Topic: Tomorrow I head to the Lions' Den.... (Read 2324 times)

Maybe it won't matter anyway, but you certainly can't fault us for lack of effort.

I'd like to think its about something bigger - people turning their back on this nonsense altogether. If Romney is the nominee, you can bet on record numbers not even showing up to vote. I know I didn't in 2008, and since there are a lot more people today thinking the way I was 4 years ago, their line of reasoning will likely be the same. Most RPers are too woken up at this point to go back.

Either way, if bitcoins and crypto-currencies in general succeed, this whole president thing isn't even going to matter.

This was never about Ron Paul per se, even though he has done a wonderful job of motivating the young.  Nor is it about Rand Paul.  Romney is someone who isn't strong in any convictions, so he is just as influence prone from a Republican base that has turned strongly lib as he has been influenced by liberal voices while governor.  If this proves not to be the case, there is always Gary Johnson.  If Romney ignores lib concerns, and loses because 6% of the Republicans voted for Johnson, the next nominee in 2016 will certainly not repeat that error.  The key is displaying that there are more libertarians (and voters who lean libertarian) than has been assumed by all sides.  The voter turnout from the Ron Paul primaries should be proof enough of this, but if not, a Gary Johnson spoiler will certain be enough. 

Sounds like Kentucky is where Colorado was 4 years ago. Unfortunately, there'll be no Ron Paul movement in 4 more years. Ex-Paulers can either join Romney with their tails between their legs, or become anarchists and start using bitcoin.

Sometimes that's what you get. Rand isn't fake, though. The Tea Partyy started off about 50% lib, but didn't stay that way. Still that is an improvement upon some of the neocons I've met since joining the exbaord. I really didn't think that intelligent people actually beleived some of this crap before, but I now have real examples of party officials who will talk about fidelity to the constitution except (whatever).

Great post Moonshadow. Very informative. Thanks

Whats your opinion on the Tea Party candidates? Many of them voted for TARP (the bank bailout). They seem to be pushing deregulation for big business, especially in environmental regulations. But they dont seem to be in favour of any deregulation for ordinary people, like legalising soft drugs, or removing licencing requirements.

I see the merit in the strategy you outlined. I just feel like the top of the GOP is nothing more than a group dedicated to transforming millionaires into billionaires at all our expense. Some of their contributers would enslave children in crack factories if they could get away with it. They are not libertarians. Look what happened when the bankers lost their money in 08. The GOP turned into communists and gave out my tax money. Is that the free market?

 

I sincerely wish that it works out for you but I'm not particularly optimistic. You saw what happened in states where Paul got a majority of the delegates - the rules were suddenly changed at the last  minute to prevent them from changing the overall outcome. The national party has ways of keeping the state and local parties in line as well as co-opting people on their way up the ladder.

This is the endgame of a decade long endeavor among small-L libertarians to take over the Republican party.  Keep in mind, that the Libertarian Party was born about 1971 because of a liberty purge that followed Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful presidential campaign.  But a generation of activism as a third party has netted zero gain.  During that entire time, libertarians never exceeded 6% of the electorate; which in our system (as opposed to a parlimentary system such as is common in Europe) that amounts to zero representation.  It had become obvious to the Gen-X libertarians (and some of the old guard) that this third party thing was never going to amount to anything.  So around 2002, or perhaps even earlier, a new plan was hatched.  One that didn't require the total commitment of a population that is known for doing thier own thing.  A campaign of educating (or indoctrinating, according to a certian perspective) of the young Millinial generation using their own, and at the time very new, methods of communications on the Internet.  Ever noticed how the Internet, in general, appears to be very libertarian with pockets of liberalism?  This lifted up a new generation of educated young voters, and now they are ready.  I'm not saying this is what what was supposed to happen, this is what did happen.  And I have to admit that I am more than a little suprised to see it working, but it is.  I am now a voting member of my local Republican Excutive Committee, in addtion to being a district chair.  Nor am I alone on the committee.  Our intent, and successes, are to inject ourselves into the party structure, demonstrate our political will as a block, and take over the party from the grassroots up.  Ron Paul has been aware of, and agreed to be the figurehead of, this movement.  So has his son Rand.  I know this to be fact personally, as I have met both of them.  Honestly, Ron Paul never expected to win the nomination, and probably didn't really want it anyway.  But not only will we be a force to contend with at the national convention, local and state candidates that wish to stand a chance at winning officeare going to start talking to us and talking the talk.  This doesn't mean that they will actually be liberty minded candidates, but it does improve those odds.  The (R) nest to your name, as a liberty minded candidate, is a huge political advantage compared to trying to run an independent or (L) campaigin.  In another 4 years, the demographics & votin trends says that enough Boomers will have died off that the center of the electorate in the US will shift directly to the Millinials, skipping my generation completely.  This was never some off-the-cuff plan by a bunch of disorganised kids.  This is a well executed long range plan, and the Republican Party will be the liberty party again for another generation.  We have already affected change.

