The Garden

I despise violence. Likewise, I despise those who advocate violence as a “solution” to anything. Those who advocate for violent solutions are amongst the most savage, primitive and malevolent human beings possible. Further, those who advocate for the most severe and efficient forms of violence—i.e. those who promote military violence—are amongst the most sadistic. Militaries, as agents of mass death, are only considered to be solutions by those who subscribe to a morality that says “rightness is determined by one’s ability to kill;” such a moral code contains nothing else—no justice, no freedom, no fairness; simply violence. And, as it has been with many other subjects, our new president Obama is no different from his predecessor when it comes to invoking the military as a “solution.”

President Obama spoke last Friday about his plan to deal with the ongoing situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan—a situation he described as “increasingly perilous.” According to Obama, “Al Qaeda and its allies, the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks are in Pakistan and Afghanistan…and if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban or allows Al Qaeda to go unchallenged, that country will again be a base for the terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they can.”

Of course, a key piece of Obama’s “solution” to this plan is to increase the military forces in the area by some 20,000 troops. According to Obama’s speech, “These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east…and to go after insurgents along the border.” I suppose since these “terrorists” want to “kill as many of our people as they can,” we’d better go ahead and kill as many of them as we can first. It can’t get any simpler than that, can it?

Now, Obama did warn of some risks to his plan. He said “[T]he sacrifices have been enormous. Nearly 700 Americans have lost their lives. Troops from over 20 countries have also paid the ultimate price.” Since military violence is all about who can kill who faster and better, I suppose it is likely that many soldiers will continue to “pay the ultimate price.”

What is peculiar though is that Obama never mentioned what sorts of risks his plan has in store for those who happen to live in Afghanistan—you know, civilians and such who might also have to “pay the ultimate price.”

According to some numbers compiled at wikipedia.org under an entry entitled Civilian casualties of the War in Afghanistan (2001-present), the total civilians killed as a direct result of U.S-led military actions since 2001 is between 4,972 and 7,764. These numbers include the blowing up of civilians with bombs from the sky, or the shooting of civilians with bullets from soldiers’ rifles, tanks, machine guns, etc. Also, the same Wikipedia article estimates that the total number of civilians killed as an indirect result of U.S-led military actions is between 3,200 and 20,000. The article defines “indirect deaths” as Afghans who had died of starvation, exposure, associated illnesses, or injury sustained while in flight from war zones as a result of the U.S. war and airstrikes. I suppose the range varies so greatly due to the inherent difficulties of measuring displaced peoples. In any case, these numbers tell us that somewhere between 8,172 and 27,764 Afghan civilians have been killed as a result of U.S-led military actions.

Now, Obama does remind us that those nasty terrorists have killed civilians too, “Nearly 3,000 of our people were killed on September 11, 2001,” Obama said, “for doing nothing other than going about their daily lives. Al Qaeda and its allies have since killed thousands of people in many countries.” Fair enough. But how many people have these Al Qaeda allies actually killed?

According to the Wikipedia article, the total civilians estimated to have been killed as a result of insurgent actions is between 2,399 and 3,949—far fewer than the U.S-led military has accomplished in the same amount of time. I suppose this means our military is better at killing civilians than those terrorist insurgents, eh? And if I understood Obama correctly, he wants to send more trained killers (otherwise known as soldiers) into the area.

Obama’s affection for military violence propels him easily and painlessly into my category of sadistic persons subscribing to the doctrine that rightness is proportional to powerfulness. As such, it is no wonder why he would make the following statement: “There is an uncompromising core of the Taliban. They must be met with force, and they must be defeated.” In other words, there is no need to talk or negotiate with the Taliban, because they refuse to “compromise;” besides, we can simply settle this by “force” anyway, so why not just use that first?

I swear I’ve heard this before…except it wasn’t the Taliban who was “uncompromising.”

