A letter from Alan Jacquemotte. He writes:
The following is in response to an interview of Mark Faber which can be found at http://www.lewrockwell.com/schiff/schiff12.html
And in the interview Faber says that the the inflation will FOLLOW the depression, not occur simultaneously. And that the depression may last as long as 10 years before the inflation kicks in.
So essentially what he is saying is that “things (prices) will go down for some indeterminate length of time…and then they will go up to higher than wherever they got down to”. Wow! Heavy stuff!
Anyway, whoever titled the piece is obviously “naming with an agenda”, just like the neo-cons do with their “wars” on drugs and “terror”. Very sad company in which to find yourself.
You, Schiff, Faber, et. al. should all just admit that: one, you were wrong about the inflation, and, two, that your model is flawed. Then start figuring out what is actually true.
You can start with this: before Cain (and his people) started “mixing labor” with the land, Abel (and his people) lived off that land and required free access to all of it to maintain their way of life. Having stolen Abel’s land, Cain’s descendants (that would be us) can never claim “just acquisition”, therefore there is NO “justly acquired” property. Not ever, not anywhere.
You can also figure out that even with gold-backed money we had fractional-reserve requirements on banks which is what leads to the leveraging that creates the booms and busts (and we had MANY devastating depressions while under the gold standard; gold’s main function has always been to make a currency unprofitable to counterfeit, but we have modern technology today that can do the same thing far less expensively).
If you had totally fiat currency (think “ration coupons”) and took out each month exactly as much as you put in (something we could easily do today with modern technology), you would NEVER have inflation, so obviously whether the currency is specie-backed or not is not what leads to inflation and is not the actual problem that has lead to the crash. The actual problem is that ALL land has been privatized by surrepticiously-owned governments (like our own) for the benefit of the surrepticious owners without those governments paying compensation to all the people whose free access to all of that land has been stolen, leading to a chronic condition of there being TOO LITTLE money around (which results in labor being kept as cheap as possible – again, to the benefit of our surrepticious owners). So the opening of the money spigot is just a necessity to keep the cash cows from having an uprising (ya know, like the one called “Shays Rebellion” that scared the banking interests enough to call for – and get – a rewrite the US Constitution).
The following plan addresses and conclusively handles the actual problem by completely revamping the economic resource distribution system that had been able to cover up the actual problem until today (flawed as it always been, the current distribution system passed as a workable system until cybernation technology began eliminating human employment faster than it could be created; the tipping point of human under-employment has been reached and the old system “is a goner”):
1. End the Federal monopoly on money and replace the Federal Reserve’s debt-money with US Government-printed “ration coupon” money backed by the combined property and wealth of the USA. (This new “money” could be completely electronic.)
2. Declare the U.S. National Debt “odious” and payable by the banksters and their representatives in Congress that ran up the tab for the benefit of themselves and their bankster bosses. (This goes all the way back to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, dominated by representatives of banking interests, which created the federal monopoly on money that flew in the face of the decades of economic stability provided by state-issued scrip; of Pennsylvania’s delegates alone, seven of eight, including Benjamin Franklin, were major stockholders in the Bank of North America, and three were BNA board members.)
3. Ration every legal resident $1000 per month of the new money with no qualification or strings attached. Everybody will be able to work and make as much additional money as they want. (For legal residents less than 18 years-old, half the amount should go into a trust, as below.)
In order to not incentivize “octomoms” (or any other prospective baby-farmers), beginning one year after implementation, the money ration of newborns should be held in trust until they reach age 18. The trustee of their account will be held jointly responsible (with their parents) for their proper care until they reach age 18.
4. All income-based federal taxation is replaced by an automaticaly-collected “economic infrastructure maintenance fee” of up to one percent on EVERY electronic debit transfer (whatever is required to keep prices stable; something less than one-half percent will probably prove sufficient). Like with the human body, as long as you take out as much as you put in, there is NO inflation. Cash and barter transactions will be federally untaxed and the U.S. federal government will “self-fund” with the new money. Besides eliminating the IRS and the inherent costs of “tax avoidance behavior”, this fee will also impede price distortions caused by market speculation.
5. The more decision points a system has, the more intelligent the decisions it can devise, therefore, in all other economic matters (besides the furnishing and regulating of liquidity rations “autonomically” by the federal government as described above), free market auction should be “the brain”; central planning is inherently stupid and always makes things worse.
