Friday, December 29, 2023

Bill Bonner, "Hardwired for Disaster"

Ed. Note: Members of the Bonner Private Research team are spending time with respective family and friends over the holiday period. But we didn’t want to leave you, our dear reader, empty handed. So please enjoy these complimentary excerpts from Bill’s last book, "Un-Civilizing America: How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better," available on Amazon, here.

"Hardwired for Disaster"
An excerpt from Bill's last book, "Un-Civilizing America:
 How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better"
by Bill Bonner

"Driving down the road in rural France one evening, we observed a rabbit in front of the car. The animal feinted to the left, and then to the right, trying to fake out its pursuer. The tactic, passed along by the survivors of past win-lose encounters, was now embedded as instinct. Had the rabbit been chased by a dog or a fox, it probably would have given him a slight advantage. Against a Nissan Patrol, however, it was counterproductive. Embedded myths, like moral lessons, are dependent on the conditions in which they were derived. Had the animal simply jumped out of the road, it would have survived. The car paid no attention to the feint. It ran right over the rabbit.

The instinct to fight... to defend... to take up arms against an invader... was embedded in a time when the scale of information was much smaller. Back then, all the available information was private. Its quality was very high.

As civilization evolved, with larger and larger communities, information evolved, too. It got bigger and more abundant. But the quality was less sure. Myths filled in for truth. Some were more appropriate to the new circumstances. Others, nourished by the new media, stirred old instincts... and brought disaster.

In 1945, people in Hiroshima went about their business. But things were getting tough for the Japanese. The U.S. controlled the seas and the air. This cut Japan off from its supply lines, leaving it hungry... and without any real means to defend itself. People were already dying of hunger-related diseases - such as tuberculosis and beriberi. Young and old had been enrolled in the war effort, responding to air raid drills daily... with buckets of water at hand to put out fires, and practicing diving under beds to protect themselves from bombs. Every house also had a sharpened bamboo stick at the doorway to fight off American soldiers.

Any sober observer could see the situation was hopeless. An observer with access to details of the Manhattan Project could see the threat was existential. Bamboo spears and mattresses were no defense against an atomic bomb. But the Japanese - or some of them, at least -believed Emperor Hirohito was divine. It might be hard going now. But when they looked ahead, the myth blocked their vision. They couldn’t see how they could lose the war, because that would mean the Emperor had lost to mortals... and not even Japanese mortals at that.

The Japanese discovered the weakness of this myth on August 6, 1945. It was not only inappropriate, it was deadly. Within seconds, the rabbit was crushed - the center of Hiroshima was obliterated as temperatures rose higher than on the surface of the sun. Steel melted. Internal organs vaporized.

Leaping to Absurdity: The average man can’t know what is in his hotdogs or how his nation’s medical system works. Even its weights and measures are a mystery. He believes in ghosts; he doubts a moon landing ever took place.

He wonders how many inches to a gallon. He can’t find Ukraine on a map... he believes the Declaration of Independence is a terrorist document... and as for Muslims, he is sure they are up to no good, even though he’s never met one. He relies on his elites to deal with these complex matters... and counts on them to treat him fairly. When they don’t, he gets a noose in his hands and looks for someone to hang, though not necessarily the fellow who has it coming.

There will always be some people who are stronger, smarter, faster, more charming, better marksmen, more productive, etc. Society always sorts itself into a hierarchical, pyramidal structure, with the elites on top and the masses at the bottom. The elites help the masses by separating good myths from bad ones... facts from lies... and foolish notions from useful ideas. They help administer justice with calm, sensible, common law courts, rather than lynch mobs. They provide the technical expertise for indoor plumbing and computer networks. They offer spiritual guidance and make the trains run on time.

Elites have power. And power invites corruption. In a modern, large-scale empire, the elites have so much power that double-dealing is almost inevitable. Then, the elites turn the rest of the population into chumps. Instead of challenging and correcting the fake news that motivates the mob, the elites encourage even more extravagant illusions.

We have to annihilate ISIS in Syria or no man in Iowa will be safe. The Fed makes our economy stronger by faking interest rates and flooding it with “savings” (credit) that no one ever saved. The Department of Education can make us smarter... the Department of Defense can make us safer... and the Department of Gender Affairs can make us better human beings. All they need is more power and more money!

