The Non-Stop Conflict Between the Common Man & the State

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

www.poormansurvivor.net

 

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

 

"A government that is big enough
to give you all you want
is big enough to take it all away."
-- Barry Goldwater

 

 

The Misuse of Police and Resources Against Citizens is Bad Now-It Will Only Get Worse

On last night’s news I heard a SWAT team in Texas raided a man’s home to deliver a warrant for an outstanding student loan of $1500 from 1987 – and you wonder what the hell is wrong with America?!

Using a SWAT team to deliver a minor warrant is bad enough and such stupidity has increased from an average of 100 such raids per year to 100 per month in our so-called free society.  I guess local governments have massive amounts of [our] cash to waste so their boys can play commando!

For the past 20 years Washington, much like Nazi Germany did,  has been enacting laws which exert much tighter controls on cash and its citizens…allowing zero privacy, for instance, on the opening of any kind of financial account domestically or overseas [FINCEN laws, IRS searches of American Express card holders, the new Obamacare laws, cancelling passports without notice on delinquent tax citizens, etc].

No doubt you’ve heard the phrase that “freedom isn’t free.”  That’s because the state is continually trying to rob the common man of freedom.

There is a non-stop conflict between the individual and the state.

Governments around the world have demonstrated that they are willing to trample on individual liberties with no thought to the larger implications.

The following is observed by Gary Gibson…[Read to the end about our Recession Rescue program]

“What holds society together is not a bunch of strict laws and a brutal police force -- it’s basically peer pressure, moral ‘suasion, and social opprobrium. Look at a restaurant. The bills get paid not because anybody is afraid of the police, but for the three reasons I just mentioned.”

[What’s your take? Could we survive without a state? Is the complete absence of government superior to limited government? Are you, as they say, a “minarchist” who believes in limited government?

Americans long ago settled for convenience over freedom: Paved roads and more commercial space per capita than any other nation on earth… to go along with various prohibitions on personal behavior, expanded domestic spying by police, the TSA and the biggest prison population per capita in the world.

Why be concerned with the prison population? Because the state is caging a lot of people who have neither killed, nor raped nor stolen. According to Wikipedia:

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national “war on drugs.” The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.

But don’t drugs get to the end user by criminal means that often involve violent cartel conflict somewhere along the line? Absolutely, but only because the state makes drugs illegal, resulting in extralegal black markets. The state says it’s for own good, but we can’t help but notice that it also serves to increase the power of the state to monitor and to police.

It’s bad enough that inflation-fueled nationalizations have become the norm in the U.S., that the government crowds out real job growth by stifling small business while bailing out failed big ones.

But what about the other legal indignities, all the other ways the authorities remind you that you and your property aren’t really yours?

Why can’t we drink on the sidewalk? Or smoke in bars? They manage to do it in other parts of the world without civilization collapsing around their ears…or even an increase in violence or cancer rates!

In Acapulco at night the streets are crowded both with parents, their young children, the elderly and tipsy young men holding bottles of Corona. It is lively but peace reigns. Perhaps people are just nicer when they aren’t constantly stressed out by being over-regulated.

People smoke in restaurants and as long as the air is circulating, no one else seems to be bothered.

Since 2006 it has been legal to possess varying amounts of “hard” drugs for personal use -- though, comically, selling these drugs technically remains illegal.

Prostitution is also technically illegal, but pretty open. Every strip club doubles as a bordello, and of course there are the actual bordellos!

A mark of true civilization is civility. The people peacefully seeking their own enjoyment are able to mingle with people raising their families, all without discomfort or conflict. Sure their officials are all probably thieving criminals -- this is still Latin America -- but the people of Acapulco themselves live blissfully free of the state’s heavy handed interference in their personal goings-about.

“All well and good for the rest of the world,” says the American conservative who claims to love “freedom” (as long as it’s done his way), “but I don’t want to be surrounded by drug use and prostitution!”

But, dear conservative control freak, you already are! This stuff goes on all around you anyway. It’s probably going on in at least one house within a couple miles of yours as you read this. And it manages not to bother you because it really isn’t any more your business than other habits and pleasures your neighbors may have.

No amount of “war” on the arbitrarily declared vice crimes (alcohol is okay, but marijuana is not?) by the state with your blessing will end practices you don’t like… unless maybe you turn the joint into a theocratic tyranny of the Middle East variety.

Criminalization just drives the behavior underground while giving the state the authority to regulate more and to seize property and cage any of us in an effort to fight “wars” against personal practices. Such laws are just prejudices backed by guns.