As has been made obvious in recent days, mainly the administrators of a centrally-planned economy wind up helping themselves and their friends to the funds and credit in the national treasury at the expense of everyone else. “Regulation” merely provides the “false sense of security” necessary for the spider to get the fly to drop his guard.
Consequently we will need to get rid of every Federal law, policy or agency that discourages competition, unevenly distributes resources, or hides or socializes risk while privatizing profits (i.e., pretty much all of them), including all taxes on personal and corporate income and all personal and corporate subsidies (including all Minimum Wage laws, grants, tariffs, etc.).
6. Our current Constitution being “self-defining” (that is, the government gets to appoint the people who decide what the the words of the constitution actually MEAN; “self-definition” – also known as “lying” – is the defining characteristic of ALL National Socialists such as the German Nazis, and the American neo-cons, Federalists, and all other bank-backed U.S. political parties including today’s Republicans and Democrats), we will also need to replace the current U.S. Constitution with one with “some teeth in it”. For example, it should define all the terms it uses (like “person”) within the constitution itself rather than have those terms be totally subject to the political whim of the day.
Just for starters, the above plan will improve things regarding unemployment, poverty, crime, healthcare, urban blight, rural living affordability, childcare, etc., and will diminish incentives for crime, wars, illegal immigration, market volatility and speculation.
People in other countries will want to implement this plan once they see it working. We could offer statehood to countries that are willing to apply for it. (We already did this with Texas, so there is precedent.)
Everybody gets the same “bailout” amount, everybody pays the same percentage…and everybody’s balance sheet gets improved without specifically rewarding those who took the “free call option on rising real estate prices” bait.
Cars get sold or leased again and banks get people to whom to lend. On the other hand, no specific bailouts should be done just because a particular industry has costs that are too high for them to be market-competitive, and weak or broke banks and companies need to be bought up by the few still-strong ones or by private equity (rather than by the government).
Simple, fair, effective…and we will keep on “trending down” until something like it gets implemented.
Alan
P.S. The above may require the creation of a new political party that runs candidates who back this plan and who also DO NOT TAKE ANY MONEY FROM ANYONE. The party will have to handle all campaign expenses. If a politician takes “a little money” where does it stop? If we ever want to get our political system back, voting for people that “do not take money at all” has to become “the thing to do”. The only way we can expect to compete with the banks is by changing the game.
My Comment
OK…this will have to take place between dragging some machinery around and some house guests…so I will put things down as they occur. Before looking at specifics, just two philosophical “wonderings”:
1. I have a problem with anyone thinking “the economy”can be fixed.. Nothing wrong with a term like “economy” as a useful shorthand for a complex whole but grossly misleading if it allows us to think we can “fix” it. This relates back to the post Mike Martin sent about thinking of the economy as a machine rather than an ecological system.
2. I also wonder if the assumption that anyone has to fix what’s happening isn’t mistaken. Things can get better on their own without programs or plans on a macro level. That is, the problems we might end up creating with any program might be worse than what we would have without them. I think a micro approach is a better (and more individualistic) approach. That is, each person finds the best way to empower themselves, using existing tools and resources…..
3. Undo, before do...
More later on the specifics.
OK, Lila here.
Just found a good weight machine for $250. The seller was going through bankruptcy, job loss and other misfortunes, which I will refrain from making the subject of a blog post. I felt for him and at the same time was rubbing my hands in childish glee at the bargain I’d got (actually, he wasn’t selling at a loss, either, so my guilt was wasted. He’d paid exactly the same sum two years ago, had never really had time to use it, and now needed the money more than the machine).
The point of this digression is to show you that even a simple transaction can be seen in a number of ways – depending on where you’re standing. Think about it.
1) Obviously, his need was my gain.
2) Obviously, also, my gain did not subtract from his well being, but added to it; it improved his situation.
3) Not only that, it oiled the wheels for a future win-win transaction between us, since I feel well disposed toward him and also – quite unnecessarily – irrationally guilty to be taking something from him, even if I’m paying for it. That guilt means that when I start on an upcoming project, I will almost certainly turn to him for help.
