Writer Jerry Pournelle has a balanced view of how things work. This one is no different. h/t Reynolds.
Meanwhile today may be the most important vote in Congress since the days of the New Deal. If the health care bill passes, it will fundamentally convert these United States into a different kind of popular democracy, which generally means rule by a unionized bureaucracy organized to vote. Once that much of the economy is run by government, economic recovery as many hope for will simply be impossible.
Of course: By now the socialist constituency is vast and amounts to the dependent class – having been fashioned into same by their government – along with most of academia, those that academy influences, that irresponsible political left we have with us always, that enormous unionized bureaucracy organized to vote, the forces behind the special interests that stand to profit by such legislation – medicine already spends six hundred thousand dollars a day lobbying – and any miscellaneous political refugee who thought the Democrat Socialists represented an alternative to the BushCo phantom ginned up these last eight years by the press.
The shorter version is that this constituency is built on either having been manipulated by government in some way previously, or having adopted the myth of benevolent statism, assuming there’s much difference between the two. No one essential to production or freedom would have supported this government takeover, meaning the fix was in by way of decades of having first pushed them to the margins.
Have we seen the end of the good times? Tax rates go up, but government revenues keep going down. And down. Raising tax rates doesn’t seem to make the government much more money. And unemployment goes up. And the beat goes on.
A new Great Depression is not inevitable, but each time there is another transfer of resources to the government, it becomes more likely. The trick to survival is to find niches where one can thrive or at least hang on in the midst of the downward spiral. Who is succeeding in today’s Detroit? It would be worth studying those survivalists…
It’s also worth considering vegetable gardens. I wish I were kidding.
The House just congratulated itself for jeopardizing health the way left-leaning statism had already permanently lowered the bars on education, quality of life, and yes, health to date. The US government school system is an accepted, relative failure, welfare impoverishes and enslaves – and those rolls just increased – and the collectivized healthcare already on the books is upside down tens of trillions of dollars.
Now it’s all up to the Senate. Should this assault on liberty and prosperity pass it too, it’s all up to the vote. There’s nothing more I can think to say and today I’m going to reassess my small business, my daughter’s education, my own health concern, and my standard of living, such as it is. This feels like being sentenced or told you have twelve months to live. For me, the consequences may be no different.
Yesterday was a referendum on honesty and honesty lost. Yesterday Democrat after Democrat lied outright simply by refusing to state the truth of our situation and of our pro-property, libertarian history while Republican after Republican failed to present a convincing counterpoint. I listened to scores talk and there was by my count slightly less than one statesman among them. Only one that I saw so much as tried.
Comment by Andrew the Noisy on 11/8 @ 6:45 am #
A hard rain is gonna fall.
Comment by Salt Lick on 11/8 @ 6:58 am #
Tax rates go up, but government revenues keep going down.
Wanna see down? Like this.
Yesterday was a referendum on honesty and honesty lost.
Something else is going to lose come 2010. The fight has only begun.
Comment by B Moe on 11/8 @ 7:07 am #
Carin? Little help?
Comment by newrouter on 11/8 @ 7:31 am #
“To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by
Detroit retiree, 69, supplements his income by living off the land”
Comment by serr8d on 11/8 @ 7:40 am #
A great post, JHoward.
We are now well and truly
fuckedCommunity Organized.Comment by serr8d on 11/8 @ 7:41 am #
“Urban Hunter”. Heh. My grandmother told me that, during the era of Hoovervilles, urban cats were called ‘roof chickens’.
Comment by B Moe on 11/8 @ 7:48 am #
What people don’t realize about all the jokes about hillbillies eating coons and possums and groundhogs is that the reason people ate that shit was because all the deer and rabbit and squirrel had been hunted to damn near extinction.
Comment by DarthRove on 11/8 @ 7:59 am #
The long-legged brown yard rats (a.k.a. deer) don’t even flinch when I go outside, even with the dog. I’m thinking I could get at least four before they wised up. Just need to get a bigger freezer.
