The Royal Wedding

The Royal Wedding
By Charles Tolleson
April 30, 2011

The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was a Cinderella story come true for a billion women. It is estimated that two billion people watched the wedding on television. My neighbor, a single woman in her 50s, was up at midnight to watch the wedding live. She had a printout of the schedule, minute by minute, anticipating the next move.

I watched some of the ceremony on television the next day. It was pageantry at its best. I wonder who the “Wedding Planner” was. The Brits have had plenty of practice at this so I suspect the wedding planner just pulled out the script from Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding.

Why are so many people fascinated by romance stories? Most of the movies have romantic plots to them. Operas are all about romance. Poetry and songs are about romance. One can watch a ballet and almost see it as a modern day sexual rite.

It seems like humans have developed the mating rituals to an art form during the past 10,000 years. Before that we were just like other animals in our mating. During the past few thousand years we have enhanced and honed these mating rites.

Humans have developed a talented ability to fantasize and expect. These illusions, filled with hope, are cheap forms of happiness. When a young woman reads a fairy tale about finding her prince she forms an illusion about her future. Women of today see their fantasy come to reality, with someone else, by watching the royal wedding. All of the viewers of the Royal Wedding have an illusion that the Prince and his Cinderella will live happily ever after.

In the past a woman always wanted to select a man that could provide her with healthy children, comfort, and safety. The females of other species always do the selecting in which male will get to fertilize her eggs. This is nature’s way of improving the species. Though technology and gender careers are changing female behavior, many young women of today still try to select a man that will improve her life. Her awareness that she might become pregnant is another concern in what kind of man she selects.

The birth control pill and other technologies will continue to cause a genetic evolution in females that will diminish their desire for a Prince Charming. Government programs that reduce a female’s dependence on a man are changing why many women are no longer interested in a man being a prince charming. The new Prince Charming for many women is the government, a government that provides for her and her children.

"Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end." -Joseph Conrad, novelist (1857-1924)

Government Planning for Climate Change
By Charles Tolleson
April 27, 2011

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/western-us-water-supplies-climate-change_n_853882.html

The above link is to a news story that writes- “WASHINGTON -- Climate change is likely to diminish already scarce water supplies in the Western United States, exacerbating problems for millions of water users in the West, according to a new government report.

A report released Monday by the Interior Department said annual flows in three prominent river basins – the Colorado, Rio Grande and San Joaquin – could decline by as much 8 percent to 14 percent over the next four decades. The three rivers provide water to eight states, from Wyoming to Texas and California, as well as to parts of Mexico.”

Four decades! 40 years! “Could decline”? The government can’t predict something accurately one or two years into the future? So how can they predict something 40 years into the future? The article uses a lot of suppositions such as, could and likely. Nothing definite, just possibilities.

The fear mongering is always a way to justify more bureaucracy, jobs, and power. “The report "affirms the urgency of the planning we are engaged in," Connor said at a news conference Monday. "We need to take actions now to plan" for changes that are likely to occur over the next several decades.”

The American people should read “The Science of Fear”, by Daniel Gardner, to realize how they are being manipulated into giving more and more power, slowly, to government employees. Central planning is a placebo for the masses and steroids for the planners.

“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.” Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

There is no water shortage and there never will be. As water or other resources become scarce, women will have fewer babies. They already are, thanks to the birth control pill. Besides, humans can desalinate water. There is and will be a plentiful supply of the product, water, made simply of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Stop worrying America! Believe in the "Ultimate Resource", human creativity.

Liberal Economists
By Charles Tolleson
April 15, 2011

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, a critic of free markets, is promoting a tax on the rich because he says the divide between rich and poor is increasing. He says the poor are struggling more.

Stiglitz should have been around in 1900 when there were only an estimated 4000 millionaires in the United States. A million dollars in 1900 would equal about 22 million dollars adjusted for inflation. This was just a fraction of 1% of the 76 million people in the U.S. at that time. There were 7 million millionaires in the United States in 2009 in a population of slightly over 300 million. This dramatic increase in millionaires is proof that capitalism creates wealth for more people. Countries that do not allow capitalism, free markets, and private property have fewer millionaires and more poor people who are poorer than the poor people of capitalist countries.

