Commentary: Socialism vs. Free Markets

The supporters of the current US administration claim that now we can get away from this foolish idea of a free market, and make this society work as it should.I have a couple of comments about that.

First, we do not have a free market, nor have we had in any of our lives. Therefore, those who say the free market has failed us are either lying or don't know what they are talking about. This society hasn't tried a free market.

Obama is now demanding a new federal agency to oversee and control all banking entities. He claims that this is necessary to prevent further predatory lending practices that caused failures of banks due to people not being able to make their payments, and resulting in the government having to spend the people's money to bail out these banks. Now Obama wants to punitively tax these (and all) banks to get the people's money back, and add controls to prevent further occurrences of this sort of abuse.

Here's the real deal: in a free market, no bank would have made such poor decisions and granted wholesale loans with a high risk of loss of capital. The fact is, these loans were passed on to just a few huge banks that specialized in such loans and mortgages; banks that were insured against failure by the government. Any bank doing so, without such government backing, would have simply failed and been bankrupted, with the assets being sold on the open market. That is how it is supposed to work.

But these banks were encouraged by the government to issue such loans, and when the economy suffered a setback, the government lived up to its promise of stealing our money to bail out the banks. That is not a free market.
Now these punitive taxes are not actually on those who created the problem, but rather added taxation on those who save and invest, with the beneficiary being the same government that created the problem in the first place.

And as for the new regulations Obama wants to impose, this is simply a demand for even more governmental control over our money, in a time when free-thinkers such as Ron Paul for calling for ending the Federal Reserve.
I side with Ron Paul.

By the way, I have a perfect example of socialism versus free market, in the form of residential trash pickup. Here is how free market trash pickup works:

Joe buys a truck and starts a trash pickup business. He hires a couple of people to help him. He advertises his business and signs up customers. He could even buy some really nice trash cans to sell or lease to his customers. His potential customers don't have to buy his service. They can elect to hire a different company, or haul their own trash to the landfill (another business, where they have to pay to dump), or they can pay their nephew who needs a job to haul it to the dump for them, or whatever.
But suppose a particular homeowner does decide to buy Joe's service, and further, to buy or lease a can from Joe. At the time that the homeowner pays for the can, the can is delivered. No can, no pay.
Then, Joe picks up the trash on a set schedule. If he agrees to pick up on Thursday mornings, he makes sure that he or his employee shows up every Thursday morning and picks up the trash. If he misses a pickup, he doesn't charge the customer for that pickup, but he really tries to not miss a pickup.
Now, if he misses a pickup or two in a month and sends the customer a bill for the full amount, that customer will not be happy and will probably refuse to pay until the bill is adjusted. If Joe is a jerk about it or continues to render poor service, the customer will fire Joe and find another way to deal with the trash. That is free market.

Now, the communitarian/socialist way: A new resident moves into a house. They soon receive a letter demanding that they sign up for trash pickup, at a certain amount per month. The letter is addressed to them by name, because this is a government "service" and they got the name from some other government  or quasi-government agency. If they don't respong, they soon receive a bill for trash pickup that has not occurred, along with a letter threatening to have them arrested if they don't comply and remit payment within, say, 10 days.
Not wishing to go to jail over it, the resident pays. He expects to see a nice, wheeled trash can show up soon, just like everybody else has, but it doesn't show up. So he has to go to Wal-Mart and buy a can to utilize the "service" for which he is being charged.
Sometimes, the trash can actually gets emptied on Thursday mornings. Other times, a couple of weeks go by without a pickup. The truck just drives by and doesn't stop. Certainly, if an animal gets into the cheap Wal-Mart can and turns it over, scattering the trash in the road (which wouldn't have happened with the nice, heavy can the "service" was supposed to provide), it is up to the resident to pick it up because there is no way the lazy, overpaid government employee is going to stoop to actually touching the trash.
Also, if a year and a half goes by without a can being provided despite repeated complaints by the resident, that resident will still be forced to pay the full amount every month, under threat of criminal charges.
See, the "service" is provided at the government entity's convenience, and has no real connection to the bill. The bill is a non-voluntary tax, pure and simple. The sanitation department couldn't care less if anything is ever picked up at your home, but you will pay the monthly bill, regardless.
Does it sound as if I am speaking from experience?

Born-Again American

I liked this so much, I had to share it. It gets really good about halfway through.

