@ Bill Ross

I can agree with most of what you have said. My point expanded a bit is that these two "gods and governments" are broadly used to indoctrinate children (see Adam's link above to Click to view link) to keep the cycle going. To introduce something new without the state or church involved would be extremely difficult. People are waking up to the violence, aggression, coercion and murder around them. More and more people who I speak with are becoming aware.

Regards

Also see Stefan's youtube channel for more.

The Sunset of the State

Click to view link

@rrust

Thanks for the very enlightening post AND -even more--for the benevolence of the philosophy underlying it. Best regards.

@ those interested in the legitimacy/illegitimacy of fractional reserve:

There are cases to be made on both sides, but DB's is correct, and DB's reflections on history are illuminating.

Those who consider fractional reserve pure out-and-out fraud: these people believe that fractional reserve systems always deteriorate into the mess we have in the world now, and necessarily so-deteriorate. Nearly all people alive today have witnessed nothing other than fractional-reserve perverted into hyper-inflational insanity. Thus, the position of the "fractional reserve itself is pure evil (fraud)" people arrive at their position through witnessing current near-universal events. The position is wholly understandable... and was mine prior to absorbing DB's position.

On the other hand, Daily Bell insists that, with free competition, and full transparency, there is nothing wrong with fractional reserve banking, for without legal tender laws, fractional reserve banking self-corrects. It does NOT produce victims. Those who wish may seek higher returns -- as always, accompanied by higher risks -- by dealing with banks using higher levels of fractional reserve. Anyone who is *hurt* under a free and transparent fractional reserve bank has simply suffered from not having done adequate research, and has willingly accepted a given level of risk for a given level of return. Anyone wishing full-reseve banking is free to choose such banks, or create them. There would of course be additional costs for the additional safety & certainty. This is universal law that cannot be over-ridden by legislative action.

The problem is an old one. There are those in the world who wish (forlornly) to have government and regulations in place to protect them (and *the weak*); which all-too-often also permits those with perfectly adequate brains from the need to think for themselves. The genuine *weak* need protection -- but not by means of government and its laws and regulations. Those with brains need to use them. It's the old problem: socialism breeds weakness by encouraging it.

The true *weak*, in the absence of government intrusion, WILL be assisted by family, friends, and community. I think history bears this out.

And... one's life on this planet is *a school, a learning experience*. (smile)
--Learning being accomplished through experiencing human imperfection. Plenty o' that about, ha!

Needless to say, nothing in the above intended for instruction. Rather, it's just me working through the material for myself, and posted to allow others to *compare notes*.

@ Anadianant:

Thanks for your link, a fine piece... it DOES go beyond wishful thinking. Communal positively-aligned thought IS a powerful force for positive outcomes.

I think many understand this, but due to long-term negative forces, have lost faith in the expediency of what they intuitively know. As you suggest, such deep knowledge CAN be resurrected and put into play.

I would aver that history has been produced for a long, long time now.

One could even go as far as to say that all history has been produced. Every bogeyman, star, hero, especially the last century was a construct. Every movement was instigated, prodded, championed by the three letter agencies and their mesmerizing, tavistockian, Bernaysian fore-fathers.

In fact, to put an Indian spin on this, the last century was the century of Maya. Interesting thing, now, this time seems to be a time of the destruction of the illusion. Often harshly. We are at the de-construction phase of the great game. And all our heroes and heroines have clay feet.

Islam, some claim itself a construct (the game of problem reaction, solution is an old one), such a powerful anti-force to it's Abrahamic religious cousins. Surreal. And inevitable. This is how I saw it could be...

Click to view link

@ DB

Apparently I am not the only one who misconstrued your post. See Bill Ross above.

@ Acudoc

The government is the representative of those who buy it, not the taxpayers who are only the victims. The American experiment of a government of laws rather than men was ended by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 when the banksters arranged to buy the government in perpetuity by capturing and controlling its financing. Since then, the government, with the exception of a few personal twists by presidents has been a tool of the owners of the Federal Reserve banks. See "The Money Masters" for a brief history.

"The Money Masters" advocates a national bank owned and controlled by the federal government, i.e. Congress.

While better than one owned and controlled by the Rothschilds/Rockefellers and a list of private economic elites of America and Europe who flog us at will, it is probably unworkable in the end due to certain elite subversion. That is why 'free banking' or a free market in currency is probably best in the long run although some rules would be helpful, like re instating Glass Steagall and the outlawing of fractional reserve banking.

