Taxation and International Trade

 

     There is another aspect to the economic effects of taxation not covered adequately in the 'Economics of Taxation 101' post: the impact on international trade. With President Trump reviving tariffs as a tool of international policy, the ramifications of that and other taxes are worth examining.

    Everyone has heard from time to time that a given country – ours or others' – is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. This is obviously a good thing, but if the inhabitants of the country merely sell off the non-renewable resources, a wealthy country can quickly be reduced to ruin and destitution. A few natural resources are not expendable, such as climate, access, etc., which can be lumped into the Realtor's favorite line – location, location, location. Virtually everything else can be exhausted or decimated for short term profit. Taxation can play a major role in either facilitating or discouraging the demise of a country's natural resources.

    Development of mineral resources can contribute positively to the wealth of a country, but not in the long term if they are liquidated in international trade. On the other hand, consumable resources such as fossil fuels can be depleted internally or externally if not given the proper respect as finite non-renewable assets. In either case, the fairly obvious policy a country should pursue with all non-renewable resources is to try to conserve them for posterity.

    So what should be the proper approach to international trade? Ideally one should export renewable assets, primarily labor, and strive for at least net zero export of non-renewables. In fact, a net positive import of non-renewables is desirable, with export profits being based on value added to imported raw materials by labor and manufacturing. This strategy, in fact, been responsible in a large part for the ascent of China in recent decades.

    The role of taxation for encouraging the principles described above is to discourage or restrict export of non-renewable raw materials; to NOT tax the contribution of labor to exported products; to discourage imports to the extent that they are primarily labor intensive; and to encourage to the extent possible the import of non-renewable raw materials. Tariffs can be useful for achieving the proper balance of types of imports, but should not interfere with obtaining raw materials.

    As usual, the Income Tax is perhaps the worst offender in achieving the desired trade objectives. It taxes the labor and value added of Americans at the source and throughout the supply chain, and therefore works diametrically opposite to the strategy outlined above. It does not tax exported non-renewable raw materials, but instead taxes any American labor involved in producing and shipping them. As this blog has repeatedly emphasized, THE INCOME TAX MUST GO!

    Sales Taxes, on the other hand, tax some or all goods and services consumed by the residents of a country. In this country State sales taxes are a levy on American goods and services, but also a levy on all imported goods. Unfortunately, they usually do not tax foreign services rendered by mail, telephone or internet. A National Sales Tax would treat domestic and foreign entities equally, and would also be more or less equivalent to an across-the-board tariff of the same rate. This would then make any additional targeted tariffs more advantageous to American producers and a more flexible tool for trade negotiations.

    It is worth noting that a tariff is essentially a sales tax levied on specific imported goods or on imports from specific countries. It is levied on imports at the time and/or place of import and not at the point of sale. This differs from what Americans are accustomed to, as sales taxes in this country are levied by each State at the time of sale as an add-on. Thus the tariff sales tax is buried in the price of the affected goods and as such goes more or less undetected by the consumer. A National Sales Tax could be implemented in a similar manner.

Political and Moral Aspects of Taxation

 

In the last post (Economics of Taxation 101) we looked at the subject of taxes with the emphasis on the economic effects of the various taxation schemes.  There are also some fundamental considerations of Liberty and Property rights that are relevant to taxation mechanisms.

As was desirable in the previous post, we will divide the taxation types into direct taxes and indirect taxes.  The latter are primarily use taxes or consumption taxes, and as such can in many cases be avoided with some inconvenience by not using or consuming from the markets.  The direct taxes are imposed on the individual or his property and usually cannot be avoided.  These latter are a direct affront to the freedom of those that are taxed, in that failure to pay such taxes will subject the individual to loss of property or liberty by the taxing authorities.  Thus direct taxes are in principle a declaration by the government involved that some or all of each person is the property of the government.  The extreme example of this is the conscription of individuals for military service, where even the life of the taxed is the property of the government.

Aside from conscription, the worst example of direct taxation is the Income Tax, where some portion of the labors of the individual and any return on his savings and investment is declared the property of the taxing government.  Thus any person that contributes to the economy in labor or in capital is in fact no less a serf than the medieval peasant.  The claim that Americans are ‘free’ is merely a fiction useful for keeping the peasants in line. 

Retail consumption taxes are the best example of indirect taxes that can be avoided, and as such are defensible to the extent that they are fees for maintaining the convenience and privilege of a free market.  The infrastructure and legal system that is necessary for a properly functioning free market economy is not without costs, and sales taxes are entirely justifiable on that basis.  This does not, however, apply to taxes that are designed to distort the market in favor of products or producers that are preferred by the taxing agencies, or to tax revenues that are used for unrelated purposes.

Any taxes that end up affecting the prices of goods and services are indirect in that one can avoid them by producing for one’s own consumption rather than consuming from the markets.  However, the justification for any such taxes is murky at best, in that money is fungible and is very likely to be diverted from justifiable maintenance of the market environment to ‘fraud, waste and abuse’.  The typical government is usually the source rather than the solution to this problem.

Real estate taxes are a second major source of abuse of direct taxation.  They can be justified to some extent by the ‘user fees’ argument, in that there is a certain amount of burden to the infrastructure of every piece of real property.  The costs of maintaining services used by the property owner such as water, sewer, electricity, communication, and transportation are reasonable to consider as due from the property owner.  To the extent that these costs, such as for roads, are necessarily provided by the government they justify some use taxes.  Real estate related costs may even be in part determined by the area or the road frontage.  In particular, parameters such as resident population, transient population and transient traffic loads are appropriate in determining the proper level of taxation to provide necessary government support for the property.  On the other hand, taxation based on market value and improvements is a classic example of the state declaring that the property is really state owned and that the ‘owner’ has only an exclusive lease on it as long as the ‘rent’ (tax) is paid.  Again, any property that is unused and presents no burden to the local infrastructure should be essentially tax free, and any real estate taxes should only be imposed as user fees.

A final affront to the taxpayer is the loss of privacy.  Direct taxes are the perfect excuse for the government to pry into every nook and cranny of the citizen’s existence.  The Income Tax, as usual, is the worst offender, where the government has its nose into your bank accounts, your employer’s records, etc., purported to make sure that no one is hiding taxable income.  Real estate taxes based on market value gives the local busybodies an excuse to case your home and even peer into your windows to make sure that you haven’t improved (heaven forbid) your abode.  Personal property taxes can be carried to the extreme of (in West Virginia) requiring the resident to list not only virtually every asset but even dogs and horses, and in years past sheep.

The bottom line is that, as was pointed out above, the American citizen is far from ‘free’, in spite much rhetoric to the contrary.  The government owns your liberty, your butt, your income and your property, and will relieve you of any or all of it at any sign of a lack of genuflection.  It might be possible to improve or even correct this situation with a knowledgeable citizenry and some major additions to the Constitution, but it’s very unlikely.

 

 

FUNDAMENTALS OF TAXATION 101

 

This essay will examine the various taxation schemes governments have devised to fund their parasitic existence, and to fund their operations, both desirable and undesirable. In addition we will examine who pays for this largess, and show that with little exception all taxes are paid by the consumer.

