Dollar Vigilante

URL: http://www.dollarvigilante.com/blog/rss.xml

Updated: 14 hours 25 min ago

New York, Atlanta, and San Miguel de Allende: Doing The Numbers

Mon, 06/17/2013 - 16:15

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV legal correspondent, Jim Karger]

June 11, 2013, 5:07 p.m. United Airlines Flight 4132, Houston to Leon, Mexico

We just reached whatever height above the earth deemed by the US government suitable to use electronic devices. I know that because our flight attendant, Stephanie, bored and tired as she is, just told me and everyone else it is "OK" as long as the wireless feature is turned off, but she warned ominously that if you give serious thought to using a cell phone during flight that you will go straight to jail, and I believe her.

I left the airport at Leon, Mexico yesterday at noon, flew to Houston and then to Atlanta where I arrived last night about nine o'clock and took a taxi to a nearby Holiday Inn Express. The cab fare was $40 US with tip (all references to money are in US dollars) which seemed almost like a bargain compared to a cab I took two weeks ago from the Newark airport into downtown Manhattan. That tab was $100 with tip. But neither seems like a deal compared to my home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where anytime of the day you can take a cab anywhere for $2.50 during the day or $3.50 at night. If you throw up in the cab, it may be another buck.

The Holiday Inn Express near the Atlanta airport is new, sanitary to a fault, and sported an unusual sign in the bathroom that said in nicer terms than these, "too many of you are stealing everything from the towels to the sheets to the coffee maker and even prying our hair dryers off the wall. If we catch you doing this shit, here is what we are billing you," followed by a long list of the entire room's inventory except the carpet and the furniture. Even the shower head apparently gets gnawed off by hungry businessmen looking to take something home to the missus. To be fair, I did get a free cookie on check-in and some stale cereal for breakfast this morning and because I didn't steal the television set my tab was just $89 until various governments got their hands in the mix taking the total to $130. Not bad, I thought, compared to Marriott's Springhill Suites on 36th Street in Manhattan where two weeks ago my room, modern but tiny and only a "suite" if you reinvent the language, was $414-a-day on Priceline, and by the time New York and the Feds got through with me the tab for two nights rang up over $1000. And again, neither seem anything but offensive compared to a real suite I had the last time I was Puerto Vallarta where 1200 square feet with a full kitchen, marble floors, living room, two 60" LED screens, a swim up bar, meals and all the top shelf liquor you can lap up) was $125-a-day for TWO people.

After my two hour meeting this morning, I took a cab back to the airport (another $40) and bought a small package of trail mix (emphasis on small) for $5.25, found a bar and ordered a (as in one) gin and tonic (after all it was slightly after noon) which set me back $11.25 with tip. After arriving in Houston for still another late flight, I bought a sandwich knowing that whatever United was pitching off their extruded aluminum carts would not be fit to eat at any price. My sandwich set me back $7.95. And once again it all seemed reasonable considering three of us went to a bar on 37th, ordered some finger food and enough drinks to change the overall attitude but not enough to lose our way back to the hotel which set us back over $300. And yes, once again I remained nonplussed considering my good friend Arnie Thexton (read more about Arnie here) and I frequent the best bar in San Miguel de Allende (see photo) and get two for one all night, making good liquor about $3.50 a drink served not by someone pissed off with life and the shitty cards they have been dealt but by happy people who, if you hang around long enough, will drink with you and tell you stories that will make you cry, not because they are sad but because you wonder why you are not happier.

Now, before you start objecting that San Miguel de Allende, a small city perched at 6,200 feet above sea level in the high central desert of Mexico cannot be compared to New York, or even Atlanta, you are right. It would be like comparing a $5 apple to a 20 cent orange. On some days, I like apples more, but for the difference an orange is just fine anytime especially if I don't have to peel it.

Don't take my word for it. TDVers have shown up here in droves. A handful can't get over the fact there is no Best Buy and hustle home to work on their next heart attacks. Others leave promising to return as soon as they can work their way out of debt in Manhattan or Atlanta or Houston. Good luck. Many have simply returned home, sold everything and now live in San Miguel de Allende, one of the most beautiful places in the world, where the weather is almost always perfect, the people are friendly, and you can drink with Arnie and take a cab home all for less than ten bucks.

Jim Karger is TDV’s San Miguel de Allende group (access for TDV subscribers only) concierge and hosts the TDV San Miguel de Allende website. He is a lawyer and Dollar Vigilante legal correspondent, and frequent contributor to The Dollar Vigilante, who has represented American businesses against incursions by government and labor unions for 30 years. In 2001, he left Dallas and moved to San Miguel de Allende in the high desert of central Mexico where he sought and found a freer and simpler life for him and his wife, Kelly, and their 10 dogs. He is TDV's San Miguel de Allende concierge and his website is found at www.crediblyconnect.com.

Life in San Miguel is so clearly so much better than anywhere in the increasingly fascist USSA that Jim Karger has been wondering for months why I haven't transplanted myself yet. I swear I can almost hear his head shaking in befuddled disappointment as I read his emails on the matter. What could make secret spying programs and increasingly likely black-bagging seem more appealing than historic splendor and affordable living? And there is the giddy feeling of freedom that comes from not actually being within USSA borders...

If you'd like to start figuring out where else in the world you ought to be, then TDV Groups (of which Jim is a Concierge) is just the thing for you. Access to TDV Groups is a benefit exclusive to TDV Newsletter subscribers. But you can find out more about becoming a subscriber here.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

TDV Week in Review June 16, 2013

Sun, 06/16/2013 - 19:39

Ambushed by Statist Women at a Booth in a Bar
(or "Girls Night Out")

"But who would build the roads?" the young woman in the middle asked me. She was of South Asian descent. The woman to her left was an actual African (not a pseudo-African like your muttish editor), African accent and all. The woman to her right was a Slavic blonde. The three women sitting across the table from me in the booth had set upon me as soon as I'd taken my seat, like much better looking versions of the Stygian witches as they might appear in a United Colors of Benetton ad. For the moment I was the Perseus of ancaps.

One of my lady friends had invited me to stop by for the latter part of her night drinking with her girlfriends. They had been partying at her apartment and then moved the party to a nearby bar, where I was told to meet them. My lady friend has developed a habit of telling the people in her life that I am an anarchist. It's something about which I have very mixed feelings. I'm not ashamed, of course. I just don't feel like turning every meeting into an attempt to undo an entire lifetime of brainwashing.

This time, however, she was very apologetic. Her girlfriends were very intelligent people with good-paying consulting jobs. And they had been drinking a lot. They were as merciless as they were relentless. This wasn't a discussion. It was an attack.

I fielded their questions and accusations as best as I could. I explained about the anarcho-communists (she had related to me that her boss thought that as an anarchist I would be upset that she worked for such a big, for-profit organization!), about the absurdity of trying to eliminate property rights, about the inherent fascist nature of public policing.

The African said that people would not do good things without the government's gun to their heads. I pointed out that she's saying that people aren't capable of good...so they need people who are also incapable of good to show them how to live... I also pointed out that political power attracts the very worst people to it. The blonde disagreed almost violently with that.

I also spoke about how they themselves lived anarchy every day and would be offended if the state were to encroach upon that more than it has. "We've been moving toward more freedom," I explained, "and have been better for it. Freedom and progress are hopelessly intertwined. You may not understand how roads could be planned voluntarily and for profit, but just imagine the other ways freedom has benefited you. Just imagine there was a time when people were forced to marry, for example. Surely you wouldn't appreciate that now."

"Marriages lasted longer when they were arranged and enforced," said the African. Her sad comment actually took the fight out of me. That someone would actually make an excuse for such fascism on the grounds of perceived effective results...that's like excusing a rape that resulted in fairly normal children. It was just too monstrous, too disgusting. My lady friend had been trying, almost with tears in her eyes, to get me to stop fielding their questions. So I took that opportunity to bow out of further political discussion. Even my chatterbox tendencies flag in the face of such ugliness.

The good news, however, was that while the blonde to the left wasn't an anarchist...she loved Ayn Rand and considered herself socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Dear readers, I do believe I found myself a libertarian minarchist. This didn't escape the notice of my lady friend who sarcastically suggested her blonde libertarian-ish friend and I should get married.

It may be a bit soon to talk about marriage. But at least this was someone I could actually talk to. She doesn't yet get the inherent immorality of the state (the socially accepted initiation of force). But she has a solid base arguing for more liberty from effect. So maybe I'll give her a call...

Not sure my lady friend would appreciate that, however. And to her credit she is perfectly fluent in Spanish, has lived abroad extensively and is dying to travel with me, possibly even leaving the US forever and getting a job in Acapulco. Decisions, decisions...

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

P.S. The decision is actually pretty clear. Things may eventually get better around the world thanks to the internet letting reason and peace spread like a virus from mind to mind. But critical mass won't be achieved before the collapse. And it's probably going to get very bad in the USSA before it gets better. If you are ready to get out so you can watch the hyperinflation and martial law from a safe distance -- like a comfortable manor among like-minded people in a stable country -- then click here.

I began this week with a "Memory Hole" on the ongoing Big Brother state we’re experiencing. In Jeff Berwick’s “Vigilantes View”, our Editor in-Chief told you how to survive The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) by wearing your gold like Mr. T! Ed Bugos brought investors into the know in his “Review and Outlook”, while Jeff took us on a rousing and sobering roundup in “Other News from TEOTMSAWKI and TDV Related Tidbits”. Our “Expat Report” looked at some big changes we have coming to TDV groups, and lastly our profile took a look at the enemy of the state of the week, Eric Snowden.

All these incomparable contributions, as well as our monthly Homegrown and Issue, can be subscribed to here. Come see what you’re missing!

Here’s what we wrote about this week…

MONDAY, June 10

Calling to the Remnant

Wendy McElroy calls for the few to stand for the many.

“The Remnant is the small minority of people who understood through the core of their being what it means to be free. They almost intuitively grasp the adversarial nature of state and society, with the bloated state feeding on the body productive until it has been sucked dry.”

TUESDAY, June 11

The Soul-Rape of Bradley Manning

Wendy McElroy considers the public flogging of Bradley Manning by a hypocritical state.

“US Army Private Bradley Manning is being persecuted for exposing war crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations. Like any criminal, the US government wants its wrongful acts to remain secret; it wishes to make the truth illegal.

On June 3rd, the trial of Manning began. He previously pled guilty to 10 offenses that could collectively bring 20 years in custody, but the military prosecutors were not satisfied. They pursued the capital offense of “aiding the enemy” which can be punished by execution or life imprisonment. This is Obama's warning to anyone else who is tempted to speak truth to power. ”

Wednesday, June 12

China is Now a Safe Haven from the US Empire

Gary Gibson with a decidedly TDV take on Eric Snowden.

"As the USSA continues to devolve into a full blown police state empire the ironic keeps becoming the norm. So it is that a whistleblower has to take refuge from the secretive, tyrannical US government in totalitarian socialist China. Ah, but here I'm playing it fast and loose with what is considered to be China. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is actually in Hong Kong, which is technically part of China again though it remains semi-autonomous. Years of British rule left Hong Kong with a Western-stlye justic system that seems to be more in tact than the tattered one barely covering up the empire's naughty bits back in the US.

In fact, it was Snowden's growing realization of just how wicked the US government was growing that led him to risk spending the rest of his life in prison. Snowden had been enlisted in the US Army and then worked as a security guard for the NSA before being stationed in Geneva, Switzerland as a CIA information technology spook in 2007. That's where he had access to the incriminating data about secret and far-reaching government surveillance programs. That was also just before the election of Barack Hussein Obama. We had to stifle a laugh when we read that Snowden considered going public about the nation's secretive programs then, but decided against it because he didn't want to put anyone in danger and because he actually believed that Obama's election would rein in some of these secret spying programs. ”

THURSDAY, June 13

Yes, It's Getting this Bad: We Now Have to Wear Out Wealth

Jeff Berwick suggest Mr. T as a model for surviving the dollar collapse.

" It turns out that Mr. T has been showing us a way to survive The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) all along.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you know we are getting very close to a complete collapse. In Europe, they are confiscating funds directly from people’s bank accounts. The USSA, and Canada by the way, have become complete surveillance states. So much so that to even go public with knowledge of what is going on, as Edward Snowden has apparently done, is treasonous. That word treason has very different applications depending on whether you believe in theft and violence based collectivism or in individual liberty.”

FRIDAY, June 14

Feedback Friday – June 14, 2013

In this week’s Feedback Friday: Property, relationships, and Canada vs. Chile.

The Weekend Vigilante June 15, 2013

Sat, 06/15/2013 - 23:04

Hello from opulent Vina del Mar, Chile,

I first visited Vina in 2005, eight years ago now, and my impression then was that it was a nice but quiet beach town. I’ve since visited a few times in the last year and the changes are truly unbelievable.

On my first visit in 2005, at this same time of the year near winter, there wasn’t much activity. There was one small bar that wasn’t very busy and just a few decent restaurants. Now it has turned into a world-class city. The population of this area is about one million, but since the place is less than a two-hour drive from Santiago that number swells. The amount of five-star restaurants is uncountable. There are many on almost every block and the city has expanded so much both to the south to Valpariaso and to the north with what seems to be hundreds of new, modern highrise apartment buildings that it would take you weeks to visit all the trendy, modern hotspots.

When I first visited there was a definite separation between Valparaiso and Vina, but it has now turned into one large metropolis.

You may remember on my last trip to Santiago I ended up sleeping on the floor for two days because the Galt’s Gulch staff headquarters was full of new GGC teammembers. Since then, the team at Galt’s Gulch Chile (GGC) has rented a beachside apartment in Vina with four bedrooms, where even our clients are welcome to stay as did Joshua and Ni (upcoming guests on Anarchast) from Ecuador last night along with myself.

Here’s an important insight. Chile has been absolutely booming… in stark contrast to Europe and the US. Imagine these kind of statistics in the US (and you can keep imagining because it will never happen again in the US as it exists today). Chile’s GDP (Imacec index) is up 4.4% over the last year. Inflation is the lowest in South America, less than 1% year to date. The unemployment rate is currently 6.4%, down dramatically from 11.6% in August of 2009. And, retail sales are up 11.2% in the last year. I’m actually surprised it is not higher. The malls, full of incredibly high end fashion and electronics are packed from morning to night. Some of the guys at GGC went to Home Depot at 9pm on Sunday to pick up some supplies and they described what they saw as an overwhelming amount of shoppers as though it was a Christmas or Thanksgiving day rush.

But, here’s the insight. Prices of real estate have not risen commensurate to the growth… yet! As I sit here in Vina with my view of surfers and the beach that looks almost exactly like Malibu (without the risk of running into Mel Gibson), but more upscale and with less police and homeless people, you can still buy an apartment here for prices that will not bankrupt you. The four bedroom GGC apartment, with a loft, on the beach, costs $1,500/month to rent and total costs above that including water, electricity and internet is less than $200/month. And all along the 1.5 hour corridor between Vina and upscale Santiago are world class wineries in the Casablanca region and, of course, Galt's Gulch. Galt's Gulch is currently offering a time-limited pre-sale pricing of lots for less than $50,000 for 1.25 acres! Mark my words, you won't be able to buy a one-acre lot anywhere in this area for less than $500,000 in ten years. This is the buying opportunity of this century.

Even the government and central bank are mostly run by free-market type people. And that, of course, is why things are going so well here. The central bank is run by the "Chicago boys"... people who adhere to Friedmanite philosophies (quite free market) as opposed to overtly statist polices (Keynesians). Even the President and those who surround him are very free market.

I was quite surprised when talking with an American colleague who is very involved in the liberty movement that she knows many of the higher level politicos in Chile and most are libertarian and fans of Ayn Rand - and therefore would be very interested in our libertarian styled community named in tribute to Ayn Rand, Galt's Gulch. She sent me one of her contacts today to connect us. Upon receiving the email I was at a dinner with GGC staff and asked, naively, if anyone had heard of a politician named "Pinera"?

A few of the guys who have lived in Chile for a while laughed as though I were joking. I asked, "What?"

They replied, "He's the President of Chile."

Wow. As an anarchist I obviously dislike all politicians and see government as an unnecessary evil, but I was quite happy to hear that the area in which we are trying to build Ayn Rand's vision is an area that is mostly politically controlled by big fans of free markets and Rand's philosophies!

Not to mention, Pinera is a real businessman.

