More Americans Renounce Citizenship, With 2014 on Pace for a Record - Total Return - WSJ

This is the domain of the Treasury Department? Hmmm. To paraphrase Princess Leah "The more you tighten your grip the more [taxpayers] will slip through your fingers."

More Americans Renounce Citizenship, With 2014 on Pace for a Record - Total Return - WSJ

The economics of violence:a matter of scale

One of the concepts in The Sovereigns Individual is the economics of violence of making so it is not financially advantageous to have a massive army in this, the age of information.  It has occurred to me recently that while this trend make nations states more irrelevant, this does not mean they will not adapt, in fact, be leader in adapting to these trends.  I have comforted my self with the thought that the government would never "come for us."  It wouldn't economically make sense to load a tank onto a trailer. Haul it up here, unload it and have it destroy our roads rumbling along at 8 gallons/mile ( yes gpm not mpg) to come to my house to force me to comply.  This is also a strong argument for the right to keep and bear arms.  Gun control advocates are correct that a rifle is little good against a tank, but it is the local bureaucrat thugs for whom we need to raise the cost of violence.

The military is seeing it too.  Notice the following evolution of laser guided missles:
Hellfire: $150,000 missle, 100lbs, 20 lb warhead
Griffin:$75,000, 43lbs, 13lb warhead
LMM: 29lbs, 6.6lb warhead

No longer are russian tanks on the menu, but one house or car and not the ones around it.  Game changer.

Privatizing government in Honduras

Honduras Signs Deal to Create Private Cities

Wow.  It is happening.  Privately run cities "with their own legal and tax systems."  Perhaps, we don't need to have sea colonies/seasteads to have these experimental governments.  Will these cities have their own police?  They have to.  Will they have their own military?  It would be fascinating to see how these cities develop.  Who will be allowed to live there?  What is the selling point?

Exporting allergies and some honey.

I saw a sign on Rt 15 in Dover-Foxcroft  protesting the East-West Highway which read "If you want another highway, why live in Maine?"  It is mainly because I want to live in Maine that I think we should thoroughly explore this highway in Maine.  The setting the the sign was a perfect.  It sat in the corner of a huge field of....goldenrod.  A wasted field.  Nothing being raised or grown.  Nothing anyone would want though there is a beekeeper set up nearby.  Clover would be better and sustain a beef critter. Next to that field heading south was the Charlotte White Center, which receives massive amounts of State and Federal funding.  Sure, leave the Maine way of life alone as if change wasn't happening and could be stopped.

First, do no harm

We've been thinking much about North American missionary efforts.  This statement is from a secular book, echoes-though rather coldly, the premise that you're not helping someone by doing something for them they ought to do themselves.

An important consequence of redistribution among cultures has been to make those who lived in nonindustrial civilization and adhered to non industrial values artificially competitive.  International aid, rescue missions to counter famine and disease, and technical intervention fooled many into believing that their life prospects had sharply improved--without the necessity on their part of updating their values or significantly altering their behavior.

--The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg, pg. 394

We have handed them the fruits of our faithful Christian heritage without pressing on them that this is the fruit of righteousness and their low condition looks much like the curse of God on a nation that disobeys Him.  Also at play is the our not believing that the church could so take hold of and transform their culture that they would receive the blessing promised in Scripture on a nation which obeys.

"Tip of the iceberg"

This article explains exactly what the Sovereign Individual predicted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/us/26expat.html

Granted, it is a small start.  But with the IRS swelling it ranks and the need for tax revenue getting greater and greater, it will only increase.  The federal government itself is "underwater,"  owing more than it is worth.  And, like Florida home owners, some citizens are choosing to walk away rather than keep dumping money down this hole.

Flash Mobs in Philly

Read the story here

This seems to be what The Sovereign individual is talking about.  This quote hits the nail on the head.

Merchants, parents and police are scratching their heads trying to explain the explosion of violent flash mobs. The city's new district attorney, Seth Williams, says it comes down to the proliferation of computers and cell phones.

"Before, it was just you tell someone to meet you somewhere — if there was a fight you meet them at the school yard," Williams says. "Well now, instead of just 10 or 20 kids at most knowing about something, now you have 1,000 kids showing up at an intersection. And that's a problem that we as law enforcement have to try to deal with."

Computer/microprocessors  increase the capability of individuals, making it more difficult, that is expensive, for government to maintain control. "Police have created a special rapid response force." which they didn't need before.

I do love Mayor Nutter's comment

"Parents have a responsibility here, so we will do all that we can. I ran for mayor, I didn't run for mother," he announced. "I can't take care of everybody's child."

 If you provide education, food, and housing; you are acting like a parent.  Why not leave discipline to you as well?

I recently read the book the The Soveriegn Individual, and it has been influencing how I have been looking at the world.  Another lens I have been seeing the world through in that of population decline shown me by The Demographic Winter.  That was a jaw dropper even though I have followed that topic for over ten years.  My childrens world will be very different that the one I have known.

A sign of things to come-Mass school closures approved in Kansas City, Mo.



The key quote to me is:

Once the district had enough desegregation money to build such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But the effort to use upscale facilities and programs to lure in students from the suburbs never worked quite as planned.

Covington has stressed that the district's buildings are only half-full as its population has plummeted amid political squabbling and chronically abysmal test scores. The district's enrollment of fewer than 18,000 students is about half of what the schools had a decade ago and just a quarter of its peak in the late 1960s.
Many students have left for publicly funded charter schools, private and parochial schools and the suburbs. The school district also isn't the only one serving students in Kansas City; several smaller ones operate in the city's boundaries.

This is the flight not of white people but wealth.  Why live in a city where laziness and irresponsibility is subsidized and achievers are punished?  Government burracracy will increasing fail in the competition to provide services, entitling it to less of the peoples money.  This hemorraging beast could get dangerous as it fights for survival.