3) Now I probably wouldn’t have thought of using someone for this project at all, if I hadn’t made a good deal now. That wouldn’t be because I didn’t have the money or didn’t need the extra help, but because it’ s human nature to restrict expenditure when things look bad. I’d have felt (again, irrationally) that I should be doing things myself and saving. But having already saved on this transaction, I’d feel I’d “made out” and that little impetus would encourage me to reward myself with a treat – a little extra help……which translates into work for an unemployed man. He, in turn, feels better for having parted with something without making a profit on it and eases up on any slight resentment he might be feeling (also, irrationally) toward me.
So what does this have to do with anything?
Just this. Even the smallest transaction is a complex affair. Even when it’s engaged in with as much rational self-interest as human beings can muster, it’s fraught with irrational consequences. The repercussions can hardly be foreseen, being so complex and extensive. Now think of the huge, unbelievably convoluted set of events in the financial world today, and it’s fairly certain that any sense we might have of where things will go from here has to be haphazard…..and any plan or program to change it even more so…..and any assurance that the change will be to the good fleeting at best…
( Despite the negative response it seems to be provoking and despite my own caveats, I still think this scheme has some merit. I might be wrong, of course, or simply ignorant of all the implications).
Last update: OK – I think this has become rather convoluted, so I’ll take it to a new post….
Always amusing to read notes from people with “solutions”. Of course for all its flaws and display of backwoods philosopher king “wieson”, it does illustrate a dangerous tendency among many people in the U.S.A today–an ignorant smugness more concerned with proving others wrong and inflicting some back woods faith in constitutions or snake handlers view of the world upon the rest of us….These type of notes are both fascinating and frightening. When you read enough of these things you conclude that Mencken was right when he said–“often the ordinary people need to get everything they desrve good and hard…
Hi Robert –
I beg to differ there. I DO think constitutionalism is much more than a “backwoods faith”. Besides which, I like backwoods… (chuckle)
I’m a rube myself….
Still eat my Indian food with fingers when I can, like my coffee or tea in a big mug not demitasse (not that I don’t like nice crockery, but there’s something about drinking out of ceramic mugs that I don’t get out of fine china)
I think there’s some merit in what he says and want to hear why you think it’s “snake-handling”….
Lila
I always cringe when people make biblical refrences (Cain and Abel). I too eat with my hands but this belief that changing laws and chaning the constittuion will yield results is well silly. Liberia has the same consitituion as the U.S. for the most part and consider how that has turned out. Most of the LDC’s around the world have copied the laws and governing documents of France, Switzerland and England and well how has that turned out. By snake handling I mean simple superstition in chaning laws or writted rules or even rituals and then suppose that instituitons or society will change in a meaningful way…..Also, agree with you in the sense that the term economy is used loosely and in some abstract way by people. Ask them to define it and you get strange answers. This writer has the USA today version of “economy” and that is pretty much in snakehandler country–an abtraction of government statistics and reports on the “level” of the dow. They forget (and you have not) that its about people pursuing their lives!
The core problem with this fellows approach is that it is borne of the same habits of mind of the current congress and adminstration and other medlers and people with solutions and a vision…no humility that some things in life insoluble and that efforts to go counter to human nature and history will end disastrously. Hubirs is da problem with this fellows repair program and well most other programs. I am with you–stop doing. This is why Calvin Coolige is my favorite president–he did very little in office save Preside! Which they would go back to presiding rather than controlling and dictating…..
Backing the currency by the combined wealth of the US is pure gibberish since that’s exactly the regime we have today…that is unless you believe the federal government actually has any value outside of the jackboot it places on private citizens and private wealth.
The entire essay reminds me of the economic musings of Frank Lloyd Wright after a night of heavy drinking and womanizing.
(the emailed version of this has a bunch of clickable links; if something looks like it should have more explanation it was probably linked to the same-named page in Wikipedia.)
Lila,
I fully appreciate your reticence to embrace the plan without full argumentation on every point, but as Tom Paine might have said “PERHAPS the sentiments contained in [the plan], are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” Actually consensus makes even more converts than time.
Most of my converts so far have been due to “crying need”: I’m from the Detroit-area, where the “D” has stood for “Depressed economy” for, like 20 or 30 years or so, so making a convert due to reason rather than “abject poverty” would be a pleasant change.
Contra the argument that “its too complicated to screw with”, the main purpose of the plan is to get rid of the most complicating factor of all: government interference in the market, including ending income-based Federal taxation, and leave price and production decision-making to the hopefully-someday-free market. I believe that is a worthy and sensible goal and if somebody has another way to actually get that done, lay it on me; otherwise, I am intending to “launch this baby” as deteriorating conditions continue to create demand for change.
