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Guest Post: Why You Should Be Excited About National Bankruptcy
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,
One of the great absurdities of our modern financial system is that a nation living within its means, i.e. spending less than what it confiscates in tax revenue, is no longer the norm.
Living within your means is now considered ‘austerity’. And unfair.
Whether in the UK, Europe, or North America, many voters have become so accustomed to the government’s massive role in the economy, they can’t begin to imagine how it could be scaled back.
You usually hear heavy objections from people like– “What about roads? If we start cutting budgets, there would be no more roads!”
The ‘road argument’ is one of the most widely misused defenses of government… as if there are no private roads in the world.
Chile comes to mind as a great example– the country’s very modern toll-based highway system is privatized, and the operators have a huge profit incentive to keep the roads in top condition.
In fact, the 2 1/2 hour ride from Santiago to our farm is along one of these roads, and it’s smooth sailing the whole way.
A few years ago when Chile had its major earthquake, portions of the highway system were damaged. This meant that the operators were missing out on toll revenue… so they found a solution and were back up and running in a matter of days.
It was amazing how fast they were able to pull it off when so much of their profit was at stake.
When you think about it, just about everything that government provides either is already, or could be, provided by the private sector. That there is presently a private vessel docked at the International Space Station in Low Earth Orbit is the finest testament to this concept.
SpaceX has twice succeeded in launching a vessel into space in its 10-year history with a total of just $1 billion in funding, averaging to $100 million each year… roughly 5.6% of NASA’s massive budget.
Then there are things like the court system… where the wheels of injustice grind away at such a pedestrian pace that it can take years for a case to even be heard, let alone resolved.
Enter 21st century technology: there’s a relatively new service called Judge.Me, an online arbitration service whose decisions are legally binding in 146 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe… and yes, including the US, Canada, and Western Europe.
At just $299, disputes can be settled in a matter of days, and the firm’s case history shows that 96% of all arbitration awards have been honored.
This is the sort of thing that makes me very excited– the private sector displacing the public sector. And there’s going to be a lot more of it coming.
The more insolvent governments become, the more they’re going to be forced to axe all the things they can’t afford. We’re already starting to see this in places from California to England that can no longer hide from their fiscal reality.
With the government monopoly out of the way, the private sector will mop up every service that it can turn a profit on– trash collection, security, fire, prisons, libraries, etc. This forces competition, higher quality service, and lower prices for everyone.
The people who protest against austerity, or think it’s a tragedy when a courthouse closes down due to budget constraints, are really missing the larger point: the sooner this corrupt house of cards collapses, the better off we’ll all be.
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This is the mentality I love. Those still whining about others with more then yourself instead of trying to find a way to enrich yourself. The sentence in the article suggested potential opportunities for the entrepreneurs. And like I said, there will always be a minority that control much more wealth then the average person, before and after any economic collapse which praps comment supports.
the "envy" card works just as well as the "race" card
guess what, I don't care. it won't matter in a hundred years once the heads have rolled.
Yes, and the private penitentiary system is working swell. Just look how many folks we have locked behind bars. We're #1!
fuck public sector inefficency
would you go to a resturant where the waiter was rude and they never brought out the meal then charged you double for it?
Anyone "for" government (larger, more expansive, etc.) or that thinks that the government can "do it better" is a person to be avoided, mocked at every chance, and looked at as a fool.
I have seen these "roads" arguments by the shit-eating, asinine fools that are "for" the government, and I lambast them as to this (public vs. private)...I get no comeback.
Of the people I know out there that are "pro-government/shared sacrifice" type ople, 95% of them are simpletons/idiots/people with no idea of how businesses are run.
Shunning and mocking those with beliefs that diverge from the free market orthodoxy. These are the actions typical of a cult member. Just sayin....
Yeah, private law, private roads, private everything. Covenant of servitude and we're all happy serfs for the extremely efficient private state of massa Feudal Lord.
Massa Benmosche for example made it very clear from his quaint seaside villa in Croatia that we should be happy to work until 70 or 80 ...
Massa Bernanke was speaking about a fiscal cliff in 2013 today. Not sure what he meant by that? Maybe the Club of Massas will have to come in and take over all those public assets that they can buy with the money they looted from the treasury?
Thanks for reminding us of the term "massa". It will be used from here on out. Describes best what is going on.
The Massas forget that there's more of us and that our people work for them, in their houses, in their yards, in their kitchens....
Unforunately what we have now is public law, public roads and public damn near everthing else. And we are the servants of the state. So I don't see any net difference other than the name that the feudal lord is going to go by.
Regrettably you don't. You don't have public law with Citizens United. Many of what you believe public, hardly is.
My friends and family get on me for rooting for collapse, they always bring up all those that will be hurt. I say when a system gets this corrupt and unsustainable there is no outcome but to collapse. They call it schadenfruerde, I call it simple fucking math and physics.
Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.
Stockton, California is gearing up for bankruptcy and I'm all in favor of it. While illegals have played a huge role in fiscally destroying California, even more responsible are the public sector unions (which are a contradiction in terms in my opinion). We have police chiefs rotating out every 2 years so the next guy in line can take the slot and retire on a chief's pension. Extrapolate that out 20 years or so and you get the picture. There should be no "public sector" unions. If you want to live off the taxpayer and you don't think the money's right, go out into the private sector and compete for it......LIKE I DO.
