The one person qualified to govern you

The route to a free society will vary according to the history of a region, and consequently no single description will do. The path taken by North Korean market anarchists will no doubt differ from the course of similarly minded individuals in the United States. In the former, violent overthrow of unjust regimes may occur, while in the latter, a gradual and orderly erosion of the State is a wonderful possibility. The one thing all such revolutions would share is a commitment by the overwhelming majority to a total respect of property rights. [emphasis in original] — Chaos Theory, Robert P. Murphy

Most people don’t vote in government elections, and the ones who do regard that fact as shameful, disgusting, deplorable, and downright unAmerican.  They accuse nonvoters as too lazy to care about “their country.”  How can we make government the voice of the people if most of them stay home on Election Day?  Maybe the US should follow Australia and make Americans vote at the point of a gun.  When people don’t do what everyone knows they’re supposed to do, make them pay.  Force them to be moral.  Give voting the power of the law, or more precisely, threaten the slackers with fines and incarceration if they don’t vote.

No doubt there are a lot of people who care little or nothing about the government we have.  I am not one of them.  

We need government but not one built on a scheme of monopoly and coercion. Such a government wrings the life out of its citizens before collapsing completely.  Common sense tells us that monopoly and coercion provide a bad foundation for a peaceful, productive society. 

I have written a book that explains how the “gradual and orderly erosion of the State” can come about.  It requires “voting.”  The only requirement for voting is access to YouTube and the ability to understand English.  

Unlike the State’s elections you won’t be voting for a person some political gang has put on the ballot.  You won’t be voting for a candidate you hope is the least likely to make your life miserable with higher taxes, increased regulations, and war — along with lies to cover it all.  You won’t be voting on one day only as specified by the State.  Once the voting booth opens it will stay open indefinitely, unless YouTube shuts it down.

In a real sense you will be voting for the only person qualified to govern you — the guy you see in the mirror.  Without the State standing over you, you’re on your own.  You will be taking full responsibility for your life.

Scary?  If you’re looking for scary check this out.  Robert Higgs:

Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. 

Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

And it wasn’t anarchists who shut down countless businesses and churches during this overblown pandemic.

The YouTube “voting booth” will open at the end of July when my movie is released.  Voting is simple. If you agree with the presentation in the movie (which follows my book), give it a thumb’s up.  If not, don’t.  That’s it.

In the meantime, those interested in the arguments for ending the state can consult my book, Do Not Consent: Think OUTSIDE the voting booth.

***

George Ford Smith is the author of nine books, father of twin daughters, and grandfather of an active grandson.  He's also a filmmaker whose short movies are available on Amazon Prime.

Three red flags and a fourth

Libertarians harbor massive guilt, especially Christian libertarians.  The pillars of their worldview are certain ideas the rest of the world condemns.  Their guilt is revealed in their words.  They never write or speak about these ideas without apologies, if they’re even mentioned at all.  It’s the time-worn attitude of make concessions to be accepted.  Not all libertarians suffer thus, but almost all.  

Is there something innately wrong with a person of libertarian views?  Do biological wirings get crossed as the person matures and moves from something resembling mainstream views to positions that shove him to the brink of insanity?

Or is it possible libertarian opponents never broke free from the indoctrination of childhood?

I’ll leave that question to the reader.  What I would like to do, with a minimum of guilt, is examine four ideas that most of world rejects as absurd, evil, naive, criminal, or offensive.  Or all of the foregoing.

But wait.  For those assuming I’m a ranting malcontent, let me tick off a brief resume:  Raised by mainstream parents. College graduate with honors.  Father of loving twin girls in their mid-thirties.  Enjoy living in a middle-class and racially diverse neighborhood.  Last I checked found no chips on my shoulder.

And perhaps most importantly: Optimistic about the future — the future of most people alive today.  

Okay, let’s take a look at those shameful ideas.