You final comments leave me with the impression that you feel that “things are not that bad that we should try something that might make matters worse”. Well, maybe things are not that bad in New York, but here in Michigan (and in most parts of the country and the world), many people are in desperate need NOW and are only sitting still while the country gets raped by the bankers because they ARE desperate and are hoping that “giving the banks what the bankers’ government stooges say the banks have to have” will improve things. They are going to be disappointed.
Anyhow, if anyone has any actual questions about the plan, fire away. I would like to point out though (in case it wasn’t clear in the brief write-up that I sent you, stripped down of all philosophical justification language for ease of public digestion), every part of the plan involves voluntary compliance and participation, and every part of the plan can be easily morally justified. Just ask if some part seems otherwise and I’ll clear it up (or else I’ll modify the plan if we find there was something I missed). And if anybody out there wants to promote the plan as their own idea or adopt any part, go to it; I just want to get this done so my kids can have a better world. I think when you actually think about what incentives this will create and the obvious ramifications of putting everyone on the same team as it does, you’ll understand why I say that.
…”a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT”. Slavery used to be as perfectly accepted and normal as the way we transact our business and privatize property without compensation; being “perfectly accepted and normal” does not make something right: to my mind, the prime and overwhelming argument in favor of the plan is that it could actually get things set right (both morally and pragmatically) for the first time ever. Show me where I’m wrong.
Regarding the other comments:
Except, sadly, for the “heavy drinking and womanizing” parts, I guess I have to plead guilty to most of the abuse. I had a lot more philosophical justification in the original version (which I literally hand out to people that I meet on the street when I stop to help them with their broken-down cars and in laundromats and grocery stores, etc.), but I stripped it all out because Joe 6-pack just doesn’t give a rat’s butt about moral justification; he just wants to know “What can we actually get done that will actually fix this problem right now?” Uber-intellectual website trolls (even the ones with challenged spelling and grammar) might have big philosophical problems with the plan (having drunk the pseudo-libertarian kool-aid), but the REAL people that I’ve run it by always tell me “it’s a great idea, and I could sure use the extra $1000 to (either) catch up on bills, or spend more time with the kids, or move into a decent place to live ” or something else to a similar effect. It may be “snake oil”, but it is a snake oil that people will buy that will get us a much more stable and much less volatile economy and get us off of the banking industry’s milking machine. There are probably far better ideas, but if only an insignificant number will buy those better ideas, they are just going to stay ideas.
Answering comments, last in, first:
JC Butte: Yes, it is exactly what we have today, except for the “a third of our annual labor goes to the rich (and China) to pay the interest on the national debt” part. Maybe you are deeply attached to being milked, but, personally, I can do without it. My question then is “If it’s the same, then why are we paying for something we can do for free?”
R (and maybe Lila… and this has to do with September-born billionaires also): As regards “stop doing”, how does that non-action address the banking industry’s rip-off of the general population for the last 200+ years and the resulting consolidation of wealth in the (relatively) fewest hands in human history? Maybe that is okay with you, but it is never going to be okay with me (see my “personality report” below for details).
Just like you have a semi-randomly-generated physical facade, you (and everyone else) has a semi-randomly-generated personality facade. You can get a digital (and totally free) read-out of “what personality was being handed out on the day you were born” at http://www.alabe.com (among many other websites with free introductory reports); if you don’t do this and see for yourself you will never understand why “September actually is a way-better-than-random month for birthing billionaires”: I don’t pretend to know how it works (any more than I understand the intricacies of genetic science), but I can still turn on a light switch.
Believe it or not, this sidebar is actually germane to the discussion at hand. Everyone is different and everyone can only play with whatever cards they were dealt at birth: some people can’t stand change and some people can’t live without it. Some people (like myself) are driven to try to make a difference, and some will never believe that a difference can ever be made; the actual fact is that I enjoy what I’m doing, and so that is what I am going to continue to do, regardless of whether or not it results in anything. My advice for everyone is to find a way to do exactly whatever it is that you enjoy doing and don’t worry about justifying it. Being a strict determinist, my sole purpose here is to “have fun”; if anything actually changes it will be because “that is how the book was written”, and that it was just time for that change to occur: everything we have to work with we picked up at the door when we got here, and, at every moment, everyone makes the best decisions that they are capable of making at that particular time (given their innate personality and all environmental incentives extant).
ps. FYI: The September-born are more likely to have been born when a certain magnetic confluence occurs that allegedly increases the odds that they will be very practical, very discriminating and very competitive, and I guess those aren’t bad characteristics to have been born with if you think winding up as a billionaire is a good thing.
