Peach Pundit: Defending Theft, Displaying Ignorance

My response to: Let’s Just Get This Out of the Way on Peach Pundit

Fractional money creates no wealth, but it does decrease the purchasing power of the money already in existence, which producers have previously earned by labor and production. This is a form of theft. To support fractional money is to support theft.

People depend on production. Fractional money produces nothing. No new resources exist because a quantity of fractional money is created. People don’t eat, wear or find shelter in paper money.

Some argue there is not enough commodity “money” to support our economy. This is a false claim and suitable for those who accept propaganda and useful to those who understand how to use the paper money system to claim the labor and production of other people.

Keynes is the chief advocate or poster boy for this paper money system we have. He explained its purpose in 1919 in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace:

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some… Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Another old banker once rightly said:

“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class. The great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages will bear its burden without complaint.”

Fractional money is simply a sophisticated form of plunder. If fractional money is good for the country on its own merits, stop wasting bits and bytes with ad hominem blather. Make the case.

Begin by proving that fractional money does not systematically cause theft, benefiting the few at the expense of the many, or by presenting your case for supporting theft.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816

Moral Law, Moral Decay and Marijuana

We live in a country with over 300 million people having a variety of different worldviews.  There are various issues that divide public opinion.  For example, some people think that it should be legal to grow, sell and use marijuana.  Others are completely opposed to marijuana and believe that it should be illegal.  I am not writing this article to support or oppose either view.  Instead, I want to consider who has the right to make the decision about marijuana.

The first thing I want to do is to introduce a new term to go alongside of legal and illegal.  The new term is silent.  For an example of the concept of silent in law, we will look at the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances."

The phrase "Congress shall make no law" is a way of saying that the government shall be silent on the issue.  So the question is not simply should marijuana, for example, be legal or illegal, but we must also ask if it is something that the government should be silent about.  Our Constitution already requires the government to be silent on religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press and all aspects of the citizen's method, approach and right to petition the government with regard to grievances.  There is a very glaring and obvious question that we must ask at this point.  If government law makes society better and government acts in our best interest, then why would we prevent government from making laws about these most important and precious rights?

Let us ask that question again.  If we call on government to address moral issues and to uphold a high moral standard and bind people to good behavior for their own best interest and in the best interest of society as a whole, then why would we not ask government to pass good laws about religion, speech, the press, free association and the methods whereby we speak to government when we think the government may (Imagine that…) have made an error?

Obviously, we do not trust government to do the right thing with regard to these exceptionally important issues.  Why would we trust government with anything else of value?

At this point I want to make a distinction between government and The State.  Because the following two issues are related, let’s also consider the distinction between the Institutional church and the Biblical church.  The way I would identify an Institutional church is by determining if the attributes and properties that most clearly define the church in question are its institutional attributes.

So here is our comparison:

The Institutional church is to the Biblical church what The State is to government.

In the Institutional church, the people serve the leaders and the leaders have power due to centralization.  In the Biblical church, the leaders serve the people and the leaders have limited influence due to decentralization. 

The State is characterized by at least the following properties.  It is always a monopoly of force organized for legal plunder and serves the purpose of enriching the few at the expense of the many.  Government, on the other hand, administers just law, based on natural law, and defends the life, liberty and property of the individual.

According to the Christian worldview there is no place for a theocracy today.

John 18:36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm."

It should be obvious at this point that we are currently ruled by The State, not by lawful government.  So now we have two questions.  First, there is the question of whether The State has the moral authority to pass moral law.  Second, there is the question of whether government that defends life, liberty and property would pass moral law.

Let’s deal with the second question first.  Let’s consider something that no one would think to outlaw, like spinach. 

Do I have the right to eat spinach?  I think we would all say yes.

Do I have the right to steal from you in order to buy spinach?  Do I have a right to steal your spinach?  Do I have a right to make you grow spinach for me?  Do I have a right to make you eat spinach?  Do I have a right to tell you what to do with your spinach? 

No.

Do I have the right to eat spinach, even if I am violently allergic to spinach?

Yes.

We can see from considering spinach that the real issue is not the spinach.  The issue is your rights and my rights.  Lawful government would defend our right to choose what to do with our property, beginning with our own body, provided we did not infringe on the rights of others.

So if lawful government should and would be silent on religion, speech, the press, voluntary association, the redress of grievances, and would defend our private property rights in all cases except when we infringe on someone else's property rights, then how could The Unlawful State have any basis for passing law that infringes on any of these rights?

Consider a brief history of The State since the US Constitution was ratified.

The State sanctioned cruel slavery, robbed the farmers, merchants and blacksmiths that supported the Revolutionary war, went to war against its own people, is responsible for the Trail of Tears, led in eugenics research, sterilized Americans who were considered to be unfit, was cited by Hitler as an example in handling "undesirable people" because of the way we handled the Indians, robbed the American people by debasing the currency, created the unlawful Federal Reserve System, passed the unlawful income tax, instituted conscription in the form of the draft, stole land, broke treaties, still slaughters babies around the globe through abortion, drove production off of our soil with GATT and NAFTA, has destroyed the family farm through market manipulation, subsidy, income tax, regulation, and inheritance tax, is destroying our right to grow our own food through Senate Bill 510, has destroyed the health care market through regulation, with the latest destructive blow being Obamacare.

Those are just for instance…

So even if it were the role of government to pass a law about spinach or marijuana, and it is not, The State is absolutely and totally devoid of the moral authority required to decide what moral law should be passed or to enforce that law.  The State is the most violent and egregious offender of natural law on the continent.

