OPINION – With a new year upon us, it’s customary to indulge in a bit of introspection before plowing onward. Of course our soul-searching is usually so superficial that we all joke about how soon our resolutions will be forgotten and discarded.
Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong questions. Or maybe there are things that we aren’t sure we really want to know about ourselves. How can we truly change for the better when we aren’t even sure how we perceive the world or our place in it?
Syndicated columnist Charley Reese was one of those rare individuals who understood the power of asking the right questions. Here is the question he recommended asking to help us find some clarity:
What is a good society? A society in which everyone makes as much money as possible, or a society in which as many people as possible are happy and content?
How we answer this is a good indicator of how we will tend to view politics, policies, and what the media is telling us. These views, in turn, will shape how we live our lives. They will help determine how we expend our energies, to whom and what we will lend our support, and what we’ll allow others to do to us.
Virtually every election from the federal level down to our municipal races is framed in terms of economic prosperity. Candidates at every level speak of job creation and economic development as if these were the primary goals of government.
A good example of how this can become a detriment is the sprawling National Security Agency data center that has been built just outside of Salt Lake City. Utah politicians were falling all over themselves at the prospect of how many jobs would be created by the huge spy center. But when weighed against the reality that the NSA is actively stripping us all of our privacy, their celebrating seems pretty shortsighted.
How many high-paying jobs will it take to offset the accompanying cost in personal freedoms?
Another example of how we’re being taken for a ride is the ongoing debasement of our currency thanks to the Federal Reserve banking system. When this private cartel of fractional reserve bankers creates untold billions of dollars without something of actual value backing them, inflation is the result.
Inflation shrinks the purchasing power of every dollar whether it is in savings or in circulation. It is a hidden but very real form of theft. No wage earner can hope to earn money fast enough to outpace the effects of inflation. Those on fixed incomes are especially vulnerable.
The Puritan or Protestant work ethic that enabled our forebears to found this nation and tame a continent has given way to the new American ethic. Hard work, self-discipline, thrift, and personal responsibility are rapidly being replaced by the thirst for material gratification.
Once our basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter have been met, we’re supposed to aspire to newer cars, bigger homes, and better toys. Many of these items require going into debt. Certain types of debt, like student loans, are nonforgivable. Repaying these debts can keep us enslaved to the whole rotten system.
Is that what we mean by prosperity?
The collusion between Wall Street special interests and government is creating a situation where real prosperity and freedom is something that only the very elite will enjoy.
So what is the answer? How do we escape a corrupted system?
Paul Rosenberg said that with the key elements of economic freedom, personal independence, and personal privacy, we’d be mostly there.
Having the freedom to produce value as we choose, to make a profit, and to build up capital provides authentic personal power. Of course, this is difficult to do in a system where regulation, debt, and taxation are used as leverage to prevent us from attaining that power.
Personal privacy allows us to act as we choose without threats and intimidation hanging over us. Now does it make sense why those who run the corrupted system are so eagerly erasing our privacy?
People who have personal power are much less receptive to any system that is running over their natural rights, Rosenberg said.
This is why if there is just one resolution to keep and make this year, it’s the one to develop our personal independence so that we may think as we choose.
Freedom brings prosperity to life that goes far beyond what can be measured in mere dollar signs.
Bryan Hyde is a news commentator and co-host of the Perspectives talk show on Fox News 1450 AM 93.1 FM. The opinions stated in this article are his and not representative of St. George News.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @youcancallmebry
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2014, all rights reserved.
Suspect corrupted system? Like the suspected corrupted government that St George had the past 20 years? You wouldn’t have a corrupted government if people actually were attentive to the politics in their area instead of believing lies told to them. While locals were led to believe outsiders would bring corruption and be the downfall of their city, it appears it were the local good ole boys who were “screwin’ the pooch”
Good points about the Federal Reserve banking system.
Why are my comments not going through?
