“We should not, like sheep, follow the herd of creatures in front of us, making our way where others go, not where we ought to go.”
Nils & Jonas
njlifehacks.com
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Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2020
“We should not, like sheep, follow the herd of creatures in front of us, making our way where others go, not where we ought to go.”
Nils & Jonas
njlifehacks.com
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Seneca, sheep, Stoic | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2020
A lesson in panarchism.
https://www.panarchy.org/rozeff/panarchism.html
By Joe Jarvis – December 09, 2020
Cities vote differently than rural areas, if you haven’t noticed. Look at any election map, and its mostly red, with little clusters of blue in populated areas.
There is another map floating around instead showing large blue dots for population, with the message that land doesn’t vote, people do.
And this is true. But I think the point made by the mostly red land map is that a bunch of city folks are totally controlling how the country folks govern.
I don’t really see rural America clambering to control how cities are run. I do see urbanites demanding control over… well, just about everything.
And in the context of a city, it makes sense to think there needs to be more rules. You’re living in close proximity to a lot of other people. That requires more logistics, and increases the probability of conflict, just based on the number of people you come into contact with.
There is a saying that at the federal level I am Libertarian, at the state level Republican, at the local level Democrat, and at the family level Communist.
The problem comes when you try to take policies that might make sense for a city, and force them on the entire nation.
But still, blue for Democrat and red for Republican are extremely broad– and really bad– indicators for how people want to be governed.
When people feel forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, they will choose the values of whatever party most closely aligns to them.
And yet, Austin, Texas is not run like Portland, Oregon. And Montana has different interests than Tennessee.
It’s actually encouraging to hear more people say that the United States might be better off splitting into two, along major party lines.
Six or eleven separate countries would be even better, along cultural fault lines that run from the beginning of European settlement of North America, as I discuss in my video on the eleven rival cultures which have always fought to control DC and exert their authority on the other regions.
Or maybe 50 countries would be best, one for each state. The smart ones would join open borders, defense, and trade agreements, but make sure NOT to be forced into a federation– this time they should make it clear that they have the free will to leave.
That would ensure any larger political bodies formed would require the consent of the smaller members, and without that consent, the larger body would have no authority over the smaller.
And I certainly think any of this would be a step in the right direction.
But why not 314 countries in the former United States? That’s the number of cities in America with a population over 100,000.
Better yet, why not 3,100 if all the counties formed their own countries, or even 19,502 if every incorporated area in the US, like towns and municipalities, declared independence.
Again, sometimes it benefits a country to be part of a larger federation, and these places could easily team up for certain things like defense and trade if they found such an arrangement mutually beneficial.
It doesn’t have to feel much different than traveling, shipping, doing business, or moving throughout the United States feels does now.
You already have to be familiar with local laws to not get in trouble for certain victimless crimes. Everything from taking your shirt off to smoking a joint will get you very different treatment depending on where you do it.
But the structural changes would make all the difference– we wouldn’t be locked in a battle for control of a centralized power which will force its will on everyone.
Instead, any large centralized governing structure which has something to offer the smaller entities would have to deliver, or lose its members, support, and funding.
And if that sounds too messy and complicated to you, so would, for instance, how the beer supply chain works.
Do you know where the ingredients like hops and barley are grown, and how breweries source them? Do you understand the shipping routes and logistics it takes to deliver the raw materials?
How much do you know about the brewing process, the science, and creating the right taste? Then there is packaging and distribution, marketing, advertising, and so forth.
That is a confusing complicated process as well. And yet the beer gets made with remarkable variety and consistency, always on demand. A bunch of moving parts coordinate with each other, all for mutual benefit, to set up a system that works.
Precisely because it is not centralized and controlled from the top down is why all the participants in the system can work together for the benefit of producers, consumers, sellers, and so on.
And thus, you have more beer options than government options.
Beer supplies are consistent, reliable, they always get where they need to be.
Your choices range from big companies with gross beer, like Budweiser to small companies with good beer like Cigar City in Tampa. And everything in between.
Some of the small brewers grow into big brewers, like Sam Adams. Some of the bad ones go extinct, like Knickerbocker or Falstaff.
Imagine if terrible governments could go out of business.
That’s what happens with a real free market. And actually beer is a perfect example because it used to be highly regulated and there were only a few crappy options. But once the regulations were ditched, the craft beer movement was born– so take that hipster IPA lovers.
The point is, we should be choosing governments the same way we choose beer. I can handle that some terrible brews exist, as long as I am not forced to fund their production, or drink the final product.
If there was a market for government, we might end up with something we actually like– yes and something different for different tastes. I’m allergic to bureaucracy just like some people are gluten intolerant– and there are even beers for them.
So here’s how we turn government into a beer garden.
Democracy sucks, but here’s how to make it suck less.
Democracy is allegedly our voice in government. Do you feel heard? No me neither. But add exit, and that solves everything.
Exit can happen in two ways. You can literally move to a better place, which I’ve already done twice.
The problem is that we have massive government claiming large swaths of land. The US government is even worse in that respect than most, because it claims 320 million citizens as tax cattle who owe Uncle Sam money no matter where they live, work, or earn a living. Just moving outside the US does not divorce you from the IRS.
And even if that wasn’t the case, there are still fewer than 200 countries on earth to choose from. So yes there is already some choice to exit to a better place, but again, you have a better selection of beer than governments.
