Breach Of Contract

22 thoughts on “Breach Of Contract”

1. Lock him up!!!
   And, oh yeah: Merry Christmas!

2. Sir

   There is nothing in the world I like better than reading the thoughts of a really smart person expressed with clarity and good sense. Now that I am nearing the third anniversary of my wife’s passing (the 20th since she was fully compos mentis) there are few places I find I can get such thinking and expression face-to-face so I must rely on the folks to whom I am exposed through these pages, and an occasional random other source. This piece is probably going to be the most perfectly expressed reaction that I will get to see, to the winding down of what I personally feel as the most tragic period in our collective history in my lifetime .

   Society’s boundaries, as you have sensibly assessed them, have been viciously attacked by a perversion of one of the core values of our country, the right to personal liberty. In the years since January, 2017, we got to personal observe the substitution of anarchy as our definition of liberty. In any orderly society, that cannot be. Taken at their core, the thoughts of our historically great thinkers: Plato, Confucius, Jesus, Jefferson, and others, has mostly focused on a common theme, how to create and manage an orderly, upright society with a proper balance of personal liberty and the greater good. Humans, sadly, are a selfish, greedy, and undisciplined lot who secretly would like to do whatever they want, whenever they want, no matter who is harmed. Right now we are hanging by a thread and those with the darkest souls are once again the most visible. I am glad I am old, and sad that I feel that way.

   This is one of the very best essays I have read this year. Thank you, sir. Keep up your wonderful voyage of enlightened self-discovery. It has been pure pleasure to observe and I feel gratified to be allowed to participate vicariously.

   1. One other thought. Trump came to the Presidency as a man involved in what some have estimated to be over 5000 active lawsuits. Contracts are made between and among us to create the basis of favorable outcomes for our joint endeavors. If we are honest and true to each other we don’t need legal documents, but since some of us seek to cheat to get more than our fair share, we make contracts. Trump, imo, is a man who never wants any limits placed on him so he violates his contracts with others nearly all the time, and calls it “winning.”

   2. A ten year younger reader sadly agrees with your feelings about being glad to he old.

      And your praise for our Dear Leader’s writing.

      But hey, I always click right over when I see you have posted a new comment. You are one of the best minds here.

   3. Another excellent post to close out the year and I second Mr. Lucky’s equally excellent comments. I am also, I believe, a bit younger than he, but share his thoughts. I would add one of my own — that the disappointment of not having children during my lifetime has quickly morphed into a hollow relief of sorts that I need not worry about them along with all the other things I find myself worrying about now, including so many things that I did not expect to be worrying about.

      Many thanks to H for another fine year of teaching me about the market, which is the reason I started my subscription. But the reason I continue my subscription is the unexpected side effect of its more holistically refining my way of thinking. The difference between filling my brain and really training it.

   4. Mr.Lucky, I bet you are treasured and admired by all who know you. I value your insights but am inspired at a very human level from your personal story of your wife. Merry Christmas.

3. Donald Trump was commander-in-chief of the United States. The capital of the United States was under attack and he watched it on TV. Dereliction.
   His words may have inspired the attack, and he could weasel out of that. He’s worse than a failed commander-in-chief. He is a coward by not acting one way, or the other.
   Biden is commander-in-chief and Trumpism remains a clear and present danger. I do hope that his views of protocol and law, and tactical application has a good outcome.
   Time always has its way with things.

4. You made it through this whole post without any mention of Sam B-F. Impressive!

   His bail was set at $250 million… but he was apparently released on his own recognizance, his parents’ Palo Alto home (~$4mm) posted as surety. Meanwhile, people being arrested tonight with bail set at $1,000 won’t be released unless they can deliver actual cold hard cash. People who did vastly less harm will spend Christmas not with their families, but in jail–not because their petty crimes have been proven guilty, but because they’re poor. SBF, who robbed > 1 million people, flew home first class, where he’ll spend the holidays with his parents.

   You want some examples of things our grand childrens’ grand children will find positively loathsome? We’re surrounded by it, reminded on a daily basis of its existence, but it’s so frequent, we’ve become numb. We’re numb to horrors that should make rational people shudder.

   It’s easy to conceptualize a fatalistic acceptance of the normality of, for instance, the arbitrary capricious deadliness of disease when you live in the 19th century. People just randomly get sick and die, there’s nothing you can do about it, so we accept it and don’t dwell on it. Today? Imprisoning “innocent” until proven guilty people for being poor, and accepting that elementary schools need to be hardened against mentally ill heavily armed “active shooters”.

   Absurdism is the only philosophical framework for the world which can reconciles with how the world actually works.

