Take a Deep Breath

All too often, each of us is confronted with stressful situations, feelings of guilt, health problems, work hassles, nasty-rude people, fear, political conflict and the odd and assorted financial problem. We tend to take this personally, feeling victimized and put upon. Although the problem is ultimately that we are suffering the consequences of previous decisions we made.

We usually hate to admit that we create our own reality but we do whether we intend to or not. The fact is we do create our own reality and the present is our point of power. Once the present is past our leverage evaporates. When we focus on past decisions with regret we guilt ourselves. When we worry about the future we experience fear. But all we can control is the present. Guilt is useless. Fear is the mind killer. When we choose to remain in the present we experience peace.

So why not take a deep breath, slow down and think about the choices we are making each day as we make them. Actually, we are either typically obsessive in our guilt about the past or fear of the future. Tragically, we choose to feel guilt over the consequences of our choices after the fact, hopelessly attempting to clean up the debris. Or, we fearfully obsess about the future, helplessly anticipating the worst.

The alternative is to live in the present and be at peace.

The Rainmaker believes it is better to think about the choices we make as we are making them in the present. The alternative is to wander through life in an oblivious fog; alternating our focus between guilt and fear, while dealing with an endless stream of unintended consequences.

Expect a Miracle

Too often we expect the worst and that's exactly what we experience. A business deal doesn't go right. We lose faith and patience. Our trust in the transaction is lost. Then, a partner says let's give it one more chance. There is no need to rush to litigation according to our partner. Against our better judgment we wait just a little longer.

Then out of the blue the unexpected happens. The other party to the transaction actually performs as mandated by the contract. And, rather than spending the next 18 months and who knows how much in legal fees pursuing inadequate remedies, the deal works.

So the lesson is have a little faith, have a lot of patience and choose to expect a miracle. Sometimes the outcome is positive.

How much time and energy to we waste day to day choosing to expect the worst?

Why not choose to expect to be pleasantly surprised. Why not expect a miracle?

What really do we have to lose?

Sir Francis Bacon Part Two

A few days ago The Rainmaker published a discussion of a very short but interesting set of propositions by Sir Francis BAcon, politician, statesman, poet, author, philosopher and enthusiastic promoter of the scientific revolution. That post was inspired by our correspondendent Diana. As promised in that post our reactions will be provided to both Bacon's "Stumbling-Blocks to Truth," and Diana's points to ponder. Diana's material is highlighted in Bold, the original text of The Rainmaker's original post will appear in italics and today's text will look just like this.

As a thinking society, what can we learn about ourselves from assessing Sir Roger Bacon's 'Stumbling-Blocks to Truth?'

All The Rainmaker really knows about Roger Bacon is that he was a pretty amazing dude...The Rainmaker had never heard of these four stumbling-blocks to groking the truth. An Aside: "Grok" is a term from Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," the first libertarian book The Rainmaker ever read (almost 40 years ago...ouch!) and the term "grok" means "to know completely." Obviously the definition of "grok" has been grossly simplified for brevity but any fundamentalist Heinlein fans will have to bear with this for now. It's still a great read after all these years.

Back on track: Here is what Peter's email for Diana said about Bacon's blocks in full: (The Rainmaker's comments are inserted into Diana's text in regular type.)

Four very significant stumbling-blocks (are) in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom and truth. (Circa 1214-1294)

They are:

1) submission to faulty and unworthy authority

The Rainmaker agrees that Sir Robert nailed the problem pretty concisely yet compreshesively and suspects that Machiavelli would consider #1 above to be an Oxymoron.

2) long-standing continuance of custom

The Rainmaker suspects that Hobbs would disagree the #2 is always an obstacle. The Rainmaker can almost anticipate George Wills column to refute this proposition.

3) popular prejudice and regard to the opinion of the unlearned

4) concealment of ones own ignorance while exhibiting wisdom"

The Rainmaker strongly suspects that Sir Roger Bacon would be glad he didn't live in the era of Congressional hearings, spin doctors and cable news networks as those pertain to items #3 and #4.

The Rainmaker is no philosopher but sees nothing to disagree with in the four statements. All four are indeed stumbling-blocks in the way of grasping the truth.

The foregoing was obviously, at least to The Rainmaker Bacon's material. The following is from Diana by way of her spouse Peter P.

"We seek truth to analyze problems and to avoid making similar mistakes in the future yet in our politically charged world we find intellectual dihonesty and purposeful chaos.

