submitted by jwithrow.
Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Peak Collectivism
August 7, 2015
Hot Springs, VA
The S&P closed out Thursday at $2,079. Gold closed at $1,090 per ounce. Oil checked out just above $45 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.27%. Bitcoin is trading around $281 per BTC today.
Dear Journal,
The Musings of a Wayward Philosopher launch has gone fairly well this week. The ebook is currently ranked #1 in Economics>Commerce and #1 in Education&Reference in Amazon’s Kindle store. The paperback ranked as high as #50 in Economics>Commerce but has faded back a bit since. I noticed a big spike in interest while it was ranked top-50. This trial-and-error learning process has been exciting!
What’s even more exciting is the fact that this wasn’t even possible just twenty short years ago. The gatekeepers have fallen!
The publishing arena was heavily guarded prior to the rise of the internet. The only way to publish a book and get it circulating beyond your immediate network was to work with a large publishing company. This meant that your book had to conform to their ideas, requirements, and biases. The dynamic was the exact same in the broadcast media realm. Apart from local newspapers you were only going to get “news” that had been sifted through a major media company’s filter.
The result was that everyone got a relatively uniform message of conformity which led to a relatively uniform world-view amongst nation-state populations. It seems to me that it was this uniformity that enabled collectivism to engulf America in the 20th century.
Collectivism is the placement of people into groups and the subsequent projection of human characteristics onto those groups. It is the assumption and expectation that people will identify with their group and assign a higher-purpose to the group’s well-being thus subjugating their own individuality and sacrificing themselves for the group if necessary.
Collectivism has been around forever and it is not bad in-and-of itself if freely chosen. Back in the tribal days collectivism was necessary simply for survival. Collectivism becomes absolutely absurd and incoherent, however, when it is forced upon large numbers of people with unique backgrounds and interests. The growth of the nation-state has necessarily brought forth the rise of collectivism once again, though the necessity now is not for human survival but rather for the survival of the nation-state itself. This is why collectivism has been pushed upon people for at least one hundred years now.
Against my better judgment, I sat down and watched the entire GOP debate last night. The first thought that came to my mind was: what a circus! The debate commentators tried to present the production as if it were a sporting event, and indeed the large crowd of people in attendance responded in kind. I was so saddened to see all of those people stand up and cheer for the liars, thieves, and warmongers as they were paraded onto the stage as if they were heroes. One of the commentators, after mentioning the arena was home to “King [Lebron] James”, then suggested that one of these debate candidates may be the new king after the election cycle is over. How fitting, I thought.
There was very little substance in the two-hour debate – it was mostly a track meet to blame Obama, Democrats, China, Iran, and Russia for every problem or perceived problem that exists. While the debate was mostly empty rhetoric, I think there is one conclusion most viewers will come to: there’s no way Jeb is actually W’s brother. Cousin Rob had a unique insight also which he shared with me about half-way through the debate: “Every answer Ted Cruz gives should be sung by Toby Keith.” I laughed.
It occurred to me as the show played on that these guys have no clue that they are already obsolete. The cultural shift away from politics is already in motion. Instead of recognizing this, virtually every answer the candidates gave was an exasperated call to action: “We need to do this! We need to do that!”
Who is “we”? I asked my television screen.
You see that is collectivism in action, and it is the ideology adored by both political parties. They do not see the American people as unique individuals capable of making their own way; they see us all as a single unit that must act in unison to benefit the nation-state which in turn is used for the benefit of the political class.
They love to trumpet America as this great and noble nation, but they seem to have absolutely no understanding of America’s founding principles. “Freedom isn’t free. We all have to fight for it!” said one of the candidates. Yet the Declaration of Independence reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” If my Liberty isn’t free then the Creator has been very slow in invoicing me.
So who does this candidate suggest we fight for our personal liberty? Oh, people 6,000 miles away in the Middle East. Here’s what Thomas Jefferson had to say about foreign entanglements: “I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.”
