Mike Fleming

I agree. This is what it's about. Slavery was not ended through violence. It ends when the propaganda is overthrown and people everywhere come to understand the reality, that slavery is wrong. How many people today think slavery is acceptable? Now imagine a world in which nearly everyone thinks that government is wrong and a despicable idea, just like people think of slavery that way today. The interesting thing about arguing with statists on the internet is how they feel no fear at defending the state. There are no adverse social consequences at this point in time. If you argued for slavery people would be all over you but the same people who would decry slavery are at this moment, observing with interest, but waiting to see which way the wind blows. I don't know how long it will take to get enough people on board but the process seems to be accelerating. Oh and btw, it wasn't Lincoln who ended slavery, it had been destroyed in people's minds all over the world before Lincoln came along and took credit. No leader required.

I think of money as an abstract concept. It is not Gold as many say it is, nor is it intrinsically linked to any particular commodity. it is a way for people to easily and efficiently exchange things of value, because fundamentally in this world we all provide goods and services for each other and need to be able to trade them. In order to be able to do this money has to do certain things like retain a certain value over time, be divisible, etc. Gold was always used in the past because it was the only way people could be sure that the value could be held due to physical world constraints. This is why Fiat works, at least to some degree, if it can be restricted in amount. But fiat basically has the same problem as Gold when it's in government hands. Both can be debased. Now that we can devise a money which can be restricted in amount using technology and which is far easier to trade in a global world I believe that Gold (and fiat) has pretty much come to the end of it's run as a currency. It will always have value as long as people want it but I personally think cryptocurrencies are superior money and will be the way forward. Although, that's not to say even better solutions won't arise in the future. As long as money is in the free market and out of government hands both directly and in regulatory terms it will continue to innovate and become more useful.

Does anyone know anything about this? If there are any links to medical studies or anything? Epilepsy is often due to brain damage of some sort. Sometimes it can come about because of a physical head injury, but what if it is the sort that is not due to a head injury? It does seem, in some ways to be a like a super hyperactive fight or flight response where the brain just goes so hyper that the body "freaks out" and then the brain, at least in the more severe cases, shuts down and basically reboots. Which is kind of what it feels like to be honest, after you've fallen unconscious and the episode is over, you wake up groggy and not knowing what's going on at all and it's like your consciousness gradually reasserts itself. But this is something I've been wondering about for awhile now. Just because epileptic fits, in my case at least, do seem a bit like a crazy over-the-top fight or flight response. When child abuse damages the brain can it be what results in epilepsy or similar brain conditions? I guess it wouldn't be conclusive but intuitively it seems like a fit to me.

I agree with this. I, too, have a hyperactive fight-or-flight. It's interesting, now that I've calmed it down somewhat, how obvious it is to me in others. When I wasn't self-aware I didn't notice it in other people. It's a very interesting thing to observe in others and know that it's not just me. And also, that it can be tamed to a degree, but you have to figure out what your triggers are and ask yourself the question "Is this really that important or am I getting worked up for nothing?". Breathing exercises and not responding, at least for awhile, are also methods I find useful. And after walking away for awhile almost every time I don't see a need to come back to the argument. The response will never completely go away because it is physically a part of you but it can be managed.

I thin people will continue to congregate together in at least relatively large numbers. But I also think there will be natural limits on that. What those will be will depend on the area in large part. I also think with more and more areas of the world becoming developed, if there were less restrictions placed on people moving, I think it is likely that we might end up a bit more spread out. Especially with the dawn of the internet and it's decentralized nature there won't be as much need to stay in a large population centre.

I had the impression, before watching this, that the Alex Jones crew were on board the minarchist train.

All I can do is just shake my head at this stuff

My impression of Free Will with Stef is that he has entirely his own definitions of it which don't match what is commonly understand. Joe Rogan pointed this out when he started to talk about it in the recent interview. My view with the Free Will/Determinism debate (I am a determinist) is that the truth will become commonly known eventually to everyone, just as the truth of the Earth revolving around the Sun came to everyone eventually. Before it gets to that stage, it needs to be properly communicated what the consequences of determinism, if anything, are to the masses. No, it doesn't mean you can't be held responsible for your actions. Trying to redefine free will and say determinism is untrue will be an argument that discredits anyone who puts it forward if we get to the point where it is regarded as common knowledge. Especially someone who claims to be a philosopher who follows the scientific method.

