One of the most popular nursery rhymes in the world is a good catalyst for meditating about the famous / notorious PIIGS countries of Europe.  There were five little piggys, and there are five PIIGS countries.  Each of the five little piggys had a quite different circumstance, as does each of the PIIGS countries.  Perhaps we can figure out how the PIIGS managed to insert themselves into the financial quicksand pit they share at the moment.  A case can be made that the piggy who cried “wee wee wee” is Greece, so the Greeks are under the looking glass first.

In my home town, I am convinced that the Greek-American community comprised a statistical anomaly.  All of the students of Greek heritage that I met in school were very smart, many had musical and artistic talent, and at least one I knew was an outstanding athlete.  My older sister, five years ahead of me in that same school system, had the same impression of her fellow Greek students.  I could have been persuaded that the Greek community in my town defined the upper end of the bell-shaped distribution curve of intelligence.  ( I have to admit that at least one of my Greek-heritage acquaintances labeled me a Grecophile.)  So, what’s not to like about Greeks—and how in the world did they get into their current predicament?

Similar to blaming the Wright brothers for failing to anticipate harmonic oscillation, flutter and transonic aerodynamic anomalies, we could blame the Greeks for their failure to foresee what Alexis de Tocqueville later observed:  “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship”.  Surely those smart people could have figured it out in that couple of millenia between Plato and de Tocqueville.

But human nature hasn’t changed much since Plato’s day.  Just as we can be enticed by a something-for-nothing scam, so can  the Greeks; but it does appear that the Socialist environment in Europe dampens people’s common sense more than elsewhere.  So Greece became a model again—a model for “entitlements”; and Greece proceeded to pump up  its welfare state at a record-setting pace .  Today, Greek workers’ benefits and entitlements are so luxurious that they sound too good to be true.

In Greece, the Social Security systems (yes, systems, plural) provide 90% to 110% of the retiree’s final salary.  Health care, as in most of Europe, is “free”.  Housing benefits abound, vacation and holiday allowances are staggeringly generous, by U.S. norms.  Just to add a little more sweetening, workers receive bonuses at Easter and Christmas; and so on.  Needless to say, it took a few years for Greece to pile the benefits up to their current levels—a pace exceeded only by the Obama administration in the U.S.  One other complication to Greece’s debt crisis is the enormous number of public sector employees, now approaching a quarter of the total Greek work force (a few percentage points worse than the United States).

From our position today, looking back makes the Greeks appear pretty dense.  But we should not forget the context in which this current Greek Tragedy has evolved.  Socialism is the norm among European Union countries.  Of all the EU countries, only one has gotten serious about getting its fiscal house in order (Sweden, essentially reversing its long Marxian nightmare of over-taxing, over-regulating, overly-promising unsustainable entitlements, and overgrowing government).

In addition to its European family tradition of Socialism, Greece has had an active and aggressive Communist Party for many years (a serious U.S. concern during the Eisenhower administration). In fact, it’s amazing that the Greek Orthodox Church has been able to avoid canonizing Saint Marx and littering the countryside with Marx icons.  At this moment one of Greece’s leading Communist politicians is encouraging or demanding that his comrades vote for de Tocqueville’s last sentence in the quote above.  EU economists now describe the situation in Greece with adjectives such as “precarious”, “grim”, and even “hopeless”.

Although we can admire all that is good about Greece, and we can empathise with the Greek people, we are not in a position to continue enabling their addiction to “something-for-nothing”.  Much as a lot of Americans would like to see the U.S. totally bail out Greece, the U.S. is only a couple of fiscal disaster steps behind the PIIGS.  A great many Americans also appear to be addicted to “something-for-nothing”, and the Democratic Socialist Union Party will fight to the death in order to keep all the American slaves in government bondage.

To avoid following Greece into the quicksand, the U. S. must understand the PIIGS lesson and promptly change course, toward economic reality.  Continuing to walk, step by step, deeper and deeper into the PIIGS pit while waiting for a superhero doesn’t seem very promising.  By the way, have you completed your PIIGS Fan Club membership yet?  Join The PIIGS Fan Club Now!

The current fuel predicament arises in part from President Obama’s desire to swiftly move all of us from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources which would also presumably be cleaner for the environment.  It is a rational and desirable goal, and as the world’s energy demand continues to rise, it will become necessary.  Unfortunately, the President has not thought about a transition path that could lead us to that goal down the road.  He continues to believe that if the U.S. government can make gasoline, diesel, kerosene and coal prohibitively expensive, we will all switch to alternatives for electricity generation and transportation before we are bankrupt.  The President’s logic would be OK—if  viable alternatives existed today.

