I saw an amusing comment in a newspaper. They said "Iran's elections are obviously rigged. All of the candidates, even the 'reform' candidate, were chosen by the insiders who control Iran." My reaction was "Duh! That's exactly the same as elections in the USA!"
It's amusing to see interviews with US politicians. Instead of them saying "Iran's election was rigged! Iran's government is illegitimate!", they say "We should respect Iran's political process." Any politician seems reluctant to say "Iran's elections were unfair!", because that can lead to "Elections in the USA are unfair!" After the disputed 2000 and 2004 US Presidential elections, Gore and Kerry didn't go around saying "This President is illegitimate!" Instead, they quietly went back to other cushy jobs. A politician won't risk ending the gravy train that insiders enjoy.
Even though the election was pre-rigged by the selection of the candidates, it appears that the vote counting was also rigged. This has triggered some riots and protests.
Riots and protests accomplish nothing. As long as people keep paying their taxes/tribute, a protest accomplishes nothing. Some token concessions will be made to the protesters, and things will continue as usual.
This is a common evil fnord. "If you are unsatisfied with the State, your only recourse is to riot or protest!" That is false. A better solution is to avoid paying taxes, which fuel the evil of the State. This solution is never publicly discussed.
Riots and protests serve several useful functions.
- Pro-State trolls say "People who don't like the government do stupid violent things. Hooray for the State!"
- The police can keep track of who the protesters are.
- The police can use violence and display their power. A group of amateurs against para-military police is no contest, even when the amateurs outnumber the police.
- The violence is an excuse to raise the budget for the State police.
- People can vent their frustration, while accomplishing nothing.
- People think that their only recourse, if unsatisfied with the State, is to riot or protest.
4 comments:
The government should
-buy out the federal reserve permenently
-form a new currency that doesn't require exponential creation of money to keep the system going (such as a 0% interest loan that must be secured by the value of the asset they are buying)
-Create a fixed amount of dollars that is constantly monitored like the population is monitored via a census... as nanotechnology will eventually allow counterfeit money and paper currency in it's current system won't last for much longer anyways.
-Have the currency/dollar expire every 4 years, to prevent hoarding of wealth and power, and promote exchange and value creation. Interestingly enough, as more and more is created the value of a dollar actually should go up naturally but much more gradually. If there was only 1 house in the world it would be worth a lot, but if there was enough houses for everyone to have 3 of them, they're is no scarcity factor, there's much more houses available, and with the same amount of dollars in existence, it only makes sense that people wouldn't give up as many dollars to get a house, nor would they need to, and wealth would go up.. In addition, this would create more economic activity as more stuff is created because things would become more and more affordable.
-Have the dollars be a certain color, size, shape, or with the current presidents face on it, so people know that when the next dollar is issued, the old one is no longer acceped.
-An economy that runs like this will not require inflation to keep it running, it will only require that we maintain our productive capacity. Unfortunately we won't be able to inflate away our current debts to other countries anymore, but eventually we will get to that point if not by diplomacy, by force. It would be much less costly to start producing and creating.
Although it would seem that the governmnt would lose it's ability to provide pension and such, in fact, retirement would occur faster, because if the money supply remains constant, but more and more is produced, provided the population doesn't grow out of control, the cost of living will gradually go down.
If there is excess economic activity, without excess creation and production, there is likely to be counterfeit money held somewhere. However, with a design of a new form of dollar every 4 years, the money would have to quickly flow into actual economic activity, so the counterfeiters couldn't really debase the currency for very long, and if they did, it would have to create economic activity to do so.
Your dollars must be exchanged if you want this new currency, although there should be a 1-2 year overlap of currencies, in which the old dollar actually would inflate but safely without hurting the economy as replacement dollars could be obtained. The more counterfeit there actually is, the less that money will be worth during this 2 year period. If people are holding money or laundering it and refuse to turn it in, there money "expires" worthless. There could be multiple currencies at once some backed by various things, others just backed by debt like the current dollar if there are concerns.
Some might think that under this system no one could ever afford a home without a mortgage, but the truth is, the prices of housing would become affordible under a currency like this, it is only because so much debt is allowed, and people need shelter that homes have become something that we're willing to pay and slave away, 30 years worth of our lives of work to have. The housing industry has grown plenty, so costs to create new ones won't be an issue, even if they are, the production that normally is used to go towards a home will instead go into the rest of the economy, and other areas will grow, allowingmore value that workers get from their jobs, and as a result people will have the money to pay for the production of a new house without requiring them to mortgage away their lives.
Ahmadinejad isn't our president we vote Mr Mousavi but fake election's result show us Ahmadinjead your President!!
you said:
I'm thinking of ways to become a mainstream advocate for agorism and real free markets. My best idea is "Promote agorism via standup comedy."
I think this would work great.
Also, you could try to contact various famous stand up performers. Carlos Mencia for example is known for "stealing material" but because he's such a great performer, and more famous, he gets more laughs. He has often dried up on material and had to do rewrites of other people's stuff. I think there are plenty of stand up artists looking for material. If you can give them all variations of the same material they can perform.
Drawback is lck of control, if the people you provide content to are pro state trolls, or if the major networks are going to edit and limit what they can say, it might not work. What's more, if they take the materil and spin it to instead attack agorism, it could be bad.
But The bennefits I feel outweigh the cons.. Why?
First of all a better performer who's already created the market and found the popularity already sells out and already has the attention is going to command a lot more people's attention. A lot more reward for less effort. Working smarter, not harder.
2nd, if you submit material to multiple people, you can command more attention to what a scam taxation is, and possibly get more aspiring commedians to continue to spread that message.
Also, you could be subtle, using good fnords, or point out how stupid the bad fnords are...
"I was watching wheel of fortune and someone got bankrupt and he said "it's okay"... Hello! I just went bankrupt you moron! If you think it's okay, I got an idea... go to the bankrupcy courts where real people have lost everything because the entire system is made up of lies and you tell them "it's okay"... Acttually Pat Sajack, if you think bankrupcty is okay I got a great deal for you. You give me your money, and I'll give you the opportunity to declare bankruptcy!... don't worry Pat... it's okay"
(repeat same joke with deal or no deal)
I think the great stand-up comedy performers would be able to not only take that as is and make it funny, but provide some of their own ideas on the situation, mixed with timing, funny voices, etc. But giving them these type of things, even if they're not neccesarily funny will get their mind thinking...
I think it's probably easier to contact these performers than people probably think. there's a lot of fakes out there, but celebs often do have myspaces, and twitter accounts, and blogs, and they actually do use them.
economic solution... in some sense that might work, but read what this post says in response to those about ron paul. if the government is reformed, it might be better than maintaining the status quo, but working towards government based solutions won't help.
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