R again: First of all, I do NOT think that changing the Constitution will actually change the system, just the reverse: we have to change the system and then commemorate the “new ideas that led to the change” in a new Constitution (other than that, EVERY constitution is just a g-d piece of paper, so to speak). And we have to take people as they are: anyone who proposes change based upon getting people to “see the light” is going to be greatly disappointed (are you listening pseudo-libertarian guys?); my plan is workable because it recognizes that people are not going to give up the deal they have (semi-crappy as it might be) without seeing up front that what is being proposed is a perceptibly better deal for themselves right out of the gate. I have not talked to one REAL person (no offense pseudo-intellectual website trolls) that didn’t think the plan would be a better deal, on the whole, for themselves.
Actually, I’m a “modified deist” (who believes that, behind the facades, we are all “god” and would quickly realize that fact if not for our unique semi-randomly-generated genetic and personality characteristics that create the illusion that there is somebody else here besides our self), and the reference to Cain and Abel is in deference to Joe 6-pack’s presumed familiarity with the story, my point being that Locke was not defining the process of “privatization of the commons” so much as trying to philosophically justify the theft of the lands of the North American aboriginals which was occurring JUST at the time of his writings (from Wiki: “Detractors note that (in 1671) he was a major investor in the English slave-trade through the Royal Africa Company, as well as through his participation in drafting the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas while Shaftesbury’s secretary, which established a feudal aristocracy and gave a master absolute power over his slaves. They note that as a secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations (1673-4) and a member of the Board of Trade (1696-1700) Locke was, in fact, “one of just half a dozen men who created and supervised both the colonies and their iniquitous systems of servitude”[6] Some see his statements on unenclosed property as having justified the displacement of the Native Americans. Because of his opposition to aristocracy and slavery in his major writings, he is accused of hypocrisy, or of caring only for the liberty of English capitalists.” No vested interest here, move along, please!), and that the story of Cain and Abel is actually an allegory concerning the displacement of the hunter-gatherer way of life by the more productive rigors of farming, that the hunter-gatherers should actually be considered the original owners of the land they depended upon for survival, and that those who later came along and conquered/claimed it for farmland (“mixing their labor with it”, to coin a phrase), can be considered to have stolen it and that the government of that land could be considered to owe (and to ALWAYS OWE) compensation to ALL of the people who could POSSIBLY be using that land’s resources for their own survival. My plan can just be considered an automatic process for paying “just compensation” in order to create the world’s first “justly acquired” property. (See Paine’s “Agrarian Justice” for a better-worded argument.)
Lila: He calls it “snake-handling” because I’ve challenged his religion and he doesn’t have an actual argument to refute me. I’m not really a “Constitutionalist”, but Joe 6-pack (and many pseudo-libertarians) have had it drummed into their heads that Constitutions actually do something besides placate the masses, so I tossed that part in for effect. Constitutions are just another form of “protective regulation”, the main purpose of which is to help the spider get the fly to drop his guard.
Robertindc: “an ignorant smugness more concerned with proving others wrong” whose sole purpose appears to be to create an opportunity to quote Mencken. “I know you are but what am I?” As there is nothing in the plan that can’t be fairly easily (and legally) avoided, how is what i am proposing inflicting anything on anyone? I propose ending the Federal monopoly on money: you don’t want to accept and/or use the ration coupon money, you don’t gotta. We’ve already demonstrated that people don’t care if a currency is backed by anything as long as everybody else is using it and the supply is regulated. Other than that, it’s proposing to get rid of pretty much all other Federal regulation and discriminatory subsidies, so how is that a bad thing? And finally, the “infrastructure maintenance fee” will be legally avoidable by using cash or barter, so what’s your beef?
