The Wonder Springs Chronicle

Specialization classes

2 December 2009

Volume 11, Issue 47

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On Tuesday evening President Barack Obama presented to the American people and the world at large his war plan for Afghanistan. Those thirty thousand extra troops will give ammunition to pundits everywhere to analyze whether that glass is half empty or half full. Little commentary will focus on the reality that in this analogy it is half a glass. The major question that speeches don’t cover is how you fill up the glass or empty the glass as time goes on. That is also dependent on whether there is a hole in the bucket, dear Jacob. Fixing the bucket will prove more costly and time consuming than the President and his supporters and adversaries are willing to admit. This is especially perplexing when the option of getting a new bucket is quite impossible.

Spun in more historic terms, is the Afghan War really an attempt at colonization focused upon a people who don’t believe in colonization and don’t particularly want to play the game? What is really at stake is a global conflict basically between Twenty-First century western culture struggling against medieval Islamic adherents. This is not a new war, but we think there are enlightened ways to provide a simple solution for Western Culture to triumph over the bad jihadists. Lots of luck fellows!

In reality if it was not for the victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 and in the Siege of Vienna in 1529 the whole world would be followers of Mohammed. This of course leaves out the Grace of God, as outlined in the Bible of Christians and Jews, as Almighty God. As the Almighty he rules over and controls human destiny. Since Western Culture truly no longer believes in God the words of that Biblical icon Solomon is in order, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Put is more twenty-first century jargon, Lots of luck fellows! A little history lesson of what followed the Battle of Vienna in 1683 might give some global historic perspective.

Of course twenty-first century Islam is not as overtly organized as medieval Islam. Covertly it seems just as successful especially in that old adversary Western Europe. The radical jihadists while well funded must exercise what command and control they have from the remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. However little command and control is required for attacks such has the recent guerilla attack at Ft. Hood, Texas by Army Major Hasan.

In the last week the threat of further sanctions really had no effect upon Iran. So they are going to install fifty thousand more centrifuges to enrich their nuclear only domestic energy needs and alternatives. The Iranian options there have even more salient consequences, none of them easy, none of them cheap, none of them without broad ranging ramifications.

Tomorrow President Obama will hold his jobs summit. So this is turning out to be the week that is. My email inbox suggest that this will be a continuation of “the Obama-Pelosi-Reid plans . . . because of their big government, high tax, big bureaucracy, politically defined model that simply doesn’t work.”

The Republican Party alternative is of course, balanced budgets, lower spending, lower taxes, and smaller government. That Reaganisk response, especially under George W. Bush gave us too big to fail financial, automobile, insurance, housing and other big business solutions, which basically shifted debt from government programs to deficit consumer debt, much of it in the form of credit cards.

Let us back up for a moment, if you would like to take a deep breath that would be OK also. Just don’t hyperventilate. The United States of America, in her greatness used to be known as the world’s most classless society. Now we have the Political class, the Financial class, the Intellectual Class, the Progressive Class, the Conservative Class, and lest we forget a very large Classless Class. These classes are further determined by race, location, education, and a whole host of other divergent factors. We call this evolutionary diversity.

But what really determines these classes? The Political Class is largely determined by the fear of not getting reelected. The Financial Class is largely determined by a place where you can make a lot of money fearing nothing but true risk. The Intellectual Class by their own admission have all the great ideas, but none of them really have ever done anything except talk about them and publish papers. Progressives favor government solutions, conservatives favor free market solutions, and for the Classless Class of the American people, everyone hopes they will just go away.

The foundation of all of these elitist classes is fear of the unknown. What we have really done is take the capitalist notion of specialization and carried it to the extreme. There is no place any longer in American society for someone who can put together diverse pieces to make a consistent and working whole. Rather we have become very good at digging holes and not being able to extricate ourselves from the bottom of the pit.

This fear truly comes from us believing that we have no worth, because we all evolved from methane and sparks through some monkeys billions of years ago. Really if you believe that God created you in His image and has a plan for your life, and that even though you are inherently evil, God saved you by the propitiatory death and resurrection of His son, you have worth and need not be afraid of the unknown.

So the emergence of all those classes from the evolutionary ooze is really not the fault of Darwinian evolution. The fault lies really with the Christian church, whose leaders sold out their priceless inheritance for the promise of conservative political power and the chance to build a mega-church in the suburbs.