To begin with it is desirable to categorize taxes into two groups, direct and visible taxes, and indirect and invisible taxes. The first group includes, among others, point of sale taxes, title taxes, excise taxes, real estate taxes, property taxes in general, and of course income and payroll taxes. The second group includes inflating the currency, tariffs, sales taxes that are embedded in the price, and oddly also all of the direct taxes, including income taxes. This latter point is little appreciated and the major impetus for this essay.

The fact that virtually all of group one taxes directly affect the price of goods and services purchased in the market leaves little doubt that these taxes are paid by the consumer. They either reduce the amount of money that the consumer has to spend in the market place, or they increase the price of the goods and services the consumer buys. The direct taxes are plainly visible and can be understood by every consumer that is affected.

On the other hand the indirect and invisible taxes require considerably more time and thinking to appreciate how much is paid and by whom. These taxes deserve a more thorough discussion.

Inflation of the money supply is only possible in the case of fiat currencies. Unfortunately virtually all of the major currencies in the world are now fiat currencies and can be increased at will by the controlling governments. In the case of the U. S. and the dollar, this is accomplished by the Federal Reserve, which is supposed to be independent of the government but is in fact a creation of the Federal Government and therefore ultimately under its control. Thus creation of more money by the U. S. government is not only possible but has been used more and more to cover deficits between income and spending. This is a tax on everyone that uses dollars in that the extra money created and spent by the government drives up dollar prices for everyone else.

President Trump has reintroduced tariffs, i.e. taxes on imported goods, both for income for the government and as a economic weapon against foreign countries. Tariffs can increase prices of imported goods to compensate for the increased prices of domestically produced goods due to various taxes paid by domestic producers, but in that case tariffs are paid by the U. S. consumer. However, if the foreign importer has enjoyed a windfall profit by pricing his goods the same as the domestic producer, he can eat some or all of the tariff. Unfortunately the American consumer still pays the same elevated price, but in a real sense the importer is paying the tariff.

In the U. S. most sales taxes are only applied on final retail sales, so the embedded sales tax is mostly irrelevant here. However, ALL the direct taxes – real estate taxes, retail sales taxes on capital expenditures, income and payroll taxes, etc. – that are paid by every U. S. entity involved in getting the goods and services to the consumer are also embedded in the price and are therefore paid by the consumer both in and out of the country.

This last point is the main takeaway from this essay. Every American that contributes to making goods and services available to the market has to include all the taxes he pays in his price for his contribution to net a desired or necessary profit to support his existence. Thus the fundamental fact is that the consumer pays virtually all the taxes, not the worker making the product, not the corporation he works for, not the rich ;individual who owns the corporation that the socialist claims will pay, not even the trucker who delivers and the retailer who sells the product. All of these pay taxes only to the extent that each of these consumes the goods in the marketplace. The consumer pays either by sales, excise, tariffs, etc. taxes embedded in the prices of the goods and services he buys, or by losing buying power with the income, real estate, personal property, etc. direct taxes he pays. Even the parasitic welfarite that lives off of government largess has his or her consumption reduced by the price increases representing the taxes added.

The principle presented in the last paragraph is why the Income Tax is such a bad idea, and why replacing it with a National Sales Tax is greatly preferred. Even if such a tax would be at a rate to replace the Income Tax revenue to the government, the consumer would not be paying more that he does now since he pays it all anyway. In fact, by eliminating the gargantuan IRS empire and the indirect costs to business of complying with the insanity of the Income Tax code, one would expect that effectively the consumer would pay less. It is almost impossible to put a number on the indirect costs referred to here, especially since currently every business decision is made worrying about the tax considerations. No wonder Marx listed a graduated income tax as a major tool in destroying a country.

One last consideration as to why the Income Tax is a terrible idea. The contribution of the Income Tax to the price of all goods manufactured in this country makes a major contribution to why American exports are non-competitive in world markets. This burden cannot be offset with tariffs or the like, and the elimination of such would go much further than tariffs to make the U. S. a dominant economic player in the world markets.

Years ago Milton Friedman stated the principle that the total taxes that a government takes in must equal the total expenditures. The U. S. government does not really operate with a 'deficit'; it just collects that part of its income from the indirect and invisible taxes. This author would add the principle discussed above that all taxes are ultimately paid by the consumer. These two principles should allow taxes to be understood in spite of all the noise surrounding the subject.

THE LEFT AND CHARLIE KIRK

In 'Language and Human Development' (1), I argued that the child from age 2 to about 12 is in an information absorption state, or in more modern jargon, is programmable. Even though, as I then argued, the adolescent teenager becomes somewhat rebellious and a know-it-all, what he or she thinks they know is mostly what has been programmed during the learning period. In mature homogeneous societies this programming of the religious and cultural mores, and the general knowledge of the society, plays a major role in its stability.

Unfortunately, this programmable aspect of the human child plays a negative role in the current battle between the political Left and Western Civilization. In a democracy the majority of voters determine what the government does. Since by definition a half of all voters are below the median in intelligence, co opting the support of the lower half can be a winning strategy for controlling the government. This is the bread and butter of the Left, which these days is the Democrat Party.

The founders of our government knew this and alluded to 'Qualifications' to vote for the only direct representatives of the people – the House of Representatives. Presumably they hoped that even the lower half of the qualified voters would be intelligent and knowledgeable enough to make reasonable choices for their representatives. But inexplicably they left it up to the States to determine these 'Qualifications' for even the Federal elections. This is the Achilles Heel of our Constitution. In the last two centuries Constitutional Amendments have not only resulted in the Senate and even the Presidency determined by the popular vote (with a minor peculiarity resulting from the Electoral College), but in addition the States have eliminated any semblance of qualifications for voting. The current crop of elected Democrat politicians leave little doubt that, without 'Qualifications', the lower half of the electorate is not competent to vote for their government, or even their representatives.

The Left's Marxist movement is now over a century old. Its strategy at first was to co-opt the blue-collar workers by infiltrating the labor unions. This was less successful than they had hoped, perhaps because Western Civilization workers were reluctant to cede total control to the government. It helped that the rate of collapse of communist experiments across the globe woke up too many 'low information voters' (Rush Limbaugh's favorite term).

During the mid 20^th century the success of several despots in co-opting the youth – Hitler's Brown Shirts, Mao's Red Guard, etc. – led the Left to change their focus to the educational systems. This approach has the advantage that, as described above, the child is innately programmable until puberty, and that programming is almost impossible to undo.

Using the educational systems to program the youth is almost perfect, but a problem remained. The nuclear family can, if aware of the problem, block the ideological programming of the schools. Thus the Left launched a parallel effort to augment the takeover of the educational systems with the destruction of the nuclear family. Feminism pushed the married female to get a job and let professional baby sitters raise the young. This effectively blocked most efforts by the family to interfere with the programming of the young by the Left. The degree of support of socialism by the younger generations is testimony to the effectiveness of the Left's current game plan.

Charlie Kirk was a serious threat to the Left's indoctrination of the young. Charlie had to go. However, assassinating Charlie may have been the wrong strategy for nullifying his efforts. By making him a martyr they have lost significantly more ground with the young than they have gained. Fortunately, intelligence has never been the long suit of the Left. 

