Essays

The Trick to Suppressing Revolution: Keeping Debt/Tax Serfdom Bearable

"In a way, a belief in the value, transparency, trust and reciprocity of the System is like a religious belief. The converts, the true believers, are the ones who work like crazy for the company or the service. And when the veil of illusion is tugged from their eyes, then the Believer does a reversal, and becomes a devout non-believer in the System. He or she drops out, moves to a lower position, or 'retires' to some lower level of employment. At what point do people choose to opt out of debt/tax-serfdom? What triggers their decision to renounce debt, go off the financial grid, and escape serfdom by fashioning a low-cost lifestyle in the cash economy?" Continue reading →

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Ten Reasons the U.S. Is No Longer the Land of the Free

"Since 9/11, we have created the very government the Framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely. The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention. Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free." Continue reading →

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“When Will They Learn?”

"In a conservative administration, a government will institute greater social controls. In the following liberal administration, the government will institute greater economic controls. And the police state will be increased under both administrations. The net effect is overall increased dominance by government. Under the two-party system, this dominance is not only tolerated by the populace, but encouraged. The day never comes when a people convince their government to 'lighten up.' Relief only comes when an overly-powerful governmental system collapses under its own weight." Continue reading →

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The Worst Law Most Americans Have Never Heard Of

"While there is still an opportunity for you to avoid getting boxed in by a desperate and out-of-control government, nobody knows exactly how much time is left. And once official capital controls are implemented (#3), your wealth is trapped and things tend to unravel pretty quickly. Developing your internationalization game plan does not mean you have to leave your home country. It is possible to achieve a certain level of international diversification without needing to leave your living room, for example, by opening a foreign bank or brokerage account remotely. The idea is to create your own personal insurance policy to immunize yourself from the common destructive measures of a desperate government." Continue reading →

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Ron Paul: Middle of the Road in Healthcare Leads to Socialism

"Beginning in the 1940s, government policies distorted the health care market, causing prices to rise and denying many Americans access to quality care. Congress reacted to the problems caused by their prior interventions with new interventions, such as the HMO Act, ERISA, EMTLA, and various federal entitlement programs. Each new federal intervention not only failed to fix the problems it was supposedly created to solve, it created new problems, leading to calls for even more new federal interventions. This process culminated in 2010. Contrary to the claims of some of its opponents, Obamacare is not socialized medicine. It is corporatized medicine." Continue reading →

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America’s Social Recession: Five Years and Counting

"What happens to the social fabric of an advanced-economy nation after a decade or more of economic stagnation? For an answer, we can turn to Japan. The second-largest economy in the world has stagnated in just this fashion for almost twenty years, and the consequences for the 'lost generations' which have come of age in the 'lost decades' have been dire. In many ways, the social conventions of Japan are fraying or unraveling under the relentless pressure of an economy in seemingly permanent decline." Continue reading →

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Economic Darwinism and the Next Financial Crisis

"The boom times enabled animals called bankers grow to massive size. Nature selected those who were the fittest for that environment. When the environment changed, these animals were like dinosaurs staring at the glaciers. The interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve today is designed to keep those dinosaurs warm and well fed. The people who run our country were largely selected by Economic Darwinism from a pool of people who owe their success to cheap interest. It is no surprise that these people see cheap interest as the only solution to our economic woes. This policy is about rebuilding their past rather than improving your future." Continue reading →

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Creative Destruction—The Best Game in Town

"It is a sorrowful reality that for the past century or more, people in the West have for the most part turned increasingly away from the economic system whose creativity redeems it and embraced instead systems whose hallmarks are economic irrationality, resource waste, bureaucratic tyranny, and ultimately mass impoverishment. Perhaps the great economic advances in Asia, where the market has been given wider scope in recent decades, will serve as a lesson to Westerners, pulling them back before they allow their governments to plunge them into the mass poverty from which their ancestors pulled themselves by means of the market system in earlier centuries." Continue reading →

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Anarchy: The Basis for a Civilized Society

"Sartwell says even if anarchism were not practical, it doesn’t follow that it has no value. This is not to put aside the question of practical application. He pointed to the works of anthropologists James Scott and David Graeber, whose work independently has shown how anarchism has worked in a variety of settings. Bowling leagues, to use an example from Sartwell’s book, are anarchist organizations. They are completely voluntary. No one is forced to join. So when you think about it, our lives are full of anarchist organizations built on voluntary foundations. Suddenly, anarchism doesn’t seem like such a radical idea. You come to appreciate that the basis of civilized society is anarchic to its core." Continue reading →

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Freedom and Servitude: Could You Have Answered This Question?

"For this man, following rules that others set made sense – it’s a safe position. But once there, he’ll never really grow again, and he will be cut off from a lifetime of discovery and satisfaction. What’s bad about servitude is that it prevents us from living. To one extent or another, we’ve all let our love of life dim and have taken ‘safe’ positions. We live in a tough world after all. The good news, however, is that we can regain what we’ve lost merely by changing our minds. To repair ourselves requires that we think about these things – to notice when we begin playing a role, to act on curiosity when we feel it, to stop defending our previous choices, to expect surprises and opportunities." Continue reading →

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