The Ultimate Minority

In order to have a clear understanding of rights, one must first understand the concept of property.  Questions of “right” can be easily sorted out when approached from the perspective of property.

Most envision a piece of land when thinking about property, but this is too narrow a definition.  Property begins with self ownership.  As an individual, you have full ownership of your own body.  You have the absolute right to determine what goes in to your body.  No one has the right to infringe on your property, in this case, to assault your body.  Your labor is your property.  What you produce with your hands, or with your mind, is your property.  When you go to work, you sell your labor to your employer, who in turn sells you money in exchange for your labor.  Everything you acquire through lawful exchange is your property, and you have the absolute right to determine the disposition of your property, whether you choose to sell it, give it away, or dispose of it.

Property ownership is transferred through mutually agreed upon exchange.  If I own a bicycle, I may agree to sell it to you or I may give it to you.  Once I have decided to do so, I have transferred the property and therefore the property rights to you.

Understanding rights from the perspective of property helps us clear the air of confusion when collectivists put forth their “but” arguments against individual rights.  For example, many have heard the argument that you have a right to free speech, “but” it has to be limited because it shouldn’t be a “right” to run into a theatre and yell “FIRE!”

Approached from the perspective of property rights, it is easy to see why yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theatre isn’t a “right” in the first place.  First, the theatre owner (as the property owner) has the absolute right to establish rules of conduct on his property.  By purchasing a ticket, you consent to his rules.  The act of yelling “FIRE” disrupts his business operations on his property, endangers his customer relationships and future revenues, and may subject him to liability if people are harmed.  The property rights of the individuals attending the show are similarly violated, as they exchanged their money for 110 minutes of entertainment, and cutting the show short deprives them of the property they rightfully purchased.

Speaking of individual rights, it should be noted that only individuals have rights.  There is no such thing as a “group’s” right.  Groups are abstract concepts, only individuals exist.  Every individual in a group has rights inherent in his humanity, but no additional rights are acquired by membership in a group.  The rights of a group are simply the rights of its individual members.

Election day, 2008:

I don’t think I’ve ever voted Democrat or Republican in a general election – maybe sometime in the past, I’m not sure, but for the most part I’ve always voted third party.

This time around, I made a different choice: I chose not to vote.

I chose not to vote for the lesser of two evils, because I would still be voting for evil.  I chose not to vote third party, because I do not believe this government can be “reformed” if we can just get the “right people” in office.  I chose not to vote to express something much more profound: I have withdrawn support for this government, and I will not legitimize it by participating in its grand show of validation.

History has shown that while government has had minor setbacks in its growth from time to time, the long term trend is that it will continue to grow.  Growth of government and individual Liberty are inversely proportional.  Each administration has left us less free than we were upon its taking of office.

The constitution has failed in Thomas Jefferson’s vision that it would bind the government down with chains.  This government resembles the constitution only in form, in that it has three branches and holds elections every few years.  The constitution is, at best, nothing more than a speed bump to be occasionally overcome by an ambitious ruling class.  When the constitution was the supreme law of the land, it could be said that we lived under Rule of Law.  Due to its failure, we live under rule of men.

This government has ruled the world money supply for decades with its worthless fiat money, and – as is always the case with the unlimited power to create money out of thin air – it has destroyed the value thereof, devastating the productive base of the nation and the middle class that it built.  The future value of all fiat monies, at some point in time, is zero.  The three decades since the final breakdown of the Bretton Woods arrangement have brought about deterioration at an exponential rate, manifest in the recent trillion dollar bailout and the multi-trillions yet to come.

This government cannot be reformed.  It draws evil to its ranks, and quickly converts the well-intentioned into evil with its black hole-like power center.  It is, after all, the most powerful government in the history of the world, running the most expansive empire in the history of the world.  As children, we were taught two things about empires:  They’re evil, and they are always doomed to failure.  This empire’s day is coming, whether it be five years or fifty years from now, I do not know.  But it will fail.  The only question is whether it will go out with a bang or with a poof.  I do not claim to know the outcome.