 (1)   Musings and Rants - 1985-2016,  Marcus Everett,   CKCPC3 Publishing, Nowata OK 

Income Tax Burden

     

The fact that a large number of current jobs are directly the result of the Income Tax is NOT a good reason to retain it. The argument that it provides work for these people is the same as the 'broken window' theory - that it is advantageous economically to have windows broken because it makes work for glaziers. Although a work force repairing windows that are accidentally broken is necessary, breaking windows to create more repair jobs is obviously insane. But that in effect is the Income Tax. There are several alternatives to the Income Tax to finance necessary government, and the gargantuan army of 'window repairmen' servicing the Income Tax monstrosity could be employed in much more productive efforts. The deleterious burden on business of the Income Tax is so great that putting the Federal Bureaucrats, lawyers, CPAs, bookkeepers, etc. that are required by the Income Tax on welfare and eliminating the Income Tax would be an economic gain for the country.

The total effect of the Income Tax on the economy is virtually impossible to determine. The word insidious is defined as working or spreading harmfully, subtle but treacherous, gradually but secretly causing harm. This describes the Income Tax, in that a graduated Income Tax appeals to the lower classes because it looks like it can tax the rich and not them. This is the sinister aspect of the Income Tax, in that the cost to the consumer of all the Income Tax paid by every worker and business in this country that is involved in bringing the product to the American consumer is included in the final price of the product. This includes not only the workers and businesses that contribute to the production and delivery of all goods and services bought by the consumer but also all those parasites that are required to do all the necessary bookkeeping and other paperwork involved in determining and remitting the Income Tax. In addition there is the completely indeterminate cost of the many economically negative decisions that are made because of the arcane Income Tax rules.

A word in passing on a related subject. There are morality aspects to the many forms of taxation that seem to be given little consideration in modern America. In particular, Income Taxs are essentially a statement that an American citizen is in fact a serf of the Governments, Local, State and Federal, that he/she lives under. The situation is no different than that of the King in medieval times requiring a percentage of the productivity of each peasant to support his opulent living style.

Replacing (absolutely NOT in addition to) the Income Tax with tariffs, sales taxes, excise taxes, etc., should be a no-brainer. The problem is to educate the public to the total cost of the Income Tax, direct and hidden, and thus to the resulting loss of competitiveness of American made goods in both domestic and foreign markets. Adding tariffs on imports to offset the embedded cost of the Income Tax may help domestic producers for sales in this country (mostly paid by the American consumer), but it does nothing to make American goods more competitive in foreign markets.

Lastly, the fact that citizens of the U.S. are no more free than the medieval peasant should be galling to every hard working American. We fought the Revolutionary War in part over a tea tax. Let's hope we don't have to repeat over a serf tax.

1942 VERSUS 2023

My father, born in 1901, was too young to be in WWI and too old to be in WWII. Living on the Atlantic coast during WWII he was involved in coastal watch efforts, but as far as I know that was the extent of his participation. In the late 40s and early 50s I don’t recall my father talking much about the war, with the exception of one comment that I retained. That was his observation that we didn’t out fight the enemy in WWII as much as we out produced them. In retrospect this was almost an understatement.

The war materials production effort in the U.S. during WWII was literally incredible. In addition to a large manufacturing base that was totally re-purposed for the war effort, we enjoyed the fact that the enemy could not get to us because of the two oceans that separated us from the two theaters of war. We bombed the enemy’s production facilities into oblivion but ours remained untouched. Our enemies were never able to establish bases from which they could attack us.

The difference between the situation in the U.S. in 1942 and the U.S. in 2023 is night and day. In 1942 our economy was slowly recovering from the depression of the 30s, but our industrial base was sound, we were not dependent on others to any real extent, and our citizens were patriotic. Today we are on the verge of either a government default on its debts or a currency collapse due to runaway inflation; a large percentage of our industrial base has been moved to other countries, mostly because of stupid tax laws; we are dangerously dependent on others including those that should be considered enemies; and our citizenry have been turned against the country to an extent that may in fact be fatal. To make the situation much worse, modern weapons can reach us from anywhere in the world, so we're a lot more vulnerable to attack on our soil.

The point of all this is that the U.S. is in no condition to fight any wars or even fund and support others in wars that we have no direct interest, and certainly would not be the untouchable powerhouse that it was in WWII. The stupidity and greed of too many Americans that has permitted the political Left to destroy our country from within may be irreversible, but identifying and correcting the problems that have brought us to this state of affairs is our only hope. Continuing to concentrate the National focus on the Woke insanity, the Green Energy stupidity, the fiscal debacle of the Welfare State, maintaining a world wide military presence when we can't afford it, trying to export democracy which doesn’t even work at home and a myriad of other distractions will guarantee an early and complete collapse of the U.S. nation.

Many in the chattering classes like to refer to the United States as an ‘experiment in democracy’. Although the founders never envisioned the Republic they created as a democracy, the more democratic it has become the faster it has headed toward complete failure. The ‘experiment’ has been run, and the unvarnished reality is that it has failed. Democracy is basically allowing the inmates to run the asylum, and is just not a workable concept.

 

GENDER STUPIDITIES

Finally! A lady on the Fox News program Special Report, presumably speaking on behalf of a national sorority that had been forced to accept a 'trans' male as a sister, noted that there is little to no ambiguity in determining one's sex: every cell in your body knows the answer. If your 23rd chromosome pair of your DNA has two X chromosomes then you are a female. If you have one X and one Y then you are a male. Period.

However, to give some credence to the claims of many individuals that they 'feel' like they are in the wrong body, it is true that in the development of the person from a fertilized egg to an adult human, many things can go wrong. As the initial fertilized egg splits again and again cells in various parts of the body begin taking on specific characteristics to form the many parts of the finished body. This process is known as differentiation, and depends on the chemical signals from adjacent cells. In a contaminated environment errors in development may result from interference in the signaling from cell to cell. This seems to be particularly critical in the later development of the brain, where external influence from the wrong sex hormone, estrogen or testosterone, can affect the wiring of instinctive behavior for the sex of the individual. It is interesting to note that the brain cells that may be improperly wired still have or don't have the Y-DNA that fundamentally determines the sex.

Given the realities of the last paragraph and any other errors in development that might occur, it is more than reasonable to cut some slack for the affected persons. This can easily be overdone, and certainly does not give those persons the right to demand that society as a whole conform to their peculiarities. Accommodation must be limited to restraint from harassment and persecution. As long as such individuals lead their lives in a manner that does not negatively affect others in the society in an unreasonable way they should not run afoul of the law.

Legally, it is obvious that rather than a criteria such as 'sex assigned at birth' determining compliance with privileges and constraints in a society, it would make much more sense in the modern world to use DNA to answer once and for all what is a man or a woman. This is especially true now that such a test can be made with something as unobtrusive as giving a sample of saliva. Surely the Legislative bodies of a society can use something as simple as that to write meaningful laws on the subject.

Lastly, it is obviously insane to think that one can 'transition' from one sex to another by cutting and pasting body parts or intentionally interfering with proper development of a child with chemicals. The degree to which this stupidity has permeated our society does not provide much hope for the survival of America. As Mark Stein observed, "[America has become] too stupid to survive".

