We're
going to relate this ancient article to this blog's proposal and
current trends and events. Following the article are additional
modern comments which shall also be addressed.
Source: Private property, freer trade, free markets, and free enterprise
Henry
Hazlitt - Mises.org - May 20, 2016
[Originally published January 27, 1964 in Newsweek. Excerpted from Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt]
President Johnson has declared an “all-out war on human poverty.”
It is a laudable aim. It has in fact been the aim of rulers, statesmen, economists, reformers, religious leaders — of every man of goodwill — from time immemorial. It is an aim shared by all free-enterprise economists since the time of Adam Smith and by all socialists and Communists since the time of Karl Marx. The problem does not concern the end, but the means. What is the best way to abolish poverty?
Unfortunately the means Mr. Johnson recommends are dubious. He proposes more and bigger government spending programs — “to build more homes and more schools and more libraries and more hospitals than any single session of Congress in the history of our republic,” and to “budget the most Federal support in history for education, for health, for retraining the unemployed, and for helping the economically and the physically handicapped.”
What do we already know about this attempt to solve poverty?
1) We know that all this government spending allows capitalism to further “rape, pillage and burn;” loot the general public and the economy by allowing some “safety net” to the poor, whose numbers under capitalism are and will be growing. State socialism is the requirement of capitalism. Without it, the people would revolt. So the two are not competing systems at all. They are points on the same dialectic or either/or continuum created and maintained entirely by THEM using THEIR money, power and influence stemming therefrom.
We further point out that in contrast to capitalism, while free enterprise is not exactly dead, it is largely discouraged, generally difficult to find funding for in THEIR money. Free enterprise is difficult to promote, grow and continue and more and more, going into business is considered a springboard to riches, because capitalism encourages inventors / entrepreneurs, free enterprisers etc. to patent or copyright their discoveries so that they can be bought out by capitalists. Often these buy outs are not to further or develop the discovery or invention, but to keep it from public view or use to promote a favoured monopoly, run by “special people,” etc. and further ..
2) All centralized planning and “big useless plans” places the development of the facilities and infrastructure ahead of their actual need. We have seen evidence of this in developments all over the world, where facilities are built for tremendous profit to certain individual corporations or individuals, but where such facilities may even remain empty after being built, because nobody has enough of THEIR money to be able to rent them. We need not add that precisely none of this activity helped the poor.
Not by Inflation
Whether it is possible to do all this and still cut the total of Federal spending may be reserved for later consideration. But even on the face of his own budget projections this program will involve a combined deficit in the current and next fiscal year of $15 billion. This gap will probably be financed by inflation — i.e., by printing more money, by lowering the purchasing power of the dollar and so raising prices.
We understand that ANY deficit spending over tax revenues must be financed through more borrowing from the central bank which causes more money to enter the system in ways where the likelihood is great that more and more people will not be taking in as much money as the politicians spend of this government issued money. Hence there are far too many open monetary circles and these are hence “spurious notes” that were created without considering anything except the need to spend money on infrastructure that would benefit the contractors that built it above the rest of the people who would use it or pay for it.
Who were those people who benefited then and benefit still from such practises? Usually big construction concerns that are regional or national corporations who can and do build great modern works, including in some parts of the world, whole cities. So just how did this spending actually alleviate poverty? It didn't. It just made certain people richer and the rest of us have to pay for it in taxes and inflation.
This cannot help the poor. Regardless of the immediate result, the long-run result of inflation must be to distort the structure of production, and hence to slow down the rate of balanced economic growth. This cannot help the poor.
To distort the structure of production: Rising prices for common consumer goods are the result of rising expenses to remain in business; government spends money on regulation of business plus taxes to pay the money back are inevitable, plus greater control over the prices of things through commodities speculation (capitalism) driving down prices as far as possible favouring the largest producers, even after efficiencies to scale are exceeded at which point more government money in bailouts is sought else “too big to fails” would lose even more jobs after most are shipped overseas anyway.
As for inflation slowing down the rate of balanced economic growth, we would prefer considering first whether economic growth is always wanted or even welcome and from whence it is motivated if not strictly by nature. We verily have the answers; unwanted economic growth is where wealth is decreased through diminishing of income; usually through a hostile takeover made possible through the rules of capitalism and secondly the reasons why economies are forced to grow is entirely due to usury; the asking back of the uncreated eleventh marble. So called “sustainable” economies are possible, but certainly not by using anything THEY run or have devised. It begins with money that is issued directly by the people themselves, not through any government or by any bank.
