Topic: Media
Mania! Gold, Nukes, and Plagues! - Part I Thoughts on the hysteria created by media mania.by Aaron Emery
(libertarian)
Friday, June 5, 2009
Mania! Gold, Nukes, and Plagues!
Part I
We are insane. Americans that is. We borrow money from China, who a few years ago we claimed was a grave threat to the U.S., give that money to Iraq, whose "evil dictator" we removed from power after we placed him in power, and somehow it's all in the name of promoting democracy...in the Middle East. Good plan. We're also in the midst of paying very poorly performing companies for performing very poorly because they're too important to not perform poorly. Hmm. What better way then, to fix this economic mess than to tax and spend and tax and spend, do it again, and then because the first few times didn't work, print that money hoping for different results. Anyone who has studied economics or history, even remotely, knows that this is a damning scenario. If you don't know much about it you probably still have enough wit to realize that borrowing your way out of debt is a joke that will leave us destitute. But we have our best and brightest in Washington you say. They certainly are the best at putting themselves in advantageous positions and convincing us that it's for our best interest. I wish I had that power, it's like voodoo and we're their dolls.
Dear reader, some people reading this don't understand why a massive loss of wealth and freedom can possibly benefit anyone. Look around: do you see someone with a puzzled look? If not, then it's you! What are politicians most interested in? Money? Maybe. Sex and rock and roll? Doubtful. Posterity? Not in this life. Power? You betcha! So how do you secure that vested power? How do you ensure your place on the throne or at least a good seat at the kid's table? You make everyone else believe that they can't possibly do what you do because they have neither the knowledge nor the ability to pull off those hijinx. I bet you can do that by creating a mania amongst citizens. Sow the seeds of hysteria and reap the benefits of compliance.
We need to fix everything RIGHT NOW or America as we know it will crumble! Oil, nukes, dirty bombs, WMDs, swine flu, bird flu, some other kind of flu, SARS, domestic terrorism, foreign terrorism, insurgents, poverty, green energy, automakers, "evil-doers" who hate America for its supposed freedom..?, drugs, national healthcare (why is it called that anyway, shouldn't it be sickcare?), homelessness, steroids in baseball (Are you kidding me? This is what Congress is supposed to do?), blah, blah, blah. Get the point? Oh yeah, I forgot about Somalian pirates and Y2K, wouldn't want to leave them out. At some point all of these WERE going to cause the U.S. to collapse. They didn't. We just let media mania get the best of us, again. In the search for our next fix we sure have taken some crappy advice. We've definitely been lost in the Presidential sauce for a few decades now, probably more than that. We want so desperately to change that and get things straight. If history is a guide, we're screwed.
Gold: No Keynes No Gains!
Human history is rife with examples of governments who snubbed REAL MONEY (gold and silver...anything but PAPER!) in favor of paper. Paper is terrible for citizens because it inevitably leads to overspending by government, which in turn leads to inflation (excess supply of money relative to demand, NOT rising prices!), which in turn leads to less purchasing power. However, it's great for public officials because they can print and print and pay for their questionable and broken social programs they're so sure will fix things. Unfortunately those programs never work as planned and fizzle out because they're simply unsustainable. Some people can see it coming, surely not stuffy Washington types, but people who have studied ACTUAL history, not the wishful government version of events. You know the type, preaching the benefits of owning gold (or silver) because of bloated, manipulative government. We should have listened to them. I'm not talking about just in the last few years; I'm referring to the ones that screamed bloody Mary when Nixon debased the dollar in '71! Here we are 38 years later, now we're starting to pay for it. Turns out the "gold bugs" were right all along. No kidding. It was this mania over the desire to have ultimate control over all aspects of society that led John Maynard Keynes (shudder) to pronounce gold as a "barbarous relic", a thing of the past, so last millennium. We're still following his lead, at least our government is. Private citizens have been buying up gold and silver left and right in an attempt to ward off the vampires of inflation. Perhaps it's not so barbarous.
We've played this social engineering game before; it was called the "New Deal" or the "New New Deal" for those of you who have studied history (see John Law if you haven't). It may or may not have been intentional, making things as convoluted as they are, economically speaking, but boy if it WAS intentional, that's just pure genius right there. I've never been able to convince anyone that taking their money, spending it on projects, investments, and programs with no return or yield will, in the end, make them better off. THAT is crazy. Einstein said it best; "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." We can only devalue the dollar so much before it implodes. What different results are we expecting by doing the same things? Call it "Devaluation Democracy".
The views expressed in this
article are those of Aaron Emery only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Aaron Emery is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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