Gazing Into The Abyss

Gazing into the abyss

Gazing Into The Abyss

Almost all Futurists have that addictive habit of gazing into the future, it is, after all, their predictions that make their reputations. Some of such predictions have been little more than science fiction fantasies. Others, while missing the mark wildly, have never the less some grains of truth to them. We never did have that great nuclear war with the USSR, but that more more than a wild miss and a bit more of an impossibility. In hindsight, the best the USSR could have done was to have occupied Western Europe for a brief period of time while taking tremendous damage at home. Oh, not so much from the nuclear bombs and missiles but from the economic cost to the economy. Wars for centrally directed economies are prohibitively expensive even when your opponents are a bunch of tribal hillbillies living in the mountains. Search and destroy runs up a huge tab in logistic costs regardless of the technology used and when such expensive technology is being wasted, the country waging war better be able to afford such expensive losses. Besides, its not technology that wins wars, it is the will to win that matters as the United States found out in Vietnam.

Today I watch and hear and read so many experts (mostly self-proclaimed) warn of the coming war with China if the CCP doesn’t get its way in the world. The United States since the election of Biden (or theft, if you like, but possession is nine tenths of the law as many like to say) has been perceived as a weakling, as a decant world power too afraid to wave its sword for fear of being totally defeated. China is being proclaimed as the new world power and we had better knuckle under to their authority. They are not only a superpower but the worlds eminent super economy. Such experts are selling bridges to keep their jobs and professional status and revenues intact. True, The People’s Army is huge but has never fought a major war since 1947 when they finally defeated the Nationalist Chinese Forces. True, they attempted to overrun Korea in 1951 but at a loss of millions of troops, not to mention the loss of civilians to starvation. Their vaunted navy is strictly coastal and has no capacity to venture more than a thousand miles from their coast before having to return to refuel and restock. Their weapon systems may sound formidable but are largely untested in war. And it’s not the number of ships that count, it’s there ability to wage war and the ability of their commander to command. And so it goes, China’s economy is no longer doing double digit GDP numbers (sometimes the statistics are not very accurate). China is an export economy, that is, their middle class is far too small to consume what the manufacture. True, they have over a billion people but the per capita earnings are too low. Yes, they have manufacturing but their technological innovations depend on theft of other nations intellectual property. And besides, it takes too long to reverse engineer products to gain any financial advantage.

China’s problems continue towards the horizon and most likely it will cease to be a ‘great’ nation within ten years time, becoming as many as four regional states fighting for sovereignty. Well, if not China, who, Russia? The dark abyss is about demographics, about the declining world population. Oh, that’s right, the world’s approved media hasn’t said a word about that, have they. The only continent where the population is growing is Africa and even there one must pick and choose because the growth is not uniform. Lots of little wars kill lots of little people and the latest population destruction will be in South Africa. A few guns and a lot of famine will do them in. How about Europe and the EU. That thought is good for a laugh for their ‘native’ populations are racing towards obliteration, only the Eastern European countries (the ones who have been under the enlighten hand of Marxism and the USSR) are in full resistance but had yet to do little more than retain replacement rates. France will soon be fighting to retain its Republic as Islamist migrants seek to establish a caliph. The same story will play out in Germany, Spain, and most of Western Europe including the Nordic countries. Of course that once industrial and financial giant will dissipate into rival factions as these caliphs increasing lose more and more of their educated and technically trained work force as migrant workers whose only education may have been little more that learning parts of the Koran by heart orally. Not exactly the technical training needed to learn CAD or STEM or anything else of commercial value. And South America? Where’s that? It would appear that much of the world has been living off the American welfare system.

So where do we look for the future? North America (includes Mexico). The United States of America is the only country that is geographically capable of existing economically by its self. It has almost all the natural resources it needs for its own economic survival. It is a consumer led economy and does not need to depend on exports. While its ‘native’ European population has a declining birthrate the influx of immigrants has boosted its population with new consumers. True, most of these new consumers are low wage earners but in time they will create their own version of the American Dream. Meanwhile other ‘native’ white populations, meaning those who identify as white but are also classified as other groups, have birthrate above population maintenance, or growth rates. These are groups that may be classified as Latino if one is into identity politics, but who are second, third, and fourth generation Americans. These groups collectively have a growing middle class and a growing political affect on the rest of America. But we should have guessed this from the histories of the many immigrant groups that came to America and occupied the bottom status as they individually and collectively worked their way towards the top

All would appear to be rosy except it’s not. We are distracted by the noise of visible politics, that sound and fury that signifies nothing. Biden wants to be a tough guy against Putin but can’t find his power ring the people at Mattel gave him. Meanwhile the greatest team of incompetents ever assembled to run a country is busy pushing policies that will consolidate their power even as the they start destroying what has been the sinews that have held this country together with all the opposing views, both social and regional. We forget that this country was almost destroyed and consumed by an extremely costly civil war. The loss of life alone was greater than all the wars this country has fought since. Look to England for the costs of civil war, historians estimate the population was reduced by well over a million. People who call for a civil war rarely foresee both its immediate and its long run costs. I have not kept up with current UK affairs since the end of WWII, so I have little to offer on that score. Let us continue with the American Experiment, for it still continues and will not end until the government is broken and one or more new governments arise.

