I think we are on the same page as Immigration: Can be good, too much is generally bad, and the Immigrants unfortunately get flack when the problem is the government. And unfortunately - fixing the problem is going to suck for a wide number of prospective immigrants. What so many on the left don’t seem to get: It is not the American tax payers job to give a rats ass about people who WANT to move to the US. It is the US’s duty to ensure the people being allowed to come in WILL BE a NET BENEFIT to the society. And this means: They must end up being a net contributor. As it stands - we see government funds going to support migrants illegal or legal. We see growing crime rates - with information coming out that statistics were manipulated purposefully or accidentally to look better: But the truth wins out.

Smaller Government - not small government - I want to clarify this: I don’t think a small government works. I mean, if you are in a hamlet where everyone knows everyone, everyone comes together to solve issues as they crop up in a big town hall that encompasses everyone: Sure, small government works. But we are talking about an entity that has to deal with hundreds of millions, over a vast area, with various regional concerns and interests… it’s a NIGHTMARE. But Big government is also not the answer.

When I talk about reduced regulation - I’m not talking NO regulation. I mean: If you want to tax - flat rate it, have it low, get rid of as many deductions as you reasonably can. No longer do you have “I pay 35% income tax in my bracket but have 23000$ in deductions” - instead you have “I pay 20% tax rate on everything made over 30,000$”. And that can work - really damn well. You can do it for business as well - first, I dunno, 500,000$ in revenue isn’t taxed, at all - anything over 500k is taxed at 3%. I know - insanely low. But a company right now that makes 50 billion in revenue through tax games and loop holes can end up paying 0%… and that is more common then not when you get into large corporations. So: Simplify the tax code. People will be mad at first, until you state “This will help small business by reducing their tax burden, while ensuring large corperations like Google, Microsoft, Wallmart, and so on will pay their share for the benefits they reap for operating within this nations economy. We understand that some of them may feel the need to pass the costs on - but we strongly feel the market can, and will be better able to compete with these entities as a result - which will, in time get you better paying jobs, better prices on your products, and more option in where you shop”. And for once - the argument that corperations are greedy assholes might have some merit.

Why I like Medium Sized Governments

Maybe I should define what I mean.

If small Government is one that does basically nothing, and Big Government is one that expands itself whenever it wants to do more - then Medium Government is a government that looks at it’s current activity list and decides: Is any of this non-critical? Can we simplify and attain the objective?

to me: That is what government should be constantly doing - If it has staff pushing paper around for all intent and purpose, and that paper needs 5 signatures, and it needs 8 audits before it’s approved: Why? Can you do it with 2 audits, and 2 sign offs? Well: Probably. And considering the sheer amount of errors and mistakes that make it through the overly bloated systems we have today - my guess is less is actually more, and the entire reason? Because with less - people are forced to take ownership: They can’t just pass on the buck, they are accountable to what they sign off on, what they do.

And so we get to the core of it: Big Government is accountable to no one and no one person is accountable to anyone. Small Government does so little it doesn’t worry about accountability. And so, we get to another reason why medium sized governments are better: They are, by their nature, far more accountable to the people.

At risk of being downvoted into oblivion: People are hyper polarized and unable to have nuanced discussions as a broad generalization any longer. And that, is the core of the problem.

But where does it stem from? Misdirection - it might not seem relevant, but, I assure you: It is. We have to talk - as a recent video reminded me, and taught me something very important, Beoing. And maybe Intel - but mostly Boeing.

Back in the Early 60’s - Boeing was Successful, very successful, it was THE MOST SUCCESSFUL airplane company - and it was, surprise surprise: ran by engineers. Then we have Douglas - ran by Finance bean counters. In 67, Douglas was facing bankruptcy, and - as a defence contractor, the US government in it’s infinite wisdom forced Boeing to merge with it, and - to put the cream on the top followed by the crowning toxic jewel on top: The executives that caused the problems at Douglas were put in charge, and - Boeing has gone downhill since. At one point an executive at the new Boeing said something along the lines of: “I don’t want to be distracted by the details of building airplanes” - like, I’m sorry: THAT IS WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES, those aren’t the distractions - that is your core needed responsibility to make sure it’s done right.

We good with why the above is a problem?

