America Was Always A Governmental Project

The colonization of the West Indies, Central and South America, but also North America, were all governmental projects manipulated by private individuals. The “Crowns” of Spain, France, Portugal, England (in that chronological order) financed them. And so it was for centuries: government first, organized everything. The myth that the “Free Market” colonizes all, and is the ultimate organizer was just a (self-serving) myth invented by US plutocracy to better colonized all. Wait, some will say, aren’t you contradicting yourself? No, century or so was a period when the wealthiest individuals in the world, US plutocrats, acquired a variable, but occasionally domineering level of control of the US government: cursus honorum, as the Romans used to call it, American style.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the government, in a real democracy (people-power)… Except for the flaws Athens exhibited in its short lived total democracy dominance (namely over-passionate, poorly studied, hubristic and intemperate decisions). Now Athens had a basic problem: it was not the domineering military power (Sparta was stronger on land, and Persia was immensely stronger on land, more than equal at sea). Right now, the West is domineering militarily. but democratically incomplete. Biden is trying to grow government. He can be exactly what the doctor ordered, IF done right (spending where government spending will change the future for the best).

Governmentalism, done right, is growing, and has to grow… Be it only because it works so spectacularly in China,while the “free market” is failing spectacularly in Europe (see the European COVID debacle; Europe did less well than China, or the US, the latter mostly at the origin of the vaccines, through Trump’s efforts).

Overall, since the Communists took control, China has been driven by smart (and violent) governmentalism… when the government intervenes in all ways. For example, the Chinese Communist Party intervenes decisively by outlawing marriage with close relatives (which bolster kinship). What the CCP was doing was to impose frantically laws similar to those of Western Europe. Western Europe, led that way mostly by France, had been, for two millennia, the prime actor of governmentalism. England, a subsidiary of France initially, was not far behind.

(I prefer the word “governmentalism”, to “statism” which is too… static. The most dynamic societies have practiced “governmentalism… but were, precisely, far from static. Landing on the Moon, a government project, was not static!)

In 2020, massive intervention of the US government in private research, through development funding and rewards brandished, brought the spectacular arrival of half a dozen vaccines (“Operation Warp Speed”). The European Union did nothing similar to what Trump did, brutal governmentalism. Instead Europe waited for private enterprise (much of it now financed by Trump or… Boris Johnson!) to come up with solutions. So Europe failed monstrously, and now depends upon Trump financed vaccines. Now this is not exactly about Trump: governmentalism and mercantilism (governmentalism applied to “free trade”) have always been American traditions.

The part of America which became the USA has long been a government enterprise. English America was first founded by the “West Country Men”, a group of famous plutocrats which had included Sir Francis Drake, who died in an American military expedition… and where King James I would be most prominent.  

The Erie Canal made New York the economic capital of the USA, displacing Philadelphia.

The English North American colony, the 1607 project, was founded by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock entity which was empowered by the Crown to govern itself… with the help of military officers (such as the fierce and experienced Captain John Smith who was part of the governing council). So, from the beginning, the North American colony was a joint military-government-investors venture. 

Biden wants to augment significantly government spending, in a reversal of the Reagan program of considering the government as the enemy. There are powerful antecedents to this: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, JFK and LBJ. Ike rose the marginal tax rate to 91% (a bit higher than Truman left it).

Nowadays, what needs to be industrialized correctly is the entire world. In particular, in the long term, no more fossil fuels, no more deforestation, no more environment killing plastics, chemicals, heavy metals, phosphates, etc.

This reconfiguration of the world economy can only happen at the direction of governments. Taxation, anywhere in the world, just as the economy, anywhere in the world, or democracy, anywhere in the world, is a global problem. There never was, and never will be, a free market as the adjudicator of all things economic: it is the government itself which is the adjudicator. The government determines what freedom is, and what the market is. 

Around 655 CE, the government of Queen Bathilde of the Franks ruled that trading slaves was unlawful: this restraining of the free market led to investments in education and higher technology, making Europe what she became: a fulcrum of progress and relative freedom… As usual the link is indicative; I do not fully agree with the description of Bathilde as given by Encyclopedia Britannica; in particular, the British encyclopedia lies about Bathilde freeing only Christians. Bathilde [correct spelling from contemporaneous 7C, Seventh Century Latin documents] OUTLAWED SELLING and BUYING SLAVES… Even from OUTSIDE FRANCIA: more exactly, a slave bought outside Francia was automatically freed when brought into Francia. The religion, ethnicity, gender and origin of the slave did not matter; the slave was freed. The Bathilde governmental policy of outlawing slavery did not just change the socioeconomy of Europe, but of the planet.

She outlawed slavery: Most important political leader of the planet? Ever?

All the great civilizations have been driven by smart governmentalism: Darius greatly improved the Achaemenid Empire by experimenting with the free market, while engaging in massive government spending in all sorts of infrastructure, canals, some underground, irrigation, communications, roads, state banking, a powerful navy, etc. China built a giant canal system, over millennia, and had a powerful educational system. Nowadays the most important spending should be research in fundamental science, something the “free market” and its greed can’t provide for… The world CO2 crisis can only be solved scientifically, not fiscally

Bidenomics consists, roughly speaking, of more of what I call “governmentalism”: large-scale public investment paid for with more taxes. 

The Biden administration infrastructure fact sheet alludes to part of that history, declaring that the plan “will invest in America in a way we have not invested since we built the interstate highways [Ike] and won the space race [JFK, LBJ].” I have long advocated to bring back the Dwight stuff — with much higher government investment as a share of gross domestic product than we do now, and also much higher tax rates on both high-income individuals and corporations.

The era of big government investment and high taxes on the rich coincided, not incidentally, with the US and Europe’s 30 glorious years the greatest generation — the post WW2 decades of rapidly rising living standards….

Public investment and progressive taxation in America in particular and the greatest civilizations in general goes back much further than the mid-Twentieth Century.

An example is the construction of the Erie Canal between 1818 and 1825. It imitated what the Romans and the French had done. When Marius’ legions arrived in Provence and waited two years for the savage German invaders to deign showing up, he occupied his soldiers by building a canal. The land which came to be known as France would keep on building canals, at government expense, for another two millennia. 

Unlike the privately owned canals of 18th-century plutocratic Britain, the original Erie Canal was built by the government of New York State, at a cost of $7 million (in 1818 dollars). This was carried out over the years 1818 to 1825. The canal is a 363-mile  (nearly 600 kilometers) waterway that connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River in upstate New York. It connected New York City to the Great Lakes, and through Chicago, to the Mississippi system. 

The legislative act allowing bonds to be sold to finance the canals’ construction specified a maximum interest rate of 6 percent… apparently was the interest rate which the bonds actually paid. Over the period from 1824 to 1882 the total tolls collected amounted to approximately $121 million. This ranged from $300 thousand in 1824 to $4.5 million in 1862. Thus the canal paid for itself in less than twenty years.

Britain had immensely wealthy individuals and banks, the USA did not (both the US Revolution and presidents such as Jackson made sure to keep away European plutocrats and their banks). So governmentalism was a necessity in the USA. As a share of state G.D.P., the canal was probably the equivalent of  $1 trillion today

Big public role in infrastructure continued down the generations, and it was accompanied by a policy not of “Free Trade” but “Mercantilism“: the US government would mostly maneuver to advantage private enterprise and greed, at the cost of all and any notions, including basic decency or filial piety… for example profiting from World War One by selling to racist fascist invasive mass homicidal genocidal Kaiser Germany what it needed to keep fighting World War One, by evading the Franco-British high seas blockade; this caused great suffering and weakening of France and Britain, the parents of the USA.