For the government to borrow $15 billion now to reduce taxes $11 billion means that taxes must later be raised to a still higher level to pay off the new debt. This must discourage production and employment, and cannot help the poor.
Taxes are an expense passed on to the consumer. When a business is taxed, whatever it does has to rise in price to cover that expense. If the business can't do that and remain in business, it folds.
The economic proposal by Mr. Johnson that would do most harm of all would be to impose a still higher legal penalty for overtime even than the present stiff penalty rate of 50 percent. This could only raise costs of production, lift prices, reduce sales and output, and hence reduce employment. It could not help the poor.
Anytime a state, or the bankers behind them, have to resort to taxing the labour of its citizens, the state has automatically placed a noose around their necks that will eventually strangle them. If deficit spending causes more and more incomplete monetary circles while tremendous amounts of money is borrowed to pay for weapons systems which can never be resold for what they cost (so all that money is dead on arrival), one sees nothing ultimately but rising unpayable mountains of debt that will eventually destroy the host government the capitalists and bankers have been feeding on; their host governments as good credit risks, and the money will be devalued and devalued until it buys nothing and is discarded like toilet paper in a Weimar meltdown, as is going on now in Venezuela.
What was THEIR money based on? Government debt. To whom? To other governments and banks that bought that debt. OK, then what became of the governments or banks that bought that debt? They bought land in the country that was failing or got their stripped natural resources for cheap, not to develop, just to add to their dwindling bottom lines. Or they got to develop infrastructure that stands empty and crumbling because all the money was made and taken away and there's none for anybody locally to have enough of for them to use or to live there.
Mr. Johnson proposes to give Federal funds to “the chronically distressed areas of Appalachia,”to expand area redevelopment,” to “distribute more food to the needy through a broader stamp program.” All these are merely new forms of the age-old proposal to take from the rich and give to the poor, to take from the more productive to give to the less productive. What the reformers who back such proposals forget is that you cannot “redistribute” the fruits of production without drastically reducing production itself.
To “redistribute wealth” assumes that there is anywhere and always a limit to how much wealth there is and however it is many more people don't get anything compared with the few who seem to have and own almost everything. An almost immediate change of perception occurs concerning real wealth once this blog's proposal and analysis are applied. Once that perception change occurs, it is obvious that redistributing or confusing any existing wealth in whatever state it is in, is a ridiculous and a completely short term solution, doomed to failure.
For this “redistribution” reduces incentives at both ends of the economic scale. As the productive have more of their income taxed away from them, they have less incentive to exert themselves to earn it. As the poor get increased handouts and subsidies, they too have less incentive to improve their condition through their own efforts. The problem of curing poverty is difficult and two-sided. It is to mitigate the penalties of misfortune and failure without undermining the incentives to effort and success.
We're going to be making use of exactly these words in future papers concerning the entire subject of poverty and material success, because this all has a bearing on this blog's proposal.
Restore Incentives
The way to cure poverty is not through inflation, “share-the-wealth” schemes, and socialism, but by precisely the opposite policies — by the adoption of a system of private property, freer trade, free markets, and free enterprise. It was largely because we adopted this system more fully than any other country that we became the most productive and hence the richest nation on the face of the globe. Through this system more has been done to wipe out poverty in the last two centuries than in all previous history.
The emphasized stand out - adoption of a system of PRIVATE property including money, that would be from its issuance completely ours, not THEIRS and of course the recognition that free enterprise is the force behind all real progress in civilization and therefore free enterprise is to be considered the right to freedom of every human being; to barter for their living conditions and they have a right to receive and spend their own money too.
The way to combat the remaining pockets of poverty is to keep this system; to reduce government intervention instead of increasing it; to reduce government spending and punitive taxation — in brief, to increase the incentives to the initiative, effort, risk-taking, saving, and investment that increase employment, productivity, and real wages.
We will acknowledge and deal point by point with all of this farther along. But first there's this:
Comment by Michael;
There will always be poor people because there will always be lazy people.
