I thought I might roll out an old favourite article of mine:
=> Parallel Lives: Abraham Lincoln and Julius Caesar
So if Abraham Lincoln is Caesar, then who is Obama?
Hmmm...
He's certainly no Marcus Aurelius. Surely it's got to be Commodus?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Golden Antidote
Another excellent Walter Block podcast, this time a prescient warning from 1999:
=> The Golden Antidote
This starts with the following Woody Allenesque monologue:
To be a liberal you have to believe the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of government funding,
You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but that being gay is natural,
You have to believe that businesses create oppression and that governments create prosperity,
...,
To be a liberal you have to believe that there was no art before federal funding,
To be a liberal you have to believe that taxes are too low but that ATM fees are too high,
To be a liberal you have to believe that second-hand smoke is more dangerous than HIV,
And you have to believe that the reason why socialism hasn't worked anywhere that it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge,
You also have to believe that gold is a barbarous relic that must be expunged from the monetary system
You know, I'm really beginning to warm to Professor Block.
He tops off the monologue above with a later line about the double coincidence of wants problem, involving a chicken owning pickle wanter in search of a pickle owning chicken wanter.
Try saying that after a Martini! ;-)
Yes, it's ten years old, this podcast, but still worth a listen for its wide-ranging discussion points.
=> The Golden Antidote
This starts with the following Woody Allenesque monologue:
To be a liberal you have to believe the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of government funding,
You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but that being gay is natural,
You have to believe that businesses create oppression and that governments create prosperity,
...,
To be a liberal you have to believe that there was no art before federal funding,
To be a liberal you have to believe that taxes are too low but that ATM fees are too high,
To be a liberal you have to believe that second-hand smoke is more dangerous than HIV,
And you have to believe that the reason why socialism hasn't worked anywhere that it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge,
You also have to believe that gold is a barbarous relic that must be expunged from the monetary system
You know, I'm really beginning to warm to Professor Block.
He tops off the monologue above with a later line about the double coincidence of wants problem, involving a chicken owning pickle wanter in search of a pickle owning chicken wanter.
Try saying that after a Martini! ;-)
Yes, it's ten years old, this podcast, but still worth a listen for its wide-ranging discussion points.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Songs for the barricade
In Uncle Murray's magnificent magnum opus, Man, Economy and State, with Power and Market, he introduces the character 'Jones', an acting man who must decide between watching a baseball game, playing cards, or taking a drive. These different possible actions keep moving up and down Jones's ordinal scale of most desirable thing to currently do, as he moves through the evening, in the subjective utilitarian reality of Austrian human action choice.I felt a bit like that on the beach, today. My ever-revolving list of iterations were (1) Order a cold Heineken from the beach butler, (2) Go for a swim, (3) Order a burger with french fries, (4) Listen to a Walter Block podcast, (5) Avoid looking at the impossibly curvaceous, slim, golden-skinned, blond-haired girlfriends of what appeared to be a former company of Russian Spetznatz troops, discussing all sorts of 'business', on the beach.
Imagine men who are built like tanks, covered in tatoos and scars, and wearing grey vests and cut-off grey camouflaged beach shorts, and I think you'll get the picture.
Rather remarkably, it was incredible how many times listening to a Walter Block podcast won out over avoiding looking at the impossibly curvaceous and slim blond-haired women.
I must say, however, that these Eastern European ladies all seem much nicer than the leathery Western European ones, who appear to be able to work out your net income and capital property value at five hundred yards, with a single penetrating glance.
You feel like your wallet has been squeezed and molested, when they run their eyes (very briefly in my case) over you. Ah well, I'm probably only jealous that I don't appear to come up to muster wearing my Jean Baptiste Say "Markets Clear" T-shirt, gaining about a 3.42 nanosecond glance before my case is presented, tried, and dismissed.
Anyhow, enough of that nonsense.
While I was pondering whether to listen to another Walter Block podcast or go for another swim, I wondered about creating a song list for the barricade, when the revolution comes. Just like the Desert Island Discs program, I thought I'd limit myself to just eight tracks, to listen to when the balloon finally goes up. If you have an alternative list, I'd be pleased to see it:
1. 1973, James Blunt, All the Lost Souls
2. No One Knows, Colin Hay, Are You Looking At Me?
3. Shiver, Natalie Imbruglia, Counting Down the Days
4. You Get What You Give, New Radicals, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
5. Life is a Highway, Tom Cochrane, Mad Mad World (I watched this one performed live about a hundred years ago with English Bay, Vancouver, as a backdrop, while the Sun set into the Pacific. If you know Tom Cochrane, then you'll realise just quite how good that was.)
6. No Tomorrow, Orson, Big Idea
7. Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy, Big & Rich, Horse of a Different Color
8. Superman, Lazlo Bane, All the Time in the World
Prizes will be awarded if you can work out which song goes with each of the following women: Pauline, Caroline, Vanessa, Carol, Christine, Anne, Katherine, and Kathy, in no particular order.
Well, while you're on the barricade, you may as well have something to remind yourself why you're there.
Report on LvMI UK
Bad news, folks.
I have spoken to my control from Auburn, and from what he tells me I personally would have to do to get a Von Mises Society going in England, which would achieve the aims I would want for it, would require too much energy and time on my part for me to be able to do it.
However, if anyone else wants to form such a thing, then I would be happy to join.
The first step might be for a rogue UK Austrian individual with a spare £50,000 in their pocket to sponsor a Mises Circle event, say in London, and to take it from there.
In the meantime, because of a lack of Austrian economics professors in England, who would be the probably best strong 'root' of a Von Mises Society, perhaps the better things to do are to:
1. Help the LvMI in Auburn, especially by helping it fund the enrollment and education of UK people into the Mises programs, to then enable them to become Austrian professors in England, to then form the nucleus of a future much more effective Von Mises Society.
2. Help Sean Gabb with his endeavours, with the Libertarian Alliance (orthodox wing), and try to add Austrian influence to it.
3. Similarly, for the Libertarian Alliance (provisional wing).
Oh well, reality hurts. But it's the thought that counts.
I have spoken to my control from Auburn, and from what he tells me I personally would have to do to get a Von Mises Society going in England, which would achieve the aims I would want for it, would require too much energy and time on my part for me to be able to do it.
However, if anyone else wants to form such a thing, then I would be happy to join.
The first step might be for a rogue UK Austrian individual with a spare £50,000 in their pocket to sponsor a Mises Circle event, say in London, and to take it from there.
In the meantime, because of a lack of Austrian economics professors in England, who would be the probably best strong 'root' of a Von Mises Society, perhaps the better things to do are to:
1. Help the LvMI in Auburn, especially by helping it fund the enrollment and education of UK people into the Mises programs, to then enable them to become Austrian professors in England, to then form the nucleus of a future much more effective Von Mises Society.
2. Help Sean Gabb with his endeavours, with the Libertarian Alliance (orthodox wing), and try to add Austrian influence to it.
3. Similarly, for the Libertarian Alliance (provisional wing).
Oh well, reality hurts. But it's the thought that counts.
Polymath Block adds a new discipline: Sociobiology
In the same way that intelligent people compete for sexual success, without really being aware of the underlying self-organising system of evolution, Walter Block postulates that socialism may be hard-wired into the human brain because of the evolutionary success of explicit co-operation and implicit co-operation.Listen in, from about 16 minutes onwards, to the following podcast, for his sociobiological explanation:
=> Libertarianism: Is it Conservatism’s Future? (MP3)
Essentially, a million years ago, there were two ways for a proto-human tribe to survive against the lions and the sabre-toothed tigers. One was explicit co-operation, where if I helped you, then next week you helped me. This 'Reciprocation' feature is hard-wired into humanity and is used by sales people today to sell you stuff you perhaps realise afterwards you didn't want (e.g. giving away small 'free' samples of shampoo - you then 'reciprocate' later by buying a full bottle of the new shampoo from these 'benefactors').
Those who didn't reciprocate, for instance if you looked after them when they were unwell and they then refused to look after you when you were unwell, were quickly shunned, isolated, and kicked out of the tribe.
This explicit co-operation, driven by the underlying evolutionary mechanism of gene survival, worked well enough for 50 to 100 related people, in the typical primitive pre-Neolithic tribe. This then is the behaviour, which lies at the root of socialism. It is why socialist society can survive at the primitive agragrian autarchic level of a village or a small valley, with a single overlord, who is probably also literally 'Head of the Family'. The emotion and the memory of reciprocation holds everything together, in the tribe, through thick and through thin.
But what does this primitive tribe do if it finds a rival tribe over the hill, carrying lots of juicy Wildebeest carcasses? It forms a hunting party and tries to wipe out the other tribe in order to retrieve the Wildebeests. These people are 'others' and therefore it is okay to kill them, so long as the tribal chief commands it.
But this kind of tribal aggressive behaviour, perhaps the root of national socialism, completely wipes out a far more powerful form of co-operation, that of implicit co-operation, i.e. the free market, another self-organising Hayekian system with remarkable similarities to evolution.
If instead of trying to wipe out the other tribe, we open trade negotiations with them instead (something which happened only in the last 100,000 years or so, when Cro-Magnon eventually grew intelligent enough to work this out), 'selling' what we had too much of (say, ivory tusks) for what the other tribe had too much of (say, Wildebeest carcasses), enabled us to become much wealthier over time, rather than by using the older techniques of brutal theft and murder.
