Breaking Away

"I have to believe that when things are bad I can change them."
--Jim Braddock (Cinderella Man)

Like many (most) in this country I was largely ignorant/apathetic to political process. Then came the 2000 election, 9/11, the Afghan and Iraq wars, the housing bubble. All the while massive imbalances--well expressed by quantity of debt at personal, corporate, and country levels--continued to escalate geometrically. Recent attempts by market forces to rectify these imbalances have been met with more interventionary measures to restrain them.

These events motivated self study into government and political process. I've read the Constitution at least 100 times over the past 5 yrs. I've studied the founding context to better understand the forces that drove the framers. A grasp of government:banking links also seemed prudent. More recently I've tried to gain better understanding of the 1910s-1940s--a period that ushered inflectionary change for the US. And I've tried to get a better handle on socialism because government control of productive assets has clearly been increasing for the past 100 yrs.

One of the many conclusions I have reached, and I'm certainly not the only one who has reached it, is that we've been moving away from the founding intent of this country. The Founders sought a republic that would permit individuals to live in a free manner. Although some believe the door was left open for reversal by the Constitution's wording, the intent was clearly to limit central government power. Via their own (and I should add quite remarkable) study of government and politics, the Founders understood that the best, and perhaps only, prospect for liberty lay in a decentralized design where social power would outweigh authoritarian tendencies of the State.

While the framers clearly understood State opportunism, I'm not sure they adequately stress tested the design to withstand crisis conditions. It is under conditions of real threat that people are more prone to cede liberty in favor of security. And it has been under the auspices of crisis over the past 100 yrs that the State has appropriated large chunks of power.

The problem for the State is that imbalances grow with the power it amasses. The State is a destroyer, not a creator, of economic value. The State can employ debt and inflation to mask deterioration in standard of living but their effect is illusory--and temporary. Why? Because debt and inflation drive the imbalances, and at some point the system will no longer tolerate additional debt or currency debasement.

We may be close to that point. Politicians are increasingly brazen as they go about their business to manipulate the system. For current examples, look no further than the health care 'reform' episode, where overt actions of political bribery and thuggery have surprised even me. That the constitutionality of such interventions is rarely questioned anymore provides a good indication that our system is out of control.

History suggests that regaining control is less likely than system failure.