Dear Patrick, > This story truly shows how modern government has become > the largest organized crime racket in the world.
I think you are exactly correct. First of all, the model on which the present system of government is built involves all the pseudo-scientific nonsense of modernism which was touted by the likes of Beardsly Ruml and John Maynard Keynes, with their quaintly brutal notions of "scientific socialism" and wealth re-distribution. Modernism is a failed philosophy. It was de-bunked long ago by Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich Hayek. I think Ludwig von Mises treatise on _Human Action_ not only debunked the mythology of modernism, but provided an enormously important basis for a more rational view of things. My story is symptomatic, and not at all an extreme case. We've all heard and read about really extreme cases, so I won't dwell on these. In their book _PowerShift: Knowledge, Wealth & Violence on the Edge of the 21st Century_ authors Alvin and Heidi Toffler mention the idea of surplus order. As they describe it, surplus order is when thugs come to the door and tear babies out of their screaming parents' arms, haul the parents to jail, revoke passports, kick in doors at 4 a.m., and the like. We've heard of such things in Soviet Russia and also in Soviet America. Surplus order is not the kind of order people need to have in order to do business, keep their property safe, or get the kids home from school without being mugged. Rather, surplus order is of benefit exclusively to those who run the state. It is order they impose for their reasons to support their preferences. The question becomes: what do we do about it? Individually and severally, the divers individuals on this list have a personal interest in avoiding the application of surplus order about our heads and shoulders, rubber truncheons or no. DGCs are part of the solution, IMNSFHO. I would agree that the modern nationalist, socialist welfare and warfare state represents a sort of massive, authorized, authoritarian, and "legitimized" organized crime syndicate, using its judges to apologize for its excesses, using its legislature to make up artificial laws to replace what Frederic Bastiat identified as natural law, and using its militarized police to brutalize anyone who objects prominently. Identifying the problem is part of the process of resolving it, but only a part. You noted: > We really do need some independent form of sovereignty, > whether Atlantian, Texan, or whatever. I think that's true. I worked with the Atlantis Project while I thought it was viable. I checked out all the Republic of Texas groups, and found none of them viable. A very small group of Texans came up with the idea of a constitutional contract: http://www.TexasSovereignty.org/ but that failed for lack of interest. I remain convinced that something better is needed. That's why none of my major endeavors are based in the uSA. I'm still looking for better jurisdictions. To be candid, this issue of jurisdictions is one reason that I prefer GoldMoney to e-gold. I prefer 3PGold on the same issue. E-gold and e-bullion have servers in the USA, have some of major operations based in the USA, and one of these cooperated with at least one SEC subpoena investigation, and I just don't feel confident having the history of my transactions stored on servers at e-gold. The fact that I have never used e-gold to commit a crime is not at all relevant. After all: I never committed a crime while working with Space Travel Services. We had a legal sweepstakes activity. But we were screwed to the wall with a moly bolt anyway. So, doing nothing wrong with e-gold doesn't protect me from all kinds of investigatory harrassment. GoldMoney has servers based in the Channel Island of Jersey, as I understand it. That's superior, because Jersey has its own court system, its own police of sorts, and is not going to just roll over for any USA sourced subpoena without at least a probable cause hearing, I would expect. Which distances things quite a lot. It isn't the case that GoldMoney could be used to hire assassins, though, since Jersey would be very interested in making that stop, and, I would expect, so would the GoldMoney proprietors. I, myself, am against the initiation of force, so I would applaud an appropriate investigation of any use of GoldMoney for killing. > Independence has historically been a bloody affair, True. Though, of course, freedom is the pearl of great price. It is worth a great deal. Sometimes the price is paid in the blood of tyrants, and sometimes in the blood of patriots, but most often in the blood of both. > with some rare exceptions like the secession of Norway > from Sweden, or West Virginia from Virginia. I'm going to assume that the situation with Norway and Sweden was really bloody and terrible, then. You know, West Virginia "seceded" from Virginia during the single bloodiest batch of warfare that the United States and its several states has ever seen. One million and twenty thousand men shed their blood during the "War for Southern Independence." A great many battlefields were in Virginia. > But I am convinced that the next independence can > be achieved peacefully. I am, too. Alvin & Heidi Toffler are not, I think, quite so convinced, as they show in _War & Anti-War_. However, one thing they do mention in that excellent book is the "worry" by USA fedgov officials that there may come in the 21st Century into being some 5,000 new countries. Think of it. Five thousand different sovereign territories. One could be owned and operated by JP May, and another by Jim Davidson, and a third by Patrick Chkoreff, and a fourth by Linda Lovelace, and so forth. >Even the digital gold economy itself is in effect a state > within a state, or rather a state without a state. I think the digital gold economy is exceptionally important, and part of the cure for what ails us. Otherwise, I would not be devoting as much time to it as I have been. It seems to me that, throughout human history, the issue of money has been prominent in economic affairs. The control of money is vital to those who would control other things. A couple of thousand years ago, the issue of the debasement of currency by the Romans was significant enough that a fairly popular prophet could hold up a coin with a Roman emperor's mug on it and say "render unto Rome that which belongs to Rome" and everyone around Him understood this phrase to refer to debased coinage. This same guy was well known for objecting to a certain scam involving the control of currency. Hebrew shekels had not been issued for several centuries, and their supply was fairly scarce. Priests of the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem had conspired with certain vendors of exchange to fix the exchange rates at a very high level, limiting competition. In order to make sacrifices that the Temple priests would find acceptable, you had to use shekels. And you couldn't get them without paying an exorbitant exchange rate. So, in goes our hero and topples the money changer tables, declaiming that His father's house was not built as a den for thieves. More recently, Nathan Rotschild said that if he were to control a country's currency, he wouldn't care who had control of its laws, for he would soon control them. And so forth. Money is important. It is a very useful tool. It is too important to leave in the hands of US Treasury bureau-rats and Federal Reserve System apparatchiks. The digital gold economy represents individuals taking control of the destiny of their own money, and choosing a better approach. Better money means greater privacy, more certainty in economic transactions (therefore a lower transaction cost), and greater conservation of wealth. >Thanks for letting us benefit from your experience, Jim. Thanks for your kind words, Patrick. I was very pleased to share my experiences with PlanetGold, and I hope others do, as well. Understanding each other as individuals who have had certain formative experiences is important. Building relationships on mutual understanding should, if we are able to keep our obligations, lead to trust. Doing business with people we can trust is better and easier than doing business with those we distrust or don't know. What we do with the tools of the digital gold economy are important matters. How we enhance those tools with new technology and with intangibles like good will and trust is also important. Ultimately, I believe we humans have access to an entire Solar System of resources (much of which is platinum group metals) to advance our purposes. In my youth, I wanted to make humanity a multi-planetary species for fun and profit. I worked very hard for that goal, and failed to accomplish it. So, now, I'm trying to build a better foundation, so that I won't fail again. Part of that foundation involves the careful choice of jurisdictions. Part of it involves building true wealth founded on solid metal rather than wastepaper. Part of it involves finding and founding new jurisdictions, free ports, free trade zones, and eventually, I think, new countries. For, to quote that somewhat popular Prophet aforementioned, the man who builds his house upon a rock can expect it to last. He who builds upon sand will be disappointed. Regards, Jim http://www.cambist.net/ --> we exchange everything http://www.goldbarter.com/ --> you exchange anything http://www.goldbarterholdings.com/ --> James's bonds http://www.two-cents-worth.com/?101468&EG --> 18 cents http://www.ezez.com/free/freejim.html --> a speaker http://www.awdal.com/dax/ --> a free port Post is property Jim Davidson copyright 2002. --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
