Saved Twice on Pennsylvania Ground; Round 3: Fuel. Countries Don’t Die by Philosophies, They Die by Economies.
Gregg Zegarelli Esq.
Managing Shareholder at Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC
The United States was formed in Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention. The United States was saved in Pennsylvania at Gettysburg. And the United States will discover its future prosperity in Pennsylvania, the Keystone State.
The following is not suggested as correct, but only suggested as sufficiently correct to assist in critically thinking about the issues in the upcoming election.
Some people are "one-issue" voters. Whether that is a responsible, wise, and disciplined to serve the primary objective of survival and prosperity for a diverse, free and free-thinking people is for each person to determine for self. [1]
Democracy—that is, people ruling themselves—requires virtue by intention, wisdom by direction, and discipline by application.
[2] Selfishness does not tend wise or virtuous. Even this post suggests direction to one issue, but, here, it is directed to the one primary objective of the survival and prosperity of a divided country with a lot of election issues noise.
All must yield to the survival and prosperity of one United States of America. That is our "Get our guy out of the jungle before we smoke a cigarette, objective." [*1] Lincoln understood the point. He knew his "primary objective" was first to preserve the United States. [*1] Everything else comes after.
Noble environmental issues are vaporized in a scorched-earth destabilized United States. Noble civil rights are conceded by surrendering to a conquering country's political philosophy. After stability through prosperity, only then do the subsidiary issues rise into place. [*1]
It may feel really good, and expressive, and hopeful, to pray to the gods for food for our children by sacrificing our last cow, but it is not wise. [3] Vindictiveness and retribution have always been abhorrent policies.
The pursuit of happiness does not occur in a capitalist framework without, first, a healthy economic framework. The Founding Fathers chose capitalism, but not as a "selfish" economic paradigm; to wit:
By failure of proper education and training, there is a common myopic philosophical flaw in socio-economic-politico legal thinking; to wit: that capitalism is a selfish economic paradigm. ?It is not. The primary objective of capitalism is the common good by way of individual incentive, actualization and reward. Natural self-interest is the means to the "good" end.
[4, 4a] Those who are uneducated in economics tend not to understand the importance of the economic engine to provide systemic stability. Capitalism, like all tendencies, requires control and regulation, from the internal or the external, but that does not mean it is a bad paradigm for a diverse, free, and free-thinking people, which is why the Founding Fathers chose it. The economic system is the train that carries the systemic benefits and privileges.
There are vertical issues and there are horizontal issues. A vertical issue is can or tends to stand alone. A horizontal issue is or tends to be integrated into the systemic framework.
A vertical issue is the immigration debacle; that is, it can be resolved unto itself. It does not mean that the issue does not have issue tentacles or policy or philosophical implications, but only that it can tend to be resolved within in own subframework. Wall Street reform is a horizontal issue because it cannot be resolved without systemic change across the entire socio-economic framework. It might be said that a horizontal issue is to fix or to upgrade the train, a vertical issue is to fix or to upgrade a train car. [5]
Then, there are economic issues and there are non-economic issues. An economic issue is an issue that drives or tends to drive monetary prosperity. A non-economic issue does not.
Zygote gestation rights reform and "god in government" are non-economic issues. [6] Again, issues do not stand alone, but we require tools of general distinction or we will spiral. [7] It might be said that economic issues are directed to the train itself and non-economic issues are directed to the payload, being the bundles of privileges that the economic engine carries for us, from us, and to us. Our freedoms ride on the economic train.
When the economic train fails—that is, when economic prosperity fails—everything else starts to fail: necessary and empathetic social programs, discretionary spending, affordability of necessities, ability to protect borders, ability to wage necessary protective wars, and then people start to get scared, desperate, and unhappy, grasping in survival mode. Then, for a country that can do so, its starts to borrow money, print money and debt-spend, with inflationary results that feeds upon itself until final implosion. The pursuit of happiness is not abstract in the end.
Countries don't die by philosophies, they die by economies.
