I am rapidly becoming convinced, at the behest of politicians, that there really are no qualifications, save perhaps ability to bloviate - oh, and a big ego.  Anyone, it seems, can become one, without experience, and we really don't mind at all.

I shan't list the names of the budgeoning list of candidates - or volunteers - with either relatively little or no experience, as we are seeing them parade before us in rapidly increasing numbers.  But it has not just begun - name recognition, particularly among entertainers (including professional athletes) has long been successful - not always, but successful nonetheless.  Apparently anyone can become a politician - at the national level at least.

Ah wait, there are other qualifications besides name recognition: money, political connections.  Are there others?  Apparently not.

No wonder the quality of our governance is so poor.  Yet another elite is offering itself to us.    Sadly, we will pay a price; and who will we blame?  Certainly not ourselves, and there lies the basic problem.

Readership in newspapers and magazines are down; viewship on broadcast TV is too; and the competition on line is brutal.  And there's the rub: competition.  Each thrives on hits and when the public hits elsewhere they suffer, so what to do?  The answer, apparently, is increase sensationalism - and timeliness; it sells; it's what attracts customers.

The result is somewhat of an embarassment for what used to be the most professional, truthful and balanced media in the world.  Other country's media tend to be blantantly partisan - it's the way they are - ours has prided itself in being more responsible.  But that appears to be changing with the competition; blog after all can make any kind of unsubstantiated charge, and do.

The obvious is the latest political campaign where crass partisanship was not only evident but obsessive.  But there is more, and a great deal of the more has to do with celebrities - any and all celebrities and their lives.  Why does media report such drivel with such enthusiasm?  The answer:  because the public reads/watches it.  So as is so often the situation, the culprit is less media than it is us - we are the cause of declining media professionalism.  We are voyeurs; we hunger for controversy; we love inuendo;  and we are suckers for conspiracies - the more timely the better.  What is the matter with us?

I would contend that we haven't changed all that much; in other words we've always been like this - or at least some small number of us.  But the media proliferation and particularly the interactive capability it is offering, has just given it voice - and it's not that everyone uses it, but we notice those who do, and that's the real reason for the transition.  As media competition demands resorting to sensation, many seek it, and when they find it, use it, creating opportunity for more creation of what can not otherwise be found.  Much of the success of terrorists is creative use of media type sensation, often of their generation, and terrorists have become very adept at using both terror generation and the media.  Let's face it, anything that happens anywhere  (no matter how trivial or obscure) if it has sufficient sensation component is splashed on media somewhere, picked up, and flashed around the world.  It was always there, but now it's front page here, creating hunger for more.

And that's the final act.  Couch potatoes, with limited understanding of much of anything, latch onto the sensation and make it the normal routine: that's the way things are.  No, it is not how things are, but the perception of how and what they are.   And, unfortunately, perception can be everything.

It is within our capabilities to resist - if we want to resist.  Many do; but more don't, and those are the focus of media.  Once again, we meet the enemy and he is us.  Kind of sad, isn't it?  Pathetic actually.

A favorite international sport, aided and abetted by coastal "intellectuals" is to complain about, criticize and verbally abuse the United States, its history and basically all it stands for, particularly its cruel and brutal market economy.  The evidence of this is so common I shan't even go into detail.

What they never say, however, is how that economy has contributed to the well-being of the world.  What would happen today if the US just sunk into the ocean?  Foreign aid?  A drop in the bucket.  Even our human rights efforts could be dispensed with with alacrity.  What the world could not long endure, however, would be the loss of the vast American market.  Who would buy their products?  Germany is the world's strongest exporter.  Where do they sell their products?  Not all in the US, but heavily.  They also sell to China; and which country is the strongest buyer of Chinese products? 

And where does most of the innovation come from?  China and India are growing dramatically, but very little from innovation.  Nor is that innovation all derived from basic research; we don't monopolize ideas;  innovation is more.  The United States has long displayed its talent in taking ideas and moving them to the market place, where all, not just cloistered elites, access them.  And where does that come from?  Those nasty cruel and brutal free enterprise markets that thrive only on incentive and productivity, in which America excels.

The world, however, neither wants to admit that or even think about it.  Ami bashing is too popular.  And the alternatives too unpleasant.