Today the United States has 412 BILLIONAIRS, 34% of the world’s total billionaires. The billionaires all have large staffs that are employed. They have corporate jet crews that are well paid. They have yacht crews that are well paid. They pay high property taxes on their houses, planes, and yachts. Take away their money, as Stilitiz and leftists propose, and give it to the government mob and what will they do with it? They will pay themselves a large commission and use the rest to buy votes and the poor will become poorer.

As for poor people struggling more than in the past, Stiglitz should have been around as a poor American in 1900 to see poor people really struggle. Those same poor classes now have free medical care, free housing, and free food. They also have TVs and cell phones. They have instant heat and running water. To know what a real struggle is Stiglitz should try drawing water from a well, building a fire in a wood burning stove for cooking, doing laundry in a tub, plowing behind two mules, and using an unheated outhouse on a cold winter night.

I have a picture of me with my brother and sister taken around 1940. My sister is wearing shoes. My brother and I are bare foot, as were most children of the time. Poor people of that time could not afford shoes for their children so the children only wore shoes when it was too cold to go barefoot. Today poor people wear stylish Nike shoes while humanitarians like Stiglitz say poor people are struggling. The following picture shows some barefoot boys doing factory work in 1912. They were struggling. Poor people today do not struggle like those poor people in 1912.




Poor people in 1900 made about $1.60 per day which would be about $35 today in inflation adjusted dollars. A poor person today makes a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, or about $58 dollars per day for a shorter day than a poor person worked in 1900 for about $35 per day.

“Internal Revenue Service data show that the income of people who were in the lowest income tax bracket in 1996 rose by 91 percent by 2005. But people in the "top one percent" had their incomes drop by 26 percent in those same years. There is nothing complicated about this. Most people simply start at the bottom when they are young and their pay rises as they get more experience. Most people in the top one percent are there for only a single year when they happen to have a spike in income. They too are not an enduring class.”- Thomas Sowell

People like Stiglitz will never be satisfied no matter how much is confiscated from the producers and given to the non producers.

“Leftists, in their heart of hearts, hate capitalism more than they fear the total state. They can put up with anything so long as people are not free to make as much money as they want in the service of others. The resulting inequality in wealth distribution in this system, and the manner in which the free society raises up a class of natural aristocrats, is morally intolerable to them. They prefer to risk the creation of the totalitarian society rather than put their core hatreds on the back burner.” Lew Rockwell

Rules and Rule Enforcers
By Charles Tolleson
April 13, 2011

"There ought to be a law against that"! How many times have you heard someone say those words?

Many years ago when the country was sparsely populated there were fewer rules, and fewer rule enforcers. Many people relied on their gods to enforce the rules and dispense punishment. There were no rules against washing dirty laundry with lye soap in a public stream and no Environmental Protection Agency. There was no rule against an outhouse in your back yard. Still society had bad rules and bad enforcers. There were State rules that allowed slavery and prohibited interracial marriages. And there were Sunday Blue Laws, a rule that prohibited the sale of liquor on Sunday.

Now we have- “There are rules on how to keep water clean and how much water should be used to flush a toilet; for how much gas cars can guzzle, and — under one now in the works — for rear-view cameras or sensors to keep drivers from backing over toddlers; for how to build commercial airplanes — right down to their nuts and bolts — and for how to launch amateur model rockets.” – Nancy Benac, AP

Other rules about manners in the workplace seem so unnecessary. It’s as if there were no manners before the rule enforcers had so much power.

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” ~Napoleon Bonaparte

In 1939 there were 550 pages covering the U.S, Tax laws. Today those pages are a staggering 72,000!

As the population became more crowded, people demanded more rules. There soon were so many people with their idea of how other people should behave, according to their beliefs, that more rules were created. Our desire for safety makes us call for more and more rules. These same people who wanted more rules also decided the rules needed enforcers, so, more enforcers were created. Today there are over 17 million federal, state, and local full time government employees.

