If enough people have a demand for a particular product, whether it is prostitution, gambling, drugs and alcohol, or an anonymous, instantaneous and low-cost money transfer, it will be supplied.

The big issue at the moment is money transfer. Governments want to know both the source of everyone's money and how it is spent in order to collect more taxes, regulate behavior, reduce certain types of criminality and increase political control.

The IRS and other government agencies claim that all of the financial information they collect is strictly confidential -- which is a laughable claim in an age when Lois Lerner, Edward Snowden and all of those Chinese and Russian hackers flout the rules.

As the government has become more and more intrusive in the financial affairs of individuals and businesses, the incentives for those who can develop ways to either legally or illegally get around the increasingly costly and abusive regulations has grown.

This dynamic promises to create alternative private currencies that will make government currencies obsolete.

You're probably reading this on your computer, iPad, or smartphone. When we drive somewhere new we get precise directions with real-time traffic information via GPS. We carry music, movies, and truckloads of files in a gizmo no bigger than our thumb.

We store thousands of books and read them off of small pads, in an instant. We find any bit of information we desire to know through the Internet. And we can talk by phone to almost anyone from almost anywhere - with live video included if we like.

These technological miracles are part of our everyday lives; and such revolutionary inventions as the television, telephone, air travel, microwave ovens, and even rocket ships are so... 20th Century. They're like background noise to us now.

But we are aware of them, and when I mention these technological breakthroughs, most readers will recognize and appreciate them immediately.

Yet there's a much more revolutionary transformation that we enjoy today that most of us have no awareness of whatsoever... a revolution in our very humanity, a revolution that bodes well for our very existence.

The chances are you've never heard of this, in part because of another technological development: television news.

At least it was cordial.  But the 150 or so "movement conservatives" gathered at Paul Pressler's this weekend (1/13-14) were a fractured lot.  Maybe 10% were for Perry.  Almost all of them were against Romney.  Well, sort of.  Caveat below.

When the case was made that Perry was the only candidate who actually understood the Constitution and the power of the 10^th Amendment, the only one who was not a big government guy, the most successful governor in the country who has a rock solid record of job creation and conservative judicial appointments - they just didn't care.  I want that to sink in. 

These conservative leaders really do not care about jobs, people hurting like the Great Depression, America's economy falling into an abyss.  All they care about is "the family as the fabric of society," and other Rick Santorum social conservative platitudes.  So a majority of them voted for Santorum. 

They could care less that Santorum would not do anything to reduce metastasizing government, much less castrate it (like Perry would), or has not the slightest trace of executive experience of any kind, government or private.

When asked one-on-one why they were going for Santorum when they knew he had no money, no organization, and stood not a ghost of a chance to win the nomination, the truth came out: 

Assume your government job is to write regulations to require bicycle manufacturers to make safer bicycles. You know two things.

The first is that if you say bicycles are being made about as safely as they can be, then you will no longer be needed; hence, no job. Second, you know there were no U.S. commercial airline fatalities in the U.S. in 2010 (an amazing and true fact) while about 1,000 people died in bicycle accidents in 2010.

Thus, as long as you argue that riding a bicycle should be made as safe as flying in an airplane and that tougher regulations on bicycle manufacturers could make bike-riding safer, you can keep your job.

President Obama jumped on the regulatory-reform bandwagon last week after two years of greatly expanding costly regulations and reducing personal liberty, particularly on health care and financial services.

I confidently predict his new initiative will be a failure. History has shown that the vested interest of the regulators in job preservation and expansion almost always swamps efforts at regulatory reform.

With the wind chill, it was around 50‑60 degrees below zero. I sat on my heels in the back of the Twin‑Otter and looked out the open door of the plane to the sea of white below. We were 8,000 feet above the ice and making our jump run. Some tiny black specks appeared on the ice in the distance. "Left five degrees!" I called out through my face mask, and Rocky nudged the Otter toward the specks.

"All right, man, how do you feel?' I asked myself. "Are you nervous?" I took a deep breath and relaxed, just letting whatever emotions were there come up. I had expected the reply to be, " What, are you kidding?!? I'm terrified!!" But no, to my surprise, I felt incredibly calm and peaceful.

Memories of the past four years raced through me like a flash flood. All the ecstasy and magic ‑‑ then all the pain and grief and mourning. A year ago, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to live or not. Learning how to sky‑dive when you don't know if you want to live is a good way to find out.

[With a final chapter 34 and an Epilogue to go, The Jade Steps is nearing completion.  So it's worth re-emphasizing again that The Jade Steps is a true story.  Every principal event described actually happened, every named person really lived and had that name.  It all happened almost 500 years ago, but it still remains the cause of the civil war within Mexico's soul.  Mexico will never rise out of the Third World until this spiritual wound is healed.  That is the purpose of this book.]
 
The Jade Steps
Chapter Thirty-Three:  Reaping The Whirlwind
 
"Doña Marina! Doña Marina!"  Someone was screaming at her, shaking her violently.  It was Doña Luisa.  Dazed from fainting, Malinali stared at the woman in confusion.  "You must not stay here! The Aztecs are attacking!"  She heard the words with no understanding.  She felt herself being pulled roughly to her feet and pushed into a run.  They reached a set of trees.  She looked around in bewilderment.  There was this incredible noise, but it seemed so far away.

She looked in the direction of the noise and saw the Tacuba causeway.  It was filled with screaming Aztec warriors swinging their macuahuitl obsidian-edged wooden swords and racing towards Pedro de Alvarado and his men.  Somehow the sight of it seemed as distant as the noise.  Suddenly, like the wave of a storm, the full sight and the sound of the battle crashed upon her.  She heard claps of thunder, but the sky was clear.  Then she saw the brigantines in the lake on either side of the causeway, firing their canons into the Aztec mass.  She recognized the captain of one of the ships, Juan Jaramillo, the officer who had protected her during La Noche Triste.

She saw Pedro de Alvarado lead his horsemen into a charge straight into the Aztecs, as the musketmen and crossbowmen formed positions on the edges of the causeway to fire into them.  So many Aztec warriors had filled the causeway in their fury and rage to get at the Spaniards that they couldn't move.  They just became targets for the cannons and muskets and arrows and the hooves of war horses.  They died in the hundreds, and still more hundreds, until they gave up the assault, retreating back into the city shouting insults and taunts that they had killed...

Then the terrible sight that had caused her to faint appeared before her eyes, the bloody head of Cortez bouncing and rolling in the dust, and she screamed in horror.  Doña Luisa embraced her and she clung to the Tlaxcalan princess, sobbing uncontrollably for "My Captain, my Captain..."  She finally let go, and, whispering her thanks, she walked alone along the shoreline to stare vacantly out upon the waters of Lake Texcoco.