#0 What Are the Biggest Lies and Delusions?

What Are the Biggest Lies and Delusions That Keep People Voting Against Their Own Best Interests?  By Rob Kall  Source

This article deserved substantial comment as the author makes many decent observations and then shows his statist card. He shall herewith be soundly rebuked. Perhaps he will see it our way. If he doesn't, he really has nothing to offer as a solution to any serious issues facing the world today. His remarks will be in blue, mine in black.

This world is being handed over to a few hundred billionaires and transnational predatory corporations gorging themselves in an economic bloodfeast that leaves hundreds of millions billions dead or damaged. Yet many of those people-- people who go bankrupt because of health care expenses, people who will live their lives burdened by student debt, who face no realistic hopes for a decent job, whose children face even bleaker futures, who are living shallow, meaningless lives focused on consumption of crass, worthless things with brand names, who are eating foods that are beyond unhealthy, to the extent that they reduce lifespan, increase risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and inability to resist infections-- continue to vote for corporatist politicians in both major parties in the US, or abroad who vote against their best interests.

The question is "why?"

I believe it's because people are living in a story narrative that has them convinced that it's the best thing for them and their families. So my question is, "What are the lies, the deceptions and illusions that keep these billions of people complacent, accepting this unjust situation, even supporting and advocating for it?"

I'll throw out a couple of guesses, but I'm hoping that the best answers will be in the comments from Becker, Pear, Schwartz, Kaiser, Hall, Ramani, Penisten, Arnold, Walker, Tremlett, intotheabyss, Wight Roll, Tell, E. J. N., Geery, Sanchez, Repstock, Baker, Butler, Vierotchka, Stryker, cruz, Schreiner, Herendeen, Reichel, Palsimon, Collins, Duveen, Quandy, Srodes, farris, BFalcon, to name a few, and even from Bill Johnson, Braverman and Doc McCoy and anyone else. We're giving it a try, Rob.

So, here are some of my guesses on the lies and delusions that keep billionaires, psychopaths and predatory capitalism in power:

1-"Individualism is an American value." Ok, so, we do have a history of people like Daniel Boone-- rugged individuals-- but Boone sacrificed his life for a bigger picture. Not at all sure this is true or relevant. It is noble to be an individual, yet stand up for and fight for the rights of others and for the community. The individualism we see celebrated today is the selfish, narcissistic kind that Ayn Rand-- a disgusting person who preached the worst values-- encouraged. We would prefer it stated more correctly: Ayn Rand may have indeed been “a disgusting person,” but her self image and her belief system were certainly a product of the crucible of collectivism as she experienced it in the Soviet Union. She was paid to write on behalf of “a disgusting elite” and yes add “narcissistic” to the rubric describing them too. Since it is probable that Rand never knew how these same people and their system were responsible for Bolshevism (see Antony Sutton and others), she can be accounted very much a victim of their machinations, as were all those unfortunate Ukrainians and Russians who lost their lives, so that foreign bankers would be paid their pound of flesh; usury. It all goes back to that after all.

Individual expression and independence can be great. I pride myself on not being a part of the mindless crowd. But it is possible, no, essential that individualism not come at the price of justice and fairness for the people and the commons. Individualism must be alloyed with kindness, empathy and a keen desire for justice. Now Rob, let's examine exactly what you may not intend, but what becomes the result of your uses of the words “justice” and “fairness.” You also use the word “must.” Why “must” any of it, Rob? Who is to decide? Some democratically elected person? Isn't that a lot of power and responsibility to grant to anyone? And no matter who that person might be, how do you know whether the votes were tabulated correctly? How can you be so oblivious to the obvious facts that since the year 2000 at least, electronic voting has made a “fair” and “just” election impossible? Have you no consideration for the fact that the “democracy” so many of your sort think they want, is nothing but a mere charade? We live under a dictatorship of central bank debt money with a convenient front to make the people think they are being treated “fairly” and with “justice,” when that is hardly ever the case. In fact, democracy is mob rule and as is well known, mobs can be coerced into doing some pretty terrible things. So is it all a mere idealism then, Rob? If so, you had better wake TF up! Reality is reality, A = A, and until things radically change, ideas like “fairness” and certainly “justice” are mere playthings of the oligarchic elites who stand athwart whatever you believe the world really needs and wants.

2- "Consumption and increasing production are essential to a healthy future." This is a malignant, cancerous idea that afflicts the minds of most economists and far too many consumers. As I've grown older, and I think wiser, I've found that I need less and less things to be happy. Before I turned 50, I used to love to peruse catalogues and products. What a waste. Yet so many include acquisition as one of the their primary values. The never ending growth paradigm is directly related to usury, the taking of interest on a loan of money; the taking back of that which was never created in the first place. If usury were not built into the economic system the way it obviously is, and at every turn, everyone would have enough of whatever they really needed and wanted, freedom and individualism would know natural bounds and what was “fair” and “just” would follow as natural consequences. Anything you can possibly advocate, without getting rid of usury, shall accomplish precisely nothing. Get that, Rob? You are spinning your wheels in mud. Without a stand against usury, you accomplish precisely nothing!

3- "Bigger is better." That's mostly true for the biggest, but not the rest of us, as I've explored in my article series Small is Better than Big. There are natural economies of scale that are routinely ignored by the financial elites who demand their yield. Again, elimination of all forms of usury naturally determines what those scales are. Most things that are too big now, including governments, would most assuredly be smaller. It wouldn't take un-natural legislation or FORCE to accomplish it either.

4- "Protecting the Wealthy protects my possible future." Supporting legislators who pass bills that protect billionaires because you think you will become wealthy is one of the worst fantasy/delusions. We are in agreement here, but probably for other reasons. The reason that legislation in support of any business is bad is that such legislation stands against all natural law. One can pass any fool law into existence and FORCE people to live under it. It doesn't make that law either essentially right or good. It just makes for more tyranny.

Take the elimination of the estate tax, for example. Currently, the estate tax exempts the first five or ten million for a family. That means it covers probably 98% of the population, yet a huge percentage, particularly of people who have estates under $100,000, will vote for legislators giving welfare to millionaires and billionaires. Watch out, Rob. You're falling into a trap or setting one for the rest of your readers. Most people cringe at the idea of inherited wealth because they have little understanding of the natural benefits and consequences for allowing it. An estate tax is the state's interposition of itself into the natural rights of everyone to pass on what they have to whomever they choose, as a natural right. Now, if you still believe that some “redistribution of wealth” or collectivist strategy is ever going to win the day, then you are oblivious to mountains of historical data which support the claim that the elites actually want estate taxes so that they have fewer competitors. Family estates, including businesses and farms, provide stability to society and guarantee that the naturally successful benefit from their strings of right decisions and right actions which benefit the community at large that you seem to care more about. No Rob, estate taxes are EVIL. They support only those who have the extra money (which they came by dishonestly anyway) to buy up for a song what took lifetimes of labour and effort to erect. If you don't see it that way, I have a long list of books for you to read.

5- "Regulations are bad, against freedom." There is a price for freedom. That price includes rules, laws, regulations and responsibilities. Freedom that fails to consider the needs of the people, of the ecosystem is self-centered, likely predatory and not deserving. No Rob. Freedom that is not self centered is an illusion. One cannot be free if one is continually burdened by mountains of irrelevant rules. There is no ecosystem, Rob. That is another fallacy. The entire concept of an ecosystem assumes steady state models of predictive reality that are more idealisms. We have attempted to explain in this blog just how and why idealism is very bad stuff and you should really get rid of it.

It is also likely to be very short-lived. The inhabitants of Easter Island used up all the trees on the island because they could-- and then the culture died. I'm sorry, but whether that's true or not is irrelevant. The natural boundary was that Easter Island is an island and that the people there, who may indeed have had the idea of cutting down all the trees on the island, had no farther to go, but I really doubt whether they did what is claimed. Frankly, some things we shall never ever know for sure.

Nature exists because of "regulations," like pH (acidity) and many different biological balances. it is wise to learn from mother nature. What nature does and what man does are not completely analogous because the whole notion of a natural balance is largely baloney. What you would have us believe is that somehow people who we would elect to enact legislation favouring redistribution of wealth or collectivism are behaving as extensions of nature. I'm sorry, but that's one hell of a leap of faith. Most by now are weary of such ideas, to say the least.

