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Ron Paul Explains Why The "Scottish Referendum Gives Reasons To Be Hopeful"
Submitted by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity,
Even though it ultimately failed at the ballot box, the recent campaign for Scottish independence should cheer supporters of the numerous secession movements springing up around the globe.
In the weeks leading up to the referendum, it appeared that the people of Scotland were poised to vote to secede from the United Kingdom. Defeating the referendum required British political elites to co-opt secession forces by promising greater self-rule for Scotland, as well as launching a massive campaign to convince the Scots that secession would plunge them into economic depression.
The people of Scotland were even warned that secession would damage the international market for one of Scotland’s main exports, whiskey. Considering the lengths to which opponents went to discredit secession, it is amazing that almost 45 percent of the Scottish people still voted in favor of it.
The Scottish referendum result has done little to discourage other secessionist movements spreading across Europe, in countries ranging from Norway to Italy. Just days after the Scottish referendum, the people of Catalonia voted to hold their own referendum measuring popular support for secession from Spain.
Support for secession is also growing in America. According to a recent poll, one in four Americans would support their state seceding from the federal government. Movements and organizations advocating that state governments secede from the federal government, that local governments secede from state governments, or that local governments secede from both the federal and state governments, are springing up around the country. This year, over one million Californians signed a ballot access petition in support of splitting California into six states. While the proposal did not meet the requirements necessary to appear on the ballot, the effort to split California continues to gain support.
Americans who embrace secession are acting in a grand American tradition. The Declaration of Independence was written to justify secession from Britain. Supporters of liberty should cheer the growth in support for secession, as it is the ultimate rejection of centralized government and the ideologies of Keynesianism, welfarism, and militarism.
Widespread acceptance of the principle of peaceful secession and self-determination could resolve many ongoing conflicts. For instance, allowing the people of eastern Ukraine and western Ukraine to decide for themselves whether to spilt into two separate nations may be the only way to resolve their differences.
The possibility that people will break away from an oppressive government is one of the most effective checks on the growth of government. It is no coincidence that the transformation of America from a limited republic to a monolithic welfare-warfare state coincided with the discrediting of secession as an appropriate response to excessive government.
Devolving government into smaller units promotes economic growth. The smaller the size of government, the less power it has to hobble free enterprise with taxes and regulations.
Just because people do not wish to live under the same government does not mean they are unwilling or unable to engage in mutually beneficial trade. By eliminating political conflicts, secession could actually make people more interested in trading with each other. Decentralizing government power would thus promote true free trade as opposed to "managed trade” controlled by bureaucrats, politicians, and special interests.
Devolution of power to smaller levels of government should also make it easier for individuals to use a currency of their choice, instead of a currency favored by central bankers and politicians.
The growth of support for secession should cheer all supporters of freedom, as devolving power to smaller units of government is one of the best ways to guarantee peace, property, liberty — and even cheap whiskey!
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Ron Paul...there he goes talking sense again.
i voted for him..
for he is a rarity...
in 2012 he was one of the few REPULICANS who ran that was prior military...
HONEY BADGER DONT GIVE A SHIT-randall
I voted for him too, and had to write him in to do it.
"According to a recent poll, one in four Americans would support their state seceding"
Based on my experience, one out of four Americans probably think "seceding" means "being successful".
At the end of the day, I believe voting is for suckers, but after Ron Paul retired, I dropped out of the Republican Party and went independent.
I vote third party as often as possible.
Only reason why I even bother being registered is for local propositions.
As others have noted. He is the best president we never had.
51-49 The perfect rigged election score. Close enough to give the losing party hope yet still a win for the oligarchy.
Yes, exactly...they only waited 300+ fuckin years for this moment - and they said 'no thanks?'
.
come on man
"Consent of the governed" remains the only just and legitimate measure of government.
Measured how and by whom? That remains the only just and legitimate measure of how tight the elites' grip on power is.
So, if the state comes and kidnaps me for some infraction or other, I've somehow consented to something which I subsequently don't consent to? How about we get together and 'consent' on things on behalf of the minority of guys who didn't vote for our party? How does the government have more rights than those it represents?- I don't have any right to threaten my neighbour and extort them, and when the government has more rights than I do, how can I be in any sort of control of said government with a lesser amount of power than they?
Why do we need government? - because we want to protect ourselves against our own savage nature? So lets take a subset of those savage-natured people and confer omnipotence upon them! What could possibly go wrong?
It defies logic. Honestly, think about it.
There is no legitimate measure of government. Someone always gets screwed.
I think the most important fact to emerge from the recent Scottish referendum is that older people support big government and its social welfare goodie bag while younger people want smaller government or at least not to get stuck with the bill.
There goes my President...
What I'm amazed by is that the secessionist movements in Europe aren't called racist like they are in the US.
‘"Hope & Change"…. Send a few dollas, will ya?’
Devolution is the natural consequence of systemic collapse. Energy is bleeding out of the system. With declining energy, the growth paradigm cannot be maintained. Without growth, the debt cannot be expanded or serviced. The only option is to roll back government. They will not roll back government and so they will forced to print. They will print until they explode the currency. Then we will collapse.
I've been saying (and believing) that for going on 7 years now.
Yet still the charade totters forward.
Timing is everything.
See they are terrified if states break up, because when you have different countries running in different ways, you will have countries that get it right and countries that get it wrong.
They know that ultimately freedom and liberty = prosperity, and that centralized government and economies are doomed to failure, so they know that people will notice that the GOOD FREE countries are BETTER PLACES TO LIVE than the socialist goulags that they want us to live in.
These people are by the very definition "control freaks" they can't fathom the idea that THEY DONT KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR EVERYONE and that THEY CANT MICRO MANAGE AN ENTIRE POPULATION... and the alternative of self-governence TERRIFIES THEM.
Since now the general trend of unification has essentially been broken, they will scramble to staple and glue nations together under Euro type models BY FRAUD/FORCE and THREAT of economic harm if they have to. . . the last thing they want is a country like Greece, Spain or France leaving the Euro and then suddenly entering a Recovery that out-paces the socialist Euro "recovery" (if you want to call it that), because it would be PROOF in the worlds eyes that Euro Type Globalization of Trade does not work economically because such systems burn too much energy to be sustainable.
Just because it is PROFITABLE (money wise) to ship tons of steel from America to china to be cast into I beams and then shipped back, does not actually make it a NET PROFIT for the economy , it is actually a LOSS of energy.
Economics needs to be re-written to be ENERGY EFFICIENT because with globalization, COST EFFECTIVENESS RUNS COUNTER TO ENERGY EFFICIENCY, which ultimately means the system will cause wild and dangerous economic distortions and destabilization.
The best economic system is that each nation should do the best it can with the resources available to it domestically, and should export PRODUCT (not resources).
So if your nation has IRON ORE and another nation has Timber, the logical thing is for Nation A to make Steel Girders and Nation B to make Lumber and to trade Lumber for Steel.
Opposed to today's model where Everyone ships all their resources to a third party, who manufacturers everything and ships the finished product back, and the people mining the ore and resources from the nation of origin have to get into DEBT just to afford their own processed materials back !?
The real problem is Globalization is a HORRIBLE economic model in terms of efficiently using our resources and energy and will ultimately fail.
I agree that small government is beautiful. But you're wrong about globalization (ie: free trade).
Imagine there are no countries. So 'nation' A (with all the iron ore) is now just 'area' A. As is 'nation' B with the lumber and 'nation' C with cheap labour... they're all just areas. OR... the separate countries they comprised have unified, so they're all in one country.
Exactly WHY should area 'A' not ship its ore to wherever is the cheapest (ie, most efficient) at processing it?
Take your argument to extremes... why should the iron ore mine ship the ore outside the mine at all, rather than process it and turn it into steel itself? And then into beams?
