Change--The Irresistible Force

Government validates inertia’s principle that objects at rest tend to stay that way.  The philosophies of the political parties that dominate the government workforce remain relatively static.  The few changes in government that have occurred have been superficial—they have been mostly changes in scope and breadth—the essential precepts have endured since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Welfare Society.  Government’s tendency is to beget more government.

Today, nearly half of Americans pay no personal income tax, and the Food Stamp President represents the country.  The president and his bureaucratic cronies are as comfortable with the current theft-welfare state as pigs wallowing in mud.  Rather than to decrease the scope, breadth, and expense of the out of control federal government, O-buma has appointed a cadre of czars to expand the regulatory burden to crisis proportions.

Nothing is too good for the One and his minions, especially when others are paying for it. 

State governors have set examples of what needs to be done about government.  Chris Christie in New Jersey, Rick Scott in Florida, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and John Kasich in Ohio are prime examples.  This article describes what John Fortuno, Puerto Rico’s governor, did there.  Two years ago, he fired 17,000 government workers…thousands of union members demonstrated against Fortuno for days.  They clashed with police.

The governor explained, we didn't have enough money to meet our first payroll.  His predecessors had grown Puerto Rico's government to the point that the state employed one out of every three workers.  Fortuno reduced corporate taxes from 35 percent to 25 percent.  He reduced individual income taxes.  He privatized entire government agencies.  Puerto Ricans are better off for it.

Canada’s liberals used similar measures.  Those in charge shrank the government.  In 1995 they ended several wasteful programs.  The country’s debt stopped increasing, the country began to run surpluses, and the debt began to decrease.  Economist David Henderson argues that government wastes most of what it spends, and so just cutting government and having that money in the hands of people means it's going to be used more valuably. 

Canada fired government workers, but unemployment didn't increase.  In fact, it fell from 12 percent to 6 percent.  Canadian unemployment is still well below ours.  And the Canadian dollar rose from just 72 American cents to $1.02 today.  Canada also raised some taxes.  But the spending cuts were much bigger, six to one.

So why can we not do this here?  For the O-buma administration, the situation is not that they cannot, they simply will not.  The current government does not represent the best interests of the people.  It represents this diaper-wearing slug and the rest of the advocates for and participants in the taxpayer funded mommy state.

Perhaps the state of California is the best example of progressives’ end game.  In this article in Forbes, William Baldwin asks the question "What’s Your State’s Deadweight Ratio?"  The author argues that government has too many mouths to feed.  He has established a Deadweight Ratio.  It tells you how many beneficiaries of government spending there are for every private sector job.

California is in deep kimchee; for every 100 private sector workers, there 113 people drawing benefits.  Each worker pays for himself as well as one other person.  Business are relocating to other states or countries.  The state is on the verge of collapse.  California, like the federal government, is subjecting its people to confiscatory taxation without providing responsible and effective representation.  A war was fought somewhere over taxation without representation.

When the government thumbs its nose at the governed, the people take umbrage.  That is what happened with the Boston Tea Party.  Taking away a government’s revenue can effect change.  What would happen if everyone, businesses and individuals alike, refused to hand over another dime to revenue collectors?  This purely hypothetical conjecture advocates no illegal activity of any kind.

Still, there are people who seem to have cut government out of its role of middleman in economic transactions.  In Wired, Adrian Chen describes an underground and anonymous exchange system that uses electronic currency known as Bitcoins.  Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency, not issued by banks or governments, but created and regulated by a network of other Bitcoin holders’ computers.  Some feel that this is a Libertarian economic alternative.

Chen’s example is a company named Silk Road that sells contraband drugs; however, it could well be the purveyor of almost any form of goods and services.  Accessing the company is only possible through the anonymizing network Tor.  Any company could create a similar enterprise.  Silk Road’s site administrator urges people to stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market, but the effort need not be illegal. 

What sort of changes might one make by using this sort of system, without selling illegal products, but through legal civil disobedience against a government believed to be oppressive and out of touch.  If this could be done lawfully, a more perfect form of democracy could result.  When the people get mad as hell, things change.  Perhaps a new form of Hopenchange is coming.

May your gods be with you.