Thomasio

@Torero I guess it gets too long to go through all of it with quotes, also I agree with quite a lot of what you say, so let me focus on a few things. The state cannot print money, only the FED can. The FED is a privately owned bank, they give loans to the state and they charge the state interest on it. If the state was printing money itself, the state wouldn't have any national debt. The reason why it's organized like that is, because a state that prints its own money would easily cause runaway inflation, while a state that has to "ask" a private bank for a loan, will get that loan only if the private bank estimates they will get the loan paid back. There's even loads of proof for this problem, in countries like Argentina where the state frequently prints itself into hyper inflation. Therefore it's not the state stealing money, it's a private bank that charges interest on loans, forcing the state to charge taxes that raise the money required to pay the interest, or in other words, a private bank is stealing from the people through the help of (bribed) politicians. It kinda puzzles me, how you can blame someone completely drowned in debt for stealing from you. Isn't it absolutely obvious that the ones stealing are the ones who end up with your money in their hands? If you would take the politicians out of the picture, the thieves won't go away and I'm quite sure they would find new ways to keep the stealing going, through media propaganda like global warming and other stuff. To my mind the only way to stop the stealing would be politicians that cannot be corrupt, but I will admit, I don't have the slightest clue, how we could achieve that, because corruption is something like the foundation of politics. Heiner Flassbeck never was a politician, he was (for a lack of a better word) an accountant and an advisor, supposed to check the numbers of the Ministry of Finance and give them advice of how to proceed. He was the first pointing out that southern Europe would go bankrupt, but at first he mentioned that only internally within the Ministry. He got kicked out of his job, because politicians didn't want to hear about his prediction, because they didn't like the reason he gave of why this was happening. After that he went public with his predictions and he has become one of the harshest critics of politics, especially the economic policies of the state. He has gained quite some popularity in Europe, because his predictions have come true near precisely. Unfortunately almost all his work is in German, but here is a short part of his ideas in english, from a conference in Italy: from time 15:45 on If you look into the latest press releases from the IMF and compare to what the IMF said 20 years ago, you will see, even the IMF has recently reversed its ideas and now adopted most of Flassbeck's theories. If you believe there could be a state in the world, where the total balance of the 4 groups, private households, businesses, state and foreign countries, savings and debt don't add up to zero, give me an example where it's different, I don't know of a single one. The calculation is quite simple, if you have access to the data. Take all the savings private households have anywhere, in investments like the stock market, account balance in the bank, pension plans and all that, subtract the debt they have for car loans, student loans, their homes and everythng and you get to a total for that group, which shows they are either net savers or net debtors. Do the very same calculation for the other 3 groups, find out which group is a net saver and which group is a net debtor. Add up all 4 groups and the result is zero. I'm not going into your claim return on investment would be different from interest, I guess we won't get to common ground on that one, so let's skip that and talk about the things we might find common ground in.

There is no such thing. In fact there can't be any such thing. Christians argue in circles, god exists, because the bible says so and the bible is correct because the bible says so. Other than that, there's the god of the gaps, where Christians argue, you can't explain this and that, therefore god must have done it, therefore god must exist. Not only can't there be any Christian authority who agrees with my statement, there literally can't be any Christian authority, because they don't have any proof either. They claim to have proof, but all they do is argue in circles and fill in gaps. There isn't the slightest bit of evidence for any religion, which is quite logic, simply because if there were evidence, science could verify it, set up experiments that reproduce and verify the proof for an overnatural existence and everybody would believe it, because it wouldn't require faith anymore. As soon as anyone would come up with the slightest bit of evidence for a god, be sure, he'd get the nobel prize.

