I’m reminded of the Thoreau quote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root,” because all I see around me are efforts to treat the symptoms of a problem while hardly anyone is trying to find the reason for the problem so it can be stopped at it’s source.
It’s everywhere; in politics, medicine, economics, even interpersonal relationships. More effort goes into slapping a Band-Aid on a problem rather than taking the time to figure out what’s actually wrong.
Social ill? Pass a law that forbids a particular behavior you don’t like. Got bad numbers on a blood test? Take a pill! Government running out of money and what little YOU have doesn’t buy anything? Just print more and tell people to stop complaining because stock prices (and everything else, they never mention) are rising so the economy is actually doing well!
I had a doctor whose solution to just about every problem was “I’ve got a pill for that!” but I never got any better and was spending tons of money on prescription meds, so I fired him. I dug into the causes of the issues I was having, found some treatments that were uncomfortable but doable, and went to work, experimenting on myself. “Experimenting on myself?” I imagine you saying, and yes, I was experimenting on myself. I figured, if so-called “experts” could experiment with entire populations without our consent, it’s no big stretch that I could do it on an individual scale. I found another doctor that was willing to help me fix things, so we started to see what I could do and how it would affect me. It took a while, but we found the right dietary changes to make, and I’ve now been off of all medications for about 15 years now. I can’t imagine the price tag of having done nothing!
About experimentation: Yes, we’re constantly being experimented on without our consent, and almost always without our knowledge. For more info, look up Operation Sea Spray, the Tuskegee Experiments, MKUltra, Operation Popeye (one of my favorites), and that’s just a few off the top of my noggin. There are others like Operation Whitecoat, that featured a form of consent (subjects were allowed to volunteer or likely be sent to Vietnam as a medic, so more of a you’re screwed either way kind of deal than actual consent), and a host of other governments that did horrible things to their populations (usually indigenous) with no accountability. I mean, sure, an occasional doctor or bureaucrat would have to be sacrificed to the mob if we found out, but none of the actual decision-makers have been held to account. This is usually because the really nasty details only come out after the perpetrators are safely retired or dead. On that note, don’t think they stopped doing horrible things, they just change how and by whom they are done.
But it’s not just medical experimentation; our “leaders” will often enact a new economic or social policy because it feels or sounds good, or because an expert in some government bureau or another thinks it’ll fix things, or more cynically, because they’re getting a kickback to push a particular piece of legislation, the contents of which are a mystery to all.
It could also be that they’re all truly evil, KNOW whatever it is isn’t going to work, but know they’ll be at the front of a new industry, governmental department, or think tank that will be dedicated to solving the problems they continually make worse.
We get legislation to cure economic ills, but the Federal Reserve is the actual cause. Nothing is done to fix what’s wrong at the fed, so nothing they do to “fix” the economy will be effective. The real solution is to close down the fed, liberalize the economy, have competing currencies, and make Congress ask us for money. That would destroy the government’s ability to piss away money on things that benefit them and their friends, though, so it’ll never happen.
We get legislation to fix the social ills of society, but the problem is governments at various levels having too much power over peoples’ decisions and associations, so none of it works. The real solution is to let people live their lives, and get our noses out of other peoples’ business unless it ACTUALLY concerns us, but that would destroy numerous industries that revolve around grievance, oppression, and hatred, and that makes a lot of folks a LOT of money, so it’ll never happen because they hold the levers of power.
We get all kinds of educational assistance bills, are told that college is what everyone should aspire to, yet few can afford it even after all the “help” (partly because of the economic stuff I mentioned above, partly because the government props up the college system so no one can make something better), when the real solutions are to end public education and state sponsorship of higher education. If students were the customers instead of the students’ parents and lenders, college would of necessity become more affordable and may even change form entirely to more of a specialized model since children would enter higher education with a much better base of knowledge than they do at present. This would also be likely to happen because no federal oversight would force colleges and universities to all follow the same rules, which degrades choice.
If we as a society were simply more diligent and showed some effort, we would make great progress toward fixing things, but we are instead brainwashed and indoctrinated to think that only a handful of special people have the ability to do so, and we just need to listen to them. Further, we’re told that everyone else’s problems are our problems, or that other peoples’ issues are something “the village” needs to, and has the power to, solve. I ask you, what has gotten better in life since the rise of the bureaucratic, fascist (actually fascist, as in the merging of corporate and government power) state? Sure, certain small groups have received benefits, but if a small group benefits at the expense of everyone else, is that right or just? I say no. Even if they’ve been historically oppressed; that kind of thinking only creates a pendulum effect of oppressed and oppressor.
As an aside, I know that a lot of the grievance industry centers on historical wrongs, but I think that’s a diversion. I ask you, internet, what is the starting point? I assure you, there has been beef between families, tribes, villages, and nations for millennia longer than any of us have been around. This is one area I really don’t think it’s possible to find the root of the problem, ironically. There isn’t a way to make anyone accountable, and that’s very convenient and a terrific way to keep the industry going because you’re always creating new victims. And there’s no way to go back to the original starting point before any fuckery, because doing so would have negative affects on actual people living right now.
