Agorist Toolkit - Tax Resister Insurance

I liked this post at the Picket Line. I liked the bit about the War Tax Resister Penalty Fund:

(It occurs to me that those tax resisters who apply to the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund for reimbursement of interest and penalties can actually end up ahead of the game this way!)

If you're a war tax resister, you can apply to this fund for reimbursement of the interest and penalties that the IRS charges you. I'm surprised the government hasn't shut this group down. That's probably because they aren't that popular or widely used.

The poster is confused about how profitable tax resistance really is. This is actually a straightforward calculation.

Suppose that the interest rate you earn on your investments is HIGHER than what the IRS is charging in interest and penalties. In that case, tax resistance is practically riskless. You can stonewall for a year, pay, and still show a profit. I earn over 15%/year on my investments, so theoretically I could profitably do this. Of course, you would have to deduct the time and effort spent contesting the IRS.

You should also figure out your odds of escaping detection. For W-2 or 1099 income, the odds of hiding the income from the IRS are zero. For other forms of tax resistance, you may be able to hide the income from the IRS. Once you know the true odds of successful tax resistance, then it becomes a probability calculation. At this point, it starts becoming an insurable risk.

Even if you waste $1000 of time and the IRS wastes $100,000 of time to collect a $10,000 tax bill, you aren't really profiting. If you're the only tax resister, the IRS has an *UNLIMITED* budget relative to you. You should only consider your personal gain/loss and not the government's gain/loss.

Also, if you're a tax resister, you should stick to things where the only penalty is a civil penalty. If you're risking criminal charges, the stakes are higher.

Personally, this tax resister is taking the wrong approach. If your income is on a W-2 or 1099 and you're a tax resister, you're probably SOL. Your income is automatically reported to the IRS. If you have dividends, capital gains, or interest, that income is also automatically reported to the IRS. If you want to be a tax resister, you have to focus on generating income WITHOUT IT BEING REPORTED TO THE GOVERNMENT. The only way to do this is in-person cash transactions.

I think this is a good agorist business opportunity. Here's how I would set up an agorist tax resister insurance program.

You would have to register for tax resister insurance coverage BEFORE you earn the income that you're trying to resist paying taxes on. You can't buy tax resister insurance after you get a letter from the IRS, although you still could hire them to help defend yourself.

The tax resister insurance association would provide you guidance for how to realize income WITHOUT generating a report to the government. If all your income is on a W-2 or 1099 or from investments, you probably are SOL when it comes to tax resistance.

I would advise the tax resister to file a tax return that includes ALL income the government ALREADY knows about. Did you work and get paid on a W-2 or 1099? You should report that and pay the tax. Did you sell stock and get a capital gain? You should report that and pay the tax.

I would advise the tax resister to NOT deposit cash in their bank account. That triggers all sorts of government alerts and reporting requirements. In order to convert Federal Reserve Points into inflation-protected investments, I would offer an agorist gold and silver metal dealership.

Legally, if you aren't a lawyer, you can't represent someone else in any official capacity. However, you CAN help them prepare letters and defend themselves sui juris (representing themselves).

The agorist insurance association would keep a catalog of what techniques work and what techniques don't work. If the IRS catches you and you wind up being forced to pay, the insurance would cover interest and penalties.

Of course, the agorist tax resister association would have to operate itself as an off-the-books business. If you tried doing this as a legal business, you would find yourself shut down in a hurry (especially if you were good at it!).

I probably would charge premiums equal to 1% of the avoided tax in the first year, and later adjust based on my experiences. Remember: the insurance association isn't JUST providing insurance. It's also providing techniques and instructions that help people be a more successful tax resister. After a few years, the tax resistance insurer would have pretty good statistics about the risks of getting caught. The tax resistance insurer will not be so stupid as to keep a written list of his customers, in case he himself is raided by the IRS.

The Labor Theory of Theft

I was reading about "The Labor Theory of Value" on the Internet. Mainstream economists roundly decry The Labor Theory of Value as nonsense, a discredited theory. Only Communists believe in the Labor Theory of Value.

I didn't like this post on Human Iterations. The poster says that anyone who believes in the Labor Theory of Value is a fool. I'm afraid that the author of "Human Iterations" falls under the category of "phony anarchist". There's so many of those!

These economists are the same ones who say "The Compound Interest Paradox" isn't true, and the same ones who say a gold standard is a quaint historic anomaly. My reaction to this sound dismissal of the Labor Theory of Value is "The Labor Theory of Value must be true in a free market."

If mainstream economists spend a lot of time and effort denouncing a theory, then it MUST be true! (At a minimum, it's worth a serious investigation.)

The Labor Theory of Value fails to hold in the current market, because the current market isn't a free market. Economists can't say "The current market is not a free market", so they're forced to say "The Labor Theory of Value is false."

I'll define what I mean by the Labor Theory of Value, because I've seen different definitions in different sources. The Labor Theory of Value says that labor is paid an amount proportional to the actual value of their work. If a job is difficult, it will be paid more than a job that is not difficult.

In a free market, capital is plentiful and cheap. Cost of capital is still a component of price in a free market, but the labor component winds up being the dominant factor.

For example, a cook in a restaurant produces actual real value, but is not well paid. A lawyer produces nothing of actual value, but is extremely well paid. Mainstream economists look at examples like this and say "The Labor Theory of Value is false".

Another example that discredits the Labor Theory of Value is that the stock market goes up 10%-15% per year, but wages only rise 3%-5% each year. Capital is able to get more than its fair share of profits. The reason is that the Federal Reserve and government regulations distort the capital market. The current market is unfairly biased against labor. With an inflation rate of 15% or more, stocks yield a total return of 15% just from inflation! (A stock investment is an inflation-hedged investment. Many large corporations have substantial debts, which means the shareholders BENEFIT from inflation.)

What would happen in a truly free market? Suppose a free market under a gold standard. Under a gold-standard, the risk-free interest rate will be very low. Let's suppose the risk-free interest rate is 2%. Anyone with capital can get a guaranteed return of 2%. Any skilled worker can borrow and raise capital at a cost of 2%, plus a very small fee.

In a free market, capital won't be able to earn returns much higher than 3% or 4%. Why not? Suppose there was an industry where it was possible to get a return on capital of 10%. In that case, skilled workers would borrow money and enter that industry. The excess returns would soon be arbitraged away. If an industry required skill, the workers would be paid more, proportional to the skill required. The return from working as a laborer would only be slightly less than the return from working as a business owner, due to free market competition among business owners. The most skilled workers would probably start their own businesses, instead of working for someone else. There would be no restrictions against starting a business imposed by the state. Business owners would receive as a return the risk-free interest rate on invested capital, plus the actual value of their labor, plus a little more as compensation for their risk.

Capital should earn a slightly higher return than the risk-free interest rate, because a business owner is taking risk. However, the premium can't be too large, or else the capital owner will find competition. There is no red market to shield capital from competition, and the free market guarantees easy access to capital.

Suppose the workers in an industry are overpaid. Other workers will start entering that industry, driving down salaries. People will start competing businesses. Suppose the workers in an industry are underpaid, because there are too many workers in that industry. Fewer new workers will enter that field, and some experienced workers will switch jobs. Suppose the workers in an industry are underpaid, because capital is getting too large a share of profits. In that case, some of those workers will start competing businesses.

The free market (if it existed) would cause salaries to adjust to the actual value of the labor. This arbitrage process doesn't occur in the current market, because the current market is not a free market.