Who is working themselves to death? Not those in the public sector, that's for sure. Not those on public pensions either. If you look at it, you have got people in the private sector working very hard and sometimes with insane hours and those in the public sector, well, for the most part sitting around doing not much for 40 hours a week. Doesn't that kind of seem insane? Why is there a need for people to work so hard? Taxes, maybe.... That's not to say there won't be workaholics anyway but would the average person work that long if they weren't paying insane levels of tax? And where is the tax going for the most part? To non-productive workers. Inflation is another reason. When it's difficult to save money you have to work more just to keep up. This is why it's often said, paraphrasing "inflation greases the wheel of the economy" or something like that. What it really means is that people are forced to work harder and more and more resources are consumed than is necessary. Government also creates the wildly swinging boom bust cycle. So that instead of having an undulating sustainable economy we have wild swings up and down. In many places they have inflated the price of property, one of the major reasons people work, beyond all reason and people feel like they need to work harder just to keep up with insane propety prices and the accompanying mortgages. Of course with all this extra money pouring into banks, bankers salaries end up inflated also. I could go on and on. The state-run economy is just complete madness. But the fundamental problem is that it is predicated on the initiation of force. On authoritarianism. It is an unfortunate relic of our history, like slavery was, and must be purged like slavery had to be purged.

Thanks. The family as cult really strikes a chord with me. More and more I've realised that the true problem in my family was my father not so much my mother. My mother is a hysterical narcissist, but she's essentially just like a dumb machine that largely doesn't know any better. Really, I think she belongs in a mental institution. The real damage was done by my father. He normalized the behaviour and made it seem OK. He is is reasonably intelligent, but also a pathetic little boy who gets attacked by my mother in much the same way my brother and I have been. But I think, without him, I would have seen my mother as crazy in my mid 20's and moved past her then. With him working on me, I was always questioning whether I was the crazy one or not. With the way society reinforces the cult mentality, and no-one around to validate my experience, it was extremely hard to think straight. It kind of reminds me, looking back, of the way I've seen in cults where when someone is thinking of leaving it won't be necessarily the cult leader who talks them out of it, but an intelligent, weasly, subordinate. That's what it was like for me. My mother was not in any way charismatic, but when she has society reinforcing her, it doesn't matter so much. And it's not like the standard cult where you just get away physically and you are largely safe and removed. Because in today's society you will always be asked, "what about your mother?" and told "maybe you should get in contact" and all that. Whereas no-one would say that the cult member should get back in touch with the cult leader. There is nowhere to run to escape from the cult of family. Except maybe FDR.

How would you determine what is "pointless" and what is "real" printing? How would you decide how much? Do you not think it's completely arbitrary? And who gets to decide? And what stops them from abusing the power? This is called mining. People go to investors to get money to finance mining equipment and/or borrow money from banks to finance it. Why would you print money for it? Printing money for it would be stealing. As you are stealing value from other people's money to finance it.

You're not following it because you are sane.

I've lived in WA on and off for the last 20 years. This video doesn't surprise me at all. It's like a bizarre large country town (Perth) with all the weirdness that comes with them. Thank God for the internet, because I would have gone insane long ago in this town without it. People scare-mongering by blowing people up on beaches?? I think there is a significant amount of mental illness around here before I watched that and people freak out almost universally at any criticism of the government more so than anywhere else I've been.

Inflation is an increase in the money supply. The critical piece of information in that statement is "money". What is money? In our system it is defined as both cash and credit. Credit is basically cash owed. So the way money is currently defined can be a bit misleading because it is sort ot defined as itself and "itself owed" which is kind of confusing and misleading. Deliberately so, I suspect. Deflation in prices is generally considered a good thing. Look at computers. Inflation and deflation in and of themselves are not bad. If we define inflation as an increase in the money supply, which is mostly credit, then the amount of money borrowed will be constantly changing up and down. Assuming fractional reserve banking of course, which is another discussion. What is bad is counterfeiting, printing money. It's basically done to to lower the interest rate to stop malinvestments being liquidated. ie. let's say you invested some money in a business and the business could not make enough money for you to service the debt because the market just didn't consider it a good way to allocate resources (people didn't like your product). Instead of the investment being liquidated and the capital being reassigned more productively elsewhere, the government artificially lowers the market rate of interest, meaning the investment can keep stumbling along. This is the story of the American economy as a whole. Bad investments everywhere, but instead of allowing them to be liquidated the government allows the whole thing to keep going encouraging more bad investments and the American economy basically slowly wastes away while you have the illusion that the investments being made are good ones. QE (or money printing) is the slow acting poison killing America. By the time deflation actually is allowed to happen, if it is allowed to happen and they don't print into hyperinflation first, it will be a disaster. But the disaster has been building behind the scenes for many years. if deflation were to happen, it just makes the disaster that QE has created apparent and visible. It doesn't in and of itself create the disaster.

The Daily Show are heavily invested in the left liberal philosophy. That is the audience they have cultivated for many years and which provides them with their views and by extension their advertising money. Now libertarian free market ideas are slowly starting to pull people away from that philosophy. The Daily Show sees the threat to their income and the space they have created for themselves and is acting to nullify it by discrediting it. The attacks are really building up now, but it's really just a prelude to our victory.