Even better, would be to codify these 'trading' practices and these 'property rights', to help people do what felt unnatural, with the natural urge being to steal from and murder those in the other unrelated tribe, and to take their stuff. These codifications of 'unnatural' behaviour thus become the roots of the earliest religions, which has to keep being drummed in to hard-wired people, to stop them falling into 'evil' (i.e. property theft, envy, and murder). I don't think it's any coincidence that those with strong religious beliefs are often the most market-oriented in society, and those that are the most atheistic are often the most socialist.
But if these 'unnatural' rules are adhered to, the self-organising system of the market is formed, working to the same general principles as the self-organising system of evolution, with which it is closely related (as it were).
Those who most clearly used these 'moral' techniques of implicit co-operation and trade quickly became the dominant tribes, and thus quickly we reach the earliest cities, which start off as enhanced trading posts lying upon natural communication points abutting rivers and coasts.
Obviously, underlying all of this is the more primitive hard-wiring which still makes us want to hit people over the head to then try to steal from them, and this is what lies at the root of the first states, where 'strong' individuals take over these early cities through armed force, to live as gilded parasites on the backs of all the other traders. (We could argue here that they were merely providing security services, but we can leave that discussion for another day.)
Hence, we reach the stage of Kings, armies, Pharoahs, and other assorted bands of robbers writ large, as the hard-wiring keeps re-arising after oscillatory periods of intellectual liberty. Hence, the United States has an ideological epiphany with the writings of Englishman Thomas Paine, but then subsequently falls under the Pharaonic communist spell of Horus-God, Obama, who can right all evils with a single glance. Look, the US economy is recovering, my children, and I will create the jobs necessary to keep this recovery going, ...for Lo, I am the one true God, the blessed, the merciful, the deliverer of winds, and of all other sweet goodnesses - Weep ye children of America, for I have come among you...
And if you believe that nonsense, you'll believe the Moon is made of cream cheese.
So the sociobiological approach is a bit of a tale of woe, I'm afraid, but it does explain an awful lot, especially why only one in a hundred people is a believer in freedom rather than a believer in some form of socialism, which makes our fight against them all that more Sisyphusian, as we constantly face the uphill struggle of overcoming primitive hard-wired genetics.
However, if Thomas Paine could do it, with such spectacular results, then at least we ought to try.
Socialists are primitivists. They should have our pity. And if we can help some of them shake off their hard-wiring, then one day we could finally shake off their dreadful stone age instincts which keep giving us war, slavery, and poverty.
For much more on this kind of line, I must recommend Hayek's 'The Fatal Conceit'. It is doubtful if Professor Hayek wrote all of it, however, it is still worth reading for all that.
Pip pip!!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Heaviest element yet discovered: Governmentium
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.
The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 – 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
We asked the scientists involved whether it was dangerous:
"It causes a cancer," said one expert, with a beard, "but of a special kind. Instead of causing plain simple bodily cancer, like other heavy elements, it acts instead as a cancer throughout the whole of society, feeding upon free radicals and chewing them up through university professorship salaries to become further morons within the Governmentium mass."
"It is incredibly dangerous," said another scientist with a beard, "because once you are afflicted with it, you think it's a good thing and try to spread even more of it around to deflect the blame. Both of us have had to grow beards to try to offset its effects, but even we are feeling tempted to recommend that Governmentium be compulsorily administered to all children, from the ages of 3 through to 21, and then again in all hospitals, for every kind of treatment. Keep clear."
So there you have it folks, the new heaviest element of all time, Governmentium. I suppose we'll discover a use for it one day, but in the meantime, as the men with beards say, stay well clear.
With thanks to the Objective Analyzer
The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 – 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
We asked the scientists involved whether it was dangerous:
"It causes a cancer," said one expert, with a beard, "but of a special kind. Instead of causing plain simple bodily cancer, like other heavy elements, it acts instead as a cancer throughout the whole of society, feeding upon free radicals and chewing them up through university professorship salaries to become further morons within the Governmentium mass."
"It is incredibly dangerous," said another scientist with a beard, "because once you are afflicted with it, you think it's a good thing and try to spread even more of it around to deflect the blame. Both of us have had to grow beards to try to offset its effects, but even we are feeling tempted to recommend that Governmentium be compulsorily administered to all children, from the ages of 3 through to 21, and then again in all hospitals, for every kind of treatment. Keep clear."
So there you have it folks, the new heaviest element of all time, Governmentium. I suppose we'll discover a use for it one day, but in the meantime, as the men with beards say, stay well clear.
With thanks to the Objective Analyzer
Yet more layers of bureaucracy planned to protect the 'Too Big to Fail's
Peter Schiff lays into the US Senate:
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The US creates its own NHS
It just seems bizarre to me.
The NHS in Britain is a rotten over-manned, over-paid, over-pensioned, filthy, disgusting waste of taxpayers' money, where you have to beg to be lucky enough to be placed on months-long queues for the simplest of treatments.
Doctors are arrogant, impossible to sack, massively compensated, and you're lucky to get more than two minutes with one before they're pushing you out of the door with a Big Pharma script in your hand.
If we had a National Food Service in the UK, the NFS, we all know that we would be queueing all week for filthy rotten potatoes, but still we put up with the same kind of miserable 'service' from the producer-led NHS.
And America wants to have the same system over there.
Oh Dear Lord.
They fight a revolution to get the British government out of their lives, and 250 years later they are copying the worst examples of British government stupidity.
Yes, we all know Obama is an Acorn-Chicago-Machine communist. But for the rest of the US government to push through this horrible health bill, to create an American NHS, is simply incredible.
If I was a Texan, an Alaskan, a Californian, a Hawaiian, or best of all a Vermonter in the "Green Mountain Boys" liberation army, I would be brushing off my legal text books on secession.
Its time has come.
The NHS in Britain is a rotten over-manned, over-paid, over-pensioned, filthy, disgusting waste of taxpayers' money, where you have to beg to be lucky enough to be placed on months-long queues for the simplest of treatments.
Doctors are arrogant, impossible to sack, massively compensated, and you're lucky to get more than two minutes with one before they're pushing you out of the door with a Big Pharma script in your hand.
If we had a National Food Service in the UK, the NFS, we all know that we would be queueing all week for filthy rotten potatoes, but still we put up with the same kind of miserable 'service' from the producer-led NHS.
And America wants to have the same system over there.
Oh Dear Lord.
They fight a revolution to get the British government out of their lives, and 250 years later they are copying the worst examples of British government stupidity.
Yes, we all know Obama is an Acorn-Chicago-Machine communist. But for the rest of the US government to push through this horrible health bill, to create an American NHS, is simply incredible.
If I was a Texan, an Alaskan, a Californian, a Hawaiian, or best of all a Vermonter in the "Green Mountain Boys" liberation army, I would be brushing off my legal text books on secession.
Its time has come.
The cure for Randianism
Surely, there can only be one cure; a single viewing of 'Mozart was a Red', by Murray N. Rothbard:
Better than sex.
Here's the text.
Better than sex.
Here's the text.
The cure for socialism
I was asked a curious question the other evening, about how it is possible for someone to be a hard-core Stalinist socialist one day, and then a hard-core Austrian anarcho-capitalist the next.
Well, it's very rarely an overnight thing. However, there are cases where such people have been instantly transformed simply by reading Human Action, understanding the reasoning behind the Socialism Cannot Calculate argument, and then instantly flipping straight across to full anarcho-capitalism. But this didn't happen for me (alas).
Instead, it was a decade-long road of mistakes, false trails, cul-de-sacs, and finally waking up one day and realising that government is not only unnecessary, it is positively a cancer which should be eradicated.
There's two other things to understand, too. First of all, very few people change their political stripes once they have reached the end of puberty, because of chemicals released by the body during this period which 'freeze' certain parts of the brain. For instance, if you learn a foreign tongue before the age of 12, it is likely you will speak it like a native and have no accent. If you learn a foreign tongue after the age of 18, it is highly likely you will always keep an accent.
But we're not after most people. A twenty-year-old who is a committed socialist is almost certainly a lost cause, and not worth the candle. They may come across of their own accord, but that's entirely down to them. I'm certainly not going to lift a finger to help these cretins, as the energy they soak up is just too high. If they're intelligent enough, they'll eventually work it out for themselves.
What we are after, however, are those uncommitted people who just want to see a better world. We have to rescue them before they are sucked into the socialist maw by constantly deriding and laughing at the stupidities of socialism, and pointing out a better way.
A very very few people can be persuaded to change their spots, but so very few it is not worth spending much time on the matter. (Though those that do change, say, after the age of 25, are often our greatest fighters, in the manner of anti-smoking zealots who used to be heavy smokers.)
The second thing is this, you have to realise that those who do change from one extreme to another, are most likely possessors of highly volatile minds. This is a polite way of admitting that I could in some ways be judged as being 'slightly short of a few bob in loose change', as could many of my fellow 'changelings'.
But it's certainly a factor to be considered.
Obviously, we 'changelings' consider ourselves highly intelligent, creative, passionate, innovative, soulful, and magnificent. However others just call us lunatics. But we can live it, so long as we realise it's a possibility.
(Though as Professor Thomas Szasz would say, 'mental health' may simply be an invention of the state to describe behaviours not wanted by the state.)
However, given that, where does one begin to cure one's self from socialism?
I think the root of this must be George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although Orwell himself remained a socialist until his dying day in a curious case of cognitive dissonance, this dystopic vision of the future rings so true as to the final nature of a socialist world, that it drives a fantastic nail into the heart of socialist ideals.
