By Andrew K. Boyle

This is a time of want. It may be ridiculous to say in a country where even the homeless people eat well, but the greatest driver of our politics and our personal lives is want. The power of this force was recently confirmed in the federal government shutdown.

The shutdown itself was something of an enigma; absent the legal authority to continue spending, the United States Federal government shutdown something in the neighborhood of 13 percent of all spending. Non-essential personnel were told to not report to work, which the Huffington Post reported drove an increase in viewership of Netflix skyward in the greater DC area. Programs were hand picked to shutdown in an attempt to rein federal spending under the 87% limit.

The shutdown itself was severed from the life of all Americans. It was the size and scope of the money involved which made it entirely unfathomable; a budget of 3.67 trillion bucks was drastically slashed with projected spending of about 3.12 trillion. Until recent times trillion was a unit of measurement which pertained exclusively to astrophysics, for the simple reason no other discipline had any use for it. For some time now, our government, being entirely serious, has insisted that the accounting community was perfectly capable of using trillion when discussing the business of the people. For this most carnal reason, the shutdown was inaccessible both intellectually and emotionally to all people experiencing it.

With this constraint of participation, the shutdown became about want. It was not a want of substance, no food or basic needs were denied the people, instead the government sought to deprive our inalienable rights -- specifically our liberty. The shutdown saw Park Rangers become brown-shirted enforcers of executive orders. Open air monuments, sidewalks and grassy patches of our nation's capital were barricaded and patrolled. Here in Colorado, not far from my home, Rocky Mountain National Park was closed to visitors. Absent federal dollars and personnel, I was told, it was impossible for me to hike through the forest. Coincidentally, adjacent to the national park is a county controlled open-space park, same forest, different jurisdiction. I could hike thought the same forest as the elk, observing them passing freely between the two jurisdiction, but unlike the noble beasts I was confined by a metal fence and the promise of being charged with a crime should I continue to follow the ridge line over the boundaries my representatives had established.

The government shutdown did nothing to deny my livelihood, but it did, with laser-like intention, attack my inherited sense of liberty, creating want in a land of plenty. It denied citizens access to our national treasures, for politics. It created an artificial want in hopes of being able to become the synthetic supplier of even our inalienable rights.

A similar paradigm is being formed today in the Sooner State. Relegated to the back pages by shutdownpocalypse, in papers including the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider, were stories focusing upon Governor Mary Fallin and the state rainy-day fund in Oklahoma. In the starkest contrast to the shutdown, columnist marveled at the Governors' ability to turn a roughly 100 million dollar yearly deficit into a half billion dollar reserve. When interviewed for these articles the Governor simply said that she had made tough decisions and managed to cut the State's yearly budget by about ten percent, importantly not spending the surplus thusly created. She also chastised the federal government for not being able to do what the States had to do.

This is a great story, in a time of want and profligacy nationally, one state had, during the great and seemingly perpetual recession, managed to curb spending and stock away money for future needs. The reason it is important is that the same story which bounced the Oklahoma surplus off the front page is also the story that has created a want which will seek to eat this plenty.

In normal times, a surplus in one state would be a good thing. In times of want, both authentic and synthetic, a surplus will be seen as a source of supplying for unexpected needs. But if one government shutting down can impose massive heartache across the land, another government with excess will always be seen and attacked as hoarders of wealth. Oklahoma will become the bourgeoisie to the American Proletariat. The Occupy Wall Street type movements, obsessed with eating the rich, will in the future, turn their appetites towards rich states.

The fallacy of this highly perverted world view needs no defense or recounting for the enlightened readers of this paper. But in an America of want, it is not enough to rehash the error of ways; you must match the rebellious nature of the left with a counter rebellion.

The most radical thing which Oklahoma could do with its surplus is to stop its growth. The Governor should set a target goal for the rainy day fund to be considered fully funded. At that point, with cash on hand, a campaign of aggressively returning the money directly to the people should be commenced. It doesn't matter if it's in the form of a rebate or tax cuts, show the nation what it looks like for the people to keep the fruits of their labor because the government ceases demanding more from them. Don't just do it, Facebook and Tweet it.

Other acts of rebellion should be encouraged atop the wave of returning money to the people. Oklahoma's refusal to set up ObamaCare health exchanges is a good start, but why not set up a truly free health care market across the state? Encourage cash prices for medical procedures, allow insurance companies to experiment without any mandates for coverage levels or guaranteed benefits. There are a good number of insurers who currently can not operate in the states they have long existed; they should be welcomed into the plains of Oklahoma.

The grand rebellion would be energy. Oklahoma should grant permits for oil and natural gas in defiance and with complete disregard and apathy towards all federal restrictions. Drive jobs and create enormous wealth in defiance of the total transformation dragging down both in the rest of the nation.

All of these, and the vast potential rebellions not here mentioned, are aggressive and laced with the promise of creating wealth. They, by their very nature, are something fundamentally different than a rainy day fund. While it is prudent and virtuous to save for a rainy day, just as it is wise to utilize gold or other physical assets to hedge against inflation, these are examples of wealth being removed from the entrepreneurial spaces of life. A stock pile of gold, in addition to providing safety, also denies the equivocal opportunity for someone to create wealth entirely alien to the present economy. Furthermore, the retarding of wealth creation is much more harmful to the souls of those denied the opportunity to make real that which the creator of the universe hard-wired their mind for. A Thomas Edison who didn't invent the light bulb obviously makes mankind darker, but what then of Nikola Tesla? What wealth does not get created if Tesla doesn't have the chance to take Edison's light bulb and illuminate New York City?

The key to capitalism, unknown to our generation, is not the right to keep your money -- it is the responsibility to sacrifice what you have to make a fundamental transformation in the living conditions of others. The driving force of Oklahoma's rainy day fund is security, but if this security is risked in a way which allows the entrepreneurial energies of her people to be unleashed; unexpected, wild new wealth will spring out of the red clay. May Oklahoma's sunset plains and the Fire of Genius burning among her people light the way for a nation living in the shadow of wealth.