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The Rulers And The Ruled
From Bill Buckler, author of The Privateer
The Rulers And The Ruled
The truth that without property rights, no other rights are possible has been known for millennia. In the formalised study of politics, it is more than 300 years old, having been articulated with great care by John Locke in the late 17th century. The modern study of economics is well over 200 years old. Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations was published in 1776 - the same year as Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration Of Independence. The great work which finally integrated money with politics and economics celebrates its centennial this year. Ludwig von Mises published his Theory Of Money And Credit in 1912 - the year before the US inaugurated an income tax and a central bank. Ten years after that in 1922, von Mises published Socialism - a book which established beyond refutation the fundamental truth that any form of central planning and/or government control of the means of production cannot work because it makes economic calculation impossible. Picture if you will the state of ANY other branch of human endeavour if ALL the knowledge about it gained over the past three centuries had been summarily dismissed.
Property rights are a prerequisite for any kind of exchange - direct or indirect. The ability to exchange is fundamental to any type of viable economic activity. The efficiency of exchange is fundamental to the success of that economic activity and the resultant prosperity of the nation that engages in it. Indirect exchange using a MEDIUM of exchange or money is hugely more efficient than direct exchange or barter. That makes money the most important economic good in existence. The tragedy of our present global plight is the simple fact that money is also the least understood economic good in existence.
The first pre-requisite of the establishment of a “society” of the rulers and the ruled has always been the same. The rulers must gain control over the medium of exchange. For obvious reasons, no nation can ever progress to a state of advanced economic activity until a medium of exchange is established. Once it is established, there is no going back. An advanced economy cannot operate by means of barter. The problem is that once the government or the rulers gain control of money, it progressively ceases to be a medium of exchange and becomes a medium of control. That impinges on the functioning of markets which in turn impinges on the maintenance of property rights. Thus, we come full circle from a free society to a command society. There has never been any shortage of those who want to rule. The problem has always been with the vast majority who are content to be ruled. Today’s global outcry for the manufacturing of more and more “money” out of thin air is an eloquent testimony. It shows that most people have no understanding of freedom, markets or money. Lacking such understanding - and having no desire to gain it - most people have accepted government as their masters.
As Robert Heinlein stated the problem - it is impossible to free a serf or a slave. He or she must free themselves and most are much more terrified of that prospect than they are resentful of being ruled.
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You don't need consent to govern. You just need fear.
I believe our new 'nobles' have achieved that quite successfully.
You dont need consent to govern but the case is that 'American' governments govern with the consent of the governed.
That makes them different in that the authority to govern no longer lies with the ruler but with the ruled.
In 'American' societies, rulers derive their powers from the consent of the ruled. Rulers have no power by themselves.
Dr. Sandi - - - Its only through consent that one can govern - even in a dictatorship.
The reason for this is that the governed greatly outnumber the rulers.
Fear is of a very limited value. Once people get to the point of desperation, they no longer give a shit. The days of a ruler without consent, are then numbered.
This has been written about many times. One of the best works to deal with how consent can quickly be withdrawn was written 500 years ago. I think you'd find it fascinating. Download here for free:
http://mises.org/document/1218/
Should show a show called Amerikas Pussies or Amerikan Pussification. Might as well. Yeah great fucking society as they say. look around folks, the pathetic sheeples are zombies drawns to crap and useless relationships.
I agree that we have too many pussies in America now.
But you have to ask . . . where else in the world is this not also true ? (Iceland excepted, perhaps).
People have to be pushed far enough . . . so that the Giant is awakened.
Often they head down the road to tyranny. But perhaps there's still a faint enough memory of Liberty in Americans that they will choose a different path.
We'll see.
I have a problem with this article. Adam Smiths fundamentals have been proven wrong. (see Debt the First 5000 years)
have a problem with this article. Adam Smiths fundamentals have been proven wrong. (see Debt the First 5000 years)
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Wrong, right, who cares?It is an 'american' world. The first thing to know when it comes to lies is whether or not you can make money out of them.
Looking around, 'Americans' have monetized successfully many, many lies...
