Can Society Ever Learn for its Mistakes?


Armstrong Economics Blog/AI Computers Re-Posted Oct 25, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION #1: Hi Martin
Do you ever wish Socrates was wrong? Sometimes I do!
All the best
Maria

QUESTION #2: Marty; I have been following you since the Nineties. You have never been wrong, or should I say, Socrates. I also know how you have saved many companies since I was there at the board meeting ——–. I also know you have tried your best to influence Washington, and have resigned yourself to giving up. Do you think that Socrates could ever be wrong?

PM

ANSWER: I have simply taken the view that it is better to see a punch coming than to be sucker-punched. The world will not end. It is merely indeed a Great Reset which I think Schwab has taken from our model. He is trying to make it happen and push the outcome in his direction. Schwab is just an old academic. They theorize things rather than try to discover how things function. Smith tried to figure out how it worked. Marx tried to change how it worked. That remains the difference between Klaus and me.

Yes, I have tried to get through to those in power in vain. They turned to Klaus because of his way they got more power. They would have to surrender power if they chose my way. I can wish the outcome would be different – of course. Perhaps when I am gone, someone will champion what I have discovered like Smith during the post-2032 era. As individuals, we learn from our personal experiences. Our problem is that society repeats history because it is incapable of ever learning from past mistakes as an individual. Leaders are replaced, and never do they reflect upon the past. They all have some idea they assume it’s always new.

We need to create a system that learns from the past. Perhaps something like Socrates, where you ask it a question, and it returns an unbiased answer. Perhaps then society, just for once, could actually advance instead of moving two steps forward and three back.

So yes, I wish Socrates would be wrong. But on the other hand, I also realize that is impossible until society can learn from its past mistakes like a child and retain that knowledge to advance society – just once!

There Is Something Very Troublesome About the Western Govt, Post-COVID, Rules-Based Order


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 7, 2022 | Sundance 

While the western media quickly jumped from the COVID crisis to the Ukraine crisis, in the background of current events there is a lot of activity amid western government that does not look very democratic.

The word ‘autocracy‘, with all its variants, has been used a lot frequently by western government politicians as they attack the ideology of Russia, China and essentially every national leader who does not join their “rules-based order” club.  There is so much linguistic repetition from the same western leadership, it’s impossible not to see this autocracy narrative as some form of talking point that stemmed from some G7 or NATO collaboration meeting.

It does not seem coincidental the new catch phrases of “autocracy” vs “rules-based order” surfaced at the tail end of the COVID crisis, when Build Back Better shifted from a talking point into an actual set of western legislative constructs  perhaps intended to codify the emergency powers those same officials deployed.

What kind of democracy, or rules-based order mindset, was the European Commission carrying when they decried the overwhelming national election in Hungary?  Surely if the EU wanted to celebrate democracy, they would cheer for the high voter turnout that reelected Prime Minister Viktor Orban, yet they did exactly the opposite.  Apparently, some democracies are more valued than others.

At the same time the EU is clutching pearls over the results in Hungary, another western ally, Canada, is codifying the government’s emergency act power to seize property without due process.  As we are directed to be distracted by everything Zelenskyy, it might be worth noting that Ontario Bill 100 is about to permanently change the rules of permitted political protest. You can read about Bill 100 here and watch the economic debate here.

Essentially, Bill 100 gives the Canadian government the power to seize your home, finances, bank accounts and assets if you take part in any form of protest that would create economic harm to any loosely defined entity.  Protest at the border, lose your house; at least that’s the threat they are about to make into a law.

It seems rather incredulous to me that securing a corporate financial interest would override the concerning possibility of forever losing liberty and freedom for the individual citizen. However, in this new post-COVID ‘rules-based order’, that’s the official justification from the Canadian government.  Slippery slope and all that accepted, this Ontario Bill 100 is a few slides beyond the slippery.

Similar actions are taking place in New Zealand and Australia, where codifying the emergency powers of public health officials post-COVID rules, is at the forefront of their legislative and constitutional reform efforts.

Creating new era ‘rules-based democracy’ stuff is filling up the business end of western government attention in Europe, North American and the land down under.

But it’s not just Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Australia doing this.  In the United States we have a combination of new restrictions on liberty and freedom around emergency health issues in combination with J6 “threat to democracy” outcomes being created.  The J6 committee is looking at Trump supporters the way the EU commission is looking at Hungarian citizens.

Add it all up, and this new version of western democracy doesn’t look like it is based on the same principles the older version, the non-rules-based version, was using.

These new “rules of democracy” are also being overlaid by new rules for discussing democracy as found in the guidelines from the tech overlords.

Google just recently announced, in the era post-COVID, they will no longer tolerate content that “makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.

So, if you are to speak against the new “rules of democracy”, or the legislation that is going through the “democratic process” in the EU, NZ, AU, Canada or the United States, you can be targeted by the online Google wrong-think police.  Isn’t that convenient considering the effort to codify the totalitarian tendencies of the new “western democracies.”

If you speak against the newer version of the ‘rules-based order‘, the leaders of western democracies will enjoy protection from the internet police.  A rebellious sort, as defined by a person who still thinks independently, might say that sounds almost autocratic or something.

There was always a concern that any political leader who granted themselves extreme powers, under the pretense of the pandemic threat, would never want to relinquish that scale of control over their citizens.  Indeed, it can be argued we are seeing those concerns come to fruition with supportive action from ruling elites in the various parliamentary and congressional offices.

A wise fellow of steward-minded disposition stated today that if U.S. government officials were genuinely concerned about the welfare of Americans, they would immediately be holding legislative sessions to ramp up energy production, cut through regulatory hurdles, lower gasoline prices, seal our borders and prepare our national food stocks for a concerning global food shortage.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if a legislative body was truly representative of the citizens, they would be using a few billion taxpayer dollars to purchase or offset fertilizer costs, help farmers with diesel fuel prices and work earnestly to insure full harvests this year.

Alas, the only nation worthy of such financial consideration is a tenuously manipulated -by them- country called Ukraine.

These new western democracy rules certainly appear to be rules of priority for the few, and not rules that would be a priority for the many.   Perhaps that’s the whole point.  Maybe that’s the bigger picture.

As it appears by action and consequence, this new western, post-COVID, ‘rules-based order’ is focused exclusively on providing benefit for the self-described elites.

I wonder what will happen if the many just don’t comply?…

… Or have the autocrats thought about that with the open border rules coming May 23rd?