Back in October 2001 former president Bush rejected the Taliban’s request to hand Osama bin Laden over for a trial (after the U.S. had begun its devastating bombing campaign) if the U.S. would produce evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11. As an October 15, 2001 article at independent.co.uk entitled Bush rejects Taliban offer to surrender bin Laden reported:

“After a week of debilitating strikes at targets across Afghanistan, the Taliban repeated an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden, only to be rejected by President Bush…Haji Abdul Kabir, the Taliban’s deputy prime minister, said: ‘If America were to step back from the current policy, then we could negotiate.’…But as American warplanes entered the second week of the bombing campaign, Washington rejected the Taliban offer out of hand. ‘When I said no negotiations I meant no negotiations,’ Mr. Bush said. ‘We know he’s guilty. Turn him over. There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt.’”

As we can see, back in 2001 it was the U.S. who was “uncompromising” when it came to non-violent resolutions. It was the Taliban who wanted to negotiate, with respect to the innocence or guilt of the accused, no less—a democratic process, mind you. But, the U.S. preferred the use of force. Now, over seven years later, we have another president trumpeting the use of force and truncating the use of negotiations all over again. And as the numbers attest, it is mostly the Afghan civilians who will pay the “ultimate price” for this use of force. I therefore maintain that president Obama is every bit as sadistic as president Bush was when Bush opted for military violence as a solution in Afghanistan. I care not how fluently Obama can articulate his obsession for violence in Afghanistan with rhetorical luster, it is the same doctrine underneath and I stringently abhor it. Killing people is not good policy; in fact, it’s no “policy” at all. It’s savage ruthlessness.

Humans, more than any other species on the planet, are rational creatures. Much of our progress in our lives depends our ability to think and make logical connections between events. Many, if not all of the benefits of scientific discovery have sprung forth from the human ability to connect specific causes to specific effects. Knowing how natural systems work in the world, humans have been able to predict and anticipate what effects would follow from which causes, and thus have managed to avoid unwanted dangers and create wanted conveniences in their lives. One key feature that has made all of this progress possible has been the apparent consistency and objectivity of the natural world—that is, the laws of nature appear to always remain constant without deviating even the slightest bit (well, at least until you consider quantum mechanics, which is unusually erratic and unpredictable compared to classical physics).

It stands to reason that the scientific progress humans have made in recent centuries would not have been possible if the laws of nature were found to be erratic and constantly changing from one moment to the next. If bricks were sturdy and solid one day—fit to build shelters with—it would be devastating to the person using the shelter to find those bricks turn to liquid mush the next day. Or if gravity were to behave in unpredictable ways, throwing objects upward or outward on random occasions, how would humans be able to function productively in such a world? It seems pretty obvious that humans have a far better chance of adapting to their environments in productive and constructive ways when they are confronted with objectively consistent rules or laws rather than whimsical, amorphous systems that function without rhyme or reason. If this is so, then why would we ever want our money system to be anything other than objective and consistent?

Unfortunately, the leaders of our financial system have decided (at least since we abandoned the gold standard under President Nixon in the late 1960s) against preserving an objective and consistent money supply in the U.S. The money that we save and rely on to purchase essential goods and services in our economy is not considered objective by our financial leaders, and last week held a shining example of how drastically the rules of our financial market can change. Last week, the Federal Reserve announced that it would basically go forward with the printing of at least one trillion dollars in another emergency effort to catapult our economy into a recovery. By printing this money, the Federal Reserve is essentially creating one trillion dollars out of thin air, thus augmenting the total size of our money supply. As a result of this, the money that you and I own is basically devalued and will no longer be worth as much as it was when we earned it—that is to say, the money we own loses purchasing power when the Federal Reserve increases the money supply. And, the more they print, the more our money is devalued.

For those of us who were perhaps saving money for an extended period of time to pay for something major in the future, our ability to make the payments we intended will now be compromised by this change in the money system. When our money is devalued, it takes more units of money to make purchases. But if you do not know in advance how the money system will change at any given time, it makes it nearly impossible to accurately judge how much money you will need to save. This is especially important for those nearing retirement or who are in retirement already. What once might have lasted a person 20 years may, at any time, only last 12 or 15 since the money supply is neither objective nor consistent.