President Obama has applied himself to learning political theories that appeal to him, tactics for implementing those theories, and how to smile and deliver appealing speeches to an undiscerning electorate.  However, a great many of us are wishing he had taken a few science, math or engineering courses—courses where the correct answers are not determined by ideology, opinion polls or judicial interpretation.  A majority of us are embarrassed for the President whenever he states technical “facts” that are so obviously incorrect or wishful thinking at best.  President Obama’s technology illiteracy is not just a matter of embarrassment, though; the cost to all of us is unsustainable.

Our clumsy, government-mandated attempts to reduce gasoline consumption in this country would be laughable if the problem were not so serious.  The best example is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirement put upon vehicle manufacturers by a long-forgotten Congress and President.  Since the 1930s, efficiency of internal combustion engines has improved by about one to three percentage points at best; in contrast, differences in individual driver techniques result in a range of fuel burn of about 30%.  What the politicians have created, then, is a shell game the manufacturers must play—knowing that the net result is higher transportation costs for everyone.  (The only sure way of significantly improving fuel economy is to significantly reduce vehicle weight—with side effects of smaller cars and safety compromises.)

A more recent political sleight-of-hand is the ethanol mandate.  The energy potential of ethanol (when burned, not when swallowed) versus its energy cost of production from corn is only 1.63; other experts argue that the ratio is closer to 1.26.  But the unintended consequences of subsidizing corn-based ethanol are worse than its puny fuel value; the inflation of corn costs are being felt in cattle food, swine food, poultry food, and everything else from corn that is in our food chain.

The future of alternative fuels, however, is not totally bleak at this time.  Transformation of used cooking oils to diesel fuel is cost-effective, but obviously limited in its volume (long term, though, straight vegetable oil extracted from any oil-containing plant appears to have a future for diesel and turbine engines).  But what is needed right now is a strategy to husband our limited and expensive fuels—gasoline, diesel, and jet aircraft fuel (essentially, kerosene)—and use each in its highest and best application.  Another fascinating possibility, for railroad transportation, is a return to steam; convert diesel-electric locomotives to steam-turbine-electric, using coal for fuel.

A promising transition path toward sustainable energy sources was recently recommended by oilman T. Boone Pickens.  In his current-technology plan, we would switch autos and trucks to CNG, compressed natural gas (there are already more than 100,000 CNG vehicles running in the U.S.).  Pickens would also concurrently accelerate the implementation of electricity generation from wind turbines. The rate of CNG conversion and wind-power increase would be dependent on non-trivial infrastructure expansion.  New transmission facilities are necessary for getting electricity from the wind turbine locations to the national grid; and CNG-filling capabilities for trucks and autos are yet to be installed in most existing fuel stations (for personal vehicles, an affordable filling apparatus can be installed in the garage of any house that has natural gas).

In short, the plan Pickens laid out would essentially eliminate the need for gasoline and diesel in surface transportation (with a few exceptions such as diesel-electric locomotives and diesel-powered ships).  It makes so much sense that we are tempted to ask:   had just a bit of the trillions of dollars of stimulus money spent by the federal government in the last three or four years been directed to appropriate tax incentives, how far along in a Pickens-like plan could we be already?

But what if one of Carney’s children came to recognize that Daddy was frequently not exactly truthful and made a simple wish, “that Daddy would be unable to tell a lie for an entire day”¹ and the wish became true—on the day of the next press briefing!

White House Press Briefing Room

Carney:  “I have no opening statement this morning, so let’s just get started.  Wendell”?

Wendell:  “Can you give us any insight into the President’s complaints about the Supreme Court Justices again”?

Carney:  “Well, you know he’s a student of the Constitution…he studied it like an Army general studies and identifies vulnerabilities of our enemies.  The President knows all the weaknesses of the Constitution, the Court and the Justices, and he has a plan to defeat them all.  Mmn…Chuck”?

Chuck:  “Do you mean the Constitution’s failures to provide for all the assistance and protection that all the underclasses need”?

Carney:  “Yes; he believes the present Constitution was fine for wealthy white slaveholders in the 18th century.  Today, we don’t need any kind of Constitution—our President knows what’s needed, when and how; he can rule the country without any extraneous documents.  Helene”?

Helene:  “But what can the President do if the Court rules against the Affordable Health Care Act”?

Carney:  “He doesn’t worry—the bully pulpit always trumps the black robe”.

Helene:  “Follow-up on”—(Carney breaks in),

Carney:  “Let’s see…Jessica”?

Jessica:  “What specific steps does the President plan to take to lower gas prices”?

