Money where mouth is

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

I think it was a place called “college”, where very few things were related to the real universe, teachers of philosophy tried to explain how “perception is reality”, and young pups with unscarred bodies and unformed minds listened eagerly to the pronouncements of academicians with un-callused hands and perfectly groomed hair…

Someone tried to teach me the concept of a “zero-sum game.”

The prime example used was tic-tac-toe, where it doesn’t much matter where you place your first X or O; if you play often enough and fast enough, your win-loss ratio will even out, kind of like karma or flipping a coin. You’ve gained nothing in the end, and you’ve lost nothing because there was nothing there to lose in the first place.

I’m pretty sure I learned this from my mentor, a genius who should have been teaching advanced math theories at Stanford, but stuck it out in the trenches with us lesser lights who couldn’t balance a checkbook. Then, again, I might’ve heard this concept over one beer too many at an off-campus, high-stakes poker game. (Sorry, “A-Rod,” you learn a lot more about the real world by hanging out with grad students than you do by dating Madonna.)

I don’t remember much about college—I was too preoccupied with getting high or getting laid—but the notion of a zero-sum game came roaring back the other night when I heard two diverse facts that fell into place like a roulette ball hitting “00” and giving the odds to the house.

#1: The national debt has now equaled the Gross National Product for the first time since 1947, when we were struggling to pay off War II. If I understand this correctly, if we shut down the entire nation for a year, and taxed everything at 100%, we’d almost pay off what America owes. I think it’s $14.8 T debt versus $14.3 T productivity, but that’s increasing by $126,000 per second as you read this. [The Ts are for trillions; I’ll break my keyboard trying to enter so many zeroes.] That's a "zero-sum."

#2: With the stock market dive that celebrated the president’s birthday yesterday, every meager gain since the economic meltdown of ’08 was wiped out in a single day. That's a "zero-sum."

(I have a Constant Reader who is a big-money type. Feel free to jump in at any point if I'm wrong about this.)

Okay, my mind is blown. A third disturbing fact that someone ran past me recently is that if you tax the “richest ten percent”—who already pay 70% of the tax “revenues” in this country—at 100%—in other words, confiscating everything they possess, there still wouldn’t be enough money in the federal coffers to pay what we owe.

The evil, greedy rich have no confidence in the future of America. The Asian markets are tanking as I write this. Communist China is lecturing us on economics. Italy is poised to follow France and Greece down the rabbit-hole of entitlement protests. There is a trillion dollars of uninvested capital sitting offshore in foreign banks, earning interest for other people while American businessmen stare askance at the socialist nightmare the US has become. There is an old lady in Gum Log, Georgia gasping for air because her electric bronchial oxygen pump and the ceiling fans in her house were disconnected by the EMC because she couldn’t pay her bill, run 41% higher than last year by EPA regulation of coal-fired electricity plants.

Meanwhile, Fearless Leader celebrates his 50th birthday with yet another fundraiser for re-election, while one of his hacks bitches that he canceled ten fundraisers because he had to stay in De Cesspool and pretend to offer leadership during the “debt crisis” wrangling.

When I graduated college, and eventually enrolled in AA to recover from the experience, I learned another definition of a “zero-sum” game: “Insanity is repeating the same action again and again, expecting a different outcome.”

(I fell out of AA because of this; a lot of us try to drink ourselves to death because we don’t like what we’ve become, and telling people they’re inherently insane doesn’t help matters. I got sober by changing my life, becoming comfortable with who and what I am, and quit listening to gurus and “spiritual advisors.” I’m a nasty, insensitive man, and if godless bastards like Bill Mahr want to bet against me on God’s existence, I’ll take the wager with nothing to lose.)

Got to get a bottom line going here: WE ARE PLAYING A ZERO-SUM GAME.

Capitalism is based on growth. We are not growing; we are shrinking in power and prestige. The government doesn’t create jobs, the evil, greedy rich do, when they re-invest their ill-gotten gains in their exploitative industries. [Sarcasm mode off, but it’s true. Thank God for the evil, greedy rich…they provide jobs.]