Profit

Are you reading this on a Mac or PC?  Or perhaps a mobile device?  You probably paid someone for your digital unit, and the payment in part flowed into the coffers of Apple or Microsoft.  These guys experience a lot of inflow.  Apple’s gross profit for the 12 months ending March 31, 2020 was over $102 billion.  Microsoft’s for the same period, $94.5 billion.  Are these earnings violations of common morality?  Heck, you only got a computing device out of the deal, whereas these companies are swimming in money.  How dare they get so rich.  Turn them over to the Democrats.  Summon the antitrust gang.  Break them up.  

But you know damn well they wouldn’t be swimming at all if you and millions of others didn’t want them swimming.  You and your fellow consumers are in control.  You profit from their profits.

Consider what the federal government raked in recently.  For FY 2019, total revenue was $3.422 trillion and would have been more if Trump hadn’t cut corporate and estate taxes.  Revenue is used instead of gross profit because government is grossly in the red financially, besides which the concepts of “profit and loss” are lost on the state.  Apple’s gross profits amount to a mere 3% of the federal government’s haul.  You could argue that the government “serves” all US residents and therefore its revenue should be larger, whereas the tech giants serve only a part of the economy.  

Apple, Microsoft and other companies, large and small, bend over backwards to serve you, whereas the state forces you to bend over as it extracts your wealth without asking —and for what?  9/11, Katrina, the “this time it’s different” financial crisis of 2008-2009, the Forever Wars, the depreciating dollar, an educational system that amounts to obedience training, alphabet agencies that spy on and incarcerate people for victimless crimes.  The list is endless.  Because government as it exists is not founded on profit and loss, you (and me) lose.

You can stop dealing with Apple or Microsoft.  Try stopping doing “business” with the state.

You still think profit is an unholy word?

Selfishness

A selfless action is usually understood to mean action taken for the benefit of others.  In common parlance, being selfless is good, regardless of the outcome.  Thus, selfless people have “good intentions” even if they reduce the world to ashes.  Gun controllers love this.  If repealing gun rights saves one life, they say repeal is justified.  Sounds good until you notice all the lives lost because the victims had been legally disarmed.  

But the intentions were noble.

When Muhammed Ali refused to be forced to kill foreigners he knew nothing about — “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”  — he was acting for his own selfish benefit.  “I know where Vietnam is,” he replied to a reporter, “it’s on television.”  That’s where it was — and all it was — to most Americans.  Few voices dared criticize the state for trying to conscript him for its “noble” purpose.  War has always been a sacred state activity that just happens to make a few people very rich.  But those people aren’t “selfish.”  No, no, they’re patriots.  The selfish ones are those with a backbone like Ali who refused to be pawns in the state’s plans.  Never mind that the war killed millions of people, civilians and soldiers.  It’s the intentions that count, and the state had only the best intentions: stop the spread of communism.  Ali, though, he was acting selfishly, the dog.

If young American men had stood up to the state and refused to join the crusade, thereby not only acting in their self-interest but in the interest of millions of others who were killed, we might’ve had one less nightmare in our history.

“The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service.” — attributed to Albert Einstein.

Capitalism

We’ve never had pure capitalism because the state has always existed.  With the state you get corruption and distortions enforced at gunpoint:  Lucrative “partnerships” for some firms, anti-trust persecution for others; protection from foreign competition, protection from market solutions that threaten the profits of state cartels, thick volumes of regulations that often favor lawyer-rich large companies at the expense of smaller ones, and lately counterfeit money stuffed into the hands of consumers to keep them from rioting.

This is not capitalism.  It is corruption and theft on a large scale.  

Capitalism is an economic system that recognizes the “right to unrestricted private property and free exchange,” as Murray Rothbard wrote in For a New Liberty.  

Capitalism as it is used by its enemies is a straw man.

The beauty of stateless capitalism is that it incorporates the moral ideals of profit and selfishness that brings the bounty of the market to people, while keeping violence to a minimum.  The closer an economy gets to pure capitalism, the better off we all are.  Make that far better off when the state is eliminated.

State capitalism makes wars, but it is capitalism in any form that takes the blame.

And the fourth

This one is singled out because almost no one mentions it except to condemn it by implication.  Anarchy in libertarian theory is government without the state.  It means the free market can and should provide all the products and services needed for a peaceful, productive society.  It forbids legal coercion, which is why it excludes the state.    

