"Govenments' Not The Solution, It's The Problem." Really?

Business Productivity & Profits Grow, Wages Don't

Real Life vs. The Sound-Bite
--In the past 30 years, most Americans have not had a raise above the inflation rate; but have accumulated a consumer debt equal to their yearly income in order to feel like they did.  During this same time, the finance industry, that created and benefited from these conditions, has quadrupled in size, helped send $6,000,000,000,000 of US wealth to other countries via "free-trade," and still has millions convinced that they know what's best for us.  "Governments' not the solution, ...governments the problem," ...right?

Reagan Revolution: The Pendulum Swings
--I believe that was true 30 years ago.  At the time we did have too much regulation in this country, but the pendulum has swung.   Manufacturing employment has dropped from 22% to 16% while finance jobs have increased four fold.  Finance is now our most "vibrant" industry.  This is great for that relatively tiny segment of workers, but it is bad for the rest of us.  Producing massive amounts of innovative "financial products" on speculation destabilizes the economy for the rest of us.  So much so, we were told, that we had to help them out with trillions of our tax dollars because they were, "Too big to fail."

Americans still legitimize the ideology of market absolutism.
Perhaps because we have been complicit through our direct investments or pension fund.  At any rate, this coupled with politicians' campaign funds coming from the finance industry, and politicians' reluctance to hurt the only vibrant industry (finance) left in the US, has led to a unique situation never before seen in the US.

In America's past there would always be robust, imaginative regulations placed on the finance industry because the US citizens demanded it.  For example, various social movements started in response to the injustices of the Congress in the 1890's, or, "Millionaires Club" as it was known.  Eventually these movements became the financial regulations that were being enforced until just 30 years ago, the last of which disappeared just prior to our present financial crisis.  Of course it took the Great Depression for many of these financial regulations to actually be implemented.


Time to wake up, regain some moral vigor and power of resistance before a pandemonium and another unstopped pendulum swing in reverse.  Pendulums are destructive, virtue is in the middle.

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi

Movie Theater Massacre: Fetishizing Status and Notoriety

Get Status

The "Jokers'' Motives? --Were James Holmes recent senseless murders a socially isolated outcropping of evil, or symptoms of a cooler, isolating society which fetishizes status and notoriety?


Our Need to Explain Deludes Us Further --Within days media pundits crafted typical arguments to address the issue;

1. Tougher gun control.
2. Less glorified violence in the media.
3. Better mental health programs.
4. Better security to identify these dangerous individuals before they perpetrate.

Solution: Having and Being a Friend --None of these ideas could have stopped such events, but one may have;

A friend.

Society, Advertisers Promise Status & Friends--As Epicurus and modern Positive Psychologist tell us, the most important factor for obtaining happiness in life is maintaining good, honest friendships.  Advertisers have known this since Epicurus, but having a coke, Lexus, or PhD. won't give me friends. This doesn't stop us from believing it will satisfy this need at a deep level, thus the modern rat race.  (see Status Anxiety)   The extreme path of losing hope for obtaining those things that society promises will fulfill us is perhaps a generalized violence toward society itself.

or, ... Notoriety

Notoriety: The Last, Sad Hope of Obtaining Status

Sincerely,

Lawrence Feriozzi

Who Is James Holmes, the Aurora Shooting Suspect?

As a "quiet and easy going guy,"  I anticipate he didn't have many close friends.  He seems to have been enthralled with the modern Batman narrative which perhaps satisfied him more than anything in the world, besides getting a PhD.  Perhaps when that fell through, his escape into the manufactured Batman reality seemed his best hope for an engaging place of notoriety in this world.

A necessary condition of living a happy life is maintaining close, honest friendships, Epicurus told us.  Perhaps the modern desire to be respected for your notoriety, if not your position, is in its essence a simpler wish to be appreciated and treated nicely,... without a PhD. or senseless mass murder.