A Banksters defeatism nightmare, Being forced to Return to Real Money=United States Note=Lawful Money, remove the elastic money from the system, and pay off the national debt.. The real reason you pay tribute, an income tax, is for the privilege of using a private currency. Also known As A: Federal Reserve Note, Demand from your bank or brokerage, lawful money and the tax goes away, with a tax exemption on lawful money, all of your money is yours. Use the Remedy within the Federal Reserve Act. http://savingtosuitorsclub.net/ Stop being a Slave!!!!!! This is Tax Free Money!!!!!!!! For the short version see www.stormthunder.com
As Michael Badnarick teaches, even a three year old recognizes property rights.... MINE!
Animals recognize 'mine' and 'ours', but not 'yours'.
Sadly, only a small percentage of people recognize 'yours'.
On the contrary - most people recognize 'yours'. They know to do so is right, and the only way to preserve 'theirs'.
Its only a very small minority who does not recognize this.
They are the psycho/socio paths who end up at the top of governments.
Theyd rather take from you than do the hard work of producing their own. They also enjoy hurting people.
And some of them are very good at convincing their sheeple followers that 'yours' is really 'theirs'.
To Buckler's point, even when gold and silver have been the everyday medium of exchange, the official stamped coins of a government have simplified trust in precious metal content.
Currency is better that barter, even barter supported by advanced technology. It has only recently become possible to create a modern global currency not controlled by any central authority whatsoever.
No, it does not take government to perform that function. Study the history of money.
may I ask why it would necessary at all to have ONE modern global currency? and isn't gold anyway the one currency that is accepted in the whole world - with the exception of a "gold-suppressing zone", mostly limited to ONE country in it's extremes?
Nail in the coffin of property rights dating back to the Magna Carta:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
Right to property now an opaque and nebulous mental construct only.
As the author states, if you have no right to property you have no rights.
Bullshit.
Mutual trust will suffice.
You can't decry government in one paragraph and demand rights in the other. Property rights can only *exist* under a regime.
By demanding property rights [government protection of your property], you are essentially putting a collective obligation on everyone else to defend your shit--no, that's not quite right; you are arguing for theft of everyone else's property (what about their rights?) to finance the defense of your own.
Here is your junk.
Property rights exist independent of government, and especially independent of your asinine definitions. Governments sometimes respect and protect those rights, but more often they are the single largest violators.
But most importantly, and the reason for junking you, is that the line of thought that says rights flow from the existence of government displays shocking ignorance. You have basic human rights because you exist, not some nebulous "government".
Well said.
Some dont even question the notion of what they are thinking when they say/write 'government' - as though it were some living entity.
'Government' - in the sense we are talking about - is those polticians and bureaucrats who make meaningful decisions. (not your local mail carrier). They make those decisions based on their own personal interests - usually to gain wealth & power, and as an ego boost.
Would they say "we must have politicians and bureaucrats" determine our personal rights and how we should live ?
It is the globalist bankers who have perverted and smashed the American economic miracle.
R. W. Emerson made the people’s case long ago in “The Conservative” (1841):
“I laid my bones to, and drudged for the good I possess; it was not got by fraud, nor by luck, but by work, and you must show me a warrant like these stubborn facts in your own fidelity and labor before I suffer you, on the faith of a few fine words, to ride into my estate, and claim to scatter it as your own.”
The problem is government, not bankers.
