Part four on principles: The invisible middle finger

Adam Smith wrote about the clever social engineer as someone who looked at the nation as a chessboard, but real chessboard pieces have no principle of motion, they are motionless until the designer moves them, whereas people of the nation have internal generators of motion choosing their own designs. If only people would be more like pieces on a chessboard, ruling a large nation would be much easier.

Smith also wrote: "Little else is requisite to carry the State to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice, all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channell, or which endeavor to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical."

Priniciples are forsaken in favor of fixing and manipulating. The natural course has been thwarted by unnatural connections of private and public so that the political players cannot allow their favored connections on Wall Street to fail. Promises were surely made at some point, and to allow big players to fail could cause all manner of skeletons to break out of closets causing embarrassing havoc.

And let's say that the past thwarting of the natural course and the destruction of principles has brought us to this -- a place where great intervention is necessary to prevent total collapse of the private/public enmeshment. So be it, if that is true -- and the damge caused by the enmeshment may very well be so great that only drastic intervention can stabilize the consequences. I'm prepared to give them that, because I can imagine the terrible convolution the market is in as a result of government involvement for so many years. 

Perhaps the short term solution is even greater intervention (not what they agreed on but some sort of infusion into the market that would create confidence), but what we desperately need is a long term solution, a fundamental solution, a principled solution. And here is where we see the total insanity of our government -- for what they are proposing is more long term intervention through more and more control and regulation. This is pure insanity.

The long term solution is, of course, to untangle the private/public enmeshment and allow the free market to work through the prinicples that make it powerful. These are the true drastic measures that need to be taken if we are to survive long term. There is already mumbling that banks will continue to have troubles and this is but the first big "fix", that more will be required going forward. We are on a dangerously slippy slope and no one is talking about the change that will save our economy from incompetent design as a long term strategy.

Thomas Paine said all the great laws are naturally followed because they are of the greatest self-interest for all involved and that they would be followed without government pretension as gaurdians of the public interest. But the greatest rules of conduct are established as long term safety measures to allow action to continue with the comfort of knowing the rules. It's the petty interventions of government constantly changing the rules which create confusion and instability -- the rule of man over the rule of law.

We need steady and consistent rules of conduct which can't be circumvented by government favortism and cronyism. This would take power away from the men and women in government and place power in the laws -- the laws honest businesspeople will gladly follow because they (the laws) are rational and the best rules of conduct -- and, it prevents the dishonest businesspeople from gaining unfair advantages through government power.

This is exactly what the present gang of porkers will resist and rail against -- This is no time for principles and ideology! Right, of course it's not.