Tag: Hans Herman Hoppe

From Clan to State to Empire: Why Constant War? -and- What is the Antidote?

Reflecting on the “progress” of man towards ordering things in this world, it is of no surprise to me the thought of “bigger is better”. Even reflecting on the rise of the Hebrew people from nomads to being slaves in Egypt, and from there to the “Promised Land” west of the Jordan River and then being ruled by judges and eventually a king, you can see this is a very human trait.

The transition toward wanting a king is not something that the Hebrew’s God wanted for them, but it was allowed, with a warning. You see, earthly kings have kingdoms, which inherently need resources, taxes and young men to supply military might for both defense and offense operations. The list goes on and on as to the drain on society, communities and families to support a kingdom let alone an empire.

I think too of the struggle in the late 1700s when American colonists, while appreciating what the British Empire had done to facilitate their ability to immigrate to such a place as America, and supplied protection from those native to this land, they had however, grown resentful at the way their “parents” were treating them, almost like there was an expectation of independence not unlike what happens to humans when the are in their mid to late teens! In this case, many if not most did not want a king after kicking out the British, but some painted the road ahead with fear so as to make many desire the safety that a king, a central state, can supply.

In both of these situations, you have a taxing authority promising protection. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe points out:

A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms and will lead to ever more taxes and less protection.

One only has to look around today to see the end result of the belief that the state could be counted on to provide safety while taxing its citizens for that safety. Not only do we see the US Empire drone bombing “terrorists” (their claim is that every death is indeed a terrorist death), but also promoting regime change in countries around the globe that have nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. From the lies that launched the invasion of Iraq to the lies that led to epic cultural destruction in Libya, attempted destruction in Syria and desired destruction in Venezuela and Iran, the empire seems determined to start a war with someone. Trade wars and sanctions with Russia and China also indicate that the US Empire is itching for a fight.

But why?

Unknown to most Americans is the fact that a series of macro-economic shifts have happened over the course of this nation’s life that seem to be at the core of the angst this country’s leaders and elites feel at this time.

Remember the phrase “follow the money”? Well, it is pretty prophetic that not only did the Bible both in the Old and New Testament state that the love of money is the root of all evil, but that an inherent distrust of our provision and safety in our Creator fuels this. If there is any entity that is the furthest from God is that of the state. The state is actually the antithesis of a loving father, it is force at its core and “war is the health of the state” – ( Randolph Bourne) is its motto.

Today’s Lew Rockwell site provides a writer by the name of L. Reichard White who is willing to identify the “whys” of this latest round of desired wars. I hope to follow up with a series of  posts that go back through history and link America’s coups and wars to show how each one was premised on a lie and historically have been altered to show that these were moral victories for the state when in fact:

The sheer number of people killed by states in the twentieth century—up to 100 million, with more killed in peacetime “social reconstruction” than in wars—makes one suspect that state-provided security is extremely expensive in all respects and that meaningful alternatives have been overlooked.

So on to today’s revelation about the ways of the state and the root issue we are facing here in the 21st century, the constant wars and then some thoughts towards future alternatives.

After walking through some of the most recent “crazy” the the US Empire’s foreign policy seems to have taken since 9/11 and even before, the author states:

With all these U.S. Government interventions, at least 198 of them remember — and sanctions — it’s tempting to conclude there is no rational reason and “we” screw with other folks purely on whim, whimsey, and maybe as a hobby.

But sometimes, maybe there’s a method to this madness. And if so, it often does involve oil, just not quite the way most left-coasters think.

Oil, seems to be a common denominator. But if so, why didn’t the US occupy Libya and keep the oil? Why didn’t the US occupy Iraq and keep the oil? It just doesn’t add up. The author continues:

… because of a 1974 agreement cobbled together by the Nixon administration between the U.S. and Saudis, nearly all oil trade in the world ended up requiring U.S. dollars…

Understand that pre-1974, the US primarily used a central bank to fund its wars across the globe, and unlike your history book says, WWI (joined by the US only a few years after establishing a central bank) and WWII were not actually started by Germany, it has been only covered up that way by “Fake History” (a cousin to “Fake News”)

With a national debt of over $22T these days and over $200T of unfunded liabilities, the US government wants to stabilize and control the future, but the railroad tracks are leading to a gorge that has no bridge yet.

Not coincidentally, this [1974 action] was just three years after Nixon, attempting to finish replacing the gold standard with the U.S. paper-dollar standard, closed the gold window and thus threatened to throw the world economy into chaos. This explains a lot more than most folks realize.