Lately, President Trump and others have described as anarchy certain urban areas in which police have yielded control to violent protesters.  Anarchy and chaos are used synonymously. 

Robert P. Murphy’s engaging introductory book on market anarchism, Chaos Theory, cleverly adopts the common understanding of anarchy in its title.  Is anarchy really chaos?  Read his book.

Murphy:

[Advocates of laissez-faire such as Friedman and Mises] focused on the necessity of law itself. They simply assumed that the market is incapable of defining and protecting property rights. They were wrong. . . . 

It took no king to produce language, money, or science, and it takes no government to produce a just legal system.

Is anarchy or the state the true champion of mayhem?  Economist Robert Higgs offers some insight:

Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.

Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

One way libertarians can get ahead in the world is to stand up for their ideas and their ideals, rather than try to smuggle them past their audience..  

For a proposal to reject the state and claim our right to be free, see my recent book, Do Not Consent, soon to be a short movie.  Be sure to check out my brief interview with Libby, the star of the upcoming film.

George Ford Smith is the author of nine books, all of which can be found on Amazon.   

Rock the boat? Hell, yes!

Below is the preface of my new book, Do Not Consent: Think OUTSIDE the Voting Booth, in which I argue that the first step in removing state depredations from your life is to approve the removal of the state from your life.   

For those who think freedom can only exist in the privacy of their thoughts and has no chance in the real world consider that a voice for freedom was elected to the governor’s office in South Dakota in 2018.  In many respects Governor Noem reminds one of Ron Paul, and as with anyone opposing the narrative of state supremacy she’s routinely pilloried in the media.  

Keep in mind the voters who elected Dr. Paul and Ms. Noem didn’t have the option to “vote” outside the state’s elections, where they could publicly express their wish for government by market forces only, with the state relegated to political history.  Even the rare appearance of freedom candidates such as Paul and Noem exist at the state’s discretion.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
--  Emma Goldman

Preface

This is not a book promoting armed revolution or even peaceful secession.

It’s a book urging people to stand up for their right to be free, free from legal coercion — free from government depredation.

If you don’t want to be bossed around any longer, say so.  Say so publicly.  Make it known in a poll.

Civilization does not depend on rule by “guns and badges.”

Civilization does not depend on voting the “right” politicians into office.

Civilization does not depend on high or low taxes.

Civilization depends on whether some people have the legal authority to coerce others.

Today’s governments claim the right to coerce us.  They do so by passing and enforcing coercive laws — such as high or low taxes.

Did you personally give someone this right?  If you’re a voter in government elections, you did.

By voting, you also gave government permission to conscript men into the armed forces, many of whom were not allowed to vote because of their age.

By voting, you give government permission to continue kidnapping and imprisoning foreigners without charging them with specific crimes, as it does at the Pentagon’s and CIA’s torture center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

By voting, you give political candidates the right to renege on their campaign promises, something you would never do in your business affairs.

By voting, you keep alive the war and kidnapping machine established by the National Security Act after World War II.

By voting, you authorize the creation of secretive and oppressive federal agencies such as the FBI, IRS, CIA, NSA, and DHS.

By voting, you raise no objections to the “monetary policies” of the central bank called the Federal Reserve, an absolutely essential institution for a welfare/warfare state, given its monopoly status as a creator of money out of thin air, a defining trait of counterfeiting.

By voting, you continue to fund public schooling, the government’s indoctrination program for the young.

And through your best intentions as voters, you raise no challenge to an organization, the state itself, that has an exclusive monopoly on legal coercion and which has used that power in defiance of written law to increase its control over your life — using your money.

Do you get the feeling something’s not right?  I hope so.

What if we could dump government as it exists by telling it to go away?  Shoo!  Go away, get lost!  Get out of the war racket.  Quit trying to run the economy.  Quit stealing.  Quit supporting special interests.  Drop your bankrupt welfare programs.  Give private charity a chance to breathe.  Get a real job, start a business.

And I’m not talking about putting “none of the above” on ballots.

Even if government allowed “none of the above” you would still be voting inside the box of government authority.

