well.  How can you tell if this is a symptom or a disease?  Ask yourself if there was a simple remedy that could have been done, and if so, how would that be performed?

Back again to Hot Air (I am more a commenter than blogger these days) because the above problem is also related to this:

Too bad the Republican district and precincts couldn’t have lent a hand over the summer, huh?

You know ask all the candidates if they would like to have tables at a pancake breakfast or picnic or buffet luncheon in the districts, so that everyone pays a nominal fee for the meal and probably a speaker of some sort to talk about federalism or the constitution… and the candidates could pay a bit more for tables to get people to sign up for the qualification papers.

Geez, wouldn’t a real party that attracte enough people to actually have a functioning sub-State system be a grand thing? Why they could certainly help out by making sure that only party members sign up because they would be, after all, LOCAL.

Maybe there will, someday, be a party that actually concentrates on the local politics FIRST and gets active participation to help change government from the BOTTOM UP so that these higher level figures would have an easier time of it. Because, right now, that sort of party is missing and the gaping hole where it should be has this political label of ‘Independent’. Maybe, someday, these campaigns might just ask for HELP instead of trying to be a one-man-band of electioneering and reinventing the wheel every four years.

ajacksonian on December 24, 2011 at 12:41 PM

If political parties are made to help organize individuals and are, indeed, created so as to offer a suite of options and opportunities for political governance, then the objective of the party is to help ensure the greatest opportunities for diverse opinion at the lowest level of the party.  Which is to say that the lowest party level is the one responsible for helping to ensure a lively and appealing climate so that political dialogue within the party can flourish and that is performed by helping candidates get organized when they may not have the necessary experience to do so at locales that are diverse when running for a Nation-wide office (or State-wide office at either State or federal level).

They symptom of people leaving the parties, the symptom of candidates being unable to get signatures at the lowest level are to that disease known as irrelevance.  The two parties are not offering solutions at this point, only more of the same old cronyism, and neither party has any interest in breaking up the system to get more ideas and candidates into the system but, indeed, to begin excluding them not from third parties but within their own parties.  The centralization of power that has been seen at the federal level is part and parcel of what has been going on inside the two parties for decades.  It doesn't come from nowhere, but from the arthritic and calcifying two party system.

If we had a vibrant two party system we would have shouting matches, fistfights and many other indecorous events in our representative bodies because ideas and values would be seen as worth fighting for and not compromising over.  When everything is up for compromise, then no values are being represented except that of getting to the 'deal' to be seen as 'doing something', even if it breaks with principles that are strongly held within the party.  Representative democracy is not supposed to be about having a 'working system' that slides along ever so easily, but about having a system that does not get in the way of the populace having a hard debate over just what it is the government is supposed to be representing.  If the government represented values, principles and ideals it would be hotly debated over, fought over, and reduced in size as hated departments and programs were ended by the one side or the other winning a debate in the population over it, and in any event changes via elections would see severe diminishment in power so as to keep venues for lively debate open inside the Nation.  When everyone in government agrees for more government and then utilize the power of the taxpayer purse and writing laws to ensure that the way of those governing is then secured, then civil discourse from the body politic is gagged, bound and thrown in the cellar because that is the end of those seeking to sequester power from the people in unelected bureaucracy.

What is coming next is what I've outlined for The Jacksonian Party: the distributed, networked, locally affiliated, open platform adherence party that actually represents what its members want and is willing to have open and civil discussion about it via the new media.  This won't come easily, but the powers in the background are now enabling the people to leave the two party system and what will come will be the Dawn of a New Era.  Those running the old era will try to take civilization down with it via promises it cannot keep and by telling the people across this entire planet that they are not worth having around and will not, in any way, see that self-evident rights and liberty are in the individual.  They are the establishment within the two parties in the US, the elite in Europe, Russia, China, and the self-destructive Radical Islamists who seek to remake the world and have no understanding of what they are going to get in return.  None of the elites understands this world either as individuals or as loosely associated groups: they are operating under the old style 'elites must suppress/repress/rule the mass of individuals'.

They are trying to stop the New Era from happening by destroying economies, civil discourse, and capitalism.

If they succeed the death toll to that success will be fully 2/3 of the population of this planet as nothing else that has been tried in the way of any of the 'isms' works like capitalism does.  When results are leveled to be equal, no one sees any reason to succeed via their liberty and what you get from that is not an advancement of culture but a decline into anomie and then, soon, barbarism.  Fanatically backed religious ideologies will be hit even harder as the hand of the Gods of the Copybook Headings will hit them even harder as families begin to die of starvation because the much hated materialist goals of capitalism to do social goods via enhancing liberty means they wish to kill of the very people that allow them to survive by getting them low cost food on a global basis.  When the food isn't delivered and you can't smite those distant lands because the transportation system has imploded then, as night follows day, you take it out on those who are local to you.  Which makes the problem worse, yes, but the kill-off at least means that the food goes a bit further for a short time.