In the current market, there are lots of friction costs that prevent workings from switching careers easily. These barriers are artificially imposed by the government. Many high-paying careers have state-imposed licensing requirements, which guarantee a shortage of workers and high salaries.

The problem is that government violence distorts the market. If I say "Restaurant cooks are overpaid; I'll go work as a restaurant cook", I probably could get such a job without much effort. If I say "Lawyers are overpaid; I'll go work as a lawyer", unless I have a government law license, I am committing a crime. I have to spend several years in law school, pay tuition/bribes, and then pass a test (bar exam), which is designed to restrict the supply of lawyers. If I say "The government provided legal system is inefficient", I can't go ahead and set up my own legal system. Lawyers have entered a conspiracy with the red market to restrict the supply of lawyers, and government violence guarantees that lawyers' services are always in demand. Judges discriminate against non-lawyers who try to represent themselves in a trial. If I'm not a government-licensed lawyer, other people can't hire me to help them defend themselves.

As another example, if I say "The health care system is inefficient; I'll go work as a doctor", I'm barred by the government. If I practice medicine without a government license, I am committing a crime. The AMA has entered a conspiracy with the red market to artificially restrict the supply of doctors. I need to spend years in medical school and years in a residence, paying a lot in tuition/bribes, to get a license to practice medicine. There's no mechanism where individuals can arbitrage away the inefficiencies in the health care system, because the state restricts the supply of doctors.

For my actual career, computer programmer, I'm not protected by the state. However, the average person can't say "Programmers are overpaid; I'll go work as a programmer." Being a good computer programmer requires actual skill. A good computer programmer can outperform an average programmer by 10x-100x or more; a good computer programmer is never paid more than 2x as much as an average programmer. This guarantees I should always be able to find a job. I still experience frustration with the market, because the market is not a truly free market.

Government violence distorts the credit market. The Federal Reserve keeps real interest rates negative. This is a huge subsidy to current capital holders. Current capital holders are inflation hedged, whereas the average person receives negative real wage increases and negative interest rates on their savings. The process I outlined in "How the State Destroys Small Businesses" discriminates against small business owners. An individual who tries to accumulate capital in a bank account finds himself credited with a negative inflation-adjusted interest rate. An individual who tries to accumulate capital in the stock market may be put off by the possibility that he might lose money; he may receive bad advice from "financial planners" who receive a commission by selling a specific product. An individual who tries to borrow to fund a business finds himself paying a much higher rate than a large corporation.

If the Labor Theory of Value fails to hold in the current non-free market, it must be replaced by another assumption. My replacement axiom for the Labor Theory of Value is the Labor Theory of Theft.

The Labor Theory of Theft says "A worker is paid, not by the actual value of his work, but by the extent to which he exploits the red market to gain favors." The highest paid workers are the leading red market workers: bankers, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, and CEOs. The highest paid workers are those who most effectively exploit the state. The next highest paid workers are pink market workers, such as doctors. Pink market workers provide a useful service, but they are shielded from competition by the state. The worst-paid workers are those who do actual productive work, the white market workers.

The Labor Theory of Value is not a Communist idea. It's a free market idea! Mainstream economists falsely tout the USA as being a free market, while the USA actually is a Communist country! If you tout the Labor Theory of Value as being true, you're denounced as being a Communist! Everything is backwards!

Google Bidding in Spectrum Auctions

I read a rumor that Google is bidding in the upcoming FCC spectrum auctions.

This is a very shrewd move by Google. The telecom companies are trying to abolish network neutrality and squeeze out companies like Google. Google has to defend its market position by becoming a telecom company!

I have even better advice. Google has a market capitalization of around $200B. Sprint-Nextel has a market capitalization of around $40B. Sprint-Nextel has been notoriously poorly mismanaged.

Instead of buying spectrum, Google should outright buy Sprint-Nextel! It probably would be cheaper for Google to directly buy Sprint-Nextel than to purchase national wireless spectrum rights and build out a network.

I suggest Sprint-Nextel because Verizon and AT&T have a market capitalization that is too high to make a buyout by Google practical.

That is one of the defects of the current economic system. It is frequently cheaper to outright buy your way into an industry, instead of directly building a competing business from scratch. Google should take advantage of its high priced stock.

It would probably be cheaper for Google to buy an existing telecom corporation than build out its own network. On the other hand, Google probably isn't going to do a hostile takeover, so building out their own telecom network may be their best option.

Reader Mail #19 - How Stupid Are Taxpayers?

There was another interesting post on the Picket Line about tax evasion.

It discusses various models of the economics of tax resistance.

One interesting bit is that people pay taxes due to "loss-oriented thinking". People are focused on avoiding the worst-case penalty, fines and possibly jail time. They don't do a true statistical analysis of the risk/reward. Suppose I owe $10,000 in taxes. If I don't pay, I have a 1% chance of getting caught, owing a fine of $20,000. That definitely pays. Suppose there was a 0.1% chance of going to jail for a year after getting caught. If you assign a cost of $250,000 to wasting a year in jail, it STILL pays to resist paying taxes.

What is really needed is an agorist IRS insurance program. That way, you can be reimbursed for fines, penalties, and even jail time if you get busted for tax evasion.

If you are busted for avoiding taxes, you probably can plea-bargain for a fine early in the process. If I were operating an agorist business, and an IRS agent said he'd discovered 10% of my activity and wanted to tax me on it, I'd probably pay the fine and be more careful in the future.

Tax resistance should be focused on 100% preventing the IRS from discovering your income. Once the IRS is aware of income you incurred, such as from a W-2 or 1099, you probably are SOL as a tax resister. In the USA, the presumption still is that what you do in private is none of the government's business. If you work solely off-the-books, without officially registering as a business, you may be able to effectively dodge taxes.

Another issue is: "How expensive is an audit?" If you hire lawyers and accountants, it can get VERY expensive. If you're qualified to represent yourself, your only expense is your time. I probably could represent myself better in a tax case than an accountant or lawyer probably could. Unfortunately, government regulations prevent me from legally selling advice to others.

Another issue is: "Why doesn't the IRS spent more resources on audits?" During audits, the IRS collects more tax revenue than spent auditing. Therefore, the IRS should audit more. This is not correct reasoning, because the important statistic is the marginal benefit of one more audit, rather than the average efficiency of ALL audits. For example, it is possible that the average profitability of audits is 700%, but that increasing audits by 10% will not generate more income than the expense of the audit.

My guess is that the IRS already audits at the rate that maximizes government income. Increasing audits, after a certain point, does not increase government revenue.

There also is the social cost of audits. For example, the cost of an audit is not just the expense the government pays. It's also the expense the auditee pays. However, costs incurred on regular people typically DO NOT figure into the government's calculations. My guess is that the IRS already audits at the rate that maximizes (tax revenue) - (audit expenses).

This post on the Picket Line was also interesting.

The IRS mailed the author a notice that they were seizing assets from their bank account. The author had moved all their money out of that bank account prior to getting the notice.

I don't understand this at all. Doesn't the IRS have to get a trial and conviction before seizing your property? I don't understand why the IRS can just send a letter to the bank and seize assets, without getting a conviction in a jury trial first? When the IRS sent the author a notice demanding payment, didn't the author respond and deny that the bill was correct?

The interesting part of the post was on this document on the IRS website:

5.11.2.1.7 (01-01-2006)
Notifying the Taxpayer After Serving the Levy

1. After serving a levy in person or faxing it, mail a copy to the taxpayer. Form 668–A includes two taxpayer copies. Mail Part 4 to the taxpayer. Leave Part 2 with the person who receives the levy. ACS uses Form 668–A(c) and mails to the taxpayer Form 8519, Taxpayer's Copy of Notice of Levy.

