The Ukrainian Riots

Posted on January 27, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, the people of the Ukraine are ripping mad, and they have every right to be. They have been deceived and stabbed in the back over and over. The riots that have been going on now for weeks in Kiev are the manifestation of that anger. Now cities around Ukraine are joining the protests. Like in the United States and the World over, politicians in the Ukraine believe they can run on a platform, then rule in direct opposition to that platform without consequence. In the US politicians get away with it, with the help of the unbiased media, but in Ukraine their feet are being held to the fire. A real fire as it turns out. The Ukrainian government has offered several concessions to the protesters but they are too little too late. Perhaps the riots won’t end, until either the government stomps them down like the Chinese communists did in Tienanmen Square, or the government falls, but there is a way to solve the problem in both the Ukraine and the World over.

 

People have a great ability to forgive. We understand that others are flawed human beings as are we. Upon a continued assault however, no person no matter their demeanor, will remain calm forever. Politicians in both the Ukraine and the US run as conservatives and libertarians but rule as tyrants and socialists. This enrages the people who voted for those corrupt politicians based, as it always turns out, on lies. No one can stand ceaseless irritations without eventually becoming irritated and that is where the Ukrainian people are. How long will it take for the American people to wake from our slumber?

 

One of the concessions offered by the Ukrainian president is the amending of their Constitution. What the unbiased media fail to report, or even understand, is that if a President can unilaterally amend the Constitution… there is no Constitution. The Protesters understand this basic fact of Constitutional rule, but the elite in the media and government don’t, (or don’t want to). A Constitution is supposed to be a document that limits the power of the elite over the people. If the elite can change it willy nilly, it does not limit their power, but give their reign a faux legitimacy. If the protesters allow the Constitution to be changed by the political elite, it will be changed back again the moment the exigency of the riots are over, giving the government unlimited power again.

 

History has not been kind the the people of the Ukraine. They have suffered under the Mongol hordes, they have faced wave after wave of Muslim invasions, they have suffered under the Tzar’s tyranny and oppression and have endured under Stalin and his artificial famine. The unfortunate people of the Ukraine have no history of freedom and liberty to fall back on. They have only famine, oppression, war and slaughter to remember. Now they have an opportunity to forge a different path, one free from oppression, and they are seizing it. I pray to God they can pull it off, their lot has been so bad for so long, if anyone deserves peace and prosperity, it is the people of the Ukraine.

 

Clearly what is needed in the Ukraine is laissez faire capitalism, a strongly limiting Constitution and a NUMA to enforce it. Otherwise the government will continue to run amok, progressing to socialism and tyranny, as they are in the US. Barring that, as soon as a new government comes into power, it will act the same as the old one. A NUMA would change the paradigm in Ukraine for the better by holding the political elite to the Constitution’s limits. This is something very few political leaders have been held to, since the dawn of time, anywhere. Power must be limited else it limits the people. We have seen this played out throughout time and the World over.

 

Only time will tell how the protests in Ukraine will turn out. The strong likely hood is that some new dictator will emerge, charismatic and ruthless. History is not on the side of the people. The normal state of humanity is under the thumb of a tyrant, it is the exception where and when a people escape from it and forge a new way. The US did for a while, but the current of politics always wears away the people’s resolve, eventually eroding the limits put on government by Constitutions. Only a Constitutionally empowered branch of government could ever hope to have the authority to contain the avarice of the political elite. Without a NUMA, Ukraine will fall back into oppression, as the US is progressing to.

 

Perhaps it is a pie in the sky dream that Ukrainians could have liberty but every man woman and child yearns to be free in his or her heart. Freedom has lifted millions of people from poverty while arbitrary rule has lowered billions to slavery. I am on the side of the protesters, I believe liberty is the only way to lift all boats, and liberty is the protester’s goal, but the protesters need to have a plan. To that end, a NUMA along with a strictly limiting Constitution, would do just that. Let’s pray it happens and that the political current doesn’t wash away the hopes and dreams of the Ukrainian people. God speed and God bless the Ukrainian people… and may God help us here in the US.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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Tolerance

Posted on January 23, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me tolerance is a one way street to the political left. They have no tolerance whatsoever but demand absolute tolerance from the rest of us. This may be the definition of hypocrisy, but the left bathes in hypocrisy, it is the left’s bread and butter, to them it is a sacrament. What is not so obvious is the pernicious nature of it. Our society, government and culture are damaged greatly when a faction with so much political power are so intolerant of other points of view, other religions and other philosophies. What drives them to such heights of intolerance and hate is their innate self doubt. They know in their minds and hearts they are wrong on most issues, and their leadership will inevitably lead to poverty and violence, but they are committed to their ideology, so to have any hope of winning in a political contest they must stomp down any debate about issues, with spurious demands for tolerance, which in the parlance of the left, is approval and approbation. The longer we allow this level of intolerance of our Constitutional republic, morality, rights and liberty the lower we will fall.