Allow me to recommend two books (ha, I not only have no viewers, but readers?  Oh my): The Myth of the Irrational Voter, by Bryan Caplan and Common Ground, by Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel.  Together they tell a story.

Thomas' and Beckel 's book makes a case for anti-partisanship, and a hope that it is on the way; Caplan's that the voter by and large is mostly ignorant anyway, so it doesn't much matter.  Add to that videos I have received recording voters who haven't a clue and it's worrysome.

I do attempt to stay at least nominally non-political (whether you believe it or not) but I have to say that the recent election is commentary on all the above.  The electorate, with not a clue, opted for an inexperienced and very naive  missionary , the emperor Ollahbamabongbong I, who blathered sweetness and light (ala Jack Kennedy), with awesome levels of cash from the radical left proved  (I am assuming) Thomas'/Bechel's theory that we are so opposed to parisanship we  swallowed it hook line an sinker.

The fact is, and this really is fact, that we, regardless of party, have been sliding more and more toward big government and patronism, if not populism, for decades, with less and less understanding for and more and more bias against free market economics.

What more can I say?  Bless you; you will need every bit of it, if the history of socialism is any indication.

Why, you might ask, do I continually offer blogs when they are never read?  Never read; I have statistics to prove it.   Because it makes me feel good, and what can I do about who reads?  There may be more blogs than readers, after all.

And why does it make me feel good?  Because I am expressing an opinion.  Isn't that what we all do?  And why is mine better then any others?  I would like to believe that since I read - broadly - I have a wider perspective; but it's opinionated and the reading is probably not as broad as it could be - but one does gain perspective.  So, who cares?  Not many.  Most have little interest beyond their preconceived opinions.  And that's the problem.

What is the cause of the current downturn, and how bad is it?  There is no shortage of opinions, many of which, in my opinion, are not only seriously biased but also self serving - read: media and attracting interest through sensationalism.

What is the cause?  There is no single cause, but perhaps an amalgamation of causes that equate to greed.  Ahhhh, you say (if there were any yous; dont' feel bad, even my family and closest friends avoid me).  But give it a look.

Our Congress decided we needed to expand the opportunity to own homes, so they brought their vast pressure to make it happen.  That caused lenders  to decide that since the government was backing it, there was no risk, and they got greedy.  That, in turn caused people who really couldn't afford to pay mortgage payments - the same.  The government would take care of it all.  And then there were credit cards.  The evil banks issued them.  And who used them?  One quoted user once said, debt is a way of life, so who cares?  I shall go to the grave owing debt.

And the housing bubble burst was sudden and unexpected?  Even when people were taking out loans against the unrealistic surge in value?  Give me a break.  And who would have ever worried about credit card debt?  Answer: everyone (who bothered to look at it) has worried about it for two decades.  Sudden concern for credit overhang?  Oh, come on.

So who is at fault?  Not me said the pig; not me said the...whatever.  And it can't be our politicians faults, because the media won't allow that.  So who possibly?  Ah, the Chinese - the Arabs - the little red hen.  Moi?  Hey, no way.  Welcome to our world of excess - and expectations - demands that it continue.

Unfortunately all who suffer are not guilty of cause, but they suffer anyway.  The ones who's employment depends on the excessers.  Yup, that's how it happens.

And how bad is it?  Just about as bad as our panicked mob mentality allows it to be.  And that's how that happens.

These thoughts hit me today while I was reading The Economist Magazine - well, the book section actually.  I have to get them down quickly or I forget them.  And so why do I bother?  It gives me pleasure, whether anyone reads or not.  That fits right in, whether logically or not.

The charm of liberty and freedom lies with the people.  They are illogical, emotional, ignorant and ruled by perception.  I have spent a lot of time trying to understand what is best, what is logical, and what works.  Uh uh.  Where there is freedom and liberty that has relatively little to do with it.  In fact, even without freedom it doesn't - it's just a matter of a different set of people's illogic, biases, emotions and perceptions.  That, after all, is really all that matters.

Are people concerned with facts?  Noooooooo.  I even read recently that politicians that try to feed voters facts inevitably lose.  Voters are concerned with...yup, you guessed it.