2. If the levy is mailed, do not send the taxpayer copy immediately. Wait long enough so the taxpayer does not get the levy before the levy source does. Consider local experience with mailing times and the promptness of a particular entity's compliance.

That sounds pretty sneaky and dirty. You notify that taxpayer that you are seizing their bank balance. You make sure you send the notice to the bank before the taxpayer, so the taxpayer can't defend themselves by withdrawing their money!

If I were this person, I would move all my money out of my checking account and buy gold or silver coins. Actually, this tax protester appears to have a regular W-2 slave job. In that case, the tax protester is likely SOL. The IRS can seize the paycheck directly from the employer.

I liked this phrase on Check Your Premises, in regard to tax resistance:

Stop feeding the mouth that bites you!

In other words, if you disapprove of many things that the government does, your ONLY recourse is to avoid paying taxes.

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I liked this post on Bill Rempel's blog about inflation. It's the same stuff that I write about regularly.

The bottom line is that price inflation is 100% caused by money supply expansion. If you read on mainstream newspapers and watch television, everything EXCEPT the Federal Reserve and money supply expansion gets "official" blame for inflation. Inflation is not caused by greedy speculators, who are merely arbitraging the Federal Reserve's defective monetary system. Inflation is not caused by low unemployment. Inflation is COMPLETELY caused by money supply expansion.

Anyone who suggests that price inflation has nothing to do with money supply inflation is a propaganda artist.

Bill Rempel refers to "the Cantillon effect", which I'd never read about before. It appears to describe the negative effects of money supply inflation. The problem is that money supply inflation doesn't lead to uniform price inflation. The new money is introduced into the economy in clumps, causing asset price bubbles.

Bill Rempel suggests trading asset price bubbles as a trading strategy. The problem is that, by the time you're aware of an asset bubble, prices are already inflated. It's tricky to time the entry points and exit points. Timing the entry and exit points is based on Federal Reserve monetary policy, which insiders know far better than you could.

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I liked this post on Stumbling and Mumbling about superstar talent.

The idea that certain actors have "superstar" talent is a myth, created by the movie studios themselves. The only people who have a chance to be a "superstar" are those who have appeared in a multimillion dollar movie. There is not a true free market for acting talent, because there are only a couple of studios that produce big budget movies.

Movie studios WANT people to believe a movie needs a "superstar" actor, because that means the people will only see movies produced by a big budget studios.

This doesn't just apply to movies. It applies to almost ANY sort of "talent". You hear corporate directors lament that there's a shortage of qualified CEOs. You only are a "qualified CEO" if you've already been a successful CEO. There isn't a true free market for CEOs. The idea that a CEO has "superstar talent" is a myth. This is used as an excuse to bid up CEO salaries to an artificially high level. The Board of Directors of a corporation isn't going to risk their own jobs or being sued by hiring a CEO who isn't "proven talent".

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I liked this post on BradSpangler.com

Democracy—Three wolves and six goats are discussing what to have for dinner. One courageous goat makes an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!” The other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves acquiesce. But when everyone is preparing to vote, the wolves take three of the goats aside. “Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,” they threaten. “Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”

The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of the election: a majority, including their comrades, has voted for them to be killed and eaten. They protest in outrage and terror, but the goat who first suggested the vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy! At least we got to have a say in this!”

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People are now asking me to link to their site and promote their blogs. I don't think my blog generates enough traffic for a link to be worth anything.

This guy wrote a book. He sent me a pdf copy to review but I haven't read it yet. He also has a blog. The quality of his writing leaves a lot to be desired. However, there is one thing he mentions that has me interested. He mentions "Remote Viewing" and that he knows people who can do this. Sometimes, I have dreams where it seems like there's someone else there and they're giving me suggestions on what to do. Mainstream science says uniformly "Remote Viewing is nonsense." Unfortunately, this makes me wonder "Is Remote Viewing possible?", especially when combined with my own experiences.

If I'm going to spend time reading stuff written by someone who's a lousy author, I'll go read Kevin Carson. I'm not in the mood to push through badly written stuff for the occasional interesting item.

There's a Ron Paul blog that claims to have been tracking him since 2004, before Ron Paul was trendy. They asked me to promote their website. It was sort of interesting, but redundant with the stuff I've already read elsewhere.

My attitude is no longer "Restore the Republic", which is a common Ron Paul slogan. I've progressed beyond that. My attitude is "Who needs a government?", which is an order of magnitude ahead of someone who thinks the US government could be reformed by voting. Forget it. Voting doesn't work.

In case you're wondering, neither of those people paid me to mention their book or website. I think it's interesting that people are starting to ask me to link to their site. I only have about 200 regular readers!

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The High Weirdness Project, affiliated with the Church of the SubGenius, has a page for my blog now.

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I liked this article on the Liberty Papers about the proposed subprime mortgage bailout.

The issue is that lenders WANT to allow borrowers who are near foreclosure to be able to get a rate freeze. The problem is that the terms of the loan and collateralized debt obligations are so complicated, that isn't clear if a rate freeze is allowed. Rather than risk being sued, lenders are doing nothing.

The suggestion that lenders could be sued for altering terms of the loans suggests that someone IS BEING DAMAGED by the proposed regulation.

By forestalling foreclosures, this prevents banks and hedge funds holding these illiquid assets from being forced to "mark down" their loans and receiving margin calls. The foreclosure rate affects the price at which banks can carry these loans on their books.

What the banks are doing is buying time. By delaying foreclosure for a year, housing prices should start going up again. In a year there will be inflation of 10%-15%. In a year, inflation will cause the market price of the houses to exceed the face amount of the loan. At that point, the banks could profitably foreclose or offer refinancing.

It STILL is a scam. The details are INCREDIBLY COMPLICATED, so it's hard to figure out who's losing. For example, someone who has a large short position in subprime mortgages would be damaged by regulations that increase the price of those bonds.

Also, this regulation disadvantages people who waited to buy a house. Suppose you thought "Housing prices are too high; I'll wait to buy." In that case, you DESERVE to see housing prices crash due to a lot of houses being sold in foreclosure. This regulation cheats people who waited to buy a house. Also, the regulation is narrowly defined to apply to people "just about to be foreclosed". It doesn't help people who are already in default, nor does it help people who can afford their mortgage payments.

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I liked this quote from the Motley Fool:

But many so-called money managers aren't worried about managing money, according to Mr. Muhlenkamp. Rather, they're focused on marketing money management. And those are two very different things.

That is, in a nutshell, the problem with hiring someone else to manage your money for you. Their primary goal is marketing, attracting and keeping customers. Their goal is *NOT* to maximize expected return.

People are intentionally kept ignorant about personal finance. After all, if people were *TOO* knowledgeable about personal finance, they would start noticing the structural flaws in the economic system!

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I like this post on Zhwazi's blog, quoting Kevin Carson:

I'm reading "Studies in Mutualist Political Economy" by Kevin Carson. I've actually been meaning to read it for a while. Author is pro-LTV and I've never heard it explained this intelligently. My favorite two paragraphs so far, from chapter 1C:

Böhm-Bawerk summed up all the deviations from the labor principle, and concluded that the labor theory of value "does not hold at all in the case of a very considerable proportion of goods; in the case of the others, does not hold always, and never holds exactly. These are the facts of experience with which the value theorists have to reckon."

...

