Arnoldbucks

This is a great video; the sad thing is the folks responsible don't seem to realize they're advocating, tongue-in-check, to replace the current system of IOUs federal reserve notes with "fake" IOUs. They seem to have an inordinate faith in the power of government to right wrongs and serve truth, justice and the American Way.

Time to shrug?

The incumbent president has moved to nationalize the banks. Pressure is being exerted to nationalize the auto industry. The incoming president has made nationalizing the insurance industry one of his priorities. All of this will be funded by confiscating more from the productive. This scenario is sounding awfully familiar, although in real life they nationalized the railroads a lot earlier in the process than in the book.

I'm just about ready to move to a gulch if I can find one who'll have me. Or maybe I can flip burgers until after the productive are welcome again.

Government and theft

ck made some very cogent observations in the comments to my post "The debt thing," and I'm dragging them out here so they don't get missed:

1) All government spending is theft.
2) Some of that government spending benefits you directly; some indirectly. You are a recipient of stolen goods.
3) You allow yourself to be stolen from. You are complicit in the theft.
4) Democracy is the system whereby you and your group try to make sure you receive more of the stolen goods than you have agreed to allow to be stolen from yourself and your group members. (congressional districts call this "earmarking".)
5) Your debt is someone else's asset.
6) Taxation is direct theft, brazen even, they tell you how much they have taken every paycheck.
7) Fiat money printing ( M3 in economic speak ) is indirect theft. Every dollar printed dilutes whatever dollars you have in you accounts or possession.
8) The purpose of a central bank is to allow the printing of fiat money ... those who print the money obtain first call on the tangible goods of the productive.

It is pretty simple really, we all have to consume to survive. The trick is that not all of us have to produce something tangible or anything at all to be able to consume. In a democracy enough non-producers will always win.

You can always barter, it's fun, healthy, and doesn't require you to use fiat money. It is fairly easy to find productive people with which one can trade value for value without the intermediary of FRNs.

Barter is not part of the quotidian.

Let me see if I get this

I admit economics is not one of my strong points. But let me see if I'm following this.

The U.S. government has taken over the two biggest holders of mortgages, which were created by the government and had deep ties to the government anyway.

The U.S. government has loaned $85 billion to a giant insurance company.

The stock market rallied Thursday on word the U.S. government and other governments around the world are working on a plan to bail out banks in general.

The gist seems to be that some huge companies ran out of money, and the U.S. government is giving them some of its.

Now, I don't know much about economics, but I do know where the U.S. government gets its money: Taxes and firing up the printing press.

The back of my hip hurts. Hurts bad. You know, the spot where I keep my wallet?