Joe Withrow's Blog, page 29

Reworking Higher Education

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

Reworking Higher Education

January 26, 2016

Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Monday at $1,877. Gold closed at $1,108 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $29.77 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.02%. Bitcoin is trading around $395 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

“I am too happy to be snowed in with my family! ” Wife Rachel scolded me for suggesting she wasn’t enthused about the snow days in my last journal entry.

“Well honey, the art of story-telling requires a little flare every now and then…”

“But you make me sound like a bad… oh crap, now you are going to use this in your next article!”

She makes it too easy for me.

We ended up with about sixteen inches of snow on the ground when the flakes finally tapered off on Saturday afternoon. For me it is the simple things that make this life so special, and I can think of nothing more simply special than a snowy weekend in the mountains filled with family, food, fire, and french-pressed coffee with a splash of Irish cream.

Little Madison was especially happy to have an entire weekend of uninterrupted play with both mommy and daddy home. For my part, I am continuously amazed at how rapidly her growth and development progresses. I was amazed when Maddie learned basic sign-language from her mother as an infant. I was amazed again this weekend when she brought her sign-language book to me, sat on my lap, and then proceeded to read the book to her dad page-by-page.

Watching my little girl’s unfettered creativity and zeal for learning, I can’t help but turn my thoughts to the state of “education” today. I have written a fair amount about primary education previously. Watching Madison in action has convinced me that it is possible for anyone to craft a world-class primary education by leveraging non-interventionist principles with modern technology. I have written very little about higher education, however, and that’s where my thoughts migrated to today.

There is a budding populist sentiment here in the U.S., championed by Bernie Sanders on the political stage, suggesting that college should be tuition-free and debt-free. I think those folks are accurately pointing out the fact that sky-rocketing tuitions have created a situation where a college degree is often not worth the mountain of debt it comes with for many people.

I certainly think that was the case for me. I took on significant debt to major in business at a public university. I have come to find out, however, that a public university – being completely sheltered from market forces and populated by professors who have never worked a day in the private sector – is pretty much the last place you should go to learn about business. It took me five years to realize I had been fed bad ideas and faulty economics, and it took me nearly another five years to drop all of the acquired poor habits and dig out of the financial hole.

Wife Rachel’s case is even more extreme. She majored in nutrition and dietetics at a major public university and came out with nearly four times more debt than I did. Then she found out that the nutrition job market was pretty much non-existent. Somehow she ended up in corporate banking which is where she met, and eventually married, me. I’ll have to ask her if I was worth taking on all of that debt.

But here’s what’s even worse – or perhaps more humorous if you are a semi-stoic optimist philosopher – she could have gone online to a handful of credible websites and learned everything worth knowing about health and nutrition in her spare time for free. No student loans required. Hah!

So I do think Mr. Sanders and his supporters are on to something here. But then they start proposing solutions and I can’t help but notice that their solutions actually aren’t solutions at all.

Make college free? That doesn’t address any core issues. In fact, it’s worse than a non-solution because it would require them, using the police-power of government, to steal a lot of money from some people and to force other people to do things against their will in order to implement. Personally, I think civilization functions best when you adhere to a pretty simple philosophy: Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.

Now to be fair, it’s not like the presidential candidates on the other side of the aisle are champions of liberty and non-intervention either. There have been absurd and downright horrifying proposals coming from the red team also. But people love to divide themselves up into teams and rally together against the other guys so the masses continue to cheer the circus on. Personally, I am more fond of H.L. Mencken’s perspective: “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

Enough about politics, however, let’s get back to higher education. As with everything, the solutions to sky-rocketing tuitions are individualist in nature simply because everybody is different. Everybody has different skills, interests, passions, and goals. It is up to each individual, preferably with a little guidance from parents or someone more experienced, to determine how to structure their own education so that it is in alignment with their personal skills, interests, passions, and goals.

This will require a fundamental shift in thinking about higher education. College is currently viewed as the path to employment, and a college degree is seen as your ticket to a job. This way of thinking views higher education as a credentializing system, and it turns colleges into diploma mills. Then wife Rachel pays nearly six-figures for a nutrition degree and a few sorority parties.

Within this paradigm, all that matters is completing the approved curriculum to earn the degree. Personal development is secondary to becoming credentialed. Since the degree equates to credentials which equates to a good job, nearly all high school kids are steered towards college and financed by the federal government which drives costs up and quality down.

To match higher education up with individual circumstances, college would need to be viewed as something of a personal development tool rather than a diploma mill. In this light, it is up to individual students and families to determine whether or not a college education is suitable given their personal goals and interests.

Some students would be much better served by learning a trade, finding an apprenticeship, and making a little money right away rather than rushing off to college. After all, there’s nothing that says they can’t change their mind later. Maybe they would work a trade for twenty years, raise a family, build a financial nest egg, and then take up a totally different second career. Maybe this would entail going to college later in life; maybe it wouldn’t.

Business-minded and entrepreneurial students would likely be much better off by networking with successful business owners in the community – locally or online – in order to learn about how real-world businesses operate. One way to do this would be by identifying a business of interest and offering to work for free for an agreed upon period of time to learn the ropes. They could always work somewhere else part-time to pay the bills during this free apprenticeship period. Or, if they had crafted a world-class primary education, maybe they would already have an online business or two throwing off a little cash-flow to cover expenses.

Entrepreneurship requires patience, persistence, and a ton of trial-and-error. It is extremely difficult to dive into the entrepreneurial world with existing debt burdens hanging overhead because revenue is often sporadic and unpredictable at first. Not only does college not teach anything meaningful about entrepreneurship, but the requisite student loans make the entrepreneurial path unfeasible for new graduates.

Students interested in more specialized fields like engineering or dentistry (I wouldn’t recommend nutrition – see above) would probably need to go the college route. Although I think it would be possible to learn these fields via an apprenticeship model, licensing laws require you to have completed formal education in many of these specialized areas. But these students have an individual solution available also – they could take advantage of the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) to test out of the first two years of college. That would cut their financing costs in half. And, over the long-term, college tuitions would necessarily drop dramatically if far fewer kids were going to college because they were learning trades and starting businesses instead.

Even history-buffs and philosophers would benefit from viewing higher education as a personal development tool rather than credentializing service. Maybe they would still major in history, philosophy, or sociology in college, but they would not be under the impression that their degree would yield them lucrative employment and they would not be mortgaging their financial sovereignty in exchange. Instead, they would pursue their chosen curriculum because they felt like it would help them to grow and develop personally, whatever that may mean to them individually.

These students could test out of the first two years of college using the CLEP program as well. Of course the Internet provides access to a plethora of information regarding history, philosophy, and sociology at no additional cost, so going to college for these majors is more of a novelty than a necessity since the job market outside of teaching is pretty much non-existent in these fields.

The beauty of such an approach to higher education is that everybody wins. Or at least everyone gets to make their own decisions for their own reasons. The above examples are the most practical applications that I can think of off-hand, but there are plenty of other applications and possibilities that will occur to others. There is no one-size-fits all plan. The key is a fundamental shift in thinking, as well as a respect for the uniqueness of every individual.

By the way, the opportunity to take this approach already exists. Nothing at all needs to change about the current system for individuals and families to custom-tailor their higher education in an affordable way. While college degrees are still viewed as essential, my experience suggests that they are becoming irrelevant to employers outside of the specialized fields. I worked as an officer with signing authority at two major mega-banks, and not once was I asked a question about my degree or my education – not even when I interviewed for my first corporate job. If you are polite, hard working, well-read, and well-spoken then you are employable whether or not you have a parchment with an institutional seal on it.

The economy is changing rapidly thanks to modern technology, the Internet, instantaneous communication, and decentralized peer-to-peer networks. From my perspective, the current educational model does not prepare kids for the world in which they live. I would go so far as to say that many of the social problems the politicians campaign on endlessly are simply symptoms of this dynamic. That’s the bad news.

The good news is: the solutions are not terribly difficult to implement and they certainly aren’t political in nature. Higher education is not compatible with the plug-n-play model; it is intensely individualist in nature. The more the current model continues to devolve, the more people will recognize that they have the ability to take control over their own education to make it less costly and more suitable for them individually. This type of change does not stem from elections, legislation, or edicts; it stems from a fundamental shift in thinking within the minds of individuals… one-by-one.

More to come,

 

 

 

Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions, please read The Individual is Rising: 2nd Edition. The Individual is Rising is available through Amazon and at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. Please sign up for the mailing list to be notified of other projects as they come to fruition.

The post Reworking Higher Education appeared first on Zenconomics - an Independent Financial Blog.

Blending Timeless Simplicity with Modern Technology

submitted by jwithrow.

