Rehabilitation of Karl Marx

Marx was man's most influential scholar

A new study is out and, according to the Smithsonian Institution, the most influential scholar in history is Karl Marx.

Karl who?

Karl Marx, you know the theoretical genius who thought up the classless society called socialism … and its stepchild, communism. Apparently, Marxism is “cool”.

Marx is cool

I guess Francis Fukuyama was right and history ended in 1989 … or did people just stop learning history.

Granted, I will agree, in theory the socialist doctrine sounds ever so wonderful. It would be great to live in world where everyone had their needs met and everyone contributed to society according to their ability to contribute. I mean that would be utopia … unfortunately, utopia’s really are only fantasies because they tend to forget the most important element in society: The human individual.

Now, maybe someone, somewhere has the magic wand that is going to change the basic tenets of human nature and make people want to sit together and sing songs but that is not the world I live in. I might want to live in that world, but it is not the world that I do live in.

The problem with the socialist/Marxist model is that it forgets a few things about people that you have to deal with.

First, needs are endless. Please, don’t laugh, because what I mean is that once you get past enough to survive, then everything else is a luxury and how much do you need to survive? Not much. Mankind did pretty well for tens of thousands of years with not much more than a stick and a cave to hang out in.

Unfortunately, we as people have progressed far beyond that point now. We need to have clothes, lots of food, housing that would put kings to shame a century or two ago, vehicles for personal transportation, computers, lights, the internet, health care, etc., etc.

Point two: People are not going to work to the best of their ability unless they get some reward out of it. Nope, people aren’t made that way and all your huffing and all your puffing is not going to change that reality.

Point three: Resources are limited and there always will be competition for those resources as they have to be “rationed”.  (Some people don’t like it when I use that term because they associate it with coupons, etc., but there are other ways to ration things … like by price)

So far, in the last century, various forms of Mr. Marx’s socio-economic model has been tried several times and guess what … they all seem to have failed miserably.  In fact, in a few cases it has failed with disastrous results – like with millions upon millions of people paying the ultimate price for its failure.

What was it Einstein (probably a more influential intellect, but what the heck) said about insanity: It is trying  the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I am not saying that capitalism as outlined by John Locke and Adam Smith (two other very accomplished social scientists) is all milk and cookies. It isn’t. However, I suspect that more people have seen their lives improved under their precepts than have under Mr. Marx’s precepts.

To me, the problem is that people want life to be milk and cookies … but they don’t realize that it ain’t gonna be that way. Never has been and – barring some miraculous shift in human nature and the discovering of unlimited resources – it never will be.

Sorry folks, but things like greed, jealousy, sloth, selfishness, narcissism and the like will make your perfect utopia impossible.

Now, we can accept that reality and try to work with it; or we can ignore it and face the already demonstrated consequences.

My challenge to people is not to try or even hope to change human nature (it is like fighting the tides, you always lose), but let’s design a social system that takes those negatives into account and, if possible, figures out a way to take advantage of them and use them to improve the lot of mankind.

Ironically, capitalism actually does that. You may not like the fact that not everyone gets the benefits, but life is like that: There are winners and there are losers. You may wish to live in a world where everyone is a winner, but like light and dark, good and bad, pass and fail, there really are only two options (with a lot of grey areas in between, fortunately) because without one you can’t have the other.

Lastly, you do know that the Smithsonian is an institution that was created by the US Congress (based on a bequest from an Englishman) and, although owned by the US government, is administered as a charitable trust with a board of regents, 11 of the 17 are government officials.

I guess the US government is putting its stamp of approval on the rehabilitation of Mr. Marx and his policies.

I mean it, you can’t make this stuff up.

Nuff said.

Kitties win!

Them Kitties beat Texas Tech!! Hooah! KSU 49 TTU 26 Tech was ranked #25 GO KITTIES

Obama still doesn’t get it.

I am not responsible. I am sorry, but it was not really my fault

 

President Barack Obama gave an televised interview this week where he said he was sorry that his actions led to thousands, if not millions, losing the health care insurance policies they liked after he had repeatedly promised they wouldn’t.

See, scream the liberals, progressives and his supporters, he apologized. Now everything is hunky dory. He didn’t mean for it to happen.

Folks, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and the intentions here, it would seem obvious, were not necessarily good.

First, according to the New York Times “Mr. Obama said he had not purposely misled anyone. He said it was always his intention that no one should lose a plan he wanted to keep.”

If that was true, then the caveats and codicils that got tucked away in the law and its resulting regulations would not have made policies that administration minions decided were not good enough for people to have had to be dropped if they changed one twit after a certain date would not have been written. But they were and that was with malice aforethought. It became a way to get the insurance companies to drop current “inadequate” policies and replace them with the politically acceptable policies mandated by the administration.