So here is another way to exit.
Say a democracy votes, and you end up in the minority and you have to accept that fact that other people want to govern differently than you. But what if you still had the option to exit, without moving?
That means you simply mark off a smaller geographical area that decides it will government itself, and have another vote.
For example, the majority of voters in a city of 50,000 people vote for Socialism.
But a 15,000 person suburb doesn’t like that idea, so they vote to form their own Monarchy.
But a 2,000 person neighborhood in that suburb doesn’t like Monarchy, so they form an anarcho syndicalist commune.
And here’s where it gets fun. If just one property owner doesn’t like that new government he is apart of, he can also declare his property sovereign.
Private property itself deserves a whole video, so if you’re interested in that, let me know in the comments.
But essentially private property could be the entirety of the law, and “government” would simply be an open market of contracts and dispute resolution around the concept of self ownership, which is more or less the same concept as private property or life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But even if you have this sovereign chunk of land, you would still have to follow the rules when you go onto other people’s property and into other jurisdictions. You would still have to maintain good diplomatic relations in order to go to the supermarket, get on a plane, or use other property, like roads.
But the home would truly be the castle.
Now there’s a lot to unpack here– part of interacting with the other areas of society that benefit you would, of course, require submitting to some of their rules. But you wouldn’t be forced to. You could conceivably be left alone on your land and produce, or probably just have delivered, everything you need.
Victimizing others would still be met with consequences, mirroring common law where the entirety of the law was dispute resolution.
If that sounds interesting, I do have a video which introduces and explores this common law types of justice system.
But I’m not going to get into that here, because this is another concept that sounds super complicated and messy– just like beer production.
But again, we have every reason to believe that all the moving parts forming mutually beneficial transactions to resolve disputes will end up, not with utopia, but with a better system of social organization than we currently have with a top down, centralized power approach.
Okay let’s add one more twist before we wrap this up– who cares if the group you join or create is in the same geographical area as you?
This is the modern age, connected via the internet, why do my neighbor and I have to subscribe to the same government?
Shouldn’t I be able to pick and choose the services I want from a government, and which service provider has the best coverage for the price for my situation?
Neal Stephenson, my favorite SciFi author, wrote a book called The Diamond Age where he talks about “the first distributed government.”
It’s basically like AAA– no matter where your car breaks down, they will still come help you out, which usually means contracting with local repair shops to get the job done.
So in The Diamond Age, when one character robs the wrong person, he is hunted down and taken into custody by other members of the victim’s “tribe” in this case.
To cover their own legal liability as they hog tie him, however, they ask if the suspect has any representation– as in, does he subscribe to a distributed government that would back him up here?
If so, there are sets of rules that most of these legitimate governments agree on before hand to solve disputes peacefully among members of two different distributed governments. The idea is that they represent you fairly, but do protect actual criminals– that’s part of the agreement.
So in the book, this guy does not subscribe to any government, sort of like driving around without car insurance.
Anyway, Neal Stephenson is able to unpack a lot of complicated concepts through fiction, so I certainly recommend reading his books.
Or, for a fictional representation of the type of private governments I am talking about here, check out my own fiction serial called The Gulf. It’s involves a floating city seastead, a corrupt celebrity, a prison island, and of course, a young couple in love.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and the first season is out now and completely free to read, listen to, or watch online.
It should be obvious by now: 2020 is the elite’s big move.
We are entering the climax of a long planned crisis. Your family, your community, and your countrymen need honest leaders to guide them out of the elite’s traps.
Learn how to turn the elite’s own tactics against them, divert their attacks, and grow your own sphere of power.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: City States, Election Maps, red blue | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2020
Our “representatives” still swear allegiance to a Constitution they don’t believe in, or pay attention to. The gargantuan federal government is as far removed from what the Founding Fathers intended as a One Percenter is from a timeclock and a demanding boss. And yet, while it’s taken on a power and scope it’s not supposed to constitutionally have, it provides virtually no services in return. It just takes. And mandates.
It’s always easier to second a popular motion, to be a well-paid “Yes” man. After all, if you’re saying the president, Congress, the Supreme Court, state and local officials, corporate America, the medical profession, the insurance profession, the educational system, the legal system, the media, and the entertainment world are all hopelessly corrupt, you’ve alienated yourself from a lot of people. You’re no fun at parties.
https://donaldjeffries.wordpress.com/2020/12/07/being-an-enemy-of-the-state/
It isn’t easy being a contrarian, to instinctively go against the grain. It certainly isn’t financially rewarding. I would love to support something about our society, or someone who has a hand in running it. But I just can’t. The corruption is so immense, and so prevalent even at the local level, that it cannot be confronted by anything less than hundreds of thousands of coordinated opponents.
This situation has always existed. Think of the very accurate old canard “You can’t fight city hall.” The difference is that now the tyranny has grown well beyond crass political rivalries or even feuds between organized crime families. The mafia and more recent offshoot intercity gangs at least have some kind of twisted code, and lines they won’t cross. The elite that rule us appear to have no such lines.
The entire world was basically shut down in March of this year, over an alleged deadly virus. There were no overt signs that something dangerous was afoot. No bodies being carted away, and death visiting every family, ala the Great Plague that wiped out so many in Europe centuries ago. Most of us personally knew no victims. And yet all were quarantined to some degree. As a few critics pointed out, you don’t quarantine healthy people. Well, not until now. Sports, movies, churches, and schools were cancelled. Millions lost their jobs. The public donned ridiculous masks and followed “social distancing” rules that have no scientific basis.
And all of this was accomplished without any country needing their police to enforce it. No troops in the streets. Without a single shot being fired. The opposition to such unprecedented state control was confined to “conspiracy theorists” on the internet. Like me. Those of us who pointed out the emperor was stark naked lost many friends, and angered close family members. Our skepticism made us second-class citizens. I was called “dangerous,” and it certainly didn’t help any potential career opportunities. My own niece deleted me on Facebook. So did some of my celebrity friends, like Candy Clark of American Graffiti and Barry Livingston from My Three Sons. Oh well, at least I know they were reading.
It’s always easier to second a popular motion, to be a well-paid “Yes” man. After all, if you’re saying the president, Congress, the Supreme Court, state and local officials, corporate America, the medical profession, the insurance profession, the educational system, the legal system, the media, and the entertainment world are all hopelessly corrupt, you’ve alienated yourself from a lot of people. You’re no fun at parties. Most people used to enjoy it when I pontificated and ranted in social gatherings, or at work. If we still had social gatherings, I wouldn’t be invited. And I would be fired pretty quickly from any job, if I simply conducted myself the way I did for 44 years, until experiencing one of the most unjust terminations imaginable. Which I am helpless to do anything about, because of that corrupt system.
Reason hasn’t prevailed in any battle since perhaps the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the forty hour work week, overtime, and other employee benefits Baby Boomers like me took for granted. Every war pushed for, since JFK stood up against the Military Industrial Complex during the Cuban missile crisis, has been given the green light. Well, I guess we should count that as a victory for reason as well. So sanity hasn’t won the debate since 1962. The list of losses for the people is lengthy. NAFTA, open borders immigration, coverups of every important state crime from the JFK assassination to 9/11, the Patriot Act, the NDAA, the Supreme Court upholding tyrannical asset forfeiture laws, and many others.
We are left now to fight a forced vaccination we don’t remotely need, perhaps even being forcibly chipped. Or to try to counter the creeping sprawl of “hate speech” and “hate crime” laws. To meekly mutter “I’m not a White Supremacist.” To argue for schools, businesses, churches, and cultural events to be reopened. But only with proper precautions, of course. Must keep up that “social distancing.”
We lost the culture war that Pat Buchanan warned us about. I mean, we were slaughtered. Shut out. And so we watch helplessly as the “educators” who have such influence over our kids devise ideas like transgender story hour in elementary schools. Or “gender reveal” parties where parents often manipulate their very, very young children into “identifying” as the opposite sex. If that’s not child abuse, what is?
For years, I argued that this casino economy of ours had to inevitably collapse. In my youthful idealism, I imagined something better emerging from the ruins. Now I’m much older, and have no such expectations. They appear to be able to keep this mess afloat on life support, no matter what. The fact that it hasn’t collapsed after thousands of businesses were forced to close, millions were thrown out of work, and huge parts of the economy like sports and movies were effectively cancelled, is very telling. They will just keep creating money out of thin air under their counterfeit banking system. Maybe we’ll get another $1200 check.
Our “representatives” in the Senate just voted unanimously to eliminate the cap on foreign Visa workers. That’s quite a strange thing to do during a deadly “pandemic,” and when millions of American citizens have lost their jobs due to the unconstitutional lockdown. Don’t expect a veto from Donald Trump, who of course pledged to eliminate the unnecessary foreign worker programs. Maybe we’ll get an exasperated tweet.
The people have actually been losing ever since the tyrant Lincoln crushed that whole “consent of the governed” thing. You know, the main premise behind the War for Independence. We lost every time when their laughable false flags, from “Remember the Maine” in 1898 to the “weapons of mass destruction” lie was believed by a gullible majority of the public. That’s our problem- that gullible majority. They’re the ones phoning the authorities to report “social distancing” violations, or screaming “there’s no evidence!” of voting fraud, and they will be first in line for the mandatory vaccine. They have been trained, like Pavlovian dogs, to be skeptical of the “conspiracy theorists,” not any authority figure or institution. Except Donald Trump. They have been brainwashed to hate him, like Orwell’s fake opposition leader Goldstein in 1984.
Speaking of Orwell, his dystopian world is here. What exactly is the distinction between his Thought Crime and the “woke” Left’s “hate crime?” That gullible majority again parrots the phrase “hate speech” without understanding how such a concept is incompatible with free speech. The majority of Americans now don’t believe in free speech for those they disagree with. Since that is the significance of the First Amendment, they really don’t believe in free speech. Period. And since they don’t consider a thousand or more witnesses signing sworn affidavits about electoral fraud, to be “evidence,” they don’t appear to believe in free and secure elections, either. But they hate “racism.” And they support every war.
If the Founders could see what a shocking Banana Republic we’ve become, they would be heartbroken. They didn’t secede from British rule so that society could celebrate 57 different genders. Or claim that even the poorest residents of Appalachia have some kind of “White Privilege” that Black billionaires don’t. Or permit our militarized police to abuse their authority and confiscate the property of those who haven’t even been charged with a crime. Or give benefits, public schooling, job preferences, and legal favoritism to noncitizens, including those who entered the country illegally. Or spend most of the federal budget on a centralized permanent armed forces, and shadowy intelligence agencies with secret budgets.
Our “representatives” still swear allegiance to a Constitution they don’t believe in, or pay attention to. The gargantuan federal government is as far removed from what the Founding Fathers intended as a One Percenter is from a timeclock and a demanding boss. And yet, while it’s taken on a power and scope it’s not supposed to constitutionally have, it provides virtually no services in return. It just takes. And mandates.
We are like a boxer, who’s been beaten relentlessly for fourteen rounds. We’re in the fifteenth and last round, trying desperately to hold on to the ropes. The referee is openly against us, and the judges are not scoring the rounds fairly. The fans, who stand to lose if we do, are wildly cheering on our (and their) opponent. Our only hope is if those fans storm the ring and save us (and themselves).
As Orwell stated in 1984, “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within.” We are the Proles, and we outnumber our corrupt and incompetent leaders by the millions. But if we don’t come together, that’s irrelevant.
As we enter the holiday season, that same gullible majority is embracing even more tyrannical restrictions. Cases are surging- we must cancel Christmas! It’s like we’ve gone through the looking glass- where the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge is being celebrated.
We’re all in this together. Take your vaccines. Trust the “science.” Listen to the “fact checkers.” Embrace the “great reset” and the “new normal.” Yes, Virginia, there is a conspiracy. God bless us, everyone.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: dystopian, Enemy of the State, Orwell | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2020
All of these things impinge upon your right to ownership of private property, including your own body, which is the primary form of property.
Wearing a mask—whether or not you want to or think it helps—isn’t just about virtue signaling. It also shows whether you’re willing to do as you’re told—whether you’re “politically reliable”, as the communists like to say. It’s like wearing the Party’s armband.
I have no problem if the owner of a bar or restaurant wants to keep me out if I’m not wearing a mask. It’s his property. He makes the rules. I can go elsewhere, where it suits me better. It’s an affront and an imposition on restaurateurs and storekeepers to be told what they and their guests can and cannot do.
https://internationalman.com/articles/what-happens-when-the-suspension-on-evictions-ends/
by Doug Casey
International Man: Earlier this year, CDC was able to extend its powers unprecedentedly by issuing a nationwide suspension on evictions.
What’s your take on how a public health agency grew to be in the position of telling property owners what they can do on their properties?
Doug Casey: Health paranoia is an excellent method of control. People put their health above almost everything. I’m only surprised it hasn’t been used as a lever up until now. It’s part of a trend toward mass control that has started in earnest early in the 20th century and has been increasing exponentially over time.
First was the income tax. If you didn’t comply, it was not only seen as a legal crime but also promoted as a moral sin. The prohibition of liquor from 1919 to 1933 got under way as a moral failing and then was turned into a crime. It’s the same with the prohibition of some drugs; Nixon started that hysteria in 1971, and it was put on steroids, so to speak, by Nancy Reagan. Next came the war on terror, especially since 2001. These were all promoted with both legal and moral taboos. Everybody is supposed to line up with them shoulder to shoulder, like in one of those old socialist realism propaganda posters the Soviets and the Nazis specialized in. The public is supposed to self-police under the supervision of the authorities, like they did in Salem in 1692.
Public health is the current impetus for mass hysteria and paranoia. All of these things impinge upon your right to ownership of private property, including your own body, which is the primary form of property. The public health angle is potentially the most dangerous and invasive one from the viewpoint of freedom. Busybodies—the type of people who work for and actively support the State—always need an excuse to control others en masse. This pandemic provides an excellent template for the future.
Wearing a mask—whether or not you want to or think it helps—isn’t just about virtue signaling. It also shows whether you’re willing to do as you’re told—whether you’re “politically reliable”, as the communists like to say. It’s like wearing the Party’s armband.
In fact, wearing a mask and social distancing in stores, bars, restaurants, and gymnasiums shouldn’t be up to the government. It should be strictly up to the property owner. Decisions that the individual makes regarding his own health are his own; it’s between the individual and his doctor.
I have no problem if the owner of a bar or restaurant wants to keep me out if I’m not wearing a mask. It’s his property. He makes the rules. I can go elsewhere, where it suits me better. It’s an affront and an imposition on restaurateurs and storekeepers to be told what they and their guests can and cannot do.
This isn’t, incidentally, about a technical or medical problem. The value of wearing masks, social distancing, and obeying quarantines and lockdowns is questionable at best, as Sweden has shown. The real problem is ethical and that there’s no moral pushback from either the public or the property owners. People are arguing on strictly technical grounds: “Yes, you have a right to tell me what to do, and even close my business. But you shouldn’t because it’s not ‘fair’, or your solutions aren’t optimal”. They accept the busybody’s premises. The argument is over before it even begins. Americans are truly acting like whipped dogs.
Whether the masks, distancing, and the rest of it work or not, isn’t the point. My own belief is they’re at best of marginal value and may well be counterproductive. But that’s beside the point. The point is that it’s immoral and destructive for the State to tell people how to relate to each other.
As for the CDC, it’s just another government bureaucracy concerned with putting itself in the limelight, gaining more power, enhancing its budget, and the number of its employees—and making Fauci, a lifelong but previously insignificant swamp creature, into an international celebrity.
