'The political divide between the champions of the public sector and the private sector misses the point; the key divide is between those who support the monopolistic tendencies of both capitalism and government, and those who support the competitive effects of markets. As Adam Smith, who championed the market but not capitalism, put it: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” The market is where these conspiracies get exposed. To win in it, you don’t lobby, you innovate. Wherever free markets have been even tentatively tried, from Ancient Greece to modern Hong Kong, they have produced not just rising living standards, but net moves towards peace, tolerance, freedom and equality. Capitalism represents the interests of the rich, whereas the market represents the interests of the poor. Let’s hear it for the market as the antidote to capitalism.'

"A century ago a free market meant an economy free of rentiers, free of unearned income, free of landlords, and free of bankers."

'Corporations have nothing to do with the free market.' -- "No company can afford to pay for its own army to protect a monopoly, so it relies on the State's power of taxation..."

'It took 150 years to blow up the banking sector – a brief history of a slow detonation.' -- Pointing finger is pointing at "government"

'The 1% do not generate any wealth of their own. Everything they have they get by taking from others under the cover of law. They live at our expense. Without us, the State as an institution would die. The State is the only institution in society that is permitted by law to use aggressive force against person and property. The State is the institution that essentially redefines criminal wrongdoing to make itself exempt from the law that governs everyone else. It is the same with every tax, every regulation, every mandate, and every single word of the federal code. It all represents coercion. The State is everybody's enemy. Why don't the protesters get this? Because they are victims of propaganda by the State, doled out in public school, that attempts to blame all human suffering on private parties and free enterprise. They do not comprehend that the real enemy is the institution that brainwashes them to think the way they do. They are right that society is rife with conflicts, and that the contest is wildly lopsided. It is indeed the 99% vs. the 1%. They're just wrong about the identity of the enemy.'

'On your territory, only you are permitted to produce money. But that is not sufficient. Because as long as money is a regular good that must be expensively produced, there is nothing in it for you except expenses. More importantly, then, you must use your monopoly position in order to lower the production cost and the quality of money as close as possible to zero. Instead of costly quality money such as gold or silver, you must see to it that worthless pieces of paper that can be produced at practically zero cost will become money. Because you can create paper money out of thin air, you can also create credit out of thin air. In fact, because you can create credit out of nothing (without any savings on your part), you can offer loans at cheaper rates than anyone else, even at an interest rate as low as zero (or even at a negative rate). With this ability, not only is your former dependency on banks and the banking industry eliminated; you can, moreover, make banks dependent on you, and you can forge a permanent alliance and complicity between banks and state. You don't even have to become involved in the business of investing the credit yourself. That task, and the risk involved in it, you can safely leave to commercial banks. What you, your central bank, need to do is only this: You create credit out of thin air and then loan this money, at below-market interest rates, to commercial banks. Instead of you paying interest to banks, banks now pay interest to you. And the banks in turn loan out your newly created easy credit to their business friends at somewhat higher but still submarket interest rates (to earn from the interest differential). In addition, to make the banks especially keen on working with you, you may permit the banks to create a certain amount of their own new credit (of checkbook money) in addition and on top of the credit that you have created (fractional-reserve banking).'

"You who ask for welfare and handouts, and free education, free healthcare – are just as wrong as the 1percenters you protest. You're just not as good at using the guns of government as they are. The great divide is not between the 1percent and 99percent ... the great divide is between those who are willing to use the force of government to meet their ends, and the rest of us who want to find peaceful, cooperative, free-market solutions to society's problems – or at least, just want to be left alone by the moochers – the grandiose and the petty – and the social engineers, the deluded, the scammers, and even the 'well-meaning'."

'To conflate Wall Street – as an industry, anyway – with central banking is simply wrong. One is an evolution of the free market. The other hides behind it. Put central banking out of business and the worst excesses of Wall Street will almost immediately become a thing of the past. Put Wall Street out of business and central bankers will reconstitute over the weekend. Money Power lies with central banks, run by the Anglosphere power elite. These elites are quite prepared to sacrifice Wall Street. They WANT to regulate the private sector. Regulate it until it is cold as a corpse so that they can re-animate as they choose. The more laws there are, the better they do. The process is called mercantilism. The powers-that-be CONTROL governments. Pass a law and you are only adding to their arsenal. In fact, the leaders of Occupy Wall Street are DELIBERATELY turning the movement into a populist protest that looks to government for changes that will make societies work better. It is evident and obvious. Who knows who they work for – but evidently they are not who and what they say they are. We wish we were wrong.'

'Many are eager to transfer the system of money printing from central banks like the Federal Reserve to PUBLIC central banks that would be under the control of federal and state officials. For this reason the PRIVATE nature of central banking is often emphasized, though the Fed is not by any means entirely a private entity. In fact, it didn't even come into being until an Act of Congress was passed in 1913 authorizing it. Central banks like the Fed are what we call MERCANTILIST. That is they hide behind the power and authority of government to pursue private business goals. They use the color of government for private gain. Inevitably they are not entirely private entities. They cannot be. Central bank apologists like Ellen Brown have campaigned to ensure that people believe central banks like the Fed are ENTIRELY private when they are not. This is because "Brownians" (and others) want to propose that central banks be owned outright by public entities. If it must be tried, it should be attempted within the ambit of monetary competition and without naming the central bank printed money as the sole legal tender. When it comes to money, private markets should have a chance to compete. Absent the force of law, they will win every time.'

'Daily Bell: What is socialism? Jesse: Socialism is where the government lies and tells people they can have things for free. Daily Bell: Why would government make such promises? Jesse: So they can get more money from the Federal Reserve. Daily Bell: Why would the people who run the Federal Reserve like that? Jesse: Because they have the machines and they can make themselves a lot more money by lending it to the government. Daily Bell: How do they make money by lending it to the government? Jesse: Because the government has to pay interest. The government taxes the people in the country to pay them back on the money they made on the machines. Daily Bell: How much do you think it costs the Federal Reserve to make the money on the machines? Jesse: They just need a whole lot of paper and paint. Daily Bell: Why do you think people let this process happen? Jesse: I think because they don't know it's happening really.'

'The world's economy is a kind of planned madhouse. Those in power have inflicted upon it scores of central banks – all busily printing/creating money from nothing at the push of a button. Those who run these central banks are well aware of their ruinous disposition. They understand fully the boom bust cycle that brings bankruptcy and hopelessness to so many. But one does not ever acknowledge this. If one works within the system, one is not supposed to. In the upside-down world of modern finance, central bankers who print money are "hawkish inflation fighters." Politicians who endlessly create the distortive price fixes, called "laws," are "public servants." Corporate leaders who generate profits by linking their companies to the great, grinding machinery of Western legislation are "entrepreneurs." ...the Anglosphere elites also work via OMMISSION. That is, in addition to advocating fear, they actively encourage ignorance. The mendacity is breathtaking.'

