by Quan Parker
Government success?
Please, spend a few seconds and make yourself a list of the government or political programs, wars, projects, projections, predictions or promises in the last 100 years that: have ever been truly successful at their stated goals, were what they were advertised to be, did what they were supposed to do, were scrapped if they failed, cut back if they ran over budget (or any other reason) or accomplished anything private effort couldn't have done better, quicker and cheaper. Which, if any were but a loony-tunes cluster-*, powergrab, debacle or disaster that likely impoverished or killed more people than it helped and cost ten to fifty times the best early estimates. Ever, in the history of big government... Why?
Because corruption of power is the only replacement for the profit motive. Government only brings force to the bargaining table. Not sense, not competence, not morality, not ethics, not insight or logic. Force, alone.
Independent thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs, builders and venture capitalists who operate only on freedom of thought, action and the possibility of good profit are uniformly repulsed, demonized, coerced, discouraged, persecuted and systematically robbed by the jealous and zealous do-gooders, social workers, über-planners and arrogant whip-crackers attracted to government "work." "You didn't build this!" is their mantra. Many of these genetically-aberrant zombie-crats secretly wish they knew how to make a profit. We wish they would quit their jobs and try.
Government has become as a religion: requiring unlimited faith. Belief first, justification later. The mystical, inscrutable, indescribable and incomprehensible, a priori, as a given, like gravity or divinity, never to be questioned. Only the high priests of Order understand it, all too well. Dissent is blasphemy, sedition.
The Final Frontier
OK, the space program? Since the only single value that everyone on earth has in common with everyone else is the desire to avoid early death, logic suggests that a plan to deflect something as large as what did in the dinosaurs would be one of the extremely few things we might all agree on, like water.
Does it follow that this requires a vicious technocratic police state ruling the entire globe with a steely grin, spying on every conversation and transaction, capable of extorting or stealing anything anytime, blackmailing anyone with any indiscretion, the wrong word... with overseers like these, who needs an asteroid?
Or should it rather be in the hands of private entities like Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson looking to make a decent profit while exploring the final frontier? Interesting question.
[I consider UFO's a possibility, but do they have the ability or interest in deflecting a large asteroid for our benefit? Maybe they just want to watch Homo sapiens get what it deserves for allowing itself to be enslaved by those of reptilian philosophy. I wonder what they would charge. Payment would probably have to be in gold according to the world's oldest writings: Sumerian cuneiform pounded into clay tablets 3000 years before the Hebrew Bible was written. Our dowry for entré into the galactic community? Just kidding!]
Warming might result in greater crop yields in northern areas that could offset losses due to insufficient bee pollenization, scientifically proven to be an effect of improperly tested/lied-about Monsanto pesticides wiping out colonies. Cooling could exacerbate shortages and much higher food prices worldwide, i.e. famine in the Third World, and maybe the Second. Be careful what you wish for, or fail to prepare for.
"Nothing the government does takes place without a greater cost than benefit to society." — Lew Rockwell
It is impossible for any government to be as smart or agile as independent businessmen and companies watching out for themselves. Profit margins and share valuations require bottom-line discipline and judgment that no government position requires or values. And Trouble always follows when the power of government favors one side over the other because those favored enjoy "freedom" from competition or accountability (i.e. market forces). This distorts outcomes, creating injustice and inviting fraud where there was none to start with.
Wars were fought over port, water and cropland access as sea levels and violent regimes rose and fell throughout history. Those are the choices. What's new?