Command and control

For every Ron Paul struggling to revive even a
modicum of integrity to a corrupt system, there
will be one hundred congressional pimps working
to insure their corporate clientele favored rooms
in the beltway brothel. With numerous untold
stories of military-industrial corruption
inviting their inquiries, members of the
established media can be counted upon to supply
diversions. Like the purple smoke or multi-
colored strings of silk used by magicians to
distract their audiences, television newscasts
will continue their in-depth reporting on missing
teenagers and bridegrooms; tunnels used to
smuggle marijuana into the United States from
Mexico; unsolved murders; and chickens that can
play the xylophone. For truths of a more
significant nature, you must turn to either the
Internet or documentary film-makers.

It has been suggested, by some, that political
systems grew out of piracy, with brigands – tired
of having to chase the lootees – establishing
permanent ports through which tradesmen would
have to pass and pay fees. It should be evident
to any rational mind that, contrary to the view
that governments were instituted to protect
property, wealth preceded political agencies;
otherwise there would have been nothing to steal
or control.

The state exists for one purpose only: to
forcibly extract from people money that could not
have been obtained in the marketplace.
...
I recall, not so many decades ago, the case that
Republicans and other conservatives made to
reform the inefficiencies of government by
incorporating business principles into government
agencies and programs. The assumption was that
businessmen, accustomed to the rigors of
marketplace competition, could weed wasteful
practices from government. The notion was an
absurd one, as any first-year student of
economics could confirm: the state operates on
the basis of commands, not transactions freely
negotiated with market participants.

That last, a fine example of the difference
between the power of the whip and the power of the
dollar that Ayn Rand wrote about.

I also suspect that not one in a thousand sees
this difference and because of that we can all
expect more of the former.

Shhh. Now let's listen to the commenters that don't.

Do you have your donkey yet?

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