Government is not Evil

By that I mean, of course, that some governments are not evil, since some clearly are. But I also mean that government itself—the idea of some men having authority over others—is not evil. In fact, government itself is a positive good. The idea that government is an evil, even if a necessary one, is an Enlightenment invention with no basis in traditional Catholic thought.

For one thing, authority is clearly placed in nature, and confirmed by the sacred texts which all Catholics, and even many other Christians, hold dear. The parent, of course, has authority over his children. Children must do what their parents tell them, and if they fail to do so, their parents are fully within their rights to compel the children to complete their orders. Indeed, even further: the parents are fully within their rights to punish the children by whatever reasonable means they see fit, even physical means.

Examples are, as always, the soul of exposition. When I tell my oldest son—now four—to be quiet, and he continues making noise, I want to do two things to him. First, I want to force him to be quiet, as I told him to be, despite his perfectly natural four-year-old inclination to make noise. Second, I want to punish him for disobeying me. This punishment has three main purposes: first and foremost, it gives retribution for his disobedience, thus doing justice by inflicting pain to balance the evil which he himself has done; second, it gives an example to my other two children, showing them what happens to them when they are disobedient; and third, it rehabilitates him, by providing a negative incentive for further disobedience. Over time, he will develop habits of obedience to me, and further that obedience will develop into virtuous habits in general; for example, he will develop the habit of being nice to his sister, because whenever he’s not nice to her he gets a good, hard slap on the backside.

An outline of my general actions is as follows:

1. Compel obedience.
2. Punish disobedience.
1. Give him his just desserts.
2. Provide an example to others of the fruits of disobedience.
3. Encourage obedience in the future.

Am I exerting force on my son? Unapologetically, yes. Am I attempting to limit his will in a direction that I consider appropriate? Absolutely, I am trying to do so. God willing, I will succeed.

Is this evil? No. In fact, it is a positive good. As Catholics, we are taught that marriage has two fundamental purposes; first and foremost of these is the procreation and education of children. Once the child is conceived, he’s been procreated; that’s great and important. But after that moment, a father has a very, very long way to go. He must still educate the child; and as Thomistic philosophy shows us, education is not simply the filling up of little heads with facts, but rather the formation of loves and hates. Specifically, we must teach the child to love (and thus do) what is good and hate (and thus avoid) what is evil.

The way that a father does this is by force, pure and simple: by exercising authority in a way which will teach a child what is good and what is evil, and how to respond to each. Original sin leaves the child guideless; even after his baptism, he is still subject to concupiscence, the tendency to evil which is within all of us. The father must teach the child to overcome concupiscence; he must teach his child to choose the good as a matter of habit, as a virtue. Simply standing in front of him and making a list of goods to be done and evils to be avoided just will not do the trick; one must make the issue real and direct for him. One must reward him for doing good and punish him for doing evil. Doing so is nothing less than force.

When my child voluntarily shares a toy with his sister, I congratulate him, tell him I’m proud of him. In other words, I reward him. When he takes a toy away from her without asking, I punish him. I do this to form in him a love of sharing what he has, and a love of his sister and a desire to do good to her. I’m limiting his will, directly and unapologetically. I’m making his will less likely to choose one set of alternatives and more likely to choose another. But it’s good that I’m limiting his will in this way. That’s what my authority as a father is for: to teach him to love the good and to hate evil.

So what is a government for? Presumably, of course, all parents are doing this for their children, and thus there’s no need for a government to do it for us, right? Wrong. Even if all parents perfectly educated their children (a far cry from reality, I think we’ll all agree), there would still be a need for government. Similarly, even if Adam and Eve had not fallen, there would still be a need for parents.

Men are not individual atoms, or even individual families, bouncing around in some cosmic sphere. We are men, and we live not only as individual members of families, but also as individual members of communities, of individual members of cities, and as individual members of states. While men are valuable and good in themselves, men are also, fundamentally, parts of greater wholes, from the level of the family to that of the state. In his Politica, Aristotle famously said that a man thriving without a state must be either a beast or a god. That is, he must be either lower than man, and thus incapable of companionship, or higher than man, and thus above it. But whichever it is, one thing is certain: he’s not a man. He’s something else entirely.

And that’s why we need the state. Man simply cannot thrive in isolation; he can thrive—flourish, as the Thomists say—and fulfill his end only within communities, including the state. And those communities must be governed. The governments of these communities are not, by their nature, evil; indeed, by their nature they are positively good. The purposes of these communities is human flourishing; it stands to reason, then, that these communities must be directed toward that flourishing by a conscious device. Just as men individually tend to evil, so also do societies; just as men individually need parents to teach them the right way, and to guide families toward the good and away from evil, so also do societies need governments. Those governments are good, because they help man to achieve his good; namely, his flourishing as a human being.

Now, it certainly happens that sometimes these governments become evil, by overstepping their bounds in one way or another. What should be done about them in those cases I’ll leave for another discussion. But this modern notion that government is just a necessary evil, to be limited as much as possible, is absolutely antithetical to the Thomistic tradition upon which Catholic social teaching is based. Governments should be given the power necessary to perform their duties: directing the societies of which they are the heads toward their goods. Governments are for this, and thus are by their nature good.

This is far from an exhaustive treatment of the topic. But it does give the general Catholic view of society and government. As Catholics, we should start embracing not only the theological teachings of our Church, but also the entirety of the Catholic intellectual tradition, which includes such notions as are outlined above. Only then can we be truly and fully Catholic, and thus begin work toward the restoration of the social reign of Christ.

Praise be to Christ the King!

Some Musings on Tariffs

Protectionism, to the liberal economist, is synonymous with “evil.” It restricts “free trade,” after all, so it can’t be good. But maybe we need to rethink protectionism. After all, what we’ve been doing for the last few decades obviously isn’t working, as even a cursory glance at the newspaper will demonstrate.

Most specifically, I want to talk about tariffs. Tariffs are like taxes, but instead of being levied on things that are already in-country, they’re levied on goods that are coming into the country. For example, the United States decides it wants to cut income taxes, so it needs to either cut spending or raise some other revenues to make up the shortfall. (I know; the United States doesn’t work that way. But let’s assume that we’ve got some leaders with a modicum of financial responsibility for the sake of argument.) Therefore, the United States decides that for every car imported, it will charge a 3% import tax. That import tax is called a “tariff.”

