There are 8 Chapters in Know Stealing, with 65 sections. Following is one of these sections.
6.4 Institutions
Any government that grows, eventually kills; first productivity,
then wealth, then people.
There are good institutions in every category, but they are rare.
I define a corrupt institution as any organization whose survival
depends on coercively receiving someone else's labor, property and
production, usually for institutional self-preservation or in pursuit
of legal plunder, particularly while effectively ignoring or working
against the interest of those providing the resources.
A few examples are trade associations, cooperatives, religious
associations, religious ministries, political groups, subsidized
business, and of course government. When these institutions are
funded through a chain of events that are dependent on plunder and
deception, bad things happen.
Of course these institutions have member benefits or do some good
things, but the benefits are often like buying a thousand dollar
hamburger. It is a bad trade. Over time the institution becomes
focused on itself, rather than those it was originally organized to
serve.
Institutions Are Net Consumers
With rare exceptions, institutions are net consumers. Institutions
depend on producers in order to survive. Within a social order that
prevents stealing, if producers willingly and freely contribute
resources to an institution, then that institution is valuable to
society. If the survival of an institution depends on forcefully
confiscating profits from production, then that institution is a
parasite that is draining valuable life from the society.
Institutions Outlast Individuals
With rare exceptions, institutions outlast individuals.
Institutions which are part of the network of plunder in a society
have effectively unlimited resources.
Since an offending institution is supported by the plunder of
producers, when resources are transferred, there is a two to one
power transfer between the institution and the producers who support
it. In other words, because there is no exchange of production, the
transfer of resources moves in one direction. For example, every time
one unit of money is transferred from the producers to the
institution, there is a relative change of two units. If there was an
exchange of production, like corn for wheat, both parties would
benefit. Without mutual benefit, why would anyone ever exchange one
thing for another?
Most often, one or only a few producers attempt to resist a
particular institution at any one time, which means that through the
institution the resources of many neutral producers are focused like
a laser on one or a few resistant producers. For example, a farmer or
manufacturer may be unwittingly helping crush his neighbor.
In addition, if producers lose their profits to plunder and are at
risk of losing their capital, they are in no position to fight the
institution. Even in an honest system of exchange, most of a
producer's capital is tied up in his productive enterprise. In a
costless money system, the producer's real property is subject to
loss because he is out of balance on paper, in terms of the money
system. A farmer will lose his farm because of ledger entries at the
bank. Productive land, buildings and machines are wealth and capital.
Ledger entries are not wealth or capital.
On the other hand, the institution's access to resources, in terms
of the money system, is liquid, refreshed annually and not dependent
on the productive thought or labor of those who operate and
receive salaries from the institution.
If one million producers annually contribute $100 each to an
institution, then the producer who resists is facing an opponent
funded annually to the tune of $100 million dollars. The institution
influences producers who do not yet see the problem. While producers
are out producing, the institution gives gifts, hires lawyers, gains
experience in using an unjust legal system, lobbies government for
more resources and generally outlasts the producers who have the gall
to complain about being plundered.
Since authority is power and power comes from production,
institutions are able to easily overpower the supposedly
insubordinate producers.
Institutions Force Producers To Fight Themselves
Because institutions are fueled by production confiscated from
producers, producers are in effect forced to fight themselves. To
draw a simple analogy, in World War II the United States was at war
with Germany. Of course there were many other countries involved on
the sides known as the Allies and the Axis, but for the sake of
analogy we will focus on the United States and Germany.
Imagine if the United States was required to gear up engineering
and manufacturing to supply military gear and soldiers for our own
army, and also was required to do exactly the same thing for the
German army.
Even worse, we would be required to multiply the relative strength
of the enemy. For every one military resource we produced for
ourselves, we would have to give ten resources to Germany.
It sounds dumb to supply the enemy at a rate of 2 to1 or 10 to 1,
but that's what we do with most institutions. Who in their right mind
would provide any resources to an enemy which was trying to establish
or maintain a relationship based on force?
Institutional Conflict Breeds More Institutions
Resisting one institution with another institution is a worthless
exercise. While resisting an institution with an opposing institution
is effective, the end result is not an improvement.
Suppose Institution B is created to resist Institution
A. The problem is that over the course of time producers go from
Institutional Oppressor A, to both Institutional Oppressors
A and B, and finally to Institutional Oppressor B. The
process consumes their time, energy and resources in exchange for no
improvement in their condition.
In other words, the situation goes from bad to worse,
and then if you're lucky enough to defeat Institutional Oppressor A,
in the end you just go back to another version of bad under
Institutional Oppressor B. Institutions by their very nature engage
in internal and external self-preservation at the expense of
producers who unwillingly provide the resources for the institutions
to exist. This is especially true because the general systems of
plunder depend on institutions to control producers and keep the
people fighting amongst themselves.