The US government would send the US Cavalry, massacre and clear the Indians, and distribute their lands around the newly built railroads. Land grants enabled railway construction and universities. Teddy Roosevelt finished the Panama Canal (started by the French Ferdinand de Lesseps and his French banks). F.D.R. brought electricity to rural areas. Eisenhower built the interstate freeway network.

So what is today’s infrastructure to be built? Mostly fundamental science. We need to leap scientifically: COVID was just a little warning. Very sophisticated scientific advances (mRNA vaccines and Adenoviruses gene carrier vaccines) enabled to solve the crisis promptly. Meanwhile the climate and toxic crises are squeezing ever more the world ecology. After the enormous expansion of the world population, it is to be feared that, barring spectacular scientific advances, cannibalism may come back. After all, it was practiced in the original English colony of 1610 CE, not just the Donner Party of the Nineteenth Century.  

When India was created as a modern country, respect was paid to Islam: (wealthy) Muslim men were allowed to follow their religious edict, the Sharia, and marry several women. Meanwhile, China, duplicating Europe, was explicitly outlawing polygeny. So India was created with a low level of government intervention, the opposite of the brutal dictatorship of the CCP. India was then wealthier per capita than China. Now China is much wealthier than India in capital (but not in capita).

In 2015, the India Supreme Court found that secular law should apply to Muslim men too. Thus governmentalism has been on the rise in India… And so has been the economy. The smartest governmentalism implies the smartest laws, the smartest “free market”, the smartest tech and science, and the smartest driver of them all, the smartest smarts… The latter point escapes autocrats. As Biden (who has personal experience with them) pointed out, autocrats such as Putin and Xi think the world has become too complicated for democracy and requires autocracy. Well, it is democracy, democratic governmentalism, which created that more complicated, smarter world. Yet, yes, it is a fine line, sometimes democracy backfires, as Socrates pointed out luridly, indeed, there are all sorts of thin red lines not to cross. But, done right, democratic governmentalism can’t be beat.

A piece of advice: too much spending giving money directly to low lives, is what was started in Rome, and it brought only the opposite of what it claimed to want to achieve. Besides many “Republicans” may resist it (rightly). The way to improve civilization the most is through education, availability of work, and fundamental science. A consensus should be buildable in that perspective.

Patrice Ayme

Economy Is A Slave To The Society Governance Wants

There is never any “spontaneous order” of the economy. The “Spontaneous Economy” is a charming idea pushed forward by this pencil pusher, Milton Friedman, in a charming way. The argument of Friedman is that nobody knew how to make a pencil: it requires the entire world economy, and its entire history. That is all certainly true, yet, it is not the whole story. It is missing crucial foundations: the army, the law, the government… And an intellectual machinery below all this, to create the best ideas. For example Europe in the period 650 CE to 1000 CE, was not the wealthiest by a very long shot: China, Roman Constantinople and the three Caliphates were immensely wealthier. But Europe had the best ideas, those who turned out to be scalable into today’s world civilization. The master thinkers had names: Queen Bathilde, Alcuin, Charlemagne…

“Economy” means house management (the Athenian philosopher Xenophon invented the concept, but government intervention in the Athenian economy was more than two centuries old, by then, from Draco to Themistocles!)

Facebook directors and Wall Street titans are getting in the Biden administration.Some examples. Facebook itself was greatly created from US government (under Obama). Wall Street investment depends upon borrowed money given by the “private” banks which constitute most the Federal Reserve. The policy of the Federal Reserve, nominally independent, is not really so: it depends upon its constituent plutocrats (banks and their owners) plus what the government really wants.

Thus the economy and governance is a chicken and egg problem… and, as such, evolutionary elucidated: the house is managed according to what its governance decides. “Governance” itself varies… from Direct, Real Democracy, all the way to tyranny and theocracy.There are other entangled chicken and egg problems dominating society, such as the question of education and governance: the better educated get better governance, bad governance gives, and thrives from, bad education.

Roman aqueducts were government projects. They made the world’s largest city, Roma, with more than one million inhabitants, possible. It was by far the world’s largest city. in the following millennia, governmental water engineering made large cities possible

All these entanglements explain why the Roman Republic and State collapsed in a seemingly irresistible way, over a period of centuries: the increasingly fascist government fed the stupidity which enabled it to keep on thriving, until it finally sawed through completely the branch on which it sat.All this to say total economic freedom never is and never was. All and any freedoms are limited in many ways. An example is the (indispensable) transition to the hydrogen economy: it is feasible, but it means government intervention, in part only because there already is government intervention in favor of fossil fuel. Also all and any new technological activity needs investment, thus, ultimately, government subsidy, because governments decide who the banks are going to lend to, ultimately…

And now the question becomes: Towards The Hydrogen Economy At Last? If we want a renewable economy, we need hydrogen and nuclear. By “hydrogen” I mean hydrogen and its quasi substitutes, like ammonia, or methanol (H3COH; “wood alcohol”, which is liquid at ambient temperature). By “nuclear” I mean state of the art fission (not WW2 polluting and dangerous tech as deployed 75 years ago), and fusion.

People love to oppose “capitalism” and “socialism”. This is silly: civilization is social and rendered possible by capital. One does not go without the other. The important distinctions are between the quantity and qualities of “governmentalism”. Governmentalism, well applied, made possible the enormous population of Rome: more than one million… to be surpassed only by Beijing, London and Paris, 18 centuries later. The combined conduit length of the aqueducts in the city of Rome is estimated between 490 to a little over 500 miles. 29 miles (47 km) of which was carried above ground level, on masonry supports. Rome’s aqueducts supplied around 1 million cubic meters each day (that is one million tons, or 300 million gallons a day). That’s a capacity greater than the current water supply of the city of Bangalore, the tech capital of India, which has a population of 6 million…

Tellingly, nineteenth century spectacularly growing cities encountered severe recurring epidemics caused by their contaminated water supply, which spread worldwide… by contrast, larger Roman cities did not have such epidemics in their heydays… thanks to gigantic quantities of water flowing through everyday! Those pandemics (in particular cholera) were solved only thanks to advancement of science and hydraulics. London East End was ravaged by cholera from contamination, under Queen Victoria… Right, in the later phases of the Roman dictatorship, there were epidemics… and that was no coincidence. Just as now the fact that the epidemic is striking hard the degenerate pseudo-democratic regimes of the “West” is no coincidence… when dozens of other countries are doing better…

Reciprocally, indeed, when the government of Rome became too much of a self-perpetuating military plutocracy, thus increasingly stupid, and feeding of stupidity, its governmentalism became increasingly incompetent in managing the many, while staying optimal for the ruling oligarchy in degenerating circumstances they had themselves created… But were not cogent enough to discern, let alone fix.

Biden said he would emphasize the turn towards the “green economy“. We will know soon. When Obama came to power, the first thing he did was to demolish hydrogen, in particular hydrogen from clean sources (“green hydrogen”). The problem is that, with today’s science, only hydrogen can make the green economy workable as a full replacement of the fossil fuel economy (nothing that Obama needed to understand for his modest definition of self-fulfillment). If Biden gives a green hydrogen signal in 14 days, that will be excellent. Right now, though Biden seems to be putting in power the teams which made Obama all he could be, namely, nothing much.