But The State does make law about these moral issues.  What is the result? 

Some say that moral law restrains immoral behavior.  Some say that as the laws have relaxed the problems in society have gotten worse.  However, I believe that we have our cause and effect mixed up.  In fact, it is the intervention of government in society through education and media which has degraded our culture, degraded the character of our people and degraded our morals.  The State gains its power by making the people dependent, simple-minded and docile.  The laws that we permit our rulers to make do not cause our morals to degrade.  Government intervention in education and the media, government propaganda, subsidizing bad behavior, and penalizing production all combine to degrade our morals.  It is our degraded morals that allow them to make perverse and destructive laws, which at the same time control the minutest detail of our behavior, while making perverse and destructive behaviors lawful.

In other words, a moral society would never permit The State to get away with trampling their rights, interfering with their production and stealing their property, all while at the same time making perverse behavior lawful.  Only after morals have been undermined will increasingly perverse and destructive laws be incrementally accepted.

In the end, what we have are laws that control producers and protect non-producers in their destructive and perverse behaviors.  If government were silent about behaviors and protected private property rights, then producers would be free to help who they wanted to help and those who engaged in destructive and perverse behavior would have to stand on their own two feet.  If the moralist is truly correct about what is good and what is bad, those who engage in unfruitful behavior will go down the path of the prodigal son.

When The State begins making moral law, the end result is subsidy of bad behavior and penalties on production, which leads to violence and ultimately the collapse of the society.

If marijuana and spinach were treated the same, then the profit motive would be the same for both.  There would be the same number of people slaughtered in gang warfare over marijuana as there are today over spinach.  If you want a simple proof, look at the passage of the 18th and 21st amendment and the history of violence between the dates of their passage.

If a person were to steal to support their marijuana consumption, they would have to steal less if the price for marijuana was simply the cost of production plus whatever profit the market would bear.  That means there will be less crime as a result of marijuana consumption.  Not to mention the fact that a person could freely grow their own spinach and marijuana.

Summary

So here is what we have discovered. 

Lawful government would defend our life, liberty and property. 

The State is a monopoly of force designed to control people and steal our property and production through the guise of legal plunder.

The corruption of our character and morals as a society is the result of government intervention, not the result of bad law.  Destructive and perverse law that controls the producer and forces him to subsidize bad behavior is only permitted in a society that is sufficiently corrupt to tolerate the next incrementally bad law.

When The State has the gall to pass moral law, the result is violence, death, chaos, moral decay and destruction of property.

We can easily see why this would be the outcome if we understand the moral depravity and evil nature of The State, whose power comes from force, coercion and theft.  There is no way an immoral overlord would have any reason, authority or moral foundation to pass moral laws that are genuinely good for the society.  The State always and only does those things which will increase its power and reward its minions.

If we truly want a moral society we must defend private property rights and punish stealing even when The State is the thief.  We must permit producers to keep their own production, thereby rewarding production, investment and efficiency.  Production leads to abundance which leads to prosperity.  Those who are engaged in behaviors that are unfruitful and destructive will no longer be rewarded with the fruits stolen from the producers.

The State is unfit to write or enforce moral law because it owes its entire existence to violations of natural law and all of its power comes from a mixture of force, deception, theft and propaganda.  When we understand the nature of The State we no longer have to wonder why moral law harms more people and destroys more property than the behavior that is being outlawed ever could.

Production and The Prodigal Son

I recently taught a series of Sunday school lessons on the parable of the Prodigal Son, which is found in Luke chapter 15. The Sunday school material I used began by observing how deeply ingrained the parable of the Prodigal Son is in our Spiritual and literary traditions. It was noted that Shakespeare used plot points from the parable of the Prodigal Son in the Merchant of Venice and in Henry IV. Country music singer Hank Williams recorded a song called the Prodigal Son comparing the Prodigal's homecoming to the joys of heaven. The world's great Art museums contain many works featuring scenes from the Prodigal Son's experience. Of course we recognize terms like a wayward child being referred to as a prodigal son or daughter and we hear people talk about killing the fattened calf or riotous living. So the stories and the ideas of the prodigal son are very familiar in our traditions, culture and language.

In addition one can argue that this parable is the most richly detailed and personal of all the parables of Jesus. It is safe to say that everyone can relate to at least one of the three characters in the parable at sometime in their life.

Because of the details in this parable, many people seek complex symbolism, layers of meaning or hidden lessons which bend the rules of interpretation. We want to be very careful to focus on the plain meaning of Scripture and not invent our own meaning for the parable.

Our goal then, is to read the parable and observe the details that provide the framework for the story, so that we can understand the plain meaning of the passage. As I began to prepare my Sunday school lesson, a new facet of the details of the story came into my view. I noticed that there were many terms which were directly related to production. So class began with the study of how production fits into the parable. Our first task was to agree on a definition of production.

Production: Labor and resources combined to provide for needs and wants.

It was easy for us to recognize and agree that production is some form of gain or increase. Next we went through a series of questions to see if production was reasonable to consider in studying our Bible lesson. First we asked "Since people eat food and use things, do people depend on production?" The answer is obviously yes. Next we asked "Does our dependence on production influence our decisions?" Again the obvious answer is yes, with a good example being that we often go to work because we want to have food, clothing and shelter. Next we asked "Does our dependence on production challenge our morals?" Again the obvious answer was yes. Then we asked "As Christians, does our dependence on production challenge our obedience?" Again the clear answer was yes. Finally we asked "Who made us dependent on production?" As Christians we believe that God is our Creator, which means that God made us dependent on production.