@MoonShadow Why not drop those fools in the republican party. You know they are just not that into you libertarians. They are playing the tea party the way they used to play the Christian right.  Promising things they have no intention to deliver while stealing your tax money for their business cronies.
They are never going to let someone like Ron Paul have a voice.  They just want you to vote republican and STFU. If the libertarians and the liberals joined forces we would have a viable third party that could shake things up. I might vote for such a party, but I would never vote republican.

Take a look at what happened in Zimbabwee and you might have some idea.

I don't know, but one thing to consider is the purchasing power of government employees and retirees is being eroded at the same time as everybody else. How much of that can happen before the government stops functioning as an organization (people stop coming to work) is unknown.

This soft default period of rising prices. How will it look politically? Will law and order break down, or will law enforcement actually become more intense.  Will the Dep of Homeland Security intensify its harassment and surveillance programs? Will they conscript the poor into the army? Will they force people into labour camps like the Foxconn factories in China? Or will the USA fragment into separate sovereign states?

The US (and other Western governments) is going to default on its unfunded obligations; it's just a matter of how. In a hard default situation they instantly balance the budget which means breaking a lot of political promises. In a soft default scenario the Federal Reserve keeps printing money to cover the shortfall and the price of essential things like food and energy keep rising until the majority of the population can't afford to eat. This is followed by civil unrest such as we saw recently in Egypt.

The USSR was going the soft default route but before they got to Egypt the inner party got together and voted to disband the government. You could call this a hard default because the entity which made the promises ceased to exist. That's more or less what I expect the US and Europe to do in the intermediate term.

I wonder how the collapse event will happen. Heres what I think. The Fed will finance the budget deficit with QE, until one day the bond market will refuse to buy any treasuries at all. The yield instantly shoots up to 7% and America must make massive spending cuts, or default. Thats how it started in Greece, Ireland and Spain. 7% yield is the tipping point.

The question is who bails out the USA? The IMF? I dont think so. It can only be China. What will China demand in return? A vast reduction in the US military.

When the meltdown happens, savings wont count for anything. Even gold will be useless. The huge surveillance databases will mean its impossible to do anything, to transact or own anything without the state knowing about it. They only thing that will count is skills and relationships. And Bitcoins.

dancupid - that is a great post.

I 100% agree with this statement.
The French have just voted in a socialist president and are about to vote in a socialist parliament. It doesn't matter 1 jot unless this governemnt fails to ensure it's people have access to the highest level of technology. If they fail to ensure access to technology then France will fail.
But it hasn't happened before - all industrial democracies have managed to keep up with technological progress irrespective of the local politics. Life in France is comparable with life in Britain, Spain, Italy, Japan, USA  - this is becasue they have a shared technological history.
Politics is broadly irrelevant beyond ensuring access to technology. The poor countries of the world are the ones that limit access to technology through political incompetence.

And don't forget forum trolls. 

tasteless food, pollution, stupid games, abundant porn, more old people, more ways to kill, loss of privacy,  ... i fail to see anything good that tech brought us
And what's ahead: nukes in every country, GMed viruses, rich people living to 300 years and AI that will make all of us redundant.

The fact that governments can't run a balanced budget is the problem. The unfunded liabilities they are trying to fulfill out simply can't be paid. IN the attempt to do so, however, they are going to suck an exponentially-increasing amount of the economy into their fiscal black hole until the cash flow can no longer be sustained. That's when we get a "disbanding of the USSR" event.

The actual GAAP deficit of the US federal government is $5 trillion, compared to about $1.5 trillion in revenue. The unfunded pension liabilities just for federal employees are almost as large as the rest of the population combined. This is not a fixable problem, especially when you consider medical costs growing at a consistent 9% since the 1980s.

All we can say for certain is that retiree pension and medical costs will never achieve 100% of total economic output. Somewhere between now and that point people are going to stop getting paid.

I agree.  The point is that they can't get a decent return so government debt is not a problem.  Its free money IF you can find a place to invest it.  Better than free - atm government debt has a negative rate of return.

That's not an example of a conservatively run pension fun. That's an example of public sector idiocy.

Anyone with a calculator and a knowledge of 8th grade mathematics can see that it's not possible in the long term for an investment strategy to exceed the overall growth rate of the economy. Only a moron would expect to get 8% returns forever if the economy is growing at 3%-4%  because if your investment fund is growing exponentially at a rate greater than the economy as a whole after a certain number of years your fund would need to own more than 100% of the economy.

What happened is that a bunch of public sector pension funds got lucky in the 1990s and experienced about 8% returns for a few years. This was a fluke but they got greedy and wrote into law that the pension fund must achieve those returns every year forever, as if legislating investment returns magically causes economic growth to appear. All these pension funds are now insolvent and the people depending on those unsustainable promises are going to get increasing desperate and hostile as the mathematical reality inevitably closes in.