The DB does not think fractional reserve banking should be outlawed and refuses to explain why the creation of multiple demands on the same dollars is not fraud.

Their argument, as closely as I understand it presently is, let fraud exist as long as the market tolerates it and to hell with its victims.

This argument, assumes commerce will take place freely if everyone must first be

1)totally informed of fraudsters before doing any banking

2) a little (or, in the case of fraud, a lot) of larceny is healthy.

At least that is my impression in the face of DB's incapacity to face the issue.

Reply from The Daily Bell

The paper ticket reserve currency states on its FACE that it is REDEEMABLE. The bank knows from experience what the redemption rate is and monitors it. Too much and the bank prints fewer notes. It is a system that has been in place for hundreds of years PRIVATELY. It works, evidently and obviously and did so in Scotland for centuries - elsewhere too.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with FRN if people are aware of the mechanism and choose to do business with the bank nonetheless. Many businesses overproduce products (think airline seats) because the supply and demand allows for it. Juat-in-time factories charge for products in advance of the "build." On and on. Your definition of "fraud" is simplistic. Let the market decide.

I otherwise enjoy your commentaries but a minor irritation -why do you persist in referring to Kosovo by the Albainian name Kosova? This seems to be giving assent to the KLA ( and anglo pwer elite) project to split Kosovo from Serbia.

In 1935 Smedley Butler put out an analysis of war which he summarized in the succinct phrase, "War is a racket!" In the conclusion of his 10 page analysis he proposed three things:

1)Take the profit out of war by requiring that everyone involved in the industries profiting from war be limited to the compensation paid a private on the battlefield. Imagine the CEO of Halliburton accepting a private's wage for the duration of a war.

2)Permit only the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide by plebiscite whether or not there should be war.

3)Limit a nation's military forces to home defense purposes. He suggested no American forces be allowed to patrol beyond a 200 mile buffer zone along the coastal border, except for air reconnaissance which would patrol out to 500 miles.

These eminently sane proposals bring up a lot of questions, such as: Why are our policy makers such blockheads? Why do we have politicians and ambassadors caring about events happening so many thousands of miles from our shores? Why are there so many die-hard interventionists in government?

And finally, the Mother of all questions---Why are there so many people in government to begin with? Why can't they just go out and get real jobs like the rest of us?

@ any who ponder sci-fi & its possible predictive possibilities:

(slightly off-topic)

--Given a military structure vastly larger than any possible competing one, even assuming alliances among the competition, and...

--Given that the wealth that has brought it about and supports it becomes exhausted...

--Given that the size and momentum of such a gargantuan structure disallows it from quietly folding, because *quietly folding* is perceived by the structure itself as an impossible option...

What happens next --assuming wealth is required for it to take any real action?

Does history shed any light here? eh, historians?

The situation seems peculiarly unique... hiring itself out as a mercenary force seems impossible, if no entity has adequate wealth to keep it going.

It would seem, then, that the "impossible option" is forced upon it... like it or not, fold it must... somehow.

The uniqueness of the situation leaves me unable to foresee the unfolding of the Massive Collision.

Any thoughts? (I am assuming it will be unable to operate any longer on debt.)

Wild-eyed sci-fi responses acceptable. (smile) --Also short answers revealing my folly. (smile)

By most definitions, America has become fascist. The marriage of BIG GOV and BIG business,,, the corporatocracy. 3 congressmen are proposing that the patriot Act become permanent. GOV is well aware that the current standard of living offered by the collectivists to the non-producers is soon to have a crash-landing. 52% of Americans rely on a check from GOV. The unfunded liabilities run over $ 100 trillion.

The corporatocracy is going to cut WAY back. The funding for in-house pension funds is hundreds of $ billions in arrears for the Fortune 500 companies. If they won't fund their in-house pensions during the 'fat years", what will happen to GOV dependents in the "lean years"?

The corporatocracy has no intention of spreading democracy around the world. The "elites" are just as happy with fascism as the aristocracy was with royalty. The 11,000 elites of Fulford probably don't carry "elite" cards.

I would imagine that they are united in action by having common goals. Bankers have common goals. ALL industrialists have dreams of monopoly. Wealthy power-groups all dream of regulatory capture.

