The Loud Shall Inherit the Earth

Since the financial crisis, collapse has been on everyone’s lips. The players in this general talk of implosion: doomsday preppers, gold bugs, and gun nuts, and people who are fashionably hysterical about doomsday preppers, gold bugs, and gun nuts.

So let’s say society took that silly walk over the precipice: who would rise under such a scenario? My guess is that it would be the great pandering orators; feel good folks like Bill Clinton and Sarah Palin. Substance barely matters here in the pre-apocalypse, but at least it matters somewhat. Right now people do take notice if you're Dr. Prodigy Patel, the world's greatest neurosurgeon. They may not care as much about your frontal lobe tinkering as they do about born again benchwarmer Tim Tebow, but at least neurosurgeons still get some respect.

But if society broke down and existence became more like The Road, substance would not matter at all. No one would follow a mousy brain doctor.

The people who would rise would be the great superficial talkers, the ones who could fill the threatening silence with verbal comfort food. Anyone who spoke with precision or unassuming expertise would get nowhere. The untrained ear (which comprises the vast majority of ears), barely understands subtle oration now, and would make even less of an effort to fathom it while scrounging for another unappetizing post-apocalypse meal.

Ironically, one of the people most heralded by those worried about collapse is a prime example of someone who wouldn’t rise under such circumstances: Ron Paul. Consider just some of his talents: medical training, military experience, and an esteemed track record as a high school athlete. The man has about as much substance as you're likely to find in a person. But despite all these qualities--qualities that are uncommon by themselves, let alone combined in one person--no one would follow him post-apocalypse. Why not? Because Ron Paul isn't a rousing speaker. He would either bore the survivors or go over their heads. They might even trample him in their rush to hear Oprah Winfrey's next speech.

Being a verbose dolt is always a surer path than being a learned square. It is an even surer path these days; just look at the 40 year boom in the self-help racket. Self-help exists because once people leave the nest to become adults, they still look for people to be their parents. In the pre-self-help days, when people didn't get divorced every three years and switch religions each time there was a heat wave, their spouses and clergymen acted as de facto parents. Whether they actually loved their spouses or believed their clergymen was irrelevant. They still had a stabilizing force to pat them on the head and say that everything was going to be okay. As those stabilizing forces shriveled, they turned for direction to sophistry factories likes Dr. Phil.

Post-apocalypse, we would all feel like children again, and the people who would capitalize on this would be the folks best able to recite "reality" back to us in bumper sticker form. Even without electricity the soundbyte would be king (perhaps especially, as there would be no Wikipedia to fact-check people with).

So for those who think a societal breakdown would cause a Great Purging of the Morons, I couldn't agree less. You optimists would probably be horrified by the folks who would rise in the wake of such a collapse. We would probably see a lot of pro-wrestlers become leaders; not because of their biceps, but because of their tongues. It wouldn't be a reflective Buddha-type who would take the reins. It would be Ric Flair.

Why baby boomers aren't done ruining the country

You may have heard this quote (usually attributed to Winston Churchill): "If you are not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart and if you are not conservative at thirty, you have no brain."

You start off wide-eyed and idealistic, and as you gain experience the purism and utopian fantasy of youth gives way to at least a dusting of realism. I think there is some truth to this, and it is certainly tragic when it doesn't happen. Nothing sadder than a 40-year-old proclaiming that everyone could be an astronaut if only they were properly encouraged.

Given that the US (and the entire developed world) is aging, and given that old folks are traditionally more likely to vote, one would think this aging trend might express itself in a rise of conservative politicians (I realize that the Republican Party isn't conservative but let's keep this simple) and a consequent shrinking of government. I don't think this is going to happen, despite the standing army of dried up bingo ladies the US now finds itself with.