So let's think about what we just observed. People eat food and use things which means that people depend on production. Our dependence on production influences our decisions, challenges our morals, challenges our obedience - all because God made things that way. (For those who do not believe that there is a creator, please explain how nothing and no one produced everything. I enjoy that debate.) There is no question that thinking about production while studying Scripture is a good idea.

There are more than 50 terms in the parable of the prodigal son which are related to production. In the passage which is pasted below you will see various terms in bold. These are terms related to production. For example the term give is meaningless unless there is something to give. The term share is meaningless unless there is something to divide. The term estate obviously refers to the property of the father. The term everything refers to all of the property belonging to the son. Journey is a term indirectly related to production because in order to take a journey one must have the resources to do so. Think of your vacation. Loose living is a term related to production, as we see in the parable when his resources are gone. Then we have the term enough bread. Bread is clearly related to production and enough communicates a quantity of production. Further down we see the terms music and dancing. Music flows from an instrument which would've been produced from profits which belonged to a producer. He was willing to use these profits to create a musical instrument because his more immediate needs of food shelter and clothing had been met. And of course dancing is something that typically involves music and is something that occurs among people who are in good spirits with full stomachs. We could go on and on looking at the terms, but we have sufficiently illustrated the reason that various terms are considered to be related to production.

Luke 15:11-32 And He said, “A man had two sons. “The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them. “And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. “Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. “So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. “And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. “But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! ‘I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.” ’ “So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. “And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. “And he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be. “And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.’ “But he became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began pleading with him. “But he answered and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.’ “And he said to him, ‘Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. ‘But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.’ ” NASB95

As written above, I noticed that there were several terms related to production in the story of the prodigal son. After I went through the passage marking the terms that were related to production, it became clear that if these terms were removed there would be no story. So now we have this richly detailed parable which influences our traditions and culture and art, and which is meaningful to nearly every person in some way at some point in their life, and we find that if we remove terms related to production the story falls apart. To be very clear, I'm not saying that the truth of the story is lost, because truth exists apart from the story and apart from the framework used to tell the story. However, this parable relies heavily on the concepts of production to convey certain truth.

Our country today is sometimes called a welfare state, which means that there is a significant portion of our population that depends on welfare for food shelter and clothing. If the story of the prodigal son were told today in our country, it would go a little bit differently. After the younger son had squandered his wealth on loose living, he would've gone to the welfare office and signed up for his welfare check and food stamps. This would have kept him from "coming to his senses", thinking about the condition of the hired help on his father's estate, recognizing the error of his ways, repenting of his bad choices and bad attitude, confessing these to his father and ultimately being received back into the family.

The parable of the prodigal son tells us things about God the Father, about Jesus as Savior, about Christians as prodigal sons and daughters and about the religious people like the scribes and the Pharisees who approach God based on their works and confidence in themselves. This parable also tells us something about how God's natural order and natural law is used to draw people to truth.

A Christian is supposed to be led by the Spirit, not by the flesh. According to the Christian worldview, an unsaved person is led by the flesh rather than by the spirit.

A person who understands spiritual truth will filter the desires of his flesh through spiritual understanding. If a person who is led by the flesh is going to learn spiritual truth, his flesh sometimes has a role in leading him there. The parable of the prodigal son is an excellent example of how a hungry belly will bring a person to his senses. Therefore whether the flesh leads the spirit or the spirit leads the flesh, it is important that the flesh and the spirit move in the same direction and work together. With that thought in mind let's consider what happens if the flesh and the spirit go in different directions.

Based on my Christian worldview I believe that the God of the Bible is the creator of the universe and everything in it. I also believe that God is the ultimate producer, even going beyond production to the act of creation. I also believe that man is created in the image of God and, because God is a producer by nature, we also are producers by nature. However not everyone produces. So the question is, if people are by nature producers but are not always productive, how does a person feel when they are not productive? I agree that there are many people who are lazy and unproductive and have no desire to change, but what is going on inside? Consider the drug addict who is destroying his body. He is choosing temporary pleasure over the immediate and long-term health of his body. Likewise, people will choose to be lazy and unproductive even at the expense of the immediate and long-term effect on their spirit or the inner man.

When a person lives in such a way that he squanders the property that he has and does not work to replace it, he faces poverty and hunger. Poverty and hunger led the prodigal son back to his senses. If the prodigal son had been given just a little food and clothing and enough shelter to survive, chances are he would not have come to his senses, repented, confessed and been reconciled to his family. His inner man would've become corrupt and undergone decay, rather than healing.

Therefore if a Christian really loves other people he will never do anything to support the physical man in a way that will ultimately harm the spiritual man. Let's consider the passages from Scripture that will guide us in best serving the physical and the spiritual man.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.

Proverbs 16:25-26 There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. 26 The appetite of laborers works for them; their hunger drives them on.

I want to consider one other point the parable. When the young son returned, his father hugged him around the neck and commanded his servants to bring a robe, a ring, and sandals for his young son. Each of these gifts has a significant meaning, but we are going to focus on the ring right now. In those days, that ring would have been a signet ring which gave the possessor a right called usufruct. Usufruct is a Latin term that literally means "use of the fruits" and it describes the legal right to use someone else's property at no cost, while reaping the fruits as though the property were your own. We can see that the young son lost his right to any further inheritance, but while his father was alive he was able to use a portion of his father's property in order to produce and begin building sufficient wealth to take care of his own future family. Scripture records that God told the children of Israel that the land was His and they were tenants. With a little thought we can see the similarity between the Garden of Eden as the father's estate and Adam and Eve being evicted, but given the right to use God's property to satisfy their needs and some of their wants.

