Change To Believe In

"Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today."
--Phil Conners (Groundhog Day)

Midterm elections are tomorrow. Like the presidential elections two years ago, it appears many folks will be voting for 'change.'

The problem is that both parties are more alike than different in their habits. To the extent that these habits are chronically ineffective, then it seems that we'll be conducting 'change' elections, replacing current non-performers with slates of future non-performers, into perpetuity.

Groundhog Day at the ballot box...

The Tea Party suggests that we've drifted from Constitutional values of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets and that they need to be restored. I believe that's correct. But returning to those values after decades of learned behavior to the contrary seems a daunting task.

When a problem gets intractable, sometimes it helps to reframe it. So here goes...

The problem can be seen as stemming from a massive and growing market for political favor. Politicians have the capacity to collect and redistribute resources to the highest bidder. Citizens affiliate with special interest groups (SIGs) either to increase their purchasing power, or to try to protect what they have from confiscation. A negative consequence of this reinforcing system is that it erodes voluntary cooperation in society, which at the very least adversely impacts economic production and standard of living.

When the problem is viewed thru this lens, the root cause can be traced to political access to resources and discretionary authority to mete them out. Cut access to resources, eliminate the problem.

Two levers, if pulled, would do the trick:

1) Repeal Sixteenth Amendment. Ratified in 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment papered over the clause in Article 1 Section 9 of the Constitution that limited Congress's power to tax. Not surprisingly, government size has exploded higher since. Repeal an amendment, seriously? We've done it before. The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment related to prohibition.

2) Shut down the Federal Reserve. Removing tax receipts would put a big dent in the resource pool that can be sold in the market for political favor. However, as long as government controls money supply, then politicians retain massive confiscatory power. The Federal Reserve Act, also passed in 1913, gives government the authority to do just that. For years, citizens of the US have largely been asleep w.r.t. to the varied consequences here (here's one of them), altho more seem to be awakening to what's going on here.

Repeal the 16th Amendment and end the Fed, and watch the market for political favor slow to a trickle.

And that would be change to believe in...