Visiting the Holy Grail

A YouTube recording I recently watched brought to mind the thought that many people in the US --or at least border officials-- might think outsiders consider the USA to be the Holy Grail.

I've had my own experiences that testify to the ludicrous nature of US border officials, but I must agree that the attitude of the Canadian man in the linked recording was definitely confrontational almost from the start.  In fact when you consider that the recording was likely made in anticipation of something happening, you might wonder if it was done in order to deliberately provoke some kind of reaction.  After all, why would a completely innocent person, who had absolutely no agenda, even want to record such an event unless, perhaps, they had been continually subjected to unpleasant treatment in the past.

A great number of US officials who I have had contact with have been so much less welcoming than they might have been leading me to wonder if the DHS has an unstated mandate to disingratiate as many visitors as possible.

In fairness, however, take note that this video is about 3 years old, and earlier this year I was surprised at how pleasantly we were processed when we arrived at the immigration inspection when passing through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.  On the flight which took us to DFW airport, a video was shown which depicted a warm welcome being given to arriving visitors by US border personnel and I commented to my wife that I'd be amazed if what we were to experience was even half as pleasant as what the video portrayed.  In fact, I was so favourably impressed by the improvement we experienced that I even complimented the official who processed our entry.

While I'd still think that there's too much of a hassle for passengers in-transit, now, at least there is a glimmer of hope that visitors to the US might not need to be afraid of one-day being water-boarded just for stepping on the soil of the USA.

Symbol of American Failure

The term "American" may a symbol of its greatest failure.  Term is closely related to the notion of manifest destiny which is the dream of uniting all of the countries in America into one gargantuan nation which would be called the United States of America.

This was never declared as a specific plan or objective, but has been almost openly pursued by some US presidents and there is evidence that the idea of creating one super-nation may have been in the back of the minds of at least a few of the founding fathers when they created the US constitution. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Monroe, wrote that "it is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent."

The plan never played out but the notion lived on and through a distorted sense of democracy it might be considered justifiable to expropriate the name "American" as a moniker for  exclusive use of the USA.  While the number of states involved in the union is a majority of the separate states in all of America, the union represents a majority only if it is agreed that each state has only one vote, but it is far from a majority of all the people in the area.

A search of "population of America" in Google returns a result for the population of the United States of 319 million whereas the population of South America is 387 million, Central America is estimated at some 47 million and we still haven't included the populations of Mexico and Canada which add another 140 million to the equation. The total population of the Americas is well over 893 million of which 319 is barely over a third.

The use of the term "American" is widely rejected throughout Latin America and is considered by many to be an inappropriate misuse of the term to describe a person or any thing which is specifically attached to only the United States.  In Spanish the denomyn for a US citizen is "estadounidense," and the official Spanish dictionary states its view quite plainly: 

But the use of americano to refer exclusively to inhabitants of the United States should be avoided; this abusive usage is explained by the fact that U.S. citizens often use the abbreviated name América (in English, without an accent) to refer to their country. One should not forget that América is the name of the entire continent and all who inhabit it are americanos.        Translation from Wikipedia 

It is clear that anyone from the US who wants to make friends with others in the rest of the Americas, would be wise in employing another term and although they may have a long list of reasons to take pride in the country where they were born, they might reconsider the word they use when that word, in itself, reflects a dream that has never been realized.

Calling spades spades

To anyone who knows me it would not come as a surprise that I believe in the precepts of free-market capitalism (FMC).

T hat being said, it is also vital to recognize that I do not condone any and all actions that are taken or promoted under the banner of FMC. I also feel it is important to take into account the fact that there has never—ever—been a country which has been a 100% pure FMC economy.

To my recollection the USA, even at it’s very inception, was a mixture and it has moved more and more away from FMC every year even though it is popularly held up to be the exemplary model of FMC.  Perhaps, it is still the most free of all the countries today—although there may be much reason to doubt that—it is still far from a pure FMC and should, in reality, be called something else.

With this background I wish to express some doubts that I’ve had in recent times which grow out of the increasing concerns—both in number and loudness—that I’ve been hearing about the movement of the US towards a socialistic or communistic economy.

The crux of my concern is the connection which is always shown between the horrible actions of major communistic movements in the past in terms of genocide and suffering.

The questions which I am asking is what is there in socialism or communism that is inherently violent, or that makes a nation which adopts these systems to start killing off people on a large scale.

Yes, we can look at a large sampling of nations and name leaders like Mao Zedong, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, etc and show that under them millions of people perished.  I’m not arguing about these facts … but the thing that I am asking is whether it is the system that is at fault, or the person or people who were flawed.

From the evidence I’ve seen I have little doubt that the most efficient way for an economy to operate is the FMC model, but that, in itself, doesn’t make the other systems inherently evil, just as travelling in an ox cart is slower than a bicycle, comparing the two needs to be done on the basis of what you wish to achieve and not on the personalities of the famous people who have used ox carts or bicycles.

What this point of view raises is another issue which is possibly more vital to our future than the exact mixture of economic systems which we use:  the issue is that some individuals are possibly much more inclined to abuse power than others.

With this in mind, then we need to concern ourselves with two points:  1) Identifying who are most likely to abuse power and 2) Limiting the power which they can have so as to limit the damage which they can do.

Technorati Tags: economics,USA,communism,socialism,free market

Global Warming, Population growth, and Petroleum Reserves

YouTube - The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (part 1 of 8)

This professor has some impeccable math, and a very clear explanation of how it can be applied. I highly recommend it, however I do not agree with his logic. He doesn't take into account the fact that innumerable situations in which this kind of exponential growth have never occurred, that something -- usually completely unexpected -- have happened to prevent the disaster from culminating.

This does not excuse us from acting sensibly in dealing with issues which face us either now or in the future. Using the issue of global warming, as an example, whether or not you agree that it is a real problem, it does not make sense to continue to pollute our environment with abandon.

Devaluation in the works?

In watching the TV reports of the US budget along with all the commentary and analysis I was suddenly stuck by an odd realization: This year is two thousand nine, next year is twenty-ten. What happened to the other one thousand nine hundred and eighty (2000 less 20)?

I realize that this is an acceptable alternative way of speaking about the year, but still it strikes me a bit odd that for the first 9 years of this centry we used one form and then in the 10th year we switch to another. Is there any rational explanation for this?

There's another thing that occurred to me in mulling this over. Maybe, this is the way the politicians plan to deal with the massive debt and deficits which the US government is running and planning. Divide a trillion by 100 and it becomes 10 billion. Doesn't sound quite as bad, does it?

Is the US dollar going to be devalued during the Obama administration?