0xC9: The Good Stuff

I am told I am a very negative person and I don't say enough good things about the United States. Well, part of that is because we so often base our perception of the US as being its government. But the people are the rulers, thus the elected officials are the servant government. At least, that's how it should be. There is also supposed to be a division between a country's private sector and its public sector, otherwise we have state run for-profit initiatives, which is a bad thing (fascism).

So I've decided to look for the good things about American, inside and outside the government. This is by no means an exhaustive list. This is more-or-less a grouping of accolades and accomplishments I've singled out for specific reasons.

And remember, all praise is relative opinion.

Warren G. Harding

I was asked who my favorite president was in the last 150 years. Off the bat, President Warren G. Harding came to mind. The reason is, when they started to see economic problems, his solution was to invite his buddies over to the White House to play cards and drink booze.

I like that approach. Doing nothing was a pretty good plan. True Laissez-faire.

In other words, he did nothing and the economic problems subsided quickly. But in the process of doing nothing, he also allowed the Federal Reserve System to continue to exist, so that was a Bad Thing. Not his fault, but not something he saw fit to fix either.

Harry Truman

There had to be another president on my list, so after doing a little more research, I've decided Harry Truman is another favorite. He did a lot more than nothing. He got the federal government out of the way of the free market. He started to restore the gold standard after the war. He repealed price controls that were put in place for the war. In other words, he did things that were detrimental to the growth of the Federal Government. He took his oath seriously.

Any president who puts us back on the gold standard gets a AAA rating in my book. If Bush had done it even after all of what has happened, even after saying, "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system," I would have given him a AAA rating if he would have at least put us back on the gold standard. Keep in mind, if Bush did that, the dollar would probably have to be revalued to $40,000 per gold ounce instead of $35 like in Truman's day, but that's a step in the right direction (I just pulled that number out of the air, same place the dollar comes from).

SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is an American space-transportation startup company founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. It is developing partially reusable launch vehicles - the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 - and the Dragon series of space capsules.

Source: Wikipedia

The reason this is impressive is that they did this in spite of all the resistance and interference of the government. But it also illustrates where private industry is technologically.

Chinese Food

Technically, I'm referring to American-Chinese Food, but this 15 minute video sums it all up: