Why doesn't Joe freeze the price of gasoline at $2.00/gallon revising Directive 10-289 ? That will teach the greedy oil companies a lesson!!!

I purchased that coffee cup from the online store. Atlas Shrugged, now in non-fiction. Quite possibly the best investment I could have ever made, now has to be worth well over double what I paid for it. LOL

"Mr. Thompson, uh I mean Brandon will not be speaking to you, tonight..."

Government is a necessary evil at best, a cruel tyrant at worst. Suggesting that government is the solution to any problem other than the minimal governance necessary for good society is an inherent contradiction. Why? Because government works on a system of perverse incentives rather than the natural incentives coming from a standard business relationship of value-for-value.

To go a little deeper into this, the currency in each of these systems is fundamentally different. Money is used in the world of business to represent value, but money itself is simply a convenient store of that value which can be traded back and forth from person to person in exchange for the ultimate needs and desires of the individual: the goods and services endemic to life such as heat, shelter, food, etc. (see Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs).

Government doesn't conform to the paradigm of business because it isn't operating on the same level in Maslow's Hierarchy. Government itself isn't concerned with heat, food, shelter, etc. but rather is focused on the higher-level items - especially the ideological ones. And the currency of government isn't money, but Power. True: money can be used to obtain power through its coercive/attractive use, but government isn't interested in the lower-level items as its end goal.

This brings up an interesting parallel: why is it that so many rich people decide to go into politics? It is a matter of means. Those closer to subsistence living have only a limited ability to focus their energies on more philosophical pursuits. This manifests primarily in their scope of such philosophical interest being limited to their immediate family. Individuals who have satisfied all their lower-level needs are then free to devote their energies in toto to these more ephemeral pursuits. And what is of particular note is that along with being able to devote themselves to philosophy, they have a tendency to want to interfere in the ideology of others.

This is where government becomes dangerous and tyrannical: when individuals start shifting their personal "needs" to exist on the higher levels of Maslow's Hierarchy, where the currency is different because the ends are fundamentally different as well. And it is here in the stock and trade of ideas and their implementation that too many people spend most of their time in the implementation stage and not nearly enough in the idea stage: that process of rational consideration regarding inputs and outputs, choice and consequence, actions and outcomes. They spend little time analyzing the past to see what ideas have historically proven disastrous because they also fail prey to the accumulation of the currency of the higher layers in the pyramid: the lust for power. They allow that lust for power to take control and override the necessary study of the ideology and its philosophical grounding in reality, which in the case of leftist ideology isn't grounded at all.

Is there a solution? I'm still thinking about this, but the initial thought is that this is where the installed limitations and controls such as separation of powers and Federalism can assist insofar as those restrictions are vigorously enforced and safeguarded themselves. But what happens when it is the wolves guarding the henhouse?

AR was indeed quite accurate in predicting the course of events when statist irrational thinking predominates in a society. AS may have been designed a novel, but is now more of a documentary

I wonder what Wyatt would have said if the government told him to increase refinery output with a restricted input? 🤔

Like I said a few weeks ago. We will see 10-289 carried out in some form by the end of this decade. It doesn’t matter how “hard” you vote. Proggies have reached critical mass. Judges are only going to stem the tide for so long. We need gulches. Resilient communities. And acceptance that the “new normal” is upon us.
Go Galt!

Who does dumb-ass think is the audience for "Putin is responsible" BS?

Of course Putin would love to hose the US. He would nuke the US if not for repercussions. There are no more repercussions for Russia. We already took away their birthday, and have no more pressure to apply. We are impotent.

Not only is it Biden's policies that are hosing gas prices, but it is our policies regarding Russia that are exacerbating them.

No one but Biden is to blame, and (almost) no one is dumb enough to buy this message.

If Saint Ayn became alive today, her first words might be, "I told you so."

I just watched Vice on Prime video last night which is about Vice President Cheney. It was a very left slanted movie, but I was hit with how Executive Orders got so out of control during his tenure as Vice President. Thereby throwing checks and balances out the window.