Tariffs have been a pretty important part of American history. In fact, until the first world war (that’s the one fought by the world from 1914-1918, and by us from 1917-1918), tariffs were the single biggest revenue source for the federal government. The Tariff Act of 1789, for example, placed tariffs on all imports between 5% and 15%. (Source: Tariffs in American history.) This served two purposes: 1.) It created a large revenue stream to fund the federal government, based on the importation of luxury goods (necessary goods were mostly produced domestically because the tariff made importing them rather expensive); and 2.) it protected and supported domestic industry, because it made domestic industry, which was otherwise more expensive because nascent and undeveloped, profitable by making more mature and less well paid European industry more expensive.

Really, it’s a simple proposition. If, say, apples can be produced in Europe for five cents a bushel, but it costs ten cents a bushel to produce them here, then people will buy the European apples provided that shipping costs don’t make them more than ten cents per bushel. If, on the other hand, the European apples are also subject to a tariff which makes them cost fifteen cents a bushel, then people will buy the American apples. This also drives up American apples’ prices (though not past fifteen cents a bushel, because that would deprive the domestic producers of their advantage), which encourages more people to start producing apples and discourages them from working in, say, shipping industries importing European ones.

All in all, history shows that this worked rather well. America was a comparative backwater in 1789, with almost no domestic industry to speak of. Even the normal trades, like silversmithing, while practiced in America, were engaged almost entirely in repairing goods produced in England rather than in making new goods here. With the new system of tariffs, industry exploded in America (though tariffs were never as high as American producers really wanted, of course). By the time World War I came along, America was feared and respected as an enormously productive nation; by the time World War II came along, America was the industrial powerhouse of the Allied powers, producing the tanks, airplanes, trucks, guns, and other necessary goods, including vast quantities of steel and other raw materials which the other Allied powers used to make their war material, that won the war. Man for man, the Germans tended to beat every Allied power; but given the enormous influx of materials that America was able to supply, Hitler never had a chance. World War II was, in a very real sense, won not by American military might, but by American industrial might.

Now, of course, we do things differently. Steel is produced almost entirely by the Japanese and imported here for what few things we still actually do with steel in America. Once we led in the computer field; now computers are made mostly in Asia. Indeed, since 1978, no fewer than 16,613 American companies have been sold, for a value of over two trillion dollars and counting. It’s reached such proportions that it’s rightly called “The Great American Sell-off” among those concerned about such things. (Source: The Great American Sell-off.)

Look more specifically at the figures for essential, once exclusively American industries. Metal ore mining is now owned 65% by foreign interests. Book publishers are owned 63% by foreign interests. Cement, concrete, and similar products, 62%. Engines, turbines, and other power equipment, 57%. Glass, 48%. Coal mining, 48%. Steel, 20%. Remember, too, that these are those parts of the industries that are still domestic. It doesn’t include the fact that we now import a great deal of these things, in addition to having so much of our domestic production in foreign hands. (Source: Foreign Ownership of US Domestic Industries.)

Not to mention that many of the domestically-held industries still here are bankrupt or nearly bankrupt. Consider General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, the so-called “Big Three” now. Of course, let’s also remember to mention that they’re no longer the Big Three; that honor now goes to GM, Ford, and Toyota. Toyota is owned by who, again?

Even our government is rapidly selling out to foreign interests. Our own government. Our government is so deeply in debt that, short of simple default, it couldn’t possibly dig itself out again. China, for example, which is not exactly our most favorite country (though our benevolent leaders did grant it the vaunted “Most Favored Nation” trade status), holds no less than five hundred and eighty-five billion dollars in American debt. Government debt. They recently passed Japan, which holds a paltry $573 billion. And oil exporters, made up largely of unfriendly Middle Eastern nations, holds $182.2 billion—and we’ve asked them for even more to help shore up our disaster of an economy. (Source on the debt held by foreign nations: Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities.) Never mind the debt that our government’s in to its own citizens; isn’t this alarming enough?

How does this tie into tariffs? Well, two ways, identical to the two purposes of tariffs as outlined above. 1.) Tariffs provide a revenue stream, something our government is really badly in need of. 2.) Tariffs protect domestic industry, something our domestic industries are really badly in need of.

Let’s face it; the whole “free trade” and “open border” thing just isn’t working. It’s been very successful in making our executives extremely rich, and in feeding our appetite for consumption. Indeed, the average CEO now makes some 475 times what the average workers makes (source: Executive Pay.); however, actual wages for normal workers have stagnated (source: Wages in America: The Rich Get Richer and the Rest get Less.). The “free trade” ideology prevalent in recent decades has not been successful in providing meaningful, productive employment for our people; in strengthening our industrial base; or in making us more secure. In fact, it has done exactly the opposite.

We’re weaker and more vulnerable than ever before. Our borders are wide open to attackers. Should we become involved in a major war, we are dependent upon foreign powers for many essential industries, including steel, quite possibly the most essential of all, not to mention oil. Even our military’s standard-issue sidearms are foreign-made Birettas, rather than the excellent and immortal American-made 1911 Colt .45s which have served us so well for so long.

Our people are increasingly unemployed, and those who are employed are increasingly employed in unstable service-oriented positions such as food service and retail. The notion that finding jobs at McDonald’s and Wal-Mart will make up for the skilled, well-paid, and vital national work being done by steelworkers, auto workers, and other now unemployed industrial workmen is nothing short of asinine. We’ve made our executives extremely rich, and have even expanded our “white-collar” job sector significantly. However, this job sector is supported more and more by “blue-collar” workers in foreign lands subject to foreign regulations. And while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being foreign, to sell oneself out to foreigners while abandoning all self-sufficiency in the name of “free trade” lacks foresight at the very least.

It’s not that American workers are lazy or unproductive; it’s that they are a proud and free people, and they demand a real, respectable, living wage. It’s also not that foreign workers are more diligent; it’s that they have little other choice and are thus willing to work for slave wages. Our government and American executives are thrilled at this fact; they like nothing better than cutting their comparatively expensive American workforce to “outsource” their labor to a country that pays practically nothing, such that even with shipping costs added in their products are still cheaper than when made in America by Americans. We are not only ruining our own economy and making our own people destitute by this practice; we’re perpetuating the near-slavery of foreign workers, keeping them in horrendous conditions so that we can continue to buy our flat-screen televisions and cheap foreign cars.

Let’s stop this. Please. Put a tariff on foreign goods, particularly those from countries which allow their corporations to treat their people like slaves. The tariff will at the very least make their products competitively priced with our own; it will make it impossible for foreign companies to flood our markets with cheap products and thus eliminate American companies from the running. We’d be doing nothing more than reciprocating their own actions; does anyone really think that Japan, China, and South Korea import American goods even remotely as freely as we import theirs?