Biden, Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama put in command the financial plutocracy, and some of its agents, such as the internet monopolies. That created the economy they wanted: Delaware, Biden’s own state, is the world number one tax shelter state… Clinton demolished the safeguards of the banking system installed under President Franklin Roosevelt, by gutting the key mindset of the Banking Act of 1933. The Banking Act of 1933 prevented banks to speculate, and thus forced the banks to invest in the real economy… And leverage the real economy, instead of leveraging themselves. Instead the idea of Clinton, or, more exactly, pushed onto Clinton by Goldman Sachs was to unleash the dogs with would bring the most dinero to the Clintons. Makes sense for greedy low lives. Bush, who differently from Clinton was born at the top of the financial and military-industrial plutocracy set up the outrageous idea of refinancing failing banks without nationalizations (after letting Lehman Brothers, the Bond Market money center, but also the enemy of Goldman Sachs, collapse)…

Obama, somebody who know nothing but orders from above, ran away with the idea of financing the banks with the public purse, without quiproquo, hell-bent as Obama was to augment inequality in the USA under the cover of his appearance as the opposite…

All this exploded when Trump became president, but now the bits and pieces are been glued back together again: look at the reapparition of Susan Rice, once Kagame’s agent. And never mind the spirit of the Republic.

It is possible that Biden, husbanding the best of Obama and Trump will be a good president steeped in efficient governmentalism. It was a good start to heed my strident calls for a single shot vaccine (I sent a flurry of tweets that way on his account). The next thing should be a high density housing program in crucial cities (give subsidies to Trump! And Trump-like critters), a mad rush into hydrogen, and much more science financing (say like China!)…

Patrice Ayme

Progress From Prowess: Flying Boats Fear UFOs

Nowadays, some boats fly out of the ocean. And they fly faster than the first planes did, a bit more than a century ago. Foils located below the boats lift them out of the water, and that, in turn reduce friction considerably. Water is one thousand times denser than air. Kinetic energy is ½ mvv, so the energy imparted by an underwater foil, creating lift, will do so with a much smaller surface than a wing [1].  A drastic problem, though, is UFOs. Flying boats go really fast, they can cruise at twenty meters per second (seventy feet). When they encounter an Unidentified Floating Object, it doesn’t work too well. This problem should be fixed for a variety of reasons, from moral to technological, to economic, to, one should say, spiritual.

Technological progress is important: it is the essence of humanity and gave birth to it through a process of artificially natural self-selection. In particular present humanity, with 7.8 billion individuals, using the technologies it had to use to get to its present situation, has put spaceship Earth on an unsustainable course. 

There are two ways out of this: either a spectacular regression, through war, famine and collapse, or a spectacular progress into new technologies which will make our integration with the biosphere sustainable again. 

Around the World Record Holder: 40 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes. In 2017 [2]. It is presently equipped in 2020 with new foils which enables it to stand more outside of the ocean, just skim the water, and went already half way around the world in less than 20 days

The first around the world sailing record for circumnavigation of the world was the Basque Juan Sebastián Elcano and the remaining members of Ferdinand Magellan‘s crew who completed their journey in 1522…. After nearly three years of navigation (and only one ship left out of five; 35 circumnavigators survived out of an initial 270… Let it not be said that the global world we now enjoy was obtained cheaply. And as far as “colonialism” is concerned… Magellan died because it took part in a local war in the Philippines; the main aim of Magellan’s expedition was to prove one could circumnavigate, and thus obtain spices such as pepper and cloves from the Maluku Islands more cheaply…)

Sailing while flying from and out of water could be a technology of the future even for the most massive transport of goods and people. The technology uses computers, because electronics is faster than neurology. High flying kites dragging a boat could help too…

Trading goods is a global, essential activity that creates much of the world’s pollution as it is, and it is therefore essential to reduce said pollution, without killing trading (We trade your brawn against our brains!)

Some have whined that boats going at 25 meters per second through the ocean could collide with sea mammals, and fast sailing was, therefore, an unethical activity. Actually the problem of UFOs, unidentified Floating Objects is dramatic for flying sail boats. In the present Vendee Globe, several boats were damaged by impacts with UFOs, and had to hobble into port (not necessarily from damage to just the foils: the boats go so fast that they can be damaged anywhere). In early November a catamaran hit a UFO in the Atlantic, and capsized, killing the pilot (others below deck survived). Many of these UFOs are… containers dropped from giant cargo ships.

The impact on and with sea mammals could probably be reduced precisely because the foils make noise, from cavitation, the formation of bubbles, and should warn sea creatures. Maybe studies could be made to generate a clearer warning, or maybe collisions are mostly with man-made oceanic debris, and that, per se, should be an important object of study leading to diminution thereof. A French company is making devices which scan the sea ahead of the boats. Flying maxi trimarans have also to steer around icebergs (from satellite data), and growlers…(by looking out!) 

Other ships collide with sea creatures, but nobody cares as the ships are too large to be affected by the collisions. Hence the high speed collisions of flying maxi-trimarans with UFOs attract attention to this problem, which has been so far ignored. Efforts to avoid collisions, necessary for the maxi flying trimarans, and other flying boats, could then lead to reducing collisions and pollutants in the high seas, both laudable objectives. Thus sailboat flying is morally correct.

So let’s celebrate the efforts to fly on boats around the world in less than 40 days! Such efforts are not just technological and even scientific prowess, but also economic and moral prowess!

Meanwhile Elon Musk’s SpaceX flew its astounding Spaceship, SN8, eight of the name. It landed hard, from low pressure in the “header tank”… and exploded, but the test was nevertheless wildly successful. It demonstrated all sorts of capabilities, including aerosurfaces precision control and the ability to flip the huge vehicle upright just before landing. All this is key to the possibility to use rocketry in all sorts of ways, including going around the world in less than an hour… And we will take off from Mars, after fueling there, because it is apparently possible to make oxygen and methane on the Red Planet, from large quantities of briny water, therein. Why to go there? Will whine the losers… Why to go anywhere?

Some will whine that all these technological prowess, from SpaceX or French flying sailboats, is fundamentally inhuman. Far from it. It is those who condemn technological prowess as both exploit and solution, who have understood nothing to human nature, and are fundamentally inhuman.

Patrice Ayme

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[1] Why planes fly is not very clear(!) There are many effects to consider. Same thing for boats, thus flying boats have many types of foils/wings. 

My own guess is that what is most important is the deflection of energy, in which direction the 1/2mvv can be sent. That explains why under water foils can be so small: if just the Bernoulli Principle applied, foils would have to be as large as 1/1,000 as wings. Besides, the Bernoulli Principle, long considered, I think erroneously, as the main reason why the wings of planes provide lift, does not, cannot apply to sailboat foils; because water is not compressible… (Or, at least, not significantly so!)  , 

Actually the world record holder for going around the world, IDEC Sport, a pretty old boat from 2006, established its record in 2017. Then IDEC was fitted with new, more advanced foils, and immediately beat the record of Tea Route, Hong Kong to London. With its new foils, the main part of IDEC just skims on top of the water, it does not outright lift out of the water as more recent boats do. But that is obviously enough to reduce friction considerably. IDEC can cover more than a thousand miles in 24 hours.  

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/those-flying-boats-fight-the-co2-catastrophe/

No improved technology, no progress… What those who don’t want to go back to the Moon forget…

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[2] This boat changed names, not just technologies, a few times, as its (French) sponsors changed. It was known initially as Groupama 3, and had been made for a particular skipper, frank Cammas.

After two abortive attempts ending in 2008 and 2009, Groupama 3 finally took the Jules Verne Trophy in 2010 with a time of 48 days, 7 hours 44 minutes and 52 seconds. Ten years after her record-breaking Transatlantic dash, and now named Idec Sport, the boat again holds the Jules Verne Trophy after Francis Joyon and his crew took her non-stop around the world in 40 days 23 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds.

Fewer Nail Salons, More Global Heating Mitigation? Federal Reserve Bank Will Target Higher Inflation… At Last!

This is a historic day, the day when the central bank recognized there are bigger issues than inflation. There always have been. Rome didn’t go down from inflation, but from the unemployment and un-empowerment which preceded inflation by centuries. Roman inflation in the Third Century was a big problem, but it originated from much bigger and deeper problems, and first the lack of democracy and the mass unemployment and mass un-empowerment of the Roman plebs.