Carney:  “He doesn’t plan to do anything!  The country’s gasoline binge is  George Bush’s fault.  Before Bush, we had plenty of gas and prices were dirt cheap.  If the Supreme Court had let Al Gore win, gasoline engine production would have been prohibited in the U.S. by now, and gas prices would be moot.  Uh…Norah”?

Norah:  “Is the President concerned about the tightening of the polls in his reelection”?

 Carney:  “Nah—he sleeps well; the fix is in.  Hmm…Ed”?

Ed:  “Are you telling us there’s going to be an October Surprise?”

Carney:  “I suppose so … yes, there’s going to be a surprise.  Jake”?

Jake:  “Do you know any of the details”?

Carney:  “Not a lot; I only know a few of the secre—uh, details.  I know the secret Chinese campaign contribution of $900 million is being distributed to Democratic operatives across the country.  But I don’t know if the declaration of national emergency and martial law comes before or after the election”.

A commotion ensues at the front of the room, with three White House Staff men tackling Carney, and starting to drag him out of the room by his feet.

Carney:  (gasping, his voice raised a full octave)  “HE TOLD YOU IT WAS GOING TO BE HIS LAST ELECTION…WHAT DID YOU THINK”?  “unintelligible” (his voice trailing, as his body disappears through the doorway.

Wendell:  (standing) “I guess this means the briefing is over”?

(Reporters file out of the room, strangely silent).

¹ If the premise sounds familiar, that’s because it has been the basis for three movies in the U.S., plus films in other countries.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ground beef with Pink Slime filler of 25% or less is perfectly safe.  The name, Pink Slime—obviously a pejorative—tells us that there are some people who don’t think much of the stuff.  In fact, some literate food scientists originally called it “Soylent Pink” but fear of criticism, intellectual property theft lawsuits, or worse, triteness, caused the Soylent reference (book and 1970s movie) to be dropped.  Needless to say, the manufacturers of this ground beef additive have a completely neutral marketing name that provides no hint of its ingredients.

Now there seems to be a bit of political correctness coming out of the slime:  McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell and other large chains fairly quickly foreswore Pink-Slime-impregnated hamburger meat in widely distributed press releases.  It is likely, now that Pink Slime has been exposed to the light for a short while, that additional restaurant chains and big-name sellers of ground beef will follow.  But in the meantime Soylent Pink is still alive and well in our land; and the two main producers of the stuff continue to find enthusiastic customers.

We in the western, more-or-less-civilized world are apparently narrow in our repertoire of palatable foods.  Even before exploring foods common to strange lands (insects, reptiles, etc.), we Americans demonstrate sensitivities to taste, aroma, texture, color, temperature, and—especially—the thought of certain foods.  As children grow up, their tastes change a lot, as we all know.  But the picky eaters discussed here are adults (in age, at least).

At one company where I was employed we had a coworker who was extremely limited in what she would eat; in the years I knew her she never tried anything outside of her never-changing menu.  When we selected a restaurant for one of our periodic department lunches it was a challenge to find an acceptable eating place (but she was a good sport, and on several occasions had coffee only with us, just to enable a little variety for the group).

Because I grew up in a single-parent household, my sisters and I had for much of our lives a limited menu:  that which was inexpensive and plentiful.  As a result, when I began taking business trips (across the U. S. and beyond) there were a lot of dishes to which I had never been exposed, e.g., steaks tender and not cooked until dead, dead, dead.  Within my narrow expense account limits (especially at the airline), a new world of taste sensations awaited.

Today, very few of my food-learning experiences are worth the time it takes to tell them.  Suffice to say that subjects included escargot, rattlesnake, elk, bear, chocolate-covered ants, fried grasshoppers, haggis, Scotch eggs, freshly-shot wild Belgian hares, numerous types of organ meats, and undoubtedly lots of stuff mercifully forgotten today.  My memory tells me that only a very small minority were sufficiently repugnant to put on the never-give-it-a-second-chance list.  But there was one consistent lesson: don’t let the thought of a new food get in the way of actually trying it.

Luckily, I didn’t cringe at the thought of “grass-finished beef” (or grass-finished buffalo); in the past couple of years I had an outstanding steak from grass-finished beef, raised by a local rancher to the chef’s specifications (and a year or so later an excellent buffalo steak, from the same source).   Soylent Pink versus Grass-finished Beef provides some interesting contrasts and a peek at our emotional responses to “almost taboos”.

Pink Slime represents an edible food, irrespective of its palatability,  whose potential value to human nutrition was previously not available.  There seems to be no concern among the experts as to the taste of hamburger meat containing this additive.  But there are two primary objections:  (1), it is relatively new and potential long-term effects of the antimicrobial chemicals are unknown, and (2) the thoughts of “bloody effluent”, “connective tissue” (?), and “miscellaneous” (??) send our imaginations into negative overdrive.  It is likely that a significant fraction of Americans would rather quickly assign Pink Slime to the same category of food as Scorpions and other such third-world delicacies.

