No Competition

 ... breeds complacency and corruption.

In pondering my Theory of Everything, which posits that our cultural war is between the Secular Left and John Paul II's Theology of the Body, I continue to marvel at the ease with which we've discarded objective data and logic. Whether that's the SATs or the M2 money supply, we dispense with indispensable sources of information.

I guess that makes them dispensable. Whatever.

In 1942 or 1943, Heinz Guderian, one of Germany's ablest tank generals, was put in charge of tank production. The people running it before, convinced that victory was already won, wasted precious resources in experimentation instead of mass production. The war was not already won and Germany desperately needed every one of those tanks they didn't get.

There's a mental sloth that comes with assured victory. If you don't think you have a peer competitor, then practical considerations can be given less weight as you experiment with odd theories. You can see that in Europe where they've imported Muslims who like to have lots of babies while the Europeans, not seeing the mathematics of their future, are not having babies.

Dittos for the US. We ignore M2 money supply data because we don't really need it. We're convinced the war against scarcity is already won, victory assured by our printing presses. It sure looks won, doesn't it? 

If you've been in first place for decades, it's natural to become complacent and decadent. Not to worry, complacency and decadence have their own rewards. That's why I don't take politics all that seriously any more. It's Ivy League glee club catfighting, for the most part. Meanwhile, the debt goes up, inner city violence gets worse and our universities are reducing their ability to screen applicants. None of those problems are amenable to a political solution.

The stimmy checks will never stop, man.