I thought it was great. I've long thought of my own family as a cult, I just never really considered it in a wider context until recently. But considering my mother can't think for herself and just wants to fit in, it's no surprise that it's common throughout society. The guilt that I've felt at not being able to fit into my family that society put on me did a tremendous amount of damage. All the stories about good sons who call their mother regularly, and some every day. The whole mother's day thing. It was so hard to think clearly and objectively. It's pretty disgusting when you get a clear view of this stuff as all cults are pretty disgusting. I agree with you that the world would be quite different without this cultism. Just as people who escape cults lead quite different lives to those who remain within the cult. Purging it from my thinking opened me up to all the possibilities in life that I just couldn't see before.

Is there a property bubble in Brazil? There is a huge one here in Australia and our bank's balance sheets are so bloated that any little shock is likely to cause a financial meltdown. We have a huge government also. We are hugely dependent on China buying our resources. Is that familiar at all? There is a strong myth in our country that the nominal right are "good economic managers" which is helped along by the fact that the nominal left just happen to be in power when recessions and crises come along. They are both as incompetent as each other of course because of the failure of central planning.

We don't even know if schools are the best way to educate children. They are basically an idea from, I assume, the 19th century. Right now you are starting to see many different methods being tried, especially with new technology. Is there any reason classes can't be conducted over the internet for example? I think you would be pretty amazed if the free market took over education. It wouldn't just be a case of actual physical schools becoming private. A whole host of different options that people haven't thought of would pop up. And they would probably be more efficient too. If you think back to your own schooling, how many years were wasted? For me, I feel like at least half of my schooling was a complete waste and totally unnecessary and even detrimental in many ways. I think an important part is to take away the idea that going to a physical school should be compulsory. Because if you don't you are just handing over a public monopoly to a private cartel basically.

1) The whole financial system is really about who owes who what. What debts are denominated in is not that important at the end of the day. What is important is when you have a group of people who can manipulate the value of what the debts are denominated in. So yes, it is important. People have done work and are owed debts right throughout society. The government is a group in society. 2) See above. 3) Yes. Because all that money will be used to pay for things. If people don't get that money their quality of life will drop. Many people are under the assumption that they will be payed what they have been "promised". Few think about the consequences of this or whether it is mathematically possible or not or who actually gave them these promises (corrupt lying politicians that break promises all the time). There will come a time when the people paying that money (younger people) have to pay astronomical taxes to afford it and will say no. Or else inflation will kill the value of those promises or something like that. One thing we do know is that they won't get the full value they have been promised one way or another. 4) In the short run yes. In the long run it would obviously be greatly beneficial to write off debt because there wouldn't be any need to service it and more money would be available for spending and investment. But many institutions and countries hold those bonds as investments. The value of those investments would drop to 0. Many pension funds hold those bonds also. Imagine if your invested money took a huge hit or even went to 0. I expect also, that if the market got a whiff of it, (Obama wouldn't suddenly do it, there would be consultations with advisers and it would leak out) then the value would start to drop immediately and you would get a crisis before Obama could put pen to paper. 5) Theoretically yes. In fact they are creating billions every month right now. But there will be consequences. Dumping 17 trillion all at once on the market would result in the market convulsing imo. They are getting away with the current amount at least to some degree. Whether that continues remains to be seen... That's a very succinct way of putting it. And also, shows in one sentence how we are all at risk in today's banking environment and also that we have no way of determining what level of risk we want to take. The banks just go ahead with government's blessing and try to make as much as possible with our money.

My experience is that reality doesn't work on these type of people. My mother is a complete hysterical narcassist and I tried using rational arguments for years. It doesn't work. It may in the moment, but these kind of people just see it as an attack and hold a grudge. They have intimate knowledge of you, if mother or father, and will use any little thing to attack you at any moment and if you still have your empathy you will feel pain. i don't know if you are suggesting going on the attack, or using their tactics against them or whatever, but if you are I would suggest it's not a good idea. It's literally getting into the mud with the pig. Even if you win, which is unlikely, you will end up as dirty as the pig. My experience, is that this is a no-win situation. I don't really have any good advice for the OP. I would suggest maybe just coming up with a long-term plan if nothing short-term seems viable. Maybe slowly squirelling money away, spending as little time with them as possible, and just working towards the goal of freeing yourself. Like the prisoner slowly digging a tunnel to freedom but still having to put up with the sadistic guards every day.