I think the next nail must be Hayek's Road to Serfdom, which describes the process via which 'well-meaning' government always comes to mean men with guns shooting people in the head for daring to disobey.
Next up, is Alexander Dolgun's story, An American in the Gulag, which caused the first major crack in my own Stalinist edifice. Much more compelling than anything Solzhenitsyn ever wrote, Dolgun is unusual in being one of the very few men to come through the dreaded Sukhanovka KGB prison.
Once this book shook my Stalinism, the rot was in, and although it was to be a long road to Austria, the journey had finally begun.
I suppose I must include Atlas Shrugged, which pushed me into all the works of Rand, though I always felt she was missing something, and wondered why she had proven incapable of writing a sequel to Atlas Shrugged, turning instead to non-fiction to avoid having to write about how John Galt could run a successful American state without succumbing himself to the ring of power.
But Rand is, and always will be, a cul-de-sac. She is a statist and a collectivist, and a world entirely peopled by Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart clones, all smoking one very rational brand of cigarette, to provide fires in their mind, would be a very dull and oppressive place indeed, probably even worse than living in a Gulag.
At least in a Gulag, as Alexander Dolgun testifies, there is still some room left for a little freedom and rebellion, if only behind the closed curtains of your own mind. The Randians wouldn't be happy until all rogue mental patterns, daring to deviate from the orthodox line of a long-dead woman, had been entirely eradicated by the comrades.
But Atlas Shrugged helps, as does her much more readable earlier work, Anthem, which I wouldn't be surprised to know had been read by George Orwell before he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four.
I think by this time you will be turning for home on the last lap of the race, having done the hard yards already, especially if by this point you have discovered Mises.org.
So from then on it's a swift gallop through Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt), The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (Mises), Human Action (Mises), and finally, Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market (Rothbard).
To finally kill off any remaining shreds and hangover vestiges of socialism, you must then hammer in the final stake through the heart, in the form of Socialism, by Von Mises himself. (IMHO, his finest work.)
From then on, there are hundreds of books to read and soak up. I'll let you work out your own non-fiction ones, but the fictional ones to read are Lord of the Rings, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, anthing by Robert Heinlein (especially the Moon is a Harsh Mistress), all of the Harry Potter novels, and Time Will Run Back, by Henry Hazlitt.
There's many, many, many other books that will help. For instance, The Prince, by Machiavelli, Democracy the God that Failed, by Hoppe, and A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, also by Hoppe.
But by this point you should be well saved. So I'll leave it for you to work out where to go next.
Happy reading!
Right, it's getting on for 6pm, here, as the peachy round sun drops down over the western Gulf. So I'll be off for a rather large G&T, down by the beach, to whet my appetite for dinner.
By Gad, it's a tough life here in Maturin World.
Pip pip!!
Well, it's very rarely an overnight thing. However, there are cases where such people have been instantly transformed simply by reading Human Action, understanding the reasoning behind the Socialism Cannot Calculate argument, and then instantly flipping straight across to full anarcho-capitalism. But this didn't happen for me (alas).
Instead, it was a decade-long road of mistakes, false trails, cul-de-sacs, and finally waking up one day and realising that government is not only unnecessary, it is positively a cancer which should be eradicated.
There's two other things to understand, too. First of all, very few people change their political stripes once they have reached the end of puberty, because of chemicals released by the body during this period which 'freeze' certain parts of the brain. For instance, if you learn a foreign tongue before the age of 12, it is likely you will speak it like a native and have no accent. If you learn a foreign tongue after the age of 18, it is highly likely you will always keep an accent.
But we're not after most people. A twenty-year-old who is a committed socialist is almost certainly a lost cause, and not worth the candle. They may come across of their own accord, but that's entirely down to them. I'm certainly not going to lift a finger to help these cretins, as the energy they soak up is just too high. If they're intelligent enough, they'll eventually work it out for themselves.
What we are after, however, are those uncommitted people who just want to see a better world. We have to rescue them before they are sucked into the socialist maw by constantly deriding and laughing at the stupidities of socialism, and pointing out a better way.
A very very few people can be persuaded to change their spots, but so very few it is not worth spending much time on the matter. (Though those that do change, say, after the age of 25, are often our greatest fighters, in the manner of anti-smoking zealots who used to be heavy smokers.)
The second thing is this, you have to realise that those who do change from one extreme to another, are most likely possessors of highly volatile minds. This is a polite way of admitting that I could in some ways be judged as being 'slightly short of a few bob in loose change', as could many of my fellow 'changelings'.
But it's certainly a factor to be considered.
Obviously, we 'changelings' consider ourselves highly intelligent, creative, passionate, innovative, soulful, and magnificent. However others just call us lunatics. But we can live it, so long as we realise it's a possibility.
(Though as Professor Thomas Szasz would say, 'mental health' may simply be an invention of the state to describe behaviours not wanted by the state.)
However, given that, where does one begin to cure one's self from socialism?
I think the root of this must be George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although Orwell himself remained a socialist until his dying day in a curious case of cognitive dissonance, this dystopic vision of the future rings so true as to the final nature of a socialist world, that it drives a fantastic nail into the heart of socialist ideals.
I think the next nail must be Hayek's Road to Serfdom, which describes the process via which 'well-meaning' government always comes to mean men with guns shooting people in the head for daring to disobey.
Next up, is Alexander Dolgun's story, An American in the Gulag, which caused the first major crack in my own Stalinist edifice. Much more compelling than anything Solzhenitsyn ever wrote, Dolgun is unusual in being one of the very few men to come through the dreaded Sukhanovka KGB prison.
Once this book shook my Stalinism, the rot was in, and although it was to be a long road to Austria, the journey had finally begun.
I suppose I must include Atlas Shrugged, which pushed me into all the works of Rand, though I always felt she was missing something, and wondered why she had proven incapable of writing a sequel to Atlas Shrugged, turning instead to non-fiction to avoid having to write about how John Galt could run a successful American state without succumbing himself to the ring of power.
But Rand is, and always will be, a cul-de-sac. She is a statist and a collectivist, and a world entirely peopled by Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart clones, all smoking one very rational brand of cigarette, to provide fires in their mind, would be a very dull and oppressive place indeed, probably even worse than living in a Gulag.
At least in a Gulag, as Alexander Dolgun testifies, there is still some room left for a little freedom and rebellion, if only behind the closed curtains of your own mind. The Randians wouldn't be happy until all rogue mental patterns, daring to deviate from the orthodox line of a long-dead woman, had been entirely eradicated by the comrades.
But Atlas Shrugged helps, as does her much more readable earlier work, Anthem, which I wouldn't be surprised to know had been read by George Orwell before he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four.
I think by this time you will be turning for home on the last lap of the race, having done the hard yards already, especially if by this point you have discovered Mises.org.
So from then on it's a swift gallop through Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt), The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (Mises), Human Action (Mises), and finally, Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market (Rothbard).
To finally kill off any remaining shreds and hangover vestiges of socialism, you must then hammer in the final stake through the heart, in the form of Socialism, by Von Mises himself. (IMHO, his finest work.)
From then on, there are hundreds of books to read and soak up. I'll let you work out your own non-fiction ones, but the fictional ones to read are Lord of the Rings, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, anthing by Robert Heinlein (especially the Moon is a Harsh Mistress), all of the Harry Potter novels, and Time Will Run Back, by Henry Hazlitt.
There's many, many, many other books that will help. For instance, The Prince, by Machiavelli, Democracy the God that Failed, by Hoppe, and A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, also by Hoppe.
But by this point you should be well saved. So I'll leave it for you to work out where to go next.
Happy reading!
Right, it's getting on for 6pm, here, as the peachy round sun drops down over the western Gulf. So I'll be off for a rather large G&T, down by the beach, to whet my appetite for dinner.
By Gad, it's a tough life here in Maturin World.
Pip pip!!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Lord Mandelson to become Minister of Information
Spot the difference:
Perhaps the most corrupt man in Britain, Lord Rio of Hinduja, is to become the British government's official minister of propaganda.
The descent of the once-proud Labour Party into fascist degeneracy really is quite profound. As a former once-proud member of the Labour Party myself, its current promotion of crookery and outrageous lying, after 12 years of abject failure, really makes me quite sick indeed, in the manner of being sick at the realisation of one of your own children becoming a foul murderer.
What a terrible shame that a political movement that was borne out of a justified feeling that the world was wrong and that this wrong should be righted, has descended to such abject crassness and mendacious 'Big Lie' cajolery.
Perhaps the most corrupt man in Britain, Lord Rio of Hinduja, is to become the British government's official minister of propaganda.The descent of the once-proud Labour Party into fascist degeneracy really is quite profound. As a former once-proud member of the Labour Party myself, its current promotion of crookery and outrageous lying, after 12 years of abject failure, really makes me quite sick indeed, in the manner of being sick at the realisation of one of your own children becoming a foul murderer.
What a terrible shame that a political movement that was borne out of a justified feeling that the world was wrong and that this wrong should be righted, has descended to such abject crassness and mendacious 'Big Lie' cajolery.
Days in the office
Well, here in Dubai I've had a pretty rough day because an evil New Zealander forced me last night to sample of couple of thimblefuls of amber nectar.Being more of a Martinborough Pinot Noir man these days, followed by creamy Stilton and a light cigarillo, I perhaps had one or two more than I should have had, so I needed to concentrate a little more on my business dealings today, than perhaps I would have wished.
I blame Peter Jackson, for encouraging all of these New Zealanders to believe that they are all Men of Gondor or Dwarfs of the Iron Mountains, therefore able to quaff flagons of strong ale before striding out to deal with Orcs.
