#12 A Timely Rebuke to Statists and Statism

A survey of the written or collected utterances of statists might turn up any number of quotations that reference the same ideas, however this particular quote from Cass Sunstein illustrates many of the main points for our purposes.

“In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live? Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public… There is no liberty without dependency.”

Cass Sunstein goes on to say,

“If government could not intervene effectively, none of the individual rights to which Americans have become accustomed could be reliably protected. This is why the overused distinction between 'negative' and 'positive' rights makes little sense. Rights to private property, freedom of speech, immunity from police abuse, contractual liberty and free exercise of religion—just as much as rights to Social Security, Medicare and food stamps—are taxpayer-funded and government-managed social services designed to improve collective and individual well-being.”

Breaking it all down:

“In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’?”

The short answer is that we know that none of the money currently in use is ours and THAT's the problem. The longer answer to Sunstein's first question is answered with the following irrefutable facts;

1. All “money” that anyone ever uses in the modern world is created by private institutions (central banks which masquerade as public organizations, but are not) and hence all money really “belongs” to them. If you are allowed to hold any of it for your own purposes, they consider that a privilege they have deigned to grant you as a temporary expedient to what they want; an endless return on their loans, usually created out of thin air (not backed -collateralized- by any assets worth buying). All this money was created as loans demanding the payment of interest, which itself was not created. Since much of this debt also includes compounding of interest, which is usury on steroids, an endless stream of income is produced for at the most the service of clearing trading transactions. Nothing of any real value is added and claims against things of real value (money) are kept artificially scarce to benefit those with access to them.

Those who have not seen the mathematical anomaly in usury will tell you that they expect the interest to be covered through increased value created in the economy. But they still have not seen that every last farthing of any money currently in use to buy the goods in any economy and by which any value intended is to be recorded by the monetary system, still has interest attached to it. So, ever paying it off completely is an impossibility. This actually forms an invalid contract (a subject explained here) and therefore is fraudulent to begin with. Realizing this truth opens up a number of inevitable consequences.

2. The loaned money is “created” for the purposes of the buyer purchasing something at the time the loan is made, the money with which to pay the interest is NOT created and never will be. This anomaly, the artificial scarcity of money thus enforced, causes everyone (including governments) to go into debt to the “creators” of all money which have their special relationships with governments guaranteed as a monopoly.

3. The vast majority of all these loans are to governments which spend the money into the economy the way they see fit, not the way their citizens, subjects or peoples see fit. This is a key point to which I want all those who seek a return to money as defined in the Constitution to consider. This key insight is directly tied back to E. C. Riegel's incontestable observation that one person or organization cannot determine what another person or organization might buy with their own money (which they call into existence by their own will as every single individual has an INALIENABLE right to do).

4. The interest payments on all current forms of money are on the lives, property and personal intentions of each individual human being under the jurisdiction of these governments. The system, as it is presently designed, makes this public debt unpayable and this debt thus becomes a perpetual noose of slavery on everyone. Liberty and slavery are hardly the same thing, Cass.

Sunstein asks rhetorically, “Did we earn it [money] by our own autonomous efforts?”

Actually Cass, a few of us did, by making the decisions to freely associate ourselves with others in trade or some other remunerative activity and taking the risks involved with our decisions as a matter of mutual trust. Some of us unfortunately have spent our lives living off the rest of society. There are three broad groups of such socioeconomic parasites:

1. Those who owe their livelihood to government: It doesn't start or stop with those who are pensioners or welfare recipients, because those people were forced into these social welfare arrangements with governments, for these governments had deliberately intervened on behalf of special interests which distorted normal economic processes such that were governments not to decide to take care of these people, they would easily and quite quickly face revolution or a coup d'etat. Were money the people's to create as they needed it, there would soon be no need for any of these welfare government programs.

This then is our direct answer to state imposed socialism, to give each individual human being the right to create their own money and spend it as they see fit. Much then of what Sunstein views as beneficial products of government; “Social Security, Medicare and food stamps ... government-managed social services designed to improve collective and individual well-being,” exerted through the FORCE of taxation and the indebtedness to the present money creators, turn out to be subsidies to special interests to ostensibly provide services to the public.

As all the world knows, nothing really ever turns out well once the government gets involved. There are the usual inefficiencies and irresponsibility to scale, which the statists and their supporters (who all love the vast idols of bigness they have created and imagine themselves important by association therewith) would prefer simply to ignore. They have foisted one sort of bureaucratizing nonsense or another on humanity for the better part of the last 200 years; “scientific” management, the Soviet, etc. and still no one who deals with government ever believes they are dealing with just other members of their own local community, but rather the fronts for a cold heartless and corrupt machine. The bigger any enterprise gets, the more inefficient and tyrannical it must become because control begins to matter more than command; where the latter becomes impossible, the former becomes a desperate imperative. But hubris brings any fool down eventually, though it may take centuries for foolish ideas to reach the same fate.

2. Those who work for foundations, non profits, etc. are essentially living parasitically off of the rest of society. Not-for-profits, are essentially granted this status by the state, which henceforth regulates their activities. Seen another way, all these foundations are set up as tax dodges for the rich. The best solution for all concerned would be to force them all to shut down, because we do not want or need any overarching advice or management (a Soviet) to socially engineer things, hence we regard much if not all of it, as the audacity of peculiar groups of people who have never demonstrated they have the best interests of any but themselves in mind.
 

3. The last group who deserve to be considered social parasites are those who already have plenty of money who refuse to live from their wealth, but rather insist that their idle split-barter money deserves a reward. This too will be a subject for future discussion.

“Could we have inherited it [money] without the assistance of probate courts?”