He would have made as much sense in saying that the law of gravity was invalidated by all the exceptions presented by air resistance, wind, obstacles, human effort, and so forth. The force operates at all times, but its operation is always qualified by the action of secondary forces. But it is clear, in the case of gravity, which is the first-order phenomenon, and which are second-order deviations from it.

This argument applies to many pro-state arguments, not just "The Labor Theory of Value is false".

For example, saying "History discredited the gold standard" is like saying "Airplanes discredit the theory of gravity".

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On the Ron Paul Forum, someone asked:

Why did Roosevelt confiscate all private gold in 1933? The the miners around here told me it was for the war effort. He was planning on printing money
Only jewelrers were allowed ownership of gold.

The USA wasn't at war in 1933.

In 1933, President Roosevelt defaulted on the dollar and declared the USA bankrupt.

If President Roosevelt didn't outlaw private ownership of gold, people would have started using gold as money instead of irredeemable Federal Reserve Notes. The "official" gold price was $20/oz, devalued to $35/oz after the gold confiscation. However, with private citizens unable to own gold, people wouldn't notice that was a bunch of lies.

If Roosevelt didn't confiscate the gold in 1933, gold and Federal Reserve Notes would have circulated side-by-side. It took 40 years for people to be brainwashed so that Federal Reserve Notes are money and gold is not.

President Roosevelt's gold confiscation in 1933 was outright stealing. To declare it as anything other than stealing is being dishonest.

Some people tried to "arbitrage" the $35/oz gold price by buying lots of gold jewelry. Gold jewelery could be had for something like $40/oz, so would-be gold investors bought a lot of jewelry.

I know all the big mines around here were shut down and falling to rust.

Without the ability to sell gold at a fair free-market price, whoever owned the gold mines was acting in their rational self-interest. It made perfect economic sense to stop mining gold until gold was allowed to be sold at the fair free-market price.

On the Ron Paul Forum, redpillguy said:

With the falling dollar, the government is going to confiscate all the gold again!

I don't think there's going to be another gold confiscation. The official policy of the government is that gold is not money. It would be hypocritical for them to confiscate gold.

Currently, the dollar is backed by violence. I would be much more concerned about a gun confiscation than I would be concerned about a gold confiscation.

On Reader Mail #18, David Gross said:

You write: "If you have a regular corporate W-2 job, your options for tax resistance are zero. Your income is automatically reported to the IRS and taxes are automatically withheld. If you had a corporate W-2 job and tried to file an 'exempt' W-4 form, the HR department would never allow it."

It's actually not so bad as this. Your HR department isn't going to police your W-4 form for the government. People file new W-4s all the time for various reasons, and if you change your allowances or even declare yourself "exempt" your HR department isn't going to look at you funny (in fact, they've probably been trained not to, since it's illegal to discriminate against employees because of their family size, marital status, disabilities, and things of that ilk that often prompt new W-4 filings).

If your company withholds less from your paycheck than the IRS thinks they should, the IRS may respond to this by "overruling" your W-4 and telling your employer to accept a new one of their choosing on your behalf. At this point, your employer will begin withholding from your paycheck again. That's all. Not too frightening, is it?

You're missing the point entirely. If you have a corporate W-2 job, your employer is OBLIGATED to report your income to the IRS. Your employer *IS* the government's tax collection and enforcement agent.

Even if HR and the IRS don't overrule your "exempt" withholding declaration, the IRS STILL KNOWS ABOUT YOUR INCOME. When your income is automatically reported to the IRS, tax resistance is very hard. The IRS will still assess fines and penalties for failing to pay the tax.

Tax resistance should be focused on generating income that ISN'T REPORTED TO THE IRS. Once you income has been reported to the IRS, the red market already knows about it.

I'm not sure how this works, but I think the IRS would consider filing an "exempt" W-4 form to be a crime. I haven't heard any stories about tax resisters filing "exempt" W-4 forms, going to court, and winning.

With W-2 income, it's *TOO EASY* for the IRS to collect taxes owed. If you're serious about tax resistance, you should focus on generating off-the-books income. That is difficult at this time, because an advanced underground economy hasn't been developed yet.

On Reader Mail #18, Zhwazi said:

I'm quoting a bit sporadically, but I said "I find [the argument from mudpies] ironic..." because it "...would seem to refute the Misesian premise...not to mention it's a strawman in the first place." I'm fully aware that those examples don't singe the LTV in the slightest and made that clear.

My actual position on the LTV until a couple days ago has been that it's obviously true as a general tendency at least, and I wouldn't posit on anything else about it because I didn't know much about it...just enough to know that the mudpie argument didn't apply (from having glanced over it's wikipedia page). The irony I pointed out was a funny thing I noticed once, thinking about it's inapplicability. My current actual position is that both labor and subjective theories appear to be true, but don't seem to contradict. Still reading on that, though.

I wouldn't use Wikipedia as a source on "real" economics. It just recites the same false biased mainstream arguments. According to mainstream economics, anyone who believes the Labor Theory of Value is a Communist.

There are quite a few false mainstream economics ideas that keep being falsely cited over and over again. I grow tired of seeing the same false reasoning over and over again.

• The Labor Theory of Value is false. The Labor Theory of Value holds only in a *FREE* market.
• The economic system in the USA is a free market. The USA really is a communist dictatorship.
  
• The political system in the USA is fair.
  
• History has discredited a gold standard. It was government regulating banks and money that destroyed the gold standard.
  
• A monopolistic government is needed for a stable society.
  

I'll move my post on The Labor Theory of Value up in my draft queue. I schedule 3 posts/week. I have drafts queued up until March!

Someone told me that most insiders in the financial industry are aware that something is fundamentally wrong with the US monetary system. Why don't any of them publicly state their concerns? Anyone who's an insider is in a position where they're benefiting handsomely from the current corrupt system. My position is interesting, because I understand the US financial system, yet I'm *NOT* an insider.

On Who's the Richest Man in the World?, Francois Tremblay says:

Okay, I confess, I am the Supreme Ruler. You figured it out the whole system pretty well!

This sounds like a false confession to me. This is like Dan Quayle comparing himself to JFK. Does that make me Lloyd Bentsen?

I was thinking of doing a standup comedy routine on that theme. I would claim to be the Supreme Leader of Humanity, bragging about how he enslaved the entire world. I think it would be a good act. On the other hand, I would have to learn the timing and delivery skills that a standup comedian has.

Francois Tremblay is the organizer for the Market Anarchist Blog Carnival. So far, all of the submissions have sucked Congressman balls. One submission had a weird Ronald Reagan fetish. I found some interesting and relevant posts on the blogs I visit.

On Ron Paul Full-Page USA Today Advertisement, MCLA asks:

Why do you think people who aren't sold on agorism today will adopt it after an economic collapse? If history is anything to go by, an economic collapse would lead to civil war and/or the rise of a dictator. People will be clamouring for a tough guy who'll ditch all niceties and bring about order. Just wondering.

You are confused. The current economic system may not just collapse on its own. The current economic system will collapse once a certain % of people have converted to agorism!

The good news is that only 1% or fewer of the population need to be converted to agorism in order to succeed. The rest will then follow where the jobs are. If you told someone "You can work in a corporate W-2 job, or you can work off the books for me and get paid twice as much (after taxes).", what do you think the average person would say? Do you really think that, after seeing the benefits of a tax-free life, a person would willingly pay taxes?

Right now, I'm looking to find a core group of 50-100 people living in the same area geographically to get an agorist experiment started. I think that growth will occur exponentially once it gets started.