So we hear from these leaders and pundits that Obama is going to turn America into the United States of Socialism. “Oh, what can we do to stem the tide?”

Now see if you can follow this paradigm:

The United States of America is a unique nation in all of human history. In that uniqueness it is quite similar to the creation of the individual. For the last several decades the United States has slowly fallen from that unique place in world history as we have become the world’s most powerful nation, but also we want to be liked. During that time we have become impressed with our own importance and taken steroids to bulk up our evolving strength.

The current President does not believe in that model, so as well as inheriting that mess, he is trying to change directions to a more just society where evolving big governmental, financial, and similar institutions will save us, and the world around us, from ourselves. That is just substituting one failed twentieth century model for another. The problem is that this redistribution of wealth concept does not work when there is no source for producing that wealth.

What is lost in all this turmoil amongst the various classes is that national defense is too important to be solely left in the hands of professional soldiers. Politics is too important to be left in the hands of the professional politicians. Finance is too important to be left in the hands of professional financial managers. That list can carry on across and up and down through society. To use a term from Adam Smith, the invisible hand cannot guide society if class experts are continually trying to coerce the invisible hand to provide some visible specific outcome.

Just as with the true God, the invisible hand does not and will not play by human rules. When we want to simplify the world to a game of “Obamopoly” (which according to my web search dates back a few months), God, the invisible hand, and the American public must be willing to sit at the table and play the game. So far, except for the Progressive and the Liberal Classes, pretty much, an increasing majority of the American people are opting out. Furthermore they seem hesitant to “go all in” or even “double down” with the Obamopoly agenda. Could it be that God and the invisible hand are still alive and well?

So how do we change something we cannot control? As I wrote those words, I was reminded of a song by Garth Brooks called “The River.” The essence of that song is that you can’t really experience life by standing on the shore; you must launch your boat into the river of life. That ties in to the 5 Gs construct of gumption we discussed last week. The Bible says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

The current model of specialized American government and enterprise is that “We know what we are doing, trust us.” The truth is however, their solutions won’t work because they are too specialized to understand the diverse complications and interactions of their agendas. With all the spin of the economic recovery now beginning, none of the underlying causes have been addressed and there seems to be no gumption to tackle the hard tasks. “Hopefully they will just go away.”

That really is the limitation of capitalism as it is now practiced. If you put a round peg in a round hole for some long period of time you will be able to retire undefeated and do nothing if you so choose. In the last year many of the Baby Boomer Class learned that was an illusion, if not a bold faced lie. Since that wealth truly disappeared, unless you take some real risks that secure retirement reality also has disappeared.

So has financial leverage, with bank credit card rates now approaching loan shark rates, unless you play with free too big to fail bailout funds, borrowing cheap has also disappeared. This is especially true when you are needed to buy stuff to keep the consumer economy humming along. Then when much of that consumer spending is related only to purchasing things made elsewhere in the world, you need to wonder what does the United States do anymore?

Currently in the United States like nowhere else in the world there is no incentive to invest in small business and really no mechanisms to do the same. Underlying this premise is that all small business owners looking for equity money are really scam artists, or crooks, or both. Hence you are protected from doing something stupid with your wealth like investing with these hooligans you can look in the eye and inspect their facilities.

Thankfully we are saved by the SEC and other government regulators that allowed Enron, WorldCom, Bernie Madoff, investment and regular banks rip you off, and then get bail out money to continue doing the same, this time not with financial leverage, but with free money.

Now AARP is looking forward to making money selling their form of Medicare coverage, and the list of corrupt organizations and politicians continues to grow, as we mortgage our youth’s future to pay for regulations on healthcare that would serve us all better if unregulated, like back when the United States was a classless society.

What is missing in the big government regulatory scheme of things is that it does not follow natural energetic models. Sure they can create money in excess of all they want, but as long as that money doesn’t relate to true wealth, all the classes that want you to know how smart they are, are just blowing smoke on the water, to keep our metaphors in line. But in this case the smoldering will never produce any fire. Hence it is going to collapse when God and/or the invisible hand determine that reality.

The United States of America was founded on the principle of “We the people.” That was a miraculous concept over two hundred years ago. It still is, it is just there are a lot of special interest classes that get their identity by belonging to these classes, rather than being uniquely one of the people.

That will change when people are forced off the shore, into the river of life, with the gumption to live their life until they reach the eternal shore, which access is controlled by God not human enlightenment.