All Over America Government Control Freaks Are Forcing Preppers Back On To The Grid … In recent years there have been huge numbers of Americans that have sought to go "off the grid" and live a more independent lifestyle. It has been estimated that there are now approximately 3 million "preppers" in the United States, and many of them just want to be left alone so that they can take care of themselves and their families on their own land. But that is not the way America works anymore. In many areas of the country, government control freaks have essentially declared war on preppers and are attempting to force them back on to the grid. In some states, "nuisance abatement teams" are conducting armed raids on off the grid properties. Property owners are being cited for "code violations" and are being told that they are "bothering the neighbors". In some cases, trees and gardens are being forcibly removed. In other cases, entire structures are being relocated or torn down. And in the most extreme cases, property owners are actually being forced off of their properties completely by these control freaks. – The American Dream

Dominant Social Theme: Do whatever the heck you want. Just don't irritate us.

Free-Market Analysis: This is a most interesting article posted at the alternative website American Dream. While its main conclusion is one of anger – even despair – over US government interference in the lives of peaceful US citizens who want to become more resource independent, we see in its reporting an even larger point to be made.

It is one that has to do with a "real economy" versus one created by endless monetary stimulation via monopoly central banking.

Our perspective – the idea we've advanced – is that central banking's endless overprinting of money distorts economies over time to the point where they look nothing like what economies would be deprived of such stimulation.

China is a modern case in point. The Chinese economy has been ripped from its agrarian moorings over the past 50 years and been reconfigured as a "modern" Western one. Same goes for Brazil and India.

All these countries suffer from the "disease" of currency over-printing. It manifests itself in explosive economic imbalances including price inflation, increased separation between wealthy and poor, advancements of authoritarianism (prison populations, excessive regulation) because governments swell with tax and bond revenue; and inevitably the over-production of the facilities of civil society including lawyers, politicians, judges and academic professors … and more visible overproduction of houses, cars, boats, restaurants, supermarkets, etc.

The downside occurs when boom turns to bust, revealing the overproduction for all to see. The retrenchment begins. Houses and cars are repossed. Supermarkets and restaurants stand idle and begin to rot. There is no money to pay the plethora of judges, firemen, policemen and other public servants. Law firms cut back or go under; universities shut under-attended classes. In places like Detroit, in the US, whole cities begin to be bulldozed. In China it is discovered the empty cities being built shall never be filled.

"Money" has been divorced from the market. There is no monetary competition anymore, only monopoly central banking, and the bankers never know how much money to print. And they always print too much.

Over time, countries involved with monopoly central banking increasingly de-emphasize rural agricultural and emphasize various forms of modernity. But we would ask if the ephemera of Western culture is a valid expression of modern capitalism or whether it is the result of Money Power.

We are quite aware of the many books heaping contempt on the American system of industry. High-brow economist John Kenneth Galbraith was a virtual one-man industry when it came to this sort of prose. But Galbraith never much contemplated the effect of money printing on society.

This is why Galbraith was a kind of elite propagandist, in our view. He was perfectly willing to denounce the excesses of capitalism without ever speculating about its foundational elements.

When society is flooded by cheap money, its industries inevitably distort. Who is to say whether 1,000 kinds of ice-cream flavors is a response to consumer demand or the upshot of cheap money ? Do entrepreneurs have too much time on their hands – and too much access to inexpensive financing – or are their ideas valid responses to marketplace needs?

We've argued that the distortive effects of monopoly central banking are such that it is impossible to understand what a "normal" society might look like absent the over-printing of money.

The article we're excerpting here from the American Dream has a slightly different premise. It proposes that the reason preppers are being attacked has to do with a determination to maintain elite control.

Here's some more:

The truth is that in America you don't really own your property. You are essentially renting it, and you can only do with it what the government allows you to do. And the government does not like people disconnecting from the grid and living an independent lifestyle. So these battles over property rights are probably going to get even more intense in the years ahead.

These days, many Americans are choosing to grow "survival gardens" as a way to help feed their families and become more independent of the system. But in some areas of the country these survival gardens are being forcibly ripped out by government control freaks. Just check out what happened to one unemployed woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma….

A Tulsa woman is suing the city's code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause. Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.

She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.

Last August, Morrison's front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.

The government agents left her with nothing. They ripped her garden to shreds. She was relying on that garden for her food and her medicine. Because she is unemployed, she doesn't have any money to go to the store and buy all those things.

Now she is absolutely destitute….

"I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left," Morrison said.

Is there a bigger point to be made? It seems to us that such authoritarianism is essentially confirming our perspective regarding monetary inflation. It would seem after all that much of what we consider "civilization" is in fact a determined effort to render us helpless using the well-known effects of central banking.

After all, as this article is pointing out, when people attempt to resume the kind of agrarian approaches favored by such republican thinkers as Thomas Jefferson, they are being forcibly prevented.

Yes, there is much more going in society that simply the evolution of "capitalism." The power elite that wants to run the world has perhaps guided Western civilization down this path of helplessness on purpose. Central banking is its tool; the misallocation of resources is its goal.

Again, absent central banking money stimulation, it is impossible to know what Western societies would like and how they would have evolved.

Would the current model of consumerism actually exist at all?

There is a perfectly rational argument to be made for the idea that monopoly money stimulation creates unbalanced economies that remove the resources most people need to survive from their immediate control.

The current set-up of society, and the helplessness of so many citizens, may not be merely "coincidence" after all – the inevitable result of capitalism's choices. It may be the result of a deliberate distortion engendered by the powers-that-be using the central banking mechanism.

As this article points out, the elites that are trying to build world government, are determined to keep "preppers" in a state of helplessness. One can argue that the world's current monetary system contributes to that state. It's been implemented on purpose.