driftingjackal5 said:If you read that text and decide you're totally on board, you gotta ask yourself: do the people you call "leaders" actually believe what they wrote? And if they don't, why the hell are you following them? I’m convinced the only way to shift the political and social vibe is to start with the individual, not by shouting opinions from some political soapbox. It’s about getting individuals to realize that begging the state—or whoever’s in power—for handouts is straight-up immoral, and actually understanding *why* it's wrong.
Take the last census, for instance. Almost 90% of Americans identify as Christian. Isn't the whole foundation of Christian morality built on things like "love thy neighbor as thyself," "turn the other cheek," and "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you"? So why don't people actually live like that? Why is it that kids who were sitting in religious studies class yesterday are out on the streets tomorrow screaming for "free education"? Let's break down what "free education" actually means for a second. There are really only two options: either they think teachers should work for zero pay, or they think the state needs to provide them with fair compensation. But can the state pay for anything without taking it from someone else first? Obviously not. The state is just a monopoly on the legal use of force. When they respond to this demand for "free schooling," they’re going to use coercion—using taxes to snatch property from one person to give it to another. In this case, they’d strip all taxpayers to fund the education of the people demanding it. That’s the state initiating force on their behalf. Yet, the people demanding "free school" would never dream of breaking into their neighbor's house and grabbing a few thousand bucks to pay for their tuition. So why is it okay when the state does it for them?
It isn't just immoral; I would argue it is profoundly foolish. What people perceive as "free" handouts from the government are nothing more than empty illusions and outright scams. If you look at the reality of the situation, almost all social programs run by the American state—which accounts for about two-thirds of the entire budget—are pure deceptions. In truth, none of those students, patients, farmers, retirees, or citizens in general actually profit; instead, they are being systematically plundered through these very programs.
However, I suspect that nothing can realistically be accomplished on this front until we silence these sanctimonious parrots who drone on incessantly about the "social state," the "public interest," and "justice." Most of them are likely well-meaning people, but their catastrophic ignorance causes them to trample everything in their path. As for those individuals who justify taking out massive, unpayable foreign loans just to fund lifestyles involving luxury apartments and fancy cars—arguing that "Americans need a place to live and something to drive"—we ought to call them by their real names: parasites and traitors, and hold them accountable. I wonder what that crowd will have to say in a few years when the state finally collapses under its own mountain of debt: "Oh, our apologies, we didn't realize"?😠
The whole philosophy of liberty boils down to self-ownership—you know, individual sovereignty, autonomy, whatever you want to call it.
The core principle is dead simple: you own your life. Period. Saying otherwise is just a fancy way of claiming someone else has a bigger stake in your existence than you do. No person, no group, no government... nobody owns you, and you don't own them.
You exist through time—past, present, and future. That temporal stretch is your life, your freedom, and everything you've built with it.
Lose your life, and you lose your future. Lose your freedom, and you lose your present. Lose what you've earned, and you're losing the very history that shaped who you are.
Your life and your freedom represent your property. Your stuff is the result of your work—it's the literal product of your time, energy, and talent. Property is just nature that you’ve transformed into something useful through labor. It also includes stuff owned by others that you acquired through voluntary trade and mutual consent.
Voluntary exchange means both sides actually benefit from the deal—otherwise, why bother? Only the people involved can legitimately decide to make that swap.
Sometimes, people use force or fraud to snatch property without consent. Using force or fraud to take a life is murder. Using it to take freedom is slavery. Using it to take property is theft. Simple as that.
It doesn't matter if it's one guy acting alone, a mob ganging up on one person, or a bunch of "authorities" using their power to crush you—the outcome and the immorality are exactly the same.
Everyone has the right to defend their life, their freedom, and their rightfully earned property from aggressive interference. You can ask for help defending those rights, sure. But nobody has the right to initiate force or aggression against someone else's life, liberty, or property. And because of that, you can't delegate to some third party the right to go out and initiate aggression on your behalf.