Once you have a good agorist community started, it won't matter what the rest of the world does. You'd be able to trade with high productivity within your own community.

On Reader Mail #18, TGGP says:

You know someone else who was a white supremacist (bad idea) who also believed that the banking elite secretly rule the world (true). Therefore, everyone who believes that the banking elite secretly rule the world is evil?

I thought I explicitly denied it, but maybe I didn't make that clear enough.

Regarding promiscuos teleology, I think it is a common bias among human bequeathed to us by evolution because a false positive was less costly than a false negative. I consciously try to avoid it. One of the best websites on the net is about recognizing and correcting these imperfect heuristics: overcomingbias.com

Do you expect him to personally walk up to my front door, say "Oh, you got me!", and give me the full details of how he enslaved the entire world?

No, but I don't think anyone can have that much power and influence without people knowing.

Voting is pointless.

Certainly, but I don't think it's very strong evidence.

Mainstream media sources always echo the same defective viewpoints.

But isn't that what makes them mainstream? There's a no true Scotsman issue here. As for why the viewpoint is defective, I think if people want crap the media will give it to them.

If there were true free market competition, some media sources would tout the alternative viewpoints, just to attract the 1% market share.

I get most of my info from the internet, so it doesn't seem like there are unrepresented viewpoints to me.

University economics professors mostly echo the same defective theories.

What about non-university economics professors? I've heard they're supposed to be more right wing. I think there are heterodox econ profs in major universities though. Again though, you've got to remember that the purpose of a university is not truth but attracting students and donors.

Income taxes convert everyone into government slaves.

See re voting.

In the 19th century and early 20th century, it was common for spies to come to the USA and lobby for certain laws.

Should I care who it is lobbying? They're all scum to me and the whole thing would be rotten if there were no other countries.

Alexander Hamilton was rumored to be secretly working for the bankers.

He was certainly a despicable prick, but I don't rely on rumors for that.

For most wars, both sides were funded by large international banks.

Most wars took place before banking existed. Steve Pinker discusses how much less violent things are now here.

It's too perfectly designed to be an accident.

Creationists say the same thing about evolution.

Gary Becker and Richard Posner have been discussing not paying taxes here and here.

Now I'm convinced you're trolling.

Why are you so aggressively defending "The Supreme Leader of Humanity does not exist"? This type of troll reaction is very typical. You can't accept the truth, so you make up all sorts of excuses and nitpicky arguments to dismiss it. You pretend to address each of the individual points I made without really listening or understanding.

If you're looking to take the blue pill, that isn't really what I'm offering.

Personally, I find the explanation "Someone has enslaved the entire world" to be a much simpler explanation than "The current corrupt system evolved through a series of bad decisions and coincidences." In a civilization where accumulation of wealth and power is valued over everything else, isn't it natural that someone would have already seized absolute wealth and absolute power? Government exists to prevent someone BESIDES THE SUPREME LEADER OF HUMANITY from gaining substantial wealth and power. There are political and economic competitions, but they are usually as genuine as professional wrestling.

Evolution vs. creationism is something that can be experimentally verified. Similarly, "Is it possible to enslave the entire world?" is something that can be verified with a "thought experiment". If I had 50 smart and dedicated people helping me, and positioned them in the right place, I could earn investment returns of 1000%/year or more. Very rapidly, I would be able to take over most of the world's resources. My method doesn't even require any violence. Other people, by resorting to violence, are able to steal at a far greater rate.

If I could figure out a plan for enslaving the entire world, without seriously trying, that means someone else has already done so.

The Supreme Leader of Humanity's network includes a far greater number of people. He uses multiple layers of secret societies to keep his agents under control. For example, it is well-known that the President is a member of the Skull and Bones secret society. The Supreme Leader of Humanity has spies in that secret society, making sure that the people there behave "correctly". Those people are in turn members of other, more powerful, secret societies, and they are themselves controlled.

Economists who don't work at universities or the government are typically employed in "think tanks", which are themselves directly or indirectly funded by the bankers. I'm afraid that pretty much all mainstream economists are corrupt. Even Austrian Economics has its problems, because they still say "There should be a government".

I wouldn't say the level of violence in today's society is at record lows. The US leads the world in prison population. That means that a lot of people are the victim of state-initiated violence. A lot of these "crimes" are things that shouldn't be outlawed anyway. Remember that there isn't just direct violence. There's also the implied threat of violence. People willingly pay their property taxes, because they don't want to lose their land. Policemen don't need to go door-to-door collecting everyone's property taxes, because the mechanism for collecting from those who don't pay is efficient.

The Becker-Posner blog was already cited in that article on "The Picket Line". However, they still are making pro-state arguments. They didn't even come close to mentioning the truth: "All forms of taxation are theft". I don't normally watch video unless it's REALLY good.

I guess I should feel honored that my blog is attracting trolls now. Technically, Aahz was my first troll, but TGGP is a more skilled troll than Aahz.

On Reader Mail #18, an anonymous reader says:

You erroneously accepted the burden of proof with that guy you were debating on the ethics of the income tax. It should have been incumbent on him to prove that paying taxes is ethical.

It looks to me like you and this guy each have a piece of the puzzle: http://ranprieur.com/archives/003.html

Yes, that's the mistake I made when responding to TGGP the troll. Why is the burden of proof on me to prove that a group of people have enslaved the entire world? Why shouldn't it be the other way around? You prove to me that someone hasn't enslaved the entire world.

I'm not absolutely certain there is a Supreme Leader of Humanity. I'm just saying that it's something that concerns me as a possibility. I already made this point in The Grand Conspiracy Experiment.

This logical fallacy needs a name. How about "The Status Quo is Optimal Fallacy"? Anyone who suggests that an alternative is better must PROVE that the replacement is substantially better, when they're denied the opportunity to experiment with an implementation. However, anyone advocating for the continuation of the current corrupt system does not need to spend much effort defending the status quo. "If the current system were so bad, then how come it's what we're using now?"

In that link, he seems to be talking about the intimidation tricks the bad guys use. I liked the story about how people were forming mutual aid groups in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, and government policemen disrupted the mutual aid groups.

I liked his story about George Washington recognizing the importance of disrupting Native American civilization.

I also liked his story about how it's unnecessary to send Americans into "work camps" as frequently decried on other websites. A major city ALREADY IS a work camp. If the government wants to send a city into chaos, all it has to do is block a few highways and bridges and people will be trapped in the city.

Unfortunately, that guy DOESN'T HAVE AN RSS FEED. I'm liking Google Reader SO MUCH that my policy nowadays is ONLY READ BLOGS WITH RSS FEEDS. It looks like that guy creates his blog by directly editing the HTML.

I liked this quote from his December 1 post:

There's a lot of buzz about the Homegrown Terrorist Radicalization Whatever Act. According to the script, we're supposed to respond, "Unthinkable! Outrage! Constitution! Fight through usual channels! Oh no, usual channels not working! American reality different from American ideal! Protest! Ow, stop hitting me!"

If we respond this way, we are going along with the abuse ritual. To an abuser, there is nothing sexier than when the victim expresses shock and outrage and fights back in a way that's totally ineffective. The next sexiest thing is to grovel in submission, and next after that is total numb defeat. These strategies not only don't work -- they actually feed a demon that inhabits the collective consciousness and many individuals, and they encourage more abuse.

If you don't like what the government is doing, your only practical way to fight back is agorism. Protesting, writing letters to the editor in newspapers, and all the things you're "supposed" to try don't actually work.

FSK Asks - Should I Change My Blogger Template?