We aren’t breaking even; we’re losing. The shenanigans of July weren’t even a start to solving our problems. We have passed the tipping point; the return no longer justifies the investment. As the Brits said, "the game isn't worth the candle." As we say in America, "it ain't worth the batteries in the flashlight to read under the blanket any longer." Say good-bye to the "American century;" it's over and done thanks to the looters and parasites of wealth redistribution. You cannot legislate 2+2=4; no amount of political posturing, rhetoric, or vague promises is going to dig us out the hole we have dug for the past 100 years.

What we are offered is the AA definition of insanity: keep doing the same things, and hope for a different outcome.

(I tried that for two decades, and it only resulted in puking, car crashes, pissing in inappropriate places, divorces, and going to jail repeatedly. Good thing I wasn’t on drugs…)

The salt shaker has spilled onto the tabletop, and no amount of throwing it over our shoulder and inveighing the economic gods is going to change our luck, or the results of the game. When I woke this morning, thinking of what I might write for my handful of readers, I thought of a quote from a Doors song, where Jim Morrison begins with “When I was back there in seminary school, a man put forth the proposition that you can petition the Lord with prayer.”

That’s not really appropriate to anything, I just heard that great lost voice echoing this morning when Bobama wrapped up his latest round of propaganda with “God bless America” before returning to the White House to unfurl his rug in the closet and face Mecca.

There is no solution to a zero-sum game except to quit playing. By its very implication, the inherent nature of the game says you cannot win. It doesn’t matter where the partisan Xs and Os go on the board, the same crap will happen over and over again in infinite variation, with the outcome ultimately the same. That’s a zero-sum game, which the national economy has become. Nothing is going to change, because of inaction on both sides of the issue.

Change begins with catharsis, which my worn dictionary essentially defines as “purging, especially of the digestive tract.” I also recall a quote that “I will spew you out of my mouth, because you are neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm.” I think that means you’ll either stand for something or fall for anything.

By its nature, “compromise” is the abandonment of principles in favor of expediency. This country was not founded on compromise; it is founded on revolution, which that same worn dictionary defines as “A sudden political overthrow brought about from within a given system.”

The American colonists did not negotiate with King George III. They endured defeat, disease, vilification, partisan treason by Tories clinging to the status quo, and signed away their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for the principles of an untried system of government that has proven to be the best in history. Some died in poverty and obscurity, but they died free. They stood for a principle, not for some mushy ideological party line. They thought before they acted; then they acted decisively. They didn’t play a zero-sum game; they played for mortal stakes.

The picture heading this post states my principles: it is a wager on the common sense of the American people. That scrap of government Monopoly™ money is worth about $20 by today’s standards, but it’s still even up as a bet on next year’s election. It’s a real picture of a real bill that’s been on my gnarly desktop since the last century. I haven’t lost yet, and my liberal friends won’t bet against me.

I’m betting the farm that the American people will not tolerate the failure of leadership that they so blithely fell for in 2008. (Well, you don’t get the castle on Scorpion Hill, but you might get the gummint marker.) Yeah, Bobama’s an historical president, the first African-American, blah-blah… He has a built in voting bloc for that, and the ill-informed who fall for Goebbel’s [look him up!] Big Lie who will show up as mindless “motor-voters”, but I’m betting that anyone with two brain cells to rub together will catch the spark and realize what a disaster our leadership has become. I don’t care if Bobama’s purple…it ain’t about race, it’s about competence. The “racist” label failed with liberals when black Tea Party spokesmen started turning up, so now the ad homs are reduced to “hobbits” and “terrorists.”

I used to carry on about some sinister aspect to Bobama’s presidency. I’ve since downgraded him from “The Manchurian Candidate” to a level below the misguided idiocy of Jimmy Carter. Bobama doesn’t have the wherewithal to be a “Doctor Evil” or a Muslim sleeper-agent. He’s a fool on a fool’s errand, and a wrecker tied to an ideology that wouldn’t fly in my 1960s high-school civics classes.

“Power to the people” doesn’t mean what it used to, but it still means something. My money’s on the table. I’ll bet God against Bill Mahr, and I’ll bet cash on the American people.