III. ECONOMICS AND POWER

"Call out the border guard.
The castle is crumbling.
The king is in the counting house.
Laughing and stumbling." 
 ~ The Electric Prunes ~

1. Most of society's economic upheavals come from fiat currency used for deficit spending. The distortions thus produced, in turn, are used to seemingly justify all kinds of otherwise unnecessary remedies such as taxation, regulation of business, and protectionism in foreign trade. All these consequences are really just products of individual human dishonesty. It is the simple unwillingness to earn what one spends which leads to unstable war-based welfare economies. In a Libertarian society the behavior proceeding from such dishonesty is neither tolerated, nor is it institutionalized.

2. International banking interests go with the tides of history by quickly adapting to inevitabilities. Long ago they set up tax exempt foundations so that they could retain control over vast fortunes. They then lobbied to hasten the impending income tax and anti-trust legislation which would have otherwise hurt them. These foundations have, in turn, endowed organizations which promote Socialist teachings in the schools and churches. This has led to ever increasing government victimization of business through regulation and taxes, with proportionately diminishing competition for the old monopolies (14). The liberty loving individual, or any one making the slightest pretense of being a good citizen, will seek further specific knowledge of what these people have done since those days.

3. Elected officials have little direct control of economic cycles unless they have some direct control over their country's central bank. Campaigning politicians simply ask their economic advisers what will happen because of the current economic cycle during the next term of office. They then promise to deliver the upcoming good part and forecast the upcoming bad part, blaming this in advance, on the unsound policies of their predecessors.

4. The notion of divided power in two party systems is largely a circus to make the people think that they have some say in what goes on. The power all merges at the top. Inexperienced idealistic young politicians are often little beyond the people in their awareness of all this, but eventually they learn.

5. Eligibility for most political nomination today is simply to advocate spending as much money as possible, with as little perceivable long term positive result as possible. In this way the financial overmasters are best served. The politician doesn't necessarily have to understand the long term effect of what he is doing. The people who elect him certainly don't. Many of these politicians are just well meaning dupes, but some are not. It takes a good deal of attention to current events from arcane sources to know which is which. Intuition is not enough in this area.

6. Most of society's other "non-economic" or so called "moral" problems, in turn, come from the hopelessness engendered by war-based welfare economies. Much of what is seen as moral decline in society is simply the natural reaction of borderline individuals to an immoral and unnatural system. There are many who will live lives of shallow respectability if they simply have some reasonable expectation that their work will result in at least a minimal degree of prosperity for themselves, and that they are basically safe in their homes. Take even this away and have them "living beneath the volcano" always awaiting "the mushroom cloud" and they will resort to shortcuts reflecting their unrelenting hopelessness - virtual reality, drugs, perversion, theft, arbitrary violence, and child abuse. Remember that on the outside people will usually try to appear tough, satisfied, and content. This doesn't mean that they are (15).

7. The economic cycle caused by fiat monetary policy pulls down almost everybody in society, sometimes even to a level of apparent non self-sustainability. Most of societies "homeless" individuals would have homes and would get by, at least marginally, in a stable commodity backed economy. What possible incentive does a person who has lost everything have to start over when he has every expectation that he will only lose it all over again? One is not a "bleeding heart" to want these people happy, productive, and out from under foot in the subway stations.

8. Mathematical models for how individual countries can be returned to precious metal backed currencies have been computed and are perfectly workable. Models of this sort are falsely "discredited" by committees made up largely of central bank board members appointed by government associates to study the "feasibility" of returning to a precious metal standard. The very least that would happen to these bank board members if there were such a return to sanity is that they would lose their jobs. You don't appoint a committee of your exploiters to study the feasibility of whether or not they should continue to exploit you. For the people to condone this nonsense is the equivalent logic of using weasels to guard a hen house.

9. All that is happening now has happened before. The Romans allowed themselves to be convinced that they had to conquer the world and, of course, the Roman coinage had to be diluted with base metals to appease the mob with "benefits." This has the same effect as fiat currency. The fall of Rome was primarily an economic one no matter how collectivist "historians" fictionalize to the contrary. Medieval China is another good example.

10. Collectivist wealth redistribution goes under three basic names. Socialism, Communism, and the Welfare State are all based upon the "Theory of Surplus Value" of Karl Marx. This is the notion that all people work equally as hard and that there is really no way to judge who produces more in the workplace. This supposedly gives government the right to throw all the money into one big pot and then reallocate it on the basis of "need." Eventually when people finally accept this militant philanthropy in their hearts, the state  is supposed to "wither away." In actuality, the state which confiscates wealth will inevitably only devour the people.

11. There is absolutely no excuse for collectivist wealth redistribution today. The great Austrian Free Market economists, especially Ludvig Von Mises, totally refuted everything claimed by Karl Marx by the year 1920. There is always a long time lag between the attainment of knowledge and the implementation in society. The avant guard in economics in the universities of the 1930s was the Keynesian-Marxist nonsense under which we now suffer. The current avant guard is the Austrian Free Market viewpoint. This, happily, is one of the best single hopes for the future of life on this planet.

12. Never allow yourself to be fooled by the distraction afforded through the phony elaboration of complex definitions. Communism, Socialism, and Welfare State may be different in some externals, but from an economic standpoint, are almost identical. All are unworkable for the same reasons. They all reward incompetence and pull down excellence. The method of obtaining popular consent may be different, but the non-workability of these systems stems from the same root causes and to distinguish unduly between them is mere hairsplitting among the intellectually obtuse.

16. The conditions normally prevailing in a Libertarian society are a stable currency with no business cycle, a continuous slow uneventful prosperity, full employment, and peace. Try to imagine what a truly splendid change this would make as a backdrop against which to live our lives.