Emperor Diocletian was able to fix inflation where it really hurt state and society with a command economy, and that worked well: Roman provinces were doing great economically… until they got invaded. Archeology has revealed this to be the case all over, from Italia, to Gallia, to Africa, and even to Syria, which got invaded two centuries later than the former three.

So Rip out and throw away all the economic textbooks of the last fifty years: they were wrong.

The revamp towards higher inflation and a more active economy (as requested by US President Trump!) is designed to address the “reality of a quite difficult macroeconomic context of low interest rates, low inflation, relatively low productivity, slow growth and those kinds of things,” said Fed Chairman Jerome Powell during a conference broadcast online. “We’ve really got to work to find every scrap of leverage in helping stabilize the economy.”

I have asked heavens to target much higher inflation, for decades. In the so-called “glorious thirties”, which ended in the mid 1970s, the economy, the technology, the quality housing were all growing fast… propelled by inflation well above 2%.

How much above 2% is not clear because the ways of measuring inflation vary, and have changed from introducing “hedonistic” factors. However, the following graph is telling enough:

Enough inflation, enough real GDP growth (here the ten year treasury is used as a proxy of inflation, and it’s much better than the all too tweaked and humanized, even hedonized CPI)

Also inflation has been very strong in some areas (say health care, medical drugs; quality education), or then tweaked, twisted and tortured (measuring real estate cost from rents instead of face value, etc.)

One of my main reason to favor higher inflation is that, well done, it accelerates the speed of money and the speed of technology, while weeding out obsolete habits.

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Catastrophic Climate Change, CCC, is upon us, so forest fire mitigation has to become primordial:

Larry Minikes informed me that: “In July, [California Governor] Newsom announced the delivery of $285M worth of dozen Huey Hawk (Blackhawk) helicopters to replace our aged Vietnam-era Bell helicopters. I believe they were ordered in February. The new Hawks can each carry a fire crew plus 1000 gallons of water and are certified for night flying, which the Bell are not. However, as I am reading, pilots are not yet fully certified so they could not be used at this time”.

I did not know about the new helicopters, and Newssom’s initiative. Especially flying at night is good. They better rush, because the maximal fire season is not yet here. Systematic racism against domineering brush would be most welcome, by burning it during the cold, wet months. Some of this brush was/is ridiculous: one has to tunnel through it. It does not have to be done everywhere. That could employ a number of qualified professionals, same technique as counterfires. 

Doing preventive burning in patches would be enough, more effective for large fire prevention, and best to preserve plant and animal diversity. This was done in places like Yosemite already starting long ago, after huge fires, and it was done with reasonable success. Goats should be unleashed: there are enough mountain lions to keep the numbers down should they escape. Bovines are not ideal, but way better than nothing.

The 747-400 supertanker can drop 74 tons of water (20,000 gallons)… What is clear, as we both agree, is that much more, and more innovatively, needs to be done, right away. This should become part of a more general economic reorientation as part of an adaptation to the massive climate catastrophe around the corner. Burning the forests is how much of the change will happen, and will accelerate it, so we need to learn to slow it down as much as possible… And learn to acquire the mentality to divert enough economic activity to do this. 

Less nail salons, more prescribed burning. The responsibility in California is higher: redwoods disappeared from Europe, but they are the highest carbon storage form of life per surface. They also release huge quantities of oxygen, which may come handy if more seas die, with all their plankton… They are one of the answers to global heating: also they are fire and heat resistant.

So we have to change the world economy. And accelerate it. So, inflation, welcome!

In practice it means more loans to engage in more progress. Focusing in quality ecologically correct housing, should be a must, and priority.

Patrice Ayme

Trump $6.2 TRILLION Fight Against COVID Is Economically Responsible

Finance is a convenient servant to the economy. Finance is not even necessary to the economy, and no economy, no money.  The six trillion dollars signed and negotiated by Trump do two things: 1) and most important, sustain and amplify the essential economy. 2) keep alive the non-essential economy, which would otherwise stop existing (… we can gently ease it out later…) 

The 2.2 Trillion Dollars Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed the US Senate 96 to zero (4 Senators were COVID or quarantined). Two days later the US Congress passed it, and Trump, who had helped to negotiate the details, signed it immediately. There were no hearing: all gt together, including Trump, who agreed to much Democratic ideas…

This was the largest financial intervention act of a state in the history of humanity.

The same day, Trump used the Defense Procurement Act, forcing General Motors to produce respirators. Trump added he may use the FPA again, as “we have a couple of little problem children… two companies which are NOT doing what they said they would be doing”.  

Some anti-Trumpers screamed to high heavens that Trump was exploding the national debt, and bringing financial ruin to the US. Critics of the 6.2 trillion dollar intervention do not understand how the economy works. In particular, they do not understand the essence of the economy, which is GOVERNMENTALISM. Let me explain.

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Big US debt procurement during World War Two was highly profitable to the US… and WORLD, economy… Let alone those who wanted to smash Nazism and other fascisms…

National debt, in a sovereign country acts, potentially, like a future tax, on those wealthy enough to have lent the money, or, potentially, as a future tax on those who received the money… I say debt is a “potential tax”, because reimbursement conditions can, and often, will vary. For example, if money is lent, but not reimbursed, it acts as gift, or theft, depending if one is on the receiving, or donating end. Europeans have acted stupid, ever since the EU was founded, as if they didn’t understand that (but the UK understood it, explaining partly its better economic performance.)

Let me add that this is not the case here; the 6.2 trillions are no augmentation of the national debt (explanation another time). 

What Trump is doing is putting the US economy on life support, while providing massive financing for research and development… and health care: 150 billion dollars for hospitals alone.

Here is an example: CDC Dr. Fauci said industrial fabrication of vaccines will be launched, even while one can’t know yet if those vaccines will work, or even if those vaccines do not launch the dreared “IMMUNE ENHANCEMENT”… that is during Phase 2 trials; that will be costly as perhaps two dozen vaccines are being developed (using sometimes extremely different methods: the Pasteur institute is using its usual method to see if its hybrid coronavirus-brucellosis is safe on mice and soon primates… While Sanofi will further push a 2017 “prototype” SARS vaccine using recombinant tech; several RNA vaccines are already in human trials, testing for basic safety…)     

A nominal increase in national debt acts as real free money for now.. And a potential, just potential, tax. I say potential, because, for a country of Argentina and if the money has been lent by foreigners, one may have to pay back part of it… But if one is the USA, one doesn’t have to pay any of one’s debt. Especially to foreigners. If foreigners don’t like it, they should feel happy to have lend so much money to such a superpower. 

One of the reason the European economy has stagnated is that it has insisted to inflict high taxes on citizens, instead of much more forgiving debt (which growth can erase; so debt enables and incites a sovereign country to grow faster…)

As it is, moreover, Trump’s two trillion is not necessarily a debt. And it’s actually six trillion dollars. 

Japan has a national (“Federal”) debt in excess of 200% of GDP. On March 27, it had only 49 deaths from Coronavirus, out of 1,700 cases, with a (so far) completely flattened curve, and a death rate per million not even one tenth that of the USA. In general the Japanese economy had not been doing badly with that debt… maintaining, for example a first class universal health system…. At a time when the USA is demonstrating, for the whole world to see, that a profit guided health system is a colossal disaster. Indeed, soon the USA may have much more than a million Coronavirus cases, and that will be imputable in part to not have been willing to spend more on healthcare (instead of spending on the billionaires who profit from US healthcare).  