In summary, we find that the parable of the prodigal son is heavily dependent on terms related to production. We observed that our decisions are influenced by our dependence on production and that our morals and obedience are challenged by our dependence on production. We also see the God made us dependent on production and that God's natural order will cause a hungry man to lead his inner man toward right-thinking, restoration and productive life. An empty belly can get the attention of a stubborn will when no amount of persuasion will work. This means that if we support a hungry man who is unwilling to work, we have set in motion an internal decay that cannot be halted or reversed, except if we get out of the way and let the physical man once again be subject to the natural order and his dependence on production.

If we subsidize bad behavior, we will get more of it. If we penalize production, we will get less of it. Bad behavior is destructive and unfruitful. People depend on production. Following is a chart that I've shared in other places which compares and contrasts the biblical social model and the social model we use today in our country. Compare the chart to what we have discovered about the prodigal son.

The Truth About Property Tax

This is a message I sent out while a candidate for state senate in Georgia. I oppose all wealth redistribution and unlawful government. This short article is designed to move our thinking in the direction of limited, lawful government. I see a few edits I could make, but I want to send the text exactly as written when I was a candidate for office.

The Truth About Property Tax

Before we begin, let me be perfectly clear that I will work hard to see that our counties, cities and schools are properly funded. However, it is my belief that we can fund government without violating the rights of our citizens.

Property Tax

Property tax makes us Renters, not Owners.

What we call property tax, the Communist Manifesto calls rent. The first plank of the Communist Manifesto says there shall be: "Abolition of property in land and the application of all rents of land to public purposes."

If we study closely we find that property tax is really an indirect consumption tax.

Let's think about how this works.

What is the reason that government relies so heavily on property tax?

It is because they can tag the tax bill to the property. If you don't pay, you lose your property.

That reminds me of one of my favorite George Washington quotes. "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, government is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

Example:

Consider an elderly lady who is living on a fixed income with declining purchasing power. Each year the choice between food, energy (for heating and cooling), medication and property tax become more challenging.

There comes a time when she cannot afford everything and property tax is the first thing to go.

Our government, which is charged with defending the Life, Liberty and Property of Georgians, will take her property.

She will be moved to an assisted living home that she cannot afford, which means the taxpayers will pay the difference. The bill to taxpayers will be more each year than if we simply paid her property tax and let her keep her home.

What will happen to the property?

The government will sell the property on the courthouse steps. Someone who has the cash to purchase the land and pay the government rent, in the form of property tax, will now own the land.

Where does the cash come from?

The cash for property tax will come from people who are active in the marketplace, especially in the centers of business like the larger cities.

So what have we really done?

1. We steal the home of an elderly lady or at least force her to sell her home against her will.

2. We spend more on professional services for her in an assisted living home each year than the tax bill.

3. The property is sold to an active business person at a discount. Instant profit.

4. The business person's cash comes from business conducted in the larger cities where the consumption tax should be collected.

5. We have indirectly collected a consumption tax from that business person by selling the land at a discount to someone who can afford to pay the government rent in the form of property tax.

Why not simply collect a consumption tax to begin with and let the people keep their property?

To our shame, if there is anything government is good at, it would have to be wealth redistribution.

We can use a consumption tax to fund our local governments without violating the rights of our citizens.

Tax Equity

Some will complain that sending Gwinnett County or Clarke County or Cobb County taxes to rural counties is unfair.

I do enjoy that conversation. If we are going to talk tax equity, can we discuss restoring the family homes and family farms that have been taken away and broken up by declining real prices for agricultural products, rising property tax burdens and the destructive death tax?

That tends to end the conversation about tax equity.

Simple First Step Solution

Our property tax bill is set by millage multiplied by the assessed value of the property. We need to add one more element.

We need to set a cap on the property tax remitted by declaring that no person's property tax remittance can exceed 2% of their after tax income.

Of course the government officials will say that will deprive them of tax revenue. But think about what that means.

The argument becomes, if grandma can't pay because she doesn't have enough cash, that is her problem, not the government's problem. Cough up the cash or give up the property. It doesn't matter that you and your family worked for a lifetime to pay for it.

The government gets their money and then she goes into a retirement home that costs the taxpayers more than if we simply found another way to cover her property tax.

We could simply raise the revenue through a consumption tax or cut government spending.

I like the second option best.

Much More Could Be Said

There are many more details we could cover on this subject, but this outline is only intended to set the stage for a wise battle against the abuses of property taxes and death taxes.

Shane Coley

Please vote Coley for Liberty August 10th.

It's Not About Healthcare

Obama finally got his way in the passage of a bill that has been decades in the making. Healthcare seems to be all that pops up on the news these days, but the debate was raging long before President Obama took office.

First came Hoover and FDR. Then the 1964 Democrat controlled Congress brought with it Medicare and Medicaid. These now have over 104 million combined beneficiaries. Former President Nixon supported a plan that required employers to provide a minimum level of insurance to employees. Healthcare as employee compensation to get around wage controls, set the stage for an unaccountable four-party health insurance market. In 1976, President Jimmy Carter called for a "comprehensive national health insurance system with universal and mandatory coverage" as a part of his campaign platform. Sound familiar?

