The Answers Are Out There
by Bill Sardi by Bill Sardi
The answers for our nation’s current woes are out there. They may be a bit difficult to find, and challenging to implement, but they are there.
The immediate challenges that are being discussed today are:
- To immediately implement a complete overhaul the nation’s currency, banking, investment practices and regulations.
- To produce low-cost energy; reduce or eliminate pollution from fossil-powered energy plants.
- To reduce dependency upon foreign oil imports by increasing the efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles.
- To reduce the cost of healthcare and to make health insurance affordable for all.
- To create meaningful and substantial jobs for Americans.
First, with respect to the entire list above, libertarians would say that government needs to get out of the way and the bad parts of government need to be allowed to crash and burn, just like a forest fire purges old dead growth and brings about renewal. Can anyone argue this now that America has destroyed itself from within better than any foreign enemy could imagine?
Americans have a growing state of uneasiness as they see ahead to massive unemployment, crime, even hunger. While the absence of government would likely bring anarchy and lawlessness, the current government appears to be spurring on just such a state of chaos.
It’s obvious that the American people, schooled about the Constitution and the importance of limited government, in reality beg for more government to solve their problems. Large industries lobby for federal control, using government guidelines and regulations to impede true competition and to mandate use of their products (e.g., vaccines) and to rub out competitors (e.g., onerous requirements for underground fuel storage tanks which wiped out independent gas stations). True competition in the marketplace often doesn’t exist.
Point A: Banking and currency reform
In respect to point A, it is obvious that the fraudulent system of making fiat money and fractional banking must come to a halt, but it has continued to impoverish the American people for decades just as the Midianites ruined the Israelites long ago (Bible, book of Judges 6). Where to look for a model of economic and currency reform? The Mises Institute serves as the think tank for financial reform, with books on Austrian economics by Rothbard and others as models.
A curriculum needs to be developed for American young people, possibly starting in grade school forward to college, to learn about money, its origins, banking, etc. Funds need to be directed toward the writing of such a curriculum to be offered to schools. Even college professors don’t know where our money comes from. Most professors should attend this class. Online courses need to be offered. Why wait for the school systems to implement such a course into their offerings which will likely be opposed by many forces?
The blackballing of Austrian economics needs to stop. It needs to be instilled into the American mindset. Had Ron Paul been elected to the Presidency, the Mises Institute would have provided the direction for true reform of American government, including pulling the plug on most of it.
The printing of fiat money (printed at the whim of government), backed by nothing but the full faith and credit of government, which is defined by its ability to just print more paper money to cover for its debts, must stop.
The idea of gold-backed currency has been advocated by many for years. Mussolini printed Italian liras to fund WWII. The Italians threw this worthless paper money into the streets of Rome like it was confetti when the war ended. America is close to this same scenario now.
The idea that banks can just make money out of thin air by multiplying its cash reserves by 10-fold, to create more money to loan, is sheer folly. When a bank loans out $100,000 based on $10,000 of reserves, it created $90,000 of new money. But it didn’t put new money into circulation to cover for the cost of the interest payments. Eventually, a society using this type of banking system is playing musical chairs. Somebody won’t be able to sit down in a chair when the music stops because there isn’t enough money in circulation to cover for the interest payments. That is what is happening now.
Point B: Energy
With respect to point B, the nation is at a crisis point in regards to energy. Go to China where industry there cannot obtain electricity more than three days a week. This could be America soon. The US is locked in a war between those who demand clean energy vs affordable energy. Coal is polluting, obviously evidenced in China where mucky skies make it difficult to breathe. The idea of President-elect Obama to subsidize wind power is misdirected, since there would never be any incentive to develop energy at a cost equal to or lower than coal. Subsidized power just raises taxes. Furthermore, wind power is not practical as constant winds of 11—13 miles an hour are needed for minimal energy production (that’s enough wind to unfurl a flag on a pole), and there is no current way to store this energy so it can be used during less windy times.
Even if more power can be generated, the nation’s electric power transmission lines are not capable of delivering more power. These transmission lines heat up and droop, causing them to touch trees which results in short outs, power outages, and even forest fires (recent Orange County, California fires). About 8—9% of the electric power now generated from power plants is lost during transmission, which is about $30 billion of lost power in economic terms.
Enter private enterprise, not government. New power cable technology (Mercury Cable & Energy, Dana Point, CA) is about to be introduced that almost eliminates power line loss, can transmit more than double the amount of power without line droop or heat induction.
The entire 350,000 miles of power transmission lines in the US could be replaced within 3 years, without expansion of the environment footprint (it is strung on existing power lines and poles), and be completely self-funding (costs ~$80 billion to install, saves $30 billion a year). The bonus: stringing new transmission lines would yield ~48,000 megawatts of newly available power without having to burn more fossil fuel, and would eliminate the need for ~97 new power plants. Environmentalists should be pleased. Will the Obama Administration make room for private enterprise to enter the scene, or is it over-committed to wind power generation?
Point C: Dependency upon foreign oil
Within respect to C, about 70% of fossil fuels are employed to power automobiles and trucks. What is desperately needed has already been invented, and by none other than US car manufacturers. It’s just not available to US consumers because the federal government doesn’t embrace diesel-powered vehicles. The objection has been air pollution, which has now been conquered with new technology. Ford Motors has a new 65-mile-per-gallon diesel car that seats 5 people and is affordable. It is going to be sold in Europe, but not America.
