-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday 02 May 2006 07:03, John O'Hagan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was heard to say: > To my > mind, capitalism is the the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time and > one of the greatest threats to personal freedom; it makes no sense > to remove other impediments to liberty but not those protecting > private ownership (of the means of production)[1], usury and the > monetary system. These laws are equally as coercive as any tax for > public health, but much less nobly motivated.
Who said anything about not "repealing the laws..."? And please don't confuse me with someone who has any agreement with this "monetary system". The Federal Reserve deserves the same treatment as the "public schools". Annihilation. However, even without any laws what so ever, people will use a medium of exchange, "money", to facilitate and measure the availability of resources against demand. Someone will utilize this "money" as a resource itself, buying and selling it, renting it and trading it. Please don't confuse it with the merchantilism and "corporate-government mutual aid society" that so many people have mistaken for capitalism, instead of what capitalism really is: "a medium of exchange and the division of labor" which is what you get when people are simply left alone. > who is to decide who is "productive"? Is a poet productive? Or only > if her books sell? How about an esoteric researcher? A child with > Down Syndrome? An athlete? A philosopher? Is mining uranium and > leaving the waste lying about productive? What about currency > speculation? A productive individual is one who creates what is in demand. If I set up shop selling Linux machines in Redmond, it is very unlikely that I would be engaged in productive work. It is therefore up to me to do something else. Each of these examples you give have beneficial function to someone, otherwise no one would engage in that effort. Even a poet, dying in poverty (or pick VanGogh-type painter) did what they did because they chose to do so. The worst thing I could do is to tell them that they may not do it, because somehow I know better than they how to live their life. The real charity cases, such as a child born with Downs syndrome, deserves every bit of compassion available. The last thing I would do is leave that up to bureaucrats for whom they are not a person. "Currency speculation"? You mean, like government fiat currencies? Again, that is an opportunity created by coercive government. Might as well ask me how a "free" society would deal with Enron, since Enron was trying to build a business on trading government energy and pollution credits. Without those credits, there would have been no Enron. Curt- - -- September 11th, 2001 The proudest day for gun control and central planning advocates in American history -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBRFecUy9Y35yItIgBAQIskAf/bUNdrgJ8xBws0pb1WBDMt4ZFMUwKgUmB bXF9TtMFctLzJuxjLPFrHfLxGR6pOU+p/kWzNVCGDPMW7/JFMW/vnMd20fJvosOW JQYH+ziO7kPRed97wFd+3UTg1+XQ1jPIpTx9KZzJKkgeIEgH989buGpNdJyccwCJ pyIhfdJPhSKjO6ZbLemuu10LyE667DSe2FjQ8aojRsvJL4JPZFVcUaTAtglt1NN3 K0n861ZdBEYcT5fpgl1Yfk3ruoyn2udj7p1xHYMbLMXSPWOT9momQHEd7IeSt5I+ u/oCiF1HQlZ+ov4Y/ipsfgbQASzObz/y9orGMycl029fvuL/z5EqPQ== =X658 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
