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