The misguided belief that government can, nay must, regulate everything everyone does from dawn to dusk is not only asinine on its face but unworkable due to the extreme high cost of overhead of implementing and running it.  That is the lesson from 'regulating' everything from housing to sunshine: it doesn't work.  And as the bureaucracy is isolated from political discourse and yet is wholly infested by political idealogues of the 'we must do something to justify our pay, therefore we must have more power and people in the bureaucracy', it is a prime factor and symptom of the disease.  The disease, itself, is: tyranny.

Everywhere you turn is a symptom and they are bemoaned.

The disease is tyrannical government utilizing any tool it can get its hands on to enforce social isolation, to repress speech and thought and to otherwise destroy the very society that creates government.  Tyranny is government gone cancerous on the body of the population, and unless it is removed or given such harsh therapy as to kill the mass of the cancer off, society will not survive.

Nor will government in its cancerous form, it will implode from having no society that supports it.

That is what is happening in the US and globally: no one supports this cancerous system and want it gone.

What comes next can either be a polite ushering out of cancerous government by restricting it harshly and understanding the 'good things' it is handing out is poison to the morals, ethics and spirit of individuals, or we will see a Dark Age and Iron Times.  The choice is YOURS believe it or not.  It isn't in other people's hands unless you hand your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to other people so as to enslave yourself.  If you don't like the government and the system it has created then change or abolish it in a civil way, as that is your right, duty and obligation not just to yourself but your fellow man.

THAT is your Christmas Present, delivered when you were born to you.

If you've lost track of it, I suggest you hunt around the house and find it.

Perhaps it is under all the discarded wrappings?

Best not throw out the gift of liberty with the trash, because you just might need it in the very near future... which is already here, in case that has been missed.

The End in Iraq

My thanks to the men and women who have served our Nation in Iraq.

I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families and friends of the fallen.

I thank you all deeply for your sacrifice for our republic.

Victory has been hard won, now may others seek to win the peace.

History as teacher

I will have to paraphrase a quote for this (I think it may be Heinlein, although H. Beam Piper isn't out of the question for it, either) and it goes something like this:

If you are an expert in a field and your analysis shows that disaster is likely to follow, do you act on it?

This also goes along with the other bit, this one from Glenn Harlan Reynolds which he has stated so many times it isn't funny:

I will believe it is a crisis when those involved start acting like it is.

These both hit in the same direction in that if you see a crisis or disaster coming and you have a reliable set of background(s) to have a decent level of certainty (hitting into the 'pretty certain' which is 50%<Certainty<75%) that it will happen then do you start to act on it and take precautions?  My Lady has pointed out to me that I have been blogging about this, in one form or another, since I started blogging and that much of my posting is just about this topic.  Forming up the background to get a 'feel' for possibility (that is the universe of all possible things that can happen), probability (that sub-set of things that rise above 0.01% possibility), weighting (level of assurance) and certainty (combining the prior pieces to get to a reasonable set of outcomes that start to fall above the 10% likelihood zone) is not a science, but an art.  Analysis varies by an expert, their background and ability to discern what is and isn't probable from all possible events, and then weigh those probable events with a degree of certainty that they might happen.

I have journeyed through politics, societies, warfare, liberty, freedom, death, taxes and human nature over the course of my blogging and that has helped give me a background 'feel' for the course of events.  I really don't know a lot, no one can in this world of ours, and I've found myself driven to concentrate on a few, key topics time and time again, and they are ones that are fulcrums for societies, Nations, peoples and even all life on the planet.  I really don't worry much about 'is there life on other worlds in different star systems?' as that is a Drake equation function in which we are only in the last couple of years able to fill in one or two of the first numbers in a long series to get the possibility in a rough 'ball park' way.  Fun speculation, yes, but surviving our current age is far more important than finding life on other planets.  This concept of 'survival' is the key one as, if we don't survive as a species and retain personal liberty, both, then we are finished as an intelligent life form.

While this question has been posed in many ways over the centuries, the most compelling of ways was done by James Burke in his series Connections.  In the very first episode we are handed the fall of our society and its material works by a simple question: what do you do when the power goes off and you are stuck in an elevator?  This then progresses through a 'worst case scenario' in which something like a Coronal Mass Ejection has bathed the planet for a few days and has wiped out all modern electronics.  The power isn't coming back on.  Once you get out of the elevator, realize the predicament of the world before anyone else pieces it together, what do you do and where do you go?  The answer is that our civilization started out with the ability to plough land, grow crops that would sustain more than just the farmer and his family, and allow excess food to be exchanged for other goods.  Before then the world of mankind was in a hunter/gatherer mode, and was nomadic.  With agriculture land becomes valuable because of what it can sustain, and good crop land meant the growth of a thriving society that soon could build spaces for relatively non-productive individuals to make a living.

Because the sun is going through a deep minimum cycle and may be in one that has been played out before, there is no good way to say just if a CME will happen, when it will happen, what direction it will go and how energetic it will be.  Yet, sooner or later, one will come the way of planet Earth.

Scary stuff, no?