Click here to get the Journal of a Wayward Philosopher by Email

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

Blending Timeless Simplicity with Modern Technology

January 22, 2016

Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Thursday at $1,869. Gold closed at $1,100 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $29.75 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.02%. Bitcoin is trading around $395 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

Two inches of snow covers the ground here in the mountains of Virginia this morning, and the falling flakes show no sign of stopping. At the Withrow Estate we have a fire in the hearth, coffee in the pot, and pancakes on the griddle. I pause and smile as I hear the sounds of a laughing toddler, a lovely wife, and a loyal dog emanating from the Great Room.

The weather forecast suggests another twelve to twenty-four inches of snow are on the way this weekend. There will be no salt trucks or snow plows venturing out to the gravel road that connects our property with the rest of the world which means we will not be going anywhere for a few days. Wife Rachel, a wedding coordinator at the nearby mountain resort, has already rescheduled the various events and tastings she had booked this weekend in anticipation of our snow days. She is not terribly enthused about being snowed in for the weekend, but I can think of nothing more serene. In fact, a number of years ago I had a fleeting vision of this exact occurrence.

Back then my life was much different. It was much faster, much louder, more stressful, and much more mindless.

Working at the corporate headquarters of a major mega-bank meant I had very little time and energy for anything else during the week. I lived in a sprawling 300-house suburban development in which every third or fourth house looked exactly alike except for different color siding.

I awoke every morning to the screech of an alarm clock. After one or two snoozes I would jump out of bed, hurriedly shower and get ready for work, hop in my car and point it in the direction of the interstate. I would fight rush hour traffic to get to the light-rail station a few exits down where I would park in a three story parking garage and hope I didn’t miss the 7:35 train.

There are few gloomier ways to start your morning than riding a light-rail downtown with other corporate bankers, accountants, lawyers, and analysts. A simple glance around made it very clear that not a single person en route to work was excited about his upcoming day. A foreboding pall seemed to linger in the air.

Sometimes you would get a good seat or standing corner where you could tune out the dullness in peace. Sometimes you would get a bad spot and run the risk of a very foul smelling person sitting next to you. Sometimes the train had been held up for whatever reason and you were forced to pack in sideways like sardines in a can because the train was carrying both the 7:25 and the 7:35 passengers. One time a poorly-spoken but very enthusiastic lady yelled for five minutes about how the world was coming to an end. In that moment I may have believed her.

Upon arriving at the station downtown it was a scramble to scurry off of the train and walk the two or three blocks to the office buildings. Everyone was in the same boat – be logged into the system by 8:00 am or run the risk of having a chat with the boss.

The urgency diminished once you were logged in, however. For some employees, thirty minute coffee breaks were the first task on the daily agenda after logging in. You see, what’s important in the corporate banking world is following protocol and adhering to institutional systems. Logging in by 8 am is of the utmost importance; what you do after that incurs much less scrutiny so long as you follow the crowd.

This dynamic was very strange to me at first. The 24-year old version of me took to his first corporate job with the attitude that he would out-work and out-produce everyone in sight. And for the most part he did initially.

To his surprise, however, there was very little incentive to do so. As long as base goals were met the boss hardly cared, the bonuses were arbitrary, and the coworkers told him to stop working so hard and to stop being so darn happy all the time. Then the company implemented an expensive third-party software/systems package that added unnecessary bureaucracy and bottlenecks which made it difficult for the entire team of forty-or-so associates to meet the same monthly production numbers that 24-year old me, and numerous others, had been doing single-handedly.

24-year old me could not comprehend why in the world the company would sabotage the production capacity of one of its own departments. “You are making a mistake!“, I shouted.

Now I understand such behavior is par for the course across corporate banking and across all of government. It wasn’t a mistake, there was a sweetheart deal in there somewhere. Needless to say that was when I decided to exit the rat-race, but I had no idea how I would do so until several years later.

So I trudged along the rat-race for a bit longer, jumping ship to a different mega-bank only to find the work equally unfulfilling. But as my escape plan began to take shape, I began to envision days just like today. I began to envision a life that blended timeless simplicity with modern technology. Then the message would pop up on my computer screen informing me of another pointless meeting that had just been scheduled and the vision would fade.

So it went for several years, and during that time period I did not seriously think I would be able to realize my vision. But then I woke up this morning and the vision was reality.

If you are interested, my flagship course: Finance for Freedom: Master Your Finances in 30 Days will walk you through the analysis and strategies I used to escape the rat-race and attain my once-fleeting vision.

Instead of fighting rush hour traffic, my mornings are now spent sipping coffee and working on projects that are meaningful to me. Instead of a boss, the only person I have to answer to is a beautiful little toddler. Instead of a drab conference room, my Friday meetings take place on the side of a mountain behind my home with dog Boomer leading the way. Instead of a loud sports bar downtown, my weekend entertainment consists of a glass of fine whiskey beside a crackling fire.

I successfully traded noise, stress, and complexity for the timeless simplicity of country living. Twenty years ago such a trade would have required me to sacrifice certain conveniences and endeavors in exchange. With modern technology that’s no longer the case.

This secluded property at the end of a gravel road deep in the mountains of Virginia is connected to the World Wide Web via fiber-optics Internet service. With a click of a button on Amazon.com I can order products originating from anywhere in the world and they show up at my doorstep a couple days later. I live in the most sparsely populated county in Virginia twenty minutes away from the nearest town which happens to be the third-least populated city in the state. Despite this, I drink coffee from Seattle, tea from Japan, and hot cocoa from South America. To the extent possible I purchase locally raised meat and locally grown vegetables, but you can’t get too far in my home without finding an electronic device or trinket that says “Made in China” or “Made in Vietnam” on the back of it.

A wireless router enables me to write these journal entries from my side deck in total privacy with nothing around but an occasional deer and the rugged cliffs looking down at me from a distance. I follow the financial markets daily and I receive financial publications from all over the country instantaneously by email. I am able to earn a little income from various online ventures without leaving the comforts of my home office. Some of this income even comes in the form of a digital cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. My finance course has reached users in 117 different countries. From my secluded mountain property I periodically communicate with people from all over the world – all thanks to modern technology.

This dynamic is completely unprecedented in history, and I don’t think the global implications of this technological functionality are yet understood. One of my favorite books, The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, saw much of this technological advancement coming back in 1999, and the authors took the time to flesh out many of the socio-political implications. Examining the world from my philosopher’s perch today, it strikes me that they were very prescient in their foresight.

Not to stray too far from the point, modern technology enables individuals to seek their own tranquil simplicity without sacrificing modern comforts or their standard of living.

It has occurred to me more recently that simplicity is not derived from external conditions, however; nor is it derived from isolation or inaction. Instead, simplicity is found within.

Originally I thought inner peace and happiness followed simplicity. Now I know, as is often the case, I had it exactly backwards. One must find inner peace and happiness first; simplicity will follow.

For this reason, simplicity is not exclusively tied to a secluded mountain home. For some it is found in the heart of the city. For others it is found in a far-away land. For some it is just a matter of opening their eyes.

Here’s what it comes down to: individuals must create their own reality or else it will be created for them. This concept has been expanded upon by numerous thinkers over the years, but I think Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich may have spelled it out best.

As Marcus Aurelius pointed out nearly 2,000 years ago, your life is a mirror image of your thoughts. Years ago I had a vision of blending timeless simplicity with modern technology to create a peaceful and prosperous life of my own making. Today I woke up to snow in the mountains…

At nearly 2,000 words, this journal entry has veered to the verbose side. Wife Rachel keeps telling me to keep these entries shorter, and I always agree to do so. Maybe next time, I suppose. In the spirit of simplicity, I want to leave you today with a quote that came across my desk this week. I found it profound, perhaps you will too.

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

More to come,

 

 

 

Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions, please read The Individual is Rising: 2nd Edition. The Individual is Rising is available through Amazon and at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. Please sign up for the mailing list to be notified of other projects as they come to fruition.

The post Blending Timeless Simplicity with Modern Technology appeared first on Zenconomics - an Independent Financial Blog.

Lessons From a Toddler

submitted by jwithrow.

Click here to get the Journal of a Wayward Philosopher by Email

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

Lessons From a Toddler

January 13, 2016

Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Tuesday at $1,938. Gold closed at $1,085 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $30.44 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.10%. Bitcoin is trading around $430 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

The thermometer reads 4 degrees here in Hot Springs as I sit down to write this morning. Actually, it is my smart phone’s weather app that reads 4 degrees, but I trust it to be accurate give or take a degree. A light dusting of snow covers the ground and the crisp blue winter sky sprawls out overhead. As I place another log on the fire, I can’t help but think: the natural order is a beautiful thing for those who take the time to appreciate it.

