Peter Schiff's column on the Swiss being the "biggest losers" begins thus:
In Switzerland, it's not just the clocks that are cuckoo. Over the past four years Swiss politicians and central bankers have gone on an unprecedented buying spree of foreign exchange reserves. In 2012, their cache swelled to as much as $420 billion worth of various currencies, primarily the euro. This figure is a seven-fold increase since 2008 and equates to 70% of the country's annual GDP. The sum translates to $200,000 per family of four, enough to keep the Swiss in clocks, chocolates, and fondue for many years to come. The Swiss leadership will claim the money has been "invested" with an eye to the future, but what they've done is impoverished themselves in the present. Although such a decision seems perverse, it makes perfect sense when seen through the lens of today's presiding economic thinking.
The Message:
"Foreign Exchange Reserves" - which are NOTHING but the funny money of Other Central Banksters - are NOT "MONETARY RESERVES."
And Schiff's conclusion reads:
The problem is that economists now believe that the goal of an economy is to provide employment, not goods and services. They see a job as an end in and of itself, rather than as a means for people to get the things they really want. But if we can get all that we want without having to work, who needs to bother? A strong currency takes us closer to this goal. It is a testament to how far the "science" of economics has fallen that this goal has been utterly forgotten.
But this junk science is killing real growth. As long as this "black is white" ideology remains in place, the biggest [paper money] printers will continue to be the biggest actual losers.
Inevitable Doom - for The SWISS!
Now, Schiff is NOT an economist - but an "intelligent" Market Player.
So, let us proceed to a Mises Institute column by someone who's writings I have been admiring for long, Thorsten Polleit, who is chief economist of the precious-metals firm Degussa Goldhandel GmbH and an honorary professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management - an otherwise EXCELLENT column on the Inevitable Doom when "Banking and The State" cohabit - save for some Deep Errors that I shall be discussing subsequently - for Polleit's conclusions are much more clearly and cogently explained:
In view of what has been said above we can conclude: (1) If and when public ownership of government takes hold, commodity money will be replaced by fiat money. (2) Fiat money leads to collective corruption on a grand scale. And (3), once collective corruption has become sufficiently widespread, the fiat money regime will be destroyed by hyperinflation.
From what has been said above it follows that we know that once a fiat money system has been put in place, banks and bankers have joined – some of them willingly and knowingly, some of them unknowingly – the vast criminal enterprise that is the state.
Being self-interested human beings, bankers can, and must, be expected to know a lot about money and banking. In view of a rather dismal monetary history, such a conclusion would also do much to explain Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici’s dying words to his children: “Stay out of the public eye.”
Now, Polleit's Deep Errors are as follows:
First: the History of Trading & Exchanging homo sapiens as homo economicus does NOT begin with civilisation - hence is does NOT begin with anything called "minimum intelligence" at all - and Mises does NOT "assume" ANY SUCH THING in his Epistemology.
On the contrary, Mises ROOTS his SCIENCE of Economics in an Epistemology based on "logical categories of the trading human mind" that ALL human beings are possessed of - an Epistemology that serves as the Foundation of this Science - and this Theoretical Science is VALID in "all times and places where the conditions hold" - so these theories and their conclusions are valid ever since the first homo sapiens "evolved" in AFRICA from our "pre-human ancestors" - and I explained it all in this recent post.
Second: As far as an "inequality of skills and wants" that Polleit writes about - the "correct" manner of expressing this, in the very precise and scientific terminology that MUST be employed by ALL Misesians is as follows:
The Inequality of Skills is DATUM - and we can SEE it all around us.
The Inequality of Wants is because Value is Subjective.
Thus, in my post on trade & exchange AND the "evolution of money" in AFRICA, among the Very First Hunter-Gatherers who ALSO "evolved" there, I explained, for students, how all this occurred as follows:
The herdsman, the farmer, the fisherman, the gatherer - they would "trade & exchange" - each knowing within his own mind that the other would value his surplus LESS than he does - just as he himself values his own surplus LESS than the surplus of the other that he acquires in exchange.