There is a very, very real and serious drawback to privatization... and that is whether the new (private) master will be better or worse than the present (public) master. Privitization isn't a panacea. With the relinquishment of control (in this case, the relinquishment of the spoils of collective bargaining), the power vacuum will be filled... You might think that we have nothing to lose at the moment, but I'll posit that we can go far worse from here.
You are correct in what will happen... localization and privitization is where we're headed... but don't think for a minute that it is necessarily good or that we aren't going to give up something to get it.
At least with privitization there is someone to complain about. Try talking to water, sewage or garbage folks state/local agencies. I have never seen one example where a government-run entity was more efficient and faster than a private one keeping in mind the massive taxes used to fund the enterprise.
It makes perfect sense. What incentive does the State have in improving, economizing or inventing? Private garbage pickup was a salvation. Private road builders always outperformed. Hell, we admit that car tags would cost less and be obtained in a fraction of the time if privatized but what to do with all those folks constantly on break while you stand in line? I won't mention the hell of Motor vehicle which has given the inefficiency new meaning. At least massive inefficiency allows more jobs.
There are plenty of counter examples with private entities... whether it's trying to get money out of a B of A account or trying to get your american made car to start... the issue is bureaucracy and its prolifigacies and misallocations... the practical difference between large public institutions and large private ones is negligible.
SMB: Your last sentence is spot on. I remember my father telling me that he grasped the concept of "full employment" while in Egypt in the late '50s. Looking out his hotel window he saw 3 government workers fixing a pothole with a wheelbarrow of asphalt and 3 shovels. One man was shoveling in the small hole while the other 2 leaned on their shovels and watched.
"But what about mny SNAP card?...and free cell phone?"...my neighbor wants to know....
I want a free Ipad!
Hmmmmm, I don't like where this is going. Better update my resume.
The skills that you have, like chair moistenning and staring out the window, should provide you with a stable future.
Nah, there will still be a need for sewage plant operators....I worked in the private sector before the public one.
With the government monopoly out of the way, the private sector will mop up every service that it can turn a profit on– trash collection, security, fire, prisons, libraries, etc. This forces competition, higher quality service, and lower prices for everyone.
______________________
Everyone.
I would love to meet the actuaries who did the government pension work so I could beat the shit out of them. How does a fuckstick government employee retire in their 50's on 100% of their salary or more? Somebody actually thought that was sustainable? Somebody needs the shit beat out of them. Lots of somebodies
that is the growth forever at 10% model. a fifth grader modeled it.
what galls me is that my high school buddies who went into .gov out of school are retiring on a millionaires' income, even if they saved zero, based upon today's interest rate. no risk, at both ends of the spectrum, are rewarded. .gov employees on the low end and billionaires on the other end.all the risk is in the middle.
this is the exact opposite of a vibrant economy.
Agreed. Relatives working in .gov going to retire with $100K+ guaranteed annual income for rest of life without ever setting a penny aside...and to think I thought they were idiots when they opted to go the slightly less lucrative route of working for .gov.
At least they are appreciative of the sacrifices we make on their behalf...oh wait..."Give up the bucks..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdREEcx0-Qc
Of course Space X did not operate in a vacuum - they had the considerable benefit of building upon the research supported by the public - without that reserach many "successful" businesses would have been dead upon arrival (the public paid for the internet for example).
This guy is so full of horse dung, it's hard to know where to begin. Pure ideological claptrap built on a house of lies.
Enjoy your Chilean hideaway! Does the general population in Chile share your views? Toll roads are working fine in France and Italy as well. Germany managed to establish and maintain a pretty nice network of Autobahns without tolls. The envy of all Europeans who need to dig deep to afford to travel at higher speeds in their cars.
There can be efficient public services. However, when you have oligarchs running the country who like pigs at the trough take all the funding to line their pockets and use the "public" label as an excuse then it won't work. Even worse are the hypocrites who condemn anything run by the government but are the first in line to bid on anything government has to offer in terms of public works projects.
I challenge your view and take the opposite stand. A nation with access to resources and a productive work force could very well nationalize the energy sector and take the obscene profits that private oil and gas giants are making off the table. Same goes for banking. Why have a national currency flow through a set of private banking facilities?
You know why. Some people are above the laws that they've created for everyone else.
P.S. what are you growing on your farm and is it profitable w/o a government controlled board?
walküre
"A nation with access to resources and a productive work force could very well nationalize the energy sector and take the obscene profits that private oil and gas giants are making off the table."
Similar actions have happened in the Us in fairly recent History.
http://www.lutins.org/labor.html
28 December 1944
President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Army to seize the executive offices of Montgomery Ward and Company after the corporation failed to comply with a National War Labor Board directive regarding union shops.
1 April 1946
A strike by 400,000 mine workers in the U.S. began. U.S. troops seized railroads and coal mines the following month.
4 October 1946
The U.S. Navy seized oil refineries in order to break a 20-state post-war strike.
27 August 1950
President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later.
8 April 1952
President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike. The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court on 2 June.
