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IGMOW (I Go My Own Way) 1 year, 12 months ago.
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First, inflation is typically caused by government creating fiat money, typically, to pay its bills (handouts and government employees). This creates business uncertainty and reduces economic growth. If governments do not run deficits, they will not have debts and confidence in their currencies will increase. Inflation is just a hidden tax on the citizens. Over periods when the dollar was stable or appreciating relative to gold, the economic growth was higher than when the dollar was depreciating.
I would argue hyperinflation TYPICALLY does not cause wars — look at the dozens of instances of it over the last century. Usually it ends when government creates a new fiat currency worth 100 or 1000 times less than the old one (exchanging one fiat currency for another, citizens literally turn it in), so that they can repeat the cycle at some later time. Obviously this discourages investment and damages economic growth. In the case of Germany, it ended when they introduced a currency backed by the land used for farming and business, since the government had no gold to back it with. In the US, our currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the government, in other words, nothing, or perhaps, the barrel of our military’s guns.
I think taxes are well beyond a ‘cover charge’ when government spending now comprises 41.6% of economic output (GDP) in the United States (combined federal + state + local gangland grabs). And very little of it spent on infrastructure. I’m just a bit unclear on what additional services government provides ME now, than it did individuals 100 years ago when it was less than a quarter its current size.
I think many individuals are enslaved by debt but they made their own shackles — why not buy + own a mobile home, rather than a McMansion — pay for it in 2 years instead of 20?) But these are the decisions of individuals based on their values. To them, getting something bigger ‘now’ is worth paying for it ‘later’.
If you want to ENCOURAGE savings and investment and economic growth, then your tax system is based more upon consumption rather than income. I certainly favor this as it also makes taxes very VISIBLE. The argument against it is that it is regressive. Well, I view that as a plus in a way — because it causes a majority of people to be AGAINST expansion of government. Alternately, you could have a hybrid system, say, where your first $15,000 of purchases don’t face a consumption tax but everything after that does (difficult to achieve but could offer a rebate of consumption taxes for purchases documented on an electronic card like a credit card). I like that approach because it reduces the regression. A sliding scale decaying to zero would be better still.
Excessive taxes to me aren’t a reason not to work, but they certainly measurably ADD to the work year. If government shrank 50% then all private sector workers could have a shorter work year or retire earlier.
…And for the record, “litter of pink-eyed siblings” is a reference to white mice which are an r-type species, depending on offspring quantity to blanket an ecosystem in order to secure resources and reproductive success rather than, say, most higher order mammals that are K-type, depending on investing a small number of offspring with survival skills and experiences so that they can effectively compete for resources. I didn’t mean your brothers and sisters specifically…
Aaahhh, finally, a post I can endorse…
You know Doc, the sad thing is, I think you’d make a good libertarian if you weren’t so invested in maintaining the status quo.
[edit] p.s.
First, inflation is typically caused by government creating fiat money, typically, to pay its bills (handouts and government employees). This creates business uncertainty and reduces economic growth…
I think taxes are well beyond a ‘cover charge’ when government spending now comprises 41.6% of economic output (GDP) in the United States (combined federal + state + local gangland grabs). And very little of it spent on infrastructure. I’m just a bit unclear on what additional services government provides ME now, than it did individuals 100 years ago when it was less than a quarter its current size…
Excessive taxes to me aren’t a reason not to work, but they certainly measurably ADD to the work year. If government shrank 50% then all private sector workers could have a shorter work year or retire earlier.
Great post Frank.
Thank you guys for really digging into the topic without getting emotional
Well, I’ve been likened to a Nazi at least twice in this thread so far, but I just let it go. There’s no point to talking if you can’t keep it civil, right?
As for me, I m just curious to see how you guys intend to stop working for a paycheck and shopping for things you need. Does someone actually have a magic island? Or are you just going to bitch about banks and rich people and money enslaving you with no realistic plan for extracting yourself and ever being truly individual and free?
You guys remind me of the plantation slaves who had their irons removed but who just kept working the fields because it’s all they understood.
This thread has definitely stayed civil. With some of the other guys I’ve come across in the forums, you’d swear they’ve never been criticized in their lives. Here is my plan on trying to achieve being “truly individual and free”. I don’t believe it is possible to completely achieve, it only exist as an ideal to strive for. Kind of like Christians try to live without sin or I practice my guitar in an attempt to play the song perfectly. Neither is attainable, but that doesn’t make the pursuit worthless. I plan on living a type of minimalist in order to minimize the banks/rich peoples influence over me. Rather than saving all my cash into investments, I would invest the money education or other things that increase my abilities, so rather than being completely reliant on how well my investments grow with interest, I’ll have plenty of skills I can use to make more money or bargain with others.
