Godspeed, America -- this nation was a great idea, but it's gone.

THIS WAS A GREAT COLUMN. I READ IT ALL THE TIME. YOU CAN SEE HOW FRUSTRATED THIS GUY IS AND HE HAS GIVEN UP TRYING TO EDUCATE AMERICANS

I've been writing this column for eight years; the first columns in the archives are from 4-1-2007.
For eight years I have chronicled the abuses in our nation's economic and political systems, tying most of them to economic concerns of one sort or another.  It began on Blogger and drove a fairly major software development effort on my part to put together the software currently in use here today -- a package that is capable of much more than it does at present.
I began this journey as a sort of private debt repayment, if you will, to people who I knew that got seriously harmed in the 2000 tech wreck.  I escaped as I saw it coming, but whether that was really all skill or there was a huge element of either luck or divine intervention I'll never know; there were certainly personal issues in my life that were partly responsible for my decision to divest MCSNet in 1998.
I've heard many people over those years tell me that I'm not only inflexible but I also never admit I'm wrong.  Those of you in that camp couldn't be more mistaken. Who remembers my rather long 2007 missives in which I expected very heavy inflation and dollar devaluation, accompanied with an energy cost spike that would literally destroy the economy?  I, like many others, wasn't looking at the whole picture; I had bought hook, line and sinker into some of the econometric models put forward by so-called professors and their claims, believing without demanding evidence and proof rooted in fundamental algebra that they were providing an honest and accurate assessment.
I was wrong, and those who have followed me know that when the evidence changed -- that is, when the predictions that those models made failed to yield the results that should have occurred I went back and look at what I had been sold and found the errors -- and corrected them.
This is what we all ought to be doing, but damn few actually do.  Essentially nobody in the media does so, and nobody in the general population calls them on it.
What came from this?  Leverage, for one.  One Dollar of Capital, for another.  And a whole series of both conversations and political activism, including real attempts to sway real policy during the 2011 Budget Showdown.
None of it went anywhere.  The Libertarian Party is a bad joke riddled with example after example of rank hypocrisy and outright bullcrap.  They won't even debate their own internal inconsistencies.
Not that this is exceptional behavior for a political party.  Republicans anyone?
When it comes down to it the ills of government can be boiled down to one thing: They insist on spending money they know you won't pay in taxes; this in turn requires them to run a literal theft racket from you and in doing so they license two entire industries -- the medical and banking business -- to do so as well.
So what's the point, really?  After eight years, I don't think there is one.
You won't stand up.
You insist on supporting "D"s or "R"s, and if challenged on that you tell people "well, the other guy is worse."
Is that true?  Is being screwed in butt by 5 inches or 6 any different?  Isn't the essential character of the act the same, and aren't you really arguing over whether you'd like to be killed by firing squad or being hung?
Here's the question, when all is said and done, that I've asked myself since I began writing this column:  Is there a point?
I'm forced to examine this question every day.  Literally.
I'm also forced to ask this question: Does math really matter? It appears not; despite what's clear and evident you keep buying, you keep producing, you keep paying taxes and running on the hamster wheel.  And I believe you'll keep doing it too, even when you literally die from the effort and lack of renumeration.
In the end today I've come to the conclusion that the answer to "is it worth it" is No.
So today, The Market Ticker goes dark.
Godspeed, America -- this nation was a great idea, but it's gone.