'Derivatives are the $800 trillion or more gorilla in today's financial room. The problem lies in the bets, the wagers, in the shape of default swaps, to the tune of trillions of dollars, that are out there, and that risk being triggered by a default being declared a "credit event"... It's starting to look like that "CDS to hide debt" idea might be backfiring. ...all the Merkels and Obamas and Papandreous and Geithners on this planet will try with all their might to prevent that from happening. And they have virtually limitless access to your money, and that of your children, to do just that. They have exactly zero chance of succeeding, but that won't keep them from trying: their jobs, their social status, perhaps even their very lives depend on it. There's a low thunder rolling across the plains, and it's coming this way. There's nowhere to hide; we’ll have to live through it. It's called debt deflation. Derivative debt deflation. Financial crisis? You ain't seen nothing yet.'

'The image of the traveling snake oil salesman of 19th century America is by now a familiar trope. It is the image of the heartless huckster who preys upon the trust of the general public to swindle them out of their hard-earned savings. With a bottle of useless tonic and the help of a plant in the audience, the snake oil salesman made a living out of lies and deceit. In these respects, William Levingston was your average snake oil salesman...' -- "Competition is a sin!"

'...many justifications are inevitably advanced for regulation including the idea of "market failure." This is the fundamental defense of modern levelers. But those who defend this concept cannot, when pressed, name a single "failure" caused by the market. Inevitably, when one begins to examine this argument, one finds that it was a previous rule or law that set in motion the distortion that the "market" supposedly caused. Regulation also forces bigness. The US – and the West – long ago passed into a kind of market-fascism where large corporations (themselves a product of regulation) are essentially paired with their regulatory overseers. It doesn't matter whether the regulations seem to make sense or not. The system is evidently and obviously driven by Anglo-American power elite interests and the end result is intended to be one where markets and corporations are big enough to function within the context of a "one world order."'

'As the "problem" is marketed, the elites begin to create solutions, well funded private companies that appear to be brainchildren of alert entrepreneurs. In some cases they are; in other cases, the elites may have, initially, a direct hand in the creation of the companies; they are certainly involved in the venture capital funds and hedge funds that provide funding to these start ups. Eventually, these companies are directed toward stock exchanges and the initial, elite partners cash out. The cash-outs is then directed toward markets where it can be swapped for more substantial assets like real estate and gold. The real estate may be held or exploited; the gold is stored in countries like Switzerland using elaborate off-the-books accounting methods. Many such banks work directly for the elites; their other businesses are just for "show." This methodology is well beyond the understanding of most people, unfortunately. The scale at which it operates is almost inconceivable.'

"You'd rather sit in a surveillance van for days on end waiting to catch Tator handing Pee-Wee a vial? This, Detective, is what you're telling me?? A case like this here, where you show who gets paid behind all the tragedy and the fraud, where you show how the money routes itself – how we're all, all of us vested, all of us complicit... Baby, I could die happy."

'The ability to print money from nothing is the singular achievement of modern elites and the single most ruinous practice of the modern state. It is responsible for most if not all of the abuses of modern history, from torture, to war, to genocide. Money-printing (not money) is at the root of all evil. -- ...if EU protests over austerity are to be effective, it is central banks that have to be peacefully targeted on a consistent basis. A message needs to be sent... There are no good central banks. There is only honest money – gold and silver – and PRIVATE banking (run privately by private individuals) with or without fractional reserve lending: money competition, in other words. What is necessary if EU citizens want the "austerity torture" to stop is for individuals to target central banks with peaceful protests. Not private banks. Not commercial banks. Not savings banks. CENTRAL BANKS! Surround the great, granite temples of money printing and begin!'

'It is almost comical that central banks have chosen to buy gold now after selling so much of it early in the 2000s. Britain's former Prime Minister Gordon Brown famously sold tons of his country's gold at the bottom of the market. Today, out of office, he campaigns to become head of the International Monetary Fund and is said to be one of the front-runners. Only in the modern world could someone who espouses such financial blindness be considered for one of the world's top financial positions. It has little to do with one having common sense and a lot to do with one being a willing foot soldier. -- Buffet has managed to profit from the system as it is and his mouth has been hovering close to the fiat-money spigot for a long time now. But people have profited from unjust and savage systems of production throughout the ages. That doesn't mean that Buffett is any the wiser for having made so much money, only that he is adept at exploiting the current system to create wealth.'

'...global capitalism is actually the outcome of a deliberate societal reshaping that has as its underpinnings judicial corporate activism and central banking fiat money flows. Without fiat-money flows, corporations would not have the markets and wherewithal to make disposable consumer goods that pass for modern technology. The accumulated ephemera of modern societies is startling but that doesn't make it necessary. One of the problems that Chinese leaders have in directing consumer inwards is that the various gadgets that its factories are exporting to the West are disdained by their own populations. Western capitalism is by no means preordained and has been created by mercantilist and judicial fiat. Absent "laws," industry would be generally consist of smaller companies oriented around partnerships and individuals... multinationals would not exist without judicial activism. There is no such thing as a corporation actually; there are only people—making things and buying and selling.'

'The idea that the world is built of competing nation states and regions is increasingly a suspect one so far as we are concerned. In fact it is a kind of dominant social theme: that the West and especially the US are in decline and the larger countries of the developing world are in the ascension. No ... with the possible exception of China and a few Muslim countries, the Anglo-American power elite still runs the world in the 21st century as it did in the 20th in our view. Western elites, in their centuries' long campaign to tame, control and diminish Western middle classes have always needed to establish enemies. Without enemies there is no need for large governments and even larger armies. And without big governments, there are no legislative levers for elites to pull – giving them advantages that others cannot enjoy. All five BRICS ... have had very close ties to the Western world. We would argue (hypothetically) that for public consumption a show of independence is necessary.'

'Notice, please, the overtones of truculence (Icelanders will be sued in the Hague) general viciousness repurposed as false joviality (Iceland needs to have "good relations" with Europe and the rest of the world) and the final notes that linger on the palate (Iceland's ratings will surely "deteriorate"). The wailing and gnashing of teeth can be heard but only faintly. But it is there. Without the impression of inevitability, the Western financial scene becomes a bad joke. It has not brought prosperity (only expanding misery along with the inevitable decline of civil comity). There is nothing left, finally, for many citizens but slaving away into an old age for a pittance. Every time that little Iceland stands up to the combined banking forces of Europe and Britain, continental blood pressure soars. Worse and worse! Icelanders will not pay the stupid money back. The threat of force is all that's left.'