For decades, our government has tried repeatedly to impose universal healthcare on citizens of the United States. ObamaCare is the socialized healthcare plan of the century, repackaged. It is not a new idea, and as history has proven, it is not a road America wants to go down. It will only bring more trouble, poverty and steady decline to our nation.

So, what is the healthcare debate really about? To understand the purpose of "healthcare", we must understand the principles of liberty and production - both vital parts of human society. People depend on production. Think about the things you use throughout the day: clothes, coffee, cars, or a microwave. Someone had to produce each item. Stop. Think. What would your day be like if you didn't have these things?

Each American is in some way dependent on the labor and property of another person - a producer. We all need the other guy to produce efficiently so the things we use will be abundant and cheap.

It makes sense then, that in order for individuals to prosper, someone must produce food, shelter, clothes, and all the other things we use. It also logically follows that people produce more good things when they are not hindered by force and confiscation of their profits, property and tools.

If you produce something using your own time and property, you don't want to give it up unless you get something that is useful in exchange. It really is that simple.

In other words, the strength of an individual or a nation is dependent on the quantity and quality of useful things it produces. If we want food, clothes, housing, cars, trucks or video games, we have to either produce those exact things or produce something to exchange with the producer of those things.

Are we producing anymore? Agricultural and industrial capacity in the United States is nearly destroyed. According to estimations by the United States Department of Labor, over 650,000 more manufacturing jobs will be gone by 2018. Farming and agriculture jobs are also expected to decline by 80,000.

How did this happen? Agriculture and industry made us strong and prosperous. For some reason, someone has been allowed to drive the farmer off his land and the manufacturer out of his factory. Most of them didn't want to leave. They were forced out.

We must understand that anything that interferes with the United States' ability to produce makes us poorer and weaker as a nation. Wealth redistribution, unwise regulation, burdens of litigation, constant inflation, barriers to voluntary association and barriers to voluntary exchange all reduce how much we are able to produce.

Eventually, this decline will leave us in poverty and helplessness as a nation.

Our retirements are devastated. Many people have been forced to delay or exit retirement altogether. Families are struggling against growing college tuition rates. Teachers all over northeast Georgia are taking more unpaid furlough days. This decline must be stopped.

To give our children any honest hope, we absolutely must learn to think in larger terms. The success and strength of Georgia will rise or fall with the success and strength of America. We must understand that the state has to stand up for the rights and property of our citizens in aggressive, proactive ways.

Our central government has been up to no good more often than not, since the founding of our nation. For example, according to Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton who was Washington's Treasury Secretary, swindled the people through conniving payment of federal and state war debts. His plan had the following two goals: To confuse the people and corrupt the legislature.

Jefferson concluded: "And with grief and shame it must be acknowledged that his machine was not without effect ; that even in this, the birth of our government, some members were found sordid enough to bend their duty to their interests, and to look after personal rather than public good."

The federal government is always looking for new ways to steal our property. Our ignorance of money and production is the strength of these tyrants.

Productivity retained in the hands of the producer is the solution.

So when we hear talk about the benefits of "Healthcare," "Cap and Trade," "Global Warming," "Bailouts" or other government actions, there is really only one question:

Will this government action help us produce more of the good things we use everyday in Georgia, leading to abundance, prosperity and strength?

Statistics, math, logic, history, current events, human nature, and even the Bible, all emphatically say... "No."

Blessings,

Shane Coley

The Misesian Vision

Shane says: "This is the most important speech you will read all year."

The Misesian Vision

Mises Daily: Monday, January 25, 2010 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

[This talk was delivered at the Jeremy Davis Mises Circle in Houston, Texas, on January 23, 2010.]


I'm finding it ever more difficult to describe to people the kind of world that the Mises Institute would like to see, with the type of political order that Mises and the entire classical-liberal tradition believed would be most beneficial for mankind.

It would appear that the more liberty we lose, the less people are able to imagine how liberty might work. It's a fascinating thing to behold.

People can no longer imagine a world in which we could be secure without massive invasions of our privacy at every step, and even being strip searched before boarding airplanes, even though private institutions manage much greater security without any invasions of human rights.

People can no longer remember how a true free market in medical care would work, even though all the problems of the current system were created by government interventions in the first place.

People imagine that we need 700 military bases around the world and endless wars in the Middle East, for "security," though safe Switzerland doesn't.

People think it is insane to think of life without central banks, even though they are modern inventions that have destroyed currency after currency.

Even meddlesome agencies like the Consumer Products Safety Commission or the Federal Trade Commission strike most people as absolutely essential, even though it is not they who catch the thieves and frauds, but private institutions.

The idea of privatizing roads or water supplies sounds outlandish, even though we have a long history of both.

People even wonder how anyone would be educated in the absence of public schools, as if markets themselves didn't create in America the world's most literate society in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This list could go on and on. But the problem is that the capacity to imagine freedom — the very source of life for civilization and humanity itself — is being eroded in our society and culture. The less freedom we have, the less people are able to imagine what freedom feels like, and therefore the less they are willing to fight for its restoration.

This has profoundly affected the political culture. We've lived through regime after regime, since at least the 1930s, in which the word "freedom" has been a rhetorical principle only, even as each new regime has taken away ever more freedom.

Now we have a president who doesn't even bother to pay lip service to the idea of freedom. In fact, I don't think that the idea has occurred to Obama at all. If the idea of freedom has occurred to him, he must have rejected it as dangerous, or unfair, or unequal, or irresponsible, or something along those lines.

To him, and to many Americans, the goal of government is to be an extension of the personal values of those in charge. I saw a speech in which Obama was making a pitch for national service — the ghastly idea that government should steal 2 years of every young person's life for slave labor and to inculcate loyalty to the leviathan — with no concerns about setting back a young person's professional and personal life.

