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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Immigration Reform

Posted on December 22, 2013 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, the immigration bill that is winding it’s way through the legislature, should be called “The wage suppression act of 2013.” Let’s face it, the United States does not have a shortage of workers, we have a shortage of jobs. The labor participation rate in the US is falling at an epic rate. The US is in fact the only industrialized country that has a falling labor participation rate. Couple that tidbit with the fact that unemployment is still high by historic standards, and one can only conclude, that for some reason jobs are not being created in America today. Now, to a person with normal thinking, when a country is hemorrhaging jobs, that would be a bad time to introduce millions of new workers… wouldn’t it? Unless the elite think that the reason jobs are becoming more and more scarce is because wages are too high. If that is the case then those in power would do what they can to lower the wages of workers, for example, bring in millions of new workers to compete for fewer and fewer jobs, IE the wage suppression act.

 

Are wages too high in the US today? If we look at wages for skilled and unskilled work in the US, adjusted for inflation, we find that wages are at a historic low. All wage categories, except upper management, bureaucrats, and politicians, have been on a slide down. Wages in the low skilled sector have taken the biggest hit but the high skilled sector has been stagnant for years as well. Engineers in the US, back in the nineteen eighties were at about one hundred thousand a year, and are still at that rate today. Many argue this is because companies like Microsoft, Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM, etc… have been hiring immigrants instead of American engineers. These firms claim there are no Americans capable of doing these high skilled jobs, and that is why these high tech companies are pushing so hard for immigration reform, but facts fly in their faces.

 

Today colleges and universities in the US are turning out record numbers of high skilled people. These new college grads are entering the workforce at a time when there are few jobs and less opportunities. As a case in point, ask the waiter next time you go out to eat, if he or she has a college degree. More likely than not they do. When a college graduate must wait tables, he or she dislocates lower skilled workers, and so lacking a job they fall out of the workforce. So, we must ask ourselves, why are so many skilled people working so far below their potential? Moreover, with wages so low and opportunities so rare, no wonder recent college graduates are depressed and angry, therefore they have the time and are willing to participate in the Wall Street protests.

 

This would seem to indicate that it is not wages that is negatively effecting job creation but some other factor. When Ronald Reagan was elected there was a similar dearth of jobs. Unemployment was high and wages had stagnated. The course Reagan put the US on was not one of raising taxes, regulation, government stimulus and creating new entitlements, what Reagan did was lower taxes, deregulate and ratchet down the entitlement mindset. Calvin Coolidge did the same thing. What was the results of these policies? High GDP growth, rising wages, lower crime, low unemployment and the creation of the term “yuppies.” If you don’t remember what a Yuppy was, it meant a young upwardly mobile person… an all but extinct species today.

 

Since Obama has taken office he has raised a whole slew of taxes, from income to fees and introducing a whole new tax regime, Obama care. His party has regulated everything they can find. Our banking system reels under the weight of Dodd Frank, and the trillion dollar stimulus went entirely to rich political hacks, who went bankrupt as soon as the government check cleared, with not a job to show for it. The Federal Reserve has printed trillions of dollars, to counter the negative effects of Obama’s policies, to no avail. The only people making out well are the uber rich, (you know, the people Obama claims to hate, but spends all his time on Martha’s Vineyard with), government workers and politicians. Washington DC is a boom town awash in money and power while Main Street USA crumbles.