'...the current strategy that the World Bank is proposing for Africa is in keeping with the larger economic illiteracy that informs Western world-spanning institutions generally. The World Bank is an agent of the Anglo-American power elite. Its real job is one of neo-colonialism. It propagates Anglo-American power by supporting "governance" – the various appurtenances of developing nation-states that are supposed to ensure that "investments" are implemented in the intended manner. Western powers-that-be operate via mercantilism; by pulling the levers of government behind the scenes. Without government there are no levers and thus no availability of control mechanisms. Africa is to become the world's next China. This has two advantages for the power elite. First, it creates an entity that can purchase yet more sovereign debt from the West – yet another buyer of last resort, a function that Japan once served and China as well.'

'King's statement to the Treasury Select Committee as reported in the UK Telegraph is a pitch-perfect defense of central banking using the meme of private-sector blame. ...central banking blows up economies, leading to more regulation which further concentrates power in the hands of a few, allowing government and society to be even more efficiently run by the elite via mercantilism. It's kind of a closed feedback loop. The more chaos, the more regulation, the more leverage the elite has to reignite the process. Power is continually being centralized and the middle classes themselves (the elite's ultimate target) will actually clamor for the regulation that facilitates the process. In order to initiate the process, blame must be cast. There has not been enough anger at the private banking sector, especially in Britain where wrath has been focused – most alarmingly from the elite's point of view – at central banking itself. This is a direct result of the Internet...'

'...what is the incentive for a company running a government monopoly to provide a better brand of service to its "clients?" Ultimately, privatization is nothing more than mercantilism – the opportunity for private entities to gain control of the public purse. The very same private entities, controlled by wealthy elite money interests who have generated their enormous purchasing power by sucking the productive lifeblood from the very populace, will now "save the day" by effectively managing the countries infrastructure on behalf of a bankrupt (defrauded) populace. They will "invest" some of their appropriated fiat wealth, all made possible thanks to the central bankers and bought-and-paid-for politicos, and end up owning anything of "value" still remaining in America. What a deal! Privatization is just one more dominant social theme in our view, making the realization of elite command-and-control goals even more achievable. It's not what it appears to be.'

'Maybe Zuckerbro has some ideas for a new age democracy where every1 just votes on issues utilizing facebook, and we don't need Congress any more, and Zuckerbro can just ride dictator waves/rig some votes. Is 'technology'/'the internet' really a big deal that deserves national attention, or just another 'fad' that will be outdated 1 day? Are tech CEOs just 'legalized dictators'? Is Mark Zuckerbro trying 2 hard 2 be famous and control the world? It seems like this was some sort of modern illuminati meeting, with every1 who controls the world (because the world = 'the internet') Seems like this was probably some sort of huge meeting to 'control the future of the world.' Here they are toasting to 'enslaving' ppl with less than 100 friends on Facebook and making them do 'data entry enslavement' 4 the rest of time.'

'Mercantilism, especially in its initial phases, is not very evident to the body public, and this makes it a most useful tool. The regulatory strategies that it adopts can be disguised as mechanisms implemented for general welfare. Even mercantilism's inevitable consolidations can be presented as necessary for social and industrial "efficiency." Central banking partakes of this justification as does globalized securities trading. It is this trend that is currently in play in a post-crash global economy. The unification of markets and products proceeds apace... It is the Anglo-American power elite that evidently and obviously stands behind these ever-vaster consolidations – the same players that have developed and propagated central banking. It aims ultimately at creating a single market that can trade every kind of available instrument (including derivatives and carbon credits) under the watchful eye of a single super-regulator.'

'Mercantilism, especially in its initial phases, is not very evident to the body public, and this makes it a most useful tool. The regulatory strategies that it adopts can be disguised as mechanisms implemented for general welfare. Even mercantilism's inevitable consolidations can be presented as necessary for social and industrial "efficiency." Central banking partakes of this justification as does globalized securities trading. It is this trend that is currently in play in a post-crash global economy. The unification of markets and products proceeds apace... It is the Anglo-American power elite that evidently and obviously stands behind these ever-vaster consolidations – the same players that have developed and propagated central banking. It aims ultimately at creating a single market that can trade every kind of available instrument (including derivatives and carbon credits) under the watchful eye of a single super-regulator.'

'The banking industry simply remains cocooned inside the world's biggest bubble. Central banking itself is a bubble though people don't think of it that way, but those who print the money decide which industries expand—and no self-respecting central banker is going to let the central-bank distribution system (commercial banks) deflate. And so the banking business just gets bigger and bigger. There is no reason for such a big banking industry. In fact, banks, at root, are nothing but money-warehouses; during the industrial revolution, funding for businesses often came locally, from extended families and partnerships. But that is not how our modern economy works. Central banks have created a massive, Western banking infrastructure and they use it to fund massive multinational companies – and this results in a kind of Anglosphere brand imperialism. The world may not need Coca-Cola, but the powerful dollar reserve system has made Coke's ubiquitiousness possible.'

'The banking industry simply remains cocooned inside the world's biggest bubble. Central banking itself is a bubble though people don't think of it that way, but those who print the money decide which industries expand—and no self-respecting central banker is going to let the central-bank distribution system (commercial banks) deflate. And so the banking business just gets bigger and bigger. There is no reason for such a big banking industry. In fact, banks, at root, are nothing but money-warehouses; during the industrial revolution, funding for businesses often came locally, from extended families and partnerships. But that is not how our modern economy works. Central banks have created a massive, Western banking infrastructure and they use it to fund massive multinational companies – and this results in a kind of Anglosphere brand imperialism. The world may not need Coca-Cola, but the powerful dollar reserve system has made Coke's ubiquitiousness possible.'

'"Out of chaos, order" may guide the actions of globalists, but there is such a thing as too much chaos. The Greater Recession provided people with an impetus to read about alternative economics on the Internet... The truth-telling of the Internet has begun to have an impact. "Austerity" provided the trigger. The seeds were planted long ago, with the spread of mercantilist central banking around the world. In 2008, however the post-war system finally failed. Since it failed, the powers-that-be have printed about US$50 trillion in phony currencies to try to prop up the system. The nonsensical "banking" industry has been "bailed out" – though commercial banks are merely the distribution arm of central banks. They are not for the most part necessary, and have distorted Western economies terribly. Nonetheless, they have been preserved along with the rest of the ruinous system. It is this system that the powers-that-be are trying desperately to preserve.'

'A simple argument that proves that anarchy will work.' -- "What if there were an example of political anarchism *in practice* that every reasonably educated adult was perfectly aware of, and understood deeply?"

'It sounds bizarre doesn't it, dear reader? The idea that a small group of elite families with a power-base in London's City has managed to accumulate all the wealth in the world and – like the hydra-headed leader of million-man orchestra – played the tune to which the world has danced for at least 100 years. And yet ... gaze at the 20th century without flinching (if that is possible) and take calm stock of history as it is commonly recited. Central banking – price fixing of the price and amount of money – spread throughout the world despite the ruin it inevitably causes. Two world wars were fought, neither one with very clear antecedents. One great depression engulfed the world, again without a very clear causation. Somehow the world drifted away from honest money – gold and silver – which people had depended upon for millennia. New ‘isms" sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere – Communism, Nazism, Socialism – and somehow, somewhere, found fertile soil and were adopted by governments.'

'Nations engage in manic economic and political projects to get a "dopamine rush" that counters the depression and guilt about their success. Political paranoia and slow ego disintegration are seen in conspiratorial group-fantasies, fears of femininity [countered by persecution of homosexuals], imaginary humiliations by other nations [countered by a search for external enemies as grandiosity fails and Poison Alerts and sacrificial group-fantasies proliferate] [and Purity Crusades multiply as anti-modern and anti-child (Bad Boy) movements]. These are countered in the economic sphere by manic overinvestment, risky ventures, excess money supply growth, soaring debt and stock market speculations, and in the political sphere by jingoistic nationalism, expansionist ventures, military buildups and belligerent, insulting foreign affair behavior. As in drug addiction, each dopamine rush leaves a dopamine hangover that requires an even larger manic activity to overcome the resulting depression.'

'Nothing the power elite does in our opinion is unrelated to its larger goal of building a one-world government. The reason to commercialize environmentalism is because it is part of a larger dominant social theme having to do with scarce resources and "living within our means." These scarcity-based memes are intended to frighten Western middle classes into turning over wealth and power to globalist authorities (like the UN) carefully constructed for that purpose. Of course there are practical reasons as well. While some elite "green" solutions emphasize individualistic solutions to the faux-problem of "a society with limits," many solutions merely involve power generation at another source. Green cars such as the Volt power-up at night using electrical outlets that receive electricity from coal-burning power plants. One can make the argument that such solutions are actually contributing more "pollution" than they are removing.'

'The mercantilism that drives most major industry has been revealed – the elite's operative construct which is to build and centralize government power in order to pull its levers for its own benefit. Under no circumstances can government be blamed for what has occurred. Government is to be the solution, not the problem. If there WERE problems with government oversight, then those problems need to be corrected and government will need MORE power so that abuses will not occur next time. (Of course, actually they will – and they will be worse.) Scapegoats have to be found. Blame has to be re-established in the right places. Yes, with central banking under attack, with government generally revealed in the 21st as incompetent and corrupt, with regulatory democracy itself being questioned, the elite is desperate in our view not to lose its mercantilist privileges. What better way to distract the populace than the spectacle of a vast "insider-trading" scandal.'

'For those short positions, like the overwhelming interest rate derivative positions on the books of Morgan Chase, are probably not Morgan Chase's own at all but rather the U.S. government's. Certainly no financial institution would undertake such disproportionate positions -- positions that essentially make Morgan Chase both the silver market and the interest-rate market -- without effective assurance that government would backstop those positions. ...if the metal runs out, the commodity exchanges will change their rules or implement rules already adopted requiring cash settlement and prohibiting new long positions. The government can cover any amount of such settlements in cash through its agents. In short, take the metal out of the banking system -- yes, all you can. That will make market manipulation a lot more difficult and drag it into the open. But you won't crush J.P. Morgan Chase, for the investment bank is the government and the government is the investment bank.'

'First a nation state must establish a predictable "ruling class" because the mercantilist Anglo-American elite needs an elite, government-affiliated group for business purposes. Governments are very important to the Anglo-American axis, especially governments that are "democratically elected." Governments allow the Anglosphere to create laws and influence legislators in a way that empowers Western multinationals (owned by the elite in our view) and reshapes society within so-called legal parameters. By exporting consumerism abroad, corporatizing impoverished countries and reorganizing them generally along Anglo-American lines, Western money power has extended its reach round the world without the overt colonialism that caused so much resentment. When the Westernization is concluded, when a given economy has "matured," money power will move on, leaving behind only shambles and social chaos—a carcass picked clean of industrial potential, another treasury filled with worthless scrip.'

'A special 'Crash JP Morgan' edition of the Keiser Report. This time Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, look at the call from Eric Cantona to withdraw money from the banks and at the viral 'Crash JP Morgan Buy Silver' campaign by Max Keiser. In the second half of the show Max talks to Alex Jones about Google bombs, naked body scanners and 'Crash JP Morgan Buy Silver'.'

'The so-called differences between Chinese and Western business is increasingly a kind of dominant social theme in our view, one intended to present the perspective that private-market capitalism is under attack from a more brutal form of "state"-capitalism. This is in fact an effort to defuse criticism that the West is becoming too authoritarian and too statist. Look there – we are told – China is far worse, though perhaps more efficient. Here in the West we are devoted to our freedoms and will never go down the Chinese road. How has corporatism evolved in the West? In the past, we've discussed the idea that the corporation itself is an artificially manufactured entity and that, absent the current statist judicial system, corporations would not exist. When one examines Western capitalism, one continually comes to the conclusion that it has evolved away from entrepreneurialism and private markets and that this evolution is accelerating.'

'Washington Post: "Obama to award Medal of Freedom to 15, including investor Buffett..." -- We are reminded of a certain book when we read who is getting freedom medals from Barack Obama; but more on that at the end of this article. Warren Buffet is a kind of Keynesian socialist in our humble view, while George H. W. Bush is the former head of the CIA (as well as a former president), Angela Merkel is the quasi-socialist head of a combined Germany, Maya Angelou, a fine writer, is an activist feminist (by sympathy if not profession); labor chief John Sweeney was the president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009. All of these people in their own way have seemingly advocated using the force of government to support policies that they prefer. In fact, it strikes us that these medals support a kind of sub-dominant social theme – that freedom has to do (somehow) with empowering state activism, whether through financial regulation, government intelligences ops, feminist activism or labor law.'