Remember the “petro dollar?” Well, thanks to the Saudi/U.S. established oil-for-dollars tradition, the Brits, Germans, Japanese — in fact just about everyone — had to keep dollars on hand to pay for their oil imports.

And the oil sellers also ended up with a lot of dollars. And so did the countries they bought stuff from. And the dollar tradition spread to trade in other commodities as well. That meant that a large aggregate of U.S. dollars stayed overseas and didn’t return to the U.S.

Econ 301 is needed to understand what this means. Mr White does a good job:

Experts estimate that “majority of cash … outside the United States” is as much as 80% of the U.S. dollars in circulation. All that money overseas has a lot to do with the fact that everyone has to pay for oil, etc., with dollars.

As Case Sprenkle of the University of Illinois puts it, “Insofar as the money remains abroad and is not used to purchase goods or services from the country that printed it, it serves as an interest-free loan from poor countries to the rich.”

That’s mostly how Uncle Sam is able to run-up such huge budget deficits without causing inflation.

At this point, it will become clear to any student of history, that the actions of the US Empire since the 1953 assassination of the democratically elected president of Iran after he threatened to nationalize his nation’s oil to the most recent effort by Venezuela, sanctions, intervention, regime change and if necessary, outright war itself are the only tools the US Empire has at this point of time to get out of the hole it dug itself.

… what happens if people overseas stop using the dollar — and discover the only place they can spend it now is back here in the good ole’ U.S. of A.?

What would happen if the Saudi Arabians said they didn’t want to be paid [for oil] in dollars anymore, but wanted instead, to be paid, say in yen. There would be inflation that would make the 15 to 20 percent inflation in the early 80’s look good. —Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NEW MEXICO, C-SPAN II, 18 May 1995 ~12:33:55 PM

Unfortunately, selling oil for something other than U.S. dollars isn’t the only thing threatening the paper-standard. It’s also become the norm for governments and central banks to stockpile U.S. Treasuries to support their own currencies.

So, if a country reduces its stock-pile of U.S. Treasuries, either by selling them off or no longer rolling them over when they reach maturity — and replaces them with something else, as in the past, gold perhaps — this also threatens the U.S. dollar paper-standard.

The problem is, the paper-standard is mostly psychological. It’s literally a con — that is, confidence — game and when the confidence evaporates, game over.

And it’s very difficult to enforce confidence, no matter how many aircraft carriers, etc. you deploy. Or to predict when the confidence will implode.

Confidence is already waning on the USD Petro Dollar’s use, we know that North Korea does not participate, neither does Cuba, but lately, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and even Saudi Arabia favor de-dollarization in the oil markets, and this is huge:

I agree with Mr. White when he says:

Could that threat [Saudi Arabia’s look at USD de-dollarization] be why Mr. Trump vetoed Congress’ first attempt in 70 years to control unconstitutional U.S. war involvement by ending support for the Saudi-led murder of the men, women and children in Yemen?

What a tangled web an empire weaves. In desperation, the empire struggles to stay relevant and keep the bubble economic facade intact. Gold-based currency was a more honest way to run a nation, but quick money seems to be the way empires go.

.. killing more men, women and children is a classic result of the the paper-standard. As Ferdinand Lips explains so well, compared to the gold standard, the paper-standard makes financing wars easy and so they happen more often, are longer, stronger, and kill more innocent men, women and children.

As some folks like to put it, “The U.S. dollar used to be supported by gold, now it’s supported by aircraft carriers, B-52s and killer drones.”

I think we can safely add that it’s also supported by election meddling, coup, regime change, assassination, sanctions, invasion, and fake undeclared war. Perhaps, then, a more accurate title for this piece would be “Intervention and the Paper Standard.”

Okay then, enough depressing talk, and for those who have stayed along for this journey, what, if any, antidote is there for such a huge situation?

there’s a subtle but insidious problem with the way Trump and the U.S. Deep State are chronically implementing “All options are on the table” Games Theory. Originally a U.S. invention, Games Theory is based on poker.

The problem with poker — and BTW mercantilism as well — is that, unlike voluntary exchange in unhampered markets, it’s a zero-sum game. If you’re in a game with someone who thinks they’re playing poker, someone wins and someone loses — and they intend to make sure you’re the loser.

Unhampered markets on the other hand — and other forms of normal co-operation — are, in the long run, nearly always win-win propositions. As long as they stay unhampered — and normal.