Grass-finished beef (often mistakenly called grass-fed beef), however, should not conjure up strange things.  Grass is the natural food of cattle (although the designer of the unique bovine stomach is rarely given sufficient or frequent accolades).  All cattle are grass-fed for most of their lives; grass-finished cattle have eaten nothing but grass, clear up to the point of maturity when they are slaughtered.

Most of the beef products in the U.S. that we see in supermarkets and that we enjoy in restaurants come from cattle that have been shipped before maturity to feedlots where the animals are fed a grain diet specifically formulated to add fat quickly (beef cattle are sold by the pound to purchasers).  The beef feedlot system is peculiar to the United States and is not utilized elsewhere.  But it is a fact that today many large-scale beef purchasers need a balance of lean and fat meat (primarily for ground beef) that is not available domestically; therefore, more and more grass-finished lean beef is being imported from New Zealand and other countries.

Each side in the grass-finished versus grain-finished debate seeks to convince us that their product is superior, just like politicians.  The U.S. cattle feedlot industry has an enormous investment to protect, so we are more likely to be confronted with their side of the story, which is, essentially, “better taste, more tender”.  The (smaller number of) producers of grass-finished cattle try to get their story before the public:  “better taste, lower fat, more Omega-3, healthier”.  Third parties not associated with the raising of cattle or the processing of meat occasionally get a few of their worries out to the public:  corn utilization and price competition for it (because of ethanol subsidies); environmental concerns about feedlot operations; and humane treatment of  the animals.

But perhaps the media will perceive sufficient controversial content of this story to (inadvertently) introduce more of us to a “new” food alternative—grass-finished beef.  Bon appetit!

I started out, as is my scientific bias, giving them a try, early on.  Light fixtures that were difficult to reach and lights that were turned on for a large part of each day were the first choices.  Ordinary outdoor bulbs, most of which are yellow because of insects, turned out to be good buys.  This small number of bulbs, with a cost of slightly more than four times that of incandescents, saved a tiny amount of electricity and lasted four to five times longer.  Also, the few difficult-to-reach fixtures promise less ladder risk and effort.

The next logical places to try CFLs were those places where more light was needed from existing fixtures (those at their total-bulb wattage limit); commonly this was a step up from a 60-watt or 75-watt bulb to a brightness equivalent of 75 or 100 watts.  So far, so good; even with the greater lumen output the net energy consumed was still less.  In this four or five year period, our total investment in bulbs had been sixty or seventy dollars—a very affordable risk.  There was even one new wrinkle, our first CFL with the now-familiar spiral, pigtail tube; aside from being a bit snug in some fixtures, these funny bulbs worked about as well as the others.  In fact, the only negative so far was having to get used to the delay period between turning a light on and its achieving full brightness—momentarily frustrating but not a big deal.

Finally the time came to make a real commitment:  proceed bulb by bulb until the last incandescent had died, or go all-in and spend the several hundreds of dollars to finish the paradigm shift.  My count, as I recall, of remaining light bulbs in common ceiling and wall fixtures was 31 or 32 (specialized light fixtures were temporarily ignored—more about them later).  The count of bulbs in the various floor and table lamps in the house was about 16, bringing the total number to be replaced to approximately 50.  A quick guesstimate of the total cost was somewhere in the range 0f $250 to $300.

A rationalization that Washington bureaucrats would force the change sooner or later provided an excuse to avoid any real cost-versus-worth calculation (acquisition cost, electrical current cost, estimated bulb longevity, etc.).  So, with $350 of CFLs in hand, The Great Changeover began.

By this time, prices had come down noticeably (and the bulbs were mostly marked “Hecho en China” or “Hecho en Third World Peoples Republic ____”).  The primary driver of the lower cost was thereby explained; as would become apparent later, another reduction would also be explained.  There were a few nuisances involved in The Great Changeover, including replacement of rheostat switches with common off-on switches (dimable CFLs were not readily available at that time, or even today, for that matter).  However, all seemed to go well with the ceiling and wall fixtures.

Lamps, of any kind, were another matter.  The snug fit of CFLs in some fixtures was actually a harbinger of obstacles to come.  In general, lamps which utilized a “harp” attachment method for their shades needed the largest harps that could be found (another Obama tax?) at Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, or on the Internet.  But the harp surprise appeared miniscule in comparison to the Three-Way Bulb Education.  Like most gullible consumers, I began with the assumption that three-light-level CFLs would replace their incandescent predecessors just as the single-level ones had.  Squeezing those fat CFLs into the harps was just a minor annoyance; however, the performance of those three-way CFLs turned out to be a major disappointment.