By the very definition of religion there can't be any kind of proof for the existence of a god, simply because if there was any proof, it wouldn't be a matter of faith anymore, there would be no belief needed, one could rely on facts. The fact that there are no two believers in the world, throughout the past as well as in the present as well as in all future, who believe literally the precise same things, proves in itself, that even IFFFFF at least one of them was correct, the probability that any given specific human could be just that one is indefinately small and it allows the conclusion, even IFFFF there was a god and an afterlife and a heaven and a hell and all that, the max amount of people in heaven would be ONE SINGLE person and if that one hasn't been born yet, heaven will be empty for the time being. All the others neccessary believe in partially wrong things, therefore can't go to heaven. . . . . . Just for the fun of it: An atheist, lets call him Fred, has died and to his surprise he finds himself in the afterlife, in front of a huge gate. He wasn't a believer and he has committed several sins throughout his life, so he is quite sure, he'll be put in hell. But when the gate opens for him he finds inside a gigantic park, a lovely small river flowing through fields of green grass, lovely trees provide just the right amount of shade, the sun is shining just right, perfect temperature for a gorgeous walk in the park. A bit puzzled Fred walks on and gets to a little wooden booth, where some guy inside is serving drinks out of the window. Fred approaches the guy and asks him: "What is this place, how did I get here and who are you? The guy replies: "You're dead, this is hell and I'm the devil." Fred is completely puzzled and asks: "But hell is supposed to be punishment for sins and all that?" The devil replies: "I know, but that's just rumors from earth, not true, enjoy your eternal life in hell ........ would you like a drink?" Fred is stunned and speechless, he walks away and explores the area, but other than even more lovely terrain, with some impressive mountain ranges in the distance, he cannot find any downside, it's all just great. People walking around, everybody looking just great, pretty girls, handsome guys, everybody enjoying their time, and all that. Then, after an hour walk, Fred comes to a gigantic building. Thick concrete walls, no windows, a very massive steel door with half a dozen heavy locks and a tiny little peephole in it. Fred walks over and looks into the peephole. Inside he sees precisely what one would imagine as hell, rivers of lava all over the floor, clouds of yellow vapor floating around, loads of people burning and screaming and all that. Fred walks back to the wooden booth, where the devil is still serving drinks. Fred screams: "You devil, now I know the truth! You just wanted to give me an illusion, so my pain will be even greater afterwards, right?" The devil replies: "Nope, I told you the truth, you may enjoy your eternal life here." Fred points to the distance: "You can't fool me anymore, what about that huge building down there? That's where you will put me in soon, right?" The devil replies: "Ah, don't pay attention to that, those are the Catholics, they want it like that."

I guess it's an either or question. Either you have a free country, where anyone can come in and do whatever he likes, or you have an organized country where decisions are made one way or another. If you want any kind of decision made that effects anyone else, including where the shall be borders and how they shall be protected (whether through democratic votes or enforced through dictatorship, or whatever other form of decision making, makes no difference on the fact that some kind of organization is required) you need some kind of ...... well, I guess the word is government, even though it may be a different form of it. In a truly free society there can't be borders that separate people from one another only because they are born a few miles apart. There can't be a border preventing a diligent Mexican from making money while a lazy American enjoys his freedom behind a fence, same as a successful American employer can't be prevented from hiring a diligent foreigner by a fence, because the very existence of the fence means, it's no real freedom. Of course, in a free society you would have free movement of people, which would automatically become also free movement of labor, meaning whoever is able to work, will move to wherever he sees the best chances to make the most money out of his skills. In the long run that can only lead to two possible situations: 1) If you allow private property rights, if you allow every owner to defend his property and deny entry to anyone he sees as a danger, which is literally anyone, because the definition of who is a potential danger is up to the owner of the property. You wouldn't have any public property, because you wouldn't have a public organization that keeps public places public, therefore there isn't an option to keep any given piece of land from becoming privately owned property and be sure, after a few decades there wouldn't be one single cm² in the country not owned by some private individual. On start increasing inequality will separate the diligent from the lazy, the diligent will accumulate wealth, buy property from it, declare it private and lock out the lazy, because those will be seen as potential thieves. Once locked out, the descendants of the poor cannot get into society anymore, no matter how diligent they might be, because all possible property, especially land is already owned by the descendants of the previously diligent. At this point society tips over. Not the diligent will accumulate wealth, but the wealthy will accumulate more wealth. Independent of their skills, the power of wealth and the posession of property will allow the rich to hire the diligent poor, pay them a starvation wage and exploit their skills, just like it is today. Once in a while one or another of the most diligent poor might make his way into the rich society, but the vast majority of the poor will remain poor, no matter their skills and todays argument "they are just too lazy" would reappear, even though it will be as invalid as it is today. Doesn't require any government, the power of property rights and the desperate situation of the starving poor will have the precise same effect. 2) If you do not allow private property rights, or if you grant access to any property for anyone, even if he came only to steal. People would start moving as soon as anywhere else in the world wages are just a little bit higher than in their home town, or if they see a chance to steal something of value from somewhere. All societies, all cultures, all religions would mix completely and wages would balance out near precisely at world GDP divided by population, which at current level would be roughly $850 per month per person. With government and fiat money abolished, I'd estimate a MUCH lower average income, but that would also involve a much different life, so it's quite hard to speculate on how much it would be and what lifestyle that would allow. If you don't want either of these, if you want any kind of organization, even if it was only to achieve an intermediate solution of the above 2 options, you already need some rudimentary form of government and you would have to pay taxes so they could get paid for their work on organizing things and the argument of the government stealing from the people would reappear as soon as anyone notices that the rich use their wealth to bribe the government into organizing things the way the rich want it.