I asked Wikipedia and according to it, Sebastien Pinera once owned 100% of Chilevision, 27% of LAN Airlines and 13% of Colo-Colo, a football club in the country. Sorry, but what has Barack O'Bomber ever done? Oh yes, he was a community organizer. Whatever that is.

Chile is the new "America" of the 21st century. You can open a corporation here over the internet in one day. Any major building permits submitted to the government must be responded to in 15 days! That explains the hundreds of new highrise apartment buildings in Vina del Mar. The government is mostly staying out of the way and not actively putting up roadblocks to free enterprise like in Europe and the United State.

How long will it last? That's anyones guess... but considering Chile recently had a horrible bout with communism and now is reaping the rewards of freedom greatly in this region any major change back to socialism is likely a long way away. It took the US decades to erode most of the underpinnings of freedom and destroy most of the wealth built during that period.

BUILDING WEALTH

Speaking of building wealth our most recent TDV Dispatch this week for subscribers had an excellent overview by Ed Bugos on the entire gold stock market sector. It was incredibly insightful. He plans to follow that up with a more company oriented analysis and comparative for about 20 of the largest producers, followed soon after by a separate such analysis of about 15-20 junior producers and then a third report about emerging producers, followed by one on silver producers, and finally on advanced exploration companies.

If you are interested in the gold mining sector at all, you won't want to miss all of Ed's insights at TDV Premium over the coming weeks.

I had the opportunity to sit down with one of the savviest mining stock investors in history. He also happens to be an anarchist and so we discussed how he became an anarchist and his insights into getting rich. He began his road to billions as a bouncer and a bartender and he recounts how you too can make a fortune starting by just pouring whiskey.

Click here or on thumbnail

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

I'm headed back to Acapulco this evening but only for a few days before I jet off to Boston and then New Hampshire for Porcfest all this week. Then, again back for just 2-3 days in Acapulco and then a quick jaunt up through Houston to Dallas for the Liberty Mastermind Symposium on June 28th and 29th. After that it will either be Acapulco, Las Vegas or back to Santiago de Chile for a few days and then back up to Las Vegas for FreedomFest from July 10-13.

Then, other than a short trip to Vancouver for the Capitalism and Morality Symposium on July 27th, I'll mostly be in Santiago, Galt's Gulch and Vina del Mar for the remainder of July and early August before I head to Switzerland for the Global Access and Continuity conference on August 11-15.

I wish the US dollar would just collapse already so I could take a break and just stay down at Galt's Gulch for a while and try hard not to say "I told you so" too much. But it still hasn't. And it could still be a few years so I'll get out there and spread the word. Until next weekend from amongst a throng of gun-toting anarchists in New Hampshire, try to stay free, my friends.

Jeff Berwick

Feedback Friday - June 14, 2013

Fri, 06/14/2013 - 21:22

Good Friday to you, TDVers. How was your week? Did you hear Obama's troops on the other end of your phone calls? Were state drones buzzing your house? Did you get arrested for telling the truth and caring about your fellow man? Of course you did! You live in the USSA!

Want to join in on the discourse? Send your questions, comments, queries, and concerns to tdv@dollarvigilante.com, comment on a post, or get on the forums.

On to the feedback...

MORE ON PROPERTY. AND FLEAS.

Hey Gary,

Love the in-depth discussions of property. Even as an anarcho-capitalist, I find the topic fascinating and worthy of debate. Personally, I don't care if property (or anything) is "natural". That doesn't even mean anything - anything that exists or can exist in nature is natural. That's why I don't believe in "natural rights" like Rothbard does. I think you touch the most important point in your last Feedback Friday comment: We use property (rights) to stake claims on who can use resources, when use of those resources would otherwise be conflicted. In that sense, the concept of property is totally man-made and "unnatural" in the hippie sense. But it is clearly extremely beneficial. And since land is a resource humans constantly have conflict over, property is clearly a useful solution to use on it. The anarcho-communist explanation that there "shouldn't be property (rights) on land because it is scarce" is exactly backwards - why would you use property if something wasn't scarce?

Property is a solution to conflicts from scarcity. The distinction between "property" and "possession" that an-coms often make is also very useless to me. Call it what you want. There's a conflict over resources, and if you manage that conflict by allowing party X certain types of usage in certain ways, that's property. This might take the form of owning, renting, leasing, sharing, communal grazing, or whatever. Some of these forms are better suited to some types of resource conflicts. Ownership tends to produce better stewardship of land than communal "tragedy of the commons" type usage outside the scope of a small village or family. For a family, complicated leasing contracts and insurance claims might have more overhead than they have value, so communal sharing might work better. And the flea analogy isn't wrong at all. Fleas have to solve resource conflicts on dogs. I don't know how they do it. They might wage war, or have rituals, or instincts, or maybe they do exchange flea-money. But unless they use some kind of "property" to manage their resource (the dog), there's going to be conflicts with all their problems (over-flea'ing might cause the dog to scratch himself, causing the fleas to fly off, which is bad for every flea involved).

Property is a social construct to solve resource conflicts, like language is a social construct to solve communication problems.

John T.

Gary’s Response:

John, you're making me look bad here. Are you gunning for my job? Well said, my friend.

ENDING RELATIONSHIPS ON PRINCIPLE

Gary,

Didn't you split 'cause of her inability to grasp your politics? Wasn't that you? I remember feeling a great amount of respect for you when I read that.

I'm in a somewhat similar situation now, not exactly an anarcho-capitalist vs liberal thing, but a very similar situation philosophically. Please advise. Anything, just tell me something, lol.

Jack

(Frequent TDV forum poster)

Gary's Response:

Jack,

Anything, huh? Ok, here we go...

I did indeed end every romantic relationship when the woman simply couldn't bring herself to embrace the principles of voluntaryism even after I'd spend weeks or months explaining them. But to be honest, it wasn't on principle. It was simply the natural result of the sexual novelty wearing off and leaving me to realize how immoral the woman really was. If I were truly principled, I wouldn't start these relationships in the first place. Honestly (and I mean this from the bottom of my heart), I think outright prostitution is the far more moral activity than dating for the philisophical free market anarchist.

As I've pointed out ad nauseum, voluntaryists/anarcho-capitalists/free market anarchists are harder to find than a shred of morality at a joint session of Congress. Further this anti-state, propertarian worldview is overwhelmingly peopled by introverted men from the minority Rational group in Myers-Briggs Personality Typing. Pure anarchism is hard to come by. Even many of those people who don't trust government and want to keep it in check still feel that a monopoly on violence is necessary for "some things." I don't mean to sound snobbish about the moral purity of my anarchism (or anyone else's for that matter). But this is indeed a deeply moral view and conviction. And once you've dwelt in this sphere long enough, it becomes impossible to truly love those who still cling to aggression and who make excuses for the initiation of force.

You don't have to try to avoid falling for statists. After a while, you find that you simply can't fall for them. Lust may be possible for a while, but certainly not love. You didn't say exactly what divides you and your girlfriend...but if it's significant enough...if it's something that your principles just can't abide...physics will kick in and your desire to be around her will fade. Happens to me every time!

I'm sure I have some other issues with commitment based on early childhood traumas. But truly embracing non-aggression multiplies that like a mother******. Principled philisophical anarchism is the ultimate birth control. Used to be that sufficient amounts of hotness were enough to make me forget the inherent underlying immorality of potential non-anarchist mates. But now where I used to see beauty, hips and breasts, I just see violent, propagandized automatons. They say things like "education should be free" or "who would build the roads?" and are too hopelessly married to the secular religion of the state even when they consider themselves otherwise thoughtfully agnostic or atheist.

Do you know how sickening and depressing it is to be sitting or lying with a lover when some social issue or current event comes up and you just know without them evening opening her mouth that she supports the initiation of collectivized violence as the solution?

It's all seriously making me want to defend prostitution very publicly as the moral superiority of emotionless commercial sex for the principled anarcho-capitalist. Better that than to try to form serious emotional attachments with the bloodthirsty zombies who support the state. I suppose an even morally superior strategy would be to withdraw entirely from any romantic or sexual congress until you find someone with an actual mind instead of propogandized goop and whom you are able to love.

Personally, I'm not quite that noble yet. So I keep rotating different statist gals in and out of my life, skedaddling before we hit the official "couple" zone. I've learned that laying my arguments for anarchism out too early (like at the bar where we first meet) is a bit much. Because the arguments are rational, they can produce great frustration and anger because they reveal to people just how little they've been actually thinking and how much they've been trained not to think. I guess what I'm trying to say is "Ancaps...we don't luh dem statist hoes."

P.S. Thank heaven that enclaves like Galt's Gulch, Chile are forming. If any outpost for like-minded, liberty-loving individuals will gather the beautiful, principled women of the world like iron filings to a magnet, it's GCC. This is because of something that I term "The Berwick Effect" (TBE). Hang out with Jeff at a conference -- or head down to Acapulco and hang out with him there -- to see what I mean. Magnet. Iron fillings. It will begin to make sense. You begin to see that life can be full of laughter and beautiful women and alcohol while you're surrounded by those who share your deepest convictions about the individual and liberty. Galt's Gulch, Chile is going to be spectacular. Click here to find out about reserving your spot today.

Jeff's Response:

I just had to chime in here. Poor Gary grew up in the USSA and still doesn't fully realize that the entire world isn't statist. He has lived and still lives in the United State. I've had the pleasure of travel and know that the majority of the world is quite anarchist. I'm writing in today from Vina del Mar, Chile, and amongst the dozens of conversations I've had with locals, never is politics brought up. They just don't care. And its the same, even more so, in Mexico. The US government and media like to demonize Mexico as much as possible because they realize that the great majority of Mexicans despise government and won't allow them to destroy freedom. This has made Mexico, by far, the freest country in North America. And the US government knows that every spring breaker who goes there might have a moment of awakening that maybe they don't really live in the "land of the free".

When I first met my wife-to-be in Acapulco the topic of government or freedom didn't even come up for weeks on either of our parts. There were much better things to talk about... life, love, happiness, music, fiesta. I think it was months after I met her that I brought it up in passing, "What do you think of government?" She gave me a bit of a stern look and said, "Government? Criminal organization."

I married that beautiful, natural anarchist.

My advice to Gary is to just get out. He, like most men, has a particular preference for women and his leans definitely to the lighter skinned. In that case, I advise him to go to Chile, Argentina, Prague or Tallin, Estonia and find that almost every single girl he meets will not only be sexually attractive to him but outwardly hostile to even the concept of government. In the US the conversation starts with, "are you a republican (slave) or a democrat (slave)". In Chile, Mexico, Czech Republic, Estonia and almost every other country on Earth the conversation usually starts with "how are you?" and even bringing up politics or government is looked down upon as speaking about evil.

I know Gary will soon get out. He's like countless of our readers and subscribers who has a lot of fear of the unknown. Allow me to tell you, from a person who is out here and doing it, there is nothing to fear but fear itself!

CANADA OR CHILE? REALLY?

Hello TDV,

I thought I would write to you as I need a bit of guidance.

I have been following your videos and posts of quite a few months now and have been inspired to change some of my future decisions to create some of stability for myself and my family.

I am from the UK and currently live in France with my daughter. I was planning to move to Canada in 2015, but after watching your videos over the last months not so sure that is a good idea.

I have taken lots of good advice from Jeff especially and applaud his courage for speaking out and educating those who will listen. What little disposable income I do have I have started buying gold coins, instead of letting my money sit in a savings account. My father is Dominican and have seen that you advocate applying for a second passport for security, which I am going to do this year. I am also going to acquire a piece of land next year and start a small organic farming business.

My dilemma is that if I do not move to Canada, where would you recommend? The Chile option is enticing, but I don't not have a lump sum to purchase land at the moment. My assets lie in the UK and pay me a good steady income.

Would it be possible for you to advise me in what would be best next step. I know my story sounds a bit confusing, but I would really appreciate it.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Best regards,

Rina

Jeff’s Response:

Salut Rina!

Thinking of leaving France for Canada? Who knows, it could work out. It all depends on your personal situation and what your skillset is and what value you can provide people and how well you can handle brutally cold temperatures! As for me, personally, I'd actually go to France instead of Canada. France, governmentally, is a complete basket case. They now have gone Full Commie with income tax rates over 100% for some wealth creators! But the wine, women and natural beauty, especially in the south of France would attract me more than the barren, frozen tundra of Kanada... a place I call North America's Siberia.

One comment of yours that strikes me is that you are planning a few years ahead (2015). Trust me on this, things will be changing so dramatically in the next few years that it is almost pointless to plan that far ahead. What I would do is learn Spanish. If you speak French it will be quite easy. They are very similar. At least by doing that you give yourself a lot of options in some places that may not totally self-destruct. Specifically, Chile. On that note, if you are going to learn Spanish with a thought of possibly coming to Chile one day, I would suggest you find a way to learn Chilean Spanish. It is quite different than other forms of Spanish. I've had a hard time adjusting my Mexican Spanglish to here... and even my wife, born in Mexico, said there were quite a few words and style of accent that confused her. If you've ever gone to Scotland you will understand. I spent a few days in Glasgow once (recommendation: don't go to Glasgow) and if they were speaking English it was news to me. I didn't understand a word anyone said to me the entire time I was there. Of course, that could be because almost everyone I met, during day or night, was falling down drunk.

In any case, if your father is Dominican you should run, not walk, to get a Dominican Republic passport. This will give you more options as The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) devolves. Plus, the DR tax laws are very enticing. If you are DR citizen and you don't make any money in the DR, you pay zero tax. That's quite night and day from France, as I'm sure you know!

Keep improving yourself, learn new skills, find ways to add value to things, learn more languages, put any assets you have into hard assets such as precious metals or foreign real estate in a decent country and get another passport. If you do even some of those things you will be miles ahead of the majority of communist frogs who will soon find out that communism, and its lighter variant, socialism, ends when you run out of other people's money.

Yes it’s Getting This Bad: We Now Have to Wear Our Wealth

Thu, 06/13/2013 - 11:56

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

It turns out that Mr. T has been showing us a way to survive The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) all along.

If you believe in collectivism, then exposing the creepy privacy-obliterating spying of your government on the citizens it claims to protect is called treason. If you believe in individual liberty, this is merely called telling the truth. And speaking truth to power in a government as thoroughly corrupted as the US government is an act of bravery. As closet anarchist, Ron Paul has said, “truth is treason in the empire of lies”.

What has it come to? In order to protect some of your wealth in a time when capital controls are closing down in the West, you either have to store your wealth in your brain (by remembering your Bitcoin passphrase) or wear your gold.

Yes, it has come to this. If you want to escape from the West with the majority of your assets in tact you actually have to wear your gold.

I may be exaggerating slightly as there are other options as we talk about in Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge, but it is very close to reaching this point. Many US airports have “cash sniffing” dogs. The funny part about that is that “cash” as we know it today is not even real wealth. It is a piece of paper with pictures of dead criminals and a pyramid with an all-seeing eye on it, at least in the United States.

In India, wearing one's wealth is nothing new, but at Indian airports, wearing too much can land you in trouble just like having too much cash can in the US. Indian customs rules limit how much gold can be worn by female passengers and male passengers, and discriminate between resident and non-resident Indians. Not declaring the gold can result in arrest. Also, not mentioning gold jewelry on the departure slip when traveling abroad can result in trouble upon the return.

Of course, trying to carry gold across borders isn't recommended. Borders are essentially lawless places where you really see the true nature of governments. Arbitrary restrictions on who and what are allowed to pass, obnoxious government agents who order people around, rifle through their belongings and do pretty much whatever they want. Borders are a taste of life in prison.

Borders are places that really remind people that they are slaves and that what they have can be taken from them by the government without any recourse. As I always do, I work to find ways to free slaves from captivity and retain their hard earned wealth. On this level, TDV contributor Pete Kofod and I had an idea a few years ago to find a way to wear your wealth.

As most know, going to your local jewelry store will find that you pay massive amounts above the true melt value of the gold and silver jewelry. Pete Kofod and I attempted to start an enterprise to create jewelry that cost very close to the melt value of the necklace. Unfortunately, Pete and I were sidetracked.

I was sidetracked by my endeavors to create a free-er community in a free-er place, at Galt’s Gulch Chile. And Pete Kofod was sidetracked creating a completely secure and untrackable/untraceable desktop, called The Sixth Flag, that is just days or weeks from release. (And you will hear about it here first.)

