Last week during a long overdue vacation, a close friend of mine recommended reading the autobiography of Rich DeVos called Simply Rich.

DeVos is a billionaire entrepreneur who started countless ventures during his nine decades on this earth.

Back in the 1946, for example, DeVos started an airline… virtually overnight.

He just bought an airplane and started flying people around. No rules. No regulations.

They didn’t even have an airport. The local airfield north of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they were based, hadn’t been completed yet.

As DeVos recounts in his book, “We put pontoon floats on our plane and took off and landed on the Grand River, which ran along the airfield.”

His first office at the airfield was an old chicken coop that he found, washed in the river, and re-painted.

The following year he and his partner opened up one of Michigan’s first “Drive Through” restaurants at the airfield, catering to passengers, workers, flight students, and spectators who came by in the evenings just to marvel at the planes.

Again, no rules. No regulations.

They just saw an opportunity and went for it.

DeVos started another business selling ice cream; another offering fishing excursions on Lake Superior; and another delivering trucks cross-country.

The truck delivery business was one of the more interesting ones; it started when he was just a kid– someone asked him to drive two pickups from Grand Rapids to Bozeman, Montana.

There were no hotels or motels… or even interstates back then.

So DeVos and his friend had to zig-zag their way across corn fields to get there, sleeping on haystacks each night along the way.

The book is a hell of an adventure– a reminder of how free and unencumbered things used to be.

Back in America’s heyday, people succeeded based on their hard work, ingenuity, and willingness to take action.

They didn’t have to spend three years filling out paperwork so that some government bureaucracy could justify its existence.

It was an environment that created unparalleled opportunity and prosperity which, candidly, have long since faded.

Today there are rules for everything; in fact, just this morning, the US federal government published an astonishing 709 pages of new regulations.

And that’s just for today. They publish new regulations every single business day. So tomorrow there will be even more.

These rules make it more difficult to produce, to start a business, to sell a product or service to a willing consumer.

And these rules carry costs, whether it’s in paying a fee, filling out paperwork, etc.

So just imagine the effect that literally decades worth of rules and regulations has had on US productivity (which is now noticeably contracting, even according to government data.)

It’s also worth noting that roughly 30% of occupations in the Land of the Free now require some sort of government license.

In its study “License to Work”, the Institute for Justice reports that 45 out of 50 of the largest cities in the United States have put up substantial obstacles to prevent budding entrepreneurs from selling food from street carts.

A manicurist in Alabama requires 163 days of training, while a shampoo specialist at a Tennessee hair salon must undergo 70 days of training, take two exams, and pay $140 in fees to obtain a license.

Hawaii requires fire alarm installers to undergo a whopping four years of training, pass two exams, and pay $380 in fees to obtain a license.

And a tree trimmer in California must also undergo four years of training, pass two exams, and pay $851 in fees to obtain a license.

It’s absurd.

Nothing that Rich DeVos his partner accomplished in their teens and 20s is even legal anymore.

It makes me think about all the people today who will never have the chance to realize their full potential thanks to the mountain of regulations blocking their way.

This is an important point to understand.

Looking at the data– the incredible overregulation, $20 trillion in debt, insolvent pension funds, etc., it’s painfully obvious that the US is past its prime and holding back millions of people from achieving greater prosperity.

Rich DeVos started so many businesses back in the 1940s because the government stayed out of the way and enabled hard-working risk takers to succeed.

Today the government spends $2 billion to build a website and churns out hundreds of pages of regulations each day.

And this trend gets worse each year.

Understanding this simple reality doesn’t mean that you’re pessimistic, unpatriotic, or expecting the end of the world.

It just makes you rational.

Things change. That’s the bottom line.

The US is still a fantastic place. But it’s no longer the same Land of Opportunity it was when Rich DeVos was getting started.

As I’ve summarized before, the US is a great place to consume… but an increasingly difficult place to PRODUCE.

That imbalance has serious long-term consequences, which we are only starting to experience.

© Copyright 2016, Sovereign Man

Editor’s final thoughts:

French economist and statesman Frederick Bastiat called it the desire to rule over others, or the lust for power. Bastiat wrote,

There are too many “great” men in the world—legislators, organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the people, father of nations, and so on….

Too many persons place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it…. My attitude toward all other persons is well illustrated by this story from a celebrated traveller:

He arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks—armed with rings, hooks, and cords—surrounded it.

One said: “This child will never smell the perfume of a piece-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils.”

Another said: “He will never be able to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders.”

A third said: “He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes.”

Another said: “He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs.”

A fifth said: “He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull.” “Stop,” cried the traveller. “What God does is well done.

Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty.”

Bastiat says that we should try to exercise our God-given liberty because God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies.

He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty.

Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers!

Away with their artificial systems!

Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun:

May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and His works.

 

It’s amazing what can happen in a week.

Before this publication went on hiatus last week, one of the last letters I wrote to you in 2016 was about the National Defense Authorization Act and its treasure trove of freedom-killing provisions.

Section 1287, for example, creates a new agency called the “Global Engagement Center”, aka Ministry of Truth.

It has one purpose: to combat fake news.

The Global Engagement Center will fund and train journalists around the world to push a never-ending flow of US propaganda and cripple any independent outlet that doesn’t conform to the official government narrative.

Sadly, this is not unusual.

Each year, Congress creates a new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is essentially the military budget for the following year.

But without fail, each year’s NDAA is crammed full of horrific provisions which either waste taxpayer funds on corrupt pet projects, or destroy Americans’ civil liberties.

You may remember the 2012 NDAA, for example, which President Obama signed into law on New Years Eve 2011.

That year’s NDAA contained a section authorizing the military detention of US citizens on US soil.

Now we’re getting the Ministry of Truth.

President Obama signed this year’s NDAA into law on Christmas Day, which means that the Global Engagement Center will be live and operational within six months.

Four days later on December 29th, he issued an executive order intended to punish the Russian government for manipulating the US election.

The order contains some incredibly vague language targeting anyone engaged in “cyber-related activities” that are “reasonably likely” to pose some threat, including “activities to undermine democratic processes or institutions”.

The order also threatens anyone who provides “goods or services” to those engaged in the aforementioned cyber-related activities

Anyone deemed by the US government to fit those incredibly broad definitions can have their assets frozen instantly.

Now, the spirit of the order is to go after all the Russians and Chinese they think are complicit in hacking the US government and US corporations.

(Mr. Obama also expelled a multitude of Russian diplomats that the FBI suspects of being spies, raising the question of why these people were in the US to begin with.)

Yet such broad and vague language can easily be applied to ensnare just about anyone they want.

If you just happen to have sold a used mobile phone over Craigslist to someone who ends up being a hacker, you can be targeted under this order.

Same with anyone who uses the Internet (engages in “cyber-related activities”) to express strong anti-government opinions (“undermine democratic . . . institutions”).

Now, clearly that’s not the intention with this order.

But when enough time passes, rules and regulations have a strong tendency to be used in ways that dramatically diverge from their original intent.

Case in point: the US government has wrongfully seized billions of dollars worth of cash and property over the years through what’s known as Civil Asset Forfeiture.

Civil Asset Forfeiture is essentially a form of theft.

But it’s perfectly legal for local, state, and federal police agencies to steal from you because of technicalities that were written in laws passed decades ago.

For example, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act was passed in 1979 with the intention of helping to preserve historic sites.

Buried in the law is some vague language authorizing the recovery of any property that was stolen from historic sites.

Now, decades later, police agencies abuse the vague language from that law, as well as dozens of other laws, to give themselves the authority to seize your property.
Their theft of your property has nothing to do with protecting archaeological sites, but they still have the legal authority thanks to a 37-year old law.

So no matter how good the intentions behind a law or executive order, there’s always strong potential for nasty, unforeseen consequences down the road.

And between the NDAA’s Global Engagement Center and the President’s incredibly vague executive order, there’s some serious anti-free speech potential.

By the way, this is NOT just a US phenomenon.

Israel’s government is close to passing a bill that authorizes them to demand Facebook (and other social media platforms) to remove content that they deem threatening.

Germany’s government is talking about passing a similar bill to stop “fake news” during the election cycle, even suggesting that Facebook could be fined if it does not remove certain content within 24 hours of being told by the government to do so.

Yeah, clearly there’s a lot of garbage on the Internet.

Someone can write a post that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is running a child prostitution ring, and it gets retweeted by mindless automatons who believe everything they read.

But at the same time, there’s a lot of independent, boutique journalism out there, and many of these sites are being labeled “fake” because they don’t conform to the official government narrative.

After a terrible year for the status quo, between Brexit and the Trump election, politicians are clearly terrified of any dissent that threatens their position.

And now they’re putting together all the tools they need to stamp it out and keep you in line.

© Copyright 2017, Sovereign Man

Here are other three excellent articles on the same topic:

• The Ministry of Truth Opens June 21^st
• Snopes Outed as Unfit to Arbiter ‘Truth’
• The Fat Lady is Not Yet Singing in the Global Culture War: A Note of Sobriety Amidst the Jubilation