 

GREEN ENERGY ON THE CHEAP

 

Back about 1981 one of my fellow engineers and I got the urge to try to get a little 'free' energy from the sun. He found a source of glass panes at a good price, so together we purchased about 2 1/2 tons of glass panes. At the time I owned a brick Cape Cod in Maryland. It faced a little west of south with minimal shading on the front side, so I built a removable set of large glass panels that basically covered the front of the house. I could remove them in the summer months and enjoy some free solar energy in the winter. I learned later that my abode became known locally as the 'glass house'.

When the sun was shining in the winter the panels gave me a 'low tech' solar collector of about 250 square feet, with the brick walls acting as the absorber. The temperature behind the panels would climb into the 70s even for outside temps in the 20s, which meant that about 30% of my exterior walls thought it was summer. In fact, if I was home I would open the windows behind the panels and enjoy the warm air heating the front rooms.

Of course, even though I got an encouraging return on my fairly low cost investment, I only gained when the sun was shining. To be useful as a primary source of heat, it would be necessary to store the energy for retrieval during nights and cloudy days. So before expanding my system, I did a little research on energy storage systems.

My crude low cost system used the low tech approach of storing the energy in the thermal mass of the masonry walls of the house. If the sun was not shining some of the energy from a sunny day was still warming the front wall, but most was lost. To make such a system a primary heat source it is necessary to transfer the energy during sunshine to a large thermal mass such as a basement full of rocks or a large water tank. This is usually not too practical an approach because of the amount of material needed as the thermal mass.

The next better idea is to use a material that has a phase change (solid to liquid, usually) to store a much higher amount of energy for the same mass. Water has a great latent heat of the water to ice phase change, but it occurs at much too low a temperature. Fortunately some salts have a solid to liquid phase change at temps of about 70 degrees, so a basement full of salt would work better than a basement full of rocks. But you still have to get the energy in and out. When melted salt solidifies in the basement, the heat would warm the house from below, but transferring the energy from the solar panels to melt the salt is a challenge.

The best way to store energy (short of nuclear processes) is in chemical bonds. This is why fossil fuels are such a great source of energy. So I wondered what would be a good way to store the solar energy in chemical bonds to be retrieved later. It dawned on me that the simplest way to do that is to grow trees. You don't even have to build solar panels. Just cut down the trees and burn them in a stove.

At this point I lost interest in the whole affair. I realized that I had re-invented the wood stove.

Although growing trees for low cost - low tech solar energy collection may be a more reasonable alternative to high cost - high tech solar collection, there are other reasons why tree farms are to be preferred over large areas of solar panels. Trees not only efficiently harvest sunshine, but also absorb the dreaded carbon dioxide gas that climate change doomsayers fear will destroy the planet. In addition, in the process of cleaning the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, trees produce the oxygen that we air-breathing critters need to function. Cheap fuel, carbon dioxide removal and oxygen to breath - what's not to like about that. And growing trees is minimal effort farming - just plant seedlings and forget about them for a few decades.

There is at least one more important reason to grow more trees. Whether forests are clear cut for roads, parking lots, or other building development including solar panel farms, the solar energy falling on such cleared areas is absorbed during the day and heats the atmosphere before finally being radiated to space. If you fly a small plane over West Virginia where I live, the fact that the majority of the area of the state is wooded means that there are few thermal updrafts and your flight is smooth. Over urban areas, desert areas, and even to a lesser degree agricultural land, there are significant thermals in sunny weather and a low level flight gets very bumpy. Furthermore, such thermal atmospheric activity creates violent storms such as thunderstorms and tornadoes. The relatively tree-barren midwest is a hot bed of tornado activity, but they rarely maintain their organization into West Virginia. The fact that West Virginia is so wooded is the main reason why tornadoes and t-storms tend to dissipate over the state. The trees absorb almost all the solar energy and there is little left to fuel the storms.

Forbidden Planet Syndrome

 

In 1956 we were between two milestones that the human species had fantasized over, probably for most of its existence as an abstract thinking animal. We were about a decade past the mastery of physics that had culminated in exploiting potentially unlimited nuclear energy, although unfortunately initially as a destructive device. We were also less than a decade away from man's initial leap into space (a year from Sputnik) and less than one and a half decades from actually venturing to another world, although one near home.

1956 was also the year of one of the best science fiction movies to that date. Forbidden Planet not only had some great special effects for that time, it had a plot that was centered around the two physics subjects mentioned above. Cast a couple of centuries in the future, the remains of an advanced civilization had been discovered on a distant planet. The aliens of the planet, the Krell, had engineered an infrastructure that provided virtually unlimited energy (nuclear, obviously). They had also developed the ability to control all that energy by just thinking about it. The plot twist was that their subconscious also had access to the energy, and they unwittingly destroyed each other in an apparent orgy of subconscious rage.

Now any intelligent species anywhere in the universe would have to have evolved to the level of intellectual sophistication that permits the development of nuclear energy, including the human species here on Earth. But on the way up, so to speak, the species must survive through a continuum of ancestors that had to fight and defend their existence in a harsh and unforgiving world. The primitive emotions that allowed that survival are still resident in the brainstem of the human species, and can be reactivated any time there is a threat or other such stimulus to an otherwise civilized being.

With more and more nations on Earth having an arsenal of nuclear weapons, it would not take subconscious control of them to submit the human population to an extinction event. All it takes is the reactivation of the brainstem emotions of one or more hotheads with access to the launch buttons. The fate of the Krell is now within the reach of humanity and may indeed be unavoidable because of the role of the brainstem in evolution.

The relevant question of the day is whether mankind has in fact reached the point in evolution that cannot be passed by any species in the universe. The kill or be killed past in such evolution will still be lurking in the brains of any such advanced species. It may be inevitable that we succumb to the ultimate self-extinction that nuclear energy provides. In fact, maybe the lack of concrete evidence of alien UFOs visiting the Earth is because no species can make it past the Forbidden Planet Syndrome.

Term Limits for Elected Offices

This essay was written in 2012, and is even more relevant today.  The Presidential Election referred to is the 2008 election of Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin.

There has recently been increased interest in Term Limits for elected offices. It has become blatantly obvious to even the rank and file citizenry that career politicians are a large (if not the largest) part of the problem in all levels of government. However, there are several problems with getting from here to ANY semblance of term limits, and in addition there is of course considerable disagreement as to what such limits should be.

At the Federal level, the first problem - how to get there - is a very high hurdle. To begin with, it is virtually inconceivable that any Legislative body is going to cut its own head off by passing term limit legislation. No one is likely to vote himself or herself out of a job, especially one as lucrative and cushy as political office. Since such a vote would have the same effect as firing them, threatening to throw them out has no real clout. Furthermore, at the Federal level, there is no such thing as a referendum that would allow the citizenry to pass term limit legislation, and even if there were, the next bunch of crooks in office would just repeal it. Worse yet, at the Federal level, passing a Constitutional Amendment (which is what is ultimately needed) requires either two thirds of Congress (not gonna happen) or two thirds of the Legislatures of the States (also very unlikely) to propose such an Amendment. And then three fourths of the States must ratify it. Prospects are dim.