I didn't say what my opinion was, in fact I'm kinda trying to make up my mind what to think of all the different contradicting statements I hear from all sides. On the one hand I find the calculation of Heiner Flassbeck quite convincing, when he points out that the total balance of all savings and all debt must always add up to zero, because his numbers clearly show they do just that. (Those numbers aren't just some numbers he made up, but the official numbers he was working with, while he was a secretary of state for the German Ministry of Finance, they only kicked him out after he tried to warn them, that the German policy of eternal trade surplus would ruin the rest of Europe, which by now we know, it actually did.) I bet if you look up the numbers for any other country, you will see the very same zero balance between all savings and all debt. Depending on who puts the numbers together, you might find different values of who has how much, but in the overall total you will see a zero. On the other hand I find Flassbeck's solution rather impossible. The fact that everyone wants interest I don't doubt, because if that wasn't true there wouldn't be banks, but exclusively money services like Paypal. Of course there are people doing something for the fun of it, but nobody invests in a business, if he doesn't expect to get more out of it than he puts in. Whether or not the actual gain comes from launching your own business, or lending the money to another person who then launches a business, makes no difference, the fact stands, if it weren't for a return on investment, which is just another term for interest, nobody would launch a business. The vast majority of private households bring their money to a bank, because they have only so small amounts, it isn't worth any other form of investment. The bank then bundles a package and gives it as a loan to a debtor who pays interest on it, out of which the bank takes its fees and forwards a smaller interest to the savers. If there was no interest paid by anyone and/or if no one needed a loan anymore, banks would have to cover their expenses by charging the savers a fee, which means savers wouldn't bring their money to a bank anymore, but store it at home, where it doesn't cost any and that would kick all banks out of business, because if nobody brings them the money they could lend to debtors, they cannot give any loans to potential debtors, especially if you abolish fiat money they could print. No matter how small the interst rate, there has to be an interest rate or else banks couldn't exist. So does your picture of a free society include the abolishion of the banking system, or how do you see banks survive? IFFF you see banks survive through interest rates charged on loans, you're right back at square one, where all savings and all debt always add up to zero and with the state out of the picture you have to name the group, either private households or businesses that shall become the debtors.

I got into this discussion under Atheism and Religion, but I guess it's a bit off topic there, so let me introduce my point here again. Anyone who has money, however much or little of it, wants to get interest paid on it. Whether invested in hard assets like real estate or plain cash in the bank, the general idea is that wealth by itself, invested in the right way should gain value over time and the gain should be greater than the inflation of fiat money is. If you build a house and find someone to rent it, you will set the rent to a level where in the long run you get a return on investment and if you build a factory to produce something, you will set the prices of your products to a level where in the long run you make a profit. Or in short, no matter where you invest your money, you want interest paid on it. Of course there will be cases where this doesn't work out, people as well as companies go bankrupt all the time, but overall on average it's supposed to work out, at least for the smart ones, so let's focus on the average. Precious metals will near automatically even out inflation, so from an interest point of view that could be considered "neutral", nothing more than a protection against inflation. Cash in the bank that doesn't get interest paid is identical to storing cash at home, about the same as precious metals, only with the additional risk of devaluation through inflation. If you want interest paid on something, you have to find a debtor who pays that interest, money in the bank by itself doesn't gain anything, until someone takes the money out of the bank, invests it into something that produces profit out of which he can pay back with interest. If you rent a house, you become in fact the debtor of the landlord and if you take a loan from a bank to buy a car, you become the debtor of someone who has put his money into that bank. Or in short, except of precious metals, ALL savings, ALL investments require a debtor paying the interest. In a state there are only four groups that can either save money and get interest or take loans and pay interest. 1) Private people or households 2) Businesses 3) The state 4) Foreign countries Even though within each group there may be individuals going against the stream, it is safe to argue, if one group as a whole on average saves more than they owe, another group will automatically on average be a debtor. Traditionally private households save 10-20% of their income for retirement. Traditionally super rich individuals cannot spend as much as they make, meaning they can't help accumulating more and more savings. Even though private households take loans all the time, overall on average private households are net savers. Businesses, especially big business, with all the tax evasion strategies they have found, with production moved to China, registered address of the company on the Cayman Islands, plain fraud like several banks got caught with throughout history, have at least in the western world become net savers as well. Not sure about the numbers in the US, but here is a graph from Germany: http://www.flassbeck-economics.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Ehntssalden1.png Haushalte (blue) = private households Unternehmen (green) = businesses Staat (yellow) = the state Ausland (light blue) = foreign countries All numbers in % of GDP. I believe on the top two lines, private households and businesses, the numbers in the US won't be much different, only the bottom two will be reversed. Where in Germany they have a huge export surplus allowing the state to have become a slight net saver recently while foreign countries take on ALL the debt, the US has a trade deficit meaning foreign countries are net savers and the state takes on ALL the debt. Remember, overall the numbers ALWAYS add up to zero. Concerning the underlying problem, there isn't really much of a difference, whether the own state takes on the debt or foreign countries do, the problem is always that net savings in private households and businesses REQUIRE some state to take on the debt. In Europe they now have the problem that after foreign countries have taken on all the debt from German savers for the last 16 years, about ALL countries except of Germany itself are near bankrupt. As a recipe against this, how foreign countries shall get out of their debt, the IMF as well as the European Union are now requesting that foreign countries cut spending and reduce their debt. This allows the conclusion, foreign countries can be the required debtor for savings of private households and businesses only for a limited time, until they are bankrupt. In the US, they never went for the option of shifting the debt onto foreign countries, therefore the problem that this would not work for long doesn't exist in the US, but the state is near bankrupt in the US, therefore the state itself has to cut spending and reduce debt. The BIG problem arising now is the question: Who shall become the new debtor paying interest? The numbers MUST add up to zero, so if the current debtors cut their debt, there has to be found another debtor, or savings would disappear at the same rate debt gets reduced. If you go for the libertarian idea of abolishing the state, there are only two groups left in the game and that leaves only three options: 1) Private households must be forbidden to save for retirement and must be forced to take ever increasing amounts of loans for nothing but consumption. 2) Businesses must be forced to run an ever increasing deficit, through investing more in production than they make profit. 3) Neither of them can on average get any interest paid, meaning interest on loans must become illegal. Even if you don't abolish the state, as long as you request the state to reduce its debt, you're facing the problem, that either private households or businesses must become on average net debtors, or neither of them could get any interest paid anymore. This doesn't mean I would be in favor of one or another solution, this doesn't mean I would know the solution, it just means I see an unsolvable problem and I'm curious to find out, whether or not you guys have a solution to this. As a final note let me add: Heiner Flassbeck, a professor of economics in Germany, the author of many articles about economics in German and provider of the above graph suggests as the only possible solution, to confiscate capital from businesses and tax businesses to much, that they cannot survive without taking loans, investing and expanding, but he doesn't explain how that could be done without all businesses moving to China.