The resources in the ground of our nation are ours. The fact that a private enterprise buys themselves a cheap license to extract the wealth and sell the resource in distilled form back to us at enormous markups is obscene. Oil and distillates are essential to our economic well being. The nation fights wars to protect the flow of resources from other nations. Those are facts.
You can argue that private enterprise took the first step and is now rewarded for the risk they took with their capital. I argue back that the capital they had to start the operation in the first place was illegitimate. Then we get into a debate on ownership and rights and so on and I would have conceded a few points to you a few years ago but so much has changed in my perception, that I can no longer defend the sham of capitalism that we are forced to endure. There is no equal opportunity and there is no free anything, least of it a free market.
What I defend is a stronger government, not a more corrupt or bigger government. A government that is NOT PAID for by corporations and is doing everything in the best interest of corporate figureheads, but everything that is in the best interest of the people of this nation.
Selling our souls to China was a bad trade. Selling ourselves to the banking cabal is even worse. The oppression has to end and it has to end sooner than later. We need a strong government that truly represents at least 99% of the people and is willing to confiscate obscene wealth and end corruption and manipulation to benefit the 1%.
I love this Marxthusian justification that wealth is only stored underground waiting for extraction by greedy capitalists. I suppose by the same logic you would trade a diamond for a ton of coal, since they both have the same atomic elements?
Have you filled your truck lately?
Gasoline inventories are filled to the brim. Oil has plummeted from $110 to $82 or the equivalent of 25% roughly.
Has your local gas station dropped their price 25%? Of course not. And to think they will in a week or a month is ridiculous.
Do you understand what being hosed means? Do you understand what being taken advantage of means? At the same time the oil companies are posting record profifts in the billions of dollars.
I'm sorry to break this to you but oil exploration and refining can be run and managed by national public enterprises just the same. What is the difference between public power companies and public oil companies?
And please don't give me the lame excuse that a publicly run oil company wouldn't be effective and we'd have potentially supply disruptions or supply controls.
Nationalize the oil companies and see what's left of the banking giants. Eliminate the Rockefellers and the Fed goes the way of the DoDo bird.
This took place back when we had LEADERS, real men with both principals and balls. Men who looked at the situation and tried to do what was right for the country, not for one party or for their fianacial sponsors. Men who did not need to take a poll to see if it was OK to go take a leak. Regardless of their politics Clinton, Reagan, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhour, Truman, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt....these were leaders, and respected.
We are hungry for real leadership....and look at the garbage choices we get.
The Chile concession system is so incredibly far away from the Rothbardian ideal of private everything that that you have to wonder why it's used as an example ... it's a proof that good governance can make public/private partnerships work, not outright privitization of natural monopolies (which only leads to disaster).
Good governance can make almost anything work, including well regulated and limited privitization ... but poor governance can corrupt everything, and privitization is eminently corruptible.
Why would the government declare bankruptcy when it could declare war and say "we don't owe you anything". That the usual way.
The people who protest against austerity, or think it’s a tragedy when a courthouse closes down due to budget constraints, are really missing the larger point: the sooner this corrupt house of cards collapses, the better off we’ll all be.
Indeed: OBAMA 2012!
Obama the corporatist is only waiting to get re-elected. Then you will see what he will do. Taxes and Austerity and a war to keep you hungry and distracted.
He will do whatever his puppetmasters tell him to do. He is no more different than ANY "Democratic" or "Republican" the Bilderberg chooses to be your next president and VP. They all follow the same master. And their masters are playing off two sides of one Socialist coin... Communist or Fascist. Heads or Tails, the People LOSE unless we all wake up each other and unite!
Want to see what a "house of cards" looks like 50 years after it collapses, take a look at Africa. The Banksters will take off with all the cash, the rest of us will be fighting for a job to extract resources, prostituting ourselves, or farming. The biggest reason for privatization success stories, is the tremendous amount of free, or dramatically price reduced value, most of the privateers receive when piggy-backing on formerly publicly owned utilities and corporations.
Africa is an example of what happens when folks take power who excel only in politics and ideology. It's what happens when the folks in charge of production have no idea what they are doing. The colonial period for all its faults left Africa with paved roads and electricity - almost none of which survived more than a generation.
Witness the witless African "leaders" who take their cue from European Luddites. They refuse GMF for political reasons thus sentencing people to malnourishment and/or starvation.
re: privatization of roads:
Private toll roads are fine so long as there are adequate alternative non-toll public roads. Private roads are private property. The owners of private property may find a way around the Constitution by announcing any excuse to block citizen movement, especially in a corporatist government.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment14/33.html
The Right To Travel - The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution
IMO
Your logic is wrong for several reasons:
1. Who is more likely to want to block the movements of a large portion of the population? THe government or the private sector?
2. If the only alternative to private roads is public roads, how will having public roads as an alternative make things better, in light of #1?
3. Since when does the constitution stop government from doing much of anything? Especially in some kind of crisis (fabricated or otherwise), the government will simply cite national security or some other BS to justify violating the right to travel.
4. Since when have privatized toll roads ever conspired to stop movements of large portions of the population? Not to mention that it would go against their profit motive.