We ask ourselves:

1) Are these stumbling-blocks to truth and wisdom being used against us?

Yes, and The Rainmaker believes they are being used with malice aforethought. Search for this website featuring the "Money as Debt" movie and invest 45 minutes, then let The Rainmaker know if you agree or disagree with this answer.

2) Who in government is telling us the truth?

Only those with their mouths shut who are not writing anything. Seriously The Rainmaker believes one can trust that government which is closest to home most and hold that government more accountable. The closer one gets to the center (a state capital or Washington) the less trustworthy and the less accountable the politician or bureaucrat.

3) Does the media use it's medium to keep us from obtaining the truth and wisdom?

The media is a medium of obfuscation, interest group propaganda, sensationalism and entertainment. The media will keep us from obtaining the truth only if we allow it to do that. In the Rainmaker's opinion we are each on our own hook when it comes to becoming informed and wise.

4) How are the candidates using deception to sway our thinking?

In every way they can conceive of in order to obtain their respective real objectives, which are almost universally applicable to any candidate for any office:
*To be elected;
*To grow (pick at least two) powerful, wealthy and famous at public expense;
*To maximize their personal perogative's and perks;
*To use their power to peddle influence in order to lavishly fund their reelection campaigns;
*To be reelected often at any cost, which usually means don't rock the boat and go along to get along;
*To conceal "their own ignorance," confusion, uncertainty and insecurities while exhibiting apparent "wisdom" that in reality is merely conventional wisdom;
*To maximise their own perceived power and privilege;
*To leave a "legacy" of honor purchased at the taxpayer's cost and the soldier's life, both spent as necessary to furthur the politicians self interest; and,
*To do the right thing for the country, its citizens and the world if it doesn't conflict with any of the preceeding objectives.

The Rainmaker believes that if asked, any politician will answer that his or her objective is the last one listed and further, that being masters of "Cognitive Dissonance" politicians and bureaucrats have usually convinced themselves that is in fact the case. However, it is the Rainmaker's opinion that the previous eight objectives are pretty much listed in the real world order of importance.

5) How did we get into this economic crise?

The Rainmaker believes the United State's monetary system is inherently dishonest. As the monetary system is the medium in which a society functions, when it is poluted it will eventually do to society what dirty water eventually does to a fish--kill it. There has never been a paper money, debt money system that has managed to survive 100 years. Ours is about 94 years old.

Therefore since the medium in which society functions is dishonest--no matter how well meaning and personally honest most people in a society might be and usually are in their day to day lives--the society itself is tainted. Periodic economic dislocations are probably inevitable in any society, but the dislocations experienced by a society function with dishonest money are more frequent, more severe and ultimately fatal. That is The Rainmaker's observation regarding Diana's final point.

The Rainmaker offers the following support of this observation. That support is in the form of three books.

The first is "Money and Debt" by Thomas Greco. It can be found at a website called "Reinventing Money" in the "library" on that site and can be downloaded for free (it's only a 65 pages). It comes in three parts (meaning separate pdf files).

The second is "Debt Virus" by Dr. Jacques Jaidaran M.D. and it can be found at most online booksellers. "Debt Virus" is excellent although longer and a more expensive option than "Money and Debt.

And if really ambitious, read "Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt," written by an English Nobel Prize winning physicist Frederick Soddy. It was written about 80 years ago and reads that way. But it is well worth the effort.

Just something to ponder...

Obviously The Rainmaker's hot button was pushed by Diana's material. Hopefully you will find some value in all of this. Even if it is only value equal to a dime, it is 30% more in terms of intrinsic worth than the paper and ink we call money. This is because a dime is actually worth more regardless of the denomination of the bill the paper and ink comprise. That's right the intrinsic value (the worth of each bill, be is $1.00 or $100.00) is about $0.07.

Sir Francis Bacon

Today The Rainmaker received an email sent by Peter P. on behalf of his spouse Diana. The subject line was "Only For The Intellectually Curious."

The first reaction was "Yeah, right." But then The Rainmaker started to read. Even a blind squirrel can find a nut once every now and then. And The Rainmaker is grateful to be the squirrel that decided to read Diana's insightful thoughts, questions and observations. She might have been Socrates in a former life!

The Rainmaker is really happy to have invested the time to read and ponder Diana's observations on Bacon as well as her wise questions. Hopefully you won't be dissappointed that to have this material inflicted on yourselves.