Executive salaries will certainly have to go down, and corporate profits will be reduced. But is that really so bad? American CEOs make 475 times what the average factory worker makes in this country. Compare that to other countries, who are supposedly more efficient workers and thus are supposedly outcompeting us by virtue of their clean living and righteous thoughts. The average Japanese CEO? 11 times. German? 12 times. French? 15 times. British? 22 times. American? Four hundred and seventy-five times. (Source: Executive Pay.) Would it really be so horrible if corporations had to reduce their profits and pay their CEOs a little less—say, a paltry 200 times what a factory floor worker makes—in order to pay their workers a living wage and keep American industry competitive?

We’re no longer a nation of producers of wealth; rather, we’re a nation of consumers. Thus, we are forced to borrow and spend our way to prosperity. This worked for a little while; it’s starting to unravel. We need to go back to making wealth rather than solely consuming it. A tariff on vital industrial goods and raw materials would supply the government with a substantial revenue stream; that way it could cut taxes on domestic industries, thus giving them more room to move and grow. It would further remove the benefit that many foreign industries currently enjoy based on paying their workers next to nothing, while Americans demand a living wage. Finally, it would encourage domestic industries to grow, and new domestic industries to arise.

The issue is complex, obviously, and this little blog post doesn’t even begin to answer all the objections. But it raises the point. We’re clearly doing something very wrong right now; and back when we were doing something right, we produced domestically and we tariffed foreign imports. Maybe we ought to think about going back to what worked?

Praise be to Christ the King!

* Yes, I know that all foreign countries don’t treat their people like slaves. I also know that many do. I want to emphasize that there’s nothing wrong with being foreign, any more than there’s anything wrong with being American (after all, Americans are foreigners to non-Americans). I’d say the same things if I weren’t an American; I’d just say them about my own country. The issue isn’t that other countries are worse; it’s just that they’re not mine. My first concern is, naturally, my own country’s prosperity. I wish prosperity to all nations, but not at the cost of the prosperity of my own. I furthermore don’t want to see my countrymen growing fat and complacent on the backs of others; I want us prosperous because we work hard, save, and produce wealth, not because we take advantage of the grotesquely underpaid hard work of others.

Dozenal Mathematics

Random? Yes. But this is a blog, not an accumulation of scholarly and well-ordered writings. Each individual post is, I think, well-contained enough, but one can’t expect uniformity and order among posts on a personal blog (though one might, and should, expect it from a blog devoted to a certain topic; some excellent such blogs are listed in the links section on the sidebar). So, I’ve moved to another exciting and unbelievably obscure topic: non-decimal mathematics.

See, prior to placeholder notation (what we use to write numbers now; if you don’t get this, don’t worry, I’ll be getting there shortly), most civilizations wrote their numbers in an almost insufferably clumsy way. Take Roman numerals, for instance, which have been rightly relegated only to the most formal locations in our day (and sadly sometimes, as on tombstones and book publication dates and the like, not even there). The Romans had no concept of placeholder notation; as a result, they simply had a different symbol for each number they considered important enough to deserve one. Therefore, there was “I” for one, “V” for five, “X” for ten, “L” for fifty, “C” for a hundred, “M” for a thousand, and sometimes “D” for five hundred, as well. They shuffled these symbols as appropriate to make up more complex numbers. Originally, they would simply accumulate lower numbers until they reached a higher one, like so:

I, II, III, IIII, V, VI, VII, VIII, VIIII, X…

Later, however, they came up with a clever way of keeping their numbers shorter: if a smaller number was placed to the left of a larger one, that meant “subtract the smaller from the larger.” Thus, “IV” replaced “IIII,” “IX” replaced “VIIII,” and so on. This made things shorter, but not much easier; indeed, one has to examine a Roman numeral carefully to ensure proper parsing.

Imagine arithmetic with a number system such as this. Take simple addition, for example: one hundred and forty-seven plus two hundred and twelve. First, write them out as Roman numerals:

CXLVII + CCXII

Now, just jumble all the symbols together, organizing them in kind. But be careful to keep, say, the “X” that is being subtracted from something away from the “X” that’s being added to something, lest you confuse them and ruin your result.

CCCXLXVIIII

Now, reduce it to some sensible (sensible for Roman numerals, anyway) form:

CCCLIX

Three hundred and fifty-nine. Now, imagine something painfully simple in our current numeric notation: multiplication by a single-digit multiplier; say, three. One hundred and forty-seven multiplied by three. This can’t be hard, can it? Well, first let’s write our numbers. It should be easy, as the large one has already been written above:

CXLVII * III

To do this, we must take CXLVII, write it three times, then reduce it in the same way that we did before after addition.

CXLVII + CXLVII + CXLVII –> CCCXXXLLLVVVIIIIII

Now, we have to reduce that monstrous number to something reasonably sensible. Remember that our “XLs” are equal to “LLL – XXX,” yielding a new total of “CXX,” and our “Vs” are equal to “XV,” and our “IIIIII” is equal to “VI.”

CCCCXXVVVIIIIII –> CDXXXVVI –> CDXXXXI –> CDXLI

So, there you have it. Four hundred and forty-one. Is this doable? Certainly. Now imagine doing it with one hundred and forty-seven and, say, seven hundred and twenty-two. Extremely cumbersome. Not only that, but the location of the digits within their numbers gives us no assistance in calculating the result. Since the numerical symbols have to be arranged together somehow, it would be nice if that arrangement itself could help us in our calculations.

Enter placeholder notation. That funny little digit that isn’t even really a number, “0,” saves the day. Zero is nothing more than a placeholder, a filler; it means nothing by itself. But with it, placeholder notation was made possible, and mathematical calculations became, while not easy, at least much easier.

In placeholder notation, the location of an individual digit is vital in determining what the number as a whole is. Let’s use a “base-ten,” or decimal, base to begin with, since we’re all familiar with it. Because we are using a base of ten, we have ten different symbols: one through nine, plus zero. So, while we are counting our units, it’s easy to go from one to ten:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…

But wait! What to do? We’re out of symbols, it seems. How will we represent in writing the next number, which is spelled “ten?” The answer, of course, is easy, because we’re not out of symbols. We have one more: “0.” We’re using a base of ten. So, after we’ve counted to nine, in order to move on to the next unit we just move to another place. We write the number “10,” in which the location of the one and the zero make all the different (if we wrote “01,” for example, the digits would have a clearly different meaning). In the number written “10,” in a decimal base, the zero means “zero units of one,” while the one means “one unit of ten.” Thus, we are easily able to keep counting even to ninety-nine, using numbers like “74,” which, in a decimal base, means “seven units of ten and four units of one.”