   That said, I don’t want to give the impression that’s the only thing I took away from this article. The detailed framework you construct to support later arguments re:Trump is significant. In my life, I’ve found gradually drifted towards a left-libertarian political framework. Left-libertarian seems like a contradiction-in-terms to Americans, but that’s only because Americans have the big-L Libertarian Party dominating the connotation of “libertarian”. Libertarianism was originally a left-wing philosophy whose foundational principles would be more easily associated with AOC than Rand Paul. Skepticism of authority and coercion were associated not just with, say, police and politicians, but also owners of capital and land.

   This article is an excellent think-piece, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

   1. Edit to add I should have proof-read this comment before pushing “Post,” but I think everyone will understand my meaning.

5. From the title and the picture I thought you were going to talk about the Breach of Contract he made in his Oath of Office “…to Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution…. “

   1. Unfortunately, that territory is so well-worn I probably couldn’t add much that hasn’t already been said.

6. Fantastic article and comments. History is littered with people who rise to leadership positions, both in government and private industries that have had an amoral bent. The truly dangerous among this group have also had an uncanny ability to rally people to their cause, creating very strong followings. They usually crash and burn after a period of time, causing immense pain along the way, but the following usually dissipates post-crash. Not sure where we are on the timeline or whether we are in the post-Trump era (and Trumpism) for that matter. We’ll find out soon enough.

7. Thanks, H. I really wish I had a professor such as yourself when I was in college. I was an accounting major, flunked intermediate accounting the first time I took the class because I was having too much fun. That was a “wake up call”, after which I got serious in school and became very interested in taking philosophy and world religion classes with any spare credits that I had. If I had had a professor of your abilities, I would have gotten a lot more out of my overall education experience. However, I feel so fortunate that I came across your posts when you were “going strong” on SA before your current iteration of yourself (much healthier) as H; and that I am still allowed to be included in your journey.
   I am extremely disappointed with our education system, politicians and our media, which I believe have an enormous influence on our populous. Unfortunately, the education system, the political parties/politicians and the media are utilizing their power in such a way that our citizens are not being taught to think critically on very important matters such as our social contract and how our country and the world works. This creates a “void” subject to distrust.

8. Great line of thinking. My biggest take away from this site this year (so far) found in the subtext is that being partisan is a weakness. I was blind but, now i see it is a lack of discipline that is wholly useless. I was right about Trump being crooked and now many defunct familial relationships, professional relationships and un-friendships later, I am the loser for it. Being right is meaningless, a chasing after the wind as someone as astute as Ecclesiastes might put it.

9. A great article and many interesting comments. However, as a lawyer, I agreed with everything until the last paragraph. I would argue that the basic concept (fairness) underlying due process is fundamental to the social contract, both in its narrow and broader senses. And that is why is doubly important to strictly adhere to due process ESPECIALLY when those who would rather ignore it are involved. Otherwise we are no better than they are.
   So, even though a half-dozen pages wouldn’t have been sufficient, the 800 pages were necessary.

   1. Yeah, I mean the last paragraph is deliberately provocative, but then again, past a certain point we’re just making a mockery of ourselves. If I catch you in my house, with a hammer, with a burglar mask on, and there’s a hammer-sized hole in the glass beside the lock on the front door, and the lock has your finger and thumb prints on it, and you’re carrying an iPhone with your text messages open, and the last text you sent says, “Can’t talk now, robbing this house, will call you back shortly,” do we really need lawyers, trials and appeals? Do we need due process at all? Or is all that just a waste of time and resources? Clearly you broke into my house. I know it, you know it, the police knows it, your lawyers know it, the judge knows it and a jury would know it, so what are we really doing?

      1. This is critical, I think, when it comes to the amplification of messaging and propaganda with the potential to undermine societal cohesion and break apart the social contract in Western democracies. It should be illegal, for example, to publish Kremlin propaganda. Same goes for vaccine misinformation. If you do it, you go to jail, and unless there’s some ambiguity around intent (which, let’s face it, there usually isn’t in the first instance — i.e., when we’re talking about the publisher or the content creator) we don’t need to “prove” it. The purveyors of that propaganda and misinformation prove their guilt by the very act of peddling it. If we keep letting that kind of content circulate on social media, etc., we’ll lose our society. It’ll be small comfort that we assiduously stuck to due process, because I can promise you that the people who are brainwashed by the misinformation won’t when they prosecute the rest of us after society unravels.

      2. I have no doubt that H understands the impossibility of using a system under our constitution that mandates not only due process, but more importantly and specifically guarantees Trial by Jury. As H and you all know, our Jury system requires that a jury determines what the “facts” are in any criminal case and once instructed by the judge on the law, it is the jury that makes the final determination of guilt, not guilty or if neither can be reached a hung jury is had causing mistrial. And yes, there are many cases where, on paper, the facts of a given case read or appear incontrovertible such as the hypothetical posed by H, but there are many cases that have that appearance that turn out to be totally misleading. Moreover, who or how is the determination made as to whether no “process” is “due” for a defendant presenting with a certain category of facts of the kind H submits (since on paper it’s a “slam dunk;” e.g., like that with WMD in Iraq or like those case where countless innocent men sat on death row for decades)?