 

Societies rise in virtue and fall in vice. This is the primary lesson of all of human history. There is not one example in the annuls of humanity where a society rose in vice and fell in virtue. Virtues such as Christian morality, prayer, liberty, traditional marriage, limited government, hard work, along with so much else of what has made America great, are despised by the left. Yet the left is constantly talking of this or that iniquity as being a moral imperative, they see liberty as unconscionable. We are to hang our head in shame if we pray in public, but the reprobate who uses his EBT card on strippers and prostitutes, is defended.

 

They demand not only tolerance of the intolerable but acceptance as normal and even demand our funding morally reprehensible actions. I personally find abortion to be the evil of our day. In the future people will look back at us, as we do the slave owners of yore, and they will wonder at how we could have been so blind at the wickedness of it. The left however, sees abortion as a sacrament and so I must not only tolerate abortion, but pay for it. I was not only supposed to tolerate a picture of the Virgin Mary decorated in feces, the sign of Baal, but I was even forced to pay for it! While I am cowed by the ever present threat of State violence if I should disagree, they cannot tolerate even hearing a prayer said in public, they cannot tolerate a manger, smoking, SUVs or capitalism.

 

I am expected to send my children to be “taught” in their schools, where they undermine my religion, the morals I try to teach, they indoctrinate our children into their political mindset with money they take from me at gun point, and they seek to teach ever child the exact same thing through Common Core curriculum. While more and more teens graduate high school without knowing how to read, write, history or geography. If I were to go to a school and speak about God, or the miracle of the free market, I would be forcibly removed, but they can teach how to have gay sex, teach there is no God, teach their twisted version of history and inculcate communism to our children. They cannot tolerate my drinking too large a soda, my eating meat, my right to keep and bear arms or my free speech.

 

The left has raised hypocrisy and hate to an art form. Their intolerance is more then mere hypocrisy, it is damaging to our society, culture and indeed government. While we are ordered to obey their absurd rules and regulations to the letter, they feel no compunction at all to follow any standards… even their own. The Constitution is an anathema to them because it limits their ability to control the rest of us and so is a stumbling stone to them. Those of us who want the freedom our Constitution guarantees must tolerate the redefining of it, to comport with the left’s need to dominate the rest of us, while they demand our approval else we are “haters.” Leftists see no irony at all when they wear a Che Guevara tee shirt, as they give speeches on the immorality of war, the free market and the rich… while vacationing on Nantucket island. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so destructive.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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Morality Depends on Scale

Posted on January 20, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, understanding human morality is similar to comprehending Grand Unified Theory, they both are enigmas that defy explanation and the difference is based on scale. It is interesting how so many phenomenon appear across scientific disciplines. While it makes the universe and God’s laws easier to understand this phenomenon also shows us the interconnectedness of the universe. We have only a limited ability to understand the World around us despite our hubris. When two dissimilar systems so closely mirror one another, it is clear indication we should examine them, with an eye to comparing them, perhaps gleaning some insight into the workings of either or both. Not one among us isn’t aware that our well beings depend on the state of society, a few less understand that the state of our morality is a crucial factor in the state of our society.

 

Grand Unified Theory is a goal to combine macro physics with micro physics, or in other words, Newtonian physics with Quantum physics. The difference is scale. Things behave impossibly differently depending on the scale. In Quantum physics for example, particles can be entangled such that no matter how far they are separated if one is disturbed the other shows the disturbance, if a particle is measured that particle is fundamentally changed, and in the Quantum universe particles pop into existence and back out constantly. These are things and properties you would never see in the macro world, the world we live in. In our world, things don’t just pop into existence and back out, we can weigh anything we want without materially effecting it and just because two things bump doesn’t entangle them no matter how far apart they move. If any of those things happened in our world people would call it magic. But Grand Unified Theory is ambitious enough to try to fuse these two disparate realities into one theory.