'The idea that that the world needs "leaders" and "governmental organization" is the logical conclusion of the fear-based themes that the elite attempts to circulate using a wide variety of sympathetic instrumentalities such as universities, think tanks, NGOs and the mainstream media which it by and large controls if it does not own it outright. The idea that individuals are powerless, that money is a governmental excretion and that the only way to get things done is to lobby politicians is a core foundational element of power elite propaganda. Central banking doesn't work. No one, not even the smartest person in the world, not even Ben Bernanke, can fix the value and quantity of money for the larger marketplace. Articles like this one in the Washington Post – well written and perceptive as they are – cannot hide this fundamental point. And thanks to the Internet, we have the intellectual resources to formulate for ourselves what is wrong and to try and put it right.'

'This is how Western capitalism operates after all. Too little is made of the connection between stock exchanges and central banking, though much is made of the connection between central banking and the graduated income tax which is seen as necessary to pay off the interest of the debt that the larger government accumulates. But in fact stock exchanges along Western (American) lines are part of the process of managing the booms and busts that central banks inevitably generate. Because too few people understand the inevitability of booms and busts, nor the connections between central banks and exchanges, the middle class is inevitably damaged by market downturns. Only those who have some understanding of Austrian economics have a chance, in our view, of participating in the stock market on equal footing with market pros. ...understanding macro-economic forces are perhaps the most efficient for people who don't want to spend all their spare time involved in market analysis.'

(HATE, HATE, HATE!) -- Pointing finger is pointing at "government".

'It is distressing to anyone who believes in the progress of civil society. The corruption of science has occurred like everything else through the availability of government-printed fiat money. Stuffed with paper currency, science has grown bigger and bigger until money itself controls much of what is researched and documented. Inevitably what this means is that government preoccupations will be reflected in science and that science will be controlled by invisible strings. The mechanism is basically mercantilistic. The elite, which as realigned the scientific conversation in the past century, is interested mostly in research that either supports the primacy of Western culture or predicts its downfall. And either trend supports the larger elite agenda that has to with strengthening global government. Art, religion, sexuality, politics, war – every single aspect of human culture has been steadily dragooned into service of the larger goal. In our view the spell has been broken.'

'Dominant Social Theme: We need to print trillions of dollars from nothing. -- Western capitalism—regulatory democracy—has always been sold to the masses as a system in which the biggest and smallest have an equal chance at grabbing the proverbial gold ring. What the financial crisis and the "greater recession" have shown clearly is the amount of capital concentrated in a few hands. The real power and money is indeed concentrated at the very top and the scary thing is that Bernanke is merely a servant of money power, not a chieftain by any means. And yet despite the vast power and wealth available to the intergenerational and familial banking elite that runs the Western world, we detect more than a whiff of panic in the air. The creaky mechanism of counterfeiting that animates the heart of the central banking conspiracy has been wielded in full view of the Internet. The Western elites, we understand, are terrified of only one thing: civil insurrection.'

'The US is technically bankrupt. It is fighting two, three or four wars, mostly unsuccessfully, and maintaining something like 1,000 bases overseas. It is threatening to unleash kill squads in Yemen, to penetrate Pakistan with helicopters and troops and to start a new war by bombing Iran. Domestically, spending continues to outstrip revenues, the "real" unemployment rate hovers between 20 and 30 percent, 40 million children and adults are on food stamps; foreclosures are at an all time high; famous cities like Detroit are literally being bulldozed to remove squalor; the entire "red" interior of America is dilapidated, filled with empty factories and crumbling infrastructure. The dollar itself, once the world's proud reserve currency is worth about a penny... and eroding still further every time Bernanke launches another quantitative easing—prints another trillion in phony money to "stimulate" the economy. And what does the American stock market do? It goes UP.'

'Open source is a really interesting twist in the midst of all this. Software businesses with profit margins greater than the current Treasury yield hate open source because it mostly eliminates rents. Forkability is a rent vaccine, so open source "products" tend to be sold or serviced at just about their producer's opportunity cost. In the case of community based software, it is by definition at opportunity cost, but that cost is as likely to be paid in reputation as in dollars -- making this a conversation on sociology and psychology rather than economics. In any case, open source software is a leverage-less wasteland from the point of view of anyone that has an MBA. Or, it's a wonderfully rich source of innovation for the people that never liked having rent forcibly extracted. ...rent holders who are losing always ..: try to influence the law to make their rents more permanent. ... through lobbying, aggressive (and abusive) patent strategies...'

'Ex-banker Tim Nice But Balding is joined in the Dragons' Den by business partner Charlie Slick But Thick. The hedge fund managers offer the Dragons the opportunity of a life time, to invest in their "meaningless" piece of paper.' -- "We're both something in the City."

'Colin is convinced that it is the unions and the Communist party committee that really control the plant. Not the managers. The managers, he tells us, in both commentary and questions, have no power any longer. This is because they have become trapped by the growing absurdities of the Soviet Plan. But in reality the very opposite was true. The absurdities of the plan were actually beginning to allow the managers to become much more powerful. They were using the chaos and incompetence of central control to construct their own alternative economic systems. Which they controlled for their own benefit. In the case of Togliatti, senior managers were running an ever-growing shadow economy selling spare parts and even cars on the black market. It was supplying the needs that the Plan couldn't. And the "Red Directors" as they were called, were beginning to make a lot of money.'

"You can't have any more empathy and love for yourself than you can have for the weakest around you." -- "Everyone is always talking about their family when they're talking about politics." -- "The reason that you would need to be addicted to the pathetic and destructive rush that comes from literally stealing candy from the hands of babes is that you have learned from somewhere that power is composed of two things: #1. An ugly grab and #2. A triumphant moralizing." -- "Whenever you are cruel to those around you, you raise a need for a state in their mind especially when they're helpless." -- "The primary reason for sadism is that it is an attempt to overpower and master feelings of intense helplessness... If you will not accept those feelings of helplessness and agony of being brutalized by power, then you must normalize the brutalization of that power: you project your own helplessness onto other people and then you torture it because the only other possibility is that you feel it."

'The solution is usually the same (though again, we have not read Marshall's full book) and features additional programs and initiatives that are somehow not tainted by elite interference. This is government, in other words, without mercantilism. It is a fantasy in our view. It cannot exist. If there are governmental levers of power, wealthy elites will always find a way to pull them. The only solution is to starve the beast. Remove the levers of power altogether, or at least as much as possible. We believe in free-markets. We do not see it in class-warfare terms, necessarily. We do not see it even in terms of capitalist exploitation. We see it as a kind of cultural problem. These families have been pursuing the same goals for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. And for those who say it is impossible, we point to modern royalty and its entrenchment. It is indeed possible to leverage privilege into law and perpetuate wealth through national mandates. The evidence is all around us.'