In the meantime, Owings Metals has created wearable wealth. It is jewelry that you can wear which is both easy to trade and to verify. You can read more about it here.

As with all things I do I have contributed to their process. The cost is a bit higher than I’d like to see, but as with all things new I think the margin will decline over time. Just as a 50” Plasma LG TV cost me $15,000 in 2001 and now costs $500, this wearable wealth will become more affordable over time as premiums shrink.

I highly advise anyone with any amount of wealth that they want to protect to endow themselves, their wives (or partner) and family with at least some wearable wealth.

You might not believe me, but sh*t is about to get real and you may thank me afterwards. Any prudent person should have a few gold related pieces of apparel for the worst case scenario.

Jeff Berwick

China Now A Safe Haven From The US Empire

Wed, 06/12/2013 - 11:35

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor, Gary Gibson]

As the USSA continues to devolve into a full blown police state empire the ironic keeps becoming the norm. So it is that a whistleblower has to take refuge from the secretive, tyrannical US government in totalitarian socialist China. Ah, but here I'm playing it fast and loose with what is considered to be China. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is actually in Hong Kong, which is technically part of China again though it remains semi-autonomous. Years of British rule left Hong Kong with a Western-stlye justic system that seems to be more in tact than the tattered one barely covering up the empire's naughty bits back in the US.

Click here or on thumbnail

Candidate Obama passionately debates President Obama on privacy

That sort of childish, simplistic faith in politicians makes us smile wistfully. It matters not which face -- the socialist, the communist or the fascist -- that the people are given the illusion of picking to put on the juggernaut of the state. The state just continues to grow more sinister and more violent. (States are by their nature constantly attempting to control all people, resources and information over as much geography as possible.) Elections are the equivalent of giving your aggressive pancreatic cancer a pet name and legally changing it at regular intervals. These revelations about the NSA, PRISM and the depths of government surveillance are no suprise to me or any of my anti-state homies. We understand that this is par for the course for governments and especially for the US which is in an advanced state of surveillance police state imperialism.

Snowden told the Guardian:

Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world...I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good...

Ah, there. That's better. Snowden came to realize just what sort of monster he was serving. And to his credit, he acted courageously about it. He also acted very prudently as well as very bravely. Going public probably offers him quite a bit of protection. And he had the good sense to go public after fleeing the country. As he said, he could have easily just sold this information for lots of money, but he was motivated by something more: "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under...I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”

Further showing that he is catching on, Snowden has said: “…I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.” Testify! Paper doesn't stop bullets. In other words, the very nature of the state is the theft and violence by a minority given legitimacy in the minds of the ruled. In even more words, the government can do what the hell it wants. It will do it in secret and should anyone try to pull the curtain back to expose the unchecked power of the inherently immoral, thieving, murdering, surveilling state, the government will do everything it can to discredit and make a painful example of that person.

Snowden also realized that he would become a target for the world's most aggressive state ever and that he could be "Assanged" or, even worse, "Manninged". So he fled the US for China in order to get a shot at safety from a government that wants to crush very publicly those who expose its abuses. The world has truly turned upside down. Granted, and as mentioned above, Hong Kong isn't quite like the rest of China, but the irony remains. If it's freedom from the overreaching state that is your goal, then you should be looking to get away from the USSA.

And now even Russia is offering Snowden political asylum. Russia's treatment of its own whistleblowers and political dissidents is the opposite of encouraging, but in a continuing effort to show up the West, Russia is virtually making itself a bastion of liberty for outsiders looking for protection from their own predatory governments (as our editor-in-chief has pointed out, often no government is worse to you than the one that purports to own you). French national treasure Gerard Depardieau was very flagrantly welcomed as a Russian citizen by Vladmir Putin when the former fled France's Soclialist government's expropriating income tax on the wealthy. Meanwhile Icelandic Pirate Party members have also suggested that Snowden could seek protection in Iceland...though the new conservative government may not be as interested in that offer as those who had made the offer.

Snowden accepts that he will likely never see the country of his birth again as a free man. He is prepared to spend the rest of his life in self-imposed exile for his brave actions. We'll let him figure out which nation-state tax farm will be most willing to shelther him from the USSA monster that will dog his steps for the rest of his days. But those of you reading this probably haven't attracted such extra special attention from the state, so if you're looking to escape the US for any of the other numerous good reasons, your choice of a new tax farm is a lot simpler. No need to seek asylum with brutal quasi-communist regimes. TDV specializes in providing alternate citizenships and passports in countries that won't hunt you down around the world for income taxes, among other things. Click here if you belong to the world's most murderous and aggressive tax collector and you've been considering a divorce.

We commend Edward Snowden for helping to show the world just how far gone the USSA is. But we also sadly see the truth behind his worry:

The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things… And in the months ahead, the years ahead, it’s only going to get worse. [The NSA will] say that… because of the crisis, the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny.

I pray we're wrong about this, but we really don't see how it could turn out any other way. The total surveillance state is clearly already here. The boots of the total police state are bound to follow, ready to leave their impression on the neck of every subject across the land. First it will become impossible to get your capital outside of the border and then it will become impossible to get yourself outside either. If you have been poised to get out, consider Mr. Snowden's actions to be your clarion call to take action.

Gary Gibson, The Dollar Vigilante’s Editor, cut his teeth writing for liberty and profit as the managing editor of the now-defunct Whiskey & Gunpowder financial newsletter. He now writes for and edits The Dollar Vigilante. In his capacity as managing editor of TDV’s monthly subscription letter TDV Homegrown, Gary insists on playing Russian Roulette by basing himself in the USSA heartland so he can round up information on how the TDV readers stuck in the USSA can best survive and profit in the increasingly turbulent times in the morally and financially bankrupt empire.

The Soul-Rape of Bradley Manning

Tue, 06/11/2013 - 18:02

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Wendy McElroy]

US Army Private Bradley Manning is being persecuted for exposing war crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations. Like any criminal, the US government wants its wrongful acts to remain secret; it wishes to make the truth illegal.

WHAT YOU ARE TOLD IS ON TRIAL

Bradley Manning was arrested in May 2010 for passing restricted material to the WikiLeaks site, which is dedicated to the free flow of information. The material included videos of American airstrikes on Baghdad and Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables that became known as the Iraq and Afghan War logs.

The American government and military were acutely embarrassed. For example, one video consisted of cockpit gunsight footage from a US helicopter that was involved in the series of July 12, 2007 airstrikes on Baghdad in which an estimated 18 people were killed, including two Reuters war correspondents. The military claimed the dead were armed insurgents, and at least two of them had weapons which is common practice in Iraq. The Pentagon buried the footage by refusing a Freedom of Information request from Reuters. When the video was leaked, it showed an indiscriminate slaughter. Its audio captured the unalloyed joy of the Americans as they killed and an absolute lack of remorse when they realized young children were among the dead.

This video was a turning point for Manning who was shocked by the soldier's remarks. At his pre-trial hearing, he stated of the leaked material, “I felt I had accomplished something that allowed me to have a clear conscience based upon what I had seen and read about and knew were happening in both Iraq and Afghanistan every day.”

The 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg was a turning point in the Vietnam War because it revealed the depth of lies being told by the American government to the American people. Manning's act was a turning point in the Iraq and Afghan wars but it had far wider impact. For one thing, it was instrumental in sparking the Arab Spring; one diplomatic cable discredited the Tunisian government by verifying the raw corruption of the President and his family.

MANNING'S UNFORGIVEABLE SIN

Indiscriminate slaughter and the torture of detainees do not disturb the Obama administration; talking about them does. Manning not only talked but he backed everything up with data. For exposing and embarrassing them, government wishes not merely to punish Manning but to crush him utterly so that his example does not inspire others. To do so, it must make transparency into treason.

The accusation of aiding and abetting the enemy is a drastic and dangerous expansion of the Espionage Act. The exact wording of the charge: “Knowingly giving intelligence to the enemy through indirect means.” Traditionally, direct means have been required; that is, a person directly and intentionally provided intelligence to “the enemy.” The prosecutors now contend that the transfer can be indirect and unintentional. They argue Manning should have known Al Qaeda could access the information; his intention of revealing a war crime to the world becomes irrelevant. The New York Times observed, “This would turn all government whistle-blowing into treason: a grave threat to both potential sources and American journalism.”

The civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald explained further, “[The new legal theory] would basically mean that any kind of leak now of classified information to newspapers, where your intent is not to aid the Taliban or help them but to expose wrongdoing, is now considered a capital offense and considered aiding and abetting the enemy....And that’s an amazingly broad and expansive definition...” The expanded theory becomes a de facto gag order, especially in the hands of Obama who has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous Presidents combined.

There is no question that Manning broke the law. The fault lies not in Manning but in the military. No person nor organization has the right to force a man to surrender his conscience and mutely watch the slaughter of children. He has an inalienable right to speak the truth. To claim otherwise is to argue that a soldier is literally property, a slave of the military and no longer a man.

In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau declared, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right....Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” Speaking specifically of soldiers who surrender their conscience, Thoreau continued, “They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? [B]ehold a marine, such a man as an American government can make...a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity...”

Manning has already spent 1110 days in prison, much of it in solitary confinement and other conditions that human rights organizations call torture. Even for the most military of men, 1110 days and the prospect of 20 years more should be enough punishment for the 'crime' of retaining a conscience.

WHAT THE TRIAL MEANS ABOUT AMERICA

Roger Williams, the Puritan founder of Rhode Island, was America's first revolutionary. He created the American soul by inextricably linking individual liberty with freedom of belief. In the 1640s, Williams argued passionately for “soul liberty” – that is, an individual's conscience should be free from outside interference and control. “[T]o force the Consciences of the Unwilling is a Soul-rape,” he declared bluntly. Drawing upon Williams, the contemporary American philosopher Martha Nussbaum further defined “soul-rape” as forcing people “to affirm convictions that they may not hold, or to give assent to orthodoxies they don’t support.”

Williams won the argument, and the First Amendment was the ultimate result. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...” The amendment was first in the Bill of Rights because freedom of conscience and speech is the most fundamental of human rights. Around the world, Americans became renowned as a people who bowed their heads and beliefs to no one; they spoke and believed freely. And, so, the world gravitated toward America because of the hunger within human beings to think and decide for themselves. It is a hunger for human dignity.

The persecution of Manning is an attempt to destroy the core of what it means to be American by destroying freedom of conscience and speech. The police and surveillance state of America wants to control information down to the level of reaching inside people's minds to instill a fear of speaking or deciding for themselves.

Obama is raping the soul of America.

Wendy McElroy is a frequent Dollar Vigilante contributor and renowned individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982, and is the author/editor of twelve books, the latest of which is "The Art of Being Free". Follow her work at http://www.wendymcelroy.com.

I confess to a quiet love and appreciation for the Obama administration. Not because Obama shares with me a similar complexion, genetic background or non-US citizenship. No, it's because under the Obama administration the US state has finally started to pull off its ridiculous mask of benevolence. No more helpful "world cop", due process, rule of law or checks and balances. Just a stone-cold bully who will steal, spy, kidnap and murder as he pleases.

Obama is like a prophetic fulfillment. He is more than the second Bush II. He is more than his interventionist deified hero FDR. Obama will be remembered as one of the finest silk-tongued totalitarian redistributionist mass murderers. Forget the worn comparisons to Hitler. We're talking Stalin-level here.

Sure, you had other real stinkers atop the illegitimate monolopy on violence known as the US government. There were especially notable crooks like Nixon and Wilson and Lincoln. But I have faith in Obama. I think he has what it takes to trump them all. The man is just hitting his stride and he's still got a couple of years left.

Indefinite detention of US citizens, cosmic level secret government surveillance, demonstratively cruel punishment of whistleblowers...Obama is just getting warmed up. We may not see the closing of the US borders or actual martial law under him, but he is certainly paving the way. If you've been thinking about TDV's offers to help you get out of the US while the getting is still good, there is no better time than now to get started. Find out more by clicking here.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

Calling to the Remnant…

Mon, 06/10/2013 - 19:09

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Wendy McElroy]

“You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you.”

— “Isaiah's Job” by Albert Jay Nock

The Remnant is the small minority of people who understood through the core of their being what it means to be free. They almost intuitively grasp the adversarial nature of state and society, with the bloated state feeding on the body productive until it has been sucked dry.

The individualist anarchist Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) believed that the goal of freedom fighters should be to find and nurture the Remnant rather than to convert the populace through slow, arduous argument. In modern terms (and taking liberties), he meant that preaching freedom to people who believed every word from the mainstream media and lined up dutifully to vote was a waste of time. One thing and one thing alone would convert the populace at large: a social collapse and hardships so painful that they could no longer ignore or deny its source. Only when the brutal reality of the state was laid bare would their eyes and ears do what their reason and intuition could not: inspire an appreciation of what it means to lose freedom.

I first encountered Nock's theory of the Remnant years ago as a callow anarchist. I did not like it. For one thing, I linked it immediately with Nock's theory of education. For education purposes, Nock divided the world into two categories: Some people were capable of learning the skill of independent, critical thinking through which they questioned and weighed the world; most people were merely capable of being trained to perform process information and perform tasks. He did not contemptuously dismiss the latter category; indeed, he included doctors, lawyers, and skilled artisans in its ranks. But he believed the doctors would be only highly trained and not highly educated until and unless they displayed the critical faculties necessary to evaluate the moral and political world they occupied. The fact that they could do brain surgery only pointed to being highly trained or skilled at procedures.

I first rebelled against Nock's theory of the educated as opposed to the trained because it sounded elitist. My father – the most cultured man I've known – had a sixth-grade education and made a living with his hands. After his death, I ran away from home and never completed high school. If doctors were among the merely “trained,” then my father and I must be so poorly schooled as to be excluded from both categories.

I was incorrect.

Nock did not believe educability belonged to any one class, race, religion, or tax-bracket. It was not a matter of being formally schooled but could be mastered (or mistressed) by anyone with the innate ability to grasp it. Educability was an intangible something within human nature, akin to being born with an ear for music or a prowess in athletics. The ability to be educated visited poor Irish families, like mine, as often as it did privileged homes. Like intelligence or eye color, it was scattered across humanity with an unbiased hand.

I remain unconvinced but intrigued by Nock's theory of educability. I remain unconvinced of his theory of the Remnant, but I am remarkably more willing to listen.

In defining the Remnant, Nock made a broad point that is essential to the strategy of freedom. His essay “Isaiah's Job” opens,

“One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: 'I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?'”

The quest is folly, he explained, because the proven popular favorite of the crowd “is generally some Barabbas” whom they will champion over the innocent man they are offered. The wrong person will be crucified. This is a profoundly cynical view that is not without historical foundation.

But a belief in populism has historical foundation as well. From the 19th century British Anti-Corn Law League of John Bright and Richard Cobden to the American Bill of Rights, there are episodes in history that dazzle you with their possibilities.

Perhaps the problem is seeing the two approaches as incompatible? Perhaps it is possible to believe in a Remnant within whom freedom resonates like music and also believe there are embers within every person that it is possible to stir through reason? Freedom may be like telling a joke. Some people laugh before the last syllable because they get it on a visceral level; they see the punch line coming. Other people laugh only after a few seconds of reflection or because you explain to them what the joke means. Many never laugh at all. Some will understand and call it offensive.

The question then becomes, “what's the better use of your time and other scarce resources?” The Remnant, or the people who don't get the joke? Right now, words of reason seem to be torn away in the winds of war and politics as soon as they are spoken. At the same time, people who wish to live free are naturally seeking out and finding each other.

And, so, in the spirit of Albert Jay Nock, I address the Remnant.

You don't who or what you are but I know two things. You exist. And I will find you. Not to extract advantage or to cause harm. I will find you to extend my hand in friendship and fellowship. It is a selfish gesture because I need your companionship. I need to know there are people with enough simple goodwill to goodness in truth and to acknowledge that what I produce belongs to me. I want to talk with other people without worrying about how my words will come back to harm me. I want to live in a society where people enjoy and enrich each other without fear or danger. I long to live in a free world. I do not, I cannot live there now. And, so, the closest approximation I have is the company of the Remnant.

Without presuming to be a spokeswoman, I raise a glass in your direction to say “Join us.” If you will not, then the next glass is raised to ask “May I join you?” It comes out to the same thing in the end. Long live the Remnant in whom freedom is now entrusted.