People don't care about what is, they care about what seems to be and what they think is.  History?  Economics?  Even math.  It's not what is but what they perceive is.  And try to change their opinion.  Nope, perception is too strong - bias is too strong.  They believe what they want to believe.  Education?  Forget it.

It really makes people charming, if you can get by the frustration, and if you are not concerned with getting anything done.  Of course when things go bad, when their biases and perceptions are wrong, who is blamed?  Themselves?  Nahhh.  They always find someone else to blame - anyone else.  And their logic is strong - it's their fault, whoever they are.

Why does democracy work?  Sort of?  Because there are enough people with different perceptions so that it all balan ces out in the end.  Think about the Constitution for example: it is heavy in trying to keep people from screwing things up, not getting things done; there is a reason for that.

God bless people; but don't take them too seriously.

Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1801):

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.  From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.  The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith

From spiritual faith to great courage

From courage to liberty

From liberty to abundance

From abundance to selfishness

From selfishness to complacency

From complacency to apathy

From apathy to dependency

From dependence back again to bondage."

Looking at "democracies" in today's world one has to question how democratic many of them really are/were: imperfections have  enabled bypassing  steps in some cases.  Tytler didn't have all that many examples to view, and I suggest he omitted an important one: anarchy.

Consider the classic examples being presented in Africa, among them Somalia that  is already sliding into anarchy, as are, perhaps, several other central African states.  Anarchy, however, is not a natural state that can last for long, since before too long one or another of the war lord clans/gangs becomes stronger than the others and forms some semblance of dictatorship, until another topples it.  And others, such as Russia, that only became a quasi-democracy.; Iran skipped that step.  So is Tytler wrong?  Merely a little too general, and  a little too theoretical perhaps.  And, after all, the first four steps are relative.   So where would we place Somalia?  And does this apply to Europe?  He provides plenty to think about on the economic side, but maybe not enough in terms of greatly imperfect democracies, those that have voting, but little else that is required.  And  it leaves out the power of clans and gangs.  What effect, for example, drug cartels?  

The testing of Tytler's theory is underway, and probably is entering the make another hypothesis stage.  For awhile we thought democracy was going to be the answer from which we would never go back.  We do that a lot, think we have finally arrived.  But that is not the way things progress.  Democracy is too nebulous a term; but then so is dictatorship.  Complacency, apathy and selfishness are not, however; they exist always in some form or other.  And anarchy?  I would contend that it, in some form, is a fairly common state between democracy and dictatorship.  Surely the world will be roiled with democracies, dictatorships and anarchies all trying to exist on the same stage; a fascinating unfolding if you are observing from a distance far enough.

Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle (died 1757):

"A philosopher sees the earth as a large planet, traveling through the heavens, covered by fools."

Just so.

Perhaps it is the inevitable result of modern (classical) liberalism; we don't like to see people struggle or get hurt.  We want all to be content and happy, and to us that entails liberty.  The fact that some other cultures see things differently, and use our sense of justice against us is problematic, but that's a subject for another day.  The inevitability is that we are inclined to want to take care of those that can't take care of themselves.

That's noble.  But as with those who would use our justice against us, there are many in our own culture who would happily use our generosity against us.  These are those who can take care of themselves but choose not to when they discover an easier way.  Our proclivity to worshipping equality feeds  such a choice: why struggle when you can have it given to you?

In a free market culture people are left to their own devices, and those that are able, and make the effort can achieve beyond those that don't or won't.  And some get hurt.  We might not feel bad when failed risk takers get hurt, but they inevitably drag others down with them, and we feel bad for them.  The fact that in the long run free markets really do make it better for almost all is lost in the concern for those who slip and fall in the short run.  This struggle between long run and short run will always exist and keeping a balance is challenging.

Currently, for many reasons, the balance is drifting left.  Honest concern for others is clearly one reason; ignorance of and bias toward free markets and how they work is another; a strong belief in general egalitarianism is a third.  Furthermore the non-achieving, being more numerous than the achieving, provides a large constituency for those to whom power is more important than anything else.  The founders of our country were concerned about that, calling the potential the tyranny of the majority.