The email begins by asking the question:

"As a thinking society, what can we learn about ourselves from assessing Sir Roger Bacon's 'Stumbling-Blocks to Truth?'"

All The Rainmaker really knows about Roger Bacon is that he was a pretty amazing dude who lived about the same time as a fellow named Shakespeare was alleged to have lived. There is an emerging consensus (although still significant doubt) that if Shakespeare didn't right his material Bacon is a very likely suspect to be ghost writer. The Rainmaker had never heard of these four stumbling-blocks to groking the truth. An Aside: "Grok" is a term from Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," the first libertarian book I ever read (almost 40 years ago...ouch!) and the term "grok" means "to know completely." Obviously the definition of "grok" has been grossly simplified for brevity but any fundamentalist Heinlein fans will have to bear with this for now. It's still a great read after all these years.

Back on track: Here is what Peter's email for Diana said about them in full:

"Four very significant stumbling-blocks (are) in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom and truth. (Circa 1214-1294)

They are:

1) submission to faulty and unworthy authority
2) long-standing continuance of custom
3) popular prejudice and regard to the opinion of the unlearned
4) concealment of ones own ignorance while exhibiting wisdom"

The foregoing was obviously, at least to me Bacon's material. The following is from Diana by way of her spouse Peter P.

"We seek truth to analyze problems and to avoid making similar mistakes in the future yet in our politically charged world we find intellectual dihonesty and purposeful chaos.

We ask ourselves:

1) Are these stumbling-blocks to truth and wisdom being used against us?
2) Who in government is telling us the truth?
3) Does the media use it's medium to keep us from obtaining the truth and wisdom?
4) How are the candidates using deception to sway our thinking?
5) How did we get into this economic crise?

Just something to ponder..."

The Rainmaker commented on the Bacon material and responded to Diana's thoughts and points to ponder. Rather than be a typical media outlet The Rainmaker will give you some time to ponder these points on your own before poluting your thought process with Rainmaker opinion, suposition and prejudice. In a day or two, perhaps longer another post will explore the already written observations, thoughts, conclusions, rants and, hopefully, provide the occasional insight.

Until then, hasta la vista!

The Three Mysteries of Partisan Politics

We are 50 days (plus or minus) from the next election. It is mysterious to The Rainmaker how so much "Sound and Fury" could signify so little. The political communication seems empty, meaningless and without value.

Consider just these two examples:

First: The financial markets seem to be imploding and the candidates are AWOL, failing to even mention the $50 trillion dollars of current debt on the books, which doesn't begin to account for unfunded liabilities such as Social Security, Medicare, pensions and such.

Second: The candidates abhor the failure of the health market but basically pander to voters promising universal coverage and affordability to all while somehow missing the fact that Medicare is going cash flow negative at some point within the first term of the winning candidate.

Those two examples merely typify the disconnect between the candidates and reality. This disconnect can be attributed to the lust for power and glory silencing any meaningful dialogue while we debate the meaning and significance of lipstick, pigs and lipstick on pigs.

The three mysteries are even more troubling.

The first mystery is the Democratic Mystery. While the Democratic Party champions personal freedom of speech, association, sexuality and religion it cares little for economic freedom and property rights. In other words you are free to do whatever you want but what is yours is ours if it is necessary to win a few votes.

The second mystery is the Republican Mystery. While the Republican Party champions economic freedom it stifles individual liberty in most respects. In other words, your ownership of property is sacrosanct but your body is not your own.

The final mystery is the Statist Mystery. The slavish and rabid devotion to the health, well being and primacy of the State is totally incomprehensible. The founders believed the individual to be sovereign. But while both major political parties purport to celebrate individual liberty, both seem to have forgotten two pillars of limited government included in the Bill of Rights.

The 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:

"The Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people."

Over the past couple of centuries we have ceased to be personally sovereign and have become chattel of the State. How else can one explain the reality we experience in our day to day lives.

Imagine Ben Franklin being forced to remove his shoes and coat and subject his luggage to search in order to travel, foregoing his right to be secure from search and seizure guaranteed to him (as well as to you and me) in the fourth amendment to the Constitution.

Indeed it was Franklin who said, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." Consider this the next time you transit an airport. Do the buffoons of the TSA really accomplish anything beyond making a silly show of officious pseudo security?

Enough of the digression, the Rainmaker will return to the underlying point.

