רפי פרבר Rafi Farber

Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un, they are both whackjobs with nuclear arsenals. Here’s a novel idea for peace. Trump should fly to North Korea, prostrate himself to Kim Jong Un, and offer him the Presidency. Sure, that’s not constitutional, but neither is anything else Trump has done as Overlord.

Kim Jong Un would be appeased, become president, and nobody in the US would listen to a word he said.

It’s similar to taking the fears of the lefties and righties in Israel to the ultimate extreme. Annex everything and watch the Arabs outvote the Jews and 61 out of 120 MK’s are Arabs and vote to “drive the Jews into the sea”.

So what? Will the Jews say “Well, they have 61 votes, and according to our constitution which doesn’t exist, that means we have to follow everything they say because the State is Holy and We Are All Religious Zionists Now.”

No. Because as much as people believe that nonsense, when it comes to their actual lives, they will throw it out because it is, all, nonsense in the end.

What would really end up happening is that nobody would listen to the Knesset, finally, that would be that.

So Kim Jong Un for president. It would solve all the war tensions and solve a lot of problems with all the Trumpheads following his every command. Nobody would listen to him. He’d be a figurehead and we’d all ignore him.

Disclaimer: I am not a supporter of Kim Jong Un.

From The Jewish Libertarian, here.

When the average indoctrinated government curriculum (private or public school educated) person thinks of cops or or other government-trained human weapons, he immediately thinks of “public service”. I have no doubt that many people become government-trained killers because they think it is noble. No doubt some of what they do, minus the thievery in order to do it, is noble. Many cops protect people. Many soldiers protect people. But all cops and all soldiers without exception are sworn to serve politicians, because they are sworn to uphold the laws that these politicians pass, whether they are good laws or horrible laws. Most government trained armies think they are fulfilling some kind of duty by upholding evil laws.

Let’s keep in mind that the murderer of the cops in Dallas was a government-trained killer. When you send people to war for a cause that is not 100% obviously defensively just, it causes people to lose their minds. Let us also never forget that the amount of suicides among Vietnam veterans is higher than the actual death toll of US soldiers in Vietnam.

Send people out to murder other human beings and they will kill themselves. And sometimes others before they kill themselves, as is the case with this Dallas shooter.

No doubt if the government monopolized the food sector and forbade anyone from supplying food privately, as is the case in Canada regarding healthcare and as it almost was in the US had Hillarycare passed in the mid 90’s, then government food suppliers would think of themselves as feeding the hungry and fulfilling their “civic duty”. When in truth, all they are doing is forcing themselves on an entire sector and causing many to starve. The fact that they exist means that private security forces cannot. If government monopolized food, millions would die. This is exactly what happened in China under Mao Zedung’s reign, and 45 million people died in unutterably horrible ways. Thank God the government only monopolizes police and army and lets the food sector be dealt with through the free market (minus farm subsidies and various government food regulations).

Government monopolizes domestic security through police forces, and monopolizes foreign security through its army of trained killers. Every so often these people who make up these monopoly forces save lives. But most of the time they are simply out harassing people and making everyone’s lives miserable. Marijuana possession, selling narcotics, setting up a business without a license, tax evasion, whatever non-crime it happens to be, they will be there to draw a gun and kill you if they have to.

Concession statement: One should always pay taxes l’chumra and only set up businesses with a license and never deal drugs if they care about what little freedom they have and their very lives. Doing any of these things can get you killed by the police. 

We are taught that it is wrong to judge government-trained killers because they are simply “enforcers”. In Israel we have government-trained killers expelling Jews and Arabs from their homes and anyone who fights back is called suicidal. Antiwar people are accused of not “supporting the troops” when it is specifically the antiwar people who support the troops because we don’t want any of them killing or being killed. The war hawks care little about human life so long as their amorphous goals are achieved. What those are, they war hawks themselves couldn’t even tell you beyond “end terror”. Good luck with that.

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From The Jewish Libertarian, here.