International Man: Currently, over 18 million Americans are currently behind on their mortgage or rent payments.
That temporary suspension on evictions ends December 31st. What do you think will happen next?
Doug Casey: Just as with the financial markets, the government has no alternative but to “do something.” They will—they have to—print more money to keep the rotten house of cards from collapsing on itself.
The Democrats have already said that they want to increase the next stimulus to over $3 trillion. The fact that most of the last round of stimulus was either overtly wasted, went to cronies, or can’t be accounted for, is completely lost on them. They recognize that unless they give a lot of money directly or indirectly to the hoi polloi, there are going to be millions of them on the streets.
Approximately 11 million renters and 4 or 5 million mortgagees are now in forbearance. They’ll be kicked out of their houses and apartments come January 1, barring a huge bailout. Where are those people going to go?
If Obama had made good on his ridiculous promise about shovel-ready projects, there’d be a lot more bridges that they could camp out under. But he didn’t. They have a real problem on their hands. Millions of people have been living above their means and have no savings. At this point, if they let landlords and banks kick all those people out, a number of things will happen. Residential property prices will collapse. Millions of people will be scrambling for somewhere to live. Lots of banks and landlords would go bust.
The longer the government kicks the can down the road, the bigger the inevitable bust will be. The stimulus money will have to continue because Biden doesn’t want it all to come unglued on his watch. The State is not only going to have to pay individuals and business owners that their idiotic policies have busted. They’ll be subsidizing banks, landlords, and utility companies—because you can’t live in a house or an apartment without water and electricity.
It’s worse than that because even if you cover the bare essentials, there’s no money leftover for maintenance. There will be millions of buildings across the country suffering from deferred maintenance. The South Bronx, East St. Louis, and Baltimore will be replicated across the country.
And no one’s talking about how to cover the real estate taxes due on these properties. Many local governments are already bankrupt. Their expenses are going way up even while their tax income collapses. The whole country has painted itself into a corner at this point. That’s what happens when you adopt a collectivist economic policy, as the Soviets, the Chinese, and scores of other countries have discovered.
I’m not sure how they’re going to get out of it because the economy itself has just started to collapse. Of course, they’ll print up more money because they see that as a solution when it’s actually a cause. It’s going to worsen the collapse.
International Man: For the tens of millions behind on their mortgage and rent payments, will their back rent and overdue payments ever be repaid?
Doug Casey: The government will not only have to pay the rent for the future, but it’s going to have to cover landlords’ previously unpaid rent—if they don’t want lots of bankrupt landlords and banks.
It will lead to a guaranteed annual income, which they’ve been thinking about for some time. In some cases, the government will take over properties. It’s nothing new. Most major US cities already have significant public housing. None of it’s good, but most isn’t as bad as Cabrini-Greene or Pruitt-Igoe.
Who knows where this daisy chain will lead? With all the unemployed people who can’t pay their rent, perhaps the government will develop something like national service. Then there will be millions more people working for the government, doing god knows what. It will lead to the socialization of society. Remember, this COVID hysteria is just the pin that broke the bubble. The Greater Depression was already in the cards. Americans will beg the government to cure it, which is guaranteed to make it vastly worse and longer-lasting and invite some charismatic authoritarian to be their savior and take charge.
International Man: Assuming the COVID hysteria and lockdowns are behind us in 2021, what lasting effects could we see taking place?
Doug Casey: It’s going to destroy the restaurant, retail, and travel industries all at once.
Stores, restaurants, and small businesses are always failing—maybe 15% of them annually— and new ones are starting up in normal times. It’s the circle of life. The problem is that about half of these businesses are failing all at once. That makes it much harder to recover.
The economy is a lot like a body. If you burn your finger, it hurts, but you’ll recover. But if you suffer burns on over 50% of your body all at once, it might kill you. That’s what we’re looking at right now.
Commercial real estate is another area that is going to be devastated because a lot of people will continue working at home and prefer it over working in an office.
Who knows what’s going to happen to all that commercial real estate and how it’s going to be repurposed. It’s certainly going to consume a huge amount of capital.
Another area that will change is schools. I would have been happy to have a year off from school because classes bored me. I would have read many more things on my own. But today, most kids don’t read books. Public school kids are lucky to absorb a few things by osmosis.
Now they’re mostly playing video games or are on social media—mostly doing nonproductive things on their computers at home. I don’t know the effect of not being able to associate with other kids.
For most kids, it may be damaging. On the bright side, many parents have decided that school is a waste of time and have started homeschooling their kids. That’s generally a positive thing.
Here’s the important thing, we don’t know how long this hysteria is going to last. People are so scared that they’ll be easy to control for fear of the next real or imagined virus that comes down the road. When people are scared and don’t know what to do, they will want somebody to kiss it and make it better.
So, I expect we’re heading towards a genuine strong man for president in the US, whether that’s Kamala Harris or somebody else. If the 2020 election was bad, the 2024 election would be worse.
Editor’s Note: Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare…
The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past.
That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: CDC, Evictions, Health paranoia, Masks, virtue signaling | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2020
Starbucks spokespersons indicated that Fresse had been fired not because of her refusal to wear a gay pride shirt but because of her “comportment.” It seems this lady brazenly told her fellow-employees that God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman.