It would help if we prepared for a CME or EMP event(s) by hardening out power and electronics structure, but that costs money, takes time and is a hedge against a low probability event.  Something like an EMP induced by a CME is not out of the question and our problem is that we don't know how often a CME of that size is coughed out by the sun in our general direction.  This has uncertainty to it, and a lot of it.  If these things happened every 10-15 years we would build our equipment and infrastructure with it in mind, but since it may not hit us for centuries... or tomorrow.... we don't.  We know that one will, sooner or later, hit the Earth's magnetosphere and atmosphere, but when, how large and how long are all unknowns.  You can safeguard some equipment via a Faraday cage (you just knew aluminum foil was good for something, right?) but even if you protect enough to help survive for a couple of years there will be no electronic spare parts.  Unless you can make them yourself.

Before the Green Revolution in the 1970's we had expected the carrying capacity of Earth to be in the 4-10 billion range.  Before industrialized agriculture, coming in the early 19th century, that carry capacity was in the 2-3 billion range.  Pre-industrial agriculture required a very different form of society and lifestyle than we have today, and if a CME induced EMP wiped out modern electronics our current 6 billion people on the planet would see a one year crash into the 1-2 billion range as those who do practice pre-mechanized and early mechanized agriculture aren't in the best of cropland, and in the industrialized world we don't have enough farmers or farmland to sustain current population levels without modern systems.

Another disaster that could do something on this scale, but still leave some industrial capacity for mankind intact, is a caldera event at Yellowstone, National Park.  Yellowstone is one of the largest volcanoes on the planet and falls into that category of structures requiring that you need to examine hundreds of miles around the volcano to find out it is actually there.  Mt. Toba, being on an island, is easier to find as it blew out a lovely lake and a good part of the island it creates by existing.  While Mt. Toba is still in its 'recycle' mode, that is it is still getting mass under it for another eruption and is outside its periodicity for another eruption, Yellowstone is in its periodicity cycle for an eruption and has a decent amount of magma far below the surface to make it a real threat.  When it goes it will be a bad few decades on planet Earth until the upper atmosphere aerosols and dust filter out to let a decent amount of sunshine back to the surface.  This will, of necessity, created years of bad crops (or years without a real summer) and also impact plankton and sea life in a negative fashion.  As the aerosols and dust migrate into the southern hemisphere, no place on the planet will be immune to its effects.  And that is if we are lucky and only does a single event, not go into a multi-event mode over a few thousand years of semi-continual eruptions.

This is a certainty to happen within the next 0 to 300,000 years.

Yes, that first number is the goose egg: Zero.

You have a much better chance of getting hit by lightening during a hurricane while having an earthquake happen at the exact same time.  Or an asteroid conking you on the noggin and killing you.

It would be really, really nice to be a space based civilization by then, wouldn't it?

Too bad all trends are in the opposite direction for the past 100 years.

The systems that mankind has put in place are what as known as 'brittle': they don't sustain stress well and tend to fracture and break, not bend.  When withstanding shock a structure that bends spreads the shock over the structure and allows that force to be distributed.  A brittle structure absorbs the shock to its breaking point and then collapses.  Getting to space was actually just a theory in the 18th century and basic mechanics for getting to space were worked out in the 19th century, and the first rockets to get up to the edge of space by Robert Goddard showed that this was something that could be achieved.  It has been, but done by governments until just recently, and because of the way governments work they are stuck with the problem of doing things in nation-state interest, which is not always in accord with long-term survival. 

By prohibiting the citizen opportunities to get to space via a governmentally run system, even though the foundations for a fully space-based system have been available since the late 1960's to early 1970's, as put together by Gerard K. O'Neill's High Frontier team at Princeton, anything that had to get to space had to go through a nation-state government.  Private space flight was generally prohibited until just the last decade, and that meant that governments and sponsor corporations saw little interest in better, cheaper and alternative ways to get to space.  Something like the use of dirigibles to get high into the atmosphere and then utilize low thrust rockets to increase speed, thus increasing orbital distance, wasn't even thought about until the late 1990's and not seriously thought about until the last 5-6 years.  Ditto direct rocketry on private platforms designed by independent companies.  By slowly pulling NASA out of the way and opening a commercial spaceport in the US, the US is now the only Nation that may stand on the brink of private space exploration.  And because of the economics of getting to orbit, it is actually cheaper to mine the moon, move that material to orbit, smelt it in orbit and build stations in orbit than it is to build them on Earth and get them to orbit.  The cost is laying out the minimal infrastructure to do this, which was planned way back in High Frontier.