This is "subjective value of the marginal unit" - in ACTION!
This is also how various "media of exchange" - or HARD MONEY! - also EVOLVED, by slowly "gaining currency" - as individual traders, within their own trading minds, came to appreciate the fact that those others they wished to trade & exchange with will surely accept these. Thus ended primitive barter trades - "direct exchange" without the medium of money.
Again, this is because of "subjective value" at work - with each trading mind slowly realising that in order to obtain what the other possesses, he had best offer what he feels the other will most likely accept - what Menger called the "most sellable commodity."
Third: As I explained in yesterday's post, "We are ALL Born to Accumulate Capital" - by showing how this comes naturally to ALL of us as Trading Individuals, then the Rise of Civilisations EVERYWHERE are explained as having the Same Cause - Increased Private Capital Accumulation - and this worldwide phenomenon is also understood in History by applying the same Praxelogical Theory, and its Epistemology.
Hence - the "counting of herds" by nomadic herdsmen EVERYWHERE - from Africa, to Asia, to the Anglo-Saxon shepherds, to the Cowboys of America, and the sheep ranchers of Australian and New Zealand.
Property, Capital, Income, Arithmetic - and more! - all these "logical categories of the trading human mind" are VALIDATED.
Now, I am writing this post with the intention to PROVE that what Schiff calls "junk science" is nothing but junk - and ALSO to show how the Extremely Rare "Professor of Finance" who knows of Mises need NOT be fully acquainted with all the aspects of The Science of Economics.
So, let me proceed to some other Deep Errors in Polleit's column - to those that fall in subject areas such as Political Philosophy, and much of this is History, anyway - and these concern the "incentive for aggression," the "roving bandit vs. stationary bandit" proposition of Mancur Olson, INTENDED to DISPROVE all those who wrote about "THE PREDATORY STATE" - and then, about his "time-preference theory" of governments - one employed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe to show how "Traditional Monarchy" (of the European kind, he means) is superior to Modern Democracy - because the monarch is the Permanent Owner of The State, which his descendants will inherit one-after-the-other endlessly - hence, monarchies will not borrow-and-spend endlessly, and attempt to RAISE the Total Asset Value of The State instead.
As far as the "collective incentive for aggression" - as distinguished from the "Individual who is an OUTLAW" - and there were MANY such "outlaws" in the Wild West but NO MAFIA Gangs! - the "archaeological evidence" of FORMERLY WALLED CITIES bears EVIDENCE to the Stark Fact that the Old Threat of "Barbarians at the Gates" no longer exists, or is no longer PERCEIVED.
COLLECTIVE AGGRESSION by STATE MERCENARIES as is occurring all over-the-world today - it suddenly ERUPTED in EUROPE in the early years of the 20th century - ONLY because, as just discussed in this recent post, the Whole of Europe had COLLECTIVELY EMBRACED the New Ideologies of National Socialism, Trade Unionism, Legislationism, Universal Adult Suffrage, and the New FINANCE CENTURY that lay behind it all - as The Enticement for their Ruling Elites.
Thus, an article such as this - on LewRockwell.com TODAY, on why their Military-Industrial Complex LOVES WAR - and promotes it!
All this is the Very Antithesis of anything-and-everything the Classical Liberal Political Economists believed in - from Smith, to Bastiat, right down to Menger and finally, Mises, their acknowledged "last knight."
All this is NOT the "politics" of English "politicians" like Richard Cobden and John Bright, who successfully steered a Free Trade Movement among The English Working Classes in the early 19th century.
The World's First Working Class Mass Movement was for Free Trade!
Then, as History has recorded, "Cobden was the MOST HIGHLY FETED POLITICIAN in the Whole of Europe" - in the 1830s!
"The real threats are not the Russian armies," Mises told Americans, "they are the ideologues."
Hence, all that I just wrote AGAINST swaminathan aiyar's column of today is nothing but evidence of the REAL THREAT faced by PUBLIC OPINION from POISONERS such as these JUNK "economic journalists."
