When I was young I often thought there would be a point where it was obvious to the masses that prefer slavery that slavery is a bad idea. There would be some 'tipping point' where people would realize their were better off free. We have passed many such mile posts without so much as a whimper and proceeded toward the totalitarian state without hesitation. It is more likely America will slowly drown and is nearly there now. If a disaster were to materialize the masses will demand even greater control so their lives won't be so frightening. At this point there is little hope that any such thing as liberty will return, there are too many who want to be slaves who would not allow it. The best hope of living free is to live unobserved, unreported and slip away without being noticed.

Venezuela is 18 years into its decline under socialism but its collapse is not looked on as a consequence of the idea of socialism. Cuba is 50 years of a 90 mile away example to the USA just as East Germany was to West Germany but intellectuals did not see that the idea of socialism necessitated the consequence of economic collapse and totalitarianism. Rand wrote AS because unless you know what the good is and why you should fight for it, you cannot defeat evil. As Miss Rand said we need a moral revolution before we can have a political one. You can only have a moral revolution if you can solve the analytic/synthetic dichotomy and show how matter can have thoughts. If you want to change the world study Locke. We owe the last remnants of freedom to him. We owe the future to Ayn Rand and our hard work.

Adding capitals to static one font textual words is precisely MY way of EMPHASIZING and is NOT shouting. THIS IS SHOUTING!

And, no all thinking is NOT dynamic. Here is a definition I found that explains it well:

Dynamic thinking is the study of the interconnected relationships on an event and the impact of those interactions upon the outcomes of the system.

Leftists don't know nor care about the impact of their group-think "sacred cows". 56 Million aborted babies quite likely slowed the progress of MANY things not least of which might have been real cures for terrible diseases. Someone not born from the 1970's quite likely could have or would have found the cure for lung cancer or breast cancer or leukemia. Leftists SAY they care about others and curing diseases. However, they never think about the genocide they promote with their lock-step "choice" to kill the unborn. Though I LOVE babies, it is some comfort to me that it is quite likely mostly future leftists being aborted rather than conservatives. Cruel thought but true.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO - an acronym, not an emphasis) as far as I've heard, ALWAYS score tax cuts without taking into account my point above, national happiness (which can't be quantified) and the boost in productivity (which ALWAYS happens but also is very hard to quantify). This is why the leftists and statists ALWAYS use CBO numbers to state that ALL tax cuts COST the government money when that CLEARLY is NOT the case. This is also why it is SO much easier to THINK and argue like a leftist than it is for conservatives to make their points. DYNAMIC thinking is too hard for leftists to understand and is even harder for conservatives to try to explain these things to the dullards. There are some conservatives very skilled at teaching, but they also must have a healthy dose of courage in this climate.

I think you and I mostly agree but tend to butt heads on some fine points. LOL, have a nice evening!

Much of the inflation (increase) of money supply is being held overseas and will enter the US money supply when interest rates raise. At present, with interest rates held low by the FED with the belief that not enough money is available to support the economy, money is printed and hidden away in possible profit earning investments which help create some bubbles which need to eventually burst into recession or depression. Businesses collude with government to hide price rises and their causes while thus making the inflation worse by the appearance that all is well except that you get less at the same old price. They also make it look like real wages and salaries are rising. But workers tend to expect more income, even though with less value, and always complain that the higher income is not enough. In a way, citizens are responsible for their government choosing inflation to keep them from complaining. Would the citizens want to deal with hard currency with the latest generation not wanting even to make their own breakfasts because it is easier to order them out. They would have to pay attention in early school to figure out gold or silver coins, etc. Short of a complete redo of human beliefs, I do not see anything but future human laziness from the masses.

I lived through the inflation of the 70's and 80's. People just accepted the government's claim that inflation was caused by suppliers raising prices, so the government escaped responsibility for it. This time around, they figured out how to print money without it showing up in their inflation index. The inflation of the money supply is there anyway but its hidden but is being hidden by companies laying off workers and buying things cheaper from chinese suppliers. In certain industries, like restaurants, and other things which are actually made in the USA, price inflation is showing up anyway

Reality never promised rational animals anything. Seeking trust is the main thing that drives human action together with others. Trusting the exchange media is key to economic exchange but there is no way to guarantee individual valuation of the exchange media.
If dollars held by foreigners return to the US economy, it will depend upon what they buy. If new industry and labor though some price rises by suppliers. If competing with domestic dollars for goods, then like an inflation of the money supply since those dollars have already been duplicated by the FED, there would be price rises and some loss of trust in the currency. Suppose gold or some other commodity were held by others outside the domestic economy. Then when it was exchanged for good, it would act as with currency and gold investments might lose some trust due to loss of trust if it loses exchange value. Trust is very dynamic.

All thinking is dynamic by definition. Life is dynamic, else it dies. Statists have what can be termed wrong premises about rational animals. They consider them as part of a group and think from that premise, which is purely a concept in their minds and not part of the real world. Individual rational animals work from premises made from percepts which come from sense data and reference actual existing real things. They are capable of distinguishing existing things from what appears to be groups of them and understand that they are the directors of their own actions, while the collectivists see group action and believe that the dynamics is due to the group as a whole rather than due to cooperation among individuals.