Someone recently told me that the Blogger template I am using is no good. I should switch templates.

Do you think I should switch Blogger templates? If you wish to vote in this survey, please leave a comment in response to this post.

If you think I should switch templates, be sure to nominate a replacement template. There are 3rd party templates I can use, other than those officially sponsored by Blogger.

The primary defect of my current template is that it does NOT automatically resize the width of the screen. If you do a "view source" on my blog, you'll see I have a fixed with of 700 pixels. If you are browsing in a wider window, you will NOT see the benefits of making your window wider.

Other Blogger templates automatically resize the text when the browser window widens. Should I switch to such a template? Is it worth changing?

If you are reading my blog through the RSS feed, then it's irrelevant which template I use. (I really should start using FeedBurner to track my RSS feed.)

I am NOT considering switching to WordPress or another service at this time. I am overall satisfied with Blogger and its UI. Blogger gives me the ability to directly edit the html of my template and my posts, which is more than enough for my needs. If I start Blogging for serious income, then I might consider switching to a self-hosted blog. Blogger is more than enough for an "amateur" blogger.

Some Jokes

I read some interesting jokes. I forget the source.

You can't fight City Hall, but you can pee on the steps and run.

Another good joke:

Irony is Andrew Jackson on a Federal Reserve Note.

Background: Andrew Jackson successfully fought the renewal of a charter for a US central bank.

You could classify Lincoln's picture on a Federal Reserve Note as another example of irony. Lincoln notably won a major fight with the bankers. Fiat money issued directly by a government without debt was strongly decried by the bankers at the time. Fiat money issued directly by the government without the Compound Interest Paradox is highly desirable. Of course, they killed Lincoln for directly issuing fiat money.

In my signature file on discussion forums, I now write:

Help control the government population. Have your government spayed or neutered.

Another good joke:

Of course you can be successful without a college education. Consider, for example, the President of the United States.

Someone on the Ron Paul Forum said they were running for Congress. My response is:

A libertarian running for Congress is like a vegetarian applying for a job in a slaughterhouse.

Reader Mail #18 - Paying Taxes is Still Stupid

I liked this post from The Picket Line. It lists most of the false counter-arguments that people give when paying taxes.

The arguments were broken down into several categories:

Would tax resistance be effective?

From a personal viewpoint, if I avoid income taxes it's like getting paid twice as much for the same labor. Is that "effective" in the sense that I improved my own circumstances? Definitely! If I'm the only person doing it, does it damage the bad guys? Not at all. However, I have doubled my personal wealth! That's certainly an accomplishment.

If I would avoid income taxes, I would have twice as much income. Currently, I earn enough income to support myself. If I don't pay income taxes, I would have enough income to support myself AND hire someone else to work for me! Then, that person can avoid paying income taxes. When you also include the cost of compliance with government regulations, the productivity improvement isn't 50%; it's more like 75%-95%. At some point, exponential growth starts to take hold and the underground economy explodes.

I liked this point:

The IRS can garnish wages and raid existing bank accounts for money owed to them.

People need to start storing their wealth outside the "official" financial system. Some sort of distributed underground banking system is desperately needed.

Would tax resistance be too dangerous?

This depends on the approach you take.

If you have a regular corporate W-2 job, your options for tax resistance are zero. Your income is automatically reported to the IRS and taxes are automatically withheld. If you had a corporate W-2 job and tried to file an "exempt" W-4 form, the HR department would never allow it.

If you're registered as being self-employed, that is difficult. As a small business owner, you do have the opportunity to do off-the-books work or underreport your income. However, the IRS tends to be very heavy-handed when auditing small businesses.

If you trade agorist-style and work completely off the books, then you have better options at hiding your income from the IRS. If there was an advanced grey market banking system, you could safely store your wealth there. Instead of "laundering" your money, you would merely purchase gold and silver in the grey market economy. Even better, there may someday be an underground agorist capital market, where people can lend each other money and invest in their businesses.

Currently, there's no safe place to store gold or silver. I would be willing to loan out gold or silver at a 0% interest rate, if the counter-party were trustworthy, because that's safer than storing my gold or silver in my residence.

I liked this point:

The IRS can force you to waste tens of thousands of dollars defending yourself against frivolous charges. Don't mess with them.

I think that, when being harassed by the IRS, you might be better off representing yourself than hiring an attorney. An attorney is "sworn to uphold the law". That makes it hard to get a competent defense when your argument is "the law is illegitimate".

Plus, if you're careful, you won't generate a paper trail of auditable income.

Some people say that an IRS agent gives up when harassing knowledgeable people and prefers to go after the low-hanging fruit. If the IRS agent sees you're going to put up a tough fight, they may leave you alone. If an agorist finds himself investigated by the IRS, he may be able to settle for paying a fine. If you agree to pay a fine, the IRS agent can look good on his records, and you still may have profited if the IRS didn't catch all your economic activity.

The main problem is that there's no SERIOUS analysis of the risks of tax avoidance, because you can't go around and ask all the tax avoiders and collect statistics. This problem is best left to agorist protection associations, when they decide how much to charge for IRS protection insurance.

Would tax resistance be ethical?

Anyone who understands the Compound Interest Paradox would be so annoyed at the current economic system that they would see income taxes as immoral.

Suppose you explain to someone:

- The corrupt nature of the Federal Reserve.
- The Federal Reserve provides a massive government subsidy to banks, hedge funds, and large corporations.
- Income taxes prevent people from boycotting the Federal Reserve and using sound money instead.
- Income taxes convert everyone into government slaves. Income taxes mean you need permission from the government and Federal Reserve to work.
- The voting system is completely corrupt.
- The USA is actually a communist country. The Federal Reserve and income tax are two key planks of the Communist Manifesto.
- The economic system discriminates against individuals and small business owners.

Once someone understands some of these things, it becomes very easy to ethically justify refusing to pay taxes. If you have trusted trading partners, agorism provides a way to avoid paying taxes by developing an underground economy.

---

A lot of people find my blog when they Google search for "Who's the Richest Man in the World?" or variants thereof. I actually give the correct answer, unavailable elsewhere, and yet almost all of those visits are bounces.

My post "Beware of Libertarian Red Market Agents" has proven to be incredibly popular. I thought that was a relatively boring post. I don't know where the traffic is coming from. Usually, a spike is due to a post being mentioned elsewhere.

Sometimes, when I say "This post is going to be a hit!", nobody winds up reading it. Sometimes, when I say "This post is boring and obvious.", I wind up with a bunch of readers. I am totally confused. For example, I thought The Voting Scam was something everyone already knew about, and it's my 2nd most popular post.

---

I recently discovered Google Reader. It's a useful tool if you track a bunch of blogs. I'm sure there are other RSS readers out there, but I like Google Reader. Google isn't even paying me to say this! I use several Google products regularly: search, gmail, Blogger, Analytics, and now Reader.

I do have one pet peeve. A lot of people have an RSS feed for their blog, but they DON'T GIVE THE FULL FEED. They only give the first few sentences, and you have to follow the link to get to the full post. THIS IS VERY ANNOYING. It seems that WordPress, by default, gives only partial feeds. By subscribing to my own RSS feed, I have verified that I am actually giving out the full feed. I feel the need to make a rant for a moment.

IF YOU DON'T ENABLE THE FULL FEED FOR YOUR BLOG, I'M GOING TO STOP READING IT!
(unless your blog's content is super-awesome)

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I like this joke from "Crash Landing".