Therefore, we have an essential matrix of four: vertical or horizontal, economic or non-economic. In an economically prosperous and happy society, the issue placement is less critical. But, I will suggest, such as the politicians are suggesting, that the time is critical. We are squabbling around as noble quixotic fools over vertical non-economic issues, being the equivalent of fiddling while Rome is burning. [7a]
The issue is not, "Is the policy noble and good?" but rather, "Is the policy wise?" They are not the same thing. Goodness follows after wisdom. Wisdom first. Such as it is with money, a fool and his country are soon parted; to wit: "A fool and his country, be at debate: which after with sorrow, repents him too late." [*7a] "So sorry," said the Brass Pot, but it was too late. [7b]
Thusly, I will suggest the "Economic-Horizontal" matrix-cell category is top priority.
This category is even deeper than "tax policy" per se, because tax policy is a function of antecedent economic prosperity.
Giving tax free tips and untaxed overtime is more band-aid with implicit admission of catastrophic failure than a true solution to the systemic problem. It may give the bleary-eyed waitress a break, but, if food prices are tripled, it does not incentivize the consumer to go out to eat in the first place. Tax free tips are immaterial if the restaurant is out of business by increased cost and fewer consumers who cannot afford it. It's simply a vertical superficial sound-bite feel-good pander, "Such a good person. That's so empathetic and nice." [7c]
Some people in this election will be "one-issue voters" for gender. But gender is not a substantive qualification standing alone; in fact, I will suggest that voting for gender as a per se credential is substantively socially irresponsible, whether an XX-woman or XY-man or anyone else. Gender serves either symbolism or it provides empathy to a policy. Therefore, gender alone is not a per se credential, and, in a critical moment, gender (or other attribute) symbolism is not wise. [8] And I say this supporting women zygote gestation rights. [9, 10]
A woman or a person of color (or perhaps some other minority attribute) might serve to be more authentic to implementation for a policy, but this needs to be reduced to competition of implementations. That is, voting for a woman because she is per se a woman is one thing, voting for a woman because "it's time to symbolize the plight of the woman" is one thing, and voting for a woman because "she has an actual policy that she has articulated that will be implemented" is one thing. Therefore, the attribute of gender is not a substantive attribute to policy, but only an attribute of trust of implementation, which is vapid without the discrete policy itself. [*9, *10]
[As to gender-voting, as well as the zygote gestation issue (which I support for women and with objection to the Supreme Court's ruling [*10, 10a]), we should lucidly note that the Supreme Court has already ruled at this point that the states decide zygote gestation rights, and the decision was not a ruling against women, but rather a decision regarding federalism (who decides, not what is decided). Knee-jerk rhetoric confuses, conflates and homogenizes. Irrespectively, the issue is non-economic and probably vertical from a solution perspective.]
In The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony [11], I listed the Seven Deadlies. Each is a horizontal issue. Of them all, Failure of Education [12] is probably the most horizontal, consequential, and grave. Youth curriculum issues and book-burning are not the same thing, often rhetorically conflated, confused and homogenized. We recall that Socrates was condemned for corrupting the youth [12a], and Jesus was condemned for corrupting religion. [12b] Necessary social order issues aside, even transgenderism is not an issue of secular virtue, but only an issue of non-conformity. [13, 13a] But, alas, the horizontal-non-economic education issue is not the most urgent critical issue today.
Moreover, notwithstanding all the talk about immigration, immigration is not identified as one of the Seven Deadlies, because immigration is vertical and can be resolved vertically; one swipe of a pen and it is fixed, generally speaking. Zygote gestation is not listed, because that is a critical non-economic social issue and is subsumed by "god in government," [*10] which is the "real meaning," as Justice Harlan might say. [*13]
The Gold Standard [14], National Debt [15], Wall Street Betrayal [16], and Social Responsibility Failure [17] are all leading to the decline and ultimate fall of the United States on a horizontal systemic basis, and they are all economic. But, the first among all equals, as of today, is fuel. Fuel, fuel, fuel. [18]
If the United States of America does not control its fuel, it is a slave nation. The United States America is a slave nation because its infrastructure is based upon an externally-sourced critical dependency. It is formulaic. [18]
Five of the Seven Deadlies are horizontal-economic [*11], but fuel drives everything.
