Category Archives: Private Property

Fisker, Tesla: Fisting* The Paying Public

Bush, Business, Fascism, Government, Intelligence, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Regulation, Sex, Socialism, Taxation, Technology

Last night we dined at a local eatery in our Washington State town. Parked outside the restaurant was the electric commie car, the Tesla Roadster.

Well of course, the pinkos who proliferate and rule my state are as dumb as they are dastardly.

DUMB because they fail to understand that, “Whether a vehicle is propelled by hydrogen-powered fuel cells or electricity, both electricity and hydrogen don’t magically materialize in the vehicle. They must first be generated. Be it coal, natural gas, nuclear or a hydroelectric dam, these cars are only as clean as the original source of energy that generated the vim that powers them.”

Other than to increase the consumption of gas, because people drive more in them, state-sponsorship of so-called fuel-efficient cars is a grand exercise in compulsory misallocation and waste of capital. It proves that the development of technologies is best left to the market, not to environmental bureaucracies. The electric car is a marvelous metaphor for the legislator’s attempt to shackle the ‘wayward’ consumer. Purchase one, and your best bet is to avoid straying too far from the socket in your garage, or, alternatively, drive with a very long extension cord, lest your vehicle turn into something not nearly as useful as Cinderella’s pumpkin at midnight. The benefits to the consumer are few, much less to the environment, unless a steady discharge of lead, cadmium, and nickel—the byproducts of batteries—is a blessing in disguise.

[“Commie Cars”]

DASTARDLY because the immoral pinko has no qualms about forcefully taking from taxpaying Americans to give to favored state-sponsored interests, like Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive.

The first “received a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy.”

Here, Republicans deserve to be reminded to hang their heads in shame. “The Department of Energy loan program was created in 2007 during the George Bush administration,” for the purpose of manufacturing the equivalent of the USSR’s “People’s Car.”

The second “has received $193 million of a $529 million Energy Department loan … Fisker Automotive — the electric-car maker that was granted a half-billion-dollar federal loan and on Friday dismissed about 75 percent of its remaining workforce — is purportedly facing a lawsuit from the same firm that sued the government-funded Solyndra company …Fisker laid off 160 of its roughly 210 employees Friday morning from its Anaheim, Calif., location.” (Fox News April 06, 2013.)

Don’t look to GOOGLE to serve you news straight up either. News about the bankruptcy or lack of viability of these subsidiaries of the state does not pop up first in related searches.

Writing in the Mises Institute’s indispensable Free Market, PETER G. KLEIN partially explains the dynamics that underpin these examples of American fascism (state-corporate collaborations). “Partially,” because Dr. Klein omits the private-property variable and philosophical fulcrum. (And the editor of TFM does Dr.Klein a disservice by giving the essay a title that is unexplained in the text: What on earth is “Tang”? Writers/editors should never assume their readers know what they’re talking about.) Explains Klein:

Today, when we look at private companies like Google,
Apple, and Facebook and marvel at their innovations, we
should remember that these companies are constantly
subject to market tests, and that the goods and services
they innovate must be accepted by consumers to be profitable. When they succeed, we know that they are creating value for society because consumers have chosen their products and services over others.
The goods and services produced by the Rand Corporation and the Pentagon and the National Science Foundation do not face any kind of market test. The goods and services they produce are valuable to the directors, and
members of Congress, and to the researchers themselves
who are on the payroll, but the value of this research is
determined arbitrarily.

Tesla and Fisker “produce” for the dim-witted Hollywood and D.C. elites, whom YOU are forced to finance. That’s it.

Fisker and Tesla are fisting* the paying public.

***

* Disclaimer: The reason I know about this practice is because I used to volunteer as an HIV/AIDS counselor in South Africa. Filthy and perverted, it’s an appropriate metaphor for robbery by state and special-interests.

Savers: You’re The Bank’s Bitch

Business, Constitution, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Political Economy, Private Property, The State

Lawrence E. Rafferty, guest blogger on Professor Jonathan Turley’s blog, confirms what those of us who cleave to the Austrian school of economics already know: The workings of fractional reserve banking guarantee one thing only: Your deposits are not your own.

Booster to the banks Stuart Varney, of Fox Business, stressed today that he believes with all his heart that the US Congress [the same intemperate group that has helped accrue the US government’s 17 trillion dollar debt] will protect the private property of American depositors from the state-sanctioned theft suffered by Cypriot savers.

