The Wolves in the White House

The wolves have been in the government chambers, including the White House, since the founding. It's one of the most common threads of history. 

Some 250 years ago on the east coast of what is now the USA, a group of the wolves got together and agreed to a new form of détente. Instead of trying to get rid of the wolves, they accepted that they themselves were wolves to a large sector of the citizenry, and they agreed to a set of rules that did _not_ make the citizenry free. 

There is no way to force people to be free. 

The new rules they set rather support a people that is willing to be free in their freedom by keeping any of the various factions -- the wolves -- from getting an upper hand. 

Partisan politics (DNC, RNC, any other party that might develop long-term viability) is the result of certain factions collaborating to break the rules of détente -- factions within the party. That's why you have extremists along with moderates, and various flavors within the parties.

This is one of the things everyone who wants to be free needs to understand. The very existence of only two controlling parties is because most of the factions have agreed to try to break the détente. They think they will somehow win in the resulting power struggle.

The constant veering back and forth from left to right, liberal to conservative, etc. is a necessary adjustment in keeping any one faction of the wolves from taking control. 

That's why the leaders of the parties don't like a loose cannon, except when they are the ones who haven't been in control. 

That's why I'm really upset with the DNC for pushing RFKjr out of the contest this time. The two ruling parties have gotten too good at colluding with each other, and a win -- or even a serious challenge -- from a third party will force them back into détente. 

Moderates are generally politicians who are willing to keep the détente. Biden was a good moderate until part way through his first term, when he ran out of energy to keep his party hacks -- his support team -- in check, and they took over. 

Harris, as I say, is a loose cannon, too. She's good at hiding it. But if she had been elected, there would have been a lot of surprise and cries of betrayal from within the party that was hoping for another president they could manipulate.

Freedom is not free. 

 

 

(Wovles. LoL: Sorry about the URL, but I'm leaving it that way.) 

Affirming for Real

(This is another of those
"deep" ideas I get while
taking a shower.)   

A thought about affirmative action --

If you want people to be productive, you want them to produce things of value. If you want people to produce things of value you have to believe that they can produce things of value.

If you want to believe that people can produce things of value, you must believe that they have value -- intrinsic value.

But if you don't show that belief in your actions, you are essentially refusing to believe the thing you want to believe.

But affirmative action seems to put unqualified people in positions they aren't qualified for.

Wait. I said "not qualified" twice. Let's take one of those away.

But affirmative action puts people in positions they are not qualified for.

You get why I made those changes, don't you?

How do we demonstrate our belief in people without putting them in positions they aren't yet qualified for?

"... aren't _yet_ qualified ..."

It's impossible to get qualified without experience, and it's impossible to get experience without being in a position you aren't qualified for.

So what do we do to reduce the damage unqualified people do while they are getting experience and getting qualified?

How about letting the people who are qualified stick around?

Not so close as to prevent the new guy on the job from learning things the hard way (which is the only way to get experience), but not so far away that when the inevitable troubles ensue they can't help.

This is what seems to me to be missing in our current efforts at affirmative action.

Wealth Caps?

(This is another of those
"deep" ideas I get while
taking a shower.) 

I consider myself conservative. 

I consider myself to respect the concept of natural stewardship. I understand how artificial restraints on wages can strangle creativity.

But there comes a point -- or two or three -- where ... 

If you've already amassed enough personal wealth to retire comfortably ten times over, it's time to do so, to move over and let someone fresh join the fight. No, those who have gotten wealthy shouldn't just go on vacation, there are plenty of service projects that have no way of generating monetary value that a person can get involved in, to keep a person competitive, sharp, and alive.  

And, really, service itself should be considered a higher value than money. 

Having enough money to retire a hundred times over gives an individual the sort of personal power that minor nobility have in nobility systems of government, and if the national government is involving itself in taxing personal income, if it fails to set some boundaries on that kind of wealth, it is effectively setting up a modern version of nobility.  

In the US, that should be a Constitutional issue -- and should be held up as evidence that the national income tax itself, amendment notwithstanding, is a breach of the Constitution.  

Somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times the amount of money that enables a comfortable retirement, there's a point where the government should have a right to step in and say that that much wealth is on the face of it evidence of business malpractice, and force early retirement. I mean, if the government can force retirement at 65 or 70, under whatever untested assumptions, surely the government can force retirement at, say, 650 MUSD or so, to borrow an arbitrary number.  

[JMR202411200736 note:] 

(I should emphasize that I am speaking strictly in the loose theoretical -- I haven't thought this through to the consequences, and I am confident that, like all other good ideas, there will likely be negative effects and more loopholes for the lawyers and the rich who can afford lawyers.)

[JMR202411200736 note end.] 

I'm sure that finding indirect holdings would become a problem for the regulatory agencies. I could guess that some of the very rich would find tricks like paying people to hold holdings for them -- but even that would require them to dilute the power they can exercise. 

Getting the national government out of the income tax business would definitely help reduce the special interest involvement at national level, and spread them out at the state level enough to dilute their power -- assuming that states would completely take over the individual income tax function.  

I suspect that simply pushing the income tax function down to the state level would pretty much force most national corporations to split up on state lines, and significantly limit monopolies and the insane levels of personal wealth.

I Have a Dream (about Tomorrow)

Well, I suppose it's a fantasy.

Tomorrow morning, everybody wakes up and realizes that they just don't want to vote against their conscience and 3rd party candidates take every state that has any.

And RFKjr/Shanahan win the election, despite being on record as having withdrawn.

And every mountain shall be made low, ...

My Wife's Suggestion for US President

My wife is listening to the US election reports on NHK news.

She thinks Harris is ahead by ten points or more. 

But she thinks neither should win, and suggests that the US should learn to get along without a president.

I'm not completely averse to the idea, but I asked her who we should send to all the international summits and such.

派遣。 Just hire a temp.

派遣会社 (haken gaisha) are a particular type of temporary staffing agency here in Japan.

I'm amused, but I'm also not sure it's a bad idea.

I also asked her who would keep Congress in check.

She suggested having elementary school teachers do that job -- by rotation.

There are some problems hiding in the details, but I love my wife's imagination.