Through listening to the conversations here in Utah, I haven noticed some thrilling and at the same time frightening. It seems most people are seeing that the federal reserve has caused the problems we have been having, along with government entities. At the same time though, they are saying these institutions failed because the feds were promoting capitalism and speculation through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the banks of all sorts.
Thus Joe Schmoe is seeing this simultaneously as a failure of the state AND capitalism. This too me is dangerous. I think we may be headed into a deadly waters, where communism is the way. I have tried to talk to some about this, but they just can’t seem to see that the fed is not capitalism, that the state in ANY form is not capitalism.
I am not sure what to do about this, it scares me because I think we are moving toward all out communism or something like it.
i agree. some of my old contacts from a ron paul meetup group were advocating kucinich’s idea of putting congress directly in charge of the federal reserve. they seem to favor small business over big business, not free business over state-controlled business. they also seem to favor government subsidies to the little guy but not the big guy.
Well, I for one do not trust any politician, including Ron Paul. I hear Ron noting to people how Congress has no control over the Fed, like it would matter or something. I think we somtimes break up austrian economics into chunks and sell that by itself, instead of being more holistic.
What scares me, is that peoples expectation of what the state can do for them doesn’t change with the belief that the fed should dissapear. They just don’t seem to get the idea that prosperity takes time because production takes time. Time preferences are so high that God only knows what people will do when the empire does collapse. It may take a generation to breed out the time preferences, so we can again attempt to be prosperous.
I believe that we are walking a fine line when we only teach half of what we have.
“The Gov’t this, the Gov’t that,” the majority of people in the society feel that the Government is an almighty entity that can’t cause problems. For instance, just recently when the Obama “Stimulus Plan” was passed, I’ve expressed my feelings to my friends. It seems no matter how hard I push, even after I convince them, their answer is, “Well, you can’t do anything about it. You act like your opinion can make a difference.” And that is what are society has become. Individuals fail to see that they CAN make a difference, but they always fall short of seeing that.
No individual entity has power over you until you hand it to it: No parent, person, or Government. Nevertheless, when people come to see that the Government is invisible of corruption, they bear with it all of their trust.
Unless we get some major change in Fiscal Policy, what we are going to see is socialism or economical collapse. If the Government is the all bearing, invisble entity, then people are going to trust it no matter what. Failure after failure, citizens will refuse to disown it like they would do almost anything else. Rather, people are going to begin to say, “Hey, maybe if the Government had more power it would be able to accomplish it’s goals?” But of course, we all now that is false! Therefore, unless the Economy collapses on itself because it is standing on stilts as I speak, I wouldn’t be suprised if we moved to socialism. The sad part about it is that it will be greeted with open arms.
This is why we have this forum, though. This is my first post and it will not be my last. We are here to talk about the political ideologies of our foundation, and with it, we will try to stop this hiest from happening.
Keep in mind that the mere existance of the state (through recurring, expected acts of exploitation) increases TP, as do other activies of the state (eg. .subsidising alternatives lifestyles and fiscal policy)