The IMF just like ANY other similar organization have just ONE recipe for countries they get to. That's cut wages, cut spending, cut debt. As explained above, a policy that tries to cut debt EVERYWEHERE will on the other side of the equasion ALWAYS leave a growing amount of savings that cannot find a debtor anymore who would pay interest on it. That leads to poverty at old age and all the other problems explained above. So yes, theoretically the IMF or the World Bank COULD help, but only if they change their policies on a most fundamental level, meaning FIRST they have to find debtors for private savings, THEN they can apply other policies. Funny part is, IFFF they found a debtor other than the state itself, there wouldn't be a problem anymore, all problems would solve themselves, no further policies needed, simply because once a debtor has been found who pays interest on savings, the state doesn't have to run a debt anymore, it doesn't even have to raise taxes, it would automatically get more tax out of the same tax level, out of which it could pay its debt until all debt is paid and the extra money could be used for tax cuts for ALL people, not just the super rich.

Politicians can bail you out, only if they find a source from where they take the bailout money. If in the process the value of that money goes down, the whole bailout becomes useless, so money printing isn't an option. Additional state debt will get the state even closer to bankruptcy, which is what the rich want to prevent, because it endangers their wealth, as explained above. The only other source of money, the working people are by now at the edge of poverty, a few pennies more tax might tip them over into civil war, so not really a solution either. Or in other words, just like the mafia who can't do anything but murder debtors who cannot pay, politics cannot find additional bailout money indefinately, sooner or later they will get themselves into a civil war.

If there are no official rules, doesn't then money power automatically rule, simply because the ones who have the money have no reason to adjust to anything? Wouldn't money buy them whatever they want to have, regardless how immoral that would be and regardless how many free thinkers would not like it? Wouldn't money simply hire enough "soldiers" to enforce the will of the rich on the rest of people, whether the free thinkers like it or not?

I kinda doubt that would work out. Hedges are nothing more than bets of one rich person or business against another, the poor aren't involved in this game (other than with the pension fund). So if ALL the rich people and corporations lost 50% of all the cash they own, hedges wouldn't get paid either, simply because the ones losing that bet would be bankrupt and not able to pay. So you might end up with half the rich losing everything and the other half get out without a loss, still in the overall picture, 1/2 of all wealth of the super rich would be gone. The obvious downside would then be, instead of the top 0.1% literally owning the country, the top 0.05% would own the country, meaning with even less competition on the top, society would get even closer to dictatorship.