So lets look at Covid: Finance people want the economy to keep going - so drag their feet on doing what is necessary. Finance people don’t want to be inconvienienced, so… push for changes that are beneficial to them IN THE SHORT TERM. And finally, we see the idea that a Stage 4 Cancer Patient who passes away being labeled as a Covid Death… Why? I think it serves 2 reasons: 1, it makes the hospital numbers look more paletable for awhile - Covid death is “new scary virus” not, “Something we have been dealing with for forever” and 2. It justifies massive inflationary spend by the government - enabling them to effecitvely pick winners (big business), and losers (small business).

The thing is: This shift - this Financiers over Engineers and people in their field running the show, is both the Republicans AND Democrats. That is: Democrat Social Justice types use inflationary spending to shove money at the cost of EVERYONE at whatever group they are “fighting for” and, Republican types love to shove tax benefits in the hands of their prefered businesses. And what are the fixes? It’s really simple: End Inflationary Monetary Policy.

Thing is: Sick people masking? Makes sense. Properly cleaning high contact often terribly dirty things like debit pin pads - makes sense. More frequent cleaning of public bathrooms: Makes sense. This isn’t exactly rocket science. But forcing an untested thing onto people, after hiding the details from the public is disgusting. And the fact that people don’t get it - that is a huge problem.

I don’t think you understand the capabilities difference - Israel has the nuclear option if they are threatened existentially. But lets take that off the table a moment.

Iran’s capabilities are their missiles, manufacturing capabilities. Their Refineries, and strategic energy reserves are in known locations and are the lynch pin of Iran’s economy. And finally, the Nuclear R&D facilities are in known places. All of those are the targets - and Israel absolutely has the capacity to take it out- just not the strong justification.

If Iran continues striking Israel, Israel is going to feel the pressure to decapitate Iran as a threat to them.

The fall out of this is more interesting:

1. China loses access to Iranian Oil for the short to mid term - it will take time to restore capabilities.

2. Russia loses access to Iranian missiles - without production capabilities, and depleted stocks, Iran will not be able to sell missiles to Russia let alone drones.

3. Iran’s economy will be in shambles - that could very well open the door to coup or revolt.

4. Iran would unload as many missiles as it possibly could - which could be devastating. But that would come down to just how many interceptor missiles Israel would have available, along with other air defence options.

If you want a “Why would trump support this” - there you have it. It reaffirms US obligation to support it’s allies, It puts economic pressure on china, and denies Russia access to weapons - which should help push them to the negotiating table.

In reality, I would more expect Iran to back off. Then again - With Israel obliterating Iran proxies, Iran may feel the pressure to complete a nuclear deterrent and Israel may end up wanting to decapitate Iran as a threat BEFORE they gain that capability… what a bloody mess.

Lets be honest: The Not trump vote, probably made the election results as close as it was. And that might be difficult for some to wrap their head around - trump is unlikable, but: To anyone dealing with the fall out of certain choices Biden made attacking trump era policies (I’m thinking of one in particular), it’s a bit of a no brainer. This brings us to three key issues that are causing problems in US politics, but western politics in general:

1. The Stay in Mexico agreement is the perfect example of how Opposing political representatives have a “everything the opposition does is mostly evil and bad, and it needs to be killed as soon as possible” - and this goes for EVERYTHING. If we could have sane, nuanced discussions and come to agreements and policies we would see a LOT less whip lash, and a LOT MORE cooperation. But people who think they have the moral high ground - doesn’t matter the side - uses that as a justification for their actions, no matter how harmful those actions are. To say that illegal immigration is a problem is an understatement - it creates downward pressure on ceertain wages, which is then used as justification because hard working americans don’t want piss poor wages.

2. We have seen migration problems bleed into regional crime issues, tent cities, and so on.

3. There are a handful of very democrat cities that are suffering dramatically from catch and release policies to the point that corperations that provide necessary essential services to make a city viable are leaving the city. They are simply closing up shop. And the attitude from the democrats is not to solve the underlying problem - it’s to try to make it illegal to close up shop in the city or area. Well: The only other option is to drive up prices, or basically make it impossible to get in and out without exactly what you have paid for.

All of this comes to a reality that we have seen a march towards Institutional Authoritarianism for DECADES, since about 1970… well, a little sooner, but if you look at a lot of shifts you are going to find that about 1965 through to about 1975 is a big shift in a lot of governance decisions, and this is no different. More, and more federal agencies were created - and laws were more and more written such that it was agency rules that dictated the specifics instead of clear written law by congress. In function, it was a divestment of power from Elected officials to Appointed agencies - and over time, the Bureaucracy has been ever more empowered to dictate the direction of many of these organizations, not the elected officials or congress: And yes, Democrats are the biggest fault in this, though republicans are… barely better in this regard.