Even worse is the other things that governments have gotten loaded on with over the last century, like making sure that there is a 'retirement age' and some 'benefits' to citizens.  To put it sadly but bluntly: no one promises you a great retirement and stopping work may be the worse idea to getting to a prosperous old age.  Because of the nature of national governments, they really can't 'invest' in anything (and the demise of those who DO so is a cautionary tale since the early industrial era).  To 'invest' a government must take productive work hour product (known as 'money') from people who actually work for a living and choose which corporations to 'invest' in.  This is done not just by direct payment but via 'regulation' which not only uses up citizen taxes to run the 'regulations' but then impinges upon companies who have to comply with such 'regulations' by doing things not related to actual productive work.  Instead of holding companies fully liable for health and safety of employees on the job site, the government intervenes to set 'standards'.  Because these have a monetary cost to them, larger businesses are better able to comply with these artificial 'standards' by spreading the cost around to all their output than a smaller firm in the same industry.  While a small business may be exempt when employing 500 people, the 501st person comes with a huge overhead expansion cost of regulatory compliance for everyone in the company.  Thus government not only can support large businesses, it can punish small businesses and ensure that big businesses have fewer up-and-coming competitors.

Notice where survival is in this?

If you don't, and see that adding 'benefits' to citizens via taxation so that a few get the benefits, then you are also experiencing this strange feeling that people who should have been managing their own lives, taking precautions against the future, and generally looking after themselves are in a non-survival mode of thought.  That is correct because they are.  When government is utilized to shield citizens from the harsh reality of having to actually make a living and figure out if they can ever retire, then government has gotten away from doing the few tasks it was set out to do and now has an expanded suite it was never designed for.  A car is a great conveyance on paved roads, just don't try to plough a field with one as they aren't made for that.  Yet that is where Connections winds up if you don't have diesel for a tractor on a deserted farm that you were just lucky enough to find after high tech civilization collapsed.  You only got there because you were prepared to survive, either outran or outlasted the death of 2/3 of humanity, and now are in absolute survival mode trying to figure out how you will feed yourself, your family and any other loved ones on this deserted farm you somehow got to in your car (that doesn't have a transistorized ignition system or management system but is good old distributor and spark plugs with timing).  By having some wherewithal you have actually survived the collapse of government and are now self-governing and find yourself having to restart low tech civilization.

We have seen this sort of scenario before and I will not use the Fall of Rome or any of the interim Chinese Kingdoms/Emperors, or even the rising and falling of the likes of Inca, Maya, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc.  There is a precedent for when a large-scale trade system went under (and for its time it was very far reaching, although far less than global), and it crashed due to multiple causes: shifting weather patterns which caused changes in disease location and agricultural output, shifting populations to follow the changes in agriculture and climate, multi-nation alliances, and military struggle.  When it started to fall apart they saw the rise of barbarism, mostly at sea because that was handy, but also on land with the mass migration of peoples over a couple of centuries that would displace old populations.  Their ships were splendid and carried cargo far and wide, their trade notes are multiple feet deep in some places TODAY, items from as far away as the British Isles, Inner Siberia, India, and Central Africa were traded readily and traders ranged far and wide leaving markings behind.  It went down in a bit over a decade and it was the Late Bronze Age that, for all of the distance to Babylon and primitives in the British Isles, it had gone on for centuries and yet we remember it for Troy and one city falling.  That city was a trade hub that allowed all this trade to take place easily and those in charge of it, prospered by that trade.  An extremely high level of civilization and sophistication was seen due to the wealth increases of trade and many Empires and Kingdoms prospered.  Its fall was marked by military venture that was public and then spread to private and then became endemic enough to kill off the trade network.  By the end of it the Old Hittite Kingdom was gone, the Achaean Greeks were being replaced by the Dorian Greeks, after Ramses II Egypt barely hung on with bitter fights after sea people ravaged the northern part of the Kingdom, the Israelites found things difficult and the tribe of Dan had to take to ships to survive while others used the turmoil to get back into the Promised Land.

Baltic Amber trade dwindled to nothing.  Spice became forgotten save for the few that had taken root natively and were grown.  Cities around Greece, modern day Sicily and Italy, many of the islands, the entire coast of Asia Minor were brought low and many burned to the ground and no one has rebuilt at those sites since.  The Greek people once had a written script we call Linear-B and there are still piles of it left on coasts around the Med., yet the Greeks lost the ability to read it times got so desperate.  Only the great walled city of Tiryens got through, but with much trouble including plague.  Troy was rebuilt, but by the time it was actually functioning again it was no longer the center of trade for all of the civilizations around it.  No one can say, for certain, how many died, but when you have 30, 50, or 100 cities with anywhere from 10,000-50,000 residents each, and they are all wiped out and the populace barely able to get by on local food production on a rural basis, the numbers must be staggering given the entire population of the planet.  It would take 200 to 300 years until trade started to actually get to the minimum of old levels in the new Iron Age.  Persia rose and then went too far at the Hot Gates and in a generation there would be a Greek Emperor who would last only a couple of decades until he fell, unable to consolidate that Empire.

The seeds of the Ancient Greeks would sprout far and wide, particularly in that place called Rome, which would, finally, eclipse the old trade web that was by then forgotten to the point of near oblivion.  And then forgot the wisdom of Republics and started giving goodies away to the poor so as to appease them and oppress the middle class so the rich could rule.  In mere centuries slaves would outnumber the free and then Western Rome would fall, rotten to its core.  By then trade was not so dependent on just one city and even the Eternal City could go dark and trade would continue because it was becoming dispersed and diverse.

