Bad money drives out good money; bad people drive out good people

Below is a letter from Stansberry Associates containing Part I of an essay. Part II will follow.  Casey is well known realist, as in buy gold.  Stansberry provides excellent, clear thought regarding the economy and common sense. I selected the images.

The Ascendance of Sociopaths in U.S. Governance, Part I

By Doug Casey 

An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He's diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn't depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise. 

Living as an international man used to be just an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was nothing pressing about becoming an international man. 

Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant, at least if you have a choice, is a suboptimal strategy for surviving and prospering. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America's turn.

For those who can take up the life of an international man, it's no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a life saver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one's roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable. 

Conditions for sociopaths in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.

As any intelligent observer surveys the world's economic and political landscape, he has to be disturbed – even dismayed and a bit frightened – by the gravity and number of problems that mark the horizon. We're confronted by economic depression, looming financial chaos, serious currency inflation, onerous taxation, crippling regulation, developing police states and, worst of all, the prospect of a major war. It seems almost unbelievable that we are talking of the U.S. – which historically has been the land of the free.

How did we get here? An argument can be made that miscalculation, accident, inattention, and the like are why things go bad. Those elements do have a role, but it is minor. Potential catastrophe across the board can't be the result of happenstance. When things go wrong on a grand scale, it's not just bad luck or inadvertence. It's because of serious character flaws in one or many – or even all – of the players.

So is there a root cause of all the problems I've cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems.

In this article, I'm going to argue that the U.S. government, in particular, is being overrun by the wrong kind of person. It's a trend that's been in motion for many years, but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it's institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the U.S. is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.

The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual fabric of the U.S.

What does this mean to the individual? It depends on your character. Are you the kind of person who supports "my country right or wrong," as did most Germans in the 1930s and 1940s, or the kind who dodges the duty to be a helpmate to murderers? The type of passenger who goes down with the ship or the type who puts on his vest and looks for a life boat? The type of individual who supports the merchants who offer the fairest deal or the type who is gulled by splashy TV commercials?

What the ascendancy of sociopaths means isn't an academic question. Throughout history, the question has been a matter of life and death. That's one reason America grew; every American (or any ex-colonial) has forebears who confronted the issue and decided to uproot themselves to go somewhere with better prospects. The losers were those who delayed thinking about the question until the last minute.

I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist's characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities.

You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the U.S. Actually, there's no reason it won't at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts.

On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time. Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, Amin's Uganda, Ceausescu's Romania, or Pol Pot's Cambodia than there are today in the U.S. All you need are favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm.

Conditions for sociopaths in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.

Few of them can imagine that they're shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater. (A reinforced door on the pilots' cabin is probably all that's actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.

What's going on here is an instance of Pareto's Law. That's the 80-20 rule that tells us, for example, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your salesmen or that 20% of the population are responsible for 80% of the crime.

As I see it, 80% of people are basically decent; their basic instincts are to live by the Boy Scout virtues. Twenty percent of people, however, are what you might call potential trouble sources, inclined toward doing the wrong thing when the opportunity presents itself. They might now be shoe clerks, mailmen, or waitresses. They seem perfectly benign in normal times. They play baseball on weekends and pet the family dog. However, given the chance, they will sign up for the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, the TSA, Homeland Security, or whatever. Many are well intentioned, but likely to favor force as the solution to any problem.

But it doesn't end there because 20% of that 20% are really bad actors. They are drawn to government and other positions where they can work their will on other people and, because they're enthusiastic about government, they rise to leadership positions. They remake the culture of the organizations they run in their own image. Gradually, non-sociopaths can no longer stand being there. They leave. Soon the whole barrel is full of bad apples. That's what's happening today in the U.S.

Regards,

Doug Casey

It is easier to rebuke the sociopath when you are not wearing a stripped uniform. Vote to rebuke even if your fellow state citizens remain asleep.

Good News To Know

In the recent "debates." the purported president claimed, to the contrary of his economic policy, that oil production in the United States was dramatically up!  It is true! The lie was that he caused it.

If you can crush an industry, why not claim to be the cause of its resilience?  This is, of course, more evidence of a pathological liar, a sociopath, so if you know anyone who stands with Obama, best recall you can tell people by their friends.

