Politics

This is a sequel. Read American Spring first. “We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.” – Will and Ariel Durant In 2016, the American Republic birthed a second political party. More

A one party system ran the United States, and the United States ran the world. The US had checks and balances – governing required consensus, and the people were freed from kings. To protect speech, the framers left out a rule against conspiracies to monopolize the vote. Political parties formed to monopolize the vote. More

“Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth” – Archimedes To reduce unemployment, we need to lever up. Not like Wall Street did, through debt, but like Silicon Valley does, with tools. Leverage magnifies your actions and increases your productivity. You can get leverage through: labor (people work for you) capital (money works for you) tools (machines work for you) We’re trying to help labor. More

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. ” –H. L. Mencken More

The economic stimulus is a farce, as should be obvious to anyone who cracked open their Econ 101 textbook or ever ran a lemonade stand. Where is the $150B going to come from? Reduced spending elsewhere (wash), increased taxes (same as reducing spending from the private sector – worse than a wash), borrowing from abroad (raises the price of capital for private businesses, or causes inflation, resulting in a wash), or printing more money (inflation / reduced purchasing power, which depending on what it does to inflation expectations, can be worse than a wash). More

People hate immigration and immigrants as it’s seen as competing with newcomers over finite resources in a zero-sum game. This argument is flawed on many economic levels, but let’s overlook that for a moment. Let’s give everyone a stake. Suppose that we gave every US citizen an extra passport – a blank one. More

Free wifi in the airport, need I say more? Ok, what is stifling about airports and modern travel is the lack of control. Stand in line. Wait. Sit on the plane. Fasten your seatbelt. Put away your tray table. Close the windowshade. What is web-surfing? Here’s a blank location bar – now go, wherever you will. More

A caucasian and U.S. born friend once opined that I was lucky to have been born in a great culture (India), and that Americans have no culture. Not so. She has been living in it for so long that she is a fish in the American cultural ocean – it’s invisible. More