You have the right to find your own leaders, but you damn well don't have the right to impose a ruler on anyone else. No matter how they get picked, leaders are still just humans—they don't have any special rights or privileges that put them above anyone else.
I don't care what fancy titles they hold or how many people cheer for them—officials and leaders have zero right to kill, enslave, or steal. You can't hand over rights to someone else that you don't even possess yourself.
Since you own your life, you're responsible for it. You aren't renting your existence to people demanding obedience, and you aren't a slave to anyone demanding you sacrifice yourself for them. You pick your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure—both are necessary for learning and growing. Actions done for others, or by others for you, are only moral if they're based on voluntary, mutual consent... because morality can't exist without freedom of choice.
That's the bedrock of a truly free society. It isn't just the most practical and humane way to live—it's the only ethical one.
All those global messes caused by governments initiating force? There's a fix. The fix is to stop demanding that officials use force on your behalf. Evil doesn't just come from bad people—it comes from good people who tolerate the initiation of force as a way to solve problems. That's how, throughout history, the good guys have kept handing power to the bad guys...
Trusting a free society means focusing on the market process of discovering moral values—not some forced vision or preordained goal shoved down everyone's throats. Using the state to force a specific vision on people is just intellectual laziness, and honestly, it almost always ends in unintended, messy consequences...
Building a truly free society takes guts—guts to think, speak, and actually act. Especially when doing nothing is the easy way out.
This whole thing is based on the epilogue from "The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible" by Ken Schoolland. If you ask me, it’s one of the most punchy texts ever written explaining the political philosophy of libertarianism—or even more accurately, voluntarism. Just two basic principles:
1. You own your life. Nobody has a greater claim to your life than you do. Life isn't just existing physically; it's a timeline stretching from your past into your future.
2. Initiating force against peaceful people—for any reason whatsoever—is morally disgusting and totally unacceptable. The only time force is okay is in self-defense, after someone else has already crossed the line against you.
I don't see anyone on this forum—or even in broader American society—having a serious conversation about this stuff, so I'm hoping for a more concrete discussion here. 🙂
In economic terms, individual liberty practically means that nobody can live off your dime without your explicit permission...
It's difficult to expect a real debate about this here in the States, where people seem perfectly fine with everyone living off someone else's tab. In America, if you actually try to live off your own earnings—say, by being a private entrepreneur—you're often branded a thief. But if you live off everyone else's money through public service, suddenly you're a respected member of society fighting for the "public interest."
Decades of brainwashing from communists, nationalists, and today's autocratic parties have finally come due. I honestly have no idea how many people in this country actually think for themselves anymore.
What I'm curious about is: how many people actually realize that a system built on these principles of individual liberty is, in reality, that much-hated and despised free market? 😍
Ashley Bishop4 As stated by: If you ask me, the whole argument feels a bit disconnected from reality. It seems to be predicated on the idea of a single individual, and then—as if that were perfectly reasonable—it expects every other person out there to mirror that exact same standard. I guess it just assumes everyone operates on that same level, which, let's face it, isn't exactly how things work in the real world. If we were actually able to pull it off, I suppose no one would have any need for any communities whatsoever, other than perhaps those based on the Rhodes model.
I suppose there’s a common misconception that individual liberty implies the total dissolution of social structures. I don't think that's quite right. To me, true freedom doesn't mean we all become isolated islands; rather, it means that any community or social group you join is a result of your own volition—based on your specific interests, values, or whatever else drives you. It’s about association without coercion. You choose your circle, rather than having one forced upon you by some higher authority.
Ashley Bishop4 As requested: I suppose if you look at it from a certain perspective, the Rhodesian communities wouldn't have even considered building something like a railroad in the first place—it simply wouldn't have made any financial sense for them. 🤷
So, if you look at this from a purely humanistic perspective, I suppose the argument is quite elegant and holds up rather nicely; however, when you actually sit down to crunch the numbers, the economic reality just doesn't hold water.