'The ruination of the Chinese economy will likely end the horrible communist experiment that the Anglo-American axis helped inflict on the long-suffering Chinese. The vicious ChiComs and their oppressive system are only tolerated today because they have managed to create a good deal of "wealth' of late. But when it evaporates, the poor Chinese who have been buying empty flats in unpopulated cities as "investments" won't know what hit them. It is obvious the Anglo-American axis has been patiently tutoring the Chinese. The ChiComs and the Anglo-American elite think alike. They are brethren. Intertwined. It is perhaps a kind of love-hate relationship. If the West unravels any more rapidly or ruinously, it can take China down with it. Likewise, when China falls, (and it will) the crash will resound worldwide. The Chinese crash, when it occurs, will be truly resonant, like Ulysses impaling of Polyphemous' single Cyclopean eye.'

'Dominant Social Theme: Please don't look at the man behind the curtain. -- The entire mechanism has been reborn as a public enterprise beholden to the elite. Teacher, lawyer, educator, accountant, doctor or military person – all are entangled in a quasi-public system beholden to government at almost every level (and many are aware of their unwitting complicity, even if they can't verbalize it). For those who seek to survive outside of the system, there are various intelligence agencies and other adversarial governmental institutions manufactured to make life difficult. -- The "silver lining" to all of this, if there is one, is that the truth-telling of the Internet has thoroughly upset the artificial construct – the all-encompassing monetary and professional matrix – that the elite created through money power in the 21st century. As we have written before, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.'

'...making markets for scarce things is the result of having a kind of money that is released in a scarce way. This is a better way of saying it: for all these people’s understanding of open source and programmes, they refuse to acknowledge that the money we use is also a programme, that it is a closed source programme. ...the money we use is an operating system that was invented during the Renaissance, and it was invented for a top down scarcity model of media and culture and technology and everything. Now we’ve got a decentralised technological system with computers all over the place and people creating value all over the place, but we’re still using a 13th century money system. ...we need to now develop an economic platform capable of dealing with the distributed decentralised value-creation economy.'

'...the more that people can get back to individual problem solving with or without third-party negotiators the better off civil society will be. We would argue that people have a right to enforce private copyright and patent claims IF THEY CAN. Ultimately we would suggest that people have a right to try to attach invisible strings to their IP. Who is to stop them after all? The enforcement, within the framework we are suggesting, would amount to a kind of intense market competition. Reducing, or even eliminating, the resources and involvement of the state in judicial and civil matters as much as possible, would put the onus of enforcement on the individual. Much of what passes for "justice" today might suddenly be seen as too expensive to insist upon, once it was up to the individual. For us, issues of private justice, a return to common law and even pre-common law problem solving, even regarding so-called criminal issues, is part of creating a freer and more market-oriented society.'

'When it comes to copyright, we would argue for private justice... If someone wants to sue an individual or group for "stealing" intellectual property, the person should be able to do so. But there is no need for state laws or international treaties regarding the matter. ... This would mean that only very large commercial enterprises would end up being sued. Nobody would bother with individuals downloading files, etc. This is probably as it should be. Legal injury should follow natural law. What is "yours" is mostly what you can protect: your family, your property, etc. But launch a book or article into the world and protecting it becomes a good deal more arbitrary and difficult. We would argue that successful artists can still make a living even were intellectual property rights enforced privately rather than through statist mechanisms. Sure, it would be a less efficient and merciless system. People would pilfer songs and articles and even books. But so what? They do it anyway.'

'Ilsa is quietly, constantly insisting that they stop paying the mortgage altogether: “Everybody else is doing it—so why shouldn’t we?” A terrible sentence when a law-abiding citizen speaks it: Everybody else is doing it—so why don’t we? Fuck the rules. Fuck playing the game the banksters want you to play. Fuck being the good citizen. Fuck filling out every form, fuck paying every tax. Fuck the government, fuck the banks who own them. Fuck the free-loaders, living rent-free while we pay. Fuck the legal process, a game which only works if you’ve got the money to pay for the parasite lawyers. Fuck being a chump. Fuck being a stooge. Fuck trying to do the right thing—what good does that get you? What good is coming your way? Fuckit. When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy. Once enough of these J. Crew Anarchists decide they no longer give a fuck, it’s over for America—because they are America.'

'...homes being literally stolen, bank employees breaking into occupied dwellings to change the locks on houses they had not yet foreclosed on, multiple sales of the same property, improper foreclosures on houses where there was no mortgage at all, service of process that never happened and was attested to, literal forgery of court documents (e.g. process service filed that pre-dated the lawsuit itself) and other outrages. If this is not stopped immediately there is every reason to believe that the people of this nation will come to the conclusion that the bedrock of society—private property ownership—has been intentionally destroyed by a band of brigands with the explicit cooperation and permission of the government. Should that conclusion be reached - that our government has conspired with private parties to expropriate the homes of the citizens—history says that the outcome is likely to be extremely unpleasant and irreversible. We are running out of time to do the right thing.'

'Today, banksters (also referred to as the Monetary Elite) are said to run the world through their ability to print money and set into motion various dominant social themes that frighten the world's population into giving up ever more power and wealth to the bankster's chosen global institutions. The goal is said to be one-world domination. Of course, absent mercantilism – the blurring of public and private sectors and privileges – banksters would not have the power they currently have. Absent government power, the free-market itself would sort through the most horrid of these practices in short order. It is precisely because the free-market would make a hash of today's abusive banking, worldwide, that those involved in global banking have turned to government to ensure their monopoly power. Absent, government coercion, even the bankster monopoly would not long survive – nor even its gold manipulation.'

'The problem the power elite is having currently is that its Deus ex machina has been thoroughly exposed via the Internet... We use the term capitalism to describe the current economic system in the West as opposed to a "free market" one. The capitalism that the West has installed features the price fixing of money via central banks, a boom/bust economy and resultant war-based recovery mechanism. Every part of the current system emphasizes state power rather than individual entrepreneurship. The result is a system woefully divorced from underlying realities. Perhaps it is arrogance? Perhaps merely impatience? We are not sure. But it seems to us that even as the elite's fear-based promotions continue to fade and fail, the elite has stepped up its activity and is striving more strongly than ever for increasingly centralized, worldwide governance. Whether social unrest expresses itself in violence or in mass protest, we do not know. But we tend to believe it is different this time.'