Markets, UNHAMPERED is the key.  How can markets be “unhampered”? (Remember the Hebrews when their leadership was judges, wise men who provided justice in a society or community, or the American colonists that homesteaded on acres of trees and developed ways so that they could bring value to their communities out of sight of any British flag or British noble?)

The state is a cancer for so many things in our world. I believe the only saving grace might be for the average human (not just in America, but globally) to understand the state for what is actually is. The average human needs to know “the gun in the room”.

Anarchy, the absence of rulers (not natural rules), is probably the only healthy path forward. One of the best things I have see so far this year is this 52 minute interview on Jeff Berwick’s Anarchast page that supplies a double dose of reality into the reality of 2019, the consideration of both anarchy and Jesus as a possible path forward. I am not talking chaos and religion here, so it might be good to view this YouTube so you can understand both of these options without accepting them:

Anarchast About:

Anarchast is your home for Anarchy Podcasts on the internet

To us, Anarchy means freedom. The desire to live without a violent, coercive State. Anarchy is peace, love and prosperity. Free markets. And, power to the people.

Anarchist.  Libertarian.  Freedom fighter against mankinds two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks.

Jeff is the Chief Editor of The Dollar Vigilante, a newsletter focused on investments and expatriation information to survive the coming collapse of the US dollar based financial system.

Jeff is also a contributing editor at many of the world’s largest libertarian, financial and precious metals related websites including LewRockwell.com, The Daily Reckoning, Whiskey and Gunpowder, Kitco, Gold-Eagle, Safehaven.com, Market Oracle and is a speaker at many of the world’s most important hard-money investment and freedom conferences including Libertopia, the San Francisco & New York Hard Assets Show, the PDAC held in Toronto, the Silver Summit and all the Cambridge Houseconferences in Vancouver, Calgary,

So remember, money is not the root of all evil, the love of money is. If your faith is in money and/or government, you are going to have a bad day.

I hope to post more on what the future might hold as far as alternatives to the state, especially the “in your face” state that we are seeing in the USA that used to be restricted to the USSR, Communist China and East Germany for a few decades.

Enjoy your weekend y’all!

-SF1

How Understanding History Helps Understanding the Present and the Future

Lew Rockwell today shared his reflections of a recent book released by Hans-Hermann Hoppe called ‘Getting Libertarianism Right“. In it, Hans shares an insight he himself learned from Murray Rothbard, which is …:

never to trust official history, invariably written by the victors, but to conduct all historical research instead like a detective investigating a crime. Always, first and foremost and as a first approximation, follow the money in search of a motive

It is only by knowing the true history can one form the proper frame of mind to understand current issues as well as the future state for our kids and grand-kids.

I have to be honest, when I read how this was not talking just about a libertarian approach to life as being fundamentally and logically correct, but that the word “right” also meant as opposed to left, I hesitated. But in true Hoppe form, Hans can take the logical route and prove that in the long-term, the left as it is defined today is a destructive course. Not because the right, as it exists today, has a great record, it doesn’t, but there is a fundamental aspect of the right that is essential in understanding life.

“Knowing libertarian theory — the rules of peaceful interactions — is like knowing the rules of logic — the rules of correct thinking and reasoning. . . just as every logician who wants to make good use of his knowledge must turn his attention to real thought and reasoning, so a libertarian theorist must turn his attention to the actions of real people. Instead of being a mere theorist, he must also become a sociologist and psychologist and take account of ’empirical’ social reality, i.e., the world as it really is” says Hans

OK, but what about right verses left thinking? Lew summarizes Hans’ thoughts:

The Right accepts the reality of human differences but the Left does not. Because Leftists try to make everyone equal, they favor massive interventions by the State to abolish human differences.

So true. Anyone alive today has to eventually see through the left’s agenda. True equality is not what they want, because they would be out of a job. Their effort is the “process”, which can never be successful, of making everyone equal. This is so very similar to the progressive path that came out of the 19th century and flourished toward building some utopia, that of course had government as a key initiator and sustainer in.  You know, like a god!