The typical citizen is expected to believe six impossible things before breakfast and another half dozen before lunch. He has no easy way of distinguishing a fake myth from the useful myths that are essential to his survival. He’s too far away in every sense.

In the twenty-first century, he hears terrorists pose a threat... and he puts it in the same box as an imminent attack by a hostile tribe. His emotions - not his mind - are engaged. He sees his wife ravaged in front of his eyes... and his children carried off into slavery. He leaps to absurdity... taking up arms against an enemy that exists only as a mythical public artifact... and choosing as his champion the biggest, most self-confident alpha-male numbskull in the tribe.

Then it gets worse. The “us” enterprise - whether it is a war on terror, a war on drugs, or a war on poverty - depends on keeping “us” in line. Myths need believers. And when people stop believing... Poof! The myth disappears.

That’s why there is so much pressure to not think independently, but instead, to go along with whatever cockamamie program is in the news. That’s why you must be solidaire, as the French say, with public policy, no matter how absurd it is. Fortunately for the myths and the people who benefit from them, most people go along. They stand behind their leaders, no matter what pathetic losers they are. And they regard anyone who doesn’t as a traitor."

Adventures With Danno, "Stocking Up At Sam's Club! Buying What We Can!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 12/29/23
"Stocking Up At Sam's Club! Buying What We Can!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Sam's Club and are stocking up on some of these sales going on for the month of "December 2023! We take you with us as we show all the different deals and things we are adding to our stockpile!"
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "Alert: Government Warns Citizens; Korea Nuke Emergency; Iran War Coming"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/29/23
"Alert: Government Warns Citizens; 
Korea Nuke Emergency; Iran War Coming"
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up: 5 Unstoppable Trends for 2024"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up:
5 Unstoppable Trends for 2024"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"In this last Weekly News Wrap-Up of 2023, I stand back and look at the biggest unstoppable trends coming in 2024. They are in no particular order:

War will continue in various spots around the world especially in the Middle East.

Democrats divide themselves on massive illegal immigration, economy and Israel.

Revelations about voter fraud and desperation over Trump winning in 2024 reach a peak.

Economy tanks in 2024 so badly, everybody will know it’s a massive depression.

Nothing will stop the wake-up call for the CV19 bioweapon shots designed to make people sick and murder them. At least 700 million Cv19 injections were given in USA alone. The CV19 shots were “intentionally toxic,” and nearly everybody will finally realize this - even Senator Bernie Sanders." There is much more in the 38-minute newscast.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these 
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 12/29/23.

"15 Fast Food Chains Are In Serious Trouble Now"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 12/28/23
"15 Fast Food Chains Are In Serious Trouble Now"
"In the fast-paced realm of the modern culinary landscape, fast food chains have long been a staple for those seeking quick, convenient, and often indulgent meals. However, the winds of change are blowing through the industry, casting a shadow over some of the once-dominant players."
Comments here:

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Scott Ritter, "Israel Battles 7-Front War, Over 21K Palestinians Dead"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 12/28/23
"Israel Battles 7-Front War, Over 21K Palestinians Dead"
Comments here:

Gerald Celente, "Dollar Dying And World War III Ramping Up!"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal, 12/28/23
"Dollar Dying And World War III Ramping Up!"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Breathing Light"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Breathing Light"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.
Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

"There Was Truth..."

"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. 
There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth 
even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
- George Orwell, “1984”

The Poet: Rod McKuen, "A Cat Named Sloopy"


"A Cat Named Sloopy"

"For awhile
the only earth that Sloopy knew
  was in her sandbox.
Two rooms were her domain.
Every night she'd sit in the window
among the avocado plants
waiting for me to come home,
       my arms full of canned liver and love.
We'd talk into the night then,
contented,
 but missing something.
She the earth she never knew,
me the hills I ran
  while growing bent.
Sloopy should have been a cowboy's cat,
with prairies to run,
not linoleum,
and real-live catnip mice,
no one to depend on but herself.