Even today, some ten or twelve years after our first compact fluorescent bulb experience, three-way CFLs are not just disappointing—they approach the level of ripoff.  As a bulb which can be set at any of the three switch settings for three different levels of light, the three-way CFL can be counted on to perform like its incandescent predecessor—for one to two months.  It will then be a two-level bulb for another short period, before it becomes a single-level bulb, just like a an ordinary CFL bulb in the lamp.  However, the designers, manufacturers and quality controllers must have at least a little charity in their hearts—the remaining level is frequently the highest of the three original choices.

The economics of three-way CFL bulbs might best be described as a Charity for Incompetent Third-World Manufacturers.  Starting with the three-way bulb cost of at least double that of an ordinary bulb, when we add the new harp cost to be amortized (about the same as two of these expensive bulbs) they are about as cost-effective as the federal government.  Even the single-level CFLs from Third World Inc. have proven to have a noticeably shorter life on average than the earlier CFLs, which must have been actually manufactured in the U.S.  A believable explanation, agreed upon by a number of bloggers on the Internet, is that quality control has not yet been discovered by those third-world manufacturers who are enabling the mandate of that now-forgotten Congress and President.  The Japanese government recognizes excellence in quality control with a (W. Edwards) Deming Award.  I suspect the countries where CFLs are turned out by the billions have an Alfred E. Neuman (What, Me Worry?) award for manufacturing incompetence.

Back to a less emotional area, the specialized light fixtures in my house remain filled at present with incandescent bulbs (and I hope no one rats me out to Inquisitor General Holder).  The kitchen designer for our kitchen provided general lighting, plus task lighting for those areas where the cook toils:  range top, sinks, counter top work surfaces, etc.  The task lighting fixtures have switches convenient to the work area that each illuminates.  Those fixtures are “can” lights that may be positioned as needed along a track and can be aimed to get light to the precise spot that needs it.  The bulbs are spot lights, in order to focus intense light where work is done.  But a few Internet searches has yet to turn up a CFL spot light bulb (although a flood light is available).  Needless to say, the price of specialized CFLs represents another big increase; if they last no longer than ordinary CFLs, no rational person would ever buy a second bulb.

Another specialized fixture area applies to most households:  the light bulb in your oven (and possibly in your refrigerator, in high-vibration areas, etc.).  Has anyone asked if their smart phone processor chip will operate at 450°F?    However, I’m sure that those arrogant members of Congress, that arrogant President, and all of those arrogant staff people involved remain certain that they have prescribed for us the only light we need and all the light we need.  Do we need to hear it again, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you with your lighting”?  Or did he say lightning; or in government-speak is there any difference between the two?  Shame on us for letting those con men (and con women) maneuver us into this position!

President Obama has been in election mode for the past year, as have potential Republican challengers.  We would not expect the President to react to the Newsweek proclamation, but it does indeed appear that he is doubling down on his promises of more, bigger and stronger centralized government.  Surprisingly, though, the Republican primary candidates for President have said little about the country’s accelerating march toward European-style, big government liberalism.  Of course they have complained about Obama’s policies and the stretched-out recession; but none has presented much in the way of details on how to reverse course before the U.S. automatically qualifies for membership in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) group of the European Union.

President Obama has mentioned, in both of his memoirs, his attraction to Marxists.  He also told us that the Hawaii organizer for the Communist Party USA and another prominent Communist were frequent visitors to his grandfather’s home in Hawaii where Obama grew up.  The President’s 20-year membership in the Reverend Wright’s church, which emphasized Marxist “Black
Liberation Theology”, is another implication that Obama does not find Marxist government policies unusual, uncomfortable, or in any way out of the ordinary.

Obama Administration appointees, speaking on the various Democrat-friendly talk shows, have made remarks that indicate this administration believes 60% of the U.S. voters actually want more government assistance, support and control, foreshadowing another easy Obama election victory.

Karl Marx is frequently mentioned as “the father of Socialism and Communism”.  His actual contribution was an idea for systematizing the political exploitation of two common human weaknesses:  envy and indolence.  Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation¹ about the inherent weakness of a democracy might have been the catalyst for Marx’ thinking, but there is no evidence.  Marx detailed his brilliant idea in a short document published in 1848, “The Communist Manifesto”.  Later in life, Marx developed an interest in political economics, publishing in 1867, “Das Kapital” (and he revised it incessantly until his death in 1884).  Obviously, Marx did not live to see any of his intellectual efforts tried out in attempts to create and run an actual, real-life government.

