{"id":9854,"date":"2015-07-09T07:18:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T12:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9854"},"modified":"2015-07-09T07:18:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T12:18:27","slug":"organized-plunder-a-k-a-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9854","title":{"rendered":"Organized Plunder, a.k.a. The State"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"art-postheader\"><a title=\"Permanent Link to Organized Plunder, a.k.a. The State\" href=\"http:\/\/www.acting-man.com\/?p=38425\" rel=\"bookmark\">Organized Plunder, a.k.a. The State<\/a><\/h3>\n<h3><strong>Whose Side Are You On?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>On one side: the Fed\u2026 the NSA\u2026 the CIA\u2026 Fannie Mae\u2026 Freddie Mac\u2026 the trade unions\u2026 Wall Street\u2026 the dollar\u2026 Obamacare\u2026 New York\u2019s taxi system\u2026 QE\u2026 the wars on terror, poverty, illiteracy, and drugs\u2026 Dodd-Frank\u2026 the TSA\u2026 the ATF\u2026 millions of retirees and disability scammers\u2026 General Motors\u2026 Hillary Clinton\u2026 and many, many others\u2026<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-38431\" src=\"http:\/\/www.acting-man.com\/blog\/media\/2015\/07\/Statism.jpg\" alt=\"Statism\" width=\"340\" height=\"500\" \/>A widely held and quite erroneous belief \u2026<\/p>\n<p>On the other: Airbnb\u2026 Uber\u2026 cryptocurrencies\u2026 \u201cMain Street\u201d\u2026 businesses\u2026 families\u2026 gold\u2026 young people\u2026 savers\u2026 Freemasons\u2026 Ron Paul\u2026 truck drivers\u2026 the Episcopal Church\u2026 Elks\u2026 entrepreneurs\u2026 free markets\u2026 and millions of honest people who make their livings and live their lives as best they can without holding a gun to anyone else\u2019s head.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, dear reader, maybe it was too much alcohol or too little food. But in the night, a vision came to us. It revealed the big picture in a way we hadn\u2019t seen it. Zombies, you\u2019ll recall, are people and institutions that live at the expense of others. How?<\/p>\n<p>Some are freelance criminals. But most depend on government to get the flesh they need. People don\u2019t give up their own blood readily. They run. They hide. They try to protect themselves. But government maintains a territorial monopoly on the one thing that does the trick \u2013 violence.<\/p>\n<p>So today, we stoop to admire the institution of government. What a beautiful racket! It typically takes 20% to 50% of an economy\u2019s output. It makes the rules. It sets the pace. And woe to anybody or anything that gets in its way\u2026<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-38429\" src=\"http:\/\/www.acting-man.com\/blog\/media\/2015\/07\/murray_rothbard_poster-rf988ce7ae6e04a73bd0086fe28baac98_wvo_8byvr_324.jpg\" alt=\"murray_rothbard_poster-rf988ce7ae6e04a73bd0086fe28baac98_wvo_8byvr_324\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/>Murray Rothbard\u2019s concise definition of the State<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Organized Plunder, a.k.a. The State Whose Side Are You On? On one side: the Fed\u2026 the NSA\u2026 the CIA\u2026 Fannie Mae\u2026 Freddie Mac\u2026 the trade unions\u2026 Wall Street\u2026 the dollar\u2026 Obamacare\u2026 New York\u2019s taxi system\u2026 QE\u2026 the wars on terror, poverty, illiteracy, and drugs\u2026 Dodd-Frank\u2026 the TSA\u2026 the ATF\u2026 millions of retirees and disability scammers\u2026 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5728,6190,379,545,7135,7136,972],"class_list":["post-9854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-acting-man","tag-bill-bonner","tag-government","tag-murray-rothbard","tag-organised-plunder","tag-racket","tag-statism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9855,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9854\/revisions\/9855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}