But what if we could vote outside the box?  What if we could express our wish to dump government (as it exists) in a poll?

What if that same poll gave people the opportunity to give a thumbs-up for market-based government, with security provided by private protection agencies governed by the forces of competition and profit and loss?

What if more than a handful of people wanted this?

What if a large percentage of people wanted this?

What if their “votes” out-tallied the votes for the winning presidential candidate?

Do you think we would be closer to getting rid of coercive government?

Right now it’s just a dream.  And some of you would say it’s only a dream.  No reality to it.  We live in a great country, why risk radical change?  Let’s stay the course.  Vote in the government’s elections.  Hope for the best.

Don’t rock the boat.

The rest of this book will argue that the course is a bad one that will get worse.

Staying the course is staying on a sinking ship with no lifeboats aboard.

Give me your attention for a few pages.   You might agree.  You might want to rock the hell out of the boat.

--
George Ford Smith is the author of nine books, all of which can be found on Amazon.  Do Not Consent is his latest book and will be the basis of a movie under the same title, available on Amazon Prime and his YouTube channel in late July.

How to make your vote count

The following is from my recently released book,

Do Not Consent: Think OUTSIDE the voting booth

In 2020, the panicked and tyrannical reaction of governments to the coronavirus has created a major crisis in governing.  Some libertarian pundits see it as a big step toward totalitarian rule, another instance where the state “never lets a crisis go to waste.”  

Clearly, if we sit back and wait for more decrees and restrictions we will get them.  If we surrender our freedom without putting up a fight, we cannot claim to have lost something we value, and we can resign ourselves to the status of ciphers.

How do we fight for our freedom?

In this book I’m assuming “the land of the free and home of the brave” are more than just words.  We can make this our fight.  We have an opportunity to use this crisis for the cause of freedom.  For once we can declare that we — each of us — will make the decisions that affect our lives.  Let’s show the state we want to step outside its controlled elections — and outside its control — and govern ourselves without coercion, without the threat of violence.  The free market is our ally.  We can live free and prosper if we have the courage to remove the state from our great country.

If you agree that we need a government based on market principles rather than coercion, let your conviction be known.  When the movie expounding the views herein is released in late July on my YouTube channel, GFS543, give it a thumbs up.  

That will be your voting booth.  That will be your means of letting your voice be heard.

The movie will bear the same title as this book, Do Not Consent.  I hope you find the movie entertaining, but that’s not what you should primarily consider.  If it gets across the main point I’ve made in this book, that we can live and prosper without a coercive government — without a state, without the threat of violence — that’s what you should be voting for.  And just to be clear, you are voting to remove the state from our lives, not to remove government as such.  

The message I’m delivering is pro-government-in-the-market sense only, anti-state.  

To sum up, my advice is:

Do not consent to the coercive agencies that are currently installed at all levels of our current system of government, from federal to local.  At the federal level they include the usual enemies such as the DEA, NSA, IRS, and the Federal Reserve.

Do not consent to what’s called taxation, to the right of some people to confiscate your wealth, however great or modest your wealth may be.  

Do not consent to the current institutions that thrive on “wars” of all kinds, whether it’s a war on a bug, a drug, or an unfortunate condition of human existence, most of which the state created and intensify the problems they’re alleged to fix, that are done in your name and with your expropriated money.  

Do not consent to the vast military - industrial - congressional - media - educational complex that claims to be a defender of your liberty as it murders families overseas and destroys their society’s infrastructures — again, with your expropriated wealth.

Do not consent to the idea that you need to surrender your right to self-defense, including defense against the state.  

Do not consent to the criminal invasions of your privacy that the state has made legal.  

Do not consent to the state’s educational system as it attempts to train obedient servants of the state while continually dumbing-down the requirements for advancement.

Do not consent to any government that claims the right to enlist your sons or daughters in a war or project against their will.  

Do not consent to the state’s war on market giants that achieved their status because consumers voluntarily traded their money for the products or services the businesses offered.  Remember, consumers can and have shut down market giants by taking their business elsewhere.

