“Democracy” On The Fainting Couch

I just reached the threshold of nausea on pompous, self-righteous, melodramatic, lying, ignorant Democrats, RINOs and Marxist Media Sock Puppets swooning and telling us how (hand across fevered brow, teary-eyed and quavering voice, about to swoon and collapse on the fainting couch),

“The Russians HACKED OUR DEMOCRA-CEAAAH!”

What the hell is “our democracy,” anyway? Any lynch mob or gang rape can be a democracy. And how is “our democracy” any different from that?

Once again, you lying Marxist Useful Idiots, we are a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, and NOT a “democracy.”

And if you were so intent on protecting the democratic PROCESS by which we elect our legislative branch, why do you roll out the righteous indignation when anyone dares to suggest we require picture ID to vote? Is that because YOUR democracy only works the way you want it to when vote fraud swings the results your way? Well, yes.

Whatever these screeching parakeets are accusing the rest of us of, they are almost always doing — specifically including hacking “our democraceaaah.”

We don’t need help from Russia to “hack our democraceaaah.” We have plenty of Democrats, RINOs, Marxists and Deep-Staters working hard on that, already.

“ELYSIUM” — Hollywood Describes Socialist Dystopia — and doesn’t even know it

Okay, I admit it — I rented “Elysium.” It’s supposed to be science fiction, so I thought I’d like it, but there isn’t a lot of science, except for political science. It’s mostly a lame attempt at socialist propaganda, but it winds up being, accidentally, a fairly accurate portrayal of a socialist dystopia.

I found myself looking at ruined, impoverished Earth, and thinking, “Oh, look! The Democrats and Muslims took over the world, and now the whole planet is a toxic blend of Detroit and a Palestinian refugee camp. That’s totally believable.”

That was the the last, believable thread of the whole story concept, and the irony of it was absolutely unintentional. My overtaxed willful suspension of disbelief snapped right after that.

Next, there’s the alleged “science” in this propaganda piece. What technology could stuff the energy to take one of those “Aliens”-era shuttles from a dead stop to escape velocity (18,000+ mph) in the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere (all without smearing the occupants all over the back end with the acceleration and incinerating them against atmospheric friction), but couldn’t make every inhabitant of Earth rich beyond his wildest dreams?

What technology could put a magical wellness and tanning bed in every house on Elysium, but not a single one on poor, ole’ proletarian Earth? That’s not a science-based decision; it’s a political one — one Communist elites have made for their vaunted working classes in every Socialist People’s Paradise ever built.

In the best Communist tradition, the best health care is reserved for the party members, and the proles get the dilapidated, dirty, “Los Angeles County Public Hospital,” with its “matured Obamacare” health-care horror show. Oh, sorry — it was “Hospital Publico de la Condad de Los Angeles.” Spanish is the language of poverty, on Planet Kabul/Detroit.

What sort of Hollywood-based cultural bias does that reveal, and where do we go to get an apology for it?

Only Communism could spread poverty over a whole planet, isolate a ruling class in space, literally and metaphorically above the “Proletariat,” and want to preserve that status at all costs.

Only lame-ass Hollywood writers would steal the Ringworld concept from Larry Niven, and trash it with a simple-minded and physically-impossible interpretation. But, hey, the writers are probably Commies, too, so what’s a little intellectual property expatriation to them? Larry Niven didn’t build that!

Well, yeah, he DID build it. And HE got it right.

Lame-ass writing. Lame-ass actors. ELYSIUM is a lame-ass movie.

Girls, Beware — Mohammed’s Boys Will Be Boys

Hijab (Wikipedia)

Burqa (Wikipedia)

Niqab (Wikipedia)

Those trademark Islamic fashion accessories, the burqa, the hijab  and the niqab, are a strong hint that “prophet” Mohammed believed Muslim men to be barely civilized human beings. He was clearly convinced that his fellow Muslim males and their male offspring, and their offspring in perpetuity, were doomed to be feral creatures, possessing only a veneer of civilization, and by their very nature, unable to restrain their savage impulses to commit rape, in the presence of any sexual provocation, real or imagined.

Yes, Mohammed set the bar for Muslim men’s behavior toward women that low. I didn’t.

Don’t take my word for it. Check the ahadith, faithful recordings of the acts and sayings of Mohammed, as witnessed by his contemporaries, and gathered over centuries by authoritative Islamic scholars.