[5/30/16: At first I thought and wrote, (“There is no worthwhile comment to this.”) as a whisper. But actually there is a response to this. Laziness is regarded as a moral issue. What of the other moral issues which might not necessarily render one poor but might? Maybe these should also be mentioned:
What then of anger, of angry people, those who go about angry all the time? What of those who go about imagining that their status concerns how many verbal or intellectual fights they have won? Perhaps we're looking at selection criteria for politicians or bullies.
How about those unnecessarily proud of themselves? Narcissism comes to mind. We see plenty of that and it is even encouraged. Psychopaths, we'll meet them farther down this list, just love narcissists. They're their best targets.
Envy is the grip the mainstream system has on everyone if we give into it. Have you heard the meme that anything but neo-liberalism is considered ignorant, misinformed, not up to date, etc? Manipulating people's envy of other people has proved politically expedient for the elites down through time. It's perhaps the one element that is finally being recognized for exactly what it is; the means to manipulate people to do things according to the will of the elites.
Greed is of course one of the outstanding disease of the elites and they like spreading it so that it seems less of an issue. It begins and ends with THEIR concept of wealth. To them, wealth = stuff. Therefore any program advocating “redistribution of wealth” is viewed by them as, “hey man, that's my stuff!” There is no concern about the relationship between wealth and income. I noticed that hardly anyone was really paying attention to this disconnect back in the 80's when the first modern round of capitalist greed happened. Yeah, some got rich while many more people were simply wiped out. The essence of greed is that there is never enough. The sufferer never knows when he/she has had enough.
Gluttony, eating too much, drinking too much, etc. Look around you. You see evidences of it everywhere. It is an indication of emotional need never being met, of some latent insecurity that has gone unsolved. Perhaps there were occasions of child abuse behind it. There may have been, but we aren't jumping to any conclusions. Also, people who are gluttons tend to be dreamers who want others to join them in their parties and misery. Nothing seems to work out for them because they are in their own way all the time and over eating most of it. Fasting and raising consciousness might help many but we're already straying far off the essential purposes of this blog.
Lust, is the desire for control rather than the conviction of command because real lust is empty of anything but destructive intent. Real lust is what killers feel, it is the disease of psychopaths who are attracted to narcissists as spiders to flies. We see their games and excesses everywhere and this culture celebrates them. Many with this disease are our leaders because the system chooses to express this trait more than others.
There are really two more, Fear and Deceit. To fear beyond measure and without reason is not adequate to most of life's basic tasks. Nothing happens when people are afraid but tyranny. Deceit is the prison of emptiness, the final withdrawal. The deceitful tell lies, they care nothing for the truth, they will bend anything to their momentary advantage, there is nothing inside them, they have no inner anything except that they are living a lie that usually others around them also believe. Those successful liars we see them everywhere so it does work.
Now back to our paper ...]
But we can eliminate unnecessary unwarranted poverty with freedom, not government.
Agreed! We even go so far as to suggest that anything they (governments) attempt to do regarding the general economy is illegitimate, because it attempts to give the public something back for the money it spends into existence that the public for the most part does not even want. This would clearly not be the case were the money to spring forth from the people and not some bank.
However, continuing illegitimacy being the case, we look for the arbitrary nature of most government actions to determine the preferred winners in any economic schemes stemming from government programs, regulations or rulings. These prefigured economic winners as people can be classified as capitalists, because they are each and always so rich that they need not work at all for the rest of their lives, unless their wealth is tied up in real estate, which for some it is. But even so, they are capitalists; those who live from making money on their money without accomplishing anything productive themselves.
Ironically, and this subject must be broached, it is said that without these people nothing really big could ever be accomplished. Let us say in counter distinction to this perception that we have no idea how far human civilization could have gone without certain critical inventions being “shelved” so that the “special” monopolies could be preserved. After all, much that is their monopolies was based on huge debts that these factors of production required from the banks who want everything and more back right on schedule, whether the business succeeds or fails.
Private property, free trade, free markets, and free enterprise is the key to prosperity.
Our contribution, this blog's proposal, is based on private property and is designed to promote all the rest.
Eliminate the middleman (government bureaucracy) and allow the community to keep the wealth of their labor.
This is a huge subject and at the heart of the matter. It relates to everything that's wrong with this society and includes the problem of homelessness in America. One cannot expect much of anything different from government, none of whose policies are really designed to help the people. However there is a way for each and every community to keep more of the income from their innate wealth. We'll use our terms as they are more precise. Our approach is to build our monetary system alongside theirs. All the rest is on this blog.