The bottom line is the current reality is nonsensical to the point of absurdity. The government of the United States of America does a poor job of securing the inalienable rights invoked in the Declaration of Independence that include "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

What exactly are you going to do about that? Probably not enough!

The Sovereign Individual

Most of us never really think about it but our system of government rests on a base level assumption that the individual citizens of this or any state are sovereign.

Sovereign, what does that word mean? According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary it means: "one possessing or held to possess Sovereignty," or more specifically, "one that exercises authority with a limited sphere," or finally, "an acknowledged leader."

In the case of the United States of America the Preamble of the Constitution acknowledges the supreme power or authority of the people who come together to create the government. The Preamble says in full:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

In addition to that implicit acknowledgement of the supremacy of the individual as the source of authority to sustain the legitimacy of the state, there is two other very important amendments to the Constitution appearing in what has come to be known as the "Bill of Rights:"

Amendment Nine reads in full:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Amendment Ten reads in full:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

Taken together those three brief passages acknowledge the supremacy of the people as the ultimate source of power and authority delegated to the government.

Over the past couple of hundred years the pendulum has swung pretty far away from the assumptions implicit in those statements. Now the state has come to assume more and more power, the people are currently (even after the dreaded Bush tax cuts) paying about 300% of what serfs paid the Lords when power was delegated to ruling families via the "Divine Right of Kings" under which system the people were mere vassals of the state. Today the vast majority of people meekly submit to various indignities: Random searches, SWAT team raids, drunk driving traffic check points, presumed guilty till proven innocent audits by taxing authorities, significant limitations on free speech (especially on college campuses--making a mockery of the term "academic freedom"), random drug testing and even partial disrobing in order to board an airplane.

The question is how much farther can the pendulum swing before it begins to reverse course?

The evolution of technology mentioned in The Rainmaker's most recent post might be indicative of a shift in power and a return of power (sovereignty) to the people.

This shift was predicted back in 1997 by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg in their book "The Sovereign Individual," which The Rainmaker has read and heartily recommends. Davidson and Rees-Mogg aren't sure that the concept of the nation state is viable. They point out that governments spouting patriotism tend to manipulate citizens into supporting social policies, monetary policies, wars and ever more intrusive government creating a swarm of unintended consequences that eventually can destroy the state's viability. When the book was written in 1995/1996 and even when the book was published this theory seemed like a stretch.

But times change and at about the same time the book hit the shelves a guy named Zimmerman released an encryption program for computer files and communications called PGP ("Pretty Good Protection"), which may prove to be the death knell of the modern nation state. Actually the more likely result is a more level playing field between the state and its citizens.

PGP together with online currencies can empower a Sovereign Individual to take real steps to assure his or her privacy, financial independence, physical safety and political liberty. Thus the equilibrium that was disturbed in the United States during the 100 years between the creation of the first national bank and the eventual imposition of the Federal Reserve System/United States Income Tax inducing the pendulum to swing towards ever greater state power at the expense of individual liberty might be checked and the pendulum could be starting to reverse its course towards greater individual Sovereignty.

The outcome is unclear. Stay tuned.

Technology and the State

According to Martin Van Creveld in "The Rise and Decline of the State," techology plays a crucial role at each end of the spectrum. Beginning in 1300 AD and continuing until 1975 the state was enhanced by technology; however, beginning in 1975 and continuing until the present the trend has been for technology to be more problematic to the state.

Advances in such diverse technological areas as printing, weapons, medical treatment, sanitation, farming, communications, media and transportation all served to enhance the state for most of the past several hundred years.

Yet in the past 38 years technoligical progress in many areas has appeared to damage the state's viability:

• Transportation: The development of the shipping container, piggyback rail cars, and jumbo jets capable of hauling large amounts of freight dramatically enhanced trade. As trade increased the interdependence of states upon each other, lowered individual state's freedom of independent action as well as each states economic independence. Increased efficiency in the shipment of data is equally challenging. For example, in the era of global currency trading that approaches $4 trillion each day, it is now difficult if not impossible for any state or group of states to actually control the value of any state's money.
• Media: The ability of the nightly news to deliver graphic images of the costs of war in real time or to show either the brutality of local police or the crackdown on disidents in totalitarian (or for that matter "democratic" societies) as well as the media's ability to deliver images of the "good life" all combined to be inherently subservisive to the power of the state. The advent of decentralized media delivered via the Internet has challenged the major media outlets and in many cases reduced their news coverage ability to the point that they are becoming little more than celebrity news services.
• The Internet: Originally the Internet was built as a means of networked communication assuring a state's liklihood of surviving modern war and weapons systems. More and more, especially with the development and implementation of encryption tools, the Internet has become the preferred means of linking political dissidents, coordinating asymetrical warfare (terrorism) and facilitating tax evadors/political drop outs. This evolution has become perhaps the most significant challange to the power of the state in centuries.
• Weapons: The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, coupled with demonstrated state inability to reliably account for much less control the proliferation, theft and use of those weapons of mass distruciton is a real threat to the state. If the state cannot maintain is monopoly on violence to protect its citizens, what good is it?
• Entitlements: The use of entitlements based on bad economic models to buy loyalty or at least silence dissent is becoming a significant problem to industrialized western democracies who are faced with the inability to keep the promises they have made. In France successive governments have been paralyzed by general strikes and violence in the streets when they have attempted to rationalize benefits by bringing them to sustainable levels. This is likely to spread until eventually the state is unable to survive economically. Already citizens of the European Union who live in Germany are refusing to accept Euros they can see (by reading the currency) are created in less frugal member states such as France and Italy.
• Immigration: States are demonstrating an inability to control and secure their borders throughout the world. Poor people, oppressed minorities and political dissidents as well as skilled workers and tax fugitives are voting with their feet. Cultural conflicts undermining the cohesiveness of states are becoming more prevelant, whether between native born and muslim immigrants in Western Europe or illegal immigrants and the native born in the United States.
• Medical Science: Advances in medical science are significantly lowering infant mortality, increasing life expectancy and lowering birth rates. The demographic consequences of these trends are already a major threat to the viability of states such as Italy and Japan. However it's not just industrial societies that are experiencing lower birth rates. Virtually every state is experiencing this phenomena, even fundamentalist theocracies in the Islamic world and traditionally Roman Catholic societies in Mexico, Central and South America are seeing significant declines in the birth rate. Thanks to the "One Child" policy, the demographics in the People's Republic of China are making it a state with one of the most quickly aging populations populations on the planet. The implications of this are not widely understood yet but the result will likely be increased political instability around the world.

It is impossible to predict with any certainty where these trends will take civilization and whether the state is doomed or will be able to adapt. Next, The Rainmaker will consider one potential scenario, the rise of "The Sovereign Individual."

The Decline of the State

"The state, which since the middle of the 17th Century has been the most important and most characteristic of all modern institutions, is in decline. From Western Europe to Africa, many existing states are either combining into larger communities or falling apart. Many of their functions are being taken over by a variety of organizations which, whatever their precise nature, are not states." This was written by Martin van Creveld, a Professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in his book "The Rise and Decline of the State," published by the Cambridge University Press in 1999.

Who could have imagined as they sat in Number 10 Downing Street at the end of the 19th Century that within 100 years the British Empire on which the Sun never sat, would be reduced to Great Britain and Northern Ireland or that there would be serious talk in Wales and Scotland of secession.

Who could have imagined as they stood atop the Kremlin watching the annual May Day parade in 1980 that in a little over a decade the USSR would be no more and the Berlin Wall would be dismantled by the people of a united Germany?

Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia are no more. Belgium is in the midst of dividing itself. Ethnic groups such as the Basques and Kurds are eager to part ways with Spain and Turkey. Russia is busily dismantling Georgia, birth place of Joseph Stalin.

How many Americans are aware of the current movements in Vermont and Hawaii to secede from the United States?

To our south Mexico has been fighting for a decade or more to hang onto Chiapas, while Sonora and other northern areas find more and more in common with Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas. In western Canada and the northwestern United States there is a growing affinity.

In "The Untied States of America," Juan Enriquez visualizes alternative realities in which the United States could grow to as many as sixty states or shrink dramatically from the current fifty within a generation. His speculation is twenty years after a similar analysis by Joel Garreau gave us "The Nine Nations of North America."

And, in his book "The Black Swan" Nissim Nicholas Taleb describes the disintegration of his country, Lebanon.

What is behind this uncertainty regarding state stability? According to the analysis by van Creveld, the state rose to dominance as it became able to achieve a monopoly on violence and the supply of money while becoming a nanny to its citizens.