New Survival eBook

M.D. Creekmore at The Survivalist Blog has put together a new eBook called "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" (who doesn't remember that song?), and is offering it for free! I downloaded a copy for myself. If you want to do the same, just click here to download.

By the way, no fear mongering allowed, especially in a way that looks suspiciously like traffic-grabbing. Check information before you use it, don't blindly follow anything you read. But don't delete the entire book and any links, as a commenter suggested, just because of an erroneous comment that all HDPE containers are food-grade. They are not, but come on, give the guy a break. At least he's doing what he can to get info out there.

How To Prepare Your Car For Winter

As we prepare ourselves for winter's frigid temperatures, it is a good idea to consider the family car. Not only does the cold place unusual strain on the engine and drivetrain and create road conditions that make a mishap more likely, a simple breakdown or stuck situation that would be a mere inconvenience in warmer weather can easily become life-threatening. For this reason, we need to give some thought to being prepared for an emergency while driving.

Read the rest of the article.

On a related subject, do you have a bugout bag in your car yet?

New Book On Economic Survival

This book is by someone some of you may recognize. FerFAL is the pen name of a man who lives in Argentina and has been writing for several years about what it is like to live through the aftermath of the economic collapse there. He has a lot of information that is relevant to those of us who feel we may be facing the same thing in the near future, and I have been following his commentary for a few years, first on some forums he frequented and, later, in his blog. Now he has published a book, and I would like to congratulate him, and offer this link for anyone who would like to buy a copy of his book. It would make a great Christmas present for a prepper on your list, or for someone you have been trying to convince to join the prepper lifestyle. Here's the link:

About The Health Care Bill...

"The problem is that the Senate won't run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.

If a government plan is part of the deal, "as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters."

So says the AP news story.

Once again, the Associated Press is trying to tell you what to think. And as usual, they are off the mark. Here is the real problem, from 'way down near the bottom of the page:

"All Americans would be required to carry health insurance, either through an employer, a government plan or by purchasing it on their own."

Matter-of-factly stated, as if there is no question that this is how it needs to be, and should really go without saying.
No matter what the politicians, bureaucrats and national media try to shove down our throats "for our own good", it always goes without saying that we, of course, must give up more freedom. Distasteful even to mention it, as if we really shouldn't have ever had that freedom to begin with; as if it must have been an oversight on the part of those who have our best interests at heart.

And what if you don't comply? What if you can't afford it, or for religious or other reasons just don't want to buy health insurance, or especially to be forced to do so?
Well, one thing I read (and of course the national media doesn't tell you this) is that refusal to buy health insurance would be a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison and up to $250,000 fine. In other words, refusal to buy health insurance would carry almost the same penalty as being caught with an unregistered machine gun.
And that's not all; even if one did buy the insurance, but then had difficulty making the payments, missing a couple of payments could result in a misdemeanor charge carrying a 1-year jail sentence and a $25,000 fine.

This is nothing more than a tax, folks. If this passes, it will force you to pay a $200 per month (or more) tax, just for being alive. A life tax, in other words. And believe me, once they manage to get this in place, they will increase the amount you are required to pay, probably every year. So what starts out as a 12% life tax could end up being 30% or more, in a few years. On top of income, sales, and property taxes. Think about that.

This is their answer to how they are going to pay for the "stimulus" package.

Detroit Farm City?

I have been reading for several months about the growing desolation in Detroit, where high-rise buildings sit vacant even though the entire building could be bought for what a year's rent in one apartment within it used to bring. Who would have ever thought that what was until recently the model city for American socialism would rise from the ashes of the US auto industry to become a contender for the first self-sufficient city in the world?

Here is an excerpt from an article on the subject:

"There are more visionaries in Detroit than in most Rust-Belt cities, and thus more visions of a community rising from the ashes of a moribund industry to become, if not an urban paradise, something close to it. The most intriguing visionaries in Detroit, at least the ones who drew me to the city, were those who imagine growing food among the ruins—chard and tomatoes on vacant lots (there are over 103,000 in the city, sixty thousand owned by the city), orchards on former school grounds, mushrooms in open basements, fish in abandoned factories, hydroponics in bankrupt department stores, livestock grazing on former golf courses, high-rise farms in old hotels, vermiculture, permaculture, hydroponics, aquaponics, waving wheat where cars were once test-driven, and winter greens sprouting inside the frames of single-story bungalows stripped of their skin and re-sided with Plexiglas—a homemade greenhouse. Those are just a few of the agricultural technologies envisioned for the urban prairie Detroit has become."