Just in case I haven’t been clear in previous post, I can’t say I 100% agree with either you or Veni. Honestly, I don’t completely understand what the agreement is. All I know is agree with Veni a little more often than you. This world is f~~~ed up, and I don’t have a magical island outside of my imagination, but I don’t have to be a banker or rich man’s bitch. The less money I need, the more I free I am from a system that treats us as cogs in the machine.
There are people who bust their asses working 2 or even 3 jobs who still are only able to live paycheck to paycheck… while there are other people who just play golf and make over $500 an hour by doing NOTHING.
That is a direct symptom of monetary policy by fiat currency. It has nothing to do with capitalism/free market. Communists and socialists use this confusion (or they themselves don’t understand the difference) to convince people that capitalism is the problem when it is actually our monetary system that is the prime culprit.
On commodity money rich people will eventually have to produce goods/work/services because money is scarce and can’t be drawn up willy nilly on credit because they use fiat instead of hard money. So they have to rely on people actually paying them instead of a complex system of corporate credit.
DOC: “So a wealthy person comes to wealth by standing on the backs of everyone else in society from their parents to their teachers to the workers and the infrastructure that made their accumulation of wealth possible”
ME: That’s correct. If you believe other wise, I challenge you to build yourself some wealth without using something anyone else invented or interacting with any other person. Wealth isn’t possible without the market.
DOC: “So your beef seems to be about having to pay tax and interest and possibly something about inflation as well. Tough s~~~, taxes are the cover charge for being here.”
ME: It is not MY “beef”. The entire world has been slighted by the bankers and the ruling class. If this weren’t true, posts like this wouldn’t exist. I’m not even the person who created this post, Sovereign did, and he had a reason for doing it. If you haven’t figured out that the banks are bad for all of us yet, it’s because you lack education. You are supportive of taxes? Again, you reveal your collectivist nature by supporting and justifying the actions of the state. In capitalism, you don’t have to pay rent on what you own. So by being for taxes, you are against capitalism. In addition to that, taxes are the mechanism by which people are financially clamped into place. I’ve been working class all my life: Do you know why workers don’t want to work overtime? Because it bumps them up in tax bracket, which absorbs the extra wealth that they created for themselves. Meanwhile when the upper class is asked to pay taxes, their response is “Why punish success?”. Yes, good question. Why punish success and hard work? I’ll tell you why. To keep people producing running their engines full throttle in neutral gear, which IS the exact symptom of society right now. The original Americans revolted over a tax by a monarch on a breakfast beverage. If they were alive to day, they would have already started another revolution. Modern Americans don’t want to fight people, especially not just ignorant people who enforce unjust laws because they’ve been compelled to acquire currency to take care of their families. No one protects us from legislators.
DOC: “you can’t deny that in order to live, you must produce something of value and trade it for something else of value.”
ME: I most certainly can and will deny that in order to live, that I must trade with someone else. No I don’t have to trade someone else to live. All I have to do is hunt, fish, or find food. This statement couldn’t possibly be more false. There was a time when money didn’t exist you know, and people lived just fine. Tribes didn’t have to trade, they just took care of their own. You think that a man cannot survive on his own without trading with others? That’s absurd. If you got dropped on a deserted island, you would survive by foraging, hunting, and fishing all on your own just fine.
DOC: “My assertion is that this is what defines an individualist, and that the opposit is to expect and demand that someone else pay your way, which is collectivist… the only real point I’ve been after from the start.”
ME: We agree on those defiinitions. I’ve already established that. What we differ on, again, is that you believe that you are entitled to the labor of someone, else they should die. You believe that if a person doesn’t wish to participate in the economy that they do not deserve to live. Your type of thinking is the exact type of indoctrination brainwashing that was used to propel Hitler’s Holocaust, Stalin’s Famine, Mao’s revolution, and Japan’s Kamikaze. You do not think for yourself. You are just repeating the philosophies and curriculum that the ruling class taught you so that you can help propel the ideological systems of the status quo. You are doing a great job at it, too because you are ALL FOR slavery and have no respect for human lives, and compare us to lab rats.
DOC: “I don’t think we’re going to have a real discussion here as you already told me you have no respect for me and now I don’t have to worry about being decent or caring what you have to say any more.”