Lame. This debate was settled over 200 years ago with the Jeffersonian, American principle of "happiness" superceding the Lockean principle of property. The argument put forward in this article only goes to reflect the victory won in the American Revolution as being but one battle of many more later fought, as well as battles yet to come. As such could fast approaching declared insolvency of the trans-Atlantic banking system -- this the consequence of recent decades' reckless submission to a life sucking imperial system otherwise called "globalization" -- offer the constitutional republic of the United States an opportunity to effect statehood in the republic throughout the entire English-speaking world, and so, more firmly cement the nation's classical humanist principle, and thereby more effectively secure Liberty's posterity, as well. Surely, too, is coming chaos likely to chisel away today's slavish obeisance to modern [imperialist] dogmas surrounding money, specifically regarding its widely supposed, yet entirely unfounded supremacy over all manner of human activity, including its engagement in politically legitimized theft of property to a degree fairly unprecedented (and if not unprecedented, tragic nonetheless). Apparently the millions upon millions of otherwise trusting citizens (and no doubt trustworty, too) whose lives are being decimated by the imperial train wreck in progress has not yet been convincing. Unbelievable. Never, then, is there any need to wonder how two fascists could be running for U.S. President, nor how Nazis came to be for that matter. Cowards unwilling to defend the great American victory over tyranny apparently are easily subdued it seems by constructs like those this article puts forward regarding property, the likes of which by no means open doors to immortality, such as was the intention of the American republic, this being brilliantly inferred by the U.S. Constitution's single-sentence Preamble whose purpose reveals the intended spirit of the nation's supreme law subsequently detailed. Patriots, on the other hand, recognize the nature of subversion quite intuitively it seems, as Congress' incredibly low approval rating rather testifies. These pricks are sold out to imperalism, making the Ivy League appear a den of traitors whose disproof is their problem, not ours.
I agree with the vast majority of what you wrote, but you got it wrong regarding Jefferson and Locke. Jefferson recognized the central importance of property rights.
Jefferson has been misrepresented by some (mostly on the far left) on this issue.
There is much out there on the topic - here's one article to start:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/18_1/18_1_2.pdf
Wrong! Property ownership is one of those inalienable rights, conferred upon us by God. The legal system merely codifies what is natural law as seen in the wild among animals and in the most rudimentary of hunter-gatherer societies. It is in the DNA of living things.
If you can't call your soul your own, can't prevent your body from being violated or dismembered, can't lay claim to a simple shell that you have made into a water basin, then you aren't human, you are subhuman in the depths of Hell.
And that is where we are heading, from purgatory to the depths of Hell.
were the inalienable rights of those who lived on this land before the anglo & european "settlers" arrived respected or were those people considered subhuman and confined to the depths of the reservations?
until the people of this country have the courage to address this fundamental hyprocrisy underlying the formation of property rights as Law of the Land, it's a slippery slope down to Hell.
There are winners and losers in the clash of cultures, but the blood of American Indians lives on in me. Let me say this, that within a given culture there must be the establishment of property rights, and that standards that one holds dear are necessarily violated from time to time by the exigencies of History.
We aspire to be angels, but are really devils, thus the need for self-imposed brakes on behavior, (whatever and however such brakes can be mustered).
The American Indians were doomed by the sweep of History, most of them wiped out by diseases brought in from Europe.
At least in the United States some of their descendants had a chance to break free, assimilate, and to make something of themselves other than yearn for a past that was no longer possible.
And for me to claim ex post facto some percentage of land in the United States based on my heritage would be ludicrous. That water has long since gone under the bridge.
'American' rationalization are always the best quality. Finding better is like finding a treasure.
Keep up the good work.
And how about Chinese rationalizations over Tibet and the 40-60 million (or more)of her own citizens killed by Mao ?
The light of Liberty is very dim in America today, and almost extinguished. In China, the people were never even allowed the bulb.
We can only hope this changes for people in both countries.
Zeus says you're full of shit.
Human beings require the gifts of nature combined with their own labor to transform these gifts into usable forms - in order to live.
If one does not have the right to control the product of his labor - he has no control over his own life. His means of survival can be taken from him on a whim.
In a 'right makes right', 'dog eat dog' world there would be little time & effort available for production, specialization, and technical advancement. Peoples energies would have to be focused on protecting what little they have.
When producers are robbed to an excessive degree, production stops. Chaos thrives.
This has happened many times in world history.
You don’t have freedom of speech if you don’t own property from which to speak – a place on the Internet, a piece of land, a sovereign nation… Jefferson explained that our rights of life, liberty and property were given by our Creator, with sovereignty of the individual.
The bottom line is, in this world there is ownership. Somebody owns everything and different factions control different aspects of those things. If you don’t own anything, if you’re just a lessee, then the landlord has the rights, not you.
