I’m in the mood for positive pronouncements on New Year’s Day and not negative ones. I can’t say that I’ve read a single positive set of predictions on-line for 2024. A fake journalist recently stated that she expected a black swan catastrophe is in the works for sometime this year. That’s the strange flavor of most 2024 predictions. 

  Western Society is one that relies on the rule of law to maintain order and prosperity and the dire flavor of 2024’s predictions is linked to the rule of law not being enforced in the West since the Great Recession when the derivatives markets imploded. It makes us Westerners feel that death is near us. 

 Be that as it may, we can return to the rule of law and the way that it helps people get along better.  Rules that are enforced equally create more instead of less prosperity. Abandoning the rule of law and embracing limitlessness causes chaos to ensue. Order comes when people agree on a set of rules that applies to everyone. Usually the rule of law allows prosperity to flourish because it prevents the raiding of wealth that everyone associates with banditry. 

  There’s a longer tradition of rule of law in the West than there is of banditry, though completely getting rid of bandits is probably impossible. Bandits are encouraged to stop being bandits when a rule based society offers ways to make money that don’t require murder and mayhem. Murder and mayhem lead to terrible unhappiness that spreads. Prosperity spreads when people work together and rules help us all to work towards a fairer society where there’s room for excellence and merit. A meritocracy allows people to win at what they are best at doing.

Deregulation has failed. It was an experiment that was promised to offer the greatest prosperity. It has been tried in energy, banking, communication and transportation. None of those areas show good prospects of growing and supporting society in their best way right now. 

 Energy and transportation have been linked with crazy regulations that make cars too expensive to buy or to use. Trucking has been harmed by gas and diesel cost increases. Carbon credits are a get rich quick scheme to centralize energy profits and penalize people’s everyday energy use. It offers fantasy catastrophe scenarios that are just another tax on prosperity…one that would stop prosperity altogether. 

The banking deregulation led to global financialization which transformed the way that wealth moved across the globe. But deregulated banks have come up with a new scheme to digitize money and control what people would buy and spend. That would end financial freedoms that most people associate with the use of money. Whereas collectivist societies desire to steal money from producers to give to non-productive people and uses, CBDC would end ordinary value that money represents altogether. That would be a disaster. The social credit system isn’t money. It would end the exchange value that money has represented and substitute slavery. Why would anyone want a part of that?

Communication deregulation first led to infotainment, then Fake news and now censorship. None of these encourage news to be shared or topics to be understood. There’s no point in watching news that has no authentic verifiable information. The Covid scenario was a test to see whether people would follow bad advice and many were scared enough that they did. I don’t think that trick will work again. People eventually learn from their mistakes and the Covid Emergency has damaged and killed people. We learn more about it everyday.

Ending deregulation and reinstituting the rule of law would go a long way to fixing the problems that beset us and that have led many to predict bad outcomes for 2024. Think about it. 

If you want to see how we got here to this place in politics and economics, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com.

  How many times have you wanted to find out why or what or how something in the 21st century happened and encountered multiple viewpoints without getting to the why, the what or the how? This happened to me when I wanted to find out the cause of the Great Recession in 2008. News agencies brought multiple points of view and no conclusions. There were no lessons to be had or strategies to avoid similar troubles in the future. There was a big zero in the information-I-could-use category.

Even more seriously, how many times have you wanted what people used to call “the skinny” information about something and failed to find a simple description of what that something is or why it happened? Look at the carnage in Israel right now. Every viewpoint has been presented as though each one is equally valid and the consequences can’t be avoided. Conflict in Israel must go on apparently and no one can stop it because there’s no skinny opinion to help the conflict come to an end. No alternative. No justice. No peace.

Sometimes I can’t even find out if something really did happen because there are opinions to the contrary of the something having ocurred at all. Look at medical fraud during the Covid emergency. Was it an emergency? Well, there were emergency declarations. But did it have to occur at all if it was a man-made event with an engineered coronavirus with genetically engineered splices of information that was patented? Why are dangerous experimental treatments being promoted today to treat covid that have been shown to cause deaths and injuries? Why does every interest get promoted as though each one is equally valid? Are profits more important than people’s well being? Do all profits deserve to continue especially those being supported by government? 

Welcome to the 21st century where all opinions and options are welcome simultaneously without offering the gem of a conclusion based on known consequences.

 I miss the days when real reporters gave us the who, what, when, where, how and why something happened. Those bits of very pertinent information matter in the real world where people don’t have time to entertain every possible point of view. In addition to pertinent facts about something that has happened an array of consequences should also be considered.

The point of view that a single person with an informed perspective can offer is a gift that can save time and promote the getting on with life that we all undertake everyday.

All possible outcomes don’t deserve to happen. Harmful happenings should stop happening. An informed opinion is needed that helps people to decide what harmful happenings to avoid or to stop and what good happenings should continue and be supported by the efforts of all of us to make the world a better place than it will be if we don’t pay attention to the good vs the bad outcome. 

Making distinctions between good outcomes and bad outcomes as a set vs the set of all possible outcomes is something that people can do and that computers can’t do. It’s why I don’t believe that an AI algorithm can be superior to human judgements. People aren’t always right, but through learning and sampling outcomes, we can grow towards useful and helpful and better outcomes. AI can’t do that because AI isn’t alive. It can’t experience consequences the way that a person can.

If you want to learn about political and economic changes in the U.S. over American history, if you want to learn why some economic systems work and others don’t, if you want to be informed about the timeline of history and the consequences of many political and economic policies, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries, available at Amazon.com. It gives you “the skinny” and helps you to understand how we got to where we all are right now.

  

Neoliberalism came about as an idea that started after WWI on the way to and after WWII. It was meant to preserve markets and use the regulatory power of governments to keep markets in good order, helping neoliberal businesses to succeed. Of course a partnership between government and business always carries the risk of becoming fascist. Fascism in history has committed mass murder. Totalitarianism is all about mass murder. The intention of American neoliberals was to avoid totalitarianism and the sequelae of mass murder that follows that. They supported the rule of law and government tolerance and support for their projects without mass death.

Too late now.

With the evidence accumulating that many will die an early death from the covid vaccines, mass murder is no longer only a boogeyman only of the future. Mass murder is already happening. Betrayal of world populations can’t be a good direction for politics to take.

Financialization appears to have freed a lot of capital that has circled the globe many times. But to what good end? Derivatives are rumored to be ten times the size of the real markets and yet they are tools of mass financial destruction (according to Warren Buffet). Although financialization enabled the wealthiest to grow their capital, it doesn’t produce real wealth in the form of real assets. Right now the jetset can still afford to buy fuel and to plot their plans for world domination but that doesn’t look good for society longterm. Society needs more than capital to turn the wheels of civilization. Money needs to represent real value and to hold that value. Under a regime that is overprinting money and creating high inflation, money represents less value every day.

One of the outcomes of the destructiveness of WWI and WWII was a desire by everyone in politics and finance to avoid similar future annihalation of infrastructure. With a major population decline planned and in the works thanks to covid casualties it looks like there’s a future demographic decline. It will lead to further economic destruction even if physical buildings remain for a period of time. Without workers to man the economy, the upkeep of those structures is doomed. And the ability to build anything to replace what will be lost is also in doubt. Easy come, easy go?

Not so easy. What is being destroyed and squandered is the wealth of the old civilization. That wealth includes political and economic systems that worked to produce the old wealth. A parasitic growth has formed that is sucking the life out of our nation and although there are numerous claims that digital money will work, that electric cars will work, that medical tyranny is better, that tyranny generally is better, none of it has been proven or is likely to be better at all. Except for parasites that are corrupt benefactors of the disruption that they have caused.

The time that you live in is harder to characterize in descriptions because being mired in its problems and advantages makes it really hard to get a clear perspective. The past is easier. Descriptions by many people about the past are easier to come by and to compare. How would you describe the present?

When I worked my way through school by manning the counter of the neighborhood convenience store, I knew that disadvantaged children from down the road would sometimes come in to steal some candy. They would tell each other, “Lets go rip off.” They would get frustrated when I and a friend would stop them from stealing by watching them too closely. They couldn’t achieve their small intended theft.

Sometimes the goals of today’s neoliberal criminal class seem equally petty and pointless. There are a lot of empty calories in human traficking, drug trading, frauds in financial dealings. How can society prosper while criminals make money from empty trades like those. What happy result is possible from that? Happiness seems like a better goal to me than world domination, mass murder, infinite crime without recourse for the despoiled.

I believe that happiness is an important goal that those dominating and stealing will never achieve.

A few days ago, I was summarizing my book for an interested person that I was talking to. I said that my book traced ideological change across American history. We, that is the U.S., started with classical liberalism, which was the idea that political freedom requires economic freedom. The U.S. Constitution was meant to help us to maintain a prosperous commonwealth where people could do what made them happy, where liberty and tolerance were part of everyday life, where free speech and the right to defend oneself were respected. Work and keep what you earn. Government and the law weren’t intrusive. People’s privacy was a given. Live and let live.

We transitioned to modern liberalism during the Civil War with the North bringing on a temporary income taxation that later became permanent with the Sixteenth Amendment. That made a portion of people’s earnings available to grow governments larger, to fight bigger wars and bring about larger social welfare projects. The consequence to our U.S. economy was the crowding out of private investments with public ones and an increase in government corruption. That made the economy’s ability to grow shrink. People kept less of what they earned. Law was reinterpreted to become more intrusive in people’s life.

Later, living in the consequences of soft socialism modern liberalism, American corporations wanted more than they could achieve in the United States. In an already shrinking economy, with labor unrest, corporations wanted cheaper labor and less regulation. They wanted to go global. After WWII we changed to neoliberalism with global economic agreements, evolving global banking and transnational companies that went everywhere around the world making money on cheaper labor and saving money with lesser regulations. They escaped legal restraints that were horning in on their ability to generate higher profits.

While I was reluctant to simply call it fascism in 2015, I think neoliberalism has ripened now to be full fledged fascism because of three clear signs.

First of all and most recently, the events that we all lived through with covid-19 showed intrusive government Department of Defense and medical corporate interference in people’s life that led to deaths. Many people suffered both in terms of their health including numerous fatalities and in terms of their economic welfare.

Secondly, after the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, the rule of law was not implemented to rein in criminal banking. Many people suffered financial damages from which they haven’t recovered. Banking criminality continues.

Thirdly, during the 2020 election, the representational system of voting was undermined and the election was stolen. There were many examples of fraud in the 2020 election. Electronic voting has apparently been a large part of voting fraud since the early 21st century. But evidence regarding this fraud has not yet been heard in court.

We seem to be living in a melee of discord without a remedy. It seems as though government and rule of law aren’t able to help because of corruption.

As there isn’t the proper accountability for various crimes being committed, criminals in government, banking and corporations continue wrecking our nation. It is clear that the rule of law is failing to be implemented. Although neoliberalism was meant to be a political triumph of organizations, supported by regulatory largesse, neoliberalism has now turned into something really terrible.

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Most people see criminality but I seldom hear an acknowledgement of fascism. Fascism is deadly. It is destructive. It will lead to griefs of many kinds that are already becoming manifest. It is past time to stop it.

What can we do to stop it? It is a reasonable question to ponder.

Good soil holds together loosely when you grab a handful of it, compress it and open your hand. Sand doesn’t hold together at all. Clay holds together so tightly that it doesn’t let air and water through in a way that benefits plants growing in it.

Influencers that lead you to a better understanding are sometimes like good soil that holds together but lets other ideas in so that you can grow and thrive. Other influencers may block other ideas or fail to connect with you in an honest way.