 

Human morality is similar to micro and macro physics in that our morality largely depends on scale. Mo Ti said he couldn’t understand why a person shown a black dot could identify it as a black dot, but when shown a page filled with black dots, that same person would call them white. One would have to question the viewer’s eyesight… Mo Ti was of course referring to War. The one dot meaning the killing of a person but the page of dots representing the killing of many. The difference is scale. If I shoved a gun in your face and demanded money, that would be a bad thing, and everyone understands that, but if a government does the very same thing, people say it is good. You don’t think government demands are backed up by deadly force? Try not paying your taxes and hold up in your home, threatening no one, there will be armed police surrounding your house before you can blink. How many other examples can you think of, where if you or I did an action it would be wrong and punishable, but when government does that same action, it is called social justice.

 

To conceptualize a Grand Unified Theory of Human Morality would be every bit as difficult as Grand Unified Theory of Physics. To observe such fundamental change depending on scale boggles the mind. How can physics be so utterly different, at microscopic scales from how things behave at macro scales, the scale we live in? Human morality is no different on this matter, how is it possible that an action that is wrong for the individual, right for a group? Because if you think of it, a group with political power is all that government is. How many times in human history have people done evil things to one another, simply because they were “ordered” to? In their minds and in truth the minds of most people, they lost culpability in their actions when they received orders to… gas the Roma and Jews, take food from the people’s own larders to create a forced famine starving millions to death, drive the Roma to another country, or keep quiet when we see people being abused, along with any of the other atrocities you can think of. Physics is so fundamentally different from human morality that is is startling when we find such a close analogy between them. It would serve the physics community well if they could come up with Grand Unified Theory but it would equally serve the human race if we could come up with a Grand Unified Theory of Human Morality. Perhaps the researchers in physics and moral philosophers should examine each other’s fields to get a deeper understanding of their own.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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The Law of the Magnification of Jobs Due to Labor Saving Devices

Posted on January 16, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, there should be a law of economics called, The Law of Magnification of jobs due to Labor Saving Devices. In my conception of it, when new technology is added to an economy, jobs are not lost, but gained. Locally and initially jobs might be lost but in the course of one economic cycle those jobs are not only more than replaced but made easier, better and with higher wages. This effect is not only global but local as well. It is important to keep this in mind when people say that such and such is taking away jobs, because the opposite is actually true.

 

Your job, my job and most other people’s jobs weren’t even invented a hundred and fifty years ago. That is an eye blink in written human history. Think of it, most of the jobs that keep tens of millions of people busy all day, were only invented so recently. Work with computers? They only came on the scene as workable things in the nineteen sixties. But when computers came out they were supposed to wipe out secretaries, instead they erased several levels of management from large cap firms. This freed up smart people with capital to invest and start businesses. Some of those ideas became large cap firms a decade or two down the road, and some in only a few years. Imagine the magnification of jobs this added to the others created by computers.

 

Cheaper, better, and faster ways of doing things frees up human capital that can be better spent on the things humans do best. It also makes the goods of society available to more people. One revolutionary technology that is about to burst is 3D printing. It will do to the creation of goods and products the same thing that word processing did to writing. 3D printing will bring the act of creation to the masses.

 

Every minute of every day, the Eggbert Slokums of the World are imagining new products, new goods, new ways of doing things. 3D printing will give them all the ability, to not just imagine and jot some notes on a napkin, but in a reasonable amount of time have a computer print the fully functional product, good of even mechanism. The abilities of this technology are startling. Unfortunately industries will disappear, people will loose their job, and there will be bankruptcies, these bad things will be the cost of the introduction of this technology.

 

How can anyone fully account for the benefit though? The future intangible benefits cannot be even imagined at. The reason is that no one can tell what innovations 3D printing will lead to. (If they could they would be billionaires). Imagine if we veered off from computers because Middle Managers were afraid of loosing their jobs. There would be no I Pods, no smart phones, no thumb drives, nor mouses. Typing would still be on a Selectric and special effects would be of the Star Wars variety. All the jobs that are now done by computer, for computers, and with computers, would cease to exist. Imagine how materially damaged our society would be if that had happened?

 

The last example I will use is the mechanical loom. Marx said, the mechanical loom would put so many people out of work, the people would starve, ushering in the revolution. “As the forest of arms grows ever thicker while the arms themselves grow ever thinner…” Some people did loose their jobs when the mechanical loom was introduced. Those that still worked on the looms, were no longer subject to the tendonitis from throwing the shuttle, their legs and backs didn’t ache from constantly peddling the loom and their wages went up. What is never mentioned however, is the mechanical loom has to be maintained and it takes a trained person to do that, parts for it must be imported, the demand for wool to feed a mechanical loom is much higher than a craft loom, the list of added jobs goes on and on.

 

The take away here, is that labor saving devices don’t destroy jobs they make more and better jobs. The people against the introduction of labor saving devices into the workplace are engaging in sophistry, making false arguments that appear logical for selfish ends. Classic liberal tactic… but like everything liberal, it makes perfect sense, as long as you don’t think about it to long.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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Hubris or Humility, Which is Best in Our Leaders?

Posted on January 13, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, tyranny seeks to change the people to suit the State, free States seek to change the State to suit the people. Tyrants presume wisdom to know what is best for humanity, and with that hubris that necessarily comes with such presumption, they dread what would happen to them if someone else took over their power. In free states however, the state simply forms a framework for the markets, society and culture to work. It doesn’t take charge of any facet of society that it doesn’t belong in. The free state does not presume to know what’s best, it simply provides standards as a structure for human society to grow on, while the oppressive state, wants to not only provide the structure, but everything else as well, to protect their power. To that end the dictatorship must change the very essence of humanity, evolve us to something different, to become socially aware, ubermensch or whatever the mastermind connives the name to be. This is the fundimental difference between liberty and tyranny, the one respects who and what we are as human beings while the other must change who and what we are to something else.

 

Karl Marx argued in many of his writings that people will evolve out of our individual selves into species self. Once the revolution happens and the people live communally we will forget the individual self that so alienates us from others, and embrace our species self, that will end our alienation from each other and our work. Never mind, almost everything Marx said is provably wrong, the immense human suffering that has been committed in the name of communism, or that every “revolution” has been led by the intelligentsia and soldiered by the peasants, never the workers, think of the presumption of this as a philosophy. That fellow human beings be forced by violence, (what else is a revolution but violence), and then given such little respect, we are to be the lab rats in an experiment in human evolution? Can presumption possibly be raised to a higher level than that?

 

The example of the United States serves to show the other side of the coin. For most of it’s existance the US has been a place where the individual has been allowed to do his or her thing. The nation was founded on the concept of maximum liberty. The founders tried mightily to put in place a system of government that would protect the rights, priviliges and property of it’s citizens. This system has yeilded some pretty startling results. There has never been a place in the annuls of human history or lore, including the tales of Atlantis, where a country brought about such seismic change to the standard of living of people the World over, led science to such heights, achieved such measures of efficiency in the production of the goods of humanity, restored a people to liberty then left, nor reached the Moon. That the US is turning away from it’s heritage of liberty and freedom for the individual, and to the oppression of a state that seeks to become everything, will be the verfying counter experiment. Where we change the fundamentals to the opposite so the outcome reverses fundamentally as well.

 

If those who have such egos and presumption actually had faith in their ideas they wouldn’t have to change the essence of who and what we are. It is the nagging uncertainty, that produces a disquiet in their hearts, that forces the would be oppressor to seek to change the very nature of what it is to be human. They know in their hearts that they are not God but have the hubris to presume to supersede him. The leader, senator or government that has humility will not try to force change through oppressive control. The state that is free will have a great diversity of people, busy working away at whatever each finds the most rewarding, or whatever he or she falls into. Humility gives a leader the self assured tranquility to trust that liberty is truly the best policy, while presumptuous power corrodes the oppressors’ self assuredness and sense of safety, until they go insane and hang their uncle.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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We Have Become Inured to Hypocrisy

Posted on January 9, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, folks who advocate the State has the power to dictate how others live, should be forced themselves, first, to live that way. Were this the case I think we might see a bit more leniency in the thinking of many presumptuous people. Imagine for a moment, a World without hypocrisy in it’s leaders. It is of course not ours, but an imaginary one, where the elite are held to their own laws, regulations and orders. Do you suppose the laws, regulations and orders would be, let’s say, better thought out? If the people making the rules were held to them, doesn’t it seem reasonable, those people would make as few as possible? Wouldn’t everything, society, the culture, and the economy, be better if the laws were minimized, better thought out and applied equally?