Our problems in the West stem from overbearing government and fiat currencies. Get rid of them, and globalisation is a boon, not a problem. Whereas, if you keep an overbearing government and fiat currency, ending globalisation does no good at all.
Mercantalism is a failure.
Obviously your logic is flawed, clearly if the place where the ore was being mined had the room to refine and forge the ore, its more efficient (for the whole economy) to mine. refine/process and forge the steel all at one location.
It doesn't make sense to ship an unfinished product (it wastes energy).
The problem is cost effectiveness (in dollar terms) hides the fact that it is not an energy efficient process.
Monetary policy distorts this reality.... and CREATES these problems (IE: Surplus labor in china for example) is a net result of poor monetary policy and a bad monetary model.
If there was no central banking/fractional banking, China would make better use ofits labor force domestically and be better off for it.
But its a matter of opinion I guess.
My point is that you're getting oddly hung up on borders. The fact that iron ore miners don't manufacture their own steel goods in situ must tell you that it's clearly more efficient to send it elsewhere for processing; like somewhere they have cheaper energy (say a mountainous country with plenty of hydro). Furthermore, most products containing steel contain plenty of other materials too; if the iron ore miner is going to manufacture finished products, he's going to have to ship those materials to the mine, isn't he? It may make more sense - depending on their weight, volume, and distribution - to ship the steel to nearer those materials before assembly.
Monetary policy distorts this reality.... and CREATES these problems (IE: Surplus labor in china for example) is a net result of poor monetary policy and a bad monetary model.
Chinese labor is cheap for a variety of reasons. For a start, most of China has not had a massive real-estate boom caused by their central bank suppressing interest rates. So their living expenses are lower. They don't have high taxes paying for an enormous welfare state. They don't have an enormous military with which to bludgeon OPEC countries into accepting the USD (and therefore artificially propping up its value) ofr oil. Ironically, this dollar strength means anyone earning USD has exaggerated buying power relative to earners of other currencies... but also mean US labour is artificially expensive. As Triffin pointed out, you can have a trade surplus... or the world reserve currency... but you can't have both.
Here's the bullshit that was 'promised' (youtube link)
I transcribed the salient points:
12 powers of scottish parliament
Didn't get the rest, but you can bet the procrastination will begin at the end of october.
Much like their mandates or manifesto's, it's all just fairy dust; why don't they present iron-clad contracts to the public?
And apparently councils are now looking at all the voters who recently registered to vote in the referendum to see if they are still owing poll tax from 20 years ago.
People who vote give legitimacy to the illusion of democracy!
Owning your own Country is a lot like owning your own home.. If you own it, you take prudent care of it because it is yours, and you are the one who benefits from its care and improvement...
Being a vassal of separate government is like renting your apartment, the tenant could care less about overall maintenance (that is the job of the landlord) and accrues no personal benefit from care and improvement of the apartment.....
So why do people invariably choose to "rent" their Country instead of owning it??--Or at best, why do many choose to inhabit a condo, where-at exhorbitant cost not within their control- a generally incompetent Homeowner's Association dictates how you can live in your own home?? (this is how your tax dollars are spent on the Military Industrial Complex and the Prison industry--after all, it's all absolutely necessary-and for your benefit )
With Freedom from Scotland, the UK would not have to pay the Scotts about $2400 per person which is paid annually to each Scottsman now. it could be worth it if the U.S. would be free from California, New York and othe red states which have the huge urban populations and everything that accompanies them.
$2400 a year paid to every Scott. Damn, i've gotta change my name to get this annual bonus.
Replace governments with open source software.
Long live Ethereum.
The US needs to be broken up into 5 or so smaller countries with Washington having control over New York, Chicago and Porto Rico.
Ron Paul is a hatred imbecile
You mean he doesn't understand hatred? Quite possibly.
Very deep comment. Well done.
The purpose is to destroy America, Americans and the dollar. Secession would do that.