Further, when Polleit writes of "collective corruption" - and then, WE look at The REAL Threat - that of "ideologues" - who are simply PURCHASED because such purchasing is EASY for Rulers who Print Money - then the Twin Dangers of State Education as well as Unlimited Budgets & Unlimited Taxation become STARK!
So, to ADD to my post of yesterday, on The Limiting Constitution of any Free Republic of The Future, let me now ADD:
NO PUBLIC EDUCATION!
BANNED!
Next, "weird definitions" of the State as "a monopolist over force" within its territory as provided by Polleit are AHISTORIC as well as "unconstitutional" - that is, if this word "constitution" in employed in its CORRECT, LEGAL SENSE, which is:
To Place The Rulers Under Laws that Limit their Powers of Coercion
AHISTORIC in a Deeper Sense as well: For, just as a Stateless Society like that of The First Settlers in America STARTED with the LIBERTY to ARM THEMSELVES, so did Human History from the Very Beginning!
Indeed, the Mass Migrations of Jews into Eastern Europe in the 16th or 17th century, from Spain in particular, but also from other parts, including Germany, which is surely how Mises' ancestors began residing in what in now Poland, has been, by a contemporary historian, likened to the migrations into the "Wild West" of the North American continent from those of the Eastern parts, and what was ALIKE about both these was that in ALL HAD TO BE ARMED - because it was DANGEROUS otherwise!
Thus, when Peter Bauer titles a great book - The Development Frontier - and we THINK of the real "frontier" regions of the Third World today, including this Indian sub-continent, then PRIVATE GUNS are surely a MUST - for Economic Development!
CONSTITUTIONALISM, therefore, means:
To Place The Rulers Under Laws that Limit their Powers of Coercion
A LAWLESS STATE - with a Lawless Police fucking-around-the-place - and then, to top it all, a Socialist Constitution - and then, this COLLECTIVE CORRUPTION of both money as well as MINDS!
SUCH A LAWLESS MONOPOLY OF FORCE MUST BE OVERTHROWN!
That such a LAWLESS POLICE is also what the USSA is about TODAY - do read this truly HORRIFIC account of what COPS do there.
And, as for the SOLDIERS of the USSA - there is this DEFINITION of The American Soldier dated 1922 - from the Great HL Mencken - and I am PROUD to quote it in full below:
"There was a time when the profession of arms was honorable, but that is surely no longer true in America. The corps of officers of the United States Army seems to be fast sinking to the estate and dignity of a gang of longshoremen. One never picks up a newspaper withoout reading of the arrest of some officer or ex-officer for an offense involving dishonor. Not long ago one of them was hanged for murder. A few days later another one, in prison for the same crime, asked for a pardon on the ground that, in the region where he was brought up, murder was not regarded as criminal. Swindles, defalcations [i.e., embezzlement], rowdyism, drunkenness, extortions, cruelties -- such offenses are so common that they pass almost unnoticed."--H.L. Mencken, in The Smart Set, Jan. 1922, in The Second Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 168-169.
What to RECONSTITUTE in each Free Republic of The Future - well, I only just wrote about it.
I have also explained the "logic" of Just War and Republicanism - and there is a post that is more an essay - On the "Grave Constitutional Crisis" facing Indians today - but that word should read "crises" - for this is verily a WORLDWIDE phenomenon.
To conclude:
NONE of the most fucked-up poorest-of-the-poorest SHEEPLE of The Planet need anything called "minimum intelligence" or suchlike - and they shall "naturally" PROGRESS into CIVILISATION because of the "logical categories of their trading human minds" - and they shall surely Accumulate Hoards of Private Capital equally naturally if - and only if - this JUNK SCIENCE and its JUNK MONEY to which all these JUNKIES are ADDICTED is JUNKED - and PRIVATE MONEY with laissez faire and LIBERTY in a New Civilisation of Free Republics becomes:
A New World