How did Obama justify his support of this idea? He said that when he was a young man, he learned important values from his period of community service. It helped form him and shape him. It helped him understand the troubles of others and think outside his own narrow experience.

Well, I'm happy for him. But he chose that path voluntarily. It is a gigantic leap to go from personal experience to forcing a vicious national plan on the entire country. His presumption here is really taken from the playbook of the totalitarian state: the father-leader will guide his children-citizens in the paths of righteousness, so that they all will become god like the leader himself.

To me, Obama's comment illustrates one of two things. It could show that Obama is a potential dictator in the mold of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, for the presumptions he puts on exhibit here are just as frightening as any imagined by the worst tyrants in human history. Or, more plausibly, it may be an illustration of Hannah Arendt's view that totalitarianism is merely an application of the principle of the "banality of evil."

With this phrase, Arendt meant to draw attention to how people misunderstand the origin and nature of evil regimes. Evil regimes are not always the products of fanatics, paranoids, and sociopaths, though, of course, power breeds fanaticism, paranoia, and sociopathology. Instead, the total state can be built by ordinary people who accept a wrong premise concerning the role of the state in society.

If the role of the state is to ferret out evil thoughts and bad ideas, it must necessarily become totalitarian. If the goal of the state is that all citizens must come to hold the same values as the great leader, whether economic, moral, or cultural, the state must necessarily become totalitarian. If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning.

On the face of it, many people today do not necessarily reject these premises. No longer is the idea of a state-planned society seen as frightening. What scares people more today is the prospect of a society without a plan, which is to say a society of freedom. But here is the key difference between authority in everyday life — such as that exercised by a parent or a teacher or a pastor or a boss — and the power of the state: the state's edicts are always and everywhere enforced at the point of a gun.

"It begins in a seemingly small error, a banality. But, with the state, what begins in banality ends in bloodshed."

It is interesting how little we think about that reality — one virtually never hears that truth stated so plainly in a college classroom, for example — but it is the core reality. Everything done by the state is ultimately done by means of aggression, which is to say violence or the threat of violence against the innocent. The total state is really nothing but the continued extension of these statist means throughout every nook and cranny of economic and social life. Thus does the paranoia, megalomania, and fanaticism of the rulers become deadly dangerous to everyone.

It begins in a seemingly small error, a banality. But, with the state, what begins in banality ends in bloodshed.

Let me give another example of the banality of evil. Several decades ago, some crackpots had the idea that mankind's use of fossil fuels had a warming effect on the weather. Environmentalists were pretty fired up by the notion. So were many politicians. Economists were largely tongue-tied because they had long ago conceded that there are some public goods that the market can't handle; surely the weather is one of them.

Enough years go by, and what do you have? Politicians from all over the world — every last one of them a huckster of some sort, only pretending to represent his nation — gathering in a posh resort in Europe to tax the world and plan its weather down to precise temperatures half a century from now.

In the entire history of mankind, there has not been a more preposterous spectacle than this.

I don't know if it is tragedy or farce that the meeting on global warming came to an end with the politicians racing home to deal with snowstorms and record cold temperatures.

I draw attention to this absurdity to make a more general point. What seems to have escaped the current generation is the notion that was once called freedom.

Let me be clear on what I mean by freedom. I mean a social or political condition in which people exercise their own choices concerning what they do with their lives and property. People are permitted to trade and exchange goods and services without impediment or violent interference. They can associate or not associate with anyone of their own choosing. They can arrange their own lives and businesses. They can build, move, innovate, save, invest, and consume on terms that they themselves define.

What will be the results? We cannot predict them, any more than I can know when everyone in this room will wake up tomorrow morning, or what you will have for breakfast. Human choice works this way. There are as many patterns of human choice as there are humans who make choices.

The only real question we should ask is whether the results will be orderly — consistent with peace and prosperity — or chaotic, and thereby at war with human flourishing. The great burden born by the classical liberal tradition, stretching from medieval times to our own, is to make believable the otherwise improbable claim that liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of orderliness.

To be sure, that generation of Americans that seceded from British rule in the late-18th century took the imperative of liberty as a given. They had benefitted from centuries of intellectual work by true liberals who had demonstrated that government does nothing for society but divide and loot people in big and small ways. They had come to believe that the best way to rule a society is not to rule it at all, or, possibly, to rule it in only the most minimal way, with the people's consent.

"The political order in which we live is but an extension of the capacities of our collective cultural imagination."

Today, this social order sounds like chaos, not anything we dare try, lest we be overrun with terrorists and drug fiends, amidst massive social, economic, and cultural collapse. To me this is very interesting. It is the cultural condition that comes about in the absence of experience with freedom. More precisely, it comes about when people have no notion of the relationship between cause and effect in human affairs.

One might think that it would be enough for most people to log on to the World Wide Web, browse any major social-networking site or search engine, and gain direct experience with the results of human freedom. No government agency created Facebook and no government agency manages its day-to-day operation. It is the same with Google. Nor did a bureaucratic agency invent the miracle of the iPhone, or the utopian cornucopia of products available at the Wal-Mart down the street.

Meanwhile, look at what the state gives us: the Department of Motor Vehicles; the post office; spying on our emails and phone calls; full-body scans at the airport; restrictions on water use; the court system; wars; taxes; inflation; business regulations; public schools; Social Security; the CIA; and another ten thousand failed programs and bureaucracies, the reputations of which are no good no matter who you talk to.