Government is only necessary for a very few basic functions. We should not allow the government to acquire much control over our markets. The markets can work themselves out far better than a centralized governing monopoly of FORCE. Of course we need regulations, but we have to have smart regulations, not over-regulation and not regulations geared toward lobbyists, special interest groups, and government bureaucracy.
Ultimately we only want regulations regarding property (to protect it from poachers, etc.), life (including health and safety matters), liberty (free enterprise) and due process (access to courts of settlement).
In order to get the correct regulations in the place and get rid of the bad regulations, we must eliminate the current atmosphere that provides incentives for over-regulation and bad regulations. We need to create an atmosphere that naturally spawns proper regulations such as campaign reform, term limits, as well as several other changes in our system [the present system not that proposed by this blog] that I could explain in detail but it would take quite some time. But the point is, embrace sensible regulated capitalism based on an open free market system, not socialism based on a centralized monopoly of force, and/or redistribution of wealth.
At this point in time, the effect of any of this on the powers that be is equivalent to a fly that went by. None of this can be done in THEIR system but certainly can and would be done in OUR system.
How regulated Capitalism got branded as Socialism & how real Socialism got sold to the people as the solution to improperly regulated Capitalism / Crony Capitalism:
Back in the days in America when child labor was accepted, no building codes were in place, OSHA was not formed yet, worker's rights weren't put into place yet, so on and so forth, there were Community organizers and good politicians that wanted to regulate the marketplace to make it a more safer and prosperous body. But the major corporate/industry leaders fought against putting these proper regulations in place and demonized it as socialism when in fact it was not socialism at all, it was just sensible regulations.
Let's cut right through this: regulated capitalism is still capitalism. Real capitalism as defined by this blog is strictly speaking any practise that makes money on money without actually working for it. Is a middle man a capitalist? No. A middle man is buying something at wholesale (more of something than anyone would ever need) and bringing that to his customers in a location likely to buy at retail what he brings there. All the transportation, knowing what his/her customers want, etc. is all his/her innate wealth. So there are honest middle men and if there weren't any, much of a good economy would be a pipe dream of perhaps some of Rand's “hate eaten mystics.”
We further define capitalism as empowered to get away with much of what it does through “limited liability” and “absentee ownership.” These are what all corporations have so that their “owners” are never liable for anything said corporation might cause to do harm to the rest of the general public. Let's stop for a moment and ask whether this is fair, just, honest or all the rest? Of course, none of it has an ounce of integrity to it, therefore all such forms of business shall be forbidden operation in OUR markets using OUR money. Well that limits a lot now doesn't it? Since as we saw from some previous essays, THEY already own most if not all of the world anyway, or so THEY imagine. So just imagine what happens when they are standing there, their world in ashes asking the rest of us for help to rebuild it and of course taking THEIR money.
Similar things still happen to this day however, we now primarily have issues of over-regulation and not intelligent regulations in place.
I've just told you that “intelligent” regulation is an obtuse subterfuge to get everyone to leap to unwarranted assumptions about what one can and can't be done with the obvious. There is no intelligent regulation of that which has no integrity as an operation. You are doing nothing but shining shit!
We also have a corrupt system that has lobbyist/corporations that pay for our politicians campaigns so that when they get elected into office they will deregulate or over regulate a particular industry to appease their lobbyists so as to allow their lobbyists to monopolize and or corner their particular Market.
That's right. So now, is it that they buy and sell politicians like fruitcakes, or that the regulations that do get passed benefit those behind the scenes, or does it really bother you that they are supposedly using YOUR money to do all of this? It's your perception that needs work as all the rest has been going on since forever. It's the money, stupid! THEIR money, ALL of it, including silver, gold and precious stones, all of it is THEIRS, not yours or mine. What have YOU? What do YOU decide to base your money on?
This has many labels including the term crony capitalism. We are witnessing crony capitalism failing not true well regulated capitalism (remember, well does not mean over-regulated, it means sensible intelligent regulations).
