Amerika

Let me tell you a sad story, probably a story that you know so well because it repeats in similar forms so many times, but one that nonetheless might strike a chord or a nerve.

A group of people find themselves to have risen above others. It is not organization, intelligence, culture, or wisdom but all of them; they have simply risen. They opt to get the heck away and form a caravan to a new place.

Once they get to the new place, they enjoy the good life, but find that they will never be just left alone. Nearby tribes, hungry for plunder, attack. Swindlers and junk peddlars show up on roads from far away. Some of their own people give birth to retards, sociopaths, or incompetents.

The only solution is to keep fleeing. And so, ever spring, Bjorn steps out of his tent and surveys his fellows. “Sven, Ivar, Lars, and Adolf, let’s hit the road. Bring your wives, kids, and anyone you know who is welcome to adventure and getting away from these morons.”

A new caravan heads out, and the process repeats. Founders create; morons arrive; founders move. The nomads give up a lot for this lifestyle, since they cannot have symphonies or libraries, have to eat what is in season, and live in tiny cramped huts.

Eventually, over the centuries, they run out of empty places to roam. All those idiots they left behind have set up farms, grown a lot of starchy vegetables, and now exist with their numerous spawn in settlements with shops, homes, and even militaries.

The main concern of these bourgeois — village-, town-, or city-based people — is having good jobs and security. They do not think about things like civilization or wisdom. Their focus is not on honor but on avoiding risk and accumulating wealth.

We might call these people the currency people because their lives revolve around currency. They can do anything as long as they have money and can pay other people for goods and services.

When the nomads run out of space, they settle, and soon they are surrounded by the currency people. These are not concerned with great empire, but for some centuries, they are kept in line by the superior strength of the nomads and their descendants.

Eventually however the currency people win out by the bottom-level growth of society. Under the better organization of the nomads, the currency people have fewer deaths, and so their faster rate of breeding makes them a majority.

Now you understand civilization decline. The currency people, seeking jobs and risk-free existence, do nothing but breed recklessly and through this overpopulation, overwhelm the few who can actually think.

This creates a society of rackets where the currency people invent more jobs for themselves. Property taxes are a second mortgage. Realtors take a percentage of every sale. You must hire state-approved inspectors. You need eye, dental, and doctor appointments every year.

The currency people use government and law as weapons to create permanent employment for more currency people. This includes the bureaucracy; they view government jobs as desirable and want to make more of them. You have to hire lawyers and inspectors to get anything done.

All of these rackets take money from the productive parts of society and funnel it into people whose highest contribution is attending a job and acting according to the rules. They get promoted just for seniority and eventually take over every company.

We are now witnessing the death of the rackets. People are no longer interested in paying realtors, licensing fees, attorneys, doctors, or others who have simply dipped their cup into the deep well of free public money.

We no longer believe in the money boat, or the idea that somewhere there is a vast sum of money just idly waiting for a purpose, and that if we tap into it, we become prosperous simply for being clever.

We are moving toward a time when production matters more than anything else. Those who produce, get rewarded, and we are no longer interested in the thousands of coattail-riders who follow them around with rules and regulations designed to steal away money.

Our belief in taxes was shaken even before COVID-19, but people are now asking what government does with the money. We saw that none of us were benefiting at all from these many government programs, but we sure were paying for them.

The racket consisted of inventing a morality of universalism where everyone is important. Our nomadic ancestors must have laughed! That model has collapsed; in the new model, only those who demonstrate utility are important, and those who are not are a threat to our future.

Tags: prosperity, taxes