Here’s the thing, the militarism in the Middle East has nothing to do with individual liberty in the U.S. It has everything to do with the interests of the political class, the international financier class, and the defense contractors all of whom profit from militarism no matter the outcome. This dynamic is referred to as the military-industrial complex. Here are a few books to support this claim: War is a Racket, The Creature from Jekyll Island, Crisis and Leviathan, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity.
To further demonstrate the insanity, the candidate who goes out of his way to present himself as a Christian enthusiastically said the military is about “killing people and breaking things”. Not only is he ignorant of American founding principles, he seems to be completely ignorant of Christian principles as well. Here’s Jesus of Nazareth: “Put up again thy sword into its place: for all that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
I also found it fitting that the candidates who mentioned Obamacare wanted to “repeal and replace” it. None of them came out for returning health care to the private markets where doctors and patients interact with each other as they see fit and insurance companies compete for business according to market conditions. Instead, they want a government health care system created by Republicans instead of Democrats.
Moving over into the economic realm; each candidate confidently promised to grow the economy and create jobs. They seem to think there is a magical button somewhere that you can press to accomplish these things. Maybe they will install this button on the massive wall with the big shiny door that we (there’s “we” again) are going to build on the Mexican border.
Of course we need to beat China, Mexico, and everyone else at trade also. I guess they think the button does this too. They don’t seem to understand how free markets, free enterprise, and sound money are necessary for a stable and vibrant economy. Free markets, free enterprise, and sound money are pretty much the exact opposite of any and all government programs and currencies. We once called such a system “capitalism” and it had nothing to do with all of the financial shenanigans that are taking place today. Bill Bonner may have described it best:
Capitalism is not a “system” like democracy or a composting toilet. It is not something that anyone designed. It is not something that can be consciously improved.
It is the result – or should be – of free markets, including the insights, work, gambles, and luck of millions of people all over the planet.
Improve it?
You might just as well “improve” the price of Walmart shares or of a pound of peaches.
Capitalism is not a system that you can take or leave, or take some parts of and leave the others, thereby making it more suited to your needs.
Capitalism is just what you get when you respect the rules of civilization. Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t bear false witness. The rest probably don’t matter, but we haven’t taken the trouble to think about them very much.
A few of the candidates did point out Social Security’s insolvency, but that’s as far as they took it. They didn’t mention that Social Security and Medicare already comprise 63% of the federal budget and that spending for these programs is projected to double over the next ten years. That means these two programs alone are on pace to encompass and surpass the entire federal budget in a very short period of time. The candidates never questioned whether or not government should be running Ponzi schemes masked as social insurance plans in the first place. They never brought up the Federal Reserve which finances all of this madness by creating fiat currency out of thin air to buy government bonds.
The debate moderators were kind enough to give each candidate a closing remark to offer solutions to the American public. Here’s what they said:
We need to be unified! We need to make America great again! We need to improve our economy! We need to vanquish our enemies! We need to vote for me!
All of this mindless collectivism is downright insulting to me, but a large swath of Americans are still onboard as evidenced by the large cheering crowd in attendance at the debate. I get the feeling we may have reached Peak Collectivism, however.
Slowly, people are waking up to the nonsense and looking for their own answers. Many of those answers are now readily available online thanks to the decentralization of publishing and media. You can find blogs, books, and reports about any subject imaginable with a simple search query. You can find unfiltered news from a growing number of independent media companies if you simply look. There are numerous ‘news aggregator’ sites out there that compile stories from many different sources and publish them in one place.
Ultimately, however, all the answers you need are already within you. You already understand that you are a sacred individual with unique skills, talents, and interests. You intuitively know that you have individual rights that cannot be justly violated. You know that your network of family and friends is your most important resource.
Putting this together clearly demonstrates the incoherence of the collectivist world-view pushed by the political class. They want you to be ashamed and afraid at all times. They want you to be a victim constantly searching for a secular savior. They want you to subvert your own will for that of the nation-state.
The political class is bankrupt morally, intellectually, and economically. Don’t follow them down that path.
They don’t realize it yet, but they are already obsolete. They don’t realize it yet, but the individual is rising.
More to come,
Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher
For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions to collective problems please read “The Individual is Rising: 2nd edition” which will be available later this year. Please sign up for the notifications mailing list at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/.