I never told her,
but in my mind
I was a midnight cowboy even then.
Riding my imaginary horse
 down Forty-second street,
 going off with strangers
 to live an hour-long cowboy's life.
   But always coming home to Sloopy,
     who loved me best.
   For a dozen summers
 we lived against the world.
An island on an island.
She'd comfort me with purring,
I'd fatten her with smiles.
We grew rich on trust,
         needing not the beach or butterflies.
I had a friend named Ben
Who painted buildings like Roualt men.
  He went away.
My laughter tired Lillian
after a time,
   she found a man who only smiled.
    But Sloopy stayed and stayed.

Winter,
       Nineteen fifty-nine,    
Old men walk their dogs.
Some are walked so often
that their feet leave
little pink tracks
in the soft snow.

Women, fur on fur,
elegant and easy,
only slightly pure,
hailing cabs to take them
  round the block and back.
Who is not a love seeker
when December comes?
Even children pray to Santa Claus.
I had my own love safe at home,
and yet I stayed out all one night,
 the next day too.

They must have thought me crazy
    screaming SLOOPY!
 SLOOPY!
as the snow came falling
down around me.

I was a madman
to have stayed away
 one minute more
  than the appointed hour.
I'd like to think a golden cowboy
snatched her from the window sill,
 and safely saddlebagged
she rode to Arizona.
She's stalking lizards
in the cactus now perhaps,
  bitter, but free.
 I'm bitter too,
and not a free man anymore.

  But once upon a time,
In New York's jungle in a tree,     
before I went into the world
in search of other kinds of love,
nobody owned me but a cat named Sloopy.
   Looking back,
perhaps she's been
the only human thing
that ever gave back love to me.” 
                                                                                                
- Rod McKuen

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The thought of the disaster which almost certainly lay in wait for the Other Men threw me into a horror of doubt about the universe in which such a thing could happen. That a whole world of intelligent beings could be destroyed was not an unfamiliar idea to me; but there is a great difference between an abstract possibility and a concrete and inescapable danger. On my native planet, whenever I had been dismayed by the suffering and the futility of individuals, I had taken comfort in the thought that at least the massed effect of all our blind striving must be the slow but glorious awakening of the human spirit. This hope, this certainty, had been the one sure consolation. But now I saw that there was no guarantee of any such triumph. It seemed that the universe, or the maker of the universe, must be indifferent to the fate of worlds. That there should be endless struggle and suffering and waste must of course be accepted; and gladly, for these were the very soil in which the spirit grew. But that all struggle should be finally, absolutely vain, that a whole world of sensitive spirits fail and die, must be sheer evil. In my horror it seemed to me that Hate must be the Star Maker.

Not so to Bvalitu. "Even if the powers destroy us," he said, "who are we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own high ends, use our strength and our weakness, our joy and our pain, in some theme inconceivable to us, and excellent." But I protested, "What theme could justify such waste, such futility? And how can we help judging; and how otherwise can we judge than by the light of our own hearts, by which we judge ourselves? It would be base to praise the Star Maker, knowing that he was too insensitive to care about the fate of his worlds." Bvalitu was silent in his mind for a moment. Then he looked up, searching among the smoke-clouds for a daytime star. And then he said to me in his mind, "If he saved all the worlds, but tormented just one man, would you forgive him? Or if he was a little harsh only to one stupid child? What has our pain to do with it, or our failure? Star Maker! It is a good word, though we can have no notion of its meaning. Oh, Star Maker, even if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest. Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so, it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right."

He looked down once more upon the ruined city, then continued, "And if after all there is no Star Maker, if the great company of galaxies leapt into being of their own accord, and even if this little nasty world of ours is the only habitation of the spirit anywhere among the stars, and this world doomed, even so, even so, I must praise. But if there is no Star Maker, what can it be that I praise? I do not know. I will call it only the sharp tang and savor of existence. But to call it this is to say little."
- Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker"
o
Freely download “Star Maker”, by Olaf Stapledon, here 

"Don't Give Up..."

 

The Daily "Near You?"

Fullerton, N. Dakota, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Ubuntu"

 

"Sticks And Stones..."

“Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. 
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.”
- Robert Fulghum

"Every Normal Man..."