Book 32, Number 4092:

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu’minin:

Asma, daughter of AbuBakr, entered upon the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) wearing thin clothes. The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) turned his attention from her. He said: O Asma’, when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands.

Even the mere presence in the same room of a Muslim man and a woman who is not his wife, sister or mother may trigger an irresistible rape impulse in the superficially-civilized Muslim male, according to the hadith:

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 250:

Narrated Ibn Abbas:

That he heard the Prophet saying, “It is not permissible for a man to be alone with a woman, and no lady should travel except with a Muhram (i.e. her husband or a person whom she cannot marry in any case for ever; e.g. her father, brother, etc.).” Then a man got up and said, “O Allah’s Apostle! I have enlisted in the army for such-and-such Ghazwa and my wife is proceeding for Hajj.” Allah’s Apostle said, “Go, and perform the Hajj with your wife.”

Maybe we should take Mohammed’s word for it, and treat Muslim males accordingly. Mohammed, after all, is the standard against which all Muslims are to be compared, and not just in the Seventh Century, but today, and forever, because his example and his teachings are eternal, according to him and the authoritative Muslim scholars.

Perhaps during this year’s Democratic National Convention, we should direct the attention of Western feminists and other Cultural Marxists, who share Islam’s disdain for Western culture, to this “feature” of Muslim men — or at least of those who follow Mohammed’s example – the real Muslim men.

Modern Western women’s fashions are likely to be an irresistible provocation to the irrepressible, animal instincts of Muslim men, who cannot be held accountable for the resulting sexual aggression and violence toward those women.

After all, those Western women have brought it upon themselves, by going out among men not their husbands, sons or brothers, and without covering everything but “face and hands.”

Those Muslim boys just can’t help themselves. Mohammed said so.

College Degree? Great. What Can You DO?

Any pug can go to college, but don’t bet on impressing employers unless you can do something they need.

As a college-educated retiree, I can tell you that a four-year college degree is not now, and for decades has not been, a reliable path to high-paying employment.

The scandal of tuition inflation (fueled in part by government subsidies) is only compounded by the lack of capacity for independent research and analytical thinking a typical graduate has when the cap and gown get tossed into the closet, and the grad gets tossed into the job market.

(To be fair, most of them enter college without those skills, or with those skills seriously underdeveloped, because their K-12 public education has concentrated on sociopolitical indoctrination at the expense of basic skills — reading, writing, math, reasoning and research.)

The rapid pace of change in Information Technology, and its pervasive effect at every level of everyday life, certainly changing the way business is done, means that a specific skill set that is in demand halfway through a college student’s four-year education track, and which may influence his choice of major, may well be obsolete by the time that same student graduates.

In fact, a technology in high demand when this year’s crop of freshmen graduate from college in 2017, may not even have a name, now, much less a defined curriculum that makes a grad attractive to a prospective employer. How many incoming freshmen in the fall of 2007 thought they should be learning how to write smart phone apps?

While the four-year graduate is still flying a touch-screen cash register for Apu, at the Springfield Kwik-E-Mart, living in Mom’s basement, and wondering where the money to pay his hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans is coming from, his more-adaptive contemporary, a student who left college in his sophomore year — or even with high-school diploma — has entered the job market with the ability to adapt as the job market changes, and to TEACH HIMSELF new skills ,as well as to absorb new developments in his existing skills.

By the time the “dropout” is a successful entrepreneur, or well up the ladder in a thriving business, the college grad will just be showing up on his doorstep, asking for an entry-level job, and not bringing much to recommend him. And, his student loan payments will still be due.

While he works nights in Apu’s emporium, he will need to struggle through some shady online college, incurring even more student loan debt,  and hope that he can use those skills before they go obsolete, to make better money, someday.

“So, you’ve got a BA in Poly Sci, with a minor in Women’s Lit? Great. Set me up for $30 on Pump 4, will ya? Is that coffee fresh?”

“So, college grad, huh? Hang up that cap and gown, and get me some coffee.” (Photo Courtesy of The Simpsons at Wikipedia — Thanks, Apu!)

It’s About Time for a Reichstag Fire

The Reichstag burns, and Hitler decides “no crisis should go to waste.”

One of several reasons I am frequently annoyed with Glenn Beck, is his obsessive penchant for admonishing his listeners to disavow violence, utterly and unconditionally.

