The Blind Destruction of The Economy

If all you have is a hammer,” says the old proverb, “everything looks like a nail.” And I’m hard pressed to think of a better way to describe the destruction of the US economy (and many others) over the past few weeks. It has been a foolish set of reactions, and I’m going to show you both why it happened and why it was unnecessary.

First, however, I should clarify that the financial meltdown and the blowing up of the economy are two different things:

  • As many of us have long noted, the leading finance regimes of the world were insanely over-blown bubbles, just waiting for some kind of pin to pop them. This was a virtual economy of fabricated currency units contained within carefully controlled securities markets.
  • The real economy of goods, deliveries, repairs and so on was separated from the virtual economy, and its surplus was skimmed away with paid-for regulations and obligations. The people in this economy got relatively poorer and poorer, the big corporations treated them as serfs and their rulers despised them, but they were allowed to keep working.

Finally the financial bubble popped, hurting lots of people, both comfortable and poor. But that didn’t require the burning down of the real economy… the aforesaid making, growing, repairing and distributing of everything that really matters to us.

Why They Burned It Down

Really, it boils down to this: When the shit hits the fan, people revert to their basic psychological premises. And for politicians… for rulers of most any sort… that psychological premise is control. If and when they reach down into their souls, that’s what they find.

On top of that we should remember that politicians aren’t much different than perpetual beauty pageant contestants. When such people see a parade developing, they run to the front and grab the parade’s attention any way they can. And if the parade has come together mainly out of fear, you get their attention by agreeing with them (loudly) and being just a little bit more extreme than they were. Then, you present yourself as the solution.

Hooray, it’s now my parade!”

Afterward, when the other beauty pageant contestants up their ante (more fear, more control) you raise yours too. Politicians react to the other contestants, not to some schlub on Main Street.

Complications aside, the actual economies of America and much of the world have been shut down because of this. The damage is already severe and the fallout may last a long time.

They Had No Choice!”

To those saying the politicians had no choice I have a very simple response: “No; they saw no choice.”

Now, since almost everyone has been taught to see the world as the ruler sees it, most people saw no choice either. But there were far better choices… choices that didn’t burn down economies.

What Other Choices?”

I suppose we can begin our list of other choices with a respectable adult – an actual grown-up – standing up, day after day, explaining to people the history of epidemics, the choices we face, the costs of each, and how every person can either save their neighbor or endanger them. We had several weeks, after all.

But this was not done. Sure, politicians acted a little bit like this after the horse was out of the barn, but people need time to assimilate such things, and a one-shot effort doesn’t work. Any ruler worth his or her salt would know this. But, they didn’t. Instead they reverted to what they did know: more control. Their psychological bias was for war rhetoric, soldier boys, tanks and quasi-tanks, more cops, fines, punishments and jail cells. Everything, to them, looked like a nail, and so the real economy was hammered.

But even without a respectable adult talking sensibly, most people were intelligent enough to take precautions. By the time the first lock-down orders were given, most Americas were already “sheltering in place,” and I suspect that most other peoples were too.

Here are a few other choices the rulers never considered:

  • Tell the people they won’t be taxed upon – won’t even have to report – their income from making masks, ventilators, valves, etc.
  • Tell the people that patents and regulations are suspended for the next year… that they will be held to account for negligence, misrepresentation, and so on, but that they needn’t get approvals.
  • Put every bit of data, every proposal, every blueprint and chemical formula online, available to the world. Upon receipt. (Why not? Because the people are brute beasts and the ruling class is not?)

This list could go on at length, but just this much would put millions of intelligent and motivated people to work – immediately and at zero cost – fixing the crisis in far more and better ways than command-and-control processes.

