The Root Of All Scams Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

Its faces are as legion as its names, but its disguises all spring from one and the same root, the singular notion that you can get something for nothing.

The very idea that you can get knowledge without the work of inquiry, that you can get good at inquiry without the work of accumulating experience, that you can govern a complex society on a shoestring.

Of course, only real losers fall for that, don't they?

Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

Limited Government vs. Government, Ltd.

If you really think about it, we all believe in low taxes and limited government power over our lives. We all believe in low prices and limited corporate power over our lives. But we want the things we want and everything costs something, so the question of prices and taxes is really, “What is a fair price for the things we want?”

In a complex and populous society, which we don't really have much choice about anymore, there will be people at some distance from us who have a significant impact on our lives, perhaps to the point of life and death questions. That is a form of ruling power, no matter whether it comes from a corporate or a government body. When it comes to organizations that rule over our lives this way, there is a big difference between corporate power and government power, at least, since 1776 when the Founders of our Nation fought for a strongly representative form of government, in other words, a republic.

The difference that made a difference worth fighting for was this — in a republic the people are the bosses. That is not just a polite phrase — it means that we, the people, have a direct impact on the lives of those remote agents who impact our lives. In our contemporary argot, it closes the feedback loop, and in a very powerful way, far more powerful than the impact mere consumers ever have on the agents of a corporation in a market system.