Friday, May 16, 2008

The Free Market is like the Internet

The internet is a web that isn't controlled by a single person or a single group. If there is a defect, data gets routed around it.

If I were a baker and my flour supplier screws up, I can find another flour supplier.

The Free Market is self optimizing. If I had 2 flour suppliers I'd go with the one that offered the best combination of price, quality, and service. If the less favored supplier figured out a way to cut cost, he would become the favored supplier. Let's say he figured out that he could cut cost by switching his delivery vans to vegetable oil / diesel. The other guy would then have to figure out a way to cut his costs too.

The beauty of this is that everyone figures out a way to be most productive, because he gets rewarded. I don't need to tell the flour supplier that he should switch his delivery vans to diesel. No bureaucrat needs to decide who gets how many rolls of toilet paper that week.

The free market in a way is also like distributed processing. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry would get to decide how to best run their business. A million individual brains is better than one single bureaucrat.

The opposite of this is centralized economic planning a la the Soviet Union. Their shortages of basic necessities were legendary. In contrast, when were you ever worried that your favorite coffee shop would have no coffee one morning?

The idea of the free market as self-optimizing is espoused in the classic essay, "I, Pencil":
http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Essays/rdPncl1.html

The most curious thing of all though is, despite the fact that many people realize that central economic planning is ridiculous, they allow the very core of the economy, the monetary system, controlled by a central planner, the central bank, aka the Federal Reserve (in the United States).

How does the monetary system work? Here is a fantastic 45 minute cartoon video making it easy to understand:
http://www.moneyasdebt.net/

Thursday, May 15, 2008

The Gatekeepers

Most of the population fall for the Left vs. Right argument, believing that the Democrat vs. Republican debate is valid. They are simply playing out the role of Good Cop / Bad Cop.

If the left/right axis were simply socialism vs. capitalism, then I am a right winger. (Note that today we have CORPORATISM and NOT true capitalism).

However, many issues are mixed into the "left/right" axis, seemingly at random. The human tendency to identify with a group makes them want to identify with either the left or the right, at first due to their pet issue, and are brainwashed later into accepting all the other stands of that side on all the other issues.
  • Who decided that the right would be pro gun rights?
  • Who decided that the right would be "pro life"?
  • Who decided that the left would be pro civil liberties?
  • Who decided that the left would be anti war?
  • Who decided that the left would be pro gay marriage?
(Missing from this is the most important issue, the fact that the monetary system is fundamentally flawed, and inherently corrupt. )

In reality ...
  • The Democrats in Congress have voted overwhelmingly to support the Iraq war. (They aren't anti war)
  • The Democrats have voted overwhelmingly to support the Patriot Act. (They aren't pro civil liberties)
  • The Republicans have increased spending as much, if not more than, the Democrats. (They aren't pro small government)
  • The Republicans (more accurately, the NeoConservatives) have continually increased government power (They aren't pro small government)
  • The Republicans (the NeoConservatives), have been pushing for more war (How is that pro-life?)
  • Republican Ronald Reagan bought into Keynesian Economics (tax less but spend more, which of course increases deficits, and benefits the bankers).
As you can see, the "Left" and the "Right" each have some valid points, but on the valid points, they say one thing and do another - such as the Democrats voting to support the war and the Republicans increasing government spending.

An example of how people are manipulated by the Left/Right illusion is that all the pro gun rights people, who have forgotten that the 2nd Amendment is there so that an armed populace is a deterrent and the last stand against a tyrannical government, did NOT make a stand against the Patriot Act, an act by a tyrannical government! All because they were led to believe that the Republicans were on "their side".

And of course when someone gets it right, like Ron Paul, the "Left" and the "Right" attack him by simply screaming about his points that don't agree with the Establishment Right/Left. e.g. the "Right" screamed he's antiwar and therefore doesn't care about "national security", and the "Left" screamed that he's anti-human because he's anti-welfare. And then on Abolishing the Federal Reserve, they'll both just call it "loony".

Part of this left/right issues hodgepodge is the belief that we are screwed today by corporations and their lobbyists (true), but that the solution is more government regulation (false) and more socialism (false), because corporate abuses are a result of capitalism (false).