 

"2023: The Year Humanity Died"

"2023: The Year Humanity Died"
By Seraj Assi

"As a Palestinian who was born two generations apart from the Nakba, I have never imagined that one day I would witness the genocide of my people unfold before my eyes in broad daylight. While I always feared the prospect of a Second Nakba, as many Palestinians do, I have never dreamed, not even in my worst nightmares, that I would live it, witness it, and write about it.

In my happy Palestinian innocence, I believed that even if Israel was keen on repeating the Nakba, or attempting to “finish the job of 1948,” as many Israeli officials have threatened over the years, the Free World would not allow it to happen. In my wishful thinking, I believed that the world had learned its lesson since the Nakba. Yes, the world failed the Palestinian people in 1948. Yes, it allowed Israel to carry out its ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of Palestinians. Yes, it abandoned the Palestinian refugees, and rewarded Israel with a United Nations recognition and membership. But that was 75 years ago, the age of genocides and holocausts. A lot of progress had been made since, I told myself. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. The U.N. evolved. Human rights groups mushroomed. Mandela won the Nobel Peace. True, genocide would occur so often and so uncontested in the decades since, but after the horrific genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the leaders of the Free World seemed to have had enough! They seemed adamant not to allow another genocide to happen—Never Again! Not in Palestine, not again!

Summit after summit, they vowed that such atrocities had no place in the new century. Even when the new century in Palestine ushered in the Second Intifada and the collapse of the Oslo Accords, I still believed that the horrors of the past were in check. Even when Israel mushroomed in size, and the settlements tripled, and the apartheid system was closing in on the Palestinians in the West Bank, and the merciless siege suffocating those in Gaza, where one million children were born and raised in captivity, I still believed that that was the peak of our suffering and nothing remotely close the terrors of Rwanda or Bosnia, or indeed the First Nakba, would happen to us, because the world was watching, and it was ready to dispatch its postwar moral arsenal to stop it!

As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war.

I was dead wrong. For three bloody months since the Gaza Genocide first unfolded, the Free World has sat there watching, and cheering, and mocking us to death. During the first weeks, I still held onto my naïve optimism. True, the Free World betrayed Palestinians in Gaza; it allowed Israel to act with impunity; it tolerated its war crimes and mass atrocities; it denied the children of Gaza even the pretense of humanity. But ultimately it was bound to come to its senses and unleash its moral diplomacy to end this horror. So I persisted in my optimism. Perhaps the world needed more time to fathom what was happening. Perhaps it was waiting for a few more thousands of Palestinians to be killed before making its drastic move. Yet week after week, the world remained silent, blind to our deaths, deaf to our sufferings.

One month into the bloodshed, after Israel had killed 1,000 children, I said that’s it; the world would make its move now, if only to save the children! But the U.S. responded by vetoing a humanitarian cease-fire that could have saved thousands of innocent lives! A month after, when the death toll of children reached 10,000, I said enough is enough; it’s high time the world acted NOW, because humanity itself is at stake! U.N. officials had already sounded the alarm that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children,” so no one could pretend they did not know. The time to act was now or never! Yet there was another U.S. veto; another cold hand was raised to issue a new death sentence for Palestinians. Another spit in the face of humanity!

Now I’m lost for words. I have lost faith in humanity. The staggering death toll in Gaza is humanly impossible to fathom or accept without losing our sense of shared humanity. As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war. I know for certain that I will not emerge from this tragedy the same person I was before. None of us will.

Gaza may be annihilated, but it’s not going anywhere. When the dust of war settles, it will sit on our global conscience for generations to come. It will be a permanent stain on our humanity. The children of Gaza will not forget, if they survive. The living will remember, and the dead will haunt us forever. Gaza will be remembered not only as the crime of the century, but also as the site of our greatest shame, where humanity failed.

2023 will go down in history as the darkest in Palestine - the year humanity died." 

Free Download: Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”
o
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
An excerpt from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.
Full text of “Francisco’s Money Speech” is here:

Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Sane Who Know..."

“Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.”
- W.H Auden

"A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart, but at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion."
 - Charlyn Khatero

"A Hammer Blow..."

"Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie."
- Dean Koontz

Bill Bonner, "Trust in Gov"

Ed. Note: Members of the Bonner Private Research team are spending time with respective family and friends over the holiday period. But we didn’t want to leave you, our dear reader, empty handed. So please enjoy these complimentary excerpts from Bill’s last book, "Un-Civilizing America: How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better," available on Amazon, here.

