The River
I'll never forget the first time I drove along the river's banks.
I had to look up at the passing ships because in some places, the bed of the
river is so high, it's above the surrounding land. It can be kept confined to
its channel only by dikes. If the dikes were not there, the river would flow
out across the surrounding land and destroy everything.
Year after year, decade after decade, the bed of the river rises, and the
government responds by raising the dikes. What causes the bed to
rise? .......The dikes......
Here's why…
In college during the mid-1960s, I took a geology course. The professor used
the Mississippi as an example of what happens when government
"experts" try to improve on natural systems.
The Mississippi is America's largest, most important river, which means its
behavior affects millions of voters. In the 1800s, some of these voters built
their farms and towns on the river's floodplains.
I once heard another geologist ask angrily, "Why do you think we call it a
floodplain?!" In the 1800s, some of the voters decided the government
should do something about the flooding. Did the politicians say no? Of course
not. They said, give us more money and power, and we will fix your problem.
They started building dikes.
My geology professor explained that when a river is confined to its channel, it
has no place to dump its silt except in the channel. This raises the bottom of
the river, until the river overtops the dikes. Did the politicians admit that
building dikes was a bonehead idea? Absolutely not. They said, these worsening
floods are a huge problem, but give us more money and power… and we will build
the dikes even higher.
And so it has gone for more than a century. The dikes are raised, which lifts
the bed of the river, causing more flooding, plus more demands for higher
dikes. All the while, the cities on the floodplains grow larger.
In 1883, the great river pilot Mark Twain warned that efforts to control the
river were futile. "10 thousand river commissions" could not do it.
As you can see on the TV news, he was certainly right.
My professor 46 years ago said it was well understood among geologists that
this addiction to dikes, piling mistake on top of mistake, would eventually
lead to catastrophe. No one listened, and the government kept on
"fixing" the flood problem until here we are today, with a river
that is above the surrounding land.
As an aside, it's interesting to note…
… another word for dike is levee, which is the French word "levee,"
meaning "to lift."
Lots of rivers have levees – mistakes piled on top of mistakes. In 2008,
hydrologist Robert Criss showed that the bed of the Mississippi is now so high
that over the previous 25 years, Twain's hometown, Hannibal, Mo., had been hit
by 10 floods, including one 200-year flood and one 500-year flood.
The insane attempt to improve on a natural system was begun by an Army engineer
named Andrew Humphreys (1810-1883). This is the same General Humphreys who led
thousands of troops to their deaths in the Civil War, then wrote that he
enjoyed battle so much "I felt more like a god than a man." After
1865, Humphreys continued his pursuit of godlike sensations by declaring war on
the river.
I'm sure it is not an accident…
… that this attempt to control every inch of America's greatest river system
became a hot project during the era the socialism of Karl Marx was on the rise.
Socialism is about control, and just as the democratic and republican
politicians have controlled the Mississippi into chaos, they've controlled the
rest of the economy into chaos, too.
We are ruled by an idiocracy. (Idiocy + bureaucracy.)
It is often said of socialism, and its offspring Keynesianism, that control
breeds more control. This can be seen nowhere more clearly than in the
idiocracy's attempt to regulate the Mississippi. All of east Europe, Africa,
and Asia have been through the socialist meat grinder.
This is why the first word that comes to mind when we think of these areas is
not "wealthy," despite their abundance of oil, gold, and other
natural riches. West Europe, too. The debacle with the euro and European Union
is more of the inevitable disintegration. Don't expect the repeated bailouts
and other stopgap measures to accomplish much. It's just more variations of
robbing Peter to subsidize Paul.
Again, the government's management of the Mississippi is a good cross section
of the idiocracy's management of the whole economy. All the farms, towns, and
cities on the river's floodplains are mal-investment caused by the government's
efforts to improve the river. They are another example of what I mean when I
say the political meddling in the natural economy is so great that I believe
there are whole cities in the wrong places doing the wrong things.
The news media refer to Mississippi floods as natural disasters, but the floods
are really…
… political disasters
The socialized Mississippi system is a kissing cousin to socialized schools,
transportation, monetary system, medical structure, financial framework, and on
and on. They all show the same characteristics. Each "fix" creates
more problems that need more fixes until it all falls down, which is apparently
where we are now.
No one can predict exactly when the boondoggle will come crashing down,
but we know it will. Conditions at Hannibal and many other places seem to be
saying the end is near. For the economy as a whole, I think the end is near.