ME: It is abundantly clear that you haven’t been decent to begin with. Calling people “losers” or other names is disrespectful. Claiming that you can judge whether a person is worthy of living is the thinking of psychopaths. It’s how they justify genocide to the populace, and it’s how they rally support for it: by dehumanizing other people; classifying others as somehow subhuman. This is the reason everyone jumped you for calling someone a loser. People don’t come here to compete with you and listen to your s~~~ty criticism about how they are inferior or worthless. They come here for collaboration and support to try to escape the slavery that we’ve been talking about this entire time, but with your way of thinking you should just really quit MGTOW because you don’t believe in freedom at all. You would pick up a gun and lay waste to your fellow man for the economic system.
DOC: “Aha, this is where you thought I said you and your family should die.”
ME: Yeah, it’s too late for you to try to damage control that and save face. What you said was cruel and unnecessary, and along the line of thinking of psychopaths. It doesn’t matter if you framed it with an “IF” statement. Even *if* I met the criteria, neither you nor anyone else are capable of appraising my value, much less deciding whether I’m worthy to live or not. It’s not your place. The fact that you think you can is your illness, and is also the illness that has spawned all of the mass depopulation efforts of the ruling class, and sick, cruel and twisted proposals similar to what Thomas Malthus wrote in his “Essay on the Principle of Population”.
DOC:”So what was your point again, aside from waaah, international banking conspiracy BAD!”
ME: Ok Doc, for probably the FIFTH time now : (I don’t really know how many times I’ve told you and I’m not going to go back and count) People should not have to be compelled into the service of others by law. How many times do I really have to say this? I’ve gone over every piece of legislation for you that compels people to acquire currency to exist, instead of allowing them to own their land, farm and take care of their families on their own. I don’t expect people NOT to trade. I expect them not to have to pay to exist, because originally they didn’t. This is the type of freedom that Americans wanted when they rebelled and fled from England.
DOC:”I’m sorry if you took it personally…. unless you’re a freeloading whining entitled loser collectivist who thinks money is bad because someone else has a lot more of it than they do and who can’t or won’t compete fairly to get what they want but instead expects to be paid, fed, watered, cared for and treated like a princess for just showing up and having intrinsic value. Like most women do.”
ME: First off, you did not hurt my feelings. If I felt anything, it was the disgust of knowing that yet another “citizen” has been brainwashed with the idea that people should be slaves else die. I have already established numerous times that I am not a freeloader, and that I’ve never accepted a handout. Before I left my job, I saved up enough money to pay my mother for 6 months while I learn to code. In addition to that, I purchased the trailer I live in from her. Your attempts at “Ad Hominem” have failed you, sir, and are an indicator that you are incapable of refraining from attempting to make it personal, likely because you lack information about the *actual* subject, which is “How Humanity Has Been Enslaved With Debt”. Your views are statist, and they are collectivist. You can’t call yourself individualist while being a statist and justifying that people should be taxed, compelled to involuntary expenses, and compelled to earn their living from someone else instead of earning it for themselves. Your hypocrisy speaks for it’s self. You might be done here, because you have defeated yourself by contradicting yourself too many times, and leaning on “Ad Hominem” and subhumanist philosophies instead of facts. However, I will continue discussing this subject because it’s just as important to me as it to the original poster, and the truth is on my side.
It has nothing to do with capitalism/free market. Communists and socialists use this confusion (or they themselves don’t understand the difference) to convince people that capitalism is the problem when it is actually our monetary system that is the prime culprit.
Capitalism isn’t synonymous with the ‘free market’. and I agree, Crony Capitalism (Keynesian and other like economic schools of thought) IS the prime culprit, in my opinion. A ‘free market’ would allow the working class to use their collective economic power to influence state policy.
This thread has definitely stayed civil. With some of the other guys I’ve come across in the forums, you’d swear they’ve never been criticized in their lives. Here is my plan on trying to achieve being “truly individual and free”. I don’t believe it is possible to completely achieve, it only exist as an ideal to strive for. Kind of like Christians try to live without sin or I practice my guitar in an attempt to play the song perfectly. Neither is attainable, but that doesn’t make the pursuit worthless. I plan on living a type of minimalist in order to minimize the banks/rich peoples influence over me. Rather than saving all my cash into investments, I would invest the money education or other things that increase my abilities, so rather than being completely reliant on how well my investments grow with interest, I’ll have plenty of skills I can use to make more money or bargain with others.
lol, it’s hard sometimes Tiga but I’m glad that none of the participants have stooped to death threats yet! 😛
That’s a very reasonable philosophy Tiga and perhaps, you’re on to something. In any case, it’s good to get a broad range of opinions.