Ah, well, Lissenen ar' maska'lalaith tenna' lye omentuva.
Fortunately, because it's nearly the weekend here, we all managed to slip down to the beach by 3pm, to soak up a few rays of lovely November sun and to get the beach butler to bring us down a few cold drinks, to quench our pre-Orc quest.
So fear ye not, fellow seekers of Mordor's ultimate Leviathanesque destruction. Things aren't too disastrous in Maturin World, today.
Now, after my bath to wash off all of that salty sand, surely it's time for a stiff one before dinner?
Pip pip!!
Bernanke is the apprentice of Gutenberg the printer
Marc Faber predicts that the future value of the dollar is precisely zero.
The interviewer, aghast, asks "zero against what?"
"Vell," says the Good Doctor, "against everyzing":
More here.
The interviewer, aghast, asks "zero against what?"
"Vell," says the Good Doctor, "against everyzing":
More here.
Climate change study shows Earth is still absorbing carbon dioxide
Not that it matters anyway, because there's still the question of explaining why the last ice age had much higher carbon levels in the atmosphere than we have now, but yet another scientific study has shown that the ecomentalists are a bunch of religoid gangsters, with fingers stuffed in their ears shouting "Cannot hear, Cannot hear, Cannot hear".
Superb.
Superb.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The second American revolution has begun
Uncle Gerald Celente calls the first three shots which have already happened, in the second American revolution.
He also predicts that as Obama's ratings continue to drop, then some significant 'event' will take place, to re-boost these ratings.
He skirts away from saying that the Bush administration deliberately caused 9/11, to overcome the malaise caused by the dot-com crash, but he does say that he puts nothing past the US government to renew itself in a time of crisis.
Crivens!
He also predicts that as Obama's ratings continue to drop, then some significant 'event' will take place, to re-boost these ratings.
He skirts away from saying that the Bush administration deliberately caused 9/11, to overcome the malaise caused by the dot-com crash, but he does say that he puts nothing past the US government to renew itself in a time of crisis.
Crivens!
The only way is up - or is it? Gold at $1100 dollars an ounce
Marc Faber thinks you should wait until gold drops to $800 dollars an ounce before you buy any.Hmmm...
Personally, I don't think we'll ever see gold go below $1,000 dollars ever again. However, Dr Faber is a very rich man and I am a very poor man, so maybe he knows something about IMF and World Bank policies that I don't, so I wouldn't entirely rule out a very short-term drop below a thousand again.
In the meantime, however, not being the greatest market timer in the world, I'm going to keep buying gold with every spare penny I have.
It's only a bubble when every idiot in the street is buying into it, and as Mark Dice has found, there are still plenty of zombies out there who think gold is only something you wrap chocolate sweets in.
Probing the depths of public ignorance on gold money at $1100 dollars an oz
Mark Dice, hero, fails to find the bottom of the depth of public ignorance on gold as money.
He tries to sell a 1 oz Canadian maple leaf solid gold coin for $50, in the smart part of town, and finds no takers.
The Fedsters and other counterfeiters really have got their serf zombies nailed.
Simply fantastic:
He tries to sell a 1 oz Canadian maple leaf solid gold coin for $50, in the smart part of town, and finds no takers.
The Fedsters and other counterfeiters really have got their serf zombies nailed.
Simply fantastic:
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Socialism cannot calculate
Above is a photo of the Boeing 777 I flew to Dubai in on Saturday. Look at the tremendous number of operations going on. There is luggage being loaded, food being loaded, (most importantly) drinks being loaded, and passengers about to be loaded. That's not to mention the 600 channels of entertainment, including the latest Harry Potter film, and quite a good romp called 'The Ugly Truth'.The flight crew are preparing their route and doing their pre-flight checks. The cabin crew are with us in the lounge getting us ready for the journey, and the plane itself is the direct descendant of the Wright brothers plane, made out of string and balsa wood, which hopped about on a Carolinas beach a mere 100 years ago.
(To put that into context, think about Roman imperial society in 100 AD, and then Roman imperial society in 200 AD. Any differences coming to mind? No? Thought not. This is because the socialism of the late Roman empire crushed all innovation and created a stagnant society ready for brutal crushing in the metal-crusher of history - but I digress.)
All of the progress in the photograph above is down to capitalism, particularly that of capitalist America before the two-headed monster of the Republican-Democrat government machine succeeded in destroying it and allowing China to take up the mantle.
Socialism cannot even calculate how many tons of coal to mine in any given year, in a coal-bearing area, to feed a single iron foundry.
This is the genius of Ludwig von Mises. Of his many astounding accomplishments, perhaps his greatest was the epiphany that socialism cannot calculate.
ANYTHING.
Without a free market there is no way of knowing what is the best use of scarce resources.
As an experiment for yourself to check this, play any 'Tycoon' computer game in 'Sandbox' mode (i.e. communist mode) and see how boring it gets, and how quickly it gets boring, and then take a look at the convoluted and stupid worlds you build when there is no competition forcing your hand to be efficient and productive, even when you have unlimited cash to build said resources, without any need to generate any kind of investment return.
This is why socialism appeals to people with the sandbox mentality of young children. Because it fails to take into account any kind of reality, in which real resources are scarce, and in which 'perfectionism' cannot be achieved in anything like a realistic time frame.
Mises realised all of this before computer games.
Mises truly was one of the greatest men of all time. Personally, I think the only man who came anywhere close, previous to this great Austrian, was Thomas Aquinas. Before that, probably Aristotle. Before that, perhaps the un-named Prometheus figure who invented fire-making, and before that, perhaps a close relative of the Bonobo chimpanzees who was the first brave 'man' to decide to come down from the trees and out from the forest.
We really are not worthy.
Just a random thought.
Uncle Gerald tells it like it is
US citizens should stuff cotton wool in their ears before they listen to 40 minutes of Uncle Gerald in full flow.
Brutal.
Brutal.
The Man Who Predicted the Depression
A superb article in the Wall Street Journal, on Ludwig von Mises' 1920s' prediction of a forthcoming economic crash.
The Austrian crusade may finally be beginning to get somewhere after 80 years of being right all of the time, and subsequently being ignored for being so damned smug about it.
(BTW, in case you're wondering, the Persian Gulf sea, just off the Hilton Jumeirah in Dubai, is superb at this time of year. Wearing my 'Murray Rothbard: Enemy of the State' drew a few confused looks, but what the heck.)
The Austrian crusade may finally be beginning to get somewhere after 80 years of being right all of the time, and subsequently being ignored for being so damned smug about it.
(BTW, in case you're wondering, the Persian Gulf sea, just off the Hilton Jumeirah in Dubai, is superb at this time of year. Wearing my 'Murray Rothbard: Enemy of the State' drew a few confused looks, but what the heck.)
Saturday, November 07, 2009
The power of language
Followers of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), will know all about the power of language, but for those less familiar, take a look at the following paragraphs I found in The Labourgraph, this morning:
US unemployment hits 10pc for first time since Ronald Reagan was in power
“While the US may be officially out of recession, there are too few signs yet that employers have confidence enough to begin taking on new staff,” commented Howard Wheeldon, BGC Partners’ senior strategist.
This “suggests that those working in the wider economy are still concerned that the stimulus benefit enjoyed in recent months can be turned into sustainable growth,” he continued.
Notice, "the stimulus benefit enjoyed", allied to the highest US official unemployment figures for 26 years (with the real jobless rate probably twice that).
I must say, as an NLP practioner myself, and someone used to its powers, this clever use of language even took me by surprise.
You might even believe, from the messages being put out by governments all over the world, that everything is so good that we should all burst spontaneously into song, singing "climb every mountain".
It is clever, though. You have to hand it to these bought-and-paid-for intellectuals, for being able to machinate this nonsense without their own brains melting.
US unemployment hits 10pc for first time since Ronald Reagan was in power
“While the US may be officially out of recession, there are too few signs yet that employers have confidence enough to begin taking on new staff,” commented Howard Wheeldon, BGC Partners’ senior strategist.
This “suggests that those working in the wider economy are still concerned that the stimulus benefit enjoyed in recent months can be turned into sustainable growth,” he continued.
Notice, "the stimulus benefit enjoyed", allied to the highest US official unemployment figures for 26 years (with the real jobless rate probably twice that).
I must say, as an NLP practioner myself, and someone used to its powers, this clever use of language even took me by surprise.
You might even believe, from the messages being put out by governments all over the world, that everything is so good that we should all burst spontaneously into song, singing "climb every mountain".
It is clever, though. You have to hand it to these bought-and-paid-for intellectuals, for being able to machinate this nonsense without their own brains melting.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Mises slideshow
Jeffrey Tucker has put together an amazing slideshow of Ludwig von Mises images. I particularly like the ones where he is with Hayek:
Reserve Bank of India’s Gold Purchase From the IMF - Bye bye dollar, hello gold
Michael Rozeff helps me in my ponderings about what's going on in the world gold market versus the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency.
Forget that. Gold is gradually becoming the world's reserve currency.
Forget that. Gold is gradually becoming the world's reserve currency.
Have the central banks given up?
With gold at $1,092.90/oz this morning, I was wondering whether the central banks (plus the Basel BIS, the World Bank, and the IMF) had all just given up.
For decades they have striven to keep gold below $1,000 dollars, to hide their counterfeiting practices from seeing the light of day.
Even with the forthcoming pre-announced sale of a further 200 tonnes of gold by the IMF (to whoever wants it, probably the Chinese government), has the heart gone out of the fight to keep the gold price down below the magically psychological $1,000 dollars?