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi

The Conservative Intellectual Tradition In The US

David A. Keene

RATS TAKING OVER THE SHIP--The very wise and seasoned David Keene, NRA President, recently gave a talk at the Citadel which was very enlightening. (click here to view) I have gone over many of these ideas in previous blogs.  His talk was concerning the conservative intellectual tradition and how it has been usurped by new comers, the rats, to the Republican party.
 
FIRST, KEEP THE RATS OUT--In the later 1950's William F. Buckley helped to fuse disparate groups of anticommunists, moderate libertarians, and traditionalists into a new conservative movement that eventually took the national office in 1980 with Reagan.  However they had to kick some radical newcomers out in the beginning that would have jeopardize this new group's identity.  The Birch Society, extreme libertarians, and Rand's objectivist were forced out.  He made the analogy that when his father opened up a new bar, the first thing his father had to do, was to kick out the drunks that were kicked out of every other bar in town, otherwise no one would want to come.

"Hes' Conservative, But He's Not a Conservative"

Reagan-Our Last Conservative

LETTING SOME RATS IN--After the movement was established, its then "OK" to loosen your standards since you have your core ideas and identity established.  This is what he says happened by 1985 during Reagan.  They wanted to be in power but were not real conservatives, he, and I, would liken them to rats.  At first this is great because you need their votes to win.  But being a victim of your own success became dramatically apparent in the following decades where all kinds of people came into the Republican party that were "conservative, but not a conservative".

"Not conservative because of Hayak, Buckley, or Kirk, ...conservative because they liked Reagan, Gingrich, or Bush"

THE RATS TAKE OVER--These shallow conservatives have in the past few decades over run the ship and now lead the Republican party,--rats reproduce quickly.  Among them are the selfish and greedy Rand, free market ideologues and warmongering neoconservatives.  He points out, as I have, that having a stringent ideology, say of exporting democracy all over the world, is an anathema to being a conservative.  Being a conservative is a way of looking at the world and not an activist agenda.  As Goldwater said, being a conservative is rooted in nature, not an ideology.

Taking Back Conservatism From the Big Government Neoconservative Warmongers

THE RATS ARE SINKING THE SHIP!--About a third of our national budget, 700 billion, is spent on the military to support the neoconservative agenda: all because their leaders want a legacy.  They know international crusades produce legacies.  Libertarians say the growth of the superstate is the growth of the warfare-state.  In this they are correct.  Almost every voice of influence representing so-called conservatives today are rats, including, but not limited to those in the media and the Congress.  It's time for true conservatives who know what I'm talking about to speak up and educate the rats.

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi

1776: Birth of a More Important Idea: Adam Smith's Free, COMPETITIVE & JUST Markets

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was based on three extraordinary ideas:

1. Freedom: Individuals have the right to produce and exchange products, capital and labor as they see fit.
2. Competition: Individuals have the right to compete in the exchange of goods & services.
3. Justice: The actions of individuals must be just and honest according to the rules of society.

"Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of Justice, is left perfectly Free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into Competition with those of any other man or order of men." Adam Smith

I assert this three legged stool has only one leg left: "Freedom," as in the highly espoused Ayn Randian, "Free Market" absolutist mentality which is really just government backed mercantilism 2.0.  This is evidenced by our broken world economies where the most powerful use the "free" market to kick the other two legs of Competition and Justice out from the rest of us.
Time to regain some moral vigor and force another revolution to reinstall competition and justice to our political-economic system. 

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi

Declaration of Independence

 Read & Repeat to Protect Against Tyranny

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of AMERICA.
WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another;

The Virtuous, Marginal Middle

Liberals author the influential narrative in popular culture; songs, film, fiction, etc....

Conservatives hold influential economic and political power; CEOs, business leaders, power brokers, etc....
Thus often the public is left to witness only the polarized encounter of these self-selected and adamant ideologies.  Perhaps their sole point of agreement is dismissing admonitions that, "Virtue is in the middle,"--Aristotle.  

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi