It sounds like you are endorsing a hidden dictatorial government with total control, in the hopes it will do good things. My understanding is rarely has dictatorial governments with absolute power done anything but get into a war. Not that our government is any better at this point, but it keeps up the facad.

But on the military, the Founders wanted that, but they soon learned that freedom comes with a price that requires a standing, trained, efficient military, equipped to fight your most probable enemy, and have a reserve. That was painfully clear in the War of 1812, where the "militia" consistently proved it was an inept, corrupt group led by self serving idiots. Most "leaders" were fired within weeks of contact with the enemy, and the few professionals were drafted to positions of leadership and managed to save the day, just barely. That taught the country your really needed a strong, professional military and they immediately started building ships of the line for the navy and maintained a standing army. The Civil war was the next debacle that showed untrained, untested troops led by inept, self serving idiots, would fail, and it took 4 years to get the Norths act together. Only service by the odd "outstanding" individual on each side, kept things going. Fast forward through WW1 (a fluke as they had 4 years to prepare) to WW2 and on Dec7, 1941 we were again equipped with a small military, although FDR (whom I do NOT respect, but must give his due) was trying to grow to face the war he knew was coming. The first year was an unmitigated disaster. Same reasons. China has a huge army today and is not interested in our freedoms or security, only theirs. If they chose to invade (and they could easily) we would have a really hard time stopping them from rolling over us.

I did not find the "article link talking about a shadow govt" what were you referring to?

Again we seem to disagree, the political parties, institutions, power centers, have specific ingrained beliefs centered on themselves. The do not practice individual thought, except in how to twist the overall situation to their individual favor. Yet it always is bad for everyone else, as they funnel wealth and power to their own control.Classic liberalism has morphed into today's "Progressive" politics. I do not understand how you see statists pushing classic liberalisim out, as there are statists professing both sides of political philosophy and neither is a true adherent to those philosophy s as they were. They have all met at a common power struggle, each pulling into their own camps, which is the only battles we see today. Nothing is done for the good of the whole, or to preserve individual freedoms, rather the opposite. It is all about the Party, not the people.

"They rationalize their way around them, following Constitutional procedures through declining momentum with no concern for, let alone reliance on, the principles of limiting government power and the reasons for it. " That was what I was addressing, The Constitution does not stop them because the Constitution has been ignored and perverted by SCOTUS Political appointees as well as the herd from both parties serving the party and not the people.Short of the asteroid on DC, or KJU doing something stupid, e get back to the Convention of States to create the changes needed to prevent the abuses they have come up with, then 75% of the states to have their people force their legislatures to approve. Unless you propose to scrap the whole thing and start over, and I don't think that will go well...

The concept "service" is inappropriate because it makes no such distinction. The proper concepts are production and trade, exchanging value for value (with pride in what you do), not service.

"evw says no constitution can overpower bad philosophy. I don't know if that's true, but IMHO we should certainly try."

Who is going to stop them from imposing more statism? The Constitution is ideas expressed on paper. The paper isn't going to do it and the ideas of how to interpret it and what they can get away with are in people's heads. The meaning of the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is no matter how clearly it states something else. If they don't want limitations on what government can do, because of the philosophical ideas they hold, then in accordance with the Pragmatist theory of government as a set of "tools", combined with their collectivist premises, they will not limit themselves. They haven't for over a century as they progressively reinterpret what they are allowed to do, and they won't stop now.

If the Constitution were bad and people understood and wanted something better, the Constitution would go. It is the same in the opposite direction. There is no divine duty imposed on the country or on politicians to stick with the Constitutional principles. What they do follows the currently dominant philosophical ideas of what is proper and acceptable. The trend is only a matter of time plus whatever else they can get away with.

That is also why it is unlikely that the politicians and their supporters would permit a setback for themselves through meaningful reform at all. They are today barely tolerating Trump and his amateur efforts to 'drain the swamp' remaining in office as they circumvent long established principles and procedure in their attempts to obstruct him and push him out of office -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- and the same power seeking mentality drives everything they do.

With a rejection of principles of limited government and protection of the rights of the individual, politicians and bureaucrats are at best following at least some procedures out of psychological/political momentum with a tacit agreement to follow rules even as they progressively undermine them over time. That momentum at best slows the progression until the day when it all breaks down in part or whole, typically under the guise of 'solving' some crisis. As it goes, piece by piece, the next step is always rationalized in some way made to sound acceptable to enough people so that they get away with it. When there is a sudden break rationalized by a crises they also find a way to make it look acceptable under the circumstances of the moment with an unprincipled Pragmatist mentality.

What seems at one point in time too unacceptably extreme to worry about later becomes routine and then there is no going back. We have seen this over and over, accumulating to the current mammoth government and still growing.