I suppose that they all have the common dream of;

Maximum monetary extraction
Maximum control to insure this
Minimum interference
Minimum personal liability.

One could argue that everyone has these desires possibly. It appears to me that; once a person acquires the requisite power, MOST people grab the dream of ever-increasing power and wealth. Power generally corrupts.

The elites don't have to synchronize their actions. All they have to do is to concentrate on maintaining as much control as possible. That's it in a nutshell. Look at the control that Bernanke has.

The flip side of all this is the reason that there won't be a "One World" GOV. Each of these little despots and oligarchs and tin-pot dictators would have to surrender control of his little fiefdom to some central power. This is the antithesis of what a dictator desires. Look at Hosni. He refuses to surrender power.

All the Perons and Allendes and Khadafis spring up organically. GS has bought up the entire wheat market hoping to give the world a sound thrashing in the hopes that they will be willing to accept OW GOV when they are starving. Stupidity.
Starvation isn't going to unite anything.

One World GOV will appear when some large, powerful supranational group can enforce a one-world currency. The Euro appeared on the scene before there was any regulatory body to enforce economic and monetary discipline. Considering just how fractious the various despots are, I doubt that we will see ANY force that can enforce economic and monetary discipline worldwide. All the dictators will sabotage a OW GOV that doesn't have them as the leader.

Just as the U.N is given no "teeth", I don't foresee the rise of a powerful supranational military force. There is the possibility that the supranational force will be regulatory rather than military. Things are moving in that direction. The Eurozone is the perfect example of a huge bloated bureaucracy that would probably be the "role model" of some future OW GOV. Like the American intelligence bureaucracy, it would reach a point where it was incomprehensible.

"They" are going to muck-up the whole works trying to achieve the perfect dystopia.

No mention of the Pentagon sourced maps of the New Middle East? Heck, a version of one of those maps was on the front and back cover of an issue of The Atlantic a few years ago.

The structural organization for MEFTA (as a precursor to formal development of regional government) was revealed years ago.

Add in Naomi Klein's research in her book Disaster Capitalism and we have the how to manual on how to create economic chaos for the purposes of political, economic, and social re-engineering.

@Bill Ross: "...peaceful people who just want to be left alone"

Were people always left alone?

@DB: "...[religion] becomes a social and cultural choice."

All religious beliefs are chosen?

Acquiescence to threats of physical and psychological violence doesn't come from nowhere. Commonly accepted patterns of behaviour have a history. Childhood.

Links above. Another below.

"The shape of political authority in society mirrors that of the family. When you have better families you end up with better governments. When you have non-authoritarian, pacifist parenting with respect for the self-ownership of children, you will inevitably end up with a free society. If you want to change society, you have to change people's early childhood experiences. Objective morality, property rights and self-ownership all fall counter to just about everybody's experience of their family and certainly against their experience of church and school. So we're fighting a real uphill battle, it's one that we'll win, but it's going to take a long time."

YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: Listener Emails: Loneliness, Hatred, Reason, Revolution

Click to view link

@Jeff

"...that the two greatest threats to us (the human race) are the two mythologies of gods and governments."

Completely incorrect. The root cause of our woes is that it is falsely believed to be "necessary" (Machiavelli) that aggression be imitated against peaceful people who just want to be left alone.

Completely obliterate these two mythologies (false sets of rationalizations) and, they will be immediately replaced by another set of rationalizations regarding why some must be predator and others, prey.

Until the matter of criminals initiating aggression, under any pretext is dealt with, we remain on a path to collapse of civilization and species extinction:

Click to view link

The reason that we have recurring woes is that the root causes of problems are never understood, nor addressed. So, we remain in a never ending sequence of "running from" as opposed to determining where we want to go and, what comes next. This is a major intellectual / power vacuum which predatory opportunists always have and always will be happy to step into.

@ Isabelo Alcordo,

I would simply argue that the two greatest threats to us (the human race) are the two mythologies of gods and governments. Seems here in the USA we have groups pitting one against the other. False choices they are. If we (the people) can't get past these, we'll continue to make the same mistakes. Reason and evidence (within a moral and ethical framework/methodology) should be leading the way. They aren't and we see the results.

Regards

"Just a note: When you come for our guns, be ready to die for them."

