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Learning From Pandemic, Laura Ebke, And Lysander Spooner – How Will Our Recovery From Covid-19 Impact How We Govern Ourselves?

Published on in Activism/Free Market/Opinion/Politics/Poor Pratt's Almanack
Two Choices: Authoritarian Rule or Lysander Spooner "V" for Victory of Voluntary Self-Rule. Which one will you choose?

Excerpts from and extensions to an illuminating social media dialog with one of my favorite Libertarians, Laura Ebke:

Laura Ebke:

My friend David took a comment and turned it into an article!


I keep hearing stories of innovations here in Nebraska that are being unleashed because of regulations being lifted. Maybe we don’t need so many regulations in the post-COVID-19 world!How will we recover from the Corona pandemic?


David Pratt Demarest:

Thank you, Laura! Nice segway and critical incremental step to nudge the needle toward freedom.

Laura, I agree. Opportunities come in many flavors and abound for those who turn failures and crises into learning, teaching, and commitment moments. Like you, a “gentle housecleaning” day of reckoning is coming as I approach the 5000 limit on Facebook friends, thanks to our expanding online horizons as we “shelter in place”.

On the more serious side, the pandemic and all its implications will be a huge opportunity with many challenges, not just regarding our health but how we govern our relationships with each other. Will we remain nations of sheep and allow authorities to continue mismanagement of our affairs that put us at risk to pandemics and on a path toward mutual economic and social destruction?

Or will we wake up, act as individual leaders by example, make and keep commitments, take back our personal responsibilities, and put governments in their place by showing them how it is done by effectively governing and conducting ourselves like the rational self-aware species that we are?

That is indeed a tall order. But this is an opportunity to change the polarity of the needle and start incrementally moving our reality in a different direction toward freedom.

Where to start? First things first, we must recover from the Covid-19 pandemic with our economy, society, and personal lives intact. This will require much brainstorming and soul searching to create health solutions, adopt adjustments to our behavior patterns, and take the bull by the horns to show government how self-governance can work better to address societal challenges as we recover from the pandemic.

As our species fills up and crowds all corners of the earth, we know that more novel virus pandemics will be coming our way. The next challenge will be to build on what we have learned and behavior adjustments we have made in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Today, we have all of our eggs in one shrinking basket, planet earth. However, diaspora to other planets will not solve all our problems either here on earth or wherever we disperse to.

Ultimately, our challenge is to take the next big step for mankind, the transition from authoritarian rule to self-rule to avoid the alternative threats of chaos and authoritarian mud-hut poverty, misery, and conformity.

I choose to fight institutional authoritarianism every step of the way to intelligent self-governance. Will it be easy? NO!

The good news, however, is that the biggest leap will be accomplished when we realize that most of our personal relationships and our constant interactions in a variety of social and economic free markets are already lived successfully under self-governance.

We don’t have to rely on government to tell us how to handle our personal relationships and free market transactions. We already know how to get along with each other, both socially and economically. We just do it, each guided by our own personal ‘government’ if you will, our mutually developed set of rules that govern our personal and commercial relationships and transactions.

And by golly, our personal ‘governments’ are working so well that our species continues to survive and make progress despite the worst that authorities can throw at us. When our ‘personal governments’ clash, we work it out for mutual benefit.

Those who have difficulty making win-win mutually beneficial agreements usually get the picture rather quickly after even just a limited exposure to voluntary individual economic and social positive reinforcement and negative ostracism incentives. Hell hath no fury like social ostracism. Those who would make do with incarceration cringe in the face of ostracism, shunning, and exile by friends, family, loved ones, neighbors, colleagues, and society.

It turns out that we don’t need to change our behavior very much. We just need to change how we look at it by realizing that we are already almost there. Once we let government know that we have reassumed responsibility for our personal destinies, game over.

Will authorities defend their power, perks, and ill-gotten gains? Of course they will. But we have morality and the determination to be free on our side. Our intelligent application of determination will make the difference in the face of cowardly threats of force.

Our first task is to undermine their source of revenue, the theft of taxation. A succession of secession-lite incremental baby steps will start the ball rolling. These baby steps might include jury nullification and other localization initiatives like legal sanctuary cities, counties, and states on a variety of issues beyond just immigration and abortion. Other tipping point sanctuary incentivizing issues might include health care, education, war on drugs, retirement savings, protection, conflict resolution, and the like.