People and corporations who/which resist regulations are really thieves in disguise, hoping to evade responsibilities and externality costs that they want others to pay. When you see a company or politician decrying regulations, you see a thief or someone who advocates for a thief. Really, Rob! What a bunch of simplistic misleading garbage! What's worse is that such ideas give a complete green pass to those who are really thieves; bankers, investors demanding a yield on their extra money, corporations that seek to grow profits by stifling competition and production. Yes, we are all hoping to evade responsibilities and externality costs, especially when those are imposed upon us from un-natural sources. That's nature too, Rob. One person's freedom naturally extends until it meets up with someone else's need for freedom. Conflicts are inevitable, but it matters less when those conflicts are restricted to smaller factors rather than being financed into existence as wars. When you see a politician, ANY politician, you see someone bought and paid for by some special interest, else they wouldn't be there. Politics Rob, is NOT the answer.

6- "The system can't be changed." So many people have become victims of oppression, living with authoritarian mindsets that keep them cowed and thoroughly dominated by an oppressive system that is concentrating power into fewer and fewer hands of wealthier and more powerful people and corporations. Again, Rob sees this one clearly; this is what is happening and has been happening for a long time. The system can be changed. it is ripe for change. Perhaps. More than likely, we shall have to watch and see how THEY intend on preserving it the way it is. It is part of nature that when they go too far, a natural reaction begins to set in and once it starts, though it may take many lifetimes, it becomes inevitable; more inevitable than Marxian socialism ever was. People must wake up, come together via grass-roots, bottom-up movements, values and risings of consciousness, through education and empowerment, and they will replace the current rotten, corrupt system, as powerful as it seems, with something healthier, more just and fair. It has been done before. It is inevitable. When we change the system, it will bring about all kinds of changes that we've been wanting. But it takes waking people up. It also takes people waking up to some very old and pervasive realities:

1) the US Constitution was a product of bankers determining (nay, demanding) that the new republic be able to borrow money, at interest of course.

2) It takes people waking up to the reality that neither major political party in the United States is ever capable of representing them or their best interests.

3) It takes people waking up to their own need to assume more responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities and nations.

4) It takes people to wake up from the failed idealism that any government anywhere can issue money interest free as such is NOT natural or even required to solve the “fairness” and “justice” issues.

We believe Rob, that this blog proposes the only “just” and “fair” solution, based on a thorough understanding of the facts concerning money, what it is, how it naturally occurs and how it operates in society.

That's a start. What do you think? What are some of the lies and delusion you see as keeping people voting against their own best interests?

That they bother to vote at all, Rob. The very second that paper ballots were eliminated should have alerted people that all elections henceforth would be rigged. It's easy enough to attempt rigging an election using paper ballots – as people in Chicago (where the dead vote) have known for a long time. But with electronic tabulation, voting fraud and rigged elections become “a piece of cake.” Boycotting the whole process is the only realistic and rational response, else one is naively operating as a participant in the fake political charade. Sorry to rain on your parade, Rob, but it is YOU who needs to wake TF up!

Secondly, it is high time for more people to understand what wealth is, and what it is not. Wealth, as this blog has attempted to reiterate countless times, is and can only be that capable of providing a living income. Mere stuff is not wealth. The buying and selling of stuff to earn an income is true wealth, but that wealth does not consist in the value of the stuff itself but rather the difference between what the trader paid for it and what she must sell it for. The actual engine of wealth in her case is the labour of finding the stuff and transporting it to where it can best be viewed and sold. All labour is natural wealth, Rob. Why haven't we been told this? Largely because some people didn't want more people to know. Get it?

Following from the above, more people need to wake up to their potential to barter for goods and services they really want peer to peer across neighbourhoods, nations, or globally, and to accept their own money (not money issued by some bank or government) as the means of splitting that barter. ALL money, no matter what form it takes Rob, is evidence of incomplete barter transactions, is evidence of debt. It isn't the debt that's bad, it's to whom the debt is owed that is wrong with the present system and it's supposed “order.” Those claiming they can make it better through having the government issue so called “debt free money” which turns out to be an oxymoron, are idiots in the literal sense of the word, worse too as their ideas cloud the picture and deceive many.

A point I did not make about government regulation of business activities is that reviewing the history of all such regulation reveals that the government was coerced into regulating commerce solely for the benefit of bankers and monopolists, NOT as an extension of nature itself. If you don't know, Rob, you'd best go have a look at the history of such government agencies as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Food and Drug Administration, etc. The purpose for government regulation is to minimize competition for the monopolists, Rob and it all really has NO OTHER PURPOSE. Therefore those advocating more government regulation to enhance “fairness” and “justice” are indeed “useful idiots” acting on behalf of the very monopolists and elitists they claim not to support. Nice job, Rob! Now, get a grip on your ideas, question everything you know or think you know and then get back to us with something useful. Best-