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Sometimes burning bridges isn't a bad thing. It prevents you from going back to a place you should never have been to begin with... Unknown

My real adversary has no name, no face, no party, it will never be elected, yet it governs — the adversary is the world of finance.

Francois Hollande, President of France, 15 May 2012 —

This week we are about a third longer than I like to keep things, but we introduce 10 hurdles of the present, we need to navigate as we move to the future. So rather than chop the article into a number of pieces—all ten hurdles follow.

Commodityism? A new word, not quite, but until now you will only find a few references to its roots on the Internet. As best I can tell, it is only mentioned briefly in a critic of capitalism, by none other than Karl Marx and his friend Fredrich Engels during their exile in France. Yet that reference is really “commodity ism.”

To find another reference in the modern American sense of making up words as you go along, we find commodityism in discussions of farm prices and there it seems that one reference is repeated over and over again.

We came up with the commodityism concept as we finished last week looking at the financial tension that is developing globally between “capitalism and socialism.” Sometimes the words change, but what the world really is struggling with is the fundamental understanding of how our things are supposed to work. As currently defined in the American construct, the choice seems to be between progressive-liberalism and fiscal-consevativism.

Francois Hollande is quoted today for it’s his second day on the job. Our contention is that his adversary as the “world of finance” severely misses the mark, because the world of finance is really just attempting to deal with the commodity of money. If you limit your discussion to finance, the real deal is just rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking ship we call the euro.

Hopefully this week, as we discuss commodityism we will see that until we look at our global predicament in a much bigger picture, we will continue to kick the can, rearrange the chairs and struggle with Hayek, contrasted with Keynes.

Tags: commodityism, Francois Hollande, Karl Marx, capitalism, socialism, hurtling hurdles

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You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can fool all of the people all of the time.

Abraham Lincoln (attributed) 16th president of USA, (1809-1865)

Over the weekend, in France and Greece, the world’s financial elite saw the people, through their democratic processes, set fire to the bridge back to the final vestiges of the hope of controlling the unintended consequences of a financially united European currency. The Au Revoir, Austerity title of this week’s article was Monday’s early morning headline from The Drudge Report.

It is quoted that the new president of France, Francois Hollande has said, “My real adversary has no name, no face, no party, it will never be elected, yet it governs — the adversary is the world of finance.” This is not good news for a century of the evolution of global finance, reportedly begun by the Lord’s of Finance (NY Times book review). That hope in change began just about a century ago, where good men, trying to do the right thing, started us down the broad global financial highway and across The Bridge to Unintended Consequences.

In Europe over the weekend, we see the beginning of an attempt to forge a new way of literally doing business, which will eventually have repercussions globally down to the petite cafes of rural France to the American greasy spoon, and everyplace in between. In a way this week’s title could be changed to Au Revoir, Security. This means it is going to take a while to see how all this shakes out. Tuesday’s stock market rebound after deep losses, being an attempt to salvage optimism in the face of reality.

For broader context, the sad reality is a century of broadly based elitist (more highly evolved) leadership has broken down. It has failed to provide the security, both temporal and eternal that these leaders have and had promised. In other words the top-down has failed and now the bottom-up is beginning to express their displeasure.

In the United States it was that displeasure that led to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008. The election of 2012 boils down to the reality of, “How’s that hopey changey thing working out for ya?”—really it isn’t, but is this present Obama insecurity more secure than changing to Mitt Romney’s vision? Over the weekend the same could be said for the elections in both France and Greece, as well as other leadership changes across the Atlantic and the Middle East, since the beginning of the financial crisis.

Tags: Francois Hollande, France, Greece, unintended consequences, leadership, Entrepreneur Reserve Program, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area

Tags: unemployment

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Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. Matthew 7:13

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost, 1920

Sometimes burning bridges isn't a bad thing. It prevents you from going back to a place you should never have been to begin with... Unknown

According to the question mark finder, last week we asked thirty-one questions; gave very few answers. This week we look at the Bridge to Unintended Consequences and sadly, using Robert Frost’s analogy, “somewhere ages and ages hence” we have crossed that bridge to Unintended Consequences and now it is burning behind us. Hence we can’t go back to take the road less traveled there, but we need to create a new one out beyond this mess.

To put this into American political punditry of the late twentieth century: We built a bridge to nowhere and now we find in Unintended Consequences, a barren land, not to our desires of A free lunch for everyone and everything forever. Looking back, as that bridge is in flames, we find we abandoned the fire fighting equipment on the other side of our political and economic chasm.

Hopefully the only significant question this week becomes: How long will it be before we decide to move beyond the light of this burning bridge, trekking beyond Unintended Consequences by beginning to look for narrow gates and roads diverging in a new wood?

Going back is not an option, but looking back to see the recorded history of where we laid the cornerstone of the present burning bridge, is not all that difficult.

Going forward, is simply to amend our ways and not build another bridge to another set of unintended consequences, but rather learn from our past mistakes, for the future has enough tribulations of its own.

From the vantage point of Wonder Springs in Death Valley, the broad easy way of America’s divergence from our founding history really is of relatively short duration. We didn’t get to this far side in the dry bones valley of unintended consequences by the socialist Barak Obama, nor the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush, nor the end of big government of Bill Clinton, nor the Gulf War of Bush 41, nor the revolution of the Gipper, nor the stagnation of the peanut farmer, nor the bungling of Gerald Ford.

Tags: unintended consequences, Richard Nixon, Vietnam War, Gold Window, Grizzly USA, all vounteer military, agriculture