Seek Out Inspirations for Flow

Sometimes we find inspiration for flow in places we wouldn't otherwise look. Over the years, I've tried to apply lean thinking, elimination of waste, simplification, respect for individuals, etc. to my political thinking. The short story is - I can't subscribe to U.S. political thinking anymore, in almost every instance of political creation in world history, the result is a path towards destructive win-lose thinking. Fredric Bastiat says it best:

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. 

When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.

Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. 

People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them. 

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. 

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Bastiat described this French political climate in early 19th century in , The Law. This win-lose, zero sum game of destruction doesn't sit well with me, not at all.

Enough doom and gloom. There is a silver lining...the concept of the flow of ideas, information and things will lead to the betterment of society. Constructive win-win thinking comes from respect for individuals, sharing your views with others and mentoring those that are willing to adopt and adapt to their own personal situation. This is what lean is about for me, and lean thinking has changed the lens I use for looking at the purpose of government beyond the local level.

Pleased to share with you, if you are open to the idea - The Foundation for Economic Education. Not Economics in the sense you hear about on Fox or MSNBC, where Statist Capitalists are pitted against Statist Socialists, essentially yelling at each other how they should go about their legal plunder. Nope, we are talking economics in the sense of what individuals do, making choices, humans taking action. The materials and philosophy here may not sit well with your current political paradigm, but I challenge you to take it in and process without prejudice, like you say you do when you are problem solving.

The current issue of The Freeman is all about FLOW...put your lean thinking cap on and use it!