The periodic cicada is an insect, called “periodic” because it appears once every so-many years. For instance, one type of periodic cicada, the 17-year cicada, lives in North America and spends almost its entire life underground, sipping juices from plant roots and molting several times as it grows.
At the end of each 17 year, underground period, millions of these insects simultaneously emerge from the ground for one purpose: Sexual reproduction.
During that short period they mate, often multiple times, and the females lay their eggs in tree stems, where the eggs mature to nymphs which crawl down into the ground and repeat the 17-year cycle.
A Parable
Let us say, for the purpose of our parable, that a new species of periodic cicada — the “One-Year Venomous Cicada X” — lives in just one place on earth: Your little village.
As per its name, the One-Year Venomous Cicada X has a venomous bite that can prove fatal, and the insect emerges for one week, once every year. For everyone’s protection, you need to get rid of the One-Year Venomous Cicada X.
How would you do it?
Each villager could find a special costly poison, being developed for the purpose, and lay it on the ground to destroy the nymphs before they emerge.
Or, you all could hire several hundred people to wait in your yards until the One-Year Venomous Cicada X emerges, and these people could run around with butterfly nets trying to catch all of the millions of cicadas after they emerge, but before they mate.
These methods would be expensive, possibly dangerous, extremely time consuming, and in the end, they might not work.
Meanwhile, the One-Year Venomous Cicada X keeps emerging, for one week, year after year, killing some villagers, sickening others, and threatening to spread to other locations.
In addition to developing two expensive, dangerous, time-consuming and problematic methods, you and your fellow villagers decide to consider two other approaches.
You all could stay indoors, distancing yourselves from the cicadas, during the week every year that the One-Year Venomous Cicada X emerges.
But during that time your businesses would suffer from your absences and some would go bankrupt. 
Or, you and your neighbors each could lay a sheet of permeable cloth on your respective back yards, just before emergence time.
Then, when the One-Year Venomous Cicada Xs emerge, they are caught under the cloth, and being unable to procreate, they die.
Although the cloth isn’t perfect — a few cicadas do manage to procreate — it does allow you to live your lives without closing your businesses or waiting for the poison and the butterfly nets to be developed and work, if ever.
And, the cloths might actually do the job without the need for the poison or butterfly nets ever to work.
So your village votes to mandate that every year, just prior to emergence, everyone must lay a cloth on their yards, for one week.
Unfortunately, the village manager himself refuses to lay a cloth on his yard because he says it “looks bad.”
And his selfish followers, taking their cue from their clueless leader, and claiming “Constitutional freedom” also refuse to lay cloths.
So although the vast majority of the villagers do lay cloths, which kill a great number of the One-Year Venomous Cicada X, those few who don’t ruin it for the rest.
And while waiting for an approved poison and butterfly nets to work, many people continue to lose their jobs and businesses, and die from the One-Year Venomous Cicada X bites.
The End
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Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.
The most important problems in economics involve:
- Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
- Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics. Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
Ten Steps To Prosperity:
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
3. Social Security for all or a reverse income tax
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
5. Salary for attending school
6. Eliminate federal taxes on business
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.
8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
9. Federal ownership of all banks
10. I
Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%
The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 