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Everyone needs good influences in their life, influences that help us to grow and connect with other people and other ideas. If the influence signal is very loud and very insistent, maybe it isn’t something that can offer any benefit to you.

We all need air and water, or rather useful ideas, helpful notions, positive worldviews, confidence that a better tomorrow is possible, or that wholesome experiences are of value and that good people can achieve positive ends that help us all do better.

I heard recently that more Americans are consulting their Bibles to try to connect with old strategies that lead to a more blessed life. The Bible has been around so long that you can find many ideas in it and a lot of our culture, that is the culture of the West, has been influenced by biblical texts.

The Bible has recorded civilizations falling apart and what that looked like. People seeing mayhem in the news have become curious as to whether Clown World has been acted out on Earth in the past and whether there are recordings of it in the Bible. It is interesting to observe people making mistakes that have been described before.

The natural world is a sane place for finding a sane perspective. Walking under the sky can be a wholesome action that gives a person some fresh air and that doesn’t interject Clown World nonsense. It can be an escape from that. Talking with other people, even people who offer a totally different view of any topic can also be enriching especially when you make time to talk to many other people often.

I find myself alienated from all broadcasting at this time. Some of it seems aimed at making me feel angry and helpless. Some of it is full of obvious mistakes and lies. The effort being made to mold my opinions into fantasy offends me. I resist this.

We all face uncertainty these days. Bad politics and bad economics have led us to a place that most of us recognize as likely to bring about even more problems. I know of so many predictions about the rosy future that are turning bluer.

Take for instance the rosy future that computer technologies and the digital world would bring. Where is it? Moore’s Law showed us that exponential investments would be required in order to continue increasing computer efficiencies. But what have we achieved by making those investments? The most powerful groups have joined the computer revolution but what we see is that combining government and private enterprise gets us fascism. That is one of the worst outcomes that we could have imagined. And fascists want to control society. Social media and information censorship have led to social unhappiness and discord. Curating content hasn’t led to greater social cohesion but it has increased social distrust when we once had a high trust society. So much for exponential growth.

How about the green revolution? For instance, how about the money that would be saved with solar energy? That money disappears as soon as you add the investment column to the savings column and check for outcomes over the long haul. It costs more than it yields in savings. It’s not a winning strategy. There were investors in solar energy ready with cheap solar panels but that isn’t enough. Those panels aren’t independent of the fossil fuel industry.

What can any of us do when we face policies that don’t make sense over a longer horizon? We can rely on our own policies wherever we are to make things better.

When the experts fail, become an expert yourself. Check to see what you can do to improve your life. Don’t wait for a prognosticator to be wrong again. Fix whatever needs fixing yourself. We can make things good wherever we are. Solar energy is disappointing, but maybe a heat pump would make your house more energy efficient. Or just add some insulation to your attic. That’s one of the most cost effective saving improvements you can make.

Buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com.

If you can’t afford new windows, caulk them and maybe add some storm window inserts that could save your energy when it gets cold this fall. Or put it in a wood burning stove.

When it comes to your health, you have the most influence of anyone in the choices that you make. Start a morning stretch routine. Do something aerobic everyday. Lift some weights. Go for a walk or a jog.

How about a nutritional boost with a garden planted this coming spring to give you fresh food like lettuce, tomato, peppers, carrots, broccoli or whatever you fancy.

Clean. Create better order. Reorganize your garage. Paint your bedroom or your kitchen or living room. Change things to make you like your surroundings more than before.

The easiest thing to change is your mind so change it for the better by empowering yourself to do whatever makes your life better. Don’t waste another minute, just make it happen. You’ll feel better when you make improvements wherever they are needed and wherever you can afford to do it. Utilize your agency to make order out of whatever chaos surrounds you. Be. Do.

