MINECRAFT GOVERNANCE

Understanding the seductive pull of Corporate Welfare spending

For the millionth time, I ask myself if things are actually getting nuttier, or am I just seeing it more clearly now.

Once I swallowed the ‘’Everything is a scam” pill, it is no longer possible to read a piece of news about a spending project without immediately knowing that someone is getting over on us. Be it data centers, convention centers, indoor luxury Mega Rec centers or (“P” word). I promised myself I would not mention the 9/23 vote, so that I cannot be accused of suffering from “(“P” word) DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”.

I may be deranged, Beth, but I ain’t crazy. We can’t ALL be crazy.

I/we are collectively working our way through the stages of grief that follow traumatic events. Psychologist Jordan Peterson has talked about this process. It happens to us all at some point in our lives - a divorce, job loss, betrayal, death, or some other catastrophe - which unbounds the structure of the reality of our fragile lives. Such an event leaves one faced with the horrible truth that what we thought we knew doesn’t really exist. This is a good time to be a Christian who understands that God is sovereign, and we are to place our trust completely in Him alone.

But as one who is invested in the political world in South Dakota, I must make certain adjustments to my worldview, taking stock of my motivations and desires, moving forward. What has been crystallizing in me is the understanding that the primary threat to our way of life, liberty and ability to control our financial security comes from our electeds spending our money.

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Government growth and overreach.

This must be our point of attack, our combined focus. To do this, we must be able to understand how and why nominally “conservative” electeds get seduced into these massive spending projects. My field trip to the Sioux Falls City Council meeting was very instructive in this regard. Everyone involved in the $50 million indoor Mega Rec center at Frank Olson park was infected with what I have dubbed “MINECRAFT GOVERNANCE”.

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WHAT IS MINECRAFT?

Minecraft, developed by some Swedish dude in 2009, has been played by over 1 billion people & is the #1 selling video game of all time. If you’re not familiar, it’s a simple game of single players foraging around a map for raw materials, collecting them for the purpose of building their own custom structures. Other stuff too, but mostly constructing things in a blocky open world environment.

The good news is that young folks are interested in construction, sort of. The bad news is that it’s all fake.

Which is why this game reminds me of the mindset that overcomes even the most frugal conservatives as they transition from idealistic candidate to powerful law passer, ostensibly representing us the People in their respective capacities.

This foray into the forensic study of figuring out exactly how these things unfold has dominated my thinking these past few months, in the aftermath of “The Thing We Need to MOVE ON from”. [I will NOT say the “P” word!]. Like most other friends I’ve talked to, I just want to try to understand how this happened, and figure out what we can do to prevent future fiascos. To do this, we must come to grips with the seductive power of Spending that works its dark magic in literally every branch of our government.

We must know our enemy, which isn’t just a person, group, political party, PAC, lobbyist or business entity. The Enemy is the thread that runs through all of these, corrupting the power of the purse to favor the Donor Class.

I can attest that building buildings with your own money is exciting and scary, because an enormous bank loan is a very heavy weight to carry. Building Big Beautiful buildings with Other People’s Money is just exciting. No worries about mortgages, insurance, maintenance or resale values for our friends in government. For them it is equivalent to playing Minecraft. The Minecraft video game may be fake, but the “Minecraft Governance” game is all to real, and the negative effects are borne by the taxpaying middle class, primarily.

So now that we have this understanding of how our fellow citizens get swept away in the swift-moving current of “Minecraft Governance”, what are we to do with it?

How can we use it to fight the system?

What is the purpose of fighting it?

Do a sizable percentage of my fellow SD citizens agree with me that this is even a problem?

Can we win?

If so, what does winning look like?

Honestly, I do think most of our fellow citizens agree that Corporate Welfare is corrupt. But no one inside the government machine ever calls it that for what it is. After all, I myself was guilty of buying the propaganda that “all growth is good growth” for decades, until I woke up to the truth that the vast majority of all “Economic Development” schemes only end up benefiting the few businesses who are directly connected. I recently posted on FB lamenting the fact that Amazon was given incentives to build their giant warehouse in Sioux Falls a few years ago, using our very own tax dollars, even though they are the most valuable company in the world. Some rando commented “but don’t they employ 2,000 people?”. Our first instinct, I think, is to nod our heads and think “yeah, jobs good”. Except that Sioux Falls has been chugging along at full employment for decades, and actually doesn’t need anyone in government juicing the system to seduce companies to come here and set up shop. In fact, what has to happen to fill those jobs (which are soon to replaced by robots) is import low wage job seekers from outside of our community, which degrades the overall health of the metroplex, in my opinion.

To be clear, I have no issue with Americans moving here for a better life, to contribute to our society without depending on social services to survive. This is what my wife & I did 32 years ago, when we chose Sioux Falls as our forever home to start our business and raise our family. Not once did we ever think to approach the government for “help” in starting our business. And after 10 years of obsessively serving our customers 7 days a week, improving and strengthening our operation, we secured a bank loan to purchase a chunk of land and build our own commercial building. With no TIFFs, discounted land or incentives from the government. Now if my company was 20 times larger, I’m sure I could have greased the skids to get some Corporate Welfare to “help” me with financing from the City of Sioux Falls and it’s Sioux Falls Development Foundation gangster cousin. But, like thousands of other small businesses in SD, we go it alone, to sink or swim. This is how it should be for ALL businesses, no matter the size.

If you can’t expand without government handouts, too bad so sad.

Here are a couple headlines from yesterday which should bring us hope. Citizen groups are fighting back against Corporate Welfare, and this should inspire us to join them.

Hats off to this fine group of concerned citizens who is doing something about it - (read article here) NO FREE RIDES

I don’t know yet what this movement will look like, but I am open to any and all suggestions. If you think this is a worthwhile endeavor, please leave a comment, or reach out to me.