Your ability to hold real cash, not just bank balances accessible by check or electronic means, protects you from the inevitable infrastructure problems associated with any electronic system but also from the instantaneous seizure of at least some of your money. Cash is anonymous whereas a bank account is not. If something happens, you will still be able to function to the limit of the cash you happen to have on hand.
Before delving into the dangers of eliminating cash and mandating that all transactions be conducted by digital means, let us briefly discuss the legal aspects of money. In the United States, as in all economies that have legal tender laws, only cash is recognized as money. Some may think that the balance of their bank accounts is money too, but that is not quite the case. Your bank balance is one step removed from legal money.
All banks must maintain minimum balances of reserves, in cash held either in their vaults—a very small amount—or in their “reserve accounts” with their local Federal Reserve Bank branch (there are twelve of them). These reserve account balances may be converted to real money, or cash, at your bank’s discretion. However, the total cash in our economy also includes cash held outside the banking system, such as the money in your wallet, cookie jar, or personal safe deposit vault.
The total of bank reserves plus cash held outside the banking system is known as the monetary base. The monetary base is not the same as the money supply. Most of the money supply is composed of bank credit not backed by reserves. When banks make loans, they credit your account, which becomes bank credit money. Yes, this money was created by the bank out of thin air. Notice that the banks did not create reserves, only credit money, which is not the same thing.
How, indirectly? Government makes us poorer than otherwise we would be. The state takes roughly 50% of the GDP and pretty much wastes it all. If we had this back from this venomous institution, we would be twice as rich as we are.
What does poverty have to do with weather conditions? Simply this: wealthier is not only healthier, but also allows us to be more and better protected from adverse weather conditions. It is not for nothing that two storms of equal intensity will play much greater havoc in a poorer than a richer country. The buildings in the latter nation will be built far more sturdily.
Hurricane Idalia made devastating landfall on the west coast of Florida a few weeks ago and then ripped across the state where “woke goes to die” (who makes up names for hurricanes, anyway? I looked it up. It is the World Meteorological Organization; who knew? go figure).
Who or what is to be justifiably blamed for this event and others like it? To hear left-wing environmentalists tell it, it is the fault of not global cooling, the cause of all weather evil in the 1970s, nor, yet, global warming, the bete noire in the 1990s, but temperature change, the guilty party nowadays. This, in turn, is the result of capitalism, greed and profits (but I repeat myself), failure to ban fuels such as coal and oil, and over population. It is difficult to maintain this explanation with a straight face, since there is no evidence that hurricanes are getting worse.
What then is the real cause of these horrendous events?
Government, of course, both directly and indirectly.
History shows that smaller polities mean more decentralized governance and greater human liberty. As people can effectively vote with their feet, they can indirectly affect societal change. This is not to say that small governing bodies have no ability to coerce or become corrupt, but people living in those communities are able to more easily choose a new government right next door.
Along the Danube River in South-Central Europe rests a unique parcel of land. This roughly 2.7 square mile piece of land is sandwiched between Croatia and Serbia. Before the breakup of Yugoslavia, the autonomous regions within the federal republic established their borders following the Danube. However, after decades, the river has slightly changed its course, leaving this piece of land outside of both borders. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, neither nation claimed the land, and in fact it remained terra nullius, or no man’s land, until 2015.
Vit Jedlička and a few others proclaimed the territory as the Free Republic of Liberland on April 13, 2015. Upon international recognition, Liberland would be the third smallest sovereign state, after the Vatican City and Monaco. There are four criteria required to be considered a state according to the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States. They are as follows:
A permanent population;
A permanent territory;
Government;
Capacity to enter into relations with other states;
Liberland has met all of the requirements, meaning that it should be recognized as sovereign by the international community.
Some libertarians have questions as to the necessity of a new state. Aren’t there enough countries already? Why couldn’t Vit and the others be grateful in their original home countries? Could Liberland even be a real country anyways? All of these questions are valid but have equally valid responses.
History shows that smaller polities mean more decentralized governance and greater human liberty. As people can effectively vote with their feet, they can indirectly affect societal change. This is not to say that small governing bodies have no ability to coerce or become corrupt, but people living in those communities are able to more easily choose a new government right next door. Modern nation states are relatively new creations anyways. Thousands of smaller polities existed both inside and outside of competing empires for generations. There is no reason why groups should not be able to secede or claim uninhabited land as new self governing communities.
For Americans, one of the most important stories is that of the separatists and pilgrims who left the Old World searching for religious freedom and commercial success. Not only did they live in the New World as British citizens, but they would also eventually proclaim their own autonomy.
This sense of agency is celebrated by Americans, as well as many post-colonial states around the globe. Why shouldn’t this value be celebrated by everyone? Self-determination as an inalienable right, given by a Creator is crucial to the human experience. Without it, humans lack dignity. The idea that a human adult has no choice but to be subject to the authority of another human adult without explicit consent is dangerous, even tantamount to enslavement.
Property rights also come into play here. Famous empiricist John Locke proclaimed that a natural right to property existed because, “God gave (the world) to mankind in common” for the purpose of stewardship and survival. He argues that individuals can only survive by laboring, and appropriating parcels of land. Thus, property is a natural right to those who contribute their labor to its sustainment.
