If you haven’t yet read The Alpha Strategy, John Pugsley’s excellent treatise on shielding yourself against the ravages of inflation, please do so. However, for the moment I have a snippet from that fine tome for your consideration. In it, he uses as a demonstrator a fictional island occupied by two and only two persons: you, and an economist named Maynard. (Never mind how the two of you got there.) Maynard has some “modern” ideas about how to structure an economy. It makes illuminating reading.
Very near the end of the book, Pugsley addresses the political problem at the base of contemporary economic irrationality:
Pretend for a moment that you have cultivated a cabbage patch on your island, and Maynard has some goats. Every night Maynard opens your gate and lets his goats into your yard, and each night they feast on your cabbages. You decide to approach the problem by appealing to reason. You put together your arguments about how this is ruining your garden, stifling your incentive to grow cabbages, and will hurt the whole neighborhood in the end. You then walk out of your house, march down to your garden, and have a heart-to-heart talk with his goats.
Pretty silly, eh what? But the moral is sharply pointed: The goats are not the root of your problem. Yes, they are the proximate cause, but not the efficient cause. The goats didn’t let themselves into your cabbage patch, now did they?
The moving force here is Maynard. It is he who empowers those goats to raid your garden – and it is plain that he’s entirely willing to sacrifice both your immediate interests and the larger, long-term interests of the local economy to feed his goats at zero cost to himself. He must be dealt with.
“But how?” I hear you cry. You know perfectly well how. You must strike at his interests: whatever is of value to him that you can threaten. That would give you influence over his actions: a deterrent, if you will, against further bad behavior. If he has nothing of sufficient value, you must threaten him: his life.
Now let’s talk politics, specifically the Congressman currently serving as Speaker of the House of Representatives: recently revealed Democrat-marionette Mike Johnson of Louisiana.
The Speaker of the House has considerable power. With certain exceptions, he decides what bills will be brought to the House floor and be voted upon. His position also equips him to act as a negotiator to facilitate the passage of bills he favors. But where does his power come from? (Hint: It’s not the position of Speaker that I have in mind just now.)
YES!! Got it in one, you brilliant Gentle Reader, you! The Speaker is elected by a majority of his fellow Congressmen: in this case, Mike Johnson’s fellow Republicans. On January 3, 2025, a new election for Speaker will be held. How, then, do we persuade the majority caucus of the House to put the clamps on Johnson – or failing that, to elect someone less inclined to placate the Democrats and more amenable to the MAGA agenda?
That’s right: the same way we “persuaded” the House to drop that atrocious “Continuing Resolution” to bankrupt the country. Tell the House GOP loud and clear: Comply or face a primary challenge.
And as it’s still early on Boxing Day 2024, I shall leave you to contemplate your next moves. Have a nice day.
2 comments
one must always remember that a politician’s number one job is to get re-elected. everything else is a distant second. when they are deeply offended that we bring up primarying them, it is the cry of the con man or magician who is angry that you are letting the rest of the marks in on the trick.
Most congressmen do not work for us. They do not run for election to make America great. They run for congress so that they can become rich. One of the ways that they do this is make secret agreements with other congressmen to mutually vote for bills that help them become rich. There are a few honest and decent congressmen but the majority will not vote them into positions of power exactly because that would stifle their goals to make more and more money by using their power. Congress spends trillions of our dollars just to buy votes and slowly but surely they are destroying out country in the process. Short of electing 535 honest decent people to congress there is no escaping this. Our fate is sealed and all we can do is watch and complain.