A couple of additional thoughts:
1. You, we, and I can’t change human nature. While trying to improve conditions for ourselves via improving the general lot for Joe 6-pack, et.al., the only thing that might actually be able to be changed is THE SYSTEM that supplies the incentives to which people respond. The bankers, mortgage lenders, liar loan-home buyers, Goldman Sachs/gunvermint appointees, GM bigwigs, etc. were all just making the best decisions of which they were capable given the data and incentives with which they were being impinged at the time. The roller-coaster ride is always going to be a roller-coaster ride; if you want to have something other than a roller-coaster experience, then you need to ride something other than a roller-coaster. Those who profit from volatility have a vested interest in keeping us on an economic roller-coaster.
2. Given an adequate definition of “government”, it becomes obvious that government is what CREATES property, and that the only way to get minimal government is to minimize the impact of property on human survival.
An adequate definition of “Government”:
A “government” is one or more persons who claim natural resources, are willing and able to defend their claim on those resources, and make and enforce decisions regarding the allocation of those resources; in other words, he, she, or they “govern” their property.
Governments grow by claiming resources (including humans) that previous claimants were unable to defend. Those governments are the actual owners of all the resources within their domain (including all the people and all of their “private” wealth) but in the interest of “domestic tranquility” (and to avoid getting the heads of the government’s administrators chopped off from time-to-time) modern governments like to leave their people-property with the illusion that they are self-owning and actually have private property that nobody is allowed to legally “screw with”; such illusion lasts exactly as long as the government needs it to last, and then we get to see (for at least a little while) the actual state of affairs: the government can do any dang thing with “our” property that it wants. If you require help to keep something, apparently it really isn’t yours to begin with.
Even if you aren’t actually capable of defending your claim upon property that you consider “your own” you will still act in the BELIEF that the property is actually yours. The circumstance is similar to that of an “actually owned (say, by you)” infant or pet dog: you may have been the one who supplied them with a teething ring or doggie bone, but just try to take it away from them without getting their consent (or without giving them something in trade that they think they will like better). Because people believe that they actually own their “stuff”, when the government wants them to give up something, it better have something to give them in its place, else it is soon going to face way bigger governing costs (due to rioting, etc).
3. The plan was devised with the following standards and principles in mind:
“Rawlsian Justice”. (see “Justice As Fairness”)
Thomas Paine’s “Agrarian Justice”. (My original argument for the monthly “cash ration” was based on Paine’s arguments that there should be compensation for government’s denial of everyone’s “right of free access to all land”. My primary argument lately is that “Nothing else is going to keep this ship from sinking”.)
That the penalization of children (for having been born into poverty or other bad circumstances or for having been dealt a bad hand by genetics or by the “personality lottery”) should be minimized.
That it is not unreasonable for there to be a monetary charge for use of the government’s economic infrastructure based upon “benefits previously derived”.
If you (or China) happen to have “a gajillion dollars”, all in Treasury bonds, then you are among those receiving the MAJORITY of the benefits of our economic system while paying NOTHING for its maintenance: how can that possibly be fair? It was called an “income tax” because “an income” is what it created for the rich (and China, et.al.). The only reason it was ever “acceptable” to tax labor is because it is was tax that the wealthiest COULD AVOID.
Since government laws, policies, agencies, and programs are ALWAYS used to benefit friends of the government’s administrators (to the detriment of everyone else), and since the actual result of government action is to harm (with unintended consequences) everything they try to “improve”, the BEST GOVERNMENT actually is THE ONE THAT GOVERNS LEAST, as a government “doing its least” creates less damage.
The “free market”, having the maximum number of decision points, is a better system for setting prices and determining service and production requirements than central government idiocracy.
To the greatest extent possible, everyone should get the same treatment FROM the federal government, and everyone should pay at one equal RATE to maintain that government.
Now we probably don’t want to (and actually can’t) get rid of government and property completely, but (as it certainly seems that “more government is worse than less”) we can limit its participation in “decision-making” by requiring it to compensate everyone for their loss of “free access rights” and then automate the payment of the compensation. That is actually all that the plan does; I cut out the explanatory parts because the vast majority of the people to whom I proposed the idea really didn’t give a hoot about the philosophical justifications: they simply want a system that works (to get the garbage picked up, the electricity kept turned on…oh yeah, and, hopefully, to take care of them in their old age) and they want it NOW (and most especially without them having to do much thinking about the whole thing).