Hans points out that even the most ardent leaders of the left’s agenda deep down knows the truth. I mean, even the common man on the street knows the honest truth. Hans does not mince words .. he too knows that this agenda benefits some and not others:

“The egalitarian worldview of the Left is not only incompatible with libertarianism, however. It is so out of touch with reality that one must be wondering how anyone can take it seriously. The man-on-the-street certainly does not believe in the equality of all men. Plain common sense and sound prejudice stand in the way of that. And I am even more confident that no one of the actual proponents of the egalitarian doctrine really, deep down, believes what he proclaims. Yet how, then, could the Leftist worldview have become the dominant ideology of our age? At least for a libertarian, the answer should be obvious: the egalitarian doctrine achieved this status not because it is true, but because it provides the perfect intellectual cover for the drive toward totalitarian social control by a ruling elite”

So in the present state (no pun intended), many people are caught up in this dream world for the future that they will never see. By the time they realize this, it will be too late for them to enjoy the freedom of every person, being uniquely created and uniquely gifted to accomplish their unique work in this world that can make societies and communities a better place.

So what does Hans attribute this drift and now free-fall away from libertarian principles? The keystone seems to be a supreme judicial authority that quickly became politically aligned. I suggest, and Thomas Jefferson agreed, that America from the get-go was an experiment. The tweak in this experiment from the Articles of Confederation in 1781 to the Constitution in 1787 broke it even more. By the 1790s, Americans were paying more in taxes than they were in 1775!

Hans shares his insight:

“Predictably, the monopolist will use his position as ultimate decision-maker not only to resolve conflict between contending property owners, but increasingly also to initiate or provoke conflicts with private property owners, in order to then decide such conflicts in his own favor, i.e., to expropriate the just property of others to his own advantage on the basis of his own made-up laws. And on the other hand, the price to be paid for justice will rise. In fact, the price of justice will not simply be a ‘higher price’ that justice seekers may or may not be willing to pay (as would be the case for any other monopoly), but a tax that justice seekers must pay whether they agree to it or not.”

With this capstone, the effort that most people assume is that the drive is to control the state apparatus as history shows political struggles becoming at times physical wars (War of 1812, War Against Southern Independence, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, etc. * I got tired of typing all the wars the US has fueled). However, Hans turns this thought on its head as well:

“Only with democracy, however, i.e., the free and unrestricted entry into the State, are all moral restraints and inhibitions against the taking of others’ lawful property removed. Everyone is free to indulge in such temptations and propose and promote every conceivable measure of legislation and taxation to gain advantages at other people’s expense. That is, whereas in a natural order everyone is expected to spend his time exclusively on production or consumption, under democratic conditions, increasingly more time is spent instead on politics, i.e., on the advocacy and promotion of activities that are neither productive nor consumptive, but exploitative and parasitic of and on the property of others.”

More time spend on politics, that are not productive, but exploitative and at its root, parasitic towards the property of others! Ain’t that the truth. Everyone these days wants government money (the government has no money of its own, just the power, the sword, the gun to extort money from you). This is not sustainable, but the average politician is in this only for short-term gains. They have zero concerns about our kids and grand-kids. ZERO! Speaking of politicians, Hans has a few things to say:

“If measured by the standards of natural law and justice, all politicians, of all parties and virtually without any exception, are guilty, whether directly or indirectly, of murder, homicide, trespass, invasion, expropriation, theft , fraud, and the fencing of stolen goods on a massive and ongoing scale. And every new generation of politicians and parties appears to be worse, and piles even more atrocities and perversions on top of the already existing mountain, so that one feels almost nostalgic about the past. They all should be hung, or put in jail to rot, or set to making compensation.”

The very people who lied us into the Iraq War (and other wars) walk free today and yet the very people who broke the truth about these and other wars are now behind bars and are not free (Assange, Manning, others). Justice has been turned upside-down. We are not free. The lie has been for sometime that our troops have been fighting for our freedom. This is only a convenient cover for a parasite (global elites, US Empire, Washington DC, Deep State all the way down to the local police state) sucking all it can out of its people as well as those around the world that they sanction, drone and harass for “freedom”.

I plan to read this 120 page book by Hans this weekend and will get back to you. It has come to that. We need to be very aware of the past so we can understand the red flags around us (the ‘red flag laws’ popped in my mind, that is another post), and then prepare ourselves, our family and friends for the future. Not just physically, but psychologically as well!

At the end of the day I trust that the Judge will make all things right and all things new, but even His Son who lived in this broken world knew that critical thinking would be needed to navigate life under an empire, in His case, the Roman Empire. His example was to sell a coat for a sword, but also to have hope that there is a better day coming, as the Father would present us something fantastic, not only peace in the middle of the storm of this very broken world, but a future home where there would be no tears.