I love it when the State goes after its own. I see on my homepage, which is MSN in Hebrew because I’m too lazy to change it, that Bozhi Herzog (I forget the menuval’s real name) head of the Labor Party, is being investigated for receiving “illegal donations” to his campaign for head of the labor party back in 2013.

Shelli Yechimovich, the other menuvelet who was running against him, had this gem to say about the affair:

חברת הכנסת שלי יחימוביץ’ (המחנה הציוני) התייחסה היום (שבת) לראשונה לבדיקה המשטרתית נגד יו”ר מפלגתה ויו”ר האופוזיציה יצחק הרצוג, ואמרה כי היא “סומכת, כמו תמיד, על המשטרה, הפרקליטות ועל כל מוסדות השלטון ומייחלת שהמפלגה שלנו לא תשלם מחיר כבד מדי

Knesset Member Shelli Yechimovich commented this morning on the police investigation against the chairman of her party and the head of the opposition Yitzchak (ah, that’s it) Herzog, and said that she “relies, as always, on the police, the prosecution, and all the institutions of state and hopes that her party will not pay too heavy a price.”

Whenever the state goes after itself, politicians have to still praise the state so as not to incite rebellion against it. She relies on the police, the prosecution and all the institutions of state because those are the weapons she is always fighting to control with her political aspirations. She is caught between the State and a hard place. It’s the same reason politicians always profusely thank the “first responders” in any disaster situation because the first responders are always police and firemen, services monopolized by the state.

I, for one, do not rely on the police, the prosecution, or any institution of state to do anything except what is in their best interest. I say the same thing about all private businesses as well, which always only do what is in their best interest. However, the difference between a private business and the state is that people voluntarily pay private business for their services, whatever they are, which means it is always in the best interest of businesses to comply with the wishes of their customers and clients. The State, however, doesn’t have to comply with the wishes of anyone because they get their money at the barrel of a gun.

If a private business screws you over, they will lose business. If the state screws you over, there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it, except go to the state itself to complain and scream at the wall. Or in the best case scenario, to the “Judges” of the “Supreme Court” who are wonderful and fair. And are paid by the State.

Also interesting to note, the crimes that state officials get punished for, almost always, are crimes against the State, which in this case would be accepting money not according to state laws. This isn’t actually a real crime, since accepting money is perfectly fine. They are never charged with actual crimes against people, even though they commit these every second of their lives. They only get in trouble for breaking the artificial laws the state makes up for itself.

From The Jewish Libertarian, here.

Cars as an example: The Money Printer vs the Money Saver

Imagine for a moment that I want to buy a car for 100,000 shekels. I’d rather not work and save, so instead I decide to simply print 100,000 shekels in cash so I can buy the car. I print it, I hand the pile over to the car dealer, and the car is now mine.

What just happened here? I counterfeited 100,000 shekels and increased the money supply by 100,000 when I handed those shekels over to the car dealer. The average person, the kind that has to work for his money would say that I stole 100,000 shekels. But today’s economic experts like Stanley Fischer and Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman would say that I gave “economic stimulus to the automobile industry.” So what really happened?

When an average person works in the private economy and saves money to buy a car, he produces more than he consumes, hence savings. In other words, he puts more into the economy than he takes out, the difference represented by the money he saves. There is now more value in the economy, more stuff because he worked harder, and he takes that real value represented by the money saved and buys a car for 100,000 shekels.

The car dealer now has 100,000 shekels of real value to invest in expanding his business, and thanks to the value that the saver added to the economy through saving, there is now more value in the economy with the same money supply. The value of the shekel goes up and prices drop just a little bit, and everyone owning shekels gets a bit richer thanks to the saver. The car dealer can now expand his business and safely assume the demand is there to match his increase in supply. The economy grows.

Now, if I simply print up 100,000 shekels and give it to the car dealer, I added zero value to the economy. There is no more useful stuff. Just paper. I did not save a thing. All I am doing is taking from the economy without adding anything to it. Worse, the 100,000 shekels I added to the money supply makes the value of the shekel go down a little bit, since more shekels are now chasing the same amount of goods. Prices go up. Everyone gets poorer, except for me of course, because I got to buy the car before the money supply went up. The act of me buying the car was itself the action that made the money supply go up in the first place. I, the money printer and the first new money user, am up one car. Yay for me. But everyone else besides the first person to use newly printed money loses.