While I think I understand his motivation – to avoid giving the Obama administration any pretext to violence to “restore order” – I tire of the implication in Beck’s admonitions that his position is morally superior to that of ordinary citizens who acknowledge a rational limit to their willingness to submit to coercion from Muslims, Occupiers, union thugs or any other pressure group used by the Left as a weapon against us. .

It was obviously very important to Beck to discourage his listeners from any impulse to gather up the “pitchforks and torches” and march up to the Frankenstein castle, demanding that the authorities hand over the monster. I excused that the first few times, but after a few dozen, I started to resent the implication that I was some volatile, redneck Timothy-McVeigh-type who was a hair’s breadth from taking up arms in violent insurrection

I have not been recruited into revolutionary violence by Glenn Beck, McVeigh, or anyone else. I do not feel on the verge of becoming a serial killer, a guerrilla, a bandito, or a freedom fighter, toting RPGs and EIDs.

Thanks for caring, though, Glenn.

I do not, however, ignore the possibility that the Obama regime may metastasize on very short notice from a wanna-be socialist utopia to an iron-fisted, Communist dictatorship.

The magnificent socialist utopian experiments of the 1900s killed more people and wasted more wealth and resources in a single century than all the socio-political systems tried in all the rest of recorded history (with the possible exception of the first thousand years of political Islam – accurate stats on that are hard to come by). There is no reason to believe that this latest bunch of unaccountable, self-righteous, arrogant ideologues would do any less damage than their failed predecessors.

That would not keep them from trying, of course.

But, really, what makes anyone think an armed uprising among some serious believers on the Right would be necessary to provide the pretext for an Obama dictatorship? Have you not read about the Reichstag Fire?

One man could do it.

A lone Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe, was caught at the scene of the Reichstag fire, confessed, and described in detail his procedure for spreading fire in the old structure. British intelligence agent Denis Sefton Delmer,  wrote that he was on the scene at that fire in 1933. He reports reports his conclusion that van der Lubbe was plausibly the lone arsonist responsible for the destruction of the historic German parliament building. Delmer says senior fire investigators reenacted the attack following van der Lubber’s detailed account, and found that one man could have quite easily done the deed. Other evidence gathered after the fire tended to support the “lone arsonist” theory.

The truth became less and less important, even before the smoke cleared. The Nazis pounced on the event to accuse the Communists of committing the attack as the signal to begin a concerted, premeditated terror campaign, including “dynamiting, incendiarism and mass murder” all over the country.

The Soviet Communists fabricated and spread legends to convince the public that in the immediate aftermath of the fire, the building had been found to be crawling with Nazi Stormtroopers, who were supposed to have spread the fire so quickly, and, implausibly, hung around to watch it burn. Delmer, under his cover as a reporter in that period before open conflict between Britain and Germany, asserts that he entered the building in the wake of Hitler and his entourage as soon as the fire was under control, and that there were no Stormtroopers in evidence.

None of the Communists’ efforts to capitalize on the event  mattered, either, because Hitler and Goering, his adroit propaganda minister, successfully used the event to persuade the Germans to give the Nazis extraordinary authority over them — only for the duration of the emergency, of course – which his party used to round up the Communists and any other opposing political leadership, and to curtail free speech and opposition political activity nation-wide.

Hitler only had to invoke the Germans’ historic animosity toward Russia to justify his “conclusion” that the Soviet Communist political apparatus was on the verge of attempting a coup d’état. That van der Lubbe was a different brand of Communist – one with lasting hostility toward the Soviets – mattered not at all. The Germans reacted by allowing Hitler to stage his own coup d’état, without firing a shot. The Third Reich, and the War of Revenge, The Great Patriotic War, or World War II — depending on the version of history by which you choose to describe it – followed shortly.

History, as is often repeated, has a way of repeating itself. If the history presented by Mr. Delmer is accurate, one man, a small cadre, a group of government agents or, say, some “community organizers” could light the American Reichstag Fire, if the benefits seem to outweigh the risks, or – just for a bit of evil fun. The key factor in the succession of events isn’t the exact nature of the initial act, but the reaction to it by authority, and the willingness of the media to question or swallow the “official” explanation that best fits the political agenda.