Even though hope of such a Constitutional Amendment is vanishingly small, let's take a minute to look at what such Term Limits might be. Most suggestions are for two or three terms, somewhat akin to the two-term limit that was passed for the Presidency. (Note that this Amendment probably was successful only because most of Congress and the State Legislatures had little hope of winning the Presidency.) Some suggestions at the Federal level have been for a fixed time limit, with 12 years (6 terms of the House or 2 terms of the Senate) being the favorite.

Unfortunately, the problem with the career politician is that he (or she) is always running for the next election. The minute that the current election is won, the campaign for the next election is the primary focus for not only most of his time, but for what his vote is going to be for or against any bills that come up. To me, this is the root of the problem. With this in mind, it seems obvious that the proper term limit is ONE.

Even passing a Term Limit Amendment limiting all terms of elected office to one term still leaves a gaping hole. This was blatantly illustrated in the last Presidential election. ALL of the contenders were currently holding office at the time, and most spent the better part of two years campaigning rather than addressing the task they had been elected for. Ironically, since the winner had only just been elected to the Senate in the previous election cycle, he basically reneged on his obligations to his constituents to campaign for a better job. As a blurb that circulated on email suggested, try that on YOUR job.

My proposal for a Constitutional Amendment, albeit probably unattainable, is the following. Since the problem is not only that the career politician sucks off the public teat all his life, but also the fact that he is also constantly campaigning for the next election, there is only one way to end the farce. To wit:

No person shall be eligible to be a candidate for any elected public office while currently holding any elected public office. This restriction shall be in addition to any other qualifications for the particular office.

That oughta 'git 'er done'!

PACKING THE COURT

    To continue with the theme of my most recent post, the 2020 election has highlighted several of the 'glaring faults' of the Constitution. In particular, the current threat of a Biden/Harris / Harris/Biden administration together with the Democrat Party retaking the Senate of adding extra Justices to the Supreme Court is sufficiently likely that they won't even discuss the possibility. Such an action would render the Court an even less useful body than currently exists.

    The Constitution leaves the numerical makeup of the Supreme Court up to Congress. This in itself is not necessarily bad, but safeguards should have been in place to prevent modifications (packing the Court) from being a political tool. It would seem that at the very least, restricting any changes from taking place should be deferred until every seated member of Congress has been subjected to an election and possible replacement. That, together with allowing for such proposed changes to be rescinded in the interim 4 to 6 years would go a long way to frustrating the kind of mischief currently contemplated by the Democrats.

    The phrase in Article III granting Justices tenure during 'good behavior' seems a little lax in that a lifetime appointment too often in modern times means possibly extending into infirmity. Since most Justices are confirmed during middle age, a cap on maximum duration of a couple of decades would seem to be better than waiting for the grim reaper to trigger replacement. Some nonagenarians maintain their wits in spite of their longevity, but all too often some degree of senility sets in. Subjecting the integrity of the Supreme Court to the risk of such possibilities seems unwise.

    The fact is that any system design, subjected to the rigors of implementation and use, inevitably shows signs of faults and omissions that a second attempt might try to correct. However, referring again to Fred Brooks' 1975 book The Mythical Man Month, the risk of such attempts becoming bloated and worse than the original (The Second System Effect) is somewhat evident in the fact that the Constitutional Amendments too often sully the elegance and simplicity of the original document. The author's opinion is that we're running about 50-50 which is probably not bad for almost 250 years.

THE 2020 ELECTION AND THE CONSTITUTION

With all the hoopla surrounding the coming elections (2020), it is interesting to look at what the Constitution had to say about the subject - both the original document (including Amendments 1 to 10), and the remaining Amendments.

It is fairly obvious that the Founders were against creating a Democracy, and in the original document gave the people only a direct vote on their Representatives in the Congressional House. Even then, they kicked the can down the road on the subject of qualification to vote, essentially leaving it up to the States to decide individually. This is just one of several glaring faults in the Constitution. The requirements for qualifying to vote should have been spelled out explicitly and should have been uniform across the country for the Federal election.

The 17th Amendment (one of two in 1913 that set the stage for the downfall of the U.S.) added the Senators to those directly elected by the populace, effectively creating two Houses of Representatives, but with different rules. Again, instead of rectifying the omission in the original with respect to qualifications, they kicked the can down the road once more.

However, with respect to the choosing of the President, the people were not only deprived of direct election by the Electoral College mechanism, but were even denied direct election of the Electoral College Electors. The original document specifies that "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress". Nothing in the remainder of the original document nor in any of the Amendments changes the right of the State Legislatures to appoint the Electors for the Electoral College, although if a State chooses to use a popular election to decide who to appoint, several Amendments have a lot to say as to who may or may not vote in such an election.

Since the Constitution states that "Each State SHALL appoint..." their electors, convene them for their votes, and forward the results to the Senate, one might reasonably assume that such action should be taken in a timely manner. Nothing in the original document or the Amendments suggests that such required actions might be justifiably delayed by an optional popular election at the State level. Thus it is hard to justify the concern that the actual determination of the winner of the Electoral College might not occur at the normal time.

At the same time, there seems to be no real deterrence to any State Legislature appointing their Electors based on any whim they might take, regardless of the results or lack thereof of any popular election, or for that matter, any overreaching dictum from any court. Thus schemes to eliminate the Electoral College and choose the President by the national popular vote are unnecessary - the same result can be achieved within the current Constitution by getting sufficient State Legislatures to agree to appoint their Electors based on that criteria.

This, of course, is just another of the several glaring faults in the Constitution as mentioned above. The Founders apparently hoped that such faults might be corrected by the Amendment procedure provided for, but most Amendments have tended to create more faults rather than correct the original ones (author's opinion). The result seems to lack the 'conceptual integrity' described by Fred Brooks in his classic 'The Mythical Man Month'.

Why The Income Tax Must Go

Rahm Emanuel is known in part for his adage "never let a serious crisis go to waste".  The unprecedented crisis in the United States that the coronavirus COVID-19 has brought upon us may be an opportunity to correct a glaring problem with the U.S. tax structure.

One of the corrections needed in U.S. overall philosophy that most have been made painfully aware of because of the coronavirus is the need to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of critical needs, especially on countries that have overtly stated their hostility to America. The general wisdom on the subject is that it is the greed of large corporations that has led to so much outsourcing of the goods and services that we consume. Where less than a century ago the US was the undisputed leader in production of most goods and services, today we don't even produce much of our medical or military needs. This is insane and dangerous.

The rarely mentioned factor in the impetus for the outsourcing and offshoring of production is the U.S. tax structure. In particular, the Income Tax is a huge contributor to the reason that the American Worker cannot compete with low cost foreign labor. The added costs to every product made in the USA due to income taxes paid by both the worker and the business that he works for make his product less competitive both in the domestic market and in foreign markets. Any superiority in the efficiency and productivity of the American worker is canceled by the income tax burden that must be included in the price of American goods.

There are many ways to view the undesirability of the Income Tax. On the philosophical side, the Income Tax is a tax on productivity and investment, both of which one should want to encourage, not penalize. The Income Tax is a tax on labor, not product, and thus can be viewed as penalizing the American worker relative to not only the foreign worker, but also illegal 'under the table' workers and even automation.

The costs of maintaining the infrastructure that is necessary for the free market to exist in this country is paid by the citizens of the country, but not by foreigners that participate in our markets for nothing. Instead of foreign interests paying their fair share, that cost is shouldered by U.S. citizens, primarily with the Income Tax. and in effect makes their products more expensive in both domestic and foreign markets.