Do not consent to the practice of state - business “partnerships” that create unfair competitive advantages for the business or industry, while cheating consumers with higher prices and/or inferior products or services — a practice best described as crony capitalism but which for anti-market purposes is usually called capitalism.   

Do not consent to any state institution that attempts to dictate how we should live, what we can or cannot consume, read, watch, say, or listen to.

Do not consent to any government that does not secure your property rights, including your right to life.

Voting in the state’s elections continues the racket.  And it will continue.  Your vote would consent to it.   Don’t do it.   Would you vote for new leaders in the Mafia or Ku Klux Klan while believing that doing so will encourage those organizations to play nice?  

Don’t let the enemies of freedom get away with equating the state with government.  Government can and should exist without the state.  

In this book I’m speaking to adults who wish to take full responsibility for their lives, regardless of their age, medical condition, race, sex, or anything else, who are fighters not wimps, who want to lay the foundation for a better life not just for themselves but for their families and the generations to come, who want to end the acrimonious fighting over the levers of power that would force the winner’s agenda on the rest of us.  If you are in agreement then express your conviction with a thumbs-up to the movie Do Not Consent, coming in late July, on my YouTube channel, GFS543.  

In the meantime, I hope this book will convey the message the movie will dramatize. 

George Ford Smith is the author of nine books, including The Flight of the Barbarous Relic, and the most recent, Do Not Consent.  He is also a filmmaker whose latest work is a whimsical tale about the threat of nuclear annihilation, Last Day.

Gold says "No" a lot

From The Flight of the Barbarous Relic:

[The following is an] excerpt from the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the nomination of Preston V. Mathews to be a member and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. . . .

Chairperson MASON: You’re saying the Federal Reserve is not politically independent. Are you also saying we’re forever subject to the economic problems I named?  

Dr. MATHEWS: Not at all, though a look at the Fed’s record for the first 70 years might suggest otherwise. 

One of the Fed’s jobs was to eliminate the crises that occasionally struck the economy prior to its inception. It’s also true that prior to the Fed’s inception government intervened in the economy, our money and banking system included. Nevertheless, the national banks decided the existing system was too open and competitive and thus lobbied for more intervention. From the mid-1890s, if not earlier, their goal was to win support for a central bank with a monopoly of the note issue and to serve as a lender that never ran dry. 

The bankers needed government to make a central bank work – a free market precludes central banking. Most people, of course, being staunchly pragmatic, don’t care whether it does or not. What they want to know is: How effective has the Fed been? When it began operations in 1914 the Comptroller of the Currency boasted that the new Federal Reserve “supplies a circulating medium absolutely safe” and will render financial and commercial crises such as occurred in 1873, 1893, and 1907 “mathematically impossible.” Was his statement true? Have we averted economic crises? Has the Fed preserved the value of the dollar? 

[Mathews stands and reaches into his pants pocket.] If you will, Senator . . . catch. [He tosses a coin at Chairperson Mason. She claps it into her hands and looks at it. He takes his seat.] 

You’re holding in your hand a nickel, which is roughly what remains of the dollar since the Fed went to work. So much for the dollar as a store of value. As for economic crises, instead of identifying them by year, perhaps we should give them names like Camille or Katrina. They seem to occur at about the same frequency as killer storms, and both are generally regarded as beyond human control, as acts of God. What do these facts say about our central bank?

Fed chairman Alan Greenspan is regarded by many people today as the greatest Fed chairman ever for steering the economy through several major crises. He’s been knighted by the queen and awarded numerous honorary doctorates from some of the world’s most prestigious universities. 

In December 2002 he gave a speech to the Economics Club of New York that offered an interesting perspective on our country’s monetary systems. In the 50 or so years following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, he said, prices rose by approximately 750 percent, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. The CPI, as it’s called, is a basket of household goods that excludes certain items because of their volatility. He also noted the fact, startling to some, that in 1929 prices were about the same as they had been in 1800, though there were price fluctuations during that period. In other words, the gold standard held the line on prices over a 129-year period. Throughout most of this period, as we know, the country experienced spectacular growth, rising real wages, and miniscule government debt. 

