Quote from: Tryptamine on May 02, 2012, 06:32 pmQuote from: BKind on May 02, 2012, 06:14 pmThe idea that unfettered freedom is good (i.e. no government) is uninformed, in my opinion... first of all, "survival of the fittest" is wonderful - if you're one of the strong... what about the handicapped, the poor unable to afford health care and education, etc? I know that SR is a free-market drug site, but the idea of "fighting the state" brings up other issues, too - social services, education, defense... should we "privatize" those services and, if so, why?Social services provided by the state are pathetic and expensive, the health care system effectively mandates illness and prohibits health, public education turns the children who pass through it into feeble-minded, repressed serfs, and, at least in the US, the police are not legally obligated to protect you. Meanwhile millions of indigents or delinquents work as bureaucrats or politicians and coercively extract value from those few people who create it. Saying words that sound like they represent desirable things does not change the reality of how things are and have been for a long time.These are not just words, there are numbers to back them up. It is not uninformed BKind, it is simply a synopsis a great many people, not pundits on radio or television stations either, would agree with the shape of.We are not mad, the State has become mad. It is like a drunken old man suffering from Alzheimer's wildly wielding a rifle in the night. The tool used to restrain the darker side effects of market forces has ossified into a stranglehold over time. It's bigger than regulation, laws, taxation, policy and all those things traditionally referred to. Neither the Republicans or Democrats have a handle on what's going on.You see, there is a War on Drugs, but it's part of a greater cycle. The populations of the West are like frogs slowly being cooked to death. They feel discomfiture occasionally, but don't see the general flow of events and their implications. As the Chinese say: too much water and fire. There is socialism in our corporations and capitalism in our government, no good comes of that, ever.In the future, we are going to have the perfect storm of economic destruction.-> higher taxation-> higher inflation-> higher unemploymentThe national debt itself is merely a symptom of a much larger malaise. I also believe that Western Europe will be the first to fall to the above holy trinity of economic chaos, they are a little like the canaries in the coal mine, and that America will ultimately recover wounded but alive unless they start a series of misadventures in war as is their wont. For Western Europe however, the changes will almost certainly be irrevocable. Americans are familiar with problems such as the national debt even if they hold differing views on the subject. Western Europeans aren't even aware there is a problem. On average, a Western European country has economic statistics which are many times worse than the United States, and I am not implying that the stats for the US are good. Indeed, there is compelling evidence that the governments are secretly concealing the genuine extent of the problem. I wish Western Europe was a stock so I could short it. As it is, I left the bonds of the developed world quite some time ago, and most institutional investors grit their teeth and wish they could do the same. The world's financial capitalists are hemmed in, like a legion of cats in a dead end alley trapped by a group of caterwauling petulant children. That instant that capital controls come into play, you bet your life those cats will dart left and right like greased lightening. I wish them god-speed. Power you see, whether governmental or corporate is like holding a delicate crystal glass, if you hold it too loosely, it smashes to a million pieces on the floor. If you hold it too tightly, the stem of the glass snaps and is irreparable. We are in the latter situation today.If I were to make a specific prediction, it would that within 2 years, perhaps sooner or a little later, you'll have widespread riots in Western Europe, they are going to have a warm winter this year and no mistake. I see no peaceful solution. Still, in the longer term, I am an optimist! Time heals all wounds. Eventually the wheel turns and things come right again. Imagine visualizing the world of 1941 to 1942 in 1900? Previously there had been no serious interstate wars for roughly half a century, it was the golden age of the West's first globalization. Then imagine visualizing the world of 2000 in 1941, when the Nazis controlled lion's share of Europe.So much philosophy, perhaps it sounds useless to you. It isn't, it implies you should diversify your portfolio more extensively between non-corelated assets than most people would think to. Everybody has a portfolio, even my nephews and nieces have piggy banks, that is their minute portfolio, and they don't spend it all in one shop now.Apart from portfolio restructuring, I believe SR or similar service is the ideal place to be situated in the future, esp. when industrial production of synthetics gets married up with it. Ready access to drugs, guns, papers and hard currency, that's the ticket. Always useful, but even more so when G-men turn into real assholes.tldr; Get out of Dodge! Or stay there and profitably sell hard liquor and colt 45s to the natives.