With people such as Rahm Emanuel in positions of influence in the Obama White House, it’s unlikely that Emanuel’s maxim that, “[y]ou never want a serious crisis to go to waste” would be ignored for long.

All it takes is a crisis – real, imagined or staged. Is our Reichstag Fire smoldering at this moment?

Does it even have to be a “man-made disaster? Nope. How about a natural one that affects most of the country, like a New Madrid earthquake that crumbles every bridge over the Mississippi, or a huge solar flare that wipes out the national electrical infrastructure? Neither event would be unprecedented. Nature has served this continent both dishes before.

And, if nature won’t step up and provide a “serious crisis,” how about the Iranians, with their “peaceful” nuclear power, that, for some reason, requires the parallel development of Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs)? Those wacky, nuclear North Koreans can’t be counted out, either.

If so, then what?

Glenn, Rush and Sean will disappear from the airwaves, and we “sick, twisted freaks” will be on our own.

The Obama goons will exert whatever power they have, and the competing factions among them (Brotherhood Muslims vs. Communists vs. Old Left vs. Black Muslims vs. foreign agents and sleeper cells, etc…) will jump at the chance to flex their muscles, jockeying for position, with one eye on owning the ruins when the smoke clears.

The First Tuesday after the First Monday in November is right around the corner.  Will we have an election?

It forces one to think the unthinkable, doesn’t it?

A Kinder, Gentler Martial Law

GOP senators have appealed to President Obama to soften the impact of martial law imposed before the national election.

Republican Senators Offer Alternative Plan for Martial Law

(Washington, October 29^th, 2012)

In the wake of President Obama’s declaration of martial law last week, just weeks before the 2012 general election, moderate Senate Republicans have proposed some alternatives to the President’s executive orders authorizing indefinite detention without trial and civil asset forfeiture.

The measures were described as “draconian” by former talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who has not been heard from in several days. Senate Republicans Olympia Snow, John  McCain and minority leader Mitch McConnell came forward today with what they call “a reasonable alternative” to the emergency measures. They say they have met with Senators Harry Reid and Dick Durbin to negotiate the release on recognizance of several Republican senators, congressmen, and state governors, all of whom had been “very critical” of the emergency measures.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell spoke for the group:

“In this time of crisis, we must reach across the aisle to our colleagues and come to some sort of compromise on these executive orders. While we appreciate the urgency and severity of the situation that faces the President, we believe it is possible to deal with our unfortunate circumstances with a more moderate, measured approach.”

“We propose to allow those thousands of Americans being held incommunicado and without legal representation or charges being filed, to be released on their own recognizance from the detention camps around the country, after signing an agreement not to participate in political activity.

“They should be allowed to return to their homes, if they have not been demolished or re-assigned to needy immigrant families. They should wear a GPS-enabled house arrest ankle bracelet and keep authorities advised of their whereabouts at all times.

“Of course, we would expect the President’s National Stability Police Force to continue to hold anyone who is a real security threat, but we expect that such detainees would be tried and convicted or released within a reasonable period.”

Saying they were trying to reach missing Congressional colleagues to get a consensus in support of the compromise, McConnell expects to be allowed to meet with the President’s chief of staff to present the proposal “within the next few weeks.”

CPR for America — ABC!

Here is where we are:

We walk into the room, and find our country, the United States of America, down on the floor, unconscious, not breathing, and with no pulse. Death is imminent.

Triage is in order. Treat the immediately life-threatening conditions first. Then fix the underlying problems.

The mnemonic used in CPR training, “ABC” (Airway, Breathing, Circulation), focuses on the order of importance of things in first-responder emergency care. Rescue breathing, for example, can’t happen without an open airway.

Circulation, including cardiac compressions and stopping bleeding, is irrelevant if there are no airway and breathing  to get  oxygen into the blood.

Get the airway open, deliver some breaths if needed, and then do cardiac compressions, if needed.  After the ABCs are taken care of, tend to the bleeding.

Fractures, pain control, swelling, infection, and other, important, but less urgent conditions come later. They cannot be neglected, but they come after ABC.

Same with our country.

Yes, we need a conservative president, and the more conservative, the better. However, any president who is not an America-hating, hard-core leftist,  is a life-saving improvement over Barack Obama. He has our national airway blocked. He will kill our country in another four year term.