But Mr. Greenspan’s speech suggests another observation. If we take his period and cut it off at 1912 instead of 1929 – 1912 of course being the year before the Fed was born – we find the CPI falling by roughly 57 percent. Put another way, 19th century Americans, whose dollars were defined as a weight of gold or silver, experienced falling prices and economic prosperity at the same time, a state of affairs we have a hard time even imagining today. 

Let me say that again: Americans once understood falling prices and prosperity as natural bedfellows. And the reason is quite simple. In those days the production of goods and services outpaced the production of money.  

So what happened after 1933 that drove prices through the roof? Chairman Greenspan said: “Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, had allowed a persistent overissuance of money.” 

The Fed’s eager printing press could have led to our destruction, but fortunately it didn’t. “The adverse consequences of excessive money growth provoked a backlash,” he said. Beginning in 1979, the Federal Reserve, under new leadership and with the support of the government, “dramatically slowed the growth of money.” Consequently, we went through a sobering recession and the pace of inflation eased up.

Following this, the economy rebounded vigorously, and “the progress made in reducing inflation was largely preserved,” Mr. Greenspan told his audience. “Although pressures for excess issuance of fiat money are chronic,” he concluded, “a prudent monetary policy maintained over a protracted period can contain the forces of inflation.”

In other words, when the Fed stops inflating, inflation stops. 

But is this what Mr. Greenspan meant? Mr. Greenspan, you will remember, was famous for using words in such a way that no one was ever quite sure what he was talking about. For example, what did he mean by “contain the forces of inflation”? With little imagination it’s possible to assign four or five meanings to that expression. And he used the words “can contain the forces,” not “would contain” those forces. Nor did he say how the Fed would or could contain those forces, because we still operate without the constraint of gold convertibility. 

But taking him in good faith, we assume he meant something positive, like “the Fed knows better than to push too hard on the peddle because we don’t want another ‘backlash.’” As long as the Fed has a backbone, with the will to resist the “excess issuance of fiat money,” we’ll stay out of trouble economically. So, while it makes no sense to talk of a political entity such as the Fed being politically independent, it makes a great deal of sense to talk of the determination of Fed officials to “just say no” when conditions warrant. 

Chairperson MASON: You have some impressive notes at your disposal, Dr. Mathews. We all remember Mr. Greenspan, of course, but it’s helpful to be refreshed on some of his comments. He had a fondness for gold. 

Dr. MATHEWS: Yes, he did. 

Chairperson MASON: In connection with your last comment – “just say no” – someone once wrote that gold says “no” a lot. Is that an expression you would agree with? 

Dr. MATHEWS: It does say “no” because of its limited supply. Gold says “no” to a lot of bad ideas. It says “no” to deficit spending, which is precisely the reason it was ditched. As history makes clear, people in the twentieth century were sold on the idea of big government, so they needed a debt-based monetary unit to provide the “liquidity” needed to pay for it. 

Fiat currencies have been very dangerous because there’s no limit to their supply. They’ve also been very profitable to some people. Fiat currencies are monetary yes men and go along with just about anything. But saying “yes” has painful consequences, as Mr. Greenspan acknowledged. The nickel I tossed you is one of those consequences. If we allow ourselves to be taken in by “liquidity,” as other countries have for over three centuries, it will be our downfall. But the United States is not just another country. As you’re well-aware, we play a pivotal role in the global economy by virtue of the popularity of the American dollar. To a large extent it underpins the world economy. A dollar collapse, therefore, would have global consequences.

Chairperson MASON: Dr. Mathews, this “liquidity,” what has it cost us in the past? Can you give us some examples? . . .

George Ford Smith is the author of eight books, including The Flight of the Barbarous Relic, Eyes of Fire: Thomas Paine and the American Revolution, and The Fall of Tyranny, the Rise of Liberty.  He is also a filmmaker whose latest work is a whimsical tale about the threat of nuclear annihilation, Last Day.