I was reading a book on Jefferson and Burr tonight and read, "Justus Bollman sent a message from his cell to the President's house."

'What?!' I thought. 'He was texting Jefferson?!'

Then I realized he had been in jail at the time.

---

I liked this post on Kung-Fu Monkey's blog. It links to a series of interesting articles on another blog, "Orcinus".

In this post, I liked this excerpt:

[Psychopaths] are drawn to power, and will seek it ruthlessly and relentlessly, regardless of the consequences to others. Many cultures (including ours, up until a few decades ago) have found these people so dangerous that they've evolved counterweights and backstops that conspire to either keep them away from the levers of power, or mitigate the damage they can do (and I'll discuss some of those in the last installment). However, modern America seems to have lost all vestiges of this awareness. Now, we celebrate our most powerful social dominants, pay them obscene salaries, turn them into media stars, and hand over the keys to the empire to them almost gratefully. They have free rein to pursue their ambitions unchecked, with no cultural brakes on their rapacity. They will do whatever they can get away with; and we'll not only let them, but often cheer them on.

This paragraph is interesting. The economic and political system in the USA *USED TO* have checks and balances that made sure psychopaths didn't rise to positions of power and influence. All those checks have been repealed. Now, the psychopath is held up as the model for everyone else to follow. Only the most egregious conduct winds up being caught and punished, and the threshold for "egregious conduct" seems to be higher and higher all the time.

The only solution is to abandon the idea of having a government altogether. The very existence of a government means that the most evil people will exploit it for their own benefit, while loudly proclaiming that they are merely doing it for the benefit of everyone else.

In a truly free market, someone who acted as a psychopath would find themselves at a disadvantage. Non-psychopaths would be able to found competing businesses, and their superior performance would wipe out any psychopath-run businesses.

In this post on Kung-Fu Monkey's blog, I liked this excerpt:

Well, let's say the candidate's job is to walk into a room of complete strangers and get them to like him. Connect with him. Wow, the few rare politicians who can do that, they're worth their weight in gold.

I did that for twelve years. So did hundreds of other people you've never heard of. We're stand-ups, and that's the ENTRY-LEVEL for the job.

A good stand-up can walk into a room, a bar with no stage and a shit mic, in the deep goddam South or Montana or Portland or Austin or Boston, and not only tell jokes with differing political opinions than the crowd, can get them to laugh. With all due respect to our brother performers in theater, etc., we can walk into a room of any size from 20 to 2000 complete strangers with no shared background and not just evoke emotion ... we can evoke a specific strong emotion every 15 seconds. For an HOUR. A good stand-up can make fun of your relationship with your wife, make fun of your job, make fun of your politics, all in front of a thousand strangers, and afterward that same person will go up and invite the stand-up to a barbecue.

In short -- every club audience is a swing state.

Politicians lack the basic speaking skills that every stand-up comedian knows. Whenever a politician speaks in public, it's a scripted PR session. Whenever a politician appears on a talk show, the host is reading from a prepared script of questions. Even the Daily Show and the Colbert Report do this, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to land "hot" guests. The *LAST* thing a politician wants is to be put in a situation where he's forced to think on his feet.

The problem is that the media is biased. There aren't ANY shows that deviate from the script. A show that deviated from the script would no longer be able to get politicians on as guests. The host probably would be fired for deviating from the script. There are no "unscripted live performances" for politicians. The *LAST* thing the Supreme Leader of Humanity wants is a politician who's able to think for himself.

In this post on Kung-Fu Monkey's blog, I liked this excerpt:

[Many readers on Kung-Fu Monkey's blog say: "BUSH IS A LIAR! ISN'T IT OBVIOUS!"]

He's not lying. [He actually thinks he's telling the truth, so technically he's not lying. His cluelessness makes him a more effective liar. If he *KNEW* he was lying, he wouldn't be as convincing.]

In the parlance of my business, he's the hack comic who kills every show, and has no idea he's a hack.

The problem is that the media, who are supposed to be making sure that unqualified hacks don't get elected President, AREN'T DOING THEIR JOB. The average person says "Really, would a totally clueless fool be presented by the mainstream media as a qualified President?" The average person is unaware that mainstream media is completely and totally corrupt.

Topics such as "Who deserves to play in the BCS Championship Game?" are debated much more honestly and thoroughly than actual serious news stories. A play-by-play announcer for a sports game actually has the improvisational speaking skills that most political candidates lack.

Francois Tremblay pointed out that elections on American Idol are conducted more fairly that US government elections. Unlike with government elections, American Idol gives a SERIOUS analysis of the candidates' qualifications before the vote. American Idol uses a variation of "Instant Runoff Voting", which is far superior to the winner-take-all method used in political elections. In contrast with political elections, American Idol really gives each candidate equal time, although the producers of American Idol only present candidates that meet their standards. I estimate that the average person will spend more time discussing American Idol than the 2008 Presidential election.

---

I liked this post about tomato pickers in Florida. The writer seemed to sort of understand how the Federal Reserve makes the bargaining relationship between workers and employers uneven. The tomato pickers were NOT officially organized as a union. This meant they could actually use effective tactics, since they were not subject to government regulation of unions.

Instead of pressuring the farm owners, the tomato pickers started pressuring the large fast food chains that bought the tomatoes. They even managed to get some concessions from some large corporations that use tomatoes, offering to pay the workers extra. One corporation decided it didn't want to give concessions. It successfully lobbied the Federal government to declare those negotiated agreements illegal.

In other words, the workers did manage to negotiate better wages, in spite of a huge handicap. Then, the red market reversed their progress by declaring the agreement illegal.

IMHO, the tomato pickers should be recognized as the rightful owners of those farms, and not the corporation who owns the farm, who purchased/stole the farms with money borrowed/stolen from the Federal Reserve at an artificially cheap interest rate.

---

On Zhwazi's Blog, he says (paraphrasing):

I don't like the Labor Theory of Value.

You don't understand the Labor Theory of Value.

The Labor Theory of Value says that a worker's salary is proportional to the actual value of his work.

In that post, he gives an example of someone who is paid to dig a ditch and fill it back in. The person who hired you to dig a ditch and fill it back up again is a stupid businessman. In a free market, he will soon go out of business.

The Labor Theory of Value fails to hold in the current economic system because the current system is not a free market. For example, lawyers do nothing useful, but they are paid a lot. The problem is that government violence creates an artificial demand for lawyers' services. Government violence gives lawyers a monopoly, due to licensing requirements.

In a free market, there is a natural arbitrage process that raises the salary of underpaid workers and lowers the salary of overpaid workers. Don't confuse the current market with a free market.

My attitude on such theories is: "If mainstream economists uniformly and loudly discredit a theory, then it must be true." IMHO, that works every time. For example, try asking an economics professor about The Compound Interest Paradox. He will say that there is no such thing. Try asking an economics professor about a gold standard; he will say that history has soundly discredited the gold standard. Not only will the economics professor disagree, but he will be loud and insistent.

I have a future draft planned for the Labor Theory of Value. If you want, I'll publish it sooner.

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I'm starting to get bored with the Ron Paul Forum. It might be time to declare that forum property of trolls and move on.

---

On the Ron Paul Forum, someone said:

Should Americans worry that foreigners hold lots of dollar assets? Check out this article. It was written by an economics professor at a respected university, and therefore it is of a high quality.

[Summary of article: Employers can't discriminate against workers, because they would just find an equal or better job elsewhere.]

And then a troll responded:

I am a troll.

Just because someone's the chairman of the economics department at a university, doesn't mean they're NOT a troll.