Another downside of the Income Tax is the detrimental effect that it has on business economic decisions. How many times have you heard someone say "I have to consider the tax implications", or "I need a loss". This is magnified by the many special rules that the lobby driven political class has embedded in the tax code. One wonders if the productivity of American businesses wouldn't explode if the stupidities of the Income Tax were purged.

Then there is the problem of whether to tax gross or net income. It's pretty obvious that taxing gross income would be a total disaster, since anyone that was in the business of reselling a product would have to have a markup greater than the tax rate to make any net profit. But that leaves the problem of defining net income, a task beyond mere mortals, and especially those that try. And even if it could be done fairly, it requires massive bookkeeping to compute net income to tax. This bookkeeping burden further adds to the cost to the American producer.

One last indictment of the Income Tax in the U.S. Since we have a fiat currency that our unscrupulous government is inflating at a non-trivial rate, the Income Tax treats any increase in currency based value as a taxable capital gain. Return on investment in the form of interest or dividends are taxed at the marginal rate such that one must get a return of more than the inflation rate plus the tax on that fictitious gain to not be losing value. Inflation and income taxes are not compatible and the one that is worse is the Income Tax.

Instead of taxing and therefore penalizing labor and investment with the Income Tax, it makes much better sense to tax the product with a retail consumption tax. It taxes foreign products at the same rate as domestic products, thus taxing a $30,000 car made in Japan, Mexico or Detroit the same. It has the same effect on foreign goods as a tariff, without the appearance of a punitive penalty. At the same time, the exported domestic goods are not burdened with the US consumption tax and therefore are more competitive in foreign markets.

Thus in the midst of a health and economic disaster Americans have a historic opportunity to at least try to improve their government. The income tax, a treachery so heinous that it required amending the Constitution (the 16th Amendment) to be legal, could be temporarily eliminated. One could further hope that the wisdom of such an improvement was sufficiently apparent to promptly re-amend the Constitution to eliminate the possibility of it reappearing.

The 'Fair Tax' bill (H.R.25 - Fair Tax Act of 2019) does an excellent job of laying out the case for a sales tax to replace the disastrous income tax. But it's not going to happen unless the rank and file citizen becomes sufficiently convinced that it's not only a good thing, but that it's virtually required to avoid an untimely demise of the United States as the world economic leader. One of the unfortunate characteristics of the average American is that his/her response to everything is "what's in it for me". This is despicable, but it is a fact of life that must be faced. Every American needs to study the problem, convince himself that there is something in it for them (unless they're politicians or tax lawyers), and then help get the word out.

The Internet is deluged with jokes and other garbage passing from coast to coast like wildfire. Let's make use of this phenomena to pressure Congress to pass the single most important piece of legislation that's come along since the ill considered stupidity that proposed the 16th Amendment in the first place.

Aesop's Golden Goose Fable

Aesop's Fable of the goose that layed golden eggs is an ancient metaphor for why Socialism cannot work. In the fable, for those that cannot remember their Mother Goose days, a man and his wife had a goose that layed eggs of gold. This made them very wealthy, but as is the norm for humans, they were not satisfied. The wife suggested that if they cut open the goose, they could have all the eggs at once. Of course, there was not a hoard of golden eggs in the goose, and the dead goose was done laying eggs.

The Capitalist Free Market (CFM) system of economics is the real manifestation of the golden egg laying goose. Those societies that have embraced it have enjoyed the greatest increase in the standard of living of any in history. Although it is inevitable that those capitalists that represent the goose in a CFM system do enjoy relatively more 'eggs', their standard of living is only incrementally better than the poorer members of the society that are merely consuming the eggs. One need only visit the typical Walmart to see that the rank and file are not only well fed, well clothed and as healthy as their voluntary choice of lifestyle permits, but they enjoy all the smartphones, TV's and other toys that the wealthy do. The Welfare State is only possible because of the eggs produced by CFM, not in spite of it.

The current mania of the populace advocating for socialism is, relating back to Aesop's Fable, the equivalent of the wife wanting to kill the goose to get all the eggs at once. All schemes of taking from those, rich or not, that invest savings in productive enterprise, are an attempt to kill the goose to get all the eggs at once. Most of the 'wealth' that the non-investing public covets is in fact the goose that they benefit from, i.e., the capital of CFM. With a welfare system that consumes most of the eggs CFM currently produces, it is a testimony to the robustness of CFM that our standard of living is as great as it is. Make no mistake though, if you take the last egg or kill the goose, the good times end.

The fable of the goose is also a good metaphor for a point made in my earlier post Socialism CANNOT Succeed. Just as there were no eggs in the goose, there are no hoards of desired goods and services in the Capitalist's pantry. Appropriating the Capital that is the basis of CFM is the immediate end of the great standard of living we currently enjoy.

University Admissions Scandals

The breaking scandal concerning the rich 'buying' their offspring's admissions to prestigious universities has elicited two reactions against the practice. Since most of the offenses have an illegal aspect to them, there is a justifiable cry for charges to be brought against the perpetrators. To the extent that applicants test scores and accomplishments have been falsified there should be repercussions for the fraudulent acts involved. On the other hand, however, the proper reaction to the universities lowering or ignoring admission criteria based on money offered by the wealthy is a more complex problem.

The practice of giving priority to wealthy donors' children is as old as the university system itself. It is well known that considerations other than academic merit have always existed, although with all of the athletic, political, affirmative action, diversity and other factors currently in play it may well be worse now than in the past. If such advantages can be proven to violate published admission criteria on which an applicant has expended time and money only to be rejected, there ought to be a legal tort case against the school, but apparently this is rarely if ever done.

However, the point that I would like to make is related to the arguments against socialism that I posted only a little over a week ago. As I pointed out there, there is not an unused supply of goods and services lying around waiting for sale, including university admission slots. The money from the rich, whether spent by them or stolen by government, can buy available slots, but only by bumping more deserving applicants. The same money can build more universities and train more professors, but only with considerable time and at the detriment of other goods and services. Those that profess alarm and disgust at the usurpation of a few admission slots for the scions of the wealthy somehow fail to see the vastly greater problem with buying admissions for huge numbers of less wealthy (and probably less qualified) freebie seekers.

Human vs Computer Conflicts

The two crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft in the past year seems to be coming down to a problem of a conflict between the pilot and the on board computer system. In response to an unusual nose-up event, both the pilot and the computer change the controls to push the nose down, resulting in a over reaction. Correcting for the first over reaction by both the pilot and the computer results in a second over reaction, more extreme than the first. If the pilot does not recognize the situation and disengage the computer system, the result is loss of control and a pile of debris. The argument that the solution is more training for pilots seems specious.

A couple of years ago I became re-interested in the reasons for the crash of the Air French Airbus Flight 447 in 2009. At the time I wondered if the 'fly-by-wire' systems on the newer larger airliners was the culprit. In reading the final report on the accident, the cockpit voice record had a comment by one of the pilots on the way to their watery grave: "I don't know what it's doing". It occurred to me when reading it that the pilot was not sure whether he was fighting the aircraft or the computer. This is the fundamental problem with computer control of anything. Whether it is aircraft, cars, or anything where the computer is in control with the human also believing that he/she is also in control, a conflict can easily result in the human fighting the computer because of not being sure what the system is doing. This is especially true when the human is used to controlling a normal plane or car but is not sure what the computer is supposed to do.