I do know that I have taken the first and most important step that all of us must take if this government is going to go out with a poof. We must reject its claim to rule over us.  We must declare our individual sovereignty.  We must strip it of its legitimacy, and then dismantle it – lest we (or succeeding generations) will be forced to shed blood in order to reclaim our natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

I, for one, do not wish to pass that burden to future generations.

And it won’t take any action on your part.  All you need to do is sit idly by while government grows – more government intervention and regulation of the “unfettered free market.”  More government intervention in foreign affairs, constant war, and ongoing occupation of 130 countries.  And most importantly, sit and watch as more power and control are handed over to the engine of government growth:  The Federal Reserve System.

An ever-expanding government needs money to run its wars, to subsidize and bail out its politically connected corporatists, and to pacify the masses with handouts.  It can only tax its subjects so much before they revolt, so it fires up the printing presses and creates new money out of thin air.

When government pumps new fiat money into the economy, it inflates the money supply.  This is the true definition of inflation.  When the money supply increases, the purchasing power of the dollar declines, as there are more dollars competing for the same amount of goods in the marketplace.  Prices for everything go up, which is now misleadingly called inflation (shifting the name to the effect rather than the cause) to mask the tampering going on behind the curtain.

As the dollar declines and the economy suffers, the government “takes action” to stimulate the economy – by inflating.  Government spending programs are launched and easy credit is pushed into the marketplace to pump up consumerism.  You read that right – using inflation to cure the problems caused by inflation.

Thus begins the vicious cycle into hyperinflation.  And this is where your millions come in.

In the Weimar Republic of 1923, the currency was inflated to the point that men were paid several times a day by their employer.  Their wives stopped by the job, picked up the money, and spent it on food before it lost more value.  Near the end, a man walked into town with a wheelbarrow full of cash seeking to trade it for food.  He left it parked on the sidewalk while he inquired with the shopkeeper.  When he returned to get his money, he found it dumped on the street and his wheelbarrow stolen.

In Zimbabwe today, the government has discovered that the paper going into the production of money is worth more than the currency itself, so they have resorted to printing extra zeroes on existing supply.

There are many examples like these throughout history; it can and will happen here – the only question is when.  The future value of all fiat currencies, at some point in time, is zero.

Shortly before the complete collapse of the dollar, you will be a millionaire -  but you’ll be dirt poor – because along the way, the central bank will have obliterated the middle class, having completed a massive transfer of wealth from the proles to the bankers.  The only amelioration is that you won’t have to lug wheelbarrows full of cash down to the store to buy a loaf of bread, because you’ll have a debit card.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. – Thomas Jefferson

And their elected “representatives” have ignored them, and have done what they planned to do all along.

Today, the congress passed the massive bailout bill, the biggest ripoff in American history next to its causal predecessor, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  Last week, a reluctant House of Representatives voted down the bailout bill after a tsunami of calls, letters, and emails in opposition.  There was a brief ray of hope, in that the roaches had been sent scurrying out of fear for losing their jobs.  Paul Ryan (R-Wis) said:  “We’re all worried about losing our jobs…Most of us say, ‘I want this thing to pass, but I want you to vote for it – not me.’”

One may have been encouraged by the failure of the first bailout bill.  One may have believed that this is, in fact, representative government because, ultimately, the people can “throw the rascals out” if they do not do their bidding.  One may counsel one’s self that if enough people can be motivated to take action, the system works – the threat of removal from office would enforce the will of the people.

One would have been disappointed.

The Senate took the responsibility to correct the failure of the House of Representatives, repackaging the bailout in a swift and unconstitutional manner, originating a bill of revenue in the Senate (against the requirements in Article 1, Section 7:  All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.)  They passed their bill 74-25 and handed it down to the House.  Emboldened by Senate action, pacified with more welfare and promises, House passage of the bill was a formality.

The first version of the bailout bill was three pages in length.  The second version was over 400 pages.  The bill went from $700 billion to $810 billion.  Another $110 billion in pork was added to win over the support of those congressmen who could be persuaded with goodies for their district, or more accurately, welfare and subsidies for those who stuff their campaign coffers.  To this end, we paid for:

• Sales tax exemption for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children:  $2 million over the next 10 years
• Tax breaks for a motor sports racing facility:  $100 million
• Tax breaks for rum importers:  $192 million.
• Corporate welfare for research and development:  $19 billion

The list goes on and on.  Taxpayers for Common Sense gives an overview here.