If you think this all sounds like a contrivance to virtue signal environmental responsibility, you would be right. Whether electric utility customers are receiving renewable energy isn’t clear, but that’s what they signed up for (by default, in most cases). CCAs, in any case, can claim they provide their customers with the responsible kind of electrical energy and thereby help them save the planet.
We expect the lights to come on when we flip a switch, unconcerned with how the electricity is produced or how it reaches our homes. We are aware of telephone poles, wires overhead, and transmission towers, solar panels, and windmills across the countryside. But as long as we pay our electric bills, we trust electric utilities to provide our power somehow.
Who produces the electricity we use? Where does it come from? How does it reach us when we flip that light switch? And is electricity as “green” as we are often told it is?
Residential and business electric customers across the country are served by three different types of energy providers: the traditional monopoly known as an investor-owned utility (IOU), the public power utility owned by a municipality, and the community choice aggregator (CCA). This last is a relatively new type of nonprofit purveyor allowed in nine states—Massachusetts, Ohio, California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, and New Hampshire—that have passed legislation allowing them.
These entities form what is collectively referred to as the grid, an interconnected network for delivering electricity from producers to consumers.
Community Choice Aggregators
CCAs are the newest type of electricity provider. They buy electricity from private generating firms, many of which are small start-ups, and deliver it to end users over wires owned by traditional IOUs. Thus, CCAs function as middlemen between energy suppliers and consumers. They also compete with investor-owned IOUs to sign up entire cities or counties.
Electricity can be generated by coal, natural gas, diesel, nuclear fission, biomass, hydropower, solar panels, and windmills. Of these, the last five may be considered renewable sources, but green energy purists view only solar and wind energy as renewable.
California contains over 11 percent of the American population, its energy markets are deregulated, and it hosts twenty-five CCAs, which serve fourteen million customers throughout the state in over two hundred municipalities with over eleven thousand clean energy power purchase agreements.
In addition to these twenty-five CCAs, California has three large IOUs: Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric. Together, they own a significant share of the state’s energy distribution infrastructure (poles and wires). California also has one large municipality-owned utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, as well as several smaller public utilities throughout the state.
In 2002, the state legislature passed a bill (Assembly Bill 117) admitting CCAs, which began forming shortly afterward. CCAs promise to provide “green” energy (i.e., generated by solar or wind) to reduce carbon emissions and counteract climate change.
By dragging the United States into this war, President Biden has planted the seeds of innumerable 9/11-style blowback attacks on the US. Yet he has the audacity to claim that all of this is keeping us safe.
President Joe Biden announced last week that the United States would be funding – and possibly fighting – three wars in three different parts of the world at the same time. It is an ambitious foreign policy for a president who doesn’t even seem to be able to express a coherent thought without the help of a teleprompter.
Nearly every word of Biden’s speech was untrue, including the preposterous suggestion that “American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe.”
US interventionism in Ukraine for over ten years and in the Middle East for decades has brought those two regions to the brink of an explosion unlike anything seen before. And if that is not enough, Biden’s neocons are also determined to take us to war with China over Taiwan. The world is literally falling apart in front of us as Biden claims we are the only thing holding it together!
After a brutal attack on Israel by Hamas earlier this month, Israel declared war not just on the terrorists who attacked its territory, but on the entire population of Gaza itself. Israel’s policy of collective punishment – razing Gaza to the ground – has inflamed Muslims from the Middle East to Asia to Western capitals. The anger rages more fiercely than we have seen in decades, perhaps since the founding of Israel in 1948.
Yes, very shocking news: trying to make the civilian population of another state so miserable they choose to try and overthrow the regime doesn’t work.
Geez, if only Washington had known that from repeatedly trying it before…like in Iraq…or Iran…or Cuba…
Watching the Republican Party presidential debates has been surreal in many ways. Apart from the awkward spectacle of Mike Pence and Chris Christie acting like they have a chance at the Oval Office, perhaps nothing has been more confounding than the new, hottest idea: bombing and invading Mexico to solve the drug crisis. And it gets better! Because while they’re at it, the military will solve the migrant crisis, too.
This really is baffling.
Except for those monied interests who benefit from its continued fighting, the drug war has been a total failure. Pick any metric you like.
So, too, but for those monied interests who benefit from its continued fighting, the Global War on Terror has been a failure on all fronts. Again, pick any metric you like.
So why would a war on “narco-terrorism” be expected to go any differently?
I mean really, taking a step back, does the fact that so many of the migrants are now Venezuelan not strike these Republicans or their voters as in any way odd? No more than the fact that so many of the same migrants headed north thirty years ago were Guatemalan and Salvadoran.
Nor that efforts by each of the previous administrations at intervention and influence operations in Latin America (Honduras in 2009, Bolivia in 2019, or Venezuela in 2020) have all been failures.