The inability to stop fracking in two or three states, mostly, has resulted in 2012 being the highest recorded extraction of good-ole carbon fuels. Yes. The record.  Below are some notes from Stansbury's letter to put the spike in perspective. Private industry has, once again, slipped around the tedious Big Brother.

I recommend voting to reduce the war on energy so other states, like NY, can join in the windfall.  The later NY waits, the less will be the windfall.  Of course, Democrats do not need revenue from oil, they place taxes on pizza.

All over the world, nations will be resorting to fracking, so the energy crisis is over; the good thing is natural gas will begin to take the place of oil.  This does reduce emissions.

So

 Oil hit a three-month low today at a little more than $88 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude – the U.S. benchmark price – has fallen from $108 a barrel in March… a 19% drop.
The reasons for the decline are twofold – a global economic slowdown and the huge amount of domestic oil production coming online from unconventional shale plays. We'll discuss the latter issue today. 

 We've highlighted North Dakota's Bakken shale region several times recently. It's one of the largest shale plays in the U.S… Its production will soon surpass the Arab nation of Qatar. At 770,000 barrels a day, Qatar is the world's largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and a major oil exporter as a member of OPEC. And the Bakken is only one of the massive shale plays that will contribute billions of barrels of new production (more on those in a bit).
Thanks to new technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), exploration companies can now access resource deposits that were previously uneconomical. And it's leading to a huge glut in domestic energy supply. Consider the latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)… 

 DOE reports domestic fossil-fuel production will reach an all-time high in 2012. At the end of this year, the U.S. will have produced more than 61 quadrillion British thermal units – the energy equivalent of burning 61,000,000,000,000,000 wooden matchsticks – of coal, oil, and natural gas. This meets 83.3% of total annual U.S. energy consumption needs. Five years ago, domestic sources only amounted to 70.5% of total annual consumption. The last time domestic energy production was as high a percentage of consumption was 1990. 

 Over the last four years, domestic natural gas production has increased 20.5%. Domestic oil production is up 24%. The following chart compares 2012 U.S. oil inventories to their 10-year and 28-year historical averages. Current levels are almost off the chart.

 And exploration companies are still finding massive new deposits. Last week, for example, we mentioned Continental Resources' discovery of a new shale oil play called the South-Central Oklahoma Oil Province (SCOOP). Continental is already the No. 1 producer and landowner in the Bakken. And it believes the SCOOP could yield 1.8 billion barrels in the coming decades. 

 Now, two new reports have surfaced regarding the Marcellus shale gas deposit…
The Marcellus shale lies beneath parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. The U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) most recent estimates had pegged Marcellus' gas reserves at 141 trillion cubic feet.
But the Associated Press reports industry analysts believe this number is "grossly understated." A Standard & Poor's report says the Marcellus may contain "almost half the proven natural gas reserves in the U.S." And a report from analysts at ITG Investment Research says the EIA's estimates don't correspond to actual well production. The firm estimates the Marcellus holds 330 trillion cubic feet of gas. That's more than double the reserves of the next-largest U.S. field, the Eagle Ford in southern Texas. 

 It's not just the size of the U.S. shale oil and gas revolution that is amazing… it's also the speed of production. 

The Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. will be in a virtual tie with Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by the end of next year. In 2012, U.S. oil production rose 7% to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. It's the fourth-straight year of increases and the biggest one-year gain since 1951.

Saudi Arabia's daily oil output is 11.6 million barrels. Analysts expect Saudi production to remain flat through 2017… but U.S. production continues to surge at astounding rates. Citibank predicts the U.S. will produce 13 million to 15 million barrels per day by the end of the decade.

So, I am looking forward to $2.00 gas in the mid term!  (Then, again, BIg Brother will add more taxes) Natural gas will eventually creep up from its very low price, now, as we start exporting it and have a new market to compete for product.

Query

I better publish a blog as I seem to have people visiting.