BLM/Antifa style of diversity and inclusion
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sippin–starbucks-no-more/
The fate of Betsy Fresse, an evangelical Christian who refused to don a gay pride shirt in accordance with instructions from her manager in a Starbucks store in New Jersey is explained with remarkable concision in a recent Reuters article:
A former Starbucks Corp barista in New Jersey sued the coffee chain on Thursday, claiming she was fired illegally because she did not want to wear a ‘PRIDE’ T-shirt, which she said conflicted with her religious beliefs.
Betsy Fresse said her August 2019 dismissal from a Glen Ridge, New Jersey store, near her Newark home, for allegedly violating Starbucks’ ‘core values’ amounted to illegal religious discrimination under federal civil rights law.
This obstinate employee was apparently given an opportunity to reconsider, as NBC points out in Starbuck’s defense. Fresse received a call from Starbuck’s Ethics and Compliance Helpline after she initially eschewed the caring-sharing shirt. Since she failed to give the proper diversitarian response over the phone and in conversation with the manager, she was summarily terminated.
The fired employee thereupon sued, claiming her religious rights had been violated. To my knowledge the plaintiff was not rehired; nor was the manager who fired her disciplined; and finally Starbucks denied Fresse’s charges, insisting that it stands for “diversity,” and therefore could not conceivably have discriminated against a Christian former employee. The fault, we are left to believe, was Fresse’s appalling contempt for Starbucks’ perfectly reasonable “core values.”
Allow me to express my profound skepticism about Starbucks’ open-mindedness. Having frequented that company in the past, I could not help but notice the obtrusive reminders about the management’s politics, including cups and sugar packets adorned with leftist political platitudes. Starbucks’ CEO and founder Howard Schultz would hardly qualify as a politically detached individual. He is a socially over-the-top liberal Democrat, who according to a description in National Review is “suspicious of socialism, but woke — some might say performatively so — on immigration, LGBT issues, racial justice, and abortion.”
Starbucks spokespersons indicated that Fresse had been fired not because of her refusal to wear a gay pride shirt but because of her “comportment.” It seems this lady brazenly told her fellow-employees that God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman. This message, which presumably came in the wake of being urged to wear the LGBT-propaganda shirt, constituted behavior that Starbucks refused to tolerate.
Let’s imagine that the dissenter was a homosexual activist being forced to wear a shirt stating marriage is between a man and a woman. This assertion would not have caused the slightest scandal up until about 25 years ago, because it would have expressed what everyone across the political spectrum had always believed—or was expected to believe.
But those who, like Mr. Schultz and his media allies, are involved in a moral-cultural revolution are out to punish heretics, particularly powerless ones like low-wage evangelical employees in a coffee shop, the easiest victims to make examples of.
Would Mr. Schultz and his media allies have balked at an objection voiced by a gay activist who had been forced to wear a shirt defending traditional marriage? Would the protesting gay have been treated with the same contempt or consternation that Betsy Fresse evoked? You can bet your bottom dollar that would not have been the case. And we know why. Black Lives Matter and LGBT are top dogs in the woke hierarchy, whereas white Christians who talk about biblical teachings are holding bad cards. The high and mighty can kick them around with impunity.
But while Fresse waits to see the fruit of her lawsuit, there is a solution that might work better, and for which Schultz and other woke capitalist revolutionaries are most certainly not prepared. The little people with traditional beliefs should strike back by organizing mass boycotts against those arrogant plutocrats who scorn them and their pre-revolutionary values.
The woke Left calls for boycotts 24/7, such as those against states that did not put up transgendered restrooms fast enough to please the “LGBT community” or then-President Obama. Why can’t traditionalists imitate their enemies by embracing the same useful tactics? What would happen if the little people all over the country agreed to boycott Starbucks until Ms. Fresse’s job was reinstated with a raise and an apology from Mr. Schultz? This low-tax leftist may find he likes making money even more than beating up on the God-fearing.
There is much we can learn from the Left, starting with how to deal with the other side.
—
Paul Gottfried is editor in chief of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is also the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years, a Guggenheim recipient, and a Yale Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Betsy Fresse, evangelical Christian, Starbucks | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2020
Why do the title and the caption not surprise me?
https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=0adc5fb7a

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: COVID shots, Pfizer board, Scott Gottlieb | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2020
Voluntary: done or undertaken of one’s own free will.
Coerce: to pressure, intimidate, or force (someone) into doing something.
https://mises.org/wire/how-governments-rigged-game-against-workers
Usually, actions can be easily categorized as voluntary or coerced. You choose where you work. You are coerced into paying taxes. However, long-standing concepts such as “wage slavery” challenge this simple classification. While socialists use this term to justify greater force and coercion (akin to southern US slaveholders), there is nonetheless a kernel of truth here. The truth is this: the rules are rigged. Social media encourages catchy slogans over detailed exposition, and arguments like “taxes are voluntary” and “wages are slavery” are quickly rewarded with internet points. Both comments are mirror images of the same proposition: that wages and taxes are either both voluntary or both coerced. You can choose, the argument goes, to avoid paying taxes by not working and not buying consumer goods. Pointing out that one must work to live appears to prove that you do not work voluntarily but only under duress: to avoid starvation.
Shallow arguments like these can be quickly brushed aside by simply referring to the definition of the terms:
Voluntary: done or undertaken of one’s own free will.