17. The potential for new technology is infinite, and provides new ways of generating wealth. The potential for wealth is also completely unlimited. We don't need government to "stimulate" anything. Unimpeded industriousness, with a little education about birth control, will result in more wealth than humanity can ever spend.

18. The actual amount of money necessary to run a Libertarian society is only a minuscule fraction of what it takes to run a banker manipulated economy, and can be paid for entirely by user fees and lotteries. There need be absolutely no taxation whatever. The slow rise of deficit spending by governments has obscured these facts. There are few still living today who remember that in the past there were scarcely any taxes at all. They were not needed even during the Nineteenth Century, the greatest period of industrial expansion and road building in all of human history, and they are needed even less now.

19. The withdrawal of social programs possible in a Libertarian society would not lead to "starving children" as Socialists and Establishment propagandists have alleged. Entitlements can be phased out over a suitable period of time without hurting anyone. There will be no hunger in a Libertarian society. Just riding ourselves of fiat monetary policy alone will reduce unemployment to one percent. There can be an emergency fund for those who are in desperation because of local catastrophe, including those with a history of productivity who have, through no fault of their own, incurred disability. This can be funded by special lotteries at the federal and state level.

20. Voting for the "lesser of two evils" decade after decade is still a vote for evil, and will not slowly bring society to good as naive individuals wishfully believe. This is because the absolute amount of evil of what both candidates represent increases with every election. This is a consequence of rising deficits, and is completely apart from any consideration of the "intentions" of the candidates individually. Giving a "lesser evil" vote without further specificity seems to give total mandate to a candidate's entire program and registers nothing but approval to his mind. This gives him no message or incentive to change anything. There is, however, presently a very clear and easy alternative to evil. Libertarians are on the ballots everywhere now, but will they always be? The choices later will not be so easy. Slaves, awaken! Stand on your feet and seize your destiny as free men and women! Utopia is at hand, if we have the simple courage to do what is clearly right for once in our lives, all at the same time.

21. As the totality of human knowledge increases, so does specialization. In such an age it becomes increasingly more important that people be able to trust each other. The surgeon should not have to master economics to keep the central banker from stealing the shirt off his back. The central banker should not have to study medicine in order to keep the surgeon from performing unnecessary operations for extra money.

22. Man's interference in the natural flow of human affairs because of collectivist government is exactly the same as man's interference in the ecosystem and produces the same types of difficulties. Human affairs have grown so complex that this fact is usually difficult to see and easy to hide. The chain reactions of cause and effect which produce distortions are so complicated and far reaching in a collectivist society that is usually impossible to conceive of them in advance or even to explain them when, in rare instances, they are understood (17). International banking families don't care about the details. These things only effect other people. All they want is to finance the increasing complexity. That is their only real political goal.

23. A criminal enterprise needn't necessarily be a monolithic conspiracy, constituting a conscious or malicious organized plotting against anybody, but can simply be a mutual tendency towards cooperation among individuals in conditions which favor their own personal interests at the expense of justice and individual liberty. A criminal enterprise on a grand scale is usually just a complex of mutually profitable, but manifestly unjust, interdependent relationships which develops spontaneously until it reaches an almost unfathomable complexity and cannot easily be detected against the larger backdrop of human affairs. Such will not usually be completely understood even by most of those who participate in it, even though most of the activities go on openly.

24. To the extent that any society is not completely free, it is a criminal enterprise, even if a consensus majority of the population are involved in perpetuating the oppression. The increasing criminal interaction between government and central bank interests may be thought of simply as that corruption normal among the very powerful. The increasing criminal interaction between crooked benefit-seeking voters and collectivist politicians may be thought of simply as the decline of civilization. Any government or individual official who cooperates with international financial interests to the detriment of his country has effectively been subverted. To call this what it really is of course, will usually elicit a pretentious but fashionable, knee-jerk reaction from the youthful intelligencia that one is being "paranoid." Other, even older pseudo-intellectuals may insult true patriotism in this same way. Anyone today who is not instinctively mistrustful of government must either be asleep or comatose.

25. Treason is usually thought of as selling military secrets to enemies during wartime. In a broader than usual sense, treason is any act where one knowingly subordinates individual liberty in his own country merely for personal gain. In every non-Libertarian society many trusted government officials are effectively guilty of treason in this broader sense. A person however, cannot be tried for an act which is not illegal at the time of the act. It is sometimes tempting of course, to consider "ex post facto" legislation, but such a precedent would then mean that nobody in the future would be safe from arbitrary judicial impulse. Besides, since the majority of these people are not really all that political from a standpoint of ideology, most could be retrained to lend their sometimes considerable abilities as functionaries under a Libertarian system. We would simply have to keep an eye on them.

26. If we are to have a truly workable society we must get rid of the idea that things will be fine if we can just put perfectly good men into positions of great coercive power over other people. A perfectly good man is a pretty rare duck. Political ambition is usually augmented by moral compromise. Power rewards evil far more quickly, easily, and tangibly than it rewards good. Power is the problem, not the solution. When we get rid of unnecessary coercive power by government, we won't have to depend on officials being perfectly good. Things will work out very nicely anyway with people being just exactly what they are.

27. World leaders sometimes possess a curious mixture of genuine idealism and personal lust for glory. We must try to reach them with the truth to show them that their greatness can most completely manifest itself to posterity through a unflinching heroic commitment to those Libertarian principles which would truly render them the saviors of the world.

28. In a Libertarian world there will be continuing prosperity, full employment, and peace. Individuals will be able to prosper to the full extent of their abilities. Government will give no unfair advantage to anyone for any reason. The sooner that greed for short term unfair advantage is overcome, the sooner lasting earned prosperity will be achieved everywhere. Desire for this can only be kindled through education about the total workability of Libertarian Capitalist principles and the fact that no other system can produce these results.