If the government owns the parkland, it’s the people who control the government that own the parkland, not the people in common. Think not? Try exhibiting your rights and putting up a Christian cross on that parkland if you think you own it. Try exhibiting your free speech on the interstate, or at the Washington Monument, saying what you will about US/Israeli aggression.
But, you can still speak from your property, and the government will have to have a court case to keep you from it.
Man was given the earth; it’s up to man to decide what to do with it.
by John Fullbright and Dustin Welch
http://www.johnfullbrightmusic.com/music/
That is good. Another 'American' wrote above the pursuit of happiness and stuff. Does not prevent another 'American' from misrepresenting the pursuit of happiness a few posts below.
US citizenism at its best.
I feel like everyone is missing the point of this article, as it coincides with our (human bengs) situation in the world today! Which is, individual property rights and there essential connection to freedom and liberty within a society, are being greatly diminished both in this Country and abroad!!!
Why???
One word: Resources
Governments and elites love to "hand out" property rights as a carrot, when resources are abundant, it's when they become scarce, that we find out how much freedom and liberty we really have!! Land is the most limited of resources, more limited then oil, gold, silver and the rest! It's just such a human tragedy, that after 300 years of "enlightenment" on this subject, that our revolution of 1776, is all that stands between total global tyranny on this subject! And we are crumbling at the foundation as we speak!!!
It's more stunning, that as more and more "revolutions" emerge from Africa to the Middle East, Asia to Europe, that none of these will be about property rights fundamentally, instead all you hear is........"people are taking up arms and fighting the government, because the government didn't "provide them" with jobs, opportunity, and happiness!!!!!!
All things the Government can NEVER provide!!!!!!!
thanks v. much to mrB for the "facts" of the philosophers and not some bullshit:> "...therefore we ALL must..." conclusion
jLocke; vonMises; tJefferson; aSmith; and...
...robert heinlein? [1907-88] was somehow able to spin a great yarn using the philosophies, ideas, and values of those 4 who preceeded him as his "core"
heinlein'sHeroes were presented in an uneneding (it seemed) stream of novels or novelettes of "sci-fi" and he contended in the literary struggle for the "heart and minds" of, ...well, boomers, and was a Paperback WriterTheBeatles <:/~~~
strangerInAStrangeLand took the 60's by storm and inspired one compleatIdiot to act out thusly:> slewie's "roll your own" Utoobz
johnnySilverBear likes this one best, i think heinlein {h/t :> LBT}
and if you choose to read this :> Desmond Tutu Calls on ICC to Try Blair, Bush Over Iraq
try listening to it w/ one of these [paulSimon] OdeToLadyLiberty
...or not...
Bill B. there is a problem with your thesis, not that you did not make great points, and not that you are wrong on any of the above, but you say:
The rulers must gain control over the medium of exchange. For obvious reasons, no nation can ever progress to a state of advanced economic activity until a medium of exchange is established.
It is true that barter can only service an economy at about the level of hunter gatherer, even feudal systems need money. But, I think you have used the term "medium of exchange" inaccurately.
Money is the term you needed to be using and in order for anything to fill the role of money "medium of exchange" is just one of three required attributes. Otherwise Gresham's Law will make sure that your medium of exchange, legal tender or not, will rapidly parish, and there are no bankers or politicians that can order Gresham's Law into submission, they all try but they all fail eventually. For example the recent presidential order in Zambia banning dollar denominated trade. It is going to fail and Zambia will go the way of Zimbabwe. Bad money will always chase out good, nobody in their right mind will exchange a bar of gold for goods when they can make the same deal using a debauched dollar. Another example is the federal government's "crackdown on liberty dollars using the ironic and totally spurious claim that they were circulated under a Ponzi scheme.
The other attributes are that it has to be a unit of account, without a standardized and universal accounting system there simply is no point or ability to trade no matter what is used for money.
The third requirement money must satisfy in order to be of use in economics is that it must be a store of value. Without a constant value you might as well use cabbages as money. Just as with cabbages that rot and lose value in time your specie will rot and lose value without a reliable value that an economy can count upon year in and year out.