We now stand at an age of interconnection that, for all its different standards and scale, was only rivaled once before and ours, too, is dependent upon a high technology and civilized peoples to run it.  Yet those who expect freebies from government or care from government are not free, at all, and those oppressed by government to its own dictates are less free still.  As there was no way to harden the old trade systems so, to, are the lifeblood of our commerce systems unhardened and for all the fineries traded around the globe all it can take is one very bad day and it will come down in a crash.  Or rot from the inside as it is already doing as true freedom and liberty are replaced by security provided by government for each man instead of for each Nation.  Those who hate the system and call it cold, gray capitalism are lying to themselves and you, for capitalism is the enabler of human liberty and government is that which carries the whip and chains.  Those governments that seek to 'control' capitalism become far worse than any gray owner of any company, as the dictates of government are for the government, not its people, and once given the ability to reward and punish, it is the people who suffer and have their spirits broken.  We see the new class of warlords as was seen in the Late Bronze Age, called pirates, brigands, armies of thieves, we now call them terrorists and yet their goal is to live and die by the sword no matter what credo they spout.

History teaches us that when Nations depend on trade and have no fallback plan, no hardened way to survive, then all who depend on trade are at the mercy of its fall and that the precarious system will finally fall.

History teaches us that when you see barbarians arise to spread war on their own, with no oversight of any Nation worth speaking of, that you are on the cusp of something that can turn into pure savagery for all involved civilized and barbarian alike.

History teaches us that when individuals are cared for by government which saps money from the productive wealth of working citizens, that it is the unproductive that get rewarded at the behest of the wealthy through the promises of great breads and circuses, and that it is rotten to its very core.

History teaches us that republics need stout defenders from its citizenry at all times who are willing to water the great Tree of Liberty with their own blood and that of tyrants.

History teaches us that no matter how grand the cusp of technology and trade is, that both can be lost in such a short time period as to be breath-taking as your very last breath may be taken by it.

History teaches us that savage man is a threat to all of civilization no matter what the savages say about who they attack it is all who are civilized who are threatened by them, not just those they attack.

History also teaches us that stopping collapse and creating renewal by removing rot and hardening the system via the freedom and liberty of people has never, ever, not once, been tried for any Nation and all others have had their people willing to suffer collapse into barbarous agony rather than raise their hand to halt it and reverse it.

One does not need to be overly intelligent to learn these lessons, nor be extremely deep in understanding as History teaches us via example and we forget that at our peril.  They are not nice lessons nor savory ones but, for all of that, they are good lessons to learn.

All one has to do is call themselves a Free Citizen, act civilized, disdain the corrupt enticement of government, not be swayed by the siren's song of power, reach out to be a strength to those you love and your community around you, and then be prepared for the day when you will have to stand for your freedom and liberty with your fellow Free Citizens and defend yourselves morally, ethically and physically against all onslaught. Being civilized isn't about being 'nice' but doing what is necessary, and History has taught me its lessons and now is the time to start changing the path so we can avoid the fate of so many other people's who couldn't be bothered to save civilization, or themselves, and thusly lost both.

There is no greater force for good and civilization than that person that is a Free Citizen.

I am a Free Citizen.

And nothing will sway me from the course of being civilized as I self-govern so that we may have a republic.

The republic is upheld by you being able to self-govern, you being willing and able to care for yourself, you being ready to have, hold and teach the skills necessary to keep local society alive, you being a stout and ready defender of your life, your family, your home and your neighbor, and by you not turning to barbarism not enslaving yourself to any Nation or State to get bread, circuses, medication or hand-out of any sort.  Governments that promise health care, retirements, fun and games, free food and on and on always, and ever, collapse under that weight as no government can do these things and survive with any class of free people within it: there are the rulers and the ruled and all else gets crushed between those two.

Republics ask much of its citizens.

Federal republics can only be secured by its citizens stepping up to the plate and saying 'no' to government.

If you have ever wondered why my main blog has many articles on survival of a post-crash sort, DIYism, firearms, sewing, wood working and finishing.... now you know.  I do these things not in fear but as a Free Citizen of the Federal Republic of the United States of America. And those who dare to take up that task implied by being such a Free Citizen are the most powerful people on the planet not because we are an army, but we can create one at any moment when our liberty and freedom is in jeopardy.  So it was in 1776, so it must remain today to keep our liberties and freedom and pass them on undiminished to our children and grand-children. 

Subsidizing stupidity

First a look at what happens with subsidies on the effects side, not the 'lets put them in place' side of things.  First off is China and gasoline from Chua Baizhen at Bloomberg News 09 JAN 2011:

The government introduced a new fuel-pricing mechanism in December 2008 that tracks global crude costs. A month later, it raised a gasoline consumption tax fivefold, pushing domestic pump prices above those in the U.S. and ending an era of cheap, subsidized fuel. The government has made 13 price adjustments since introducing the system, most recently on Dec. 22.