And in the U.S. we get it with both barrels, both financial and personal interference a la the state. They overtax us, steal from us by means of inflation and then tell us what we can do with willing partners and with ourselves. The liberals cheer on the seizure of property for redistribution while the conservatives cheer the government’s ownership of our bodies.

Yet Americans are still convinced that they love freedom. Personally we scarcely know anyone in the States who has a clue what that particular word means. And most of that small number who do are heading for the exits so they can experience it.

When they leave they leave the white, white world of Western Civilization entirely. They head for Asia…or Latin America. The latter seems to be especially popular.

Maybe it’s something just basic to the essence of the West. It’s the West after all that prides itself on being the birthplace of democracy. As if that’s something to crow about!

Democracy is just a system of mass mutual slavery. Everybody owns everybody else and this power of ownership is represented by the vote. Woe be to the people -- and their property -- in the minority group when it’s time to count those votes.

Maybe it’s genetic. The typical American comes from European stock and though he reflexively yells “liberty” and “freedom”, he has a hard time letting go of slavery. He stopped thrusting it on imported Africans, but seemed to miss it so much that he started inflicting it on himself and his kin.

He enslaves the unborn to debt, the worker to the unproductive, the hedonist to the moralist, and so on.

Yet it’s this same set of hypocrites who gave us a higher standard of living due to technological innovation in robust free markets. It was their European ancestors who gave the world most of the advances in the hard sciences in the first place.

We’re not entirely sure what to make of it. It warrants further consideration. We suspect this would best be undertaken on beach somewhere south of the U.S. border.

Gary Gibson
Managing editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder

Post Script

The Federal Reserve and US Government Have Warped the American Economy

In just the past decade, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has grown from roughly $800 billion to over $4 trillion. Our central bankers engaging in massive asset purchases to pummel interest rates downward is not news to anyone. We’ve been living in a world of falling interest rates since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet, few mainstream economists have taken a good look at the destructive effects of this unprecedented monetary expansion. The calamitous distortions Fed policy has created for actors on both Main Street and Wall Street since 2008 have laid the groundwork for yet another crash.

 

Low interest rates stemming from a growing money supply are the only reason the US government has managed to service its gargantuan debt in recent years. The Congressional Budget Office itself has pointed out that even a slight rise in interest rates could potentially result in anywhere from $700 to $900 billion in annual tax payments just to service the interest on our debt. At this pace, paying the republic’s creditors will become our largest government program in no time. Future Americans might go to work and have 50 percent of their paychecks seized not to pay for government services, but simply to service debt forced on them by central planners.

 

But public debt is far from the only distortion artificially low rates have wrought. Mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, and student loans have ballooned total consumer debt to $12 trillion, and this number is only trending upward. 

 

The easy credit economy manufactured by central bankers has obliterated American savings and replaced them with debt. The average American consumer has less than $1,000 in his bank account. He lives praying for no car trouble or a broken arm. There was a time when Americans were rewarded for saving their earnings with double-digit interest rates but this is a distant memory. If Americans want to earn a return nowadays they must play the central-bank sponsored stock market casino…or the state sponsored lottery where the odds are even worse!

 

 

 

 

JP Morgan: 92% chance of recession...

Recession Rescue: Surviving the Coming Debt Crisis- Prepare Now while you still can!

Many trusted financial analysts are advising their clients that another recession is about to hit…well known advisor Peter Schiff says it will be worse than the 2008 financial crisis and will be harder on Americans because debt levels are so much higher today!

According to The Urban Institute 35% of Americans have at least one debt in collections. Typically for a debt to be in collections it has to be at least 6 months past due! The 77 million Americans with debt in collections owed an average of $5,200.

Although some might not see it but our nation is facing another recession, investors are being warned by analysts to brace for a ‘cataclysmic year’ akin to the Lehman crisis of 2008-This year saw the worst opening month for the stock market EVER and most Americans are unprepared with little or no savings.

If that describes you, please consider getting yourself a copy of our special CD ROM containing [here’s a sampling] these reports:

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·        Surviving a job loss

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·        67 firms that will pay you to work from home

·        Debt beaters report

·        Super simple money saving tips

·        Re-financing tips

·        Solving the money puzzle

·        How to live dirt-cheap

·        Recession Rescue – finding emergency cash

·        Surviving a debt crisis

·        Budget plans for a recession

·        Bankruptcy Recovery Report

·        28 credit secrets they don’t want you to know

 

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Yours for Survival,

Bruce ‘The Poor Man Survivor’

A Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production