So: How do we fix this?

The answer is: Smaller government. Simpler regulations are cheaper and easier to be in compliance with, and require less resources to audit. Simpler taxes are this with added benefits - in that, by simplifying, you crush the legal loopholes used to hide money from scrutiny. And part of the simplification is you remove basically everything that is eligible as a tax credit.

And this applies for EVERY SINGLE regulatory body, every government agency, all of it.

You can’t tax a nation into prosperity, you can’t regulate it into prosperity. You can tax a society into equality by making everyone miserable - but since the politicians are human beings as well, you can bet they will NOT be living a miserable life meaning it will never happen. Those two things are the core of stratifying a society - and again, they have increased in count and size consistently. And if you think taxing the rich is a great idea - income tax on the rich was the first income tax in the US, levied to pay the debts of the civil war. Pretty soon governments decided that taxing everyone else would be better then taxing just the rich: After all, it’s just fair… right? And pretty soon, the regulations, and rules shifted such that the rich pay significantly less as a portion of their income as does literally everyone else: Oops?

It’s almost like Equal opertunity serves society better then trying to force equitability. It’s almost like Free association, is better then trying to force everyone to associate. It’s almost like Freedom from government oversight is better then a government up in every bit of your business. And it’s like Free trade is good for the wealthy - and bad for about everyone else in the long term: Because it’s not about YOUR benefit, it’s a bout the owner classes benefit.

You can’t tax an economy into prosperity, you can’t regulate a nation into prosperity, and you can’t export your industry and become prosperous.

The Democrats and Republicans since about 1965 have worked in concert to offshore industry, tax and regulate domestic businesses out of profitability, printed more money then you can imagine - driving inflation. And the crowning jewel of all of this was killing to gold standard, with a nice improvement to the display of the crown through implementation of Free trade.

If we had a Fair trade arrangement - that allowed for Tariffs that explicitly were put in place to undermine the value of subsidizing foreign production that is exported to your nation, we would have a very different story. If we had an explicit way or costing up production that is done to the detriment of environmental standards - China and such would have had actual pressure to clean up their environmental standards.

Lets explore something that demonstrates the missunderstanding:

I want to talk about China, It’s National Security concern, and Renewables. And yes - these three things are linked HEAVILY.

A lot of people who are pro Renewables will point to China: They can do it. And sure - they can. But what they entirely miss out on, is that to China Renewable energy is THE ONLY OPTION FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE. And Energy independence is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIALLY if you want to be a global power. Energy independence allows the nation to be more aggressive without risk of embargo - for if China were to engage militarily in Taiwan, the shipping lanes in and out of china could be put under blockade, western insurers would basically kill the option to use them to ensure the ships going to/coming from the region - and that would dramatically reduce the amount of oil/gas coming into the nation. It would also limit food entering the nation.

See: A Nation like Canada, or the US, who are each are (or capable of being) food AND energy independent - you can’t exactly siege them. While the last several decades manufacturing in these nations has been lacking, these nations also have tremendous mineral resource availability if they ever choose to start exploiting it at scale again: China has none of this.

Traditionally, this is why China has a strong incentive to facilitate the power of their Empire through Trade (ex. Silk Road). Because they have such need of importing food (especially over the last couple of decades), trade is the only option China has for expanding it’s influence. China CAN NOT use military force without fear of retribution that literally starves out it’s populace of energy, and food. Basically: China is vulnerable to a nation wide siege. And China’s potential greatest Rival: The US, has the absolute means to do this.

So, in order to solve ONE of these problems, China needs Energy Security through renewable. Oddly enough - in the mid term, as China’s populace begins to shrink it will become feasible for China to become food independent as well. Once that occurs, we may very well see China become more aggressive militarily.

Now: Take that same principle and apply it to EVERY SINGLE POLITICAL ISSUE.

When you start to see the agenda’s being pushed - and start ripping down and looking at the underlying motivations which come down to “we don’t want to die” and a couple other core ideas - each of which is very immediate - what we find is both Republicans, and Democrats are prone to ignoring the details in favour of pushing their agenda.