The proof of this is that even with none of the above, and at significant risk to themselves, some people are still acting independently. Here, for example, is a home-made ventilator (cleverly hacked together from CPAP materials) that could save many lives:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Price We Pay For Being Ruled

Things didn’t have to go this way, and the price we’re paying now is the cost of rulership. I’ll spare you the details, but millions of us have already realized that rulership was never as advertised and that other options, while less than perfect, are far less bad than the bloody, arrogant and exceedingly expensive mess we’ve had.

You are not a nail; you’re a thinking and productive human being. Be clear on the fact that you didn’t deserve to be hammered and that it wasn’t okay. Because you didn’t and it wasn’t.

This is not the kind of world we deserve, and it’s up to us to improve it. The rulers are unable to move forward, and they just proved it again… this time on a massive scale.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com

Is This Really the Best Way Possible?

WayPossible

I was taught in school that our modern governance was the best thing ever, and I suppose that you were too. But do any of us really believe that the way of life we now have is the best possible? I dare say (and hope!) that few of us are that intellectually barren.

And yet, the systems of the West are treated as gods: No thought of changing them is permitted. Working inside the system is acceptable; anything else brands you a “domestic terrorist.”

How then shall we improve? The system we have is despised on all sides, and yet to suggest anything outside of it terrifies the servile citizen and incites the security complex to violence.

It would be a disgrace to human nature if we didn’t try to improve our situations; our descendants could and should condemn us for such a failure. And so, here lies the social problem of the age:

New ways of living are prohibited; they are ridiculed at their outset and punished if continued.

If you’re tempted to think that I’m overstating this, please give it a try sometime. You’ll find the experience educational.

Going More than Halfway

The streets are full of people who complain about the political systems that rule them. And millions more have been recognizing their abuse recently. I welcome this enthusiastically. Facing the truth is a crucial virtue.

The holdup in this process is usually at the halfway point, where angry people blame factions rather than structures. In the US, for example, half the country blames the Reds for everything; the other half blames the Blues for everything. But they both stop short of seeing that the system itself is the problem. And so, they get more and more polarized, to the point where it’s starting to bleed over into violence.

So, yes, Mr. Blue, you are being abused, and yes, Mr. Red, you’re being abused. But your abuser is the system itself, not the slimy parties that slither through its belly. If all the parties vanished tomorrow, your abuse – at the hands of a hundred government agencies and their partners in crime – would continue unabated.

And this really should be obvious: The Reds have had their turn with control of the full Congress and the presidency; the Blues have had their turn with the same advantages. And yet the abuse continues unabated. It doesn’t take a genius to draw a lesson from that.

Blame the Structure

As I’ve explained before and no doubt will again, the system we now “enjoy” is primitive and barbaric. It’s really a relic of the Bronze Age.

Think about it this way: If you weren’t taught all your life that ours was the best possible organization for the world, would you seriously choose to give one small group of men all the weapons and full power to control and punish everyone else? And if you knew that this ruling group would be morally inferior to nearly everyone else, would you still think it was a great idea?

Only if you were deranged.

My message, and one that I suppose I’ll keep repeating so long as I have breath, is that we are better than this. Humanity is far better than their barbaric ruling systems. We are better than manipulative elites and perpetually false politicians. We just need to stop believing them, that we’re all vile and weak. If we did that, we’d never put up with the abuse they heap upon us year after year.

The Bottom Line

If you take an argument like this to political obsessives, they’ll take you on an hours-long tour of confusion, throwing authority and intimidation at you and all the while and warring against your personal judgment. Truth, on the other hand, is simple and clear. And the question that cuts through all the BS is this:

Are we free to experiment, or not?

If you can withdraw from the ruling system and experiment with new ways of living, then you’re a free man or woman.

If the system won’t let you out – if they won’t release you to try something better – then you are enslaved, and no amount of confusing talk will ever change that.

We are better, and we can become much better. Archaic structures of dominance stand in our way.

* * * * *

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Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Why the Real Founders of Democracy Would Be Pissed if They Saw What We Did…

democracyThe word democracy is held in awe these days. Mention it almost anywhere and you’ll get instant nods of approval.