I have always had an appreciation for nature’s tranquil beauty, but it is taking on a new meaning for me as I watch my 14-month old toddler grow and develop. The more I observe little Maddie at play, the more I realize a little-understood truth: there is no teaching; only learning.

This concept is as strange to the world as the world must be to a child, but I am beginning to appreciate it more and more. The world sees children as empty vessels to be filled with proper ideologies and dogma, and it attempts to teach, preach, reward, and punish at every opportunity.

However I am beginning to see children not as vessels to be filled, but as candles to be lit. Provide them with love, support, freedom, positivity, and watch them go! To watch a child at play is to observe God at work.

Fourteen months ago Madison was completely helpless and immobile. Today she can crawl, walk, talk, communicate using sign language, drink from a cup, and feed herself. She has learned how to sit on chairs, climb stairs, and ease herself off of the bed. She has learned the names and can identify everyone she comes into contact with, even those who she sees infrequently. She can identify many numbers, letters, shapes, and colors as well.

She learned all of this by simply observing and experiencing the world around her. Sure, the adults in her life communicated names, numbers, letters, shapes, and colors to her, but only within the context of play. Madison learned by seeing, hearing, and doing things she was interested in – not by being ‘taught’.

I attempted to flesh out and extrapolate the practical applications of this concept in the education reform chapter of my book The Individual is Rising. I was operating solely on high-conviction theory when I wrote that chapter, and I am more confident than ever in the theory of Peaceful Parenting now that I have seen it in action.

I always suspected that I would have much to learn from little Madison as well, but I am a little surprised at what those lessons have been. Of course it turns out the lessons have been exactly what I needed at this point in time. Funny how that works.

Prior to my daughter’s birth I considered myself to be a person of strong will and calm mind. Then I discovered that you only know the strength of your will and calmness of your mind when an infant is screaming for a reason you must decipher, and, later, when a toddler is throwing a fit because she wants something you would prefer her not have for safety reasons.

Needless to say, I was not as strong-willed and calm-minded as I thought. I found myself cringing at every whimper and desperately reacting to every cry in an attempt to “solve” the problem. Even when Maddie was perfectly content I found myself sitting on the edge of my chair waiting for the next outburst. Wife Rachel, armed with her motherly instincts and much better suited for the transition, found me quite insufferable.

This went on for as long as I resisted the lesson my daughter was facilitating for me. Then, after this had gone on for months, the lesson slapped me in the face. I guess it got tired of waiting for me to catch on. I happened to dust off my copy of Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman and the lesson jumped right off the page.

A Warrior acts, only a fool reacts.

What a fool I was! My tense reactions created a tense atmosphere that led to more tense reactions.

There are actually two lessons to learn from this; one obvious and the other hidden. The obvious lesson, of course, was for me to act calmly when appropriate and to cease with the nervous reactions. I learned this lesson within the context of raising a toddler, but its application is universal.

Those of calm mind mold the world around them.

You poke a person whose mind is not calm and he flinches. You prick him and he gets angry. The person of calm mind remains steadfast in his purpose. He does not flinch, nor does he get angry because to do so would be counterproductive. You cannot control what happens to you, but you can 100% control how you respond to it. Strive to act in a loving, positive way at all times and your life will be filled with fulfillment.

The hidden lesson is this: be in the moment. The only way to have a calm mind is to live in the present. The only way to be prepared to act with purpose at all times it to be present in the moment at all times. A Warrior acts, only a fool reacts.

Every time I felt the urge to desperately react to an external occurrence was when my mind was fretting over something I needed to do in the future. At first I struggled with this lesson because I think planning for the future is tremendously important. How can you live solely in the present when you have a business to build, investments to manage, and a daughter’s education to plan?

Then it occurred to me: a well-conceived but flexible long term plan actually enables you to live in the present. Set the plan and follow it for as long as conditions remain the same. When conditions dictate that you alter the plan, do so, and then get back to now.

My happiness has increased tenfold since I ceased reacting and began living in the present. I suspect wife Rachel no longer finds me insufferable because of this. I have noticed that Madison has had fewer “tantrums” since I began striving to exude an aura of positivity. Thank goodness her stubborn Dad finally learned the lessons he needed to learn.

I suspect there will be more lessons from a toddler to come…

More to come,

 

 

 

Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions, please read The Individual is Rising: 2nd Edition. The Individual is Rising is available through Amazon and at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. Please sign up for the mailing list to be notified of other projects as they come to fruition.

The post Lessons From a Toddler appeared first on Zenconomics - an Independent Financial Blog.

The Self-Referential Awakening – Heeding the Warrior’s Call

submitted by jwithrow.

Click here to get the Journal of a Wayward Philosopher by Email

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

The Self-Referential Awakening – Heeding the Warrior’s Call

January 4, 2016

Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Friday at $2,044. Gold closed at $1,060 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $37.07 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.27%. Bitcoin is trading around $431 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

Happy New Year! As I touched on in my last journal entry, I expect 2016 to be a very interesting year in the financial markets. Credit has been expanding and interest rates have been falling for more than three decades now, but 2016 may be the year those trends reverse.

The “authorities” will fight such a trend reversal with everything they have, but Mr. Market will eventually assert himself. Trees don’t grow to the sky, as they say. For a more detailed look at the prominent macroeconomic trends of our time, as well as how to position your finances accordingly, please see our online course Finance for Freedom: Master Your Finances in 30 Days.

Moving from finance to philosophy…

Socrates: Everyone wants to tell you what to do and what’s good for you. They don’t want you to find your own answers, they want you to believe theirs.

Dan: Let me guess, and you want me to believer yours.

Socrates: No, I want you to stop gathering information from the outside and start gathering it from the inside.

This dialogue is from a book by Dan Millman titled Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and I think it is an excellent way to start this entry. I will warn you: I know what I want to say, but I am not exactly sure how to communicate it so what follows will be unfiltered, unwashed, and likely controversial in reputable circles. I must also issue a disclaimer: I believe the historical references that follow to be true and accurate – to the extent that historical references can be true and accurate – but I am not an expert historian so I apologize in advance for any over-simplications.

Societies, all throughout history, seem to be organized around and driven by commonly-held beliefs. Yuval Noah Harari fleshed this concept out in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanind. Harari calls these commonly-held beliefs “myths” that enable groups of people to undertake large-scale operations. Mind you, Harari doesn’t suggest that these “myths” are necessarily false, he simply points out that they are powered by collective thought and action.

As best I can tell, societies tend (though not always) to uphold common beliefs that are relatively fair and tolerant when they originally form. I am going to focus on Western Civilization in this entry because that’s what I know, but the same cycles seem to play out in all civilizations throughout history.

Western Civilization was based on Judeo-Christian principles. These principles created a standard of conduct that stood above earthly institutions, and they placed morality and responsibility in the hands of the individual. This was a distinct break from the Greco-Roman standard that emphasized wise rulers and gracious gods as the source of personal well-being.

A quick look at the Christian Gospels demonstrates the core of Judeo-Christian principles. Jesus of Nazareth was constantly calling out the Sadducees and Pharisees as hypocrites, serpents, and vipers because they were proponents of the rule of men rather than the rule of God. In other words, they saw obedience to earthly authority as more important than obedience to personal morality. Matthew 15 characterizes this concept perfectly:

Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” He answered and said to them, “Why do you transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?”

Jesus and his disciples were individualist outsiders who did not go along with the collective insanity of their time and this was at the heart of Judeo-Christian philosophy. Judeo-Christian principles emphasized the primacy of the individual over the State and established power institutions, but they also required personal responsibility and morality.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you was the golden rule and from this simple statement common law, contract law, and market capitalism developed and evolved over centuries of Western tradition.

As societies grow in size and wealth they tend towards centralization – the institutionalization of social instruments via a “ruling” administrative hierarchy – and this is exactly what has happened to Western Civilization. This process inevitably transfers emphasis away from the individual and toward the collective, and it tends to corrupt the original societal “myths”.

As the central power structure grows, so too does the burden upon the economy, and it becomes more and more necessary for society to suppress individual thoughts and actions that run counter to the accepted paradigm.

That’s where Western Civilization is today. The golden rule has been replaced by “Do unto others what you can get away with”. Common law has been replaced by arbitrary legislation (to the tune of 70,000 new pages per year in the U.S.). Contract law has been replaced by lawyers, lobbyists, and regulators. The principles of individual liberty, free markets, and free enterprise have all been seriously dulled down over the past century.