One other issue of the "extreme left" is that the US Government is abusive overseas (true), but that it's simply a result of simple politics (false).

Which brings me to the GATEKEEPERS, who are a potent method of making people believe in the left vs. right hoax.

Noam Chomsky for example is a LEFT GATEKEEPER.

http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=NoamAsset :
Noam Chomsky is often hailed as America's premier dissident intellectual, a fearless purveyor of truth fighting against media propaganda, murderous U.S. foreign policy, and the crimes of profit-hungry transnational corporations.

His formula over the years has stayed consistent: blame "America" and "corporations" while failing to examine the hidden Globalist overclass which pulls the strings, using the U.S. as an engine of creation and destruction. Then after pinning all the worlds ills on American imperialism, Chomsky offers the solution of world government under the United Nations.

Chomsky steadfastly denies the role of the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Committee, and Trilateral Commission in the creation and management of the wars and poverty he claims to condemn. When speaking on such "conspiracies," he said the following:

"It's the same with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, all these other things the people are racing around searching for conspiracy theories about -- they're "nothing" organizations. Of course they're there, obviously rich people get together and talk to each other, and play golf with one another, and plan together-that's not a big surprise. But these conspiracy theories people are putting their energies into have virtually nothing to do with the way the institutions actually function." (Understanding Power, p. 348)

The CFR has been the dominant roundtable group pushing for a Panamerican Union by 2010 which would dissolve national borders and unite Mexico, Canada, and America under a single currency, with biometric ID cards and GPS-tracked vehicles on camera-strewn superhighways. How can Chomsky seriously claim the CFR is a "nothing organization" when their role in crafting policy is so clear? Whom is he trying to protect in denying the treasonous goals of the CFR?

Chomsky's stonewalling on the Bilderberg Group raises even more suspicions. Since 1954 the Bilderberg has served as the central brain of the New World Order, the major secret gathering for Globalist agents from across the globe. Bilderberg chairmen like Prince Bernhard and David Rockefeller have pushed for total global government, eugenics population control, engineering wars, and controlling the worldwide economy. Top politicians from America and Europe also undergo a grooming process at the Bilderberg [meetings]. Bill Clinton went in 1991 as Rockefeller's personal guest, and Tony Blair attended in 1993 before becoming Prime Minister. John Kerry attended in 2000, and John Edwards did two weeks before becoming the VP nominee in 2004.


Gatekeepers have two functions:
  1. Limit discussion so that fans think that's all there is to the issues
  2. Make "extreme" bullshit statements so that the opposite side (the right in this example), will summarily dismiss his valid arguments, such as Chomsky's arguments against Corporatism, by way of the Ad Hominem logical fallacy, (which FSK groups under what he calls the "Strawman Fallacy")


Another example of a left gatekeeper is Lyndon Larouche.

Larouche has dug up and published obscure stuff like CIA involvement in the overthrow of certain foreign governments. With respect to (2) above, he says things like:

“The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications.”

And so by means of the Ad Hominem logical fallacy, the pro-right people will dismiss the notion that the CIA has overthrown legitimate foreign governments.

Larouche by the way endorses the "Alexander Hamilton" banking model -a central bank, like the Federal Reserve, which makes him a New World Order asset.

The Right Gatekeepers, most common of which are the obnoxious radio talk show hosts,
will say stupid things like "we need to invade Iraq", and then the pro-left will dismiss valid points like "we need to get rid of welfare".

Lou Dobbs is another kind of Gatekeeper. He rails against Corporatism and the North American Union, and claims that none of the presidential candidates ever talks about it, despite the fact that Ron Paul has talked against both many times! This is to prevent any real progress on these issues.

The way to identify gatekeepers is to see if they push any of the NWO (New World Order) agenda:
  • central banking
  • claim that the free market is the cause of recessions and/or poverty
  • more government power or more centralization of power
  • more government regulation
  • more government spending
  • more war / conflict
  • less individual freedom
Or if they rail against some of the agenda but limiting discussion to prevent real progress (e.g. Lou Dobbs not talking about Ron Paul).