"Trust in Gov"
An excerpt from Bill's last book, "Un-Civilizing America:
 How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better"
by Bill Bonner

"Civilization and its win-win deals both require trust. And they help bring it about. You need to trust that your barber won’t cut your throat and that your money will still be worth something tomorrow. Then, the more often you get shaved without having your throat cut, the more you trust that your barber won’t slash your throat - ever.

Trust is probably deeply etched in our social programming. Out on the savannah, a pre-human had to trust that his companions wouldn’t run away when they faced down a pack of hyenas. Survival required those in small groups to trust one another... to use all available eyes to watch out for trouble and all available hands to fight off danger. And even today, cowardice in the face of the enemy - being untrustworthy in battle - is the worst sin a soldier can commit.

Generally, “high-trust” societies are more prosperous than low-trust societies. Switzerland, for example, has a much higher per capita income than Haiti or the Congo. Trusting societies are richer because trust increases the efficiency of investment and economic activity of all sorts. If you trust that your investment firm won’t rip you off, you can save on the amount of research and due diligence you might otherwise have to do. If you trust that your investments will always go up, there will be no need to hold unproductive cash as “insurance” or “hedge” positions. With less need for investigation and protection, you can simply take someone “at his word.” You can do more win-win deals. Knowledge and wealth grow faster.

And if trust is widespread, so is credit generally available on easy terms. When creditors are assured of getting paid back, in money that has not lost its value, they offer better terms. One of the strange things that happened in the last few years was that creditors made money available to selected borrowers (large institutional borrowers and governments) at negative rates. In theory, borrowers were paid to take money off lenders’ hands.

This was so bizarre (suggesting that lenders had more than 100% confidence that nothing would go wrong) that we will explore it further in a later chapter. Our point here is that the safer the currency, the market, and the firms in it appear, the richer the society... and the more tempting it is to defect. Typically, markets go in cycles, roughly corresponding to the ebb and flow of trust. As trust recedes, so do asset prices. Bond prices, for example, fall and yields rise as people lose faith in the future.

But remember, there are two ways of doing things, and two ways of getting what you want. And they’re not permanently fixed. As a society does more win-win deals, it becomes richer and more trusting. Then, win-lose deals and defection become relatively more rewarding. There are fewer armed guards, fewer locks, and fewer skeptical widows. Generally, as people become more trusting, it is easier to rip them off.

So, too, “pacifist” nations become easy targets for warlike people. Steven Pinker explains: "If a nation decides not to learn war any more, but its neighbor continues to do so, its pruning hooks will be no match for the neighbor’s spears, and it may find itself at the wrong end of an invading army."

In a broader sense, trust and the progress of civilization itself are cyclical, too.

The Great Leveler: A billboard in the Baltimore area simplifies the message of a local firm specializing in tort cases. “Get More!” it says. Chasing ambulances is a competitive business. It is not enough for a lawyer to promise a courtroom victory. After all, it’s not the principle of the thing. It’s the money. So, one billboard advertises “More Aggressive” lawyers. Another suggests that “You may be entitled to a big settlement.” Still another, from Johnnie Cochran’s outfit (Cochran is the attorney who helped O.J. Simpson beat the murder rap), says, “Turned down for disability? Let us help you get the money you deserve.”

This “Get More” message is not aimed at the rich. Instead, it is aimed at the poor and middle classes, where the target market seems to know exactly what it means. It is an effective message, too; it appeals to basic desires: greed, envy, and, sometimes, larceny. If you get in a traffic accident, slip on ice, or end up with a limp after hip surgery, you may have a chance to “get more” in a settlement. All you need is a mad-dog law firm fighting for you.

The ad, however, sounds a little crass, crude, or vulgar to most people. And in matters of public policy, they prefer to talk of “alleviating injustice” by “palliating inequality.” The name “Piketty” is frequently invoked.