5. If we have a corporatist government, why would it matter whether we have private or public roads? If the government wants to stop people's movements, it can use both its public roads and the private roads to do so.
Your example only works in the case where we have a corporatist government in a society of privatized roads whose owners for some inexplicable reason want to forego profits and band together to restrict a large portion of the population.
If there's one threat to liberty in today's world, it isn't the private sector.
I once joked about how people with cash should buy a foreclosed home or condo right now, some place you can live in for the rest of your life. Run up all your credit cards on furnishings, decor, etc. Declare bankruptcy - your credit score won't matter soon anyway. There are laws that will protect your home from beings seized. The next stage is to find a lawyer or sympathetic doctor and go on Social Security Disability. Food stamps, and any form of welfare from the government should be welcome. You will have a house, furnishings, a vehicle, cable TV, internet, and from the government, food, medical care. Why work? Taxes are for the rich, right? The rest of us have paid our fair share, no? Time to be European and take early retirement, courtesy of the Blue model.
I once joked about all this, but the high levels of fiscal irresponsibility in government makes me rethink this as a viable plan, many are doing it, and no matter how you look at this, it's nothing to laugh about, its a progressive plan of action, seizing the future from the present. Total bankruptcy is coming, you can continue to fund it by working (bless your heart) or you can cash out your equity in this crooked system right now.
I know of a nurse who just went on "early retirement" and took disability like that. And she knew just how to do it too.....
Can't get food stamps if your home is paid for. Well, could you with disability? I don't know.
All hail privatization! Save us oligarchs! Our governments are weak and lazy!
Oh, wait......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
It was the weak and lazy government folks that PARTIALLY DEREGULATED the California energy market. The partial deregulation allowed for exploitation of the Utilities because they were captive buyers. Only idiots in government could have devised such a scheme...
This joke of a writer named Black wrote: Enter 21st century technology: there’s a relatively new service called Judge.Me, an online arbitration service whose decisions are legally binding in 146 countries
To which I retort: Enter Old West technology: We got us an old standby called lynching, an on twine arbitration service whose decisions are binding (snort!) in every county in this here state.
Same as it ever wuz.
How can you compare what China is doing with us? Mussolini had everything working perfectly, too. It was great.
That’s always the way for these big corporations, not to privatize, but to monopolize, i.e., claim government is just too inefficient. Here’s how Mother Jones put it in 2007.
Goldman Sachs' Road to Riches | 2007
Like a real estate agent representing both buyer and seller, Goldman Sachs simultaneously urges governments to privatize highways, advises them as they structure the deals, and buys a piece of the action.
Number of city and state governments that have hired Goldman Sachs to advise them on privatizing highways: 4
Amount that Goldman Sachs clients recently put into a fund that invests in infrastructure such as highways: $3 billion
Amount that Goldman Sachs gave to a PAC established by its lobbying firm, Hillco Partners, to push a 2001 Texas ballot measure allowing privately operated roads: $10,000
Minimum amount Goldman Sachs paid Hillco lobbyist J. McCartt, a former aide to Texas governor Rick Perry, between 2002 and 2005: $95,000
Difference between the amount Goldman Sachs offered for Houston's 83 miles of toll roads in 2005 and what a subsequent study found they were really worth: 86 percent
Number of county commissioners who voted to privatize: 0
Number of Goldman Sachs funds that invested in Australian toll road operator MIG while the bank was advising Indiana on its privatization deal with MIG: 3
Amount it would cost to drive through NYC's Holland Tunnel if a MIG-style toll pricing scheme had been put in place at its inception: $185 (again, 2007)
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/01/goldman-sachs-road-riches
Maybe you should watch "The Corporation", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y
Multi-national private companies can be more powerful than governments. Who pays for the lobbying and election campaigns?
If the government really represented the people...
Maybe you should realize that corporations DERIVE THEIR POWER FROM THE STATE.
The demise of the United States government? God.Fucking.Speed.
If I could I'd give it a 10 star and make it mandatory reading for Congress! What idiots gave the 1 star? Time is the great healer. It is also the mechanism whereby actions that once would have shocked us are now casually accepted. In my life we've gone from surpluses (1951) and deficits in the millions to the billion and now trillion mark and the response is a giant yawn.
THis creep toward insolvency makes things seem normal. We can print trillions, pay folks from an endless pile of dollars, borrow into the future forever and never worry about consequences.
I consume neither crab legs, nor fish. Why do I have to help pay for a large Coast Guard operation in Dutch Harbor, from wence million dollar operators send fishing ships to sea?
I live in a country that wants to reduce the Army to 82,000 yet only has 25,000 Combat Soldiers......it does this so it can pay for aircraft carriers without aircraft and jet fighters that were designed for aerial dogfights not ground-attack roles (which was the job of carrier-based aircraft) so the thought of Government even going bankrupt cleanly is beyond comprehension
re: judge.me
By what LEGAL authority is this backed up? I looked up the web site @ WHOIS and ownership is protected.
Thanks, but no thanks!
The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (The Institute) was founded in London, England in 1915, incorporated in 1924, and granted a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth II in 1979.
