This a very well written article, articulating the intricacies of our current [corrupt] system, along with a logical, rational and methodical [academic] approach to solving the problems. Unfortunately, in real life, such an approach won't work. Instead, the solution will be more drastic - Clyde, in "Law Abiding Citizen" sums it up the best, 'It's gonna be biblical. I'm gonna bring the whole diseased temple down on your heads. It's going to be Biblical.' I think we [the people of the world] are starting to see the signs of this happening.
Very interesting. I’ll add this as one place to start.
With just 3 exceptions, the entire Federal Criminal Code has no constitutional basis for existence. Nearly all of Title 18 is unconstitutional.
The federal government has no constitutional authority over criminal law except for cases of piracy, counterfeiting, and treason.
Ponder the level of bureaucracy and the agencies that would not exist (looking at you FBLie) if Congress and the Courts had actually followed to Constitution over the past 250 years.
Excellent piece. This is the first time I’ve read someone who was intellectually capable of describing the complexity of the web that intertwines big corporations, government bureaucracies, and the role of, for instance, US bureaucrats versus EU technocrats (or socialists or marxists...whatever) versus autocrats from China wielding “green” disillusions, and so on, without reverting to lumping the various groups together as some WEF cabal or the “military industrial complex.” If the “military industrial complex” is to be labeled the “bad guys” then holy hell, I don’t want to know what you would
call the folks behind Pfizer-BioNTech, the FDA, the CDC, and the NHS and HHS in England: bludgeoning serial killers? The way Pfizer’s been able to grab seemingly every figure from the very top to ER doctors by the cahones and coerce or otherwise get them to do very evil things is shocking, the stuff of science fiction. Anyway, long story short the author is brilliant, and the intersection and often competing interests of the world’s elite is much too complex to distill into “the WEF/Davos cabal.”
Love it, QTR. Next time you drink, please shoot me a Twitter DM and launch Spaces -- your subscribers are having buzzed QTR monologue withdrawals, mate! We need that dopamine kick. Though, I’m sure Pfizer has a solution.
What about smaller? There is no historical precedent that a democratic republic can grow as large as the US and still function. The government needs to be closer to the people, which means the U.S. as currently constituted is just too big. Sea-to-shining-sea as a governing principle has failed.
Okay, we know we have a huge issue with our bureaucracies at all levels of government. We have huge issues with our debt at all levels of government. Incompetence is everywhere in all governments. All of these bureaucrats are party members.
The end of this nonsense will create a lot of pain and misery for everyone. Are we ready for that? I’m not sure a majority of people are, but my take on history is that there were not a lot of “patriots” either in 1775 and 1776, but they were willing to sacrifice everything to break away from the King.
We have our Constitution. It is a great document and maybe we should start there. Obviously the world is different now and it may need to be updated, but thankfully our founding fathers thought of that too. We do need people of extra ordinary moral values to step forward and lead. Our founding fathers documented that when they were writing the constitution. Unfortunately the very people they were concerned with have taken over.
I’m not sure I want to follow the advice of 3 economic professors from the Commonwealth to tell us how to fix our problems. Let them fix the Commonwealth problems first, then, if they are successful, maybe we take a look at what they did. The commonwealth doesn’t have a constitution, but they wish they did. Last time I checked, we fought a war to be free from their type of government. Look how the Commonwealth countries handled Covid. That didn’t turn out so well for their citizens.
Our country has a lot of very smart and morally guided people who could lead us, but I’m not sure we are ready to suffer the pain that would come from that experience. There are a lot of “We the People”who are just fine with how things are. Our government takes care of them and they are fine with that.
Nothing will change unless it 'has' to.. Even the Fed, supposedly trying to break the economy, now has the bureaucracy saving SVB from breaking the economy. The Great Depression worked wonders for several decades thereafter--let the system fail and it's easier to flush out the crap you have so concisely elucidated.
I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix this. It has been obvious to me, for quite some time, that any number of offices and bureaucracies need to be shuttered. It wouldn't hurt to fire at least 50% of every government employee, especially those at the Federal level. No, I'm not drunk at 9 am nor am I smoking high-grade cannabis, either!
Many government jobs are make-work or jobs programs for people unfit to work in the private sector. I'm talking about the TSA and VA, to be specific. The only people at the VA with decent healthcare are the Federal employees who are well protected by strong government union apparatchiks. Medical care for veterans is secondary, on a good day.