When we get to ninety-nine, we might seem to have a problem again. However, this answer is once again easy: use the zero. We write the next number after ninety-nine “100,” which once again uses placeholder notation to make its meaning immediately clear. The one means “one unit of ten tens,” or in more colloquial language, “one unit of one hundred.” The first zero means “zero units of ten,” and the second means, as before, “zero units of one.” So we can now count all the way up to nine hundred and ninety-nine, using numbers like “487,” which means “four units of one hundred, eight units of ten, and seven units of one.” After 999, we just add another digit, which will mean “one unit of ten hundreds,” or “one unit of one thousand.” And so on, as long as we are blessed enough to need to continue counting.

This seems so simple to us in the modern day that even discussing it is absurd. It is taught in our schools as a given, never really explained in its workings because no one can imagine any other way of writing figures.

However, this system became such second nature that, when the Revolution came, for some reason the number ten was invested with a mystical importance. Because it happened to be the base of the number system that had arisen in India and the Arab world, the Revolutionaries decided that it was the high holy number which would brook no opposition. A seven day week? Absurd! We need a ten day week. While we’re at it, we need a ten hour day, too, and a ten month year. All our measurements should be based on ten, as well. We’ll call it the “metric system,” as though no other system of measuring can be called “metric” (which, after all, just means “measuring”). The great number-god, ten, will be the victor. One number to rule them all, one number to find them; one number to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

Indeed, the worship of the number-god has become so powerful that almost no one realizes that it’s really not very remarkable at all. The great convenience of placeholder notation, for example: metricists like to praise the metric system because it’s so easy to convert units. 718 kilometers; how many meters? Just move the decimal point to the right; 7180 meters. Easy. Much easier than multiplying by 5,280 to get feet from miles.

And it surely is easier, should you find yourself needing to know how many feet there are between you and Hoboken. However, why does it have to be ten? These conversions would work with any base system, as long as your measuring system had the same base. Indeed, another base might be considerably more convenient than ten. Suppose you wanted to measure out precisely one third of a meter of wood and saw it off of a larger piece. This will be rather difficult, as one third of a meter is 33.333333333333333333333, repeating to infinity, centimeters. The best you can do is eyeball a third, say 333 millimeters, and call it a day. But if there were a base in which three divided evenly, you could get exactly a third, and need no inaccurate estimation. With ten, of course, one can get even tenths and even fifths, but not even fourths, thirds, or sixths. Given the frequency with which most people need to deal in thirds and quarters, and the comparative rarity of dealing with fifths, this would seem a major defect of the decimal system.

Let us assume, then, that we were intent upon inventing a number system for our society. We would want a number that was not too large; we don’t want to have to have too many independent symbols (one needs the same number of symbols as one’s base divides into one; so, for example, we needed ten different symbols in base-ten). We would also not want a base that is too small; otherwise our numbers would quickly become unwieldy. Take the number 10000, for example; in base-two, or “binary,” that number equals only 16 in decimal. To get ten thousand in binary, one would require no less than fourteen digits. Clearly, we want to avoid having to juggle so many digits for such small numbers.

We would also want a number with as many even fractions as possible. Seven or eleven, for example, which divide evenly only by themselves and by one (these are called “prime” numbers), while being of convenient size, are inconvenient because of their lack of whole factors (“whole factors” is mathematics talk for “even fractions”).

Furthermore, which factors the base has will also be seen as quite important. First off, the daily and even academic activities of mankind demand certain fractions more often than others. While man often requires fractions such as a third and a quarter, one rarely requires an eleventh or a thirteenth. It will thus be seen as quite important to have commonly used fractions divide evenly into the base; that is, to be whole fractions. These commonly used fractions include a half, a third, and a quarter. If possible, it would also be helpful to have whole fractions representing halves of each of these fractions, which are also frequently used. Half of a half is a quarter, which we are already seeking; half of a third is a sixth, and half of a quarter is an eighth. A number with all of these fractions is unlikely to be of a conveniently small size; however, we should seek a base which contains as may of them as possible, and it would be good if, even if not whole, the fractions of the ones which our base does not contain are at least manageable; that is, are not repeating or irrational. An example of such an inconvenient number would be a third in base-ten; yielding, as it does, a placeholder representation of 0.3 repeating for a third, base-ten is inconvenient for this common fraction.

These fractions (factors of our base number) are important for another reason: the importance of the numbers themselves to mathematics and geometry. Two, of course, is universally divisible by all even numbers, and it is also the only even number which is also prime (that is, divisible only by one and itself). Also, geometrically the number two is extremely important; it is the first number which takes us beyond mere points and into having dimension. Three, as the first odd non-prime number, is also very important. Geometrically, three is the first number which yields two dimensions; three points makes the simplest polygon, the triangle, which is also vitally important for everything from simple surveying to trigonometry. The triangle is so necessary for nearly every craft, from carpentry to engineering to architecture to any number of other trades, that its importance as an even factor should not be underestimated. Four is likewise extremely important as the smallest non-prime number. Geometrically, four is the minimum number of points necessary for constructing a three-dimensional shape, the tetrahedron. Interestingly enough, the triangle and the square, regular polygons having three and four sides, tessellate together in two dimensions, further demonstrating their importance to geometry.[1]

So let’s test it, shall we? Assuming that anything lower than six is too small, and anything higher than sixteen is too high, let’s just go through the available fractions, excluding one and themselves (which all numbers have as factors), for each proposed base. We’ll put the numbers in base-ten, since we’re all used to that, for now. Remember that we’re specifically looking for two, three, and four at the very least. Additional helpful factors would be six and eight. Others, while advantageous, cannot be compared in importance or usefulness to these.

Proposed Base	Factors	Number of Factors
6	2, 3	2
7		0
8	2, 4	2
9	3	1
10	2, 5	2
11		0
12	2, 3, 4, 6	4
13		0
14	2, 7	2
15	3, 5	2
16	2, 4, 8	3

And then, of course, we get to 17, which again is prime, meaning that it has no factors other than one and itself.

One of these numbers (16) has three factors. Several (6, 8, 10, 14, and 15) have two factors. Only one, however, has more than three: twelve. Not only that, but the factors of twelve (2, 3, 4, and 6) are extremely commonly desired fractions; we often divide things into halves, thirds, and quarters (which are, after all, what you get when you divide by 2, 3, and 4); furthermore, since a sixth is half of a third, we not infrequently find ourselves in need of sixths, as well. All these convenient factors are present with a base of twelve. While twelve does lack five as a whole factor, fifths are much less often needed than those factors which twelve does have; furthermore, no other conveniently sized base which does have five as a factor also has three and four, which are certainly more important and more commonly needed.