Rafferty sunders the Varney pie-in-the-sky, revealing that,

“A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. ” NationofChange
The above article explains that most of us do not realize that when you deposit money in a bank, that it becomes the property of the bank and we become unsecured creditors of the bank! “Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price?” NationofChange
If I deposit $1,000 dollars in my local bank, I trust that the funds are safe and protected by FDIC insurance and that even if the bank fails, I will get my money back. Under the plan listed above, we may not even be able to fall back on the FDIC insurance coverage. The FDIC-Bank of England plan would supersede our FDIC coverage and we would be relegated to become a “shareholder” in the failing bank or its successor entity. Let me see if I understand this scheme. The bank who is failing due to mismanagement or due to risky investments could steal my funds and force me to accept stock in a company led by poor businessmen with an even poorer business record! If you are brave enough, check out the full FDIC-Bank of England plan here.
Cyprus wasn’t the only place where a bankster grab of deposits was put into place or is being discussed. It is being discussed in New Zealand as well. “New Zealand has a similar directive, discussed in my last article here, indicating that this isn’t just an emergency measure for troubled Eurozone countries. New Zealand’s Voxy reported on March 19th:

Read Rafferty’s complete report.

Yippee! For your “hard earned deposits,” you’ll receive shares in a bankrupt, banking institution.

As Lew Rockwell put it recently, the most patriotic thing one can do is to partake in a run on the bank.

Before the fact, of course.

Moreover, and as I’ve long argued, thanks in no small part to Congress, various global agreements, mediated by a global bureaucracy—these embroil individual Americans absent their consent—have usurped the US Constitution and the power of Congress.

International treaties are often nothing more treason tarted up.

UPDATED: Savers Pay For Spenders

Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Private Property, Socialism

Cypriot officials had colluded with euro-zone Kleptocrats in order to raid individual savings accounts in their country to pay for their profligacy.

If the little guy did this—you or I—we’d be in the big house.

Other than that it is theft, seizing private property to pay for “public” debt punishes the economically righteous, who squirreled away for a rainy day (RETIREMENT). Observe how state policies, in addition to generally being immoral, invariably help invert conventional morality.

The right of private property notwithstanding, why should savers pay for spenders?

However, ask yourself this:

WHY is state-sanctioned theft from Cypriot savers any different to your paycheck being docked for statutory payroll tax deductions?

WHY is state-sanctioned theft from Cypriot savers any different in principle to the statutory theft called the income tax; and, in particular, from the progressive income tax, where the rich (“savers”) are penalized for the sins of the rest?

As to taxes on assets: Property taxes, taxes on investments—why are these seizures of private property any different in principle to the lunge on Cypriot savings accounts the bankers and bureaucrats of Europe have made?

You’d think the US doesn’t tax assets. It does. And how are the taxes above different in principle from a bank deposit levy?

UPDATE (3/20): From Vox Day:

One of the many unintended consequences of the Cyprus situation is that many people are finally beginning to understand that money they deposit into a bank is no longer their money. It’s one thing to have some vague notion of what a fractional reserve system is, it’s another to realize that with every deposit, you are making what amounts to an interest-free loan to some of the shadiest and shakiest entities on the planet.

Death By Democratic Socialism

Crime, Democracy, Founding Fathers, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Race, Socialism, South-Africa

I’ve just heard the neocons of The Five, on Fox News, lambaste the late Hugo Chavez for the crime levels in Venezuela.

Not that the panel said this, but populist, revolutionary movements that “empower” the masses can give way to lawlessness.

Obscene levels of crime in South Africa are a by-product of the overnight dismantling of what was once a hierarchical society.

The meme about crime in South Africa is that it’s apartheid’s fault (“the white man made me do it”). It’s a script that has no base in reality, and is the product of the twisted minds of liberals there and here. Never mind that South Africa was inhabited by genocidal tribes prior to the implementation of the policies of apartheid.

Except to maintain a vigil outside the ailing Nelson Mandela’s hospital—the news media refuse to report honestly about crime in South Africa.

Amy Chua did a remarkable job in linking violence to the outbreak of unfettered democracy in countries with a market-dominating ethnic minority. But Amy Chua is too bright to make it onto American TV (except to discuss, and be derided for, her non-progressive parenting).

Back to the subject: From the perspective of the flaccid Five, the link between lawlessness and democratic socialism is obvious in Venezuela, but not in South Africa.

By the way, what is America if not a social democracy?

In the US, a poll is the most popular argument for a policy. Might makes right. “Polls show that the American people want Obama care.”

“So bloody what” is what our Founding Fathers would retort. “You can’t have everything you want; and you can’t have what doesn’t belong to you.”