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Saturday, May 12, 2012
Extremes
I was reading my Twitter freed this morning to get the latest news and commentary.
There were references to a wide range of stories from various news outlets and some funny
and interesting posts by individuals that I follow. As I finished my review I was struck by the fact that we live
in a world that is filled with people with perspectives that are extremely diverse. They range from ultra-liberal
in a western cultural context to ultraconservative (conservative isn't close to being the right word because these
people appear to be living in about 700 AD). As I read about the opinions of people with extreme views, compared
to my own or centrist views in the US, it was hard to comprehend what planet some of these people come from.
It is also easy to understand why many nations, including the US, are having problems making their elected governments
work effectively. The incredible diversity of perspectives makes building consensus almost impossible. The democratic nations
of the world seem to be breaking apart along lines that are ethnic, class, or special interest oriented. The
fundamental organizational structure of a nation is based on geography. Yet we see a number nations in the world
being pressured by their own people to break apart into multiple countries or yield fundamental power from the central
government to regional governments. We all know that the nations of the world have reorganized themselves
many times in the past. I wonder if we are approaching a time when a new type of geopolitical reorganization will evolve.
The government leaders of many western nations apparently failed basic mathematics and economics in school
because they don't show any capability or desire to properly manage their countries finances. Maintaining a proper
balance between income and expenses isn't very hard to do if you can add and subtract. But there are people around
the world that don't seem to care about balancing anything. They want others to hand them a particular lifestyle without
working for it. They want to create money and wealth out of thin air without earning it through the labor of their citizens.
They seem to forget that all wealth creation is tied to labor of some type at some time. The world has developed mechanisms
for storing wealth for future use. But once citizens have spent their wealth it is gone. Peoples and nations have
to start over at the bottom and begin building their wealth from the beginning. The extreme economic views being
expressed by political leaders in some countries are almost incomprehensible. There is no logic to their arguments
other than they want some other nation to give them wealth and receive nothing in return.
Extreme views
can be tolerated at different levels. If some country on the other side of the world wants to impose extreme
social or cultural mores on its citizens there is not much anyone in the US can do to stop it. We should try to avoid
interacting with that culture as much as we can. The governments in western democracies should give their own people
as much freedom of choice as possible. Since the US is made up of many different subcultures our federal government
should not be involving in mandating or prohibiting behavior by its citizens. It should delegate that task to the individual
states so they can make their own decisions.
But in the end the social framework must be compatible with the
economic math, which must add up properly for countries to be prosperous and stable. Extremists insisting that
we ignore the math of basic economics must be removed from influence. Voters in western democracies should
do their best to eliminate any leader or political group that refuses to properly execute basic economic math. Nations
can't function indefinitely when one plus one doesn't equal two. There is no role for extreme views in economic math.
TPM
12:35 pm
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