An inadvertent co-conspirator with Marx in the attempts to turn wishful thinking into an operating government was John Maynard Keynes, a highly educated and respectable political economist.  Keynes’ ideas, like those of Marx, come in and out of favor across time; both have been criticized by a number of world-famous economists over the years.  To someone without much training in political or practical economics, a serious flaw that seems obvious is that both Marx and Keynes apparently believed wealth just existed:  like matter (pre-Einstein), wealth cannot be created nor destroyed, just transformed (as in whose wealth, where, and how used).  During Marx’ productive years no essential economic data were collected or available.  Keynes did not have that handicap; but he compensated by ignoring new data that did not support his economic theories.

Today, neither Marx nor Keynes carries much weight—except with Socialist and Communist true believers and with clever, opportunistic politicians.  But, as we have seen time and again over the last 100 years or so in the United States, emotion frequently trumps logic and reason.  Therefore it is likely that the current owners of Newsweek magazine already have the cover designed for the 2013 issue that will appear after the presidential inauguration.  Utilizing the largest typeface that will fit, that cover will proclaim, “WE ARE ALL COMMUNISTS NOW“.  A good subtitle on that cover would be, “LEARNING TO LOVE BIG BROTHER AND COPE WITH THE POLITBURO”.

Well, Comrades, plant a Renaissance garden, husband your resources, pray that you do not come to the attention of Inquisitor General Holder, and it may be possible for you to survive four more years of Chairman Barack.  But whether the country will survive remains unknowable.

NOTE:

  ¹Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States in its early years and later observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”  (In more recent history, a Margaret Thatcher quote would be an appropriate footnote to de Tocqueville, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”).

A reasonable definition of faith might be “a belief that does not rest upon logical proof” or “belief in something that cannot be seen or otherwise sensed”.  Religious faith means to most people a belief in a Supreme Being, a belief in God.  Past a basic belief in God, religious faith can take on many meanings, e.g., Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc.

Perversely, though, strong as our beliefs may be, we humans have proven over the ages that we are capable of believing anything that we want to believe, whether that belief was arrived at via evidence and logic or is a matter of faith.  It’s fairly common to encounter, anywhere in the media, persons of religious faith,  agnostics, and atheists trying to convince each other of the “truth” of their respective beliefs.  “Proving” to anyone’s satisfaction that God does or does not exist is a most difficult chore; so those discussions and arguments will continue forever.

Belief in one form of government or another also seems to be spread across multiple groups, each with their favorites, and all opposed by anarchists (the “atheists” of government faith).  Many U. S. citizens appear to be governmental “agnostics”; they don’t seem to care much about what goes on in the federal government or in their state government.  But one thing is certain:  it is difficult to avoid those seemingly endless debates and arguments over politicians and governments that permeate the media—especially during our elongated election seasons.

We regularly see spokespersons within television broadcast and cable organizations who are unquestionably partisan true believers of their favorite form of government, exposing the depth of their faith on a regular basis.  Needless to say, those partisans exist throughout the political spectrum; on the Internet, free from FCC license concerns (at least at present), partisanship is more the rule than the exception.  In my opinion, even among professional reporters there are very few who stick to “who, what, where, when and how” facts, avoiding the temptation to editorialize.  The public usually would find it difficult to determine a really good reporter’s political preferences.

How do we arrive at our governmental faith (or lack of it) ?  Here, the parallels with religious faith seem to be most striking, as I noted in those previous blogs (above).  But the category which should yield the most information is the one with which I have the least personal experience:  people who have lived under governments quite different from that in the U.S.  One friend emigrated to Canada from The Netherlands, where the government was classic European Liberal-Socialist.  This friend developed one rule from that experience—don’t trust any emigrant’s outlook until he or she has emigrated twice!  All emigrants are looking for a better place, but they can’t truly judge which is better, their native country or their adopted country, until they have made the relocation twice.

Another friend emigrated from England, a place for which I have great respect, both from reading history and also from several visits which were longer than usual business trips or vacations.  What I learned from my English friend was that we can’t trust our judgement unless we have made that decision and have had the experience of permanently relocating.

A third friend was a fellow employee I met at my night janitor job during college.  He and his wife, both college professors, had escaped from Latvia at the time it was a slave state of the Soviet Union.  Because the Soviets wanted to make sure that any who escaped their clutches would have as difficult a time as possible reestablishing their lives in the west, my friend Petaris could not acquire the documents to prove his tenure at the University of Riga nor his doctoral achievement.  Of course, that meant that there were no college professor jobs for him (but the U. S. oil company that hired his wife, a PhD in geology, was not hung up on credentials and was happy to give her the opportunity to prove she could handle the job).  So Pete and I worked together each night with mops, buckets, scrubbers and polishers—giving me a rare job benefit of learning a little about classical philology (his doctoral specialty and teaching subject) and the country of Latvia.  But what I remember best of the things I learned from Pete is that freedom, personal and economic, is tenuous and can disappear in an unwary and unguarded moment; none of us can really appreciate the fragility of and the value of freedom until after it is gone.