The question is not what happened in the past, or what the status is today, I fully agree things are pretty bad right now and society keeps going down the drain. The question is, how do you prevent this from getting even worse? Even if you argue the state mostly or completely doesn't prosecute the wrong doing of the rich, that doesn't answer how a stateless society would prevent this wrong doing. After all it's not the state that keeps the wealth to itself, the state only makes the laws that allow the rich to steal from the poor. So if you dismantle the state, that says nothing at all about how you prevent the rich from making new laws that allow them to steal even more. As long as you do not confiscate the stolen wealth from the rich, how would you get this wealth into the hand of its rightful owners? If you honor property rights and leave ALL the oil fields, all the refineries, all the other energy sources in the country to a handful of super rich corporations, despite the fact that you yourself say, they have stolen it from the producers, meaning they do NOT own it morally, how do you prevent them from dictating the price of energy to the poor? If I got that right, you actually want to get away from democracy, not really sure if I got that absolutely right, but I have the impression you want money power to actually rule, which is literally what I'm afraid of, because precisely this money power has bought the political class in order to make laws in their favor. If I got that right, then you liberate the rich from even having to bribe politics, rather than spending part of their money on politics, they could use all of it for their propaganda in the media and things would get far worse.

Yes, but then there isn't enough to pay the national debt, unless you take the rest through one of the measures I suggested before, where IFF you take #4 the ENTIRE bankruptcy is almost identical to an extra tax on the rich, only that through bankruptcy it comes all in once, a confiscation equal to a 50% tax on all private cash above 1 million, instead of my suggested 5% for 10 years.

Before I'm willing to believe in a dictator that makes me live for an eternity under his regime and even requests that during life on earth I already accept his dictatorship including a ton of disgusting commandments, I rather spend my life on earth in moral freedom, because then at least I have had a lifetime on earth without a dictator above me.

State bankruptcy is identical to confiscating the money from all those who own state bonds. That's for a large part the same super rich ones that would pay the extra tax I suggested in #4, so no real big deal on that one. But for the HUGE downside of a state bankruptcy loads of funds, like the pension fund are invested in state bonds, meaning after a state bankruptcy a huge part of all pensions couldn't be paid anymore.

Very good presentation, I like it. There's just one point in the story that makes me believe your ultimate conclusion doesn't work. If I understood it right, you do not plan on confiscating the property of those who currently own almost all the wealth (after they stole it from the producers), the top 1% or so. What makes you believe a switch to no state and free market would achieve anything but the complete overtaking of society by the super rich? However much corrupt the state may be, it's still the only thing we have that prevents the super rich from exceeding all moral boundaries. If you dismantle the state, there's nothing that would prevent an even greater theft, where the rich rob the poor and where the rich take over the tiny little rest of independent media we still have to make the propaganda complete. How would you prevent the super rich from buying all internet providers and censor all forums and blogs they don't like? The wealthiest people in the country, like the Koch brothers are in favor of dismanteling the state, so how on earth could that be good for the people they are currently stealing from? Isn't it as logic as can be, if the rich themselves run heavy propaganda towards their goal of less government that the precise opposite of that might be better for the "normal" population? Since so many people in this forum seem to believe in the idea of a stateless society, I'm quite sure I must have overlooked a major point and I would love to know that one. So what I'm I missing? Whats the powerful thing coming together with the abolishion of the state, that at the same time takes away money power from the thieves? Or what else would prevent money power from taking over society?