Those familiar with George Orwell realized from the top that Sunstein was talking newspeak. The honest response to this is, “you've got to be kidding!” No folks, he isn't kidding. Probate courts are the creation of creditors, especially governments, to make sure they get paid before everyone else in matters of inheritable estates above a certain nominal money value. These courts are interlopers in the inheritance process and steal estates for themselves and their cronies as is well known. Sunstein places the state's corruption through these courts above the will of every single human being. Under the present probate tyranny these issues are settled by FORCE upon the natural inheritors of the donor who is prevented from passing his wealth along to whomever he/she wishes.

“Do we save it [money] without the support of bank regulators?”

Saving money is as usual not what everyone has long believed or been taught to believe. First of all one has to jettison all notions of gaining return on idle money by the usual means of sharing the taking of unlawful interest (from funds which were never created in the first place). Only increasing genuine value counts as a means of making honest money.

An individual (a class A member of a VEN by definition) or an organization (a class B member of a VEN by recognition of all class A members in that VEN or by its elected representatives) may be rewarded for any increases in value they produce and exchange with other productive members. Perhaps Sunstein believes, as has been proven incorrect by recent events, that bank regulators are responsible, or are even capable of being responsible, to savers for the safety of their savings from the machinations of bankers. Such is clearly not the case and there isn't any real likelihood that confidence, such as Sunstein wishes the public would all share, should return any time soon.

What honest savings, in money terms, has always meant, is literally the taking of money out of circulation and putting it away, stacking it up, for that time when one has enough to make larger purchases. That's all savings has ever been. Anything more is strictly speaking, a scam. Any bank will hold your money for you and pay you something for holding it; a savings account. In this way they have built up their reserves against which they may write loans many times greater than their actual reserves; what is known as fractional reserve banking, the legally enshrined fraud at the centre of the present rotten system. In this way, many banks are already technically bankrupt, but you are supposedly protected from any banker scams by what is called “deposit insurance.” No VEN account will EVER need to be insured, because financing under an VEN will simply not be permitted to operate relying on usury. This too will be the subject of a future paper.

“Could we spend it [money] if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?”

This too is some fantasy of statists that nobody with any sense believes anymore. The fact is that under the present monetary and financial system, these decisions are exercised by those who have acquired their positions and influence, not through the scrupulous hard work they'd like us to believe, earning the confidence of the people with genuine unselfish concern, but largely through deceit, treachery and the assistance of those who have already acquired such prominence. Brown nosing and other forms of obsequious behaviour are well known to this author and typified in such institutions. The desired attitude is sold to the public as “political correctness” which takes most matters of serious controversy off the table as a form of social censorship. Nobody, or not too many anyway, yet seem to realize that this is a direct infringement of another inalienable right; to free speech.

The fact is that since the prevailing system is built on frauds, fallacies, follies and outright lies, all that has been built up by the system are institutions and organizations which are perforce rendered inevitably illegitimate. The clearest example is the ubiquitous corporation's waiving of unlimited liability for damages under prevailing laws regarding the organization of such businesses. Legitimate business springs naturally from individuals engaged in trade or who are growing or making things in expectation of selling them and in return obtaining the SPLIT-BARTER money with which to provide what they want and need.

Many perhaps most vast international corporations such as we see today are masquerading as productive (and even profitable) because all the costs of damages to the environment or to customers are rendered unrecoverable; contrary to what the public may believe, most corporations do not pay their way, they bribe their way in and take from the communities they serve by threatening to close down if certain costs of operation aren't reduced. Were the scale of businesses smaller and made to conform to the rules of nature, which do not allow for any limited liability, much that contributes to social and environmental degradation would soon be things of the past.

The notion of a benevolent public servant alas dies hard, because we would all prefer to believe that someone above us actually knows better and cares for us and has our best interests at heart when this is demonstrably not the case at all. When the scales fall from the eyes as they have for many, and more will come around to seeing it this way as time permits, the public will tend to view most government officials as pernicious troublemakers whose advice and counsel is not wanted, contributes nothing of value and impedes human progress. They will be revealed as the parasites they are; more who prefer taking by FORCE what does not belong to them and returning “services” many may not need or even want.

E. C. Riegel admonished that no government ever has anything worth buying if we had a choice and therefore they were disqualified PERMANENTLY from ever being legitimately allowed to create money. (See #9 Why Proposed Constitutional Amendments Will Not Work and Other Matters)

Then we come to certainly the most audacious bursts of Orwellian newspeak in this entire quote:

“Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public… There is no liberty without dependency.”

No liberty, property or assets worth defending without taxes? This is like saying that when a robber comes forth to steal what belongs to you, they are doing you a favour. Better include in there when a government comes along and takes your sons and daughters (whether they volunteer because the economy offers them no employment or they are drafted) to train them to kill other people overseas and they often get killed themselves into the bargain. Please folks, re-read Sunstein's words above and remember them well.

There are many conceited dupes out there who actually believe this stuff. We on the other hand postulate something quite different. Liberty, property and assets are what belong to each of us based on our own abilities to add value to society through GENUINE free trade, unregulated by any “authority.” Moreover, each human being has an INALIENABLE right to acquire by honest means, such property and assets as opportunity and need permit and to pass them along to whomever are deemed worthy by the donor, regardless of what anyone else may say in the matter.

Furthermore, it is accepted and granted as among the inalienable rights of mankind to personally be willing to defend what property, assets and liberty one has honestly acquired by force of arms if necessary. That too is what the Sunsteins of this world are about; for then, they can make their lies appear to be truth by monopoly of FORCE. Consequently expect that they will seek any means necessary to deprive you of your right to self protection by keeping and bearing arms.

In closing we notice how Sunstein twists sentiments and words in order to make subservience to government authority seem noble and civilized when it is in fact weak and snivelling. But what could one expect from one who might really honestly believe that liberty is slavery and the state is God?

David Burton