This is a personal story, not political, although I’m sure it will be before I’m done.
Those who read closely probably are aware that I’m ready to embark on a new “real job”, ending my second “early retirement”. Yesterday, I took a train to New York City with a couple purposes in mind – what are the limits of my physical abilities at this point? How do I feel about maybe living in a big city? (the job will be in Chicago or working remotely from CT – probably my choice). I also wanted to visit Penn Station (where Amtrak and the LIRR run, and New Jersey Transit has service to Liberty Airport in Newark.
I’m pretty exhausted by the time I get to Penn Station and it’s a very hot day. I dump into a hole in the wall McDonald’s and order the chicken sandwich combo. I start to ponder where I am and just how much it took for that meal to be in front of me.
The chicken probably came a farm in Arkansas. The lettuce from a farm in California, the slice of tomato from Mexico. The french fries were probably from potatoes grown in Idaho cooked in oil from trees in Africa. The bun was probably made from flour grown in Kansas. The soda was sweetened with HFCS made from corn grown in Iowa, and the water came though an aqueduct system built in 1842. The garbage from my meal is probably being loaded onto a train to be sent to a landfill in Indiana.
When the Founding Fathers sat around in 1776 planning our future, most of what they ate and drank was produced from within a few miles of where people were (tea being an exception). The road from Boston to Philadelphia was about the only reliable long distance transportation.
So as we celebrate our independence from King George, it’s worth taking stock and realizing just how much today’s society is dependent on layer on layer of complexity of logistics, most of that needing reliable inexpensive transportation and an efficient distribution and storage system. Does that make us more free or less free?
Truly – both. We suffer from the lessening ability to rebuild or duplicate such a complex infrastructure in case of disaster which makes us more confined to technological and logistical limits – i.e. “less free”. At the same time, the very broad distribution of goods and services to make a living for all involved (even the taxing authorities) demonstrates the freedom that capitalism brings – i.e. “more free”. We have a conundrum of sorts.
I wonder how much our ability to accomplish anything has declined in this great nation. I look at that question more as a function of how we have tied our own hands legally in the name of one political “good” or another.
I was talking to a friend recently about the decline of our domestic textile industry as a result of restrictions on the mills dying fabrics, and the prevalance of foreign produce in the stores as a result of restrictions on agricultural water in southern California, and the loss of manufacturing here in the USA as a result of the tax burden on domestic corporations while China enjoys MFN trading status. For crying out loud, BASEBALLS are made in the Phillippines!
If you don’t have a story of your own, just go over to the candy aisle at WalMart and price candy. Are you telling me that Lifesaver can’t figure out how to make a pound of candy cheaper than some outfit in Mexico? I had a friend who tried like the devil to keep a manufacturing process in St. Louis some years ago by offering to make it 200% more efficient, and was told quietly to leave it alone, the feds were paying to move the operation to a Mexican “maquiladora” and the cheaper he was able to make it, the less the corporation would be paid!
Now it seems just when we have begun reducing our capitol hemorrage to foreign nations because the oil and gas industry has found a way around domestic drilling restrictions by rejuvinating our old wells using new technology, the regulators are moving swiftly to limit “fracing”!
Our government is bound and determined to drive us into the third world, not any lessened ability on our part.
Remember in Novermber. Things are maybe a bit simpler than they seem.
“Government is not the solution, it’s the problem.” RR
If I sat down and wanted to make a memory card for my cell phone, I could spend the rest of my life and would have no way to do that. In theory someone somewhere knows how to do that or at least collectively know how.
I saw a story yesterday about a major breakthrough that would allow a single atom to reliably store computer information for 2 seconds (which would just be refreshed before it got stale potentially enabling computers to be orders of magnitude faster. Fiber optic cables are getting to the point that entire libraries could be transmitted in a few seconds.
Meanwhile the humans are sleeping in the park smoking meth and pooping in the woods. What’s wrong with that picture?
LOL, Art. Man that gap is widening between the intelligentsia and the occupy-welfare-dregs living on EBT and Gov’t cheese.
It’s quite interesting that most that bunch is happy with Meth and crapping in the woods, as long as the EBT card, AC and cable TV is working.
They could care less about technology, science and today’s solar flares. Well it’s going to come crashing down cause were broke and someone is going to figure out this Ponzie scheme we’re living in. Doom, still just 6 months away.
Parrott
Speaking of New York and transportation of goods and services, it is interesting to seriously consider whether the Erie Canal could have been built in today’s regulatory environment. Certainly we have the technology and design expertise to do it. Google Earth and GPS would make mapping the most efficient route a snap. But would the idea ever be approved by the courts and regulators?
Only if Goldman Sachs funded it
I love how dots connect themselves 🙂 Here is some of the history of the canal
http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/eriecanal.htm
“The United States Congress easily approved a bill to provide funding for what was then known as the Great Western Canal but President James Monroe found the idea unconstitutional and vetoed it. ” and in more detail
http://www.applet-magic.com/eriecanal.htm
even the problems during the War of 1812 was not enough to convince the Jefferson anti-federalists that building a Canal to connect the Hudson River to Lake Erie was something the Federal Government should get involved in funding.
The State of New York then took up the project and funded it with bonds paid back with tolls
In the highly impressionable mind of a child, I was taught an obscure song called “Low Bridge” – a song about the Erie Canal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Bridge_%28song%29
It turns out there was another canal built across Pennsylvania, which would eventually become the route of the Pennsylvania Railroad – but since Pennsylvania didn’t have a route other than through the mountains, they had to devise a system using steam power to lift the entire barge up and over mountains.
You really make me think when I read
some of these posts… Sometimes I have no answer
and it takes a few days of reflecting for me to
understand what you really mean.
Am I growing and learning in doing this
or am I just looking to deep into the meaning?
I’m not even sure what I mean a lot of the time. 🙂
But in general, I think you are on the right track. I just ask questions, I don’t pretend to have all the answers, which is pretty annoying.
The subtext of why I was thinking about those things is it is very much related to the work I expect to start doing in a week, without getting more specific than necessary 🙂
The political subtext without beating it into the ground is how as our society has grown more and more complex, how the definition of “Interstate Commerce” has expanded by necessity and how that has grown into the “Federalization” of nearly everything. I don’t think that genie is going back in the bottle.
Yet another way to think about it is my “Libertarians are wrong” feelings. It’s normal to think we don’t have an obligation to value the past or prepare for the future – but just live for today. What exists in New York City is there because 30 or 40 generations of people made it happen. The water system, the subways, the electricity, the phone system, the way food arrives to the city are not just random accidents. Cities need planning and rules that you don’t need living on a shack in Idaho… but it’s the cities of America which were where the wealth and the progress of this country were created, and built the Arsenal of Democracy and became the place that almost everyone wanted to come to.
So there were many points or no points – you get to choose 🙂