No, retirement isn't impossible in a free society, with or without interest. Without interest, meaning without a sufficient amount of debtors, it means retirement will mean a lowering of your lifestyle, maybe to half your previous lifestyle or something like that. It means during your retirement you will use up what you saved during your life and there will be nothing left for your children to inherit, unless you die way before the expected date. It also means, most banks as well as most financial services, such as pension funds won't be needed anymore, money transfer services like Paypal will be sufficient, simply because there is no point for a private saver to put his money into a place that has expenses and charges the saver a fee, it will be cheaper storing your money at home and if you don't trust in fiat money you can buy gold or something instead. Government debt is the unavoidable consequence of giving tax breaks for businesses, because every penny higher profit for a business means, that business needs less loans, and that means there will be private savers leftover who cannot find a debtor for their savings, which either requires the state to jump in and take on the debt, or leave the saver with no interest paid on his savings. As you will surely know, we're at a point where we have BOTH, huge government debt AND next to no interest on private savings, which is the logic thing that happens once the state itself exceeds its debt limit. In other words, this national debt was from start a bad idea, should have never even begun, but the ONLY way of avoiding national debt would have been finding another source where interest on private savings could come from. Given todays situation, there are a number of possible things that could be done: 1) The Japanese way, just keep printing money to infinity. Downside of that, as you can see in Japan, is eternal deflation and depression. 2) Take the money printing out of private hands and into state property, THEN print 19 trillion dollars and pay out the national debt. Downside of that would be runaway inflation. 3) Find a new natural debtor who will take on the necessary debt that pays interest on private savings. As I explained above, that can only be the businesses and the only way to get them there would be a gigantic tax increase on businesses, so heavy that they lose ALL their profits from the last 20 or 30 years and still have to pay more taxes than they make profit, so they require loans to expand as their only means to survive. Those taxes would pay the national debt and give private savers a debtor at same time. Downside of that would be, as you can tell by what happened in the last 30 years already, businesses would move out of the state, to places with lower tax rates. 4) A one time tax on the super rich. That's the easiest way to do it, causing the least harm to society, but of course it's the most repelled argument, because precisely those super rich who would have to pay, own the media, meaning they run the propaganda of why this shouldn't be done. Not sure about the numbers in the US, so I can give you only the numbers from Germany, but I believe the numbers in the US can't be much different. In Germany private people own roughly 5 trillion EUR in plain cash, EXCLUDING real estate, cars, or any other hard property, where the richest 10% of Germans own roughly 4 trillion of those 5 trillion, while the lower 90% have their money in hard assets like their own house. Germanys national debt is just over 2 trillion, so if the richest 10% of Germans (that would be those making over 1 million EUR per year) would pay a 5% extra tax ONLY on the cash they own, the national debt would be gone within 10 years. 5% is LESS than what those super rich make in interest on their money per year, meaning they wouldn't lose any wealth, they might not even notice the extra tax, they would only gain a bit less for a limited time of 10 years. I know, I know, the counter argument to a tax on the rich is all about fairness towards the oh so hard working rich people who earned their wealth through hard work, but then you may aks those super rich, if the prefer runaway inflation or a state bankruptcy or a possible civil war in which ALL their money would disappear over night. If they don't prefer that, you will get them to agree that paying 5% for 10 years is FAR better than ANY possible alternative. Either way and no matter what solution a state will go for, as long as they don't find a natural debtor for private savings or make interest on loans illegal, the process of accumulating new national debt would start over right after. Or in other words, giving businesses further tax breaks or not undoing the tax break they got already and still allowing private people to save for retirement will NEVER solve ANYTHING, not in our current system nor in a free society, not with fiat money nor with a gold standard.

Easy to explain. First consider, what if you just put a part of your money aside for a pension plan, but you don't get any interest paid on your savings. If you consider an average life expectancy of 80 years, a start of your money earning after school and university, at the age of 25-30, a retirement age of 65 and the fact that on start of your carreer you won't make enough money to save any for retirement, maybe even have to pay back a student loan, you have to plan on saving roughly 30% of your income on a pension plan so you can keep your lifestyle up after you retire. Considered inflation and the fact that due to medical expenses at old age you will most likely need more money later on, while that money has less value, you would have to save maybe 50% or even more of your income on a pension plan. If you take inflation out of the picture, by going back to a gold standard or something like that, you still need to save about 50% of your income. If you take the fact that our life expectancy increases by about 3 months per year and if you plan on retiring in 30 years, you end up having to save about 75% of your income on a pension plan. Do you know of anyone doing that? I don't. Gambling at the stock market just doesn't do it, because that's a zero balance gamble, for anyone who gains there's someone else losing, so unless you like the risk of not having any money later in exchange for the option to be rich later, feel free to do that, but a secure pension plan is something else. That's why everybody tries to get a secure interest paid on his savings, that at least evens out inflation. Usually most people expect to get out more than inflation, so that saving 10-20% of your income during your carreer will be enough to afford a life after retirement. IFFFF you want any interest paid on your savings, you need to find a debtor who takes your savings and pays it back later on with interest. In ANY society there are only THREE possible sources, who might need a loan and would pay interest on it. 1) Private people 2) Businesses 3) The state Since ALL private people need to save for their pension plans, those don't need a loan, except of their student loans on start and maybe a car and/or a house at the beginning of their carreer, but overall that's not enough, in total private households are net savers. Since a "free society" doesn't have a state that runs increasing debt, that leaves only businesses as a possible source for paying interest. IFFFFF a free society allows businesses through tax breaks and/or not even charging any taxes from start, to make so much profit that they can out of their profits invest and expand without needing loans, nobody pays interest on a loan anymore, interest rates go to zero (as you may know from current interest rates nearly worldwide) and the society goes down the drain, because nobody will be able to save enough for a pension plan anymore unless he is born rich and has from birth (almost) enough money to afford retirement. The fact that this is already in the process of falling apart you can see in details, like the fact that almost all automobile companies have founded their own banks, meaning instead of taking loans to expand their business, they give loans to private people and cash interest, thus even DEcreasing possible sources for private pension plans. Currently there's the state left who takes on the gigantic debt needed to provide the required sources who pay interest on private savings, but if you take that out of the picture, even if you "only" stop increasing national debt, as long as you cannot name some other source who would pay interest on private savings, your society is done.

