The cottonwoods are tall and scraggly, leaning over each other as shaking hands in friendship. This is their world, a place where they can stand undisturbed by little more than a few hikers and the buzz of motorboats. Their size alone gives them an authority that allows them to speak silently, telling stories about their world that reach back over the centuries. This is Pike Island, an small speck in the Mississippi that has been allowed to go back to the way it was two centuries ago when Europeans first arrived.
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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.
-Isms
The suffix -ism is one of those handy things inherited from the versatile Greek language. The original usage was the creation of an active noun from a verb, such as baptism or criticism. It makes an action into a thing, allowing it to become a subject or object.
More recently, this suffix has taken on the use of defining a philosophy, often a political practice. It is a way of taking a series of beliefs or practices and putting them into a box which can be delivered as one unique practice. Far from making an active subject, in practical terms it becomes most useful as a way of preventing any action at all.
The great -isms of political economics are Socialism and Capitalism. The boxes these words describe were fixed long ago and remain rigid. Yet they retain their power to an opposing tribe and thus remain in use. It’s long past time to dump the -isms, useful as this linguistic construction once was.
Independence
The tour guide at Independence Hall knew how to warm up the crowd. “What states have you come from to visit us here today?” “Missouri!” “New York!” “Minnesota!” We called out, mentally hi-fiving each other as we proudly called our names. Then, she shifted gears. “Who is here from another nation?” “Japan.” “Britain.” “Russia.” She stepped up to the last man and practically begged him for more. “What brought you here today?” Slowly, in halting English, the man from Russia proudly and carefully produced his words. “This is the birthplace of Freedom. This is where Freedom began.”
The previously bubbly Americans were silent and respectful the whole tour. This wasn’t just our hallowed hall, this was our gift. This was what made us a truly great nation.
On this Independence Day the birthplace of freedom stands divided as it has not been for a long time. We are at each other’s throats, fighting and scrapping for every small victory. No tour guide could shut us up and make us respectful – this is personal. What got us to this point?
We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten our great gift. We have forsaken our soul.
150 Years of Canada
An important holiday is coming up, worthy of celebration throughout North America. It’s a good day for fireworks, cold Molson, and generally sucking up to the youngest large nation of this continent if only because we we might need to flee that way soon.
July 1st is Canada Day, the celebration of Canadian independence on July 1st, 1867. More or less, that is, because Canada became a nation slowly over the next 150 years. It was a peaceful and orderly transition that fit with a people that are generally … peaceful and orderly. We should celebrate by all rising for their national song:
Dum da-Dum da-Dum!
Dum da-Dum da-Dum!
Dum da-Dum da-Dum!
Dum da-Dum da-Dum! …
Whoops! That’s their second national song. But they get tired of people from the USofA singing “O Canada”, and only that part of the lyrics, as just about the only thing from this great nation. It’s time we give them their due as a people that are more than just the very nice people who live next door. No, once they lace on their skates and pick up their sticks, they aren’t very nice at all.
How Economics Fails
Economics is nothing more nor less than the study of the primary way in which people connect with society and get on with their lives.
In everyday life, you may interact with a few people – family, colleagues, and friends. But through the process of eating and paying the mortgage you interact, at some distance, with hundreds more. Because this interaction is entirely through something called “money,” a way of keeping score, it’s very tempting to look at it entirely through numbers. The dizzying details of tens of millions of exchanges every day makes a top-view in bulk the most desired method of analyzing how things are going.
Yet this process has proven wrong over and over again. The failure of economics, particularly macro-economics, is the primary reason why the only true study of an economy has to be a People’s Economics.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 