Recently we underwent a historical sequence of events that have nudged the balance even further left.  A combination of actions  by government, individuals and businesses, all basically feeding on human greed caused an untenable growth of wealth that reached its inevitable end, and because of the size of the problem and the general and severe pain that letting markets take their course would have produced, government took steps to attempt to avert the most dire circumstances that could have resulted, steps that were socialistic in nature - temporarily so, if followed to the logical conclusion upon which they were initiated.

But at the same time, and probably largely because of the perceptions that surrounded the financial crisis, perhaps the most liberal government that has ever existed in the United States came to power - controlling both houses of our legislature and the executive branch.  This confluence of events will clearly give our natural drift to the left a strong supporting nudge, perhaps merely speeding up the inevitable.

The question is, will it destroy the balance between big government controls and free market freedoms?  The difference?  History has made it clear, if narrowly understood, that excessive government controls dampen economic growth; there simply is too much to control, and government can not do it effectively.  But the complexity of world trade, urban living and international stresses and inequities, and pure size of the problem of living demand that  government take a hand where necessary.  Where necessary; and where is that?  At the balance point, admitedly a circular argument.  As one economist put it, we are all in agreement as to what it is we want to achieve - the best possible for our populace - but we are in disagreement as to how that is to be achieved.

Middle ground, balance point, thoughtful compromise - call it what you will; it is the secret of our success to date and it will determine our success in the future.   For let there be no doubt, success and economics are one and the same: it's the economy stupid, and always will be, because economics determines quality of life.

Our slow drift leftward - toward a socialistic philosophy - has just been given a sharp impetus in the same direction.  Whether that is dampened toward a continued rough balance between government control and free markets, or allowed free reign toward increased government control will determine our future - perhaps not immediately, but eventually; balanced?  or not?  One way or the other this historic confluence of events has offered us a test.   How we react to it will be long studied and often debated.

Today Baghdad experienced its highest violence death toll in months from three separte bombings in the north end of the city.

The first thought that hit me was, ah ha, the bad guys are already feeling their oats through expectations of a more compliant US regime and early American troop exits.  Maybe?  And maybe not.

It is something that will bear watching, though.  Politicians are famous for disregarding forecasts of probable cause and effect.  They even ignore proven cause and effect if it doesn't meet their personal expectations, requirements and spoken views.  Which all reinforces that perception is more important than fact, and boy oh boy, do we ever do the perception thing.  Politicians speak and media reports - or criticizes, depending on their own perceptive proclivities.

Let us see what happens.

I read an article today about how our drift strongly resembles that espoused by Fabian Socialism, and looked it up: essentially a slow and steady drift toward, rather than through radical action.

That got me to thinking of something I read several weeks ago.   It was a study (that I unfortunately can  no longer attribute) using questions about employment for college students.  They were given a choice between working for a company that paid high wages, but where they would earn less than their peers; and one where the actual pay level was lower, but they would be paid better than their peers.  The preference was for the latter.  Presumably, better to be a big frog in a small pond than a small frog in a big pond, or something similar.

This fits comfortably with what we all see every day and that is keeping up with the Jones - success respect.  A little bigger house, a "nice" car and enough of whatever to brag about; but not so much more as to be reviled for it.

Thus Socialism - that is, philosophical Socialism as opposed to traditional Socialism - not necessarily government ownership, but government control.  Eliminate poverty but also egregious riches, even if that slows down the engine of progress.  Put bluntly that suggests we might not be so uncomfortable with legislated medicocrity as long as we were all roughly equal.  Or as they used to see about Eastern  Europe: shared poverty.  As long as everyone is poor, it's endurable, "poor" of course being relative.

I also note (regularly) that election results show socialist tendencies strongest in urban areas.  That makes sense too, when you think about it.  And since urbanization is on the increase, so is the tendency toward philosophical socialism; or what is evident in most of the East: paternal democracy.

And under the Fabian plan it happens slowly over time.  In fact one of the reasons Fabian Socialism per se disappeared is that most of their goals were incorporated into the British Labor Party platform and came to pass, so their mission could be called completed.  It has also been pointed out that most of the platform planks of the American Socialist Party have also now been incorporated into our culture.

Perhaps this is the true will of the people, and will be accepted easily as long as it doesn't happen too radically.  We call it egalitarianism and it seems to be our most favored goal, so maybe we're almost there.