[Editor's Note: Some of the Remnant are abandoning the sinking ship of the USSA, abandoning their USSA slave papers entirely and signing on with less oppressive tax farms. A select few are gravitating toward enclaves outside the empire, the newest one being Galt's Gulch, Chile. Not only is Galt's Gulch a bastion for the liberty-minded; it is also a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity for the early adopters. To find out more, just click here.]

TDV Week in Review June 9th, 2013

Sun, 06/09/2013 - 16:29

The Attacks Mean They're Getting Nervous

Are the sheep waking up from their stupor? I ask because there seems to be an uptick in members of the mainstream media taking on the question of libertarianism.

Jon Stewart loves the idea of "good government". And it seems that more and more he turns his semitically handsome face and razor wit toward mocking those who think that all government is bad and that life gets better when there is less of it. The media in general -- of course -- portrays anyone with any anti-state sentiment as an absolute crank who is always seconds away from icing a pig. But it seems that lately they're turning their attention more to these "cranks".

This week I got my dose of antagonizing, pro-state propaganda via Salon.com who ran an article titled "The Question That Libertarians Just Can't Answer." That question was why among the 200-plus nations on the planet, none of them had tried libertarianism as a way to organize society?

Ha.

Ha!

The whole moral and philosophical center of libertarianism is that no one can organize anyone else's life. The Salon writer spent a lifetime being propagandized by the state and simply cannot think in terms of non-aggression anymore than I can think in terms of Russian or Cantonese. He is in a very real sense brain damaged, the way victims of early childhood abuse are. He can't understand a world in which people aren't "organized" by a gang of thugs in nice clothes who have the consent of the brainwashed majority to initiate violence.

Beyond not grasping the non-aggression principle at the center of (anarcho) libertarianism though, why does no nation operate along libertarian lines? Because humanity is still in the grips of the stone age habit of making right by initiating aggression. Because the benefits accrue to those who lie, counterfeit, steal and murder. The political class is descended from the same brutes who were most willing to subjugate and rape to get the resources and pass on their genes. And these same brutes still invest a lot of those stolen resources into propagandizing and brainwashing their victims from childhood to make them more manageable as adults. So the victims write articles like the one in question from Salon.com or offer hearty, unthinking agreement for that nonsense when they read it.

At the same time, however, the very fact that libertarianism is getting this negative attention is perhaps indicative. Sure the attention from the mainstream is expectedly mocking and illogical propagandizing to support the economy-killing slavery that persists in every statist tax farm on the planet. But the fact that it's being addressed at all indicates that the status quo is feeling a little threatened. Meanwhile libertarianism is becoming so cool that all the poseur kids want in on the word. So you have Christian conservative Glenn Beck along with run-of-the-mill big welfare state liberal Bill Maher looking to squeeze their big government feet into the libertarian glass slipper like a pair of ugly stepsisters.

So maybe something is going on. Maybe the state knows that a failure of the democratic welfare model will be its last shot at legitimacy. I mean, the state has moved from tribalism to various forms of force-backed monarchy to various forms of representative mob rule. And humanity has done its best when the force of the state was least effective. The Salon author failed to realize that early America iteslf -- with the very notable exceptions of black African slavery and disenfranchisement of white women -- was an extremely libertarian endeavor. Early government in colonial and post-colonial America was so weak, unfunded and ineffective that it was almost a beautiful anarchy...which allowed for the greatest economic progress that the world had ever seen until then. (That's why a "minimal" government is so dangerous; it allows great wealth to be amassed which the minimal state then uses to grow into the biggest, baddest, most dangerous state you can imagine. This isn't conjecture; it's the story of the US.)

Freedom has the curious effect of midwifing progress, overall wealth and an increase in standards of living. The welfare statism that grew up in the West after the US's glimmering slice of minimal government has drained what wealth that freedom fostered in the first place. And people -- with the help of the internet, the information work-around to the state's chokehold on information -- are starting to catch on to the con of statism. Most of them are too brainwashed/damaged to catch on fully. Ever. But the younger folks seem to be catching on to the fact that the state IS aggression and this centralized, concentrated aggression is at the root of all the other aggression and chaos in world. The wars, obviously, but also the poverty, the selling of future generations into debt slavery, the expensive injustice of prohibitions, the rising costs and decreasing standards of living. It's getting too obvious that the aggression and violence just doesn't work. And the internet is making it too hard to blame freedom anymore.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

This week I kicked things off with a look at Japan’s failing and flailing Abenomics. In Jeff Berwick’s “Vigilante’s View”, our Editor-in-Chief reimagined Horace Greeley’s “Go West, young man” declaration as a mode of considering where you should look for freedom. Ed Bugos brought investors up to speed in his always engaging “Review and Outlook”, while Jeff took us on a quick tour around the globe in “Other News from TEOTMSAWKI”. Our Expat Report featured an interview with Jan van Vliet, who has happily relocated to Acapulco (why haven’t you?) and finally our profile took a definitively non-Spielbergian look at Dishonest Abe Lincoln, in Abe’s own words.

All these incomparable contributions, as well as our monthly Homegrown and Issue, can be subscribed to here. Come see what you’re missing!

Here’s what we wrote about this week…

MONDAY, June 3

Pop Quiz on Government

Jeff Berwick discusses the indoctrination system’s love of government.

“If you still can't understand the dire need to get the small wonderful people (kids) in your life out of public and even government-approved private school, this should drive it home.

A Canadian reader sent along a copy of a recent letter to parents from a public indoctrination camp teacher on a pop quiz to be given at a Canadian government-approved and licensed school. This is an actual, direct copy with real names removed to protect the guilty.”

TUESDAY, June 4

Why You Shouldn't Read About Paul Krugman While Drinking

Gary Gibson on every idiot’s favourite economist.

“Have you ever been at a bar or some other public place and had to overhear some goober talking nonsense that wasn't just offensive but also aggressively stupid? We've all been there: listening to some idiot spout off on something that we know to be patently, embarrassingly wrong. We've all fought the urge to shut such idiots up with sudden, naked violence (because such violence would clearly be wrong). I found myself in just such a situation as I wrote the blog at my neighborhood bar earlier.”

Wednesday, June 5

Obama Warfare

Redmond Weissenberger on O’Bomber and his O’bombing.

"Amid varying scandals in late May, President Obama gave a speech on foreign policy at the National Defense University (it's a dismaying sign when a university is dedicated to teaching the art of global war) highlighting his administration's goals when it comes to international conduct. Among flashing cameras and his handy teleprompter, Obama stressed the War on Terror will "come to an end at some point". He finally acknowledged his administration is responsible for the murder of four American citizens without due process - one of which was a sixteen year-old who committed no crime other than having a radicalized father. To top it off, the President assured the public he was going to enact strict measures so the vast killing authority he granted himself would not be abused by future Oval Office holders.”

THURSDAY, June 6

A Tale of Two Countries

Jeff Berwick has an in-depth look at Chile and Venezuela.

" Nothing shows the difference that a local governing style has on an area such as South America like the current difference between Venezuela and Chile. It is almost becoming as obvious as the difference between North Korea and South Korea.

After attempting a coup, Hugo Chavez was democratically elected president of Venezuela in 1998. In Chile, The Communist Revolution came shortly after the 1964 elections. The rise of communism ended the reputation of Chile as South America's most stable state and one of the oldest democracies in the Americas alongside the United States, which had been a point of pride for the Chilean middle class. Despite frustrations with the wealthy and the institutional elite during the early 1960s, by the middle of the 1970s the powerful Chilean middle class had grown even more sour on the Communist Party and the country's poor economy, which had been strong prior to 1958.”

FRIDAY, June 7

Feedback Friday – May 31st, 2013

In this week’s Feedback Friday: Back in the USSR, gold prices, land ownership, and a time and sex analogy.

The Weekend Vigilante June 8, 2013

Sat, 06/08/2013 - 21:54

Hello from Acapulco,

I've recently moved my home office downstairs in our house. The house is built into a hillside and has five long sets of stairs from the bottom to the top where my bedroom is. Prior to moving my office downstairs I'd spend most of the day in the upper parts far removed from street level in this private, gated community. Now that my office is downstairs I spend time with a view out of a window to a patio directly overlooking the quiet street where the free market action has been remarkable. I had no idea what was going on as my wife or our maid will generally handle the daily affairs of the house.

Almost every ten minutes one truck or another offering services drives by. Today the garbage crew came by in a blur, barely coming to a complete stop as a few young guys hopped off the back, threw our garbage into the truck and whisked off. They aren't city garbage collectors (I'm not sure such a thing even exists here) and are likely paid out of the monthly property payment made to the community here. A few minutes later I was out on the patio and a bottled water company drove by and asked me if we needed more water. I wasn't even aware that was how we received our water, but I asked our maid upstairs and she said to buy a few bottles so I did and they carried the water all the way up to the kitchen for just a few dollars.

A few minutes later another brand of bottled water drove by and asked me if I needed anything. I told them we were fine. They apparently had some other products including juice and my wife called on the intercom phone down to tell me to buy some apple and orange juice from them.

I continued to stand out on the patio for a bit enjoying the sun and a motorcycle from the local store on the grounds drove by with a phone number on the side... apparently if you need anything you just call them and they'll bring it to you. I then saw a large water truck (of the kind to fill up a house's tank) drive by delivering water to those who need it for their house. There's one checkbox ticked for those who think we need government in order to have running water.

Later in the day I saw a natural gas truck drive by on its way to fill up tanks for customers and, throughout the day, the local private security guards saunter by always with a smile and a wave. And all on private roads in the community. Another checkbox for "who will neglect the roads if we don't have government?"

Most things here are privately run and everything works incredibly well. The only major issues in Mexico have to do with government and their "War on Freedom" (much more accurate and honest a title than the "War on Drugs") and the hoodlums who drive around killing people with plants and driving the business underground further causing other problems.

Without government, life would be like Disneyland.

Inside Disneyland, where everything is privatized, everything is perfect. Outside, on the streets of Anaheim, where services aren't privatized, not so much.

LIFE IN THE USSA

Meanwhile, back in the USSA, things are getting crazier by the second as the US empire collapses and we near The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI). Everything you hear out of the USSA is insane. Forgetting for the moment that Angelina Jolie just chopped her tits off for no reason and Michael Douglas thinks he is going to die because he ate pussy... in the 1970s, Richard Nixon resigned prior to being impeached for wire tapping a hotel room. Today, Emperor O'Bomber has wiretapped the entire country and no one seems to notice, no one seems to care.

The Washington Post and the Guardian released stories yesterday claiming that an anonymous NSA official released information to them about a secret wiretapping system called the PRISM / US-984XN. This system ties into virtually every major email and social media provider, allowing NSA officials to view every electronic transaction a user engages in through those social media systems. The list of providers working with the NSA include, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype and AOL. This system is always up, and does not limit the NSA’s access based on warrants issued by a judge.

Listen to William Binney describe how the systems he created are now used to monitor and record everything Americans do today.

Click here or on thumbnail

East Germany only wished it had it this good.

Meanwhile, as I write, another school shooting is happening in Santa Monica. Whether actually done by the government itself (always a definite possibility) or just done by someone who can't stand being a slave in the US anymore is up for grabs.

And, just yesterday, a man in the crowd of the Today Show tried to commit suicide, claiming the IRS had destroyed him.

The wheels are coming off this wagon very quickly! Even Jay Leno has been attacking the IRS and Bill Maher, a liberal (who calls himself a libertarian... clearly having confused the words) has even complained about taxes now that he makes enough to realize how bad it is. In March he said, "ln California, I just want to say: Liberals -- you could actually lose me."

Maher supports an overarching, authoritarian socialist state and likes to be a slave... but not that much of a slave! He pays more than 50% of his productive income to leviathan in California and even he thinks that is too much. In his movie, Religulous, he forgot to include the largest religion on Earth, the state.

I commented in one interview that has now gone viral and has nearly a million views across all channels, "Get Far Away From the US, Its Collapse Will Be Messy" to just get out. It's a mess and going to get far worse. Get your kids out of public (and even private) schools in the Western world.. they are just being indoctrinated to be worker drones and government supporters. And, now in the US, they have begun iris scanning some of them and every day at least a few children are actually arrested and handcuffed for using nerf guns or even saying the word "gun"... indoctrinated furthermore to think that self-defense devices are only good and safe in the hands of their oppressors and never in the hands of the oppressed.

We provide many solutions to help free slaves including TDV Passports, to become a slave of another much less oppressive and thieving master... that's the best we can do in today's world!

And, for those looking for a place to run, just like America's forefathers did from the UK, we're attracting freedom minded people from around the world to Galt's Gulch Chile.

If you are paying attention, things in the US are not going in the right direction at an incredible pace. And, I can't imagine any scenario where it gets better before it gets much, much worse.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

I still venture into the US, but I am very, very close to not even taking the chance anymore. Even on one of my last trips to the USSA during the Boston marathon bombings I was sitting in a New York hotel room as the top criminal in NYC, Michael Bloomberg, had gotten wind that the yet unfound bombers had plans to go to New York. He stated, "We will lock this city down" to find that 19-year-old boy who seemed to have unlimited kitchen cooking equipment to toss out of his car. My Mexican friends had asked me not to take the risk of going to the US out of fear for my safety, but I told them I was going to take the chance. For a few moments, until they supposedly found him hiding in a boat in Boston, I seriously regretted my decision.

But I will take a few more chances in the coming months. I am not fear-based and definitely not the kind of person to hide scared, but things in the US are rapidly reaching a tipping point where I'd rather not take my chances in the Land of the UnFree, home of the slaves.

I will roll the dice a few more times, however. Wish me luck. I'll be at PorcFest in New Hampshire (uncomfortably close to Boston) from June 19-23, then the Liberty Mastermind Symposium in Dallas on June 28th and 29th. And then on to FreedomFest in Las Vegas on July 10-13th. After that, I'll be in Vancouver for the Capitalism and Morality Symposium on July 27th. And Kanada is no better for me than the US as I am a slave-card owner of Kanada and, as one TDV subscriber who I just happened to bump into as we cleared customs when I was there last month found out, it almost ensures a trip to the "back room" where I get my regular shake-down. Few places are worse to your liberty than the place that purports to own you.

If I survive all of that, I'll be off to one of the better places in Europe, Switzerland, for the Global Access and Continuity conference for very high net worth people on August 11-15th. I'll then fly into Tijuana to avoid the TSA for Libertopia in San Diego, hosted by Jeffrey Tucker, on August 30th to September 2nd.

And, I've just accepted an invite to the next Global Escape Hatch conference in Bocas del Toro, Panama on September 18-22nd.

Phew.

I'm likely taking off to Santiago, Chile again tomorrow to see the ongoings at Galt's Gulch Chile... I feel like I live on airplanes, which is tough because when I am not on airplanes I am normally living in idyllic environments on the beach in Acapulco or Vina del Mar, Chile.

But I feel much like the great Harriet Tubman, the valiant underground railroad slave emancipator. She said, "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."

I'll try to free those who already know they are slaves and for the rest, I'll show up in your part of the world and try to explain to you why and how you've been enslaved and what to do about it!

Until next time!

Jeff Berwick

Feedback Friday - June 7, 2013

Fri, 06/07/2013 - 20:51

Don't you love Fridays? Your Monday to Friday owner is about to release you to the weekend. You finally have a chance to catch up on the "news" of the week, tales of drone strikes, loss of civil liberties, and government thievery and lies. Oh, life in the USSA. Why are we still here?

It's Feedback Friday, your chance to get ask the TDV crew anything you like. Want to join in? Send your questions, comments, queries, and concerns to tdv@dollarvigilante.com, comment on a post, or get on the forums.

On to the feedback…

GOLD PRICE MANIPULATION

Dear TDV,

I admit I don't know a whole lot about gold, but I have been studying it for several years now, and I find it soooooooooooooo hard to believe the bloggers, pundits, and so-called experts when they say there has been NO manipulation of gold prices over the last few months, and possibly years.

It's mind boggling to me how these guys can come up with dozens of excuses for the wild swings in gold prices that happen sometimes from one day to the next, and so few question them.

My opinion is because the entire gold market is so small compared to the others, a relatively few people with tons of money behind them can get together and make prices "dance" to their tune, and keep enriching themselves with tons of money until the cows come home. And who is going to stop them?

Jerry H.