If they have given up, what is the 'natural' ceiling, if gold were to be treated like copper or zinc, or any other regular metal commodity? (If it's such a barbarous relic, then why do all the Keynesians in central banking care so much about the price of gold?) Is the natural price of gold 'On the Moon' at $6,000 dollars, or somewhere in the $2,000 - $3,000 dollar range?
I suppose we shall see once the IMF has off-loaded its 200 tonnes.
Have the central banks actually run out? Gold leasing has been a joke for decades, with central banks giving away their hoards of treasure in the full expectation that they would never see them again. Is Fort Knox empty?
Who knows? They certainly won't allow an audit. If James Bond were to pay it a visit today, what would he find? Tumbleweed? Crickets?
It's all very interesting. If gold breaks through $1,100 without any sign of a central bank intervention then it will get even more interesting.
Will we ever see $1,000 dollar gold ever again? Have the central banks resigned themselves to locking the price of gold to under $2,000 dollars an ounce? If they have, this doesn't have the same 'ring' as $1,000 dollars, and I predict that if the price gets to the $1,900 mark, then it will sail through $2,000 like a train through cobwebs, despite any feeble attempts of the central banks to halt the onslaught.
So this morning, in the manner of Gandalf the Grey, I shall ponder these riddles.
For decades they have striven to keep gold below $1,000 dollars, to hide their counterfeiting practices from seeing the light of day.
Even with the forthcoming pre-announced sale of a further 200 tonnes of gold by the IMF (to whoever wants it, probably the Chinese government), has the heart gone out of the fight to keep the gold price down below the magically psychological $1,000 dollars?
If they have given up, what is the 'natural' ceiling, if gold were to be treated like copper or zinc, or any other regular metal commodity? (If it's such a barbarous relic, then why do all the Keynesians in central banking care so much about the price of gold?) Is the natural price of gold 'On the Moon' at $6,000 dollars, or somewhere in the $2,000 - $3,000 dollar range?
I suppose we shall see once the IMF has off-loaded its 200 tonnes.
Have the central banks actually run out? Gold leasing has been a joke for decades, with central banks giving away their hoards of treasure in the full expectation that they would never see them again. Is Fort Knox empty?
Who knows? They certainly won't allow an audit. If James Bond were to pay it a visit today, what would he find? Tumbleweed? Crickets?
It's all very interesting. If gold breaks through $1,100 without any sign of a central bank intervention then it will get even more interesting.
Will we ever see $1,000 dollar gold ever again? Have the central banks resigned themselves to locking the price of gold to under $2,000 dollars an ounce? If they have, this doesn't have the same 'ring' as $1,000 dollars, and I predict that if the price gets to the $1,900 mark, then it will sail through $2,000 like a train through cobwebs, despite any feeble attempts of the central banks to halt the onslaught.
So this morning, in the manner of Gandalf the Grey, I shall ponder these riddles.
Strikers win again in moribund Britain
The British government once again caved in to strikers in a stitch-up deal with the postal unions.
With so much bad news around, and with Christmas coming up, the Labour Party will not want to have been accused of 'Cancelling Christmas' with a failure of the delivery of tens of millions of Christmas cards, so their chief fixer Lord Rio has 'sorted' it.
No doubt we'll never know how much taxpayer has just been ripped off by, with various pension deals and other hidden pork placed into the mix, but as is usual with the Labour Party and government monopolies, the strikers have won.
Just get rid of the monopoly, Mandy. Then we'll never have this problem again.
With so much bad news around, and with Christmas coming up, the Labour Party will not want to have been accused of 'Cancelling Christmas' with a failure of the delivery of tens of millions of Christmas cards, so their chief fixer Lord Rio has 'sorted' it.
No doubt we'll never know how much taxpayer has just been ripped off by, with various pension deals and other hidden pork placed into the mix, but as is usual with the Labour Party and government monopolies, the strikers have won.
Just get rid of the monopoly, Mandy. Then we'll never have this problem again.
Bank of England signals the end is nigh for quantitative easing
A heroin addict found a couple of years back that their usual level of heroin intake, which had been working NICE-ly for a decade, was failing to deliver its usual kick.
They then experienced a junkie's crash, and found themselves looking face-up from the gutter.
To get out of this mess, they upped the heroin dosage, picked themselves out of the gutter, crawled onto the pavement, and got on with life again. Friends even said that they detected the 'green shoots' of a return to clean living.
The heroin addict told these same friends that they were now thinking about reducing their daily dosage.
Yeah, right.
They then experienced a junkie's crash, and found themselves looking face-up from the gutter.
To get out of this mess, they upped the heroin dosage, picked themselves out of the gutter, crawled onto the pavement, and got on with life again. Friends even said that they detected the 'green shoots' of a return to clean living.
The heroin addict told these same friends that they were now thinking about reducing their daily dosage.
Yeah, right.
We can leave if we want to
That very nice man, Mr Jonathan Pearce, writes an interesting article on the possibility of the UK leaving the satanic EU, now that the Stupid Party has ruled out a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Calling all UK-based Austrians
I think it's about time we had 'Ludwig von Mises Institute' here in the UK, perhaps allied to the one in Auburn, Alabama, and possibly even a commercial outpost, so we can get books and things posted from here to cut down on shipping costs, and help them arrange more European conferences, such as the one in Salamanca.
If you are an Austrian in the UK, do you agree?
Rough plan:
1. Inaugural meeting to discuss what the heck we're going to do with the thing, somewhere nice such as Henley, Oxford, Keswick, or Bath, in a nice out-of-season B&B beside a splendidly-rated public hostelry. I'll buy the first round.
2. Assuming we get past stage one, link to be formed with LvM in Auburn (I have some cunning tricks up my sleeve, for this one)
3. Errr... that's about it for the moment
Any comments?
If there are any rogue UK-based Austrian billionaires out there, who'd like to sponsor such a thing, then I'd particularly like to hear your thoughts. Especially if you own a splendid hostelry somewhere nice.
I know there's at least one other Austrian here in the UK. You know who you are. Do you think it's a good idea?
If you are an Austrian in the UK, do you agree?
Rough plan:
1. Inaugural meeting to discuss what the heck we're going to do with the thing, somewhere nice such as Henley, Oxford, Keswick, or Bath, in a nice out-of-season B&B beside a splendidly-rated public hostelry. I'll buy the first round.
2. Assuming we get past stage one, link to be formed with LvM in Auburn (I have some cunning tricks up my sleeve, for this one)
3. Errr... that's about it for the moment
Any comments?
If there are any rogue UK-based Austrian billionaires out there, who'd like to sponsor such a thing, then I'd particularly like to hear your thoughts. Especially if you own a splendid hostelry somewhere nice.
I know there's at least one other Austrian here in the UK. You know who you are. Do you think it's a good idea?
Big Pharma hates the Internet
I was trundling back to Henley from Paddington today, on the world's slowest Great Western train, when I saw a billboard splashed with the morgue photo above, at Slough station. I can't remember the exact slogan, but it was something like "Get real. Avoid Internet drugs. Get a prescription."
The message was clear: "If you choose and buy your own drugs over the Internet, and treat yourself, rather than going through a state-appointed doctor, whom we can more easily target with our Big Pharma sales concentration techniques, then you will die. Horribly. So don't ruin our profits. Don't do anything without the state's permission. You know it makes sense."
The bill-board advert was covered in Big Pharma logos, such as Pfizer, and a range of others, as on this website.
How dare people take control of what they ingest! How dare people treat themselves! How dare people take decisions without permission from the relevant health organs!
You'd think the tax sheep were independent rational free human beings with souls and minds of their own, rather than mindless worker drones educated to be fleeced by government, government health professionals, and Big Pharma.
It's an outrage!
Remember folks, with adverts such as this Big Pharma is only thinking of you. It cares nothing at all for the gigantic fat profits it is making out of you via the British state's NHS health cartel.
Right, now I've got that off my chest, where can I get that viagra I need?
Daniel Hannan resigns from European Parliament post
I found myself last night watching a pathetic and dissembling William Hague defending David Cameron's decision to now not have a national referendum on the British government's ratification of the EU Lisbon Treaty, which was signed in a closed unphotographed room by Gordon Brown a few months ago.
The moment I realised what Cameron had done was the moment I finally lost all and any hope for the Conservative Party.
It now to me makes absolutely no difference which political party runs the talking shop in Westminster. It can be Gordon, or Dave, or even Mrs Miggins from the pie shop. Power has finally come completely to rest in Brussels, and from now on we can expect this police power to wax its muscles and properly begin to oppress the people of Europe, as was the dream of Napoleon and Hitler, and the nightmare of George Orwell.
The Roman Empire is finally back, after sixteen hundred years in the wilderness.
And the reason for this change of 'policy' in the Conservative Party? Because the Czech government have ratified the EU Lisbon Treaty.
Well, it's nice to know William Hague thinks so much of the Czechs, when I had been under the mistaken impression that he 'represented' his own constituents in Yorkshire and the 'People of Britain'.
Secession from the EU will still come, of course. That much is fairly predictable, but now this secession will be much more painful, given that the Stupid Party has blocked the peaceful route out.
Which brings us to Daniel Hannan, and his resignation from being an 'official' Tory spokesman.
Bravo, sir. At least there is one man in the Tory Party who has still got some spunk left inside him, unlike the spineless spavined William Hague.
I think it's time for that video again:
The moment I realised what Cameron had done was the moment I finally lost all and any hope for the Conservative Party.
