Collectivism is a very difficult animal to tame. Throughout the centuries government has relied upon slavery and taxation, all are impositions upon personal wealth and liberty. This is a rather axiomatic idea about how government derives power, there is of course the other element violence which is of course the final arbiter to persuade people to do as they are directed. Totalitarian powers are simply slave states where labor theory of value matters little and where the value is merely appropriated by those in power. This is the irony of the communist state, it appears to sell the idea of the dignity of labor to the workers and then promptly enslave them once power is in the hands of the collectivists, Bolsheviks, Nazis or any other variety of totalitarian.
Inflation is pernicious, it is derived from governments creating money out of nothing, this in effect results in the face value staying the same but the actual purchasing power declining. This function is entirely in the hands of government so long as they maintain a monopoly of money creation. The reason the process is pernicious is that poor people have little resources and any reduction in value of their money as a proportion is so much the more so for them. For rich people it may not affect them personally but it does affect how they may invest in say their businesses, so much so, that inflation reduces the ability to provide jobs. Once again, it is poor people who lose out to inflation as job creators will tend to create less jobs or were still go into bankruptcy or receivership. None of this is rocket science, yet so few people seem to grasp any of this. Keynesians seem to assume priming the pump and excessively spending money will get the economy going. Inflation is the outcome of these ridiculous policies as they do not know when to stop priming the pump just continuing absurd levels of unjustifiable expenditure. So long as they control money production they can inflate to their hearts content, and they do. The Federal Reserve is a supposed banking system but appears to be a partner in crime with respect to quantitative easing and any other euphemism for stealing value from the future.
While inflation is a stealth tax there is of course taxation in general which has other pernicious characteristics. Increasing taxes for the rich very soon loses jobs for the poor in much the same manner as inflation does. Corporate taxes are frankly absurd, as no corporation can afford to pay excessive taxes without recoupment. Corporate taxes will in general be defrayed out of the pockets of shareholders by less dividends, smaller pay packets for employees, and in the final analysis less jobs. There is of course the worst outcome, bankruptcy which is the endpoint of long periods of insolvency.
The debt crisis is largely synthetic, it is not as if the government was not aware at some point it would have to borrow by way of increasing the debt limit. This is the orthodoxy of both parties for the longest time. The only difference is that the current Democratic Party has taken a flight of fancy to absurd levels of public expenditure on credit. To date the donkey party does not seem to bother with the sheer scale of their borrowing activities. But what does raising the debt limit mean? The answer is simple… more debt! This does not seem to worry Democrats at all, one suspects the collectivists will be happy if the economy collapses as they can then step in give orders in an attempt to create a fantasy socialist society. The fact that this is never been possible entirely eludes them, they assume, wrongly, that a socialist society will be fairer simply because they believe in equality. They also assume, wrongly, that economies can be commanded and that economic calculation at all levels of the economy is possible. The Austrian economists blew this myth out of the water well over 100 years ago.
What is apparently happening is that nothing has changed, we march onwards though perhaps a little slower, towards financial Armageddon. Are you getting it? All threats about the debt limit are simply an exercise in scare tactics. It will be a simple political decision not to pay any of the entitlements. This will be a choice that could have a political outcome of a very severe nature should the choice be unacceptable to voters. Collectivists play these games to brand their opponents with opprobrium while all this may be Machiavellian though it is not illogical if you understand socialist revolutionary politics. The Saul Alinskey frame of mind has no problem with community action rather than the free market as a tool for running a nation. Collapsing the economy would permit community action or other naked political force as a means of organizing a “community”. The lexicon may change words used but not the processes of expropriation, slavery, inflation and other impositions on the common man.
No amount of history ever seems to penetrate the collectivist mind. Wealth is not understood nor is the process by which it is created. This is the nub of the problem, so long as collectivists merely wish to confiscate wealth for themselves and their political friends the outcome is never Rosy. Counter revolution is inevitable it is only a matter of when not if. Communist nations are always politically metastable no one trusts anyone and the informant is King until he himself was denounced. This is a dark and dreary way to run a society but that is the inevitable outcome of socialism. Socialists have managed to kill hundreds of millions of human beings with very little to show for it all.
