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Monday, February 7, 2022

Shepherds

Mesmerising Mass Sheep Herding

The sheep are not just going where they will, they are being herded by the shepherd and his sheepdogs. The dogs are a bit hard to see, small black dots around the outside fringe, but they are there.

This analogy just came to me. The great mass of the population are like a herd of sheep, simply going  along with whatever their neighbors are doing. The media are like sheepdogs, driving that mass of people hither and yon with their innate fear of the unknown. And then you've got your shepherds, calling and whistling to their dogs, given them direction and instructions. 

So we have some billionaires looking at the world and seeing problems, problems that the US government is unwilling or unable to solve, and since the billionaires have substantial power and money they say 'I can do something about this' and they try and solve the problems they see. The problem here is that while they might be reasonably intelligent people, and they are good at organizing large groups of people to get things done for the purpose of making money, they don't automatically know what is best for everybody. And that's the downside of having a billion dollars. Having a boat load of money tends to inflate a person's idea of himself. In his own eyes he becomes much smarter than everyone else.

The way I see it, we have two big problems. The first is deficit spending. Congress seems to be incapable of cutting spending. It was tolerable while they were borrowing money from other people, that is a standard business practice and how we built Western Civilization. But now they are pulling money out of thin air and that is liable to have disastrous consequences.

The other problem is the poor, people with limited resources in terms of resources, money, and intelligence. They need something to do and something to believe in. If the rich don't give them some purpose and direction, they will find their own ways to occupy their time, and we know the devil finds work for idle hands. That's how we got the riots last summer.


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