The primary function of the state in van Creveld's formulation was to wage War on other states. War requires the ability to raise money, tax, organize and mobilize. War also provides an emotional bond and unifying force to bind the state. War necessitates the state. As Randolph Bourne famous essay points out in its title: "War is the Health of the State." Another meditation on this premise is "The Report from Iron Mountain" most probably written by Leonard Lewin and published in 1967.

In the context of creating an emotional bond and a unifying force to bind the citizen to the state, the Olympics are a distant second to War if for no other reason than that the stakes are so much more sane.

Once the expense of War gets to a certain point it becomes advantageous for the state to take control of the medium of exchange and store of value, the money. This enables the state to disguise the true cost of warfare as well as the true cost of the state by the convenient device of debasing the money. Eventually the costs became so high that money became decoupled from any objective measure of value. The ability of a state's money to continue as a medium of exchange is really a function of the willingness of the populace to accept the paper. Put another way, modern state money is really a confidence game.

Simultaneously, in order to demonstrate a value proposition sufficient to justify the state--while keeping the natives satisfied, stifling dissent and creating loyalty--Bismarck came up with the idea of the welfare state. His original system of Social Security, subsequently copied around the world, used the false mathemetics of the proverbial Ponzoi scheme to create the illusion of real and sustainable financial benefits for the individual citizen of the state.

A brilliant analysis of the rise and operation of the American welfare state is, "Dependant on DC" by Charlotte Twight. The Rainmaker suggests you explore Twight's book in depth if you doubt any of the assertions made here about the welfare state.

However, in the last half of the 20th Century the underpinnings of the state became more stressed.

• Beginning in 1945 the advent and use of nuclear weapons made the prosecution of the state's primary function--War--a more difficult, expensive and risky proposition. Use of these ultimate weapons was effectively denied to Superpower states such as the United States and the USSR, each of which suffered unexpected military reverses in Viet Nam and Afghanistan, but neither deployed nuclear weapons.
• Beginning in the 1970s the inherent unsustainabilty of the welfare state became apparent. For a time most states attempted the expedient of raising the taxes on workers to sustain the vaunted "Social Safety Net," but eventually with payroll taxes approaching 40% in Western Europe the carrying capacities of modern state economies maxed out, resulting in economic stagnation. The people became ever more aware that the welfare state was at best an empty promise and at worse a fraud designed to exploit citizens.
• Beginning n the 1980s the decoupling of state monetary systems from real value led to a series of inflationary spikes, speculative bubbles and collapses continuing into the 21st Century demonstrating to more and more people that currencies of nation states are often worth even less than the paper they are printed on and are really mechanisms to impose hidden taxes on citizens while hiding the true cost of government.

Finally, in the early 21st Century the planet's remaining Superpower became involved in a War with a shadowy group of terrorists that were able to resist the massive power deployed against them, evading defeat, capture and punishment for longer than the Axis powers were able to survive after Pear Harbor. In an effort to mobilize and motivate its citizens the government of the United States embarked on a concerted program of increasing state power, eroding civil liberties and symbolic measures such as forcing travelers to remove clothing and surrender toiletries in order to instill fear and justify loyalty.

The Rainmaker believes that as we move deeper into the 21st Century the relevance and power of the state will continue to wane. States in one form or another will probably continue to exist for the foreseeable future, but they will be a shadow of their former selves sooner rather than later.

Olympics and a Preview of Comming Attractions

Is there anyone else who has watched no part of the Olympics?

The Rainmaker has not seen a single instant of Olympic video. Of course even our concerted effort to avoid Olympic coverage has not been sufficient to escape some print coverage of the games.

The whole Olympic movement serves to perpetuate nationalist identity that is really obsolete as the world enters the 21st Century. Actually the more relavant measures of community are much more local and much more global. The "national" is really much less significant.

To appreciate The Rainmaker's point, read "The Untied States of America" by Juan Enriquez.

More about this over time. But to really appreciate the upcoming conversation read the book.

Who am I and why am I here?

When Ross Perot's running mate Admiral James Stockdale asked that question in his opening statement during the 1992 Vice Presidential Debate he was portrayed as a dunce. It was the effective end of his candidacy, leading to skits on Saturday Night Live and political oblivion.

But when you back off and really think about it, those questions are really the core issues. And the answers matter--not just for political candidates but for each of us.

So, to turn the question around I ask the following question.

Just who exactly are you?

And, why are you here?

I'd be very interested to know your answers to those questions. I'm even more interested to know if you know the answers.