The cocktail solution

People know government can spend astronomical amounts of money, crisis or not, and who cares where they get it as long as they’re in on the deal.  They also believe to the depths of their souls that the ones running the show are well-educated with the best of intentions since they have a stake in the outcome of their policies.  Since their leaders are not psychopaths, at least clinically, unless Keynesianism is now a clinical disorder, they wouldn’t deliberately sink the ship that keeps them and their families afloat living a life of splendor and privilege.

They therefore trust government, trust that it will act in their interest.  But that’s where they repeatedly make a critical mistake.  It’s the free market that serves them, not the government.

Government as it exists discourages people from acting responsibly.  Being dependents, they find it natural to scream for help every time they find a boogey man under their beds.  You could argue that their plea is aligned with the libertarian notion of government as our protector.  The Declaration said men have certain inalienable rights, and that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . .”  Thus, the nearly-universal cry for government to do something about an invisible threat amounts to calling on it to do its job: Protect our right to life.

The idea that government should also protect our liberty at the same time passes by the wayside.  Turning dependents free would endanger their lives and would violate government’s duty to protect them.

As government’s only tool is force, through which it maintains its own monopoly and creates many others, you might wonder how we’re going to recover from the current crisis.  The Fed’s counterfeiting machine is too busy racking up debt to bother eradicating a virus.  The only other possibility is the free market which in today’s world is never free.  Yet the willingness of smart people to experiment and innovate is still alive, with many encouraging results, in spite of government threats.

The Cocktail

    

The administering of HCQ (hydroxychloroquine) and CQ (chloroquine) in combination with azithromycin and zinc have emerged not from the FDA, CDC, or WHO but from physicians around the world trying to find ways to keep patients alive.  One of the best-known practitioners in the US has been Dr. Vladmir Zelenko, who so far is batting a thousand treating patients diagnosed with COVID-19.  As of March 29, 2020, of the 699 reported cases treated in an outpatient setting, none have died, been intubated, or sent to the ICU.  His recommendation: Once a diagnosis of COVID-19 is confirmed, hit it hard immediately with his cocktail of drugs: HCQ (200mg 2X daily), azithromycin (500mg 1X daily), and zinc (220mg 1X daily).

As he reports in an extensive interview with Rudy Giuliani, the cost is about $20 for the five-day treatment.  He emphasizes that “this is all new” and that “I’m developing this stuff as I go along” — meaning he’s ready to make changes as needed.  “This is like battlefield medicine.  I’m giving you a report from the front lines.”  For older people he plans to hit them harder with HCQ to prevent them from going to the hospital. 

Will patients be all better at the end of treatment?  No, they will likely still feel miserable.  But success in this case is “not to die,” in Dr. Zelenko’s words.  The treatment is “not going to take away your fever, you’re still going to be coughing, you’re still going to be tired, you’re gonna have a headache, you’re going to be upset, you’re going to call me ‘It’s not working’ — but I’m looking at it differently. If you can call me, that’s a good sign.”

What does this cocktail actually do if it doesn’t relieve the symptoms?  “Let me tell you what I believe it does,” Dr. Zelenko said.  “It reduces the amount of virus the body is infected with by interfering with its growth, giving the immune system time to overcome it before it destroys the lungs.”

He goes on to say that “We’re running out of capacity to treat patients in the hospital.  You need to stay out of the hospital!”  He further adds that “many doctors are coming on board.  They are having similar results.”  He thanks President Trump for approving the use of this drug — “We have to make America healthy again,” he said.

Government might be exploiting the crisis, but the virus is a real killer.  If it gets into the lungs, its effect on the tissue is like “napalm or carpet-bombing.”  Once the virus kills the cells it invades, there are dead bodies, so to speak, that “get shed down instead of up.  It’s like pouring cement into the lungs.”  In most cases, however, the immune system will overcome the infection before the infection kills the lungs.

For information on how to strengthen your immunity see this Bill Sardi article.

George Ford Smith is the author of eight books, including The Flight of the Barbarous Relic, Eyes of Fire: Thomas Paine and the American Revolution, and The Fall of Tyranny, the Rise of Liberty.  He is also a filmmaker whose latest work is a whimsical tale about the threat of nuclear annihilation, Last Day.