 

But we all know that land is fictional, the land we live in is the land of hypocrisy. The First Lady advocates the rest of us living as aesthetic a life as possible, walking to work, easing the thermostat, eating nothing but kale and green beans… while she lives and eats like a queen. Now, I couldn’t care less how she lives nor should I. How she lives is her business, not mine. She, however, has a totally different way of thinking. She would like nothing better than to order me how to live. If I do something she finds objectionable she would love to regulate it, but if she does something I am offended by, her attitude is that I should be forced to pay for it, to open my mind.

 

People who seek political power almost always seek control over others. Why else seek political power? The only other reason is to lessen the power of government over the people. Those that seek power over others cannot run on that. It would be absurd. Vote for me, try a session with my oppression… Those who seek power over others have to couch their rhetoric with platitudes and handouts. The whip doesn’t come out until they have total power, but how offended the tyrant would be, if he felt a lash!

 

One thing about people who seek power over others, their egos are so fragile, they demand others applaud everything they do. You see this in how politically correct our speech has become. How many words can you think of that you would never say in public in the next ten seconds? A dozen, or more, is my average. Those that seek power over others have changed our language, and since we think in that language, they have also changed our thinking. They have become the thought police, but is their thought policed, for the betterment of mankind too?

 

Some people do seek political power to lessen the reach of government however. They are the ones who the elite call heartless, bigots who hate the poor, minorities, the environment ETC… When a politician is called heartless, that is a sure sign he or she seeks to limit the scope, role and reach of government. Those that seek power over others, must delegitimize those that seek to lower the power of government, because if those that seek to lower the power of government are successful, the potential power over the lives of others, of those that seek power over the lives of others, will be reduced.

 

The blatant hypocrisy of those that seek power over others using ad homonym attacks against those that seek to lower the power of government, is lost on most people because we have become so used to it. Live in a sewer and the smell will be invisible to you after awhile. We have steeped in the hypocrisy of the elite for so long we have become immune to it. Yes occasionally someone will point it out but we are quickly told, there is nothing we can do about it, so we go back to ignoring the stench.

 

So when you hear someone claiming to want political office to help people you know they seek power over others. When you hear a politician called heartless you know that politician seeks to lower the power of government over others. Many other things can be seen, and smelled, once you open your eyes and nostrils. The way to do that is to clear your eyes and nose, by imagining a land where politicians are held to their own laws, regulations and orders…

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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Should We Civilize Our Children or Make Them Into Barbarians?

Posted on January 6, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, to have a civilized society we must civilize our children. Those who raise barbarians have barbarism as the wage. This should be pretty obvious, but most of philosophy, if you think about it, is merely pointing out the obvious. To that end, raising civilized children and not barbarians, we as a society, culture and religions, must strive for. Those that seek to undermine the education and civilization of the youth act to bring about the end of our civilization. How can they be thought of any other way? Those that would prefer children be raised as barbarians must seek a barbarous society, if they seek a barbarous society then they seek, by definition, the downfall of ours. Those of us that seek a civilized society where difference is tolerated, and not only by one side, where people are polite, in as close to universal prosperity there can be, and where our churches, Temples, Synagogues, Mosques, and cemeteries are safe from fire and vandalism, not because of laws that force, but because we are civilized. We must point out the truth, call a barbarian what he or she is.

 

By civilized, I don’t mean bricks turned out from government monopoly schools, I mean stones as turned out by rivers and streams. There is an old saying, proverb or whatever, it goes; A teacher stands at the foot of a large tree, at the base are, a parrot, ape, elephant, porpoise, snake and fish. The teacher says, “The first to the top will get the best grade, then next will get the next lower grade. You will all be graded by this scale.” Clearly this scale is insufficient to capture the diversity of abilities in that group, nor scale them as individuals either within their own area of talent, but even as their talent compares to the others. This is the fundamental failure of nationalized systems of education. They make the teacher stand at the base of a large tree…

 