This act of government intervention was always about one thing and one thing only:  Preservation of government power and corporatism.  You did not factor in to the decision.  Your outpouring of objection was a minor annoyance to be overcome.

In the end, it matters not what you think.  The government will go ahead and do what it wishes, because you are not as important as the State.  These “elected officials” are not representatives – they have assumed the role of the ruling class.  You are not a constituent, you are a subject to their rule.

It is time to face the cold reality:  You are not represented by this government.  The sooner you free yourself of this myth, the sooner you can begin to reclaim your liberty.  The constitution failed long ago to bind government down with chains, as Thomas Jefferson suggested.  There is no chance for reform, we are well beyond that point.  Our only path to restore liberty is to tear this government down, learn from our mistakes, and start anew.

Follow-up:  The People Have Spoken II – The Futility of Politics

The title of this post is also the title of Chapter 3 of G. Edward Griffin’s book The Creature from Jekyll Island.  The creature he refers to is the Federal Reserve System.

If you want to understand the root cause of this bailout, you need to understand the Federal Reserve System.  It is nothing more than a banking cartel, using the force of government to protect banker’s profits and socialize their losses.  It establishes a pyramid scheme of fractional reserve banking – a fragile house of cards that is capable of generating massive profits in credit booms, but is always subject to wide-scale failure when the inevitable bust occurs.  The system was designed to allow the banks to enjoy the booms, and to protect them from failure in the bust by passing on the cost of failure to the taxpayers.

The Federal Reserve created the crisis, through manipulation of interest rates and inflationary monetary policy.  Yes, there were irresponsible lenders and borrowers;  yes, there is a tangle of government regulation forcing banks to create risky loans – but these are symptoms, not root causes.  None of this will occur in the first place without the Federal Reserve System and its central planning and control.  The housing boom itself was a product of the Federal Reserve, as outlined in this document sponsored by the central bank itself:

“Like other asset prices, house prices are influenced by interest rates, and in some countries, the housing market is a key channel of monetary policy transmission.”

Monetary policy transmission = avenue for inflation.

And now it is the Federal Reserve that will “save the economy” by bailing out politically connected bankers. Once again, we’re told that the people who created the mess are the ones who understand how to “fix” it.  This line should be getting old.

The bailout is nothing less than outright theft.  It will not “save” the economy, it will only prolong our pain and make matters worse.  The damage has been done:  There is a lot of malinvestment out there.  The best way to deal with the problem is to allow the market to revalue the “toxic paper” and liquidate the bad debt.

The Mises Institute has put together a nice collection of writings they call the Bailout Reader.  Anyone wishing to get an in-depth understanding of this mess would be well advised to start there.  It is from the perspective of the Austrian School of free market economics.  The Austrian School predicted this crash years ago, based on sound economic theory and an understanding of the perils of central banking and fiat money.

You are being robbed by a small number of extremely wealthy people.  They profited handsomely from this crisis, and will walk away from the mess they created unscathed, as usual.  Your congress is complicit, because it benefits from their gains as well.  Campaign coffers are filled by wealthy bankers intent to keep the scheme going.

Save the republic.  Abolish the Fed.

This is must see video.

Scott Horton debates Harvey Kushner on US foreign policy.  Horton represents the philosophy of liberty and non-interventionism.  Kushner represents the neoconservative policy of aggressive interventionism and imperialism.

If you’re struggling to understand why we need to give up all this “liberty for safety”, or if you don’t understand the motivation of politicians bent on policing the world, Kushner will make the case for the State with conviction.

If you want to see every argument the statists have to justify their imperialism smashed to pieces, Scott Horton will not disappoint.  Scott is a principled advocate of liberty and a walking encyclopedia of US foreign policy.

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

Wow – it’s been nearly a month since my last post on the Ultimate Minority.  I thought I’d take a moment to explore my reasons for the slowdown.