People actually believe that democracy gives us harmony and peace, not to mention wealth. They are sure that it is the ultimate and inevitable end of human development, created by the wise and noble Greeks and given to us, the enlightened society that took it to the ends of the Earth!

But if the ancient Greeks could see what we call ‘democracy,’ they would spit at it. They’d probably want to burn it down.

As many problems as they had (and they had plenty), they were not fools, and it wouldn’t take them a day to condemn what the West now worships.

Why would the old Greeks be so upset? Let’s take a look at their (Athenian) system and see how our modern form stacks up:

#1: Greek citizen assemblies met 40 times per year in an open, public forum. Any citizen could speak and any citizen could vote. A vote of those present was final.

Contrast that with what passes for (American) democracy now: Only special people are allowed to attend the assemblies. On top of that, there are far, far more meetings than anyone could hope to follow: General sessions, meetings for dozens of committees, party caucuses and more, running at all hours. No one person can come remotely close to keeping up with it all.

The citizen is clearly unable to participate or even to understand what’s going on. Just this fact would cause the “fathers of civilization” to pronounce our system a fraud, and rightly so. The citizens are non-participants.

#2: Laws were inscribed on stone pillars (stelae) and posted in prominent locations so that everyone would see them.

Greek laws were accessible to every Greek. Not only were they required to be posted, but this requirement also guaranteed that there couldn’t be too many of them.

If you were to take an ancient Greek to see “our laws,” they’d be looking at more than 80,000 pages of almost indecipherable language. (And those would be only the Federal laws.)

Because of this, the Greeks would be insulted when you assured them that we have “the rule of law.” They would say that when people can’t know the law, they are living in a tyranny, and no amount of fancy argumentation would convince them otherwise.

And, again, they would be right. If you are ignorant of the law (80,000 pages of government-speak) but are still subject to punishment under the law, you are living in a tyranny. The founders would have no confusion about that.

#3: A Council oversaw the daily affairs of the democracy. Each of ten tribes provided 50 men. But, only one tribe’s men (50 of them) served at any one time, and only for one month. (The Greeks had ten months in their year.) And once any person served as a Councilor, they were forbidden from serving again for ten years.

Under this arrangement, playing tricks became almost impossible: as soon as the first of the month came along, the next tribe could turn your tricks around and do worse to you.

Contrast this with senators and congressmen who stay in office for decades on end, selling all sorts of favors, amassing multi-million dollar campaign funds, and making themselves rich in the process. Most of them never really go away.

At this point, our philosophical forefathers would be looking for places to buy torches… and they would be ready to beat anyone who called a system that supports such shenanigans a democracy.

#4: Citizens chosen for positions like overseer of the marketplace were chosen completely at random.

Imagine choosing the boss of the IRS at random. We all know what would happen: You’d get a housewife from Portland one year and a plumber from Topeka the next. And they’d act like humans, rather than unfeeling automatons. The sanctimonious abuser state would crumble.

#5: At the beginning of their democracy, the citizens of Athens were divided into ten tribes (and NOT along regional or family lines). This was done specifically to break the power of the aristocratic families.

Have you paid attention to the DC crowd lately? Have you noticed that they never leave? Instead, they slide back and forth between congress, commissions, agencies, lobbying firms, mega-corps and media. Have you noticed how often their children marry each other?

Look at the Presidential lineup: Bush – Clinton – Bush – Obama – Clinton? – Bush?

That’s called “aristocracy.” However, people who are emotionally bound to the system can’t see it. The Greeks certainly wouldn’t be fooled.

Losing Our Religion

Do you remember a haunting song from the ’90s called “Losing My Religion“? If so, cue that up in the back of your mind, because that’s what stands in front of the people of the West.

The majestic “Democracy” that was supposed to be our savior is actually an abusive fraud. It’s time to let it go. That’s not easy, I know, but it needs to be done.

Will you take the first step?

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com