I believe you got that wrong. Religion is no thread as long as any religious idea is either a minority, or kept under control by things like the US constitution. What religion becomes, once it has the majority and is free to enforce its will on non believers is what you see these days in Saudi Arabia. The fact that 80-90% of all Muslims are peaceful doesn't make any kind of difference, the 10-20% radicals make the laws and the peaceful people close their eyes and quietly go along. That's not a Muslim problem, that's the same with Christians, countless examples in the past show, that Christian religion as well brings wide spread suffering over any population, as soon as it becomes state religion and the harmless peaceful Christians go along with whatever crime their radical leaders commit.

That's where you are completely wrong. In a democracy, whether it works as it should or is influenced by propaganda and corruption, ALL people in a country decide EVERYTHING together. When you elect a government, you elect who shall represent you and fairly obvious that includes the part where you don't agree with the outcome of the elections. Same as all those who don't agree with the part you like, support indirectly through accepting the government the things you like, you have to support the things you don't like, simply because you have to accept the majority opinion. If you don't like this, if you want to live in an environment where exclusively your own opinion counts, you will have to move out, buy yourself an island or something, declare it independent, install yourself as dictator and make the laws you like best, but if all other people would think the same way, I doubt you'd get any citizens moving into your country, because nobody would like your dictatorship, everybody else would prefer his own dictatorship. Unfortunately there are no 7 billion islands available in the world, so one way or another humans have to find a way to get along, where democracy is the best system humans have developped so far. As far as I understand, even a free society is supposed to be somewhat democratically organized, so the fact the US is at war in Syria wouldn't change with a switch to no government and since this US government represents all Americans, including you, you ARE at war in Syria.

I believe the world has gotten itself into a mess where anything one could have done or should have done in the past is no longer an option. Not sure how far back you would have to go to prevent the chain of events from starting, maybe 1953 the overthrowing of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, where the US and the UK wanted to prevent him from restricting western access to Iranian oil, which led to Rezà Pahlavi getting to power, which led to monarchy until again the US overthrew his regime in 1979, which might have been the origin of the hate from the Arabian world towards the US and which led to countless follow up problems up to todays ISIL. Maybe you have to go even further back to the times when the western world colonized and enslaved a big part of Africa. Either way, the situation has grown into a problem, where the western world now faces the decision, either we continue war against an increasing amount of enemies we keep making, until we have eliminated them all (literal genocide), or we pull back and let their revenge come over us. I'm not really sure which of these would be better from a global perspective, because it means death and suffering for millions of people either way. From a western perspective surely it would be "better" if the suffering were some place else, but from a moral point of view it's rather questionable, whether you should apply the force of war to prevent yourself from the revenge to your previous crimes. The moral high ground is definately not in the western world.

The question isn't what's more dangerous, the question is, what's NOT dangerous and there religion isn't on the list.

... and I'm saying reducing political power will increase money power accordingly. However much or little you dismantle the state, the more you enable money to buy whatever it want's to have, including law making. If you dismantle the state, there is no way to prevent money power from taking over, no matter whether you do that slowly or over night. Isn't it obvious enough already? Remember, the total balance of everything in a state MUST be ZERO. Private households are ALWAYS saving part of their income for retirement, meaning there has to be someone in the state taking on just as much debt as the private households save. In the 60s and 70s taxes on businesses were so high that businesses could stay in the profit zone only by continually investing and expanding, which required loans and that's where the savings of the people went. Having these two balance one another, the state could stay out of the game and run a balanced budget. Later on, as soon as taxes on businesses were reduced so they could afford investments out of their profits, businesses didn't need loans anymore, or at least far less than before, which left the state with the unsolvable problem of a balance that MUST equal out to zero. At same time this spare money businesses suddenly had allowed them to buy the media, where a gigantic propaganda machine actually convinced the people (including you libertarians) that the only way to solve the state debt would be even more tax cuts for businesses or even better the abolishion of the state. They didn't say, if businesses get even more tax cuts, or if there are no taxes at all anymore, who shall then take the loans the private households require to even out their savings to a total balance of zero. Completely absurd is the solution Germany found for this. In Germany private households save roughly 10% of their income. Businesses have become net savers as well. The state has recently written into the constitution, it cannot run any additional new debt either and must reduce the national debt over time. The absolutely unavoidable result is, business within Germany was first stagnating, later even going down, the last 16 years have seen slight deflation, while a booming export shifts the burden of the debt onto foreign countries. Somehow the Germans seem to believe, all this credit given to foreign countries will pay their pensions one day, while it's absolutely obvious that the credit given to foreigners is exclusively used to buy German products and doesn't accumulate ANY profits out of which the loans could be paid back one day. Maybe you can answer me that? Every single penny of savings MUST find e debtor who owes that penny, so WHO shall take on the debt of an ever increasing amount of savings of the super rich, who do nothing but exponentially increase their wealth? Or in other words: Do you want to make savings illegal? Maybe you want to declare interest on loans illegal? If not, you have to find someone taking loans in your free society, or else your free world is a logical impossibility.

