Dear Friends,
It seems a self evident fact to me… some people have more power to effect the course of humanity than others. Those people just met in Washington DC to connive their next move. In that they begrudge us the little effect we still have and seek with all their malevolent might to divest us of it. With terms like, “Stakeholder Capitalism,” that is corporatism or fascism by other names, they openly tell us, “You will own nothing and be happy.” As if that wasn’t Orwellian enough they announced that in a few years the SWIFT system (System for International Settlements) will be replaced by Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). How totalitarian of the elite. Yes, some people have more power than all of the rest of us, and they want even more. Is that sane… or pathological?
There is a term, enough, that is lost on some people. Some people can never get enough, be it money, sex or power. They are a black hole, the more it consumes the more voracious it gets. While it in and of itself is a terrible burden, when that gluttony goes unhindered, the rest of us suffer as well. Those gluttons who get big enough bend society, economics and politics around them as a singularity bends light, space time and has an event horizon. Time eventually ends them all, and even their legacies, but perhaps it would be wise to stop them from getting that big in the first place? Since it would be immoral to try to change someone’s nature, the Pareto curve is so unrelenting, and socialism only exacerbates the problem, then the answer would be… as total a meritocracy as possible.
The basic argument boils down to, who is better suited to rule, us (the hoi polloi) or the experts? The consensus of experts is that experts should have unlimited power, wielded through a global administrative state. Hard to argue against the experts, unless you realize referring to someone as an expert, who is an expert in another field, is call to false authority. It is the go to for the experts today. Instead of turning off our brains because someone is called an expert, by liars, perchance we could base our verdicts on the power of the argument, rather than the perceived authority of the speaker. Trusting authority instead of the logic of the argument is why children don’t know if they are boys or girls today. Now that we have established what the experts think… what do you think?
Those of us who practice pragmatism have to decide which has yielded better results, rule by experts or self government? The experts gave us the French Revolution and its government, the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. All of which excelled in death by government. With these setting the pattern how could a government go wrong? On the other hand, self government brought us the United States, prior to the 1930’s rise in the Administrative state. A period of unmatched gains in prosperity, technology and science. There have been glitches, the War Between the States for example, but all in all the United States has been a beacon for the world to follow. Doubt it? Then why do so many risk life and limb to get here? They vote with their feet for self government, as it is.
Just because rule by experts has always resulted in the mass deaths of the ruled, doesn’t mean it will happen again on a global scale, but it does suggest that is the trajectory the experts have put us on, again. That the powerful begrudge the weak any say at all is not simply haughty, hypocritical and half witted, but shows a total lack of self awareness. Then again psychopaths are rarely self astute. Since self rule has worked so well in the past, wouldn’t it behoove us to go back to it, instead of trusting the experts who have let us down so many times in the past? That would be the pragmatic thing to do. An idealist would argue, global corporatist socialism is what they have always needed to get Utopia to work. Ignoring the past, they feel the experts should have unchecked power… I don’t, do you?
Sincerely,
John Pepin