So we should probably all get the most gravy we can from the soup kitchen to kill the beast, eh?
ready for the real - I will live to see it - the kids - well the kids are going to learn there is no Santa Claus (again)
Cackling Hyenas
So, the firefighter and police unions cut bait along with Walker…You don’t want to be satisfied with an 80% extermination rate, because rats with a base replicate exponentially…You want all the rats out of labor before you re-boot…The robots have no economic motor…Their masters keep thinking it’s a negotiation…because that is all they know.
If you look, what you will see is more and more, less and less effective, robots being brought to bear. Numbers. All they understand is numbers, which are a relative fiction.
Sooner or later, they figure, sufficient MAD pressure will be do the trick, assuming that everyone is ultimately wh-ed out to the same reserve currency bubble as they are. Where do they go after PM?
Now, the sh-show comes back to Congress, which only knows how to get paid to lose wars and breed dependency on the likes of Soros, f-ing moneychangers.
Idiots seek the beast, to get relief from the beast, only to become the beast. The snake is an ever multiplying hydra, which was the point of the US Constitution.
The figure is $17T, and it’s going to get a lot higher by the time the Chicago boys and the little girls running Europe dial in the picture.
The empire is a systemic wave built over thousands of years. You have to accept it for what it is, not what you want it to be, to effectively implement your development. Legacy operates the explicit side and new family formation operates the implicit side, in a balance between asset preservation speed and organic growth direction.
Whether you want a fast food baby or a home cooked baby depends upon where your spirit is in the development cycle. If you want to change the direction in your world, and the vast majority is never willing to make the trade-off, prepare to have children, by challenging internal false assumptions, as the example of expectation.
Empires run on debt. They are always bankrupt, physically, mentally, and spiritually. They are controlled by issuing debt, and rewarding consumption behavior with jobs, which must be completed by rote. What the interviewer wants to know is do you comply with the arbitrary behaviors associated with the income bracket. Every empire iteration has its own set of clothing.
Most robots are born in an income track and remain there. Some move up the brackets by observing the associated behaviors and replicating them. The greater the income, the greater the debt, the more control over future behavior, with aggregate debt assigned to future generations as far as the eye can see.
How you traverse the empire depends upon the pieces required for your development. The empire expects no change, or a steady ascent to no change, followed by recycling. It’s robotic, so giving it what it expects requires little effort. Shortly after hiring, it’s going to be looking for behavior confirmation.
There are as many approaches as there are unique individuals, but the objective remains to get the required piece of your conversion key, while confirming empire expectation in time with parallel operations. Finding the unknown piece is easy; it’s unique and the event horizon false assumptions all point away from it. The more elegant your algorithm, the easier it is to operate in plain sight. When you are downed, they all come in like a pack of hyenas, which is exactly what you want.
Ultimately, somebody has to do something. Politicians don’t do anything, but talk and look busy, doing busy work. So long as future generations promise to pay back the principal and the current generation makes the interest payment, all will be well, and a government never has to pay back the principal at any rate, right?
We live in a paperless economy with exponentially increasing paper because the manufactured majority is always comprised of politicians. Have you ever watched a lobbyist work? They are well paid, with worthless money, to be well dressed gutter rats. Every gravitational system has its unifying field equation, but they all work the same way, SOP. The definition of relative depends upon the system, but they (we) are all ancient History relative to God.
The difference between income brackets, and governments, is how fast you can get a new loan after going bankrupt and whether you are rolling over interest with positive or negative relative rates, which explains Obama. Trump’s persona is a top of the line robot, which is neither good nor bad. It is what it is, whatever you choose to make of it, because, at the top (and bottom) echelon, the memory of money is virtual.
Stupid insanity is both the means and the end to certification, hence the rating agency of rating agencies. Anytime you are in public, expect to be surrounded by anxiety ridden talking heads. Navigating space is not about knowing an equation; it’s about creating space.
I know a cabinetmaker who got a contract for solid black walnut doors for the county courthouse. Each door cost $10K! Hey, it's just tax dollars. lol.........
Typical.
They will now be putting away more teenagers and young adults for two buds or a seed of pot to pay the county $50 a day to keep them locked up and off the streets.
Police will be busy trying to fill their monthly quota for speeding and parking tickets.
Meanwhile, illegal immigrants will be running amok using public services and Western Unioning cash back across the border.
Politicians will equivocate and shuffle us persistently closer and closer to banana republic status.
Middle class bled, 1% Lords and Ladies holding court, convincing the indolent and illegal to perpetuate the ponzi.
The fact that road maintenance would be one of the first things cut makes me want to puke.
In California, when the state gov wants more money, they start threatening to close hospitals and they remove fire rings from the beaches. It doesn't do shit to fix the imbalance, but it works well as extortion of their "subjects".
How about we start with trimming the do-nothing fat cats and their nipple access to other people's money. Instead of "what about roads", how about "how will we pay our buddies six-figures to serve on commissions?"
Fuck these crooks. We're going down the tubes anyway. Let them join us.
Space X makes no money. Half of its funding is from NASA. We would never have gone to the moon if not through the public sector. Nor would we have the national highway system. Just because much of government is corrupt and/or bloated doesn't mean we dont need some of it.