The suppression of opposing schools of thought begins with semi-compulsory institutionalized education which places an emphasis on politically correct narratives and rewards mindless compliance. By the time they have completed their University studies, most students have internalized nearly all elements of the public narrative and they will meet any opposing thoughts with ridicule and hostility. Then the mainstream news stations work 24/7 to make sure that no one strays too far from the accepted public narrative.

Notice how there is always a call for solidarity: “We must do this” or “We cannot allow that”. It is always “us” versus “them”, and the public narrative makes it clear that “we” are noble and “they” are evil. In this environment all that matters is what “we” do as a political structure thus personal responsibility and morality fall by the wayside.

The movie “The Matrix” captured this phenomenon well:

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system… You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

I became very angry when I first stumbled upon this phenomenon; that is, when I first realized that the institutional path I had followed my entire life was designed (intentionally or otherwise) to lead me away from personal growth and development. At first I thought the solution was to reform society according to the forgotten principles of liberty, common law, and contract law so that this would not happen to future generations.

Such a mindset led directly to depression because every step taken by society has been away from those principles. I struggled with this for quite some time until I finally realized that the battle wasn’t external, it was internal. It finally occurred to me that my responsibility wasn’t to reform society, it was to reform myself according to the principles I held dear. The challenge was to become self-referential. The challenge was to heed the Warrior’s call.



The Warrior’s call is to find meaning in each moment; to find life in every breath. At first glance this sounds simple, but it is incredibly hard to do.

The only way to find meaning in each moment is to conquer your need to seek worldly status and the approval of others. This isn’t easy, but a whole new perspective opens up once status is conquered. You suddenly gain access to an inner strength you didn’t even know existed, and you begin to trust yourself implicitly. You no longer need permission to act on your principles, and you no longer need to apologize for failing to conform to the status-quo.

You also begin to appreciate the simple things in life. A drop of lemon in your morning tea, the slow-moving mist eclipsing the mountains, the soothing crackle of the glowing hearth, the laugh of a young child as she absconds with the toilet paper, the smile on the old lady’s face when you say “hello” as you pass by – these are the things that status-obsessed people do not have time for.

Social reformers of all stripes and beliefs have always sought to reform society according to their preferences by focusing on what others should do differently. But others typically aren’t interested in doing much differently, so they don’t. As I mentioned earlier, I originally fell into this trap when I wanted to reform society according to the principles of liberty and laissez-faire. Though I still hold those principles dear at the individual level, I am somewhat ashamed of that stage because I now realize that if anyone knows exactly how society should be reformed, he isn’t writing these journal entries.

As best I can tell, societies only become more free and just after a critical mass (10-20%) of the population experiences a self-referential awakening. This seems to happen periodically throughout history, and I think it is happening once again today largely thanks to the freedom of information provided to everyone by the Internet. That is why I am so confident that the decentralization trends are rapidly gaining steam.

Regardless of the trends, the most important thing anyone can do for his community is to present it with a more self-referential individual. Self-referential individuals necessarily have empathy and tolerance for their fellow man. For the self-referential individual, the golden rule actually takes on its real meaning. Instead of simply refraining from harming others, the self-referential individual actually does for others what he would like done for himself if roles were reversed. He treats people with kindness always, even if they do not return the favor. He slips a little extra tip on the table when his wife isn’t looking. He apologizes profusely when he is wrong. He accepts that his way is not the only way and does not try to impose his opinion on others. He strives to be a positive influence at all times.

For the self-referential individual responsibility is personal, not collective. Problems are things to be solved, not voted upon. Wars are political atrocities to be abhorred, not glorified. Life is meant to be lived, not institutionalized. For the self-referential individual it is the journey that brings fulfilment, not the destination.

I will leave you with one more dialogue from Way of the Peaceful Warrior:

Socrates: I think you should continue your training as a gymnast. A Warrior does not give up what he loves, Dan. He finds love in what he does.

Dan: Look at me! I have a metal rod in my leg.

Socrates: A Warrior is not about perfection, or victory, or invulnerability. He’s about absolute vulnerability. That’s the only true courage.

Dan: What kind of training do you think I could do? I just had an accident!

Socrates: The accident is your training. Life is choice. You can choose to be a victim or anything else you’d like to be.

Dan: Just ignore what happened to me?

Socrates: A Warrior acts, only a fool reacts.

Dan: What if I can’t do it?

Socrates: That’s the future. Throw it out.

Dan: Well, how would we start?

Socrates: There is no starting or stopping, only doing.

More to come,

 

 

 

 

Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions, please read The Individual is Rising: 2nd Edition. The Individual is Rising is available through Amazon and at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. Please sign up for the mailing list to be notified of other projects as they come to fruition.

The post The Self-Referential Awakening – Heeding the Warrior’s Call appeared first on Zenconomics - an Independent Financial Blog.

The Three Debt Bombs of 2016

submitted by jwithrow. Journal of a Wayward Philosopher The Three Debt Bombs of 2016 December 29, 2015 Hot Springs, VA The S&P closed out Monday at $2,056. Gold closed at $1,068 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $36.81 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.23%. Bitcoin is trading around $428 per BTC … Continue reading "The Three Debt Bombs of 2016"

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Individualist Capitalism

submitted by jwithrow. Journal of a Wayward Philosopher Individualist Capitalism December 14, 2015 Hot Springs, VA The S&P closed out Friday at $2,012. Gold closed at $1,074 per ounce. Oil closed at $35.35 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.14%. Bitcoin is trading around $443 per BTC today. Dear Journal, The U.S. … Continue reading "Individualist Capitalism"

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Decentralization and Spontaneous Order

submitted by jwithrow.

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

Decentralization and Spontaneous Order

November 25, 2015

Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Tuesday at $2,084. Gold closed at $1,074 per ounce. Oil closed at $42.87 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.25%. Bitcoin is trading around $324 per BTC today.

Not much action in the markets this week as Wall Street humanoids are gearing up for the big holiday on Thursday. Only the high-frequency trading machines remain to trade back-and-forth with one another for a few days. Despite this calm, I get the sense that a big move is brewing…

Also worth mentioning, I appeared on the SovereignBTC podcast with host John Bush last week. We had a blast talking about many of the topics I often muse on here in the Journal. If you would like to listen to the interview, you can find it at the LTB Network here.

Dear Journal,

“That was really sweet what you wrote about Madison…” wife Rachel said after reading my previous journal entry. “But the only thing you said about me was that I wouldn’t read past a certain point!”

“Well did you read past that paragraph?”, I asked with a wry grin on my face.

“No, that’s as far as I got…”

My last entry discussed the potential for the family unit to act as a sovereign institution in light of the burgeoning Great Reset, much to the benefit of both the sovereign family and the local community. The underlying theme of that entry, and of many recent journal entries, has been decentralization.

I seek to offer my unfiltered perspective when I sit down to write these journal entries, and I only write them when motivated to do so for that reason. That’s why the Journal follows no set schedule whatsoever, though I try my best to post a weekly entry. Sometimes when I re-read my unfiltered entries, however, I get the feeling that readers may come away with a more negative sentiment then I intend to convey.

I see decentralization as extremely exciting, but it occurs to me that the concept may be foreign to many people. Most people, no matter their nationality, have been immersed in nationalistic jingo intended to glorify the centralized nation-state since childhood. I tend to underestimate the power of this social conditioning because I am completely insulated from it (no t.v., no news, no group-think), thus I probably failed to express why decentralization is a good thing in my previous entries.

Most developed nations employ a semi-compulsory public school system, and a large part of the public school curriculum is designed to impart pro-government, pro-collectivist, pro-authoritarian, pro-centralization sentiments to students at a very impressionable age. These themes are repeated and reinforced for twelve full years of primary education, and then four to five additional years of higher education. These memes are then constantly repeated and reinforced to adults by the mainstream news media day in and day out.

For this reason, the deterioration of the centralized industrial nation-state is likely very scary to a lot of people. What you need to understand is that this centralized model is completely antithetical to what Austrian Economist F.A. Hayek called the spontaneous order and the basic traditions of western civilization.

If you want a free and prosperous civilization, you need people to understand and adhere to a few basic rules: Do not kill people. Do not steal from people. In fact, do not aggress upon other people or their property in any capacity. Do everything you have contractually agreed to do, and refrain from doing anything you have contractually agreed not to do.

That’s pretty much it. These simple rules are at the heart of both common law and contract law which have been developed over centuries in the West. These simple rules form the basis of just governance and they enable civilizations to grow and thrive spontaneously in a manner that completely respects the primacy and sanctity of individuals.

This model is thrown into chaos when power is centralized and arbitrary edicts and regulations are piled on top of one another by the nation-state’s secular legislatures. As the centralized power grows, so too do the shackles upon civilization, and upon the very individuals who make civilization go.