It’s not for lack of studying or a dearth of things to write about.  I’ve been quite active in my reading and have had a lot of thoughts to explore.  The problem is, the more I study, the more I see connections between things – and the more I see connections between things, the longer my writings become and the more I’m concerned that I don’t have a complete essay ready to publish yet.

I have 16 drafts in my backlog right now – essays I’ve started but not completed for various reasons.  When I go back to one of them to complete and publish it, I remember what stopped me first time around.  On top of the 16 drafts, there have been dozens of thoughts and observations I’ve thought to write on, and held back.  Maybe it’s a writers block of some form.

But the purpose of this blog is to get me to write, even when a thought is not complete.  I’m going to start trying to break things into smaller observations instead of more in-depth essays, and then as my thoughts gel, I’ll pull from previous essays and try and put them together into a bigger picture.

Sometimes I get concerned about repeating myself – then I read Murray Rothbard, and I find him repeating himself – not out of error, but intentionally.  He was reminding the reader, reinforcing the point at a crucial point in their study as he built on an idea.  I find it reassuring as a reader, confirming the relationship between the earlier point to the current scenario.

I will strive to do better.

I’ve been doing some thinking on statism lately, trying to understand why people will follow their government into everything and justify its wrongdoings. Even when they disapprove of government action (for example, 70% of Americans wanting out of Iraq, voting in the democrats, and getting more of the same) they still follow it and grant it legitimacy.

An enormous insight was supplied to me in this brilliant piece by Butler Shaffer:

There is a deeper explanation for the refusal of most Americans to play out the superintending role expected of an electorate by defenders of democratic states: the fear of being critical of a system with which people have so closely identified their egos. If one thinks of himself as an “American” or a “Peruvian” only in the sense of being a resident of a given territory, there is little threat of organized conflict. It is when we identify who we are by reference to nationality – or race, religion, gender, or social status – that problems arise. We have been carefully trained – primarily by government schools – to attach existential significance to our nation-state. We learn such childish catechisms as “our” group is better than “theirs”; those who are not “with us” are “against us.” The daily recitation of our “pledge of allegiance” to the flag that dominates the front of the classroom, is the most obvious example of the political conditioning that begins in the grade school classroom, and carries over to our adult lives as we watch televised newscasts presented by men and women wearing miniaturized flags on their clothing.

Once we have learned to think of ourselves as “indivisible” from the nation-state, we are as desirous of protecting the state’s image as we are our own, for that is who we have become; who we are. We have become totally “externalized” beings, whose direction and responsibility lies beyond us and, thus, beyond our control.The wrongdoings by the state become our misdeeds. What embarrasses the political establishment becomes a source of personal humiliation, a discomfort we try to overcome through internal repression and/or projection onto scapegoats. Watching Americans rationalizing the bombing and invasion of two countries that have neither attacked nor threatened to attack the United States, while killing over a million men, women, and children in the process, provides as much evidence as one would need of the dangers that lie in identifying with a nation-state.

(Emphasis mine.)

Therein lies a large piece of the puzzle, and why I have advocated that the first step in recognizing the reality of the government we have inherited is to separate ones self from the State.  The baby who noted that the Emperor had no clothes could see clearly because he had not identified himself with the State.

The fascist government has long been fretting over the Internet and its ability to inform people and expose government lies. As if this is a surprise, it has been determined that there is a plan in place for the government to take control of the Internet; a plan lying in wait for an event to catalyze the takeover.

Personally, I remember feeling the transformational power of the Internet when I began to read opinions that agreed with my philosophy – opinions that I never heard in the media. When people feel isolated in their ideas, they tend to feel marginalized. When they see that they’re not alone, they are empowered.

The government established control over opinion through the Federal Communication Commission, established, of course, to protect the people from media conglomerates controlling information. As is always the case with government action promoted to protect the people, it is actually designed to protect special interests and grant monopoly power to favored political connections. It has artificially chopped bandwidth into large chunks available only to major corporations, erected as a barrier to competition. It wields regulatory power over its privileged bandwidth holders, and exerts pressure on them to keep the content to its liking.

The mainstream media we have today is a sham, nothing more than a propaganda horn for the government. In the place of journalism that questions government action, we get talking heads that read government press releases. In the place of skepticism and criticism, we get promotion of government and statism. In the place of important news and events, we get entertainment, murder and mayhem reports, and Paris Hilton.