There are many, many examples of this. A recent one is the entrenchment of Obama's health care controls -- only ten years ago it was unthinkable, then the Democrats moved quickly and rammed it through, bucking a national uproar against them, resulting in even Massachusetts electing a Republican Senator replacing Kennedy. For seven years Republicans safely campaigned on repeated loud promises to repeal it. Now we are stuck with the unthinkable already entrenched as it is accepted on principle. The conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice wrote the opinion sanctioning it with his infamous convoluted "novel" theories in spite of what the Constitution says and once meant. Congress will now only tinker with Obamacare, and they can't even do that to remove some of the punishment even with Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress and the Presidency -- because none of them will challenge the welfare state mentality. If Clinton had been elected we would be fighting full socialized medicine now instead of in a few years later, which was the purpose of Obamacare to bring down on us.

This statist progression is all due to acceptance of altruistic-collectivist premises morally demanding it no matter who or what is sacrificed, which establishment intellectuals and their followers will not challenge. You can and must fight back in any way you can to slow down the imposition of progressively more statism, but with full recognition that that is all that can be done as long as almost no one is challenging the basic philosophical premises of the altruist-collectivism destroying our individual freedom.

Yes. I don't like the world "job creation". I want to take back the word "service" though. I think of service as part of "making money". It can be servitude as a slave or serving customers, working for them in ways that make them willing and eager to pay. People will serve one another for whips and guns or dollars.

You have not addressed what I wrote. The Supreme Court and the rest of government have exceeded their authority for a century through a progression of interpretations, and will continue to so because of what they believe. They will continue to do so, finding ways around what they don't like, no matter what, if anything, anyone may change in the Constitution for the same reason they have done it for a century. The nature of the government we get is a result of the ideas that people hold, not a robot controlling from inside the Constitution.

And here they are doing it again with taxes and "job creation" https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

They are not permanently ingrained in institutions. That is a collectivist view of thought itself. Ideas are held by individuals. They are changed by spreading better ideas. After better ideas dominate, then whatever is still entrenched by holdouts in 'institutions' are pushed out of the way, just as the statists pushed classical liberalism out as the bad philosophies of the counter Enlightenment were imported and spread.

People ought to want primarily to benefit themselves through trade, not to "serve" or "create jobs" as economic or moral justification for our economic existence. Yet both conservatives and liberals are obsessed with political rhetoric invoking that collectivist premise on a base of altruism.

That is expected from the collectivist "liberals", and conservatives are undermining their own support for capitalism -- to the extent they still support it at all. Discriminatory, confiscatory taxes in the name of targeting "The Rich" are opposed only because they harm "job creation", with property rights of the individual unmentioned. One version of this is arguments that higher state taxes on "The Rich" will drive businesses out of the state.

By implication, if someone is retired or otherwise not "serving" others by "creating jobs" then it is perfectly fine to seize what he has. But it does nothing for the economy either because the left is unaffected by the conservative appeal to "job creation": It already wants to control the economy anyway, deciding what jobs are politically acceptable and who will be subsidized or punished while controlling everyone to impose that -- so the problem of "job creation" is imagined to be irrelevant because they will raise taxes to get money to do that too. They always know how to turn every problem they create with government into an excuse to "fix" it with more government controls in an endless progression. Trump himself is already pushing "jobs" as a manipulative statist agenda.

Once again the consequences of the conservatives' morally craven Pragmatist arguments, this time against raising taxes while conceding the standard of a collectivist "job creation" as a matter of government policy, temporizes, evades fundamental principles, and condones by implication government control of jobs in addition to seizing the assets of anyone who has something to take.

I think you have a good point about the jobs as meal tickets issue. I also dont like the "create jobs" idea. I dont think anyone WANTS to create a job for someone else. I think people want things for themselves and whether a robot provides it or a human does it isnt really important to the customer. To the business doing the providing of the service, its all about cost and hassle. if the human is more accurate, costs less, and is more pleasant to be around- go for it. If the robot is more accurate, costs less, and doesnt break a lot- go for that approach.

A good example is fast food. I usually eat out for lunch. Personally, I would much prefer a kiosk that just listened to what I wanted, and entered that into their system and took my money. Fast foor order takers seems to NOT listen to what I want, enter it wrong, and are slow.

As to servers, one is "obligated" to give them a tip, and they make a LOT of money as a group off those tips. I would like a tableside robot device to take my order and either a robot or a lower paid busboy to simply deliver the food. If anyone is going to get a tip, it should be the cook who is responsible for the safety and tastiness of the food.

"I was not, but that's certainly important. The Founders wanted a very limited standing army with an armed citizen militia responsible for defending their home. That way the military wouldn't become a big part of the economy and an interest group that influences gov't. And having armed citizens underscores that the people are in charge and grant power to the gov't, not the other way around. "

Very well said, indeed!

That being said, with the expense of major naval ships, some Federalization is probably necessary. Although maybe not. Maybe this is a topic for further exploration...

I was not, but that's certainly important. The Founders wanted a very limited standing army with an armed citizen militia responsible for defending their home. That way the military wouldn't become a big part of the economy and an interest group that influences gov't. And having armed citizens underscores that the people are in charge and grant power to the gov't, not the other way around.