Take the development of the American railroad—specifically the first transcontinental line—as a prime example. It wasn't some massive state initiative that jumpstarted the whole thing; it was driven by individuals. Things were going incredibly well for them, too, right up until the moment that army of bureaucrats showed up with taxpayer money in hand. They moved in, fueled by state subsidies, and manufactured those massive tycoons at the expense of the public (which, let's be honest, seems to be how it always works). ☕)
I suppose one has to wonder how a private railroad could possibly manage to get off the ground without a massive government handout, let alone how it could hope to stay competitive against three different rail giants whose entire overhead was essentially footed by the taxpayers. It seems like a bit of a rigged game, doesn't it?
James J. Hill was essentially held hostage by the cold, hard reality of the bottom line. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he couldn't just rely on a blank check from Washington; he had to operate strictly within the bounds of profitable, red-to-black business dynamics. Instead of "rushing to collect government subsidies," he took a much more methodical approach, expanding his railroad one segment at a time into the rugged northern wilderness. His strategy was actually quite clever, I suppose: Hill would build an extension westward a few hundred Miles , then move in farmers fra The East to settle the land along his tracks, often doing so free of charge. Once those farmers were established, they’d naturally begin using Hill's railroad to ship their crops back East to market. Because Hill received no government money, he was forced into a cycle where every single westward expansion had to prove its profitability before he could even dream of laying more track. It was a grueling process, but it worked. In ten years , Hill completed his transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, without receiving a single cent of taxpayer money. Quite an achievement, really.
To hit peak efficiency while keeping operating costs at an absolute minimum, Hill had to approach every single expansion with incredibly meticulous planning. It wasn't just luck; Hill personally mapped out and constructed his lines along the shortest, most direct routes possible. He was also extremely thorough when surveying the land, specifically hunting for paths that offered the gentlest grades to minimize the struggle over hills. Furthermore, since Hill was footing the bill with his own hard-earned private capital, he was absolutely relentless about demanding the highest caliber of workmanship and top-tier materials.
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The construction of the transcontinental railroads serves as a rather striking case study in the clash between political entrepreneurs and true market entrepreneurs. Back in the 1860s, we saw this massive, rapid expansion of rail lines tearing across the USA. It seems that certain political entrepreneurs, always hunting for an easy payday, decided to shake hands with Congressmen who were looking to grab some unearned power and prestige. Essentially, those political players lobbied Congressmen for the federal government to subsidize the building of America's First transcontinental railroad. It was essentially a goldmine for the parasitic elite class. You had white-collar political grifters lining their pockets with massive government handouts, while the Congressmen authorizing those subsidies got to bask in the glory—essentially justifying their own existence by claiming they were doing the public a massive favor by financing The building of America's First transcontinental railroad.
Ford is essentially undergoing a slow-motion collapse rather than some sudden apocalypse. It’s more like a gradual decay that picks up speed as the debt piles higher and higher. Honestly, the economic statistics coming out of the US and the eurozone's weaker economies are nothing short of laughable. I don't recall hearing a single sane person claim this trajectory is sustainable. Based on what I’ve been observing, the public will eventually be forced to either accept draconian austerity measures or take to the streets in protest, which would inevitably lead to the government just printing money 🙂. I simply don't see how gold's purchasing power could ever diminish in such a scenario.
Hehe, those folks who seem convinced that gold is just some relic from a bygone era... you’ve got plenty of shady characters roaming the streets of cities like Chicago or New York, claiming they can "exchange your gold for actual cash" 😂, and suddenly everyone is rushing in blindly.
Gold tends to pack a much heavier punch in terms of purchasing power than any pile of fiat paper ever could. And, if we're being honest, I suppose it might actually be easier to swap gold for real value during a crisis than trying to offload stocks or Treasury bonds.. though, I guess maybe fiat cash might pull it off eventually—it would certainly be a first after about 500 failed attempts, wouldn't it?