The Federal government created two trillion dollars as direct help with CARES. To this one has to add 4 trillions of the US Federal Reserve at the disposal of banks through leverage (to start with; the Fed has said it will create whatever money is needed). None of this money is really debt. At most it means part of the US economy is getting nationalized (the average citizen becomes a shareholder).

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Take four cases I personally know of:

Picture a 500 rooms/apartments hotel/resort without any revenue for the rest of the year. It’s a “family business”. It has employees, pays their healthcare 100%. It’s at 7,000 feet, it has large fixed cost in heating, security, maintenance. And revenue is now zero. And will stay so for many months. What to do? A bank loan! But where does the bank get the money from? The Federal Reserve, which lends it at zero interest!

Picture my climbing gym. Actually a company with a dozen climbing gyms, with course setters, maintenance, staff, and paying 100% health care. Same story as the preceding.

Third example: a research institute in AI getting its money from corporations with now zero revenue. They said they were firing all their scientists, effective in June. The Trump administration is stepping in.   

Fourth example: Several science museums I know. There is money for them in the two trillions. Trump himself explained the Kennedy Center for the Arts needed 25 millions to pay salaries, maintenance (the Dems wanted 35 millions initially). 

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Trump is using MASSIVE GOVERNMENTALISM. Smart.

What is important is that expertise not be lost. OK, a bit of expertise lost in completely useless parts of the economy will be OK… But futuristically essential services should be maintained. For example in teaching, research, industrial base. 

The mightiest states are always living with fiat money. The Inca were using knots on ropes. The very fact a state can impose fiat money is an expression of its power. As it is, there is going to be a hole of one third of GDP, because one third of all transactions in one year will not happen. So the state making it so that it will appear these transactions did happen… Even if they didn’t. 

Debt, left unpaid, means some people with excess capital may be cheated on. But debt, left unpaid, can save an economy. What is it not to like? I always said that Trump, as his chronology and behavior indicates, was truly a real Democrat (aka a “populist”… despised by the haves). TARP, organized by Obama, was truly a Transfer of Assets to Rich People. Whereas CARES has tight oversight, and pays the average family (which TARP didn’t do). CARES is the right thing to do. The alternative was a depression worse than 1929.

This virus crisis is an excellent occasion to find out how the economy works. First, one can see that 90% of the economy, or so, is useless. One can also see that the essential part of the economy, including scientific research, advanced, life saving technology, is underfinanced.

In Italy, some medical workers get paid less than $1,000 a month. Yes, less than a thousand dollars, and now the opportunity to die. But then they were honored by watching on TV brainless muscle guys paid more than one hundred million a year, just to hit a ball with their foot.

Ironically enough, the USA, and the world, is lucky that the US President is a specialist of saving (his won!) value through bankruptcy (ironically yours truly saw this, at the time, as corruption… Meanwhile, though, we have seen much bigger corruption than that…

CARES is bringing in money, as needed. Trump is ordering around General Motors, as, unfortunately, needed. This is a war. War can be good.  Universal health care systems in Europe were created thanks to the shock of World War Two. Coronavirus is the bellicose occasion we needed to reorganize the world economy in a more essential way.

Patrice Ayme 

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Say: WEAT, Wealth Economic Activation Tax. Rather Than: “Wealth Tax”.

Applauded in US, Reviled in China:

To justify the mass deportation of maybe as much as a million Chinese (Muslim) Uighurs, the Beijing authorities observed:  “Did they commit a crime? No… It is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts… Freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health.”

Well, in the West, it is unnecessary to hold such a discourse: the submissives don’t even know the names of their masters… basically the media owners, all wealthy beyond belief. (By the way, the link above is to the New York Times. The real hero is the high level insider in China who leaked the documents. Amusingly, the greatest leaker has been Edward Snowden, who revealed US spy agencies spied on all US citizens with the complicity, conscious or not, of the tech monopolies. Snowden is reviled by the US establishment, the Chinese leaker has already obtained sainthood…)

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Plutocrats are not just greedy: they want to put us in chains, because they like us to suffer: 

(This is the little point Rousseau overlooked, earning the scorn of De Sade.) To put us in chains, plutocrats confiscate much of the capital of the economy. (Not just because they want ever more capital, as Marx erroneously believed, but because they are… sadistic). To counteract the evil designs of those addicts of the Dark Side (however unconscious they claim to be), I advocate WEAT. 

In the last few weeks, the conspiracy against Warren has born fruit: she is not first in the polls, even in Iowa, the first state to vote, where Mr. Buttsomegig, apparently one of those pseudo-democrat from the school of pseudo-progress, is now leading. As I explained long ago, the impeachment targets Warren, not Trump. (Nobody seems to understand this.)

Hyper wealth reduces access to property, economy, and democracy for most people. Even health care gets confiscated: plutocrats organize health care as a source of profit. Patients who pay less, get less. I just ordered glasses. I have very high astigmatism. There were ten levels of quality of the lenses, the prices varied from one to five. The lowest level guaranteed a very reduced field of view. The most expensive, made by French Essilor, used special lenses, recut by computer driven laser. Not everybody can afford $500 lenses. If not, much less good vision, with consequences on driving, walking, etc. 

The failure of Obamacare, Reaganism for health care, shows up in the graph of life expectancy. Obama is the life expectancy inflection curve guy…

Obamacare acknowledged the necessity of organizing society around plutocratic profit (a Reagan moral imperative). Thus it compensated for those able to afford ‘less” by bringing in taxpayer money; however Obamacare didn’t change the basic picture, although it confused the issue… dental and eye care was still out of the picture… So was the little detail that Medicare is just 80%…

So the rise of plutocracy, Obamacare, Transferring Assets to Rich People, has corresponded to a lowering of life expectancy. 

One interest of a wealth tax is to reduce this confiscation of much by a few. Just taking wealth and reducing the national debt would reduce economic activity, and increase the worth of wealth, thus confiscate more from the commons, and make the wealthy relatively wealthier, achieving the exact opposite effect. So using a wealth tax to reduce debt… the latter being an obsession of the wealthiest and less economically active, would serve the wealthy, not most of the population. 

Instead, one has to use a wealth tax to augment economic activity and avenues for most people to increase their worth. Some of the wealthy argues that seizing two cents of their wealth would reduce the recycling of their wealth, the recycling of these two cents, into economic activity. A way to avoid this would be to enforce the recycling of 100% of the taxed wealth into economic projects. To avoid this, one should allow no injection of taxed wealth in the general budget. Thus one could present the wealth tax not as a redistribution tax, but a Wealth Economic Activation Tax. WEAT

Thus a wealth tax will have the following beneficial effects on civilization:

1. Economic Activation of the US wealth tax, the Wealth Economic Activation Tax will be its first effect, forcing money out of the vaults of the wealthy. Those vaults could be bonds, real estate, money losing media… So WEAT will increase what is technically known as the “speed of money”.
2. Removing even the possibility to plot to confiscate wealth from the general economy, society and democracy will be the second effect, it will inflect the economic organization of society. In today’s society, the plutocrats have so much clout, they establish government for all to see (Davos). Once the wealth tax is in place, connivence of the government and Deep State with plutocracy will be replaced by an adversarial relationship. The Davos mindset will look for what it is: a conspiracy of criminals. 
3. The Wealth Tax will foster progressive diminution of plutocracy, that is will save civilization from the control of the mentality which a few power obsessed, evil inhabited families impose at all levels of government, and society.  

The wealth tax is a must if we want the biosphere, and, a fortiori, civilization, to survive. The wealth tax is why the Roman Republic lasted five centuries (and arguably longer). Learn from history, to be spared the same catastrophes, just, way bigger, and radioactive too.