Well, that attitude is the only thing that will slow the authorities down and very few Western countries can do that now. I can't think of any apart from the USA, Switzerland, Israel & Finland, all the rest of us have been emasculated.

Would the DB like to explore the differences between the USA and Switzerland in gun ownership and the attitudes that prevail? Both ensure the people have some power against the Govt, but the social image of gun ownership seems so different between those countries. You're in a rather unique situation, having a foot in both countries with the readership here.

On religeon, why can't we bypass a Govt completely by revertng to the Church as it used to be. They used to handle welfare as charity, health via hospitals and education throughy their schools. Having the Govt run everythng is a recent phenomenon, so if people looked to their church and ignored the Govt could we eliminate their power.

Reply from The Daily Bell

"On religeon, why can't we bypass a Govt completely by revertng to the Church as it used to be. They used to handle welfare as charity, health via hospitals and education throughy their schools. Having the Govt run everythng is a recent phenomenon, so if people looked to their church and ignored the Govt could we eliminate their power."

Well stated. This is our argument entirely. People who damn "religion" sit in the wrong pew, at least. They ought to be saving their ire for theocracy. Religion, without the authority of the state to enforce becomes a social and cultural choice.

Thank you Adam, you cut to the chase there mate.

I think John must recently have arrived from Mars if he thinks that the moslem brotherhood are modernists unless he thinks that it is modern to argue for the overthrow and death of Israelis and the introduction of mediaeval laws advocated by sharia law. Did he not read of a 14 year old girl whipped to death in bangladesh last week for alleged adultery with her cousin? call that modernist? I call it primitive!!

The current situation in the Middle East is intended to cause fear in the middle class of western societies. Of course the thing that the powers that be fail to understand because they are not omniscient is the unintended consequences of their schemes.

The useful idiots of America's dominant Marxist press have the notion that the Arab countries are attempting to install democracies. (By the way Egyptians are not Arabs, they proceed Arab nations by thousands of year just as Syria and some of the other nations in that region.

However they do embrace Islam, which leads people to draw the false conclusion that the Middle East comprised of Arab nations. Egypt is also an Africa nation a fact seems to escape the superior intellect of our press corp.)

This situation will definitely grow beyond the control of the power elites because of their gross misunderstanding of the Middle East. The cry for democracy by leftist is a deception it is actually a desire for global communism. America opposed the supposed evils of the Soviets but in many respects we have done the same things in the name of building global democracy.

The presumptions of the power elite here are quite disturbing because they believe that they will somehow be able to control this situation. It would be a mistake for us not to realize that the true assault is against liberty as we know it. Unfortunately we have not been a free people for some time and we are under the illusion that global governance is the solution to all of the woes of the world.

The utopian view of reality is shared by Communists and Islamic nations the power elite wishes to use this as a means of global dominance, this is going to back fire because the secular ideal of Communism will come into conflict with theological demands of Islam. While these two belief systems now seem to be supportive of each other right that situation will change if the achieve their goals it must because ideologically these groups are actually opposed to one another.

The arrogance of the power structure is definitely at play here and unfortunately a lot people around the world will be impacted negatively by the latest attempts at global governance. Since the elites believe the world is overpopulated this is a means to achieving that goal as well in route to global dominance. Islamic and communist doctrine alike have global aspirations therefore it is not too surprising the elites would attempt to use such a vehicle to achieve the goal of global government.

Theocracies in my opinion in most cases bring on human suffering. If Christianity really had its way it would probably resurrect the Inquisitions.

Religion and government holding hands has never really been a great egalitarian, altruistic governance. History has proven that over the centuries of cruelty up to and including the present. More totalitarian than secular totalitarian rule. The self righteous puritanical with the power of government separating Gods sheep from Devils goats.

Just because one is not religious has no bearing on an individuals spirituality and belief in a loving creative omnipotent omniscient and omnipresent force of the universe.

@DB:

"the Anglosphere conspiracy is unstoppable"

Perhaps you mean that they miscalculated and the unintended consequences have been compounded by internet analysis and, they have no clue how to change course, and, perhaps, even competence or intelligence to do so? So, they are stuck on their inertial course, heading for an unavoidable reef?

Clearly, an opportunity for alternate leadership is opening up.

Reply from The Daily Bell

They are unstoppable in the sense that they will continue - not in the sense that they will emerge victorious. The process is unstoppable apparently, but the outcome is not preordained.