These experiences of my three friends convinces me that most of us in the United States do not really understand the quotation of Thomas Jefferson’s that is engraved in large letters inside the Jefferson Memorial:  “Constant vigilance is the price of liberty”.  A seductive sales pitch for some other form of government, made by an appealing con man, may sound too good to be true; but we frequently let our guard down anyway, suffering the results.  Too bad more of us don’t remember that no Liberal / Socialist / Communist state has ever survived even a third as long as The United States.  But until we know more about how people acquire their views and preferences for some variety of government, we must resign ourselves to the simplistic rationale that it is an emotional decision, impervious to reason and logic.

Recently, a number of the EU member states have managed to get the International Monetary Fund and its chief contributor, the United States, to contribute (“loan”) more money to try to prop up Italy, along with whatever a few of the EU members can scrape up.  As big a deal as it is to U.S. taxpayers, it’s just another drop into the fire bucket to be poured onto the European Socialist conflagration.  That whole effort may really be just to shame Germany, France and the United Kingdom into deeper financial participation in this unprecedented firefighting exercise.

The root of the problem is, of course, half one of human nature and half one of the known vulnerability that all democracies share.  The human frailty, which we all recognize even if we believe it is impolite to mention it, is our desire to get something for nothing.  Of course, all politicians―even the most dense and inarticulate―know that votes are purchased with promise capital.  Moreover, even that stupidest politician knows that the very best lure is something for nothing and that an ongoing vote-buying program is best of all.  Politicians also well understand that feasibility or deliverability of the promise is immaterial; we want to believe that we will get something free, with no strings attached.

That other part of the cause is a characteristic of democratic governments.  Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States.  It was de Toqueville who observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years”.  No one has yet discovered a procedural method of avoiding this pitfall; but the United States has managed so far to last only a tiny bit longer than 200 years.

Barack Obama began campaigning for the office of President of the United States around 2002, and in 2008 he succeeded in being elected.  In large part, Obama’s appeal was his promise to be “a President of all the people”.  His “hope and change” slogan resonated even with some number of reasonable, educated and knowledgeable voters.  Over the years since he was elected, however, that promise seems increasingly in doubt.

President Obama seems to be stuck in a rut, ever since his 2012 reelection campaign season began in 2010.  His repetitive speeches are more strident and angry; his nice guy attitude is nowhere to be seen.  The only vestige of the old Obama is his prowess in raising campaign contributions.  He has been delivering Marxist class-envy speeches, filled with trite cold-war-era Soviet phrases, at every fund-raising stop on his current campaign trail.  It seems that Obama would feel comfortable only in a European Socialist government setting.

Obama’s legislative accomplishments also appear to be copies of the European Socialist initiatives that have led those progressive governments into imminent financial peril.  The President has refused to consider any but the most trivial reductions in government spending, and he is obsessed with increasing income taxes.  Taken together, the President’s speeches and his legislative agenda indicate that Obama is more of a President of the PIIGS than he is a President of the United States.  Perhaps it would be best if he abandoned the 2012 U.S. election and instead looked into organizing the PIIGS into their own union, with Barack Obama as its head.  PIIGS voters would undoubtedly be receptive to promises of more and more government largesse.

One of the current reasons for our lack of vigilance is the success of those who have worked diligently to reinvent definitions of Pragmatism, Liberalism, Marxism, Socialism and Communism to make them more ambiguous and confusing.  I know a person who seems to actually understand the minute differences between those approaches to governing; once he volunteered that the label “Marxist” for a politician frequently should be, more accurately, “Marxist – Leninist”.  Although I respect those who have managed to learn these small details, I suspect that most of us don’t see two cents worth of difference across the whole lot.  Collectively, all of those labels refer to a form of government that is all about “coerce and control”, with abhorrence of even a small decision being made outside of the government.

Socialism, the blanket term, was an inadvertent side effect of the industrial revolution, the greatest improvement ever in the lives of ordinary people.  As the standard of living rapidly and dramatically improved in the industrializing western nations, people naturally looked back at the progress they had made from their feudal subsistence past.  As always, after things have gotten better, this retrospection generated anger at those undefinable forces or people considered responsible for that miserable past.  This angst was the catalyst for vast numbers of people to fall prey to Marxist propaganda, believing in its fairy-tale vision, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.