It's really very simple. Making political promises is free but fulfilling those promises is not.

It costs a politician nothing to promise everybody the ability to retire at 40 with their own private moon base. However all those retirees still need food, medicine, entertainment, clothing and shelter. They need people to construct the moon bases and to transport them to and from the moon. This couldn't be done because the economic output of the sub-40 population simply isn't large enough to give everybody over 40 their own private moon base to retire on. Printing money doesn't help because money printing doesn't cause crops to grow or rockets to be constructed. Real economic output requires human effort. If the entire population was expecting to retire at 40 to their own private moon base it just wouldn't happen for everyone. A couple people might get one but no matter how big of a tantrum the rest of the aspiring moon retirees threw it just wouldn't happen because the economic output necessary to support such a plan does not exist. You can't vote, bribe, threaten or cajole mathematics. 2+2=4 no matter how inconvenient or unfair we might think it is.

The US borrows money for less than its inflation rate.  There is no debt problem.  The problem is that the US can't find a way to use the money.  

To be fair, its not just a US problem.   The world is awash in cash that is desperately seeking a return over 5% but ends up being lent to sovereigns at a loss.  

EDIT: here's a fine example.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/business/south-carolinas-pension-push-into-high-octane-investments.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Conservatively run pension fund is making wild investment decisions because it needs 8% return and can only get 4%.  The problem the world faces is not debt - its what can you invest in?

Technically true, they had a solvency problem instead.  As a nation they ate away the capital of the prior generations until everyone was poor and simply couldn't match the 'arms race' anymore that was forcing them to continue to extract what little wealth their society could produce for military uses.

We have a debt problem, because we have had a solvency problem for some time now.

Another Dmitry Orlov fan I presume?  Although I agree with many of his assessments, there are many differences that he overlooks as well, not the least of which is bitcoin itself.  Also, what he describes as 'collapse' is far from it.  It wasn't the end of the world for Russia, and it wouldn't be for the people of the US either, if it does come to that.  A breakup of the union would, by default, be the decentralization of political power that libertarians have been advocating for decades.  Granted, such a method is going to be much harder an adjustment for most than an intentional localization of authority would have been; but in the long run it's not likely to matter.  Like Russia, the US does have enough arable land to grow enough food for it's population even with small scale and less productive methods than agrabusiness; we just wouldn't likely be major exporters of foodstuff like we are today.

The Soviets didn't have a debt problem.

It was a simple matter of mathematics, just like it is here. Exponential debt growth can't last forever and the end comes much more rapidly than people expect because they don't intuitively understand the nature of exponents.

We do   Those ideas are no longer tied to a country - they are being developed online.

Ideology has never been a force for progress. Only technology drives society toward an improved quality of life. Ask yourself who has the best plan for improving and delivering technological invention and innovation for the future.

I think you forget that the USSR's biggest problem was that people could see they were poorer than necessary just by looking at television and seeing how we lived.  No matter how bad things get in the US economy, there isn't actually a better model that people can see right now.  Chances are, the system will outlive all of us.

Perhaps. There are far too many parallels between the events of the last few years and the situation in the USSR circa 1980 for me to be certain that the current political system will still exist in 2016.

Well, I'm back.  It wasn't a success, but nor was it a complete failure.  There were no dirty tricks, but that may have been because we didn't quite have a majority, so there wasn't a need for any dirty tricks.  The trendline is obvious, however.  In 2008, Paulites represented about 1/4 of the state delegates; today almost half.  I suspect that if Rand had held off his endorsement for another week, we would have had a majority.  That took the wind out of the sails of many of the activists that were married to the idea that Ron Paul was actually going to be the nominee by some miracle last minute move.  It even seemed to me that the party structure here has recognized the inevitablitity of a takeover of the party structure and ideologies by the young & the libertarian.  There were several cases that I noted that the chair (and by proxy, the state party, since he was also the head of the state executive committee) went out of his way to permit the liberty leaning crowd leniency in their misunderstandings of Robert's Rules.  We ended up with some great resolutions, but not a single delegate to the national convention.

Ah, well.  Time carries on.  Whether by ideology or simple demographics, the concepts of liberty will once again dominate in the Republican Party.  It is simply inevitable now.

I can see it now... President MoonShadow...


"what is your stance on Iran?"

Bitcoinz.


"what are you planning to do about unemployment?"

Make jobs building a big ass mining farm and 51% this shit.


"How are you going to get us out of debt?"

See question #1. Burn US dollars. get Bitcoinz.

Good luck mate! If I was back in the USA I'd be doing this too.

Good luck! May you successfully be the delegate!

Good luck!

I will get up at O'dark thirty to drive to the Kentucky convention for the Republican Party in my final attempt to become a delegate to Tampa.

The odds are long, and Robert's Rule suck.  Pray for me to whatever God or gods you prefer.  I'm sure it can't hurt in any case.