The rule enforcers are happy to create fear because the masses overact to the risks of danger and want to be safe. The rule enforcers are happy to promise safety in exchange for power and perks. Mass fear among the public drives people to demand rules that will protect them and the rule enforcers are happy to comply. “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken

It has become obvious that government rule enforcers benefit by having more rules. More rules means more jobs available to the government rule enforcers. The government rule enforcers have their unions and department representatives testifying before legislative bodies asking for more rules. More rules means more enforcers and more lobbying power, which means more generous pay and benefits.

There was a recent ballot initiative in California to legalize marijuana. It was favored to win until the enforcers of the rule against using marijuana; the District Attorneys and the police, came out against the initiative. The initiative lost and the police and district attorneys will get to keep their enforcers’ jobs.

The American Bar Association likes having many rules because it creates much work for them in defending clients who break the rules. There are so many rules it is common for us to unknowingly break a rule, thus creating work for the enforcers; judges, police, DAs, court reporters, bailiffs, prison guards, parole officers, etc, etc.

Three Felonies a Day, by Harvey Silverglate, has many examples of the federal rules we may inadvertently break, thus creating work for the enforcers and for our defense attorneys.

The rule enforcers have a conflict of interest with liberty and their jobs. No rule enforcer is going to say a rule is unnecessary and unconstitutional and needs to be repealed for the sake of liberty. Eliminating these rules would eliminate jobs of the rule enforcers.

"Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves." ~Author Unknown

Try to imagine how many great inventions were invented before there were so many rules and bureaucratic rule enforcers. As great as our progress is, without the past and current rule makers we could be on our way to distant stars. “Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.”- Thomas A. Edison

I suppose there are some people who are born with resentment to being ruled. When I was a small child around age six I asked my father if I could walk around town alone. I ran away from home three times as a teen. As a teen I fantasized about living in the nearby river swamp alone, without rules, like the Tarzan I saw in the movies. I was a crop duster in 1958, with few rules, and no business permits, before there was an Environmental Protection Agency.

I don’t think I resent rules as much as I resent the enforcers. Rules are fine and most people will cooperate to get along in society. This spontaneous cooperation is shown by a jogging path in a nearby park. The city planners forced the taxpayers to pay to build a synthetic soccer field with an artificial jogging/walking path around the soccer field. There is no starting place or directions on which way to go on the jogging path. Somehow all the joggers and walkers go counter clockwise, WITHOUT a rule to tell them which way to go. This happens even when only one person is using the path. This is called spontaneous order.

Today I live alone in my condo. Here I have sanctuary from the rule makers and rule enforcers. As soon as I leave my condo I am ensnared and hampered by thousands of rules. I think I would have been happier living 30,000 years ago as a Cro-Magnon where I made up the rules as I went along.

Anti War Books

April 10, 2011

Three books about war and its causes have been discussed recently. “The Most Dangerous Animal”, by David Livingston Smith, “War is a Lie”, by David Swanson, and “The Demonic Male”, by Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham. One reviewer said The Demonic Male was a political correct sexist book, saying the authors imply males are bad and females are good.

I think males would be more peaceful if there were ten females to each male. There would be enough sex to satisfy men’s natural curse to reproduce their genes. This would reduce their desire to kill off the competition.

As more women choose a military career over motherhood I don’t know if wars will decrease or remain the same. Surgical killings by a little woman flying a drone aircraft 10,000 miles from the attack may increase the little woman’s desire for glory and purpose since they will not have purpose as a traditional mother.

On one discussion blog one of the authors, David Swanson, said that humans did not make war before 12,500 years ago. I believe he was arguing that war is not as genetically programmed as he and others advocate. The simply reason there were no wars before 12,500 B.C. is humans were not mobile enough and densely populated enough to need war. The wheel and bronze metals had not been invented. The horse had not been domesticated. The population of the earth in 10,500 B.C. is estimated to have been only one to ten million. People were so sparsely populated and so far apart there was simply no opportunity for war. Humans had not settled down in one place to practice agriculture. Humans however did go to war with other animal predators and prey. Humans had to eat or be eaten. This could be the origin of the aggressive human gene.