Real pies are interesting and mirror what happens in a governed system. As a group, a family, say, has a mother, a father, children, and possibly other live in persons. In my family, as a child, my mother made good chocolate pies with a tasty whipped topping. As a child I could see no good reason to wait to eat it as a desert but mother was the governor and kept rules as to how to use the pie so that there was no runaway in the family economy. I and my siblings and especially my father would have had the pie gone before desert time. Government is that way, a way of keeping a country from overheating and coming apart in warring factions. Wouldn't want all those little real pies to be ruined by others before the owners decided what to do with them.

A little hint. No SHOUTING is necessary for emphasis.

I ordered mine from amazon shortly after the show was put on netflix. I dont know if they are still for sale. If you cant find them, email me at term2@aol.com and I could loan you mine if you will give them back.

Huh. Are the storybooks available? I'd be interested in seeing how the writers portrayed things as falling out (pun intended).

For a change I wanted to see the crony establishment destroyed and some sort of libertarian government survive. I suppose that was wishful thinking !!! I did get the storybooks for the next two seasons, and things degenerated into civil war- which I think would be a good thing at this point. Smaller governments seem to work better than super big ones.

Like you, I also love this nation and the principles upon which it was founded. If America falls, it will only be because enough of the people supported a descent away from the original ideas that made it great in the first place.

Where I take hope is that it is only in the largest cities where people are largely divorced from the realities of life who overwhelmingly vote for Progressives. I also take hope in the fact that the Progressives are severely undermining one of the major groups that they would need to effect a major takeover in the Police Departments. By supporting the BLM ilk and their rioting and looting, they alienate one of the single greatest groups they would actually need. The other are the armed forces, which because the US runs on a voluntary military are staunchly patriotic. What the Progressives would have to do is to create their own army of brown-shirts (hailing back to Stalin/Hitler) and literally create civil war in order to really take over.

Or they can simply do what they have been doing for 100 years: persuade stupid and thoughtless Americans that they can invent money and jobs out of thin air. Why change what works, right?

Of course, what I really think they are doing is intentionally creating the circumstances for a wide-scale economic collapse so they can ride in like saviors, impose martial law, and force everyone into a re-enactment of the feudal system where they see themselves as the ruling class.

I dunno. They left off at a decent point. Not sure where they would have gone with another season.

You know, I'm sorry. It's a reference used by Rush Limbaugh all the time that I understand completely when he is saying it and has worked its way into my automatic thinking. I used it wrong because I, obviously, am not chatting with people who listen to him. Apologies.

My only reason for using the "pie" reference is to disparage STATISTS who have NO dynamic thinking or understanding how the economy works. Of course, there is NO PIE. THEY think there is, so they must steal from ALL to get theirs. Because if they don't, they will get NONE due to their being a bunch of malcontents and complete inability to think of work as anything other than LABOR rather than OCCUPATION.

Yes, the economy grows when the conditions are set for the government to stay away as I was referencing above in my first "pie" comment. The economy shrinks when government, in all its INFINITE (delusional) WISDOM inserts itself into it.

But the trust people have in the dollar is misplaced when our government simply debases it by printing more of it and then spending it. Once that trust is lost the basis of the money is lost also.

So can desire for some hard currency evaporate, especially with inflation of the supply of it. Nothing has intrinsic value. All value is created in the minds of rational animals and then their working to find out whether there is agreement with others, if not, then it only has value to the holder of the currency giving personal bankruptcy. Today's money is still valued by a belief that a god's hand is behind the printing press and so all is well, the 'In God We Trust' money and not the 'E Pluribus Unum' money of many decades ago where the USA was behind the money.

The whole purpose for the 'pie' metaphor is the idea that a pie can be divided and for the growing pie there can be either larger pieces or it can be divided in to more pieces. The economy is just the individuals gaining their own economic values, i.e., their individual wealth, which sometimes is a divisible real pie since a metaphorical pie is not divisible outside of the conceptual realm and is not able to be reified. There is no 'how the pie GROWS' since there is no collective pie in the first place, just individual wealth. Of course that can grow depending on the individual and the degree of government interference.

We will have $15 minimum wage, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, an easy path to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens, continual trillion dollar deficits and probably a total 40% total inflation of the currency, not to mention paid maternity leave and sick pay along with free college and substantial write offs of existing college debt. Also expanded Medicare/Medicaid for everyone.

I agree but even as HORRIBLE as Hillary is I don't think America will get as far down this road during the time that Hillary might be in office.

I wonder about that. Look at the support for Hillary. She is as crooked as they have ever come, and all hillary supporters think about is how much worse it MIGHTbe with someone who is anti-establishment. If Trump wins, I grant your argument. If he doesnt win, I say its going to have to get a LOT worse. Hillary will put us in cement shoes with her crooked cronyism if she gets elected.

it was a great series. Interesting that it wasnt finished. They were headed for Texas splitting off from the crony new US government.

The dollar is a promise backed by nothing at all except the government's ability to extract something from other people to back it up.

What really backs it up currently is basically blind trust, thats all. Trust can evaporate overnight and result in your dollars become worthless. Check out the venezuelan money- same thing.

Agreed. I expect people to look out for their own best interest before it gets as far as the book.

But that means we have to essentially stop living for the most part. The book ALONGSIDE NIGHT is an interesting alternative- hiding in plain sight. I like that idea.

not yet. the government is into the nationalizing of industry. Companies that dont subject themselves to bankruptcy unless they help prop up the government are being taken over. Basic staples are essentially unavailable to the average citizen. It will get worse there if they dont just kill off Maduro once and for all.

Better to down load it from pirate bay and be a true objectionist