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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe S Pack who wrote (52664)	7/24/2009 4:35:52 PM
From: TobagoJack	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217580

just in in-tray, regarding mob rule that goldman sachs must try to temper and fool all the time until such time the officialdom itself falls apart due to mass, burden, and whatever else my thought is that in this age of smart computers and fast connections, the burden on the population can rise higher and hold on longer before open revolt breaks out, and can keep such revolt in check for quite some time until the wastrels are thrown out let us watch n brief to me the biggest achievement of modern democracies are bills of rights that define the unalienable rights of individuals vs. the state. most else has developed in a direction that deserves much criticism. no king ever dared to grab more than 10% of his subjects income in taxes - it was clear that heads would roll if that were done. these days, democracies routinely tax 50% or more of their citizen's income. In Germany a recent study found that including VAT and other indirect fees and taxes (but NOT including the inflation tax imposed by the fiat money system), Germans now must work 60% of the year merely to earn their tribute to the state. government in the democratic nations has grown to between 40 to 60% of all economic activity - it was recently estimated that in some of the poorer rural areas of the UK, the government accounts for over 70% of all economic activity. it is not a big leap anymore from there to the total state. Routinely, some 60% of eligible voters refuse to take part in elections. there is a reason for this - they regard these elections as a farce that will change absolutely nothing. the differences between most political parties are largely cosmetic - what citizens realize or believe, is that elections are for the most part about the division of the loot. the state has become like a mafia uncle running a protection racket, whom everybody wants to avoid, if possible. over the past seven years, the vast bureaucracy of the EU has invented some 150,000 new regulations. everything from the curvature of gherkins (i kid you not) to use of light-bulbs has become the subject of regulations (one famous example is a certain type of French cheese, the name of which escapes me now, the making of which is regulated in a document running over 1,000 pages long). this thicket of rules has become such a giant maze, that it is nowadays probably impossible for the average citizen to not unwittingly break some or other law several times a week. consider that the EU bureaucracy makes supranational regulations - a similarly staggering amount of new laws and administrative regulations (which the bureaucracies create and administer themselves, largely outside of the political process) gets enacted on the national level. it is probably fair to say that by now, everything that is not explicitly allowed is probably forbidden, or at least requires some sort of official licencing, usually involving the placet of countless different bureaucracies and endless costs in addition to the tax burden. the system has become impervious to reform, precisely because its administration requires the existence of vast bureaucracies, which are not subject to the political process. whoever gets elected subsequently needs these unchanging and steadily growing hordes of bureaucrats to administer his policies. since they represent a large voting block, it is not possible to do anything that stops their growth, unless one wants to commit political suicide. apart from the failed experiment with communism, the State has never in history grown as large as it has under the democratic welfare/warfare states system. the problem with all of this is of course that a dwindling and permanently under pressure group of wealth creators is forced to finance all of it. the bureaucracies only consume wealth - they do not produce any. the question is whether this type of 'progress' has gone too far. is it really true that the citizens of the democratic nation states lack the political maturity for a minarchy type dispensation, or even a capitalist anarchy? the ages old 'tradition' of forcible acquisition of resources by political means should definitely be open to debate and criticism - but it is not addressed by any mainstream political party. (mind, none of this is meant to take away from your point that most autocratic systems are even worse - i for one think the entire concept of the nation state, regardless of how it is ruled and administered, should be questioned.)

To: Joe S Pack who wrote (52664)	7/25/2009 6:41:25 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217580

Military industrial complex returns to natural size: "Since about 1986, there has been a steady decline in the number of aerospace research and development scientists and engineers the U.S. has had available to ensure the nation’s ability to build the necessary weapons,. From a high of about 145,000 in 1986, the number of aerospace research and development scientists and engineers in the U.S. had diminished to around 38,000 in 2007 according to the 56th Edition of Aerospace Facts and Figures. It’s not that the United States is losing research and development engineers in all industries. In fact, during the same period the number of research and development scientists and engineers in all industries has increased from around 670,000 to over one million. But, in the aerospace sector the number of aerospace research and development scientists and engineers as a percentage of the total in all industries has plummeted from a high of about 22 percent in 1986 to just over 3 percent in 2007." humanevents.com