Addendum 26 Oct 2023: According to Technocracy.news there’s a newer technology that bumps up quantum computing. Atom Computing has come up with a different technology that is more stable, that uses lasers and that allows for error checking (“fault tolerance”) at room temperature. Technocracy.news, May God Help Us: Technocrats Blow The Lid Off Quantum Computing With 1,180-Qubit Processor, Alex Wilkins via NewScientist, October 25th, 2023; https://www.technocracy.news/may-god-help-us-technocrats-blow-the-lid-off-quantum-computing-with-1180-qubit-processor/. Of course, the efficacy of this new technology doesn’t alter the political and economic shifts currently taking place because of the growth of computer technologies.

No more emergency declarations. No more emergency excuses to jail people without due process. No emergency swindles that destroy property owners. No more emergency cancellations of steady employment in favor of a new paradigm. No more emergency lies to force people towards changes that they wouldn’t choose for themselves. No more.

The three branches of government each have a job to do. When the legislative branch, the executive branch or the judicial branch abandon their proper jobs in favor of a different kind of reimagined politics, they undermine their real power. Trying to imagine a new kind of power is causing problems. And these problems are causing more problems still. So no more emergency declarations.

Leave people alone to live their lives without government interference. Don’t defund the police but allow them to defend persons and properties against crimes. That’s their proper role.

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We got a puppy and that puppy is reminding us about the importance of play in everyday life. Having a perfectly organized life, on a training schedule for potty training, leash training, regular mealtimes and sleep-times with a puppy will never be possible without the interjection of a great deal of play-fun. Young dogs need play in order to be happy. Owner/dog moments of chasing each other around the yard, throwing the ball. You know. The stuff that all young children and animals do to develop their muscles and their sense of humor and fairness. Being an adult all the time is not fun. A younger friend like a puppy can help to remind your innate sense of fun to be part of everyday life again.

I was just reading Ben Schapiro’s piece about censorship on the Bonginoreport.com. He was saying that there are a number of international organizations and corporations censoring your news access and oppressing alternative sources that differ with a preferred narrative. Fooey on them. Beat back the bad-no-fun-life that those censors have in mind for you. Find your own quality in life by censoring the censors. Ignore all sound bites that explain nothing. Do your own research on news topics that affect you and play with information by asking questions that are reasonable and spontaneous. Inject play into everyday and into information related questions. Our new dog is constantly relating to us by disrupting whatever our plan is and instituting a different game that he makes up instantly. Spontaneous fun is joyful.

By far what is so noticable about today’s censorship and political dirty tricks is the focused boycott of fun. No one will get a happy life by going along with the WEF, the UN, or global collectivists. They mean to ruin fun forever. Schapiro specifically mentions the WFA the World Federation of Advertisers, as a group undermining writers and creators who don’t push the global oppressor’s messaging. I’ve noticed many works of fiction only get published when they put in whatever social engineering messaging is being pushed at the moment to influence the choices we make everyday. What if it’s bad messaging?

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Of all the times I’ve faced in my life, this time that we are living in now calls to us to choose a better kind of life that is filled with honesty, trust, faithfulness, fun, appreciation and that doesn’t spin our energies into vacuous entertainments that will not deliver happiness. Choose well. Have fun. Play.

Don’t take Zoloft, take out your math book and do some simple arithmetic. That might help you to feel better because 2 + 2 = 4.

There is a lot of chaos and confusion being sown all around us these days. There are so many simultaneous contradictory stories on-line and also in the news on the radio and television. At the end of a Sean Hannity broadcast the other day, a caller said that he’s sick of listening to Hannity’s conservative views being juxtaposed with left views from mainstream media during news updates. They occasionally directly contradict each other. The listener said that he thinks that it’s appalling and he wanted Mr. Hannity to fix it. He seemed to want Hannity to stop broadcasting on networks that have left leaning propaganda. Sean Hannity said he’d look into it. I think that means that nothing can change because Mr. Hannity has to broadcast wherever he’ll get paid and he doesn’t own the broadcasting station. In fact Rush Limbaugh was stymied just before he died when he wasn’t allowed to say that the election of 2020 was stolen on the air or he’d lose his sponsors and his platform.

Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. As social beings we crave to belong to some sort of consensus about narratives, but that consensus today is nearly impossible to achieve. Many interests are in opposition to each other and some of those interests directly oppose your own and affect the information that is available. Whereas in the 1970’s news broadcasts created a shared social narrative, some of today’s news providers want to confuse you. So you probably can’t agree with your neighbors and relatives about everything because popular narratives are inconsistent and in disagreement with many others. Social media and the way that people get information has put people into different camps of information. Politics is hard enough with factional political differences but with the added complexity of several camps of people getting different sets of information, it can be pretty impossible to get the story straight once and for all. This can throw political consensus-making out the window. People have not just an intellectual but also an emotional connection to whatever they are believing. Facing the gamut of conflicting ideas and coming to any kind of conclusion can then make people less willing to entertain even more confounding information from you if you disagree with them. And you may feel strongly about whatever you believe too.

Buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com. It will explain politics and economics to you and you won’t be puzzled by today’s problems anymore.

Do you feel anxious? Well, no wonder. I suggest that you review your old mathematics texts. There are numerous exercises that can be a kind of meditation on a reality based world. When I went to school as a youngster, even though I tried my best, I had only an average aptitude in mathematics. I couldn’t figure out the practical uses of mathmatics at a young age. Math seemed like nothing that I would have thought up for myself out of a need to use mathematics as a tool for life. But I’ve been a late bloomer in some areas and mathematics is one of them.

If you dive into any topic that has complex information, you will find that mathematics is your friend. I first noticed this when I was planning my first garden and curves using geometry helped to create a balanced use of space that was more beautiful. When I did research about the economy and politics, my mathematics brain woke up, finding a new practical way of sorting information that involves quantity and time. We are facing problems in our complex social, economic and political systems today. As complex adaptive systems, their trajectory is impossible to predict. As you face fast changes in your life, mathematics will comfort you with ordinary arithmetic, lovely geometry, trigonometry that covers all the angles, algebra for solving inscrutable problems and calculus for discerning trends. All of that is available and the answers are sure answers. You can do some math problems everyday. You’ll feel better. Because 2 +2= 4, no matter what the news jockeys are saying today.

Last week I heard a strange argument. And by argument, I mean a statement about the state of affairs that we find ourselves in. I heard the argument that covid vaxines had 3 batches, each with different outcomes. I heard that there was a batch with no side effects, another batch with a small number of a few bad side effects and and third batch with a larger number of more terrible side effects. I find this argument puzzling because we are now dealing with multiple rounds of boosters for many people, not a single shot. It isn’t the case that you can describe a single batch outcome. It is an absurdity.

When I ask myself why this strange argument for some of the C-19 vaxines being safe is being made, I can only imagine that it is an attempt to reassure a worried public. The public is worried because they were promised a safe and effective C-19 vax and we now know that the vax is neither.

People who are scared about the future because they took an experimental vaccine wish that there is an outcome of no harm for at least some of the people who received the experimental treatment. Of course we’ll see who over time is harmed, but because of boosters, the safe lot argument sounds immaterial.

Also, as far as I know, the actual contents of each experimental shot haven’t been published. And probably many people don’t know what their C-19 vax lot # was. I suppose they may have a shot record somewhere on hand but I bet they don’t pay a lot of attention to the lot #. In any case, it’s still a waiting game. Let’s not try to undermine the real world with a specious argument. Let’s keep learning about consequences as they happen. That way, we can see clearly and make a better plan for the future.

Fingers crossed that everyone who is alive today and who took the C-19 vax will be ok. And they may be ok, especially if stop taking the boosters and they adapt their health practices for better health outcomes in spite of the C-19 vax. Recommendations for natural health supplements and practices that can better each person’s chances for a benign outcome are being published and formulated every day. Fermented natto as a dietary supplement is one example.

If you are interested in learning more about our history and the way that politics and economics work hand in hand to create everyday outcomes that affect everyone, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com.