China has subsidized gasoline use for quite some time and the government has been feeling the effects of trying to provide a 'stable' price point for gasoline to the Chinese public.  I had looked at in part in a larger article on the Directivity of China that I put out in FEB 2007 as the subsidies were whipsawing the central government of China. 

Consider that when external prices are higher than the internally subsidized prices, then the Chinese government must pay the difference between world market prices and local prices if it wants to keep supply constant.  To do that requires incurring debt.  This also creates an unsustainable demand for product which, when not having to adjust for market prices, is used as if there was no change in the economic cost of the gasoline.  Thus the product loses its 'value' that is its perceived benefit per cost, because prices are artificially low.

If it lets supply float, however, and China is unwilling to pay market prices, then supply drops (long term supply contracts would still keep amounts flowing into China, but only to contract levels) because there is a delta between demand and the amounts supplied on the non-spot market.  This creates scarcity of product, although at a given price point.  The product is seen as having a set price but has a higher 'value' due to its scarcity and is used less.

Now in the 'salad days' when external prices are below the 'subsidized' prices, the government reaps a net gain either via companies selling gasoline paying more in taxes or, in the case of State purchasers, the government reaping a windfall between low purchase cost and high sales cost.  What happens in this scenario, as I outlined, was smuggling, as lower cost gasoline is smuggled in through the Chinese borders and sold at a cost lower than the subsidized, or set, fuel cost.  In this case the set price as compared to the market price changes the 'value' perception as well, and the higher 'value' gasoline is that which is smuggled in as it has a lower cost.

It is all the same gallon of gasoline, mind you.

Government interference in pricing structure changes not just the price but the perceived value of the good in question.

This I went over in a 2008 post on Bipartisanship the opposite of good government, which looked at the housing bubble and its bipartisan support, and then the US Senate ignoring testimony on how the world oil market could be gamed as pointed out by the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural resources by Steve Layton, President and CEO of Equinox Oil Company, part of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.  I'll excerpt this part to show how the concept of 'subsidies' works here, as well:

First, world oil prices are essentially set by the last barrel sold. A year ago, Iraq exported about 700,000 barrels/day. In December 1998, it exported about 2.3 million barrels/day. By March it will have another 500,000 barrels/day of capacity on line. Iraq was the only OPEC country to boost its oil revenue in 1998. As other OPEC countries have reduced production to stabilize oil prices, Iraq has become the swing producer of world oil. The swing producer sets the price.

Second, Saddam’s objectives differ from other oil producers. He wanted higher oil prices when he invaded Kuwait – money he needed to build his military forces. Now, he can’t spend money to buy arms. But, he can – by keeping oil prices low – punish his enemies, first by reducing the income to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and others; second, by driving critical U.S. production to be shutdown and plugged forever.

Third, looking purely at demand and productive capacity, today’s surpluses should not drive prices to their historic depths. We estimate that worldwide production capacity currently exceeds demand by about 4 percent.

This had been exacerbated by problems in some Asian economies but put China in the seat of having the ability to draw in funds under bonds to boost industrial development via changing its investment climate.  In a very serious way Saddam Hussein was hurting the US domestic oil production system (that is the independent small producers) and due to consumption drops in places like S. Korea and Japan, allowed the Chinese central bank to reap a windfall between set pricing internally and external pricing that was aided by changes in investing law.  The Chinese economy picked up steam and increased its productive capacity and was able to roll over its 5 year bonds in 2002-3 by demonstrating continued production.  The problem was that those 5 year vehicles started coming due, again, after 2007-8  and some investors wanted their actual full face value of the bonds paid out.

As I wrote in 2007 China was undergoing the whipsaw from low oil costs to high ones and had to start inching prices up for gasoline then.

Now over to Iran which subsidizes its gasoline and natural gas industries.

Iran faced a major problem at the end of 2007, in that its major natural gas supplier (who supplies 5% of the domestically used natural gas in Iran) was Turkmenistan, which I examined in The shockwaves of 5%, where jihad meets economics.  Turkmenistan is a major conduit and supplier of natural gas which has not only normal economic ties, but ones to a Red Mafia outfit that wheels and deals in natural gas (as well as tv stations, hotels, and all sorts of other things).  Europe was seeing the need to meet natural gas consumption and was raising the price of natural gas on the global market.  Although Turkmenistan doesn't have a direct pipeline to get natural gas to Europe, it has intermediaries that could move it through Russia to Ukraine and then into places like Poland, Romania and Hungary, to sell it at a higher cost.

I have examined Iran's oil system in two previous posts:  Iran's Oil Problem and Iran's Oil Outlook.

Facing the multi-million if not multi-billion dollar price differential between fixed contract prices to Iran or fluid and higher prices in Europe, Turkmenistan was seeing potential dollars fly out the window.  It conveniently had 'supply problems' with Iran and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas wound up in holding facilities in Ukraine (although anonymously, no one 'claimed' it) and Iran faced a sudden and immediate supply problem for natural gas.  Its refineries have not been kept up since the revolution and can supply such a small portion of natural gas and gasoline, that Iran is forced to import both.  When sections of Tehran must go cold and dark to make sure bakeries can keep running, the government in Iran suddenly faced a major problem.  It caved and paid higher fees and the natural gas flowed again.  Presumably the amount siphoned off went to Europe so it was a 'win' for the anonymous holders of the gas in Ukraine, a 'win' for Turkmenistan, a 'win' for Europe and a 'loss' for Iran.