Secession or the threat of secession demonstrates the POWER OF EXIT inherent in freedom. The act of refusal to cooperate through nullification, civil disobedience, and taking the bull by the horns to accomplish our goals our way speaks louder than words and sends a powerful message, teaching moment, and learning opportunity to authorities to either clean up their act or get the hell out of the way.

I, for one, intend to liberally exercise the power of exit as I leverage the tragic Corona pandemic to assert my right to self-governance through nullification, peaceful civil disobedience, and secession-lite localization baby steps to undermine authorities source of revenue. How about you?

Thoughts?

D. Pratt Demarest, April 3, 2020

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Tipping Point Post-Covid19 American Health Care Decisions May Save Or Sink Not Only Our Health Care System But Also Our Economy And Way Of Life

Published on in Activism/Free Market/Opinion/Politics/Poor Pratt's Almanack
Tipping Point Health Care Decision?

If and when Covid-19 levels off or perhaps before, we are likely to be faced with a critical decision on the future direction of U.S. health care. We know Socialists will be pushing single-payer or Medicare For All that Economics 101 tells us could not only ruin our health care system but also be the tipping point leading to the destruction of our economy and way of life.

Do the hardcore Socialists and soft-headed progressives care? Hell no! Their ‘ends justifies means’ mindset is narrowly focused on gaining control over mankind with no thought to the future even if it leads to extinction of our species in the long run.

Now, the question is, do we care enough to settle the Socialists’ hash and put U.S. health care back on a sound financial footing with far better timely outcomes at a fraction of the cost of ACA Obamacare, AKA, the UNAFFORDABLE Care Act? If we care, what are the options?

Medicare For All or single-payer? What’s the diff? Little or none. Medicare For All is just another dishonest smoke and mirrors Trojan horse back door for single-payer health care. Single-payer has always been the holy grail for the Socialists and progressives right from the get go.

Don’t believe that? Are you dishonest or merely gullible? If the latter, I have a bridge to sell you, real cheap. If the former, may roast in your self-made hell, basted with your guilt, and slow cooked in your own corrupt juices.

What other ugly options might we be faced with? Several. Retain Obamacare or worse yet, Obamacare on steroids? Trump and the GOP may offer a substitute that fits their political objectives. Read my lips. WE DO NOT WANT OR NEED ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT COMMAND CONTROL HEALTH CARE! But Why? you say.

Command control anything suffers from long term bad outcomes. Command control economies always fail in competition with free market solutions due to insufficient strategic decision-making information that, by contrast, abounds and works its magic in the free market. Command control armies, all else being equal, can’t compete with distributed leadership by example protection militias.

Command control top-down education has been an unmitigated disaster focused on propagandizing obedient zombie students at the expense of fostering legitimate knowledge transfer to future leaders by example that frighten the hell out of institutional authoritarians.

Given all those unpalatable command control health care options, what are we left with? There is only one rational no-brainer choice. Free-market cash-basis health care complimented by free market cash-basis education.

With cash-basis health care, you know what care you can get and what it will cost, always less and typically a fraction of unpredictable allopathic medical highway robbery. With allopathic health care today, providers have no clue what to charge due to the ACA insurance claim approval nightmare. Providers have no idea if, when, and how much they will be paid if they get paid at all. Only huge inefficient consolidated conglomerate providers can afford to wade through the bureaucratic quagmire.

Except for lucrative medical specialties and grossly overpaid overabundant administrative executives, doctors have become disillusioned about honoring their Hippocratic Oath and achieving the self satisfaction of improving the lives of their patients.

Doctors are prematurely retiring at record rates. Our primary physician shortage is further exacerbated by the AMA-dominated protectionist cronyism medical education cartel. The swamp to be drained is not limited to government. The quicksand includes everything that government touches, especially health care and education.

The time to prepare for the coming health care battle is now. The Socialists and progressives already have a head start. Just as they will defend the theft of taxation revenue source to the death, your death, they will relentlessly pursue command control health care not because they truly believe it is better. The counter evidence is overwhelming. They will pursue it based on their ‘ends justifies means’ modus operandi with the goal of enslaving the rest of us.

Power begets the lust for more power. The battle is merely a food fight over who gets the most power and the perks that go with power like hot dogs and beer go with baseball. It is a here and now battle for power with no thought to the future after their power day in the sun has come and gone and they ride off into the sunset with their ill gotten gains. Unfortunately, their power-driven lack of foresight will take them down along with the rest of us.