Institutions Are Defeated By Behavior
The most important thing to understand about institutions is this:
The only way to defeat unlawful plundering institutions is by
individual behavior.
Let's identify flaws in the two typical ways in which we are
trained to resist institutions.
The first method is to support an opposing institution which, as
mentioned previously, is a waste of time.
The second way is to encourage movements.
Movements absorb the energy of the particular individuals who are
actively resisting because they are currently upset about some aspect
of the systems of plunder and oppression to which they are being
subjected.
Movements come and go
because movements are
expensive, and producers do not have the time or energy
to stay involved in movements indefinitely. They have work to do. The
producers who are upset with the plundering institutions are not
supported by theft like the plundering institutions are, so these
producers have to keep working.
It is worth noting there is the artificial movement that is
externally sustained by institutions within the system of plunder.
For example, the Soros Open Society Institute was one of the major
contributors to the media campaign that was designed to play to an
audience of 535, meaning the US Congress.
This was an artificial movement designed to project itself as
a mass movement on the part of various voting constituencies which
would influence congressmen to vote a certain way on a certain issue.
In this case, the artificial movement was populated by
those who were deriving their livelihood from the system of plunder.
Workers in the artificial movement were sustained by
institutions and favored business whose resources are derived from
plunder, based on differing weights and measures which enable the
manipulation of labor and property on paper.
Sustained Cultural Impact
But producers who are trying to protect their property rights have
no such support. This next statement will seem very oversimplified,
but it helps to explain why movements are not sustainable. The first
order of business for a producer is to secure food, shelter and
clothing for himself and those for whom he is responsible. Unless the
movement will put food in the stomach, a roof over the head and a
shirt on the back, the movement is not sustainable.
The only way for anything to have a sustainable, long-term impact
on society is for the thing to be tied to the stomach. There are two
pieces to this puzzle.
The first piece is required and will always be present in every
society. It is quite simply some level of production. A society that
defends individual life, liberty and property will be highly
productive, which leads to abundance and prosperity. A society that
is highly oppressed will produce what it can under adverse
conditions. The greater the oppression, the greater the poverty,
disease, hunger and death.
The first puzzle piece, noted above, is about work which leads
directly to some level of production. The second puzzle piece is not
production in a direct tangible sense.
The second puzzle piece secures the ability to produce
without interfering with the ability to produce.
This is different from a movement, which is expensive, time
consuming and takes people away from their productive work. To
overcome the corruption and plunder of institutions, we need a tool
that lets us keep working so that we are able to continue producing.
Otherwise resistance leads to our poverty, not liberty and
prosperity. Finally, this tool must also be inexpensive and easy to
use.
It may sound like the tool I am describing is too good to be true,
but it is not. What I am describing is a collection of behaviors
which are driven and shaped by belief, which is founded on truth.
If, as a community of free people, we are all willing to actively
confront stealing in all forms, at all times, and we are
willing to set a standard that says if anyone is not willing to work
then he is not to eat, we will completely separate the connection
between the producer and the stomach of those who plunder.
Think of separating the connection between the producer and the
stomach of the plunderer with this allegory. Suppose you were king of
the United States and you called in the head of the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) to give him new powers. You inform him that the IRS may
use any resources, any new systems, any laws, police force or any
other thing they desired without limits, except one. No person who
works for or supports the tax collection, investigation or any other
aspect of the IRS work, directly or indirectly, is allowed to eat any
food, drink any water or take any form of nutrition ever again, no
exceptions.
By disconnecting the stomach from the plunder, there remains no
one to do the plundering. They either quit and produce, or starve.
Either way, the IRS is no longer a problem. This is a picture of what
happens when stealing is outlawed. No honest system of funding a
government which defends individual life, liberty and property
depends on theft. Without theft there remains a balance of power in
society, which is a balance of authority, which is distributed based
on production.
I guarantee that if free people will stand together and say “No
more!” the institutions will try to regain their position by
force. The thieves and their minions will use all manner of
propaganda, violence, force, and threats of impending disaster to
frighten people into submission. I
would expect what are sometimes called false flag operations. But if
producers know the truth about how the world really works and are
committed to liberty and righteous law, the thieves will not succeed.
The thieves will be overcome.
Once the thieves understand that the producers will stand together
on the principle that the individual has the right to his own life,
liberty and property, then they will become producers, or they will
perish.
According to the Bible, God has given able-bodied people the right
to choose to work and eat or not work and die. Far be it from me to
deprive them of their God-given right to choose life or death.
Footnotes
This
is a great truth in economics. Exchange does not occur because two
things are equal in value. It occurs based on what can be called a
double inequality of value. From some combination of a
variety of reasons, item A is more valuable to me and Item B is more
valuable to you. I may give up a few bushels of corn, from the tons
that I produce, in exchange for a few bushels from your tons of
wheat. We both gain from the trade.
