sound money – the paradise paradox

Episode 116 – Two Conceptions of Capitalism

The Episode:

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The Story:

In this episode Kurt and I are at the central bus station of Guadalajara, Mexico. We were patiently waiting to begin our voyage to San Luis Potosi – for a great adventure exploring the worlds of natural medicine. This episode is a captured conversation started by few Aussie friends that visited the week before, they had some very interesting questions about today’s society.

Many young adults ask questions like, why does the government need to privatise public services? examples of these services may be medical, electricity, transport, and water? and of course the bloody roads. These concerns are based on the already poor quality services at high tax costs and this instills a negative outlook on the future. To further this issue, it is widely known and understood that private companies, which buy these services, must put the interests of shareholders first. This is because of the inherent nature of business and the human component rarely becomes a concern, let alone a priority.

Our society has been conditioned to believe that this is all part of capitalism, MacDonalds, Starbucks and greedy governments. History can teach us many lessons and like all power structures, there is a common natural evolution; to increase in size, centralise power and incubate corruption. However as most young folks attended public schooling they tend to have a shallow and selected view of history, they look to the other side as the solution – Socialism.

In this episode we discuss a true capitalism, which is based on a free market system powered by sound money (Gold, Silver, Bitcoin). Advancements in information technology is opening a new world of commerce as well as new options for governance. Where all people can have an equal say and can be involved in shaping society. Our future civilisations will be empowered and united, government as we know it today will be a memory and a laugh, somewhat like the stone age. For the meantime understand that today’s government bodies do not require our full attention, as these structures are on limited time and out of gas.

The Eps:

Closet Communist

The Links:

The Story of Your Enslavement
The Wealth of Nations audiobook
Capitalism is About Love – Jeffrey Tucker

Currency Collapse Normalcy Bias

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If you’re not looking for alternatives to government, modern democracy and economies dominated by centralised control of currency, then you’re just not aware how bad things are. To go about your daily life, you might not have to confront these issues. Though you complain to the cashier about prices rising and blame the person or company that’s right in front of you, though you never stop to think about the deeper causes. You complain to your insurance agent that his prices have risen 10%, while the CPI is at 2.6%, but you never question why such a thing as a CPI exists in the first place.

It’s something like living in what you think is a happy marriage – a “satisfied” marriage . You’re more or less nice to your partner and your partner is more or less nice to you. You live together; you’re both financially comfortable; perhaps you even share intimacy from time to time. Yet, one day you wake up and can’t ignore the signs that your partner is cheating on you, or has no passion, or is completely indifferent to your presence. You drive to work and yell at the guy who cuts you off, and that sudden outburst gives you the chance to bury your overwhelming suspicions. You distract yourself with your work, forget about your paranoid, careful, and accurate analysis, and push yourself in denial for another few months. That is something like how a first-world central bank-dominated economy is. You can ignore it, and deny it, until one ominous day, in which you cannot.

Many people in the world don’t have that privilege – the privilege of ignorance of how badly they are being fucked. They have that personal knowledge because they have lived through several economic crises, currency collapses and devaluations. They’ve had to walk in the rain to trade Deutschmarks for pounds with shady characters in a dark alley. They’ve had to walk into a supermarket with the dread that a ruble is no longer worth five “standard units”, and they may not have the money to cover their groceries.

Normalcy bias affects everyone who has some semblance of normalcy in their life, and the more normalcy they have, and the longer it is sustained, the greater the bias.

The question is, what is going to happen in those countries where people have never really gone through an economic collapse or a currency crash, when it finally happens? What happens if the US dollar collapses, reducing central banks’ reserves to worthlessness? How far do the dominoes fall? Are people going to panic? Will there be a state of anomie, with people looting and killing for food and water? Will people be reduced to shock when they realise things that were once commonplace are, at least for today, impossible? What happens if there’s nothing in the supermarket? What happens if there is something in the supermarket, but the hundreds of dollars in your bank account are not worth anything by the time you get there?