Funny money system causing historic levels of discontent

In recent commentary from the web site Marketwatch.com, Paul Farrell proclaims that we either tax the super rich now or face a revolution.  Paul sort of has it right but not really.  We don't need to tax the super rich.  We need to take down the corrupt system by which they became ridiculously wealthy at the expense of everyone else.  The end result is essentially the same although the nonviolent revolution method would take a few years to achieve the more normalized distribution of wealth that Paul is calling for.

In the famous Parker Brother's game, "Monopoly", someone always ends up with all the property and money.  At some point you simply can't move without having to pay so much rent that you go bankrupt.  At that point, the game is over.  In real life it's really not much different.  Those at the top are playing a game.  They think of it as a game.  They call it a game.  To them it is actually a game.  It doesn't matter if the losers of the game are hurt because at their level they aren't exposed to the problems.  But make no mistake, to them it is a game and they are gaming it for all it is worth.

Unfortunately, it's not a game.  It's real life.  In real life the losers don't just go away quietly.  Instead, they eventually gather in force on the streets with hanging nooses and firebombs looking to extract revenge and justice from "them" (whoever that is).  It's not that the masses want violence but rather that they simply do not understand the mechanics of the game and so they do not see any other recourse.  The masses see that despite working hard every day they are not getting ahead.  They know something is wrong.  They know they are getting screwed but they cannot put their finger on exactly how it is happening and so they (including people like Paul Farrell) address the symptoms instead of going after the root cause.  Their ignorance into the strategies of the elite for playing the game only causes more problems and suffering than we really need to have in order to fix this scam.

The game being played by the elite should be called "Steal The Labor of the Ignorant Masses".  That is the essence of what they are doing.  Throughout history this game has been played by the elite in various forms.  The Egyptians enslaved many peoples and stole their labor giving them just enough food and water to survive while forcing them to create the wonders of the Egyptian culture.  Pharaohs and their cronies sat back and enjoyed the wealth generated by the work of slaves.  In medieval times, kings and lords owned the lands and the serfs were basically slaves to them.  There is no way that kings and lords could have lived in such luxury without the theft of labor of the uneducated masses.  More recently the American south imported slaves so that plantation owners could live big lives based on slave labor.

The elite have always known that all future value comes from the labor of man multiplied by machines and energy.  Thus, the game has always been to find new and innovative ways to steal the labor of man.  In ancient times the use of outright force was the tool of choice.  In more modern times, the elite have figured out that guile and trickery is even more effective than force in the theft of labor.  Using guile you cannot steal 100% of a person's work output which is what Egyptian elite were able to do with their slaves but the reduction in per person theft is made up for in volume.  If you just steal a relatively modest percentage of everyone's productive output and if the number of elite and elite cronies don't grow too big then unimaginable amounts of wealth can be concentrated into the hands of the few.   When a person accumulates wealth in ridiculous excess of what he could create by working a normal job then you have to ask how this can be fair.  How can one man contribute enough to society to be worth 50 million dollars much less 500 million or in the case of our uber-rich, 50 billion?  Were they millions of times smarter and harder working than the rest of us or did they simply stand on a lot of broad shoulders?

This is where we find ourselves today.  Because of modern technology and automation, the productive output of the world is such that everyone could live a very nice life.  I say again, we do not have a problem with there being enough prosperity.  The problem is that the elite game players are concentrating it into their own hands.  When a man (or woman) works his/her whole life under a system of this kind of prosperity then one would expect that he/she could feed, clothe, shelter and provide medical care for him/herself throughout his/her working life and then all through retirement until death.  Unfortunately, this is not going to be the case because Social Security is bankrupt and so is Medicare.  Those were scam programs set up by scammers and they will collapse when the bulk of the boomers try to cash in.

The main mechanism of partial slavery today is the corrupt money supply which consists of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.  The con men at the top get first access to freshly printed funny money and they spend it while prices are low.  By the time the rest of us get access to that same money, the presence of the new money has pushed up prices so that our buying power is less than those with first access even though we are spending the same amounts of money.  In addition, the elite give themselves access to crazy leverage that normal people could never command.  Thus when times are good they make a killing.  Of course when they get too greedy and their leveraged bets fail, the bill is placed on the backs of the ignorant people who stupidly believe that the world will end if corrupt banks are allowed to fail.

Taxing the rich is a horrible solution to the problem because it is the "feel good" solution that attacks the symptoms while leaving the problem of having a corrupt money supply remain intact.  The uber rich aren't really evil, they just play the game better.  So instead of punishing them, change the game so that it is not a corrupt scam by its very nature.  If we just massively tax the rich they will flee the country and take their cash with them.  It's called capital flight.  Instead, we need to come up with a system whereby the con men can't just print up more money and create more credit for themselves at will because this, and this alone, is the source of their power over the rest of us.  If we had an un-gameable, honest money supply consisting of a real, trusted, citizen-audited gold standard (and/or real gold and silver coins which need no auditing) then the elite would have to start working for a living like the rest of us.  They could no longer steal our labor through the con game of inflation and hyper leveraged bets which they could never pay off if they lose.

Step one is to eliminate and discredit the Federal Reserve which is the organization responsible for running the con.  Step two is to create an honest money supply and transition into it over time.  Step three is to eliminate fractional reserve banking.  Step four is to dismantle our government consumption machine which now has an annual budget of 3.5 trillion dollars with 1.5 trillion of that being funded by debt.  No honest money supply can exist when the government requires debt in order to fund its existence.  By the way, none of this is new thinking.  Proponents of so called "Austrian School" economics have been saying the same thing for years.  Unfortunately, they have been in the minority while the con men gamed the living crap out of the global financial system.

We need a peaceful revolution which is led by informed people who are focused on eliminating the con game without tearing down our public infrastructure, not the violent one that Paul Farrell warns us about which would consist of ignorant people tearing down much of what we have already paid for.  That requires that people educate themselves and become proactive messengers and organizers of change instead of waiting until the situation turns hyper-critical resulting in a social meltdown.  The coming years will determine if Americans have what it takes to be something more than a very large version of Libya.