As a one-time computer systems designer, it seems to me that the solution should always be that the computer system should be monitoring the human's inputs and neither cancel nor exaggerate them. In the case of the Boeing 737 Max 8, if the pilot has properly responded to the situation, the computer should be programmed to minimize any additional input to the problem. Expecting the user to correct for the computer is always an improper design, and avoiding such must be a fundamental consideration as we move to more and more computer aided systems.

Socialism CANNOT Succeed

As the tsunami of enthusiasm for socialism builds, it seems an appropriate time to try to understand why socialism is ultimately disastrous for every society that embraces it. Although the term 'socialism' is used to describe everything from a modest amount of welfare to total government control of all productive resources, metaphorically it is like cancer. Even a small tumor grows and metastasizes and ultimately kills its host. Those that embrace socialism are never satisfied until they are standing in line for a loaf of bread.

In this discussion, we will look at the problems of the 'socialism lite' that is promoted and practiced in the Western Democracies, where the government limits itself to redistribution, rather than the totalitarian version where the government owns and controls all productive resources. However, the full version is probably ultimately inevitable since, as is pointed out above, all socialism is unworkable and its proponents will resort to totalitarian control as a last ditch strategy.

Part of the lack of understanding in the U.S. of socialism's flaws is a result of the fact that economics is not taught in the public school system, and counter arguments are limited to citing historical examples and cliches such as Margaret Thatcher's “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” This quote highlights another part of the problem - arguments against socialism tend to be couched in terms of money. Unfortunately, money is an abstraction that most people, including a lot of academics, do not really understand. Those that do tend to argue in terms of nuances and jargon that mean nothing to the general public.

It is more insightful to look at socialism in terms of the actual goods and services that proponents like to promise as 'free' or provided by a socialist government. The current list includes 'free education' over and beyond the current K-12 public school system, 'free healthcare' over and above the current Medicare, Medicaid and the like, and a liturgy of other freebies that already partially exist in one form or another. But government financed K-12 education already consumes the bulk of most local governments' budgets. Government support for higher education has driven the cost of college to the point that without some financial support most people cannot afford to attend. And government involvement in healthcare has resulted in skyrocketing costs that threaten to bankrupt even the Federal Government, etc. All this seems to have been lost in the bleat for more 'freebies'. But this again presents the problem in terms of costs and money, and the pro-socialism forces just counter with their cure-all mantra - we can just tax the rich to pay for everything.

The first and foremost thing to think about in understanding why socialism can't work is to to realize that, although the government can steal the people's money, rich or poor, and can even create money out of thin air, they do not produce more goods and services. They can even steal non-money assets to redistribute, but again they cannot add to the total goods and services available. Thus goods and services that are transferred to the beneficiaries of the socialist system must be taken from the rest of the populace. There is no net benefit to the society as a whole. This inevitably must reduce the total goods and services available since few will be inclined to produce or provide if the fruits of their efforts with be stolen from them. Saying it differently, you can take away the money (from the rich) but can only take away a minimum amount of goods and services from them. It's not like they have giant stores of hard goods and services lying around.

The temptation is again to believe that only the rich will be stolen from, but this is a fallacy. Whereas the rich may have the most 'money', they only consume a small fraction of the total goods and services available. In fact, most of their supposedly excessive wealth is actually invested in capital goods, those factories and other infrastructure that are necessary to produce the consumer goods that the bulk of the populace want and need. The rich obviously only account for a pittance of the education and healthcare services that are at the top of the socialist's 'freebie' list, so virtually all of those goods and services to be redistributed in the socialist's schemes must come from the rest of the people. Putting it differently, the impact on the available goods and services in the marketplace by the actual consumption by the rich is negligible. If any attempt is made to redistribute the capital goods part of the rich's wealth, the obvious result has to be less production and less total goods available. Once you kill the goose, there are no more golden eggs.

Returning to money arguments, let us just point out that neither taxation nor inflating the currency (creating money out of thin air) create more goods and services, as is discussed above. In fact, all such schemes are almost guaranteed to reduce the available goods and services, so any short term benefit to those hoping to gain from the 'freebies' will be very brief if not totally nonexistent. Increasing tax rates will decrease investment in capital goods as well as tax revenue, as has been demonstrated several times, and even a tax rate of 100% just guarantees that production of goods and services will cease.

Lastly, creating money to fund socialist schemes just reduces the value of existing dollar denominated savings such as bonds and CDs, and even the money under the mattress, but again does not add to the goods and services that such savings hope to buy in the future. Thus anyone who saves will find the proverbial cupboard bare when they try to cash in their savings.

Once again, the moral is clear. Socialist schemes cannot share the wealth, only the poverty. Or, in other jargon, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Population Growth

(from Musings and Rants 1985-2016, Marcus Everett 2017, CKCPC3 Publishing, p173, written in 2007)

Several years ago a friend was telling me about a book she had read about the Blue Crab. The life cycle of the Blue Crab begins in bays and marshes along the East Coast from the Mid-Atlantic States to the Gulf States. The mature female can only mate during a 'shed', when she discards an old shell and before the new shell hardens. If she is fertilized during this event, under her 'apron' she will grow a large egg mass, which looks like a big orange sponge. She will then make her way to the inlet of the bay where she has been living to release her eggs into the outgoing tide.

The eggs hatch and the baby crabs spend the first half of their life at sea. When they reach about half of their adult size, they return to the bays to mature and mate. The question of interest, then, is what percentage on average of the thousands of eggs released by a female make it back to successfully mate?

Most people would guess that the percentage is small, and they would be right. But it is possible to be more precise. For a stable population, each successfully breeding female must, on average, produce exactly one successfully breeding female. If the average success rate is greater than 1, the population will grow exponentially; if the rate is less than 1 it will decrease exponentially. An average success rate of 2 would result in the population doubling every generation, a success rate of 0.5 would result in it halving every generation.

One might ask about the poor males, but as long as the survival rate of males is sufficient to fertilize a sufficient number of females, the population growth rates depend almost entirely on the success rates of the females.

The above consideration holds for any sexually reproducing species, whether it's crabs, birds, whales or humans. If the average female success rate differs from 1, the population will either grow or decay exponentially. This fact has rather profound implications for modern humanity.

For most of known human history, the long-term female success rate has been greater than 1, but only barely. Estimates of population growth over the 10,000 years before about 1700 put the average success rate, assuming 20 years for a generation, at about 1.01. This rate of success implies that each generation was about 1% larger than the previous, and that the population doubled about every 1500 years. Wars had little effect, since as was pointed out above only a sufficient number of males are required. (This fact is borne out by the baby boom after WWII - losing a half million males didn't even keep the growth rate flat!) Disasters that affect both sexes cause a short-term stutter, but usually this just makes it easier for the next generation or so to make up lost ground.