Patrice Ayme

Why Is Portugal Collapsing? From Deindustrialization and Dummification. Same As Rest of EU

The problem for Portugal, and, more and more for all European countries, more or less: what are they living from? What do they sell? What’s their job? European countries need gas, oil, and high technology: but (differently from the USA) they import all this… well, OK, France has Airbus … But France used to have much more! 

Europe has fallen asleep. The Court of Auditors in France has said that Arianespace is two years old to find a solution to the competition of SpaceX, Blue Origin (with their reusable rockets). Meanwhile, SpaceX continues its experimental efforts at a torrid pace, staggering, India is trying to land on the moon, or a Chinese robot has just made a weird discovery.

China, India and, of course, the US have fully understood that the future and independence can come only from technological dominance, so they make enormous efforts. Europe concentrates on tourism, museums, comfort and widespread mediocrity … And especially on the German industry secretly financed by small bankrupt banks financed by the German states … Unfortunately, the rest of Europe suddenly deindustrializes. ..

Population Collapse, Working Population Collapse: Thank You, Great EU Planners

All vital imports for Europe must be paid: with what money? Unlike the United States (or even Great Britain!), Europe does not create enough funding to finance industries that could create currencies for Europe to pay for what it needs.

In the fourteenth century, Portugal, then a tiny country of a million inhabitants, just released from five centuries of Muslim yoke, had the most advanced technology (maritime) in the world (and against attacked Muslims in Morocco). And now? Where is the Portuguese or even European technology? Now, technology is asking for the moon…

Historians are often baffled by the undeniable rise of the European society and economy by the Eleventh Century [2]. Soon north-west Europe had around the same demographics as the entire Roman empire (more 54 millions), and achieved greater productivity. It doesn’t take very long to find out why: Europe was stuffed of windmills, water wheels, heavy steel ploughs (to turn over fat rich soils of northern European plains), hydraulic hammers, and slow or fast ships all over, enabling trade all over, for example between Scandinavia and the Middle East, Norway and Sicily…

It’s so obvious that many non-European powers have perfectly understood the lesson. So why has Europe forgotten it? Because Europe is the revolutionary center …that mostly came from the driving engine of the early Renaissance, Western Francia, which was divided in 60 states in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. because Europe is the revolutionary center, the European media, owned by the plutocracy, has been excellent at making Europeans believe in the opposite of common sense and their self-interest. Instead, they learned to play, sing, dance and get drunk on their past…

As long as this is not understood, Europe, and Portugal in particular, will sink [3].

Patrice Ayme

[The preceding was machine translated from French original below!]

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[1 ] After all transistors were mass produced, and invented, in France, in 1948, with the help of two German scientists… and not by US, as corrupt Swedish Nobel organization claims…).

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[2] Berengar of Tours (c. 999 – 6 January 1088), in Latin Berengarius Turonensis, was an 11th-century French Christian theologian and archdeacon of Angers, a realistic scholar whose spectacular leadership of the cathedral school at Chartres set an example of intellectual inquiry. He was excommunicated for his fostering of reason, but, protected by the enlightened William of Normandy, kept on prospering and his ideas spread all over, forever after…

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[3] Even the crazed out Boris Johnson understands perfectly well that the fate of Great Britain rests in developing more advanced technology (hence is extolling of the… JET, the Joint EUROPEAN (!) Torus…).

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French Original:

Le problème pour le Portugal, et, de plus en plus tous les pays Européens, plus ou moins: de quoi vivent-ils? Il leur faut du gaz, du pétrole, et de la haute technologie: mais ils importent tout cela (bon d’accord la France a Airbus…).

L’Europe s’est endormie. La Cour des Comptes en France a dit qu’Arianespace a deux ans pour trouver une solution à la concurrence de SpaceX, Blue Origin (avec leurs fusées réutilisables). Pendant ce temps, SpaceX continue ses efforts expérimentaux à un rythme torride, sidérant, l’Inde essaye d’atterrir sur la Lune, ou un robot Chinois vient de faire une découverte bizarre. 

La Chine, l’Inde et, bien sur, les USA ont parfaitement compris que le futur et l’indépendance ne peuvent venir que de la domination technologique, donc ils font des efforts énormes . L’Europe se concentre sur tourisme, musées, confort et médiocrité généralisée… Et surtout sur l’industrie allemande financée en secret par des petites banques en faillite financées par les etats allemands… Malheureusement, le reste de l’Europe du coup se désindustrialise… 

Toutes les importations vitales pour l’Europe doivent être payées: avec quel argent? Differemment des USA (ou même de la Grande Bretagne!), l’Europe ne crée pas assez de financements pour financer les industries qui pourraient créer pour l’Europe des devises pour payer ce dont elle a besoin.

Au quatorzième siècle, le Portugal, alors un tout petit pays d’un million d’habitants, juste libéré de cinq siècles de joug Musulman, avait la technologie (maritime) la plus avancée au monde (et contre attaqua les Musulmans au Maroc). Et maintenant? Ou est la technologie Portugaise, ou même Européenne? Maintenant, la technologie, c’est demander la lune…

Economics As Science: Quesnay, Not Smith

Where it is revealed that Adam Smith was Quesnay’s Feeble Student…

Faithful Anglo-Saxons love to evoke Adam Smith and Ricardo, who are famous British economists.

Adam Smith is viewed as the first temple of economics, inventor of the free market. And that is the first set of deep mistakes. First, there was never any free market, ever since there are tribes, and they are governed. Even a government of pirates has laws. Which its market obeys.

Second, Adam Smith was actually a student. All right, we all are, but some of us do like Einstein, and get “their” main ideas somewhere else. They are not the ultimate creators. Ultimate creators are the ones worth pondering: their reasons are always deeper and more interesting than that of their parrots.

Adam Smith went to France, and learned from the physiocrats. The most prominent physiocrats were towering personalities. One, Turgot, became France’s Prime Minister (under Louis XVI), another was king Louis XV’s surgeon and “first doctor” (so economy was a love of his, as it was with the philosopher who named and founded economics, Xenophon. Lovers tend to think better than those paid to think correct thoughts).

What was the idea of physiocracy? Well, it’s in the name: the power of nature. Physiocracy views economics as an application of the laws of nature, hence its great reverence to agriculture. 

Mercantilism Is Much Smarter Than This Sorry Abstract Puts it. Physiocracy Insisted That Nature, Not The Sovereign, Should Guide Economics. True, But Naive…

As The Economist put it at some point: “If YOU asked twenty well-educated souls to identify a physiocrat, only a couple could help you out. Writers like A.R.J. Turgot, the Marquis de Condorcet and Francois Quesnay are not household names, unlike Adam Smith or David Ricardo. But they are important. According to one late-19th century historian, the physiocrats (who called themselves the “économistes”) created “the first strictly scientific system of economics”.

Adam Smith was half the age of Francois Quesnay when the latter instructed the former (43 versus 72). At the time, intellectuals from Britain and France heavily influenced each other, to the point theater has been written about them. The phrase laissez-faire, coined by fellow physiocrat Vincent de Gournay, came from Quesnay’s writings on China

Some say that physiocracy was a theory of wealth. In this reduced vision of physiocracy, the physiocrats, led by Quesnay, believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of agriculture. In that parody, Quesnay’s understanding of value-added was rather primitive—he could not see, for example, how manufacturing could create wealth. But that is certainly not true, as Quesnay greatly admired the Chinese universal education system, and its vaunted examinations producing mandarins who ruled the empire (without aristocracy).

Moreover, as Quesnay was France’s top doctor, he could not possibly believe that there was no added value in science and medicine. Quite the opposite. Quesnay, Louis XV’s esteemed friend, was called by the king, “my thinker”. Quite a compliment, as another friend was Voltaire. So that physiocrats believed in agriculture alone is a parody.