IF the president didn’t know this was going to happen, then folks, he is a dolt. Either that or his staff is about the most incompetent group of yahoos that have ever worked on Pennsylvania Avenue.  It is not like years ago, people in the various executive branch departments were not saying: “Oh, yeah, and large percentages of existing policies are going to go away when we put this new stuff into effect.”

Did he just turn a deaf ear to these reports, or did his staff shield him from them? I don’t know, but in either case, he screwed up as a leader and that is what we hired him for (well, at least some of voted to hire him).

That there are a whole lot of incompetent senior executive service people still holding their jobs is really telling. The president is saying, admitting, that there is no accountability in his administration (and we thought Dubya was bad).

I hope that management and leadership programs across the nation are taking copious notes on how NOT to be a leader. Unfortunately for the United States, our president is giving a lesson in how to do that.

Only my Kitties would try this

K-State offers bacon treat at games

I love this … and if they still are playing in Ahern Field House, I hope the ladies pack in the student fans.

Colombia says Russian bombers violated air space - New York News

Colombia says Russian bombers violated air space - New York News

Hmmm - Cold War Redux?

Now, I suppose that all those folks whose knickers are in a twit over US drones will let this pass without comment. I fully expect it.

You see folks, what bothers me with all the hue and cry about when the US does a or b, is that when anybody else does it, and they do - routinely, there is nary a peep.

The double standard just makes me so sick.

It is like the old bargaining stance that what is mine is mine and what is yours is negotiable. Of maybe it is "They are the bad guys so we don't expect them to play by the rules."

I am sorry, but I am tired of having to play by rules that nobody else is held to ... not when the US keeps getting asked to lead and to try to resolve this world problem or that world problem. There is an old saying from my military days that says "Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way!"

All these people who have all these moral problems with whatever it is they don't like about US policy this week, never seem to spend an equal amount of energy on those whose acts make US policy seem pale by comparison.

Moral values are good ... and we should do all we can to uphold them ... but they should not bind us into a suicide pact that allows those who don't have such moral scruples free to do whatever they want to do.

Yes, there is  place for law, but only when there is a recognized, competent authority to enforce the law, otherwise all you are going to get is a mockery of the law. Unfortunately, there is no real international law, despite what various people will try to tell you, because there is no competent authority to enforce the law. That, my friends, is the dying truth and you need to face that reality.

You cite the ICC or IWCT or any of any number of multilateral or UN sponsored venues and I would point out two points: One, they are not universal nor are they immune to political influence. Two: They really are Lilliputian efforts to tie down Gulliver. I wonder what will happen when the US is no longer strong enough to play the part of Gulliver. Who will protect the Lilliputians then?


Nuff said.

Interesting discussion

Linkedin discussion on the NSA brouhaha.

 

I have been involved in an interesting discussion over at Linkedin that those who follow me might want to take a look at.

I am explaining, from my point of view, to a non-American why I think the NSA thing really is more a tempest in a teapot than some real major crisis.

Summary: First, the NSA ain’t alone in the dock here, folks … or at least shouldn’t be … and the others are not being put in the dock.

Second: What the NSA is doing is little more than what internet service providers and social media providers, as well as credit card companies, telcos, and just about everybody else has been doing (like credit bureaus) in scooping  up personal information on individuals everywhere.

Third: You ain’t gonna be able to stop it, much less really control it. Look at the health record sharing plans … nope folks, welcome to the Brave New World.

Cats Win!

Kansas State 41

Iowa State 7

Just How Badly Has Snowden Wrecked American Power?

Just How Badly Has Snowden Wrecked American Power?

This is an awesome article.

Granted, a lot of people won't like its point, but its point is valid.

Unfortunately, for the US, it is hard to lead when there is nothing really to lead against, and that is the defining challenge facing the US. Unlike the Cold War, when there really were bad guys (even though there are enough people now trying to rewrite history to rehabilitate socialist ideologies) and they eventually collapsed as the tyranny they sponsored self-destructed (which tyranny is wont to do over time).

The point being is that the US really has been on the side of the rule of law and human rights (even as imperfect as our record is, really has anyone else done much better with polyglot mutt of a society as ours?).

No, Americans are not perfect and anyone who tells you so, either is ignorant or lying (I am not sure which), but as Winston Churchill said about democratic forms of government: All the others are so much worse.