Every single issue in the United States of America fails if the economy implodes. The issue is not about how to give a "quick-fix" to someone deserving in need, but rather how to create the surplus economy that provides the new prosperity from which to seed more natural growth. [18a] Each thing—surplus or debt—tends to feed upon itself. Debt-giving matched to consumption without seeding profit is not a solution. Redistributing wealth is not the solution. Wealth needs to be substantively created, and not the gaming fiction of Wall Street ethereal office-chair wealth. Without surplus profit, failure is certain. It's abrasive brutal mathematical science. Fuel serves this objective of creating new wealth from within.[18b]
When the Middle East created the first fuel crisis in the 1970s, it crippled the United States economy and the automobile industry, in one fell swoop, and America still has not fully recovered. [*18] And then, moreover, environmental regulations were the "Et tu, Brute."
America made Dubai rich while America enslaved itself to its ever-increasing national debt just to survive. [15] America killed America. To be more precise, Wall Street killed America [16], but that it not really the essential point in this post.
The point is that fuel is the primary issue in this election, and it will rest in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This is not a love or hate for a candidate. It is suggested as a rational prioritization of what must be first, by principle and application, to secure the economic prosperity upon which all other American prosperities rely.
The once-darling environmental King of Batteries, Elon Musk, is supporting Donald Trump, who supports extraction of fuel from our own United States sources, Pennsylvania. Not only as a primary fuel self-source, but also with a commitment to end battery-powered automobile benefits. What, therefore, might we glean from Musk's apparent self-defeating association with Donald Trump for fuel from Pennsylvania? Musk knows that, in the future history of automobiles, batteries, as such, are the "Palm Pilot" of the industry [19]: good for a time. No one of us really knows what is in the mind of genius Musk, but we know hydrogen is on its way. [20] Elon already did batteries, as such. Space is the next big new step for the United States, perhaps not the final frontier, but the next frontier. Musk is campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania and he is always ahead of the game. Musk does not just talk, he implements.
Wisdom is noble unto itself. Properly sourced, prosperity and happiness come from within, no less for a country than for a human being.
The only way to be free is to be fuel independent, which is to own the natural elements, the technology, and the machinery. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
So says Aesop wisely, "He who feeds you, enslaves you." [21]
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Fuel drives everything. It is the essential least common denominator for a happy life. First survival, then prosperity.
Happiness is relative, survival is absolute.
[5] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 7 Excerpt—Wall Street [#GRZ_181]
[12] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 4 Excerpt—Education [#GRZ_182]
[15] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 2 Excerpt—National Debt [#GRZ_185]
[16] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 7 Excerpt—Wall Street [#GRZ_181]
[17] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 6 Excerpt—Responsibility Framework Failure [#GRZ_180]
"Democratia virtutem per intentionem, sapientiam per directionem, disciplinam per applicationem requirit." ("Democracy requires virtue by intention, wisdom by direction, and discipline by application."); "Libertas invehitur in agmen oeconomicum." ("Freedom rides on the economic train."); "Felicitas relativa, salus absoluta." ("Happiness is relative, survival is absolute."); "Nobilis est sibi sapientia." ("Wisdom is noble unto itself."); "Non moriuntur regiones philosophiis, moriuntur oeconomicae." ("Countries don't die by philosophies, they die by economies.") ~ grz
* Gregg Zegarelli, Esq., earned both his Bachelor of Arts Degree and his Juris Doctorate from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His dual major areas of study were History from the College of Liberal Arts and Accounting from the Business School (qualified to sit for the CPA examination), with dual minors in Philosophy and Political Science. He has enjoyed Adjunct Professorships in the Duquesne University Graduate Leadership Master Degree Program (The Leader as Entrepreneur; Developing Leadership Character Through Adversity) and the University of Pittsburgh Law School (The Anatomy of a Deal). He is admitted to various courts throughout the United States of America.
Gregg Zegarelli, Esq.,?is Managing Shareholder of Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC.?Gregg is nationally rated as "superb" and has more than 35 years of experience working with entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes, including startups,?INC. 500, and publicly traded companies.?He is author of One: The Unified Gospel of Jesus, and The Business of Aesop? article series, and co-author with his father, Arnold Zegarelli, of The Essential Aesop: For Business, Managers, Writers and Professional Speakers. Gregg is a frequent lecturer, speaker and faculty for a variety of educational and other institutions.
? 2024 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.
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