Anthony Evans78 said:People aren't seeing any deflation here. Deflation means your money actually gains purchasing power. Anyone who buys groceries, pays utility bills, or deals with the daily cost of living knows their dollar loses value every single day.
Some people prefer the term stagflation. Essentially, prices continue to climb even as the money supply remains stagnant or shrinks. It’s a bit of a double whammy: while we deal with deflationary pressures on our wealth, the government keeps squeezing citizens through taxes just to subsidize corporations, effectively propping up high prices or driving them even higher. Americans are getting hit from both sides here. On top of that, gold prices are climbing. I suspect we've only just seen the beginning of the rush toward gold buyback stations. The real frenzy is likely still ahead. *And I am referring specifically to the situation here in the States.
As for hoping the dollar will strengthen or that gold will suddenly tank... well, that's probably wishful thinking.
The velocity at which capital flows into the market is dictated by interest rates. Right now, the Federal Reserve has rates hovering around ~0%. However, that’s just the supply side; the actual demand for that liquidity is determined by the market itself.
As for inflation or deflation, I suppose it’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation about either because of the bubble. The financial derivatives bubble currently holds about ten times more cash than the real economy actually does, which is why we aren't seeing any real-world inflation. Essentially, the bubble has sucked up all the newly printed money, and then some—it’s even vacuuming up existing liquidity from the market. Consequently, despite the endless money printing, citizens are effectively experiencing deflation.
If you ask me, you really ought to consider taking a break from college to find a steady job, and maybe eventually move out from under your parents' roof... honestly, that last part would probably save you a massive amount of stress.
Andrew Barrett4 said:I know this isn't exactly a groundbreaking trend, and I can't quite recall if we've touched on this here before, but I figured I'd throw it out there...
I suspect most people might miss the point, but here it is anyway: video in Dutch (you can see part of the actual process, so it might actually be worth a look)
Summary (from the video): - The US - leading the way (doing more recycled metal reclamation via this method than anyone else) - Reclaiming metals like: Cu, Pb, Ni, Pt, Au, AG, Zn, Al - There is absolutely no drop in metal quality - Depending on the specific equipment used, efficiency can be 100-1000x higher than traditional gold mining (The highest yield/profitability comes from mobile phones, followed by computers, etc.) - R&D is heavily focused on new extraction techniques, MIT, Austin high-tech campus - Annual production: Cu=2,000,000 ; AG=450,000kg ; Au=300,000kg 😍 ...........and so on............ - Cumulative various metals: 70,000,000kg/year
Personally, I think I might actually dare to put some money into this field either into new methods/development or perhaps even excavating old landfills from back in the 90s to reclaim the pulp.
I mean, I have to say, there’s no way that figure is actually accurate. It seems statistically impossible for the entire country of China to be churning out less than 300 tons of gold annually. I guess we might be looking at some seriously flawed data here, but honestly, it just doesn't add up to me.
one of the big reasons we have this huge balance of trade deficit is because we buy all this gold and put it in the closet .. if Europeans suddenly said they were going to dump their gold, or if they were forced to, that too would put a big drop on gold
you're hurting Europe by owning gold, and it's not safe for you to keep it, give it to me... 🤣 Hmm... I suppose the media has actually started hinting at confiscation now.. With the dollar being so strong, it probably doesn't make much sense to be buying in Euros right now
In the first three months, gold exports from the United States reached $28 million, which is 14 times higher than during the same period last year. For context, gold exports last year were already eight times higher than they were back in 2010.
Looking at those numbers... it makes you wonder if there is even any gold left in the United States; Americans might soon forget what gold even looks like🤣
If gold ever dips down to $1,600 an ounce, I’m heading straight to the store to grab a few small bars...
By the way, looking at the Federal Reserve's trajectory, they're sitting at near-zero rates through 2015. On top of that, they'll likely be pumping even more liquidity into the system via T-bills just to cover Medicare costs, student loan restructuring, and that massive welfare spending... not to mention we have elections coming up at the end of the year.