It really is strange. One would think that a policy that generated such obvious negative consequences would have surely been abandoned. But it hasn’t. And just as destroying the Middle East and destabilizing North Africa led to the migrant crisis Europe is still enduring, Washington’s focus on isolating and impoverishing an already populous and poor country like Venezuela has prompted many of them to pack up and leave
Replace the corn every day. Once they’ve become dependent on the free food, erect a section of fence down one side of the clearing. When they get used to the fence, they’ll begin to eat the corn again. Then you erect another side of the fence.
Continue until you have all four sides of the fence up, with a gate in the final side.
Then, when the pigs enter the pen to feed, you close the gate.
Most of us would like to assume that we’re smarter than pigs, but are we? Let’s have a look.
Pigs are pretty intelligent mammals, and forest-dwelling wild pigs are known to be especially wily.
However, there’s a traditional method for trapping them.
First, find a small clearing in the forest and put some corn on the ground.
After you leave, the pigs will find it. They’ll also return the next day to see if there’s more.
Replace the corn every day. Once they’ve become dependent on the free food, erect a section of fence down one side of the clearing. When they get used to the fence, they’ll begin to eat the corn again. Then you erect another side of the fence.
Continue until you have all four sides of the fence up, with a gate in the final side.
Then, when the pigs enter the pen to feed, you close the gate.
At first, the pigs will run around, trying to escape. But if you toss in more corn, they’ll eventually calm down and go back to eating.
You can then smile at the herd of pigs you’ve caught and say to yourself that this is why humans are smarter than pigs.
But unfortunately, that’s not always so.
In fact, the description above is the essence of trapping humans into collectivism.
Collectivism begins when a government starts offering free stuff to the population. At first, it’s something simple like free education or food stamps for the poor.
But soon, political leaders talk increasingly of “entitlements” – a wonderful concept that by its very name suggests that this is something that’s owed to you, and if other politicians don’t support the idea, then they’re denying you your rights.
Once the idea of free stuff has become the norm and, more importantly, when the populace has come to depend upon it as a significant part of their “diet,” more free stuff is offered.
It matters little whether the new entitlements are welfare, healthcare, free college, or a guaranteed basic wage. What’s important is that the herd come to rely on the entitlements.
Then, it’s time to erect the fence.
Naturally, in order to expand the volume of free stuff, greater taxation will be required. And of course, some rights will have to be sacrificed.
And just like the pigs, all that’s really necessary to get humans to comply is to make the increase in fencing gradual. People focus more on the corn than the fence.
Once they’re substantially dependent, it’s time to shut the gate.
What this looks like in collectivism is that new restrictions come into play that restrict freedoms.
You may be told that you cannot expatriate without paying a large penalty. You may be told that your bank deposit may be confiscated in an emergency situation. You may even be told that the government has the right to deny you the freedom to congregate, or even to go to work, for whatever trumped-up reason.
And of course, that’s the point at which the pigs run around, hoping to escape the new restrictions. But more entitlements are offered, and in the end, the entitlements are accepted as being more valuable than the freedom of self-determination.
Even at this point, most people will remain compliant. But there’s a final stage: The corn ration is “temporarily” cut due to fiscal problems. Then it’s cut again… and again.
We are now in an existential struggle to preserve the values that founded the most successful constitutional system in the history of the world.
It is our legacy that now can be either boldly defended by a grateful people or lost in the whimper of a disinterested generation.
Rejection of the Constitution began at roughly the time the ink was dry. Government employees are required to uphold the constitution. The very few that try are duly punished.
Below is my column in Fox.com on the poll released last week showing an increasing number of citizens have lost faith in our constitutional system and now view violence as warranted to silence those with opposing views.
It is a crisis of faith that represents the greatest possible threat to our Republic. The loss of faith and fealty constitutes one of the greatest crises that our nation has faced since its foundation.
Here is the column:
A recent startling poll shows that a majority of voters not only view the opposing party as a threat to the nation but justifying violence to combat their agenda. The poll captures a crisis of faith that I have been writing about for over a decade as an academic and a commentator. Many now question democracy as a sustainable system of government. It represents the single greatest threat to this nation: a citizenry that has lost faith not just with our system of government but with each other.
The polls by the University of Virginia Center for Politics shows a nation at war with itself. Fifty-two percent of Biden supporters say Republicans are now a threat to American life while 47 percent of Trump supporters say the same about Democrats.
Among Biden supporters, 41 percent now believe violence is justified “to stop [Republicans] from achieving their goals.” An almost identical percentage, 38 percent, of Trump supporters now embrace violence to stop Democrats.
Not surprisingly, many of these people have lost faith in democracy. Some 31 percent of Trump supporters believe that the nation should explore alternative forms of government. Roughly a quarter (24 percent) of Biden supporters also question the viability of democracy.
Faith is the one thing that no system of government can do without. Without faith in the underlying values of a constitutional system, authority rests on a mix of coercion and capitulation.
For years, I have written about this growing loss of faith and how it has been fueled by our intellectual and political elites. In the echo chamber of news and social media, citizens constantly hear how the opposing party is composed of “traitors” and how the constitutional system works to protect enemies of the people.
Viewers now get a steady diet of figures like MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal who called the U.S. Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it.
In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
MCViewPoint 