Where individuals once had the ability to act and transact as they saw fit, they now must behave only in ways that are acceptable to centralized authority. Where individuals could once travel freely and conduct business in foreign nations with ease, they now must carry numerous State-sanctioned identifying documents and submit to all manner of disrespectful treatment before permitted to travel. Where individuals were once focused on supporting their families and local communities, they are now expected to subvert all interests to those of the monolithic nation-state.

This is the centralized model, and it is pretty much the same in every developed nation today. This model has given rise to massive governments, massive bureaucracies, massive debt, and massive unfunded liabilities – all under the watchful eye of the central planners who claim to know what is best for hundreds of millions of unique individuals, families, and communities. This is all in clear violation of the Golden Rule that most children understand very clearly before they are sent off to be immersed in the State’s propaganda.

To unconditionally support the centralized model, people must necessarily come to believe a number of fairly irrational things. People must be convinced that a faceless, bloated bureaucracy not only has everyone’s best interests at heart, but also has the ability to organize society and redistribute money in ways that will be beneficial for all. People must be convinced that thousands of economists convening for periodic conferences and meetings can do something that no economist has ever done before: improve an economy. People must come to believe that money can be created from thin air and then be properly distributed to make society wealthier. People must believe that wealth is created, not from sweat, savings, or entrepreneurial ingenuity, but instead from monetary stimulus programs enacted by enlightened central bank officials. People must be convinced that debt and deficits do not matter because the central bank can simply print more money to buy government bonds. “We owe it to ourselves”, say the Keynesians on television and in the economics classrooms. People must come to believe that men and women wearing suits and wielding Ivy League degrees are more intelligent and more powerful than the spontaneous order.

This is why the public school system and the mainstream media is so important to the power structure of centralization.

While the central planners can keep their centralized model plodding along for extended periods of time, the model itself is self-destructive. Centralization ultimately cannibalizes itself as it is locked within close-ended hierarchical structures that are micro-managed from the top-down in an Industrial Age assembly line fashion. The monolithic bureaucracy necessary to facilitate such micro-management is completely parasitic in nature as it produces nothing, but skims a very large portion of wealth from the production of people engaged in commercial activities. The bureaucracy is completely sheltered from market forces and its managers are completely insulated from accountability, thus the only incentive the bureaucracy has is to grow in size and power. Hire more people, spend more money, appropriate a larger budget, garner more influence… these are the sole concerns of the bureaucracy, and it is all funded by the hard work and ingenuity of individuals who press on in the marketplace in spite of all the theft and constraints. Instead of embracing self-determination for individuals, families, and communities, the centralized model creates coercive territorial monopolies designed to live off the labor of enterprising individuals within the territory.

Nowhere else in the natural world do we see such a centralized model employed on such a large scale. Nature operates according to the spontaneous order of decentralization. The reason the free market is so effective at allocating labor and capital, and indirectly organizing society is because it inherently possesses the same respect for self-determination that we see in nature. This is Adam Smith’s invisible hand and F.A. Hayek’s spontaneous order.

Now to be clear, I don’t presume to say that centralization is always and everywhere a bad thing. A little centralization here and there is probably a good thing. Certainly the Industrial Revolution raised many people from the depths of poverty and it built the world we live in today. But the Industrial Revolution was not powered by the centralized nation-state; in fact the exact opposite is true. The monolithic nation-state grew to be so fantastically large in the twentieth century specifically because the Industrial Age created a scenario in which it was fairly easy and profitable to do so.

The tide has now turned, and the marginal utility of centralization is rapidly approaching zero. Then it will go negative and we will really see some fireworks. Simply, centralization is no longer profitable.

While the ills of the current centralized model are many, I communicate them to you with a smile on my face. I treat it like one treats a skilled opponent after the final buzzer sounds; you casually walk up and offer a firm hand shake. “Good game, sir.”

Indeed, everything has its time and its place. That’s what makes this life exciting and worth living. The purpose of life is not to secure as many comforts and luxuries as possible. The purpose of life is not to avoid pain and stress at all costs. The purpose, at least to some extent, is simply to experience. There’s no joy without pain. There’s no comfort without stress. There’s no leisure without work.

The obstacle is the path.

As the winds of decentralization continue to blow, many exciting opportunities are becoming more and more apparent. This leaves you with two choices. You can focus on the deterioration of the current model and experience fear and anger as a result. Or you can embrace the rise of decentralization and experience adventure and excitement as a result.

Despite what the central planners may tell you, the choice is yours and yours alone.

Cheers.

More to come,

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions, please read The Individual is Rising: 2nd Edition. The Individual is Rising is available through Amazon and at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. Please sign up for the mailing list to be notified of other projects as they come to fruition.

The post Decentralization and Spontaneous Order appeared first on Zenconomics - an Alternative Financial Blog.

The Family As a Sovereign Institution

submitted by jwithrow.

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

The Family As a Sovereign Institution

November 4, 2015

Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Tuesday at $2,103. Gold closed at $1,114 per ounce. Oil closed at $47.90 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.19%. Bitcoin is trading around $480 per BTC today.

Take a look at the Bitcoin exchange rate – it’s up nearly $250 this month! It’s up $171 this week alone! We have seen this story before, but it is hard not to get excited about that kind of explosive gain in purchasing power. I can’t emphasize this enough: if you aren’t familiar with Bitcoin, look into it. It has the potential to revolutionize money, banking, finance, and accounting. Whether or not it will, who knows, but the potential is there. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence, and more than half of those have already been mined. That means the potential for continued purchasing power gains is huge if Bitcoin continues to gain acceptance. Why not have at least a little skin in the game?

Dear Journal,

Peak Foliage has come and gone, and only the most resilient leaves remain clinging to the trees here in the mountains of Virginia. The naked trees reveal a clear view of the bare cliffs that majestically overlook the southern side of our property. I look upon these cliffs with awe and respect as the morning fog slowly passes by their jagged ridgeline. These are the cliffs that looked down upon my daughter’s birth a little over one year ago. I hope these same cliffs will stand watch as a joyous, energetic little girl laughs, runs, and plays in the yard below. Maybe they chuckle as she stumbles chasing mini-lab Boomer who frolics with a tennis ball in his mouth. Maybe they nod in approval as she learns to kick a soccer ball into the net. Maybe they smile as she prunes apple trees in the orchard. This philosopher-dad can only speculate and wonder.

I can’t help but look inward as my mind’s gaze slowly recedes from Madison’s future and comes back into focus. My own path has been a strange one. After being 100% conventional, uncritical, and unquestioning for the better part of a quarter-century, a simple spark of curiosity led me down a road of intellectual growth and spiritual awakening from which I surely will never recover. From that spark the wayward philosopher was born.

In the early days of the awakening, the philosopher had all of the answers. The more research I conducted, the more philosophy I internalized, the more history and economics I studied, and the more I attempted to put it all into practice, the more I found that I simply did not know anything for certain. As my knowledge and understanding grew, my comprehensive answers shrank. A funny paradox.

That’s not to say my beliefs wavered; indeed they grew stronger and more defined. But I began to recognize that all solutions are individual in nature. There are no one-size-fits-all answers because all collectives are imaginary. They are made up. They are Fiction. There is no “nation”. There is no “us” opposed to “them”. There are only individuals because human consciousness can only be experienced individually.

This doesn’t mean we aren’t interconnected; we are. At the heart of human consciousness is the omnipresent creative force of the Universe. Humans often call this force “God” and it flows through all of creation. Humanity is interconnected in this way. One could spend a lifetime pondering this phenomenon. Consider this: you are not “in the Universe”; you are the Universe.

Now I don’t mean to undermine culture and tradition, because I think both are a very important part of human experience. Culture and tradition should be positive in nature, however; they should never foster aggression towards others who do not share the same views.

Wife Rachel will stop reading this entry if I ramble on for too long, so let me get to where I am going with all of this. The nation-state is going to devolve as the coming decades play out, and the modern welfare-state employed by all developed nations is going to collapse. This includes welfare for “the poor” as well as state-transfer programs such as Social Security and Medicare (and their equivalents in other nations). These programs are all going to be cut significantly or possibly disappear entirely over the coming years and decades.

I know this probably sounds heretical to those immersed in twentieth century industrial thinking, but this statement is not hypothetical or ideological; it is economical. The numbers don’t work. The demographics don’t work. The incentives don’t work. The bureaucracy doesn’t work. The money doesn’t work. It’s all on borrowed time.