Farmers certainly produced wealth. To quote Karl Marx in “Das Kapital”, “the Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive, since that alone, they say, yields a surplus-value”.

The physiocrats are most commonly known for these most simplistic economic ideas which do not reflect their subtlety. Indeed these parodies are not their most important contribution to economic thought. Rather, it was the physiocrats’ methodological approach to economics that was revolutionary.

Before physiocracy, economics was not viewed as a scientific discipline, but rather a strategic one (this is what is called “mercantilism”). Mercantilist thinkers sometimes assumed that amassing gold, or military power was the best economic strategy… And indeed, it often was. Economic efficiency was irrelevant.

But Quesnay was a scientist (for most of his life, he was a surgeon, trained with the best, who then, at age 50, became an official medical doctor). And Quesnay wanted to apply the scientific principles of medicine to the study of economy. The “Tableau Economique”, which shows in a single page how an entire economy functions, and the abstruse book which contained it, is Quesnay’s most famous contribution.

Quesnay,an immensely respected figure, showed that the economy was something to be respected, analysed and understood—much like a human body. It could not simply be moulded by the will of a monarch (or government, or a bunch of know-nothing aristocrats).

This was a hugely important step forward. The elder Comte de Mirabeau, father to the main leader in the first few months of the Revolution, before an untimely death at age 40, considered Quesnay’s Tableau to be one of the world’s three great discoveries—equalled only by the invention of printing and the discovery of money. As The Economist says:

Familiar notions of contemporary liberal economics, laissez-faire, the invisible hand, etc. derive from Quesnay’s scientific approach. The physiocrats, like many other thinkers of the eighteenth century, believed in “natural order”. They showed that unchanging laws governed all economic processes. Consequently, it is generally thought that the physiocrats were opposed to government intervention: the dead hand of the state would only corrupt the natural evolution of the economy.(but, as Quesnay’s admiration for the Chinese governmental system based on erudition, and for Confucius, and Quesnay’s de facto appartenance to the government shows, that’s another nefarious Anglo-Saxon parody). T. Jacob Viner, a Canadian economist, referred to the physiocrats as one of the “pioneer systematic exponents” of laissez-faire… Alongside with Adam Smith.

But the root of physiocracy was much more general. Adam Smith was the student.

Why is the preceding important? First it destroys the Anglo-Saxon hubris that the Anglo-Saxon culture invented modern economic theory and practice. And that it succeeded because of it (whereas the proper application of gunnery has more to do with it).

In truth, it is quite the opposite. When Louis XIV, the self-flattered “Sun King” took control of the state, he discovered, to his dismay, that France had only twenty (20) major capital ships. England and the Netherlands each had one hundred (100). Each.

Why?

Because the Netherlands and England practiced the exact opposite theory to Physiocracy (which would be created in name a century later). The Great Powers, starting with the Imperium Francorum, Francia, and, seven centuries later, Portugal, Spain, etc., practiced Mercantilism, or how to create economic opportunity with big armies and then, big guns. And you know what? Right now the super states of the USA, China and Russia are practicing Mercantilism, while Europe practices Physiocracy. Obama has turned out to be a major practitioner of Mercantilism. Mercantilism has been his main activity. Europeans have not understood this at all.

Guess who is winning?

Patrice Ayme’

No Beasts, No Cry

The Kenyan government burned 100 tons of seized elephant ivory. Meanwhile in France, the environment minister outlawed the trade of any ivory object younger than 1947.

We hear from animal activists everywhere that animals should not be hurt anymore. Then they hop on a plane, and produce lots of biosphere killing CO2. How do we teach those fools that biocide is a greater crime than the suffering of a particular organism?

So let’s push the logic of the whiners to extremes. Say that, on January 1, 2017, the trade or exploitation of all and any animal part is forbidden. How much good would that do?

Africans, For Some Reason, Prefer To Enjoy Life Rather Than To Feed The Beasts. Because Villagers In Niger Were Gulped Down At An Unsustainable Rate, The Army, Well Trained By Hunting Jihadists, Was Called In.

What will happen? OK, a few hundreds of millions of people would die relatively soon from malnutrition. But let’s neglect this inconvenient truth. Anti-speciesists tell us that humans are no more worthy than insects.

What would happen to the animals? Well, they would have no more economic utility. They would also present some inconvenience: forget swimming in rivers full of giant lampreys, crocodiles, or seas full of sharks and sea-going crocodiles.

Africans kill wild beasts, because wild beasts are dangerous. I have seen villagers kill venomous snakes. Even In India, land of the beasts, villagers can get tired, when a single leopard kills more than 200 people. Such attacks still happen. Elephants too can be dangerous. Videos are out there, where an elephant will attack and gore, and throw in the air, and then again and again, and finally tramples… a calf.

Still, right now, national parks are reasonably safe. I have come across large ferocious beasts in my life such as various bears (several of them threatening), lions, leopards, boars, etc. They all fled in the end, except for a charging cow which nearly got me, and a wild horse which kicked me (don’t ask).

But ferocious beasts dominate their natural ferocity and inclination to destruction, mostly because large ferocious animals are wise, clever, and completely aware of the power and cruelty of Homo. And were taught that way by their parents and fellow ferocious beasts.

If one removed that psychological factor, things would change. Ferocious beasts would start to see Homo as dinner, or an irritation.

Respecting other animals, and conceding the planet to them would make our lives very uncomfortable. Vegetarians from India may object. However, last I checked there were only a few thousands tigers there, and less than 300 (Indian) lions. 300,000 years ago, lions were the most frequent large animal (because they ate anything, from rabbits to elephants: the European and American lions were significantly larger than present African lions).

It has been suggested that Homo was prevented to penetrate the Americas, for millions of years, by Arctodus Simus, the Short Faced bear, a huge, nightmarish carnivore. Arctodus was extremely carnivorous, extremely fast (70 km/h). Only advanced weapons, 12,000 years ago, were able to master the beast… into extinction.

So are we willing to have ferocious animals around, just to look at them, and fear, and flee, for our lives, which, should we turn pacific, would become short and brutish?

I think not.

To preserve the animal kingdom, it has to manage, and even economically exploited. I am for the reintroduction of (genetically re-engineered) lions, rhinoceroses and mammoths in Europe, grizzlies in California, jaguars in Arizona (there is at least one, eating immigrants, probably). However, the animals will have to be managed. So they have to pay for their own maintenance.

One can persuade Africans to tolerate elephants, if they bring enough cash to tolerate all the problems they do, and will, cause.

On the coast of New England, in some places, thousands of seals bask in the sun. Sharks, great white sharks, will follow. Then what? Will the secret service swim around the president if he dared to stop golfing, and took a dip in the sea?

That animals had formidable rights, long neglected, was a music to the Nazis’ ears. It is actually hilariously terrifying to read the 1933 law on animal protection signed by Adolf Hitler, November 24, 1933.

That animals need more rights is fine. However anti-speciesism is a delicate concept: a mosquito is not as sentient as a parrot. Nor is a sheep as sentient as a wolf. (And certainly a Nazi should not be viewed as being as sentient as those children it is sending to the oven!)

The Nazis (deliberately) pursued their inhuman agenda by hiding it with their loud obsession for animal welfare. Some variants of present day anti-speciesism often embraces, or even go further, than the Nazis did.

I am, of course, a human supremacist. I entertain no illusion on the goodness of animals as somehow superior to that of Homo.

Once I was on narrow mountain path, on the very steep flank of a mile high mountain, in a French national park. There were sheep around. The sort that shepherds release for summer. Big, fluffy, white wholesome wooly live sheep skins. The largest of them all, it seems, a stupendously enormous beast was spying on me with its beady eyes on the path. I stopped, wondering what could such a stupid beast think about. We looked at each other, the super predator, and the . Finally the living comforter appeared to have taken a decision, and I marvelled at the fact it could take one. It aimed straight, and tried to push the super predator off trail. I did not quite fall.

