Recently, I told my wife that the 2020 election follies made me think of John Milton. She commented that I may have been the only one in America to make that connection to the second most important author in the English language, after Shakespeare, best known for his poetry. After all, very little of this year’s politics has been poetic (though it could be argued to fit somewhere in Paradise Lost). I was thinking of Milton’s prose.
Whether you have watched The Sopranos, Goodfellas, or The Godfather, the gist of those stories is always the same: a mafia boss gets involved with a private person or sometimes a businessowner and demands a fee to be paid by midnight tomorrow, otherwise said person will lose a finger or two and maybe a kneecap as well. An analogy often made by libertarians is that the government operates similarly to the mafia. The government demands money in form of taxes, which they redistribute as they please.
Anne Applebaum is a renowned historian of the Soviet Union, but her recent book The Twilight of Democracy illustrates a common confusion. She says that she and her husband, the Polish diplomat Radek Sikorski, continue to support “the pro-European, pro-rule-of-law, pro-market center right,” though former friends of hers who held the same views have veered toward nationalist extremism.
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What is fiat money and what does it do?
This is essential to understand since today’s worldwide unbacked paper, or “fiat,” money regime is an economically and socially destructive scheme—with far-reaching and seriously harmful consequences. There is an answer, though, and this lies in ending the money production monopoly of states.
In his writings, Milton Friedman blamed central bank policies for causing the Great Depression.
In addition to the gains in the stock market on Monday, uncertainty about covid, and the economy, is another concern regarding the outcome of this election, as reported by CNN:
This week, all eyes are on the Trump-appointed General Services Administration administrator, Emily W. Murphy, to recognize Joe Biden as the winner of the election and president-elect.
Americans anxiously wait for the final outcome of this election, the Federal Reserve continues on its immovable course towards nationalization of the means of production. Ironically, we vote for a president who has limited power, but a hand on the nuke button; whereas, we don’t vote for the Fed chair, who has nearly unlimited power, and a hand on the economic equivalent to the nuke button; the ability to conjure money out of thin air.
