Planned Irrelevance

Somebody tweeted about this today: It's called the "Congressional Effect Fund". It's a mutual fund premised on the idea that Congress destroys wealth. That's putting your money where your mouth is, eh? Or rather, where their mouths ain't.

I don't know enough about how this stuff works to know if they can actually minimize their exposure on non-Congress days, and I do sort of wonder whether, if something like this took off, it wouldn't end up creating distorting effects.

But it is interesting from the standpoint of "libertarian optimism" we were talking about before.

Also interesting are the various cities and states (AP snark warning on that state link) resisting the current power grab.

Could we build a society around the Federal government? In-between? In the unregulated and unregulate-able nooks and crannies?

To an extent, the "black market" or "underground economy" (WSJ.com) has always flourished in supressive times--and regulations are suppressive, however necessary they may be--and, in a totalitarian environment, the black market is often the only market there is.

By the way, another word for "underground economy" is "free market".

I'm not an OUTLAW like some people, but it doesn't take much to realize that people will seek to survive and to improve their conditions, and if the environment works against them they will push back against the environment, escape the environment or operate under the table (which is a form of escape after all).

Technology can play a big hand here: Even while it gets harder to start a business due to regulation, technology can make it cheaper than ever.

The real question is whether you can work in your current physical space well enough to fight the creeping, smothering embrace of government--or whether you need to move to a new, less paternalistic locale.