Coerce: to pressure, intimidate, or force (someone) into doing something.
The corner drug store offers a reward for work: money. The government threatens imprisonment to collect taxes. While this is enough to address newly minted socialist undergrads on Twitter, it fails to address underlying issues raised by more thoughtful scholars.
In a free market, employment is clearly not slavery, but states everywhere reduce and limit the freedoms of employers, employees, and consumers. While this may not reduce wage earners to a state of slavery, market arrangements in an interventionist market such as this are not quite voluntary either.
The Marxist tradition has expended a lot of effort to classify societies into various modes of production, e.g., slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. These modes, while currently out of favor, generally sought to highlight key features and relationships that differentiated one mode from another. As socialist David Graeber put it:
in the case of [the] slave mode of production, the exploiters directly own the primary producers; in feudalism, both have complex relations to the land, but the lords use direct jural-political means to extract a surplus; in capitalism, the exploiters own the means of production and the primary producers are thus reduced to selling their labor power.
The presence—or lack thereof—of “outside options” (the ability to earn a living outside of formal wage labor) is critical for socialists when describing coercion within capitalism.
Imagine a small merchant who runs a corner drug store. Now imagine that a massive corporation seeking to limit competition uses the state to make self-employment prohibitively expensive; more people will be forced to turn to wage labor. This serves to increase the size of the labor pool, reduce wages, and reduce competition from small firms.
Another example is the AB 5 legislation in California, which temporarily disrupted the gig economy before voters overturned it with Proposition 22. Ignoring the stated motivations, the actual impact was to drastically restrict the ability of people to work for themselves as independent contractors.
Consider other ways the governments can restrict the choices of wage earners:
This is not simply theoretical. A fascinating study out of UCLA measured the effect in the British West Indies of plantation owners using the state and legal coercion to restrict the outside options of former slaves and thus secure a steady supply of cheap labor. Return to plantation owners was highest where they could successfully lobby to restrict homesteading (or “squatting”) of abandoned land. They also used the tax code to benefit themselves at the expense of small plot holders. The same spirit of coercion, if not the exact same tactics, were used in the American South after emancipation to keep former slaves on plantations.
Underneath the vapid squawking of woke Twitter parrots, there exists a real issue: the incentive structure is being manipulated to hide coercion beneath the guise of free will. The rules are rigged. Let us not be tricked into defending a current system we do not support. Author:
Kyle Ward (@dkyleward) is a data scientist with degrees in engineering and statistics. He uses machine learning and econometrics to inform transportation and redistricting decisions. He avidly consumes all things Mises institute on his (almost) daily runs.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Governments, Interventionist Economy, rigged, wage slavery | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2020
Throughout history global chaos has always been used as a precursor to big change on our planet. Sometimes many of these changes are done under the guise of good will, where the initiators of these measures claim they are doing it for humanities best interests. We saw this, for example, when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the extent of surveillance that’s conducted by the U.S. government, measures put in place that are supposedly for our protection. Snowden has recently expressed his opinion that COVID-19 is being used by governments to grab even more power and take away many of our basic rights and freedoms. This seems to be a common theme also expressed by many when it comes to what’s called “The Great Reset.”
What is “The Great Reset?” It’s an initiative that’s been started by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The House of Windsor, and the UN are prime executive co-producers. It was the title of a book that was published by WEF founder Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret earlier this year. Top sponsors include BP, Mastercard and Microsoft. According to them, “There is an urgent need for global stakeholders to cooperate in simultaneously managing the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. To improve the state of the world, the World Economic Forum is starting The Great Reset initiative.”
I am not going to go into great detail here about The Great Reset, as I recently published an essay on it doing just that titled COVID-19: A Precursor To A ‘New World Order?’ aka “The Great Reset.” You can refer to it if interested as it’s a much deeper discussion on the topic. With this piece I simply wanted to share the opinion of Alberta Premier, Jason Kenney, and encourage people to ask themselves why controversial topics are always presented as a “conspiracy theory” and never really discussed or addressed properly by mainstream media.
It’s time to truly begin having serious conversations about controversial topics and learning to empathize with differing positions on them. The need for collective sensemaking is at an all-time high, and if we are constantly divided and unable to perceive reality from the perspective of anybody else we are going to struggle to create meaningful change. This is both a time to consume information and to develop ourselves personally to become effective changemakers.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Great Reset, Jason Kenney, World Economic Forum | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2020
In this era of the fraudulent coronavirus ‘pandemic,’ most are well on their way to becoming a nation of mindless drones that will be accepting of human experimentation. This is in fact already happening, but it seems that it will get much worse very soon. Fear can breed aggression, but considering the herd mentality of the human species, it is much more likely to breed passivity and compliance, both very detrimental to survival in what could be considered any normal way of life.
The ultimate goal of the state here is to first destroy the human spirit, leaving an empty mind and a blank slate so that the people at large are ready and willing to become the test subjects for their claimed masters.
“We slow the progress of science today for all sorts of ethical reasons. Biomedicine could advance much faster if we abolished our rules on human experimentation in clinical trials, as Nazi researchers did.”