Signing off

-SF1

 

American Empire’s Military Industrial Complex: Corporate Welfare-Centric

After decades of propping up US military manufacturers (not dissimilar to how the US government propped up canal builder, railroads and steel industries in the 1800s), it is becoming obvious that any industry subsidized this way gets very ineffective and very inefficient while never being innovative. One only has to look at recent super-large military projects like the latest carriers, F-35 and littoral class ships to see that for all the money spent, what the US taxpayer (now and in the future as the debt interest for these expenditures hits) got is of little value.

In his blog post, Andrei Martyanov writes about the F-35:

.. to shoot down F-35 one has to have two different bands radar, good sensor-fusion algorithms and decent signal processing protocols and voila’. S-300 PMU2 Favorit can do this, certainly [the] S-400 [can] ..

This explains why Israel is nervous flying near Syria these days. With customers like India and Turkey now opting for Russian build defense systems, the basic “free-market” economics are finally overriding threats from the US Empire. At the end of the day, these countries want good defense of their nation. This is something that the US has failed to accomplish for itself as it is distracted with the military-industrial complex racket that is in effect a jobs program first and the actual defense of the US is a distant priority.

Andrei goes on to explain what gives Russian military industrial manufacturers the edge:

Unlike American military-industrial complex Russian military-industrial complex is not jobs program or corporate welfare system, it never was.  Allow me to quote myself:
For a nation with such a military history as Russia’s the issue of military technology is an issue of survival. As such, weapons in Russia are sacralized because behind them are generations of Russians who shed blood to make those weapons what they are. They have become a part of the culture to such a degree that commercial considerations take a very distant second place to a main purpose of these weapons—to actually defend the nation. This is absolutely not the case in the United States, with some exception for its Navy, with Americans having no knowledge or recollection of what real war is and what instruments for fighting and winning it are needed. Those things cannot be paid for in money, they are paid for in blood.
I guess this should help explain why Russia is so successful on the international market with her weapons.
At the end of the day, the US now realizes its failed MIC projects at the same time it has alienated both Russia and Chine. Not cool. Too bad Washington DC, Pentagon and Deep State could not grasp Ron Paul’s philosophy that what works around individuals works with nations as well .. good trade (sanction free) promotes peace and prosperity .. and that the “Golden Rule” ( Do unto others as you would have them do unto you ) ain’t just for Christians, or for individual relationships, but nations as well.
Moon of Alabama’s post goes on to extend this demise to the littoral class of ships that the US Navy went all in on:

.. the incompetence of U.S. military design are the Littoral Combat Ships, which are essentially unarmed fast boats. The “stealth” DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers were supposed to support ground troops with their long range guns. Built at $4 billion a piece the ships are now losing their guns because the ammunition turned out to be too expensive to buy. Before that they lost much of their stealth capabilities because some necessary communication equipment was left out of the original design. The ships new task will be that of a missile launch platform, a job that any commercial ship, carrying containerized Russian missiles (vid), can likewise fulfill.

Epic fails. I could write more about the latest carrier fiasco, but I digress. This is only a symptom of a bigger issues as Ian Walsh in the same post points out:

There is a lot of ruin in a nation, but for almost 40 years now America’s elites have treated the US as something to loot, and assumed that the good times would keep rolling. They were uninterested in actually governing. They were happy to move much of America’s core manufacturing overseas, to the most likely nation to replace America as a hegemon, because the Chinese were smart enough to make American elites rich.

So all these short term gains are typical in a democracy. A monarchy is actually one notch better in keeping the long-term in mind.

Alastair Crook extends this demise to the West itself when he was quoted in Moon of Alabama’s post as concluding:

as the post-war élites in America and Europe become more and more desperate to maintain the illusion of being the vanguard of global civilisation, how will they cope with the re-appearance of a ‘civilization-state’ in its own right: i.e. China?

I guess it is time to read Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Democracy – The God That Failed“.  This book is pricey ($40), so an alternative is another Hoppe book I have read called “From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy – A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay” is a good read available for $4 (Kindle at Amazon) or a PDF from the Mises Library for FREE!

Placing hope in nations, in militaries and in government leaders is foolish. Time to reflect on family, faith and focusing on the local as the empire slowly dies. Maybe Ron Paul was right on a few things (quote from his book ‘Swords into Plowshares’):

“The people, who far outnumber the would-be dictators, can succeed in a worldwide revolution that fully deprives the dictators of their power. But, any revolt must not lead to just changing the name of the authoritarian system or the political parties in the system. Instead, the revolt must be based on rejecting the trust in government doing the things that only the people can and should do for themselves. This revolt will probably come in stages—in bits and pieces—and be different in the various countries of the world.”
― Ron Paul, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity

-SF1