Swanson also argued that war is NOT inevitable. I am starting to agree with this premise because more people are beginning to discuss the causes and the unnecessary wars. Just these three books indicate an argument about our behaviors that first have to be identified before they can be changed.

Another argument one of the authors makes for the positive side of humans is their ability to form social groups and not kill each other in the group. This is behavior based simply on survival and self interest. People form groups and set rules that say we will not kill each other or steal from each other, but, by being in a larger group we will be able to still carry out our genetic disposition to kill by killing others outside the group. By being in a social group there are greater chances to pass on one’s genes. By having a large group to raid another smaller group there is a greater chance to gain resources, and again, pass on the male genes through capturing the females, a resource.

The military nation in the U.S. has broad support. Too many people are related to someone in the military or someone making military products. 57% of the people in a recent poll did not want any reduction in the military budget, despite the enormous government debt. The military nation has become a big government bureaucratic program that has little to do with defending the United States. I believe under certain conditions the people of the United States would support a military coup.

There are 1.4 million active duty military personnel and 1.4 million military reserve personnel. Half are over the age of 25. About 60% are married. About 43% have children. As long as the mercenary military pay and benefits are good there will be plenty of people willing to join the military. Retire with 20 years service and collect a pension for 40 years!

During 2010 the total military fatalities killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were 559, less than ½ of 1% of active military personnel. Over 99% of the military personnel on active duty in 2010 survived. During World War Two there were over 16 million people on military active duty. 293,000 died in combat, less than a fraction of 1 percent. Compare that to the Soviet Union that lost 25% of its military personnel during WW II. People who join the U.S.military see the odds of surviving and reaping the glory and the opportunity to wear a few ribbons and march in parades. "All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them." Napoleon

People will cheer the U.S.S. Enterprise, a floating nuclear power plant anchored in a harbor of a densely populated city, but will scorn a privately owned nuclear power plant in an isolated rural area.

The U.S. Navy is going to allow males and females to serve together on U.S. Navy submarines. The first females will receive a lot of attention. This will garner support for the military funding as there are powerful female members in congress and the male members dare not critique females in the service or the male members of congress will not be reelected. The U.S. Navy has 53,000 females on activity duty. One would think the U.S. Navy could find an all female crew for a submarine among 53,000 women.

“The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service.” ~Albert Einstein

Charles Tolleson

Rep Paul Ryan and the U.S. Budget

By Charles Tolleson
April 5, 2011

Republican Congressman, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, wants to change the U.S. government’s role in Medicare and Medicaid, two unconstitutional programs. I agree that something has to be done and this is a good start. Vouchers will go a long way towards making the program more competitive and reducing fraud and corruption. The Medicare Agency simply cannot manage one billion claims per year efficiently. There is no way the Medicare program can sustain an additional 70 million new retires in the next 25 years as baby boomers reach age 65. Even with deaths the system will be overburdened because of new expensive medical procedures and the increase in longevity.

Paul Ryan proposes giving future seniors vouchers to buy health insurance. This is not a function allowed under the U.S. Constitution for the Federal Government. It is something the states are allowed to do. Still, it is better than the current program.

By giving vouchers to potential customers of insurance companies the federal government remains a third party payer. The means the insurance will cost more than in a free market. The insurance lobby will always be lobbying congress to increase the amount of the vouchers.

Paul Ryan, the war lover, leaves out one government agency, the Defense (Offense) Department, which spends 25% of the U.S. government’s money. It costs more fuel to fly a military F-15 fighter for one hour than it costs for the average American to fuel their car for more than a year.

To reduce the budget and the power of the Federal Government we should end the wars in foreign countries. If not, then we should have an assessment on each citizen to pay for the wars instead of borrowing money that future generations will have to pay back to sustain the Military Industrial Nation. An assessment on each citizen would make them realize the wars are not worth paying for.

The Department of Education should be eliminated. There is no reason for the federal government to be involved in teaching your children how to read and write.

To reduce the U.S. government debt, all other federal departments should be required to reduce their budgets by 5% per year until the budget is balanced.