Elect a president who will fire the “czars,” sequester the insane spending on pointless, destructive bureaucratic regulations, and take the government’s choking grip off the economy’s airway.

Airway open.

Get the air moving in the lungs. Tell Congress to repeal the stupid laws that gave these bureaucracies imperial power over Americans. Make the Justice Department administer justice, and not the political whims of the White House.

Breathing established.

Elect succeeding generations of strict constitutionalists to the House and Senate, so that any president who wants to rule like a king is hogtied and impotent, and impeached and removed, if necessary. Federal judges who want to write law from the bench will be returned by a Constitutionally responsible Congress to the private sector, or to prison, if they have done wrong in office.

Stem the government’s endless appetite for power and property by stopping it from doing the endless things it has no business doing. Abolish unconstitutional agencies, and fire their employees.

Circulation restored, and bleeding stopped.

Then, fix the deeply-rooted, abusive practices of a government that have had generations to fester and swell.

This process will take several election cycles, but it can work, if we don’t turn our backs on politics after the next election.

A, B, and C. Each is vital, but none is enough, without the others.

The best president in history is only a temporary fix, without a Congress and a judicial branch that will do their constitutional jobs.

None of this can happen without an electorate that is educated on the founding documents, and involved for the long haul — not just for 2012, but for every election from now on, and for every day in between.

We may put off our country’s imminent death, but we will have done nothing to forestall its progressive, degenerative decline into third-world, bankrupt, crippled irrelevancy — and death is still the ultimate result.

ABC.

A presidential election is a beginning, but it is just a beginning. It’s not a long-term job; it’s a never-ending job, and it’s the voters that have to do it.

First, ABC.

When RINOs Attack

THE DUNCEPHANT — Proud symbol of the compassionate conservative, big-tent, self-defeating, Stupid Party

Let me see if I understand the criticism from those on the nominal right who support the Boehner Two-Step:

1) Anyone who opposes Boehner is supporting Reid, Pelosi, Obama, Schumer, et al., because they oppose it, too.

2) Cut, Cap and Balance failed to get a vote in the Senate, so the House has to pass something the Senate will like.

3) Republicans will be blamed for default, for Social Security checks and VA benefit checks not being issued, and for the downgrade of US credit, among other things, if Boehner’s latest mutation doesn’t get out of the House.

There are other criticisms, but these are the big ones.

1) Anyone against Boehner must support Obama, Reid, Pelosi, sexually transmitted diseases and Karl Marx.

Is this supposed to be an argument worthy of mega-brains like Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol? Guilt by association?

The small-government right opposes Boehner because it is a capitulation. It grants Obama nearly a trillion dollars of immediate spending authorization, and razor-thin, ephemeral spending cuts.

The big government left opposes Boehner because they have been told to, by their ideological leaders, and because even phantom spending reductions threaten their eternal right to buy votes with taxpayers’ money, and they will fight like rabid raccoons against anyone or anything that threatens that practice.

The pathetic spending cuts, history has shown anyone who cares, won’t happen, because current Congresses can’t obligate future Congresses. And, even if they could, so what? When have laws or obligations stopped big government from doing what it wants? When the people driving the policy think the Constitution is “flawed,” because it is a document of “negative liberties,” what’s to stop them? If Congress won’t allow it, find a judge who will. What will the RINOs do? “Well, it’s settled law,” they will say, and go back to their perpetual election campaigns.

2) The Senate didn’t “like” CC&P, so the House has to pass something Reid & Co. will “friend.”

As the establishment Republican critics often say, CC&B didn’t even get a vote in the Senate. To that I say, so what? The Senate is controlled by Democrats, and collaborating RINOs. Is anyone really surprised that CC&B didn’t get a vote?

Do the establishment Republicans above somehow think Boehner 3.x could get through the Senate as anything but a shell, gutted and carved up like a Halloween pumpkin, and filled with progressive and socialist candy? And that is only if demented clown Reid lets it get that far.

And then, what? The Boehner pumpkin zombie bill goes back to the House. House members with 0.5 brain or more vote it down, and the Media/White House axis brand the House Republicans as obstructionists. Is there ANYTHING about this outcome that is not utterly predictable?

3) Republicans will be blamed for financial ruin, the starvation of the elderly and babies, the deaths of polar bears, and the cake falling, if they don’t get behind Boehner 3.x.