     

Civilization’s Savior?

President Trump and Congress plan to send up to $1,200 to most American adults to help them recover from the economic shock of being told not to work.  “Individuals making $99,000 or above or married couples making $198,000 or more would receive no check. People would receive an additional $500 per child.”  The so-called stimulus package would total $2 trillion, roughly 9% of the country’s GDP.  

Are you curious about the source of the $2,000,000,000,000?  Had government put it aside for just such an emergency?  Not a chance.  Though it’s not clear at this point exactly where the money will come from, it will likely roll off the printing press, the banking industry’s greatest invention.  

Long ago, money had its roots in honest production much like other economic activities, such as growing wheat, making cars, or teaching calculus.  Money, like cars or ventilators, couldn’t be willed into existence.  By virtue of banking fraud, today it can be.  So the government will call upon the esteemed bureaucratic entity it created for just such emergencies — the Federal Reserve — and assign it the task of pulling $2,000,000,000,000 from the great vault of its imagination. 

Today, under a central banking regime such as ours, money is no object.  Today, the Fed gods create it by fiat — “Let there be money.”  It is not tied to anything tangible.  Yes, the Fed talks of purchasing assets, which are government debt.  The government creates IOUs, or debt instruments, and the Fed creates money to buy them.  It sounds so very proper.  The government then funds certain programs such as the upcoming handout, and night continues to follow day.  To the world, an IOU from the federal government is an asset.  It’s a prized asset because of its power to shake down those responsible for it — people like you and me.  

Let’s be clear.  As a parasitical entity government produces nothing, therefore earns nothing.  What it calls tax revenue is properly called loot — money lifted from those who work for a living.  Governments are looters, and their debt has come to be regarded as assets.  Because Americans are wealthy compared to the rest of the world and therefore represent a plump goose, the federal government’s assets are highly prized.  

Money was once the most marketable commodity as determined by buyers and sellers engaging in voluntary exchange.  Government and central bankers have thoroughly corrupted it to their advantage.  Take a look at what a dollar was worth before and after President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law in 1913.  Note: You can’t use the BLS inflation calculator because it doesn’t allow us to compare pre-1913 prices (I wonder why).  Using a calculator found here, comparing prices in 1870 and 1900, for example, we discover that:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, prices in 1900 are 35.88% lower than average prices since 1870. The U.S. dollar experienced an average deflation rate of -1.47% per year during this period, meaning the real value of a dollar increased.In other words, $1 in 1870 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $0.64 in 1900, a difference of $-0.36 over 30 years. (my emphasis)

And the years from 1870-1900 were some of the most productive in mankind’s history.  Workers at all levels could get richer simply by stuffing money in a mattress.  Why?  Productivity increases outpaced the supply of money. 

Comparing prices in 1970 and 2000, on the other hand, we learn that “prices in 2000 are 343.81% higher than average prices since 1970. The U.S. dollar experienced an average inflation rate of 5.09% per year during this period . . .” (emphasis mine)

Central banking is a great racket because almost no one in a position of power sees it that way — and because central bankers take care of people in power.  Central bankers are legal counterfeiters protected by the governments they serve and the big banks they bail out.  They make some people very rich — early receivers of the newly printed money, before inflation kicks in.  By means of the stimulus bill a few regular Americans will soon be among the early birds.

Repercussions down the road?  Speculators and other scapegoats (including Trump) are lined up and ready to hang at a moment’s notice.  Legal counterfeiting is a scheme that can only self-destruct.  It’s virtually immune to intellectual criticism because most economists are in on the racket.   Conceivably people could rise up and demand honest money, but they have no idea what honest money is.  They won’t find it explained in the government schools they attended.  On the contrary, they’re likely to hear the hard stuff once passed around as money has long been considered a barbarous relic.  (See Gary North’s article Deadly Assumption #6: Gold Is a Barbarous Relic for a brilliant but brief discussion of gold and government.)

So here we are again, looking to the Fed to buy government debt with money it doesn’t have so that the government can send money it never had to select subjects, all the while assuming enough someones will keep producing goods and services so that the fiat digits can buy real things.