…ME: Ok Doc, for probably the FIFTH time now : (I don’t really know how many times I’ve told you and I’m not going to go back and count) People should not have to be compelled into the service of others by law. How many times do I really have to say this? I’ve gone over every piece of legislation for you that compels people to acquire currency to exist, instead of allowing them to own their land, farm and take care of their families on their own. I don’t expect people NOT to trade. I expect them not to have to pay to exist, because originally they didn’t. This is the type of freedom that Americans wanted when they rebelled and fled from England…
Another exceptional post Veni.. it’s fortifying to read a post that expresses so similar philosophy to my own but articulated with an elegance that I can’t quite muster. keep up the great work, it inspires me.
Thank you, Bob, and thanks also to Big Boss, Chir, and FrankOne. Now we are back to actually having a discussion about the subject
Your strategy is excellent Tiga. I think we all should get back to DIY as much as possible, especially since planned obsolescence. What you said here is beautiful: “I don’t have to be a banker or rich man’s bitch. The less money I need, the more free I am from a system that treats us as cogs in the machine.” Sometimes less is more, and that was definitely the case here. Well said, sir. Well said.
Thank you guys for really digging into the topic without getting emotional
Well, I’ve been likened to a Nazi at least twice in this thread so far, but I just let it go. There’s no point to talking if you can’t keep it civil, right?
As for me, I m just curious to see how you guys intend to stop working for a paycheck and shopping for things you need. Does someone actually have a magic island? Or are you just going to bitch about banks and rich people and money enslaving you with no realistic plan for extracting yourself and ever being truly individual and free?
You guys remind me of the plantation slaves who had their irons removed but who just kept working the fields because it’s all they understood.
This thread has definitely stayed civil. With some of the other guys I’ve come across in the forums, you’d swear they’ve never been criticized in their lives. Here is my plan on trying to achieve being “truly individual and free”. I don’t believe it is possible to completely achieve, it only exist as an ideal to strive for. Kind of like Christians try to live without sin or I practice my guitar in an attempt to play the song perfectly. Neither is attainable, but that doesn’t make the pursuit worthless. I plan on living a type of minimalist in order to minimize the banks/rich peoples influence over me. Rather than saving all my cash into investments, I would invest the money education or other things that increase my abilities, so rather than being completely reliant on how well my investments grow with interest, I’ll have plenty of skills I can use to make more money or bargain with others.
Just in case I haven’t been clear in previous post, I can’t say I 100% agree with either you or Veni. Honestly, I don’t completely understand what the agreement is. All I know is agree with Veni a little more often than you. This world is f~~~ed up, and I don’t have a magical island outside of my imagination, but I don’t have to be a banker or rich man’s bitch. The less money I need, the more I free I am from a system that treats us as cogs in the machine.
Your strategy sounds excellent, Tiga. We need to go back to DIY instead of being completely dependent upon the services of others through the economic system, especially since planned obsolescence. Brother… the way you said this exactly what I’ve been trying to get at the whole time: “I don’t have to be a banker or rich man’s bitch. The less money I need, the more I free I am from a system that treats us as cogs in the machine.” Sometimes less is more, and in this case you win with the simplicity. I appreciate you
Hmmm, but I’m not referring to the ‘millionaire’ class. You CAN be a millionaire by simply being thrifty, investing wisely and working hard. Hell, the average price for a flat in central London is now £1.26m according to ‘Foxtons’. I’m talking about the Captains and the Kings, the legislators and plantation owners.
Where do you draw the line? Millionaires aren’t the problem…do you have to have 10+ million to be a problem? Do you have to have 100+ million? Or how about those greedy billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Mark Zuckerberg? Oh wait…none of them were born into money or an empire, they were all self made billionaires.
Beer, there is no such thing as “self made”. Sorry, but behind even the best and brightest, there is a very long “thank you” list of entire teams of people without which, a single person’s success could not be possible. This list can include the parents, family members, friends, business partners, employees, and it can also simply include predecessors that made innovations that helped boost a person. Self made is a myth
A self made millionaire refers to someone who did something to earn that money on their own…basically they didn’t inherit a fortune. No s~~~ the actual person them self isn’t entirely self made…considering people these days tend to not grow up in a cave in the wilderness with no human interaction, which would be the only way they could fit your definition of self made.
If you did not directly provide someone with a service, or create a product, and you are getting paid, you have not earned the money. That is money for nothing. In the end, profit is really just value created by, and stolen from, the laborer. People who make a profit and then invest the money to receive even more profit, have really just stolen from the workers that created the wealth for them.