~ Paul Nitze
The idea of brutal experimentation on animals has always been justified by claiming that it is necessary in order to benefit the health or mental well being of humans. This propagandist thinking could and would lead to a public acceptance of experimenting and torture of living things in the false name of human progress. But it was also meant to condition man to accept harm to one species in order to better his own. It stands to reason that once this mindset was in place, it could be argued that human experimentation could enhance that ‘progress’ much further, thereby becoming a necessary evil that could be seen as beneficial, especially if it began with psychological experimentation, and not physical. Now that the psyche and body are in many cases being seen as one and the same, why not use medical testing of some humans so as to benefit the collective? In this scenario, the individual would be destroyed in favor of the group, and this could easily lead to sacrificing some for the good of all. The result of this progression would be that we are all lab animals now.
In this era of the fraudulent coronavirus ‘pandemic,’ most are well on their way to becoming a nation of mindless drones that will be accepting of human experimentation. This is in fact already happening, but it seems that it will get much worse very soon. Fear can breed aggression, but considering the herd mentality of the human species, it is much more likely to breed passivity and compliance, both very detrimental to survival in what could be considered any normal way of life. It is not that this government and its controllers have not used its citizens and others for these purposes in the past, but today it is becoming rampant, and is even out in the open concerning current policies in place.
Most all that is now being mandated by the political class is based on experimentation. That experimentation is predicated on compliance testing, this regardless of the gross harm caused. You see, when experimenting with the human animal, it is first necessary to gauge the psyche of the average person in order to know how far the experiment can advance. Because of this, it is crucial to perform psychological experimentation prior to physical experimentation. This of course is not necessary with animals, but is vital with ‘reasoning’ humans. With mass compliance, it becomes evident to the ruling sector of society that the people are prepared to become guinea pigs, and therefore are ripe for abuse. These lockdowns, distancing rules, mask wearing, voluntary business closings, virus testing, and restrictions to liberty at every level, are simply tests to see if the people are willing to follow ludicrous and dangerous instructions in order to gain some sort of false safety due only to pre-planned government propaganda. It has been obvious that Americans in large part have been willing to do absolutely anything they were told to do, including allowing their older family members to be psychologically tortured, and effectively murdered, due to forced isolation by the state.
The ultimate goal of the state here is to first destroy the human spirit, leaving an empty mind and a blank slate so that the people at large are ready and willing to become the test subjects for their claimed masters. The day of the first significant physical experiment on this population is fast approaching, and at this time seems imminent. That experiment will rival many of the heinous and torturous ‘scientific’ persecutions of the past, but will be unique in that it will be made to seem voluntary instead of being done through incarceration and brute force. But there is a sinister aspect of this feigned voluntarism that exposes a heinous psychological manipulation.
I am speaking here of course of the coming poisonous ‘Covid-19’ vaccination. The contradiction and foretelling of doom is obvious, so why are so many already willing to be used as lab animals? The first sign of great danger lies in the fact that the state has exempted the pharmaceutical companies developing these experimental toxins from all liability. The state with your money is also paying for the development of these virulent injections, while allowing unlimited profit to its partners in crime. In addition, the government is claiming to be liable, but that is a lie, as government has nothing, and produces nothing; it only steals from those that do. So each and every citizen guinea pig taking this deadly and experimental vaccine is personally liable for any and all harm. What this means is that vaccine manufacturers, deliverers, and the government have zero risk, while the people retain all the physical, mental, medical, and financial liability. This is a true government coup d’état, in that the human lab animals take all the risk, contract all the sickness, disease and even face death, and also pay for all the damages.
While the political class will crow loudly about this not being mandatory, they will at the same time threaten every single individual that does not bow down to the state and take this vaccine. Those threats will be brutal, and meant to destroy any that do not comply. So this vaccine will really be mandated in that those that disobey will be abused, and attempts by the government to force consent will be completely inhumane. The ability to get daily necessities including food will be eliminated, as will most all travel, working and supporting family without an immunization pass, gaining medical care, access to any service, all public entertainment and activities, and most anything vital to life. Does this sound voluntary to you?
But this experimentation will not end here, but will also continue as long as the people allow it to continue. There will be new experimental vaccines, new updated injections, injectable nanoparticles, chips, property confiscation and redistribution, RNA and DNA experimentation, universal basic income, governmental digital money, tracking devices, and many other intrusions said to be necessary for any citizen wanting to be able to move about or function in any ‘new normal’ manner. So long as the people comply with these orders, the list of demands by the state will be innumerable.
We are all facing one giant experiment where the powerful controlling ‘elites’ and their pawns in government are the mad scientists, and the common masses are the lab animal test subjects.
There is only one answer to this madness: Disobey every government order and be prepared to defend at all costs your life, your family, your property, and your freedom!
“The enrichment center would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation.
If any Aperture Science employee would like to opt out of this new voluntary testing program, please remember; science rhymes with compliance.
Ted Kosmatka, Portal 2: Lab Rat
Source links:
The Best of Gary D. Barnett Gary D. Barnett [send him mail] is a retired investment professional that has been writing about freedom and liberty matters, politics, and history for two decades. He is against all war and aggression, and against the state. He recently finished a collaboration with former U.S. Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, and was a contributor to her new book, “When China Sneezes” From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Political-Economic Crisis.” Currently, he lives in Montana with his wife and son. Visit his website.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: distancing rules, Lab Animals, lockdowns, mask wearing, pandemic, virus testing, voluntary business closings | Leave a Comment »