Open your eyes!

"This world is home to a lot of different people. Most of us go about our daily lives with little care how the world works so long as it does. Some of us do care. Some of use believe we should control others because we know better. Some of us are trying to gain an advantage by controlling others. This post deals with the latter type.

It is pretty obvious that the only way to get anything done in Washington is to lobby. Over the years, this has been a badly-kept secret, but the effort to keep that secret is being reduced. Mostly, people know that is how it is and don't care. And, why should they? Things are fine.

Why do they think things are fine? They are certain the news media would tell them if things weren't fine. Well, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the mainstream news media is corrupt, incompetent and lazy.

Money is the root of everything, including evil. If you trace the money in the media, you inevitably find some quasi-political hack holding the purse strings. These guys influence trade; they print persuasion and retoric to support various ideas the government wants out there in exchange for consideration in the way of favorable legislation and access to news. This is how the game is played.

The government itself is then packed by people that are elected on the basis of this disinformation. Make no mistake; a politician is no brain trust. The politician happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right mixture of charisma and machismo to make a good candidate. What he says and does is largely controlled for him by his handlers, as he certainly hasn't got the time to review everything.

So, who is really running this government is a collection of beaurocrats, middle-managers and old-money interests, industrialists and bankers. The first two have far more power than you'd think, being as they are the eyes, ears and hands of the leviathan. Were they to refuse to accede an order, it would be nigh impossible to force said order. But that is not the focus of this essay.

The old-money interests, starting with Lincoln, have been trying to establish mercantilism in the US. Mercantilism is a ruling philosophy whereby a few well-connected corporate interests collude with the government to run the country. Mercantilism has been tried before and it leads to corruption, loss of competitive edge, and collapse. But, once again, that is not the focus of this essay.

Through time, the same types of people have attempted to gain control of the masses for their personal gain. Lords, kings and emperors all demanded tribute for allowing their vassals to live. Back then, there was a direct linkage between the state and its vassals so that money owed the state must be paid the state. Then, as now, these people drove the tax rates as high as they could go, often leading to ruination and rebellion.

The current system is much more subtle. I doubt it is overt; it seems more a collusion of stupid rich men (most of which have no idea whats really going on) , but it is effective nonetheless. For starters, create a social-democrat society, one of concern for your fellow man and community feeling, often in the form of patriotism. In this society, you have convinced people that there are problems only government can solve. You have also convinced society that they cannot have all they wish because these problems must be solved. This allows you to syphon taxes off to fund your control of the government through graft.

Now, start up some rumors about things like global warming so that people will believe they will have to pay more for everything and will have reduced expectations about their income and purchasing power. This allows for greater hidden taxation without squealing from the masses.

Now, you will find that you have driven taxes up but not necessarily increased income, as the increase in taxes tends to drain economic activity. In the old days, you could haul out a whip and get the peasants to work harder. You cannot anymore. You must do something else.

The problem is that the populace does not have the appropriate level of fear and loathing for the future to make them work harder. They have savings and own property so that extended periods of unemployment are not a problem. That is money you can't get at to put in your coffers. Something must be done.

Invent a central bank. Convince everyone that gold is so last year. Go off the gold standard on the theory that soft money helps the poor by allowing them to pay off debt. Neglect to mention that few poor have any credit, let alone debt. Now, as inflation sets in, and it will, you will find that those savers decide that losing money isn't worth it so begin spending their savings. Further, your central bank lends money at reasonable rates, so they find they don't need savings; they can just borrow their way out of anything. Over time, the debt load increases to the point where they don't have enough savings to cover even one month's worth of unemployment. Now they work at a fever pitch to stay afloat and their spouse works too. Some of them have two jobs to make ends meet. This production seriously improves your bottom line and makes the economy look good, too.

Now, you can lower taxes. The amount of money being generated is much higher than before so lower taxes still allows adequate graft. Besides, you can always get a loan to speculate on the market, and if you default, your company goes bankrupt and you try again later. It's free money, isn't it?

The problem is that the people, who have no way of analyzing the situation to find the root of their problems, begin to notice they are working harder for less. They also begin to notice that others are getting richer for less work. This is when the riots start. This is when you need to misdirect their anger to the evil globalization/polluters/whatever so they don't notice what is really going on. Starting a war helps because the protesters will tend to fixate on that and, besides, you can increase economic and civic control and thus improve the power of your mercantilistic system.

Thinking people will dismiss the protesters as loony because they are protesting loony things. Their theories about what is wrong with the world are marxist/lenninist crap by and large, so you can ignore it, as it is thoroughly discredited. Those that do know what is going on can also be ignored because the only people that matter, the centrist majority, believe the news media, which brings us full circle.

This is what has allowed the United States to debase its currency by a factor of ten since 1971 and still remain the world's reserve currency. It is all about perception management, they say, and, so long as the perception remains managed, the system works. So bad is the downside, they argue, that anything is acceptable to maintain that perception, including outright fraud.

The problem is that eventually people get tired of being used. Eventually people notice their retirement accounts have been shrinking, not growing. Eventually, people come to retire and find out their pension plans got raided in a bankruptcy. Eventually, people get upset. These people may seek shelter in precious metals in order to hopefully avoid losing their meager savings to inflation. When this begins, expect precious metals to start a bull market the likes of which you've never seen before. At that point, the man behind the curtain will be revealed for a rotten corpse and the whole world will know there is no value in the US economy anymore, as it has all been spent.

Those of us possessing gold and silver will have money. Everyone else won't."