One way to challenge the collectivists is to promulgate the idea of private money not mere currency. Frederick von Hayek is perhaps one of the few authors in modern times to open the door on this concept. As a full professor at the LSE he wrote a number of books per perhaps one of the most interesting ideas was his small IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) pamphlet on private money. Why would private money matter in a discussion of collectivism? The answer is simple, take money out of government monopoly control and debt ceilings, inflation, crazy public spending would all be virtually impossible as no one would ever lend to spenders who have no intention to repay the money they borrow.
It would be most interesting, to the float the idea of money created outside the government control framework and of course the Federal Reserve. It would not be unsurprising if such an idea engendered a very strong and intense negative response from the spending classes. They will argue about all the benefits they would be offering at others’ expense. Burglars and social burglars should never be given the time of day, be they criminals or the governing class dipping its hand into the value of others’ lives.
There are private currencies in existence, bitcoin of bitcoin.com is an example, though one might not claim that it is a particular good one but it exists. There would be every opportunity to develop more effective methods backed by precious metals and other commodities. The legal tender laws would do well to be amended to permit for value currency trading of alternative monetary vehicles. Offering alternative media of exchange in advance of a financial Armageddon would obviate the need for cigarettes and other poor quality exchange media. Advancing the idea of carefully considered alternative value-based money would have a very salutary effect upon those bent upon devaluing the dollar. They would be caught red-handed on something like Morton’s Fork with a simple choice of stopping what they doing or lumping the fact that they would have to deal with real money dealers who would demand value for money and, more to the point, expect a rate of interest without a notional deduction for inflation. Can any of this happen? You betcha! So it is perfectly possible to give collectivists and intellectuals a headache about excessive spending when you can reasonably argue that their activities are irresponsible. There are enough far leftists in the Democrat party to suspect that many of them do not care if the whole economy collapses Zimbabwe style. Fielding an argument about alternative money, not just mere fiat currency, would make them think very carefully about attempting to bring about a financial Armageddon. No one in history has yet managed to float a private monetary counterattack to prevent criminal big spenders from breaking down the fabric of a civilized society. So why not now?
Collectivism is a very difficult animal to tame. Throughout the centuries government has relied upon slavery and taxation, all are impositions upon personal wealth and liberty. This is a rather axiomatic idea about how government derives power, there is of course the other element violence which is of course the final arbiter to persuade people to do as they are directed. Totalitarian powers are simply slave states where labor theory of value matters little and where the value is merely appropriated by those in power. This is the irony of the communist state, it appears to sell the idea of the dignity of labor to the workers and then promptly enslave them once power is in the hands of the collectivists, Bolsheviks, Nazis or any other variety of totalitarian.
Inflation is pernicious, it is derived from governments creating money out of nothing, this in effect results in the face value staying the same but the actual purchasing power declining. This function is entirely in the hands of government so long as they maintain a monopoly of money creation. The reason the process is pernicious is that poor people have little resources and any reduction in value of their money as a proportion is so much the more so for them. For rich people it may not affect them personally but it does affect how they may invest in say their businesses, so much so, that inflation reduces the ability to provide jobs. Once again, it is poor people who lose out to inflation as job creators will tend to create less jobs or were still go into bankruptcy or receivership. None of this is rocket science, yet so few people seem to grasp any of this. Keynesians seem to assume priming the pump and excessively spending money will get the economy going. Inflation is the outcome of these ridiculous policies as they do not know when to stop priming the pump just continuing absurd levels of unjustifiable expenditure. So long as they control money production they can inflate to their hearts content, and they do. The Federal Reserve is a supposed banking system but appears to be a partner in crime with respect to quantitative easing and any other euphemism for stealing value from the future.
While inflation is a stealth tax there is of course taxation in general which has other pernicious characteristics. Increasing taxes for the rich very soon loses jobs for the poor in much the same manner as inflation does. Corporate taxes are frankly absurd, as no corporation can afford to pay excessive taxes without recoupment. Corporate taxes will in general be defrayed out of the pockets of shareholders by less dividends, smaller pay packets for employees, and in the final analysis less jobs. There is of course the worst outcome, bankruptcy which is the endpoint of long periods of insolvency.
