http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=227328
Is this Geolibertarian full of crap?
"Austrian Schoolers don't really want to "end" tyranny; they merely want to privatize it and call it "liberty." (Not that they'll ever admit to this, of course, even though it was the Rockefeller Foundation that financed the Austrian School out of obscurity in the U.S.) [...] As to the question of currencies, allow me to repeat an explanation I've given elsewhere concerning this issue: Thanks to the educational efforts of monetary reformers such as Ellen Brown, Richard C. Cook, Byron Dale, Bill Still and Stephen Zarlenga, millions of people are now aware of just how disastrous the gold standard in all its variants has consistently proven to be in the past, and of how finance oligarchs have historically promoted this system while demonizing debt-free Greenbacks. As an apparent consequence of this, it has in recent years become fashionable among many public relations-savvy Austrian Schoolers to avoid even mentioning the discredited gold standard, and to instead peddle the notion that if we simply turned money creation entirely over to the (euphemism alert!) "free market," then we would finally have a “sound” money system, and, as a result, all of our monetarily-caused economic problems would magically "correct" themselves. Yet there's a fatal flaw with this idea that its advocates either can't or won't see: once the government declares commodity-backed currencies A, B and C good for the payment of taxes and commodity-backed currencies X, Y and Z not good for such payment (or not as good), from that moment on the value that the former three have relative to the latter is determined more by government "fiat" than by the forces of free market "competition" -- at which point they cease to be "competing currencies" in any meaningful sense of the term. Of course, despite the obligatory lip service they pay to the Constitution, many if not most Austrian Schoolers are in fact anarcho-capitalists, and so the likely response from the more intellectually honest among them would be that there shouldn't even be a government. This "no government" fantasy is particularly delusional, because they simultaneously advocate the very sort of land tenure system that invariably and inevitably gives rise to oppressive "governments" in the first place: -------------------------------------------- http://lysanderspooner.org/node/59 In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class -- who had seized all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth -- began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the land-holding class -- their former owners -- for just what the latter might choose to give them. Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands, or other property, and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no alternative -- to save themselves from starvation -- but to sell their labor to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that. These liberated slaves, as they were called, were now scarcely less slaves than they were before. Their means of subsistence were perhaps even more precarious than when each had his own owner, who had an interest to preserve his life. They were liable, at the caprice or interest of the landholders, to be thrown out of home, employment, and the opportunity of even earning a subsistence by their labor. They were, therefore, in large numbers, driven to the necessity of begging, stealing, or starving; and became, of course, dangerous to the property and quiet of their late masters. The consequence was, that these late owners found it necessary, for their own safety and the safety of their property, to organize themselves more perfectly as a government and make laws for keeping these dangerous people in subjection; that is, laws fixing the prices at which they should be compelled to labor, and also prescribing fearful punishments, even death itself, for such thefts and tresspasses as they were driven to commit, as their only means of saving themselves from starvation. These laws have continued in force for hundreds, and, in some countries, for thousands of years; and are in force today, in greater or less severity, in nearly all the countries on the globe. The purpose and effect of these laws have been to maintain, in the hands of the robber, or slave holding class, a monopoly of all lands, and, as far as possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great body of laborers in such a state of poverty and dependence, as would compel them to sell their labor to their tyrants for the lowest prices at which life could be sustained. The result of all this is, that the little wealth there is in the world is all in the hands of a few -- that is, in the hands of the law-making, slave-holding class; who are now as much slaveholders in spirit as they ever were, but who accomplish their purposes by means of the laws they make for keeping the laborers in subjection and dependence, instead of each one's owning his individual slaves as so many chattels. [Continued...] -------------------------------------------- The key point here is that a group of private individuals presuming to "own" all the land comes first, and the "government" (or, more accurately, the State) into which they organize out of common interest comes second. (Whether they actually call it such is irrelevant.) That's the inevitable result of allowing the concept of "private property" to be applied to the Earth on which all must live yet which none produced in the same unlimited, unconditional sense that it's applied to the products of human labor. http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html It's also the inevitable result of turning the power of money creation (as the Austrian School would have us do) entirely over to private interests: [...] The typical Austrian School reaction to this is to shamelessly engage in hysterical fearmongering about the presumed evils of government-issued currency. Yet one could just as easily posit all sorts of ridiculous fearmongering scenarios concerning government-controlled police and government-controlled armies as a way of scaring well-meaning yet gullible readers into embracing the stateless utopian fantasy world of the Austrian School, wherein -- according to those who promote this quasi-religious fairy tale -- a mystical, God-like entity euphemistically called the "free market" magically keeps privately controlled police and privately controlled armies from terrorizing, oppressing and enslaving the masses. Fortunately, most readers aren't quite so gullible. They know that keeping the police and military in public rather than private hands is, if nothing else, the far lesser of two evils; and that the reason certain public institutions have become so corrupt and oppressive is that they've been, in effect, "privatized" to one extent or another (case in point: the "Federal" Reserve), and that the solution, therefore, is not to mindlessly throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to reclaim from these private interests our rightful control over our own government. I, for one, say "no" to the privatized tyranny that anarcho-capitalists would have us all living under if they had their way, and "yes" to the liberty and freedom that can only be experienced in a truly Democratic Constitutional Republic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DioQooFIcgE (The American Form of Government) I'm sure I'm far from alone in that regard.
Yes, it really is. And the aforementioned article - long though it is - utterly fails to even talk about free market money. He makes it clear that he beleives Austrian monetary theory is espousing crony capitalism in money production:
once the government declares commodity-backed currencies A, B and C good for the payment of taxes and commodity-backed currencies X, Y and Z not good for such payment (or not as good), from that moment on the value that the former three have relative to the latter is determined more by government "fiat" than by the forces of free market "competition"
This is true for a sufficiently strong government. In any case, Austrian monetary theory calls for a completely free market in money, which means the government is not allowed to pick winners and losers. So, the entire article is a waste of keystrokes and a red herring.
Clayton -
"So, the entire article is a waste of keystrokes and a red herring."
That's what I was thinking. This guy is always posting on prisonplanet forums and always there to talk bad about the fed, but wants the answer to be complete government controlled money. He's sort of like a Judas goat. He blends in, but then leads you right back to where you were.
I've followed him and trapped one of his fellow Tarpley accolytes a few times. Obvious troll, is obvious... Now with mod status!
I actually remember his hero, Webster Tarpley, say, on live radio,(paraphrasing) that we shouldn't listen to the Austrian economics because "what has Austweea ever pwoduced?"
I would say a troll more is there to disrupt and get his jollies. This guy is more decieving people. I think he knows better. The fact that he is now a moderator there is kinda wierd.
"what has Austweea ever pwoduced?"
Echoes of its once-great past:
Cont'd:
limitgov: (Not that they'll ever admit to this, of course, even though it was the Rockefeller Foundation that financed the Austrian School out of obscurity in the U.S.)
(Not that they'll ever admit to this, of course, even though it was the Rockefeller Foundation that financed the Austrian School out of obscurity in the U.S.)
https://mises.org/Community/forums/t/20332.aspx
Bloody yank