How Inflation Helps Keep The Rich Up And The Poor Down

LudwigvonMisesInstitute  May 31 2014

Banking is fraudulent whenever bankers sell uncovered or only partially covered money substitutes that they present as fully covered titles for money.” ~ J. G. Hülsmann

The production of money in a free society is a matter of free association. Everybody from the miners to the owners of the mines, to the minters, and up to the customers who buy the minted coins — all benefit from the production of money. None of them violates the property rights of anybody else, because everybody is free to enter the mining and minting business, and nobody is obliged to buy the product.

cartoon_bernankeThings are completely different once we turn to money production in interventionist regimes, which have prevailed in the West for the better part of the past 150 years. Here we need to mention in particular two institutional forms of monetary interventionism: (fraudulent) fractional reserve banking and fiat money. The common characteristic of both these institutions is that they violate the principle of free association. They enable the producers of paper money and of money titles to expand their production through the violation of other people’s property rights.

Banking is fraudulent whenever bankers sell uncovered or only partially covered money substitutes that they present as fully covered titles for money. These bankers sell more money substitutes than they could have sold if they had taken care to keep a 100-percent reserve for each substitute they issued.

The producer of fiat money (in our days, typically, paper money) sells a product that cannot withstand the competition of free-market moneys such as gold and silver coins, and which the market participants only use because the use of all other moneys is severely restricted or even outlawed. The most eloquent illustration of this fact is that paper money in all countries has been protected through legal-tender laws. Paper money is inherently fiat money; it cannot thrive but when it is imposed by the state. Continue reading

1946 Archive Film Proves Despotism Has Taken over America [Video]

TruthStreamMedia  February 26 2014

“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Thomas Jefferson, writing on behalf of the independent-minded colonists in 1776, backed up the Declaration’s conclusion with numerous examples of British tyranny, stating: “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

Compare them to the United States and global system we live under today

Are we now free? Examine the balance of power between individuals, endowed with natural rights by God, and government, Constitutionally bound to only limited powers, as well as the leading corporations of the private sector.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/xdkU79nZIq4&w=500]

A 1946 national archive film released by Encyclopedia Britannica titled “Despotism” outlines several yardsticks for measuring the balance of power of a free society and that of an outright a despotism, according to scales of respect, power, economic distribution and information. Concentrated power and wealth, centralized information and monopolistic or oligopolistic control in any one of these areas tends to negatively affect the others, and renders freedom a mere illusion.

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Michael Busler, Ph.D ~ In the Land of Opportunity

Freeman’sPerspective  August 1 2013

[Today’s article comes to us from ., a public policy analyst and an Associate Professor at Richard Stockton College. Courtesy of The Project to Restore America]

About 237 years ago the leaders of our country gathered to form a new government. This land would be governed by individuals who were freely elected by the majority of the people. This land would encourage freedom, democracy and fulfillment, by proclaiming that all people had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This would be the land of opportunity.

In this land of opportunity every individual would be encouraged to contribute to the economic system and would be rewarded according to that contribution. This land would have low rates of taxation and a limited role for government. That would ensure freedom and just rewards for all contributions. This would be the land of opportunity.

In this land each person was expected to not only reap the vast rewards of a free society, but also to assume the responsibilities of freedom. These responsibilities included providing for those who were, for whatever legitimate reason, unable to provide for themselves. And since, in a free society people tend to be very compassionate, this responsibility was accepted. Yes this was the land of opportunity.

After about 150 or so years of this system, we became the most successful nation on earth. We were the greatest producer of output, we had the strongest economy and we strived to be the best at virtually everything. Our success was stunning.

Then things changed.

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