The debt crisis is largely synthetic, it is not as if the government was not aware at some point it would have to borrow by way of increasing the debt limit. This is the orthodoxy of both parties for the longest time. The only difference is that the current Democratic Party has taken a flight of fancy to absurd levels of public expenditure on credit. To date the donkey party does not seem to bother with the sheer scale of their borrowing activities. But what does raising the debt limit mean? The answer is simple… more debt! This does not seem to worry Democrats at all, one suspects the collectivists will be happy if the economy collapses as they can then step in give orders in an attempt to create a fantasy socialist society. The fact that this is never been possible entirely eludes them, they assume, wrongly, that a socialist society will be fairer simply because they believe in equality. They also assume, wrongly, that economies can be commanded and that economic calculation at all levels of the economy is possible. The Austrian economists blew this myth out of the water well over 100 years ago.
What is apparently happening is that nothing has changed, we march onwards though perhaps a little slower, towards financial Armageddon. Are you getting it? All threats about the debt limit are simply an exercise in scare tactics. It will be a simple political decision not to pay any of the entitlements. This will be a choice that could have a political outcome of a very severe nature should the choice be unacceptable to voters. Collectivists play these games to brand their opponents with opprobrium while all this may be Machiavellian though it is not illogical if you understand socialist revolutionary politics. The Saul Alinskey frame of mind has no problem with community action rather than the free market as a tool for running a nation. Collapsing the economy would permit community action or other naked political force as a means of organizing a “community”. The lexicon may change words used but not the processes of expropriation, slavery, inflation and other impositions on the common man.
No amount of history ever seems to penetrate the collectivist mind. Wealth is not understood nor is the process by which it is created. This is the nub of the problem, so long as collectivists merely wish to confiscate wealth for themselves and their political friends the outcome is never Rosy. Counter revolution is inevitable it is only a matter of when not if. Communist nations are always politically metastable no one trusts anyone and the informant is King until he himself was denounced. This is a dark and dreary way to run a society but that is the inevitable outcome of socialism. Socialists have managed to kill hundreds of millions of human beings with very little to show for it all.
One way to challenge the collectivists is to promulgate the idea of private money not mere currency. Frederick von Hayek is perhaps one of the few authors in modern times to open the door on this concept. As a full professor at the LSE he wrote a number of books per perhaps one of the most interesting ideas was his small IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) pamphlet on private money. Why would private money matter in a discussion of collectivism? The answer is simple, take money out of government monopoly control and debt ceilings, inflation, crazy public spending would all be virtually impossible as no one would ever lend to spenders who have no intention to repay the money they borrow.
It would be most interesting, to the float the idea of money created outside the government control framework and of course the Federal Reserve. It would not be unsurprising if such an idea engendered a very strong and intense negative response from the spending classes. They will argue about all the benefits they would be offering at others’ expense. Burglars and social burglars should never be given the time of day, be they criminals or the governing class dipping its hand into the value of others’ lives.
There are private currencies in existence, bitcoin of bitcoin.com is an example, though one might not claim that it is a particular good one but it exists. There would be every opportunity to develop more effective methods backed by precious metals and other commodities. The legal tender laws would do well to be amended to permit for value currency trading of alternative monetary vehicles. Offering alternative media of exchange in advance of a financial Armageddon would obviate the need for cigarettes and other poor quality exchange media. Advancing the idea of carefully considered alternative value-based money would have a very salutary effect upon those bent upon devaluing the dollar. They would be caught red-handed on something like Morton’s Fork with a simple choice of stopping what they doing or lumping the fact that they would have to deal with real money dealers who would demand value for money and, more to the point, expect a rate of interest without a notional deduction for inflation. Can any of this happen? You betcha! So it is perfectly possible to give collectivists and intellectuals a headache about excessive spending when you can reasonably argue that their activities are irresponsible. There are enough far leftists in the Democrat party to suspect that many of them do not care if the whole economy collapses Zimbabwe style. Fielding an argument about alternative money, not just mere fiat currency, would make them think very carefully about attempting to bring about a financial Armageddon. No one in history has yet managed to float a private monetary counterattack to prevent criminal big spenders from breaking down the fabric of a civilized society. So why not now?