Chris: Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino’s admission that she was not familiar with the Cuban missile crisis is but one more example of how chaos theory negates the state’s claims to be able to create programs and policies to effectively deal with complex problems. The capacity to predict the outcomes of complex systems is impossible, due to the inability to be aware of all the variables at work upon events. The rationale for the exercise of state power (i.e., the ability to amass information not available to the rest of us) depends upon this “sensitivity to initial conditions,” which the “butterfly effect” completely disrupts. Government officials who have never heard of the Cuban missile crisis, or are unfamiliar with the dynamics of the business cycle, or, worse yet, are formulating policies on the basis of lies and other deceptions, are bound to create more dysfunctional consequences. Should Boobus ever grasp this fundamental fact (i.e., that the state is the creator of the very problems it then insists upon correcting, with an escalation of further problems) he/she may begin walking away from this most insidious and vicious racket!

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