Republicans, as the Elephantine Establishmentarians never tire of lecturing us, only have one-half of one branch of the legislature, which is one-third of the government. Yes, I read that somewhere. And, by the way, that’s wrong. Republicans do NOT have one-half of the House.

They have a clear majority, if they ever decide to vote together, which is considerably more than 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/3. If the leadership had principle in mind, rather than obscure gamesmanship and obsolete reelection strategies,  they would use that majority to pass legislation that is clearly right for the country, and not what “might” pass the Democrat Senate.

They should get the message out that they are doing what the Constitution not only allows, but compels them to do. And they should let the chips fall where they may. Those who are unable, or unwilling to do that, should be encouraged to find jobs in lobby shops and universities, where they will be in more forgiving, less demanding environments.

Socialism, the Perpetual Money Machine

Fludd’s Perpetual Motion machine, circa 1600, courtesy of Wikipedia

Perpetual motion describes hypothetical machines that operate or produce useful work indefinitely and, more generally, hypothetical machines that produce more work or energy than they consume, whether they might operate indefinitely or not.

There is undisputed scientific consensus that perpetual motion would violate either the first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics, or both. Machines which comply with both laws of thermodynamics but access energy from obscure sources are sometimes referred to as perpetual motion machines, although they do not meet the standard criteria for the name.

Despite the fact that successful perpetual motion devices are physically impossible in terms of our current understanding of the laws of physics, the pursuit of perpetual motion remains popular.”

— WIKIPEDIA

Yes, it does. Several inventors claim to have developed machines that take a small amount of energy input, and put out a much larger amount of energy, usually in the form of electricity. None of these inventions has resulted in a marketable product that has been shown to work.

Of course, the fundamentals of conventional physics don’t allow for more energy to be produced by a closed system than is put into it, period. Grumpy and intractable physical limitations like entropy and friction keep perpetual motion in the realm of fantasy, wishful thinking and investment scams. Barring the discovery of utterly new physical principles, perpetual motion remains in that realm. Energy and mass are conserved. All of the energy in the universe eventually degenerates to heat.

Most people understand that, at least intuitively, if not intellectually. Of course, there are enough credulous customers to draw scammers and opportunists to the smell of money. After all, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

Why then, do so many people accept without question the existence of  a perpetual money machine, also known as socialism? Too many of the people who know better than to believe there is a way to get something for nothing from a perpetual motion machine, willingly accept that government can somehow produce wealth without consuming wealth — a perpetual money machine.

Yes, taxpayers furnish the energy input to government’s machinery, but there is only so much taxpayers’ money. When government pays out more than it collects, debt ensues.

Margaret Thatcher painted a neat bulls eye on the fundamental flaw of the perpetual money machine when she was describing in an interview the damage a socialist government in Britain had done to the economy:

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people. — (Thames TV Interview, February 5, 1976. Emphasis added)

Does this ring a bell with anybody?

When the taxpayers are paying all they can, many modern governments just keep on paying it out, and damn the debt torpedoes. When it becomes difficult to borrow money from individuals, organizations and other countries, some governments just invent money out of thin air, or try to. They fire up a perpetual money machine.

Our government has just issued bonds (borrowing from lenders with the promise of repayment with interest), and then issued “money” to buy those bonds back from the lenders. The “money” is “money” in quotation marks, because it has no inherent value, like gold or land, and it is only worth what the government can convince people it is worth.

It is also referred to as “fiat money,” not because it can only be used to buy one brand of Italian car (whose name has been said to be an acronym for, “Fix It Again, Tony!”), but because “fiat” is Latin for, “Let it be done.”

When a government issues a fiat, questioning its validity draws the same answer a child may get from its parent, in lieu of a rational explanation:

“Because I said so!”

Parents sometimes exercise such autocratic power over their children, when there is not time for a rational explanation, or when they assume that the child needs to believe the parental pronouncement regardless of the child’s capacity to understand the explanation. Autocratic governments often exercise the same sort of authority over their subjects – uh, citizens.

“This dollar will buy you a loaf of bread, because the government said so.”

When individuals issue “money” to pay debts, it’s called “counterfeiting,” and it is regarded as a crime, because… because… only governments are allowed to issue worthless money. The whole sum of money in circulation is reduced in value because of the loss of faith in its value. Faith is all that supports the value of fiat money.

Counterfeiting, in other words, is a government monopoly.

