Blowing Bubbles and The Wisdom of Grumpy Old Men

I've been experiencing something of a rebirth lately. Perhaps it's the changes to my diet freeing my soul from the torment I put it through, or a glint of light caught from the heap of experiences I'd thought were merely rusted out clunker memories. Whatever it may be it has awakened my soul from it's forced hibernation, and rekindled a fire for exploration, change and hope. It's drawn lines between the knowledge I've spent years attaining, which I'd thought was merely a good way to while away my hours on the Earth, and the experiences of people who come into my life for whatever brief moment of existence. This is the tale of a very grumpy man, and the truth that gets obscured by our self-centered political class.

Bubble Blowing and The Wisdom of Old Men

Most people have never heard of the Austrian School of Economics, the reasons why could probably be debated into infinity, but they have most likely heard of the Austrian School's political off-shoot - Libertarianism. The fundamental principles of the Austrian School speak to man's ultimate power to determine his own economic fate when left to his own devices. Men (and women too of course) of all talents have, in several long and glorious periods of human history, been left to determine the outcome of their lives and that of their families with fairly little intervention from outside compulsions. It was the way the original inhabitants of America lived, self-sufficient Native American families drew upon the in-born talents of their members to produce the stuff of life, and lived peacably within local tribes with whom they traded their abudant resources for those they may have lacked in. In modern American history there have been brief periods of this self-determination, immediately after the revolutionary war and upon the failing of the various schemes for federal control in the 1800's men's lives were their own to craft, the right to success or failure was theirs to pursue. In the early 1900's however, a curious but deliberatly steered intellectualism rose to the fore, funded and promoted by men whose names are still heralded more than a century later. These were self-made men, who took opportunities and put to use new technologies that brought them immense personal fortunes, and the power that comes with such riches. At the height of their power, and with the connections and knowledge at their disposal, they constructed a global system meant to 'freeze time' and ensure their permanent grasp on the power and wealth they'd acheived. This system is called Fractional Reserve Central Banking and it survives to this day in a form not far from that which it was created in.

Now you may be wondering at this point what the Austrian School, Native Americans, 19th century Industrialists and myself could possibly have connecting us. Let me tell you my brief experience with the grumpy old man in the title, and how he flicked the switch in my mind that shed light on the practices of the past which have gotten us to where we are today.

I began volunteering with a political action campaign in Cleveland in June of 2009. Initially I'd been signed up to do simple computer work for them, but I was prodded into joining an on-the-ground effort to explain our cause door-to-door, and collect signed postcards to be mailed to city council members