Animals, in the wild, are very smart. Homo can outsmart them, but it takes some concentration. Animals, out there, eat and kill each other, for many reasons. Once I was in a Senegalese national park, on top of a cliff. In the broad river, below, 200 crocodiles were basking in the sun. An hyppotrague (an antelope like bovid, large, powerful and ferocious), to escape an enormous lioness, charged across the Gambia where it was narrow. The lioness followed: damn the crocodiles! Both prey and predator took a calculated risk, because they knew how to take decisions, in seconds, and fiercely. (Yes, I swam in that river.)

The call of the wild is not the call of madness. It is the call of the mind, embracing the universe.

All what the call of harming no animal brings, is the disappearance of species. Many species survived only because they were useful. Even cattle, if not used, tends to disappear: see the case of the formidable Aurochs, and present day Gaur.

If an industry of cutting systematically the horns of rhinoceroses, and selling them, for cash, had been set-up, long ago, no rhinoceros species would have disappeared. And no harm would have been made to the rhinos (they like humans to scratch their backs, if they have determined them to be friendly).

The extermination of species is a higher form of immorality than the persecution of individual animals. To see this, one has to go at the root of morality, which is sustainability: a behavior is moral, if it is sustainable. Biocide, killing the biosphere, is as unsustainable as it can get. Homo has evolved into, and with, and managed, the biosphere, for millions of years. To declare that we will not manage the animals anymore is a dereliction, not just of duty, but of evolution itself.

The day wool and leg of lamb will not be needed at all, sheep will disappear. Philosophers will not be charged by sheep in the wild anymore. Much mental stimulation will be lost.

If we want to honor and love the animals and their species, the wealth of the biosphere our species evolved in, we have to accept all they can offer to us. Yes, including ivory. Grow up.

No beasts, no cry. Yes, there is suffering, so what? The day crying will be lost, much soul will be gone.

Patrice Ayme’

How Humanism Dies

Humanitarians Killed By Jihadists

Some of those who have Islamophilia claim that we obsess too much about Islamist terrorism. However, terrorism terrorizes. Everybody.

Merkel invited a million marvellous Muslims in Germany, and a few thousands of them, Muslim men, went on a rampage against German women in Cologne. The Qur’an has lots of passages about “women that your right hand posses”. (One can do plenty of things to those!)

Read the Qur’an, ladies and gentlemen, oh yes, read the Qur’an, and then you talk. The Qur’an is much much more fun than the completely insipid “50 Shades of Grey” (a book about a vaguely sadistic guy and a vaguely masochistic girl engaging in vaguely reprehensible practices). The Qur’an brims with fully endowed sadism, and uncomplexed total sexism.

Franco-Moroccan Leila Aloui, A Teenage Jihadist Faced Her, And Absolutely Had To Pump Her With Three Bullets. Too Beautiful. She Took Four Days To Die.

But do not gun killings as in the USA kill much more? The question has been asked by the Islamophiles (some of them no doubt pedophiles, as pedophilia is part of the sacred Islamist texts). Yes, they do: more than 300,000 in the USA in a decade. Murder, one by one, as in the USA, creates a pervasive mood of fear. Yet, it is not mass terror: the victims generally know their assassins (and many are gun lovers).

Whereas mass terror affects everybody, all the time. And it is capable of destabilizing entire countries. Some say: let those countries go. The objection to this is simple: how many North Korea do you want?

Bush and Blair made a deal with the bloody Libyan dictator Gaddafi, the “Deal in the Desert” in 2004. In exchange for dropping his nuclear bomb and chemical weapons program, Gaddafi got non-prosecution for mass murders committed in the West, oil going to Britain, and then lots of prisoners sent over by Blair and Bush, to torture to death, etc. And Gaddafi also got a lasting friendship: Blair called his friend the despot to try to save him from the wrath of the French led assault onto his satanic kingdom.

Leila Alaoui, already a famous photographer, 33 years old, was on a mission from Amnesty International. Leila, a talented artist, in the company of researchers from Amnesty International,  photographed young women who had been forced into marriages, by Islamist abusers. Some were as young as 11 (eleven) years old.

Leila was shot three times when she went to buy a salad, and found herself in front of a Jihadist. He had no idea who she was, except that she was obviously a free woman. She lost a lot of blood. A young African passing by picked her up, brought her to the hospital. She asked about her driver. She was not told that her driver, also from Amnesty International, had been burned alive in his car.

The Jihadists in Ouagadougou shot everybody in sight. They assassinated a six member Canadian family who helped, in a humanitarian effort, with a school since December. And two famous Swiss humanitarians, ex-MPs who had also been on an humanitarian effort were also killed. Then the Jihadists went back to finish the wounded. Many played dead. The Jihadists set the hotel on fire. Many burned alive.

French special forces were flown from Mali, and wiped the terrorists out. If you want peace, first make war.

Meanwhile, Oxfam, a British charity, came up with its annual report on inequalities.

62 billionaires own as much property as 50% of the world population, 3.6 billion people. Since 1998 the 10% richest got most of the increase in riches.

Moreover, Oxfam found that 7,000 billion Euros of tax evasion, mostly from corporations. This is 12% of world GDP. It’s more money than the GDP of any country, except the USA and the EU.

Meanwhile, French industrial production collapsed by 50% in 15 years. It’s not all a simple, direct effect of globalization. Something more subtle is at work.

What? Why? ENA, the National Administrative School, a sort of French Harvard played a big role. Know not knowledge, but how to “Mange”, I mean “Manage”, that is, exploit, fellow men. Big French companies selected the most “intelligent” 20 year olds, those who got to the likes of ENA, coincidentally those children are those of the elite. Many of these companies had been created by “privatizing” large French public companies. Something similar happened with Russia at the same time, with the same sort of “advice”, in the end emanating of that same source of neo-capitalism, Harvard.

Volkswagen instead replaced its CEO by an employee who started at VW as a teenage apprentice.

French savings go mostly to life insurance, which, “strangely”, by French law, cannot go to investments in industry (or maybe it’s not so strange when one realizes that the legislative process is increasingly dominated by the financial plutocracy!). Instead French savings gets to government bonds, and, first of all USA government bonds, thus feeding the American financial plutocracy (as it fits into the Quantitative Easing scheme).

Just as Quantum Entanglement entangles the world as one, plutocracy entangles the world with its satanic mood. Meanwhile, a national union government arose in Libya.

What for? Franco-American attack on the Islamist State in Libya. The idea is to have the new Libyan government ask the United Nations for help. Then the West could eliminate the Islamist State in Libya.

Some will say it will make the situation worse. However, sometimes all we can do is mitigate. Come to think of it, life is all about mitigation. Only god knows the ultimate ends, and this is why he does not exist. But we do.

In recent decades, it has dawned on Non Governmental Organizations of the humanitarian type that the preceding is correct. Humanitarianism without enough force of law is a non sequitur. 

Without military force to impose the law, the law of man, ethological law, the work of humanitarian NGOs cannot be done. (Yes, there was this systematic bombing attack against Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan. But that was no doubt nothing that Obama and company ordered. Both France and the USA, differently from Russia, have tried with greater attention to detail than ever, to limit “collateral damage”.)

Obama evoked these ambiguities in his Peace Award Nobel Lecture. Indeed. Only evil against evil can fight for the greater good. Goodness is the product of careful applications of evil calculus. Absent the application of force by goodness, evil moves in the moral vacuum, unopposed.

Patrice Ayme’