Does Anybody Understand This Stuff?: Part 5, Mercantilism and The Physiocrats – A Thumbnail Sketch of 4,000 Years of Economics
Read Part One Here Read Part Two Here Read Part Three Here Read Part Four Here Read Part Six Here Mercantilism and the Physiocrats (1500-1800AD) Mercantilism A later development of the feudal system, mercantile economics’ primary goal was to develop national and oligarchical wealth through policies that favored minimal imports and maximum exports. This system […]
National Defense Authorization Act: Is This The Line In The Sand?
Posse Comitatus… Due Process… Habeas Corpus… What do these all have in common? Suspension and death, if the National Defense Authorization Act is not vetoed by the President of the United States. U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-01) said it this way, “Today, I voted against H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 because I firmly […]
Attention Span: Our National Education Crisis, Part One
Click Here For Part Two I have a number of different topics to cover over the next couple of months. I will post most of these in the form of series. Sometimes, as these series can be multi-parts (as many as ten), I will introduce a new series before a given series is completed. […]
Does Anybody Understand This Stuff?, Part One: Deflation
Read Part Two Here This is one of several blogs in a series called Does Anybody Understand this stuff?, concerning economics and our future. There is no way to honor the blogging rule of 600 word posts when we are talking about the economy, so I will try to keep them short but no […]
People Who Live at the End of Dirt Roads: Monte and Laura Bledsoe – Quail Hollow Farm, CSA
Six years ago one of my former mentees decided to try growing vegetables on a tiny patch of ground. She thought, “what a nice little hobby I will create for myself.” Her vision was to grow and provide a little food for a few other families. She was not willing to commit to more than […]
Montesquieu: Luminary of the Enlightenment
(Please excuse any errors. I am writing on the fly from New York and time is limited). Cicero said, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” To paraphrase, he who only knows his own generation is an unwitting slave to those who have a knowledge of the past and an eye on the […]
What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear
The debate of the Federalists and the Anti-federalists is not our debate. Their argument was centered on how to create a system that maintained the strength of sovereign states and create a strong, independent general government. We now have the opposite, weak quasi-sovereign states with a run away all-powerful federal government. The central government debated […]
Article V: A Potential Path to Restoring State Sovereignty, Citizen Responsibility and the Original Intent of the Founders
Today there are two strongly promoted opinions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of a Constitutional Convention that could be activated by the application of at least 34 of the several states as outlined in Article V of the U.S. Constitution. One purports that such a move would likely put the nation and her 224 year-old […]
Fundamental Principles, Individual Rights, and Free Government: Do Utahns Remember How to Be Free?
The idea of jealously guarding freedom seems to be slipping quickly from the grasp of the average Utahn and American. Over the past year I have spent significant time in New York, California, and Utah with visits to Arizona, Nevada and Kentucky. I get a feeling that the average American is becoming less and less […]
What Does Our Future Hold? or You Can’t Fix Stupid
Fairytale of 2011 Once upon a time and in a land not so far away, there was a people who willing made personal economic decisions beyond their income capacity. They borrowed money from lenders for not just houses and cars, but they borrowed money for clothes and vacations, homes far beyond their ability to maintain […]