The Internet changed it all. No longer is there a barrier to competition. No longer is there a monopoly control over information. And no longer is there a lack of diversity in opinion.

This is dangerous to government legitimacy, and they’re dying to squelch it.

In this video, Lawrence Lessig mentions the “iPatriot Act,” governments plan to get the Internet under control. He makes the point that the Patriot Act, a long, heavy piece of legislation, was presented to the House twenty days after 9/11. It was not written in twenty days, it was written long before, and sat in wait of a catalyzing event to prompt its introduction.

I’d like to say that this can’t happen – that an attemt to take control over the Internet would be the last straw.  But I know it will happen when the government can play on fear, and when it will be sold as a measure to protect the people.  They’re already selling incremental control to the masses with the fascist push for “net neutrality,” with “Internet freedom” advocacy groups lined up behind the government to get “protection.”  A catalyzing event is all that is needed, and free speech will be squelched – again.

In my previous entry, for which this follow-up entry is long overdue, I cited government intervention in free markets in the form of war, sanctions, imperialism, and mercantilistic policies as a primary cause for our current woes at the pump.  Today, I’d like to address the other primary cause:  How inflation affects gasoline prices.

As a first step, it is important that we do not improperly associate the word inflation with rising prices.  In today’s terminology, it is commonly accepted that inflation is a rise in prices.  This is incorrect.  Rising prices are the result of inflation.  Inflation is an increase in the money supply.  This conflation of terms is intentional, as the government and its unconstitutional central bank, the Federal Reserve, seek to shift blame from their wealth-extracting policy of inflation to the marketplace.  When the money supply is increased, it devalues the currency as more dollars are competing for the supply of goods available in exchange.  To understand why the government inflates the money supply, I’d recommend a reading of my entries titled What is Money? and Fiat Money.

When the government inflates the money supply, it issues new bills of credit to finance its operations.  This is debt.  This newly created money is then funneled to politically connected special interests, such as the Military Industrial Complex, and is used to fund government intervention to support corporatism, for example, supporting “Big Oil” through the manipulation of foreign governments in oil producing countries and subsidization of military dictatorships that will bow to the empire.

When a fiat money is accepted in world markets as a standard and reliable currency, other nations are willing to accept that money in exchange for their goods and services.  They are not acquiring real wealth, such as they would if they were exchanging their oil for gold;  they are accepting debt paper.  This ability to exchange debt instruments for real goods is known as exporting inflation.  Foreign governments are now holding US debt in exchange for oil.

This chart is the key (click on it or; source:  inflationdata.com):  It shows how the US government has successfully exported inflation since 1981 to drive down the cost of gasoline at the pump.  Oil producing countries accepted more debt and provided oil in exchange, artificially reducing the cost of their product for two decades.  Americans enjoyed cheap gasoline over this time period, as is reflected in our usage habits:  We shifted from vehicles of high fuel economy to large SUVs and bigger cars because gasoline was inexpensive, but we were doing it with a national credit card.  The chickens have come home to roost, as the saying goes, and now it’s time to pay for it.

At some point, this privilege of being able to print money in exchange for real goods is bound to fail.  The rest of the world is only willing to take on so much debt, and when they see their largest debtor running up a bigger balance and financing its operations with exponential deficits year in and year out, they begin to shift their desire to accept more paper.  We can see this in the world oil markets, where many of the oil producing countries are no longer pricing their product in dollars, but have instead shifted to pricing in euros (another fiat currency produced by the European Union.)  As of today, it will cost you $1.59 to buy one Euro.

This exporting of inflation led to a shift in markets that would not have occurred had we been paying for oil with real money (gold) all of this time.  Consumer preferences for large, fuel-thirsty vehicles may have never come about, or perhaps demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles (both larger and smaller) may have created innovation in fuel economy.

Central banking creates booms and busts.  What we are witnessing here is a gasoline boom, followed by the inevitable bust.  Don’t be angry at oil companies, they are only taking advantage of what your government has bestowed upon them.  The government and its central bank are to blame.