Now, one might say, Oh sure, the free market gives us the dessert, but the government gives us the vegetables to keep us healthy. That view does not account for the horrific reality that more than 100 million people were slaughtered by the state in the 20th century alone, not including its wars.

This is only the most visible cost. As Frédéric Bastiat emphasized, the enormity of the costs of the state can only be discovered in considering its unseen costs: the inventions not brought to market, the businesses not opened, the people whose lives were cut short so that they could not enjoy their full potential, the wealth not used for productive purposes but rather taxed away, the capital accumulation through savings not undertaken because the currency was destroyed and the interest rate held near zero, among an infinitely expandable list of unknowns.

To understand these costs requires intellectual sophistication. To understand the more basic and immediate point, that markets work and the state does not, needs less sophistication but still requires some degree of understanding of cause and effect. If we lack this understanding, we go through life accepting whatever exists as a given. If there is wealth, there is wealth, and there is nothing else to know. If there is poverty, there is poverty, and we can know no more about it.

It was to address this deep ignorance that the discipline of economics was born in Spain and Italy — the homes of the first industrial revolutions — in the 14th and 15th centuries, and came to the heights of scientific exposition in the 16th century, to be expanded and elaborated upon in the 18th century in England and Germany, and in France in the 19th century, and finally to achieve its fullest presentation in Austria and America in the late-19th and 20th centuries.

And what did economics contribute to human sciences? What was the value that it added? It demonstrated the orderliness of the material world through a careful look at the operation of the price system and the forces that work to organize the production and distribution of scarce goods.

The main lesson of economics was taught again and again for centuries: government cannot improve on the results of human action achieved through voluntary trade and association. This was its contribution. This was its argument. This was its warning to every would-be social planner: your dreams of domination must be curbed.

In effect, this was a message of freedom, one that inspired revolution after revolution, each of which stemming from the conviction that humankind would be better off in the absence of rule than in its tyrannical presence. But consider what had to come before the real revolutions: there had to be this intellectual work that prepared the field of battle, the epic struggle that lasted centuries and continues to this day, between the nation-state and the market economy.

Make no mistake: it is this battle's outcome that is the most serious determinant in the establishment and preservation of freedom. The political order in which we live is but an extension of the capacities of our collective cultural imagination. Once we stop imagining freedom, it can vanish, and people won't even recognize that it is gone. Once it is gone, people can't imagine that they can or should get it back.

"Never miss an opportunity to tell the truth. Sometimes, thinking the unthinkable, saying the unsayable, teaching the unteachable, is what makes the difference between bondage and sweet liberty."

I'm reminded of the experience of an economist associated with the Mises Institute who was invited to Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union. He was to advise them on a transition to free markets. He talked to officials about privatization and stock markets and monetary reform. He suggested no regulations on business start-ups. The officials were fascinated. They had become convinced of the general case for free enterprise. They understood that socialism meant that officials were poor too.

And yet, an objection was raised. If people are permitted to open businesses and factories anywhere, and we close state-run factories, how can the state properly plan where people are going to live? After all, people might be tempted to move to places where there are good-paying jobs and away from places where there are no jobs.

The economist listened to this point. He nodded his head that this is precisely what people will do. After some time, the government officials became more explicit. They said that they could not simply step aside and let people move anywhere they want to move. This would mean losing track of the population. It could cause overpopulation in some areas and desolation in others. If the state went along with this idea of free movement, it might as well shut down completely, for it would effectively be relinquishing any and all control over people.

And so, in the end, the officials rejected the idea. The entire economic reform movement foundered on the fear of letting people move — a freedom that most everyone in the United States takes for granted, and which hardly ever gives rise to objection.

Now, we might laugh about this, but consider the problem from the point of view of the state. The whole reason you are in office is control. You are there to manage society. What you really and truly fear is that by relinquishing control of people's movement, you are effectively turning the whole of society over to the wiles of the mob. All order is lost. All security is gone. People make terrible mistakes with their lives. They blame the government for failing to control them. And then what happens? The regime loses power.

In the end, this is what it always comes down to for the state: the preservation of its own power. Everything it does, it does to secure its power and to forestall the diminution of its power. I submit to you that everything else you hear, in the end, is a cover for that fundamental motive.

And yet, this power requires the cooperation of public culture. The rationales for power must convince the citizens. This is why the state must be alert to the status of public opinion. This is also why the state must always encourage fear among the population about what life would be like in the absence of the state.

The political philosopher who did more than anyone else to make this possible was not Marx nor Keynes nor Strauss nor Rousseau. It was the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who laid out a compelling vision of the nightmare of life in the absence of the state. He described such life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The natural society, he wrote, was a society of conflict and strife, a place in which no one is safe.

He was writing during the English Civil War, and his message seemed believable. But, of course, the conflicts in his time were not the result of natural society, but rather of the control of leviathan itself. So his theory of causation was skewed by circumstance, akin to watching a shipwreck and concluding that the natural and universal state of man is drowning.

And yet today, Hobbesianism is the common element of both left and right. To be sure, the fears are different, stemming from different sets of political values. The Left warns us that if we don't have leviathan, our front yards will be flooded from rising oceans, big business moguls will rob us blind, the poor will starve, the masses will be ignorant, and everything we buy will blow up and kill us. The Right warns that in the absence of leviathan, society will collapse in cesspools of immorality lorded over by swarthy terrorists preaching a heretical religion.

