Where I Try to Alienate the Entire World

On one of my daily reads, Marginalizing Morons, I saw a post on The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek, and it made me want to reread the book. Having misplaced nearly all of my books in my overly crowded attic, I opted for the purchase of a new copy rather than turn the world upside down looking for my old copy. My new copy, The Definitive Edition, is edited by Bruce Caldwell and I have yet to even finish reading the introduction. The introduction to the new edition started me thinking and we all know how that turns out. I bore you with philosophy and my simplistic view of everything in general.

FA Hayek was one of the most introspective academics of the last century. He was one of the main influences that I had when devising my "nothing is mutually exclusive" ideology. Hayek studied the different economic systems, not in a vacuum, but applied with the political, the philosophical, the moral, and the mathematical, and scientific aspects. In other words, he bit off his ideology in the only way that it could be bitten off, in totality. And, not only that, he continued to revise and modify things as new information arose.

One of the very things that Hayek did that interested me so much is he never accepted historical "facts" as settled. He was all too aware that new information always has a tendency to crop up and he literally reserved the "right" to adjust his opinions given new and more accurate data. Exactly unlike the new wave of idiots that call themselves "intellectuals." Think Al Gore or Michael Mann. G_d forbid, Barry Obama thinks of himself as an intellectual, we have all seen how stupid that guy is by now.

I guess if you were to pare The Road to Serfdom down to a single premise, it would be that capitalism is the single most moral economic system devised to date. Hayek accepted man's inherent flaws and actually introduced his notion that social experiments in government could provide a slippery slope that might lead down the road to totalitarianism. He also was all too ready to debate those socialists and accept some of their basic premises because he was an academic that was willing to debate anyone on nearly any topic.

I am not an academic, I am just a dude, banging on a laptop keyboard, that has no care in the world if some moronic socialist gets his/her/ambiguous other's panties all bunched up. They can blow me.

I think that we can all agree that those very social experiments, discussed by the intellectuals, of the past century, are NEVER successful. Simply because, at the helm of all of them, there is a man that has moved to the top and controls those experiments. That man at the helm has a personal agenda and usually it is to FORCE others to live as he expects them. I have no clue why those dudes wind up running things, but you can see it every day, if you actually want to observe what is happening.

Point in case, Haiti. There is not a worse shithole in the entire Western Hemisphere. Wonder why? There seems to be no ideal explanation, since it occupies one third of the island of Hispaniola, the other two-thirds of which is the Dominican Republic. Haiti is a parliamentary republic and is the poorest country on this side of the world. The Dominican Republic is a representative republic and it is nearly the wealthiest country in the Caribbean. If you want to look at the racial aspects of these two countries, Haiti is 95% black and the Dominican is about three quarters a mixed race. Funny how those two countries are nothing alike and they share an island that is less than thirty thousand square miles. It is about the same size as South Carolina, yo.

And now, we enter slippery slope territory. There are certain knowns that make for an easier life. Our good buddy, MUD, again today passes on wisdom regarding money and how not to be a loser. While the post seems like a simplistic view of personal economic stuff, common sense wisdom always has so many more things that are underlying principles.

While MUD's premises seem to be planning one's personal economy, it is really about goals. It is not about manipulating money and attempting to raise the standard of living of everyone collectively, it is about personal responsibility. It is not about the emotional aspect of caring for all folks equally, it is about pointing out the individual actions required to accomplish the end result. Yes, I have no doubt that MUD is a genuinely caring guy, but he is NOT promoting the ideology that HE is responsible for YOU and your future. He is telling you how not to be a dumbass.

MUD's ideology and Hayek's ideology were so parallel as to be exactly the same thing to me. Of course, I relate much better to the words and syntax used by MUD.

A very basic premise of The Road to Serfdom was to push back against the move at the time to a planned or managed economy. Hayek thought that an economy based upon laissez faire capitalism was the best one. This means allowing business to be free of government control. Laissez faire assumes that the consumer is the best gauge of allowable business practices. If a business screws you over, the negative publicity that you give that business will harm them, so the business is forced to conduct their trade in a moral fashion.

No, we have never had this type of economy in the United States and therefore, our country has never been as morally sound as it could have been. As a matter of fact, since the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and probably as far back as the "republican" movement of Alexander Hamilton, our country has been so strapped by the planned economy of stupidheads, that we are literally moving down the road to a totalitarian government.

Why do I bring this up now? Because not only have we moved further and further toward the model of economy that has brought Haiti to the edge of the financial abyss, our federal government continues to push for further and more control of our lives. Also, for people that are paying attention, we do not have the brightest and most agile brains running the show in the United States. In fact, our current president is borderline retarded.

Bottom line in the debate is this. The way that I deal and trade with any man is determined by my morality, philosophy, and my intellect. The government can pass all the laws they want to achieve moronic perfection of the planned economy, but I shall remain unchanged in the way that I transact with other like-minded men. I refuse to be cowed into submission by anyone that wants to force me to become the supporter of people with morality that I cannot abide. CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION...and that is exactly what the "progressives" are doing in our government today.

I do hope that at some point in my lifetime, we remove the last vestiges of oppressive government from our lives. I can always remain HOPEful.

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