You cannot promise what does not exist, has never existed and will never exist. It's all “big useless plans” and until more people wake up they will assume things such as that of course they were never lied to anywhere in any classroom ever attended, can believe what their TV's project, etc. Oh, and all capitalism is essentially crony capitalism because their making money on money schemes always involve market makers and key players in any commodity or industry. Want to socialize it? We already do. It's called the plunge protection team and they spend huge amounts of so called tax payer money to keep THEIR markets afloat. What did we say about any money paid for something that goes down in price, perhaps forever? Right, that money has died, forever. Meanwhile since all of it is debt back to various banks, who created that money as marks of their ledgers, out of nothing, because THEY have stolen OUR fiat, that we are too stupid to recognize and reclaim for ourselves, because gosh darnit, we're just too dumb. If that's the case and you can't or wont get any smarter yourself, because you're too lazy or weak to think clearly, then well perhaps you should just admit you're no better than a worm or somebody's slave and of course being a slave, just who are you to demand “intelligent” regulation of anything? Better learn your place, or get your own money.
Our system is beginning to have major financial and social issues as a result and instead of people being educated about what the true fight is, which is to restore and form a well-regulated capitalistic system, people are being sold the philosophy that we must centralize the decision-making on every aspect of the market and form a Monopoly of FORCE to be administered by the federal government, which is known as authoritarianism and or socialism. The most extreme form of this kind of governing (micromanaging) is referred to as communism.
“To restore and form a well-regulated capitalistic system?” There never was one. There was a time when free enterprise was allowed far more than it is now. In order to promote free enterprise we actually need less regulation and all of it local. If something is too big to operate safely anywhere locally, then it is simply too big to operate, as the price to adequately insure it against what it might do to harm others is not worth staying in business, such as ALL ATOMIC POWER PLANTS EVERYWHERE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
We must put sensible regulations into place; we also need campaign reform to do something about lobbyists; and very importantly we need to reject politicians that promote true socialism. There is a lot of work to be done and we need to educate people about what true socialism is vs true capitalism.
Cutting through more of this pure confounding of facts: capitalism and socialism are both isms, irritants upon society. They are evil twin sisters as they came about from and through the same people. There is nothing good about either of them. There is a socialism that is good and then there is free enterprise from which everything great stems. The so called “public” corporations and capitalism are sharks that must be correctly seen as what they are; parasites upon society that require forms of state socialism in order that the people not decide to revolt and overthrow their class of people from their stolen privileges. Such people are to be regarded as essentially criminal vermin and their money as poison. We need and want our own money and ultimately our own institutions. There is nothing of THEIRS that we want.
Because of our high taxes and over regulations in this country as well as these anti sovereignty trade deals, American corporations are taking their factories and production out of this country to places with lower taxes and lower regulations and then bringing their products back into our country free of charge with no tariffs (taxes) on these products raking in huge profits for their CEOs and top corporate leaders.
So what? It's THEIR money and THEY get to do with it what THEY want, until we have our own and can say NO to THEM. In the meantime, we advocate paying your taxes and NOT trying to do anything but working to walk away from them, out of their crumbling capitalist/socialist empire into something we devise of our own; real land ownership, clean water, air, food, etc. Work and trade among ourselves using OUR money to rebuild our homes, farms, villages, towns, cities, etc. This is a time of transition. There is nothing to go back to, it is all over. There will only be what we decide it's going to be into the future. We can start by doing everything we can to make the powers that be utterly irrelevant. Start getting familiar with this proposal and spread its message. You cannot stop them, you can do something else instead.
Some Americans are brainwashed into thinking this [globalization = capital chasing cheap labour around the world] is good because we get cheap Goods. But the truth is Americans suffer tremendously through job losses and wages. And not to mention this creates huge amounts of slave labor in other countries like China. All while growing our trade deficit exponentially. And Washington is allowing our markets to be flooded with cheap labor from third world countries.
... because when it all comes right down to it, we are living in a country where the state is signalling that we can no longer afford to live in it. Some of the immigrants are believed to have some of THEIR money to spend on the artificially inflated prices of everything that is still depreciating. The only reason the present economy still continues to operate is that enough people buy into their promises. Have THEY ever kept their promises?
Tax cuts back to the Individual VS. Stimulus Packages geared toward multi-million dollar corporations & special interest groups: When you cut taxes & put money back into the economy through the individual, they typically spend it on necessities & or goods therefore stimulating [sic] the economy. When you take tax payers' money [sic] & form stimulus packages/quantitative easing (QE), & take all that capital out of the market & redistribute it to multi-million dollar corporations & special interest groups, they tend to either horde the money or keep it for their CEOs & or Friends. And that money never really circulates back into the market as it should.
