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Post by cwood14 on Dec 24, 2012 15:13:05 GMT -5
This country needs a serious reality check, we need to embrace philosophies of liberty, peace and mutual respect amongst each other and amongst nations. To be that beacon of light that stands for freedom. This nation is possessed by it's possessions, overwhelmed with prosperity built on credit and debt, nobody wants to be indentured servants, stuck in a system that is no more than a rat race for the cheese. The eagle represents freedom, liberty, it has been saved, respected, now if only as a nation we would find our place in nature and preserve that liberty for ourselves.
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Post by Swampy on Dec 24, 2012 15:19:18 GMT -5
I will answer your points one at a time. Americans have been complaining about gridlock ever since Madison was around, but their country managed to become the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. And the subject of democracy leads to your next point. America is the beacon of freedom. But its strength is in the American Dream, which has now spread to the rest of the world. It means people can come and, by working hard, realize their dream of owning a house and starting a family, not to mention letting their children rise to being better than them. That Dream is under attack, but not because of moral corruption but because of the pressures of global competition. And yet, if you read my ongoing posts on the struggling economic recovery, you'll see America is on its way back. The members of this forum know I agree with that.
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Post by cwood14 on Dec 24, 2012 15:28:35 GMT -5
Any economic recovery based on more debt and the indentured servitude of a system is no more than a band-aid on a bleeding artery. The United States has been living in perpetual debt for about 80 years, it has proven that since 1944 it can only increase debt under this system of coercion that forces our subservience through countless of hours to provide our basic needs. Central planning in economics always has a way of plundering and limiting mankind's natural growth through his own self-interest and even worse provides that the legislators themselves will use the law for it's own self-interest, which is to make promises of trees but sells us lemons.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2012 17:40:32 GMT -5
I've asked this a number of times and never have gotten a satisfactory answer. What would you do to correct matters?
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Post by Swampy on Dec 24, 2012 20:09:03 GMT -5
Yes and no. Yes as in no country can keep bleeding forever, but no as in debt financing was needed to get America out of the Depression. Many companies who want to expand have to get the money somehow.
Yes, but even capitalist economies need debt financing. The Asian states modernized themselves through debt financing.
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Post by cwood14 on Dec 24, 2012 20:13:12 GMT -5
Everything begins with the proper use of the law, to defend the life, liberty and fruits of our labor from plunder. Once central planners, designers, false philanthropists engage in using the law for plunder, to provide privilege or emolument, conflict is created. Such law is no better than organized crime.
Humans are given by nature all that they need to prosper in the clean air of liberty, to serve liberty is to serve justice and equality. This is not to equalize by taxation but to stamp out coercive practices, cronyism in law to defend the basic liberties of the people from the plunder of swindlers, frauds and let people develop commerce in a natural way.
You do not counterfeit wealth with debt obligations, rather you build your economy on surplus, supply and demand, without price fixing, price manipulation, fractional reserves.
Our founders chose coin as currency, gold and silver were money and debts from the states were to be paid as such. That nature itself provided wealth to those through the course of nature, not to be ruled by man. They did this to maintain the system of barter but there was always this issue of "credit". Credit is interesting because it is in all aspects indentured servitude, as to get something of need, to advance in society, or advance society itself one must promise a period of labor to the lender for an agreed amount of dollars, which equate to time laboring to gain this, modern serfdom. This phenomenon exists not only amongst individuals but is engaged in by our rulers in the legislature.
How do you make the transformation to a surplus economy, governed by a strict rule of law, to which justice is served? You have to ween society from it's vice - debt.
The type of currency used must represent something of value in hand, redeemable but regardless of what form of exchange medium used, it must not be monopolized and it must conform to natural and common law.
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Post by Swampy on Dec 25, 2012 0:09:37 GMT -5
What do you mean by "natural and common law"? Those have specific meanings to lawyers.
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Post by cwood14 on Dec 25, 2012 1:12:04 GMT -5
What Is Law?
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right — from God or nature if you will — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. - from The Law by Frederic Bastiat 1850
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Post by cwood14 on Dec 25, 2012 1:20:15 GMT -5
Using this reference I am referring that it must not be centrally formed but rather it must evolve naturally amongst traders, subjective value in a free market. It can not be a system of plunder.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2012 9:08:24 GMT -5
As usual, no answers to the question, just platitudes.
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Post by cwood14 on Dec 25, 2012 10:06:52 GMT -5
What do you want my 10 point plan to save America from itself?
I laid out a foundation of principles to build on, that matters.....
You have three choices....
1) The few plunder the many 2) Everyone plunders everyone 3) Nobody plunders anybody....
It's obvious that if #3 is your guide for justice, if this principle stands, then whatever you do will succeed.
Nature has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. Nature has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! A way with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty - Bastiat with a personal touch...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2012 11:29:34 GMT -5
Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. You should be a politician. A lot to say, no substance.
However, in the spirit of the day, Merry Christmas.
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Post by cwood14 on Dec 25, 2012 13:19:45 GMT -5
You asked what should be done to correct the matters, I gave an answer of substance -
Strict rule of law that adheres to the individual right to defense of life, liberty and property.
I know that may seem a short answer but it is indeed the answer.
Correct the law, correct the problem...doesn't take much more than that.
...and Merry Christmas to you...
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Post by Sir John on Dec 25, 2012 13:29:37 GMT -5
cw14 reply #2!
Gentlemen,
I offer no workable 'solutions' to the current economic situation in the USA and Europe, and indeed around the world. I simply do not believe that a near painless one one exists. In fact the opposite, it will be horrendous.
Government debt is out of control, and the top 10 or so countries are operating on an endless supply of 'funny money' printed to buy the Treasury Bonds needed to keep spending. The voters have made it clear they will accept nothing less and the politician that hints at stopping the drug is doomed to political oblivion.
This situation WILL come to an end, and I firmly believe it will be soon, very possibly, even probably, this coming year.
With US budgets in the red to the tune of US$1.3 Trillion, and the US Fed and the US Social Security Trust fund needing to buy the great majority of that as the foreign buyers have largely stopped adding to their holdings. To that US$1.3 trillion you can add the maturities in the current year.
Taxing at 75 or 100%, and halving the Pensions will only be a temporary 'solution' and nature will take its course, the thing WILL 'solved' by ever more printing and ever more inflation until the US Dollar is near to worthless. The Bonds will then be paid off. I have read of one theory that the Fed etc will print the money, buy the Bonds, and then remit the interest back to the US Treasury, and in due course tear up those Bonds. Sounds good until you realise that the money has been fed into the system and increased the money supply and thus generated inflation.
As one official in Washington said on TV recently, 'we are going to kill the Dollar". (and the Pound, and the Yen and so on.....).
I think that cw14 knows what I am on about, it is now pure Austrian crystal ball stuff. Ludwig von Mises stated clearly that a spending boom is ALWAYS followed by a currency collapse. It has been shown on about 30 occasions in the past 100 years. The main difference is that instead of one country at a time it is now the ENTIRE WORLD!
JMO, (and I would love to see your comments CW14.)
SJ
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Post by Swampy on Dec 25, 2012 13:33:13 GMT -5
Hang on - if it's "pure Austrian crystal ball stuff", then it's nonsense, am I right???
I'm no Austrian, obviously, but I'm trying to get a sense of where you are.
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