Iran got to this predicament through a multi-fold governmental problem that, primarily, refused to keep up the oil infrastructure in the country.  The refineries are the most complex part of the system and they are on their last legs and no one will invest in them as Iran keeps an insane contract policy of charging what it feels like charging for crude oil, without regard to market price.  If it needs more billions to run terrorists, it charges more.  Gazprom warned Putin about this and China found that their 'investment' wasn't going to get them better treatment or stable prices, so they yanked $10 billion out when they found this out.  After that, Iran subsidizes oil and natural gas use.

It is, therefore, priced below market cost and the delta is made up in crude oil sales.

With that said there has been no marginal expansion of the oil fields in Iran (to keep nominal production constant) and the infrastructure is losing oil in the pipelines through poor maintenance (not stolen as in the case in some African countries, just leaking out of the system).  Higher world costs helps a bit on getting income, but when gasoline prices go up faster than the rate of crude oil increases (it is a refined or value added product, after all, and has a production cost delta added in), then Iran must pay that cost.  Most oil producing nations with refineries are also natural gas exporters as natural gas is a byproduct of refining crude oil.  Iran must import BOTH gasoline and natural gas, which tells you what is about to happen to their oil system.  They can keep patching it up a bit, but without a major re-investment in new facilities, plus a major production expansion, Iran is facing a huge economic crunch.

What the subsidies do is to put a set, below market price on gasoline and natural gas, which means that it is not gaining a true 'value' perception by the population.  They then use it to the maximum of the low price, which is above what can be sustained and more is imported to meet demand.  Iran has slowly had to move away from subsidizing both products, because its faltering oil production is not meeting the cost of increased use of both products.

Now lets shift from China and Iran to the good old US of A!

Lord knows we love our subsidies!

We subsidize: home sales, retirement, medical benefits, student loans, 'clean fuels', agricultural products (both raw and refined)... and we get bubbles, lots of economic bubbles... You name it and our lovely Congress probably has a subsidy that comes in many forms: price supports, direct subsidies, rebates on taxes, and the ever lovable 'regulations' to support 'social causes'.  This goes far beyond Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie/Sallie, SSA, the M&Ms, ethanol, solar power, mortgage debt, student loan debt, unsustainable retiree benefits plans, IRAs, HSAs, and on and on and on.

Since we have all seen the housing bubble (and, btw, the laws and regulations that caused those have NOT been repealed, which means we can get ANOTHER one any time Congress feels like putting another few trillion on the debt) and, instead, go to everyone's choice for 'why the hell are we doing this?' which is the shifting away of cropland for producing food to producing ethanol.  This is done via regulations (mandating a certain amount of gasohol to be sold or ethanol added to fuel), direct subsidies to farmers and some payoffs on the tax side for use via equipment purchases.  All of these have created a problem because the US Big Agribusiness (which benefits immensely from this) has done damage to the global market for corn.  In particular it has hurt our NAFTA partner Mexico as I go over in Where is the international law with NAFTA? which looked at this phenomena.

Ahhhh... Free Trade!  The great panacea!  Unless you add subsidies, of course, and then you get unintended consequences as unsustainable and bolstered trade tends to hurt Free Trade.  In this case the victims are multi-fold but the main one is Mexico.  First off our subsidies to farmers makes our already low cost of production of crops even lower than any other Nation on the planet.  No one can compete with crop outputs like those in the US.  Don't worry, our government has a solution to that.  Mexico, with its relatively backwards agribusiness, soon saw the small and local farming communities having to compete with subsidized corn from the US produced from huge systems and farms that could utilize modern technology to the utmost to cut per acre cost of overhead beyond what any small farm could ever hope to do.  Well that was OK in the early days as, hey, those stupid Gringos were opening factories just over the border in Mexico!

Mexican workers flocked to them and the agricultural sector suffered as all those good, high paying jobs in the factories meant people could buy cheap corn from the US.

Those were the days, huh?

Remember Saddam Hussein and last barrel sold setting price from above?  Yeah, subsidized crude oil prices to keep prices low, globally.  Remember him?  Remember what happened in China?

Yeah, Chinese labor was cheaper than Mexican labor so the factories promptly went transnational and moved production to China.  All in the name of subsidies: in the US, in China, in Iraq.

And the Mexicans?  Well they still had cheap corn and many people went to work north of the border in farms which paid a bit better than the failing system in Mexico.

I'm not painting Mexico out as a 'victim' here: they have their own regulation and subsidy problems with crude oil which add no end to their internal problems.  Especially when you get all 'environmentalist' on those topics.  Mexico is in no way, shape or form a 'victim' save of its own corrupt system.

What we did in the grand old US of A was up the subsidy for ethanol via various means.

Farmers saw that you could make more, per acre of marginal income, by producing the corn that would be made into ethanol, which isn't a food crop nor a feed crop for animals.

There is a set amount of arable land in the US and when production of a subsidized crop increases it does two things: it reduces the yield of its similar counter-parts (feed corn) and it starts to look to expand its output by putting fallow land to use which raises the price of fallow farmland as it sees a demand increase.

What happens is that feed corn (both for cattle and human consumption) undergoes a price increase as less is produced, farmland property undergoes an increase in valuation due to increased demand, and we produce more of a product that is subsidized to protect it from lower cost producers overseas (mostly Brazilian ethanol but others also produce it cheaper).

In Mexico the price of corn for tortillas skyrocketed in 2006-09.

Elsewhere in the world food shortages started to appear in Egypt, India, and since China has done wonderfully Progressive things with its farming sector it has gotten a Progressive Dustbowl and a decrease in farm labor due to its subsidizing industrial output.

Everyone, and I do mean over 3 billion people, depend on the US of A for FOOD.

The US of A sets food prices like nobody's business because our subsidized Big Agriculture generally outcompetes everyone due to vast acreage put into production and modern farming techniques.

Our educational system, meanwhile, has been concentrating on the humanities and subsidizing those, so we don't produce many new farmers, agronomists, and even folks in the hard sciences and engineering have suffered in output because of subsidized student loans.  In the hard fields of maintenance blue collar jobs the US is no lacking a half million welders, alone.  This isn't talking about the other jobs necessary to maintain our infrastructure: pipe-fitters, bricklayers, sanitation personnel, road crews, ditch diggers... there are good jobs going begging because of the feeling of 'entitlement' to a good life without having to maintain it via our educational system.

And that elite education costs too much.

Well, it is subsidized, after all, and so you get a bubble economy in it.

If we were still training the maintenance people at a clip to maintain the infrastructure, this wouldn't be a problem for our civilization.  Maintenance and marginal expansion would help us get through tough times.  Iran doesn't do that to their oil infrastructure and is now paying a price in unrest and having to demonize external enemies for internal problems.

OWS isn't a disease, it is a symptom of rot to the very core of our society manifesting on its skin.

To that we can thank: subsidies put in by government regulation which now strangles every aspect of our economy.

Let go on with a bit from Vladimir Dvornikov's article On "Iron Laws" of Economics and this is not an endorsement of his full line of thought it is an illustration of where we are and he is coming in after talking about minimum wage laws:

[..]

It is important to notice, that the last time the absolute fatalism in the economic area is replaced by a liberal one. "Ironness" of the economic laws is accepted here, but, most probably, not as inexorabliness, but as heartlessness, hardness, and cruelty. "The laws of the market are cruel, but the society, by means of the state, can interfere with its actions, in order to bridle the passions and mitigate the consequences of the spontaneous market". Thus, in the given case, though the objective force of the economic laws is admitted, at the same time, it shows their moral defectiveness, which makes them rather alien and hostile for the majority of the people. Here, the government is offered a little comic role, as a "lubricator" of the iron laws (to keep them from clanking) without, indeed, any hope for improvement. The supporters of the "regulated market ", if I am to understand, are trying to remain seated on two chairs at once, and, as a rule, are falling from both.

The unsteadiness and ambiguity of the moderate fatalism induces the most active minds to pass to the following step - to reject completely the abstract economic laws and to declare government as a sovereign ruler and legislator of the economic life. Namely, the government, here creates and legally fixes "uniform rules of the economic game", which all of it's participants, managing in the given territory, are obliged to observe strictly. Thus, the once almighty economic laws receive the modest role of national customs or peculiarities, which should be taken into account while drawing up of rules of game. But who, tell me, presently may vouch for viability of any cabinet? As a result, the instability of a situation, connected with the changing of political tendencies and tastes of the government on the one hand, and the absence of the firm and objective goals in economic activity on the other, stimulates the most hazardous and vigorous players in "economics", either to bypass, or directly deny the governmental decrees. From here originates, and by it is fed, the powerful and well-organized sector of the "shadow" economy: not paying (in opposition to the "light" one) taxes, or even establishing it's own "rates", with which the state conducts eternal, ruthless, and, in the final account, a fruitless war for incomes.

[..]

The more government regulates the less it can adequately control and no one trusts that control as it sways only to its own wants for power via the forms of politics.  The very regulations that are meant to 'uplift' and 'protect' people become the instrument to use against them as the political winds blow.  All of those wishing for government to 'moderate' any economic ill then proceed to lobby politically to get that done so yet more falls under sway of government and out of kilter with economics.

Yes there are Iron Laws of economics.

Our entire world has been trying to deny this for decades due to the siren's song of subsidies, promising everlasting good and inculcating everlasting agony.  It isn't the only siren sitting amongst the rocks, but it is the easiest to succumb to and once the ship heads towards the rocks then others of its kind are then the focus of attention.

More subsidies!

More regulations!

The loss of freedom and liberty amongst those rocks?  Ah, those who listen never tell us about those, now, do they?