All that led to the emphasized may be true, but the conception of money as some kind of circulating lake is not correct. We therefore admonish all our readers to reacquaint themselves with a few facts of money before ever jumping to such conclusions ever again. Here's
#80 How Money Is Destroyed and
#84 The True Shape, Flow and Destiny of All Money.
Money is not something that is preserved, conserved, reserved, any of that. It begins from a transaction involving somebody buying something and ends up being destroyed by the things that it bought which cannot be resold to retrieve it. If you bought it for too much and can't sell it, all that money is lost forever. Money always needs a source from whence it springs forth. WHY DO PEOPLE AUTOMATICALLY ASSUME THAT IT MUST SPRING FORTH FROM A BANK OR FROM THEIR METALS? It's frankly stupid!
Despite collecting record revenues, government still runs $461 billion deficit. We don't have a tax revenue problem and we don't need to raise taxes. That's a diversion from the truth. The truth is we have a waste, abuse and fraud problem:
... and just how do you suppose you're going to stop all that? Again, it's THEIR money, not yours or mine. You and I have NO SAY in ANY matter concerning THEIR customer, the Federal government, nor in anything THEIR banks using THEIR money insist any other of THEIR governments, not you or I, must and will do. Nevertheless ...
1. Waste: We have a huge bureaucracy that we don't need. We have government agencies that are not necessary, and we spent trillions of dollars on over regulations that we don't need. Etc
Who is going to fire them?
2. Abuse: We over stretch our military for geopolitical nefarious reasons and we misuse our safety nets (welfare) for political leverage and votes. We also create entitlements that are both unconstitutional and unsustainable. Etc.
I'd appreciate everyone dropping both “sustainable” and “unsustainable” from your vocabulary and begin recognizing this as newspeak for the bigs and the elites deciding what will be accepted or not, not you or me. I wont be repressed into believing that anything they say concerning such matters is for anyone's good but their own. Besides we have Fukushima and the Gulf of Mexico disasters (and much more) as evidence that they are hypocrites and assholes who do not deserve anything like the respect or plaudits they are used to receiving.
3. Fraud: We have people that abuse the welfare system by misusing it's designed purpose and by lying about their status so as to receive several different forms of welfare such as EBT cards, etc that they shouldn't qualify for. We also have politicians that take money from the general fund and misappropriate funds through negligence and theft. They use the money for Black Ops projects, to give themselves unnecessary raises and create bogus projects for profit and the list goes on.
The poor are not the problem. The rich and THEIR money are the problem. There are people who do not belong where they are many times because they were and are being driven out from where they were living because someone with more of THEIR money wanted something under land those people were living on and basically drove them off of it. War has many fronts and causes. It is always about money, power and resources. Religion is occasionally used but nobody fights and dies without being paid and the promise of more pay. That is indeed how THEY pay for would be enemies to fight against.
And this is a very short list and examples of the waste, abuse and fraud. Raising taxes is not only unnecessary but counterproductive and a direct deception by your federal government.
It isn't ours, it never was ours, we aren't the people who formed it, the people who wrote the piece of paper that formed it did so behind closed doors and armed guard. Why do you suppose that was done? It never came out that all you need do is replace the stars in blue in the corner of the USA flag with a British union jack and you have the flag of the East India Company, a private corporation that helped write the Constitution. All they have ever shown you was smoke and mirrors. There is nothing special about DC except it's a place where destroying people's reputations is considered sport. Waste fraud and abuse? It all begins and ends with THEIR money, and that includes ALL silver and gold because THEY own the mines and control the price at which it is traded. It is all of it THEIR money, not yours or mine.
We're finally going to edit this so you can see what he wrote and what we mean by it:
A huge part of how America has succeeded in the past so much and so in many areas such as sports, big and small business ventures, technology, innovation, revolutionary inventions, and so much more is because of our emphasis on personal freedom and liberty.
We aren't seeing enough of this because our schools have largely brow beaten us out of most of it. We are now told to rely on others who know more and have more than we do because we might fail, etc. We would rather quote people regarded as smart than try and use some smarts of our own. Every ounce of backbone has been and is being systematically removed to make us all conform to THEIR will.
