News item: U.S. government offering lessons in how to handle money

U.S. trying to teach Iraqis how to spend billion-dollar surplus

Now, really. With everything you know about the U.S. government, would you trust it to teach you how to spend your own money?

If so, I've got a bridge to sell you. Paul Krugman built it. You're gonna love it.

For those who love power more than they love people

For those who love their power over people more than people, themselves, this is dedicated to you.



It's not just the sinners of lust, greed, and vanity who God cuts down, as it turns out. It's all of us. And pride is the sin that is and always has been most destructive of humanity. That's why it's the deadliest sin.

It's time to end this obsession with power. Soon or later, it will end. Sooner or later, it'll cut us all down.

Loving freedom

I care about people doing good. In a lot of ways, it is the central purpose of my life. Figuring out how I can do more good, how others can do more good, and what to do about when I and everyone else doesn't do good.

I've also come to terms with the fact that it is useless to compel people to do things they are not going to do, anyway, or will half-ass it, at best, except in very limited and generally negative situations when we don't want them to do something and when the dangers are real and the stakes are too high not to use force or aggression. But those times are few. And people perpetually use that exception for license to use force and aggression whenever they want, and often for self-centered purpose and often when they don't really give a shit about those they are compelling or even others they aren't compelling, for that matter.

I've learned what a waste of time it is to force peoples' hand to do good that they are either going to do or not going to do, and which, when compelled, not only limits the freedom of those who actually care to do a better job, but which always results in half-ass efforts from those who don't.

As people live life, as they care about one another, more, and get smarter, over time, often by learning the lessons of their own foolish mistakes, they generally do want to do good. Though noone can do all the good in the world that needs doing. So that's why it's best to let people do the things they do best and stay out of their way when the truth is that we, generally, do not know how to do the good they have to offer as well as they do. It was one of the most important lessons that Adam Smith had to offer. And it is more relevant today than it was over 200 years ago, when he wrote it.

Many people just have to fuck up the big lessons in order to learn them. The world in the process of doing just that, right now. You could say that the world is always in that process, actually. But the current political moment and its romanticism of force, aggression, rules, laws, regulation, etc., is a moment when we are going to have to fuck up a big question to get to a better answer.

The better answer is more freedom. We probably won't get that figured out until we've fucked it up, enough. It's kind of a frustrating and often sad fact of life, really. But it is a fact that cannot be avoided, no matter how smart or good or whatever we think we are or are not.

And the hubris that life can be lived without fucking up and with power circumventing the very human propensity to fuck things up is the source of humanity's most serious and persistent tragedies over the course of human history.

This is a moment where we can begin to end that much more fundamental mistake of human history. We have spent several hundred years working to do just that with the founding of liberal democratic values and societies.

It is time we recognized the brilliance, bounty, beauty, and greatness they have to offer. It is time we learned confidence in the lessons and learning and fruits that freedom has to offer.

It is time we learned to love freedom for real.

Time

There is so much to know about the world. And so limited time to know it all.

The question for all of us is how are we going to spend that time? And are we going to do it honestly and for good purpose?

And, most important to me, do we really give a shit about the people that our time and efforts serve?

Those are the 3 most important questions for life that I can think of, at this moment.

Might be worth us taking some time to answer.