To understand this, you must understand how the nation-state rose to power and gave birth to the welfare-state. The Industrial Revolution created economies of scale which drastically improved productivity, wealth-creation, and standards of living. This was a good thing. The downside was the Industrial Age created a situation in which the monopolization of force and coercion paid extremely well. In exchange for high-cost, low-quality “protection services”, nation-states claimed the right to tax and regulate all people, businesses, and assets within a specific geographic territory. While not exactly a new concept, the scale of which nation-states extended dominion and extracted wealth was unprecedented. It was the mass-confiscation of private wealth that enabled the nation-state to grow and concoct the welfare model.

This dynamic is no longer viable in a world where money, assets, businesses, legal documents, and data can be encrypted and safely domiciled in cyberspace outside of any particular geographic territory. Much of daily human interaction, including commerce and communication, can take place in cyberspace as well. Monopolizing force and coercion does not pay in this paradigm because the decentralized, distributed nature of the internet makes it impossible to dominate. We discussed this in my previous journal entry as well.

Chancellor Bismarck is credited with creating the first welfare-state in Germany back in the 1880s. The welfare-state was born in the U.S. in 1933 with FDR’s “New Deal”, and it ramped up in 1964 with LBJ’s “Great Society”. Historians will probably say that the U.S. welfare-state was viable from 1933 up until 2008. It was powered by two things: the Baby Boomer generation (born between 1946-1964) and the fiat monetary system (1971-20??).

The Baby Boomers powered the welfare model simply because they were more plentiful than their parents. In their prime, there were 42 Baby Boomers working for every person receiving Social Security benefits. Now there are less than 3 people working for every person receiving Social Security benefits.

That fiat monetary system, which came about in 1971 when the U.S. dollar’s final link to gold was severed, has played a major role in the modern welfare state as well. The act of “printing money” is unrestrained within a fiat monetary system, but it necessarily reduces the purchasing power of the money.

This ability to create money from nothing has enabled the political class to ignore the welfare-state’s mounting deficits and unfunded liabilities. Rather than make tough decisions to shore up these programs (like cut spending on military imperialism), government officials have simply printed money to continuously fund their welfare. While this has kept the money flowing to recipients, it has also caused that money to decline significantly in value. In other words, recipients receive their normal nominal benefit amount, but that nominal amount actually buys fewer goods and services over time specifically because creating money from nothing destroys its purchasing power.

Once decimated, it is unlikely that the welfare model will be rebuilt in the Information Age. Unfortunately, many who have grown dependent on the welfare system will be harmed by this. They will call for the State to “soak the rich” to restore the transfer programs, and there will probably be twelve Bernie Sanders’ in that election cycle, whenever it may be. But the rich will have domiciled their businesses and their assets somewhere out in cyberspace, and the State will be rendered inept.

There is one institution that could help offset the loss of a public safety net, however, and it is the very institution the welfare-state sought to destroy: the family. In the Industrial Age families were taught that it was their moral duty to subvert their own interests and serve their nation-state, but this was not always the case. During the Feudal Age that preceded the Industrial Revolution, it is well documented that many families viewed themselves as sovereign. That is to say, these families took responsibility for their own security – physical and financial – and they strictly adhered to an internal code of governance. These were the families most capable of supporting others in their community as well.

Perhaps we will see a re-emergence of the family unit as a sovereign institution in the wake of the Great Reset. It is already common among wealthy families to establish a Family Office to set forth internal governance principles pertaining to family values, wealth management, family support criteria, and charitable activity. Family Offices often include a family constitution, a family crest, a family motto, a family council, and a family investment committee with an ultra-long term outlook.

It is entirely possible for less wealthy families to employ a similar institutional structure. In fact, it would likely be easier for less wealthy families because they would not have to set up as many complex legal structures which entail significant attorney’s fees.

There are as many ways to do this as there are unique families, but the easiest place to begin is to set up an Infinite Banking insurance policy for all children. I discussed this in detail in my journal entry titled Disintermediate the State. The Infinite Banking Concept has the power to single-handedly eliminate your children’s need for student loans or personal loans, it renders the entire welfare model obsolete, and it creates a much larger income stream at age 65 than Social Security ever could. From there, families could start pooling money to create a “family bank” which could be tapped into by family members later according to well-defined criteria – probably emergency or entrepreneurial in nature. Families could begin to structure their investments to compound for generations rather than decades once their Family Office was well-established. Families could also purchase a family estate, potentially outside of their political jurisdiction, for family council meetings and other functions.

These are just a few examples, but the overriding idea is to create a permanence of security, both financial and otherwise, so that your family is not dependent upon anyone else for security and support. This in turn would enable your family to become a leader in your community and your associations of choice. There are plenty of people out there who want to support their community and help others, but they don’t have the means to do so because they never established permanent security. In the Industrial Age, their solution was to use the power of government to force people with means to ‘help’ for them. That won’t work for much longer.

I will conclude this entry by suggesting that modernity’s lifestyle model actually fosters transience rather than permanence.

Modernity’s model is to send our children off to school every day to be indoctrinated by a curriculum that very much favors political values over family values. When they graduate, we encourage our children to take out big student loans and rush off to college despite the fact that they have no idea what their interests, skills, and passions are. After college we encourage our kids to go find a steady job with good benefits, emphasizing income over values and experience. This model teaches our children to be transient every step of the way.

As with anything, there are pro’s to go along with the con’s of this model. I do not presume to say this model is always and everywhere a bad idea. Is it time for a new model? That’s up to each unique family to decide for themselves. As for me, the answer is an emphatic yes.

More to come,

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions, please read The Individual is Rising: 2nd Edition. The Individual is Rising is available through Amazon and at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. Please sign up for the mailing list to be notified of other projects as they come to fruition.

The post The Family As a Sovereign Institution appeared first on Zenconomics - an Alternative Financial Blog.

Politics is Already Dead

submitted by jwithrow.

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

Politics is Already Dead

October 14, 2015

Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out today at $1,994. Gold closed up at $1,187 per ounce. Oil closed at $46.59 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 1.98%. Bitcoin is trading around $252 per BTC today. My attention is currently focused heavily on the gold sector in the equities market. Many gold stocks were beat up and left for dead, having fallen 90% from their previous high. This sector has steadily traded higher over the past few weeks, including a brief pull-back, potentially indicating the gold sector has formed a bottom. Has the next gold stock bull cycle begun? It could be a big one.

Dear Journal,

Little Maddie celebrates her first birthday next week! Wife Rachel has been hard at work planning the party. She has been very busy picking out decorations, sending out invitations, putting together a food menu, picking out outfits (Madison’s and her own), getting her hair cut, wrapping gifts, cleaning the house, ordering her husband to clean the house, and acquiring all necessary items from the store. I notice a twinkle in Rachel’s eye as she talks about the birthday celebration with excitement. Madison couldn’t care less.

With wife Rachel in frantic planning mode, I take the time to savor the onset of Autumn here in the mountains of Virginia. As the leaves slowly transform into majestic shades of yellow, orange, and red, I casually work to stack wood in the garage and get kindling ready for winter. I sit and enjoy a Harvest Pumpkin Brew as the early Autumn breeze gently blows fallen leaves down the gravel driveway. Soon we will take Maddie to the pumpkin patch, and we will purchase apples from the local orchard to make Apple Cider. What a glorious season!

In my previous journal entry, I suggested that technological advancements were rendering many established institutions obsolete. I want to build on that suggestion from a slightly different angle today.

I took a brief reading break last night to turn on the Democratic Presidential Debate later in the broadcast. I was just in time to hear Bernie Sanders emphatically state that the young people of this country need to rise up and demand free education from all public colleges and universities. He seemed to honestly believe, passionately I may add, that free university education was a distinct possibility if kids were forceful enough in their demand for it.

It wasn’t clear to me whether Mr. Sanders wanted to force universities or the federal government to foot the bill so I visited his ‘issues’ website to find out. Mr. Sanders wants the federal government to “tax Wall Street speculators” to pay for everyone’s college. So Bernie wants to use the power of government to steal from some people to pay for other people’s college education.

The immorality of theft aside, this is an Industrial Age concept that cannot work in the Information Age. I’ll explain in a minute, but first I have to give Mr. Sanders a little bit of credit. At least he is passionately pointing out the fact that the American system of higher education is turning kids into debt-serfs. In the ten minute time period within which I watched the debate, Bernie also called out the prison-industrial complex that is locking up huge numbers of people for non-violent offenses. The United States has by far more prisoners in jail per capita than every other country in the world. That probably shouldn’t be the case in the “Land of the Free”. Bernie is also right that there is a lot of corruption on Wall Street, but he seems to miss the fact that most of the corruption exists in collusion with the federal government and the Federal Reserve System. In fact, the cronyism on Wall Street can only exist with the help of the federal government and the Federal Reserve.