So here we are. We have found a base which has four whole factors, more than any other number we examined (and, in fact, more than any other number below eighteen, which has two, three, six, and nine, but is too large to be convenient and also lacks the important factor four). This base, twelve, not only has more factors than any other number below eighteen, but it also contains the three most important factors we discussed, two, three, and four. Furthermore, it contains six, as well, which is half a third and thus very convenient. While it lacks five, which is occasionally convenient to have, this disadvantage is more than made up by the factors that it does have. Furthermore, it is only two higher than the base which we are already used to, and thus requires only two additional symbols and is thus very conveniently adopted.

In comparison, ten seems a weak and sad base. While it benefits from being the same as the number of fingers on the human hand, it suffers from a lack of useful factors, having only two and five, leaving out two of the most important and most frequently used factors, three and four. Writing a fourth in base-ten requires two numbers, 0.25, and writing a third accurately is impossible, as it requires an infinite number of threes. Writing a sixth, half a third, is even worse; it requires a 0.16, with the six repeating to infinity. In base twelve (“duodecimal” or “dozenal”), however, these fractions are easy, requiring only a single, even number. Furthermore, while man may have ten fingers, he has twelve segments between his knuckles on a single hand, which can be conveniently counted upon with the thumb.

Let’s examine how we’re going to write numbers as we continue our investigation into using twelve as a base. First, of course, we’ll require twelve symbols. We may as well continue using the ten that we use now; however, we will require two more, one for ten and one for eleven. Computers, when writing in hexadecimal, use A-F for the numbers ten to fifteen; we, however, are free to use whatever we want. In accordance with American practice, then, for now we’ll use “X” for ten, since it’s the Roman numeral for ten, and “E” for eleven, since eleven starts with “e.” (It’s important to note that frequently one will also see “A” and “B,” or even “*” and “#.”) We’ll pronounce them “ten” and “elv.” So now, our numbers look like this:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, X, E, 10, 11, 12, . . .

That would be counted, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, elv, twelve.” There are a number of different proposals for how we ought to say these new numbers; for now, however, we’ll stick with the normal English “twelve,” “dozen,” and “gross” when they are needed.

Remember, when looking at a number, that you’re looking at a different type of number than you’re accustomed to. When you see the number which we write “10,” for example, you will probably read it out “ten.” This is only natural; that’s what you’ve been doing for your whole life. However, we’re using base-twelve now, not base-ten, and a one followed by a zero no longer indicates the number between nine and eleven. It’s important to remember that, when you’re using base-twelve, “10″ means “twelve,” “a dozen,” or whatever you want to call it. The number that’s said “ten” is represented by “X,” not by “10.”

It seems esoteric, but it’s really just as simple as the numbers you’ve been reading your entire life. It’s placeholder notation, pure and simple, just as we discussed long ago toward the beginning of this article. The only difference is that each place represents a multiple of twelve, rather than a multiple of ten. Take, for example, the number “1492.” In base-ten, that number represents one unit of a thousand, four units of a hundred, nine units of ten, and two units of one; added together, it equals one thousand, four hundred, and ninety-two. In base-twelve, however, that number represents one unit of a great-gross (that is, twelve gross, represented in base-ten by 1728), four units of a gross, nine units of a dozen, and two units of one. Thus, in base-twelve, “1492″ equals 2414 in base-ten. To get what “1492″ means in base-ten, one must write a different number: “X44,” which in base-twelve means “ten gross, four dozen, and four.” Thus, “1492″ in base-ten and “X44″ in base-twelve are equal.

Another example may help. To start with, however, let us form a convention to determine whether a number is written in base-ten or base-twelve. Generally, fractionals are indicated in base-ten by a “decimal point,” which looks exactly like a period, “.”. In base-twelve, the “decimal point” (which would be better referred to as a “dozenal point”) is generally a raised dot, unlike a period; however, in ASCII text such as what you are currently reading, a raised dot is difficult, so a semicolon, “;”, is used. All base-ten numbers, therefore, will end with a decimal point, such as this: “1492.”. All base-twelve numbers will end in a semicolon, such as this: “1492;”. Thus there can be no confusion as to which base a given number is relying on.

Now, on to the example. We are presented with the decimal number 2008., which represents the current year at the time of this writing. That number is easily parsed: it represents two units of one thousand, zero units of a hundred, zero units of ten, and eight units of one. Thus, the total value of the number is achieved by adding these up:

(2 * 1000) + (0 * 100) + (0 * 10) + (8 * 1)

2000 + 0 + 0 + 8

2008

Once again, it’s just placeholder notation. It’s really that simple. Now, however, we are presented with the decimal number 11E4;, which also represents the current year at the time of this writing. We parse it in precisely the same way, remembering that each number represents a multiple of twelve rather than a multiple of ten:

(1 * 1000) + (1 * 100) + (E * 10) + 4

1000 + 100 + E0 + 4

11E4

It’s really that simple. The only trick here is remember that each place represents a multiple of twelve, not a multiple of ten. But this is simply a matter of practice, of adjusting the mind, no different from remembering that, when learning Spanish, a “j” doesn’t sound like it does in “judge” anymore.

All the vaunted benefits of the number-god ten are equally present in the base-twelve system for twelve. Let’s say, for example, that we want to divide a number by one of our units. We have three gross of eggs, for example, which we want to divide into dozens. We simply take our three gross, 300;, and move the dozenal point over one digit, yielding 30;0, or more simply 30;. This is neither easier nor harder than doing something similar in base-ten; assuming that we have three hundred eggs that we want divided into tens (why, since they are sold in dozens, I’m not sure, but assuming that we do), we simply move the decimal point over one digit, getting 30.0 from 300.. It’s placeholder notation, quite possibly the most brilliant mathematical advance of all time. Division by the base is always easy, no matter what the base is. To claim this as an advantage of base-ten is simply silly.

The question is not division by the base (which, again, is always easy); it’s division by other things. With our current, decimal base, we often have a great deal of trouble dividing by common numbers. Take percentages, for example. “Percent” literally means “per one hundred,” so any fractions of a percent are going to be fractions of a hundred. But what about when we want to say that one third of our group should do this or that? We have to say that 33.333333, for as long as we’re willing to say “three,” percent should do whatever it is we’re talking about. If we’re using a dozenal base, however, and therefore are using “pergross,” the question is easy. 100; pergross is equal to 144.; a third of 100; is 40;. Four dozen pergross is one third, and they should do this particular thing; the other two thirds, or 80; pergross, should do the other thing. But we need more accuracy: we want half of that first third to do it in one way, and half to do it in another way. It’s equally easy whether we divide 40; by two, or whether we divide our whole, 100;, by six; either way we get a nice, even 20;. In the decimal system, we wind up with another repeating decimal, 16.6666666 and so on.