That's like saying "Ben Bernanke is the absolute authority on sound monetary policy." Ben Bernanke is as much a troll as some people on the Ron Paul Forum. Ben Bernanke is far more dangerous, because he can impose his will on others by force. An obnoxious person on a discussion forum is easily ignored.

There's a major fallacy in the article cited above. That assumes that you're dealing with a free market. In a *TRUE* free market, a businessman who tries to discriminate against an employee suffers negative economic consequences. The businessman loses a worker, and the employee can find a job just as good elsewhere.

The USA is *NOT* a free market. It's a communist dictatorship. In many industries, there are only 3-5 employers, frequently located in different cities. An employee who is unfairly fired may be forced to move. The other employers may "check references" and the discriminating businessman may give a false bad reference. A worker can't easily get a job of equal value, because the labor market isn't really a free market. A worker can't start his own competing business, because there are too many obstacles placed there by the government.

If professors didn't pass off lies and nonsense as "economic research", we wouldn't be in the current mess.

On Don't Think Too Hard, an anonymous reader says:

Thats pretty funny. I get told not to think too much by people around me all the time. Sure it is good to know your position in the human world and why you are there. How some people are controlling your behaviour and under-development through the use of their laws and policies and to combat them.

But beyond rationality there is a knowledge that is very fine and subtle....it comes from the Spirit, from within...and this gives peace....and a method of combating the enemy without.

It really is traumatic being able to think clearly when nobody around you seems to be able to do it. After being trained to not think, it's very traumatic to be suddenly able to start thinking for yourself.

Most people refuse to think because they're trained to not think, and actually thinking can be very stressful.

Sometimes, I feel like the Will Smith character in the "I am Legend" movie. Everyone else is a mindless zombie and I'm trying to help them.

On The National Debt - Who is the Creditor?, an anonymous reader says:

I think it would be cool to print an umpteen trillion dollar Federal Reserve Note and present it to the banksters as payment in full for the debt. It would be legal tender but if they tried to spend it any cashier would say, "sorry, I don't have change for a bill that big; got anything smaller?"

I already mentioned this. "In theory, the government could mint a $100 trillion coin and deposit it in its account at the Federal Reserve."

If the Treasury department printed a $100 trillion Federal Reserve Note, the government would only be reimbursed FOR THE PRINTING COST.

If the Treasury department minted a $100 trillion coin, the government would be reimbursed FOR THE FACE AMOUNT.

The government insists that, when it mints coins, the government is reimbursed for the face amount, not the minting cost.

There is a strange legal loophole. Look at a Federal Reserve Note. It says "This note is legal tender." Look at a quarter. There is *NO INSCRIPTION* that says "This coin is legal tender." Treasury-minted coins are ACTUALLY money. Federal Reserve Notes have a lower status.

Fortunately, the Congress and President will never try this. The fact that Congress *COULD* do this if it wanted to, points out how silly the concept of a "national debt" is in the first place.

The US government cannot be bankrupted as long as all its debts are in dollars, a currency it controls. The Federal government is not subject to the same accounting rules as everyone else.

Third world governments can be bankrupted, because their debts are in dollars and their income is in their local currency.

Suppose I made up my own currency, the F$K. Suppose I managed to convince other people to start accepting F$Ks as money. If the F$K was an irredeemable fiat currency, then I could NEVER go broke! I could always just print more F$Ks. People might notice inflation if I did this. If I abused it too much, people might start refusing to use F$Ks as money.

On Beware of Libertarian Red Market Agents, TGGP says:

Interesting to hear this from an agorist, the last person I came across speculating about secret forcing behind banking who are wealthier than anyone but unknown was a right-wing extremist rather chummy with neo-nazis. It doesn't make you wrong though. I tend to be more willing to belief in impersonal forces and I try to avoid promiscuous teleology.

This is another comment that falls under the "I almost rejected it as a troll" category.

Are you aware of how many times you used the Strawman Fallacy in your comment? You know someone else who was a white supremacist (bad idea) who also believed that the banking elite secretly rule the world (true). Therefore, everyone who believes that the banking elite secretly rule the world is evil?

It's time for a new blog rule. People who post comments that use the Strawman Fallacy have their comments rejected or ridiculed.

That link defines "promiscuous teleology" as assigning causes to events WITHOUT EVIDENCE. I don't have ABSOLUTE PROOF that someone is secretly ruling the world. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that a group of people are secretly ruling the world. What do you expect the Supreme Leader of Humanity to do? Do you expect him to personally walk up to my front door, say "Oh, you got me!", and give me the full details of how he enslaved the entire world? Even with the full proof, fully documented, I doubt I could convince many people anyway.

There is a *LOT* of circumstantial evidence that someone is secretly ruling the world.

- The Compound Interest Paradox is too cleverly designed and hidden to be an accident.
- Voting is pointless.
- Mainstream media sources always echo the same defective viewpoints. If there were true free market competition, some media sources would tout the alternative viewpoints, just to attract the 1% market share.
- University economics professors mostly echo the same defective theories.
- Income taxes convert everyone into government slaves. Income taxes mean you need permission from the government and Federal Reserve in order to work.
- Income taxes and anti-money-laundering laws make it impossible for someone to legally develop an alternate monetary system.
- In the 19th century and early 20th century, it was common for spies to come to the USA and lobby for certain laws. In fact, the international bankers even had some spies planted among the US founding fathers. Alexander Hamilton was rumored to be secretly working for the bankers.
- For most wars, both sides were funded by large international banks.

The best piece of evidence is: The current economic and political system is one of absolute perfect enslavement. It's too perfectly designed to be an accident.

As a practical matter, it's sort of irrelevant. If the current corrupt system has developed by accident, then we should do everything we can to develop a better system. Since the opposition is disorganized and incompetent, success should come easily.

If the current corrupt system is part of someone's sinister plan, then we should do everything we can to fight them. If there is someone secretly pulling the strings, the fact that I haven't been hunted down and killed is evidence that they approve of what I'm trying to do. If there is someone secretly pulling the strings, it seems as if they *WANT* the current economic and political system to fall apart.

Being accused of "thinking like a child" is actually a compliment. That means that I've managed to unlearn most of the bad things I've been taught.

On Reader Mail #17, Kevin Carson says:

From the stats on my site meter, I can't imagine how I could possibly have 10,000 regular readers or more--unless the 200 or so visitors I have every day are people who visit very infrequently.

I misestimated. I assumed that if your Technorati rank was that much higher than mine, you had that many more readers than me. I'm up to around 40 visitors per day, and it's been increasing at a decent rate. That means my blog is only 1/5 as popular as Kevin Carson's! That's kind of neat.

They have a "rate your blog's language level" tool somewhere on the Internet. Kevin Carson's blog rates as "genius level", which also means that it's tough to read. My blog is "high school level", which means I'm not writing with fancy language.

I noticed that Kevin Carson is writing a second book. How many copies has he sold? Is he self-publishing or going through a publisher? I was thinking of taking my best posts and making a book, but it would probably only be worth it if I could sell over 10,000 copies.

The biggest piece of advice I have for Kevin Carson is: LEARN TO WRITE BETTER. His content is very interesting otherwise. For most other authors, I wouldn't bother to trying to read in spite of the poor writing.

I noticed that my blog is of interest to a wide variety of people. I've been mentioned on white supremacist sites, agorist/anarchist sites, communist sites, amateur trader sites, car discussion forums, and many others. I think the fundamental issue "The current economic and political system isn't working" is a common theme for all those groups.