Every €Trillion a country borrows from the Rothschild controlled fractional reserve banking system costs €27 million per day in interest at 1%. If interest rates rise to 6% this cost rises to $162 million per day. This is what kills off economies and is why the Euro will fail soon. The idea that taking on debt that removes tens of millions of Euros a day in interest payments from an economy and expecting the economy will thrive might work if governments own the right to create money. This is because the interest paymenst remain in the country with the debt and get fed back into the economy. However with the current system meaning the Rothschilds siphon off the interest payments there is no possibilty of survivial. This means that what is being played out politically in Europe now is just theatre and seems a last gasp effort to transfer the maximum amount of the publics wealth to the Rothschilds before the system collapses.
This means that what is being played out politically in Europe now is just theatre and seems a last gasp effort to transfer the maximum amount of the publics wealth to the Rothschilds before the system collapses.
BINGO
Agreed, Lucky. Bill Still, sovereign fiat, makes sense to me.
Gawd!!!
"One of the great absurdities of our modern financial system is that a nation living within its means, i.e. spending less than what it confiscates in tax "
Want to try it the Greek way? See how long it all lasts. Toll roads...we have them here. The only time I used one was to get to the airport in time to pick up the youngster. A big wide empty ribbon of tarmac at rush hour. I consciously avoid them. Privatize stuff so that the rentier class will have more ways to extract from people, pay through the nose individually for what would have been cheaper if we bought it wholesale! Remember when America's image was in bags of grain we sent to other countries? Now we send bombs raining from the sky. Kennedy diverted the MIC into space exploration, we marvelled at our ingenuity and resourcefulness then. We built something with our tax dollars, America had the infrastructure that was the envy of the world. We exported know how based on research and science, we shared. Decades ago, my mother went down to the Agricultural Department to get seeds for the dwarf variety of wheat, and was astounded at the yeild. The programme produced the green revolution. In every field, America was #1. How high was taxes then, when we made the world a better place?
We have become a country of serfs with niggardly minds, reflecting our circumstances. Those that will rail against the nanny state seems to prefer the mercenary "job creator" class, that's just changing who you bow down to. There is nothing wrong with the post office. The only time mail goes missing is when there should have been a check in it. Talk to me again when FedEx can deliver a letter for 40c, and they have banked all the monies for pensions instead of proclaiming a profit. Are we paying for the wrong things? Can the government be more efficient? YES. But we will not have that conversation as long as we insist on having one about drowning our collective voice in a bath tub.
The pendulum has swung too far. Do you really want a society based on a Darwinian concept like "The Highlander"? There can only be one, and trust me, you ain't it.
We still have the same infrastructure that was the envy of the world.
We still have the same infrastructure that was the envy of the world...in 1970.
1. Bribe politicians to nationalize everything; create monopolies.
2. Collapse the economy by choking the population with debt.
3. When there's blood on the streets, buy nationalized monopolies at rock-bottom prices. Bribe policitians to get an extra-sweet deal!
4. PROFIT!
5. When business becomes less profitable, go back to step 1. But bribe politicians to give you a HUGE chunk of money in the nationalization process.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
"...and the operators have a huge profit incentive to keep the roads in top condition..."
i am so sick of these arguments in favor of private rapacity....consider bp whose profit motive does not induce it to provide safe working conditions, consideration of its environment, or a host of other cost incurring measures to avoid imperiling life and limb....when profit motive descends into greed, the results are horrific....
naomi klein epxoses the corporate menaces of ford's south american torture chambers at its plants in brazil and argentina....the cult of the private is as pernicious as the cult of the public.....
Black is something of a simpleton... he thinks the only smart choice is to pack up and move to Chile, or Uraguay or BFE... I agree the US is fucked up, but moving to a 3rd world country and hoping they don't confiscate all your bread and put you in a hole somewhere... hard to figure... unless you make a living on this type of tripe.
i am staying here for sure, so when they are banging outside my door, atleast i know what the fuck they are saying to each other !
Wow simply wow. Since the banks and monetarist ideology screwed everything up, they have skewed the system so that it is IMPOSSIBLE that gov't can function on the taxes it collects.
Austerity is not 'living within your means'. Austerity is cutting needed services caused by an ideologically driven crisis. The answer to fraud is austerity? I guess that answer to a headache is a gun. I guess the answer to a stomach ache is gastric bypass. You don't take away services that will kill people because the oligarch planned and suceeded in rigging the game. You unrig the game and roll back what they were given.
The system is less important than the people. Period. When the system is a fraudulent setup, there is no reason to save it, the only thing to save is the people. You can't save this fucker. Why do people think, let's cut here and maybe try to save this shitshow. It can't happen. You'll ONLY be continuing on with the shitshow until it collapses while fucking real people over along the way needlessly.
Who the fuck wants to drive on a private road? They blow and should be done away with. It isn't hard to clear roads. It ain't brain surgery. Horrible example as if all toll roads are maintained like that. Again people act as if road repairs take a long time. Here's a hint. They don't.