It is a matter of practical economics to allow our government to control the production of our currency and our monetary exchanges. If our government decides to place that production in the hands of a single semi-private company, as it does with the Federal Reserve, and allow a limited number of entities to regulate the exchanges, like banks and the stock markets, it seems to be working fairly well. For a comparison, I would suggest reading the history of the bitcoin and the dollar for the last year in regards to speculation. Anybody who does this can see clearly what the advantages of a currency regulated by US law has over an arbitrary and, let’s just say it, Marxist currency that claims to endow its currency with ‘proof of work’ through cracking(hacking) cryptopuzzles. Point is, every economic system can break down, because it is created by and for, human beings. Regulation, debt, and taxation are all part of that; you will never be rid of them. Nobody ever has. The right question is, what can we do as the people we are for the good of each person?
“Working fairly well’ is certainly in the eye of the beholder. If the criteria is to devalue the U.S. dollar by 95% or more while racking up incomprehensible amounts of debt via government spending, then, yes, the system is right on track.
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Bitcoin is no more or less stable than the dollar thanks to its status as a fiat currency. It does, however, have the advantage of being out of the reach of the banking cartels. I’m certain that this is upsetting to the money masters.
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There’s a reason that Congress was the deliberative body that was delegated the power to ‘”coin Money” and “regulate the Value thereof.” When Congress sought to hand that responsibility to a banking cartel in 1913, it handed away a great deal of our national sovereignty in the process.
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Honest money restrains the growth of government and doesn’t saddle unborn generations with debts they had no say in incurring.
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I do agree with your point about considering what we can do for the good of each other.
What do you do when the ones with power take advantage of the ones with none? For starters, you stand. It might be the hardest thing for people to do. It so much easier for people to sit, I know when I stood up against corruption, my husband and I were the only ones standing and people sat around and watched us get attacked by the ones in power and most of the ones sitting oined in out of fear. Fear it was going to happen to them, fear of losing something, Fear. So for starters, stand.
Working fairly well might also be the conclusion one might draw after comparing the major currencies of countries the US has had international dealings with for the last hundred years. The same comparison could also be made regarding debt incurred by government spending. Comparison gives a fair approximation of how the US stands practically speaking against the rest of the world, however much we may fall short of a specific economic ideal.
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Fiat currency like Bitcoin is proving to be completely unstable; it is inherently elitist and has no practical value except to money market speculators and, as one police department has found out, as blackmail. This is because the value of its ‘proof of work’ is in encryption and decryption, which has no tangible value, because it is not a thing, like gold, or even a dollar bill. It most resembles credit currency, and as such, can be absolutely destablized by damage to our electronic infrastructure; in other words, this sort of currency is worthless in wartime. It does not pose a threat to the ‘money masters’ because, if it gains any real popular ground, they will simply pay someone to make one of their own. They have plenty of capital.
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I agree with you that the Federal Reserve may not have been among the most honest or great ideas of our Congress, since as you point out over and over again control of the exchange is one form of bondage. I only point out that it is private in much the same sense that Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac are private, that is, they enjoy a privileged position that can, and is, taken advantage of. Consider however that the control of the exchange was under government control in Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan, and the result was hyperinflation to further their war interests. I do not believe that this happened to our own currency during WWII. My greatest concern with destabilizing our currency through extra-governmental means is that only those whose worth is on paper, not in real property, will be harmed. That’s pretty much every one of our citizens except the filthy rich. I really think the change here has to occur with how we view private property. Probably we are in some agreement here, since I would be the first to erect a statue, or at least an ice sculpture to Chesterton and the Distributist League.
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I don’t know what honest money means, but again, I don’t think the problem is inherently a problem of currency. The problem is with the dwindling number of people with private property. Fix that and the notions of debt, taxation, credit and all the rest will have firm ground to sort themselves out on.
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Glad to see we agree on some things.
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Actually, I was working from memory regarding the points I made about Nazi Germany and Japan during World War 2, and, upon checking the facts, they are not completely correct. I was thinking of Germany during the First World War. Error is mine.