Now, let’s say I stop printing money and the car dealer expands his business with the new shekels. Since everyone is now poorer, there is no new demand to match his new supply. The signal he got of new demand for his cars was wrong, because the 100,000 shekels I printed did not represent added value to the economy through saving. Demand is not there, his business overexpands and he has to cut back and contract by selling cars for cheaper and taking a loss. His business shrinks or “goes into recession”, but cars get less expensive for everyone else.

But let’s say I keep printing 100,000 shekels every day and buy another car with it day after day after day. The car dealer will keep misinterpreting the sales as new demand that doesn’t actually exist. He will keep expanding. It will look like the economy is growing and growing, the statistics the government puts out on car sales will skyrocket. But really, only I and the car dealer are benefiting. Everyone else is suffering inflation and getting poorer and poorer every time I print. At some point I will have to print more than 100,000 to buy each car since the money supply is expanding so rapidly, but that’s no big deal for me. It takes the same effort to print 150,000 as it does to print 100,000. I keep getting richer. Inflation doesn’t bother me. The car dealer keeps expanding and cars become so expensive that no one can buy them. Then let’s say suddenly I stop printing shekels and stop buying cars. The car dealer’s business totally crashes, and he goes out of business in a bankruptcy sale. All the cars get sold to the public for ultra cheap. His business “goes into depression,” but cars are suddenly cheap for everyone else.

So we see that every time money is printed:

1. The ones who receive it first are the ones who benefit the most
2. The ones who receive it first also become entirely dependent on it
3. The ones who receive it last suffer inflation and a rising cost of living

And we see that every time I stop printing money:

1. Those who were receiving it first, suffer the most
2. Everyone else benefits from deflation and a falling cost of living

What happens in reality?

But this is not exactly how it happens in reality. The institution in charge of printing shekels, the Bank of Israel headed by Stanley Fischer, does not “stimulate the automobile industry”. No no. That’s not his job, at least not directly. When Fischer expands the money supply, he buys none other than government bonds with printed money and stimulates the government. The government is always the first to get the new money.

The government then puts most of the money into the banking system, and uses a small tiny percentage of it to hire more government ministers in order to satisfy coalition partners, give raises to government workers in order to keep up with consumer prices (because God forbid a Knesset Member should suffer the ravages of inflation), cave in to unions like the Histadrut when they threaten a general strike which gives them even more power to shut the country down in future spats, and pass out more welfare to the four corners of the Earth to get more voters. So the first ones to receive new money from Fischer are:

1. The government and its workers
2. The banks

Who is the next in line? After buying votes and coalition stability with printed money, the banks then take most of the money and invest it in the stock market and mortgage loans. So the next in line are:

1. The stock market
2. The real estate market

As the real estate market rises, so do rent prices, not only on the middle class wage earner who is always last to get the new printed money, but on other renters like Supersol and Rami Levy, so your food bill goes up, too. Meanwhile the government and the banks expand blissfully, and the stock market goes up, but you don’t have enough money to invest there because, with inflation and rent and food going up, you are going into debt. To the banks of course.

And so it goes, that every time the Bank of Israel prints money, the government and the banks and the land owning tycoons get richer and the middle class gets poorer. The wealth transfer from middle class to rich is a necessary part of this process. Why? Because if, for example, the Bank of Israel wants to raise the money supply by 5% and instead of giving the money to the government and the banks, it simply adds 5% to all of our bank accounts overnight, the prices of everything would go up 5% in a day or two and the Bank of Israel would have accomplished nothing but stark and immediate price inflation. The trick is to give it to one group and its buddies, being the government and the banks first. That way it takes time for inflation to affect prices and people don’t even realize they’re getting poorer, or if they do, why it’s even happening.

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