It now to me makes absolutely no difference which political party runs the talking shop in Westminster. It can be Gordon, or Dave, or even Mrs Miggins from the pie shop. Power has finally come completely to rest in Brussels, and from now on we can expect this police power to wax its muscles and properly begin to oppress the people of Europe, as was the dream of Napoleon and Hitler, and the nightmare of George Orwell.
The Roman Empire is finally back, after sixteen hundred years in the wilderness.
And the reason for this change of 'policy' in the Conservative Party? Because the Czech government have ratified the EU Lisbon Treaty.
Well, it's nice to know William Hague thinks so much of the Czechs, when I had been under the mistaken impression that he 'represented' his own constituents in Yorkshire and the 'People of Britain'.
Secession from the EU will still come, of course. That much is fairly predictable, but now this secession will be much more painful, given that the Stupid Party has blocked the peaceful route out.
Which brings us to Daniel Hannan, and his resignation from being an 'official' Tory spokesman.
Bravo, sir. At least there is one man in the Tory Party who has still got some spunk left inside him, unlike the spineless spavined William Hague.
I think it's time for that video again:
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
IMF sells 200 tonnes of gold to Indian government
On the day that gold hits a new record dollar high, Peter Schiff analyses the IMF's huge sale of gold to the Indian government, literally paying top dollar to get their hands on this barbarous relic.
Like the rest of the central banking world government cartel, the IMF is doing everything it can to bring down the price of gold to hide the effects of the massive global fiat monetary inflation going on.
So what does Der SchiffMeister think about all of this?
Simples.
Buy Gold!!!
Like the rest of the central banking world government cartel, the IMF is doing everything it can to bring down the price of gold to hide the effects of the massive global fiat monetary inflation going on.
So what does Der SchiffMeister think about all of this?
Simples.
Buy Gold!!!
Discovering a seam of diamonds
I have just discovered, for the first time, the writings of David Calderwood.
Absolutely superb.
He writes like I wish I could, with every article a veritable Silmaril gem.
Marvellous.
Here's his archive:
=> http://www.lewrockwell.com/calderwood/calderwood-arch.html
Absolutely superb.
He writes like I wish I could, with every article a veritable Silmaril gem.
Marvellous.
Here's his archive:
=> http://www.lewrockwell.com/calderwood/calderwood-arch.html
Five British soldiers shot in Afghanistan
What can you say? Why are the British government still there after eight years?
Isn't it obvious yet to everyone that the 'mission' of propping up a corrupt quisling puppet was never worth a single British soldier's life, never mind the five just killed in the latest disastrous episode?
Bring the troops home, Gordon. Do it now, you pusillanimous idiot.
Isn't it obvious yet to everyone that the 'mission' of propping up a corrupt quisling puppet was never worth a single British soldier's life, never mind the five just killed in the latest disastrous episode?
Bring the troops home, Gordon. Do it now, you pusillanimous idiot.
The difference between power and market
I recently changed some British sterling pounds for UAE Dhirams, at a Travelex exchange desk outside the security clearance area at Heathrow Terminal Three. As I got through the metal detector a message came over the Intercom. "Can Mr Maturin please return to the Travelex Desk". I instantly realised I had left my plastic bank card inside the PIN machine. I turned to go back out through the security checkpoint.
"I'm sorry," said a dull voiced British government security wonk, "now that you're through security, you can't go back."
What to do? Two weeks away and my bank card left in a Travelex shop, to fall to who knew what fate?
With a small amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins I approached a "security" desk. Three state chumps sat there, appearing to do "not much". I wondered how much each of them was costing me in salary and pension costs. Perhaps upwards of £50,000 a year each. As these were my servants, whom I pay for, I thought they might be able to help me.
I roused one of these wonder workers, whose probable only excitement in life is a once-a-week "random" test of the security system, every Tuesday, at 10:45am. I explained my situation to the chump. His expression ranged between not giving a monkeys and contempt.
JM: "Can I go back through security, and go back to the Travelex shop, and then straight back here again?"
Chump: "You can't do that. It's against immigration regulations."
JM: "Can one of you three accompany me out, and then accompany me back again?"
Chump: "We have to man this desk sir."
All three were doing absolutely nothing discernible. I suppose they may have been doing something intricate with their feet, but it wasn't showing up on their body postures. There was no-one else in the vicinity, except me. We were right beside the back of the Travelex shop. There was a door ten feet away labelled security, which fairly obviously went back out onto the external concourse. This was maddening.
JM: "So what do I do then?"
Chump: "You'll have to go through the terminal building, then through departures, then through customs and passport checks, then back up to the arrivals hall, get your card, then back through security."
This would have taken about 25 minutes at best and about 50 minutes at worst. My flight was leaving in one hour, with a last call in 45 minutes. Not the end of the world, but hardly what you might call convenient.
JM: "And there's no other way of doing it, and no way any of you three can help me?"
Chump: "No."
JM: "Could one of you go and get it for me?"
Chump: "That's against regulations."
All three men were openly on the verge of laughing at me now, despite my payment of their salaries and pensions, via her majesty's inland revenue department.
JM: "Well, Gentlemen, thanks for all of your help. I can see you're all really quite busy."
By this time my adrenaline was running quite high, and if I left it much longer I would really be pushing my flight to the wire. I then had a brainwave. I quickly walked up to the nearest Travelex inside the security zone and asked a busy desk member if they could get my card for me.
He looked a bit harassed, but made a quick phone call.
"Someone will be through in a minute with your card, sir. They had a trainee on today and she forgot to check the PIN machine was empty. We're sorry about that."
Sure enough, within five minutes a Travelex staff member had appeared and gave me back my card.
"Sorry it took me so long, sir. It's horrendous getting through airside security at this time in the morning."
Panic over.
And there we have the difference between power and market. Power is over-manned, lazy, inefficient, has poor to non-existent levels of service, is expensive, arrogant, is hidebound with rules, inflexible, sees the people who pay its wages as irrelevant insects, is contemptible, intolerant of mistakes, and robotic.
Whereas market is busy, efficient, serves the customer, helps to tackle mistakes, tries its best to get the job done as quickly as possible, is flexible, and is above all, human.
One serves itself. The other serves everyone else, despite being tied in knots by the rapacity of power.
Give me the market each and every day of the week.
"I'm sorry," said a dull voiced British government security wonk, "now that you're through security, you can't go back."
What to do? Two weeks away and my bank card left in a Travelex shop, to fall to who knew what fate?
With a small amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins I approached a "security" desk. Three state chumps sat there, appearing to do "not much". I wondered how much each of them was costing me in salary and pension costs. Perhaps upwards of £50,000 a year each. As these were my servants, whom I pay for, I thought they might be able to help me.
I roused one of these wonder workers, whose probable only excitement in life is a once-a-week "random" test of the security system, every Tuesday, at 10:45am. I explained my situation to the chump. His expression ranged between not giving a monkeys and contempt.
JM: "Can I go back through security, and go back to the Travelex shop, and then straight back here again?"
Chump: "You can't do that. It's against immigration regulations."
JM: "Can one of you three accompany me out, and then accompany me back again?"
Chump: "We have to man this desk sir."
All three were doing absolutely nothing discernible. I suppose they may have been doing something intricate with their feet, but it wasn't showing up on their body postures. There was no-one else in the vicinity, except me. We were right beside the back of the Travelex shop. There was a door ten feet away labelled security, which fairly obviously went back out onto the external concourse. This was maddening.
JM: "So what do I do then?"
Chump: "You'll have to go through the terminal building, then through departures, then through customs and passport checks, then back up to the arrivals hall, get your card, then back through security."
This would have taken about 25 minutes at best and about 50 minutes at worst. My flight was leaving in one hour, with a last call in 45 minutes. Not the end of the world, but hardly what you might call convenient.
JM: "And there's no other way of doing it, and no way any of you three can help me?"
Chump: "No."
JM: "Could one of you go and get it for me?"
Chump: "That's against regulations."
All three men were openly on the verge of laughing at me now, despite my payment of their salaries and pensions, via her majesty's inland revenue department.
JM: "Well, Gentlemen, thanks for all of your help. I can see you're all really quite busy."
By this time my adrenaline was running quite high, and if I left it much longer I would really be pushing my flight to the wire. I then had a brainwave. I quickly walked up to the nearest Travelex inside the security zone and asked a busy desk member if they could get my card for me.
He looked a bit harassed, but made a quick phone call.
"Someone will be through in a minute with your card, sir. They had a trainee on today and she forgot to check the PIN machine was empty. We're sorry about that."
Sure enough, within five minutes a Travelex staff member had appeared and gave me back my card.
"Sorry it took me so long, sir. It's horrendous getting through airside security at this time in the morning."
Panic over.
And there we have the difference between power and market. Power is over-manned, lazy, inefficient, has poor to non-existent levels of service, is expensive, arrogant, is hidebound with rules, inflexible, sees the people who pay its wages as irrelevant insects, is contemptible, intolerant of mistakes, and robotic.
Whereas market is busy, efficient, serves the customer, helps to tackle mistakes, tries its best to get the job done as quickly as possible, is flexible, and is above all, human.
One serves itself. The other serves everyone else, despite being tied in knots by the rapacity of power.
Give me the market each and every day of the week.
Your Ideal Job for the Greater Depression
If you find one, let me know.
Superb article on the unpredictability of the future by David Calderwood.