Alas, if Mr. Sanders only understood how the market system worked he would be in a position to propose real solutions which do not call for government theft and violence. Of course, if he did understand free market capitalism he would not be appearing in the Democratic debates… or the Republican debates for that matter. Instead, he would realize that politics is already dead.

To illustrate why I fervently believe politics is already dead, let me expand upon my Information Age comment from above. In response to dear Bernie’s free college solution, I suggested that using brute power and force to achieve an end-goal was an Industrial Age concept that does not work in the Information Age. Let me clarify this point using an example.

On December 30, 1936 members of the United Automobile Workers union (UAW) forcibly seized two of General Motor’s main plants in Flint, Michigan. The UAW was demanding higher pay for the workers, and they shut down the machines and turned off the assembly lines in these two plants to force GM to meet their demands. The drama unfolded over many weeks and it included clashes of violence. Seeing little progress in forcing their demands, union activists seized GM’s Chevrolet plant in Flint on February 1, 1937. By seizing and closing GM’s key factories, the workers paralyzed the company’s productive capacity and effectively held its capital ransom. As a result, General Motors eventually capitulated and met UAW’s demands. Power and force won out over markets and commerce in the end.

It is this triumph of power over markets that fueled the massive growth of the nation-state throughout the twentieth century. While Americans are quick to pay tribute to their country’s founding principles, few notice the fact that the United States has ballooned into a gargantuan centralized nation-state that has a hand in virtually all aspects of citizen’s lives… which is pretty much the opposite of what America was intended to be. It is largely forgotten that the American colonists revolted against what amounted to an estimated 3% tax rate under King George III. Today, many Americans pay out half of their income in taxes across the board and the federal government still runs twelve to thirteen figure deficits every year. This same dynamic exists in most of the developed countries of the world as well. National governments all grew to be fantastically large in the twentieth century by using power and force to regulate the market system and extract its wealth.

Fast forward to present day: technology, microprocessing, automation, robotics, and the internet have drastically reduced the number of factories in existence, especially in developed economies. Even those companies that still deal heavily in manufactured products have a much smaller employment roll, and they are far less vulnerable to force and violence as they once were. I will support these statements with another example.

Beginning in 1993, the UAW launched a lengthy strike against Caterpillar in an attempt to force the union’s contractual demands upon the company. In response, Caterpillar farmed out much of its low-skill work, closed inefficient plants, and invested nearly $2 billion on computerized machine tools and assembly robots. The union ultimately called off the strike after seventeen months when it became clear that it would be unable to force its demands. Caterpillar used the strike to drive labor-saving improvements and came out of the strike needing two-thousand fewer employees to meet the same production goals. It became clear to manufacturers for the first time that markets now trumped force.

What has not yet been realized is that this dynamic is not unique to the manufacturing industry. Markets and commerce are now superior to power and force throughout the modern economy. The $15 minimum wage that our misguided hero Mr. Sanders is calling for will do nothing but put automated order machines and robotic burger flippers in every fast food restaurant in the country. Retail companies will replace the salesmen with self-checkout machines and contract two private security guys to guard the doors. Or they very well may close their stores completely and send out an email referring previous customers to their website for online shopping. Meanwhile the unemployment filings will shoot through the roof.

Markets even triumph over the mighty nation-state today, but the nation-state does not yet know it. Here’s a supporting example: Apple, IBM, and Microsoft currently have roughly $1.95 trillion in foreign earnings legally parked offshore in low-tax countries. Why? Because the U.S. government maintains one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world and these companies do not want to send 35% of $1.95 trillion down the tax rabbit-hole to be filtered through layer upon layer of bureaucracy and special interests. So the capital is instead employed in places where it is better treated.

Similarly, corporate inversion has been a big trend recently. This is where multi-national corporations relocate their legal domicile to a low-tax country, usually while maintaining material operations in the higher-tax country of origin. Modern technology has made it possible for companies to structure their affairs in a way that minimizes their exposure to force and theft. The result is the flow of capital and economic activity to the places where markets are most respected.

Even more exciting, this dynamic is not exclusive to large multi-national corporations, but markets can trump power for individuals now too. The Internet and instant communication has destroyed the gatekeepers in most industries while placing the power of unlimited networking capacity into the hands of the individual. The independent media has pulled back the curtain on the propaganda machine that is mainstream news coverage, empowering individuals to make better decisions based on a real understanding of global markets and current events. Homeschooling is more effective than ever before thanks to online curriculum of all shapes and sizes. This is empowering parents to provide an infinitely better education for their children than what would otherwise await them in the public school system.

Peer-to-peer business models, global freelance marketplaces, cryptocurrencies, and crowdfunding all make it easier than ever for individuals to find a niche and earn income by engaging in commercial activity both locally and globally with less regulatory resistance. It is also well within the individual’s grasp to contract Virtual Assistants at an affordable rate to help scale entrepreneurial activity with limited resources. I contracted a Virtual Assistant to do market research for me while I was completing The Individual is Rising so that I would have a marketing plan ready to go upon publishing. I would never be able to hire help if I had to go through the official employment process; there’s just no way I could afford to comply with minimum wage, OSHA, Obamacare, and who knows how many other government mandates and regulations.

Technology is also enabling individuals to insulate themselves from force and theft in cyberspace. Virtual Private Networks (VPN) can encrypt your internet connection so that you can conduct your online affairs in security and anonymity. Reputable VPN services housed outside of an individual’s political jurisdiction further insulate people from force because the VPN would not be subject to demands from the individual’s government. Additionally, it is now possible (though not easy for Americans) to open an offshore bank account online. It is also very easy for anyone to buy and sell precious metals in foreign markets, and even store precious metals in audited/allocated vaults in a foreign jurisdiction. These are services that were only available to the wealthiest of the wealthy traveling to the country in question just a few short decades ago. Paired with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, individuals can employ these strategies to shield some of their money from their home government in a manner that is 100% legal. Perhaps this may seem unnecessary currently, but a quick look back at Greece last June shows why it is important to have some money outside of your political jurisdiction. You want to have access to your money if the banks close and capital controls are implemented because your government has run up too much debt that it can’t possibly repay.

If you really wanted to take individual sovereignty to the next level, Flag Theory lights the way. Flag Theory is about “planting flags” in numerous countries to increase individual freedom and prosperity. The idea is to have residency in one country, maintain a passport from another, have a business in a third country, warehouse assets in a fourth, own land in a fifth, and secure your data in a sixth country. Now this is a tedious process, but it is 100% legal if done correctly. Most people are not interested in going this far to insulate themselves from government force and theft, but there are a growing number of people who are doing this. Flag Theory may be the ultimate example of how markets and commerce triumph over power and force in the Information Age.

Politics is already dead. It is dead because politics can no longer overpower commerce when individual actors are determined to prevail. The politicians will continue to go about their business as usual for as long as possible, but the show is going to be over sooner rather than later. These nation-states that grew so fantastically large in the twentieth century by pillaging markets and plundering the very people they were supposed to protect are already broken institutions by their own standards. All of these governments are now burdens on the economy and social society. That’s why every developed government in the world is drenched in debt it cannot possibly pay back. It’s why more than twenty central banks have cut interest rates in 2015 – some sovereign rates have even gone negative! It’s why the prominent central banks seem to be taking turns at launching quantitative easing programs in an attempt to goose the financial markets and consumer spending for a little while longer. But none of their funny-money antics have brought back the status-quo the nation-states have come to know and love.

A fiat currency crisis looms as the day of reckoning draws nearer. When that day comes, the nation-state will not go quietly into the night. It will lash out with all of its might in an attempt to conquer the market for good. The poor people who are unprepared or in the wrong place at the wrong time will feel the dying nation-state’s violent wrath. The market will just shrug from a safe distance and go about its business because it transcended politics and the nation-state long prior.

The nation-states are not likely to disappear entirely, just as Rome did not disappear when the Roman Empire fell. But as Rome was only nominally significant after the fall, so too will the nation-state fade into the background. It will then understand politics is already dead.

The post Politics is Already Dead appeared first on Zenconomics - an Alternative Financial Blog.

Awareness Rising

submitted by jwithrow.

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher

Awareness Rising

September 25, 2015

Emerald Isle, NC

The S&P closed out Thursday at $1,932. Gold closed at $1,153 per ounce. Oil closed at $44.91 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.14%. Bitcoin is trading around $236 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

Little Maddie took her first unassisted steps this week. Your editor was quietly observing from the glider as she crawled around the back deck, carefully inspecting each nook and cranny in the wood. Suddenly, without warning, her little head popped up and she looked directly at me. There was a strange twinkle in her eyes that I had not seen before. It was almost as though she had just experienced a moment of infinite intelligence, but before I could reckon on it she stood up completely unassisted for the first time and took two steps before easing to her knees. She popped right back up and took three more steps before easing back down to her knees again. Then she looked up at me and laughed hysterically.