         What I sense from H’s provocative point is deeply held frustration that arises from the lack of prosecutorial action against Trump where the publicly witnessed, known or documented facts supporting an array of crimes amounting to, at the very least, prima facie evidence to support the filing of charging documents have yet to be addressed by either counties, states or the federal government and this state of affairs harkens back before 2016.

         Yet in reckoning with this “magic pass,” Trump has managed so far, the answer is not to join in with Trump in either terminating the US Const or chipping out a cherished right embedded within in it. Lastly, and my sense is doubtlessly when putting his devil’s advocacy aside, H would agree with that.

         1. The issue here is really about the existential nature of the threat. At the risk of overstating the case, you could pretty easily argue that any media outlet, YouTube channel, blogger, etc. with a reach that numbers in the millions and whose owner(s) deliberately exploit the undereducated, the gullible and the vulnerable using a misinformation-for-profit model at the expense of national security and/or democracy, represents a far greater threat to the United States (as distinct from Mexico and South America) than any drug cartel based in the Americas. Cartel bosses are an existential threat to the social fabric in their home countries because operating typically involves corruption on a massive scale and horror-movie-style violence, but their impact on the social fabric in stable democracies is limited to the damage associated with crime and addiction. To be sure: That damage is vast. Incomprehensible, even. But it’s of a different nature/character than the damage done by those who actively and knowingly seek to sow domestic discord via what I can only describe as a campaign of for-profit psychological terrorism that’s cost countless Americans their very sanity. 30% of the US population no longer has a solid grip on reality itself, and that’s due in no small part to the same outlets, bloggers and propagandists mentioned above. If a third of the voting public is literally insane (as opposed to just stupid), nothing else matters, and we’re doomed. That, among other things, is what Kremlin propaganda is trying to achieve. And quite a few of the counter-narrative peddlers in the US are wittingly or unwittingly involved in that effort. In my opinion, that should be prosecuted with at least the same zeal that the US pursues cartel bosses and terrorists who, as I’m sure readers are aware, don’t generally enjoy due process.

            1. And there it is: “In my opinion, that should be prosecuted with at least the same zeal that the US pursues cartel bosses and terrorists who, as I’m sure readers are aware, don’t generally enjoy due process.” In that last sentence of your reply you’ve outlined a frame of reference for those having difficulty discerning right from wrong in the context of the existential threats that you address, the criminal law. To state the obvious, it’s the criminal law that would be used to “prosecute” those that have inflicted the once unimaginable extensive injury and damage that you describe. For as you submit, the “that,” that the prospective defendants “should be prosecuted,” for committing, are, I suspect, “crime(s),” and if there are no crime(s) to be found within the volumes of the US Code that are applicable, then Congress’s duty would be to pass legislation for the President to sign and if he did and should the courts find that the “words” and/or “actions,” you’ve addressed may be wrong but nevertheless protected speech pursuant to Amendment I, US Const., then the states should amend Amendment I, US Const., in order to vindicate the kind of interests that are described in Breach of Contract. And with that, one is compelled to ask, what are the odds of that ever happening should the matter land on the previous sentence?

10. “…so what are we really doing?”

    It is my opinion that the “labyrinthine, due process-obsessed legal system” is necessary to insure that the poor go into the prison industrial complex and the rich go home with ankle bracelets. Complexity makes justice arbitrary and easily manipulated if one has connections and can afford the right lawyers. If the 1/6 mob had been armed black people, the leaders and many of the participants would have been gunned down at the capital and the rest executed for treason or terrorism within weeks by a military tribunal but rich white guys with corporate backing and platoons of lawyers, well that’s different. And really, the Trump show is just a distraction from the real issue. Trump, DeSantis and the other Trump wannabes are just the clowns on the stage. If a clown goes off script and commits treason – so what. Our oligarchs have hundreds in reserve, always ready to lower taxes, cripple the IRS, build more bombers and privatize pretty much every service the government supplies. Sorry, but the great American nightmare is just getting started.

    Merry Christmas.

    1. I don’t think it’s as bad as you say. But I’m no expert. Well put, IB.

       I agree the world is a scary place and democratic ideals are not the easiest thing to achieve and/or maintain. That said, Thomas Jefferson suggested similar wisdom in the following statement: “The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”

       Jefferson was a less than perfect leader, a man of his time in history, discredited by some for various, serious faults and actions. But he knew the flaws of existing 18th century institutions. He foresaw a better means of government and imagined potential obstacles to our country’s success.