The case to be made for public employee unions, of any kind, is gone. I can understand the need for a union if one is working a dangerous job (funny how military service members are not protected by a public employee union) but there is little danger as a public school teacher, or as a mailman, or as a paper pusher at the VA. Unions are outdated, an artifact that is no longer a benefit for the public at large.
My crystal ball cracked some time ago so my skill at predicting the future is non-existent. The article mentions the former USSR. I can see a similar break up of the USA, happening, with the US becoming Balkanized into regions. States with shared values would join together, such as Idaho and eastern Oregon in the Greater Idaho movement, or as in Texas simply saying no more, and leaving the union as a form of self preservation.
Financial collapse seems unavoidable at this point in time. After that happens, the people of the US will do what we have always done. Pick ourselves up and get back to work.
i found these quotes particularly clear, concise and accurately diagnosing the problem..."the very fabric of operations of both politics and the bureaucracy has become captured, procedurally and technologically, by special interest groups."
...
"one cannot isolate a few corrupted parts of the state bureaucracy, excise them, and start afresh. The system has become entangled precisely to prevent such a solution: to do any serious reform ‘from the outside’ you would not merely have to axe all the major departments, including the army, but also the legal structures and the major businesses that have grown around the state bureaucracy. "
the real trick is - so what now? what are the solutions? I appreciate the author offering some (6) - conceptually. I agree with the proposals, but look around. Do we - the majority of the USA that knows trump was a loud mouthed game show host who was undermined by the federal government for 4+ years ...who also know biden/kamala are incompetent and corrupt - do we think any of the proposed solutions have any chance? the country is too easily divided & distracted despite the media's horrible record the big tech + mainstream media monopoly on info has so many deluded - we cant even agree on the facts...forgive my cynicism
Very thoughtful article that helps articulate many of my family’s own frustrations and observations. The 4th branch of government has ceased to serve and become only self replicating / self protecting (similar to everyone’s fears concerning AI’s future).
This a very well written article, articulating the intricacies of our current [corrupt] system, along with a logical, rational and methodical [academic] approach to solving the problems. Unfortunately, in real life, such an approach won't work. Instead, the solution will be more drastic - Clyde, in "Law Abiding Citizen" sums it up the best, 'It's gonna be biblical. I'm gonna bring the whole diseased temple down on your heads. It's going to be Biblical.' I think we [the people of the world] are starting to see the signs of this happening.
Dammit chris, is had to bust out the dictionary on the first fuckin line!
Imo public-private partnerships must be verboten. Something like the separation of church and state.
Very interesting. I’ll add this as one place to start.
With just 3 exceptions, the entire Federal Criminal Code has no constitutional basis for existence. Nearly all of Title 18 is unconstitutional.
The federal government has no constitutional authority over criminal law except for cases of piracy, counterfeiting, and treason.
Ponder the level of bureaucracy and the agencies that would not exist (looking at you FBLie) if Congress and the Courts had actually followed to Constitution over the past 250 years.
Excellent piece. This is the first time I’ve read someone who was intellectually capable of describing the complexity of the web that intertwines big corporations, government bureaucracies, and the role of, for instance, US bureaucrats versus EU technocrats (or socialists or marxists...whatever) versus autocrats from China wielding “green” disillusions, and so on, without reverting to lumping the various groups together as some WEF cabal or the “military industrial complex.” If the “military industrial complex” is to be labeled the “bad guys” then holy hell, I don’t want to know what you would
call the folks behind Pfizer-BioNTech, the FDA, the CDC, and the NHS and HHS in England: bludgeoning serial killers? The way Pfizer’s been able to grab seemingly every figure from the very top to ER doctors by the cahones and coerce or otherwise get them to do very evil things is shocking, the stuff of science fiction. Anyway, long story short the author is brilliant, and the intersection and often competing interests of the world’s elite is much too complex to distill into “the WEF/Davos cabal.”
Love it, QTR. Next time you drink, please shoot me a Twitter DM and launch Spaces -- your subscribers are having buzzed QTR monologue withdrawals, mate! We need that dopamine kick. Though, I’m sure Pfizer has a solution.
What about smaller? There is no historical precedent that a democratic republic can grow as large as the US and still function. The government needs to be closer to the people, which means the U.S. as currently constituted is just too big. Sea-to-shining-sea as a governing principle has failed.
Don't hold your breath.