Think of what a barbarian is, a loutish person who has little self control, seeks primarily hedonistic pleasures, and is prone to violence. Isn’t that pretty much what you picture in your mind’s eye when you imagine a barbarian? Now look at what our schools teach our children, that God is fiction, the strong should take from the weak, it is better to appear good while being bad than to just be good, that honest gain is bad while dishonest gain is good… the list goes on and on. Not one of these lessons lead to civilized people, they must lead to hedonistic people, immoral, lacking utterly in self control, with a total ignorance of the social graces, such as courtesy, in short, people who are egoistic and therefore prone to violence…

 

To civilize a child is to teach them not only how to read, do math, understand science, know history, and write, but why they need to know these things. Grammar should be called philosophy and the reason for this explained to children. There is a whole arm of philosophy that deals in the failure of language to be a perfect deliverer of philosophical ideas. Kung Sung Lung for example. Once early philosophy (grammar) is done, then philosophy should talk about the ideas of the moral philosophers like, Plato, Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Hsun Ching, Jesus, Abraham and Moses. The stories children should read need to have the theme of overcoming diversity, while striving to be good, like the ones written by Horatio Alger. Much can be taught by games, war games like, Russian Campaign, Panzergruppe Guderian, France 1940, Desert Fox, Saipan, ETC… teach basic math, geography, and history long with strategic thinking and an appreciation for the reality of war, where the numbers of men each unit represents is stressed. This is how I would set up an education system.

 

These innovations can only be done in small experimental schools, the good ones will be rewarded by the market and the bad ones will be punished by the same market. A market set up by the voucher system. Making the voucher system the means to civilizing children, since it is the only way educationally diverse opportunities would be available to children, who would potentially shine in them. To educate a child is to knock off the rough edges, but keep the eccentricities, to teach a child is to cut everything that doesn’t benefit the State off a child, fabricating them into equal rectangles, eliminating all political eccentricities. The first is strong inside but oddly shaped, the second weak inside but regular outside.

 

Our government is making more and more of our children into little barbarians, and when they act as government taught them, barbarous, government points to them as reason to limit all of our Rights. It is almost like those in our government want crime, poverty and strife, to justify the enhancement of their power over us, as shown by their actions IE, turning out barbarians from the government factory schools, instead of allowing us to civilize them. Be it for the sake of the Teacher’s union, political expediency or simply egoistic self interest, these are the actions of people who seek the downfall of civilization, with all that implies. We are the ones who must take action, demanding the voucher system be fully implemented everywhere in the US, with no religious exclusions. Pry our children from the trap of government factory schools, where they are being turned into mindless barbarians, and get them into schools where they can be civilized. The elite in government, media and culture are against us, but God is with us. With the scale tipped so far in our favor how can we but win?

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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What if Life Were a Game?

Posted on January 2, 2014 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, it would be really cool, if people lived under a system in which we all competed to help our fellow man the most, top prize going to the guy or gal who succeeded by helping the most, the most. If the competition were dynamic it would be even better. In other words, the system wouldn’t pick just one winner, but millions of winners every moment every day everyplace. Winnings piled upon winnings. The incentive would clearly be for every man woman and child to help their fellow man and be a blessing on mankind. Cuz that’s how you win!

 

We could set it up as a game. People would go out and provide some service or good for their fellow human beings to consume, then bring back the amount of products or service given and each would get a weighted prize based on the volume. The person who moved the most would get the top prize unless that person used underhanded measures to achieve the numbers. Inflating the numbers entered for example.

 

Perhaps we could allow entrants to lever their sales and positions with sublets. A sublet could be another contestant who gives a portion of his or her handing out numbers. This would be in exchange for some material help. Allowing people’s needs and wants to be met even more efficiently. If within the game contestants could combine freely and as needed to meet the needs of society.

 

New products and services could be scaled differently and by a different standard. One that leverages the producer of a new good, service, or way of combining resources. Contestants who invented such things and made them available to the public, could get a special scale that measures people served instead of volume of services or goods. The creator of new stuff could get top prize many years.

 

The contest would be free to enter, but a contestant could use money he or she has, to enhance their ability to provide products or services, or perhaps invent new stuff. The ability to add in new money to the game would improve the efficiency of the process. It would allow way of creation to get abilities sooner than it otherwise would or could have. Obviously, making creation of a product cheaper by the introduction of better ways of creation, sooner rather than later, would make the game more dynamic.