Are you familiar with Bitcoin? It is not Gold, nor tangible in any way. Does that make it fake and invalid? What about Gift vouchers that you can use at stores? They are just paper. This is a funny thing about money that a lot of goldbugs tend to miss. It is in fact more an abstract concept than a physical thing. Gold has traditionally been used as money because it was a medium that had a limited supply. In this sense Fiat money can work as long as the issuer can be trusted to keep the supply relatively stable. Unfortunately, the trust that people place in government's and by extension, their central banks, has been well and truly proven to be unfounded. But just because money doesn't have a physical backing doesn't automatically make it worthless. Money's value rests in it's utility to people. I think in a free market with competing currencies we probably could have had good private issuers of fiat money. Alas, that wasn't the world that came to be. Governments took over and have pretty much had an iron fist around the issuance of money ever since. The value of money ultimately resides not in the money itself but in the goods and services that can be traded for it. You could have 50 tons of gold, but if you were on a desert island, what good would it do you? Money is tool that facilitates trade efficiently. Ultimately, all humans are working and providing products and services for each other. Which makes the manipulation of money all the more insidious.

The entire issue really is unrestrained credit creation. There are certain restraints upon how much credit can be created. One of them is Gold. If you say that Gold has to be a certain fraction of a bank's reserves then the bank can only extend credit so far before it comes up against this limitation. The next one is the interest rate. As more credit is extended and the money supply inflates, people naturally demand higher amounts of interest to offset this. This is why the Fed took over the setting of the interest rates. Instead of the interest rate's being set by the market, what happens today is that the Fed creates money and uses it to buy debt in the open market, thus holding interest rates below the point that the market would set. Thus, the two big constraints on credit creation have been effectively neutered. What subsequently happens is that the credit creation becomes so great that the market eventually just says enough basically and you end up with a deflationary financial crisis. Instead of letting it play through, the Fed has gone to insane lengths of money printing to keep interest rates low and keep credit creation going. It's now just a question of whether we get an even larger deflationary crisis than 2008, since debt levels are now much higher than then, or whether the Fed prints the money into oblivion trying to keep interest rates down and hyperinflation ensues. And that's what the big debate on the internet is all about.

Further to what has been said above Yes, bank runs occurred before the federal Reserve. Just as bad businesses have gone bankrupt right throughout history, so too have poorly run banks. It's a fact of life. By protecting banks from bad management the Fed has fostered a general culture of recklessness amongst banks. Why work too hard to successfully run a bank when you have the Fed backstopping you and protecting you from failure? This culture has built up over time, along with bank regulations written by bankers for the most part, to the point where it now threatens to bring down the entire system rather than just one or two banks every now and again. The facts are that if bankers can pass on the risks to a third-party they will do, because the more risk they can take on the more reward they will get. The government is the third-party. Of course the people in government are not themselves responsible and it all get's thrown on the taxpayer ultimately. Because the bank problems have been built up into a systemic problem, it is easier to scare people into bailing them out. Whether full or fractional reserve banking is practiced in a free society is open to debate. One thing that we can be sure of, is that fractional banking in a free society will not be practiced on the scale that it is today because the risks are just too great and the market would find them unacceptable. When you have the choice to put your money in a safe bank or a very risky bank, which would you pick? There essentially are no non-risky banks today due to the federal cartelization of the banking industry through the central bank. Personally I don't have a problem with the Fractional Reserve concept, but I have huge problems with how it is practised today. The government involvement in banking is the problem, not fractional banking itself.

Back before I got interested in FDR, anarchism and all that, back when I was lying to myself that I could be happy to live amongst the muggles, I used to enjoy the World Cup. Today, I can't think of much worse. It just looks like cults competing to see which cult is the best. I don't have anything against professional sport but the nationalism on display, not to mention all the "it's everybody's dream to play for their country" being spouted by pampered idiots is just unbearable. What's the difference between that and your standard religious cult? It's all just religion when you get down to it.

I recently thought up this simple way to convey the GFC using analogy and was looking for comments/criticism. So, let's say there is this guy who is doing really well for himself. He is a real high-flyer, he's spending money and enjoying life. Then let's say for whatever reason the money dries up, he loses his job, whatever. He's down in the dumps. It's his own personal recession if you like. So people look at the guy and say "how can we help this guy get back on his feet?" Then the answer comes. "I know, we'll give the guy a credit card with a huge limit. And because we know he doesn't have much money incoming, we'll drop the interest rate below what it normally is so that he can service the debt". Over the next few years the guy is back to normal spending money on his credit card and enjoying life. He's having his own personal boom if you like. Do you know where the story ends? Well, eventually he reaches the limit on his card and is unable to borrow any more. This is his personal credit crunch if you like. Now he can't spend the money to keep up his lifestyle, but he still has a huge debt to service. But he was using borrowings to help manage the debt. Eventually he reaches a point where the debt can't be managed anymore. Now he is in his own personal financial crisis. End of story. The difference collectively is that when the financial crisis arrives where society as a whole is unable to even service the debts any more, it is not so much the borrowers problem as the banks problem. I don't know exactly how the old adage goes but it's something like "if you owe the bank a million dollars you have a problem, if you owe the bank a billion dollars the bank has a problem". Hence, banking crisis.