Okay, we know we have a huge issue with our bureaucracies at all levels of government. We have huge issues with our debt at all levels of government. Incompetence is everywhere in all governments. All of these bureaucrats are party members.
The end of this nonsense will create a lot of pain and misery for everyone. Are we ready for that? I’m not sure a majority of people are, but my take on history is that there were not a lot of “patriots” either in 1775 and 1776, but they were willing to sacrifice everything to break away from the King.
We have our Constitution. It is a great document and maybe we should start there. Obviously the world is different now and it may need to be updated, but thankfully our founding fathers thought of that too. We do need people of extra ordinary moral values to step forward and lead. Our founding fathers documented that when they were writing the constitution. Unfortunately the very people they were concerned with have taken over.
I’m not sure I want to follow the advice of 3 economic professors from the Commonwealth to tell us how to fix our problems. Let them fix the Commonwealth problems first, then, if they are successful, maybe we take a look at what they did. The commonwealth doesn’t have a constitution, but they wish they did. Last time I checked, we fought a war to be free from their type of government. Look how the Commonwealth countries handled Covid. That didn’t turn out so well for their citizens.
Our country has a lot of very smart and morally guided people who could lead us, but I’m not sure we are ready to suffer the pain that would come from that experience. There are a lot of “We the People”who are just fine with how things are. Our government takes care of them and they are fine with that.
It’s JMHFO.
Nothing will change unless it 'has' to.. Even the Fed, supposedly trying to break the economy, now has the bureaucracy saving SVB from breaking the economy. The Great Depression worked wonders for several decades thereafter--let the system fail and it's easier to flush out the crap you have so concisely elucidated.
Every once great society, born amid relative freedom, ultimately succumbed to the self serving corruption and gluttony of central authority.
In reality , as the great PJ O’Rourke wrote, our government is just a Parliament of Whores.
I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix this. It has been obvious to me, for quite some time, that any number of offices and bureaucracies need to be shuttered. It wouldn't hurt to fire at least 50% of every government employee, especially those at the Federal level. No, I'm not drunk at 9 am nor am I smoking high-grade cannabis, either!
Many government jobs are make-work or jobs programs for people unfit to work in the private sector. I'm talking about the TSA and VA, to be specific. The only people at the VA with decent healthcare are the Federal employees who are well protected by strong government union apparatchiks. Medical care for veterans is secondary, on a good day.
The case to be made for public employee unions, of any kind, is gone. I can understand the need for a union if one is working a dangerous job (funny how military service members are not protected by a public employee union) but there is little danger as a public school teacher, or as a mailman, or as a paper pusher at the VA. Unions are outdated, an artifact that is no longer a benefit for the public at large.
My crystal ball cracked some time ago so my skill at predicting the future is non-existent. The article mentions the former USSR. I can see a similar break up of the USA, happening, with the US becoming Balkanized into regions. States with shared values would join together, such as Idaho and eastern Oregon in the Greater Idaho movement, or as in Texas simply saying no more, and leaving the union as a form of self preservation.
Financial collapse seems unavoidable at this point in time. After that happens, the people of the US will do what we have always done. Pick ourselves up and get back to work.
thanks for sharing.
i found these quotes particularly clear, concise and accurately diagnosing the problem..."the very fabric of operations of both politics and the bureaucracy has become captured, procedurally and technologically, by special interest groups."
...
"one cannot isolate a few corrupted parts of the state bureaucracy, excise them, and start afresh. The system has become entangled precisely to prevent such a solution: to do any serious reform ‘from the outside’ you would not merely have to axe all the major departments, including the army, but also the legal structures and the major businesses that have grown around the state bureaucracy. "
the real trick is - so what now? what are the solutions? I appreciate the author offering some (6) - conceptually. I agree with the proposals, but look around. Do we - the majority of the USA that knows trump was a loud mouthed game show host who was undermined by the federal government for 4+ years ...who also know biden/kamala are incompetent and corrupt - do we think any of the proposed solutions have any chance? the country is too easily divided & distracted despite the media's horrible record the big tech + mainstream media monopoly on info has so many deluded - we cant even agree on the facts...forgive my cynicism
Great article. Thanks for this.
Outstanding.
Very thoughtful article that helps articulate many of my family’s own frustrations and observations. The 4th branch of government has ceased to serve and become only self replicating / self protecting (similar to everyone’s fears concerning AI’s future).