 

Imagine how much good that game would be, not only for humanity that would directly benefit, but for the entrant, who would get benefit both through societal improvements and by personal enrichment for having taken part in the rejuvenation of society. In this way entrants to the game would get multiple benefits, a third possible benefit would be one of the top prizes, which would be far more likely than the lotto. The incentives in such a contest would be to improve the lot of Man, not lower the lot of Man.

 

But of course, this contest exists. It is called the market system, or meritocracy, the same system Marx derided as Capitalism. In a truly market system there is nearly universal prosperity, while in the most socialist countries there is universal poverty. The difference is as stark as it is irrefutable. In a market system, but not under crony capitalism, the creator of new stuff, or the entrepreneur, is well rewarded for significant advances. We freely combine or in other words self organize, to meet the needs of society, economic efficiency and to include those who otherwise couldn’t be included. No person needs to be rich to enter the market system, just willing to work. If he or she is so inclined they can use the resources they have put aside, to purchase the way of creating, or in other words, means of production.

 

The way to have a prosperous society where no one falls through the cracks, unless they want to fall through the cracks, and lets face it, who are we to presume to deny a human being the right to fall out of society, unless they are escaping moral, rational justice. The contest we are engaged in, the market system, is why we are so much more wealthy than those who labor under socialist systems. Ours, is a game to improve the lot of Man, while theirs, is a game to take the largest portion of a dwindling pie.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

 

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Looking Into the New Year

Posted on December 30, 2013 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, with the year ending it is time to look forward at the year to come. There will be economic news, tragedy will happen, terrorism will grace a few front pages and there will be happy stories, encouraging news and miracles. Next year could be the best of your life, so so, or the worst you have lived, but the possibilities are endless. If we are to gain the benefit of knowledge however, we must remember the past, so as not to relive the time we made bad decisions, but not dwell there. To get the best of what is possible we must avoid making the mistakes of the past. That is the way societies advance and not falter.

 

Expect good things, think good things and do good things and good things will come to you. When we do a good thing for someone else we feel better about our own lot. We are as we think, if we dwell on bad times and things, then we become mired in them and cede the ability to go on, maybe to something far better. Moreover we get what we expect. If we expect things to go wrong they often do. Possibly, do to our expectations we have a hand in them going wrong, but the same argument can be made for expecting good things too.

 

A smile is the best accessory anyone can wear. A smile is free to give, it carries profound weight and it improves the lot of Man. There is not one among us who is incapable of utilizing the musculature to muster a smile yet there are so few thrown around. Even if a nice smile to the delivery man doesn’t get a few cents knocked off the price, he or she might be having a bad day, because of that, someone else might get a smile, and your goodness will have cascaded.

 

When we see a failure of government, society and culture, is does not follow we should loose faith in our fellow man, only in those things which have failed us. People are people everyone strives to get ahead, to deny that, is to deny humanity. When people fail there is almost always a negative backlash. When an institution fails however, that institution usually offers up some scape goat. One that, to fix, will result in more power for that institution. This is the way institutions grow. They fail, get more power because of that failure, and fail again… People are not like institutions however, we pay for our mistakes, and so are more trustworthy.

 

Most of us just want to get along. I bet almost everyone would like to be a hero, if the opportunity is convenient, safe and public. The number who are malevolent in their hearts are few but we weigh all our fellows on that scale. Yet, common sense tells us that if people were as bad as the media makes us out, society would crumble. We are urged to trust those institutions that fail us all the time, with absolute power, while mistrusting other human beings to the point of demanding them disarmed. What we loose sight of in the culturally induced panic is what we really loose. It is by your neighbor having a gun that makes it ever so less likely that someone who is malevolent will break into your home.

 

Prayer is a great way to focus the mind on good and weaken evil. The Capitalist’s prayer is one that does just that:

Lord God,

I pray that somehow and in someway,

I improve the lot of all humanity,

And that my existence be a blessing on mankind forever…. Amen

In our system, where we compete to meet the needs of our fellow human beings. Those who meet others needs best can be said to have improved the lot of mankind. So we can say, in a market system, wealth goes to those who are a blessing on mankind. Wealth makes many other things possible.

 

A new year is an opportunity to make the future something different than what it otherwise would be. How often we are given that chance, always rejecting it to continue on a path we dislike, find repellant and lowers us. Think good thoughts, expect good things, do good things, Pray, smile, be more trusting of people and less of institutions. Don’t allow yourself to be corralled into group think that empowers the elite at our cost. Just as the carpenter uses chalk lines, to get a building straight, these are also tools, tools that each of us can use to get our own lives, and society, straight.