So let me ask you, if I start a small business selling ice cream, and hire a few part timers to work with me, is it ok that I make money? Of course it is. Now let’s say the business is wildly successful, I move to a bigger location, I hire 5 full time workers and some part timers and I work as manager, its still ok I make money, right? Of course! Now the next year, I hire someone out to manage the place for me, and I sit home and watch tv while I entrust my employees to do their job and run the place for me, and I still make a profit, but its wrong?
Last I checked I wasn’t stealing anything from my employees, I gave them money in exchange for labor. How is that wrong? Should I have to close my business down or give it away when I decide its well established and I’d rather pay someone else to run it for me so I can go play golf instead?
This is fact. Inflation does effect the rich less, because the poor and middle class run out of money faster.
Like I already said, that is why you invest your excess somewhere you can collect interest, dividends, capital gains, rental income, etc. Stop being a moron acting like you are forced to put money in a 0% account and watch it get eroded by inflation when there are tons of other options to avoid that. Are some of them risky? Yeah, but guess what, the rich take the same risks as the rest of us when doing something with their money as well.
A major strategy of large companies is to starve out fresh competitors by underselling them until they are bankrupt. This was particularly notorious in the early oil days of Rockefeller.
And this has absolutely nothing to do with inflation…
Banks DO force poverty on everyone, at least central ones anyway. They do this by the overprinting of money which eventually results in hyperinflation followed by war. Sorry sir, but you have a lot of learning to do. You should get studying immediately because obviously you do not understand how the banking system works.
I think its quite the opposite. I understand how the banking system works and I use it to my advantage. Its why I’m top 10% net worth for my age and why I’ll be retired in my early 40s.
Excessive taxes to me aren’t a reason not to work, but they certainly measurably ADD to the work year. If government shrank 50% then all private sector workers could have a shorter work year or retire earlier.
Right on brother…some people just don’t get this. They want “free” s~~~ from the government, which means government gets more expensive, which means they get to keep less of their money to spend how they want. Suddenly they feel like they are getting more poor, so they vote for more “free” s~~~, and the cycle continues.
I have no problem paying taxes, I realize our government serves some critical functions and we should all have some skin in the game, but when only half of us have any skin in the game and the government waste money on dumb s~~~ at the rate they currently are its pretty infuriating.
I plan on living a type of minimalist in order to minimize the banks/rich peoples influence over me. Rather than saving all my cash into investments, I would invest the money education or other things that increase my abilities, so rather than being completely reliant on how well my investments grow with interest, I’ll have plenty of skills I can use to make more money or bargain with others.
Just in case I haven’t been clear in previous post, I can’t say I 100% agree with either you or Veni. Honestly, I don’t completely understand what the agreement is. All I know is agree with Veni a little more often than you. This world is f~~~ed up, and I don’t have a magical island outside of my imagination, but I don’t have to be a banker or rich man’s bitch. The less money I need, the more I free I am from a system that treats us as cogs in the machine.
So you end up an educated, successful man with a lot of skills that makes a lot of money. Eventually you make more money than you need to make ends meet..what do you do with the excess? You invest it somewhere…you put it in stocks, you put it into rentals, etc, and that money makes you even more money, and eventually this passive income will be enough you can say f~~~ it and quit your day job.
Oh s~~~…now you are making that evil interest/dividends/passive income that Veni detests so much. How can you agree with him when he is basically saying the ultimate end game for working hard and saving somehow equates to you being a leech that contributes nothing that is stealing form other people?
ME: Ok Doc, for probably the FIFTH time now : (I don’t really know how many times I’ve told you and I’m not going to go back and count) People should not have to be compelled into the service of others by law. How many times do I really have to say this? I’ve gone over every piece of legislation for you that compels people to acquire currency to exist, instead of allowing them to own their land, farm and take care of their families on their own. I don’t expect people NOT to trade. I expect them not to have to pay to exist, because originally they didn’t. This is the type of freedom that Americans wanted when they rebelled and fled from England.
We didn’t rebel against taxation, we rebelled against taxation without representation. Colonial Americans weren’t anarchists, they had local governments, and they full well understood they had civic duties. I’m more of a libertarian than anything else myself, but what are you going to do when you need to go to the store for something? Travel on a public road? Someone’s got to pay for it. What are you going to do when someone comes and steals your horses, call the cops? That cop isn’t working for free you know.
If you expect not to “pay to exist” but want to benefit from what other people pay for, aren’t you essentially forcing other people to fund you, which you yourself are bitching about not wanting to fund other people?
Ok Beer, first let me correct you: When you said: “how about those greedy billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Mark Zuckerberg? Oh wait…none of them were born into money or an empire, they were all self made billionaires.” you are mistaken. Firstly, Bill Gates is in fact, from a wealthy family. Secondly, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t self made because he funded his startup with other people’s money, which is why he had the falling out with the people he started Facebook with in the beginning.