'The stronger and more invasive the government, the more the power elite benefits, as its great wealth and influence provide it with the wherewithal to pull the levers of public policy for private gain. People accepted the intrusiveness of state control because so many goodies were being given away. The European Union was built on the back of central banking. America itself has gradually lost most of its "exceptionalism" as a result of the corroding influence of central banking. Eventually, Dreamtime subsidies. What did the power elite expect? It was easy enough to trick people into trading freedom for the comfortable confines of state authority when times were good. But did the elite really believe that people would honor the terms of a legislative contract that doomed them and their children to a kind of perpetual poverty? Did the elite believe that in exchange for trinkets handed out in the 20th century that people would accept penury in the 21st?'

'The word “capitalism” is an antagonym, meaning that it has at least two commonly used definitions that are completely at odds with (antagonistic to) each other: #1. A free market economy. #2. The present state-subsidized corporatist economic order or its features (e.g. the prevalence of absentee-ownership and wage-labor). -- Most agorists tend to use the second definition of “capitalism.” In An Agorist Primer (p. 30), Samuel Edward Konkin III wrote: "Sometimes the terms “free enterprise” and “capitalism” are used to mean “free market.” Capitalism means the ideology (ism) of capital or capitalists. Before Marx came along, the pure free-marketeer Thomas Hodgskin has already used the term capitalism as a pejorative; capitalists were trying to use coercion — the State — to restrict the market. Capitalism, then, does not describe a free market but a form of statism…"' -- *rolls eyes at the endless redefinitons* Capitalism != Corporatism, Mercantilism or Statism. Capitalism = Capitalism

'Dominant Social Theme: "We just have to keep trying until we get it right." The democratic regulatory meme is one of the most persistent and successful of all power-elite dominant social themes. But perhaps this dominant social theme itself is beginning to lose credibility. Regulation after all is simply nomenclature for government using force to tell people and businesses what to do. Each one of these modern omnibus bills provides more of a precedent to simply state the problem in arcane terminology while leaving the "details" up to regulatory authorities themselves. In practice this means that industry shows up on the doorstep and a great deal of behind-the-scenes horse-trading occurs before a finished product is unveiled. As regulators are inevitably subject to "regulatory capture" by the largest entities that they attempt to regulate, what this process means in practice is that those private groups with the most money and power are the ones with the most influence.'

'The energy conversation in the West has been badly compromised. ...the conservation movement and Peak Oil were among some of the most perfect power elite dominant social themes ever floated. They were highly-tuned, fear-based promotions designed to drive believers into waiting arms of elite-created, authoritarian solutions, many of them globalist in nature. Eventually, these two movements would be joined by a third promotion called global warming. There are plenty of solutions to energy issues (were there problems to begin with) that can be brought to bear. The free-market is a wonderful tool even though modern-day citizens of the West have been taught to fear its putative "greed and waste" via meretricious elite fear-based promotions. It is only when people begin to reach a consensus about the corporate manipulation of energy supplies and the benefits of the Invisible Hand that the conversation itself will grow more comprehensible and, ultimately, rewarding.'

'#Ending excuses for big government: Much of the government spending to which libertarians strenuously object is made necessary by its taxing productivity instead of land values. The property tax falls mostly on improvements, so less housing is built, giving the government an excuse to build public housing. Profits are taxed, leading to less employment and giving government an excuse to spend money on economic stimulus projects. Family income is taxed to the point that they have difficulty buying a house or sending their children to college, so government institutes subsidized mortgages and student loans. Even the indirect effects are substantial. Land speculations gone sour chew up inner cities, so poor people turn to crime (if drug selling and prostitution be crimes) and the government gets an excuse to beef up the police state. Even welfare increases do not stay in the hands of welfare recipients, but are quickly greeted by higher rent demands from ghetto landlords.'

'...like a boa constrictor, in stages, the central banking economy swallows the private economy. The banking sector itself, midwife to the central bank, waxes fat on the larger misfortune. The economy is continually centralized. Money and power flow to those who stand in the shadows behind the central banks and the Swiss-based BIS. Only certain elite-affiliated corporations thrive and every time there is a downturn more and more jobs are lost and government is empowered. This is the fate of all who are exposed to mercantilist central banking economies. Ideally, from an elite point of view, this process might have continued until it forced a kind of inevitable global centralization of employment, property and authority. But the Internet has come along and interrupted the various promotions that have surrounded the central banking mechanism and confused the reality of its destructive grasp. More and more "get it" – and as they do, the mechanism itself is increasingly paralyzed.'

'From our point of view, the article [by McKinsey and Co. writers] espouses a kind of dominant social theme – that the Great Recession and the pain it is causing is part and parcel of the natural evolution of capitalism. By focusing on creative destruction, the article does not have to deal with the overwhelming monetary failure of central banking that brought the West to this place. That is also, probably, why Schumpeter is popular with the bankers at the Federal Reserve. He provides them with a template that allows them to avoid talking about the monetary disasters that they tend to inflict upon the world. What we have then in Newsweek is an article that misrepresents a man and his economic theory in order to try to divert attention away from the monetary failures of the central banking business cycle. Further, the solutions offered by the article are predictably statist and partake of the same failed authoritarian model that has brought us the current misery.'

'The myth of the Banker Jew, and of money-grubbing and devious Jews generally, is one of historical popularity. In the modern era, Jews are blamed for 9/11, for Western wars, for "bankster" central banking and other disasters of modern society. But free-market thinking should give the individual observer pause before he or she too easily subscribes to these beliefs. Is it the Jew himself or herself -- something intrinsic to Jewish personality -- that gives rise to these suspicions? In fact, absent government involvement, Jews would not be capable of accomplishing any of these nefarious objectives (were they to have done so). The problem is not Jews, or even Zionists, therefore, if one accepts free-marketing thinking, but a handful of powerful individuals (some of who may be Jewish) who utilize government power (and public/private central banking) in order to promote private agendas. ...the use of government levers to achieve individual private ends is called MERCANTILISM.'