Are all fractions in base-twelve easy? Naturally not; no base includes every fraction evenly. However, the dozenal base does include all the most frequently used fractions, while the decimal base excludes two of them. For comparison, let us chart out the major fractions in each base, from one to twelve, listing each in their own bases.

Number	Dozenal	Decimal
1	10	10
2	0;6	0.5
3	0;4	0.33333
4	0;3	0.25
5	0;2497	0.2
6	0;2	0.16666
7	0;186X3	0.14285
8	0;16	0.125
9	0;14	0.11111
X	0;12497	0.1
E	0;11111	0.09090
10	0;1	0.08333

As we’ve noted before, all the most common fractions—halves, thirds, and fourths—come out perfectly evenly in a single digit. Half of a third (a sixth) and half of a fourth (an eighth) also come out evenly, at 0;2 and 0;16. It is also worth noting that a ninth, though not very common, comes out evenly in only two decimal places. Ten is certainly easier for fifths and tenths, but is frustratingly inadequate for thirds and sixths, and more difficult than twelve for quarters and eighths. All in all, it seems plain that twelve makes a better base than ten based on the convenience of its major fractions as well as the importance of its factors in mathematics and geometry.

Furthermore, those numbers that mathematicians hold dear are often more accurate and shorter when rounded in the dozenal rather than the decimal system. Take, for example, the square root of two, which in dozenal notation is 1;4E79170X07E86 and so on, while in decimal it is 1.4142135. One can round the decimal to 1.41; however, doing so is considerably less accurate than rounding to 1;5 in dozenal. Dozenal thus provides a more accurate estimation of an important mathematical number, in fewer digits, than decimal does.[2] Of course, pi and the base of the natural logarithm are still grotesquely irregular fractions; but given that dozenal provides a larger base, one does acquire greater accuracy in the same number of digits than is possible in decimal.

All in all, it seems clear that twelve makes for a better base than ten. However, our language assumes a base of ten; how are we to count by twelves without having to resort to clumsy statements like “five great-gross, three gross, five dozen, and four?” There are many suggestions as to how to handle this situation, but the easiest and most consistent is offered by Tom Pendlebury of the Dozenal Society of Great Britain. Mr. Pendlebury has not only compiled an excellent way of saying the numbers in the superior dozenal base; he has also devised a complete and coherent dozenal metrology, known as TGM. A perusal of this work is much recommended for anyone interested in dozenal mathematics.[3]

Pendlebury suggests that we call eleven “elv,” to make it easier to use in compounds. He further suggests that we shorten “dozen” to “zen,” thus allowing us to say a number such as 47; as “fourzen seven” rather than “four dozen and seven.” Finally, he advocates completely eliminating the terms “gross” and “great-gross” (a dozen dozen and a dozen gross, respectively), and instead adopts the terms “duna,” “trina,” “quedra,” and so on. Thus, the number X44; (translating to the decimal number 1492.) would be read “tenduna fourzen four,” or “tenduna fourzen and four.” As another example, the current year, 11E4;, would be read “one trina one duna elvzen and four.” For comparison, a decimal year such as 1945., when read properly, is “one thousand nine hundred and forty-five.” Abbreviations to pronunciation, such as “nineteen forty-five,” will doubtlessly arise with the use of the dozenal system, as well, and are to be encouraged as long as they fit within the dozenal milieu.

Pendlebury’s suggestions thus make reading a dozenal number just as brief and easy as reading a decimal number. Furthermore, his metrology is much more consistent, and provides much more convenient units, than the current decimal metric system, and thus bears careful reading and consideration.

Well, there you have it. Nearly four and a half thousand (or two trina seven duna and threezen) words later, you have a basic explanation of number systems, placeholder notation, and why twelve makes a better base than ten. There’s a great deal of further reading to assist you if you’re interested, including basic things like how to convert between decimal and dozenal and back again (it’s easy, don’t worry). Please go browse the Dozenal Society of America, and the more extensive resources at the Dozenal Society of Great Britain.

There are programs to help you. I’m working currently on a general text-based, reverse Polish notation calculator for Unix-based systems (it currently works in the basic four functions), and I’ve completed robust converter programs (again for Unix-based systems, though they would probably compile on DOS-based system like Windows, as well) which convert numbers of more or less arbitrary complexity from decimal to dozenal and back again, as well as one which will turn dozenal numbers into the words suggested by Pendlebury. Future projects include a robust program for converting English and metric measurements into Pendlebury’s TGM. There is already a calculator for DOS-based systems, which will run perfectly fine in Wine on Unix systems, available at DSGB. Unfortunately, it’s purely graphical, and thus doesn’t fit nicely into scripts and command lines. Nevertheless, for simple calculations, it works quite well.

Thanks for listening to my rambling on about the dozenal system. Random, yes, but also interesting. God bless you and yours.

Praise be to Christ the King!

[1] This information on the importance of these numbers in mathematics and geometry is taken largely, if not entirely, from “Polygons,” by “Troy,” available at Polygons from the The Dozenal Society of Great Britain.
[2] This fact was noted in the article “Duodecimal” on Wikipedia, at Duodecimal.
[3] Tom Pendlebury, TGM: A coherent dozenal metrology based on Time, Gravity, and Mass, published by the Dozenal Society of Great Britain, available at TGM.

Adventures in Agriculture, Part I

Greetings again, ladies and gentlemen. This is the first post of a series of indeterminate size, which will recount my attempts to gain some proficiency in actually producing something of value. I know; that’s rare in America these days. But that’s precisely why I’m trying to do it.

I started in my old, rented house, with a few pots holding herbs and such. I tried to grow beans but was unsuccessful; they universally died shortly after sprouting. However, I have two good pots of parsley and one of basil as living proof that plants do not spontaneously die in my presence. Also, I managed to start two cherry tomato vines in pots, to which we will return later.

In March 2007, I bought my house. I spent the first year or so doing minor things; I put some boxwoods in a gap on my porch that needed some green. I became familiar with the layout of my tiny little plot (it’s a quarter-acre with a house on it) and the numerous trees that occupy it (I’ve got a chestnut oak, a white oak, four dogwoods, and a pecan), and tried to decide what I wanted to do. This year, I finally got a little busy.