I will address your questions about business:
BEER:”So let me ask you, if I start a small business selling ice cream, and hire a few part timers to work with me, is it ok that I make money?Of course it is. Now let’s say the business is wildly successful, I move to a bigger location, I hire 5 full time workers and some part timers and I work as manager, its still ok I make money, right? Of course! Now the next year, I hire someone out to manage the place for me, and I sit home and watch tv while I entrust my employees to do their job and run the place for me, and I still make a profit, but its wrong?”
ME: Yes you can pay yourself as long as you are working. If your business is wildly successful, then the expenses should be subtracted from profits and then divided up evenly among all of the people who made your business possible along with the profits, but instead you pay them a meager wage and keep the rest for yourself. In the end, once you have phased out the necessity for you to actually do any work, all you have done is created free lunch for yourself at the expense of the labor of someone else. You have no real way to justify that or call it good, but people are going to do it anyway, because they don’t care about the person they are exploiting. Companies are actually doing this now; rewarding the people who actually produce the goods and services.
As for the American Revolution, it was about a hell of a lot more than just taxation without representation. It was about owning your own prerogative. It was about battling the idea that some people are inherently superior to others by blood line, this concept being called “royalty”. It was about the right of the people to rule themselves, rather than being forced to serve a ruling class. There’s a specific reason that Thomas Paine wrote “Common Sense”. The desire for conquest by the British Empire was insatiable, and that’s why they controlled Africa, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Britain, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, America, and the majority of the entire Dynasty of banking through the Rothschild family.. Essentially, most of the world. None the less, we have now come full circle and have replaced the monarchy with an oligarchy. At this point, the oligarchy is probably worse than the monarchy ever was. They definitely have starved and murdered a hell of a lot more people, in even crueler ways. The wars have been far more devastating. My statement about oil companies starving the competition was completely relevant to inflation because it is an analogy of what happens over a longer period of time to the value of the dollar, and thus the purchasing power of it.
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling” -Thomas Paine.
BEER: “If you expect not to “pay to exist” but want to benefit from what other people pay for, aren’t you essentially forcing other people to fund you, which you yourself are bitching about not wanting to fund other people?”
ME: Who said I want to benefit from what other people pay for? That’s manipulative. You are framing that I am of that opinion, and I am NOT. I’m not forcing anyone to fund me, and never have. So, for probably the 6th time now let me attempt, yet again to convey that what I am actually saying, is that the collective of society, through coercion, has no right to prevent me from growing my own food, fishing, hunting, and taking care of myself. It has no right to force me to pay rent on land that I own. For the kazillionth time, since you are SO dense, the collective has NO RIGHT to force me to pay in order to exist, else confiscate my freedom for simply hunting, fishing, and growing my own food, on my own land. You cannot refute that, because if you do, you are saying that you are against private property, and that government has the right to remove independence from people. If you truly believe that, you are not at all an individualist, and damned sure not a libertarian. As for banking, you know that it is fraud. Just because you benefit from the fraud doesn’t mean it is good, and also doesn’t mean it’s legitimate. It’s a Ponzi scheme. The majority of us have said that. If you think not, then you are one of the few, if not, the only one here who believes it’s legitimate. Just because you benefit from something doesn’t make it good, or right, Beer. You would benefit from slavery. Is it good? No.
So you end up an educated, successful man with a lot of skills that makes a lot of money. Eventually you make more money than you need to make ends meet..what do you do with the excess? You invest it somewhere…you put it in stocks, you put it into rentals, etc, and that money makes you even more money, and eventually this passive income will be enough you can say f~~~ it and quit your day job.
Oh s~~~…now you are making that evil interest/dividends/passive income that Veni detests so much. How can you agree with him when he is basically saying the ultimate end game for working hard and saving somehow equates to you being a leech that contributes nothing that is stealing form other people?
I probably won’t become very rich because I won’t be chasing the highest paying jobs. Me aim is to work no more than I have to. My biggest agreement with Veni is that I distrust money. Money losses value with inflation and all they have to do is print more of it to make what I worked for less valuable. In order to defeat this inflation, I have to give my money to companies so they can further perpetuate this system and then after years of waiting, I can finally get my wealth. I’m not interested in that. The knowledge that I pursue as an alternative will be something I enjoy chasing after and I don’t have to wait until the investment matures to derive benefits from it. I can use my skills to make money if I want or barter with other people to get what I need.
I’m out of time right now and I’ll need to reread this thread to get a better understanding of exactly what you are claiming Veni said, so I’ll end my comment here. I’ll see if I can get back to this before tomorrow.
