Nobody asked but ...
A severe case of the End justifying the Means: Seize any laudable goal, then build a sand castle around it, ignoring that even the most minor chink in the foundation will evolve into a chasm. Then beat all critics with the laudability of the still distant goal until everyone is investing all resources in the eternal rescue of the sand castle. This metaphor is scalable. It fits sand castles. It fits full employment schemes, war, infrastructure, the state, empires.
Nobody asked but ...
What's the difference between the free lunches offered by POTUS-Elect and by POTUS'es-also-ran? They all would have been prohibitively expensive, were lies, and will never take place. Consolation? There WILL BE one or more massively expensive nutrition-free meals, any way we may have gone.
-- Kilgore Forelle
by Verbal Vol
If only it were taught in government schools that currency should be on the free market, like everything else, that competition between consumer chosen currencys is the only way it can't be used against the users of currency. government monopoly currency is designed through being a monopoly, is made for abuse, theft, and is the dirtiest of money ever, ever, funds illicit wars, is printed to rob the masses, and other abuses of the people using the monopoly currency. And yet the government turns round and says any money that competes with it is illegal, counterfeit, and criminal. Hahahahahahaha, Oh the cruel evil irony. (Please add to this thought your wisdom on the topic.)
-- Freya Wilde
Apart from medieval China, which invented both paper and printing centuries before the West, the world had never seen government paper money until the colonial government of Massachusetts emitted a fiat paper issue in 1690.4, 5 Massachusetts was accustomed to launching plunder expeditions against the prosperous French colony in Quebec. Generally, the expeditions were successful, and would return to Boston, sell their booty, and pay off the soldiers with the proceeds. This time, however, the expedition was beaten back decisively, and the soldiers returned to Boston in ill humor, grumbling for their pay. Discontented soldiers are ripe for mutiny, so the Massachusetts government looked around in concern for a way to pay the soldiers. It tried to borrow £3,000–£4,000 from Boston merchants, but evidently the Massachusetts credit rating was not the best. Finally, Massachusetts decided in December 1690 to print £7,000 in paper notes and to use them to pay the soldiers. Suspecting that the public would not accept irredeemable paper, the government made a twofold pledge when it issued the notes: that it would redeem them in gold or silver out of tax revenue in a few years and that absolutely no further paper notes would be issued. Characteristically, however, both parts of the pledge went quickly by the board: The issue limit disappeared in a few months, and all the bills continued unredeemed for nearly 40 years. As early as February 1691, the Massachusetts government proclaimed that its issue had fallen “far short” and so it proceeded to emit £40,000 of new money to repay all of its outstanding debt, again pledging falsely that this would be the absolute final note issue.
"This business about allocating fish quotas as if they was rows of potatoes you could dig. If there’s no fish you can’t allocate them and you can’t catch them; if you don’t catch them, you can’t process them or ship them, you don’t have a living for nobody. Nobody understands their crazy rules no more. Stumble along. They say ‘too many local fishermen for not enough fish.’ Well, where has the fish gone? To the Russians, the French, the Japs, West Germany, East Germany, Poland, Portugal, the UK, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria—or whatever they call them countries nowadays. ... And even after the limit was set, the inshore was no good. How can the fish come inshore if the trawlers and draggers gets ‘em all fifty, a hundred mile out? And the long-liners gets the rest twenty mile out? What’s left for the inshore fishermen?”If you're like me, you just wonder how can anyone in Ottawa, Ontario know anything about fishing in the North Atlantic? The answer, regulate the inshore fishermen some more. Persecute those you can reach. Pretend as though the outlaws are not there beyond your puny state. Instigate programs that will have nothing to do with positive outcomes, but will perpetuate the bureaucracy. And, by the way, when I use "outlaws" above, I do not refer to criminals, only to those being outside the regulatory fictions.
" ... there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." -- H. L. Mencken
Why is this true? Firstly, we have to recognize that this may not be true in all cases. After all, it is a simple solution for explaining human error -- a persistent problem underlying other problems. So, Mencken's observation may not be absolute, but it is a powerful demonstration of what is practically true. Any one of us may live a lifetime without seeing a "neat, plausible, and correct" solution. We also may never see a neat (standalone, uninvolved) problem. Problems come in squadrons entangled in wires, webs, nets, tendrils, embedding goo. A simple solution tends to render the rest of the mess more impenetrable. Humans, particularly politicians, exploit problems -- even making them up when no real difficulty is at hand. More on this elsewhere at EVC.
Kilgore