In 2013, Barack Obama described the “defining challenge” of our time. The problem, he said, was a “dangerous and growing inequality.” He never explained why it was such a problem. In fact, we’ve never seen any real explanation. Some say it “causes instability.” Some, including Mr. Obama, say it’s “unfair.” Others think it “inhibits growth.” Most just don’t like the idea that some people are getting more than they are.

Getting more than the other guy is the theme of a book by Walter Scheidel. In "The Great Leveler", the Stanford professor worries about the inequality of income and wealth. He wonders - but not too hard - what causes it... and observes the awful circumstances in which the playing field is commonly leveled.

The phenomenon is well documented. The rich get richer. And richer. And richer. Why do the rich get so rich? Partly because they are smart, disciplined, and hard-working (the traditional Republican view). Partly because they are greedy capitalists, who use their money to gain more capital (they “make money when they sleep,” as French President François Mitterrand put it). And largely because the government colludes to rig the system on their behalf (our focus here).

Most people have nothing against the “deserving rich.” If they have done more win-win deals than others, they should enjoy more of the fruits. Nor does it bother us that people save their money rather than spend it, and that by putting it out to hire, they make more money for themselves. Nor does wealth “inequality” itself seem sinister or unjust. It doesn’t stick in our craw that we are much richer than the typical Pakistani peasant or much poorer than Donald Trump and his crony friends. The evidence suggests, at least to us, that it is not really wealth inequality that makes people mad; it is the win-lose deals that cause it.

Clever, ambitious people always want to get ahead. When they exercise their ambitions honestly, few complain. Periods of stability give them a chance to multiply their wealth by doing more win-win deals. Each win-win deal advances, in some small or large measure, the “wealth” of society and the satisfaction of the people in it. These win-win deals create surpluses, from which we get savings - capital - which can be applied to even more wealth-building. In the aggregate, everyone is better off.

The trouble is, there is always a temptation to cheat... to defect... to gain wealth, power, and status in the fastest, surest way: by taking it from someone else. That is how the win-losers benefit from periods of stability, too, burrowing into the rotten wood of government and building their nests in its nooks and crannies.

Over time, the number of chiselers and malingerers increases; the number of people contributing to growth and prosperity goes down. Insiders gain more power. The swamp gets deeper. This is why, too, after a war, it is frequently the losers who end up the winners. In the winning camp, the insiders get more and more of a hold on old industries and corrupt, geriatric government. In the losing camp, the old government has been dismantled... cronies and zombies have been chased away or killed; people are free to build new wealth on the rubble.

After World War II, for example, which were the world’s most dynamic economies? Germany and Japan. Within a single generation, the two bombed-out economies were back on top of the world, the second- and third-largest economies (after the U.S.) - until China took the lead in the twenty-first century.

The U.S. was king of the hill after World War II. Its industries were intact. Its ships ruled the seas. Its salesmen roamed the land, offering quality, American-made goods to a grateful world. But the Republic was already 170 years old. The beasts were already slouching toward the District of Columbia, bringing win-lose deals by the thousands. They were soon embedded in the 178,000 pages of the Code of Federal Regulations... and 75,000 pages of the U.S. “tax code.” The Obamacare regulations alone are eight times longer than the Bible."

Dan, I Allegedly, "No More Free Rent"; "Buy Car, Pay Later"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 12/28/23
"No More Free Rent"
"Explore the unsettling world of property squatters in our latest video. Witness the challenges faced by homeowners as individuals move into houses without renting or purchasing, living rent-free while causing damage. Join us as we discuss upcoming legislation led by Congressman Kevin Steele from Florida, aiming to criminalize this behavior. Stay informed on the legal efforts to address this issue and the potential impact on property rights."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 12/28/23
"Buy Car, Pay Later"
"People are buying cars right now with the same mentality of a small purchase. Buy now, pay later. People are getting payments extended for six months just to get in a new vehicle right now. People are also trading car after car just to make a smaller payment as possible."
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Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Kroger!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 12/28/23
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing some massive price increases on groceries! This is getting frustrating as we continue to see food becoming unaffordable in a lot of our main supermarkets!"
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Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell , 12/28/23
"I Decided to Work as a Russian Food Delivery Man"
"I decided to try my hand as a Russian Food Delivery Man, taking on the role of both store picker and physical delivery person. Working in a dark storee in Moscow, i got the chance to see what its like being a Russian Food Delivery Person. From the store shelf to the customers door step I did it all."
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Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Judge Napolitano, "Larry Johnson: IDF Is All Babies Army, Israel Never Beat Experienced Armies Like Hamas, Hezbollah"

Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, 12/27/23
"Larry Johnson: IDF Is All Babies Army, 
Israel Never Beat Experienced Armies Like Hamas, Hezbollah"
Comments here:

Must View! Canadian Prepper, "Breaking News! All Hell Is About To Break Loose!"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/27/23
"Breaking News! All Hell Is About To Break Loose!"
Comments here:

Scott Ritter, "Israel Is Failing On All Fronts - Hamas, Hezbollah & Houthis Are Very Close To Win"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 12/27/23
"Israel Is Failing On All Fronts - 
Hamas, Hezbollah & Houthis Are Very Close To Win"

"Relaxing Music To Relieve Stress, Anxiety, Depression. Calm Your Mind"

Full screen recommended.
Soothing Paradise, "Relaxing Music To Relieve 
Stress, Anxiety, Depression. Calm Your Mind"

Musical Interlude: Logos, "Cheminement"

Full screen recommended.
Logos, "Cheminement"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. 
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”

Chet Raymo, “The Silence”

“The Silence”
by Chet Raymo

“The hiding places of my power
Seem open; I approach, and then they close;
I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
May scarcely see at all, and I would give,
While yet we may, as far as words can give,
A substance and a life to what I feel…”

“These few lines from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” leapt off the page at me. They capture well enough what my life has become. All those years of teaching, of writing in the Boston Globe, were years of sharing public knowledge, knowledge that had been vetted by the scientific community. The work was not about me. The teacher was me, the writer was me, but what I taught and wrote was reliable, consensus knowledge of the world. A student in my classes or a reader of my newspaper columns would have been hard pressed to know my politics or my religion or the nature of the questions that came in the darkest hours of the night. And that is the way it should have been; that was my homage to objectivity.

Those were valuable years, years of building up a sturdy polder in the sea of mystery, a place to stand with a firmness of foot. And now, in retirement, with time on my hands - and on my mind - I find myself more inclined to explore what Wordsworth called “the hiding places of my power.” I approach. They close. I touch with my hand the surface of the pond that Pat wrote about the other day; my hand comes out of the depths to meet me. I see by glimpses. It is, I suppose, a kind of forgetting. With the forgetting comes a certain freshness. My fingertip touches the surface of the world from above and from below, and concentric circles spread outwards, rippling, like a soundless sound, and I struggle, in words, as best I can, to give a substance and a life to what I feel.

This does not mean, I trust, that I am going soft, finding supernaturalist religion or getting all New Age squishy as “age comes on.” I keep my feet planted on solid fact and read my weekly “Science” and “Nature” along with my Wordsworth. No, it is rather a simple freedom to explore the hiding places, attending to private particulars as opposed to public universals, listening for the small voice that whispers from the nooks and crannies of yet unassimilated reality.

There is a passage in “The Prelude” where a young Boy (the poet?), standing in evening air by the glimmering lake, makes a mimic hooting with his hands to his mouth and the owls answer. Twooo-twooo. And the reply. Twooo-twooo. Then, unaccountably, the answers cease. And in the silence the boy becomes more keenly aware than ever of water, rocks, and woods, and mountain torrents, “that uncertain heaven, received into the bosom of the steady lake.” Thoreau has something similar. He rejoiced in owls; their hoot, he said, was a sound well suited to swamps and twilight woods. The interval between the hoots was a deepened silence, suggesting, to Thoreau, “a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.” It is that that I now attend: the deepened silence between the hoots.”

The Poet: Rudyard Kipling, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings"

"The Gods of the
Copybook Headings"

"As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while 
we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, 
and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, 
or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market 
Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, 
They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, 
that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
"Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 
"The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, 
there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
"If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, 
and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled 
and began to believe it was true,
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings 
limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!"

-  Rudyard Kipling
o
The "copybook headings" to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, often drawn from sermons and scripture extolling virtue and wisdom, that were printed at the top of the pages of copybooks, special notebooks used by 19th-century British schoolchildren.