SpaceX, another idiotic example. Let's see, you get a bunch of suppliers by the balls since their contracts with NASA ended, along with some employees, and use the most basic design (and capability), not to mention safety, and bare bones party like it's 1958, and look at the cost. NASA has had no real mission since Apollo ended because the monetarists said it cost too much. NASA has contributed so much to society the author is an absolute fool. No NASA, no Apple. Hmm. Imagine that. Anyone think SpaceX is going to start a new 'tech' sector by itself? Tang? Viscoelastic foam? Stronger materials? A million other things? The space faring part of NASA was only a portion, but since it's all about appearances with this guy, the costs and the numbers are the bottom line....not what they actually do.
SpaceX only copied the wheel, while for space at large we still need to invent it. SpaceX won't invent the wheel. Thus spaceX won't do shit that actually matters in space. Their research was outsourced, except it's 40 years old now.
Here's a hint, had NASA continued to press on like it should have, SpaceX could probably launch stuff to the moon instead of just into orbit. It's because we held back so much that even SpaceX has been stunted as all of our space technology has been stunted. It's not that there isn't a role for companies in space, it's that with trillion dollar needs, no business can do anything but cheap knockoffs.
The space program is the best investment ever, and it's destruction over the last 40+ years has only held us back. Now that Monetarist Obama has basically destroyed NASA everyone can cheer as progress on this planet besides iPad's has stopped. But SpaceX will......just repeat the past.
Again, don't worry about WHY gov't are insolvent, fraud, the game has always been by the monetarists to end the Westphalian nation-state. They've decided to bankrupt all gov'ts at once at bring in the fascist new world order. Lemmings should rejoiced, we defrauded the world out of gov't and pretended that it was the cause. Now let them eat cake.
Seems like Sovereign man actually is an ideological whore for the oligarchy. Austrian or Keynesian....both oligarchical whores. FACT.
His ideology makes him THINK we'll all be better off without the Nation-State. Congrats, you are as much of a dumbshit as Bernanke is to think printing for fraud is a good idea. As you can plainly see, Simon Black is no different than Ben Bernanke, it's just their methods are different to arrive at the same end game.
Glass-Steagall
Nice! +1
Lowers prices for everyone? Maybe, but ask a Bolivian village about its water supply.
Maybe Detroit can subcontract with OCP for their police force.
just as long as lazy and corrupt politicians and public employees, who cause my property taxes to become impossible to maintain and the service to disappear so they can retire in florida, get hurt the worse, then bring on the collapse today, before the close of busness
Tell me how that living within your means works for you......at $8-10.00 an hour.
Austerity is when Simon Black is limited to visiting only two countries per day.
So why is he a shill for austerity? Because of his keen sense of justice. He knows that is the little guy who is responsible for this mess. The obamidable behavior by the little guy is why the noble Paulson had to genuflect before Nancy Pelosi to get the modest sum of $700 billion just to save the same little guy's ass.
Yes, we small savers, the tax donkeys that constitute the middle class, are the real criminals. We deserve to be crushed by austerity for the next 10 or 15 years. We should follow in the footsteps of the Irish, who are only too aware of their own blame for how things have turned out there.
Kudos to Simon Black for instilling a sense of penitence and readiness to suffer the most extreme privations.
I like libertarianism as much as the next guy, but I can't say I am looking forward to the day when we have to walk (privately-owned) city sidewalks stopping at each corner to pay the block entrance fee, and to cling to our own personal bodyguards (since there surely can't be any police in your dream world).
yeah it will be good in the long run but the transition will not be smooth
long asphalt
zerohedgers I am starting a blog about my 2 loves fitness/yoga and prepping (target demo 20 something single althetic women) I'm going to write about my berkey first bc I love it but what other topics do you think will work
i have 0 readers right now which I am OK with I just want a fun summer project ^___^ and maybe educate some ladies!
edit: don't think you don't have a stake in this, you want the hotties to survive right???
Whenever I read one of these "Government Sucks" and "Private Enterprise Can Do Everything Better" posts, I wonder if the person saying it is getting paid to spread the propaganda. While government does suck at many things, private enterprise is not that much better. I suspect it has something to do with the size of the particular organization and the degree to which the management of either government or business is remote from reality.
For fun, read this about the Garden of Eden which some would have you believe is the "Unfettered Free Market":
http://www.zompist.com/libertos.html
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
Austerity promotes revolution.
Long live the revolution.
Revolution is the answer! I say.........Bring It On!! It's the ONLY way that we are going to be able to bring sanity back to our world. And wipe out the debt of the middle class and poor. Fuck the 1%!
all the special interests, unions, employees, politician, et al will not go without squeeling and crying about how unfair it is
"With the government monopoly out of the way, the private sector will mop up every service that it can turn a profit on– trash collection, security, fire, prisons, libraries, etc. This forces competition, higher quality service, and lower prices for everyone."
Oh, really? What a short-sighted, unbelievably biased 'I hate Keynes' typically Yank load of arrant nonsense!!!! The real truth is that it is only a truly MIXED economy that works. One where private enterprise holds sway in areas of enterprise at which it excels - making things, providing a service, (making electrical goods, running an airline, for example) which 'governments' would be abysmally inept at providing. The weasel word in Mr Black's argument is competition. he blithely (!) assumes that if you wave your free enterprise, your laissez-faire wand hard enough, competition will magically appear. And lo, there was competition! But what if, for some reason, say, oh I don't know, the influence of power and money, there is no competition in an particular industry or business. What then, (Simon) Peter? What then? What then is we are back to what we have now, isn't it?