This spring, I dug out a monstrous plant from one of my flowerbeds, called a “Japanese aucuba.” This plant was huge, hideous, and generally unappealing. This country is already overrun with Japanese cars, Japanese cartoons, Japanese electronics—do we really need Japanese bushes? In any case, I cut it down, then dug it out, a laborious task that destroyed my cheap shovel. (I therefore had an excuse to buy a nice, higher quality one.) After I did this, I filled in some good, organic soil and planted two blueberry bushes in its place. They have struggled throughout the summer; it is now cold, and I think that only one will likely survive. However, this was my first real foray into planting useful vegetation, so I’m counting 50% as a success.

Remember those cherry tomatoes I started? I moved those outside in June; this, sadly, was too late, and I would have had much more impressive harvests if I’d done so a month and a half, or even two months, earlier. However, the vines did quite well when transferred outside; they grew vigorously, spreading out over two 6′ x 2′ lattices, and producing large quantities of delicious cherry tomatoes. My daughter, of course, decided that these tomatoes were placed there specifically for her benefit and ate as many as she could get her little hands on as soon as she realized that tomatoes grow on vines and not in supermarkets (she’s two). However, I did get to eat a fair number myself, as did the rest of my family, and it was an experience I won’t soon forget. To eat the product of one’s own labor, even such a small example of it, was powerful and motivating.

Surprisingly, even in nearly-freezing temperatures, these vines are still producing goodly numbers of green tomatoes, which are very slow to ripe but nevertheless apparently healthy. I’m contemplating picking them and letting them ripen off the vine, as they are going slowly and I’d hate to have a frost ruin them. If that’s what frost does to tomatoes; I’m playing mostly by ear in this.

This week I began pounding up a part of my yard for a garden. My plan is to have about a hundred square feet for planting various vegetables, from corn to potatoes to greens. This was especially laborious work. My yard has a pretty good mat of grass and weeds holding down the topsoil; my task is to till that soil despite this extremely effective ground cover. To do this, I employed a tiller to dig up the grass, then a hoe to pound it and the soil underneath it apart. I succeeded in doing this to about a third of the intended area.

Once this task is complete, I will take green waste from other parts of my lawn—”green manure”—and bury it throughout the garden beds. Over the winter (and especially in spring) this will rot and nourish the soil, essentially composting in place. Once I add in my rich compost, I will have an excellent bed for planting my garden.

This year I also began a compost pile, which has proceeded beyond my most hopeful expectations. Essentially, I took a bunch of dried leaves and buried within it the weeds and other flotsam from overgrown vegetation around my property. I came back in two or three weeks and found, under the cover of leaves, pound upon pound of rich, black loam, teeming with insects and worms of various types. I’ve increased the pile significantly this fall, and will probably increase it still further. After the winter and the first few weeks of spring, I should have a significant amount of finished compost to use in my budding agricultural endeavors.

Here is where I stand. Please post any advice you might have in your comments; I’m desperately in need of whatever assistance the wise can offer. I’ll also continue updates as I do and learn new things; may God help me as I do this, His work.

Praise be to Christ the King!

Random Thoughts on the Election of 2008

The election of 2008 (the American election, that is) teach us a lot, but I think two are worth pointing out explicitly.

1.) The demise of racial politics. Seriously. I know, a lot of the hoopla about Barack Obama was precisely the fact that he’s not white. Great, we get it; Obama’s black. Understood. But one of the two positive things about his election (the other being that McCain didn’t win) is that it means that racial politics aren’t going to hold half the force they used to have. God willing, they will fade away and die forever.

I’m personally on the very tail end of Generation X (technically I’m “Generation Y,” or whatever you want to call those of us born after 1980, but I remember Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Empire, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and in general I get along better with Gen-Xies than with my own generation, for example), and when I heard that a black man was running for president it had absolutely no effect on me. When I think about it, I think, “It’s great that this isn’t an issue anymore.” But the fact is that it just wasn’t an issue for me; and similarly, it wasn’t an issue for the vast majority of American voters. That’s a Good Thing.

Did some people not vote for Obama because he’s black? Certainly. Did some people vote for Obama precisely because he’s black? Equally certainly. But the point is that the man got elected, and despite having the support of 90+% of the black population, he also had the support of huge swathes of everybody else, including 60+% of the Hispanics and better than half of whites. The fact that he was black, while an effect, was a small effect. Thirty years ago it would have been huge.

So I was happy to see this sign of the end of racial politics in America. May God grant us that it go away forever.

2.) The election of Barack Obama, though a sign of racial equality, is pretty bad news. Granted, it’s a good thing that McCain didn’t win. But it doesn’t follow that it’s a good thing that Obama did win. In fact, it depresses me mightily. I despise the two-party system for a number of reasons, and it’s really done its job here. We were presented with a “choice” of either Tweedle-dee or Tweedle-dum. While it’s great and all that Tweedle-dum didn’t win, it’s still awfully depressing that Tweedle-dee did.

I came across an interesting quotation that explains my misgivings on the two-party system quite nicely:

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

In other, and more timeless, words:

The democracy has a right to answer questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be rather careful what questions it asks. And if the dangerous comfort and self-flattery of modern England continues much longer there will be less democratic value in an English election than in a Roman saturnalia of slaves. For the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification of taking one course or the other. The lord will take two things so much alike that he would not mind choosing from them blindfold — and then for a great jest he will allow the slaves to choose.

G. K. Chesterton, “The Voter and the Two Voices” in A Miscellany of Men (1912)

We were presented here with a less than satisfying choice, to say the least. A better phrase would be “completely unacceptable” choice. Consider the following:

	Obama	McCain
Same-sex “Marriage”	Against, but favors “civil unions”	Against, but favors “civil unions”
War in Iraq	Set timetable to end it; withdraw when Iraqi government is ready to take over	Don’t set timetable to end it; withdraw when Iraqi government is ready to take over
Pakistan	Bomb or invade if Pakistani government doesn’t take care of the problem	Bomb or invade if Pakistani government doesn’t take care of the problem
Iran	Nuclear Iran is unacceptable; all options on table	Nuclear Iran is unacceptable; all options on table, especially bombing
Afghanistan	Surge in Iraq successful; let’s try it in Afghanistan	Surge in Iraq successful; let’s try it in Afghanistan
Stem-cell research	It’s great; we need more of it	It’s great; we need more of it
Health Care	Government should provide health care directly	Government should provide health care indirectly through tax breaks and incentives
Abortion	A sacred right; Roe shouldn’t be overturned	Uh…uh…Roe shouldn’t be overturned…no, wait, it should…but no back-alley abortions…always make exceptions for “rape, incest, and life of mother…and no “litmus test” for judicial appointments…uh…

Is there really a whole lot of fundamental difference here? A few quibbles on methods, most especially in health care reform.