"Although Detroiters have been growing produce in the city since its days as an eighteenth-century French trading outpost, urban farming was given a major boost in the nineteen eighties by a network of African-American elders calling themselves the “Gardening Angels.” As migrants from the rural South, where many had worked as small farmers and field hands, they brought agrarian skills to vacant lots and abandoned industrial sites of the city, and set out to reconnect their descendants, children of asphalt, to the Earth, and teach them that useful work doesn’t necessarily mean getting a job in a factory.

Thirty years later, Detroit has an eclectic mix of agricultural systems, ranging from three-foot window boxes growing a few heads of lettuce to a large-scale farm run by The Catherine Ferguson Academy, a home and school for pregnant girls that not only produces a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, but also raises chickens, geese, ducks, bees, rabbits, and milk goats. Across town, Capuchin Brother Rick Samyn manages a garden that not only provides fresh fruits and vegetables to city soup kitchens, but also education to neighborhood children. There are about eighty smaller community gardens scattered about the city, more and more of them raising farm animals alongside the veggies. At the moment, domestic livestock is forbidden in the city, as are beehives. But the ordinance against them is generally ignored and the mayor’s office assures me that repeal of the bans are imminent."

Read more.

A Cheap, Towable Cabin For Your BOL

If you have been a prepper for any length of time, you have probably dreamed of having a retreat that you can take the family to if things get really bad, whether "really bad" means something that makes your primary home temporarily unsafe, or a job loss or economic disaster that results in the loss of your primary home. Obviously, in the second instance, the "fallback" location must be cheap and, preferably, paid off.
In today's economy, there are a lot of people who have already lost their homes and their jobs. As preppers, this is one of the things we would like to be prepared for, before it becomes fact. To that end, a lot of you already have a piece of cheap land, ostensibly for hunting and/or camping. But when it comes time to contemplate actually putting some kind of structure on that land (other than a tent, of course), we are faced with the dilemma of how to go about doing so without breaking the family budget or going in debt. Buy a cheap mobile home? While an old single-wide mobile home can indeed be found quite cheaply, having one moved and set up can run into many thousands of dollars, thus negating the savings. Travel trailer? While some of these are nice, and they are designed to be moved at will by the owner, they tend to be either cramped, very expensive, or both.
Enter the fold-up, towable cabin. Folded, it is a mere 7 feet wide by 21 feet long, so it can be towed anywhere without special permits, by any pickup truck or SUV. But upon arrival at the desired location, it folds out to a spacious 15 by 21 feet. A couple of people can set it up in a very short time. And once set up, it looks like a cabin, not a trailer. Sounds good? Wait 'til you hear the price: this little wonder can be built in a typical suburban backyard, for about $3000! And that's if you use all new materials. Anything you can scrounge or buy used will reduce the price accordingly. It it not out of the question that it could be built for under 500 bucks. A good wall tent costs more than that!
I have read some of the blogs out there advocating that people who find themselves out of work or in similar situations, buy themselves a small tract of "junk land" (land that has little monetary worth, which tends to also have low taxes and few restrictions) and live on that land in a travel trailer, and it occurred to me that this portable cabin would be a better solution for those folks, as well as preppers who just want a place to "bugout" to if necessary. And like a travel trailer, it can be set up on a few acres of junk land, a camping lot, or even a hunting lease.
Sound interesting? Click here for more information or to purchase building plans.

Obama To Cede US Sovereignty?

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change skeptic, gave a presentation in St. Paul, MN. In this 4-minute excerpt from his speech, he issues a dire warning to all Americans regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty, scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Lord Monckton served as a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to a debate to which Gore has refused. Monckton sued to stop Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” from being shown in British schools due to its inaccuracies. The judge found in-favor of Monckton, ordering 9 serious errors in the film to be corrected. Lord Monckton travels internationally in an attempt to educating the public about the myth of global warming.

Comment excerpted from GlobalClimateScam.com.

Sonia in Canada Talks About Victim Disarmament

Sonia is a vlogger who lives in Montreal, Quebec and regularly addresses the growing encroachment of the police state.