The goal of both the Left and Right is that we make our political choices based on these fears. It doesn't matter so much which package of fear you choose; what matters is that you support a state that purports to keep your nightmare from becoming a reality.

Is there an alternative to fear? Here is where matters become a bit more difficult. We must begin again to imagine that freedom itself could work. In order to do this, we must learn economics. We must come to understand history better. We must study the sciences of human action to relearn what Juan de Mariana, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Frédéric Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Murray N. Rothbard, and the entire liberal tradition understood.

What they knew is the great secret of the ages: society contains within itself the capacity for self-management, and there is nothing that government can do to improve on the results of the voluntary association, exchange, creativity, and choices of every member of the human family.

If you know this lesson, if you believe this lesson, you are part of the great liberal tradition. You are also a threat to the regime, not only the one we live under currently, but every regime all over the world, in every time and place. In fact, the greatest guarantor of liberty is an entire population that is a relentless and daily threat to the regime precisely because they embrace the dream of liberty.

The best and only place to start is with yourself. This is the only person that you can really control in the end. And by believing in freedom yourself, you might have made the biggest contribution to civilization you could possibly make. After that, never miss an opportunity to tell the truth. Sometimes, thinking the unthinkable, saying the unsayable, teaching the unteachable, is what makes the difference between bondage and sweet liberty.

The title of this talk is "the Misesian vision." This was the vision of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. It is the vision of the Mises Institute. It is the vision of every dissident intellectual who dared to stand up to despotism, in every age.

I challenge you to enter into the great struggle of history, and make sure that your days on this earth count for something truly important. It is this struggle that defines our contribution to this world. Freedom is the greatest gift that you can give yourself and all of humanity.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of The Left, the Right, and the State.

This talk was delivered at the Jeremy Davis Mises Circle in Houston, Texas, on January 23, 2010.

Soil and Liberty

Our nation is at a crossroad. We are facing the potential collapse of our currency and the following disintegration of our society. There are technical reasons this is true. Some mainstream financial advisors take this position. Certain economists take this position.

Our security depends on knowledge. Please consider the following ideas.

Dollars

Imagine a Wall Street hedge fund manager who has acquired millions of dollars in the previous year. Imagine if he sold everything of value he had, including house, clothes, cars, etc. and only held dollars. Imagine that he never traded those dollars for anything. He just held his dollars.

Is he wealthy?

Or is he hungry and cold?

He cannot eat, wear or be sheltered by his dollars. Unwilling to part with his dollars and having no other property, he is a man in poverty.

This would also be true if he held a currency that no producers would accept in exchange for goods and services. This is the current situation for Zimbabwe Dollars.

Soil

Let’s say our Wall Street banker finds this situation to be untenable.

He is hungry and cold.

So he buys food, shelter and clothing. These are all directly or indirectly based on products which come from the soil.

The people who produced these things live in houses, wear clothes and eat food which are dependent on soil.

So, even the Wall Street banker has nothing if he only has dollars. And even the Wall Street banker is directly dependent on soil.

All nations are agrarian or have agrarian dependencies, whether they know it or not.

Only a fool believes a nation can survive without a strong agricultural base.

Only an enemy would undermine a nation's agricultural base.

Our agriculture and industry have been undermined.

Production

Have you ever noticed that everything we do or use relies on production?

Consider the following questions:

Can we agree that if a person stops eating, he will die?

Can we agree that if a person is dead, he no longer thinks, at least temporally speaking?

Can we then agree that thought relies on food?

Can we agree food must be produced?

Can we then conclude that thought relies on production?

If thought relies on production, can you name even one thing that you do or use that does not rely on production?

Teachers

Teaching can be edifying or destructive. One can be taught to build or to tear down.

If teachers have a desire to promote and support the teaching profession or society as a whole, they must teach production.

If a teacher simply wants to be guaranteed a certain quantity of paper tickets, like dollars, perhaps they should move to Zimbabwe. People in Zimbabwe have plenty of paper tickets. Of course the people starve, but even the poorest person has vast quantities of worthless paper money.

Perhaps teachers actually want valuable incomes so that they can enjoy food, shelter, clothes, relationships and leisure activities.

If food, shelter and clothing are what the teachers want, they should NOT lobby the government for guaranteed quantities of dollars. Instead, since everything we do or use relies on production, they should teach the students how to be productive.

Anything that interferes with the freedom to teach students how to be net productive should be considered an enemy of the teacher, student and society.

Fundamentals

I have noticed that people eat food and use things.

The government produces nothing and wastes much.

Government has nothing to give.

Everything we do or use relies on production.

Through taxation, regulation, litigation and inflation, government reduces the quantity of production, which makes us all poorer.

The things we use must be produced.

I have noticed producers exchange with producers. Paper money which has been devalued and made worthless will not be accepted by a producer. Our dollars will soon be worthless, which means producers will not accept our dollars in exchange for what they have produced.

We have destroyed agriculture and industry in our nation.

We are losing generational knowledge and trade skills.

We can no longer produce adequate quantities of what we need and want.

Conclusion

Paper money is poverty. Electronic money is death. All nations which debase their currency have collapsed.

Unless we learn the truth about production and the truth about money, we will lose our liberty and prosperity. Unmistakable poverty and tyranny will take its place.

Dollars are worthless and useless in their own right. We must understand the true foundations of liberty, beginning with soil and production. Otherwise, when dollars can no longer be exchanged for production, we will witness the disintegration of the United States as we know it.

Every man, woman and child must learn and teach the truth about production and the truth about money.

If we do that, the United States of America will again be strong, prosperous and free.