It's not really very complicated and I've written on it before.
Civil society does not exist because 50.1% of the people decide they want something to happen, and force the other 49.9% to do it.
We are not a Democracy, and neither is Canada. A Democracy is 10 foxes and 9 sheep voting on what's for dinner. A Republic is the same 10 foxes and 9 sheep -- and the sheep pull guns to issue a veto on that vote.
Civil society exists because 99% of the population goes along with whatever is put in front of them. Not 50.1%, not 60%, not 75%.
99%.
Always.
Oh yeah, you may well vote against whatever it is next time around but you still consent until the next election.
The simple and inescapable fact is that 99% of the people must consent until that time or whatever it is that government is doing, if even 1% refuse to consent and mean it, that thing, whatever it is, stops.
You can't jail more than about 1% of the population. Every person you jail costs you three worth of productivity in the economy; the one you jail and then two more who do nothing other than keeping that person in jail. If you go materially beyond 1% you lose too much productivity and the economy collapses.
Canada's trucker action shows us exactly how this works. You don't need 50.1% of the people to consent to any given policy you need 99% or even more.
Oh, its fine if the people who "disagree" get mad enough to vote the other way in the next election. That does no harm and is how we refine processes.
But if even 1% of the population decides they're actively not going to cooperate -- not just choose to vote a different way, gripe to their friends over a beer in the bar, or show up for a day, wave signs and then go home but actively not cooperate right here and now, and mean it that's the end of the conversation.
It is for this reason that all such capacity to make law in legitimate, modern societies rests in legislative bodies, and only there. That doesn't prevent a legislature from provoking the word NO but it makes it much less-likely. The premise of "emergency powers" is that in the few hours or days before the legislature can act something might need to be done. A tornado can strike, there might be an earthquake or similar event.
A few months later, say much less two years, that excuse is not only dead its a picked-over collection of bones and if the legislature has not acted it is because the cannot obtain the required 99% -- not 50.1% -- consent and they know it.
So do the people; the legislature hasn't acted because they can't without losing their jobs.
How do you get things if nobody delivers the things? You don't.
"Oh, we'll tow the trucks and jail the truckers!"
That's nice. How do you intend to (1) replace the trucks and (2) replace the drivers? What do you do if for every one you tow three more show up?
The Fed can't exactly print trucks or drivers, can it? Nor can they print skilled individuals. They can't be wished into existence either.
This protest is drawing all manner of extreme reaction -- including wild-eyed screaming nonsense about using the military from former Obama officials.
The reason for said wild-eyed screaming from US policy wonks -- and threats -- is simple: They are very afraid you will learn the lesson that the truckers are teaching -- that civil society only exists because 99% of the population, not the 50.1% required to win an election -- consents to the actions taken whether they politically agree or not and for this reason the power to make law always and only rests with the legislature, which the body politic in general elected and believes is responsive to them.
What if those who supported Trump last cycle really believed the election was stolen and would never be honest again? Not the rhetoric that comes out of people's mouths, they really meant it? What if even 1 or 2% of those people decided to withdraw consent -- and meant it?
The fact is that neither Trump nor his supporters really believe it and zero mean it; all consent, willingly, intentionally and daily to Biden being President.
Compliance was and is always a voluntary act of consent, begrudgingly or otherwise.
You don't have to commit acts of violence if you do not consent: You merely have to stop working, and concentrate the peaceful acts you do take such that others do not work effectively or at all either.
Such a set of actions leaves the government with no options other than to cut that **** out.
If they use force in that situation they make it worse; now they're using force on their own people, each of which have family members and friends who might exponentially expand the group of people who stop working.
What happens when that exponential expansion hits the people who run your nuclear power plants and they walk off the job? How about the people who run your natural gas transmission lines? Run the industrial and medical gas plants without which you have no working hospitals nor industry? Refineries without which nothing moves as there's no diesel fuel or gasoline?
These are skilled positions; without those people that particular function does not get done and there's nothing you can do about it.
In short none of these things you take for granted are available except by voluntary consent of basically every single person in the United States. If that consent is withdrawn by even a tiny fraction of said persons that all stops and the government has exactly nothing they can do about it.
Public policy, in short, is not about finding consensus of the 50.1% as is often claimed.
It has and is always about finding consensus of the vast majority, and the more-interconnected your economy is the higher is the required consensus percentage, rising to an effective 99% among western nations today.
If you want to stop anything -- inflation, regulation, masks, jabs, anything that even one percent of the population rates as so stupid and intolerable that they're willing to walk off the job and inconvenience others to the point they say "**** it!" through peaceful means on a durable basis then the government has no option but to change said policy.
I've pointed this out for more than a decade on these pages and have been called a nut.
In 2008 when all the felonies committed by the banksters were ignored and in fact rewarded by Hanky Pankey and his merry band in Congress even 1% of the population could have forced every one of those banksters into prison.
Over the last 30 years the ridiculous, wanton and "in your face" violations of 15 USC Chapter 1 by the entire medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industries, which have twice been ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court yet not one prosecutor at the state or federal level has jailed one single person under these laws and if they did medical care would cost ONE FIFTH of what it does and insurance would be entirely unnecessary for other that improbable emergencies (just as it is with fire insurance on your house) could have been stopped at any time in the last 30 years by fewer than 1% of the American public without committing a single act of violence.
When the virus came around and it was clear that not only did China seed it but our government and various institutions were involved in outright force and fraud, from lockdowns to masks to lies on jabs and more even 1% of the population could have forced it all to end immediately, and forced every one of the people involved including Fauci, his wife, the people in the "institutions" here (cough-"colleges"-cough-"public health"-cough-cough-cough) out of office and straight into prison without committing a single act of violence.
And today our sky-high energy prices, ridiculous government spending and Fed support of outright fraud in said government never mind appointing a flat-out mental case to manage nuclear waste at the government level could also be forced to stop by a tiny minority of Americans. Again, without a single act of violence.
Less than 1% of the Canadian population just proved that I was right about this in 2008, I've been right since and I'm right now.
You are not powerless in any way, shape or form, Americans, if you decide you've had enough of the government's bull**** and it does not matter how many Karens scream at you with the opposing point of view.
They, in fact, are powerless.
Well?
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=245135