Now we can argue whether the current administration is ruining the country or if the opposition is merely blowing smoke rings, or somewhere in between. On the one hand we have a belief by those who are political liberals in the style of FDR where government is obligated to fix all problems, both seen and unseen and on the other a belief that the government that governs least governs well (this includes all levels of government). We can enlist the services of various philosophers to bolster our arguments but I think that unwise since they cannot speak to today’s problems, and unnecessary because they would most likely tell us to think for ourselves. The real crux of Freedom and Liberty is that of recognition of what we call private property. The Marxist thinks of private property as some real estate or other worldly good that should belong to the state, in safe keeping of course, for the people. Yet should we not think of a man’s life (sorry, I am not going to be politically correct, man means everyone) is his own property to do with as he wishes. And if a man owns his own life then surely he owns his own labor and is free to enter into a contract to sell that labor to an employee who will, in good faith, pay him his wage for work performed. Should a man then be free to spend of save such wages as he receives as he will? That all men were created equal in the sight of their creator and are endowed with certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, well then, these are givens for the functioning of any society of men. And what is the purpose of any man devised government (actually, humans will sort themselves into functioning organizations that regulate society informally) that will secure such ideals and safeguard them, perpetuate these ideals to future citizens and maintain an orderly society. That maintain part is a bone of anarchists and libertarians for they see it as an imposition from without and fail to realize that the imposition must come from within, that society has rules which, in order to maintain itself must be taught and obeyed. Those who do not believe in such rules and order must then be pushed out of society and into the wilderness where death awaits them.

If this is the basis for a good society of men where each man can attempt to find opportunity for his own pursuit of happiness in the companionship of others and by means of cooperation live his life then we are on the right tract. Make no mistake, opportunity is not a thing one can own, it’s an occurrence one may acknowledge or not. Society is a collection of groups which we join, with the exception of family, voluntarily and we seek our place it the group hierarchy. We usually belong to number of groups during our lifetime, joining and leaving as the occasion presents itself. We seek a cohesion with other individuals. If we root for a football team then we identify to some degree with other fellow fans. We may join a church and identify as a member of that creed and belief system. We find cohesion with others in many different ways. As employees of a certain employer, as members of the local neighborhood in which we live. As students and alumni of educational institution, the list is long and varied. The one position in life on this earth is living in isolation or living in constant fear.

Time to turn and face this abyss. This is the unknown unknown as identified by one politician. Before we had some idea of the abyss we faced and its possible sequences. Today the uncertainty is so great that it has become unknowable. Back in the 19^th century we had in the UK, in Europe, and the United States a proliferation of “Trusts”, legal entities that allowed individuals of any amount of wealth to retain control over their property (property also includes financial wealth) for the individuals so designated as beneficiaries. The Trust was owned in part of whole by the benefactor or benefactors by what means they desired (such as an unregistered venture stock company). The Trustee managed the assets of the trust. Who owned what and who managed what, and who benefited were very often obscured by design and thus monopolies, oligarchies, and combines could effectively control most of the industry and economic wealth of an economy. Teddy and his Rough Riders road to battle such octopuses of wealth control, seeking to break up the trusts for the common good. The irony is the the trust was an invention of British bankers (they had good intention, but as we all know eventually many intentions head south for the winter) and we just naturally subsumed the idea, created an extremely great number of trusts with interlocking directories and such and generally beat the British industrial trusts at their own game until we crushed their industrial might, then we kind of got rid of trusts, but not entirely.

The new form of trust has returned and you will like the re-invented form. We call them by a number of different names according to their perceived purpose. NGOs or Non Government Agency is one. Another is the Research Institute such as the Rand corporation, which started a federal government funded research group for aeronautical engineering before and during WWII and then went private funding when the direct funding ended, they now do contract work and original research. On the other hand we have all those “Think Tanks” that sprung up during FDR’s administration and during the Eisenhower administration that engages in ‘policy’ research, not to mention a bit of lobbying, hiring former federal and state administration personal (only the chiefs at the top, mind you) and are sustained by government grants, gifts by the wealthy, a few paid subscriptions, and are tax exempt. Now we get to the more serious offenders, those who say they are charities or other important contributions to society. We may think of the Red Cross as one, going about the world doing good, except they have a political agenda. There are quite a few like that, organizations that started out with good intentions and then became very political and at odd with most Americans. The last are the ‘Foundations’, usually established in the name of someone rich and famous (did you ever hear of the Joe Blow Foundation? Neither did I). the Gates Foundation, established by Bill Gates with a block grant of Microsoft stock. The number of these various foundations would thoroughly astound you. Now you may ask, who controls the tax exempt creations of good or evil (they are becoming mostly evil)? Well, the Gates Foundation has many other billion dollar foundations that it ‘runs’. How convenient. And these foundations also have interlocking directorates. Do I detect a pattern? How we gone back to 1900? We have ‘Public’ corporations such as PBS and NPR that are federally government chartered corporations which receive federal funds for their operations and is Joe Blow on the board of directors? If you aren’t wealthy, and I mean multi-million/billionaires, you changes of sitting in any mid-level administration seat let alone on at the top is very minimal. People, Charities and ‘Foundations’ are very big business. We, the little people are not suppose to question their operations or their motives. And yet the wealthy have succumb to the deadliest of all diseases, Hubris. Progressive idealism sounds some beautiful and when you have lost complete contact with the rest of humanity and need not suffer the least from any decision you make for the ‘Little People’, then it’s all for their own good. The irony is that these people seldom pay attention to the lessons of history, because we all know it can’t happen here. Now just how many French aristocrats, mostly the far less important one with little financial resources, helped to carry the French Revolution and lost their heads in the process? How many of the Russian aristocrats helps Lenin and Stalin tear down the Russian government, wage war on the rest of Russia only to be sent to the firing squad for a quick death or to the gulag for a slow one? The irony is that these are the people who are ripping America apart, the very country and processes of becoming wealthy, these are the new aristocracy, the new helpful idiots of the new world order. This is why ‘money is the root of all evil’, it’s not the damn greed, it’s the damn stupidity that too much money brings, that isolates you from the rest of the world.