 

 

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Standards Based Society Versus Regulated Society

Posted on December 26, 2013 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, standards are better for humanity than regulation, but regulation is better for the elite. Standards encourage commerce while regulations are, by design, intended to give some politically favored group, privilege. Standards drive people to self regulate. Observation shows us that as regulation grows standards drop. The same can be said of the reverse, when standards go up regulation goes down. We can also glean from observation that economies function best when standards are high and regulation is low. The economic history of the World is adamant that these assertions are truths. So why are we in a regulatory spiral that can only end in total government?

 

When asked what would he do if he were made emperor, Confucius said, “I would rectify the use of terms,” or in other words, standardize. Imagine if a gallon sold by a dairy was one size, but when the farmer sold it to the dairy the measure of a gallon was smaller, to help the farmer with his feed costs. Perhaps the amount in a gallon was different at the pump than it was for the refiner? That is exactly how it would work if a gallon were regulated instead of standardized. We have weights and measures that are standardizations not regulations. A gallon is a set amount of liquid or gas.

 

Have you ever wondered why a law passed by Congress and signed by the President has so many pages? Or why those pages expand so much once the bureaucracy gets hold of them? Especially as compared to the short description of any standard? This is because regulations are designed to benefit some politically favored group. Much of the extra wording is to make sure politically unfavored groups don’t get the benefit. But a standard has no exceptions everyone is held to the same code.

 

Since observation tells us that an economy functions best when standards are high and regulation is low, it would seem logical to move any society from a dependence on regulation, to an ethos of standards. Again, any examination of the history of economics shows that when regulation distorts any market, at some point the distortion becomes so great it overpowers the cohesive forces in that economy, blowing bubbles then bursting them or recessions, occur. All of economics is about trying to change this observation of reality.

 

Economists seek to gain control over the economic cycle so government can be the arbiter of who gets what. When an economist gets a Nobel Prize he or she has discovered some means to wrest the reigns of economics from the free market. The holy grail to the elite is total control over the means of production. If that were to occur, distribution would be according to political favor, and who has more political favor than politicians? They would get the lion’s share of the goods of society. If this seems presumptuous, because it rests on the egoism of the elite, I will remind you, President Obama argued; Some doctors are cutting off the legs of patients simply to get the money. How can anyone make a claim that rests so much on the villainous nature of Man unless he has that diabolical himself? Especially since the allegation was, and is false, but only propagandist rhetoric to push the masses. How much less does my argument rest on the egoistic nature of Man? They justify their means by their glorious ends, no mater the hypocrisy of it.

 

There is a faction of the World intelligentsia that believe more regulation and fewer standards is a good thing, they call themselves the Frankfurt School. Their philosophy is a direct contradiction of the largest part of philosophers, like Socrates, who argued in The Republic; justice is a good we do for the intrinsic goodness of it… thereby benefiting all of society, or Confucius, who contended the leaders must lead by example. The Frankfurt School follows the philosophy of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. The common threads among these philosophers are their belief in the materialistic nature of the universe, and that human beings can be “evolved,” Moreover, there can be no absolute truth or morality, due to their strictly materialistic view of the World. Nietzsche argued in, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that the way to the over man is under. Or that by the chaos created by crime, poverty and oppression, that would result from everyone doing whatever the hell they want, whenever they wanted to, because they are holding themselves to whatever standard they thought best, from saint to sadist.

 

The Frankfurt School believes that through changing the state, history, society and culture they can evolve human beings into super men, who are in touch with their social natures instead of our individual selves. This means are acceptable to them because, the means are the ends. Since they believe society will be best once people are forced to evolve, to whatever vision the holder has, and in the future all the ills that we find ourselves in will evaporate. Of course, the Frankfurt School’s whole thesis depends on the changing the very essence, of what makes us human beings. They presume to fundamentally change us by changing everything around us and in extreme cases killing those that hinder evolution. Standards are a road block while regulations pave the way. To that end, what would be more effective of gaining the power to evolve us, but by moving the paradigm from standardization to regulation? Because of the deprivation of people, the ends will have been made possible, by the means becoming an end.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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