President Obama has decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan to the tune of hundreds of billions of more dollars spent there, and at the same time spend hundreds of billions dollars trying to revamp the bureaucrtic mess of Medicare, Medicaid, and the whole government-regulated hospital/medical care system. When the bureaucratic mess called the Soviet Union took on the expense of waging war in Afghanistan it bankrupted itself to the point that there was no more food in the stores, and Gorbachev finally threw in the towel on the empire. Should the US government send more or less troops to the Mid-East? Should it subsidize certain new prescription drugs and to what extent? Fortunately, individualists don't have to concern themselves about such matters, since we're not too interested in the nuts and bolts of collectivist-capitalism or capitalist-collectivism, and we know that our efforts at input are not going to change anything, anyway. So, all we have to worry about is trying to keep as much of our own money as possible out of the hands of governments, while at the same time trying to recoup as much benefit as possible for ourselves in goods and services. We can behave just like everybody else without the aggravation of trying to decide which politicians represent the lesser evil and spending time and money supporting them. We can watch more soccer, maybe study Chinese, and just worry about taking care of ourselves after the system collapses of it's own weight.
What amazes me is that after Gorbachev threw in the towel, Washington felt the need to rummage around, find it, and pick it up. That towel is filthy, get rid of it.