What I'm trying to say is, IFFFF I understood correct, how you want to switch from our current system to a free society, you will not get what you dream of. As long as you keep the money in the hands it is in right now, you preset the stage for what will happen after that money is free to do whatever its owners like to do. The only way to a truly free society would be if you make an ABSOLUTE clean cut of EVERYTHING on EVERYONE. Declare ALL money worthless, declare ALL property ownerless, down to every single piece of bread you have in your household. Declare ALL business ownerless, all shares of stock worthless and make that WORLDwide. Not sure how you would get from there to decide who obtains ownership of something, without civil war combatting for property, but suppose you could find a fair way, where the diligent become the owners of something and the lazy remain poor. THEN you may get to a level where individual responsibility will be worth something. But I doubt, even you wouldn't want THAT kind of complete cut for a start.

Considered the fact, when I went to school, computers were only in the earliest beginning and in school nobody taught anything about them ..... Considered the fact when I finished school informatics wasn't even on the list of any university ..... Considered the fact except of reading, writing and basic math, NOTHING I learned in school has ever been useful for anything ..... I wouldn't even try for high school again, I would try to bypass the law that says I have to go to school, terminate school right after elementary and go for what I in fact did later on, after I had wasted over 10 years in school, which is learn on my own, research information on my own and mostly learning by doing. My father was an electrician, I learned from him all the basics of electricity as well as some basics of physics, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. My mother was an accountant, I learned from her all about tax laws, tax evasion of big business, how to make your own tax declaration better than any studied professional could and how to legally get away with paying less taxes and I got from her a basic impression of the financial world. Those two things I would learn again. For the rest, I would do near precisely the same things I did, only 10-20 years earlier. Instead of learning english in school for 8 years without memorizing much of it and then having to catch up 20 years later, learning english in chat rooms on the web, I would go to England or the US for a year or two to learn the language by using it in real life. Instead of learning the precise dates of historic events, out of which I remember next to none, I would learn computer technology on my own, just through learning by doing. Instead of learning French in school for 6 years, out of which i remember nothing at all, I would learn programming, rather than learning it 20 years later, but I still would learn it on my own, without any school for it. I would never try to apply for a regular job, let alone taking one and work my ass off for next to minimum wage for 10 years like I did, I would open a computer repair service in the early days and later on I would either become a freelance programmer or I would open a programming school. Financially, under the condition that I wouldn't be able to predict the future value of something better than I could the first time, I wouldn't do anything different than I did, other than making more money through better paid work. I believe for the options I had I did pretty well, even though gambling on things like Bitcoin could have made me rich. I still believe the safe way to go is, just don't accumulate debt, stay ahead of the game, save some money and increase it the safe way. That might be a slow increase where I most likely won't become a millionaire, but it also is a secure way to afford a halfway comfortable life. This ALL changes completely, if I consider I would be in my teens in todays world. Today I would do about everything completely different. I wouldn't learn anything about computers or electricity or any other real world things. If I were in my teens today, I would finish high school and even go to university afterwards, not to learn anything, but to obtain some pieces of paper that say I'm qualified for this and that. I would study financial business and become a trader, meaning someone who takes other peoples money and invests it for them, charging a fee for the service. I wouldn't invest my own money, but I would pretend I do, just to make the people I work for believe I trust in what I'm doing, thus make them trust in me. This way I would be in the only group of people in the whole game who get rich without risk. For leftover money I make and don't need directly to pay my bills, I'd buy gold and silver, absolutely independent of its current value and still independent from its future course I would never sell any, until I retire, where I believe it will have more value than ANY pension plan could ever pay me.

It's actually the other way around. By all studies I've seen from all over the world, divorce rates are higher among religious people, haven't cross checked all results I've seen, but I believe the divorce rate among strong religious people is about twice the rate of less strong and non believers. Unfortunately most of the ones I know are in German and refer to Europe, because I'm German and live in Italy, but here is one from the states: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/impact-of-conservative-protestantism-on-regional-divorce-rates/ I'm tempted to believe that the reason might be a MUCH higher rate of violence from men towards women in religious families, coming from the fact that in religious families many men see women as inferior, while in atheist families the idea of equal rights is more common.