So, yeah, the money printing isn't going to stop anytime soon. Gold seems to be tracking the M2 money supply pretty closely, which makes it a decent hedge if you're just trying to preserve your purchasing power, but I don't suppose there's much actual profit to be made here.
Lisa Ward3 said:To summarize what's being reported below... two Japanese nationals were caught at the Italian border carrying bonds worth $134 trillion. That’s basically the entire net worth of Russia. It’s opened a massive Pandora's box, revealing that trillions of dollars in gold—thousands upon thousands of tons—were embezzled by the Fed and global elites to build a fiat system based on nothing. They essentially kicked gold out of the equation just so they could manufacture crises and manipulate markets globally.
Now, we're looking at heavy hitters facing indictment, including figures like Ban Ki-moon (head of UNICEF), the entire Italian government, their financial police, Silvio Berlusconi, and even the World Economic Forum. I guess even the UN itself might be on the hook.
Oh, this should be interesting. 😁🤣😂
It was bound to come crashing down eventually. Better now than later, I suppose. 😍
Andrew Sullivan8 said:I do. A little more than I really need. Though, "enough" is a subjective thing. To some people, it wouldn't be enough, and to others, it'd be way too much... ☕
Looks like most people missed the whole point of this thread...
The topic is about how people who already have massive wealth—money they could never actually spend (just look at those political scandals in the papers I mentioned earlier)—are willing to sacrifice moral values just to pile up even more money they'll never touch.
It seems you’ve already provided your own answer... I'm not entirely sure why you're bothering to ask anyone else if you already know where you stand.
So, I’ve been dealing with this slightly stressful situation lately—and by "slightly," I mean there's definitely some underlying tension and excitement involved—and I've noticed this redness breaking out on my lower neck and upper chest area. It looks remarkably similar to an allergic reaction, if that makes any sense.
Does anyone happen to have any insight into whether this is just some minor physical manifestation of stress, or am I perhaps facing some sort of impending medical catastrophe?😁
Amanda Myers3 said:I get it. I really do... There will always be someone out there who excels more or hits higher milestones than you ever will.
I’ve been reflecting on why I act this way and view the world through this lens. It feels like I'm in a constant state of needing to prove myself. That implies I care far too much about external validation. Looking back, it's clear I didn't receive even half the affection I actually needed growing up. I won't go into the details of what happened or how. We can move past it now, but what they did is done. As for how I feel today... honestly, it feels like there isn't a place for me in this world.😢 The question weighing on my mind is: how do I build self-esteem after all of this? Where do I even start? Because I believe that if I could actually build some self-respect—if I could truly love myself—I wouldn't feel this desperate need to constantly achieve things and pile tasks upon myself.
Social standing—or rather, the approval of those around us—is something the brain interprets as a direct boost to our survival odds (meaning our own survival and that of our offspring). Consequently, we are dealing with incredibly intense emotions here; they aren't something you can just brush aside. When our social reputation is low or damaged, we tend to feel fundamentally threatened. That’s essentially where this desperate need to be the absolute best at everything comes from.
In my estimation, if one wants to lead a sufficiently decent and stable life, it requires a balance of social standing, family, career, and so on... You really can't rely on just one of those pillars alone.
p.s. What do you call a perfectionist in America? A masochist.
Unfortunately, there is plenty of that kind of chatter floating around where we live, but since this is a dedicated subforum, I think it would be best if we collectively stuck to discussing actual legal options, official procedures, and everything else strictly related to the law.
When you notice someone pivoting between two completely contradictory stances on the same topic, it’s a dead giveaway that they don't actually care about the subject at hand; they’re really just trying to manipulate the conversation toward some other agenda.
It seems to me that these types cling to their moral high ground only when there’s an audience watching—it's purely performative, not a matter of personal conviction. But the moment you actually challenge them with a direct, pointed question, they tend to stumble, lose their footing, and lash out. ...And honestly, they'll probably hold a grudge against you for the rest of their lives.🙂