I had never before experienced the feeling of unbridled joy that overcame me in that moment.

Later, with Madison calmly napping, I had time to internalize the moment and bask in the joy. As I watched my little angel sleeping peacefully, a strange thought came to me.

If you are going to have highs, know you will also have lows. There are no ordinary moments.

I decided then to cherish every single moment with my little girl. Even when she wants me to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See to her for the thirteenth time. Even when she is screaming at me from the car seat because she is tired of being couped up. I will cherish it all.

Though I vow to cherish each moment of little Madison’s childhood, I am filled with hope and optimism for her future. I marvel at the opportunities that lay in front of her, and the rest of her generation. Generation Next is the first generation in centuries to arrive on this planet precisely as technological advancement is coalescing with a rising Awareness of human potential.

Our world has been dominated by authoritarian medieval institutions for centuries now, and the general paradigm has been one of institutional collectivism. This paradigm has demanded that individuals subvert their own interests to the interests of the collective as represented by the institutions. This paradigm is focused on suppressing human achievement and limiting human experience. The compulsory school system that exists in most of the developed world has been the primary engine powering this collectivist paradigm. The school systems instill collectivist values into children at an impressionable age, and many are unable to shed their social conditioning in adulthood.

Technology has advanced to the point where most of these institutions are now obsolete. With instantaneous communication capacity and access to unlimited pools of knowledge with a simple click of a button, a future of unrivaled Liberty and prosperity is in the making. Given modern technology, the free market has the ability to easily transcend any and all petty institutional restrictions and road blocks.

Despite this being the case, many people are still locked into the collectivist way of thinking. I tried to demonstrate this in my critique of the first GOP debate. I attempted to watch the second GOP debate as well, but it was especially riddled with childish bickering and mindless proclamations which I could not stomach for long.

Though still significant, support for this political theatre is diminishing rapidly. Most of the young professionals I interact with see politics as a sideshow. They know the candidates have no principles and are just saying whatever they think the masses want to hear. Many also see the government and its favored institutions as immensely corrupt. Some even think the elections are fraudulent. All of them understand that government is inept and their prosperity is dependent upon their own actions.

The paradigm is shifting.

What does the world look like if Generation Next is raised to be individual leaders rather than conforming collectivists? What does the world look like if Generation Next is raised to be skeptical of government? What does the world look like if Generation Next is permitted a real education where they are able to explore their own interests, develop their talents, and pursue real-world opportunities for experience. What does the world look like if Generation Next is actually taught classical economics and a healthy respect for the market economy opposed to Keynesian economics and its love of Big Government? What does the world look like if Generation Next actually learns sounds personal finance principles? What if they learn that they must produce more than they consume and save most of the difference? What does the world look like if Generation Next is never broken of their innate self-reference? What if they learn to stand upon their own principles rather than falling into the herd mentality? What does the world look like if Generation Next is encouraged to make their own path in adulthood, rather than submit to student-debt servitude and wage serfdom? What does the world look like if Generation Next understands that it is never acceptable for individuals OR institutions to kill, injure, steal, or commit fraud?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I hope I live long enough to find out.

I have no doubt the world is moving in this direction, though you wouldn’t know it if you get your world view from the television. Governments, institutions, media, and the masses are all reactionary. They are creatures of the herd, and the herd does not stop or change directions quickly. As such, you won’t notice the Awareness rising on the news or in the schools, universities, corporate cubicles, or town hall meetings. People are generally scared of going against the herd so they are not apt to voice their private thoughts in “official” settings. But individuals are starting to become disillusioned with the status-quo.

I stopped by my favorite Italian restaurant last week to pick up a pizza. It is a small family-owned business that has been making pizza the same way since the 70’s. They use real, high-quality ingredients and the difference is amazing – most other pizzas taste like cardboard to me. The owner met me at the register and struck up a conversation about business. He told me he had been dabbling with gold coins – buying at a discount locally through various channels and selling at a slight premium online. I expressed my belief that the price of gold would skyrocket over the coming years. He agreed and said ”I only deal with the physical. I don’t want paper. Paper means nothing if the country disappears.” Though I wasn’t surprised, I didn’t expect to hear sensible economic concerns coming from a family-owned restaurant in small-town USA.

Likewise, I have heard similar concerns awkwardly expressed by individuals in unexpected places – both in-person and online. Awareness is rising and it seems to be comprehensive in nature. People are starting to realize that perpetual debt is not sustainable, creating currency out of thin air is not a solution, and most of the political promises made over the past eighty years are going to be defaulted upon in some capacity. People are also starting to realize that the health care system has been cartelized by Big Government, Big Insurance, and Big Pharma. People are starting to realize that standard AMA practices are very often not in the best interests of the patient. People are starting to realize that the school systems are awful, the student-loan business is a racket, most college degrees are not worth what they cost, and most of the modern economy is in a bubble created by exponential credit expansion.

Yes, these views are only held by a minority of the population, but they are the thinking minority who are willing to act upon their beliefs. These views will not be expressed in the nightly news or in the presidential debates because they still lie with the minority, but do not assume they are irrelevant because of this. As Samuel Adams once expressed: the irate, tireless minority absolutely has the power to change the world. Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have.

The beauty of this rising Awareness is its holographic nature; it is not uniform. The problems are seen by the thinking minority from different perspectives, thus the solutions are varied. Not all solutions are applicable to all people at all times, thus there is no central blue-print to follow. The common denominator is that these solutions are individualist in nature; they do not require collective mobilization. Here are some examples:

Homebirths are becoming more prevalent because people do not support the hospital’s invasive approach. A growing body of research suggests that several standard hospital procedures actually increase complication risks for both mother and baby during the birthing process.
Homeschooling is on the rise because people do not support the established educational model. This model is stuck in the Industrial Age, and children are exiting the school systems completely unprepared for the world that awaits them. Which begs the question: why separate children from the real world in the first place?
The organic food movement is becoming mainstream because people do not trust GMO foods and the collusion between Big Agriculture Companies and Big Government.
Natural health practices are increasing in popularity because people do not support the “pill for every ill” approach and the collusion between Big Pharma and the FDA.
People are shunning infant vaccinations because they do not trust the heavy-metal preservatives and other questionable ingredients contained within. There is a strong correlation between increasing infant vaccinations and increased cases of autism.
The independent media is on the rise because people do not trust the news being reported on their television and in their newspapers. Along with the independent media, social media also provides an unfiltered glimpse of current events.
Voting and political involvement are on the decline because people do not trust their government or the election process.
Institutional money management is on the decline because people do not trust the banking system to safeguard their money nor do they trust Wall Street to grow their nest egg.
People are starting to allocate a percentage of their asset portfolio to precious metals because they do not trust the fiat monetary system. Gold has maintained its value for centuries while fiat currencies have come and gone. The U.S. dollar has lost 98% of its value since 1913.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are becoming more widely accepted because people are recognizing the merits of peer-to-peer payment systems. The power to directly transmit purchasing power through a decentralized network is immense. Fraud is eliminated, fees are demolished, and political borders are irrelevant within such a network. Not to mention, the currency cannot be counterfeited by fraudsters or central banks (perhaps redundant) and ‘accounts’ cannot be frozen.
The peer-to-peer economy is growing tremendously as modern technology is enabling networks to grow and free markets to thrive. Artificial credentials are giving way to reputations built by real skills and maintained by exceptional service.

All of these trends feature decentralization and a transfer of power and wealth away from the status-quo and to individuals. All of these trends are market-based and voluntary in nature – no one is forced to participate in any of them against their will. None of these trends require the forceful abolishment of the status-quo, thus no energy or resources need to be diverted from productive endeavors to the political process.

Sure, government could implement regulations intended to hamper these trends, and it likely will. But government is always reactionary and will only act once a particular trend has become large enough to be seen as a challenge to the status-quo. By then it’s too late, and any attack would only hasten the rise in Awareness and the obsolescence of the status-quo. The free market based on voluntary interaction always prevails in the end because it is more aligned with individual interests. Liberty cannot be legislated away, no matter how many laws they pass or crony programs they implement.

This is why I am so optimistic for little Maddie’s future. Though I am bearish on the next decade or two, I am convinced the future is bright. Technology is advancing and Awareness is rising. I suspect Generation Next will be free to live and prosper in ways we couldn’t conceive today.

More to come,

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and individual solutions, please read The Individual is Rising: 2nd Edition. The Individual is Rising is available through Amazon and at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. Please sign up for the mailing list to be notified of other projects as they come to fruition.

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