Comment by Carin on 11/8 @ 8:19 am #
B Moe – it’s dog-eat-dog. Small business. Lean and mean. I think it’s too early to say whether anyone, in Detroit (or Michigan) survives.
Comment by Cowboy on 11/8 @ 8:31 am #
A lot of this I don’t understand (and I’m sure our Democrat superiors look at that as a feature, not a bug), and what I do understand makes me feel overwhelmed and depressed.
So, I’ve decided that each time I begin to feel like there’s little hope for “our little country,” (hthf) I’ll turn to this video, or one by the same artist: http://tinyurl.com/c3gyct
BMoe, I think, will approve.
Comment by ThomasD on 11/8 @ 8:41 am #
A tip: The trick to making raccoon and possum palatable is to trap them. Then you starve them for a few days on a diet of water and vegetable scraps, this helps eliminate the gaminess from whatever it is they recently ate (and you do not want to know what a possum recently ate.). Possum should also be par-boiled. That’s how all the old timers used to do it when I was a kid.
Woodchuck (gopher/groundhog) is what it is, and it isn’t bad – an oversized rabbit really.
Comment by Cowboy on 11/8 @ 8:43 am #
Possum, racoon, ground hog, even older squirrels and rabbits all benefit from soaking them in salt water over night.
Squirrel with brown gravy and mushrooms is a pure delight.
Comment by DarthRove on 11/8 @ 8:46 am #
So exactly what form is the Underground Economy going to take, and are there any good instructive books on how to do well in the black market? I get a feeling there’s going to be a whoooole lotta barter and “off-the-grid” activity going on
Comment by B Moe on 11/8 @ 8:47 am #
Approved with extreme prejudice.
I found this one the other day and it put a big smile on my face.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 11/8 @ 9:28 am #
Damn, B Moe, that was so hot I barely noticed the jacket and lapels. Big Freddie is timeless – my 12 year old loves playing Hideaway on his cheapo Strat copy.
Comment by Curmudgeon Geographer on 11/8 @ 10:28 am #
You’ve seen the movie Serenity?
They’re just trying to “make a better world”. Personally, I’d rather misbehave.
Comment by rrpjr on 11/8 @ 10:58 am #
Yesterday for me was a kind of single-phenomenon materialization of the decay and corruption — educational, political, cultural, moral — I’ve been sensing for a generation. The long, slow and undefinable “drift” of our country from its high-water idea of liberty downward into the backwater sludge of statism suddenly congealed for me into an actual malign form, with a face and voice and intention, as I saw one after another of these “democrats” push themselves toward the microphone to utter their ugly, pornographically emotional lies about healthcare in America, all slavering in anticipation of the sacred vision within their grasp at last.
I’m not apocalyptic, that is I believe man always finds a way, but we are nearing the point where the corrupting hands among us are closing around the last hope for this rare thing that is America.
Comment by Dump Hank Johnson on 11/8 @ 12:59 pm #
I, for one, intend to misbehave.
To that end, I have started dumphankjohnson.blogspot.com
I don’t expect much to come of it – Georgia’s 4th Congressional District elected Cynthi McKinney – but it might be a bit of a lark to dump some sand in the gears of socialism.
Comment by Dump Hank Johnson on 11/8 @ 1:00 pm #
Broken link on last post. Sorry.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/8 @ 1:01 pm #
your link doesn’t work about the dumping
Comment by happyfeet on 11/8 @ 1:01 pm #
oh. right.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/8 @ 1:07 pm #
omg it’s a zuni doll
Comment by happyfeet on 11/8 @ 1:18 pm #
oh. it’s zuni doll meets chocolate rain more like
Comment by Dump Hank Johnson on 11/8 @ 11:57 pm #
I do apologize. My Rep. is not all that exciting.
Sorries. Or some such.