There is no reason why paper money, fiat as many here prefer to call it, can't satisfy all of those requirements as long as the guardians of the currency do not succumb to the temptations of debasement, and perhaps that cannot be hoped for in reality without a death penalty for the crime of tampering with any of those three aspects of money. One thing is for sure, if the stewards of our monetary system are not scrupulously and entirely honest and morally impeccable in this regard the people will find or create a superior money.
Balderdash! You speak of debasement, scrupulousness, and honesty.
The Federal Reserve Notes are wothless as we speak.
What Makes Money Valuable?
In the United States neither paper currency nor
deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar
bii is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries.
Coins do have some intrinsic value as metal, but generally
far less than their face value.
Modern Money Mechanics Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago p. 3
Liberty Dollars were taken down because they supported a store of wealth and were issued counter to Title 31 section 5118 Gold Clause.
BitCoin still stands because it serves the TPTB. IMHO it is the most unreliable, floating, easily confiscatable digital currency imaginable.
Ponzi roulette zombie money, Yeah!
That was sort of my point Kayl, a death penalty for tampering with any of the three aspects of money no matter what money actually is, because it is not about gold verses silver verses cabbages verses FRN's, it is about the integrity of the people we trust to administer our money, if they cannot be trusted to make a paper dollar FRN as good as gold then they can't be trusted to make anything be money. As long as they have a part in it we are slaves.
Scrupulous men and women who do their job because they love their job, they are good at it and they love their country so the country will always have the best they can do, those are the people that must administer banking and regulation and monetary policy, not corporations bribing people to have their bitches placed into seats of power. My whole point was that the USA and world have no money at this point, because in every land on the globe one, two, or all three of the requirements of "money" are absent, corrupted, or valued in relation to another which is debauched.
I would prefer to see people who do their jobs from an altruistic love of their nation rather than those that do it from a fear of the death penalty, but any violation of one of the three properties of money is the same as counterfeiting, one of two (or was it three) crimes the founders of the USA ascribed the death penalty to when they made our constitution. Unfortunately the legal definition of counterfeiting has come to mean the actual reproduction of FR notes rather than the broader definition of tampering with the three real tests of what money is.
Of course any use of the word BALDERDASH automatically means (/sarc) but still, I know a lot of people that would kill grandpa and sell grandma for a few hundred of those "worthless" FRN's. Metals cannot be money for the simple reason that 7 billion people can't use gold and silver as money, there just is not enough of it to represent ongoing economic activity as well as the stored value of things built. If gold alone were the money of the planet your smallest coins would have to be atoms of gold. Not ounces or grams, or nano grams, atoms.
I think we are entering, or better put already in, a period of global reevaluation of just what everything is actually worth from "priceless" da Vinci art to an hour of labor at Mickey D's, and that is why money is not functioning as it should be. Make no mistake this reevaluation is based in an angry old white guy power elite of a few thousand rich people against 6 billion 9 hundred 99 thousand and 12 other people who seem to think they have something called RIGHTS! Imagine that, rights. As long as the top of the heap can afford those mercenaries who will kill grandpa and sell grandma hope is dim, but the army of the little man grows faster than the rich can produce bullets to shoot them with. In the end it will be people like me, and you if you are cool enough to be rational, who will win. Pure math, the only way they win is to wipe out billions of people in a stroke. Sadly they are so pathological about their ownership that I honestly think they will resort to that when they have no choice but to submit and pay taxes or kill us. I don't for the life of me understand why all of you are not picking up arms and going after all these people you bitch about when we all know they would have no problem dropping a nuke on your city if it meant they could keep their fabulous dynastic wealth.
Could it be that you all just envy them and want to join their ranks as rulers of the stupid masses, rather than being a stupid mass yourself? If so you are not welcomed in my home.
The modern world is blurring distinctions like this that used to be relevant in the past.
Suppose someone sits at home watching TV in a section 8 subsidized apt., then occassionally goes out to get his SNAP rations. And nobody ever bothers him.
Is he "free"? Most would say no, that he's not free. Because if he were free, he would live or die based on productive ability. But is he a "slave?" Again, no, because he really doesn't have to do any work at all.
I would use the world "dependent" to describe such people. And the truth is, who wouldn't want to be dependent? Would you rather be dependent, or spend your life working in the fields?