It has nothing to do with capitalism/free market. Communists and socialists use this confusion (or they themselves don’t understand the difference) to convince people that capitalism is the problem when it is actually our monetary system that is the prime culprit.
Capitalism isn’t synonymous with the ‘free market’. and I agree, Crony Capitalism (Keynesian and other like economic schools of thought) IS the prime culprit, in my opinion. A ‘free market’ would allow the working class to use their collective economic power to influence state policy.
No, the monetary system having fiat currency is the prime culprit for disparity of rich and poor. Crony capitalism simply means people are getting government preferential treatment because of political/financial connections.
But having a guy ridiculously rich and doing nothing vs someone working forever on only a fragment is the result of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.
When we still had a gold standard, there were no billionaires. The closest people could get were millionaires. Even with some form of gold standard recently in the 50’s we had milk men living on the same suburbs as doctors. Because money had value. A cart of groceries could be bought on just a dollar.
After the Brenton Woods 2 agreement, was the value of a coke revalued from 5 cents to now around 2.50. The money is junk because of fiat currency AND fractional reserve banking expanding the money supply to ridiculous levels. So now people and corporate giants can just borrow on credit and not worry about backing it up..
Big Boss, you are so much more skilled at describing the problem than I. I am glad you are laying it down.
Firstly, Bill Gates is in fact, from a wealthy family.
His parent’s didn’t hand him a 40 billion dollar fortune.
Secondly, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t self made because he funded his startup with other people’s money, which is why he had the falling out with the people he started Facebook with in the beginning.
Its called investing. People took a gamble on Zuckerberg being he had the drive, the ambition, and the ideas, and those people were well paid because of it, but according to you, those people are all scum that contribute nothing to society. Just imagine how fantastic society would be if people couldn’t invest like that, and an average guy like Zuckerberg with an idea couldn’t turn it into an empire.
Yes you can pay yourself as long as you are working. If your business is wildly successful, then the expenses should be subtracted from profits and then divided up evenly among all of the people who made your business possible along with the profits, but instead you pay them a meager wage and keep the rest for yourself. In the end, once you have phased out the necessity for you to actually do any work, all you have done is created free lunch for yourself at the expense of the labor of someone else. You have no real way to justify that or call it good, but people are going to do it anyway, because they don’t care about the person they are exploiting. Companies are actually doing this now; rewarding the people who actually produce the goods and services.
Oh, so you mean if someone gave you money to get your business started, you should have to divide up the profits and share with them? That is uh…exactly how the stock market works…that is what investing is bro…the very thing you seem to hate.
Not to mention, you pay your workers. They agree to do a job for a certain amount of money…they don’t have any claim to your profits. If I was running the show I’d give my good workers raises and bonuses, and a lot of bosses and companies do that, but in the end all that is owed to you is your wages for time you work, you don’t have any legal or moral claim to a profit share. If you don’t like what a company agrees to pay you don’t take the job, go do something else.
I’m not forcing anyone to fund me, and never have. So, for probably the 6th time now let me attempt, yet again to convey that what I am actually saying, is that the collective of society, through coercion, has no right to prevent me from growing my own food, fishing, hunting, and taking care of myself.
So what if set up an amazing garden on your land, and it grew a ridiculous amount of food, and society came in and said you don’t need this, and took 3/4 of, would you be p~~~ed they took it through coercion? Its your right to grow it, is it not?
Now how is that any different than my example of the ice cream shop? Just like you set up that amazing garden, I set up an amazing ice cream shop, and instead of my excess resource being food, it was money, yet you seem to think I should have to split it up. You think I should have to fund someone else in my example, but yet, you don’t think you should be forced to have to fund anyone else?
It has no right to force me to pay rent on land that I own. For the kazillionth time, since you are SO dense, the collective has NO RIGHT to force me to pay in order to exist, else confiscate my freedom for simply hunting, fishing, and growing my own food, on my own land. You cannot refute that, because if you do, you are saying that you are against private property, and that government has the right to remove independence from people. If you truly believe that, you are not at all an individualist, and damned sure not a libertarian.
Actually article 1 section 8 of the constitution grants the government the right to tax you.
As far as me not being a libertarian, that is just comical, as I’m a registered libertarian. Maybe you should learn a little about the modern libertarian party, here is an interesting summation of some of their beliefs if you are interested.
http://www.uselections.com/ideology/libertarian.shtml
Mainly I’d like to share the following points…
Economic Liberty – Libertarians want all members of society to have abundant opportunities to achieve economic success. A free and competitive market allocates resources in the most efficient manner. Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society.
