Frank Ogden (Dr. Tomorrow) likes to be provocative. Somehow I get the
feeling that he won't be among those demonstrating against the FTAA in
Quebec!
Bob
SEPARATE ECONOMY & STATE
01 Oct 2000
For centuries, during the so-called "Dark
Ages", the Roman church ruled the known
world of Westerners. The technology of the
day, the printing press created by Gutenberg
around 1450, started stealing some of the
power that was Rome. The freedom to read
and pray to thine own god had arrived. This
was an unusual freedom. because basically it
was a first. It grew over the centuries to the
freedom to be free of any religion if so
desired.
Time marched on. Eventually, in 1776, the
American Revolution woke the world to the
further potential and possibilities of the human
spirit -- political freedom. The United States
made the entwining of church and state illegal.
No longer could the church impose rules
beyond theological matters. This was The
Second Freedom.
Is The Third Freedom peeping over the human
horizon? The freedom and separation of
economy from the state? If power corrupts
and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then
the formerly free power of the state has run
out of control. The power to organize and
administer the lives of many now restricts the
livelihood of those who create wealth and
jobs that lead the economy onward and
upward.
An apparent law of Nature seems to be
setting its own regulations: "a country that is
not fair to its rich, will soon be too broke to
be
fair to its poor." Draconian taxes on the rich
(in Canada that's anyone earning US$40,000
a year!) move, taking wealth, expertise and
jobs-creating ability with them. Successful
Canadians are taxed more than the Egyptian
pharaohs taxed their slaves.
The United Nations started off with 48
countries in 1948. Current membership totals
187 (roughly three more a year over the past
50 years), with another 38, mostly tiny
principalities still agitating to join. Places
and
people like Quebec, Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
Tibet, Tamil Tigers, Natives in the U.S. and
Canada, half of Africa, several provinces in
Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico and elsewhere.
Have you felt the breeze? Something is
happening.
Three decades ago a few daring
entrepreneurs or adventurers tried to set up a
"Free country" on a reef called Minerva, in the
South Pacific. The King of Tonga squelched
them although the force used was little more
than a yell. Recently, New-Utopia (a reef off
the coast of Central America) vanished from
my screen. Another one recently appeared on
the Internet. It's located on a World War II
anti-aircraft concrete platform 10 km (six
miles) off the British coast. It's called:
www.havenco.com They claim to be the
world's smallest principality -- The Principality
of Sealand -- and "will soon be offering the
world's most secure managed co-location
facility" for Internet traffic. "We will be
providing the business structure in the world's
first free-market location".
According to the latest edition of
INTERNETWEEK, "HavenCo will be the
closest place on earth to be in a completely
free, unregulated and untaxed data market."
What's happening? Even the pharaohs knew
that when oppressive taxes caused slaves to
slow down and crop productivity to fall no
matter what happened on the Nile. Have
modern governments fallen into the same
trap?
America was established as a free economy
and that made it great. Now a young guy
does everything an entrepreneurial successful
American is supposed to do and the
government says he is too successful. What
if Bill Gates picks up his marbles and moves
along with most of the 5,000 millionaires on
staff On a trip to the new Valhalla? What if
he decides not to sell his new software to the
U.S. until after the rest of the world has it?
What if this becomes a new virus (or religion)
and the one percent of American taxpayers
who pay one-third of all tax monies follow the
new Pied Piper? What if the five percent
who pay 50 percent of all taxes joins the
march? See where this could lead? The same
bureaucrats are also picking on World Com
and Sprint. Has democracy run its 225-year
course?
Perhaps someone somewhere will attempt
the ultimate and try to make CyberSpace the
only truly free soverign state? Stranger things
have happened.
Remember the 9th Law:
In times of panic, chaos and rapid change, the
bizarre rapidly becomes acceptable.
Things like the separation of economy and
state.
Now you know how the Pope felt in The
Dark Ages.
What do you think triggered the
Renaissance?
Source: <http://www.cyberdenone.com/digital_diary_05.html>
--
http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/