Old people, like all people, are going to milk everything they can out of the system while it is still standing, so it seems doubtful they are going to vote for candidates running on a platform of decreased entitlements. No way, Joseph. They are going to do everything they can to pressure politicians into keeping unkeepable promises, regardless of the consequences for everyone else (it is all part of that hard won realism). And politicians will happily punish everyone else to retain the votes of these geriatrics.

Rand Paul is not going to come close to getting the nomination, let alone the White House. No austerity candidate is going to become a heavyweight in US politics. "Austerity" candidates are failing in Europe right now. When deluded democratic citizens see the end of the entitlement road ahead of them, they don't get realistic and look for another road; they idle in place and scream at politicians to extend the road.

I keep hearing libertarians express hope for the future because of the splash Ron Paul made and the ideas he introduced to so many. I would like to be optimistic, but the numbers don't add up. Look at the youth turnout for Obama this time around. Look at the widespread antipathy to markets among the young. And now with Obamacare on the books, "liberal" politicians have bought themselves A LOT of entrenched voters, because every four years there is going to be a fight about "reforming" it, complete with all the images of people being dying in the streets. When you add to all that the overhang of old folks the US entitlement system is already grappling with, it really doesn't bode well for the political application of that allegedly Churchillian quote, does it? Ours is a mob rule republic, and the Ron Paul army is really more of a small militia (how appropriate!).

I would like to be optimistic. Unfortunately, I'm not twenty anymore.

A VERY Few Good Men

I have voted just once, and it was for Ron Paul in 2008. It is unlikely I will ever vote again.

This has nothing to do Dr. Paul’s 2008 performance. I knew going in that every vote cast is a vote thrown away, but I guess I had some notion of registering my dissatisfaction with the establishment (yes, I realize that is also a waste of time). Anyway, Paul is the only elected figure I respect, and the way he has sustained the momentum of the 2008 campaign and risen so dramatically in the public consciousness has been one of the few encouraging surprises of my lifetime.

But although I have been inspired by Ron Paul’s ascendance, this has not improved my opinion of government. If anything, it has fortified my grim view of it.

The very fact that Ron Paul is so exceptional is all the evidence you need that government cannot be managed or restrained. It would take a House and a Senate and a Supreme Court overwhelmingly filled with Ron Pauls to keep government from being a winter without end, and there has been just one Ron Paul in the entire history of the US (and one Ron Paul isn’t even enough to dominate a committee, let alone a Congress). I am not exaggerating. When it comes to abstaining from nonsense, there isn’t another track record as consistent as Paul’s (and many of his supposedly fellow anti-establishment types don't hold up to examination). And we should remember that he has never been tested at the executive level. Much as I admire him, we have no idea if he would remain Dr. No while residing in the White House.

The exception of Ron Paul proves the rule: government is an unwieldy boomerang…everything you put into it comes soaring back to lop your face off.

Yet folks continue to believe. Reminds me of investors who pay Wall Street fund managers hefty performance fees to deliver them above-market returns. Most fund managers do not beat the market. This has always been true. Yet people forever point to those sparse few market-beaters like Peter Lynch and Ray Dalio as proof that trying to beat the market is worthwhile. Stand back and you'll observe that the staggering dearth of market-beaters suggests that attempting to beat the market is unrealistic. This info. falls on stone deaf ears. Investors keep fruitlessly chasing unrealistic market returns and voters keep fruitlessly chasing unrealistic political returns.

There has been one Ron Paul in 200+ years, yet we're expected to keep the faith about government. And voters do keep the faith. No matter how many times their efforts fail, no matter how many times they're betrayed...they keep believing. Just like investors. Wall Street comes out with Value at Risk; the political system comes out with Tea Parties. The results remain as dire as ever. The fact that the Ron Pauls and Howard Buffetts and Grover Clevelands are as stunningly infrequent as the Peter Lynches and Ray Dalios demonstrates how useless it is to think you’re going to beat the government. The difference is that when you buy a mutual fund, they might charge you a 2% performance fee. For voters, the “performance fee” charged by the government (taxes) is usually more than ten times that.