Jeff’s Response:

Hi Jerry,

You must be mistaken if you think we've ever said there is no manipulation in the gold market. In fact, there is manipulation in every single major market on Earth. When you have a market of thousands or millions of people there will always be some who are trying to manipulate the market. One of the definitions of manipulation is "to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose". We are all constantly "manipulating". When some pretty girl says something stupid, for example (like "education should be free"), you may not correct her because it will reduce your chances of invoking your human instinct to mount her and propagate the species.

In terms of the gold market we are fans of the Gold AntiTrust Action Committee (GATA) and Bill Murphy who heads it, and is a good friend of mine, if only for trying to bring to light some of the higher level manipulations. Ed Steer, another good friend from my home town of Deadmonton, Alberta, also does good work on this subject.

However, finding out all manipulations in the market is completely impossible. But, as I've recently written about ("The Paper Precious Metals Market Precariously Close to Diverging From The Physical Market"), the number of manipulations in the "paper" (futures, ETFs etc) gold market is diverging from the actual physical market. After gold recently dropped $200 in a few days it was nearly impossible to source the physical metal almost anywhere... and we surveyed people across the globe.

And even to this day premiums for physical silver, even "junk" silver (old US government silver coins when money was real) are at historical extremes. I've even stated numerous times that at some point the paper gold price will completely diverge from the physical price.

Some of the evidence of this is that gold and silver stocks at COMEX are being withdrawn at unprecedented rates. And then the disclaimer now posted on the Comex gold and silver daily warehouse stock report as of Monday, June 3, 2013 just stated, "The information in this report is taken from sources believed to be reliable; however, the Commodity Exchange, Inc. disclaims all liability whatsoever with regard to its accuracy or completeness. This report is produced for information purposes only." -

That's interesting, isn't it! The COMEX can't even vouch for the precious metals held in their vaults at this point without a major disclaimer.

We've written boldly and often for the last three years that we are in the final stages of The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) and more proof builds each day that this is true. I'd be very surprised if the COMEX even exists a few years from now.

Playing in paper gold, as in anything paper today, is dangerous. You should be looking to go mostly to physical, but diversify internationally to defend against state expropriation (see our report, free to TDV subscribers, "Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge" for the world's best manual on how to do this). If you are going to speculate in gold and silver stocks, then also look to "BulletProof Your Shares"... another report that is free to TDV subscribers. Both Vin Maru at TDV Golden Trader and Ed Bugos of TDV Premium are now all but pounding the table that the precious metals shares have bottomed and it is time to get back into those markets.

Mark my words, you won't believe what is going to happen in the coming years as TEOTMSAWKI comes to its final chapter. Own physical bullion and store it wisely. If you can survive TEOTMSAWKI with assets in tact, you will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy up assets at ridiculous prices. During the Weimar Republic hyperinflation it is said you could buy hotels for one or two gold coins.

Is the gold market manipulated? Sure. But if you can manage to hold on to your physical bullion through it all, you will be one of the few able to capitalize on the biggest event in human history, TEOTMSAWKI.

OWNING LAND IS UNNATURAL

TDV:

One of your responses was absolutely ridiculous. Twisting personal possessions into "property" when clearly the word property is intended to describe land. Owning land is not natural. That's a bit like fleas buying the dog they're on.

Cherry

Gary’s Response:

I spent a few days recoiling with fascination and disgust from this message. Owning land is not natural? Of course this is the semantic trick that the most blatant communists use to justify owning their personal possessions (like clothes and food) while vilifying those who gather productive capital and own it individually. For the communist the means of production must either be owned by the state (state communism), held in common by the workers (syndicalism), or owned by no one at all (anarchist communism).

So let's look at this. Land falls onto some list of things that can't be owned? Then how does one get the rights to use the land for useful and necessary things like growing food, building houses or setting up shops and factories? If you artificially (and stupidly) exclude real estate from the concept of property, then a whole lot of economic activity becomes unfeasable. We require rights of exclusive use of real estate in order to function. Somebody ultimately must claim ownership of square footage. Even state communists and syndicalists realize that someone's got to have the right to do as they wish with the land and the stuff on it while excluding others from the decision and usage. We argue it's better for this to be left to peaceful individuals and not the state which by its very nature is a violator of property rights.

Your analogy is false and misleading, much like the analogies of the state being like parents to citizens who are like its children. Sure, some people would like to think of the head of state as "dad" or want the socialist democrats to be their mommies and fascist republicans to be their daddies. But that doesn't make it right. We aren't fleas on a dog. We're human beings on a space rock. And we manipulate our environment and naturally extend the concept of ownership to patches of the earth we stake out and improve. Land, water and air are all physical things that can be owned and which are far better protected by private ownership than they are by communal or state ownership. The only physical things that are exempted from ownership are human beings, and to show why this is we have to delve into philosophy and ethics. We don't have the space for that here, but the absolute right of human self-ownership is the foundation of the individual anarchism that informs our political (anti-state) and economic (free market) stance here in these pages.

ANALOGIES: TIME/SEX

Dear TDV,

I asked my wife if price would make any difference in her classification of being a whore, $100 or $1,000,000, and of course the response was a whore is a whore regardless of the price.

So, I said, then if 100% of your income makes you a slave, what does 80% or 60% make you? Less of a slave?

I actually tend to think that we're all WHORES and the State/Pimps are just pimping us out for the owner/banks. If I want to eat, I am going to whore myself out to the man/state/pimp. My time is the sex. The Pimps want anything I get for my time/sex.

It's getting clearer each day, I'm a whore and I admit it.

Time to leave.......

David G.

Gary's Response:

David, of course I won't argue that it's time to leave. But I would like to take this chance to talk about prostitution.

Why, oh why, is it that you can give a woman an expensive ring and a house in exchange for exclusive rights to copulation and even actual reproduction...or even give her a meal in exchange for just one night of sexual pleasure after doing some legwork to get her to go out with you in the first place...but you can't give her cold, hard cash for that one night and skip the legwork or the awkward promises to call her after the sex?

Of course, people are willing to restrict such free trade and personal choice based on the "externalities" of the situation. In short, marriage and sometimes dating are considered positives while more blatant prostitution is considered negative. But prostitution's negatives have always come from two sources: a) its very illegality which drives it underground and adds a layer of violence like all prohibitions do and b) thinking of women as subhuman property which is a cultural psychological problem that traditionally also made marriage problematic for women, too.

Are you thinking in terms of "human trafficking" and abusive pimping? Then you are thinking in terms of the state which restricts women's rights to keep property and the fruits of their own labor. Or you are thinking or the prohibition that leaves women open to violence and having to contract with the mini-government of violent gangstersism.

The fact is, it's non-sex worker women who hate prostitution because just like all corporatists, women hate competition and aren't above going to the state to restrict it. Think about it. Prostitution makes a hell of a lot more sense than dating and for a good deal of men it makes more sense than marriage, too. Remember, you don't pay a prostitute for sex. You pay her not to bother you again after you've had sex. Or as the old saying goes, you pay her to leave. A woman who wants one man to stick around wants to dominate his resouces for the sake of her offspring and she realizes that the competition from prostitutes drives her own economic advantage way down. So women with long-term resource domination in mind create an artificial monopoly on sexual favors by pushing for anti-prostitution laws which are backed by threats of violence from the state. If they really cared about other women, they'd champion the right of a woman to make her living any way she chooses without making the oldest choice illegal.

I've run the numbers. Dates with a girlfriend cost about the same as dates with a more obvious prostitute. But dating a non-obvious prostitute is worse in a way because the non-obvious prostitutes get emotionally attached and immediately want to restrict your access to other women.

Now I'm not against emotional attachments. Or with making financial decisions that I personally would not. What I am against is those with a monopoly on the initiation of force mucking with personal choices and economic freedom.

You want to get married? Fine. You want to date? Fine. You want to see a sex worker? Fine. It's the difference between owning, leasing and short-term renting. There isn't a moral component to any of this. These are personal decisions based on preferance and economic considerations. There are those who consider even dating to be "immoral" and think that sex should be confined to the ancient contract of marriage which has its roots in treating women as chattel slaves for domestic upkeep and biological reproduction. But people consider all kinds of things immoral --drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, dating the same sex or the opposite sex of a different ethnic or racial background --and want the state to get involved in restricting it. Using violence, particularly of the sate, to restrict the right to act voluntarily, however, is itself the only true immorality.

The rightness of these sexual and economic arrangements depend on your point of view and your cultural brainwashing. Whatever you think about them, the state and its lobbyists need to stay out of these arrangements and leave people to make their own decisions as to what to do with their own bodies as well as let people figure out which form of sexual economy makes the most sense in their individual circumstances.

BACK IN THE USSR

Dear Gary,

Loved the column on Krugman. I [too] feel like those who stayed in the Soviet Union right up until 1991... except that most Soviets actually knew their system was terrible.

I was in the USSR when it turned. They had a 90%+ literacy rate and they all knew it was coming. The USSA is barely 50%. I'd estimate less.

Boris [Yeltsin] was the president of the Labor Union and all the guys I was a guest of had a union card with his name on it. We headed for the hills deep into the interior the day before the tanks came into Moscow as there was unity, but still some sense that those tanks could have used bullets.

I was just north of Mongolia at the time and will never forget it. Everyone in the know was aware that there would be a showdown, but it took real courage.

Oh yes, I was there by invitation. They wanted me to help them with their oil and gas. Sadly, they had not a clue as to what would happen. They heard George Bush say he was going to send the new Russia $10B and they actually believed that they had a shot at getting some of the money for their businesses they had planned. They wanted me to go see George and ask for some of the $10B. I was so taken I burst into a chuckle and then I realized they were serious. I'm certain they've since figured out the ways of the world.

Thanks again,

David G.

Gary’s Response:

Thanks for the perspective and input, David. Check out TDV's Senior Analyst Ed Bugos's take on the same column below...

TDV'S SENIOR ANALYST BRINGS CLARITY

"...by the state's monopoly on the definition and supply of money, which they then inflate thus transferring wealth to the government and the well-connected and away from the middle class and those further down the chain who are forced to borrow more and more to keep their standard of living from falling."

Hi Gary,

First of all, I love the new term: asshat.

Please take as constructive here...

One thing I want to point out is a lot of people "further down the chain" have the ability to step in front in line either by speculating correctly or by borrowing. Borrowing effectively pushes them up the line and they become one of the benefactors of the policy as do recipients of welfarism. The
groups hurt most by the policy are fixed-wage earners and savers -- especially those who don't borrow - but this transcends the poor-rich scale. The cost of the policy is also born across the income spectrum. Aside from those mentioned above (wage earners and savers) it includes future offspring as well as entrepreneurs (as capital is wasted and the state grows larger).

The longest lasting benefactors of course are the politicians, warmongers, and bureaucrats. The bankers, the rich, and especially the productive will be among those hurt by the policy before those interests. But my main point is that the inflation policy benefits/costs transcend the income spectrum/scale. It seemed you were confused about that. Many apologies if I perceived that all incorrectly.

Cheers,

Ed Bugos [TDV Senior Analyst]

Gary's Response:

I wish I could take credit for "asshat", Ed, but that was Jeff's contribution to the conversation!

In any case, thanks for the clarification. I wasn't so much confused as I was just touching on the point briefly in a slightly inebriated lament that Paul Krugman and Keynesianism are still taken seriously by so many people! I wrote that blog post days ago and I'm still a bit miffed. I'm still not sleeping well and my digestion is a bit off. Reading Krugman's nonsense and the economically illiterate praise of it is an occupational hazard, however. It takes years off of my life, but it must be done!

Note to the rest of you dear vigilantes: This is the kind of knowledge and precision Ed Bugos brings to the table for paid subscribers to TDV's Newsletter. If you'd like to get access to Ed's analysis and investment advice -- along with more in-depth analysis from TDV CEO Jeff Berwick -- then click here to learn more.

A Tale of Two Countries

Fri, 06/07/2013 - 01:03

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick, and is excerpted from his "Vigilante's View" column from this week's TDV Dispatch, a subscriber-only publication. To become a subscriber, go here.]

Nothing shows the difference that a local governing style has on an area such as South America like the current difference between Venezuela and Chile. It is almost becoming as obvious as the difference between North Korea and South Korea.

Following a devastating famine in 1979, mass riots plagued Chile in the early 1980s and right-wing guerilla movements as well as mainstream opposition began to emerge. By the end of the Pinochet era in 1990, Chileans had had enough of communism and fascism and gravitated back to a more capitalist, free market system.

The results were clear to see.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, things were going in the opposite direction.

Hugo Chavez, a self-labeled “man of the people” mired the country in authoritarian socialism verging on outright communism.

For a time, according to some of his proponents it was “working”. What wasn’t noted was that Venezuela had massive oil reserves upon which to make it appear as though it was “working” for a time. That time is now ending. For months now stores across the country have been host to long lines just to enter stores that are devoid of many basic products from butter to toilet paper.

Due to the problems caused by the inflation and destruction of the country brought on by Chavez the state of Zulia in western Venezuela said it will now launch a pilot program next week that uses a digital system to block shoppers from buying the same staple products at different stores on the same day. In other words, food rationing.

“We cannot allow the government to use our state to create a Cuba-style rationing system,” said opposition legislator Elias Matta of Zulia. “This shows the failure of 21st century socialism.”

The following graphic really says it all about Chile and Venezuela.

Venezuela will get worse and worse until it abandons its socialist and authoritarian policies and Chile will continue to thrive unless it abandons its current path.

And so, for those looking to live in a freer more prosperous place, your options today are, Go South (or East), young man.

For those looking to defect from the West, TDV Groups, which is free to all subscribers now has dozens of groups worldwide including groups in Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia in the South and Cambodia, Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand in the East.

We will also soon be releasing our “Freedom Lover’s Guide to Expatriation and the Permanent Tourist Lifestyle” report which will be a living document and continually added to with contacts and info and advice from TDV Group concierges around the world. That also, of course, will be free to TDV subscribers.

To continue reading "Vigilante's View" in its entirety -- and to get even more in-depth analysis and actionable ideas to grow your wealth as the monetary system collapses -- please subscribe here.

Jeff Berwick

Obama Warfare

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 20:40

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Managing Editor, Redmond Weissenberger]

Amid varying scandals in late May, President Obama gave a speech on foreign policy at the National Defense University (it's a dismaying sign when a university is dedicated to teaching the art of global war) highlighting his administration's goals when it comes to international conduct. Among flashing cameras and his handy teleprompter, Obama stressed the War on Terror will "come to an end at some point". He finally acknowledged his administration is responsible for the murder of four American citizens without due process - one of which was a sixteen year-old who committed no crime other than having a radicalized father. To top it off, the President assured the public he was going to enact strict measures so the vast killing authority he granted himself would not be abused by future Oval Office holders.

The adoring media ate it up. Here was Obama, finally behaving like the peace candidate he promised back in 2008. But was he being serious? Your immediate reaction should be, when is Obama, or any President for that matter, telling the truth? I have a bridge to sell you in Toronto if you sincerely believe the guy who believes he has the moral authority to kill without repercussion will actually curtail the warfare state.

It's being reported Obama entered into secret talks with Pentagon officials to draft a plan for the imposition of a "no fly zone" over Syria - the newest target in the American hegemon's eye. Bloodthirsty senators like John "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" McCain and Lindsey Graham are pushing hard for war to satisfy their imperial desires. Obama, being ever the statist, is happy to oblige, even as he treads lightly to not spook his leftist base.

The state is based on violence and predation. No one man, especially Barack Obama, is going to defang the beast. The talk of ending the seemingly immortal War on Terror is just more talk. The warfare state in the United States will collapse once Washington goes broke from the orgy of fiat spending and debt financing. It's just a shame we have to wait that long for results.

In the meantime, the US government will continue to wage its own War of Terror against Americans - looting them, reading their private correspondence, and throwing them in jail for non-crimes. But as long as the unquestioned commander-in-chief tells the mainstream press all is well, his will will be obliged. The War on Terror is not ending because it enriches too many establishment firms and allows the government to run roughshod over the rights of everyone on Earth. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but don't say we at The Dollar Vigilante didn't warn you.

Redmond Weissenberger is the Managing Editor of The Dollar Vigilante and the Founding Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, the centre for the study of the Austrian School of Economics within Canada.

Redmond founded the LvMIC in 2010 to address the lack of knowledge about the true cause of our booms and busts of the last 100 years and the need for sound money and sound economics to be applied to the Canadian and global economy.

When people tell me that we need the government because it protects us from murderous madmen, I have to point out that the government is how madmen get to murder thousands of people with impunity and often with praise.

