From the Tom Woods Letter:
One of the most frustrating things about being a libertarian is how consistently the state gets away with ripping off the people, and the people don’t even realize it.
The public has been trained to think of the people who run the state as “public servants” who “work for us.”
Let’s get one thing straight: they do not work for us. We work for them.
Their salaries come from taxing the salaries of you and me. Running afoul of their zillion and one rules and regulations can get you and me put in prison.
Imagine trying to persuade an alien from another planet that in this relationship those people work for us!
And since most people lack the necessary economic knowledge, they are easily duped into blaming forces other than the state for problems caused by the state.
So of course it’s not difficult to persuade people that rising prices are caused by greedy businessmen or whoever the current villain is.
In fact, rising prices economy-wide are caused by the fiat money system. Before we had this system, we did not have economy-wide price increases. To the contrary, prices fell over time.
So the cause of the rising prices is the regime’s crappy money, and the solution is restraining its money creation or even adopting a hard-money standard.
But they’ll never admit that.
So instead, rising prices are caused by bad guys in the private sector. Or, more recently, they’re caused by you and your wicked desire to consume.
How about that: the state causes a problem, blames you for it, and the solution is for you to suffer.
Our friend Saifedean Ammous puts it this way: a fiat system’s way of putting a lid on inflation “is for you to live like a 12th-century peasant.”
Exhibits A, B, and C:
“Climate change,” incidentally, is the ideal elite fixation. Almost any state power can be justified in its name, and the victims of the various alleged mitigation policies are the kind of poor and helpless people the elites pretend to love but actually despise.
There was a time when climate-change propaganda was just a background annoyance, but now that the people who rule us have seen what they can get away with, it’s turning into a lot more than that these days.
If you can believe it, there is actually a sliver of the libertarian world that considers AOC and “The Squad” to be the most libertarian members of Congress.
The Squad is all in on the civilization-destroying Green New Deal, but we’re evidently supposed to overlook that small matter because of their opinions on…ICE? Who even knows or cares?
At any rate, I guess one silver lining of the Covid episode is that thinking people are now far less likely to accept impositions on them in the name of some expert consensus.
One more thing: I know some of my readers are interested in homesteading, so let me point out that our friend and repeat Tom Woods Show guest John Bush, whom I’ve known since the Ron Paul days, is running a virtual summit on homesteading on a budget. He’ll cover growing food, buying inexpensive but high-quality groceries, prepping, and even buying land on a budget. If that floats your boat, check it out:
http://www.tomwoods.com/budgethomestead