Such an automobile would cause oil-producing companies to shake in their boots. If Detroit auto makers are bailed out of their financial crisis, will there be a demand to produce these cars and bring them to the US? Will the US government eliminate its burdensome tax on diesel fuel? This opportunity is in President-elect Obama’s court. His bully pulpit can bring about this change, simply by letting American free enterprise go to work, unhindered, and let it compete against the best foreign imports.
It has been estimated that vehicles that get 33 mpg would reduce America’s oil demand by 500,000 barrels of oil per day in 2015 and 2.1 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. Just think of a 65-mile-per-gallon car. Think of the billions of dollars that wouldn’t be spent for gasoline that would be freed up to spur on the economy. The air would be cleaner too.
Point D: healthcare reform
With respect to D, there is no way any developed country, especially one facing a growing population of retirees, can avert financial collapse of its healthcare system without improving the healthspan of its citizens. The incidence of disease needs to decline. Age-related disease needs to be slowed. Japan does this by its traditional diet, characterized by less meat and dairy products, not by prescribing more medicines and performing more treatment. The fodder Americans are being fed is breeding the diabesity epidemic. Food producers like Americans to overeat. Government subsidizes the cheap less-nutrient-dense foods and high-fructose sugars.
More health insurance just increases demand for care, more doctoring, more treatments, more hospitalizations. Prevention is anathema to doctors. All that the incoming Administration has promised is to introduce a program that ensures doctors and hospitals get paid for providing care to the uninsured (many who can afford to buy private health insurance, but elect not to). The lesser advantaged are now waiting for their free healthcare card so they can run to the doctor. And there aren’t enough primary care doctors to meet the increased demand for care.
Government here can’t see that it needs to promote self-care. If it does realize this, it will never get through the food, pharmaceutical, hospital, doctor-dominated National Institutes of Health, Food & Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control. The American healthcare industrial complex has penetrated every area of healthcare with an agenda to over-vaccinate and over-medicate every citizen.
In reality, America does not have a health care system, it has a disease care system, and a medical factory line that practices little prevention and promotes more and more disease. Once people enter the clutches of the health care system, the search for disease begins with mammograms, colonoscopies, stool tests, blood tests, CT scans, and the like, but no routine testing is performed for vitamin C, vitamin D, folic acid, vitamin B12, red-cell magnesium, or essential oils. Instead, drugs are prescribed that actually induce nutritional deficiencies, ensuring more chronic disease.
American free enterprise needs to step up to the plate and offer courses in self-care, education in the use of natural antibiotics, over-the-counter pain relievers, antidepressants, artery cleansers, even home cancer cures. (Some which have been aired here at the Lew Rockwell website:
- Just One Pill Away
- Are Cancer Cures Being Hidden From the Public?
- Real Help for Cancer?
- The Overlooked Cancer Cure From Japan
If President-elect Barack Obama wants change, he can set an example here and shun the trappings of modern health care unless it is absolutely needed and set an example by giving up his tobacco habit, and starting to take vitamin and mineral supplements, and advising the public to do the same.
Point E: employment
This article just described an invigoration of American free enterprise that would unleash millions of enterprising and hard-working Americans to rebuild America.
About 25% of the American work force is now employed by government. Fixing the employment problem by creating a national police force, federally funding more programs that build dependence upon more and more taxes, is folly. This is the feather-bedding that America used to criticize Russia of practicing.
When government manipulates the job market it often creates phony, meaningless jobs. Money hasn’t fixed inner-city schooling or made Americans any healthier. It won’t fix the job market either because you end up with the few paying more taxes to support jobs for the masses. Then any cutback in taxes means people must be dismissed from their jobs. It’s a vicious circle. Let private enterprise hire a minority woman with four kids to feed. Then she is not forever on the back of the taxpayers.
Finally, one reason why you see the Lew Rockwell website take a strong position against war-making is that it economically burdens the country. Someone has said that for a country that isn’t at war, the unemployment rate is about 25%. The ancient Egyptians at least figured a way around this, and employed their slave classes to build temples and pyramids. But these again were meaningless jobs. But at least war was averted.
War is the politicians’ way to cover for a bad economy. It has been employed by leaders since time immemorial. The Germans in the 1930s were ready for more bread lines when Hitler drummed up nationalism and the need to conquer other lands. The warmonger unites the masses in fervent nation pride, temporarily giving the masses jobs, but distracting from the real tasks of government.
Americans hear of military cutbacks as if troops in the field will be at greater risk. The federal government hides the fact that ~51% of the annual federal budget goes toward making war. This produces a false economy, making weapons, jeeps, war vehicles, army boots. Then the economy depends upon endless war for endless employment. The war budget is robbing America’s future. Whatever Medicare and Social Security have promised (there will be a $75 trillion shortfall in these programs as the Baby Boomers enter their retirement years), military spending has taken away. Our children’s future has been taken away.
The phony wars (can you recall a recent war the US really needed to enter?), and the fabrications for war (weapons of mass destruction) will continue as long as Americans are gullible to fake villains (Osama’s, Al Qaeda’s) and contrived war triggering events (Pearl Harbor, 9-11), and willingness to work for, and die for, the war establishment that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about. Yes, there will be lots of temporary unemployment as troops come home from the war fronts, but there is a lot of work to do at home. America must shed its dependence upon war to fix its economy, and to cover for the lack of proper governance by its leaders.
Our tired and worn out republic needs more than a tire change. It needs to re-invent itself in the traditions that founded the country, freedom from over-taxation, limited government, right to defend ourselves, the Judeo-Christian work ethic, freedom of worship without a state religion, free enterprise, and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