When we compare the progress humans have had in the areas such as scientific discovery, we can appreciate that the objectivity found in natural systems has been useful; there’s a good fit between the rationality of the human mind and the objectivity of the human environment. Based on this reasoning, it is most unfortunate that our financial leaders have sought to undermine our attempts to predict and rely on a consistent monetary system. It is difficult to see how an elastic money system can work to the benefit of rational creatures such as you and me.

If you follow what the press has to say about our current economic problem, you might get the impression that the government is the only entity that has the capacity to offer any kind of solution to the problem. Given that the scale of the problem is so large, it is often believed that you need an entity proportionately large to correct the problem. Since the U.S. government is likely the single largest organization in the country, it is therefore appropriate for the government to take action when economic problems, like our current one, arise. I would like to challenge this belief and offer that instead it is the actions of the “every-day” person that carries most of the corrective power in circumstances such as these, and suggest that interventions by the massive government actually serve to inhibit, or subjugate, the corrective power of the general citizen.

Given that the economy is little more than the organized interactions of producers and consumers, it is easy to consider that the average citizen is actually quite powerful with respect to impacting the state of economic affairs. Each citizen is both a potential producer and a potential consumer in the economy. It is therefore inherent within each person the capacity to make choices that affect the larger economic whole. As a potential producer, one has the option of how to choose to create value in the economy—i.e., one can choose where and how to work. The better one is at producing things of value in their chosen field, the better off the economy as a whole becomes because of this influx of value into the economy that this person’s work has provided. Likewise, as a potential consumer, one has the option of how to choose to reward or encourage the creation of value in the economy by others. This consumerist power can determine what sorts of goods or service are considered valuable by the society, and provides an incentive for others in the society to produce them. Both of these powers are intrinsic to the citizens of a free-market society, but limited in the government.

The extent to which a citizen chooses to be a producer of value is largely determined by that individual’s personal choice. That is, one has the power to choose whether they will activate their ability to create value or not. One could have all the ability in the world in one productive area, but if they choose not to use it, the economy as a whole derives no benefit. It is therefore up to each of us to choose whether we will exercise our fullest abilities in the production of value in our economy. The government does not have the capacity to activate this potential within each of us at will, nor can it replicate our productive capacities without us. All the government has the power to do is seize the value created by its citizens and redistribute that value according to its own ideals—the government does not have the power to create things of value on its own. The government is simply neither designed nor equipped for the creation of original value. It is therefore odd to turn to the government when production is declining, as it currently is with respect to the rising unemployment rate. If, somehow, people are choosing not to produce things of value in the economy, the only remedy to that problem is for people to choose to resume producing things of value—whatever that choice entails. If people find that they are incapable of producing things of value despite their desire to do so, then there may be a serious problem involved, but there is nevertheless nothing the government can do about that. The government cannot invent new ways to produce value—that is not the government’s nature or function. It is, as it always has been, up to the ingenuity of the individual to find ways of producing value in a society. This is where we should be putting our focus; not on the government who is utterly impotent in this area.

Further, as I mentioned, each individual is also a potential consumer. This means that each of us can impact our economy through the purchasing decisions we make in our daily lives. This again is often overlooked in the mainstream’s discussion of the economic situation. Even though there may be limitations to the purchasing options that each of us has in some areas, overall we still have a lot of power in our hands when we make decisions about where to spend our value. The government does have more power to affect this aspect of the economy than it does the productive side because the government has the ability to take your purchasing power away from you and give it to someone else. However, the extent to which the government does not intervene in a citizen’s purchasing decisions is the extent to which that citizen can impact the state of the economy. If one were to feel that the manufacturing of goods in America were a valuable thing in the economy, then the more one chooses to buy American products the more American products will likely be produced. If, however, one chooses to buy Chinese products instead, for example, this will consequently diminish the extent to which American products are likely produced. Consumers, therefore, have a significant responsibility in determining the fate of their economic system and thus ought to be considered in times of economic turmoil.

The emphasis on government solutions is too simplistic in my opinion to adequately address the nature of our economic situation. We ought to think more carefully about how we spend our disposable incomes and attempt to shoulder much of the responsibility for the state of our economy rather than sluggishly pass the responsibilities off to the government. We are both the producers and consumers of value in or society and nothing will change that.