Superb article on the unpredictability of the future by David Calderwood.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Death to the East Asians
I must say I was horrified yesterday by the shots of the USS New York ploughing into New York harbour, with 7.5 tons of twin towers steel in her bows. I think a David Kramer article on the Lew Rockwell blog sums up my feelings better than I could, so here goes:=> Steel Yourself for This Story
Let's hope that some poor Afghani, Pakistani, or Iranian child sees the full majesty of the sentiment when they have their guts blown out by missiles launched from this new imperial billion-dollar 'Death Star'.
Church of the poison mind
Seeing as we now officially have a new eco-mentalist religion, I thought we better have a name for it.
Too close for eco-comfort
A hilarious story today, in which an eco-nutter is claiming that he was 'wrongly' dismissed by his former employer for his eco nut-job views and that he is proud to call his beliefs a 'religion' and wants these 'religious beliefs' recognised by law.Or something like that, anyway. I was too busy laughing to get the full details:
=> Eco-employee wins bid to appeal
Where do we start?
Because of course, the uncomfortable truth for all of the watermelon socialists in Britain, is that eco-mentalism IS a religion, as was its evil godfather, socialism.
The uncomfortable truth is that many who consider themselves 'logical rationalists', have sunk into what the ancient Greeks would have recognised as 'Mother Goddess' worship. They even use the same name for this Goddess, Gaia, and still think they are being rational.
They even think they're still being rational over 'global warming' when 1998 was the warmest year in recent times, and it has been getting cooler ever since, probably due to fluctuations in the Sun's power output.
And for one of their number to speak the truth and to call their following of eco-mentalism a religion will be perhaps a little too uncomfortable to bear. The trouble for 'atheists' of course, is that there might be a psychological 'God-shaped' hole in everyone's brain (possibly in the temporal cortex), and that if you expunge traditional religion, another one will slip right in there, which will be a lot less good for you.
Christianity et al may have their faults, but they have survived and evolved to become the dominant religions because they deliver a simple rules-based methodology for living which took us away from stone age violence and into modern civilisation. Boil down the ten commandments, and what do you have? You have a rational voluntary way of living based upon property rights: Love thy neighbour, but don't go poking into his affairs if you're not welcome. Do not steal. Do not be envious of the property of others. Do not harm others. Look to yourself for help first.
It's an almost perfect libertarian rationale for life, which maximises peace, wealth, civilisation, and happiness.
What does the religion of environmentalism give us?
Hate everyone who dares to question the thought police. Steal carbon taxes from people until they're too poor to keep themselves warm or to move themselves around in satanic vehicles. If a western man has a fridge and an eastern man doesn't, smash the western man's fridge because he has no business being better off than the eastern man. Throw anyone into jail who dares to be a global warming denier. Create a world government to police everyone into rigid eco-orthodoxy. Stick your nose into the lives of everyone, including checking whether they have recycled their potato peelings properly.
I know which religion I prefer.
The worship of the state, socialism, and environmentalism, despite all of the hatred for humanity contained within these religions, is thus a powerful trinity of despair, borne I think of teenage angst and self-loathing hatred. It dresses itself up as the 'font of logic', but this man's action today quite clearly demonstrates what the rest of us already know.
That eco-mentalism is a religion, and should be treated as such.
And don't get me started on employers not being able to sack anyone of their choosing.
In 'Maturin World' there will be no such thing as 'Employee Rights'. If you're good enough, I'll hire you. If you're not good enough, I'll sack you. And I'll be the judge of both. If you don't like it, go and get a job somewhere else. Or even better, start your own business and stop leaving it to other entrepreneurs to go out of their way to make your life easier.
I've probably broken about 50 damn stupid statist laws in the above piece of writing, so I better stop there. Though I must say, if I am brought up before a socialist judge I shall claim 'Austrianism' as my religion, and demand full equivalent rights with the eco-nutter above.
For an interesting article on that topic, try this:
=> Is Austrian Economics Merely Religion?
My own opinion on whether Austrianism is a religion itself, is perhaps fairly predictable. Austrian economics is merely the seeking for truth, as it is found in the universe around us, built upon axioms which are apodictic (necessarily or demonstrably true; incontrovertible).
Yes, there are lots of grey areas and a lot more will be uncovered in the future. But Austrianism generally moves forwards and drops what has been shown to be false, and adopts what has been shown to be true (or at least less false than the previous thought).
Without a five-hour diatribe on Popperian logic analysis, I think the more real-world demonstration of Austrianism's non-religiousness is its treatment of its leaders, from its inception with Carl Menger.
For instance, Rothbard criticised Mises for his mentor's belief in democracy. Kinsella has criticised Rothbard for Uncle Murray's belief in copyright, and everyone criticises Hans-Hermann Hoppe for just about everything he says (despite his being usually right about everything).
Compare that with Objectivists' treatment of anyone who disagrees with Rand, or eco-mentalists when you tell them you think anthropogenic global warming is a heap of hog's entrails. Austrians always try to stick to the truth, even if tempted to get emotional, and even if the truth is hard to define. Whereas religions (such as Objectivism, Socialism, Scientologism, Keynesianism, Environmentalism, et al) usually resort to bad-tempered emotion fairly quickly in any form of discussion when you stray from the straight and narrow path of orthodoxy.
Though I myself do believe in the one true God.
Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
IEA dies
Tom Harrington spots that the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rare voice of sanity in the UK, has just committed Cato-Institute-Style hari-kiri by appointing an EU-loving Westminster village insider as its leader. (Just to let you know the man's full quality, he is a former media director for the socialist 'Liberal Democrats'.)
Oh dear.
That'll serve the IEA right for being so physically close to the Hydra's head in Westminster.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is in Auburn for a reason, and it ain't the climate. It's to make sure that they don't get contaminated by the evil ring of power 'Inside the Beltway'.
Perhaps the IEA should take the same medicine, before we lower its coffin into the ground? (Though perhaps it's already too late.)
Come to Henley On Thames, in Fair Ithilien, chaps. Get yourselves away from that Mordor smog inside the Westminster Mountains of Shadow.
Oh dear.
That'll serve the IEA right for being so physically close to the Hydra's head in Westminster.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is in Auburn for a reason, and it ain't the climate. It's to make sure that they don't get contaminated by the evil ring of power 'Inside the Beltway'.
Perhaps the IEA should take the same medicine, before we lower its coffin into the ground? (Though perhaps it's already too late.)
Come to Henley On Thames, in Fair Ithilien, chaps. Get yourselves away from that Mordor smog inside the Westminster Mountains of Shadow.
Country roads, take me home
Well, Emirates airline take me home, on the 3:10am flight out of Dubai Airport.
I've been locked in the Jumeirah Emirates Towers hotel for two weeks now and I think a state psychiatrist could now officially sanction me as completely mad.
Heaven knows how people cope in socialist jail cages, for years on end, for victimless non-crimes, if I'm starting to lose my mind after two weeks in a luxury hotel, with eight restaurants, a thirty metre pool, and the most helpful hotel staff I've ever met?
It really is time to be going home.
Though I shall be shutting my eyes to the grim-faced passport checkers from Slough, at Heathrow Terminal Three, and ignoring all Daily Mail headlines of societal collapse caused by that idiot Gordon Brown, to try to regain my sanity, once my feet are back on the ground in the sceptred isle.
Though fortunately, my exit strategy for escaping this sceptred isle, when the Great Depression finally hits, is a step further forward. A few more heaves, and the escape rope will be in place.
And so, before my car to the airport arrives, one last soiree down to 'The Noodle Bar', for a last portion of Thai Green Curry...
I've been locked in the Jumeirah Emirates Towers hotel for two weeks now and I think a state psychiatrist could now officially sanction me as completely mad.
Heaven knows how people cope in socialist jail cages, for years on end, for victimless non-crimes, if I'm starting to lose my mind after two weeks in a luxury hotel, with eight restaurants, a thirty metre pool, and the most helpful hotel staff I've ever met?
It really is time to be going home.
Though I shall be shutting my eyes to the grim-faced passport checkers from Slough, at Heathrow Terminal Three, and ignoring all Daily Mail headlines of societal collapse caused by that idiot Gordon Brown, to try to regain my sanity, once my feet are back on the ground in the sceptred isle.
Though fortunately, my exit strategy for escaping this sceptred isle, when the Great Depression finally hits, is a step further forward. A few more heaves, and the escape rope will be in place.
And so, before my car to the airport arrives, one last soiree down to 'The Noodle Bar', for a last portion of Thai Green Curry...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
We are not worthy
I had the great honour and privilege of spending several hours alone in conversation, recently, with a living breathing Professor of Austrian economics. We don't need to name names here, but the scope, the range, and the power of the thinking of such people, left me staggered with admiration.
As a mere back-street propagandist and barricade-manning volunteer for the Austrian cause, I felt a bit like Salieri in the company of Mozart; able to appreciate the splendour of the thought but incapable of reaching the same symphonic heights myself.
Oh well, perhaps if I'm good enough in this life I may come back as an Austrian Professor myself, at some point in the future.
If you are at that tender undergraduate age where such things are still possible, then I would recommend that you go for it, because it truly is the noblest cause; the salvation of civilisation will be in your hands.
What could be better than that?
As a mere back-street propagandist and barricade-manning volunteer for the Austrian cause, I felt a bit like Salieri in the company of Mozart; able to appreciate the splendour of the thought but incapable of reaching the same symphonic heights myself.
Oh well, perhaps if I'm good enough in this life I may come back as an Austrian Professor myself, at some point in the future.
