Quickies: Positive Feedback And Galacticization

     This morning, a glance at CM Blake’s latest got me thinking about political dynamics from the standpoint of the “bad guys.” Please head over there and read it; I’m refraining from excerpting it because I can’t do so without stealing the whole thing.

     The eight initiatives cited in that graphic have something in common: inherent positive feedback. That is: if you do a little, it creates a demand for more, and if you do more, it creates a demand for much more, and so on. The resulting “yield curve” ascends exponentially. Any technologist will tell you that that’s a recipe for catastrophe. Such a system destroys itself soon afterward.

     But “bad guy” psychology tends to be both short-range and incurably optimistic. This is especially true of the political villain. He’ll set such a scheme in motion believing that:

• It will create the conditions required for him to take power;
• He’ll be able to put a stop to it as soon as the reins are in his hands.

     As with so many other moral, social, and political phenomena, Robert A. Heinlein pinned this one too:

     "Kettle Belly," said Joe, "doesn't she know that if the Earth becomes a nova, the Moon will be swallowed up in the disaster?"

     "Crater walls shield her dome from line-of-sight with Earth; apparently she believes she is safe. Evil is essentially stupid, Joe; despite her brilliance, she believes what she wishes to believe.”

     [Robert A. Heinlein, “Gulf”]

     A system with positive feedback embedded in its guts behaves much like a system dominated by gravity. A system of masses ruled by unopposed gravity will compress at an exponential rate; the pressures that ultimately result will cause it to explode. The higher the peak pressure, the greater the bang – and the politics of the Left has already put American society, the American economy, and the American psyche under enormous pressure.

     But Barack Hussein Obama, his controllers, and his aspiring successors believe they can control the forces they’ve unleashed. Evil is essentially stupid.

     Of course, there are also quite a lot of politicians on the Right who think they can harness the mechanisms involved, tame their feedback cycles, and break them to saddle and bridle:

     “There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” (Daniel Webster)

     They’re no brighter than their counterparts on the Left, just modestly (if at all) better intentioned. Only the complete destruction of the crony-capitalist / regulation-dominated / welfare state and its ruling class will serve...and the only route back toward that is the re-establishment of Constitutional order.

     What odds would you give on such a development, Gentle Reader?