We valued the
Now, this blog's proposal aims directly “to mitigate the penalties of misfortune and failure without undermining the incentives to effort and success.” We see only one way out of this and for want of better words, we're going to adopt these words as part of our slogan; Natural Socialism. Natural Socialism will be understood to mean where a community takes care of its own. Since all socialism is an ism, an irritant to society, we understand that eventually it will not be necessary and so shall go away. But as a means of solving poverty, this is a better solution than anything anyone else has in mind.
It DOES require organization, but does NOT require it being a state. In fact it would be best to consider what we have in mind to be a private business organization, or a universe of them at each local level, that everyone can be a member of if they observe certain rules. This is the only way to maintain order which is also part of a civilization, that its activities are not just rational but that they are orderly. Basically one cannot have a civilization without order. This applies directly to our observation that the recognition of SANITY is a universal thing, not requiring some “expert” to decide for us and that most people live in a REASONABLE EXPECTATION of continuing peace and taken together are basic human rights.
It DOES require recognition of various facts of life, liberty and money, some of which is explained in this blog. It manifestly makes each man or woman responsible for their own and compensates for the drunken stupidity of those who would have us believe that any individual can behave like a grown up baby, throw tantrums and FORCE others to live or die by their decrees because of THEIR money, etc.
We start out with an inception date for our money; Nov 2, 2011. From that month on, starts a clock. That clock ticks by the month. For every month since then that has passed, people on various government benefits programs got paid because they were deemed disabled or aged or blind or whatever it is. In the case of Americans, it will differ from place to place as we decide at each local level, we propose that since inception, all of these people who become our A members shall be entitled to a store of Valuns equal to the dollar amount of their monthly government payments. That's our Natural Socialism. These Valuns become the money force (voltage) that gets the Valun economy going. Down the line as fewer of these government programs are funded the Valun economy will grow and people will notice that nobody who uses Valuns is poor. Over time these social isms will be phased out as they wont be needed. Where do all new Valuns come from? From work. You can trade any other of THEIR money for them, through gold and silver. There is no way back. All exchanges are one way only except for legitimate taxes. We expect that most taxes will be covered by our members in their own “public” currencies.
These so called free Valuns, usually not recovered by these people selling back something into the Valun economy, will end up in the hands of the most productive as they ever would using any money. Even customary economics speaks about the dollar spent on welfare vs. the dollar spent on defence as worthy of investigation. Of course they rarely point out that the poor must spend whatever they get and can never save anything and that those extra dollars do end up in the hands of the most productive, or capitalists (who are sharks), whilst that dollar spent on defence is mostly irrevocably lost since these weapons etc. cannot be resold for anything like what the government paid for them. So in the entire military industrial complex rests the graveyard of more dollars than are spent by government for anything else, and most of the rest is also wasted and buys nothing that we really want. AND we have perpetual and rising taxes to pay for it all.
Since one can't really do anything about it, why not just leave or plan to? Why not start something else before you do leave? The first effort should be doing it orderly; start IVES, start getting people enrolled, form at least three IE's in each state before starting. Meanwhile get to work doing whatever you are best at; your innate wealth. We said that work was any and all time out of your daily life to earn money. If you work at home, begin by taking track of the time as if you were punching a clock. You will be this time. It will be YOUR clock.
As you begin looking at what you do as a business, begin selling whatever it is to your friends, think about the dollars you take in as tax money first. Pay off your house. All mortgages must be paid off. That's the very last debt you would ever let go of. As for the rest, pay off as much of your debt as you possibly can. Then when Valuns become available start using them. They will be a little different. Since they will always be heavier than dollars, you will need fewer of them. Each one will buy more.
For example we expect a dozen eggs or more likely 18 eggs to go for V1. Likely a gallon of milk would go for V1. Likely a gallon of gas would go for V1. There would be plus or minus 10% either way, but without capitalism, the expected price at every locality would serve as a Figure 1 for that commodity. Valun tokens will say things on them like the People of wherever it is you live and will say either V-Check or Exchange Note on them. We hope to make them look as good as we can, but their purpose is foremost to function as tokens of our own monetary system that is designed to surpass and supplant THEIRS when it fails.
David Burton
dpbmss@mail.com
Current Hypothetical Value of a Hypothetical Value Unit
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