Prager.u is producing killer youtube ads

I think everyone has a pretty good sense for the truth found in the saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The question is, how do some people end up getting absolute power?  How can the herd fall for the BS of megalomaniacs over and over again?  As an engineer I have thought about this quite a bit, and I think the answer lies in adaptation.

I think most people are born inherently good but that life experience teaches them that they can sometimes get ahead by standing on the shoulders, or faces if needed, of others.  If you walk up to most young people and say, hey, let's go do some heinous shit, 95% will tell you to get away from them and call you an a-hole.

Megalomaniacs know this.  So they never lead with evil.  Instead, they lead with something that sounds good and then over time they change it by degree.  The frogs who have been following them slowly heat up in the pot, never really noticing that the fundamental good thing they once believed in is all but gone from what they are currently doing.  But momentum is a powerful thing in a herding species and it's really, really hard to stand back and evaluate everything from scratch once the herd is moving in a given direction.

Once the herd is moving, collectivism, which I believe is a form of energy conservation similar to compression in software engineering, takes over.   Nobody stops to re-evaluate the series of events that have taken place that got them from start to present because that takes not only a lot of time but also a lot of deep thinking.  Instead, everything going forward is relative to the present.  So if someone can slowly establish a status quo without being called out as having co-opted herd think, that status quo becomes the norm by which all future actions are measured instead of going back to the original intention of a thing.  In this way, con men from either the extreme left OR the extreme right to use our own humanity, our own human nature against us like a blunt weapon.

Campaign  promises made by parasitic con men (and women) are a good example of this.  Andrew Yang and Pocahontas Warren sell themselves by promising forgiveness of past debts (like student debt), universal basic income and free health care (i.e. forgiveness of future debts).  Of course these are ridiculous ideas from an economic standpoint which anyone except a child can see will not work.  All of this crap hinges on using the power of the state to steal from someone in order to bribe votes from someone else because programs must be paid for somehow and government has no wealth of its own.  Anything it spends must be taken from the herd via one of three means:

- borrowing from others (with the eventual goal of defaulting)

- overt taxation (confiscatory taxation of the rich)
- covert taxation (inflation)

None of these ever work out well for morons who fall for their allure. 

- If you borrow today then you either have to pay back tomorrow or you default.  If you pay back then all you are doing is pulling in tomorrow's consumption into today.  When tomorrow comes you will simply have that much less.  If you default then that revenue stream goes away.  So this tactic is not sustainable over the long term and it always devolves into debt monetization which is the sneaky tax.

- If you institute overt, confiscatory taxation of the rich, all you do is send the message to them to move elsewhere.  Peter Schiff, who is said to have a net worth of about $70 million, said goodbye to affluent Connecticut a couple years ago and moved to Puerto Rico where taxation is more favorable.  While not uber-rich, Schiff got out while the getting was good.   Mike Mish Shedlock has indicated he is moving out of Illinois next year in order to avoid upward spiraling taxes of the upper middle class in order to pay public pensions.  Shedlock isn't rich.  He's upper middle class.  He's proof that leftist schemes to tax the rich in order to pad the pockets of their supporters cannot and do not stop with the rich because the rich just leave.  They have the wherewithal to relocate very easily.  It's called capital flight.  Shedlock is not rich so it is taking him longer to get out and he has been threatening to do so for the last 4 years.  But now he's finally ready and so he will leave as well.

- if you institute covert taxation via the printing press, anyone who uses the currency experiences loss of buying power over time.  This always hits the poor the first and the worst.  The reason is that rich have assets and poor do not.  Asset prices rise in the presence of inflation, thus offsetting the loss of purchasing power of the currency.  The left says they are doing all this to help the weak and impoverished and minorities, etc. but those are the people who are really getting screwed in this deal. 

Even people who are just middle to upper middle class like myself are maneuvering to avoid what we know is coming.  All my retirement wealth is in precious metals and within 2 years I will be leaving Texas (and high property taxes) for the Bahamas (zero property taxes) where I will live on an ocean canal with direct access to some of the most pristine and beautiful and productive waters on the planet.  No matter what happens, I will never go hungry because the ocean will provide.  Even if there is no gasoline to run my 42' fishing yacht I can walk to the beach in 10 minutes with my fishing pole and catch food anytime.  Or I can go snorkeling off the beach with a spear.  Or I can kayak out into deeper water and drop a line.

I think Andrew and Pocahontas know all of this as well.  If either gets elected they will make some token effort at implementing their stupid "ideas" (con games) but will then branch off into something else.  Over time they will be doing things that are completely unrelated to what they promised in their campaigns and their only goal will be to remain in power.

Prager.u is a conservative group which has formed, according to their website) in order to re-ignite Judeo-Christian values.  They have been buying a ton of Youtube ad space of late and putting out some really good 5 minute videos that teach real conservative values about money, politics, society, etc.  In this recent release they point out how liberalism and progressive-ism used to mean one thing but now the actions of those who call themselves progressive liberals fly in the face of their stated core beliefs.  It often manifests as the leftist tactic of "do as I say, not as I do, rules aren't for me 'cause we made them for you".

Prager.u is just another example, and quite a good one IMO, of how the conservative wave is re-establishing itself here in the USA.  In the link to the recent video release you will note that the speaker (Dave Ruben) identifies himself as a "married gay man".  While I think he is misguided in that, I fully support is right to make that decision.  In fact, he seems like a very likeable and intelligent guy.  Importantly, he does not think that being gay should afford him special privilege in directing the lives of other people.  He states the obvious, if someone doesn't want to serve him because he's gay, go elsewhere.  Duh.

Ruben is a good example of what I mean when I refer to "centrist gays" and there are similar examples of "centrist dems" who do not happen to be gay. There are a ton of them who are breaking away from the leftist movement, "walking away" from the left as it were.  Rubin's video is even titled, "why I left the left".  One day, he suddenly saw or heard something which was a deal breaker.  Crazy leftists crossed some line of sanity with him and they could not convince him to cross that Rubicon with them. 

I think millions are in the same boat and I think that is why the political left is now in all out war with anyone who opposes them over control of government.  They sense that they are losing control.  They feel like they are drowning as in fact they are.  But with each new conspiracy theory they look more and more desperate and more insane.  This, when combined with new communications like those from Prager.u which tell people to step out and look at the big picture instead of herding with the herd is another huge nail in the coffin of radical leftism in the US and in the world.  The herd is simply tired of stuff that doesn't work.  Too many leftist promises are now being exposed for what they always were: lies of a con man.