At Thanksgiving time in the U.S. we should remember the earliest experience with failed Socialism in the new world.  The Plymouth Colony began with what we call Socialism today, only to watch it progressively fail to the point where the colony was in serious danger of starvation and extinction.  Governor Bradford, in a brave act of political leadership, mandated a return to the form of economic activity familiar to the colonists—what we call Capitalism now (and it worked so well that Bradford declared a holiday after a fall harvest “to give thanks…”).  The colonists literally learned, or relearned, that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

But is the U. S. at present meekly acquiescing as a pack of Communists in Capitalist clothing pull our country down into the same black hole that Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain are currently spiraling into?  No Socialist government in history has ever survived even a third as long as that of the United States.  Are we going to cheer our entrance into Socialism and bankruptcy at the same time?  Will we continue to idolize and support the chief wolf in sheep’s clothing, gorged with his easy plunder already and still agitating the pack to binge on everything, down to the last remaining morsel of the flock that used to be the United States of America?

Will we wake up to the same unbelieving morning after the election as have Poland, the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, and most of the struggling European Union member states?  Will we, too, have to learn the unacceptable cost of the free lunch?  Is the eventual victory of the President Of The Communists inevitable?  Do we have sufficient remaining optimism to believe in the possibility of electing a genuine President Of All The People?

We humans, like a lot of other animals, learn through experience.  As those experiences have been recorded for posterity, each new generation of researchers, as the saying goes, stands on the shoulders of those who came before.  In ancient times, long before the seeds of modern science were planted, alchemy was accepted as a legitimate scientific pursuit.  The best-known purpose of alchemy was its goal of converting base metals such as lead or tin into noble metals such as gold and silver.  That goal eluded its searchers for millennia, but it was thought to be possible, awaiting only a “right stuff” thinker who could accomplish what had proved impossible for so long.

Today the average person thinks of alchemy as a play toy of the incorrigible ignorant.  Although essentially true, that’s not a totally fair assessment, since alchemy was one of the seeds that lead toward modern science.  One alchemy-like problem we see today is the achievement of controlled nuclear fusion, like the controlled fission used in nuclear power plants.  But, unlike the efforts of those early alchemists, research that some day might lead to controlled fusion (the holy grail of energy sources) is being conducted by the world’s top scientists with supercolliders, supercomputers, and all of our modern research tools.

President Obama does not seem to understand that the alchemy of the middle ages cannot be made to work, in spite of his rhetoric and his desires.  It appears that his ingrained ideology and ignorance of (or contempt for) physics, mathematics and engineering makes him an easy target for confidence men.  It is painfully evident that our President believes that almost instantaneous elimination of fossil fuels is achievable via political fiat.  The President is not alone in his beliefs; many in his administration have the same fuzzy beliefs and the same contempt for those “little people” of science who can’t seem to understand what is wanted of them.

So we see billions and billions of our taxpayer dollars being donated for seed money in economically questionable renewable energy initiatives.  A recent winner in our energy folly lottery is the late lamented Solyndra company that filed for bankruptcy in early September.  At this point there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Solyndra, aside from poor management and possible lack of due diligence.

Poor decision-making and overconfidence are seen from time to time in totally private initiatives, those with no taxpayer money at risk and no political favor rewards (see Diogenes and Technology Breakthroughs).  Such examples just remind us that there is risk inherent in all business ventures.  Venture capitalists understand risk management very well, but still they continue to finance new startups regularly.  However, when the venture capital is taxpayer money (which belongs to no one) due diligence has, or should have, a completely different definition.

The use of tax monies to finance business startups is generally regarded as inappropriate, but there may be room for debate on that subject.  However, no debate should be required about risk management where public moneys are involved.  Most of us believe that investing taxpayers’ money in the finest, invisible, fabric from which to make the President’s new suit should be held up to considerably more scrutiny than its counterpart private investment.

But worse than questionable investments of our money is the President’s belief that if he can starve us of electricity from coal-fired plants, we will be forced to turn to wind or solar.  Unfortunately, our President doesn’t understand or believe that there is no replacement in sight for the electricity currently derived from coal.  Or perhaps he thinks we won’t mind the absence of power at night, when solar cells produce nothing and wind turbines produce little.

We voters are a little late in vetting our President’s technology awareness and competence (and also vetting his candidates for appointment to positions related to technology).  Our recourse at this point is to do our best to make sure that potential future Presidents do not have significant technology blind spots or contempt for technologists.  It would help if we could demand more technology familiarity from the media; technology-challenged reporters and anchors seem to be the norm.

My suggestion is to support candidates for President only if they are on a technology level of George Washington or better (or Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, or…).