See: Climate change is very much real - the only question is, how much is it human caused? See - the big forest fires in Western Canada/US come down to a couple of things that are piling up over the last 5 or so years. 1. Beavers killed in massive quantities through the 1700’s and 1800’s. 2. Then we have massive fire suppression. 3. Then we have clear cutting of forests. Beavers seems odd - but beavers build damns out of wood, wet wood takes A LONG time to dry, like - from green wood to dry we are talking a year of air drying in near ideal conditions per inch of thickness and the beaver damns are… wet, covered in part by silt, and it’s deep. From the time the water ways start re-routing we are probably talking like 100-150 years for that material to dry out, break down and rot, and otherwise cease helping to maintain moisture in the area. When you suppress fires heavily - underbrush builds up and as it dries, becomes perfect fuel for a forest fire. Then you have the clear cutting which accelerates the drying of the area out. Look at the time lines and: Yep, forest fires will probably remain a problem for another decade or so.

What is going to fix the forests is: Removal of artificial damns (more fish in the water ways), Recovery of Beaver populations (they slow water ways and redirect them - they don’t stop them and control them the same way artificial ones do), and ceasing clear cut in favour of selective cuts and thinning (doing it this way does cost more per log, but - it actually can help the forest grow more lush, and a more limited area of forest support more life as more shrub and such is capable of growing in a way that allows safe spaces for wild life while providing food sources in the form of berries etc).

You know what WILL NOT fix the forest fire situation? Fighting carbon emissions. But that is exactly the argument.

I don’t see republicans, or democrats arguing for sensible long term models for dealing with the problems in a sensible way that can actually solve the problem. I see radical climate denial, and radical human caused arguments - and they aren’t useful, nor helpful but it’s what the media focuses on, it’s what gets spouted, because: It’s easy.

It is ABSOLUTELY functioning as designed. But you have to understand - Tyranny of the Majority; the threat of Religious Despots: Those two things were VERY MUCH in the minds of the founding fathers.

The argument is sometimes said as “they can step in” but in reality, that is up to the rules regulating how votes are cast based on state rules.

But you must first understand: The Founding fathers understood that Tyranny of the Majority could be a serious threat (see religious Tyranny and conflict that has lead to all kinds of problems and persecutions throughout history). It’s complicated.

Now: If you want to argue that election reform is needed in the modern day: I ABSOLUTELY 100% AGREE. I would LOVE to see an abolishoning of first past the post, and party centric electoral voting - in favour of Ranked Choice Ballots where it all pans out through one single vote. But who benefits? Well: It’s not the DNC, and it’s not the GOP: SO good luck getting the constitutional amendment needed to make that a reality.

Thing is: We COULD start - at municipal elections, elections for small positions. That is the BEST place to start but odds are, even there, you are going to have the DNC, and GOP fighting it at every step of the way, because that is a DISASTER for party control over elected officials: After all, in a world of Mass to Mass communication, you don’t need a big party to organize campaign drives - you can set up your social media posts, you can do a tonne of efforts and coordination remotely which means you can be out and talking to people basically anywhere in the country, and still be able to work to coordinate efforts directly.

Just remember for much of the Post WWII era, Congress AND the Senate, and fairly often the presidency was held by the Democrats. It is only really in the wake of the post end of gold standard that the Republican party saw growth in it’s numbers, basically in lock step with inflation. And I don’t mean inflation approved by government made up CPI numbers that are doctored through changing methodology to promote as close to the supposed golden value of 2%, when if we look at most of history the real golden number for inflation was somewhere around 0%. The only benefactors of ending the gold standard were the wealthy. The major benefactors of free trade agreements were the wealthy. The only benefactors of shipping manufacturing to China was Western Governments hell bent on isolating the Soviet Union, when - that was hardly necessary, and practically speaking ineffective.

When people talk about gerrymandering, and so many other issues: What I start to see is a planned distraction, one masking a much older, deeper, and more fundamental truth that eats and rots the foundation.

Pure Fiat has been disastrous for productivity in the West. And that too has been disastrous for birth rates that again, fall in lock step starting with the oil crisis - and continuing on with disastrous fiscal policy, followed by export of good well paying blue collar jobs to foreign nations - removing the value creation from the local economy, and handing it to nations who politically are opposed to the wests way of life.

The only people who were wanting to change that in some way - got assassinated.