For us to fight and win this battle for the sake of our health care system, our economy, our way of life, and the lives of those who follow us. we need to have a thorough understanding of the economics and moral considerations of the unsavory options we are faced with and the only sane alternative, cash-basis preventative medicine.

Let’s turn the Covid-19 pandemic and several institutional authoritarian threats to our health care system, economy, and way of life; into a tipping point opportunity to expand our freedoms.

We can start with cash-basis health care and education. Next, we can leverage privatization successes and move on to localization baby steps like jury nullification and legal sanctuary cities, counties, and states. These baby steps can be the precursors to an explicit secessionist movement that will undermine the theft of taxation and collapse evil institutional authoritarian regimes like a house of cards.

We can do it. What say you?

Thoughts? D. Pratt Tseramed, March 19, 2020

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Would Legally Mandated Pinnochio-Nose GMO Therapy For All Politicians Reverse The Unfortunate Reality That Politics Usually Brings Out The Worst In Us?

Published on in Activism/Business/Free Market/Opinion/Politics/Poor Pratt's Almanack

Here some humorous and serious consequences of requiring all politicians to undergo Pinnochio nose genetic modification:

  1. Proliferation of politicians and candidates on crutches after tripping over their own noses and the noses of their colleagues, forcing governing bodies to provide crutches and wheel chairs as standard equipment for all members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches
  2. Exponential increase in Guinness nose length records
  3. Explosive new market in nose camouflage products
  4. Sharp increase in the demand for nose job surgeries
  5. Laws passed forcing health insurance policies to cover nose job surgeries
  6. Decline of political correctness as a viable political tool
  7. Nose length contests replace political genital length comparisons
  8. Dramatic shift in political integrity or the lack thereof from liars contests to truth-telling contests
  9. Shoe on the other foot as politicians lose their advantage in dealing with supporters, constituents, and other politicians
  10. Politicians forced to either A) admit that governments exist solely for the benefit of those who govern, or B) suffer embarrassing nose-length consequences
  11. Politicians forced to own up to the fact that there is nothing that governments can do for us that we can’t do better by and for ourselves
  12. Two-party system flounders as smaller parties sporting shorter-nosed candidates win the respect of voters due to physically measurable differences in integrity
  13. Driving home what we already implicitly know about politicians but don’t admit, that the real goal of most politicians is just to gain power over others and the perks that go with power like hot dogs and beer go with baseball
  14. Private sector entrepreneurs, with no incentive or need for political correctness, become our leaders by example with corresponding economic and societal improvements including but not limited to higher standards of living and more freedom for all
  15. _____________________________

Fill in the blank with your own prognostications about the consequences and benefits of the unmasking of politically-correct, disingenuous politicians exposed by the length of their nose.

Even though we recognize that the humorous but unrealistic possibility of politicians with Pinnochio-nose afflictions is a fantasy, we might pause to reflect on this implausible scenario and come to the conclusion that politics invariably brings out the worst in us.

By contrast, we can achieve many more concrete economic and social advances by refocusing on free market successes and private sector leaders by example as they act in their own self-interest and cement their economic success as they establish a reputation for telling us the truth about the benefits of their products.

Most of us are realistic enough not to expect perfection from free-market entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, we intuitively know that private sector leaders are far more trustworthy than politicians spouting politically correct bromides and platitudes intended to pull the wool over the eyes of constituents while ripping them off to the tune of outrageous taxes.

If we are individually insightful and successful in assessing the deceitfulness of many if not most politicians, more truthful liberty-leaning candidates just might win more elections. Those elected in such circumstances just might help us get rid of the delusional notion that politics as usual is the only solution to mankind’s problems.

Point of fact, politics is the problem, not the solution. Further, lying politicians spouting obvious politically correct nonsense are the purveyors of the problem.

The solution lies not in politics but in the private sector. Part of the inarguable proof for this truism is graphically demonstrated by the obvious fact that governments inevitably collapse, typically in less than 200 years due to cronyism-induced bankruptcy if not overthrown before then. Hmmm? Now, what about the longevity of free markets?

Governments and politicians come and go with predictable regularity. However, free markets, an awesome reflection of our rational capacity, have never failed in the entire history of mankind. This historically established fact about the contrasting longevity of governments and free markets clearly suggests that institutional authoritarian ‘politics as usual’ is not a good representation of our rational capacity.

Roll over, politicians. Make room for the real purveyors of integrity and success in dealing with human challenges, our private-sector free-market leaders by example, the motor of the world.

Thoughts?

D. Pratt Tseramed, January 7, 2020

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