I’ll grant that Obama’s much clearer on abortion than McCain is, but that’s not saying much. Bush voted millions of extra funding to Planned Parenthood every year, and McCain would have, too. (Yeah, Bush signed eight budgets, to the effect of not only continuing Clinton’s funding to Planned Parenthood, but increasing it significantly. So much for our “pro-life” Republican president.) McCain doesn’t care if the justices he appoints are pro-life; he thinks stem-cell research is great, though it requires abortions to be done; he’s said in the past that he doesn’t believe Roe v. Wade (though it’s really Casey v. Planned Parenthood that matters now) should be overturned, though when it became politically advantageous he did mouth otherwise here and there; and he certainly would include exceptions in cases of “rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”

These exceptions, experience shows, really cover all abortions; all a “customer” need do is claim that she was raped, or that her brother is the father, and she can go ahead and have her baby killed. Not to mention that we really have no reporting requirements for abortuaries anyway, so there’s no way to enforce these as “exceptions” and not the rule. Finally, is anyone else disturbed by these exceptions? Here’s what McCain is really saying:

“Yes, the fetus is a human life. It’s a baby with a right to live. I don’t deny that. Unless, you know, his father was a rapist. Or if his father was related to his mother. Then we can kill him. I’m cool with that.”

And we’re supposed to believe that this is better?

Even the “pro-life” powerhouse of the ticket, Sarah Palin, refused to say that the “morning-after” pill, clearly an abortifacient and not contraception, should be made illegal, and she says that she supports the so-called contraceptive pill, which itself often works by preventing implantation of an already fertilized egg (you know, those things called “babies”) and are thus abortifacient, as well. All in all, it’s next to impossible to justify a vote for McCain-Palin on the abortion issue.

In any case, when you come right down to it, there’s surprisingly little difference between the two parties. Yet these two parties are supposed to represent all the significant viewpoints in a nation of three hundred million citizens. What Chesterton warned us about back in 1912 has come to pass: we’re presented with two choices, and it makes almost no difference whatsoever which one we pick. The establishment is safe and happy either way.

The answer? Don’t get on board with one of the two major parties, of course. Choose a third-party candidate and support them. The only reason that the two major parties are unassailable is because Americans all think that voting for them is a waste of time. If more people actually voted their conscience, instead of selecting the candidate who’s most popular even though he only vaguely, if at all, conforms to their vision of the good, these third party candidates would be viable. And then we wouldn’t have to worry about a choice between vanilla or strawberry. We could even, God be praised, choose not to eat ice cream at all.

So those are the two biggest lessons, I think, we can take from this election.

If it matters to anyone, I voted for Chuck Baldwin for president. I found both the major party tickets to be absolutely unacceptable for a number of reasons. But that doesn’t mean I can’t comment on the election as it stood, now, does it?

Praise be to Christ the King!

Consumer Confidence or Consumer Recklessness?

The current economic crisis is often blamed in part on a “crisis of consumer confidence.” The essential problem, according to those who place such blame, is that consumers just aren’t confident enough. Because they’re not confident enough, they’re not making lots of purchases, which cuts down on orders from retailers, which cuts down on transportation orders for distributors, which cuts down on orders from manufacturers, and thus hits everybody. The important thing, it’s said, is to get consumers confident again so that they’ll start spending again.

Along this vein is the oft-repeated statement that “the consumer is two-thirds of the economy.” Since the consumer is two-thirds of the economy, we need to get him spending his money, or the other one-third won’t work anymore. What’s more, that single two-thirds will shrink, thus costing everybody, consumer and otherwise.

Let’s think about those statements for a moment, however. First, let’s take “the consumer is two-thirds of the economy.” Really? If consumption is two-thirds of the economy, what exactly is the consumer consuming? Presumably, the other one-third is production and services; but let’s be charitable to our dear country and presume that the other one-third is production. (In reality, of course, a great deal of it is, in fact, services; but we’re being charitable.) That means that we’re consuming twice what we’re producing.

Think about that for a moment. If we’re consuming twice what we’re producing, where is all that extra stuff coming from? The answer is China; Japan; Europe. Essentially, elsewhere. And because we’re consuming twice what we’re producing, we’re also spending twice what we’re earning. Where does the extra money come from? The answer is China; Japan; Europe. In other words, we’re borrowing to cover for the extra consumption that doesn’t balance what we produce. And, as a corollary, we’re accumulating a great deal of debt and paying a great deal of interest on it.

And that leads us to thinking about the other notion now, that the problem here is one of “consumer confidence.” Don’t we really mean “consumer recklessness?” The problem, such people say, is that consumers just aren’t spending their money like they used to; they’re saving it instead. Tightening their belts. Never mind that once this great country prided itself on the thrift of its hard-working citizens, noting that said thrift and hard work are the elements which made it economically great. Such people, though, want us “consumers” to just keep spending our money, even though we really need to save it. Even though, in the past, the money that we’ve spent is often money that we didn’t have, and that we had to borrow to spend. We need to retrench; pay off our past debts; save up a cushion in case of a fall. That means that we, as consumers, are not “confident.”

In reality, though, it means that we, as consumers, are not reckless. We’re being wise for a change; we’re being careful only to spend money that we actually have; we’re foregoing present pleasures for the sake of future safety; we’re actually, horror of horrors, paying off some debts instead of constantly racking up new ones. This is terrible! Consumers aren’t confident! Can you imagine what might happen to the economy if this spreads? What horrible disasters might befall our nation if such ludicrous practices spread, and our government adopted such an insane scheme so lacking in “confidence?”

Modern economics have led us to a strange place. Though this country was built on working hard, producing goods, foregoing unnecessary consumption, taking debt as rarely as possible, and paying off necessary debt as quickly as possible; though the wealth of every country has been based on these perennial, thrifty, and diligent practices; we have nevertheless convinced ourselves that our wealth is based on spending as much as we can, racking up as much debt as we need to in order to get everything we currently want, and letting other countries bother with the annoying hard work, production of useful goods, and delayed gratification.

Here is national suicide. We need to return to the basic principles of sound economic management. Namely, that it is production which is primary, not consumption; that it is better to save than to buy what we don’t need; that it is better to be free of debt than to have debt; and that gratification of our present desires need not be immediate, or even occur at all. Thrift; moderation; looking to the future. There is national prosperity. There, and there alone, is the solution to our economic crisis.

Praise be to Christ the King!

Long Absence

I know, I know. It’s been a long, long time. And much has happened since January of this year. This is just a brief comment to assert that I intend to keep this blog much more up to date in the future. I should have a new entry tonight or tomorrow. Until then, let us remember: praise to Christ our King!