Martin Armstrong, the well-known and somewhat infamous theorist of economic cycles, just published a blog post with this title, Will Society Ever Wake Up? Here are some choice excerpts:
This subject had been on my mind as well since having to deal with a couple of victimless traffic fines recently, for completely reasonable behaviour. I was left wondering, to what degree is one born as a slave to the state? To what degree is one obliged to be bound by the arbitrary and ever changeable dictates of a ruling clique of politicians and bureaucrats whose financial appetite is insatiable? Does the state really have a claim over one's possessions for which it can enact arbitrary laws to give justification to taking?
Increasingly it is obvious that it is the power of might which gives government arbitrary authority over individuals rather than any moral authority. When every single individual in a population is terrorised by the enforcement of arbitrary laws constructed to justify the theft of private property, and I know of no one who has not been fined, does that not make the laws themselves anti-social and unjust by definition?
I often drive along a main road in Melbourne where the speed changes from 70km/hr, a very reasonable speed for the conditions, to 40km/hr and where speed cameras have just been erected. Needless to say, with every change of traffic light that I have seen since the installation of the speed cameras, the unwary, momentarily distracted and uninformed are "caught" driving over the current nominal speed limit.
Will society ever wake up and say, "that's enough of the big government with their totalitarian controls and unrelenting demands on private property?" Or has the population become captured by a dependence on government that exposes the moral hazard of giving up individual sovereignty and initiative, destroying our economic potential as Armstrong suggests?
I think, just looking at the lecherous and increasing dependence of governments on fine revenues in Australia clearly identifies that Australia is trapped in an unholy interdependence. A spiral of diminishing returns where the population is dependent on the government to sustain it, losing its entrepreneurial initiative and economic potential in the process, resulting in a dwindling indigenous corporate tax base that forces governments into increasing reliance upon and enforcement over the population to fund itself.
Is the only option to break this cycle of governments creating increasing totalitarian controls that persecute and fine the population at large, to quote Armstrong, a reboot? Unfortunately, the population is too hopelessly cowered by over-bearing enforcement and restricted in temporal freedom, due to historically high debt servicing commitments, to resist such laws. Clearly there is no incentive for government to limit its own power to claim private property, in fact they infinitely justify increased powers, so they can never be expected to turn back the rising totalitarianism themselves. With a population that is increasingly time and resource poor and with a political process that requires ever increasing wealth and power extracted from the population, what hope is there if not a "reboot" after some dystopian end game plays out?
I think there is only one hope to turn things around within the current system and that comes from independent politicians, who are not dependent on politics for their career or wage, and whose philanthropic dividend back to society is to fight for its freedom and resist the totalitarian inclinations of career politicians.
This subject had been on my mind as well since having to deal with a couple of victimless traffic fines recently, for completely reasonable behaviour. I was left wondering, to what degree is one born as a slave to the state? To what degree is one obliged to be bound by the arbitrary and ever changeable dictates of a ruling clique of politicians and bureaucrats whose financial appetite is insatiable? Does the state really have a claim over one's possessions for which it can enact arbitrary laws to give justification to taking?
Increasingly it is obvious that it is the power of might which gives government arbitrary authority over individuals rather than any moral authority. When every single individual in a population is terrorised by the enforcement of arbitrary laws constructed to justify the theft of private property, and I know of no one who has not been fined, does that not make the laws themselves anti-social and unjust by definition?
I often drive along a main road in Melbourne where the speed changes from 70km/hr, a very reasonable speed for the conditions, to 40km/hr and where speed cameras have just been erected. Needless to say, with every change of traffic light that I have seen since the installation of the speed cameras, the unwary, momentarily distracted and uninformed are "caught" driving over the current nominal speed limit.
Will society ever wake up and say, "that's enough of the big government with their totalitarian controls and unrelenting demands on private property?" Or has the population become captured by a dependence on government that exposes the moral hazard of giving up individual sovereignty and initiative, destroying our economic potential as Armstrong suggests?
I think, just looking at the lecherous and increasing dependence of governments on fine revenues in Australia clearly identifies that Australia is trapped in an unholy interdependence. A spiral of diminishing returns where the population is dependent on the government to sustain it, losing its entrepreneurial initiative and economic potential in the process, resulting in a dwindling indigenous corporate tax base that forces governments into increasing reliance upon and enforcement over the population to fund itself.
Is the only option to break this cycle of governments creating increasing totalitarian controls that persecute and fine the population at large, to quote Armstrong, a reboot? Unfortunately, the population is too hopelessly cowered by over-bearing enforcement and restricted in temporal freedom, due to historically high debt servicing commitments, to resist such laws. Clearly there is no incentive for government to limit its own power to claim private property, in fact they infinitely justify increased powers, so they can never be expected to turn back the rising totalitarianism themselves. With a population that is increasingly time and resource poor and with a political process that requires ever increasing wealth and power extracted from the population, what hope is there if not a "reboot" after some dystopian end game plays out?
I think there is only one hope to turn things around within the current system and that comes from independent politicians, who are not dependent on politics for their career or wage, and whose philanthropic dividend back to society is to fight for its freedom and resist the totalitarian inclinations of career politicians.