 

So why import millions of new workers who will work for far less than Americans can? The only logical answer to that question is to lower the wages of Americans. Why would the government do that? To diminish the political power of the people and create disquiet in society. Remember, the worse conditions are for the people, the more power politicians get. Since power is their goal, not creating the conditions for a stable wealthy society, the unrest that… diminishing wages, resentment of immigrants, and the crime these beget, drives demand for more regulation, more government oversight, more police, more surveillance, in short, more power to government and the elite. Our compassion for the children of illegal immigrants, is being exploited to lower our standard of living, therefore enhancing the political power of the elite. This should come as no surprise, the new class’ goal has always been to reestablish the power they lost to the bourgeoisie a few centuries ago. Back to the good old days, when there were only two classes, the aristocracy and peasants.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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Incentives, in the Long and Short Term

Posted on December 19, 2013 by john

Dear Friends,

 

It seems to me, incentives count, in every facet of human existence. People can be relied on to do what is in their immediate interests. Long term interests however, have less bearing on what we do, because the consequences are distant, while the consequences of short term actions are at hand, so they count more. As more negative incentive build up in society we can reasonably expect more negative actions by people. This is a fundamental fact of economics. That is why the incentives in a society are possibly the most important factor in the real standard of living of that society.

 

If the building you are in is on fire and you are trapped in a room on the 20th floor, what can you do? Jump out the window, landing is simply the next problem you have to solve. The world we live in demands immediate actions and our thinking has evolved to satisfy those needs. When we get up we think about the day at hand and not so much about the coming year. It is mere human nature. So when our immediate needs and wants are blocked by regulation, or encouraged by culture, we react within those constraints. The long term results of those actions are rarely considered.

 

Governments around the world have taken on a new role in the lives of people, to mitigate the negative consequences of negative behavior. Even a cursory look at the goal of most modern regulation and laws illustrates the point. Abortion free of charge and for any reason is one such example. It’s sole purpose is to allow people to engage in socially damaging conduct without short term consequences. What is the welfare state except a means to encourage men to abandon their families? Even a seemingly benign law like Social Security encourages profligate spending during the high earning years of a person’s lifetime, despite the fact it leaves people with insufficient funds to actually retire on.

 

Economic incentives that are socially damaging abound. Regulations that demand banks lend money to people who cannot pay that money back directly led to the banking crisis of 2008, environmental laws that drive businesses into bankruptcy fill thousands of pages, while unemployment benefits are extended regularly, the Federal Reserve is printing billions of dollars a month to mask the negative effects of government policies, like high taxes and stifling regulations, savers are punished by the low returns driven by the Federal Reserve’s monetizing the debt while spenders are encouraged, class warfare are encouraged by the elite, while government officials are allowed to skirt their own laws with almost total impunity.

 

These are just the tip of the iceberg of negative incentives government rakes our virtues with. Many are a crass means to grasp political power, by manipulating our compassion, only serving to increase the very things they are supposed to eliminate. Perhaps the most pernicious thing about negative incentives is the way they lower the outcomes of individuals. There is a story about a woman in her 60s who lives in her father’s basement, while her father, in his 80s, travels the world. If we apply that story to the next generation, their economic outcomes will be lower than hers, and the next’s will be even lower. As government creates more and more negative incentives the economic future of each generation gets worse and worse. Eventually lowering the economic outcomes of Americans to that of the third world.

 

Young people, who are most negatively effected, get to have their immediate wants met. Sex with strangers at any time anyplace fueled by changing cultural mores and free birth control, if that fails, (or they fail to use it), free abortion on demand is the backup. This clearly leads to a promiscuous society. Those babies that slip past the abortionist’s knife are born fatherless, because the State is ready to step in and take his place. This leads to men who never mature. Why save when the savings of others are at your disposal? The elite have created a system where virtuous behavior is punished and bad behavior is rewarded. Is it any wonder there is so much bad behavior? It can truly be said that today’s young people will pay the highest price.

 

Now we stand here, reading the latest results of the negative incentives our society and government promote, aghast at the news we are assaulted with daily. The knock out game both horrifies and befuddles us, school shootings become more common, people have less money for retirement, wages get lower even as jobs get fewer, 60 year old women live in their father’s basement, while he travels the world, and our own government monitors us with increasing intrusiveness, to counter the negative incentives… and we sigh, how could this happen? In our hearts we know, but we are loathe to do what it takes to turn the ship around. The right thing is always the hard thing, because it is painful in the short term, for rewards in the long term.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John Pepin

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