Post-1945 to the crowning of 'Queen Maggie' as UK Prime Minister in May 1979, Britain had a mixed economy which worked tolerably well. OK, certain beyond left-field (the loony left) trade union leaders had aspirations of toppling (usually Conservative) governments in order to achieve a permanent socialist state politically aligned to the then-USSR. I concede it wasn't perfect but, on the whole it worked. And do you know why it worked? It was honoured (i.e. not tinkered with) before Thatcher. That's why I don't share Yanks' gooey-eyedness whenever the name Margaret Thatcher is mentioned. She wasn't a heroine, she was just a vandal, a wrecker and she caused havoc to the UK economy in the early eighties by, instead of improving and modernising industries, she just brought them to their knees and handed them to others either in part or in their entirety in the name of IDEOLOGY - Friedman 'monetarism'. Utter, utter, folly and dangerous folly at that. Here is a list of industries she destroyed in the the of 'EFFICIENCY': Coal, ship-building, locomotive and railway rolling stock manufacture, the motor industry, steel manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, also, something which is not an industry per se but vitally important: an efficient Civil Service (she had it 'outsourced' by creating so-called 'agencies' which were and still are not directly answerable either to government or Parliament). All of the above were thriving industries before Thatcher. Yes, they all had problems, but none which meant they should be thrown away, giving as gifts to other countries. And now, far too late, we find that most of these are strategic: one other 'industry' I forgot to mention is farming. The most strategic of all, wouldn't you think? Beginning with Thatcher, a great deal of British farming has been aggregating into fewer and fewer hands. Less competition and great ability to manipulate prices with the collusion of the big 3/4 supermarket chains who impose impossible demands of smaller producers.
Yes, all this started with Thatcher. It won't end until Britain realises it doesn't make or serve anything or anyone apart from what goes on at Canary Wharf by which time it will be too late to resusitate anything remotely strategic. Is that what Herr Schwarz wishes to see? I think his thinking needs a rethink.
Your catch-phrase for today, Simon. A mixed economy is a winning economy.
+1
"The ‘road argument’ is one of the most widely misused defenses of government… as if there are no private roads in the world."
Oh boy, another apologist for capitalism; another plug for capitalism. That is rich (pun intended). If the roads in Chile are one example, the HMO system in the US is a contra indicator.
When your body and your health are to be considered from a perspective of how to profit on it, your health is the lower priority, if it is a priority at all.
I have not examined the roads in Chile claim, but I am reasonably sure there is more to that story than has been revealed in the brief anecdote we've been given.
Profit has little to do with the quality of goods and services. It is as much an inventive to reduce quality as raise it. One example would be food, where, for instance, the desire to substitute high fructose corn syrup for real sugar (and thus put our health at risk, according to many and without concern for health, according to many more) comes to mind.
Profit does not motivate quality, it motivates greed.
Not a bad post but I still can't stand this ponce.
Well said Simon Black
but if public monopoly is transfered to private monopoly (aka the Thatcher era) then the benefits are not so large.
Privatising public utilities into private monopolies (telecoms, water, electricity etc) has been a disaster in Britain and elsewhere accompanied with warehouses full of legislation and corrupt regulators to stifle free market competition
only a removal of Govt controls from the market will free the markets huge potential and deliver benefits to end-users
"SpaceX has twice succeeded in launching a vessel into space in its 10-year history with a total of just $1 billion in funding, averaging to $100 million each year… roughly 5.6% of NASA’s massive budget"
You have to understand that NASA doesn't just launch a single rocket. They run multiple facilities and have hundreds of complex projects and instruments. You can not compare the two organizations.
Remind me again many spacecraft the National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration has operating these days?
And what is NASA actually spending $20 Billion a year on? Would anyone except NASA employees and contractors notice if they stopped doing it?
If you ever get yourself access to the Internet, you can visit http://www.nasa.gov/ to find out more about what they're doing there.
It's a lot easier than finding out what the CIA and NSA are spending your money on, anyway.
Privatization on the scale that the article's author is imagining isn't necessarily a good thing. Privatization can be a double-edged sword, especially here in the US. I have seen quite a few formerly govt services "privatized" and the people are getting the shaft in this. Fees for these "services" have gone up quite a bit, and the privateer pays really low wages all to enhance their bottom line.
I have never seen so much proud ignorance on ZH as I see in this post. People who think that there is such a thing as government efficiency or perfomance. Who think that the problems that result from miss government are the fault of private endeavors and who don't realize that there is a 1% because too big big government gives them the money power. I guess that the kool-aid they have supplied for decades causes people to believe in gov. even when it should be obvious to first grader that gov. is our largest problem and our biggest enemy. If you want to really thoroughly fuck something up. Put a gov. in control. I shouldn't be so surprised, as the education system produces workers, not thinkers. One must think and study, in order to envision a society with minimum gov. and maximum respect for rights and property. Most of the things that cause people to think of a gov. solution are really a result of corrupt courts that result from over large gov. This topic really needs a thorough discussion, not this short post.