AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

Pirates (Photo credit: Gilmoth)

GOVERNMENT IS TOO BIG

Have we finally reached the point that we can all agree that Government is too big? The latest scandals, concerning Government overreach, should be driving this point home for everyone to see no matter how politically partisan a person may be. But the republicans and the democrats have done a great job of making this a game between two teams, each having a loyal following who will defend their favorite team no matter what the members of the team do. As long as the banner of their favorite team is flying high they let corruption, power grabs, and abuses of individuals rights slide.  The normal solution for any corruption or illegality in Government is to put a new angel in the position that was previously occupied by a fallen angel [aka devil]. This will not cure the problem, it will only temporarily take care of the symptom, but the underlying problem is still there. The underlying problem is that Government is so big it’s involved in every facet of our lives. Decisions are taken out of the hands of the individual and placed in the hands of all-knowing bureaucrats. The bureaucrat is immunized from the consequences that the individual is forced to deal with. Don’t be on either of these teams, it is a false reality. The real world battle is between freedom of the individual against the power of the Government to encroach upon this freedom. With which team does your loyalty lie.

PARASITE AND HOST

Government is in a parasitic relationship with each individual in the market economy. A parasite consumes without producing. The relationship is an exchange of nothing for something, and as more is being consumed than produced a point is reached where the host dies causing the death of the parasite. As Government grows it sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Governments plunder in many ways, including taxes, regulation, fees, fines, spending, and borrowing. But the most destructive way Governments plunder is through printing counterfeit money. When you add up the volume of all this plunder, it is amazing the market economy, which is the host, has continued to produce enough to keep itself and parasitic Government alive. The printing of counterfeit money can only work  for so long and we are getting closer to the point where the Fed can’t keep economic reality from correcting these interventions.

DIGITALLY CREATED COUNTERFEIT MONEY

In this article titled Everything Created Digitally Is Nearly Free–Including Money, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com, he writes this gem of a sentence. “The key feature of digitally creating credit/money is this: it is immeasurably easier to digitally create claims on real-world assets than it is to create real-world assets.” The words in bold print are so full of substance a book could be written explaining  the totality of their meaning. I’ve tried to explain what this sentence means in two previous posts, one titled Keynes Was Correct In 1919!, an another titled, We Can’t Recreate The Garden Of Eden. Most people don’t understand that when they work for money, they are really working for a good or service that can be exchanged for the money, in the present, or at some point in the future. We exchange real things, money helps facilitate this exchange. When money is counterfeited, it creates an exchange of something that is a “real world asset”, for a “digitally created claim on a real world asset”, or nothing. It is legalized theft brought to you by your Government, The Fed, and Banks.

CREATING ARTIFICAL SCARCITY

To help understand the concept, Charles Hugh Smith uses the example of why the price of a college education is so high, when you can get the information basically free because it exists digitally. Here is an excerpt from the article:

“Since money can be created for free, how does it retain its value? The answer is artificial scarcity. The example of a college diploma is instructive.”

“Digitally created massively open online courses (MOOCs) have now made instruction as free as text-based knowledge. This means that offering a college-level series of courses is now nearly free–a topic I have discussed in some depth: The Nearly-Free University (November 15, 2012)”

“Recent studies have found that students who watch MOOCs learn more and test higher than students attending live lectures: Professors Are About to Get an Online Education Georgia Tech’s new Internet master’s degree in computer science is the future”

“So how can colleges extract $100,000+ for something that is basically free? By monopolizing the issuance of diplomas. You can get the education for nearly free, but since the colleges own the right to print diplomas (for free), you have to pay them $100,000 for the piece of paper accrediting your free education.”

“This is a classic cartel structure: artificially limit the supply of what is in demand.”

POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL ELITES RECEIVE THE COUNTERFEIT MONEY FIRST

This same concept explains what happens when you create digital counterfeit money. Here is an excerpt.

“So how does the Fed artificially create scarcity-value for its freely created trillions of dollars? It restricts access to all that beautiful free money. Wouldn’t it be nice if you and I could reach in and grab a couple of million bucks from the overflowing till?….”

“…Alas, access to the nearly free money is restricted to a small financial Elite, the Aristocracy in our neofeudal debtocracy. This tiny Elite can borrow the money for nearly nothing and then go out and buy real-world assets with the digitally created credit.”

“Debt-serfs have access to limited sums of this free money, but at much higher rates of interest: for example, student loans cost between 6% and 9%.”

“When debt-serf purchases of assets serve the agenda of the political/financial Elites, for example buying an auto or home, then the free money is doled out to secure the key feature of debt-serfdom–serfs must service all the debt they take on, thereby enriching the financial system that loaned them the money.”

“And where did the financial sector get the money? From the Federal Reserve.”

CONCLUSION

Government, led by the actions of politicians and bureaucrats, is plundering what producers produce. They do it in many ways but the most destructive, and least understood, is the theft that happens when they start printing counterfeit money. They are confiscating our present and future “real world assets” by “digitally creating paper claims on these assets”. If we don’t start to understand that Government is the problem and individual freedom is the solution, we may get to a point where we can’t keep from losing our freedom, and with it our standard of living.

This entry was posted on June 17, 2013 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Econ. 201, Government and Politics. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Charles Hugh Smith, Counterfeit money, Federal Reserve System, Government Plunder, Parasitic Government, Recreate The Garden Of Eden