Alan,
Your plan is far too broad and complex to be debated on a blog. You should write a book, or at least a pamphlet, and publish it. While it’s philosophical underpinnings may be fun to discuss, especially after a night of drinking and womanizing, I am still struggling with its conclusions. For example, giving every legal resident a thousand bucks a month creates an instant and permanent federal obligation of 3 trillion a year, plus change. I’m not sure how that parses with a “self funding” government, nor is it clear to me why anyone but those at the bottom of the economic food chain would have any particular need or use for it.
One of my core prejudices is that really smart people can communicate really complex ideas using really simple language and that alone raises my bullshit alarm given the long winded posts. Sorry. For the time being I’ll just stick with my stone age pseudo-libertarian ideas like sound money, minimal government and unfettered markets.
I guess I suffer from a lack of imagination.
JC: The first post was just a copy sent to Lila of my response to a post on the Lew Rockwell blogsite; “the plan” part (worded as succinctly as possible because I have found that people just will not take the time to read anything longer than a few paragraphs; see your own complaint for confirmation) was just thrown into that response mainly because I’m throwing it into everything I send out these days. The second one was admittedly DAMN long, partly because I wanted to provide some philosophical justifications and sources for Lila’s blog commenters, but mainly because I got lazy and didn’t cut out a lot of crap that I should have. My bad.
It IS a definitely a broad plan, but I don’t see any complexity in it at all. Will people pass around electronic fiat money just like it’s the real thing? They already do. And because we are going to be taking out each month just as much as we put in, it’s going to be the same 3 trillion (an amount that pales in comparison to what is expected to be required to fund the ongoing bank debacle) recycled around and around, over and over again. And it won’t be borrowed money: it will be like the money that you use playing a board game that gets passed around and around, but no longer are we going to have to write Milton Bradley and tell them that we ran out of money because we owed all this interest on the National Debt so please loan us some more at interest so we can run out again. (You do that long enough and you can lose 95% of the value of your money before you know what raped you.)
For those above “the bottom of the economic food chain”, the immediate benefits of implementing the plan would be: no more Federal personal or corporate income taxes, no more IRS, no more tax planning distortions, no more reason to complain that your tax dollars are going to welfare queens and creating incentive for people to not work or to fake disabilities, not to mention less crime overall and specifically less people going crazy and taking a gun into their former workplace and killing 10 or 12 people, maybe even including you JCButte or someone you love. There are no laws that can stop people from “going crazy due to the unrelenting pressure of a broken economic resource distribution system”.
That economic resource distribution system was always inadequate for a civilization that has developed cybernation technology, but, like a person with a congenital heart defect taking up running and doing fine for a long time and then one day dropping dead, the lack of obvious symptoms (and “easy payment plans”) covered up the underlying disease for many years. However, within the next few years the velocity of money is going to gradually come to a standstill and cascading unemployment is going to vastly overwhelm the capacity of the government to deal with it. How many more people in the meantime are going to explode and leave thousands of decimated lives in their wake? This is not supposition: it’s already becoming an EVERY DAY occurrence and it’s just going to get MUCH MUCH worse. What is your “sound money, minimal government and unfettered markets” doing about THAT right now when it needs to be done?
This is not “exercise”: this is “real world”. The old way is dead, the question now is “what is going to take its place?” As will become clearer and clearer, going back to the semi-crappy old system is not an option.
We need to figure out the best kind of “real world” we can get to with what we have to work with and work like hell for that damn quick because a default “real world” is coming if we don’t and it will undoubtedly be worse than anything we can imagine. Or,in your case JC, can’t imagine.
Alan,
My basic problem with your proposal is that I don’t understand it and can’t imagine how it could actually work or how the numbers would add up. My suspicion is that it would require a dictatorship, not that I am necessarily opposed to that. The best form of government, it’s been said, is a wise king. Wise kings, along the lines of Cyrus of Persia, for example, are rare in history. Perhaps you’d be one of them. 🙂
Maybe the plan to: replace the Fed debt-money with debt-free “ration coupon” money, distribute $1000 per month of it to all legal adult residents, take out as much money as we put into the system each month via a small transaction fee on all electronic debits, and get rid of as many other functions of the Federal government as we can ASAP (Milton Friedman made some suggestions along the same lines, albeit less universal) is just SO simple that it seems to you like there must be some complexity you aren’t getting. The hard part will be getting into position to get it done: I think it will take an entirely new 3rd party, as the plan has no natural backers in any of the existing parties.