You almost have to admire the evil sleight of hand. The politicians have us all cowering in fear of the petty criminals that their prohibitions and poverty-inducing welfare create. Meanwhile the politicians themselves use the money they steal to wipe out entire villages and cities with one vote or one phone call.

Politicians are just lying, thieving murderers in nice suits. They may have a thin, shiny veneer of respectability, but that covers a deep, dense core of thuggishness. The more powerful the politician, the more concentrated the evil. And the greater the cognitive dissonance among the masses of indocrtinated worshipers.

So it is that a smooth-talking thug like Obama can kill again and again and have his adorers continue to praise him and brush away any criticisms about his hypocrisy and obvious sociopathic ability to murder and not feel a thing. He is no different from the common gangster. This same man could just as easily have walked up to any of those four Americans who died on his orders -- including that teenage boy -- and put two rounds into the base of their skulls himself.

Don't ever kid yourself. That's the kind of monster we're talking about. Every politician believes in aggressive violence enough to engage in it. Your local city council member may not be as overtly sociopathic as the kind of person who seeks to command all the military might of the USSA. Or maybe they are and just don't have the ambition to get that far. When you look at the federal level, then you get to see the real dedicated, true stone-cold killers like Obama and McCain and Lindsey Graham who I only half-jokingly suspect is wearing a human-like disguise.

If you can, get away from these men. Find some pleasant part of the planet that doesn't hold their interest, take steps to divorce yourself from their tax farm and go live in peace.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

Why You Shouldn't Read About Paul Krugman While Drinking

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 18:30

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor, Gary Gibson]

Have you ever been at a bar or some other public place and had to overhear some goober talking nonsense that wasn't just offensive but also aggressively stupid? We've all been there: listening to some idiot spout off on something that we know to be patently, embarrassingly wrong. We've all fought the urge to shut such idiots up with sudden, naked violence (because such violence would clearly be wrong). I found myself in just such a situation as I wrote the blog at my neighborhood bar earlier.

I had been talking to Kerry Lutz on his show just a few hours before about how the internet is making people smarter about the inherent problems caused by the state. Then I went to my a local bar to get internet access (because the internet at my new place won't be turned on till tomorrow) and had to overhear some asshat talking to his date about about social justice, the evils of Walmart, how paying less for stuff actually hurts people and how Jon Stewart is so smart. The guy was a bit of an ogre. Well over six feet tall with a deep, stentatorian voice, the kind that is impossible to ignore if you're within a ten-foot radius, even if he's trying to keep it down. With his "Daily Show" views, height and powerful voice, I suspect a future in politics for him.

It's not polite to saunter up to complete strangers and intrude on their conversation to tell them how uninformed their opinions are. But if I were rude enough, I would have pointed out to this guy and his date that all the problems he's so eager to fix with gun-backed regulation and redistribution are in fact caused in the first place by the state's monopoly on the definition and supply of money, which they then inflate thus transferring wealth to the government and the well-connected and away from the middle class and those further down the chain who are forced to borrow more and more to keep their standard of living from falling.

Further, I would have pointed out that the answer to the ills of the downtrodden isn't more political threatening, prodding and pushing. Political violence is the source of the wealth gap in the first place! But that would have been challenging some very basic assumptions about the role of the state as legitimate, armed regulator in human life. It would also have challenged the assumption that the state ought to be the controller of the currency and then require that more dots be connected in a short conversation than most brainwashed slaves are able to deal with.

The early after-work crowd started pouring in and the noise of their conversation started drowing out Mr. Social Justice. I was just calming down when TDV editor-in-chief, Jeff Berwick, sent me a link to the latest article on Paul Krugman. You can read the entire article here, but essentially Krugman tries to explain why the Keynesian paradox of thrift is actually a valid theory and not some lamebrained excuse for inflation and government debt. Did you think that the paradox of thrift nonsense had been put to bed? Au contraire, dear rational reader...

Crucially, Krugman continues, "what's true for an individual is not true for society as a whole". The analogy between a household budget and a national economy is "seductive, because it's very easy for people to relate to", and it makes some sense when we're not in the grip of a macro-economic crisis. "But when we are, then individually rational behaviour adds up to a collectively disastrous result. It ends up that each individual trying to improve his or her position has the collective effect of making everybody worse off. And that's the story of our times."

For those that don't already know, Paul Krugman is an especially obnoxious itch for any mind dedicated to good economic theory. Like every Keynesian, Krugman is a shameless apologist for centralized, violent, political intervention in the economy. If regulation and government debt were men, he'd proposition them in the bathroom of questionable bars. Biggest "stimulus" ever didn't work? Clearly we just need even more "stimulus", says Paul! Economies aren't households. Saving is only good for individuals, not groups of indviduals. And this is the state we're talking about! It can borrow without consequence to misallocate money to things the market doesn't want and magically come out richer later.

The article itself was written by the same sort of asshat whose interventionist, leftist claptrap I had to overhear at the bar. The author seems to have a bit of crush on Krugman, however. Which would be fine if the crush were based on Krugman's woodchuck-like good looks or obviously clever little mind or subtle charm. I mean, I can see it: The beard...the beady, little eyes... the teaching gig at a prestigious university. But instead the author is crushing on him because she thinks he's right.

Sadly, most of the brainwashed tax cows in the world would likely agree. More government, more regulation, more inflation, more government debt! It's a wonder these people manage to dress themselves in the morning.

Luckily, the din of the bar has blocked out most of the nonsense I was hearing earlier, but Jeff Berwick sending me that Krugman article has me even further infuriated. Reading anything from Krugman not only ruins my mood for days, but it also makes me feel like I am in the Soviet Union in 1976, listening to the Finance Czar talk about how great communism is despite the fact that you can barely find a pair of shoes in the country... at least not one for both the left and right foot. Krugman only gets to spout his nonsense because it tickles the ears of leftists who want to believe that there is no social program the government can't afford, no immorality attached to government intervention, theft and redistribution. The right loves the man to the degree that he sees war as economically beneficial. You can't deny that the man is whip smart. But he is popular because he champions Keynesian economic theory and thus confirms a pernicious, pro-state bias.

I suppose it is my fault, however, for having stayed in the USSA this long. I feel like those who stayed in the Soviet Union right up until 1991... except that most Soviets actually knew their system was terrible. They had two governmental "news" outlets, the main Communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda and Izvestia. Those names meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively... and a popular Russian saying was "v Pravde net izvestiy, v Izvestiyakh net pravdy" (In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth).

Here the local slaves still think the propaganda and drivel on CNN and other mainstream programming is actually both the truth and real news!

It's a good thing I am still sitting in a bar and can drink the only government-approved intoxicating agent...even if it is the least effective and slowest of the various ways to make the world melt away. No wonder everyone here drinks so much!

It's really looking like the final chapter of Atlas Shrugged with everyone clinging to centrally planned solutions even as those solutions accelerate economic collapse. It's a good thing TDV has created a real world version of Galt's Gulch to which to escape.

If you have had enough of the Jon Stewart worshipers who think Krugman is brilliant, and you are ready to divorce yourself from the US, then click here to see how TDV Passports can help you on your path toward permanent expatriation. If you insist on sticking around like your masochistic editor, be sure to tune into TDV Homegrown for tips and strategies to make your stay as comfortable as possible.

Pop Quiz On Government

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 16:36

If you still can't understand the dire need to get the small wonderful people (kids) in your life out of public and even government-approved private school, this should drive it home.

Sent: May-30-13 3:05 PM
To:
Subject: Government Pop Quiz Tomorrow

Dear Parents,

I have given the students a heads-up this morning that there will be a government of Canada pop quiz tomorrow. I have given them the 8 questions ahead of time so they know what to study. They should have all their notes home tonight to study from. Many hand-outs have also been shared with the students through Google Apps.

For those who were not in class today, here are the questions:

1) Importance of a government (3 reasons)

2) 3 levels of government on Canada and services each one provides

3) How these 3 levels of government work together to help Canadians

4) What happens in the House of Commons and what role does it play in the federal government

5) Importance of 'good' laws

6) Importance of Confederation of Canada

7) Difference between a province and a territory

8) Process of how Bills are passed into laws

There is also another blog assignment posted. If there isn't enough time tonight students can view the video and post their blog over the weekend.

Thanks for your attention.

Notice that there is no alternative theory to the one that says government should be there in the first place. The implication is that government is as natural and necessary to the proper functioning of the planet as sunlight. Now we know that to most people an alternative theory to government sounds like an alternative theory to a heliocentric solar system. But we put forth that non-aggression is the center of a properly functioning society and economy. Any society that puts the initiation of force known as the state at its center is bound to suffer economic misallocations, violence, crime and eventually collapse. Government: it's just no way to live! It's simply a medieval, barbaric concept.

We thought for fun we'd go through some of the trickier questions and answer them with a dose of peace-centric reality. We hope our reader gives these comments to his child as a "Coles Notes" for writing his own answers.

1) Three reasons why government is important.

Answer: We start off with a bit of a fumble because we can only come up with one really good reason: to concentrate the proceeds of socially accepted theft into the hands of those most willing to use force. We suppose that most people would offer some pre-programmed responses about providing "certain" services more efficiently than the free market, regulating and prohibiting transactions to keep the most possible people "safe", and preventing all of us boobs from stabbing each other and poking out our own eyes.

4) What happens in the House of Commons and what role does it play in the federal government

Answer: What happens in the House of Commons is theft and violence by people in costumes that sometimes are business suits and sometimes robes and wigs. The true tragedy of what happens there is that apparently a significant amount of the population approves of the House's criminal actions and allows them to play out their grand opera by which they come up with arbitrary criminal concepts and then have other people in different colored costumes then carry out their bidding using force. All activities conducted in this location are criminal and those associated with their activities should be regarded as such.

5) The importance of 'good' laws

Answer: First define a 'good' law. To many unthinking people, various prohibitions are 'good' because they keep people from doing things with their own bodies that other people just don't like...yet banning actions like these invariably results in a black market, extra-legal and violent resolution of disputes and a humongous public cost of enforcement.

But we'd go a bit further and say that even the most basic of 'good' laws --like don't harm the person or property of another-- are redundant because people don't generally do that anyway because they figure out very early in life that cooperation makes them richer. Even further we'd say that the laws are hypocritical because the government that's supposed to enforce them gives itself license to kidnap, assault, steal, destroy and kill. At the center of the law is a Gordian Knot of hypocrisy that cannot be done as long as the supposed peace is guarded by those who claim the right to initiate aggression on everyone else. As a very smart philosopher has repeatedly pointed out, you can't protect property rights with an agency that in its essence is a violation of property rights.

F- AND THE HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

Of course, any child prisoner in a Canadian day-camp for youngsters who answered the way we did here would receive an F-minus. Of course, getting suspended or thrown out of their indoctrinating prison camp could be the best thing that could possibly happen to them.

Around the same time I received the email from the Canadian government indoctrinator, good friend and host of the Global Escape Hatch conferences (next one coming up in Panama in September - and I'll be there), Bobby Casey, posted the following to his Facebook wall:

My daughter got an email from her teacher yesterday in response to her US history paper. It said, "this sounds like you have been raised by an anarchist".

Her teacher was right; she has been raised by anarchists. Bobby has expatriated to Latvia where he lives with his 17-year-old daughter and, yet, she still has a "US History Class"! While I never saw her paper, I know Bobby well enough to know that her paper likely didn't jibe with things like "Lincoln", the movie, and instead was factually and historically correct and saw Lincoln as a genocidal, fascist criminal.

My own children will, hopefully, never get far enough along in their Mexican private school to even have to answer pop quizes like the one above or even have to respond with inaccurate, flattering answers to the questions about the unspeakable acts of the US government throughout American history.

To add even more to the hope for the future is not just Bobby Casey's daughters responses to her indoctrinators but also the blog below.

I recently interviewed an entire anarchist family that has moved down to Galt's Gulch Chile. Terry Neudorf, who now works with us at GGC, talked about his anarchist family and how they just took off one day and headed down on an adventure to South America. You can see the full interview below.

Click here or on thumbnail

You can see his entire beautiful family in the final minute of the video. Open, happy, free thinking individuals, each one, right down to their three-year-old daughter.

But what amazed me recently was his beautiful nine-year-old daughter. For emphasis, NINE years old. Here is her recent blog post that she wrote all on her own without her father even knowing about it:

Save the Bees and People

I want to talk to you about GMO. It is a bad chemical for bees and people. It is killing bees and making people die. Me and my family go the healthy lifestyle. We do not eat GMO or aspartame, glucose and things like that. It also makes your mind not think as well. So when we got to the grocery store we look in the ingredients. One of the reasons the bees are dying is because farmers are buying seed from Monsanto which has a poison to keep the bees away. That makes them die. The reason bees are good is that they make honey and they pollinate the plants so you can have more healthy seed. And when the bees make honey you can have the honey for things instead of corn syrup and sugar because honey is sweet and tasty and healthy. You may not believe me because I am only a child but I'm doing this all for the good and I believe it.

When he sent it to me I sat well back in my chair, looked to the sky and thought to myself, "Oh my god, there is hope!". More than just hope there are countless unschooled pure, free, individual human beings coming on to this planet that can show us more than we ever imagined.

I responded to Terry, telling him how exciting and unbelievable it is to see a nine-year-old girl writing about this.

Here was his response:

Yes, she did this without us even knowing it. We talk a lot about these kinds of issues, and often with the children. A few days ago, she was ready to call her grandpa (Kim's dad) and tell him to stop growing soybeans and spraying "cemikls" on them, and I said: "You know, that might not go over very well, and maybe isn't the best approach. Maybe you should do some research and write a post on your little blog about it - it's better to educate than to preach." The next day she showed me these 3 pages she had written for her blog. I didn't know she would just go and do it. We posted it. I don't know what grandpa will say, but it's a lot less direct than the urgent phone call she was planning ;)

I grimaced at the spelling, and grinned at the content. She spells phonetically - you'll notice each word is spelled exactly as it sounds to her!

Spelling aside... and if he caught more spelling errors in her blog than I regularly do in The Dollar Vigilante blog, then he is a better editor than I!

But, far and beyond spelling, if these kinds of children are coming up behind us, then there is tremendous hope. I hate to use words like "the children are the future" and "hope" and "change" after those words have been so prostituted by politicians (and politicians are just sociopathic con men), but if this a hint of the future, then we have much, much better times ahead.

I'd like to see her, Bobby Casey or my children answer the government pop quiz at the top of this article.

There is an awakening that is happening. Unfortunately, most people who remain affixed to the Western government and societal social constructs will be the last to learn.

But, as Dayna Martin in another interview I did, said, "My unschooled children will be your college-educated children's bosses".

The future still has the hope of being beautiful. Free your mind, get outside of the boxes built around you and seek the truth.

Those things are most easily done by just getting out of where you live and gravitating to a place where people like Terry Neudorf have gone, like Galt's Gulch. Or, become an expatriate like Bobby Casey and either get out of your Western country or outright renounce your citizenship and get a citizenship in another, less oppressive country (TDV Passports can help here). Or just subscribe to TDV where we talk in detail about how to do the things that Terry, Bobby and myself have done and where paid subscribers have access to things like TDV Groups, which now has freedom-minded expatriates in over 30 countries ready and willing to outstretch their hand and welcome you to the future.

Or, just stay in the West and keep your kids locked up in public school, reciting memorized dates of how FDR saved the US from the Great Depression by killing hundreds of thousands of people and ignore the fact that the Greater Depression is already upon us.

The choice is yours!

Jeff Berwick

TDV Week in Review June 2nd, 2013

Sun, 06/02/2013 - 14:47

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Speed Limits

Sharp-eyed vigilantes might have noticed that our publishing times got pushed back a few hours these past couple of days. In the case of issues with Jeff's contributions this was due to Jeff's insane travel schedule, particularly following the official announcement for Galt's Gulch Chile. In the case of your browner but no less mouthy TDV editor, today's tardiness is for far more mundane reasons. I recently spent my first night in a new, very nice house rental in St Paul, Minnesota as part of my own personal undertaking of the strategy to live rent and mortgage-free as outlined in the pages of TDV Homegrown. The Internet activation at the new house was supposed to be as assured as it was supposed to be brief. It was neither. And since Saint Paul is anything but a 24-hour city, I had to wait till the morning before I could find a place where I could legally sit and use the Internet. So it is that I am up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to upload these musings to you at my local Caribou Coffee shop. And my musings today are about speed limits.

