Malice Disguised as Misfortune

Larken Rose

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." _-John Adams

November 27, 2008 - This Thanksgiving, as the economy is falling apart, entire companies are collapsing, lots of people are losing their jobs and/or their houses, and the value of many peoples' investments and retirements are plummeting, a whole lot of people are going to have to try harder than usual to feel thankful.  And while lots of people are already pointing the finger of blame at this or that, let's look at the situation from a slightly different angle.

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Suppose you were a nasty tyrant, and that you really hated a certain country, and were determined to destroy its economy.  How would you do it?  If you think about it for a few minutes, you'll realize it's not really an easy thing to do.  If you attacked or sabotaged some select targets — maybe blowing up a computer factory, fire-bombing a lumber yard, or spraying poison on a corn field — it would cause a large inconvenience for a few people, but it would do hardly anything to the economy as a whole.

Because there are so many different factories, farms, businesses, etc., the most messing with a few here and there would ever do is make a tiny dent in the overall economy.  The trick is to find something upon which everything else relies.  For example, basically all industry depends upon electricity these days.  If you could somehow make electricity not work, throughout an entire country, that could cripple an economy.  But how on earth would you do that?  Even blowing up a nuclear plant here, or a hydroelectric damn over there, while causing big inconveniences, wouldn't take things down for long.  Even if you managed to stop all oil production — and I'm not sure how you'd do that — there are alternative ways to produce energy, and America wouldn't just give up because it might be a challenge.  History proves the saying true:  "necessity is the mother of invention."  Whatever you try to mess up, a free market will adapt and create, and fix itself.

The point is, if you SET OUT to destroy a huge economy, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do it.  So the question is, if it's nearly impossible to do on PURPOSE, how could it be happening here and now by accident?

If you controlled the government, and imposed a 90% tax on everything, that would pretty much kill the economy, but only if people complied.  And if you did something that huge, and did it all at once, they'd be more likely to overthrow you than obey you.  And while taxes always seem to be creeping upwards, there has been no dramatic jump recently to explain our current economic crisis.  So what is doing it?  What is there that can destroy an entire economy, all at once?  Short of nuclear holocaust or a meteor hitting us, there's really only one way it can happen:  by someone messing with the CURRENCY.

If everyone in a country uses the same medium of trade — like the "dollar," for example — and you have the ability to mess with it, THEN, and only then, do you have the ability to kill an entire economy without 99% of your victims having the slightest idea how you did it.  In fact, they won't even know THAT you did it, or that anyone did it.  Being unable to understand it, they are likely to assume that it's just some weird, complicated, naturally-occurring phenomenon.

And why is that?  Because most Americans, including most college graduates, know dang near NOTHING about money and currency, debt and banking.  Is that because it's too complex?  Hardly.  Look at all the insanely complex things Americans DO know a lot about.  In comparison, the way money works is pretty darn simple.  So why don't Americans ever THINK about it?  Because they never HEAR about it, or READ about it in the mainstream media.  I spent about about twenty minutes one day, explaining the basics about money and debt to my kid, and she now understands it better than 99% of the adult population.  The following link gives a very good presentation about money, that should be viewed by anyone who has ever wished they had more money (i.e., everyone).

Money As Debt

As an illustration of how clueless Americans are, and why they are so susceptible to economic manipulation, here is a question to ask the average American:  what would happen if the U.S. government decided to print a brand new million-dollar bill for every person in the country, and gave one to each of us?  Wouldn't we all be rich?  While most people would instinctively suspect that somehow it wouldn't really work, I bet fewer than one in a hundred Americans could explain WHY it wouldn't.

Or, to put it another way, why is counterfeiting bad?  If some guy prints out 1,000 fake $20 bills in his basement, and they're so good that no one ever notices they're fake, why is that bad?  I bet maybe one in a THOUSAND Americans could answer that.  After all, if the counterfeiter buys something, and the next guy can use the same bill, and so can the next guy, what's the problem?

The counterfeiter got something for nothing. Which means that somehow, somewhere, somebody else got ripped off.  But who, and where?  Understand that, and you will know the ENTIRE reason for the crumbling state of the American economy.  But don't hold your breath waiting for the media to ever talk about it.

But what's really sad is that, if the people were just a tiny bit informed, the solution is painfully easy.  There is a simple answer that would destroy the counterfeiters, put the Federal Reserve out of business overnight, bankrupt the ones defrauding the rest of us, and make everyone else, and in fact the economy as a whole, immune from all the dangers of fiat currency.

What is that solution?  Simple:  Don't use federal reserve notes.  Don't spend them, and don't accept them.  (There can be an in between period where you trade them in for something which can't easily be counterfeited, like silver and gold.)  Trouble is, if one or two people, or even a million people, did that, it would accomplish almost nothing.  It would take EVERYONE doing it all at once, to kill the scam outright.  And that's never going to happen, because Americans know nothing about money.

So millions will sit around, feeling bummed out, watching the jagged stock market lines going down, seeing the numbers representing their investments dropping, and gazing cluelessly at the few green pieces of paper left in their wallets.  They will be robbed blind, not only without knowing who did it, but without knowing that ANYONE did it.  They'll just quietly sulk, thinking it's just some incomprehensible, unavoidable economic phenomenon.

It's seems unlikely, but maybe someday they'll figure out what has been done to them, and by whom.  When that happens, if it ever does, you might not want to be near any Federal Reserve buildings.

STUMBLE IT!

More Good Stuff:

Articles by Larken Rose — Political philosophy of a man passionately interested in the freedom of his fellow man, moving intellectually from conservatism through libertarianism to anarchism.  Read the latest indictments against our tyrannical ruling elites.

How To Be A Successful Tyrant — Eradicate the self-determination and self-ownership of others and replace their free will with your will.  If you have an innate “love of dominion” and believe you can run other's lives better than they can, this book will show you how.

Kicking The Dragon — A chronicle of a modern-day witch-hunt.  The disturbing facts of the case pull back the façade of “due process” and the “rule of law” to reveal the United States government for what it has become:  a gang of lawless criminals interested only in preserving their own power.

ONLINE STORE — Interesting stuff you can download.  No need to sniff all over the web  -  the best stuff is right here.

Theft By Deception — This is a startling revelation for income tax professionals, income tax enforcers and administrators, and the average American who expects nothing less than truthfulness in taxation.

Would You Have Signed the Declaration of Independence? — Provide your causes that impel you to a repudiation of 'business as usual' and clearly state your demand that we reinstate and enforce government of law and liberty under the Constitution.