Be the Ball

The U.S. may not be like Russia in 1917, but it has its Bolsheviks in ecological terrorist cells with names like Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Doubtless some of the members are idealists. The Bolsheviks had their idealists, too. At least some, though, are certainly fired by the zero-sum ethic, the realization that there is only so much stuff and somebody else is getting most of it most unfairly. Examples of the stuff in short supply include a luxury home bordering a national forest in Indiana, a ski resort in Vail and a $2.4-million home under construction in Niwot, Colorado.

Small businessmen in the U.S. are resentful, too - resentful of state and Federal regulatory enforcement that sometimes assumes a KGB-like aspect. One owner of a family-owned Connecticut construction company described in a recent letter to the editor of a trade magazine how three armed officers from the Department of Motor Vehicles descended on his place of business for a routine inspection, demanding to be shown commercial drivers licenses, medical certificates, safety training certificates Department of Transportation licenses, copies of daily inspection reports for their one vehicle, random drug testing results and the father's old military drivers license. He thought the regulatory environment for small business might be a little inhibiting.

All of the undesirable effects described above are typical of enclosure, the absence of frontiers. Frontier theory renders these conditions, and those to follow, easily predictable. In the absence of a new frontier, they herald a global return to conditions like those existing in Europe prior to 1500, when the old world (nobility excepted) was sick, starving, half-naked, constantly at war and without hope save that afforded by death.

It is an end we will see perhaps fifty years hence, but not today. Today there is still time to prosper by joining those who, by accident or through malice, lead the world, or to join those who will foment rebellion. Without a frontier, you can't opt out. You have to play the game. Or be the ball.

References:

The 1917 Revolution: A Gallery of Pictures

The New World Order: An Appraisal

The Americas: Armed and Dangerous

Islander Magazine: Human Waves Over Galapagos

Phoenix Newtimes: Fahrenheit 411

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