The problem is that, over the last 200 years, the industrial revolution together with modern medicine and agriculture has greatly increased the survival rate and therefore the potential female success rate. I say potential rate, since some cultures have voluntarily reduced the rate even below 1. China, in fact, has recently implemented a one child per couple rule which, together with a cultural bias against female offspring, has apparently resulted in an effective female success rate of something like 0.4. This is a drastically low rate, and will result in economic and social chaos in even one generation if not eased. A more reasonable target might be one female child per couple.

Unfortunately, much of the third world is reproducing at a rate significantly greater than one. The world population growth rate is currently such that the population has been doubling about every 35 years. If we assume a 20-year generation, this is an average success rate of about 1.5, or in other words each generation is about 50% larger than the previous. The third world rate must be considerably higher than this since the industrial nations (minus certain minority groups) now have rates lower than 1. If the human density on the planet were still insignificantly small, this might be a good thing. However, we are already depleting our natural resources such as fossil fuels, water, oceanic fish stocks and everything else you can think of. Our waterways are polluted, our air is polluted, and there MAY be some increase in global warming over and above the interglacial effect due to human activity such as deforestation and production of excess carbon dioxide and methane.

What is depressing is that, although there seem to be unlimited cries for more laws against SUVs, coal fired power plants, etc., there is never a discussion or even a suggestion about reducing the human population. Doing so would not only help solve all these problems, but may well be the only long-term solution. No laws and no amount of technology can long compensate for the current rate of exponential growth of the human population on Earth. We must control our numbers or face the inevitable catastrophic reduction that reality will impose upon us. This fact especially must become a part of any intelligent discussions about subjects such as global warming, as well as contraception and abortion.

It should also be noted that, although the human female success rate is considerably greater than 1, the blue crab is obviously suffering a current female success rate significantly below 1. The friend that I referred to above recently paid over $60 a DOZEN for jumbo crabs at a restaurant near Baltimore. H. L. Mencken would be aghast.

Global Warming Realities

The subject of Global Warming, like most of the currently-in-vogue environmental issues, creates lots of hype and dogma, lots of politics, and very little serious discussion. Although many of the more vocal pundits claim scientific backing, the fact is that the scientific community is as divided on the issue as the rest of the populace, and the actual facts in evidence are ambiguous as to what conclusions can be drawn from them.

One fact that the scientific community is in agreement on is that we are currently at the warm end of what is referred to as an 'interglacial' warming period. These interglacials have happened periodically over many millions of years, but most of the intervening time is spent in 'ice ages'. The current average temperature is definitely above the average temperature over millions of years, but not out of line with temperatures at the end of previous interglacials.

A mathematical principle known as 'regression to the mean' is a fancy statement of the fact that, all other factors being equal, the direction a change in a variable (global temperature in this case) is most likely to take is toward the long term mean value. This would seem to indicate that what we should worry more about is not global warming, but global cooling. Sooner or later whatever drives the long-term ice age vs. interglacial cycle is going to send the temperature down and it may well be beyond human tinkering to stop it. However, it also may be a thousand years before such events unfold.

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that human impact on our home planet is non-trivial. Although there is little likelihood that there will be a runaway greenhouse effect and Earth will end up another Venus, sooner or later (probably sooner) we are going to precipitate some sort of ecological crisis or catastrophe. Neither Al Gore nor I know exactly what this will be or when it will happen, but new laws about carbon dioxide emissions are not going to solve the problem. The problem is not SUVs, coal fired generating plants or eating meat. The problem is plain and simple - there are too many people on the planet and the numbers are increasing exponentially. No amount of new laws, new technology or donations to 'save the environment' Funds will solve the problem. The human species must regulate its numbers or nature is going to do it for us.

What is particularly distressing is that reducing the population is never discussed as a solution to solving such problems. Instead we are constantly bombarded with campaigns to ‘save the children’, cure AIDS, increase health services to developing nations, etc. Although these proposals are commendable, increasing the population by reducing diseases, famines and wars and in addition increasing the standard of living of the third world is a guaranteed strategy for disaster. If increases in survival rates are not more than matched by decreases in reproduction rates we are only dooming everyone to disaster.

Drug Laws

With the patchwork legalization of marijuana in the U. S., and now with the total legalization in Canada, this reprise of an essay* which I wrote in the late '80s is even more relevant.

The attempt to deny the use of various drugs to the individual creates a problem in several ways. Human desire is always augmented by denial, especially among the young. Thus the law denying use is in fact a significant contributory factor in increasing the demand for drugs. This artificially high demand, which cannot be met by a legal market supply, generates a highly profitable opportunity for the criminal element. The government, in its misguided enforcement of drug laws, guarantees the criminal suppliers a monopoly on the market which results in ridiculous prices for what would otherwise be economically uninteresting commodities.

This fortuitous combination of augmented demand and market monopoly created by drug laws for the enterprising criminal is enhanced even further by the addictive nature of the 'harder' drugs. Once 'hooked' the hapless user becomes the perfect repeat customer - he has no choice but to do business no matter what the price. Unfortunately for him, the criminalization of the use of the drug virtually guarantees that the victim will be unable to seek help for his problem.

The bottom line is that the drug problem is a problem in economics, not morals, not health, not even safety, whether or not any or all choose to view it as one. In a way this is fortunate, since the solution is valid whether or not all agree on the moral issues. Legalization will instantly eliminate the criminal market monopoly and quickly drive the pusher from the streets. For an example of this one has only to look at the impact on the organized crime numbers rackets when the legal lotteries were created. Why do business with thugs when you can buy a ticket to win millions at the corner convenience store?

Why is it so hard for the supposedly moral crowd to view a moderate problem with some abuse of drugs by a few as preferable to a gargantuan problem with burgeoning crime? Even the Women's Christian Temperance Union finally understood by 1933 that they had created more moral problems than they had solved.

A POSSIBLE COMPROMISE

Although the lessons of history and the analysis of the current situation clearly point to total legalization of all drugs, such an enlightened reform is unlikely in the unenlightened Puritanical society of modern America. However, just perhaps an acceptable compromise can be struck that would be palatable to all but the most recalcitrant pseudo-moralist. The following solution is proposed:

1 The possession of drugs (or anything else for that matter) be forever removed from the abusive control of government - a Constitutional Amendment denying all present and future aspiring tyrants control over personal ownership per se of anything.

2 Legalizing the sale of marijuana products on the same basis as alcohol products.

3 Limit the sale and distribution of 'hard' drugs to licensed dealers (a generalization of the current prescription drug monopoly of the medical fraternity).

4 Create a network of private, or even government run or subsidized, drug rehabilitation centers staffed by licensed distributors from (3) whose function would be to provide drugs (with appropriate medical and psychological care) to anyone who demands them, but with the primary objective of eliminating the demand.

This proposal recognizes the three primary principles discussed earlier. The criminalization of the citizen is eliminated by legalization of both possession and use of drugs. The former is recognized as a fundamental freedom and abuse of the latter is recognized as a medical or psychological problem, not a crime. The role of law is reduced to control of sale and distribution, which is a more defensible government involvement, and in particular avoids the fatal mistake of trying to legislate denial to adult, law abiding citizens. Lastly, the rehabilitation centers provide both an opportunity for society to help the drug user and, just as importantly, the denial of a market with excessive economic gain to the illegal distributor.

*from Musings and Rants, Marcus Everett 2016, CKCPC3 Publishing; p.14