Now you might think it odd that in the face of increasingly egregious abuses by the thuggish enforcers of the state will (cops), I would bother with such a long-standing ridiculous policy as driving speed limits. But I've had reason to drive around a lot more than usual in the last couple of months. And the absurdity of the speed limit simply overwhelmed me to the point I had to make public note of it.

It has been my observation that the speed limits in my metro region are set at least 15 percent below the speeds that are actually safe to drive, just like they are all over the US. Also every one of the statist sheep who thinks that laws are necessary to enforce safe behavior at gunpoint all drive at least 20 percent over the posted speed limit. This was across the board. If the sign said "30 mph", you could bet money that 40 mph was a perfectly safe speed and the actual speed at which traffic tended to move. If the sign said "55 mph", you could bet your sweet bippy that 65 and often more was the actual safe norm.

Why make a big deal about something like this that everybody already knows? Well, when you're an anarchist who believes that laws are unecessary to order human behavior and just an excuse for the state to collect revenue while training obedience to its violence, you can't help but get annoyed at things like this. The regular and blatant breaking of speed restrictions is an example of the spontaneous order that anarcho-capitalists like yours truly are always crowing about. People drive at the speeds that they judge safe based on circumstances like road width and likelihood of contact with slower moving, fragile bodies like pedestrians and other non-motoring animals.

But how do we keep people from making fatal speeding errors without the threat of kidnapping and extortion that is the law? The free market would have the answer there, too. Privately owned roads would seek to maximize profit by maximizing customer and user satisfaction while minimizing risk. Private owners would surely offer recommendations of truly safe travel speeds because they would have financial incentive to do so. Public policing of public roads, on the other hand, is incentivized toward artificially restricting speeds to increase the opportunity to treat users punitively. Also, free market insurance companies would put pressure on people to self-police their actions since increasingly risky behavior would result in higher premiums. People would stick pretty close to the recommended --not violently enforced-- limits while road owners and insurance companies could simply charge more for risky behavior, enough to exert economic pressure to keep close to the truly safe limits. No need for police and guns.

The statist would think that these free market solutions are unworkable. Yet the real world shows that people base their driving speed on their own judgment while ignoring the law anyway. The statist might think that removing the guns of the public police would simply encourage people to drive recklessly, but that just shows the tired and wrong view of human beings as unruly children who need guns pointed at them to act reasonably in the face of economic incentives.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

P.S. If you are inclined to live with a lot more liberty than you would find in a police state in an advanced state of decay (like the US), then check out Galt's Gulch Chile. Leave the ridiculous restrictions behind by clicking here.

Before we get to the Week in Review, we’d like to tell you about what was in this week’s TDV Dispatch, one of our subscriber-only publications that looks for better ways for you to survive the disintegration of the USSA, and updates our subscribers on investment and opportunity. This week I kicked things off with a look at Obama’s commencement speech, inspiringly filled with lies. Jeff Berwick contributed pieces on his experience at the World Resource Investment Conference in Vancouver, a warning not to go “full commie”, and a roundup of important information in “Other News from TEOTMSAWKI and TDV Related Tidbits”. Ed Bugos talked about how stimulus cannot produce growth in his “TDV Portfolio: Review and Outlook”, and TDV Taiwan Group Moderator Simon Robinson had an overview on his new home away from the USSA. Finally, a brief profile of the gone-to-soon Aaron Swartz.

All these incomparable contributions, as well as our monthly Homegrown and Issue, can be subscribed to here. Come see what you’re missing!

Here’s what we wrote about this week…

MONDAY, May 27

Ayn Rand's Vision of Galt's Gulch Has Become a Reality as of Today

Jeff Berwick invites the world to join TDV in Chile at Galt’s Gulch. If you read one thing anywhere this week, this is it.

“After months of hard work by the entire staff at Galt's Gulch Chile (GGC) I am extremely pleased to announce to the world that Ayn Rand's vision in her iconic book, Atlas Shrugged, has become a reality. It is unfortunate that the world has transformed much into what Rand had envisioned and the need for a place like Galt's Gulch has become so urgent. But, since that is today's reality we are very happy to offer the respite from the Western world of oppressive governments to freedom-minded people in which they can build a new, more prosperous community.”

TUESDAY, May 28

The Cost of Driving Like Jeff Berwick in Mexico

The irracible Jim Karger is back with further arguments to join him outside the USSA.

" ‘How much less expensive is it to live in Mexico?’

That is the most common question I receive from friends, family, and TDV readers.

And, it is a question that is impossible to answer in the abstract.

Some capital goods made in the United States and China are actually more expensive here in Mexico. But nearly everything else costs less.

Here in San Miguel de Allende in the high central desert, we are blessed with a lot of vegetables, all grown nearby. Because most of the food we buy is fresh, our overall food bill is about 60% of what the same food would cost in the United States. Others find the difference less, but they are buying boxes of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and other US packaged foodstuffs which are expensive here.”

THURSDAY, May 29

America: The Center Cannot Hold

Wendy McElroy uses Yeats as a filter to consider the crisis of the destruction of a country from the inside.

" Yeats (1865-1939) wrote ‘The Second Coming’ in 1919 to describe the moral devastation of post-WWI Europe. The “mere anarchy” is not the laissez-faire version of contract and consent between free individuals which produces good will and prosperity. The “mere anarchy” is chaos, a Hobbesian society of all-against-all that comes in the wake of sustained violence. It is a society that guts decency, loots productivity, and rewards the worst within men.

Yeats could be describing America today. Or, at least, the America that might well be tomorrow. The center cannot hold.’”

FRIDAY, May 31

Feedback Friday – May 31st, 2013

In this week’s Feedback Friday: Chile, anarchism, and purchasing bullion. What else?

The Weekend Vigilante June 1, 2013

Sat, 06/01/2013 - 04:58

Hello from glorious Acapulco,

It is especially glorious for me after shivering most of the week in Vancouver at the World Resource Investment Conference. Although, my driver picking me up at the airport in Acapulco told me they had just been hit by a hurricane which I hadn't even heard about... my wife on our daily Skype chats hadn't even mentioned it. It's amazing what a different fear level things induce when there are no CNN reporters there to act like the wind is knocking them over and tell you how scary it is.

"Is everything okay?" I asked my driver.

"Ya, just lots of rain," he responded.

I was a bit sad to have missed it... I like hurricanes. Everything except Cat 5, of course.

But the skies were clear and sunny again and I was just happy to be back. It was nearly June in Vancouver and the entire time I was there it was cold and rainy. To make matters worse, the slave-on-slave action which runs deep in these parts kept having people from security guards to waitresses practically taking out a tape measure and prodding me that I must move a few more feet away from whatever building I was standing near trying to smoke as I tried to shelter myself from the arctic winds.

I had one person tell me as I stood on a sidewalk that I had to move "one foot" further away. Then, I had someone later coerce me to move 24 feet (or as they say there, 8 meters) away from their edifice to smoke. The worst was when I stepped outside of a restaurant situated on a large open air plaza and was told by some woman, "there is no smoking on this plaza."

"The entire plaza?" I said, exasperated.

"Yes, it's the 'law'", she responded.

I had been standing underneath an awning 24 feet away from the restaurant, as demanded in prior altercations, defending myself as best I could from the ice-cold driving rain and wind, but she demanded I must walk about a block away to smoke.

I can do better than that, I thought, and hopped on a flight back to North America's version of the land of the free: Mexico.

The cognitative dissonance in a place like Vancouver is almost unbelievable. Almost everyone I spoke to asked me where I lived, and I would respond that I don't live anywhere but spend a lot of time in Mexico. Their preprogrammed response from the communist government news channel, CBC, was always, "I hear it is dangerous there."

This, while "Gang Squad Unit" police wandered through almost every upscale establishment I visited ID'ing people and fights broke out. I even asked one of the gang squad police, "What are you doing here?"

He was quite nice to respond and said, "There have been a lot of gang shootings lately so we go in to see if we can identify violence before it happens."

I responded, "Well, the great majority of all the violence here is caused by the prohibition of plants and flowers called 'The War on Drugs'".

He said, "I think if we really wanted to, we could shut it down completely."

What he was saying is that the "higher ups" just have no interest in shutting it down completely. And, he is right. The police have no interest in stopping the things that police are supposedly needed for or they'd be out of a job.

Of course, also, he doesn't or perhaps does realize that a world in which people are so policed in such a fashion that they couldn't possibly trade for things they want would be heinous. In his 12+ years of government indoctrination and late night CBC viewing, government, police, violence, force and theft are a good thing.

I took a deep breath, to relax myself in the face of idiocy, and said, "Well, they have been trying for forty years now and it hasn't worked. The exact same thing happens every time that violence is used to stop the free trade of items," I said.

He squinted at me and said, "Can I see your ID please?"

He's been told to be on the lookout for people like me. People who logically, rationally challenge the status quo of the violence and theft of the state.

Rather than try to state that under their rules they can't just be going around asking people for identification and their papers, I rummaged through my wallet filled with numerous foreign government ID documents and passed him one of my Caribbean residency cards.

He took a look and asked, "You are from the Caribbean? You're not from Canada?"

I responded, "I am just a human being. I was born near here, but I've since defected."

He seemed puzzled, wrote down something in his notepad and we went our separate ways.

Perhaps the largest level of cognitive dissonance in Kanada is in respect to "global warming". Many Canadians still believe global warming is a major problem. This in a place that is almost always freezing cold. It'd be like telling someone from the Atacama Desert in Chile, a place where there hasn't been rainfall in 400 years, that there is a terrible thing happening that may mean global rainfall would increase and having them write their congressman to do something to stop it!

Anyway, I am so unbelievably happy to be out Canada and back in a freer, more civilized and safe place that I can barely put it into words.

EXHAUSTED

I'm actually incredibly exhausted after my most recent trip. Often, upon returning from places like Chile, Panama or Thailand I'll be tired and need some sleep... but not exhausted.

The exhaustion comes, I think, from just having to deal with things like I described above. Not to mention, the entire time I was in Vancouver it was the usual constant drizzle and no sight of the sun... and people standing on empty streets with no cars waiting for a little "white man" to tell them they are allowed to walk. Or, walking through the streets of downtown Vancouver at 6pm on a Wednesday afternoon wondering if it is some sort of holiday or something. Most shops already closed and the streets empty except for the considerable population of homeless people and beggars. Scenes from Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead" rolling through my mind as the rare people I do see in that empty wasteland are, for all intents and purposes, zombies. Government-created zombies thanks to Vancouver being the welfare capital of Canada.

And then, on the very rare occasion when anyone makes eye contact with you or talks with you they usually go on to tell you how depressed they are. No wonder! I'd only been here a few days and if there had been a loaded pistol sitting right beside me, I would have given serious thought to putting the business end in my mouth. And I was just visiting and not being extorted for half my income, going into a million dollars worth of debt to own a house nor paying rent to live in that house (property tax) like the people who actually live there full time.

Luckily my next three journeys to this region are in somewhat better places. I'll be at Porcfest in the "freer" state, New Hampshire, from June 17-23. At least there I'll be mostly walled off from the rest of the USSA, as I'll be surrounded by thousands of open-carry anarchists and freedom-minded people. Then I'll be at the Liberty Mastermind Symposium on June 28-29th. That's in Dallas in one of the freer states in the Empire and a short flight from Mexico... plus there will be lots of very interesting people there like Martin Armstrong, David Morgan, Bill Murphy and my anarcho-side-kick, Gary Gibson.

And then I'll be in one of the only places in the US where you can drink alcohol outdoors and even at any hour you'd like - crazy isn't it! Plus the strippers actually take off their clothes! At FreedomFest in Las Vegas from July 10-13th.

If you'd like to hook up with me in Canada or the US, take the chance now because I don't know how much longer I can keep going back to either place. Especially since they've begun daylight black-bagging freedom advocates like Adam Kokesh.

Adam's stance has been to stay in the USSA and fight. My stance has been to leave and fight. It's not so much because I am scared of things getting overtly-violent as the West collapses... but mostly because I can't stand even being there for more than a week at a time. I'm not even sure it is even worth fighting for freedom in the US and Canada anymore... that war has already been lost. Almost every single one of the slaves happily accept their chains. But I do wish him well and will help however I can.

I'd rather just go somewhere where the majority of the population hasn't already turned into slaves and zombies. Like, Galt's Gulch Chile!

While in Vancouver I had the chance to film a number of interviews, however, and I think the one with Vanessa Collette of Goldseek was the best. Vanessa is beautiful and she grew up in Beijing and the Philippines. For that reason she must have a much more free-market perspective and it was one of the best interviews I've had the pleasure of being part of. This is the first time she has interviewed anyone and perhaps, also because of that, she knew how to ask some really great questions. Like, "I'm going to say a few names and you tell me your immediate response to them... Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama..."

You can see my responses here although if you are a TDV reader my responses probably won't surprise you.

Click here or on thumbnail

UNTIL NEXT WEEK

I just got tapped on my shoulder at my evening office, Mangos, in Acapulco, by a TDV subscriber in town. And there are a few others and we are going to have a few drinks, smoke, and even have the waitresses light our cigars or cigarettes for us and enjoy semi-freedom!

I'm always happy to meet up with TDV'ers anywhere in the world. One TDV subscriber drove up from Colorado to Vancouver just to meet last week! If you'd like to meet in Acapulco, contact James Guzman and if you'd like to meet in Chile at or near Galt's Gulch just outside of Santiago, you can email tdv@dollarvigilante.com. And, to keep track of me anywhere else, just like the CIA does, add TDV on Facebook where I often detail my travels. Or, just add me as a friend. I regularly state which city or country I am in at any given moment in time... and it shouldn't surprise you that that often changes by the day.

Until next week, have fun, be open, protect yourself from The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) and even profit from it as we try to do at The Dollar Vigilante (our best actionable ideas are for paid subscribers).

Jeff Berwick

Feedback Friday - MAY 31, 2013

Fri, 05/31/2013 - 18:09

Anyone catch O'Bomber's commencement speech to young, unsuspecting new graduates of the US Naval Academy (ie: killing school)? So inspiring. Filled with lies, conjecture, empty promises, and more lies, and telling graduates they must be vigilant in preventing sexual assaults and help restore the country’s trust in the military... when did we have faith in the military?

On to the feedback…

CHILE OR BUST?

Hey there,

Just a quick question: I'd like to make my way down to Chile, learn the language, build businesses & income... but I don't have a US passport. I've thought about getting one, but not sure if that's a good idea or not.

Any ideas on a good course of action?

Thanks!

Jeff’s Response:

Sorry to say, but you have no choice but to get a US passport in order to leave the US in the first place. This goes for any nation-state tax farm. They won't let you leave without the proper papers. In fact, the US may at some point in the future not even let its subjects fly without a passport.

The passport system began taking hold after WW1. Before that, people could ome and go about the entire planet as they pleased. They could settle wherever they chose as long as they could find a way to support themselves. There were no "immigration problems". Before passports, it was all just considered "moving." The government was no more involved in your moving from Spain to Canada or Botswana to the US than it currently is with you moving from New York to California.

Oh, how things have changed. Now the entire world has followed the model set forth by the totalitarian communist regime in early Soviet Russia. If you want to leave, then "papers, please."

Of course, once you get a US passport your next goal should be to try to get rid of it as soon as possible and get a passport somewhere far less oppressive and thieving (TDV Passports can help here). But, first things first. In order to get out you'll need a US passport to both get out and to get in elswhere.

DOWN WITH CAPITALISM...DOWN WITH ANARCHISM!

The following are three comments from anonymous posters on Jeff Berwick's recent article, "Never Go Full Commie",

It is kind of sad how poorly communism is portrayed due to western propaganda, when it was never even achieved. What was achieved were dictatorships.

Keep in mind i am not communist (I am an anarchist), but I think it is far far better then capitalism.Yet capitalism is the source of all problems, not keynesian economics.

--Anonymous

Selling land and calling yourself 'freedom-minded' doesn't seem ironic? Anarcho-capitalist is a fucking oxymoron. The privitization of land is for the power-hungry. Another Ayn Rand-jackoff out there making the world seem more inconsistent with itself.

