*snicker*
A Liberal Think-tank
*/snicker*
a dead-ringer, for an "oxymoron"
*snicker*
A Liberal Think-tank
*/snicker*
a dead-ringer, for an "oxymoron"
Yeah, like gold and silver coins? Horsepucky.
“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.
Ayn Rand
When I got to this segment, I pretty much figured out what was coming next and I just couldn't put off rearranging my sock drawer another second...
Plunder Violates Ownership
I do not, as is often done, use the word in any vague, uncertain, approximate, or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptance — as expressing the idea opposite to that of property [wages, land, money, or whatever]. When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.
I say that this act is exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and everywhere. When the law itself commits this act that it is supposed to suppress, I say that plunder is still committed, and I add that from the point of view of society and welfare, this aggression against rights is even worse. In this case of legal plunder, however, the person who receives the benefits is not responsible for the act of plundering. The responsibility for this legal plunder rests with the law, the legislator, and society itself. Therein lies the political danger.
The Results of Legal Plunder
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
Frederic Bastiat
The guy is a kook. The comments section is infested with paranoids. Why did you choose to excerpt a paragraph in the middle of the piece that wasn’t on point with the thrust of the article? why not begin at the beginning?
It’s too bad no one cares. :(
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Finance socialism? State socialism? We're all socialists now?
It's unforunate when someone shouts their ignorance at the top of the lungs.
Let me school this fool: First came barter - I'll trade you these colorful shells for arrowheads. Over the millennia, one most acceptable trade item emerged. Most places, this turned out to be gold. Gold had some properties that made it the most desired thing: it's divisible, you trade in infinite increments to fine tune down to the exact gram.
Gold is portable and gold is a store of value and it is uniform. It doesn't deteriorate.
Gold became a medium of exchange. So, rather than trade shells for arrowheads, you'd trade shells for gold, then use gold to buy arrowheads. A medium of exchange.
Paper money arose, when goldsmiths would give receipts to the owners of gold, that they were storing at the goldsmiths. People then traded the paper receipts.
So far, so good, as long as the goldsmiths (banks) did not abuse their position and start handing out more receipts for gold than they had on hand. But that's what they did, especially after the governments got involved.
What we have today is legalized fraud. The banks are allowed, indeed encouraged to lend more money than they have on deposit. Now, if you or I tried that, we'd be arrested for fraud. Banks have a get out of jail free card to do this. The government calls it 'ensuring liquidity', 'stimulating the economy' or some such other magic words.
This is the poison at the heart of our financial system. And having Ron Paul as head of the banking committee is going to be fun and educational.