But I was talking about something more prosaic. That article link talks about shadow gov't set up after 9/11 to keep things running in case an attack knocks out top leadership. I have no reason to think there was anything sinister about this in itself. It seems a reasonable thing to do in a time when a single bomb could destroy an entire city. My point is the decisions they would make would not be pro-liberty.

I actually like the shadow gov't, and I think we should take it a step further. We should set out while we're calm and thinking coolly, what logical steps would we take if an entire US city were destroyed? How much freedom would we give up to deal with the crisis? How do we decide which particular freedoms to give up? To what extent are we willing to use WMD on non-combatants to make a point to the attacking govt or band of criminals. What institutions are capable of trying such an unthinkably heinous crime of attacking a US city?

Instead, I think the shadow gov't would restrict freedoms left and right as Rumsfeld said, "sweep it all up. Things related and not." Because the crisis will be a chance for an unelected body to give the gov't sweeping powers. 10 years later those powers for warrantless searches would be used to catch child molesters, bank robbers, people providing drugs, guns, foreign labor, or sex to otherwise law-abiding citizens, people murdering for insurance reasons, just everything.

Yep, every time campaign finance reform is proposed it is either mangled into meaningless drivel or never hear from again. They will never, ever break the chain. Power and Money are too strong an attraction for honesty and following something as arcane as "the law". Look at the last 8 years....

Yet, how would you propose to change such beliefs, they are ingrained in the institutions we have political, social and legal.

Yep, the asteroid hope is neck and neck with a revolution. I like the asteroid idea, one would think maybe we could con the aliens on our side?

Again, I disagree in how it would work. The issue is that the Supreme Court has exceeded it's authority over and over, beginning with the FDR treat to "stack the court until they give him the opinion he wanted", and then reversed itself to declare SS constitutional. From there it has gotten worse and worse, with now, having clear statements that mimic the constitution, laws are found "unconstitutional". The goal of Convention of States is to enact changes that make it well nigh impossible for the Court to jigger the whole mess in favor of whatever party has stacked the Court, this time around. Bear in mind, for the last 80 years or so, all prospective Court members have been referred to as "conservative" or "liberal" and NOT for their legal philosophy, thus indicating the politicization of something that was never meant to be political. While it will take 75% of the states to ratify any changes, the people have a better chance of holding their state legislators accountable rather than federal ones, who are beyond control or influence except by big money, PACS and their parties. A sad state of affairs, and a true testament to the lie the country has become, but short of armed revolution, the last option left. We are a nation who has perfected the art of corruption, vice a state like Venezuela, or even Russia, who are still practicing amateur level.

You may be referring to Eisenhower's infamous "military industrial complex" he warned against?

""shadow government" would activate "
I enjoy this discussion about whether it's even possible to make the Constitution self-enforcing.

When I mentioned a shadow gov't, I was not talking about a shadowy conspiracy of any sort. I meant that the US gov't has reasonable provisions to keep operating in the event many high-ranking leaders were killed.
https://nyti.ms/2uK0629

I have no problem with a backup gov't like this. My problem is regardless of who's in charge, there are always perverse incentives for more gov't , and there's no Constitution stopping them. evw says no constitution can overpower bad philosophy. I don't know if that's true, but IMHO we should certainly try.

I agree with most of this, but I don't like to talk about jobs as if there were possessions available in fixed quantity.

In your example, they set the wage floor at $15 but the amortized cost of the machine is $12. So you say all those jobs get handed from the person to the $12/hr machine, but that's not exactly true. There is some elasticity of demand. The market will demand less fast food and there will be fewer people plus robots doing the job, and fewer people served fast food.

I'm belaboring this nit-picking point because some people think of "jobs" as meal tickets to be rationed and the "economy" as this complex meal ticket generation machine whose workings only experts can understand. "Jobs" and the "economy" are just people serving one another. People don't like that word, but I think it's exactly what's happening. We either serve people because we're excited about how it will benefit us, how it will help customers and make them able and willing to give us even more, or because we're somehow roped, guilted, or physically forced into service.

I agree with your basic claim, but it sets off my jobs-as-meal-tickets peeve.

This is a great summary ---> "Arguments against wage controls focusing on automation accelerated as the inevitable response from business is temporizing, evading the fundamental premises and pandering to anti-technology, and will only accelerate government controls on automation in addition to wages."

Yes!! This one sentence summarizes it.

Not to mention retirement benefits that could never remain in place.

Yes part of that demise can be attributed to Fred Kinnan and Cuffy Meigs types . Poor or unfair trade agreements. Add some Oren Boyle and James Taggert. Plenty of Government looting and then of course the Tinky Hollaway's. What do you know , sounds like the story was written (published) in '57 the year I was born and then the sky was the limit in Motown.

You have guessed correctly. Yes, it was the days when it was impossible to think of anyone other than Detroit making cars that were the envy of the world.

The Democrats never report the aftermath of the rise in minimum wage, higher prices, job losses, less hours worked, and lower take home pay for those who still have their jobs. You can usually tell whiach areas are controlled by the Democrats, higher unemployment, higher mini,um wages, and illegal aliens doing work and being payed under the table.