If you are at that tender undergraduate age where such things are still possible, then I would recommend that you go for it, because it truly is the noblest cause; the salvation of civilisation will be in your hands.
What could be better than that?
Will Spain lead the world towards an anarchocapitalist future?
Jesus Huerta de Soto thinks it might, in an article so full of clarity, I almost cut myself reading it.
Hyperinflation or Great Depression? The 'Event Horizon' is close
If I'm reading him right, Dr Gary North is predicting that central bankers will continue propping up their government treasuries until a financial hyperinflationary 'Event Horizon' is reached.
Because of our hugely complex modern societies, urban society will collapse if the central bankers allow hyperinflation to occur. As central bankers are generally urban dwellers, who do not know one end of an unplucked chicken from another, the self-preservation instinct of central bankers will cause them to cut their government treasuries adrift at the moment just before the event horizon.
They will stop buying government bonds with counterfeit money. They will allow interest rates to gravitate upwards towards a more 'natural' level. (I.e. a lot higher than they are now.)
This 'Event Horizon' choice will immediately create a Great Depression in the economies thus affected, as unwanted and unnecessary businesses, currently propped up by false interest rates, collapse by the tens of thousand. Because governments will have no funds to 'bail these businesses out', due to being cut adrift by their own central bankers, and so long as governments do not resort to guns and bullets, these Great Depressions could be over quite quickly.
However, if as is likely, governments do resort to price controls, guns, and bullets, to 'prop up' these unwanted businesses, then we could be in these depressions for decades. In the UK's case, I think they will try to bounce us (probably successfully) into the Euro. But could the current Euro countries cope with a moribund Britain begging at their knees?
If central bankers do cave in to government pressure, and go past the event horizon with their counterfeit cheque books still open and their purchases of government bonds remaining at full tilt, the ensuing hyperinflation could kill millions of people in the 'western' world, as food riots and other revolutionary forces run amok in cities full of people who can create nothing worth bartering for in a society where food and energy suddenly command the vast majority of everyone's attention.
Think Argentina on steroids. Zimbabwe is perhaps the wrong analogy to use, because of its fairly small cities and the ability of much of its population to return to the land to feed itself and produce useful agriculural products which can then be bartered, plus a strong tribal tradition where you look after your own. After a hundred years of deliberately trying to destroy the family and the extended family, to create state subservience, the western world's welfare state socialists have even severed this potential lifeline.
The Weimar republic itself is also a bad example, because much of Germany's population at the time was still close to the land and could still generate the basics required for day-to-day living by popping over to Uncle Hans's farm and working all day slopping out the cow shed in return for a hatful of eggs. Or even in Austria by selling tasteless paintings to dumb-schmuck tourists on the streets of Vienna.
Could a graphic design consultant in North London barter his way into a hatful of eggs by 'selling' his logo creation skills in a hyperinflationary society where money is useless? Or more importantly, in Dr North's analysis, could a central banker barter his apparatchik political and financial blathering skills for a hot chicken sandwich? I wouldn't have thought so. I wouldn't even ask one to shine my shoes, as they would probably be incapable of even combing their own hair without help.
So expect a great big financial crunch, when central bankers know that the hyperinflation event horizon is near. They already know that they will be the first against the wall in a hyperinflationary situation, especially when there are lots of lamp-posts and piano wire around, therefore they will probably not allow it to happen. (At least we hope they won't.)
Purely from a personal perspective, a Great Depression may be fairly bad for most people, but central bankers aren't really going to suffer, are they? They'll still be picking up salaries of valuable money and will be the last to be made unemployed. In a hyperinflationary situation, they will be the first to go down, as the middle classes bear down upon the central banks armed with avocados and artichokes. I'll bet, for instance, that there weren't too many central bankers begging on the streets in the 1930s. So what would you do if you were in their shoes? I would go for a Great Depression choice every time and to heck with the car manufacturing plants in Sunderland.
So what you gonna do, Pilgrim? Is Uncle Gary right? Or is he being too spectacularly pessimistic, in the style of Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, and Peter Schiff?
Obviously, you may know that if I had to bet my own life on the opinions of the above gentlemen against the prognostications of Obama, Bernanke, Brown, and King, I would tend to go for the former. But that's just my humble opinion. In the meantime, while you're thinking about it, may I suggest:
Physical gold. Physical silver. Well-hidden. As much physical protection for your property as you can safely provide. Get yourself out of a large city and into the country. An exit strategy to a commodity-based or manufacturing-based economy, which produces something people need. Along with gold coins stuffed into a money belt buried somewhere unobtrusive in your back garden.
Just in case.
Of course, I'm assuming that Gordon Gecko Brown and other idiots do not sack all the central bankers and then with 'Emergency Powers', just start running the printing presses directly under the command of their own miserable government treasuries.
And then we will generate those same angry political forces which the Weimar republic created, and all of those bone-head 'intellectuals' in Britain, who refuse to lay the blame for anything at their paymaster government's door, will have all the British National Socialists they could ever wish for, to march against. If they aren't rounded up and shot first.
No, surely not. Politicians are far too sensible and long-sighted to be so stupid.
Aren't they?
Because of our hugely complex modern societies, urban society will collapse if the central bankers allow hyperinflation to occur. As central bankers are generally urban dwellers, who do not know one end of an unplucked chicken from another, the self-preservation instinct of central bankers will cause them to cut their government treasuries adrift at the moment just before the event horizon.
They will stop buying government bonds with counterfeit money. They will allow interest rates to gravitate upwards towards a more 'natural' level. (I.e. a lot higher than they are now.)
This 'Event Horizon' choice will immediately create a Great Depression in the economies thus affected, as unwanted and unnecessary businesses, currently propped up by false interest rates, collapse by the tens of thousand. Because governments will have no funds to 'bail these businesses out', due to being cut adrift by their own central bankers, and so long as governments do not resort to guns and bullets, these Great Depressions could be over quite quickly.
However, if as is likely, governments do resort to price controls, guns, and bullets, to 'prop up' these unwanted businesses, then we could be in these depressions for decades. In the UK's case, I think they will try to bounce us (probably successfully) into the Euro. But could the current Euro countries cope with a moribund Britain begging at their knees?
If central bankers do cave in to government pressure, and go past the event horizon with their counterfeit cheque books still open and their purchases of government bonds remaining at full tilt, the ensuing hyperinflation could kill millions of people in the 'western' world, as food riots and other revolutionary forces run amok in cities full of people who can create nothing worth bartering for in a society where food and energy suddenly command the vast majority of everyone's attention.
Think Argentina on steroids. Zimbabwe is perhaps the wrong analogy to use, because of its fairly small cities and the ability of much of its population to return to the land to feed itself and produce useful agriculural products which can then be bartered, plus a strong tribal tradition where you look after your own. After a hundred years of deliberately trying to destroy the family and the extended family, to create state subservience, the western world's welfare state socialists have even severed this potential lifeline.
The Weimar republic itself is also a bad example, because much of Germany's population at the time was still close to the land and could still generate the basics required for day-to-day living by popping over to Uncle Hans's farm and working all day slopping out the cow shed in return for a hatful of eggs. Or even in Austria by selling tasteless paintings to dumb-schmuck tourists on the streets of Vienna.
Could a graphic design consultant in North London barter his way into a hatful of eggs by 'selling' his logo creation skills in a hyperinflationary society where money is useless? Or more importantly, in Dr North's analysis, could a central banker barter his apparatchik political and financial blathering skills for a hot chicken sandwich? I wouldn't have thought so. I wouldn't even ask one to shine my shoes, as they would probably be incapable of even combing their own hair without help.
So expect a great big financial crunch, when central bankers know that the hyperinflation event horizon is near. They already know that they will be the first against the wall in a hyperinflationary situation, especially when there are lots of lamp-posts and piano wire around, therefore they will probably not allow it to happen. (At least we hope they won't.)
Purely from a personal perspective, a Great Depression may be fairly bad for most people, but central bankers aren't really going to suffer, are they? They'll still be picking up salaries of valuable money and will be the last to be made unemployed. In a hyperinflationary situation, they will be the first to go down, as the middle classes bear down upon the central banks armed with avocados and artichokes. I'll bet, for instance, that there weren't too many central bankers begging on the streets in the 1930s. So what would you do if you were in their shoes? I would go for a Great Depression choice every time and to heck with the car manufacturing plants in Sunderland.
So what you gonna do, Pilgrim? Is Uncle Gary right? Or is he being too spectacularly pessimistic, in the style of Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, and Peter Schiff?
Obviously, you may know that if I had to bet my own life on the opinions of the above gentlemen against the prognostications of Obama, Bernanke, Brown, and King, I would tend to go for the former. But that's just my humble opinion. In the meantime, while you're thinking about it, may I suggest:
Physical gold. Physical silver. Well-hidden. As much physical protection for your property as you can safely provide. Get yourself out of a large city and into the country. An exit strategy to a commodity-based or manufacturing-based economy, which produces something people need. Along with gold coins stuffed into a money belt buried somewhere unobtrusive in your back garden.
Just in case.
Of course, I'm assuming that Gordon Gecko Brown and other idiots do not sack all the central bankers and then with 'Emergency Powers', just start running the printing presses directly under the command of their own miserable government treasuries.
And then we will generate those same angry political forces which the Weimar republic created, and all of those bone-head 'intellectuals' in Britain, who refuse to lay the blame for anything at their paymaster government's door, will have all the British National Socialists they could ever wish for, to march against. If they aren't rounded up and shot first.
No, surely not. Politicians are far too sensible and long-sighted to be so stupid.
Aren't they?
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