For thousands of years, voluntary markets have provided basic needs at economical prices. Otherwise, when authoritarians impose their will in inflating the price of everything while denying goods and services results in hardship. Let's call it enforced hardship. Such intrusion occurred into the early 1600s when veteran merchants in London called it Tyrannical Duncery and in becoming "too much" the destruction prompted reform.
History records essentially two kinds of revolution: the bad which results in dictatorships and the good which reforms dictatorships.
The French and Russian Revolutions were preceded by dissatisfaction that prompted popular uprisings. In 1789 and 1917 economic and political distress became unendurable, but the popular movement fell into the hands of neurotic intellectuals whose remedy was absolute control. Then as the struggle for control became bitter activists resorted to state murder, initially of those that wanted an ordinary life. And at higher levels of power, the struggle for leadership involved killing the guy across the table.
With the White House suffering a vacuum of common sense, Putin was allowed to go rogue
However, England's "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 was a good one when popular dissatisfaction forced the downfall of James II, the last absolutist king. Most everyone from wealthy merchants in London to country farmers found intrusive and costly government oppressive and let it be known. Some historians note that James threatened to bring over French troops to impose his will. Was he a globalist?
Freedom and prosperity have found each other for thousands of years, whilst unlimited government and intellectuals have forced economic hardship through political brutality for even longer.
Enforcing personal ambition, Putin and his thugs clash with the reform that has been advancing, for example, in Hungary and Poland. Both countries recall the terrors of 1930's National Socialism, followed by International Socialism and have taken remarkable steps to prevent repetition.
Putin seems to want the latter back, but ordinary Russians could see it as an unacceptable return to political oppression. Particularly as Russia's crashing currency and distressed credit markets are anticipating widespread hardship, which may turn popular opinion against Putin's retrograde recklessness.
With the White House suffering a vacuum of common sense, Putin was allowed to go rogue.
This researcher has written about dictatorships, popular uprisings and revolutions back to Ancient Egypt and they have had much in common in inspiring reform.
The key moment in the collapse of communism occurred on November 9, 1989, when East German Border Guards laid down their machine guns allowing citizens to go cross-border shopping.
Doubtlessly smiling.
That was that, and Dictator Honecker had to quickly change the law that required him to murder Germans for going from one part of Germany to another.
And under a different banner, today's control freaks became committed to a cold war not just against countries but domestically against ordinary folk. And Putin's foolhardy aggression is a hot war against everyone.
However, previous in-your-face and in-your-wallet governments became unrelenting, and lengthy reform followed. The last one was called the Protestant Reformation, with the secular side being called the Enlightenment.
Generally admired as liberalism, it prevailed into the early 1900s, when the persuasions of Communism afflicted the Eastern world and Progressivism fostered big government in the West. Both persuasions still condemn fascism, but displaying considerable irony, in recent years progressives have become fascist.
Well, it fits as one definition of fascism has been the "combination of big government and big business".
If it wasn't so dangerous it would be downright funny.
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Also ironical, is Biden wanting to protect Ukraine's border while opening the Mexican border to illegal migrants. Without masks or vaccinations. While ordinary Americans have been forced not only to subsidize illegals' welfare and transportation, but have been banned from going to church, restaurants or sports events.
Arbitrary and vicious paradoxes.
Another paradox has been Biden shutting down petroleum exploration, production and transportation wherever possible.
East Coasters from Quebec to Maine have been taught to fear even short pipelines that would tap into North America's vast oil and gas reserves. Some of the supply for those refineries comes from Russia, which America could sanction, but the East Coast is dominated by politically privileged liberals.
Whose energy intransigence transfers money to Putin, with high prices funding his destructive ambition.
In the early 1980s, President Reagan advised Europe to avoid reliance upon gas from Russia.
With the Ukraine invasion, Germany's dependence upon Russian supplies is being reviewed right now as some leaders have found the common sense to suggest returning to domestic coal, nearby oil and gas potential as well as existing nuclear.
While the Left pitched fracking as evil, the geological and economic winner was horizontal drilling. And the result was ample supply at lower prices for most energy products and then regrettably the Left with Resident Biden assumed control, and they hate oil, even big oil.
In any business boom industrial commodity prices go up, but the Left's contempt of the oil and gas patch knows no bounds, and crude's price is soaring.
Strong oil prices have funded Putin's ambition.
The Second Chechen War was prosecuted through to 2009. Crude oil (WTI) soared from a depressed 17 in 2002 to an ecstatic 147 in 2008.
As General Douglas MacArthur observed: "Wars are caused by unprotected wealth" and including property, this describes Ukraine. But without the globalist determination to have Ukraine join NATO, the war may not have occurred.
In his 2005 address to parliament, Putin stated that the collapse of the Soviet Empire was: "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century". Apparently ranking worse than two world wars or by communists murdering a hundred million of their own people.
Delusional political correctness, but his aggressions have occurred with high oil prices.
Next was engineering the "non-coup" of February 2014 resulting in the "non-annexation" of Crimea. This started by sending in Russian "Night Wolves" motorcycle gangs, followed by ordinary troops as well as special forces, both in uniforms without insignia.
After plunging to $34 in 2009 crude soared to $112 in 2012 and remained high into the first half of 2014. And no one can prosecute war without real money, either gold or in the senior currency. High energy prices funded Putin's determination to extend his boundaries.
With COVID, crude plunged to $6.50, and the price rallied to $90 two months ago, providing a proportional increase in revenues to Moscow. The high has been $116.
Canada's "Freedom Convoy" is a truly great accomplishment by individuals seeing through the specious nonsense of "experts" with more titles than wisdomFlush with money and power, Putin thought he could walk into Ukraine, but it is costing more lives and treasure than expected.
Authoritarians will continue to pound controlling policies into the body-politic until ordinary folk respond with an even more formidable "No!".
Canada's "Freedom Convoy" is a truly great accomplishment by individuals seeing through the specious nonsense of "experts" with more titles than wisdom. Moreover, restoration of common sense over Tyrannical Duncery is spreading, and it is worth noting that ordinary Russians created their freedom and could move to protect it.
Putin's recklessness to restore the imagined magnificence of the USSR seems a tragic loss of judgement and the gambit can't prevail for long. However, it has not been completely reckless; there is a problem has been the attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO, which would remove the large country as a "neutral" buffer that Russia's governing classes seem to need.
Internal exhaustion, external sanctions, resistance in Ukraine and condemnation by ordinary Russians at home could inspire another popular uprising.
One of the greatest global booms in commodities accompanied the massive expansion of governments prosecuting WWI. Altogether, it drove America's inflation up to 24 percent.
The accompanying compulsion to control drove the US government to nationalize railroads. And with the commodity boom collapsing in 1921, politics reversed and for the federales the next political fad was selling them.
In Russia, full-on communism was seen not to work, and the shift was to Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) that included "a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control". And state enterprises would operate "on a profit basis".
Today's control freaks and their massive inflations are equally disastrous and in suddenly inspiring common sense will be reformed.
With Russian truckers, who needs another Lenin?
Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.