Sooner or later, the worthless money becomes recognized as such, and it no longer will buy anything, or anything much. Where a “dollar” used to buy a loaf of bread, inflated “dollars” will only buy a slice. When potential sellers of goods and services realize that money is, in fact, “fiat money,” hyperinflation may result, and a wheel barrow full of dollars may only buy breadcrumbs, if anything at all.

People holding a lot of “fiat money” in cash may find the best use of it is to burn it to keep warm.

This has happened in modern times, in places like the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe

The problem with “perpetual money machines,” socialist governments that hand out monetary favors to favored constituents without regard to where the money will come from, is a law as intractable and grumpy as entropy and friction – the law of scarcity.

Scarcity is a sophisticated name for a simple truth, which is what all natural laws are, at heart. That simple truth is: There is a greater demand for some things among humans than there is a supply of those things.

Rather than strive to understand the implications of this truth, politicians, as Thomas Sowell has said much more eloquently (and with far greater street cred), here, and, in a second installment, here, prefer to hide behind the elements of fiction that have driven public interest in drama for centuries: heroes, villains and victims.

Discussing scarcity requires an attention span and an understanding of logic that following reality television does not. Politicians are competing for an audience with “Dancing with the Stars” and the Comedy Channel, and they know that emotion and contrived drama trump rational analysis every time.

Politicians set up “big oil” as a villain, for example, casting people at the pump as victims, and themselves as heroes, with their congressional committee rooms as the backdrop. By calling oil company executives on the carpet before their committees, the politicians can compete among themselves for face time on television with stupid questions and self-important speeches, interrupting and drowning out potentially rational replies from the oil executives.

The perpetual money machine keeps cranking out dollars, passing them to favored constituents. The debt keeps rising, as do the prices of gas and groceries. Politicians keep on casting themselves as heroes, while the victims go from bad to worse.

Meanwhile, the inefficiency of government, as measured by the small fraction of each tax dollar supposedly aimed at solving problem X that actually gets to problem X, is as stubborn an impediment to the efficiency of the perpetual money machine as is friction to Fludd’s perpetual motion machine. Regulatory bureaucrats, campaign finance committees, favored contractors and unions all peel off their take before the money arrives at the people, pavement or endangered species it is supposed to be helping.

Meanwhile, the diminishing value of each dollar from the perpetual money machine is a tax on everyone who earns, saves or spends that money.

Retirees are caught in a vise. The value of their pension dollars shrinks, as the prices of the things they must buy continue to rise.

Minimum-wage employees find themselves unable to afford the gas to get them to their minimum-wage jobs, making government unemployment “compensation” more attractive, even though the money behind that “compensation” is cranked out by the same machine, with the same, ultimate cost to the unemployed and to everyone else.

The “rich,” those who have enough money left over after they pay for the essentials of life to be willing to put that left-over money to work making more money, become uneasy with the diminishing value of their wealth. They pull back the ‘extra” money, and put it where they think its value will drop as slowly as possible, so as to have more of it left when the prices of essentials rise even more. The “rich” include small business owners, and these “rich” people employ about 70% of all employed Americans. Employees the “rich” suddenly find they cannot afford, are laid off. New employees they might have hired, remain unemployed.

Crank that perpetual money machine up! There is more “money” needed to pay the unemployment benefits of those who are laid off or not hired as a result of the decreased value of fiat money. More, less-valuable money hits the street, and the value of all the money in circulation drops. Inflation continues. Economic friction continues to convert the “money” cranked out by the perpetual money machine into wasted heat.

Am I way off-base, here, to think socialism is no more sustainable than a perpetual motion machine? I don’t think so. Both are fictions based in the ignorance of the public as to immutable laws, and neither has ever worked, nor will ever work.

Perpetual motion machine scams may cause fools and their money to be parted, but socialism is a stepping stone to economic disaster.

Governments that run perpetual motion machines either fall and are replaced with fiscally conservative leadership, or they degenerate into dictatorships, like those in the last century, that were responsible for the murder and enslavement of hundreds of millions of people.

History, like immutable laws, is a dispassionate, but brutally honest teacher. Socialism, the perpetual money machine, is a scam and an inevitable, costly failure.

“They always run out of other peoples’ money.”

$100 Trillion Dollar Bill, Zimbabwe (Courtesy Wikipedia)