It is hard these days to be proud to be an American ... especially when we see the country as a whole falling away from the precepts that made it what it is. Whether myth or reality, the idea that the individual was important; that the individual was at the heart of society; that without individual liberty and freedom of conscience, all else was irrelevant. Each person is endowed, as the that famous document is oft quoted, by their creator (for the uninitiated that means GOD by whatever term you want to use) with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (otherwise known as property).

We own our own labor. Not the family or the clan or the community or the state or the nation. We deserve its rewards.

Yes, as members of all those levels human association, we do have obligations to each, but the choice to fulfill those obligations is ours and not the association's to compel. So, we have an obligation to defend our association, but the association can not compel us to do so. We still have the option to opt out. It is our choice.

You may not like that view point, but it is the one that works best for all those levels of human association.

Nuf said

Politics should stop being politics

Obama: Congress should stop bickering

The President thinks that the Republicans and Democrats should stop fighting and arguing over how the federal government spends its money. They should stop “manufacturing” crises and stop being “out of touch” with the American people.

TIME OUT!

Mr. President, what world are you living on, because it sure ain’t the same one the rest of America lives on.

Sorry, but the Republicans and the Democrats pretty much are doing what they are supposed to do: Represent the interests of the people who sent them there. Now that does not mean everybody in their district or state, but the people who voted and supported them. That, Mr. President, is how a representative democracy works. You don’t like that, then move to a different universe.

I know that I am a voice in the wilderness here, but, people, we have to understand that the US does not speak with one voice. It never has and it never will. Currently there are more that 310 million of us, each with our own mind and our own view of how things ought to be. Neither of the major political parties represents the view of the majority of Americans – especially on every issue. That is what makes politics politics.

Mr. President, you want Congress to pass a budget? Then call Harry Reid over in the Senate and tell him to pass the next budget bill that comes over from the House as is. Don’t play around with it, just pass it. And then you sign it. But, you and I know that isn’t going to happen.

And it hasn’t happened since the Republicans became the majority in the House. Every year, since 2009, the House dutifully passes the various and sundry authorizations and appropriations bills (like some 26 of them each year) and every year during that time the Senate has piddled and diddle and not one thing has it resolved. Why? Because the Democrats won’t accept what the Republicans have passed.

Every year, the Congress ends up passing a “continuing resolution” that, I guess, now extends all the way back to 2009 (it actually doesn’t but that is a different story). As Pappy used to say: That is one heck (he WAS a gentleman after all) of a way to run a railroad.

All continuing resolutions do is kick the can down the road to be dealt with again whenever it runs out.

So, the problem has not been in the House. It has been doing its job all along. And the problem is not with the Senate Republicans; they are just standing by what their House brethren have sent over. No, the problem lies on the other side of the aisle.

Now, I will guarantee you that you will not see it reported that way because it does not fit the establishment narrative of the problem.

I saw this back in 1994 when the GOP first took the House after being the minority party for more than 40 years. The establishment media was in a quandary. Over 40 years the reporters and pundits had established where they could go to get information and where the levers of power were. In an election, all that was washed away and it upset them. No longer could they go to the “usual suspects” and get the low-down on what was going on the backrooms and the cloakrooms of Capitol Hill. For a reporter who has spent years developing news source relationships, that is a very disconcerting feeling.

The new folks in power on the Hill, a bit chary of those who had developed such deep relations with their opponents, were less than welcoming to the established reporter and pundit class. So the feeling became mutual and the media bias grew to a deeper chasm.

Now, Mr. President, I know that neither you, nor any of your staff, or anyone else of note or power will read my ramblings (well, maybe someone at the NSA who is bored to death might), but please quit blaming others for your own lack of leadership.

The budgetary train wreck, the health care train wreck, the foreign policy train wreck, they are all your responsibility. Don’t slough them off on your minions. Don’t ask your co-equals in government (the ones who are to set the polices and priorities that you are to execute with the resources they give you) to do things that you apparently are unwilling to do.

Compromise is a two-way street and Congress is a co-equal with the Presidency (as is the Supreme Court). That is how the American republic was designed and how it is supposed to work. (Not by executive order and writ, as you just demonstrated with the setting up of new panels, etc., to sidestep the role of the uncooperative Congress – AND that is yet another rambling I will not digress into)

Nuff Said. Have a nice day. 

Now this is a threat I would take seriously ...

Sebelius Threatens To Put VA In Charge Of Obamacare If Critics Don’t ‘Back The Fuck Off’ (via http://www.duffelblog.com)

WASHINGTON, DC — Following yesterday’s disastrous Obamacare hearing on Capitol Hill, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has released a video message to Youtube where she warns: “Back the fuck off, or I’ll go nuclear.” The…

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