'The myth of the Banker Jew, and of money-grubbing and devious Jews generally, is one of historical popularity. In the modern era, Jews are blamed for 9/11, for Western wars, for "bankster" central banking and other disasters of modern society. But free-market thinking should give the individual observer pause before he or she too easily subscribes to these beliefs. Is it the Jew himself or herself -- something intrinsic to Jewish personality -- that gives rise to these suspicions? In fact, absent government involvement, Jews would not be capable of accomplishing any of these nefarious objectives (were they to have done so). The problem is not Jews, or even Zionists, therefore, if one accepts free-marketing thinking, but a handful of powerful individuals (some of who may be Jewish) who utilize government power (and public/private central banking) in order to promote private agendas. ...the use of government levers to achieve individual private ends is called MERCANTILISM.'

'China will do anything to keep economic growth going and, as long as they do so, their export policy will hinder any possibility of rebalancing of trade, and will continue to see the hollowing out of Western productive capacity, increasingly including higher added value goods and services. ...despite lots of noise from China's competitors, the noise just remains that; noise. It never translates into substantive action, in particular from the US. For the underlying reason for the lack of action, the answer must lie in the reliance of the US government on Chinese funding of deficits. It is a spiral of decline, in which the purchase of treasuries by China holds down the value of the RMB to support exports... the exports depress and destroy productive capacity in the US, and the US needs to borrow more money from China, to make up for their poor economic performance. The more money they need to borrow, the more fearful the US government becomes about taking action to halt the spiral.'

'The municipalities sell the land to developers and pocket the fee—which often goes directly into the pockets of the officials themselves. This kind of aggressive mercantilism is most damaging to the credibility of the state. We are not surprised. We've written many times in the past that China's "market-oriented" economy is nothing of the sort at the top where decisions are made. Western news media has generally reported on the Chinese industrial miracle with a certain amount of breathlessness and a good deal less scrutiny. Now suddenly we are sensing a shift—a sub-dominant social theme in the making, if you will to accompany the one elucidated at the beginning of this article: "The China miracle is over—and we report this sorrowfully but objectively." Yes, the over-riding objective may be to buttress Western media credibility at a time when it is likely at or near an all-time low. Presumably, the elite does not want to have to explain a similar lack of awareness as regards China.'

'Dominant Social Theme: The Jews are to blame. It is certainly a dominant social theme of sorts (though obviously not an elite-generated one). However, we would nonetheless attribute the meme's popularity in part to the power elite itself, which is delighted to have its critics focus on religion. It has long been our view that the powers-that-be encourage this sort of analysis because it repels as many (or more) than it attracts. To deny that many important and powerful banking families throughout the ages have been Jewish would be ridiculous. We do not. But is an endless emphasis on "Jewishness" when it comes to Money Power helping the larger conversation – or the development of a true understanding of the larger underpinnings of modern, Western society? Such might better be focused on the nature of the MERCANTILIST enterprise and how the state facilitates central banking, the terrible travesties of regulatory democracy, etc.'

On the American Prison Industrial Complex Slavery Gulag

(Commented. Is fiat money inflation a meme the Bell and many others have fallen prey to by way of lazy Austrian Economics/Goldbug dogma?)

'The death of the middle class, and the real purpose of government education.' -- But who would build the roads?!

'Still, it is fashionable to maintain, as the Economist does, that the West is in a fervor of full-blooded capitalism of the laissez-faire variety. How on earth the Economist and its writers can maintain this fiction is beyond us. It is part of the Hegelian dialectic, we suppose. If one part of the elite machinery claims that what we have got is capitalism-in-the-raw, then another mainstream element can continually claim that such naked and merciless enterprises need to be ameliorated by the rationalizing hand of government. Lord knows where it ends, though, as the cognitive dissonance grows continually more extreme. One visualizes the USSR, eventually, and the Economist magazine, as dry and witty as ever, droning on about the competitive difficulties of aligning five-year plans and observing cheerfully that the West's Leviathan will have to grow bigger still in the name of democracy and fairness and to ensure that free-markets do not get out of hand. Eventually it all implodes.'

'Dominant Social Theme: The more the government spends, the more helpful it is. -- In this article we will debunk once more the idea that government can spend its way out of a recession. It is our modest contribution to the 21st century, which we can truthfully label an "Age of Misinformation," fortunately alleviated by the advent of the Internet itself which is intermittently a force for enlightenment, truth and logical thinking. -- It is human nature to want to alleviate pain and suffering. Economic downturns are grim. But the rejoicing that accompanies "recoveries" within fiat-money, mercantilist economies should be seen within a larger context. A true victory would involve a return to some form of free-market money and the reduction or elimination of private/public mercantilist central banks. Something like this may start to happen anyway if the distortions grow too great and sovereign debt overhangs too onerous to manage.'

'These people lock the system in place while at the same time destabilizing it by imposing financial burden on the productive. Apparatchiks are also in place in "finance" much of which would be in bankruptcy reorganization were it not for government payouts. Most of these workers are clueless hulks of America's communist Fascist policy. We have a huge burden being placed on the few real sectors of the economy with local law enforcement, capital investment, and education, being gutted by the weight of a system stealing our freedom with a police state. We need to encourage our bright people to be constructive parts of society not toe sucking lackeys of those who have entrenched themselves in an insane psychopathic system of mealy mouthed boot lickers. Beria had it right that law and financial based capitalism would defeat itself in a psychotic-insane-prison-death-knell. We now have a leaderless nation with a growing secret police. The media has dominion over our minds and bodies.'

'...the current Western approach to China seems to us to have presented a dominant or sub-dominant social theme of sorts – that the "Chinese have found a way to marry state efficiencies to the power of the free-market to create formidable, world class results." How does such a theme benefit the power elite, which is has been intent for the last century on advancing global governance? By making the argument that China has beat the West at its own "free-market" game with a more authoritarian brand of market-commerce, the elite can justify further public/private approaches to industrial competition. Justifications for the elite's favored form of business activity – mercantilism – is advanced and even celebrated within this context. It casts an unfortunately favorable light on the manipulation of public power for private gain. -- Austrian economics shows us quite clearly that wealth is created by individuals via human action, not state action.'

'The technological advantages of sharing information point us to an important praxeological principle that also explains the nonviolence of this black market. Unlike the goods people exchange money for, information is nonscarce. Being nonscarce, it is a nonrivalrous good and, as such, it is free. In fact, as Rothbard points out, nonscarce goods cannot even be economized—that is, they cannot be made the object of human action. ...the black market in information is simply individuals cooperating in order to manipulate their own private property—namely, altering the physical state of their computers in certain patterns. We term these patterns "songs," "movies," and the like, informally treating them like physical objects. But at no point does copying a pattern inhibit anyone else's ability to enjoy that same pattern. It turns out that copying is not theft. Unfortunately, the state will not—to use a cliché—let information be free. But can legislation alter the laws of the universe?'