I salute the dependents. They are showing us all the way forward. Best to become as dependent as possible until the whole thing crashes, then it won't matter anyway.
The dependents are not fighting, striving, seeking to become something better. They are "rolling over", accepting what is handed to them in a slothful pursuit of whatever little pleasures they can eke out while satisfying their needs.
That is the "way forward"!!! I think NOT.
There is value in work, in any work. Sweat in the sun picking fruit, and you come back at the end of the day having done something, having contributed something.
Most become mindless drones without work, prey to addiction and crime, and they set a horrible example for their kids.
Huh. Somehow I think sweating in the sun picking fruit is a lot more useful to our economy than dreaming up new financial innovations to scam municipalities and pension funds out of money by convincing them that they will be able to protect themselves from interest rate risk while at the same time that risk is manipulated by the federal reserve's ZIRP. Why the big difference in compensation?
Yes, dolph9. And the moral of the original story of The Little Red Hen is that those who show no will to contribute to an end product do not deserve to enjoy the end product.
In the socialist revision of The Little Red Hen that now circulates our public libraries, all the barnyard animals that refused to help the little red hen bake her bread get to equally share in the happy eating of the bread, including the dog.
The truth is, Marxism/socialism fails, in most part, because the State has to use overt force at the point of a gun to induce people to produce. Everybody becomes, if possible, a free-rider.
Communism does not work, except temporarily at the point of a gun, because there is no reward, no ownership of property which motivates a man to burn the midnight oil to patent an invention. In the unjust world of totalitarianism, the individual who strives to advance, no matter how industrious, is just a cog in a socialist machine run on somebody’s political ambitions of " From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
And to add insult to injury, under most socialist theory, the bulk of the wealth and accompanying power is transferred to a tiny minority of the ruling elite.
JR you win, big prize for reducing complex social and economic issues to something less than a talking point.
Dolph, he is freer than if he had no housing and no food. And by the way, Ben Bernanke and the Koch Bros want to compliment you on your recent posts, great work, look for a christmas bonus of $19 at least. How free is a man living in a cardboard box under a bridge eating out of dumpsters? By the way, you do know that grocery stores now have padlocks on dumpsters so "bums" can't eat out of them right?
Oh by the way, I am a dependent. I get $3,762 dollars per month tax exempt each month from the taxpayer, plus totally free healthcare at the VA (might not be the best but it is a lot better than the nothing 55 million Americans have eh?), and I sincerely thank you all. I honestly did not think you had it in you to do the right thing, I really mean it when I say the thanks is sincere. I mean I lived in the woods for years sleeping on couches in homes of people that did not want me there, and in junker cars not worth hundreds of dollars. You finally came through for me. Of course I was 17 and looked 11 when you put me in a barracks with a known sex offender, and I will never marry or know family again, and the next 20 or so years you pay me is to me a death sentence I can't do anything about.
My only consolation is that there are so many out there that hate, into the well of their souls, and the more hate they direct at me the more they know the pain they pay me for. Because hate and resentment and envy are the real death, the real unlivable life. You can say what you want about "welfare sponging dependents" but till you lived several years of your life without a decent meal or a roof you have no idea what it really means to be human, and if you can come out the other side not thinking that every person you meet is a shitbag that wishes you dead then you made it. Because I don't hate you all as much as you hate me, but I am also never again going to let you do to me what you have done to me. And since I have already been through the worst a person can go through I now have the pure luxury of relaxing and watching as you flounder around looking for your next target to vent spleen and hate upon, because you can't touch me anymore.
Just to clear the air here...so you lurkers don't miss the 'forest':
People cordon off a piece of land and arbitrarily announce that it is henceforth a "sovereign nation." Ruffians and schemers soon grab the posts of government, and by the power they vest in themselves set about plundering the individuals who live there. This has been going on for thousands of years, until today the entire earth (other than a portion of the oceans) is divided among different gangs, who wear pinstripe suit[s], and run their plunder under the flag of governments. -Albert Keuls, The Offshore Game, From John Pugsley's Journal, Private Conversations with the Money Masters