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Does “Creative Destruction” Include the State?
Does “Creative Destruction” Include the State?
Everyone lauds “creative destruction” when it shreds monopolies and disrupts private enterprise “business as usual.” If thousands lose their middle-class livelihoods– hey, that’s the price of progress.
Improvements in productivity and efficiency can’t be stopped, and those employed making buggy whips and collecting horse manure from fetid streets will have to move on to other employment.
This raises an obvious question few dare ask: does this inevitable process of creative destruction include the state? If not, why not? Aren’t the state and the central bank the ultimate monopolies begging to be disrupted for the benefit of all? If government is inefficient and unproductive, shouldn’t it be “creatively destroyed” in the same fashion as private enterprise?
The obvious answer is yes. Why should a monopoly (government) remain untouched by new knowledge and competition as it skims the cream from society to fund its own monopolies and grants one monopoly/cartel privilege after another to its private-sector cronies?
Under the tender care of the state, we now have uncompetitive, inefficient parastic cartels dominating higher education, national defense, healthcare insurance, pharmaceuticals and hospitals– to name but a few of the major industries that are now state-enforced cartels thanks to the heavy hand of the state (i.e. regulatory capture).
Under the tender mercies of the state, prosecutors have a 90% conviction rate thanks to rigged forensic evidence, threats of life imprisonment (better to plea-bargain than risk years in America’s gulag) and other strong-arm tactics that presume guilt, not innocence. We have the best judicial system that money can buy, meaning you’re jail-bait if you can’t put your hands on a couple hundred thousand for legal defense and the all-important media campaign.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Local Currency–Money For Us, Not the Bankers
Local Currency–Money For Us, Not the Bankers
“Back in the 1930s on the Olympic peninsula, people were paying their taxes in alternative money…The banks shut them down. This is an example of the monopoly the banks have, and the level of control they have over peoples’ economic lives… People need to know [local currency] is a possibility, an option, a realistic tactical and powerful way to take back your economic power from the bankers.
” Fourth Corner Exchange co-founder Francis Ayley says the current debt-based global money system is an unsustainable Ponzi-scheme that will crash. By contrast, local currencies are unlimited, based on whatever members want to exchange. He and director Lia Ayley share the nuts and bolts for new members starting to exchange, how values are set, and exchanges involving both Life Dollars and US dollars. The biggest challenge, they say, is changing our mindset from the scarcity built into the existing monetary system to one based on relationships, cooperation and plenty. [fourthcornerexchange.org]
Watch our 2006 interview of Francis Ayley: Local Currencies – Replacing Scarcity with Trust (episode 49).
– See more at: http://peakmoment.tv/videos/local-currency-money-for-us-not-the-bankers-292/#sthash.tdRFH7VS.dpuf
The One Bank, Revisited
The One Bank, Revisited
Approximately two years ago; a commentary was published entitled “The One Bank”. The empirical foundation for the article (and the paradigm) was an extensive computer model, produced by a trio of academics at a university in Switzerland, and originally reviewed in an article from Forbes.
The gist of the computer modeling was that a single “super-entity”, by itself, controlled roughly 40% of the global economy. The term “super-entity” is simply a synonym for monopoly. The research further stipulated that ¾ of the 140+ (gigantic) corporate fronts which comprised this mega-monopoly were financial intermediaries (i.e. banks), hence the title, The One Bank.
The research names “names”. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Credit Suisse, UBS, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers are among the Big Banks listed as being tentacles of this enormous, financial crime syndicate. Note that the latter names on that list are deceased, (supposed) “casualties” of the Crash of ’08. But with all of these financial tentacles part of a single whole; this proves that the bail-outs which came after that event, and even the crash itself were pure fraud.
All of these financial losses were internal: one tentacle of the crime syndicate (supposedly) “losing money” to another tentacle of the same entity, meaning they were just phony, paper-losses which never really existed. The tentacle on the receiving end of the “losses” was enriched by that amount, meanwhile the tentacle on the losing end was indemnified via (fraudulent) taxpayer-funded “bail-outs”. Heads I win; tails you lose.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Case for Nationalizing Monsanto
The Case for Nationalizing Monsanto
Ridding the world of Monsanto via a state buy-out would be a boon to humanity.
Capitalism fails in two situations: monopoly and state-capital cronyism. Monopoly extinguishes competition and that effectively extinguishes capitalism.
When the elites of the state and private capital collude, i.e. crony capitalism, the few gain power and wealth at the expense of the many.
The state (broadly speaking, government) fails when it serves the few at the expense of the many, while claiming to serve the interests of the many. The state only fulfills its purpose when it serves the interests of the many at the expense of the few who control the majority of the political power and private wealth.
Monsanto is the epitome of monopoly and crony-state collusion. But Monsanto’s grip is not only on the throat of the nation– through its monopoly on seeds that it enforces globally, its grip is strangling the entire world.
Monopolies on food, energy and water (what I term the FEW resources) are not like monopolies on discretionary goods and services. People have to pay whatever the monopoly charges, as substitutes are either unavailable, very expensive or under the control of the same cartel/quasi-monopoly.
Before Monsanto extended its grip as the state-enforced seed monopoly, state universities and extension services developed seed strains and provided the seeds for a nominal cost. Over time, this publicly owned and managed system of providing low-cost seeds has eroded under pressure from for-profit private firms such as Monsanto and the benign neglect of a government that has been captured by private interests and self-serving elites.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