Here is my current thought, too long for Twitter.  I read over, as best a non-scientist could, a formal study of crows eating flesh containing prions and, then, spreading it. I never internalized crows eat meat.  I just won't trust crows, anymore.  I used to have  seagulls as my spirit guide, but after watching them, I realized they caught fish, flew high, then dropped them on the ground. Then, they would  descend and eat the eyes of the stunned and dying fish.

Perhaps, that is a good spirit lesson. Perhaps, that is how we should live.

PLOA ONE has a report:

Prion Remains Infectious after Passage through Digestive System of American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos)

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• Abstract
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Kurt C. VerCauteren^*, John L. Pilon^¤a, Paul B. Nash^¤b,Gregory E. Phillips, Justin W. Fischer

United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America

=======================================

My concern is the use of the word "infectious."  My concern is the preservation of logic and language in the face of common use and understanding. Of course, I know exactly what the doctors mean, but communication, right here, is not my concern.

My argument may seem too finicky, but in my vigorous maturity, I do not think so. Let me take you through my concern.  

Here is a good medical definition of infection:

infection  (n-fkshn)The invasion of the body of a human or an animal by a pathogen such as a bacterium, fungus, or virus. Infections can be localized, as in pharyngitis, or widespread as in sepsis, and are often accompanied by fever and an increased number of white blood cells. Individuals with immunodeficiency syndromes are predisposed to certain infections. See also infectious diseaseopportunistic infection

Then,

path·o·gen (pth-jn) n. An agent that causes disease, especially a living microorganism such as a bacterium, virus, or fungus.

The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007, 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

As with all definition cascades, you eventually wind up with a blurry area that no one  notices for the sake of communication, which requires the illusion of precision

Here we wonder what an "agent" is, in the face of a dealing with prijons. They could be in the sense that they cause an effect, but, now, is that effect is called a "disease." Probably, I guess one cold say that, but here is the problem. The failure to methodically define and use terms creates a subtle change in languange, making communication difficult the more years that pass. Put aside the successful communication of the title and think about how language needs to be defended.

A prion is not alive, so it is not a "pathogen" or, is it, now? Either way, a prion should not be "infecting," unless we enlarge the meaning of infect. If we do that, we better announce it; better, we should create a new concept. 

prion[prī′on]one of several kinds of proteinaceous particles believed to be responsible for transmissible neurodegenerative diseases, including scrapie in sheep and kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Because prions lack detectable nucleic acid, they are not inactivated by the usual procedures for destroying viruses. They also do not trigger an immune response.
Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.

If we change the meaning of infect to include the reprogramming by the prion of live cells, that is not, to me, an instance of a growing language. It is making the language sloppy. People, including scientists, will think of a prion as something akin to a bacteria or virus, but that is a tremendously incorrect view. It is not alive; hence, it cannot be killed.  There is no vaccine against an inert particle.  The common person has to understand this, but will not if scientists are blase about the meaning of words.

Even if a prion is properly a pathogen, some distinction must be made at the level of scientists. Otherwise, what happens, next, is high school teachers become self-proclamed gods and announce incorrect definitions that, over time, wind up in politicians' heads. These turds will use any pretext to use science to justify massive projects to fund. 

Look at "global cooling" in 1976, that changed to "warming" in the period of no warming, and is, now, "climate change."  This morphing is accepted by many and is supposed overcome objections to technical matters, bad math, lying, etc. The political types figure who can argue with "climate change," a malleable tool with no meaning to attack.

An appreciation of what a climate means makes the whole concept even less defensible. Few understand the magnitude of the word "climate." Climate is not the past four years in North America or 100 years anywhoere. Climate change is not the recent growth of ice in Antarctica. It is not a warm summer in New York City. Climate includes weather which is the changeable item." Of course, no one can say how weather changes; I should not say no one, we do have the U.N. The conversations are either gibberish or, if in-house and without discernment, commonly appreciated error. 

It seems a harmless to say prion are infectious, but that is dangerously misleading.  It sounds OK and we know what it means, but the lack of precisions at the base of knowledge leads to Babel. 

I do not see how proper work can be accomplished in a mass of imprecise assumptions. 

Epstein on Political Philosophy

I recommend listening to Richard Epstein, follow him, made on the John Batchelor show, for a substantive discussion of how libertarians see conservatives, the GOP.

Here

The interview is about the 20 minute mark.