--Anonymous

Anarchy is the cause of all social and economic problems:

All legitimate government is by voluntary consent - the very essence of civilized order. It exists, to at least some extent, where ever there are people - even in prisons and within totalitarian regiemes. The tyrants take credit for its achievements - all the while brutally repressing it.
As the state feeds off of the limitation and destruction of legitimate government, anarchy is its essence: where the state predominates, so does chaos, brutality and wars.

--Mark U.

Gary's Response:

Some days it's really hard to be an anarcho-capitalist. You've got the "anarchists" who think that property is a creation of the state and that without the state, private property would melt away and leave us all living in a bunch of voluntary communes. Then you've got the minarchists who love capitalism, but think anarchy means chaos and that some amount of the state -- which is the initiation of force in centralized form -- is required to let freedom and prosperity flourish.

First, to the "anarchist" communist. I will let old school anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre take care of my light work:

"An Anarchist-Communist is a person who is a man first and a Communist afterward. He generally gets into a great many irreconcilable situations at once, believes that property and competition must die yet admits he has no authority to kill them, contends for equality and in the same breath denies its possibility, hates charity and yet wishes to make society one vast Sheltering Arms, and, in short,very generally rides two horses going in opposite directions at the same time. He is not usually amenable to logic; but he has a heart forty or fifty times too large for nineteenth century environments, and in my opinion is worth just that many cold logicians who examine society as a naturalist does a beetle, and impale it on their syllogisms in the same manner as the Emperor Domitian impaled flies on a bodkin for his own amusement. Besides, a free Communist when driven into a corner always holds to freedom first. The State Communist, on the other hand, is logical. He believes in authority, and says so. He ridicules a freedom for the individual which he believes inimical to the interests of the majority. He cries: 'Down with property and competition,' and means it. For the one he prescribes 'take it' and for the other 'suppress it.'" ~Voltairine de Cleyre

Let me break it down a bit more. Communists of any flavor must necessarily hate liberty if they hate property. Property is a very natural phenonmenon which starts with ownership over one's own body. The fruits of what one does with that body naturally follow as surely as ownership of the things one needs to keep that body alive. Property is inescapable, a point I like to prove by snatching food off the plates of anarcho-communists. They like to protest online and in print about the violence that ultimately backs the defense of property. And make fun of us anarcho-capitalist, voluntaryist sorts when we try to explain the difference between aggressive violence and defensive violence. But then they will whine when you take "their" food (hey, are you saying it's "your" "property"??) and some might even resort to violence to defend it! In fact, in my experience, it's the communists of all stripes who are most in love with using aggressive violence to attain their ends. But as Voltairine points out, at least the overtly statist communist makes no bones about how much he loves violence, especially the centralized kind. The "anarchist" communists just strike me as a bunch of illogical, double-talkers who don't want to admit that communism fits most neatly with the state, while property is entwined with freedom. Property isn't violence; but suppressing the concept of property requires unbelievable amounts of aggression and is best handled by the state.

And as for Mark: I think you're using the word "anarchy" where you should be using the word "chaos"...because you want to justify your desire to be ruled.

I agree that the state just causes more chaos. Because the state is at its very base an immorality. It's the initiation of force. No matter its stated intention, its method is immoral. And from that can come no good. It's like trying to get someone to love you by raping them.

But to say that "legitimate" government is the answer is like saying that "legitimate" rape is the answer. And then calling what results "anarchy" is an insult to anarchy...on top of being plain inaccurate.

Anarchy is the absence of a ruler. It is the absence of government. That that equates to chaos indicates the same brainwashing that afflicts all statists. Minarchist conservatives and libertarians are philosophically no different from statists. They don't oppose the initiation of violence. Just like right and left wing statists who differ only on where the violence should be applied (more guns...or butter), minarchists quibble only about how much aggressive violence is needed. "Courts, police, national defense!" they cry...but then get angry when the more blatant statists ask for a minimum wage, or housing for the poor, or healthcare insurance for all.

How do you determine how much aggression to apply and where? That's where it's helpful to have a philosophy about these things. Instead of trying to tweak evil, you ask how does humanity order itself...without evil. You reject the multi-millenial project called the state and start realizing that humanity needs real liberty. The state isn't necessary at all. Stop trying to hold onto a tiny bit of it in your heart.

PURCHASING BUILLION

Dear TDV,

Is it better to purchase bullion through a Ltd. Corp (Canada) and hold it as a company asset (paying a lower tax rate) or to take income (at a higher rate) and purchase the bullion as a personal asset? (the Ltd. Corp. has very little exposure to liability) ... I already bought some and any further purchases will require me to do either one of the above mentioned ... my accountant is advising me to consider bank stocks instead ... safest thing he can think of.

Vicki L.

Jeff’s Response:

Hi Vicki,

Give me a few minutes to wipe off my desk... I just snorted my vegetable juice through my nose when your accountant said that Canadian banks stocks are the safest thing he can think of!

Canadian banks are massively leveraged and Canada's real estate bubble is nearly ready to pop... in Vancouver it now takes 80% of the average person's income to pay for a mortgage on the average house! Plus, worse, in the most recent Canadian government budget for 2013 they put in their own version of what I call the "Cyprus Act" stating that in the event of difficulties Canadian banks can, like Cypriot banks, just take their own depositor's money. I wrote about that in "Canadian Deposits As Safe as Cypriot Deposits".

As for your question on taxes and owning bullion I prefer not to get too detailed on tax advice for anyone. Taxes are theft... extortion. And the best advice I can give on theft and extortion is to avoid it completely. You can still do that legally, especially as a Canadian, by expatriating to a non-tax jurisdiction. This, of course, is what we regularly talk about here at TDV. Canada is going to be a horrible place to be for the coming years as will the US.

As for bullion, my main advice would be to internationalize your bullion. Get a significant portion of it outside of Canada. If Canadian banks have the right to take their depositor's money then chances are they'll take what's in the safety deposit boxes in their vaults as well. We have written a detailed report on internationalizing your gold called "Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge" that can give you more info. That report is free to all TDV subscribers as well.

You might want to subscribe to TDV for investment info... at the very least, stop listening to your accountant! He just recommended one of the most dangerous investments on Earth as being one of the safest!

Never Go Full Commie!

Thu, 05/30/2013 - 11:01

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

What do you call an economic system that takes most or all of the money you earn? You might have asked blacks in 18th century America, or you could ask taxpayers in France under French President Francois Hollande.

Thanks to the tax surcharge imposed by President Hollande's Socialist government last year, more than 8,000 French households had a tax bill that topped 100 percent of their income. Roughly 12,000 households paid more than 75 percent of their 2011 revenues toward taxes because of the Socialist government's levy. Here at TDV, we know that government is a gang of thieving thugs who take as much as they can, but even our heads swim when we read the numbers. I don't think any government has gone this fully commie since Laos in 1975.

We get the notion of "going full commie" from a line by Robert Downey, Jr's character Lazarus in the great movie, "Tropic Thunder":

Lazarus: “Everybody knows you never go full retard.”

Speedman: “What do you mean?”

Lazarus: “Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, ‘Rain Man,’ look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Count toothpicks to your cards. Autistic, sure. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, ‘Forrest Gump.’ Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong competition. That ain’t retarded. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard.”

We might -- with apologies to Rober Downey, Jr -- offer a slight twist on the same advice to Hollande and his government. "You're going full commie, man. Never go full commie!"

According to business newspaper Les Echos the almost comically commie level of taxation was the result of last year's one-off levy of 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros or about $1.67 million. The expropriated French can thank President Hollande and his commitment to punish productivity, savings and private property as much as possible. Hollande's predecessor's rebate scheme capped individual overall taxation at 50 percent of income. But that kind of limited theft offends the nostrils of those who would go full commie like Hollande.

Even France's Constitutional Council thought this was excessive. A top administrative court figures a single household should have no more than a mere 66.66% or two-thirds of its highest marginal income stolen by the government. So Hollande's government will have to rework the code so that businesses take the biggest hit. After all, every socialist/communist knows that it's productive activity that you want to punish the most and discourage.

You'd think the entire world -- even places with overtly socialist populations and governments -- would have learned from the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba: Never go full commie!

But like Ayn Rand said, one can choose to ignore reality, but one cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality! Going full commie economically before imposing full border and capital controls means that some of your victims are going to try to get away and they will rather easily succeed.

Take for example Gerard Depardieu. In one of history's great ironic twists, the millionaire actor and French national symbol fled the country ahead of the communist theft of his income, into the arms of the former center of the communist empire! I cannot for the life of me understand why a single French man or woman who has had a taste of the full commie would just sit around and wait for another run. Run, French people, run! Your government isn't even remotely playing around anymore. They have made it clear that they hate private property and wealth to a degree that would embarrass even the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

We wouldn't recommend fully following Depardieu's example, however. Get out of France, yes, but not to gangster, socially intolerant, oligarchical Russia. Not when there are so many better options—like the ones offered by TDV Passports!

French Bonds More Attractive Than Gold?

In another twist, however, the French government itself, which would strip away every cent from "the rich", is not getting what it deserves—at least not yet. According to Businessweek, credit downgrades, recession and President Francois Hollande’s gaping budget shortfall have done little to prevent French bonds from outshining gold.

Investors who bought French bonds when Standard & Poor’s stripped the country of its top credit rating on January 13th, 2012, have chalked up a 12 percent return, about triple the gains of German debt. Gold, touted by some investors as the world’s safest asset and a potential beneficiary when AAA rated governments are downgraded, lost 17 percent in the same period.

A 12% return in less than six months for the debt of a government in full, desperate, commie confiscation mode, and with a debt to GDP ratio that has been progressing like this:

And it's not just the tax slaves that French government is robbing more than usual lately. Those dumb enough to actually buy those bonds and lend the French government money get as little as 1.659% return for their trouble. This is amidst "unprecedented" stimulus from central banks that both drives interest rates down and degrades the value of whatever money is returned to the lenders in the future. Yet somehow this leads investors to seek the "safe haven" of government debt.

Businessweek quotes Soeren Moerch who heads fixed-income trading at Danske Bank A/S:

“French bonds are fundamentally weak, but they are attracting strong demand. France may be at risk of further downgrades, but that doesn’t matter much as long as there’s massive amount of money out there seeking returns. France is part of a global story of liquidity boosts and search for yield pick-up.”

Simply amazing. The monetary system as we have known it is coming apart and most of the world is still throwing good money after bad. They figure that the precious metals have had their run and it's safe to wade back into things like government debt.

Good thing you know better, which is why you are reading today's issue. For even more in-depth economic analysis and for actionable plays in the sector that will be the only winner during The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI), be sure to subscribe to the TDV Newsletter here.

Get away from the collapsing Western nation-states (especially increasingly commie France) and don't lend any governments money. In addition to being financially idiotic, it's just plain immoral.

[Editor's Note: Today's article is excerpted from the aforementioned TDV Newsletter. To find out more and sign up for even more analysis and actionable advice, just click here.]

Jeff Berwick

America: The Center Cannot Hold

Wed, 05/29/2013 - 13:01

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Wendy McElroy]

Two events recalled a passage from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats (1865-1939) wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919 to describe the moral devastation of post-WWI Europe. The “mere anarchy” is not the laissez-faire version of contract and consent between free individuals which produces good will and prosperity. The “mere anarchy” is chaos, a Hobbesian society of all-against-all that comes in the wake of sustained violence. It is a society that guts decency, loots productivity, and rewards the worst within men.

Yeats could be describing America today. Or, at least, the America that might well be tomorrow. The center cannot hold.

The first event was a quiet one; as of yet, it is an event on paper only. On May 13th, 2013, a new rule went into effect. The US Code “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” was altered by the Department of Defense to read:

“Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances because:

(1) Such activities are necessary to prevent significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property and are necessary to restore governmental function and public order; or

(2) Duly constituted Federal, State, or local authorities are unable or decline to provide adequate protection for Federal property or Federal governmental functions.”

The Pentagon has granted itself the authority to police American streets and cities without the need for permission from the Executive or consent from local law enforcement. (Note: the arrangement could be at the behest of Obama who may wish to distance himself from military action on American soil.) Moreover, because the authority results from a change within a Department of Defense regulation, there is no clear need for Congressional approval.

There are many ways to approach the expansion of military power over domestic law enforcement.

The vagueness of the language is troubling. For example, what constitutes an “unexpected civil disturbance”? Such vagueness encourages speculation as to whether the Pentagon is preparing “to quell” social unrest. The constitutional law professor Bruce Afran commented further on the absence of definition for key terms such as “wanton destruction.” He observed "These phrases don’t have any legal meaning....It's a grant of emergency power to the military to rule over parts of the country at their own discretion."

The authority is unconstitutional. The military would undoubtedly point to Article IV of the US Constitution which allows the federal government to protect individual states against invasion and “domestic violence.” But specific circumstances are required: namely, “the application of the state legislature (or executive, if the legislature cannot be convened).” The new regulation grants the power to intervene even when “[s]tate, or local authorities...decline to provide adequate protection for Federal property or Federal governmental functions.”

The Posse Comitatus Act is not just merely dead; it is most sincerely dead. The 1878 law (modified several times) was intended to limit the power of the federal government to impose martial law during times of social unrest. A nation's use of military personnel against its civilian population has long been considered a standard tool and hallmark of dictatorship.

I have a different reaction to the military's quiet power grab: the center will not hold. The last 'strategy' employed by a state is raw force. The state prefers to function through an assumed legitimacy, through bribery, propaganda, deceit, or threats because it wants to create obedience, not resistance. When a state deploys the military against its own people, it means there is enough resistance to constitute a threat. It means the mask falls off the face of power.

The second event that brought Yeats' poem to mind was Obama's “Cronkite Moment”. On February 27th, 1968, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite expressed an on-air judgment about the war in Vietnam. He called it a stalemale in which America was “mired” and from which America should extricate itself. Cronkite was the most respected news figure in the nation. Upon hearing those words, President Lyndon Johnson allegedly declared, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” And that was Johnson's base. The “Cronkite Moment” was said to have contributed heavily to Johnson's refusal to seek reelection.

Obama's “Cronkite Moment” came on May 13th, 2013 when Jon Stewart ripped into the President after years of being a staunch supporter. Stewart is the voice of the millennial generation, which is an essential layer of the President's base. Indeed, a 2004 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 21 percent of those between 18 to 29-years-old followed presidential campaign news through The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live.

What was the proximate cause of Stewart's rant (and subsequent ones)? The White House has been swamped by scandals from which it can no longer hide: the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS; the wiretapping of journalists; the stonewall and lies surrounding the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi. A sea-change is occurring in the media and in the public response to a hideously corrupt and destructive politician. Obama is no longer getting a free pass on everything from torture to killing Americans without due process, from drone attacks on foreign civilians to presiding over the longest war in American History.

The center cannot hold; America's political fabric is unraveling. And Obama has run low on the credibility required to launch yet another Charm Offensive.

“The Second Coming” ends with two of the most famous lines in Modernist poetry:

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

These lines were written at a time when the scramble for post-war power was at its zenith. It was a world that enabled Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini to triumph because there was no center to hold them back. In the words that Yeats deleted from an early draft, "The good are wavering, while the worst prevail.”

Yeats' “rough beast” has been viewed variously as the anti-Christ, the approach of World War II, the worst within human nature, and the advent of Judgment Day. In a sense, they are all the same interpretation.

A rough beast walks in America. Increasingly the beast is being seen for what it is. Perhaps the sight will make “the good” remember who they are and make them act accordingly, at long last. If not, the federal response to a growing public awareness is clear. The chains of command that restrain the military on American soil are being erased.

[Editor's Note: If ever you were thinking about getting out of harm's way, now is the time. Click here and find out about a vital process to save yourself from potential martial law in the growing American police state

And if you are looking for a new home that cherishes liberty, surrounds you with like-minded people and provides enormous economic opportunity, keep in mind that Galt's Gulch Chile awaits. Find out more here.]

You are here

Dollar Vigilante

Pages

NT4B Update

Recent comments

Priced in Gold

Gold Switzerland

King World News

GATA

Daily Bell

LewRockwell.com

Dollar Vigilante

International Forecaster

Q Wealth Report

Simon Black

Silver Shield & Silver Bullet

Monetary Future

FOFOA

Baron Dayne

Harvey Organ

TFMR - Daystar

Washington's Blog

How to Vanish

JJ Luna

Resilient Communities

SHTF Plan

Natural News

Dr. Mercola

Gerson Institute

Weston Price

Global Guerillas

Time 4 the Truth

Dean Clifford