Property and Contract – Property rights are entitled to the same protection as all other human rights.With that being said I’m not 100% in agreement with the libertarian party on all topics, because I’m not a brainwashed idiot who can’t form a thought for myself, I just simply agree with more of their views than my other choices of parties. Libertarians aren’t anarchists, we simply believe in a limited government, and even a limited government will have to tax to perform its functions.
I probably won’t become very rich because I won’t be chasing the highest paying jobs. Me aim is to work no more than I have to. My biggest agreement with Veni is that I distrust money. Money losses value with inflation and all they have to do is print more of it to make what I worked for less valuable. In order to defeat this inflation, I have to give my money to companies so they can further perpetuate this system and then after years of waiting, I can finally get my wealth.
That is actually my plan as well. I’ll never be very rich because at some point I’m going to have enough and just live off of the passive gains of what I’ve already accumulated. My time is more important than excess wealth I really don’t need, so I don’t plan on wasting my time earning that wealth. You don’t need a ridiculous amount of money to do that if you live somewhat of a minimalist lifestyle.
But with that being said…why hate the system that allows people to do that? Ok…maybe you hate wall street and don’t want to play the stock market…well you could just as easily use your excess funds to buy rental properties, hire a property manager to manage them all, and all you do is sit back and collect your rent money every month. Its the same thing, you are earning passive income for doing nothing, and your money is sitting somewhere where inflation isn’t going to erode it like if you hid it under your mattress…do you hate that idea as well?
The simple fact is we have had years of inflation and deflation even while on the gold standard. We won’t ever have a steady money supply. Even if in theory we did have a completely stable currency, it would just end up being deflated in a sense as we had to distribute a fixed amount of money among a growing population. I don’t exactly agree with our countries current monetary policies, but at the same time its not hard to make investments that have long term averages that beat the long term average of inflation, so I’m just not concerned about 3% inflation a year we’ve been averaging for the last 30 years eroding my savings while my savings have been out pacing said inflation.
Damn…Veniversum came up in here like Gandalf the White.
No, the monetary system having fiat currency is the prime culprit for disparity of rich and poor. Crony capitalism simply means people are getting government preferential treatment because of political/financial connections.
But having a guy ridiculously rich and doing nothing vs someone working forever on only a fragment is the result of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.
When we still had a gold standard, there were no billionaires. The closest people could get were millionaires. Even with some form of gold standard recently in the 50’s we had milk men living on the same suburbs as doctors. Because money had value. A cart of groceries could be bought on just a dollar.
After the Brenton Woods 2 agreement, was the value of a coke revalued from 5 cents to now around 2.50. The money is junk because of fiat currency AND fractional reserve banking expanding the money supply to ridiculous levels. So now people and corporate giants can just borrow on credit and not worry about backing it up..
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united-states-off-gold-standard
“On April 5, 1933, Roosevelt ordered all gold coins and gold certificates in denominations of more than $100 turned in for other money. It required all persons to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve by May 1 for the set price of $20.67 per ounce.”
http://www.goldpriceoz.com/gold-price-per-ounce/
Today….1 ounce of gold = 1075.5
So….1075.5/20.67 = 52 x .05 = 2.60
Oh s~~~…how about that, relative to gold…coke is still pretty much the same as it was in the 30s when you could get a bottle for a nickel.
I don’t blame inflation for a weakening middle class…I blame it on stagnant wages, but what do you expect as we shift towards a global economy, its a no brainer wealth was going to move from rich countries to poor. We also have some of the highest corporate taxes in the world, and our workers expect to be paid a lot more than in a lot of other places…is it really surprising when businesses move operations elsewhere, especially when nothing is stopping them from turning around and selling their product at the same price after they slash production costs and avoid taxes via the move. A lot of the manufacturing jobs that once made up a good portion of our uneducated middle class jobs have gone over seas where there is cheaper labor and lower taxes. Meanwhile our government allows an invasion of illegal foreigners to persist, and they drive wages for uneducated workers down even more. To top it off we even import a bunch of cheap labor on h1b visas to drive wages down for some of our educated workers as well.
This is a very weird “debate.” I sense some ignorance on some people parts perhaps due to youth. That said I agree most with Doc and Beer…Yes the system is f~~~ed, but hey make the most of it because nobody else is gonna give a f~~~ about you.
Use what you know, what you learn, what you’re good at to achieve your goals. Stop worrying about unfairness; everyone knows it’s unfair. Do what you can now with what you have. Use logic, not emotions.
It seems like the topic has been hijacked though.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity. --Einstein
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